Tools and Trends

Chair: Callan Davies

“From spearthrower to bow in the prehistoric world: a not-so-seamless transition” by Danielle Davies

This paper will briefly explore the problems inherent in seeing technological change, both past and present, as something that happens almost overnight and with little resistance. In many cases, the persistence of tradition, even with its comparative limitations, can be a powerful force among societies. A case study of the continued use of spearthrower technology after the introduction of the bow-and-arrow in North America sheds light on the unwillingness of people to let go of their traditions. Particularly interesting when regarding the pace of technological innovation in the digital world, it seems that the fight to hold onto the familiar has a place among many societies throughout time and space.

"Visualising Archaeology: Trends and Narratives in Archaeological Site Photography 1950-1980." by Charlotte Young

My PhD project investigates the relationship between visual literacy and photographing the ancient world in the mid-twentieth century. Visual literacy is a term coined in 1971 to describe the ability to recognize, interpret and understand information created in the form of a visual image or action. Modern scholars, (Gamble 1992), have observed that there is a tendency in the theoretical literature in archaeology to include very few illustrations.  Furthermore, explicit studies on the visual in archaeology have still very much taken for granted the selection and process of illustrations. I have conducted several surveys of the publication of archaeological site photographs in archaeological literature during the period 1950 to 1980. The purpose of this exercise was to create a database in which I could extrapolate statistics, patterns and trends for the nature of visual literacy in academic and popular articles. This period was an important time for the discipline of archaeology as it experienced many theoretical debates concerning the study and method of archaeology. In this paper, using my primary data from my surveys, I will show how these debates affected  a) the style of archaeological site photographs, and b) the visual perception of archaeology in the mid-twentieth century.

“Locating ‘place’ on the maps of mobile social networks: the case of Comob” by Dan Frodsham

Using a case study from the field of locative media, this paper explores how mobile social networks that operate both within and across space produce competing versions of proximity that undermine conventional cartographic representation. Comob (2009-), a mobile application produced by artists Jen Southern and Chris Speed, seeks to situate a renewed ‘sense of place’ somewhere between geographical and social space. In highlighting connections between ‘nodes’ over distances between locations,  Comob aims to empower users on the ground to collectively negotiate and mark-out their own territory. But the attempt to reconcile a relational space with absolute  space is fraught with difficulty. Comob suggests that, to paraphrase Bruno Latour (2005: 185), issues of scale and proximity may become the actors’ own achievement, yet the application’s base-map remains substantially intact and continues to order and scale spatial representation. To allow otherwise would undermine the platform on which Comob relies for its operations and set adrift the shared ‘sense of place’ that it seeks to foster. The paradox can either be seen as a productive tension or as indicative of conditions in which the venerable vessel of Euclidean space, and the maps that grid it, are no longer able to contain our knowledge or sustain our representations.