This third episode of Emerging Cypriot is up on the web. This is the final short that looks in detail at the field methods used by the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project's intensive survey team on Cyprus. This short tracks an artifact as it moves from the field to the artifact catalogue catalogue.
The focus on the artifact is of particular significance for the kind of intensive survey that we practice on PKAP. Artifact level survey (what is sometimes also called siteless survey) shifts the basic unit of interpretation from the site (or a dot on the map) to the artifact. In particular we focus on interpreting the distribution of artifacts on the ground meaning the location, identification, and documentation of each artifact plays a key role in producing our larger understanding of the site. You can see the distribution of artifact on our interactive GIS map here.
The short also shows how many people have to work together to analyze and document a substantial corpus of ceramic evidence. Each artifact passes through multiple hands: the fieldwalker, the washing team, the registrar, the ceramicist, the photographer, the illustrator, and the cataloguers. Each individual has a particular perspective on the artifact and their role on the project, and this, in effect, contributes to their creation of a distinct and familiar archaeological landscape. Among the differences between our first archaeological documentary Survey on Cyprus and Emerging Cypriot is that the omniscient narrator has given way to participant voices. This has allowed us to present the archaeological landscape as a product of the participants in the project rather than some overarching and anonymous analytical process.
A few technical notes
The video is all in QuickTime which you will need to download to watch it. If you right click and download the video, it is formatted for viewing on your iPod or even iPhone or iPod Touch. When a new installment is made, the image will become a rollover image. We'll add a short a week. I borrowed the idea for this format from a video series at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The center square in the last row is a link to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project web page where you can read more about everything that you see in these film shorts.
We have posted a particularly frank interview with the director of Emerging Cypriot and Survey on Cyprus, and you can read the commentaries on the first two shorts (with links to those shorts) below.
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