Digital Collections of Material Culture

Introduction:

While ancient texts are the main source of evidence that Classicists use to reconstruct the history and culture of Greco-Roman antiquity, they are not the only source of information on life in the ancient world. Ancient material culture, by which we mean art and archaeology, contributes enormously to our understanding of antiquity and is in fact one of the main contributors to new knowledge about the ancient world. This is because the discovery of heretofore unknown ancient texts is a relatively rare occurrence, while archaeologists uncover new physical remains, including new epigraphic materials, with each dig season. Archaeologists are thus often in a position to shed light on topics about which are written sources are largely silent.

But archaeological evidence, like textual evidence, does not speak for itself, at least not in a transparent and straightforward fashion. Archaeologists must extract meaning from physical remains, and art historians must draw meaning from artistic representation, just as literary scholars must extract meaning from texts. In practice, of course, archaeologists, historians, and literary scholars leverage one another’s work in order to contextualize their own. The archaeologists needs the context provided by written sources germain to their dig site to frame or limit their interpretation of what certain physical remains might mean about life in antiquity. Historians add material evidence to the literary evidence in order to provide a fuller and more compelling historical narrative about a particular time, place, or event. Literary scholars rely on the work of the historian to frame the context needed for accurate interpretation of text and meaning. Classical studies has thus per force become a highly interdisciplinary field, entailing the study of history, literature, and material culture, which together make up the foundation of the field.

But what is challenging for both Classical Studies researchers and students alike is the fact these are all highly specialized fields in their own right, to say nothing of their related subfields such as numismatics or epigraphy. It is of course impossible for any researcher to have a detailed knowledge of the working methods, theories, and technical debates in all the areas of research central to Classical Studies. Moreover, digital collections of material culture, both scholarly and amateur, have grown dramatically in recent years, as has the application of digital technology to archaeological and art historical research. While this has been a positive development, allowing the general public, including students and researchers, access ancient material remains in private and public collections, and in situ at archaeological dig sites themselves, not all such resources rise to the appropriate level of scholarly rigor for the purposes of scholarship. It therefore behooves any serious Classical Studies student or scholar to have at least a general passing knowledge of the working methods involved in working with ancient material culture, as well as of some the digital tools and resources available in the area of material culture in an open access format.

In Module 5, therefore, we introduce students to some general considerations that they must keep in mind when working with material culture while conducting their own research. It is not the aim of this Module to provide the students with a thorough knowledge of the field of Classical archaeology or art history, which would require an entire program of study. Rather the aim in this module is to introduce students to some basic and general considerations for how to use material culture as evidence for life in the ancient Greco-Roman world in a critical fashion. In Module 5, therefore, we introduce students to the fields of archaeology and art history in their traditional forms, before moving on to discuss how to access and use material evidence that is increasing available digitally. It should be stressed that this Module is in no way exhaustive, either in its discussion of traditional archaeological or art historical theory and method, or in its discussion of the digital repositories of ancient material culture. It is merely meant to orient students so that they might explore the world of digital material culture with a critical eye. The digital resources for material culture discussed in this Module thus do not represent that full array of ancient material culture openly accessible online but is limited to a handful of resources that can reasonably be considered ‘scholarly’ in some sense. Omitted are numerous digital collections, and 3D reconstructions by amateurs and dilletantes, and students would do well to remember that, as with scholarly literature, so too with collections of ancient material culture, it is vitally important to limit one’s view to collections curated by professional scholars.

Module 5 Lecture Here:

Module 5 Supplementary Material:

Module 5 Supplementary Material 1 Archaeology – exploring the past with modern technology, DW History Documentary 2018 (Video): Archeology – exploring the past with modern technology | DW History Documentary – Bing video

Module 5 Supplementary Material 2 The Met Museum (Video)

Module 5 Supplementary Material 3 The Met Museum (Website): Home – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)

Module 5 Supplementary Material 4 The British Museum (Video)

Module 5 Supplementary Material 5 The British Museum (Website): British Museum

Module 5 Supplementary Material 6 Perseus Digital Library Artefact Browser (Video)

Key Terms:

Provenance, Local Typology, Semiotics, Heuristics, Iconography, Magnetometry, Johann Winckelmann, Diagnostic Use, Material Analysis, In Situ, Reading Space.