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Archaeological knowledge production: reading mortuary reconstructions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2022
Abstract
Research on archaeological knowledge production emphasises the contingent nature of understandings of the past. In practice, however, levels of uncertainty and conjecture can easily become less than obvious in interpretations, perhaps especially visual ones. The authors interrogate multiple textual and visual accounts of a Viking-Age burial to demonstrate how selection processes—what to portray or omit—highlight the contextual nature of the knowledge claims in these images. Arguing that the circulation of reconstructions shorn of textual nuance leads to misperceptions, the authors call for transparency in the creation of these images. Rather than definitive depictions of archaeological fact, these reconstructions offer tools for archaeologists and the public to think with.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd
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Moen et al. supplementary material
Moen et al. supplementary material
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