Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 277.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 09:08:49 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <w.mccarty@btinternet.com>
Subject: archaeological imagination?
I would be very grateful for any recommendations of writings on what I am
calling the "archaeological imagination". Logically this must overlap quite
a bit with the historical kind, but I would suppose that because
archaeology deals so much with objects, it requires different qualities of
its imagination also. Something along the lines of Collingwood's
discussions in The Idea of History would be just right, but I would also be
interested to know how this imagination is cultivated, and whether anyone
has written specifically about this aspect of the training of archaeologists.
Tales are told about people who are extraordinarily good at sensing where
to dig, for example. This suggests perhaps a highly developed visual
imagination, which I'd guess an excavator is also much in need of once a
site has been located. I am aware of computational tools for visualizing
sites -- Richard Beacham's work with VRML comes to mind. But I'm really
wondering about the qualities of mind, visual and other.
Many thanks.
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk |
w.mccarty@btinternet.com | www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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