Build n burn: using fire as a tool to evoke, educate and entertain

The visceral nature of fire was exploited in the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods in Britain by the burning down of timber buildings and monuments, as well as the cremation of the dead. These big fires would have created memories, perhaps even ‘flashbulb memories’, and this powerful mnemonic aspect of fire was likely of significance to the social and religious lives of individuals, families and communities. This article introduces the Build N Burn concept, where fires are recreated and deployed alongside public talks, performances, experimental archaeology activities and demonstrations by craft specialists to create memorable and informative public events. Three public engagements to date, two on the island of Arran and one in Caithness, both Scotland, are described here. In each case, we constructed replica timber structures inspired by local prehistoric sites, and then burned these down in a free-to-attend public event at dusk, evoking the culmination of a prehistoric festival. Build N Burn has, at its core, the principle of delivering memorable experiences for the public inspired by prehistory, underpinned by research and experiment, using events which draw on cross-sectoral collaboration and working with local communities. This article offers a critical reflection on work to date, and discusses future potential for such activities, utilizing the mnemonic power and transformational potential of fire for public engagement and experimental archaeology

Scottish Archaeological Research Framework: Future Thinking on Carved Stones

No abstract available

Authenticity and cultural heritage in the age of 3D digital reproductions

This volume represents the first attempt to collate an organic collection of contributions on authenticity and the digital realm in heritage and archaeology. It analyses the concept of authenticity from different perspectives and with different multidisciplinary contributions, together with theoretical debate. The collection of papers explores the concept of authenticity in a comprehensive way, engaging with theories relating to the commodification of ancient material culture, heritage-making processes, scholarly views and community engagement. These papers also take into account current digital practices for the study of past material culture and how their use affects and redefines interpretation processes in archaeology. This will provide a key reference text for archaeologists, museum and heritage specialists, and other readers interested in authenticity, cultural heritage and 3D reproductions.This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), DIGIFACT 625637 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187953_ en.html) and ADS3DV 625636 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/ rcn/187952_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot)

Negotiating authentic objects and authentic selves: Beyond the deconstruction of authenticity

Our understanding of authenticity in the material world is characterized by a problematic dichotomy between materialist and constructivist perspectives. Neither explains why people find the issue of authenticity so compelling, nor how it is experienced and negotiated in practice. There is strong evidence supporting the view that prevailing materialist approaches to authenticity are a product of the development of modernity in the West. The result has been an emphasis on entities and their origins and essences. However, when we look at how people experience and negotiate authenticity through objects, it is the networks of relationships between people, places and things that appear to be central, not the things in themselves. The author argues that these inalienable relationships between objects, people and places underpin the ineffable, almost magical, power of authenticity and explain why people employ it as a means of negotiating their place in a world characterized by displacement and fragmentation. She illustrates this by drawing on ethnographic research surrounding the Hilton of Cadboll cross-slab

The Fabulous Tales of the Common People, Part 2: Encountering Hadrian’s Wall

In 2003, the Hadrian's Wall National Trail was opened, providing a 135 km (84 mile) public footpath along the length of the Roman frontier from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway. Each year, thousands of visitors walk the Trail from end-to-end and many more make day trips to visit specific locations within the wider World Heritage Site. In the second of two related papers (see Witcher, 2010), consideration turns from professional and popular visual representations of Hadrian's Wall to the ways in which visitors physically experience the monument and its landscape. The paper explores how embodied and sensory encounters produce and reproduce understandings which are charged with cultural and political meaning. Specifically, the elision of visitors and Roman soldiers through a process of embodied empathy/sympathy is outlined. It is argued that the way in which Western society assumes familiarity with an ancestral Roman Empire actively reduces the interrogative potential of encounters with the monument and limits visitors' ability to reflect on the significance of the Wall. The paper goes on to consider alternative modes of visual and physical engagement, drawing inspiration from virtual communities including geocachers who have used Information Technology such as Global Positioning Systems and Web 2.0 functionality to develop innovative modes of representation and encounter

Present teaching stories as re-membering the humanities

he ways in which Humanities scholars talk about teaching tell something about how we interact with the past of our own discipline as well as anticipate our students’ futures. In this we express collective memories as truths of learning and teaching. As cultural artifacts of our present, such stories are worthy of excavation for what they imply about ourselves as well as messages they pass onto our successors. This paper outlines “collective re-membering” as one way to understand these stories, particularly as they present in qualitative interviews commonly being used to research higher education practice in the Humanities. It defines such collective re-membering through an interweaving of Halbwachs, Ricoeur, Wertsch and Bakhtin. It proposes that a dialogic reading between this understanding of collective re-membering and qualitative data-sets enables us to both access our discursive tendencies within the Humanities and understand the impact they might have on student engagement with our disciplines, noting that when discussing learning and teaching, we engage in collectively influenced myth-making and hagiography. The paper finishes by positing that the Humanities need to change their orientation from generating myths and pious teaching sagas towards the complex and ultimately more intellectually satisfying, articulation of learning and teaching parables

Early Medieval Sculpture and the Production of Meaning, Value and Place: The Case of Hilton Cadboll

The Hilton of Cadboll Pictish cross-slab is regarded as one of the finest examples of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. The upper portion of the cross-slab is a prime exhibit in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where such sculpture is portrayed as the 'high art' associated with the origins of the Scottish nation. At a local level, attachment to the cross-slab on the east Ross Shire seaboard (modern Highland) has remained strong since its removal in the mid-19th century. So much so, that a full-size reconstruction was commissioned and erected at the medieval chapel site, next to the village of Hilton of Cadboll, in 2000. However, discovery and excavation of the missing lower portion of the cross-slab in 2001 re-ignited controversy over its ownership and presentation and created tensions between national and local interests and identities