This book

• assesses why, what should be a redundant form of representation, remains a rich and treasured way of archaeological storytelling.
• Explores what is it about pictorial depiction and its association with art, aestheticism, subjectivity and the workings of the imagination that has maintained its relevance into the twenty-first century.
• looks beyond certain supposed “creative turns” and focus instead on creative continuities, examining how the power of picturing has not only persistently informed documentary practices but actively structured those practices.
• Uses published illustrations as the primary source of evidence and discussions ranging from the fieldwork of Alfred Maudslay at Maya sites in Mesoamerica to the observations by George and Bernard-Philippe Groslier of the landscape archaeology and artistic legacy of the Khmer empire in Cambodia; from the restorations by Arthur Evans of the site of Knossos in Crete to the efforts of Alexander Keiller to reinstate the complexion of the stone circles at Avebury, England to accord with eighteenth-century antiquarian accounts.
• interrogates specific images and contrast them with later or earlier counterparts in order to identify common patterns of pictorial information, bearing in mind that the visual life of an image may well have begun with a single observational moment.

Book Information
ISBN 9781032646879
Author Roger Balm
Format Hardback
Page Count 238
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd