Download ebook FREE - Allemandi

a new trend prevailed, according to which each archaeological
site of some standing should be provided with its own museum.
This did not have only positive effects; emphasis on local features
and developments left little space for understanding wider social or
political processes. Archaeological sites, rather than history, became
now the focus of attention - to the satisfaction of the rising tourism
industry. Despite the fragmentation of master narratives, the prominence
of locality remained unchallenged. 12 Archaeological finds and
monuments continued to be treated as “objective” testimonies of the
past, whose importance had to be “discovered”. There was no room
for alternative explanations or negotiated meanings; neither were the
theoretical tenets which underlay museum exhibitions discussed or
made explicit. The past remained a singular and rigid entity, if only
more localized than before.
Multiple Interpretations
I believe that this is a major problem of public archaeology today. 13
We insist on narrow positivist views of antiquity, a belief in a unique
historical “truth”, which we think can be revealed through careful
study of the archaeological record. We avoid to explore alternative
ways of reading the past, or to offer different theoretical standpoints 14
which would allow visitors to grasp the polysemy of past human
actions.
To do so, we should draw on the interesting theoretical debate
which takes place lately about the role of agency in shaping memory
and constructing the past, 15 the importance of perception for understanding
symbolic forms of expression, 16 the meaning(s) of identity
in ancient societies, 17 and so on. Although these notions may seem
difficult to deal with in an archaeological exhibition, they may not
be so in practice.
In the Museum of Cycladic Art (MCA), we have made an interesting
experiment in that direction. After almost 20 years of presenting
ancient Greek art in a traditional art-historical way, 18 we decided to
break up the collection into two new exhibitions with very different
perspectives.
On the 4th floor of the museum, we created a thematic exhibition
on “Daily Life in Antiquity”, with rich illustrations and (noninteractive)
multimedia applications (fig. 1). Here, pictorial scenes
from vase paintings, reliefs, coins and other type of imagery have
been used as a realistic basis for the reconstruction of major stages
43