Putting the Soul into Archaeology—Integrating Interpretation into Practice

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper calls for a creative, interpretive archaeology that does not take reports for agencies or other archaeologists as its end goal but instead speaks to a far wider range of audiences through the development and presentation narratives that will engage and inspire people. I argue that this can be achieved by implementing "Emotion Design" –an interpretive design methodology that makes a clear distinction between ‘information’, ‘message’, ‘emotion,’ and ‘media’ to develop a concept in the form of an engaging story, supported by all stakeholders, that has the power to move and engage visitors. By drawing upon several award-winning case studies in the sphere of museology and site interpretation by Dutch design agency ‘Studio Louter’, I will argue how a meaningful connection to the past can only be achieved by evoking the emotions of the visitor in constant relation to a clearly developed core interpretive message. This paper builds on previous insights that were published as part of the special volume ‘Interpreting & Presenting Archaeology’ of SAA Advances in Archaeological Practice (volume 6.3).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24579