A Different Way to View the World: Comics, Outreach, and Cultural Heritage in the Islands of Yap and Palau, Micronesia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Comics can not only be an engaging and accessible medium for public outreach in archaeology, they can also help strengthen connections between such outreach and other aspects of cultural heritage. Applied comics utilize specific kinds of visual storytelling devices such as explicitly identified narrators, visual contextualization, and a constructivist approach to information to communicate archaeological data, process, and interpretation. Using the same approaches to communicate other kinds of related stories about the past can place archaeological outreach within a much wider conceptual milieu—embracing ecological, cultural, historical, and biographical storytelling about the past, and more closely partnering with community and Indigenous perspectives. This has significant implications for the broader context of community-based outreach in the Pacific, particularly as regards archaeology's relationship with issues such as development and the impact of climate change. Such an approach offers the opportunity to build a different kind of public voice and visibility for archaeology, while simultaneously promoting a more networked place for archaeology within community-based heritage working. This paper will draw on recent comics projects in the Pacific dealing with archaeological excavation and research, traditional culture and educational practices, government cultural heritage policy, and ongoing post-World War II reconciliation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• When the Wild Winds Blow: Micronesia Colonization in Pacific Context   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 31977