Reception studies, visual analysis and knowing the past

Event details

The wider cultural engagement with prehistoric and ancient cultures is a long established practice that has continued from antiquity to the present. During this time there has been an exchange of ideas between those who have investigated the past and others who have represented aspects of the past in more creative contexts. Such receptions, and particularly visual ones, play an important part in generating ideas about the past yet we still know little about how they actually 'feed into' the archaeological process of creating knowledge. In my talk I look at the field of reception studies as developed in classics, history and art history and relate this to the development of representation analysis in archaeology. Following this I present a case study on the reception of ancient Egypt in visual realms, demonstrating how perceptions of this culture have been driven by receptions generated beyond the boundaries of academic discourse.

Stephanie Moser is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. Her research centres on the representation and reception of the past, focusing on the creation of knowledge through visual documentation and presentation, museum exhibition and artistic portrayals of antiquity. I am mainly concerned with the representation of ancient Egypt in the nineteenth century and the history of antiquarian and archaeological illustration.