Question 2

Placing the figurines in a humanized context -- whether imagined, as in a reconstruction, or literal, as in the handling by a living person in a video -- brings those figurines closer to their original production and use than a photograph can do. To interact with the objects in a dynamic way encourages the viewer to reconsider the assumptions about the objects and to rethink their history. (TL)

When we only use photographs or drawings of the figurine corpus, the objects are given a sense of timeless, spaceless, and purposelessness. That is, I forget that the object was actually produced at a moment in a living history and tend to only try and imagine its use. Artistic reconstructions and movies make it easier to see the complete object and think about how it was actually produced. We are then forced to ask why it was produced. (KP)

I think both of the above analyses are dead on. Not only does the handing of these figurines in the videos put them in a "humanized context," but it more specifically it permits us to become more personally engaged with the objects. This anonymity of the handler allows us as viewers to come one step closer to the objects and project our own bodies into that space. For me, reconstructions lack that level of personal involvement because they are admittedly the product of one person's interpretation of the past whereas the medium of the video hides its own particular underlying subjective structure. [LMR]

In a photograph or drawing, the material part of a figurine is conveyed in terms of size and shape. This is better than mere description alone—sometimes when I was working at the UPenn Museum, I would find an artifact card describing a missing object as “figurine, clay” and nothing more. Cards with photographs were much more helpful. What neither description nor photographs can get across is the form of the object—not just its size and shape, but how you handle it. This is achieved on the website through the videos and, hopefully, 3-D models. (CBL)