Event: FRIDAY SEMINAR:Giving Voices - Without Words - To Prehistoric People

Dr. Ruth Tringham

Professor
Graduate School (Anthropology)
UC Berkeley

ABSTRACT:

This presentation describes a path to addressing the discomfort that I and many of my braver colleagues have had when putting words into the mouths and heads of prehistoric actors, knowing that these words say more about us than they do about prehistory. Yet without such speech, how are we archaeologists and the broader public to imagine the intangibles of the deep past (emotions, affect, gender, senses)? Moreover, such words create a misleading certainty that conceals the ambiguities of archaeological data. Are there alternative options to verbal and vocal clarity when creating imagined fictive narratives about the past? With inspiration from composer Györgi Ligeti, from linguists and experimental psychologists, and from ASMR performers, I explore the emotive power of vocal non-verbal interjections and utterances that have more universality and less cultural baggage, using them in three diverse remediations of digital media from three prehistoric archaeological contexts in Europe and Anatolia.