Paper short abstract:

I am interested in how the photographic discourse in archaeology affects our perception of the discipline. Today, there is no specific study on how Processual and Postprocessual archaeology affected the visual representation of archaeology in photography published in academic and non-academic works.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will present a short history on the theories and methods of archaeological photography for the mid-twentieth century led by significant archaeologists and photographers at the time. This will provide a framework for reconstructing the historical thinking which lay behind the specific composition of "scientific" site photography. Next I will outline the historical context of the discipline of archaeology to show how it is possible that internal changes, which occurred within the theories and methods of processual and postprocessual archaeology, affected the creation and publication of site photography. After, I will discuss how contextual hermeneutics is the most useful theoretical approach in understanding how the standardisation of site photography was historically and culturally determined. In order to prove that it is possible to trace certain pictorial conventions in site photography during this period, I will analyse the results of my survey on published site photographs in eight academic and popular journals. With this quantitative data I will show how it is possible to determine the standardisation of "scientific" site photographs by measuring the frequency in which certain visual aesthetics appear in the images from 1950 to 1980.