Keynote Presentation at University of Gothenburg, CAA Sweden 2017 Conference
Maps of the original Gothenburg on display at The Birth of Gothenburg exhibit, Museum of Gothenburg
On November 8th, Hannah Turner recently visited the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where she was invited by Dr. Per Stenborg to give a keynote lecture for the Swedish chapter of Computer Applications in Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference, Nov 8-11.
The conference focused on contemporary methods and applications of digital methods from new GIS methods, to collaborative data structures, to immersive historical environments of Viking archaeological sites, and it included a tour of the exhibit The Birth of Gothenburg at the Museum Of Gothenburg (shown above).
The keynote was called Objects, Access, Agency: The Role of Collections in a Postcolonial, Digital Age; and introduced many of the projects that the Making Culture Lab has been investigating. The keynote looked at how digital technologies have been used to reframe and improve access to material culture and archaeological data in collaboration with Indigenous communities, and it explored how different viewpoints can exist simultaneously when it comes to thinking about archaeological and material culture. What we know to be typically Western or scientific ideas about objects as evidence of the past can coexist with Indigenous communities whose ancestors used and owned these belongings (and who continue to use and make these belongings; but we must start renegotiating power structures and historical categories to accomplish this. This paper shows how fruitful collaborations can be built by considering the technologies and relationships that need to be established.