[ecrea] Media Archaeologies Forum: Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

Media Archaeologies Forum: Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

The recent emergence of ‘media archaeologies’ is an exciting theoretical 
and methodological shift within media studies. In 2010, in The Routledge 
Companion to Film History (ed. William Guynn), Erkki Huhtamo defined 
‘media archaeology’ as ‘a particular way of studying media as a 
historically attuned enterprise’ that involves researchers ‘”excavating” 
forgotten media-cultural phenomena that have been left outside the 
canonized narratives about media culture and history’ (203). In the same 
year, Jussi Parikka added that ‘media archaeology needs to insist both 
on the material nature of its enterprise – that media are always 
articulated in material, also in non-narrative frameworks whether 
technical media such as phonographs, or algorithmic such as databases 
and software networks – and that the work of assembling temporal 
mediations takes place in an increasingly varied and distributed network 
of institutions, practices and technological platforms’ 
(http://mediacartographies.blogspot.ca/2010/10/what-is-media-archaeology-beta.html). 
German media theorist and trained archaeologist, Wolfgang Ernst, 
describes media archaeology's focus on the 'nondiscursive infrastructure 
and (hidden) programs of media' (2013, Digital Memory and the Archive, 
p. 59). If media archaeologists such as Thomas Elsaesser, Wolfgang 
Ernst, Lisa Gitelman, Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka, Cornelia Vismann and 
Siegfried Zielinski are interested in scalar change, material-discursive 
assemblages and deep time relations as they pertain to media 
technologies and networks, how might archaeologists with interests in 
the media actively contribute to the shaping of this field?

Alongside archaeology’s discursive travels across the humanities, most 
notoriously via Michel Foucault, archaeologists have long engaged with 
media. From Silicon Valley to Atari dumps, from the mobile phone to the 
media technologies of post-war astronomy and from telegraphy to the 
material-discursive actions of media as sensory prostheses, the global 
archaeological community has produced a large number of important 
studies of media techno-assemblages that both map specifically 
archaeological approaches and push at the limits of archaeology as a 
discipline. What are the archaeological specificities that mark out a 
distinct disciplinary approach to understanding media? How might the 
practices of media archaeologists such as Huhtamo, Parikka, et al 
challenge assumptions that archaeologists located within the discipline 
might have about their methodological and conceptual specificities? In 
short, where are the boundaries between media archaeologies and 
archaeologies of media? How are those boundaries drawn, performed and 
maintained? And how might we work together to ask new questions of media 
technologies and their relations?

This forum invites contributors to submit responses to the provocations 
contained in the first paragraph. The forum invites contributors to draw 
out key archaeological theories and practices to contribute to the rich 
field of media ecologies, archaeologies and ‘variatologies’ in order to 
explore the implications of distinct yet diverse archaeological 
approaches to media assemblages. Commentaries are welcomed in the form 
of short texts (1,000 – 3,000 words) or in any other genre suitable for 
print, including drawings and images. We welcome especially original 
thoughts and specific examples from around the world.



Commentaries will be selected in terms of originality, diversity and 
depth and will be published in a forthcoming Forum in Journal of 
Contemporary Archaeology 
(http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/JCA). Deadline for 
submissions is 3 February 2015.


For submissions and questions, please contact Angela Piccini, 
(a.a.piccini /at/ bristol.ac.uk)


Dr A A Piccini / Senior Lecturer in Screen Media
Deputy PI: Productive Margins (Tues/Thurs); Co-I: 
knowyourbristol.blogs.ilrt.org/ (Mon/Fri)
Rm 3.17 / Department of Film and Television / School of Arts
University of Bristol / Cantocks Close / Woodland Road / Bristol BS8 1UP
T: +44 (0)117 331-5087 (Mon/Weds/Fri) / +44 (0)117 954-6713 (Tues/Thurs) 
/ 0775 834-8497
E: (a.a.piccini /at/ bristol.ac.uk)


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