Making the Most of the Medium of Film to Create Alternative Narratives About The

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Tringham/Brussels_Nov2009/Archaeological Film 1

Making the Most of the Medium of Film to Create Alternative Narratives about the

Past and its Investigation

Ruth Tringham, Dept of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, USA1

Presented at the conference Archologie Et Mdias Quelles Reprsentations, Quels Enjeux ?Brussels November 2009. Editor Serge LeMaitre

This is a pre-print copy of a paper that is currently in press to be published with the conference and festival in

November 2009. Please respect the intellectual property of the author and the efforts of the publishers and reviewersuntil its publication. If you find any errors that need modification please contact the author at

[email protected]. Meanwhile this pdf is distributed to interested readers under a Creative Commons 3.0

license.


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Making the Most of the Medium of Film to Create Alternative Narratives about the

Past and its Investigation

Ruth Tringham, Dept of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, USA2

Presented at the conference Archologie Et Mdias Quelles Reprsentations, Quels Enjeux ?Brussels November 2009

AbstractThere is no doubt that narratives told by moving images with immersive and evocative sound have an immensely powerful impact

on their audiences. Movies - whether documentary, docudrama, or feature play an important role in creating and sustaining

mainstream narratives about the past, re-mediating archaeological investigations. This role, however, is a subversive one in that

movies have as their official purpose entertainment or, at least, edutainment. This paper describes the UC Berkeley

Archaeological Film Database, now available through any Web browser, in which many of the 600 films about the products and

the process of archaeological research have been subjected to a critical analysis through the efforts of several Media and

Archaeology courses. The critical analysis follows media literacy criteria, including analysis of authorship, funding,

distribution, sub-texts, and the impact on changing audiences in terms of the construction of the past.

1. Introduction an urgent need for archaeological film informationIts a new day in 2008 on the World Archaeology Congress listserve and suddenly a lonely crycomes in from the wilderness: I wondered if anyone had a recommendation for any films orDVDs for an Introductory Archaeology class. Not something on a specific culture or region, butmore about the process of DOING archaeology? (Lance Foster, WAC list, December 31, 2007).Immediately, the list was filled with numerous helpful suggestions, from around the world, aboutspecific films that members had used in a similar course, or about a published list ofdocumentary films about archaeology (Downs et al., 1995, albeit before the days of DVD), orweb portals where such lists might exist on line (albeit hard to reach but thanks to MarcusBrittain for this great resource: Grant, 2008)).

There are actually quite a lot of those lists of films hiding in libraries and the Internet3 that tell uswhat there is to view and what the film is about, if it is a good (archaeologically correct) movie,whether it is a feature or documentary or docudrama, and sometimes how to access it.

In this paper, however, these questions are not the main direction of my inquiry. I am moreinterested in questions such as how we watch films about the past, how we use them in teaching,how we use them in our research, and how would we make a film about the past or aboutconstructing knowledge about the past, if we had the opportunity or desire to do so. How do wecreate meaning from films about the past, how if at all do we watch these films critically?How, for example, was Lance going to use the movie once he chose it and got hold of it?

To answer these question we could look at the rationale behind some of the lists of films Imentioned above: the best films can inspire the kind of connection between ancient and

modern experience that brings excitement to teaching and learning about the Classical world.Videotapes, and particularly DVD, are very user-friendly media, and lecturers and students arebecoming increasingly comfortable with viewing video content online and incorporating extractsinto PowerPoint presentations and Virtual Learning Environments. The remaining problem issimply finding out what materials are available, and this is where the databases and servicesoffered by the BUFVC can help (Grant, 2008).

Richard Pettigrews rationale for not only listing the films, but also making the films available is


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to provide a voice for archaeologists and others devoted to sharing human cultural heritage. Thusmost of the films on the Archaeology Channel are short documentaries, made by smallindependent companies or individual archaeologists, with some vetting as to standards of contentand technology (so.. not YouTube), but with very different criteria from mainstream featuresor documentaries. But I feel that these media can play a more important role in teaching and

research than to be watched uncritically for information or as supplements to bring to life or toadd the excitement of audio-visual media to texts written on paper or spoken in presentations.

2. Analysis of Archaeological and Historical Films

In the last few years several important books and articles have considered archaeological films astexts about the past that could be critiqued and used as inspiration for research on how the past isconstructed and a more critical participatory form of teaching. Three books, especially, allpublished in 2007 by Left Coast Press, should make an impact on the way films are viewed anddiscussed in the future: Archaeology and the Media, edited by Timothy Clack and MarcusBrittain (2007a), Box Office Archaeology edited by Julie Schablitsky (2007a), andArchaeologyis a Brandby Cornelius Holtorf (2007).

As a number of authors in these volumes point out (Noble, 2007, Clack and Brittain, 2007b, 39),critical discussion of screening the past and other cultures has been active in the disciplines ofhistory and anthropology at least since 1990 (Anderson, 2006, Anderson, in press, Barta, 1998b,MacDougall, 1998, Babash and Taylor, 1997, Pink, 2001, Sherman, 1998, Rosenstone, 1995,Munslow and Rosenstone, 2004, Juhasz and Lerner, 2006, Barker, 2000). Many of thesediscussions focus on revisionist themes such as cinema as an interpretive text, cinema as onemore tool in the construction of history or the other, the encoding of culture incinematographic representation and the socio-cultural context of the production and consumptionof film. These are the same themes that are discussed in the three texts about archaeologymentioned above as well as in this paper.

For the most part, these discussions in history and anthropology and I suspect in archaeology

have remained a strictly academic enterprise, and, moreover, in the higher echelons of graduateand professional research. There has been little trickle down of these ideas into primary orsecondary or even higher - education and popular culture. And yet many of the messages inthese works would, I believe, enhance the entertainment value of watching films about the past atthe same time as developing the publics critical thinking about how the past is constructed. Iwas introduced to a body of literature that actually takes the themes of the academic discussionsinto the domain of education, lifelong learning and popular culture in a most surprising way.

3. Media Literacy and the Critical Analysis of Media

I attended a two-day workshop called How to Read a Film: A Visual Literacy Workshop forHigh School Teachers and Media Educators at the Pacific Film Archive in UC Berkeley. It isan annual event4, but I happened to attend in June 2005. I was preparing to teach for the first

time a two-semester course onArchaeology and the Media, modeled on the two-semester courseof ethnographic film critique and creative practice that was already a mainstay of the UCBerkeley anthropology curriculum. In this workshop I was brought face to face with a body ofliterature about the part that films play in education as well as everyday lives that did not figurein the literature of the Ethnographic Film course and caused me to completely redesign theArchaeology and the Media course that I was about to teach. The workshop and the literature itintroduced is from the ideas of Media Literacy that perhaps started with Marshall McLuhansrevelations about the power of the media (McLuhan, 1964), but then developed through a


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number of writers from education, cultural studies, and communication and media studies inBritain, Canada, and Australia (Tyner, 1998, 154). In these countries, media literacy has beentaught as a regular part of the secondary school curriculum for many years. It plays a formal rolein the classroom in educating about racism, cultural diversity, environmental issues, and history.

In the United States, by contrast, it is still very peripheral to mainstream curriculum building; nor

is it practiced in the home by adults or children. Media education in the US tends to be aimedtowards protection against the negative effects of media, whereas the model developed in Canadaaimed to unite media analysis skills with hands-on practice, to explore the contexts as well asthe content for media messages, and to recognize that students take great pleasure in the use ofmedia and popular culture; thus the Canadians placed emphasis on the social construction ofknowledge (Tyner, 1998, 154, paraphrasing the Ontario Ministry of Education statement in1989).

4. Media Literacy and the UC Berkeley Archaeological Film Database

Putting aside the need for an acquisition program of media literacy in secondary and highereducation in the US, I found that many of the tangible parts of the Canadian curriculum weredirectly applicable to the critical analysis and greater appreciation of archaeological film andchose to follow this path in designing the Archaeology and the Media courses. TheArchaeological Film Database5, now available through any Web browser, was created as Iprepared for the course and was trying to gather together films that could be used in the courseand analyzed by its students. I included films of all genres in the database, feeling, like MarcusBrittain and Timothy Clack (2007b, 46), that it was important to subject both documentaries andfeatures, whatever their funding and institutional basis, to the same criteria of analysis. Filmsfrom some of the sources mentioned above were included. The list continues to grow in 2009over 600 films from the input of various users. The films are about the documentation andinterpretation of the products as well as the process of archaeological research. Only about 60(10%) have been subjected to a full critical analysis through the efforts of the students in severalMedia and Archaeology courses6. The point of this paper is to make public what has until nowbeen an academic venture on the Berkeley campus. The films that have not yet been criticallyreviewed have information that can be gleaned from on-line databases7 and search engines8, andin fact there are direct tabs in the database linking to these sources. But what really sets thisdatabase apart is that there are critical analyses written by archaeologists (even if these arestudents or avocational enthusiasts) that follow media literacy criteria, including analyses ofauthorship, funding, distribution, sub-texts, and the impact on changing audiences in terms of theconstruction of the past. The database is aimed at educators and lifelong learners who believe inthe mutual interdependence of critical analysis and hands-on practice to increase criticalawareness and creative satisfaction from the media sources through which the academicenterprise and popular culture can be merged.

4.1. Entering the Film DatabaseAt the entry interface (figure 1) the user has a choice of going directly to the list of films, or tothe media literacy reviews themselves. Information about both is on both interfaces but invarying detail, and it is very easy to go from one interface to the other.


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Figure 1. The Entry interface to the Archaeological Film Database4.2. The Film Information interface

The Film Information interface (figure 2) contains information on genre, year of production,location of production, duration, language, and a summary of how archaeology is represented.The lower part of the interface is a series of tabs, some of which summarize the media literacyreview (see below) with a link to the full review, and others direct the user to source informationon the Web and publications. These include external reviews, citations in publications, as well asthe ability to watch an on-line trailer from inside the database and browse the Internet Moviedatabase (IMDB), Google, and Surf-the-Channel. The idea is that the user can find not onlyinformation about the movie from these sources but also where and how it may be found/viewed.

4.3. Media Literacy Review interfaceThe interface that contains the Media Literacy Reviews is also divided into an upper part and alower tabbed part (figure 3). The upper part concerns the details of the reviewer, such asaffiliation, that is whether it is a student taking a course, or some other context, when the reviewwas written, and links to other reviews that the reviewer has written. In the lower part of theinterface are seven tabs comprising the different themes of the Media Literacy review describedbelow. Each theme has a set of guiding questions to help the reviewer. Sources that have beenused in the review are cited in the eighth tab.


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Figure 2. The Films interface of the Archaeological Film Database

4.4. Authorship

The opening Media Literacy review on either interface is the theme tab Authorship, sinceevery other theme ultimately comes back to the creators and authors who are responsible fortheir creations and should be cited. For this them, students were asked: Who are the films madeby? Be aware of the differences in the authorship structures of documentaries and feature films.What is the history of those involved in authoring the movie? What other films have they made?Why might they have made this movie? Do archaeologists or historians play a role as


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consultants, if they are not authors? What kind of archaeologists are they?

Julie Schablitsky mentions that few mainstream archaeologists have ever been used asconsultants for feature films (Schablitsky, 2007b). A recent exception is Richard Hansen in MelGibsons Apocalypto. Another is Yves Coppens in One Woman or Two. Archaeologiststhemselves have made films, almost all of which would be categorized as documentary shorts,

but they play very little part in the for-profit world. We also asked what kind of training theauthors had: archaeological, film-making, journalism ?

Figure 3. The Media Literacy Review interface of the Archaeological Film Database


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4.5. Truth and RealityReality is the next topic that reviewers are asked to address. This usually involves a detailedanalysis of the narrative of the film. The principle behind this is that reality is constructed byfilm-makers in a subtle way naturalizing action, behavior and social practice (for examplethrough the authority of an expert) and/or more explicitly asking the audience to suspend belief

for an hour or so.Guidance is given in the database interface by asking: How has the reality of the past or thepresent been constructed (made to seem natural) in this movie? How has the interpretation ofarchaeology and/or history (i.e. the past) been portrayed? How have archaeologists or theprocess of archaeology been portrayed (if at all?)? Is the movie in fact striving to depict reality orfantasy? Are other opinions and voices and ideas and standpoints about the past represented?How complex is the narrative?

This focus of critique has received the most attention by recent discussants of archaeological film(Piccini, 2007, Schablitsky, 2007a, Clack and Brittain, 2007b), and has been thoroughly debatedby historians. One of the (for me) most valuable conclusions that constructivist historians havecome to is that feature films allow a historians interpretation of documentary evidence to begiven vision and voice many draw attention to the Return of Martin Guerre as an excellentexample of such a film (Barta, 1998a, Rosenstone, 1995). Academic specialists see no escapefrom the time constraints of audience attention span and/or production costs that inevitablydemand the simplification of the complexities of a historical (or archaeological) narrative. Allagree (but mostly implicitly) that the most detrimental result of such essentializing combinedwith the seduction of cinematographic format is that the interpretation that isdocumented/performed will be received uncritically as the only possible interpretation, that is, asthe truth aka reality.

One brilliant analysis of this kind is by Steve Anderson of a very brilliant movie: Ruins: a FakeDocumentary by Jesse Lerner, a Californian film-maker with an agenda to expose colonialism in

post-colonial Central America (Anderson, 2006). In his movie, Lerner takes as his point ofdeparture the difference between truth and fiction, authentic and fake (Lerner, 2006). By his styleof montage of found footage, interviews, fake interviews, animation and fictional re-creations,Lerner creates a recombinant history of the writing of the pre-Hispanic history of Mexico. Theanalysis of the movie by Steve Anderson - himself an advocate of the recombination offragments of different kinds of media to form endless versions of the truth - shows how Lernergradually erodes the authority of the archaeologists and historians objectivity (Anderson, inpress).

4.6. Ideology and Sub-textsAndersons analysis draws attention to the third and fourth principles of Media Literacy: theMessage (made famous by Marshall McLuhan, 1964) and the Communication of the message

through the codes of representation and the aesthetic of the film-making.

Since the writing of Marshall McLuhan, an essential aspect of media literacy has been a criticalawareness of the ideological implications and value systems of the media. Movies - whetherdocumentary, docudrama, or feature play an important role in creating and sustainingmainstream narratives about the past, re-mediating archaeological and historical investigations.

In the ideology tab of the database you are invited to attempt to identify the values andmessages embedded (often quite subtly) in the movie. Knowing who made the movie and which


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social and cultural system they inhabit, is it possible to identify a deliberate agenda or sub-text? Are there assumed values and beliefs that are confirmed or legitimized by the movie?What message do you get from the movie? Do the messages of the movie help or hinder theconservation of cultural heritage? This part of the review can disintegrate into conspiracy theory,paranoia, and often not unjustified accusations of propaganda. But such an analysis can also

foreground some very interesting (and constructive) observations. For example, the archaeologistRichard Hansen working as a consultant for Mel Gibsons Apocalypto was interested toforeground a theory about the Mayan use of lime-plastering in architecture; there is also MelGibsons interesting religious background of Orthodox Catholicism that perhaps emerges in thisfilm.

Figure 4. Hugh Ranks Intensify/Downplay Schema

4.7. Aesthetics and Codes of RepresentationEach medium codifies the re-presented reality in unique ways. Under the Aesthetics tab, thereviewer is asked how the message(s) of the movie is coded in the films modes of representation.It is easy to see the different codes used by documentary versus feature films, but there aredifferent codes within genres. An important element of media literacy is the ability to decode themedia narrative, and to develop an awareness of the aesthetic form chosen for the medium. Can

it be decoded? How does the aesthetic form serve to strengthen the message9? Hugh RanksIntensify/Downplay Schema was devised to critique advertising media (Figure 4). However, hisobservations that a message can be intensified through repetition, association with phenomenathat are meaningful to the audience through such compositional tricks as juxtaposition andmontage can productively be applied to both documentary and feature films. How, for example,is the narrative of the film developed? Are the past and the products of archaeology and historydepicted as a mystery, solving riddles, a detective story? How is sound used: ambient sound orbackground music, voiceover or interview? How is the video camera used birds (gods) eye


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view or close-ups?

This role of aesthetic form, however, is a subversive one in that movies have as their officialpurpose entertainment or, at least, edutainment. What makes a movie more entertaining? Again

the argument comes that simple is better than complex, but is complexity to be understood ascomplexity of detailed information or complexity of alternative interpretations and voices? Manywould argue that the public are more interested and stimulated by the transparency of the processof constructing knowledge than by its simplification. What makes for elegance of expression andpleasing audio-visuals is it loud sound and immersive visualization or is a subtle reference tosensuous triggers and a resonance in the memories of the audience.

4.8. EconomicsThe economic basis of media production impinges on its content, techniques and distribution.Thus, under the Economics tab, reviewers are asked to undertake a bit of investigativejournalism. For starters, was the production of the movie a for-profit or non-profit enterprise?Where did the funding for production come from? What was the relationship between the

producers and the distributors of the movie - is it the same company? What is the history of thefilms distribution and its copyright? Was the movie expected to make money, and did it? Inspite of my argument on the significance of this aspect of the review, it met with much resistancefrom the reviewers, who found it mundane and difficult to research. I clearly needed to be moreexplicit as to the background of this theme in the social relations of production. In 1995, Downset al. noted that it was difficult to find the distribution details (Downs et al., 1995), but in 2009there are many sources of information using the now powerful search engines of the Internet.Starting with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), we can learn about distributors of the movie,how long it screened in the movie theater, when it aired on TV, whether it is available as a DVDand how much it costs, whether pirated versions are available on the Internet, and so on.

In 1995 many of the documentaries that had been available for the first edition of Downs et al.

had been allowed to go out of print and could only be rented at what seems a very expensive rate.Even now, however, documentary films tend to be priced much more highly than the mainstreamentertainment DVDs. For example, the excellent movie about Oakland archaeology Privy tothe Past was available at first as a VHS tape in 1999. It was re-mastered and re-published in2007 at a price of $50 for individual purchase and $80 for libraries. Mitch Allen, the distributorthrough Left Coast Press, suggested that the price was reasonable given the comparable prices ofother distributors of archaeology documentary films10. The implications of the difference indistribution, access, and pricing of documentary films versus feature films are enormous. Forexample, whereas a feature film can be rented cheaply, bought for under $20 to be viewed at willor even viewed for free on the Internet, a documentary film is hard to find and expensive to buy,can be watched only ephemerally on TV, or can be viewed under the supervision of a teacher or

media library supervisor. In other words, documentary movies as much through theirdistributional policy as their content are likely to strengthen the academic/entertainmentdichotomy. In other words the documentary version of a topic is less likely to enter into popularculture for economic reasons (let alone its codes of aesthetic representation) than a fictional(feature) version. One of the aims of theArchaeology and the Media courses was to break downthis dichotomy, by assigning the analysis of partnered documentary and feature films to eachstudent.


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Alternatives to the mainstream documentary purchases with their prohibitive costs are therelatively recent technologies of TIVO and Pay-per-view delivery of TV documentaries, andstreaming video on the Internet11. For the most part the highly restrictive copyright that tends toaccompany documentaries about archaeology prevents them from being widely available in thiscontext, for example on iTunes or Fancast12. The Archaeology Channel, mentioned above, does a

great service by streaming short (non-commercial) documentary movies about archaeology forfree: the Internet offers an unprecedented opportunity to share our knowledge and perspectiveswith the public (Pettigrew, 2007). And then of course there is always free streaming video onYouTube, GoogleVideo, Vimeo, Yahoo!Video and others.

The Internet is full of short streaming films about the archaeological process being created byarchaeologists themselves who are bypassing the commercial publishers (as with many otherforms of digital publishing) and publishing for free on the Internet in the name of OpenKnowledge, for example the current excavations of atalhyk13 and the Prescot Street site14.

4.9. Gauging the Audience

The logical progression of the argument here brings me to consider the viewer the audience,which, in the Media Literacy review of the film database, is considered at two scales ofresolution. The first, under the tab Audience in the database, considers the individual viewerin which a principle assumption is that people do not watch a movie passively; each personcreates meaning out of the movie depending on their lives and experiences at the time. This ideaseems to be at odds with the assumption of the film-makers (including TV producers) who thinkof an audience as a passive group whose emotions are waiting to be filled by the contents of themovie, or who are interested in being provided with information.

Not only does the audience not respond en masse to a movie, but also their response changeswith their social and cultural context. For this reason we ask reviewers to think about how anaudience at the time when the movie was made might have made sense of the movie and howthis would be different from the response of current viewers. To answer this question, we need to

think of not only what else was happening in the world that might have made the moviemeaningful to the audiences of the time, but what other movies might they have been exposed to,as well as the codes of representation with which they were familiar (see below). Externalreviews of the time will throw some light on possible audience responses, although professionalfilm critics are a very special breed. When we consider the diversity of the audiences (bygender, age, ethnicity, and/or nationality, culture and language), all of whom will have differentviewpoints, the task seems daunting.

However, the idea is to draw attention to the fact that the audience is diverse and constantlychanging. Films are made with an intended audience that is worth trying to fathom. IndianaJones #4 was made with the audience of 20 years ago in mind; but we have changed and so hasarchaeology and, I believe, the film made a very different impression from that of #1. It is as if

the film-makers have consumed and regurgitated the myth that they created 20 years ago foraudiences that no longer are believers. It is a perilous undertaking to presume to know what anaudience wants, what will grab their attention, what will inspire them to want to know moreabout the past. Who would have guessed, for example, that local archaeology would be morewatched than exotica and monumentality (Clack and Brittain, 2007b, 45). Who would haveguessed that the modern Maya would respond so positively to Apocalypto because this firstmovie in their language made them proud15? Nevertheless, simplification and essentialismleading to narratives of closure, contrary to expectations, are not greatly attractive of long-term


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attention. There is hope yet for those of us who celebrate ambiguity

4.10. Socio-cultural Impact of the film

There is no doubt that narratives told by moving images with immersive and evocative soundhave an immensely powerful impact on their audiences. In the tab Impact in the database, thereviewers consider the audience at a broader scale as the social and cultural impact of the movie.

Mass media are closely linked to the world of politics and social change, to the construction ofideologies of class, race, and gender, to the construction of national identity and to attitudes andvalues about global issues such as cultural and environmental diversity. The conservation oflandscapes, sites, and materials of cultural heritage are among the global issues that areimplicated in the movies in this database. Reviewers were asked to consider these impacts andimplications of the movies.

This was probably the hardest section to write about, since it requires some research in externalreviews and thinking about the effects of all the previous review sections. One of the difficultiesis that most of the films that feature in the database have had very little obvious impact on thebroader public. There are exceptions, such as the Indiana Jones quartet, which supposedlyencouraged an increase in registrations for archaeology classes. The legitimization andnaturalization of values and beliefs of specific social classes and cultural systems (until recentlypredominantly from the Anglo-Saxon world) has had a global impact, which is now changingwith the transformation in the distribution systems of media, especially with digital technologies,so that Hollywood, New York and London are not the only producers of films to which we haveaccess. The impact of films from many other cultures and countries will surely have an importantimpact on our familiarity and understanding of other pasts and other places.

5. Creating for the Film Database

An essential aspect of Media Literacy, which was an important part of the Archaeology and theMedia courses, but does not figure in the database, is the development in skill and practice in thecreation of media, as with any other form of literacy. As we watch movies and become critically

aware of their authorship, construction of narrative, techniques and styles, there are diversepossible responses. One that we hoped to engender by having students go through the reviewprocess was to inspire them to create their own narratives about the past. In the last part of thecourse, students were required to create a 5-minute movie about the process by which a placebecomes a national or global site of cultural heritage. Think of this as the audio-visual equivalentof a 15-page written term-paper. The movies are on the website and you are welcome to subjectthem to a media literacy review16. Several of them are highly entertaining but also comprise acritical examination of their topic. They are amateurish, not picked up by the ArchaeologyChannel, but they are also full of a vibrant energy. The point is that they are accessible with aCreative Commons license17 on the Internet; they are free, viewable and downloadable. As Imentioned above, these fragments of history in film format abound all over the web and can be

used to entertain, educate (how to as well as how not to), contribute to knowledge about thepresent thinking about the past, and even offer inspiration to interpreting archaeological andhistorical data.

The idea of the database is that it is a dynamically growing entity with no finite end. More thanone review can be done of a single film, and a reviewer can review as many films as he/shewishes. Authorship and responsibility for the review is very important, as is willingness to sharethe review with the others through an attribution-non-commercial-share-alike Creative Commonslicense. As with all Web 2.0 social software applications, this database is open to participation by


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all with a sign-in and password. In this case your responsibility involves a bit more work andresearch than on Flickr or Facebook to structure your commentary. You cannot change othersreviews, but you can add to the data about the films and you can add films.

The content of the database can be read without anything more than a guest login. Its context ofuse can be to satisfy curiosity as in any exploration of film reviews, but it can also be used to

structure classroom critical awareness of a film under review. It can be used as the basis ofclassroom assignments. And it can be used as entertainment (depending on how that word isdefined!

When cinema was invented, it was initially used to record life, like an extension ofphotography. It became an art when it moved away from the documentary. It was at this point

that it was acknowledged as no longer a means of mirroring life, but a medium by which tointensify it. Franois Truffaut

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SCHABLITSKY, J. (2007b) The Way of the Archaeologist. in SCHABLITSKY, J. (Ed.) BoxOffice Archaeology: Refining Hollywoods Portrayals of the Past. Walnut Creek, CA, LeftCoast Press, 9-15.

SHERMAN, S. (1998) Documenting Ourselves: Film, Video and Culture, University Press ofKentucky.

TYNER, K. (1998)Literacy in a Digital Age, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.


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Endnotes

[email protected];http://web.mac.com/chimeraspider/Ruth_Tringham/[email protected];

http://web.mac.com/chimeraspider/Ruth_Tringham/About_Ruth_Tringham.html3The books:Day, D. H. 1997A treasure hard to attain: images of archaeology in popular film, with afilmography. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Md.

Olton, B. 2000Arthurian Legends on Film and Television. McFarland and Co. Publishers, Jefferson,NC.The following online lists: The Archaeology Channel (documentaries):http://www.archaeologychannel.org/ (accessed 04/30/09)About Archaeology:http://archaeology.about.com/od/moviesandcinema/Movies_and_Cinematic_Explorations_of_Archaeology.htm (accessed 04/30/09)The list of historical films compiled for Western Civilization course at Pasco-Hernandez

Community College in Florida: http://www.hudsonfla.com/films.htm (accessed 04/30/09)European Federation of Film Festivals on Archaeology and Cultural Heritage:http://www.fedarcine.com/doc/introe.htm (accessed 04/30/09)4http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/filmread (accessed 04/30/09)5http://diva.berkeley.edu/fmi/iwp/res/iwp_auth.html (accessed 04/30/09)6http://diva.berkeley.edu/projects/tringham/RET_courses/Anthro136ij/Anthro136ij/html/136ij_default.html (accessed 04/30/09)7 E.g., Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/ (accessed 04/30/09); Rotten Tomatoes:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ (accessed 04/30/09)8 E.g., Google: http://www.google.com/; UC Berkeley Library Pathfinder:http://sunsite2.berkeley.edu:8000/ (accessed 04/30/09)9 Hugh Ranks indices of persuasion are useful tools for a first stage of this analysis:http://faculty.govst.edu/pa/index.html (accessed 04/30/09)10 it's not intended for student purchase. In most cases, it will be the university library, mediacenter, or anthropology department that purchases it. If we're lucky, we'll sell 300 of them. Wehave established a lower price-- $50-- for individual purchase, for those itinerant adjuncts whohave to amass their own video collection rather than relying on the university. If you look at thecosts of other video outletslike Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences-- they sellsimilar videos for $300 or so and rent them for $65 a shot, so I'm thinking that our pricing isactually pretty modest. Printing DVDs cost slightly less than printing books, but we're selling farfewer of them, so the individual unit cost is higher and therefore the price is higher. MitchAllen, email to RET 3 Jan 200811 For example The Roland Collection of Films on Art: http://www.rolandcollection.com/(accessed 04/30/09)12http://www.fancast.com/movies (accessed 04/30/09)13 For example: Remixing atalhyk: http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.htmland Real Audiences, Virtual Excavations:http://diva.berkeley.edu/projects/bach/rave/default.html (accessed 04/30/09)14http://www.lparchaeology.com/prescot/galleries/video-index (accessed 04/30/09)15 Personal communication, Dr. Juan Castillo Cocomb, University of Mexico, Feb 21, 2008


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16http://diva.berkeley.edu/projects/tringham/RET_courses/Anthro136ij/Anthro136ij/html/136ij_projects.html ; http://mvpublish.berkeley.edu/res/sites/tringham/openarchaeo/projects.html(accessed 04/30/09)17

http://creativecommons.org/ (accessed 04/30/09)

Making the Most of the Medium of Film to Create Alternative Narratives About The

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