Ros King (University of Southampton; r.king@soton.ac.uk)

Presenting the past, whether in the most scholarly of monographs, in museum displays, or in popular reconstructions of buildings or battles always involves a combination of evidence-based interpretation, imagination, art, and performance. These acts need to take place within a general awareness that our experience of the past changes in fundamental ways over time, and that no matter how much we try to be historically accurate we can never recreate the historical audience. Presenters therefore often find themselves caught between the demands of accurate scholarship, and of the spectacular, engaging or entertaining show. They risk charges of popularisation, simplification, cultural tourism, and vulgarisation, on the one hand, and politicisation, hybridity, and experimentation on the other. But while the concept of ‘authentic’ presentations of the art and culture of the past is now deemed in most scholarly circles to be impossible, the extreme result of that can be a relativist free-for-all where any one presentation is as valid as any other.

Archaeology is only one of the disciplines that engage with these problems. This session will revisit the debate, including speakers from backgrounds in Music, English, History, Art History and Material Culture, together with archaeologists. The ultimate aim is to move beyond the battle lines of the presentism/historicism argument as it has been played out recently in these several disciplines. It will draw together different theoretical outlooks on ways in which presentations of the past can function as a useful tool for the academic community, and ask whether it is now time to explore a more fruitful tension between the separate and conflicting authenticities of historical object, interpreter, and modern audience.

Discussants: Matthew Johnson; Ros King