13915

Stories of Life and Death. Narrative Writing as a Method in Near Eastern Funerary Archaeology

Valery Schlegel

Information for students

The Methodenübung is both in German and English. You do not need prior knowledge in German however.

Comments

The complexity and the scope of archaeological data represent a considerable challenge to communicate it in an attractive and comprehensible way. Often, the data is worked on and presented in extensive tables, unintelligible graphs and long-winded text. However, human brains have been wired for millennia to digest large amounts of information through stories with relatable characters, emotions and events. Thus, it makes sense to use the narrative structure of stories to describe and explain archaeological findings from the Ancient Near East. The Methodenübung is complementary to the seminar “Stories of Life and Death. Archaeological and Textual Sources on Funerary Traditions in Ancient Western Asia”; the data and specialist knowledge on funerary traditions of Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia covered in the seminar will be prepared in the Methodenübung by implementing narrative techniques. A theoretical-methodological introduction into storytelling will precede its practical application to conventional presentations and writing about mortuary archaeology of the ancient Near East. Exercises will base on strategies from storytelling as a craft, such as “ABT”, story arcs and figurative language, as well as on examples of object biographies, life cycles and narrative reconstructions of the ancient Near East from specialist literature (see bibliography). The Methodenübung is addressed to advanced master students of archaeology interested in the ancient Near East and is interconnected with the seminar of the same title. It aims to enhance the technical, communicative and hermeneutic competencies of the students. close