Archaeological Interpretation

This chapter explores the role of archaeological interpretation in relation to public memory. Tools from the fields of rhetoric and composition studies offer productive avenues to consider the role and responsibility of archaeologists in the earliest rhetorical shaping of public memory. Scholarship on publics and public memory apply to understanding the rhetorical process as archaeologists' texts circulate through filters of stakeholders, journalists, or other cultural heritage specialists. Case studies of texts produced during excavations at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, and Chedworth Roman Villa, UK are rhetorically analyzed to understand their contribution to public discourses, offering insight into new approaches to ethical best practice in archaeological communication. Acknowledging the work texts is important for any author contributing to the social sphere, though there is a burden unique to archaeology as authoring history into modern cultural consciousness.

Global Turns and Cautions in Rhetoric and Composition Studies

In her 2003 Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, Amy Kaplan suggests that current crises have “exposed certain limitations of our available tools” (2). Kaplan's address reflects the move beyond the traditionally nationalist concerns of American studies, but her appeal to think more critically about disciplinary identities and methods at this point in our nation's history has wider implications. Alarmed by the “uncanny mirroring” between the lexicon of the champions of empire and that of its critics, Kaplan urges scholars “to do more than expose the imperialistic appropriation of the name America and then turn away from it” (2, 10). Embracing the transnational turn in American studies, Kaplan calls for a comparative historical approach that recognizes the ideological force of “America” and that understands how “America” “changes shape in relation to competing claims to that name and by creating demonic others, drawn in proportions as mythical and monolithic as the idea of America itself” (11).