Paper short abstract:

Reflecting on the three-year Visualisation in Archaeology project, this paper probes the themes and tensions that continue to simmer beneath the surface of archaeological image-based research and practice.

Paper long abstract:

In the three years since its launch, the Visualisation in Archaeology project (www.viarch.org.uk) has seen the involvement of upwards of 100 practitioners from 17 countries, representing disciplines across the arts, social sciences and humanities. Emerging from more than a half century of critical visual theorising in these fields, VIA has aimed to tease out an intellectual framework for future archaeological image-based research and practice, and thus begin to articulate a strategy for capacity-building and visual competency development in the academic and professional communities. This paper aims to highlight some of the themes and tensions that have marked VIA's evolution, and to speak to several of the media that have often been absent or under-scrutinised within the project's programme. The making and application of visual outputs in archaeology is intimately linked to disciplinary knowledge creation, yet even within the context of VIA itself these processes can go unseen. Anticipating VIA's culminating conference in April 2011, I intend here not to simply summarise the project's progress to date, but rather to open it up to another forum for debate and judicious consideration.