Animated GIFs as Expressive Visual Narratives and Expository Devices in Archaeology

Animated GIFs are uncommonly well suited for representing archaeology. A shudder-start, temporally ambiguous fragment of sequential media, the animated GIF (just GIFs, hereafter) occupies the margins of formal discourse, visually annotating everyday life on the Internet. The creation of a GIF – comp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Internet archaeology 2017-06 (44)
Main Authors: Morgan, Colleen, Scholma-Mason, Nela
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
animated GIFs
animation
archaeological illustration
archaeology
digital archaeology
digital artefacts
GIFs
reconstruction
storytelling
visual media
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Summary:Animated GIFs are uncommonly well suited for representing archaeology. A shudder-start, temporally ambiguous fragment of sequential media, the animated GIF (just GIFs, hereafter) occupies the margins of formal discourse, visually annotating everyday life on the Internet. The creation of a GIF – compiling frames of action into a sequence – draws an easy parallel with the mode of atomizing that characterises excavation, treating archaeological deposits as discrete entities and their subsequent reassembly into a stratigraphic sequence (Morgan 2012; Morgan and Wright in press). Complex cultural expression is distilled into a brief gesture, the digital equivalent of an archaeological trace. Yet GIFs are fleetingly rare in archaeological representations, with only a handful of examples since the introduction of the media format in 1989. In this GIF essay (modelled on a photo essay), we briefly review the history of the animated GIF with particular attention to archaeological GIFs, discuss their utility in representing archaeological remains and narratives, and argue for a more creative integration of visual media into archaeological practice.
ISSN:1363-5387
1363-5387
DOI:10.11141/ia.44.11