Art and Archaeology

Abstract

Observational skills provide the foundation for both drawing and archaeological techniques. Drawing was frequently employed within archaeology as a recording technique or to produce technical illustrations for published academic papers. However, in recent years the widespread use and adoption of digital photography and 3D imagery has resulted in a decline of its use and such skills are now only briefly considered in archaeological teaching as practical and worthwhile endeavors. This paper considers the role drawing can have within archaeology and suggests that drawing is a useful tool to aid in critical observation. With the integration of specialist interviews, an art workshop experiment was created. This workshop experiment was created to explore drawing as a learning technique in which to aid in developing the observational skills of undergraduate archaeology students. The results of this study suggest that drawing is a useful mode of observation, one that enables researchers to gain a deeper understanding of what they observe, that it can be used to see.