Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 132

Gavin Lucas
location structure feature object
Fig. 9. Chart comparing quantity of drawings and photographs according to subject for all years
ofÁrbók (1881-2000).
result of a number of factors, but particu-
larly as it was the period when Matthías
Þórðason was the main figure in
Icelandic archaeology, who famously
published very little archaeology and
even fewer drawings.
Both the greater integration and sheer
increase in the visual component of
archaeological texts suggests their
increased importance; it might also sug-
gest that between c. 1880 and 1940,
archaeological imagery was undergoing
rapid change and did not settle down into
any kind of conventionality until the mid
20th century. Let me now explore the
specific details of these changes. One of
the first things to comment on is the
development and use of photographs.
The first use of photographs in an archae-
ological paper in the Árbók was by
Bruun in 1899; in the same year,
Þorsteinn Erlingsson published photo-
graphs in his book Ruins of the Saga
Time. Thereafter, photographic images
slowly became an extremely popular
visual medium until by the mid 20th cen-
tury, they stabilised to constitute half or
more of all illustrative components in
archaeological papers (see Figure 8).
This in itself is interesting, even perhaps
unusual by contemporary standards in
other countries, though without compara-
tive data, this is impossible to verify. To
what extent did the development and use
of photography affect drawings? To
answer this, we need to examine the sub-
ject matter of both photographs and
drawings and see to what extent they
complemented or mirrored each other.
Generally, both drawings and photo-
graphs share similar subjects - the most
common being of site locations, struc-
tures, features and objects; generally
exclusive to photographs are action or
working shots showing people, though
these are very rare - accounting for less
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