An archaeology of vision: Seeing past and present at Catalhoyuk, Turkey

There is room for improvement in archaeological vision. Augmentation---field glasses, shelters, special lighting---can all benefit archaeologists in the field. The impact is more than superficial, for it cannot be denied that a major component in archaeological fieldwork is visual assessment. Ergonomically, augmentation can reduce eyestrain, headaches and generally promote improved eye health. But careful consideration of vision in archaeology has benefits that go beyond comfort and safety.; Perhaps as important as augmentation is creating a hyper-awareness of vision in fieldwork, for its importance is often overlooked. It is difficult and in many aspects impossible to separate oneself from one's own vision, we tend to take 'seeing' for granted unless our eyes are giving us undue trouble. Understanding 'what we are looking at' leads us to think about what we cannot see, what we are missing. A documentation strategy for vision in the field would at the least provide us with a sense of the conditions under which 'visual decision making' were made.; Archaeological vision is generally present-biased in its explanation of how things looked then. We, present viewers, tend to create views of the past that are very brightly lit. Our definition of sufficient lighting, however, is based on a world with artificial light, a world where over 80% of the planet is light polluted to the point where on any given night, one cannot make out the Milky Way (NASA 2001). My suggestion is to start with the past viewer and work out from there. Given a pair of eyes in a black room, what are the lines of evidence for illumination? What was burning to make the light? How close are the walls and ceiling? What is on their surfaces? Were the viewers sitting, standing, crouching, lying down? Were they looking directly at the light source, the walls, objects, each other?; My study of an archaeology of vision has led me to consider not only past actors, the subject of our gaze, but present archaeologists---us---as we ponder the perplexities of a past viewed world. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...