Projects

PhD

My dissertation draws on media theory, art history, and the classics, to critically examine how people have historically used technology to form a memory of an ancient object.

The Ashmole Archive at King’s College London (KCL) consists of over 10,000 photographs, prints, glass slides, and other forms of media that antiquities scholars used to document iconic works of art from antiquity. One of these objects is the Athena Parthenos, a colossal statue that once stood in the centre of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece from 438 BCE. While the monument no longer exists, her memory is featured prominently in the archive through over fifty ancient representations. This includes a description of the monument by the Greek author Pausanias; the Athena Varvakion, a small figurine matching Pausanias’ description; the Strangford Shield, a Roman copy of the Athena Parthenos shield; and a Greek coin that displays the statue on one side and the head of Athena on the other. Within the archive, these objects have been reproduced through several forms of modern technology ranging from the late 19thcentury to the early 21st. This includes textual descriptions within a museum catalogue, glass slides, photographs within archival folders, a digital database, and a scholarly publication. The existence of both these objects from antiquity and their portrayal through various forms of modern media, enables the Athena Parthenos to remain a prominent figure not only in the Ashmole Archive but also within the wider scope of the Graeco-Roman canon, despite the fact the original monument no longer exists.

These objects from antiquity and their modern remediations form a memory of the Athena Parthenos in the archive and while the statue lives past its physical days of existence, questions about how and why it lives past those days, bear investigation. For example, why does the statue continue to be reproduced? What technological choices were made to represent the statue? Do those choices change with the latest technological trends and innovations, or do they repeat age-old narratives? Do the technological choices accurately depict the monument, or reflect ideals from another time? In an instance where a work of art exists entirely through later iterations, what distinguishes a reproduction from an original? This thesis addresses these questions through a close reading of representations of the Athena Parthenos in the Ashmole Archive. Specifically, the research uses object biography, discourse analysis and media archaeology methods, to reveal how ancient reproductions are situated within the archive and how the materiality of their modern reproductions form a memory of the Athena Parthenos. Ultimately, this case study presents an opportunity to critically reflect on how humans have used technology throughout history to create, manipulate, and impact, the meaning-making of Indo-European cultural heritage.