Making sense of the history of archaeological representation.

‘Representation’ is one of the key cultural practices through which meanings are produced and exchanged (e.g. Hall 1997; Giles and Middleton 2008). Culturally-defined systems of representation incorporate a wide variety of signifying practices and media. The broadly shared meanings encoded in these expressive forms are made sense of and connected by the social practice of discourse. Through this, dominant conventions, meanings, ideologies, and power relations can be accepted, negotiated, or opposed. Who represents whom, what, where, and how determines the representations available for us. But precisely how we interpret them (especially in terms of what they mean to our personal identities, emotions, and attachments) depends upon the realities being represented and upon our own histories, our social positions, and the ways in which we understand the world