Methodology

The following framework offers a method by which ephemera can be analyzed to reveal a community’s behavior, culture, and patterns. This chapter provides a detailed description of the archeological methods and how it can be combined communication design to create a new form of graphic identity.

Archeological Methods
The goals of archeology are to document and explain human culture through the collection of material culture (artifacts). But because archeologists get an incomplete view of the past, they must fill in the gaps with other kinds of information, educated reasoning and imagination. The collection and evaluation methods of archeology are as follows:

Collection: Strata, Specific Time Period
Common strategies for collecting artifacts are typically spatial and stratigraphic. Stratigraphy is concerned with the study of geological strata, or layers. In the context of Archeology, stratigraphy studies the relative age of layers to determine when artifacts might have entered the ground. All artifacts from one stratigraphic unit (maybe the backfill in an abandoned well or rubbish tossed in a barrel pit) are given the same reference number. Together these become the assemblage. The preference is always for assemblages that come from ‘secure’ contexts—ones that haven’t been disturbed by later intrusion, and/or ones that were put in the ground in a short space of time. The problem (for archaeologists) with ‘surface collections’ such as Aboriginal stone tools out in the bush or in a cave, is that you lose temporal control; they are accumulated over a long(er) period of time at an unspecified period of time—they could have been put there 500 years, 1000 or 10 years ago.

In applying this collection method, it is important to clearly define the location and time period in which the collection will occur. This will ensure that the final outcome of the investigation can be linked to a specific community, time and place.

Categorization of Artifacts: Function, Decoration, Material
There are three basic elements of a standard archaeological catalogue: Fabric (material: broken down into classes of ceramics, glass, metals, bone & shell, textile etc); Form or Function (i.e. tea cup, plate, bottle) which are grouped into ‘Activity’ categories (Recreation, Food Service, Agriculture etc), and Type of Decoration. The quantity of fragments, weight, measurements and for some items an estimate of the minimum number of original vessels (e.g. if a teacup breaks into 10 shards it should be counted as 1, not 10) must be recorded.

When applying the method of categorization, it is important to build clear constraints and guidelines for the categorization of artifacts, as this impacts its interpretation.

Analysis Methods:
There are a variety of methods by which to analyze material culture. Subsistence Patterns study the different ways of obtaining and producing food, Chronologies examine cultural histories and time perspectives of past cultures, and Reconstructions use physical remains to create a picture of the past.

I asked PhD Candidate, Penny Crook, who studies archeology at La Trobe University in Australia, how archeologists deal with the missing gaps of information in a collection and what role imagination plays in their final analysis of material culture. She responded, “The short answer is archaeology can never build a complete view of a total cultural system for three main reasons: 1. Not all elements of the material world are utilized in the cultural domain with equal weight or with the same symbolic intent (compare a polystyrene cup with a ceremonial goblet—both CAN tell us about cultural systems—i.e. the polystyrene cup can tell us about a culture of environmental recklessness—but the goblet was made to play an active part in the perpetuation of a subculture (the church, the masons, whatever). 2. The value & significance of those items of material culture is embedded in the minds and actions of the people affected by and responsible for maintaining/changing that culture and these values shift considerably from time to time and place to place (i.e. the cup: when first produced it may have been a trigger for people to reflect on the amazing progress of technology and the wonder of made-made synthetics; now in the era of a environmental phobia it’s a trigger to reflect on landfill and negligent consumption—I say this because just this morning I insisted that at the conference I’m helping to organize in Sept that we must have paper takeaway cups not polystyrene as the caterer promised to supply!). And, 3. Archaeologists look at artifacts not objects—ergo we only get to see what happened to survive in the ground, not what may have been more important/significant in that cultural system.

When it comes to imagining the bits we don’t see, archaeologists are a little ambivalent on how this works, but basically we always have—we’ve always had to (think of all those reconstructions of ancient cities!); just some are little more candid about it than others. In histarch [historical archeology] there was a fair bit of debate in the mid 1990s culminating in a volume of Historical Archaeology (vol 32, no.1) called ‘Archaeologists as Storytellers’. Note well this is more about imaging the social context of past life than the cultural system per se (although of course there’s overlap). I’ve never written a narrative in the way that these articles debate, but I have published some seriously speculatively stances in the effort to make sense of pattern I had to interpret (e.g. that a group of four identical medicine bottles were possibly used by a resident who died in a lunatic hospital suffering from fits and represent the efforts of the fellow and his wife to cure and control his illness), but I was 100% unmistakably offering it as a suggestion only. That seems to be the happy medium for using your imagination in archaeology: there has to be some plausible evidence to start with (in this case, the dates of the deposit and artifact fit with the known tenant; we had historical records of his wife’s concerns about his illness; and we had 4 unbroken bottles—doesn’t sound like much but it rare) and you have to be clear about how you came to tell that story in that way, and that it’s just one possible interpretation.

Similar arguments can be made for historians, although they deal with more comprehensible information, they can never use it with full accuracy because they’re attempting to use the information in ways it was never intended to do (e.g. lots of 19th century diagrams and plans where simply designs for work; they don’t show the place as built but if they don’t survive with an accompanying note there’s no way of telling).

So in answer to your direct question, you build a representation of a culture through its ephemera with a full understanding that you can only represent a particular angle of it and even then it will just be your interpretation.”

Ephemera: A “snapshot” in time
Ephemera is written and printed matter published with a short-intended lifetime. It is the class of published single-sheet or single page documents that are meant to be thrown away after one use. This classification then excludes simple letters and photographs with no printing on them, which are considered as manuscripts or typescripts.

Common Types of Ephemera: Postcards, event-oriented posters, transportation and show tickets, baggage stickers, stock certificates, motor vehicle licensing forms, business cards, printed wedding invitations, trade cards, and other similar printed materials.

Communication Design: Moving Beyond the Vernacular
Communication design, as a sub-discipline of design, is concerned with how media communicates with people. Its focus is on how to create and control meaning through the use of words, images, graphic elements, motion, behavior, interaction all of etc… Understanding the unique aspects of media, and its impact on the reading of symbolic aspects of design including semiotics, visual rhetoric and communication models are integral into the successful practice of the discipline.

In this thesis research, the categorization, analysis and interpretation of ephemera is linked closely with the evaluation of media affordances, (i.e. what is the form, shape, size, color, language used on a receipt?) and its reading of the information (i.e. what kind of language is found where, what is the tone, focus, and intended audience and how does this impact the design?)

A key aspect of this methodology is to move beyond the vernacular and towards a new interpretation of the information contained within the ephemera collected from Kreuzberg, Berlin. This means being able to look past the graphic devices to truly “see” the information contained within the ephemera.

Identity
Identity is the individual characteristics by which a person, place or thing is recognized or known. The purpose of this thesis research and methodology is to offer a new way to create a new form of graphic identity. It is important when working with this methodology to not strive to create a complete identity, but rather one that is based on the patterns of information found within the ephemera.