Reinhard Bernbeck, "The Documentary Gaze as a Mesopotamian Innovation", in: Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017, 251–276

Abstract

This paper analyzes ‘innovation’ as a discursive, narrative and dramatized construction with a strong tendency towards reification. I review examples, arguing for an understanding of innovation that moves away from new physical or epistemic things, to advocate instead a discourse-critical, practice-centered and contextualized understanding of innovations. Two cases from ancient Mesopotamia illustrate my argument. The first is found in every treatise on world historical changes: the introduction of writing. The second is a previously underappreciated and unperceived innovation for which there is even no clear expression: the emergence of a ‘documentary gaze‘. I elucidate its original context with pictorial evidence and describe the political dimensions surrounding this innovation.

Published In

Stefan Burmeister and Reinhard Bernbeck (Eds.), The Interplay of People and Technologies. Archaeological Case Studies on Innovation, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2017