Asceticism of the mind: forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism

through a discussion of the methodological and academic approaches adopted at Butrint in order to communicate the “magic” of place. That the Butrint Foundation incorporated archaeological and nature trails, site panels, an on-site museum, multilingual publications and website, reconstruction drawings and specialized photographs to capture the landscape of the site, as well as a community-run store on its archaeological and heritage management work, among the other extraordinary aspects of the project, there is no reason for Hodges to underplay this modestly. Each of these elements invites questions on how to communicate a new historical paradigm. For instance: How was the Butrint Foundation’s Mediterranean approach articulated in the site panels? How did their placement and the reconstruction drawings engage with the site? How did adapting a pre-existing visitor trail impact the narration of a new site history? To have included methodological considerations and academic strategies in heritage placemaking would have been entirely in keeping with the essential aim of the book. For its real strength – its core clarion call – is not simply that archaeologists/academics are frontline placemakers, but that they need to step up and assume this role, and to do so they must to learn to communicate better. In this Hodges is undoubtedly right: not because we need to be more articulate, or better at outreach, or able to create “experiences”, but because we need to learn to communicate the agency of place. How is it that a television programme like “Blue Planet” can become a catalyst for a global reduction in plastic waste, but archaeology on television is still dominated by personalities talking to the camera, or driven by a “new discovery” focus? The moment the agency of objects and places is foregrounded, we can free them from their role as passive illustration. If we can think about the agency of viewing, then we free their audiences – and hence our modern viewers – from their equally passive role as receiver. If we can communicate what happens at this activated intersection, then we stand a chance of creating an authentic “place” and enabling an equally authentic contemporary audience.