ABSTRACT
Archaeology has a long history of using non-verbal media for projecting ideas about the past, but it is only quite recently that we have become aware of the need to study these means of communication. Some are comparatively obvious, with an apparently simple relationship to the past, such as the exhibition of surviving material culture in museums or the presentation of sites and monuments to the public, but even these raise further questions about the meanings they convey and the messages that are understood by the spectator. Others are much more complex and problematic. The representation of the past at one further remove through painting, sculpture, and graphic illustration falls into this latter category. In addition to questions about the sources of inspiration and their authenticity, and about the active and creative role of the artist, these representations prompt further enquiries about their power to convey a message. With the development of new technologies of communication in the last two hundred years and the growth of new social mechanisms for the dissemination or even inculcation of ideas, these images can take on a new resilience and a new power; they can pervade society and prove very lasting as they are continually projected, repeated, and renewed, and they have the capacity to exert an influence and to leave a legacy beyond the time and place or the narrow cultural sphere in which they were first created.
