Visualizing Archaeologists: A Reflexive History of Visualization Practice in Archaeology

2.2.1 An Age of Artistic Exploration and Narrations of the Past

Although Roman architectural remains were always visibly present in Medieval cityscapes, (papal) building activities and agricultural work within and outside the Aurelian walls of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Rome lead to many discoveries of antiquities (Furlotti, 2019; Piccoli, 2017). These discoveries sparked the interest of humanists and artists alike, who began to collect the antiquities, “followed by the decoding, the restoring, the imitating, the reimagining, the weaving together of a grand narrative of history of these material remains and their textual traces” (Barkan, 1999, p. xxi). Such a discovery, and the subsequent process of knowledge making, is illustrated in a letter of Francesco da Sangallo, who witnessed the discovery of the Laocoön group in 1506, and wrote that as soon as the sculpture was completely visible “everyone started to draw, all the while discoursing on ancient things” (Da Sangallo, Letters on Familiar Matters 6.2, in Barkan, 1999, p. 3).

Several modes of visual documentation reflecting different collecting aims resulted from the renewed interest in classical culture. Firstly, from the above-mentioned remark by Sangallo, it could be assumed that this “discourse” needed visual guidance. The drawings were in this case made by the scholar-antiquarians themselves, and used as an epistemological tool. Dealer-antiquarians, on the contrary, commissioned (average) artists to make drawings and sketches of antiquities, accompanied with details about dimensions and subjects. These antiquarians regarded this type of simple “catalogue” drawings as instruments to transfer the necessary information about material and aesthetic properties of the object on sale, and did not consider them as artworks nor as valuable documentary evidence, as became practice in the course of the seventeenth century (Furlotti, 2019, p. 160, Figures 89 and 90). Another visual mode emerged from the elevation of excavated sculptures to precious pieces of art, which needed to be restored without impediment to show the full glory and splendour of classical culture. A rich practice of producing replicas and restorations, or “interventions” (Furlotti, 2019, p. 4), by artists in a contemporary style on paper or sculpture, developed over the course of the sixteenth century (Figure 1). These copies or interventions are unreliable as precise representational sources but they do illustrate the epistemological nature of these images, as they document contemporary interpretation processes of antique objects and the desire to know the objects as they were in the past, and not as they are in the present. An interesting representational innovation in the sixteenth century was the recording of multiple views of one sculpture, to overcome the disadvantage of two-dimensionality of the medium (Figure 2) as to demonstrate all sides of the object. Although an artistic exploration at this point in time (Barkan, 1999, p. 146), this way of representing a 3D object on a 2D surface became a standardized archaeological practice in later times.

Figure 1

An example of a “restored” or completed archaeological object, a dancing Roman faun from the second century. Only the torso and the right thigh are antique (arrows indicating the breaks). The “Rondanini Faun” was completed by François Duquesnoy somewhere between 1630 and 1635 (British Museum, museum no. 1988,1208.1; drawing by the author when it was on display in the exhibition “Caravaggio-Bernini. Baroque in Rome,” Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 14 February to 13 September 2020).

Figure 2

Multiple views of the “Bathing Venus” by Maarten van Heemskerk, ca. 1532–1536, ink on paper. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Jörg P. Anders [CC BY-NC-SA].

A quite different visual mode in this period was painting. Early Renaissance artists in Italy experimented with relatively unprecedented mythological and classical scenes. Unlike the previous exclusively religious representation that was supported by a clear visual established language, early Renaissance artists who experimented with these “new” classical subjects had no visual framework to build upon (Gombrich, 1972, p. 32); they had to innovate. The scenes were derived from ancient texts and Roman iconography, but the artists looked to sculptures and sarcophagi to render the characters, and in some instances influences of Etruscan or Greek visual motifs have been identified (Collins, 2001). This absent visual vocabulary is best illustrated by Botticelli’s “Mythologies” (late fifteenth century) and Pinturicchio’s Scene from the Odyssey (1509), which is executed in an early sixteenth-century setting, including clothes, interior, and ship (Baxandall, 1988). Recent artistic innovations such as linear perspective, foreshortening, and chiaroscuro enabled these pioneering artists to create a certain three-dimensionality on a flat surface, resulting in convincing, realistic images of fashionable symbolic paintings of classical historical scenes representing contemporary humanist, Neoplatonic ideals, or Christian virtues. Whereas these Italian Renaissance paintings set a stage with figures performing significant actions based on texts, seventeenth-century Dutch painters (or northern art more generally), on the contrary, maintained a different visual culture that was rooted in a tradition of observation and describing nature (Alpers, 1983). Only through sight and seeing, it was believed, new knowledge could be obtained. New technology such as the invention of the lens increased visibility and enhanced observations made by the naked eye. Dutch artists adopted not only artistic innovations into their practice, but also new technology such as the lens to translate vision through this lens onto the canvas, giving Dutch paintings its distinctive descriptive character and fine grained rendering of nature and matter, not always appreciated by their Italian contemporaries (Alpers, 1983).

2.2.2 Illustrated Artefacts as Evidence

During the seventeenth century, progress witnessed in scientific method was stirred by empiricism and rationalism based on first-hand experience and original observations, on which deductive reasoning could then lead to new knowledge. The antiquarians regarded illustration as a way of doing research, and details in the drawing were seen as facts (Smiles, 2013, p. 12), as they had experienced it themselves (so it is true) (Nordbladh, 2007, p. 112), or they communicated the empirical observations made by the artist (Smith, 2004, p. 150). Similarly, a more stylized and “archetypical” depiction of reality developed in scientific representation, by ruling out deviating features and finding corresponding features, so that representative items could be placed in groups. These rudimentary classifications were made first in “museums” and private collections (or Wunderkammer, cabinets of curiosities). Objects, smaller antiquities – not elevated to art as sculptures were – and natural specimens alike were grouped together by visual association (Moser, 2009). Illustrators were recruited by the antiquarians to turn the antiquities into sources of data that would advance knowledge of the past. The antiquarians recognized that artefacts should be accurately depicted, yet a degree of artistic manipulation (called “scientific realism” by some) was preferred over naturalism to retrieve more information from them. An important innovative technique in the seventeenth century was the use of hard outlines and a frontal view to isolate the object from its background to emphasize its shape.^[3] The rim of the vessel was distorted by unnaturally depicting it in perspective instead of frontally, so that the viewer would have a clear impression of the shape of the rim (Figure 3). The image was manipulated in such a way that it should be able to guide the viewer, preferably without accompanying text, because it was believed the image should speak for itself. This way of depicting allowed the attribution to a period in time and the identification of the place of origin of the object on the basis of these physical and stylistic characteristics (Schnapp, 2014). The (pottery) drawings were recognized as valuable means of assessing how groups of objects were connected, enabling comparisons and establishing the first classes of artefacts (Moser, 2012). Transformed into drawings, the artefacts were mobilized to transmit the evidence to other antiquarians, who could then compare their antiquities with the printed examples, contributing to the further development of classes and the construction of knowledge about the past.

Figure 3

Engraving of a Roman glass vessel from Voorburg-Arentsburg (The Netherlands) with typical, unnatural emphasis on important features such as the rim and handle, published in Inferiores Germaniae Provinciarum Unitarum antiquitates by P. Scriverius, 1611. Courtesy of Leiden University Libraries [392 B 2].

Because of the absence or scarcity of Roman remains in northern Europe, antiquarians redirected historical visualization to national and local prehistories, although these artefacts and local histories (about Britons, Celts, or Germans) were for a long time explained through secondary descriptions derived from classical texts (Moser, 2009; Smith, 2004). During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England witnessed a revolution in the scale and methodology in the study of its history. An example is the English antiquarian John Aubrey (1626–1697), who, encouraged by King Charles II, carried out surveys at Stonehenge and Avebury. He documented the remains in high detail with many drawings by himself, accompanied by descriptive text to improve comparison (Trigger, 2006, p. 106). These detailed recordings created a tradition of English antiquarians who then started to group types of monuments and make accurate and detailed descriptions of (special) archaeological finds. By the eighteenth century, drawings of ancient remains, in a style reminiscent of to the Dutch and Italian examples (distorted perspective to emphasize important features), were considered in England just as important as the remains themselves (Smiles, 2013, p. 11) (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Engraving of “a British Urn,” by William Stukeley, 1717. It is depicted from two sides to provide information about the rim and base. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

It also became fashionable to record landscapes and ruins in often romantic settings, called vedute (view paintings), though in the course of the eighteenth century the genre received a more urban identity, because of increased travel by either artists or elite members undertaking grand tours (and desired souvenirs) (Janson & Janson, 1997; Moser, 2009). The most salient examples to illustrate this genre are the etchings of the architect-antiquarian Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), who documented, reconstructed, and studied many Roman remains, which he published in several volumes. Piranesi pioneered in new methods of archaeological illustration (Wilton-Ely, 2004), but also saw the remnants as creative potential to reconstruct the ruins into dramatically rendered monuments (Wilton-Ely, 2007). Pinto explained that this direct experience of the ancient ruins, and their incompleteness, stirred the imagination and fantasy, resulting in imagined restorations, which was a complete contrast to the accurate measurement of these same ruins by architects such as Piranesi (Pinto, 2012), but typical for documenting and designing architecture in those days (Pinto, 2012, p. 3). Architects of the eighteenth century recorded ruins visually in three dimensions: a ground plan, the elevation, cross-sections (to convey its inner structure), and perspective (reconstruction) drawings. Architectural fragments were visually documented too, increasingly in a way in which archaeologists today would recognize the “T” section used to illustrate pottery. Up until today these vedute prove to be invaluable visual documents in research to Roman architecture, and reproductions still sold as souvenirs to modern tourists.

These developments in Italian and English practices of visualizing and mobilizing artefacts demonstrate the formalization of a growing yet distinct practice. This development created the foundation for the emergence of artefact classification systems and the acknowledgement of artefacts as evidence of past human behaviour (Moser, 2012). These detailed drawings made way gradually for conventionalized line drawings, suggesting a “scientific” mode of representation (Moser, 2012, p. 293), and were the first attempts at the codification and professionalization of artefact drawing. This shift to stylistic analysis, systematic description, and comparison of artefacts, in which drawings played an increasingly central role, did not mean the interest in beauty was rejected altogether. On the contrary, (Romantic) realism continued to be preferred in reconstructions of the Graeco-Roman world and prehistory.

Over the course of the seventeenth century, images of artefacts became part of the “working objects” to study past human behaviour (Daston, 2014, p. 321), and because of these new techniques and methods, the antiquarian tradition gradually transitioned into a new archaeological discipline with a strong visual component, yet, as will become clear in the next section, visual traditions would not be replaced altogether.

2.3.1 Unknown Innovators and Impactful Innovations

By the eighteenth century, in the northern European countries, the study of artefact-oriented antiquity based on texts gradually evolved into distinct disciplines such as classical archaeology, Altertumswissenschaft, and art history. These disciplines were taught at universities by renowned scholars such as Johann Winckelmann (1717–1768) and Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812), who gave visual representation and direct observation of material culture and excavations an important role in the interpretation process. Winckelmann published in 1764 the seminal work Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, in which he treats Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, and Etruscan art from a stylistic perspective by grouping the objects based on style, which he then could connect to certain periods in time. Heyne, founder of the modern Altertumswissenschaft and the first ever archaeological course, worried that illustrations such as those in Winkelmann’s work would take the attention away from the text (Skoie, 2002, p. 139), but he did use imagery next to his commentaries of ancient texts nonetheless. The images were not only visual aids in the identification of styles and dating; in this research tradition the illustrations visually scaffolded the direct observations of the scholar, as evidence for his reasoning, in addition to its primary function of displaying the grandeur of classical civilization. Although both Winckelmann and Heyne are celebrated in archaeology for placing the study material culture on the disciplinary map, there were other achievements in archaeological practice of similar, if not greater, scale that are perhaps less well-known throughout the modern discipline.

Although hardly known in wider archaeological circles, Caspar Reuvens (1793–1835) is a prominent figure to any archaeology student within the Netherlands. Deeply inspired by Heyne and the sixteenth-century humanistic culture of collecting antiquities, though struggling with this “antiquarian impasse” (Eickhoff, 2007, p. 140; Hoijtink, 2009, p. 71), Reuvens became the first appointed professor in archaeology in the world at Leiden University in 1818, and was founding director of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities). Reuvens treated archaeology in the same way as history and philology, in which archaeology could supplement the aspects of past cultures in which the ancient authors remained silent (Halbertsma, 2003, p. 43). He expanded the focus on classical and Egyptian antiquities to local Dutch material culture from the pre- and protohistory, and was particularly interested in the Roman period in the Netherlands.

Reuvens’ greatest contributions to Dutch archaeology were the systematic and scientific excavations of the Roman site Voorburg-Arentsburg (ancient Forum Hadriani) from 1827 to 1834, the first large and systematic excavation of its kind. Reuvens took great care in detailed documentation by devising a site plan with the locations of the finds recorded. The site plan of Forum Hadriani (Figure 5) is not a romantically rendered drawing of the remains situated in the landscape as was customary in those days, but a scale-drawing including the limits of the excavations, plotted by a topographer, and levelling of the entire site. Other documentation comprised drawings of find contexts and architectural features, as well as stratigraphic profile drawings (perhaps one of the earliest archaeological stratigraphical drawings known), and although the archaeological remains were rendered in perspective view, they were accompanied with annotations to detailed descriptions (Besselsen, 2014, Figure 1.4), and artefact drawings were created by professional illustrators (Figure 6). Another example of the level of detail in his documentation is illustrated by Reuvens’s research on the altars dedicated to the indigenous goddess Nehalennia from the Roman period. Reuvens made study drawings of the altars accompanied with notes, collected any data he could find about the original find context of the objects and conducted a survey of local oral traditions, which was a novelty in the Netherlands (and perhaps even still today). According to Brongers (2007, p. 115), it is thought that Reuvens made drawings and sketches to organize his reasoning and interpretation process.

Figure 5

Part of the original excavation plan, with annotations. Courtesy of the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden [RA 30 c b].

Figure 6

Detailed documentation of a find context consisting of both watercolours and line drawings, in perspective, plan, and section. Courtesy of the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden [RA 30 e.12].

Another novel technique that Reuvens deployed in the field was the casting of a skeleton in plaster, with all its grave gifts still in position (Buijtendorp, 2007). This meticulous documentation is still useful for interpretation by modern archaeologists,^[4] and, moreover, the first time that this combination of visualization techniques applied in archaeology was documented (Brongers, 2007, p. 112). Where did Reuvens get the inspiration to visually document his excavation? Brongers suggests he must have been inspired by Vitruvius, who prescribed three ways of drawing architecture: horizontally, vertically, and in (bird-eye view) perspective (Brongers, 2002, 2007). Reuvens was also in close contact with Jean Emile Humbert, a military engineer who served in Tunis, where he conducted excavations of ancient Carthage (Brongers, 2002, 2007). Military survey methods might have inspired Humbert to visually document his discoveries in quite some detail, and these technical skills were shared with Reuvens who subsequently developed and expanded these recording methods.

Unfortunately, Reuvens’ untimely death in 1835, at the age of 42, prevented full publication of his unprecedented projects and he was not succeeded. More crucially, perhaps, was that his documentation methods were not continued, as no-one was appointed professor as successor at Leiden University. This meant that his ground-breaking methodology and results soon fell into oblivion, only to be re-invented abroad, half a century later, by influential archaeologists. Today, he forms an important chapter in Dutch archaeology (the impact of his work is still visible in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, and the yearly national meeting of Dutch archaeologists bears his name) and deserves more than being a footnote in the wider history of the archaeological discipline. Incredibly, the near modern standard of Reuvens’s data documentation enabled Dutch archaeologists such as Buijtendorp, more than 150 later, to virtually re-excavate the findings (Buijtendorp, 2010).

The visual approach of Reuvens illustrates how the image became during these formative years of the young discipline a convincing and tangible “simulacrum” of artefacts and reconstructions (Smiles, 2013, p. 18). As codified simulacrum, perhaps the most significant innovation in the history of archaeological visualization is the development of the “T” method in the second half of the nineteenth century to standardize the visual recording of pottery. This method enabled to demonstrate different dimensional information of an object on a flat surface at once: the section and interior and exterior surfaces, the latter often with the suggestion of three-dimensionality by stippling or another cross-hatching. As such, illustrations were attributed increasingly to a role as a research method to guide and to structure archaeological interpretation and easy comparison between shapes, opening possibilities to the further refinement of classification practices. The conventionalized methods were meant to represent the evidence as accurate as possible, and standards were developed to visualize the distinction between documentation and interpretation. The symbolical conventions enabled a shared and standardized communication between scholars (Piggott, 1965).

Besides 2D documentation and reconstructions, from the mid-nineteenth-century physical 3D models became popular modes of visualizing archaeological processes and results. This particular mode of archaeological visualization is still largely unexplored territory,^[5] and its impact on archaeological visualization practices and knowledge production is unclear, yet the epistemological similarities between these physical models and current 3D visualizations are striking. This will be demonstrated through the remarkable wooden excavation models of Augustus Pitt-Rivers and models made of plaster and cork.

Augustus Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers (1827–1900) purportedly deemed important artistic and surveying skills, as well as drawing objects in detail and terrain mapping, to support observation and study of material culture (Bowden, 1991; Evans, 2014; Piggott, 1978).^[6] An innovative effort of Pitt-Rivers was the documentation of artefacts, including sherds, in their original context within the site, whereas contemporary antiquarians simply thought it enough to know from which site the artefact came from. Less well-known, though of crucial significance in understanding current digital 3D visualizations, are the physical 3D topographical models of excavations produced by Pitt-Rivers in the late nineteenth century, of which over 50 have been preserved (Figure 7a and b). He remarked that he only needed to give scaled contoured plans to his estate carpenters to carve to models out of wood (only a few were fashioned in plaster). The surface was painted in high detail, with annotations to the recorded finds (Bowden, 1991), indicated either by pencil or with pins in the large-scale models. Some of the models are extremely elaborate, with different parts held together by hinges, so that different layers, features, and finds within the landscape could be explored and interrogated simultaneously on different panes. Evans has found a photograph of an excavation in which such a model is clearly visible (2004, Figure 5.6), suggesting that “modelling was part of the process of excavation and not just a museum display tool” (Evans, 2004, p. 123). Pitt-Rivers himself mentioned that it was of “utmost importance” to have carefully rendered models of excavations in museums (Bowden, 1991, p. 143). Yet, for an untrained eye the excavation models of Pitt-Rivers are hard to read, because of the codified way of depicting topographical information and stratigraphy. In most models, annotations to accompanying texts helped to convey meaningful information, without such aids they were far from self-explanatory. It is clear that the models fulfilled a dual role: to record and situate contextual archaeological data and interpretations, and the communication of the data and resulting insights to peers and public. As no other annotated excavations models are known from this period, the models of Pitt-Rivers appear to be unique in their kind.

Figure 7

(a) The Cissbury model, from the Farnham Collection, now in The Salisbury Museum (with permission of The Salisbury Museum), (b) the model of Woodyates [CC BY-SA 4.0 license, downloaded from https://www.dayofarchaeology.com/the-pitt-rivers-archaeological-models/].

Closely related to Pitt-Rivers’s models are the archaeological site models rendered in cork. These are unannotated 3D site plans with as primary aim presenting new discoveries, such as excavated architectural remains in Pompeii, or monuments, such as Stonehenge. The light weight of these models meant that they were easy to transport and could communicate quickly to the scholarly world newly unearthed buildings and other spectacular features (Evans, 2004). Another method of visualizing three-dimensional data and multiple data sources, yet of a more fragile nature than cork, was through the replication of objects and monuments by plaster casting and by reconstruction executed in plaster. Both cork and plaster models were used to translate immobile large monuments and excavations on a smaller scale. They were collected and put on display in British salons and other social settings; together with his military background where he learned about military survey methods such as landscape modelling (Evans, 2014), this were the places where Pitt-Rivers became acquainted with the idea of mapping excavations in 3D, which he expanded to its full potential.

Pitt-Rivers and Reuvens had in common their excellent recording methods that were well ahead of their time (Adkins & Adkins, 1989), reaching modern standards. They both used their distinct recording methods and innovative visualization tools not only to organize the documentation, but also to guide the archaeological reasoning process, in which the visualization of the material evidence played a crucial role in the creation of knowledge about social life in the past. Through these visual methods, modern archaeologists were able to trace these processes through the visual, and worked out and re-interpreted the site documentation,^[7] something that would be missed if only print and text was preferred over the visual. Reuvens’s methodology of recording in three dimensions was not continued and eventually fell into oblivion, and, according to Bowden, contemporaries of Pitt-Rivers were not very keen on this innovative way of documenting he introduced (Bowden, 1991). Perhaps, this explains why this particular 3D recording method was not more widely adopted, and archaeologists continued to document three-dimensional data onto 2D surfaces. However, the third dimension was not abandoned altogether, as from the late nineteenth century onwards, plaster models were increasingly used as a non-invasive technique to test hypotheses for, for example, (colour) reconstructions,^[8] completion or re-assembly of fragmented objects, or as proposals to restore ruins. These models enabled not only to transfer new discoveries and knowledge in three dimensions, but functioned as an epistemological tool to assist the archaeological reasoning process as well, similar to the mathematical and naturalistic models deployed in the sciences (de Chadarevian & Hopwood, 2004).

2.3.2 Reconstructing Ancient Life: From Objects to People

Besides static representations of artefacts on paper and sterile reconstructions of ancient cities and reconstructed statues and monuments, artists had the power to reconstruct the dynamics of ancient life. A famous example of representing classical Roman everyday scenes are the paintings of the “archaeologist of artists,” the Anglo-Dutch painter Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (1836–1912) (Swanson, 1977, p. 44). Alma Tadema gained his knowledge of the ancient world by reading the classics and academic treatises, and through direct observations during his numerous travels to Italy, especially Rome and Pompeii. This knowledge resulted in very detailed and historically accurate paintings, which were either hailed or reviled. Some critics sneered that Alma Tadema included so many items in his paintings that they resembled a catalogue (Prettejohn, 2016), which actually demonstrates how well-informed Alma Tadema was. Essential in his painting was the interaction between people and the three-dimensional space, as he sought to revive classical everyday life (Stoter, 2016), but the carefully rendered objects (archaeological finds such as drinking vessels) also had a practical purpose. All vessels and other objects were carefully chosen and placed, not as mere aesthetic decoration, but to inform about their function and use too (Moser, 2016; Sijnesael, 2016). The accuracy of Alma Tadema’s painting derived from his personal study of the archaeology and architecture, even though it was common at this time for artists to use a professional draughtsman to sketch the building first; Swanson comments that the extent of the architectural detail in his paintings allows their practical construction (Swanson, 1977), as can be seen in the use of Alma Tadema’s works in the epic films of Hollywood.^[9]

Reconstructions of classical scenes were not reserved to Romantic and realistic art alone. Although Alma Tadema claimed to be historically and archaeologically accurate, archaeologists wished to distinguish their visual outputs from art with scientifically informed depictions. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, drawings and reconstructions were increasingly made by either archaeologists themselves or by illustrators and architects or topographers who directly participated on excavations or were involved in the archaeological debate. The architect and archaeological illustrator Piet de Jong (1887–1967), another Brit with Dutch roots, spent the first decades of the twentieth century working as an illustrator in several ground-breaking excavations. His many beautiful watercolours of artefacts and architecture from Knossos, Pylos, Mycenae, and the Athenian Agora heavily influenced the image of Aegean prehistory and Classical archaeology (Papadopoulos, 2006, p. 2), which continues to this day. In 1922, de Jong became the first appointed architect for the British School at Athens, and between 1922 and 1930 he collaborated on the reconstructions of the ruins of the Palace of Knossos with Sir Arthur Evans, including the design that was subsequently materialized in concrete and painted almost as bright as his watercolours. De Jong was also a proponent of peopling his reconstructions of the past, but these figures seem to have been placed as passive extras, merely serving a role as indicators of scale for the massive architectural protagonists. These reconstructions were as much an expression of Art Nouveau and Art Deco as well as an exploration of contemporaneous ideas about modernity (Papadopoulos, 2005), and, in Papadopoulos words, “the building today represents one of the finest examples of 1920s architecture” (2005, p. 101).

Over time it is possible to see that reconstructions of the past were always constructed through a contemporary framework. In the Renaissance the images reflected Christian or Neoplatonic and Humanist ideals, as well as contemporary symbols, weaponry, dress, and architecture, which changed in seventeenth-century historical genre painting towards classical interiors, dress, and weaponry. In the eighteenth century the vedute of Piranesi represented neoclassical ideals, the nineteenth-century paintings of Alma Tadema contemporary Victorian life, and Piet de Jong reconstructed Minoan palaces according to modern twentieth-century architectural styles. The power of these images is strong, for it is hard to visualize the Minoan palaces differently from the reconstructions of Evans and de Jong,^[10] or to re-imagine the extravagant Roman costumes and lavish interiors of Egypt and imperial Rome contrarily to the movies and series which imprinted those images on us.^[11] Nevertheless, these reconstructions were artistic attempts to provide a visual insight into the life of the people of the past, corollary to presenting objects as evidence of past life and textual reconstructions written by antiquarians, philologists, and archaeologists. Piet de Jong’s archaeological visualizations, however, are more than pretty pictures of a peopled past, for they have structured the interpretation process of archaeologists, providing insights on construction details and architecture that otherwise might have remained invisible. The fact that his vivid imagination had to be restrained sometimes suggests that the illustrator took part in this process.