Map Orkney Month: Imagining Archaeological Mappings

This chapter will introduce this project and its processes by dipping into a selection of the contributions (shared here as quotes and associated images; please read these in sequence along with the main text). Full details of the project and how it unfolded can be found on the Public Archaeology 2015 blog. The story told here draws more thematically across the Map Orkney Month assemblage and proposes new modes of archaeological cartography. Map Orkney Month was archaeological in conception, but multi-disciplinary in its outlook, bringing together elements of archaeology, geography, cartography, and arts practice. For me, this sort of project exposes the importance of archaeology of the present within the sub-field of Contemporary Archaeology. Indeed, archaeology of the contemporary world should, and can only be, all of these things and more.