Visualisation has had longstanding, albeit contested role in the field of archaeology. Archaeological visual media broadly refer to 2D and 3D productions, drawings, maps, photos, models, videos, sounds, and exhibitions. They can contribute to the communication of knowledge to specialists and to a wider audience. Yet, visualisation can also facilitate the creation of new knowledge in archaeology. Visualisation as a process in knowledge making is now acknowledged in recent geovisualization and geovisual analytics literature as well as in the field of computer sciences but has not yet gained much attention in archaeology. In this session, we call for papers that begin to address the ontological turn of archaeological knowledge making through visualisation methodologies that enable information processing, which in turn, can enhance our understanding of the past. We especially welcome papers that explicitly enable interaction and navigation of the spatial, temporal and thematic components in archaeological data and that demonstrate how visualisation methods facilitate deeper insights into archaeological phenomena. We propose the following format: a three-minute (3M) ‘thesis’ and one ‘tweet-able’ slide presentation. After the presentations, participants will engage in an open round table discussion on the changing role of visualisation in archaeology and the challenges and opportunities for further developing these methodologies. The 3M presentation is an opportunity for authors to showcase their visualisation tools and what insights they gained into archaeological data and archaeological phenomena. The subsequent round table discussion will be organised around the central theme of further work that is necessary in order to improve visualisation as an analytical tool in archaeology.
