Parallel Lives - An Interview with Ruth Tringham

• Published in: Norwegian archaeological review Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 43 - 52
• Main Authors: Tringham, Ruth, Solli, Brit, Sørensen, Marie Louise Stig
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 01-06-2008
• ISSN: 0029-3652; 1502-7678
• DOI: 10.1080/00293650802181196

Ruth Tringham is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. She is one of the founders and a director of the UC Berkeley Multimedia Authoring Center for Teaching in Anthropology (MACTiA). Her research has focused on the transformation of early agricultural (Neolithic) societies. Tringham has directed and published archaeological excavations in South-east Europe and Turkey, at the site of Çatalhöyük. Current research focuses on the life-histories of buildings and the construction of place. Much of her recent practice of archaeology incorporates digital, especially multimedia, technology in the presentation of the process of archaeological interpretation, Since 1998 Tringham has incorporated multimedia authoring and digital technology into teaching inquiry-based hybrid courses. From 1998 to 2001 she held the UCB Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education. Tringham is now recognized internationally as one of the leaders of digital education, media literacy, and digital publishing in archaeology. This interest in multimedia grows out of a lifelong passion for music, puppets and cultivating illusions of reality.
The interview was conducted in Cambridge on 23 October 2007, the day after Ruth Tringham's participation in a personal history retrospective at the Department of Archaeology together with Meg Conkey, Henrietta Moore and Alison Wylie, and organized by Pamela Smith. The retrospective aimed to reflect on the transformation of archaeological theory and method during the 1970s and early 1980s (an audio recording is at
http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/podcast/rss.xml
). The interview was transcribed by the interviewees together with Dr Katharina Rebay, University of Cambridge.