Andy Munro

Archaeoastronomers have made great strides in development of research methodologies, yet there is limited curriculum available to train new practitioners. If we seek results that address current archaeological research questions, then our work must necessarily be pertinent to such questions and grounded in rigorous archaeoastronomy fieldwork and analytical methods. Furthermore, the inferences we create should be supported by the points of intersection between archaeoastronomical data and archaeological theory (Iwaniszewski, 2015). To achieve these objectives, practitioners must be aware of current archaeological research questions, trained in archaeoastronomy methods, and aware of the intersections between archaeoastronomical data and archaeological theory. Historical and ethnohistorical information from a wide variety of cultures demonstrate that visual astronomy may be interconnected with cosmovision, politics, ritual, religion, and economics in variable and unique ways. Research must be iterative and interdisciplinary. To illustrate variations in interdisciplinary sources, we briefly present two case studies. These case studies underscore the variability of sources supporting archaeoastronomy research; therefore, a curriculum and supporting instructional materials to train practitioners must by definition be interdisciplinary (see, e.g., Magli, 2016). Such a curriculum is under development for the University of Oklahoma‘s College of Professional and Continuing Studies (OU PACS). One key charter of OU PACS is interdisciplinary study. The OU PACS Archaeoastronomy program will integrate astronomy, anthropology, archaeology, history of science, and history of religion. The program is initially planned to include five (5) graduate courses offered as a graduate certificate. The program prominently features North American archaeoastronomy and will include a field methods practicum.

Piano transcriptions are often treated as superficial works, the sole purpose of which is to display the technical prowess of the performer. In this dissertation, I engage critically with this perspective by investigating the various layers present in transcriptions. The study will focus on the Ernani Paraphrase by Franz Liszt. The investigative question of this study is: “How can I intertwine the layered information gained through the analysis process of the Ernani Paraphrase with the embodied discoveries, in preparation towards performance?” I offer the palimpsest as an analogy through which to analyze the Ernani Paraphrase. In the palimpsest layers, dealing with the analyses, I trace a trajectory from the play and opera that inspired Liszt’s transcription, through the musical and social circumstances surrounding the transcription, and a musical analysis of the transcription itself. These layers are referred to as the ‘peeling away’ phases in the process. In the palimpsest layers, that follow the analytical phase, I engage autoethnographically with embodied explorations of the score while interacting with the piano as I prepare for an eventual performance. These embodied layers are perceived as the re-accumulation phase. Separating these various layers provides a unique overview of the work, its influences, and origins. Ultimately, all these layers will reaccumulate into what will become the palimpsest of performance. The analogy of the palimpsest proved effective in outlining the many origins and influences of the transcription which then inform later layers in preparing for the eventual performance.

Given John L. Austin’s Oxonian pedigree, we should expect his discussion of how “to say something is to do something” (1962, 12) to be taken up analytically. However, Austin also offers resources that have been exploited outside of traditional analytic philosophy—think of certain analytic feminist work, for example, or literary critical uses of performativity. For the most part, such work extends and inflects Austin’s notion of illocution and its related concepts of force and performativity for disciplinary-specific ends. This tendency in reading Austin to focus on illocution and its related concepts is understandable. After all, Austin devotes most of his Harvard lectures, assembled in How to Do Things ..