African Diaspora Archaeology Theory Map
Background
This theory map was one of the two final assignments for African Diaspora Archaeology, where I was first introduced to the pioneers of the subfield of archaeology that I'm interested in. For this assignment, we had to create a visual, scrapbook-like recap of every week of class on the major themes or a specific topic that interested us the most. For this assignment, I took inspiration from the wealth of "bullet journal" pages that I've seen online, which relies on small sketches and drawings to tie the page together.
Reflection
I decided to choose this piece for this portfolio over my final paper for this class because this felt like a new way of communicating the things that I'd learned over the course of the quarter, as I had nearly free creative liberty on how to organize the information that I was putting on these sheets. Creating this was a lesson in understanding how to digest dense theory and papers into something that is not only understandable, but visually pleasing to the reader. This was a great exercise for me in learning the important design principle of balancing large blocks of text (as required) and visual aids in pursuit of highly effective communication. I also decided to take on a more casual tone on some of the pages, which felt more effective than speaking formally, especially on topics that are somewhat taboo within academic circles such as sexuality, gender, and race.
If I were given the chance to revise this theory map, I would definitely integrate some of the skills I have since developed in graphic design to make the pages neater, as some of them are definitely too busy to effectively convey what I wanted them to. Still, this is a resource I still turn to today for inspiration, and with some fine-tuning, I think that this could be a great introductory document for new people who want to learn about African diaspora archaeology, and one that I would love to adapt in the future as I draw from the ideas and papers that are included in the document.