COMMUNICATING ARSLANTEPE. FOR A SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO THE MUSEALIZATION OF AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Abstract

Musealizing the remains of architectural artefacts, like the palace complex at Arslantepe, means creating a semiotic machine, no less. It is not only a matter of showing what it must have looked like in the past or placing it in its historical setting, but of making its value topically relevant, making the structure effective in terms of communication, and reconstructing the meaning that it can have today. This is the only way a museum can aspire to being valid from both the cultural and economic points of view. It follows from this that every decision that has to be taken must express a precise strategy, of which semiotics is the key. The purpose of this article is to offer the reader the possibility of looking behind the scenes at one specific experience, without forgetting that cooperation between semiotics and archaeology can go much further than all this, encompassing the methodology used for the study, and its epistemological premises.