Uncertainty as Affective State and Critical Engagement Strategy in Museum and Heritage Site Settings

Some pasts have long been uncertain—among those, prehistoric lives in areas where limited archaeological evidence has unearthed. The Scottish Crannog Centre holds a collection of Iron Age artifacts that excavated from the bottom Loch Tay, jigsaw pieces are used to tell story everyday crannog dwellers two and half thousand years ago. visitor experience at museum is built on direct interaction with team as visitors guided through site, presenting ample opportunities for critical questions be raised discussed about how past can understood present it inform future. Facilitating such conversations—and using points connection conversational prompts—involves careful balance between fact, interpretation, imagination; what we know certain, likely, do not, cannot, know. This paper focuses practitioners employ uncertainty feeling, process, an engagement strategy generating reflections conversations among visitors. Drawing data generated twenty-five interviews staff, apprentices, volunteers, well ethnographic observations, explore manages uncertainty, positioned functions interactions visitors, facilitates sense distant past. In so doing, argue more clearly conceptualized affective state when exploring present-day life connected contexts.