Visualizing the Pondering: A Multimedia Tribute to the Epistemological Legacy of Victor J. Paz

Rob Rownd

School of Archaeology, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines; U.P. Film Institute, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines; rrownd@up.edu.ph

Responding to the call to celebrate the legacy of Professor Victor J. Paz (1967–2024), this multimedia presentation features a short film that serves as a pedagogical ingress into his seminal 2003 work, Terms to Ponder for a Southeast Asian Archaeologist. As the discipline moves toward "palaeohistory" and "deep history," this film visualizes the problematization of Eurocentric periodization and the "prehistory/history" divide that Paz tirelessly challenged. Through a series of "material monologues" artifacts such as Tridacna shell adzes and carbonized Canarium remains act as ‘narrators’ and ‘plot points’, to illustrate the shift in framework from rigid technological stages to a nuanced understanding of human-landscape interaction/intimacy and maritime agency. By centering the "history of archaeological practice," the film enacts the "terms of engagement" Paz championed, bridging the gap between scientific rigor and heritage consciousness. In Victor’s eyes, changes in theory could at times be seen as much as plot points as examples of the evolution of ideas. This work is positioned not merely as a retrospective, but as a celebratory "constructive debate" in multimedia format. It invites the session to ponder not only how Paz’s advocacy for a localized lexicon continues to shape the ethics, pedagogy, and praxis of Southeast Asian archaeology today but also how do we popularize the understand of this shift? How do we as archaeologists compete for attention in the crowded marketplace of ideas.