PROCEEDINGS | Scientific Symposium
objects- and their combination from the syntactic viewpoint -the context- ( Nardi , E ., 2001 , p . 11 ) is not undifferentiated for any type of museum , but on the contrary the objects on display represent semantic elements to which each museum category ensures specific syntactic rules , suggesting , through the context the most adequate key to understanding ( Ibidem ).
From this claim coherently derives that afterall when we speak of museum education we use an approximation , because we must in reality talk of archaeological museum education , of scientific museum education , of anthropological and so on … ( Nardi , E ., 1997 , pp . 47-54 ).
If , however , it is true that many different types of museum education exist , and many different types of museum typology , it is also legitimate to ask ourselves what are the characteristics which distinguish in a specific way communication in archaeological museums , from the moment that the so called “ multicontextuality ” ( Hooper-Greenhill , E ., 1994 , pp . 229-257 ) of the museum object is even more accentuated , or perhaps it would be better to say more ‘ stratified ” in the case of archaeological exhibits .
The education criteria , inherent in every museum category , should be set on the basis of the diverse epistemological prospects relative to each specific disciplinary area , in such a way that museum education can be determined by the confluence of competence which concerns three different planes : the particular scientific sector …, the education in that particular sector …, and finally its application to the museum ambit ( Nardi , E ., 1997 , pp . 47-54 ). Such an approach allows respect for the interpretive characteristic of each disciplinary approach ( Ibidem ) from the moment that the communicative system of the museum objects presuppose the ability to master a code which , in its turn , refers to learning previously acquired ( Cameron , D ., 1968 , pp . 33-40 ).
These are , on closer inspection , those preliminary indispensible requirements of which a subject should have in dealing with the process of learning ( Tomassucci Fontana , L ., 1999 , p . 30 ) of whatever nature , more commonly called “ prerequisites ” and which in the museum field allow the visitor to have an interpretation code for his or her use to help in understanding the message designed by the curator .
The importance of previous knowledge is crucial according to German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer ( Gadamer , H . G ., 1976 , pp . 104-106 ), just at that moment when the meeting and the comparison with the objectivity is established , given that the process of interpretation of the meaning can be configured through hermeneutic circles which involve at the same time the present and the past and also the whole and the part of the museum object ( The process of making meaning moves both between the whole and the part of the object and between the present and the past , simultaneously . A dialogue is established between the whole and the part , the past and the present , which enables continual checking and rechecking , revision of ideas , trying-out of new ones and rejection of those that do not work , in Hooper-Greenhill , E ., 1994 , p . 47 ).
In this respect the process of decodifying the meaning of a work of art is circular and dialogical ( Hooper- Greenhill , E ., 2000 , p . 23 ).
Also Eilean Hooper-Greenhill insists not a little on the importance of the interpretive processes , arguing that any process of interpretation is necessarily dropped into a historical process … the significance is built in and through the culture . The perception ( that which we see ), the memory ( that which we choose to remember ) and the logical thought ( the sense we choose to attribute to things ) differ culturally precisely because they are culturally constructed . Pre-existent knowledge and historical and cultural experiences contribute to creating diverse meanings … ( Ibidem , p . 24 ).
According to Eilean Hooper-Greenhill the museum object has potentially the capacity to express a series of diverse multiple meanings in relation to the interests and cognitive experience of the visitor . This process of attributing meaning depends on prior knowledge ; how far it goes depends on how much is
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