Heritage — making futures

A critical-heritage complement to the Janus Maneuver – [Link] More notes on futures studies. A second component to the same conclusion: that working with the past is a way of making futures. Convergence — “Janus Maneuver” and heritage futures In a recent post I made the case for “The Janus Maneuver” [Link] — that an…

Some archaeological notes on futures studies

The Janus Maneuver Hindsight, foresight, and futures studies Everyone, it seems, is a futurist now. Here are some loosely gathered thoughts on why an archaeology of design may be a missing foundation. These are notes – so expect inaccuracies and mistakes of memory (hopefully minor). After Janus – the divine principle of looking both back…

Newsletter — Stanford Archaeology Center

Prospective reflections on 2025-26 Acting with nature — prehistory My new book Archaeologies of Nature: Activating the Archive, written with Gabriella Giannachi, University of Exeter and Turin, is now complete and in production. Open Access — it will be available as PDF in June 2026. We use an archaeology of artworks to probe human relationships…

AI and collaboration — lessons from Stanford

Here is the keynote I presented at our reunion last week in Odense, of Danish alumni of the Stanford H-Star fellowship program (2010 to 2015). Keith Devlin (H-Star director emeritus) and Connie Svabo of the STEM Education Research Center – FNUG at University of Southern Denmark [Link], were our hosts. The program enabled about 50…

In Gitte and Poul’s garden

Svendborg, Funen, Denmark Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Grasund alle Herrlichkeit des Menschenwie des Grases Blumen.Das Gras ist verdorretund die Blume abgefallen … (Johannes Brahms – Ein deutsches Requiem (1865) Op. 45) Click on image to open gallery -> Poul, Connie, Gitte, Jan, Keith