Studio Michael Shanks Stanford University Click images to enlarge Questions and propositions Four interrelated research questions: Current projects — ongoing Archaeological history — building scenarios. Greece and Rome: a new model of antiquity. With Gary Devore. A project concerned with how one might conceive of antiquity as a kind of archaeological prehistory, retold through speculative…
Author: Michael Shanks
Archaeography: An Introduction
A conversation with photographer Graeme Williams [Link] last November prompted me to reorganize and review my own photowork. Here’s one result. Archaeography — where the performance of photowork meets an archaeological sensibility.Exploring the shared practices of archaeology and photography — working with remains, attending to traces, and composing with absence. Since the 1970s I have…
Robert Longo’s archaeological sensibility
An exhibition of works by Robert Longo at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art [Link]. Raft at Sea 2016-17 Longo traces photographs in charcoal. Large scale charcoal drawings. Of photographs. Blow-ups — upscaled photographs — traced projections. Iceberg for C.D.F (Caspar David Friedrich), 2015-16; The Western Wall, 2011 (Jerusalem) Stand back and you see the BIG…
Binford — telling stories with the past
The new book Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education (edited with Connie Svabo, Tamara Carleton, Chungfang Zhou) prompted a memory today. The title indicates the collection is about STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education. And so it is. But this is not a book about regular science education. We come at the topic…
Creative Pragmatics
Our new book — Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education is published this week. Here’s a personal introduction and the first chapter. edited by Connie Svabo, Michael Shanks, Chungfang Zhou, Tamara Carleton with contributions from (in order of appearance): Andrew Pickering, Jesper Bruun, Søren Nedergaard, Gabriele Characiejiene, Martin Niss, Amalie Thorup Eich-Høy, Maiken…
Colin Renfrew, Mark Leone, John Barrett — passing through archaeology
I have been bringing to mind again three archaeological colleagues, friends of long-standing. No longer with us. Passing on. Mundanities in the life of ideas. So much loss in the fleeting ephemeral. Of Colin Renfrew. A sympathy of interest and concern, from when we first got to know each other. We met regularly but not…