– the never-ending search for the Holy Grail … The BBC is reporting what looks like another publicity scam Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that’s made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for…
Author: Michael Shanks
dead media project
More media archaeology – not sure why it has taken me so long to come across the Dead Media Project. This is how Bruce Sterling and Richard Kadrey put it in their modest proposal Think of it this way. How long will it be before the much-touted World Wide Web interface is itself a dead…
hobbit hominids – data property rights
Hobbits locked away as scientists argue – Science – www.theage.com.au It has been a plague of archaeological research since the beginnings of the discipline in the eighteenth century, and a contemporary scandal, though few speak out about it. So I hear that the hobbit hominid remains have been locked away by a palaeontologist in Jakarta…
the ancients: now available in colour
John Hooper in the Guardian reviews the “Colours of White” exhibition at the Vatican museums, Rome (until January 31) – Guardian Unlimited | Arts features | The ancients: now available in colour. For hundreds of years, Caligula’s handsome, marble face has stared out at a fascinated world. Now situated at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum…
Robert Sarmast – more junk about Atlantis
More fantasy archaeology in the news. Robert Sarmast has modelled underwater topographic data and sees the remains of a city. Sarmast’s Atlantis This underwater geology has been well researched and is understood as volcanic activity ([Link] [Link]). But the pictures have far more rhetorical force. As does Sarmast’s own story of the rogue amateur who…
Michael Herzfeld on comparative ethnography
Comparing one society with another Michael Herzfeld was talking today about ethnography, about the centrality of comparison. His latest work is to compare Greece with Italy with Thailand. Michael Herzfeld at Stanford today Many anthropologists have become anxious about the comparative method, because comparing one society with another with the aim of understanding each through…
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