media archaeology – hearing the past again

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Getting back into the groove News of some more fascinating media archaeology in Berkeley – recovering sound from wax cylinders too delicate to touch. Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale and other characters from history may soon be able to speak again, as scientists perfect techniques to recover…

the look of the past

A moving event this afternoon. A celebration of the life of a family friend, Barbara Levin, who died last week. It was at her home in Portola Valley, where her son Dan Levin, Naomi Andrews and their daughter Maya now live. She loved food, travel, living life to the full. What has stuck with me…

extreme archaeology

Cornelius has put me on to a new archaeology TV series in the UK –Extreme Archaeology – from Channel 4. It runs 20 June to 8 August – eight programs. These are the people that brought you Time Team – the archaeologists who tackle a site in a weekend. Here they are to tackle sites…

Julian Thomas and the dangers of scholasticism

Julian Thomas (Manchester University) and Mike Pearson (Wales, Aberystwyth) were the opponents in the defence of Jonna (Ulin) and Fiona’s (Campbell) dissertation in Gothenburg (see my blog entry for June 11). Something has been bugging me since then about Julian’s criticisms of their work. Jonna and Fiona make a basic proposition that archaeology is performance….

the individual in prehistory

Could Stonehenge Skeletons Be Its Bronze Age Builders? – 24 Hour Museum This is the second (or third) recent attempt to connect individual burials with the making of Stonehenge (see my comments on ). They come from Wessex Archaeology. OK – so let’s accept that people built Stonehenge, not spacemen or giants or wizards. These…

the prehistoric built environment

Guardian Unlimited | Ramblers barred from ancient mound Image – earthrod.co.uk Access is to be denied to the great earthen mound to the north of Stonehenge – Silbury Hill. Yes, it is receiving too much damage. But what interested me was that this feature of an earthen landscape has been reclassified a building. (As part…