chorography – then and now

Chorography – a workshop at Durham University July 10 2012 – [Link] Summer fieldwork. I am less focused on the excavations at Binchester this year [Link]. I am pulling together my long-running research into the region – the English Scottish borders. How do you tell of such a place? All that is there, and has…

this happened here – presence and authenticity in an archaeological sensibility

Gary (Devore) has brought my attention to a remarkable new publication from the Panstwowe Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau [Link] “The Auschwitz Album” or “Lili Jacob Album” comprises about 200 photographs taken by the German SS and depicting the arrival of a transport of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp in 1944. This new collection takes 31…

prehistory and performance – an experiment in site specifics

In Göteborg this week I have been returning to the work of arts company Brith Gof – site specific performance. And theatre/archaeology – the rearticulation of fragments of the past as real time event. The context is my argument that the heritage industry is just that – work performed on what is left of the…

In theory: the death of literature

An intelligent feature in The Guardian by Andrew Gallix on Tuesday 10 January. The topic – “we’ve heard it all before” – [Link]. “We come too late to say anything which has not been said already,” lamented La Bruyère at the end of the 17th century. The fact that he came too late even to…