car collection – connoisseurship and archaeology

This is one of a series of comments on the 8th biennial symposium “Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car” held at the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida in March 2015. [Link] The symposia at the Revs Institute bring together people passionate about collecting cars, passionate about thinking deeply around questions of conservation and…

conflict-time-photography

Tate Modern, London – I have just been to the exhibition Conflict – Time – Photography [Link] The topic is how photographs connect with traumatic events and experiences, how they document such events. Here’s the review in Time Out by Freire Barnes – [Link] As we look back over 100 years since the end of…

Helen Shanks – an archaeological sensibility

Helen has just launched her web site – http://helenshanks.com Ceramics connecting quiddities, material engagement, deep history, hylography, the skeuomorph – the life of things – see some recent comments – [Link] [Link]

why antiquaries matter

There’s a great article by Peter Miller in the current Chronicle of Higher Education on How Objects Speak – [Link] Objects loom large as other gods seem to fail. The enormous global success of Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, which started as a radio program, no less, spinning dramatic tales of…

Get Carter – then and now

“Get Carter” (Mike Hodges 1971) – Michael Caine’s finest movie role. Set in the North East of England. Visiting one of the locations – Blyth – once the biggest coal port in Europe, shipping 7 million tons in 1961, from these great wooden staithes, now gone, but for the jetties. Another archaeology of the contemporary…

a pilgrimage in search of deep time

Jedburgh, just off Dere Street, Scottish Borders. On the Berwickshire coast at Siccar Point James Hutton found an exposure of the sandstone, shales and greywacke, with the strata of the sedimentary rocks lying at an angle to each other – what is now called an unconformity. Another, inland at Inchbonny by Jedburgh, is now known…