I visited the apartment today – the one abandoned over a year ago. He had lived there since 1964. It looks as if he was preparing to leave – there were some things in boxes, and the place is a little to messy with junk. But all his things seem to be still there. He…
archaeological sensibility
the individual in (contemporary pre)history
More on what we leave behind in Wired magazine’s August issue – and how tracks through cyberspace can be crucial clues to who we are and were – Raising the dead A water-well digger found the body. It was 1968, and Wilbur Riddle was tromping around Eagle Creek, off Route 25 in backwoods Kentucky, scavenging…
the mystery of the locked room
In a piece called Three Rooms – published in the Journal of Social Archaeology June 2004 issue and as a traumwerk/wiki, I tracked the case of David Rodinsky. He walked out of his one room apartment in Whitechapel, London one morning in 1969, and never returned; the door was unlocked over a decade later to…
the archaeological imagination
Some years ago back in Lampeter Julian Thomas and I used to talk about something we called the archaeological imagination. We were close to a host of superb human geographers in the next corridor who were reshaping their field (Chris Philo, Ulf Stroymeyer, Catherine Nash, Ian Cook, Tim Cresswell, Hester Parr, Miles Ogborn, Joe Painter,…
Barry Eisler’s archaeology
Barry’s latest in the John Rain series of novels – Rain Storm – is out. He was super smooth at the signing tonight at Kepler’s, Menlo Park. Didn’t you work for the government, Barry? What were you doing? Yes I did, … and no comment … [Link – Barry Eisler] John Rain, Barry’s anti-hero, Asian-American…
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…