Glasgow TAG A highlight of the conference, for me, was Layla Renshaw talking about photographs of the excavation of remains of victims of the Spanish civil war. The context is that of the growing application of forensic archaeology to investigate mass graves in Bosnia, Iraq, Argentine, Spain. To identify. To pursue justice. To achieve some…
archaeology
sham archaeological science in the academy
Glasgow TAG conference – the cows come home to Monte Polizzo. A few years ago now I left I field project in Sicily after just two seasons. I was very angry because I felt I had been forced out by people who didn’t want to listen to my concerns. Angry at my wasted effort, because…
archaeology – the “materialities of its discourse” – depressing lecture halls
Mike (Pearson) and I presented a series of performed lectures in the first years of the European Association of Archaeologists annual meetings across Europe – 1991 through 1996. Performed lectures – raising the level of expressive demands upon presenter and audience with intellectual content uncompromised – intermedia presentation dealing in the textures of archaeology and…
how to train archaeologists?
Glasgow TAG Saturday afternoon. I walked out of the the tedious plenary session. It was a debate about archaeology, the university and training professional archaeologists. Some professional from one of the archaeology units in the UK had published a deliberately hyperbolic comment to the effect that universities are failing the profession – graduates come out…
archaeology and the origins of war
My colleague and friend Walter (Scheidel), ancient historian at Stanford, took me to task over a blog comment last week about democracy and warfare. [Link] I argue that war emerged in the bronze age – for the Near East from 3000 BC, later in the second millennium for most of Europe. Walter – Is it…
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…