Doug’s book on prehistoric figurines is now in production.[Link to Routledge] This is the blurb Prehistoric Figurines is a radical new approach to one of the most exciting but poorly understood artefacts from our prehistoric past. The book explores the ways that people use representations of human bodies to make subtle political points and to…
archaeology
Exo-Archaeology
Yesterday Bill (Rathje) commented on space junk. [Link] I asked him to say more about garbage and archaeology in space. He reminded me of something that was in a recent article of ours (Michael Shanks, William Rathje and David Platt, “The perfume of garbage: modernity and the archaeological” – last issue of the journal Modernism/Modernity,…
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…
origins of agriculture
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Farming origins gain 10,000 years Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say. These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which…
collaborative archaeology – the Severan Marble Plan of Rome
The BBC have picked up on Stanford’s Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project.[Link][Stanford Report – details] The Forma Urbis Romae, also known as the Severan Marble Plan, was a giant marble map of ancient Rome that hung on a wall in a building, the Templum Pacis, near the forum. It measured 60 feet wide by 45…
trauma and the past
Lunch with Jonathan Greenberg today – Stanford Law School. He specializes in conflict resolution and has a particular interest in national partition in the wake of the withdrawal of imperial powers and decolonisation – Korea, India, Palestine, Vietnam, and, of course, Iran and Iraq. He sees partition and the narratives and feelings it generates as…