the culture of archaeology

Highway 128 Boonville California Since I moved to the United States a dozen years ago, I have spent a good deal of time in Northern California in a small back woods town called Boonville in the Anderson Valley on Route 128 as it makes its way to the Mendocino Coast. Always an agricultural community, logging,…

writing ancient Egypt

I have just received a copy of Toby Wilkinson’s Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The cover endorsements are enthusiastic; the blurb is packed with hyperbole and the promise of a roller-coaster soap-opera of pomp and ceremony, corruption and decadence, rulers with all-too-recognizable human emotions, in a book that will, we are told, become the…

archaeological research at the edge of empire

This appeared under the title Edges of Empire – the new excavations at Binchester Roman town, UK in the 2010 opening edition of the online magazine Electrum – [Link] Gary Devore and Michael Shanks Binchester Barrack block turned abattoir – the late cattle ranch in the corner of the fort. The town extended beyond over…

VINOVIVM

Update – a revised version now appears at – https://mshanks.com/2011/01/archaeological-research-at-the-edge-of-empire/ We are starting to plan for our excavations next summer of Binchester Roman town in the north of England. Here is a short news item about this last summer, released yesterday. July 2010 was the second archaeological field season for the Binchester Project. We are…