Apparatus of Scholarship

Thanks to the many friends and colleagues who have emailed me or commented on my piece about Jennifer Wallace’s new book Digging the Dirt – and particularly Jennifer for responding so thoughfully. [Link] The book is well-written and a good read. But Jennifer, I complained, doesn’t indicate her sources and complementary discussion of her topic…

the innocence of rural remains?

Thanks to Cornelius, Matthew and Troels for some very astute comment on the recent BBC item about the decline of the English countryside and its transformation into a cultural or heritage playgound – [Link] Key points for me – the remains of the past are wrapped up in relationships between city and “countryside” (a great…

Cuba – on the verge – the physiognomy of historical change

Meg’s comments on the photos of the apartment in San Jose, and her story of small town America were about the way everyday things can be almost too painful, too intimate – because of their personal associations yes, but, also because of their attachment to temporal loss. It makes us think of how we look…

deep mapping – yellowarrow.org

Sam (Schillace) has put me onto yellowarrow.org – a fascinating new project in mobile phone deep mapping. “yellowarrow” [noun] – a collective symbol for personal communication | [verb] – to leave and discover messages pointing out what counts choose – find a place that speaks to you, something you want to point out, a detail…

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,…