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…
ethics
archaeological intimacy – on looking at everyday things
Meg Butler left a wonderful story as comment on the photos of the apartment in San Jose. Both the pictures and your comments remind me of a small town in Texas that I visited. My first impression was of a dying town. It isn’t on a main highway or interstate, it isn’t touristy in any…
the apartment in San Jose
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…
repatriation of antiquities
Latest in the concerns about artifacts as cultural property – [Link – BBC][Link – BBC] Aboriginal artefacts, including two early bark etchings, have been seized in Australia while on loan from two British museums. Members of the Dja Dja Wurrung tribe secured an emergency order preventing the items being returned to the British Museum and…
art market dirty dealings
It was the way the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York described its plans for 57,000 square feet of extended gallery space that caught my eye: “We have a sacred obligation to put this material on view,” said museum director Philippe de Montebello [BBC link] He is talking about 5000 Graeco-Roman artifacts, currently in…
the past clings
A reburial issue in San Francisco: SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco has finally found a resting place for the remains of nearly 100 Gold Rush-era residents unearthed three years ago during construction of the Asian Art Museum. Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, a small city with 17 cemeteries just south of San Francisco, has…