Bill Rathje and I have a plan, a dream to create a center for garbology. Building on his twenty five years of sifting through garbage and digging land fill sites to show how wrong is our perception of discard and waste. Building on my obsession with matters archaeological. Not just garbage and rubbish. Everything from…
materialities
the body and presence – uncanny things
What meaning cannot convey Two seven hundred year old mummies found in Peru – reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 25 February [Link] A man of about 35 and a boy of 5. The man had one eye open and “you can see his eyeball. It’s perfectly preserved.” When the workers moved the body,…
manifesting archaeology
Joe Moore, retired photographer, is shedding light on California’s contradictory history. With a 132k dollar grant administered by the state library, Joe, librarians and archivists are gathering letters, family documents, court records, songs and photographs, about 800 documents, for an internet archive about slavery in California – the state that likes to think it entered…
sensory memory
The British Library has just launched a new web site devoted to the accents and dialects of the north of England, fast disappearing. Collect Britain, putting history in place. You can listen to recordings made from the 1950s of people talking about everyday life. They are saturated in locality. And just the sounds, intonation, cadence…
Archaeologists with attitude
Colin Renfrew in Stanford. Here to join me and Bill Rathje in a conversation about archaeology, for our book Archaeologists with Attitude. Gave a fascinating talk this evening – “The Sapient Paradox: cognitive archaeology from institutional facts to material realities”. He sketched out his interest in what he called material engagements – how people get…
Performance research
Canton, Cardiff. Talking with Mike Pearson. Performance practice as research – something that is on the agenda in UK universities. Can theatrical performance (or a novel, or painting) be classed as research? Being there – Tri Bywyd: a work of theatre/archaeology by Brith Gof 1995 Barry Eisler, the novelist and my good friend, came along…
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