Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited village (from Stone Pages). Further to the matter of continuity – 5 March 2004 Dreghorn in Ayrshire, Scotland, has been revealed as Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited village after the remains of an ancient settlement were uncovered by builders. North Ayrshire Council granted permission for a development of 53 new houses at…
ruins and remains
negative pasts
Earlier today I mentioned an abhorrent positivity in those archaeologies that see the past as mirror to the present and ignore the mess and suffering of history. Here are some comments of mine on negative archaeology from an article with Bill Rathje and David Platt that is about to appear in the journal Modernism/Modernity. It…
everyday mess
Philip has pointed me at blather – an extraordinary concatenation of fragments of text – the remains of thoughts, imputed conversation, remarks, ruminations, pontifications – the mess of everyday discourse … As Philip puts it Basically, you take a dictionary and throw out the definitions. Then you let everybody define the words themselves. Then make…
photoblogs
Archaeology shares a great deal with photography. Particularly time and a temporality of actuality. Here is how I descibe it in my wiki entry on the archaeological (also mentioned on 10 December). Four archaeological temporalities: Recollection It is not only that archaeologists gather fragments and build collections. Like memory, the work of archaeology is re-collection…
how the copy constitutes the original
Gavin Lucas was with us this week, talking about archaeological fieldwork. He described to us how archaeologists use mimetic machines for copying the past into the present. This is how I would put it – At the heart of our archaeological interests is the archive – we collect, codify, make and manage inventories. It is…
quotidian flux
Scanning the excellent detritus.net – dedicated to pratctices of recycling culture – I came across Mark Napier’s work. Barbie dolls (have a look!), found imagery in New York, and “negative space – an attempt to scan my entire appartment”. OK – it doesn’t get very far and is a little too whimsical for me, but…