With Kristian (Kristiansen) and Lotte (Hedeager). Talking about jazz on vinyl and prehistoric Europe – with salt from Hallstatt, the great cemetery site of the early iron age in the Salzkammergut, near Salzburg. The salt of Hallstatt at Hindås
ruins and remains
In theory: the death of literature
An intelligent feature in The Guardian by Andrew Gallix on Tuesday 10 January. The topic – “we’ve heard it all before” – [Link]. “We come too late to say anything which has not been said already,” lamented La Bruyère at the end of the 17th century. The fact that he came too late even to…
Ruin memories
I have just received a copy of World Crisis in Ruin; the Archaeology of the Former Soviet Missile Sites in Cuba from Mats Burström, Anders Gustafsson and Håkan Karlsson. Another fascinating archaeology of the contemporary past. The 1962 Missile Crisis is a well-known episode in the Cold War and twentieth-century history. It is documented in…
Olivier – Le sombre abîme du temps
Laurent Olivier’s wonderful book Le sombre abîme du temps has just appeared in translation (as The dark abyss of time: memory and archaeology) – [Link] Laurent offers profound elaboration of the fundamental insight that the past is all around us, before us, in material traces, that presence is filled with the past, that the future…
looking out and looking up
To the left – oriel window, added by Richard of York, looking out over the upland estate from the Lord’s Hall. To the right – garderobe (latrine), with a finely corbeled chute. Barnard Castle, Teesdale UK, one of the great medieval fortresses of the north
landscape aesthetics – tactics (continued)
From a conversation in the Dun Cow, Durham (with Bianca Carpeneti and Chris Witmore). Topic – archaeology, ruins and the picturesque landscape. The allure, the ideology, the challenge to avoid cliché. How do we deal with archaeological landscapes today? Should I just give up photography? As a tainted medium? This is too simple a response…
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