Applied Archaeology — Applied Humanities

Studio Michael Shanks Stanford University Newsletter 2024 Stanford Archaeology Center Archaeological mission and vision? Ivory tower as lighthouse? In a recent newsletter for Stanford Archaeology Center [Link] I talked of slow archaeology, of the benefits of long-running projects that afford time for unfolding reflection. Three interrelated projects remain ongoing. A kind of archaeological triptych. —…

A journey round my father: methodological notes on an archaeological sensibility

This is a commentary on a recent post on this site – A journey round my father [Link]. It’s about the features, concepts, tools and techniques of a reclaimed archaeological sensibility that help us connect with a complex world in flux. Bjørnar (Olsen) was visiting in the Spring when my father took another fall at…

A journey round my father

Life dispersed in small things forgotten Funeral We buried him in the cemetery at Blyth (in the north-east of England) overlooking the beach in the plot where my mother has lain since 1999. It was a bleak place back then. Twenty five years have seen the trees and hedges mature. The watery sunshine of that…

Update: December 2022 – slow archaeology

“Our brains aren’t designed for multitasking”, my dear friend Cliff Nass, mathematician, cognitive scientist and psychologist, warned me a good long while ago – and he’d written a book about it! “It will slow you down and cloud your reasoning.” OK — I’m still working on the same big three projects as back then. But…

Mike Pearson – theatre/archaeology

Mike Pearson died last week. He was a performance artist, theatre director, theorist and philosopher, scholar and teacher. And, as composer John Hardy said, Mike collaborated and connected – visual design, architectural stagecraft, poets, playwrights, composers, experimental jazz musicians, dancers, disability & gender specialists, comics, community art conveners, museum curators, traditional Japanese theatre performers, Patagonian farmers,…