– the implications of the question “what if … ?” The ancient historians Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel are two colleagues of mine at Stanford. “Who killed Harry Field?” Ian sees himself as a social scientist of the ancient world – building models of how antiquity worked, models that are general enough to apply beyond…
the shape of history
neolithic miniature figurines
Doug Bailey has finished his study of neolithic figurines from south east Europe – a fascinating treatment that ranges from early farmers to Barbi Dolls – a superb comparative work in visual culture. He presents a much needed correction to Maria Gimbutas’s fantasy treatment. It will be published by Routledge very soon. The way archaeology…
trauma and the past
Lunch with Jonathan Greenberg today – Stanford Law School. He specializes in conflict resolution and has a particular interest in national partition in the wake of the withdrawal of imperial powers and decolonisation – Korea, India, Palestine, Vietnam, and, of course, Iran and Iraq. He sees partition and the narratives and feelings it generates as…
the uncanny preservation of curse-laden mummies
archaeological archetypes Daily Telegraph | News | Ice Maiden triggers mother of all disputes in Siberia This story has it all. High in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, where Shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt in the air. Local officials,…
prehistoric beads in South Africa
more on those items from Blombos Cave – a case for scepticism 75 000 year old shells claimed as beads – Blombos Cave, South Africa I was arguing a few days ago on 17 April [Link] that the case for these shells being evidence of a modern human mentality was fragile, to say the least,…
plotting the past – the first modern humans in South Africa, and a scenario for the first farming villages
A couple of recent press comments about new discoveries have caught my attention because of what they reveal about the way academics build their careers and how archaeological field projects get turned into stories about the past. Basically it comes down to this – archaeologists want their site to be the discovery that will rock…