Phil and Peter have come across the California coastline site. High resolution aerial images, overlapped so you can travel the length of California’s coast. Tied to a map too. They were commenting on the effect of presence the site and images achieve. Not an effect of “being there” – but being able to see so…
the shape of history
temporal continuity
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…
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…
Athens Olympics – archaeology and ideology
Of course, many archaeologists and classicists cannot resist this years Athens Olympics – pressed into service, celebration and self promotion. The New York Times ran an article on March 9 under the title When the games began: Olympic archaeology. Richard Martin put me onto it. The International Herald Tribune ran the same yesterday as Olympics:…
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…
mass producing the past
The Cultural VR Lab at UCLA this week reached the Humbul Humanities Hub – the definitive portal for online resources in the humanities. There’s a lot here – many ancient sites and places (they like ancient Rome) reconstructed in that clean look of rendered architectural models. And they all look the same … Truly, and…
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