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…
the shape of history
archaeological rats
There is a small exhibition on at the British Museum of a grave dating from the late third millennium/early second. The grave of a man dating to around 2,300BC was discovered three miles from Stonehenge by Wessex Archaeology staff in May 2002. His grave was the richest from this period (the early Bronze Age) ever…
obsessions with origins
BBC Science/Nature has picked up on the occurrence of red ochre dating back 90k years at Qafzeh cave, Israel (after a recent article in Current Anthropology). Associated with burials, the pigment is taken to indicate symbolic and ritual thought (red=dead). The typical argument then goes that this is a momentous leap in human evolution. And…
The illusions of VR
Lynn Meskell at Stanford telling us about her new technology project with Columbia computer scientists. High resolution laser survey/scanning produces 3D models of archaeological sites. They tried it at Monte Polizzo over the summer. The result – a textured wireframe model of one of the architectural features of this hill top settlement. As excavated by…
Trafalgar Day
Trafalgar Day at Trafalgar Squarestanding on the steps of the National Galleryand walking to the Tate Modern Urban experience is one of layering narrative allegory spectacle intensity assemblage