I have just received a copy of Toby Wilkinson’s Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. The cover endorsements are enthusiastic; the blurb is packed with hyperbole and the promise of a roller-coaster soap-opera of pomp and ceremony, corruption and decadence, rulers with all-too-recognizable human emotions, in a book that will, we are told, become the…
the shape of history
Olmec Art
“Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico”, an exhibition of Olmec artifacts, is running at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Extraordinary pieces. Extraordinary presence. It was the first time we had come across them first hand. Here the monumental heads, zoomorphic basalt thrones, engobe ceramics, jadeite celts, are gently spotlit in that subdued ambient lighting…
past personality
Latest on the excavations of Binchester Roman town – [Link] David Petts has posted an x-ray made by Jenny Jones of one of the artifacts found this summer – [Link] It didn’t look like much when it was found. It turns out to be a stylus – for writing on wax tablets. Evidence for literacy…
Design, RES and RESPUBLICA
In Tokyo for EPIC – Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference. 6th edition. [Link] Some summary points from my keynote. How could I not respond to Kenya Hara’s wonderful opening keynote and his emphasis on the dialectic of making and its deep connection with human being? [Link] The range of research techniques and methods that I…
Mike Pearson | The Persians
Classics and the contemporary past Mike Pearson and his new production of Aeschylus Persians (National Theatre of Wales) gets a superb review in the Guardian today [Link] This is site-specific theatre with a vengeance. High up in the Brecon Beacons, in a mock-up village used by the military as a training-base, National Theatre Wales is…
elements of a theory of ruin
A wonderful talk this evening from Alain Schnapp in our Archaeology Center. It was about “ruin” as an intellectual artifact. Through a kaleidoscope of quotes and vignettes about ruin from antiquity to modernity, Alain reflected upon broad human experiences at the heart of our sense of history, memory practices, collection, temporality. Goethe among the ruins…
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