This is part of my long-running commentary on the current state and future of the humanities, including what gets called digital humanities. Nudged by a symposium at Stanford There was a symposium at Stanford last week (November 14-15) called “The Futures of Antiquity in an Age of Digital Data and AI”. Credit goes to faculty…
theory and method
Binford — telling stories with the past
The new book Creative Pragmatics for Active Learning in STEM Education (edited with Connie Svabo, Tamara Carleton, Chungfang Zhou) prompted a memory today. The title indicates the collection is about STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education. And so it is. But this is not a book about regular science education. We come at the topic…
Colin Renfrew, Mark Leone, John Barrett — passing through archaeology
I have been bringing to mind again three archaeological colleagues, friends of long-standing. No longer with us. Passing on. Mundanities in the life of ideas. So much loss in the fleeting ephemeral. Of Colin Renfrew. A sympathy of interest and concern, from when we first got to know each other. We met regularly but not…
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 day for Chris Tilley: reflections on the performance of academic life
University College London November 15 2024. This morning I was online at a gathering of colleagues, friends, former students, to reflect upon the life and work of Chris Tilley who died earlier this year [Link]. Appreciative memories; what remains; hindsight and legacy; influences. There were the regular, standardized, and orthodox accounts of Tilley’s part in…