A previous post on this site mentioned a recent visit I made to Fogo Island [Link] — and where I found myself revisiting matters I had raised in a book of mine — Heritage Performance Design (2019) [Link]. Here are more comments and thoughts that have arisen after this extraordinary gathering. See also my thoughts…
things
Larry Leifer
Larry Leifer, extraordinary pioneer in design practice and design research, passed away yesterday August 29. Larry was a key figure in what I had hoped Stanford might stand for when I arrived in 1999. He welcomed me into The Learning Lab, Stanford Center for Innovation in Learning, Center for Design Research (CDR), and the Hasso…
Newsletter — Stanford Archaeology Center
Prospective reflections on 2025-26 Acting with nature — prehistory My new book Archaeologies of Nature: Activating the Archive, written with Gabriella Giannachi, University of Exeter and Turin, is now complete and in production. Open Access — it will be available as PDF in June 2026. We use an archaeology of artworks to probe human relationships…
The archaeological life of things — Bornholm
Hosts, ghosts, visitors For some years I have been making archaeological visits to Bornholm, the Danish island south of Sweden. Rock art, unique prehistoric sites and monuments, medieval settlement, churches and castles, rune stones, fishing industry, cold war relics, an arts community since the nineteenth century, contemporary heritage and tourism. The mingling remains of many…
A journey round my father: methodological notes on an archaeological sensibility
This is a commentary on a recent post on this site – A journey round my father [Link]. It’s about the features, concepts, tools and techniques of a reclaimed archaeological sensibility that help us connect with a complex world in flux. Bjørnar (Olsen) was visiting in the Spring when my father took another fall at…
A journey round my father
Life dispersed in small things forgotten Funeral We buried him in the cemetery at Blyth (in the north-east of England) overlooking the beach in the plot where my mother has lain since 1999. It was a bleak place back then. Twenty five years have seen the trees and hedges mature. The watery sunshine of that…