I want to pick up a comment or rather link that Sam left on the Blather site entry – to Eric Benson’s blog. Archaeological text generation – Markov chains … The official definition of a markov chain is: A model of sequences of events where the probability of an event occurring depends upon the fact…
posts
sense of place – matters of resolution and augmented reality
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 uncanny
There is a sense of the uncanny to the village in Scotland that has been discovered to go back 5,500 years. [Link] Ralph Waldo Emerson: English Traits, Stonehenge: “We walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh look at the uncanny stones.” (1856). The Uncanny? The return of what is no longer…
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:…
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