– the implications of the question “what if … ?” The ancient historians Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel are two colleagues of mine at Stanford. “Who killed Harry Field?” Ian sees himself as a social scientist of the ancient world – building models of how antiquity worked, models that are general enough to apply beyond…
posts – matters of design
BorderLine Archaeology
In Sweden, Gothenburg, for Fiona Campbell and Jonna Ulin, defending their joint PhD Dissertation, Borderline Archaeology. Fiona on Labyrinths; Jonna on family archaeology. And performance to deal with both. A remarkable combination And manifested also in a great web site – where you can get the book. This is a site that aims to bridge…
media archaeologies – Iraq
Jack (Mitchell) in my Classics Department here at Stanford came out with a great point about all the imagery of abuse coming out of Iraq. [Link] The digital image has a material force – the image itself, maybe borrowing its authority from the materiality of analogue photography, affects. The image is pre-discursive – that is,…
iconoclasm and the objective art historian – the case of the Bamiyan Buddhas
Nice remark from Jack (Mitchell) about the Taliban’s art criticism: I quite agree with these remarks on the Taliban and their Stinger missiles (the instruments of their art criticism, if I recall correctly). The fact remains, however, that if the Taliban genuinely believed in iconoclasm, and it seems they did believe in it, the one…
Cantor Arts Center – half-century of support
The Cantor Arts Center celebration last Saturday [Link] made it to the San Jose Mercury today – [Link] There are details here of who was involved.
neolithic miniature figurines
Doug Bailey has finished his study of neolithic figurines from south east Europe – a fascinating treatment that ranges from early farmers to Barbi Dolls – a superb comparative work in visual culture. He presents a much needed correction to Maria Gimbutas’s fantasy treatment. It will be published by Routledge very soon. The way archaeology…