This is another comment coming in the wake of my recent visit to Fogo Island for Shore Time — a gathering to discuss design, art, place [Link] [Link] It’s about the wonderful architecture of Todd Saunders [Link]. More matters of hospitality, of hosts, visitors, and the ghosts that can haunt their meeting. At Shore Time,…
Mike Pearson
Anatomy Galaxy — epistemic environment
An invited response to a one-day installation event – Anatomy Galaxy, by Connie Svabo.University of Southern Denmark Odense June 24 2026. [Link]Link to Connie Svabo’s dissertation on the project – [Link] Epistemic environments Connie Svabo’s Anatomy Galaxy began with a found situation: a decommissioned anatomy learning environment at the University of Southern Denmark — a wet specimen…
Welsh memories in a Cretan landscape
I am on a short visit to Crete. Elounda, Lasithi. Out east. Past the prehistoric ruins of Malia, to where Chris (Witmore) and I drove in the Renault convertible on an impromptu photo shoot. It’s been twenty five years since. Another visit now to liquid commingling times. A dappled landscape I look out over a…
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…
Don Lavigne — archaeological epigram
Epigram — a concept Don Lavigne was on campus last Friday (Nov 21) to give what was a fascinating talk about ancient Greek epigram — short texts inscribed on something, typically a stone, base, offering, tomb, votive dedication, statue. Don didn’t offer a philological account of epigrams simply as texts. Instead he explored a media…
Tony Harrison — poet, playwright, radical Classicist
Poet and playwright, inspiration and colleague, Tony Harrison died yesterday. Widely acknowledged for his extraordinary poetic and dramatic verse, for his daring translation, he might also be remembered as an archaeological poet of classical antiquity — someone who habitually dug into the strata of Graeco-Roman (and medieval) remains and reworked them not as past history, as…