Blog Profile / Archaeolog

Archaeology through the Lens of Sherlock Holmes

There is always something to learn from Sherlock Holmes. It is a good sign that an archaeologist has been often identified with the private detective: The Sherlock Holmes type detective has become a common association with archaeology. Show More Summary

Archaeological Description and Doubt

I wrote this paper for a session at the 2011 Meeting of the American Association of Anthropology in Montreal called Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Anthropology: What is the status of our descriptions? It is about time I posted it here. Show More Summary

DOUBLE VISION: IMAGINES, SIMULACRA, REPLICAS

A session at the US TAG 2013, Chicago Co-organizers: Alicia Jiménez (alicia.jimenez(at)stanford.edu) and Alfredo González-Ruibal (alfredo.gonzalez-ruibal(at)incipit.csic.es) Archaeology leans heavily on typologies and similarities. Narratives...Show More Summary

Against Gandalf the Grey: an Archaeology of the Surface

Archaeology has been for many years identified with its own method, that of excavation. It is the way the public sees archaeology and many archaeologists think of themselves too (e.g. Holtorf 2007). However, Rodney Harrison recentlyShow More Summary

Archaeological Orientations: A new series

With the impending publication of an excellent new book, Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal (2013), Gavin Lucas and I have decided that we are somewhat overdue in announcing theShow More Summary

Ruins and Memory: Cormac McCarthy's Archaeological Imagination

Cormac McCarthy is a writer whose novels are haunted by ruins, whether the remains of an old inn in his first novel, or the recent ruins of a destroyed world in his last. His characters find petroglyphs, mummies, and ruined villages strewn along their path. Show More Summary

Launch of Journal of Contemporary Archaeology and Call for Papers

The editors and Equinox Publishing are pleased to announce the launch of a new journal devoted to the study of contemporary archaeology and invite submissions for publication, commencing with the first issue in Spring 2014. Journal of...Show More Summary

Symmetry, STS, Archaeology (Part 2)

...continued from Part 1 of 2. Temporality The ethnographic examination of archaeological practice has become an established sub-domain (Edgeworth 2006, 2010; Yarrow 2003), although this reflexive platform has not developed in explicit contact with STS ethnographies of science (Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983; Latour and Woolgar 1986; Lynch 1985). Show More Summary

Symmetry, STS, Archaeology (Part 1 of 2)

Territorial wrangling is a good indicator that there is something emergent which is coveted amongst disciplines. The principle of symmetry, while a topic no longer generating any sustained discussion in its home setting of Science and Technology Studies (STS), is a case in point. Show More Summary

The principle of symmetry according to Tim Ingold: An occasion for more clarification

When deployed in the context of metaphysics, symmetry is an awkward, even unsightly, term. Those of us who have enrolled this principle have been the first to admit this. We have also been the first to state that we are more than happy to take leave of symmetry. Show More Summary

test

Chorography - then and now

Chorography - a workshop at Durham University July 10 2012 - [Link] Summer fieldwork. I am less focused on the excavations at Binchester this year [Link]. I am pulling together my long-running research into the region - the English Scottish...Show More Summary

William Rathje (July 1, 1945 - May 24, 2012)

Bill Rathje passed away on May 24th – just over a month shy of his 67th birthday. Everyone who knew Bill well loved him. A there was a lot to love about him. A kind and gentle man, Bill had a laugh that shook the room. This laugh was matched by his sense of humor. Show More Summary

On objects and habits

blog Abandoned writing implements in an abandoned small house in Southern Finland. Marko Marila, 2009. There are, I think, two types of philosophies that have set the agenda for archaeological theory after the linguistic turn, namely contemporary continental realism and classic American pragmatism. Show More Summary

Arthur’s O’on: A Lost ‘Wonder’ of Britain, Part 1

Darrell J. Rohl (d.j.rohl@durham.ac.uk) Department of Archaeology Durham University Near the end of the twelfth century Ralph de Diceto, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, transcribed a tract entitled De Mirabilibus Britanniae,Show More Summary

Archaeology of a fugitive: the cave of “El Castrin”, a deserter who became an outlaw

Luca Pisoni PhD pisoni.gaetano@gmail.com Introduction The use of different sources in the archaeology of the contemporary past allows us to obtain interdisciplinary perspectives on similar issues and to verify hypotheses by comparing...Show More Summary

Archaeolog.org: 2005 to 2011 to . . .

Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore Last month archaeolog.org turned six years old. And in the blogging world this ripe old age is quite an accomplishment – a veritable geezer. But this birthday passed unacknowledged and in the midst of one of the longest dry spells in archaeolog.org’s history. Show More Summary

Manifesto for archaeology of flow

Map of part of the Lower Mississippi meander belt (Fisk 1944, United States Army Corps of Engineers) Flowing water, like air, tends to be regarded as immaterial. Anything that is fluid, anything that flows, is not usually counted as material culture, no matter how culturally shaped and manipulated it might be. Show More Summary

EXPERIMENTING WITH THE DE?RIVE EXPERIENCE OF LANDSCAPES

This is an excerpt from a portion of a paper entitled "Three Cities: thinking through embodied archaeologies with experiments in psychogeography and urban design" which I gave at TAG Berkeley back in May. The full version is available...Show More Summary

Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Anthropology: What is the status of our descriptions?

"The goal of descriptive adequacy is unattainable but continually haunts the endeavor, lying alongside, but in another time, and speaking back, like the immaterial ghosts of prophecy or the value of a currency." (Maurer 2005, p. 54) What...Show More Summary