land, community, heritage and Wal-Mart at Teotihuacan
Great comment from Meg (Butler) on past-present relationships in Mexico. Another interesting case of past/present relationships with landscape and monuments began getting press coverage this past week. I have provided below links to various articles. A controversial decision to build a Wal-Mart close to Teotihuacan provoked some very different responses from supporters and opponents. The [...]
forensic archaeology
At the scene of crime anything might be relevant. An item today from The Scotsman Sue Black was a teenage schoolgirl in Inverness when Renee MacRae and her son Andrew vanished in November, 1976. Yesterday, the renowned forensic anthropologist was back near her home city hoping to help solve one of Scotland’s most enduring mysteries [...]
the archaeological imagination
Some years ago back in Lampeter Julian Thomas and I used to talk about something we called the archaeological imagination. We were close to a host of superb human geographers in the next corridor who were reshaping their field (Chris Philo, Ulf Stroymeyer, Catherine Nash, Ian Cook, Tim Cresswell, Hester Parr, Miles Ogborn, Joe Painter, [...]
Doug Bailey’s new book – prehistoric figurines
Doug’s book on prehistoric figurines is now in production.[Link to Routledge] This is the blurb Prehistoric Figurines is a radical new approach to one of the most exciting but poorly understood artefacts from our prehistoric past. The book explores the ways that people use representations of human bodies to make subtle political points and to [...]
repatriation of antiquities
Latest in the concerns about artifacts as cultural property – [Link - BBC][Link - BBC] Aboriginal artefacts, including two early bark etchings, have been seized in Australia while on loan from two British museums. Members of the Dja Dja Wurrung tribe secured an emergency order preventing the items being returned to the British Museum and [...]
extreme archaeology
Cornelius has put me on to a new archaeology TV series in the UK -Extreme Archaeology – from Channel 4. It runs 20 June to 8 August – eight programs. These are the people that brought you Time Team – the archaeologists who tackle a site in a weekend. Here they are to tackle sites [...]
the individual in prehistory
Could Stonehenge Skeletons Be Its Bronze Age Builders? – 24 Hour Museum Photo: are these the remains of the builders of Stonehenge? ? Elaine Wakefield, Wessex Archaeology. Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have unearthed a grave containing the remains of seven men who they believe might have helped to build Europe?s most famous prehistoric monument. Discovered [...]
origins of agriculture
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Farming origins gain 10,000 years Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say. These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
what Iran means to archaeologists
Guardian UK – Chicago’s Oriental Institute woos Iran with return of ancient tablets Three hundred ancient clay tablets which helped to provide information on the languages and daily life in the Persian empire 2,500 years ago are on their way back to Iran. The tablets are being returned by the oriental institute of the University [...]
Beltane – the Wicker Man burns again
Beltane at Butser Ancient Farm, UK It is May 1 – Beltane. Beltain is the spring festival of the Celtic religion and, like other major Celtic events, was a fire festival: the ‘good fire’ was burnt for purification, for healing, for light, for growth. According to Caesar, the Iron Age Britons would construct huge wicker [...]
collaborative archaeology – the Severan Marble Plan of Rome
The BBC have picked up on Stanford’s Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project. [Link] [Stanford Report - details] The Forma Urbis Romae, also known as the Severan Marble Plan, was a giant marble map of ancient Rome that hung on a wall in a building, the Templum Pacis, near the forum. It measured 60 feet wide [...]
the uncanny preservation of curse-laden mummies
archaeological archetypes Daily Telegraph | News | Ice Maiden triggers mother of all disputes in Siberia This story has it all. High in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, where Shamans still practise their ancient rites and most people are descended from Asiatic nomads, there is a whiff of revolt in the air. Local officials, [...]
prehistoric beads in South Africa
more on those items from Blombos Cave – a case for scepticism 75 000 year old shells claimed as beads – Blombos Cave, South Africa I was arguing a few days ago on 17 April [Link] that the case for these shells being evidence of a modern human mentality was fragile, to say the least, [...]
romantic pasts and archaeological crimes
There has been an increase in the theft of ancient artefacts from Dartmoor, a fabulous ancient landscape in the UK, reports the BBC. So the Dartmoor National Park Authority have started implanting electronic RFID tags in the stones themselves to mark and track stone crosses and troughs in their jurisdiction. This time though it is [...]
plotting the past – the first modern humans in South Africa, and a scenario for the first farming villages
A couple of recent press comments about new discoveries have caught my attention because of what they reveal about the way academics build their careers and how archaeological field projects get turned into stories about the past. Basically it comes down to this – archaeologists want their site to be the discovery that will rock [...]
archaeology of the contemporary past
The Newcastle Journal has run an article about the WWII remains I mentioned in connection with the landscape archaeology around Dunstanburgh Castle in the UK. The two concrete radar buildings still survive and there is clear evidence of where equipment was sited. The remains of the Nissen huts behind the radar station, which accommodated the [...]
Dunstanburgh, Northumberland
English Heritage, the government agency reponsible for managing the historic environment in the UK, has posted a web diary of a fascinating survey done last November of Dunstanburgh Castle in the north of England. [Link] This is one of my favorite places. I have been visiting, photographing, teaching and writing about it for as long [...]
obsessions with who did it first
“Early human marks are ‘symbols’” – a BBC report headline today. A series of parallel lines engraved in an animal bone between 1.4 and 1.2 million years ago may be the earliest example of human symbolic behaviour. University of Bordeaux experts say no practical process, such as butchering a carcass, can explain the markings. But [...]
archaeological rats
There is a small exhibition on at the British Museum of a grave dating from the late third millennium/early second. The grave of a man dating to around 2,300BC was discovered three miles from Stonehenge by Wessex Archaeology staff in May 2002. His grave was the richest from this period (the early Bronze Age) ever [...]
Phluzein
Anders Bell at Phluzein has pointed out that his blog has no affliation with the Cotsen Institute. I had made the association through the RSS feed, so I went to have a proper look. It’s quite a nice miscellany about various archaeological news items.
Issues of cultural property – the usual tensions
Two articles this weekend about the Parthenon marbles. The Guardian reports a video making a case for the return of the marbles sent to 1000 members of Parliament in the UK. The New York Times yesterday ran an article about the guilt instilled by a new museum on the slopes of the Acropolis in Athens, [...]