Reflections on the work of Christopher Yates Tilley 1 It seems appropriate to call it a passing, the death of Chris Tilley in March 2024. We worked together so closely on archaeological theory from 1979, when we met at Cambridge, until he left University of Wales Lampeter in 1993, where we were both faculty elements…
the academy
Studio update – Spring 2022
This academic year I am on sabbatical leave finishing three long-running projects and planning to focus more on applications of the archaeological imagination to matters of common and pressing contemporary concern, especially through design foresight and futures literacy. This is why I have put to one side my critical commentary on all things archaeological and…
rubric for a doctoral dissertation
See alsoA personal learning manifesto – [Link]A learning manifesto – pragmatics – [Link] Two members of my studio/lab at Stanford have successfully defended their doctoral dissertations this year. Congratulations to Anne Duray and Anja Krieger with their research into the history of archaeological approaches to the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in Greece (Anne), and the…
Reconstructing Classics – voice
Part 2 of a review of Confronting Classics, by Mary Beard [Link]. Some tactics for challenging the orthodox monologue of academic Classical Studies and opening space to hear other voices. What is Classical Studies about? Mary Beard argues that Classics is not about ancient Greece and Rome at all, but about what happens in the…
Confronting the Classics
Project Greece and Rome – [Link] Classics is the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. Or is it? Mary Beard, Cambridge University Professor, the popular “Oxbridge Don“ of the British media, deals with the question of the object of Classics in her book Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations (Liveright 2013). I had a…
Update – the actuality of the archaeological past
I have contributed little to this site Since 2016. I have been writing (Greece and Rome: a new model of antiquity [Link]), running experiments in fieldwork (Project Borderlands [Link]), exploring applied archaeology (with a host of organizations and corporations), asking questions of the proper role of the academic, the researcher, the scholar. In this contemporary…