Alex R. Knodell Brown University I recently attended a conference in Greece that was put together with the admirable goal of creating a dialogue between a local community and academic archaeologists working in the area. Topics to be addressed were past and present archaeological fieldwork, public involvement with, and awareness of, the area’s rich archaeological…
fields of production
Innovation, future(s) making and archaeology
Components for wind turbines at port in Nafplion, Greece. Last Wednesday I attended a workshop at MIT entitled “Relocating innovation: Places and material practices of future making”. Convened by Lucy Suchman (in residence with the Department of Anthropology at MIT for the Spring of 2009), Endre Dányi and Laura Watts, all of the Centre for…
Twittering TAG (Theoretical Archaeology Group) Stanford 2009
Colleen Morgan, University of California, Berkeley At first, I was at a loss. Earlier in the week I had stated my intention to twitter the Stanford meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group on my blog, but there I was, standing outside the door of a conference room, wondering what exactly I should write. Twitter is…
The Archaeology of … and the Immateriality of Violence
Roderick Campbell (Brown University) It is striking how many recent archaeological titles begin with the words “The Archaeology of …” or more pluralistically, “Archaeologies of …”. While the use of “archaeology” in the titles of books by archaeologists might seem to be fairly self-evident and reasonable, there is something slightly defensive, slightly insecure about the…
A Response to The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (2007) by Yannis Hamilakis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
by Elissa Z. Faro (Dartmouth College) January 20, 2009. On this historic day, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America, the issues that Hamilakis considers in this book – the relationship between the modern nation-state and its historical and material past – resonate anew. Hamilakis’ book…
‘Popular culture’ and the archaeological imagination: A commentary on Cornelius Holtorf’s Archaeology is a Brand! (2007)
When presented with the question of “why I became an archaeologist” I tend to cycle between 3 different responses; responses all rooted in childhood experiences. Indeed, which of these I dispense varies with whom I am speaking. My answers are: 1) I enjoyed both digging up and collecting bits and pieces of glass and metal…