An artistic exploration of archaeological theory Andrew Cochrane (Cardiff University) Ian Russell (Trinity College, Dublin) The pieces in this exhibition seek to contest traditional mechanisms for representation and spectatorship by questioning the status that visual images occupy in archaeological discourse. Photomosaics of iconic archaeologists and archaeological objects are constructed through the manufacture of archives and…
memory
“BEIJING 10/2003 AI WEIWEI”
A thing. While browsing the discount shelves at a bookstore in downtown, or rather ‘downcity’ (as the locals call it), Providence yesterday and I came across a peculiarly shaped book stamped: BEIJING 10/2003 AI WEIWEI Hard bound, covered in a grey paper, imprinted with a weave texture to give the appearance of cloth, the book…
Collective memory and the uses of the past
Earlier this month, I went to a fascinating, interdisciplinary conference on “Collective memory and the uses of the past”, organised by a team around Andy Wood at the School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. The full programme is available here (text file). I was one of only a handful of archaeologists there….
The Borderland. Ethiopia.
Slavery/Fascism/Colonialism: Landscape in Gubba. In a hill over the border town of Gubba, very close to Sudan, stand the remains of a small palace. Its owner, Hamdan Abu Shok, was an infamous slave trader in the late 19th and early 20th century. The surviving brick arcades are redolent of Islamic architecture elsewhere. The ruins look…
A comment on “An Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War”
A very powerful piece of writing. Without in any way wanting to take away from your argument in relation to the Spanish Civil War, which is compelling, I would argue that sometimes the ‘blandness’ of archaeological documentation is just as inappropriate to events that occured in the much more distant past. Taking an example from…
An Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War
I was moved by a scene in Atom Egoyan’s film “Ararat” (2002). One of the main characters, a young Canadian of Armenian descent, goes back to Turkey to see the land that witnessed one of the most horrendous genocides of the twentieth century. He contemplates the landscape and films it in video. His gaze is…