Installation of ‘Na Fáná Fuachtmhar’, a new sculpture by Kevin O’Dwyer, artist in residence at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress at University College Dublin. With an excerpt from UCD Scholarcast: Archaeologies of Art. ‘Na Fáná Fuachtmhar’ was inspired by the incised chevron motifs found inside the Megalithic Passage Tomb at Fourknocks, Co. Meath. The chevron…
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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…
Archaeology, Science Fiction, and Pop Culture
The first time I TAed an archaeology class, we began by having our students draw a picture of an archaeologist. The result was predictable: a pile of comically bad drawings of Indiana Jones, leavened with a few nerdy-looking academic characters. That semester, we went on a mission to wipe this image out of our students’…
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…
Symmetrical archaeology: Two clarifications
Things are in the limelight. Fresh in the wake of TAG US where the plenary session was focused on the Future of Things, two announcements came through the CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory) listserv this past week for thing-oriented conferences/sessions. CHAT 2009 and What’s the ‘Matter’ in Anthropology, both set in Oxford, are…
The Leech Pond at Kerkenes Dağ
Ömür Harmanşah, Brown University “Animals, who exhibit life in highly concentrated and diverse forms, have the power to completely alter our way of thinking about ourselves and the forms we make, live in, and respond to…” (Ingraham 2006: 15) “In some way we recognize as true, nature and culture both share and compete for space,…