Satellite Image over Alps, Spring How do altitude and its attendant climatic results affect archaeology? Since 1994 we have an annual active learning experience about this relationship in the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project. Some general data about Alpine climate is apropos. Not only is the European Alpine high altitude above 2200 meters a cold biome…
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Heideggerian Technemataology
The philosophy of Martin Heidegger has received much attention in archaeology since the 1990s (Gosden 1994; Thomas 1996; Dobres 2000; Karlsson 2000). Along with Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger has been the great influence in phenomenological archaeology. It is quite striking that it is the most intractable Heidegger, that of the first period (Being and Time, 1927), that…
FieldWork
Returning from the ‘field’…some thoughts on what constitutes fieldwork. Such a pregnant term for the human sciences; replete with senses of: initiation, untowardness, difficulty, spontaneity, inauguration, maturation, practicum, discipline, validation, accreditation, as well as exoticism, travel, aristocratic pursuit and leisure. A process or ‘fielding’ of experience, ‘fieldwork’ plays an indispensable role in the training of…
Archaeology meets science studies head on at 4S
Matt Ratto, Michael Shanks and Christopher Witmore organized a session at the Society for Social Studies of Science conference in Pasadena, CA this past weekend (October 20-22). The conference focus was on “The Representation of Controversial Objects: New Methods of Displaying the Unruly and the Anomalous in Science and Technology Studies.” Here is the abstract…
Archaeology and modernity
I recently attended Julian Thomas’ talk, “Archaeology and modernity: Depth and surface,” at the Archaeology Research Center at Berkeley. Julian’s talk highlighted the core argument of his recent book Archaeology and Modernity. In short, archaeology could not have existed prior to the modern era because modern thought created the very conditions for the existence of…