by Maria O’Connell “The Linear B tablets have a stark beauty. Some have smooth, charcoal-gray surfaces resembling slate, others are reddish brown, still others are bright orange. (The color depends on the level of oxygen to which they were exposed when the palace burned down)…On the backs of the tablets…scribes left traces of themselves in the…
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The Center for the Study of the Relationship Between Words and Stones
by Jeff Benjamin An individual life develops philosophical themes; ideas that return again and again over the years. Over time, and quite remarkably, we actually become recognizable to ourselves, we start to see ourselves as whole, integral organic beings, larger and more enduring than the daily exigencies, the brittle constructs of events, titles, categories, applied…
Theoretical Archaeology Group_Turkey 2014
Just received the announcement for the next TAG_Turkey from Kenan Eren: The second annual Theoretical Archaeology Group_Turkey meetings will be held on 27-28 November at Mimar Sinan University (İstanbul). TAG_T2 will be open to papers that explore ways of defining the interaction of things and their interrelation with other things and humans symmetrically at different…
Review of: The Archaeology of Science: Studying the creation of useful knowledge by Michael Brian Schiffer
Twenty years ago, perhaps due to the very “intellectual faddism” that the author laments (5), a book similarly titled would likely be a metaphorical appropriation of the discipline’s popularized method in the manner of Foucault. Yet on page six alone, in the clear and succinct writing style that characterizes the volume, the author reclaims the…
Beautiful machines/Dead planet
The study of the history and archaeology of industry poses an ontological challenge to the perpetuation of industrialism and its myriad social forms. The recent catastrophic event in Lac Megantic is but one contemporary example of the dangers inherent in this human activity. The persistence of industrial archaeology within archaeological discourse suggests that industrialization was…
Night of the Living Dead: modern ruins and archaeology
By Maksymilian Frąckowiak, Kornelia Kajda, Dawid Kobiałka Archaeologies of the present A spectre is haunting contemporary archaeologies – the spectre of the present. That is to say, one has recently been witnessing a shift in archaeological approaches: a new, ‘neo-materialistic paradigm’ (so-called return to things) is slowly emerging on the scene. It indicates weak aspects…