I spent the holiday weekend doing some almost random reading as I continue to feel my way forward in my emerging project that explores the genealogy of certain ideas that are central to the pseudoarchaeology movement as it emerged over the course of the middle and late 20th century. As readers of this blog know,… Read More →
In these here parts, most folks know about the Kensington Runestone. Olof Öhman, a Swedish farmer, discovered the stone near Alexandria, Minnesota in 1898. It appears to be a chunk of blue-grey granite inscribed with a text describing the massacre of 10 members of a Scandinavian party who were exploring the region in 1362. Most… Read More →
When this post goes live, I’ll probably be doing committee work at the annual American Schools of Oversees Research meeting. I’m trying to keep on my blogging routine, but it’s a bit of a challenge. As a kind of It feels like a good time for a short, “Three Things Thursday”: Thing the First ASOR… Read More →
I’m finally getting some reading done again and started to slowly churn my way through my “to read” pile. This weekend, I managed to read one book to prep myself for going to the ASOR annual meeting next week and one book for some vague future project that is distracting me. Book the First I… Read More →
Those of you who read this blog probably know that I’m giving a paper next week at the 20th annual CHAT conference in Greece. The paper is titled “Survey Archaeology and Modern Greece,” and will be on a panel dedicated to the archaeology of Greece. I’ve posted on this paper here, here, and here. The… Read More →
As readers of this blog probably know, I’m co-leading a session at the Alexandria Archive Institute’s NEH sponsored program, Networking Archaeological Data and Communities, this weekend. As part of that, I’ve been musing on publishing lately. I posted something yesterday related to publishing and something a couple months ago and something a few weeks before… Read More →
This month I’ve been thinking a bit about editing and publishing. Partly because I’ve been working on a bunch of books that are trickling out from my nano-press, The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, and partly because I’m contributing to a NEH funded seminar on Saturday about digital archaeological data and publishing. … Read More →
One of the goals of this blog from its very early days is to give an insight into how the academic sausage is made. As a result, I’ve published working and rough drafts, pre-prints, and sometimes published papers to this blog as they appear. I’ve been working on a paper for the celebrateCHAT conference next… Read More →
I’m kind of playing around with the paper that I’m planning to give next month at the CHAT conference in Patras, Greece. I have an idea, but not really a paper. As my colleague pointed out when I sent him a draft: I’m not sure what you’re arguing here… which was a very fair assessment.… Read More →
Next month, I’m giving a paper in at the 20th annual CHAT conference in Patras, Greece. My paper is titled “Survey Archaeology and Modern Greece” with the hope that I can say something substantive about either topic. My blog post today is a bunch of scattered thoughts related to this paper. It’s a brainstorm and… Read More →
In an effort to catch up on some reading this past week, I spent some time with Joachim Bretschneider, Athanasia Kanta, Jan Driessen, Excavations at Pyla-Kokkinokremos: Report on the 2014-2019 Campaigns. Louvain 2023. This book documents five seasons of field work at the Late Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos which is in the coastal region… Read More →
Last week I read and enjoyed Charles Orser’s slim volume: Living Ceramics, Storied Ground: A History of African American Archaeology (2023). It tells the story of the origins and development of the archaeology of enslaved African Americans prior to the Civil War. Beginning with Charles H. Fairbanks excavations at Kingsley Plantation in Florida and continuing… Read More →
A number of colleagues (h/t to Grace Erny) have pointed me in the direction of a recent article by Artur Ribeiro and Christos Giamakis titled “On Class and Elitism in Archaeology” in Open Archaeology 9 (2023). The article is painful to read for many reasons. On the one hand, some of the appeals to the… Read More →
A few months ago, I wrote a post on a book project that is absolutely not what I’m working on right now. It is called “Recent Advances in Pseudoarchaeological Practice.” In my previous post, I outline some of the goals of this little book with I hoped would clock in at around 40,000 words and… Read More →
Those of you who follow this blog know that over the past decade, I’ve tried to cultivate an interest in local history. Some of this comes from a kind of restless curiosity and some of it comes from an opportunity to collaborate with members of the community to understand and present the region’s history. Recently,… Read More →
