I’m just about done the book project that I’ve been toiling on since before the pandemic, and I’m recovering from a mild case of burn out. I’ve started to get the itch to think not about not the next book, but the book after that. (The next book has to be finishing the publication of… Read More →
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been distracted and honestly a bit fried. I feel like just keeping on top of my classes and shooting the wolf closet to the sled was about all I could muster. I did, however, carve out some time to read Faidon Moudopoulos-Athanasiou’s book on the archaeology (and history) of… Read More →
It’s a happy coincidence that my colleagues, collaborators, and friends Grace Erny and Dimitri Nakassis (along with Laura E. Heath-Stout) published the results of their work to understand the demographics of the authors who publish in the American Journal of Archaeology at the very moment that I was finishing up the short study of my… Read More →
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading Dean Peeters’ Shaping Regionality in Socioeconomic Systems: Late Hellenistic – Late Roman Ceramic Production, Circulation, and Consumption in Boeotia, Central Greece (c. 150 BC–AD 700) (2023). It’s quite a book and certainly has helped me get into the necessary groove for this summer’s work in the… Read More →
Like many scholars of ancient Cyprus, I’ve been fascinated by the rapidly expanding corpus of data on Roman and Late Roman mining practices on the island. Of course, even the most casual archaeologist on the island is bound to notice the nearly ubiquitous presence of slag in both archaeological and every day contexts. This detritus… Read More →
Michael Given has long been one of my heroes among survey archaeologists. His work with the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project remains to my mind the gold standard for a large intensive survey project. So when he writes about survey, it doesn’t take much for me to pay attention. Given’s article “Towards a Post-Survey… Read More →
There comes a time in the semester, especially the spring semester, where I find myself just treading water and trying to keep my head above the waves. This is usually the result of grading, various projects coming in for landings, reading for class, manuscript reviews, and the typical day-to-day work of being alive. It’s during… Read More →
Yesterday I wrote the first half to an epic, two-part series of blog posts loosely related to a very recent article by Nathan Meyer in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 35.2 (2022), “Finding Sites in Mediterranean Survey.” Here’s part two! 4. Modeling and Efficiency. Nathan’s argument in the JMA paper (yes, this is a post… Read More →
I was mired in a manuscript that I was reading for peer review so I didn’t have the chance to read much beyond that this weekend. I did, however, make time to read a few recent articles including an intriguing, very recent article by Nathan Meyer in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 35.2 (2022), “Finding… Read More →
I’ve spent most of this academic year working to bring a handful of projects to publication. This is not always the most creative work. In fact, it often involves heeding the recommendations of reviewers by making small adjustments, adding or deleting text, gently massaging an idea here and reorganizing an argument there. The best part… Read More →
This past weekend, I put aside some of my irrational qualms about reading an older book and dove head first into Kevin Lynch’s What Time Is This Place? (MIT 1972). I was stunned by how prescient the book appeared to be, and in my post yesterday started to observe how nearly every chapter explored issues… Read More →
I have a phobia of reading old books. It’s irrational as most phobia are, but nevertheless guides my actions to an embarrassing extent. As a result, it took a particular nudge from my buddy Kostis Kourelis (and a generous copy of the book) to will myself to read Kevin Lynch’s What Time Is This Place?… Read More →
Every now and then, life happens in threes and that makes me wonder whether I’m blogging about my life or I’m simply living out a series of blog posts. In some ways, I suppose, it doesn’t matter, but it sure makes three things Thursday a bit easier. My next few days will be focused (such… Read More →
There’s a lot of stuff going on these days and I suppose it is better than getting bored, but it sometimes results in me feeling a bit scattered. Today’s “Three Things Thursday” is a reflection of my scattered feeling. I’m know some of this stuff means something to me and hopefully you’ll find it at… Read More →
Readers of this blog know only too well the multi-year odyssey to write a survey of the archaeology of the contemporary American experience. And many of you know that this was pretty bumpy. It turns out the retraining myself as an Americanist was not a straightforward process and coming to understand the nuances of archaeology… Read More →
This weekend, I had the immense pleasure of reading Catherine Kearns’s The Rural Landscapes of Archaic Cyprus (2022). The book is fantastic (and I say this as someone who is both increasingly “Iron Age Curious” and has a more mature interest rural landscapes both on Cyprus and elsewhere). Kearns’s considers the emergence of the rural… Read More →
