Archaeology

This week has been not particularly productive in terms of reading or writing, but I did have a chance to read Michael Given’s recent article in T. Kiely, A. Reeve, and L. Crewe’s edited volume, Empire and Excavation. Critical Perspectives on Archaeology in British-Period Cyprus, 1878–1960 (Leiden: 2025): “Over the landscape, in the landscape? Knowledge… Read More →

Over the past week or so, I’ve been enjoying Assaf Nativ and Gavin Lucas’s edited volume Shadow Archaeologies: In the Shadow of Antiquity or For Other Modes of Archaeological Worldmaking (2025). The book reflects the work of a fairly well-known group of shadow archaeologists whose approaches to archaeological “worldmaking,” methods, and problems are fair familiar… Read More →

I am taking some time off from writing this week to catch up on some reading and take a moment to breath. That doesn’t mean, though, that writing doesn’t happen. One of the ironic challenges of living in post-literate times is that we read and write more than ever. I have two abstracts that I… Read More →

A few months ago, there was a fairly silly social media dust up over the “Plague of Justinian.” One group of scholars following largely textual sources felt confident enough to assert that the plague killed millions. The other group of scholars, leaning on archaeological evidence, struggled to produce similar receipts and questioned whether it would… Read More →

I was pretty excited to read an article titled “Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing” in Current Anthropology. As readers of this blog know, this is something that I think about often. Indeed, just last week, I speculated that the “landscape” of academic publishing has produced a culture where AI interventions by students and, sadly,… Read More →

I had the time to read two article this weekend that produced a pretty intriguing juxtaposition that I’d like to share. First, I read Paweł Cembrzyński’s “Towards an ecology of medieval mining towns: linking social and environmental changes” in Archaeological Dialogues (2026), 1-18. This article does what it says on the box: it interprets the… Read More →

It was a great pleasure to read my friends Kostis Kourelis and David Pettegrew’s (with Nikos Poulopoulos, Albert Sarvis, Alexandra Shehigian) article “Washingtonia 1829: an American refugee colony in Greece” in the most recent issue of the Journal of Greek Archaeology. For those of you who don’t know, Washingtonia was the name of an early… Read More →

Today’s my first day of class in the spring 2026 semester. So it seems like as good as time as any to reflect on some of the reading I did on my winter research leave. For whatever reason, there was a gaggle of survey publications that appeared during that time and while I’ve still not… Read More →

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been working on a paper about the kiln and production areas at Polis over my winter research leave. Most of the paper’s narrative and argument are done now and I’m working with my co-author, Scott Moore, on the lamp and ceramic catalogues. So far, I’ve shared a section… Read More →

Over the weekend, I spent about 10 hours with John Bintliff, Emeri Farinetti, and Anthony Snodgrass’s latest publication from their work in Boeotia from 1978-2001: Boeotia Project, Volume III: Hyettos. The Origins, Florescence and Afterlife of a Small Boeotian City (2025). It is massive (700+ pages), dense (in two columns!), and it is also open… Read More →

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I do think that the end of a calendar year is a good time to reflect on what I can do better, more, or differently. Even if these musings only inspire a moment of reflection, then I think they’ve more or less served their purpose. My… Read More →

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been using my winter research leave to work on a paper writing up an article that documents the pottery productive installation at Polis (ancient Arsinoe). It’s been a nice project after the toil of finishing a book. So far, I’ve shared a section on a lamp deposit and… Read More →

Over my winter research leave, I’ve had time to catch up on reading (and read new stuff as well!). I really enjoyed “A Regional Survey of the Uninhabited Islands of the Western Cyclades: The Small Cycladic Islands Project, 2021-2022” by Alex R. Knodell and colleagues which appeared in the most recent Hesperia 94.4 (2025). The… Read More →

As readers of this blog know, I’m leaning into this winter research leave by focusing on a short article describing the pottery manufacturing installation at the site of Polis (ancient Arsinoe) on Cyprus. Much of this is based on a 2024 ASOR paper which you can read here. Last week, I wrote about an assemblage… Read More →

Over the first week of my winter research leave, I’ve been pressing to prepare a draft of an article on our work at Polis. In particular, I’m looking to publish the results of our analysis of the area around a levigation pool, a kiln, and an assemblage of Roman period lamps. Much of this is… Read More →

Last week, I was able to send my book manuscript to my publisher for review. This means that my book now has a (tentative) title: Archaeology, Photography, Oil: Workforce Housing in the Bakken. This means that I now have some time to work on other projects. For example, yesterday, I did pre-production work on most… Read More →

I am trying to catch up on some reading as I lurch into the winter break. I’m starting by burrowing down through a stack of articles that I’ve saved over the last semester. These are mostly unrelated, but interesting to me none the less. Article the First I very much enjoyed Jordi A. Rivera Prince,… Read More →

As readers of this blog know, I’ve been toiling through a pretty substantial rewrite and revision of a short book manuscript on oil, photography, and archaeology of the contemporary world anchored in our experience in the Bakken. The book is a mess, but hopefully, a good mess. Below is a slightly updated table of contents… Read More →