Each year, the ASOR Annual meeting seems to get a little longer as my social obligations, professional obligations, and academic commitments pile up. That said, it is almost always pleasant, educational, and productive. Papers This years meeting gave me a chance to catch up with some colleagues who I only see at either the ASOR… Read More →
It’s something like week 12 of the semester and I’m all over the map. This feels like as good a time for a Three Things Thursday as any. Thing the First My colleague Ty Reese pointed out to me that the city of Grand Forks recently published online a map showing the lead service pipes… Read More →
I have spent the last couple of weeks on airplanes which — as sad it might sound — have become places where I catch up on professional reading. So I’ve filled my time with wicked problems, grimoires, Atlantis, and reflections on the discipline. Not only has this given me a bit of momentum, but also… Read More →
I have spent the last couple of weeks on airplanes which — as sad it might sound — have become places where I catch up on professional reading. So I’ve filled my time with wicked problems, grimoires, Atlantis, and reflections on the discipline. Not only has this given me a bit of momentum, but also… Read More →
One of the chapters in Sarah Maza’s little book, Thinking About History (2017) is titled “Causes or Meanings?” In it, Maza proposes a distinction between the search for causality in history — evoking E.H. Carr’s famous story of the car accident — and the search for meaning. In the post war period, some historians shifted… Read More →
This is a contribution to the #RealArchaeology festival on October 25-October 27, 2024. Like so many archaeologists, my first encounter with the concept of archaeology came from pseudoarchaeology. I read with enthusiasm and curiosity von Daniken’s work, thrilled at the adventures of Indiana Jones, and pondered the power of mummies, curses, and haunted and forgotten… Read More →
I’ve been writing. Not quite frantically, but consistently over the last few weeks and that has cut a bit into my reading time. The issue of writing versus reading balance continues to be a challenge. I find it easier to find time to write — even just for a half an hour — than to… Read More →
I agreed to contribute to the Real Archaeology online event at the end of the month and this has prompted me to try to wrangle some of my pseudoarchaeological writings into a more coherent shape. My goal is to make my writing a bit more conversational and a bit less polemical. As readers of the… Read More →
One thing I’ve been trying to integrate into my weekly writing regime is some low stakes writing. The goal of this kind of writing is to worry less about getting every little thing right and more about getting words on the page. More than that, I want to get back to writing in joyful way.… Read More →
This weekend was a rare two book weekend thanks to two flight. I read Adam X. Smith’s Afrocentricity in Afrofuturism (2023) and Judith Weisenfeld’s New World A-Coming Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration (2016). Both books will contribute in significant ways to my work on Black pseudoarchaeology. Smith’s book situates Afrofuturism within… Read More →
This has been a HECTIC week, but I think the rest of my semester should come into better focus from this point on. This past week I got three things more or less off my plate and it seems like as good a time as any to share them. Thing the First This past week… Read More →
I finally got around to reading a complete book again this weekend. It was so gratifying and invariably led my to find new things to read and new ways of thinking. This past week, I started to dip my toes back into my interest in pseudoarchaeology by exploring the relationship between Afrofuturism and Black religion.… Read More →
In a rare and exotic digression of my traditional alliterative practice, today is a three things TUESDAY. Oh yeah! This is mostly to celebrate that I’m somehow gotten back into the habit of reading again! Thing the First It’s always a chance to celebrate when there’s some survey archaeology in the American Journal of Archaeology… Read More →
The second part of our piece for the Journal of Field Archaeology’s 50th anniversary issue is a bit scrappier than the first, but I think it says many of the things that we want to say (even if the citations and some elements of emphasis remain unpolished). If you want some background to what this… Read More →
A few weeks ago, I was hard at work on a draft of an article for the Journal of Field Archaeology’s 50th anniversary. You can follow some of the article’s development by tracing the links in this post. The article, “Mobilizing the Archaeological Report for a Future of Reuse: Linked Open Data in the Scholar-Driven… Read More →
I’m sure you’ll all be sick of walls by the time I’m done with writing about them. To add just a bit of variation to the ole blog, though, I’m going to pivot to the section on the 2nd century Roman bath at the site of Isthmia. Readers of this blog know that I’m written… Read More →
