As readers of this blog know (perhaps too well), I’ve been slowly exploring the topic of pseudoarchaeology over the last couple of years (here and here are links to most recent posts). Recently, I’ve explored the concept of an anti-racist pseudoarchaeology that rejects narratives infused with white supremacy and colonialism and amplifies anti-colonial and Black… Read More →
As I’ve hinted for the last week or so, I’ve been reading Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (2021). It’s a fantastically rich book that I neither have the depth of learning to review nor the time to digest even partially (and this appears to be my fate in life). The… Read More →
One of my summer projects was collaborating with my good friend and colleague, David Pettegrew on an article that surveys the Corinthian landscape in Late Antiquity. It’s for an edited volume published in Germany and directed primarily toward a European audience. This paper doesn’t so much propose any radically new analysis or interpretations, but offers… Read More →
Over the next week or so, I need to work on three different projects, each of which have their own charm, but are less connected to each other than I would like. Thing the First Today is a Corinthia day and as soon as this post is done, I’m heading over to Google Docs to… Read More →
Over the weekend, I re-read Michael Roller’s book, An Archaeology of Structural Violence, for a formal book review. I excitedly blogged on this book a couple of years ago, but I didn’t exactly read it with an eye toward writing a formal review. It turns out that writing a formal review is much harder than reading… Read More →
I submitted grades, my summer plans are coming into focus, and I’m almost ready to decamp for the Mediterranean for the first time in two years. I feel like everything is going on at once, and this is more or less a good thing and it feels like a solid backdrop for a Three Things… Read More →
Almost every summer, I put together some kind of summer reading list. They usually a combination of books that I want to read, books that I should read, and books that I have to read, and they are almost always aspiration rather than prescriptive. You can check them out here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2011. This year, the… Read More →
Over spring break I decided to FORCE myself to read TWO novels. Both books had to do with climate change, and my rationale for such a frivolous distraction from my appointed rounds was that these books would help me think more creatively about the the archaeology of climate change which as you (maybe) read yesterday… Read More →
A few months ago, I read and enjoyed Carolyn White’s book The Archaeology of Burning Man. In fact, I blogged about it. Last month, I was given an opportunity to review the book more formally and I took some time over spring break to write up my review. Unlike my often half-baked blog posts, I… Read More →
This weekend, on a lark, I read Jonathan Hall’s relatively recent book Reclaiming the Past: Argos and Its Archaeological Heritage in the Modern Era (2021). It was good and a must-read for anyone who plans to spend any time in Argos or the Argolid. The book does what it says on the cover: it explores the reception… Read More →
One of my survival strategies for being over extended and feeling overwhelmed is taking on new projects or excavating old ones. Fortunately, I always have colleagues around to help with this strategy. So when Richard Rothaus proposed that we start a new season of the Caraheard podcast, the timing was perfect and there was no way that I… Read More →
As readers of this blog know, I’m a sucker for an alliterative title and Erin Thompson’s Smashing Statues: the Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments (2022) is spectacular and as Joe Tessitor is known to say “wildly entertaining.” Thompson’s book explores the stories associated with erecting of statues honoring US Presidents, Confederate generals and soldiers, and Christopher Columbus in the early… Read More →
It’s been a pretty long week. I managed to teach my two classes via Zoom on Tuesday and made it through my night class face-to-face on Wednesday. Today, I’m bracing for the full slate of teaching and hoping (as much as anything) that the after shocks of my brush with The Omicron remain mild. With… Read More →
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Courtney Singleton’s recent Columbia dissertation based on her field work at Pelham Bay Park in New York City: “Vague Dwelling: An Archaeology of The Pelham Bay Park Homeless Encampment.“ This dissertation is perhaps finest example of the systematic archaeological documentation of homelessness that I’ve read and should become a crucial… Read More →
As anyone who has read this blog knows, I have grown weary of big books, proposing big ideas, and written by big name scholars. They stimulate debate, in part, because of their ambition and their flaws which is a consequence of their length. Of course, an overly long, complicated, and problematic book often attracts the kinds… Read More →
I’m just over 60% done with my first week of classes, and I’m settling into my new weekly scramble. As per usual, buy the half way point of the week, we life has started to fragment as I desperately flailed to capture the bits and pieces of the time, ideas, and work that had been so neatly arranged… Read More →
