Archaeology of Contemporary Past

In the Camera's Lens: An Interview with Brian Fagan and Francis Pryor

by Tim Clack

co-authored with Dr Marcus Brittain (CAU, University of Cambridge, UK)

Each with over thirty years experience with the media, Brian Fagan and Francis Pryor have broadcast their message of... more Each with over thirty years experience with the media, Brian Fagan and Francis Pryor have broadcast their message of archaeology through many different media and in their own individual ways to audiences around the world. Having written
extensively on many archaeological themes for academic and
public audiences, public archaeology in the United States and
the UK has grown and matured through their combined experience and would be much the poorer today if not for their continued passion and energy. When placed together in the
following interview (carried out via email correspondence in
the summer and early winter 2005), their views regarding current
themes from ‘archaeology and the media’ offer insightful
glimpses into the connections and distinctions between British
and American perspectives.

Yes we can! But so what? Some observations on contemporary archaeology

by James Symonds

2010 article posted on Stanford's online journal Archaeolog

For more than 150 years archaeology has had a clear purpose, to sketch out the topography of the past from the pinnacle of the present. Like the traveller’s gaze in Shelley’s Ozymandius, archaeologists have lingered over fragments from ancient times, evoking feelings of wonder, irony, and loss. Archaeological research has helped to fill the perceived ‘black hole’ that exists between the past and the present (Rathje, La Motta, Longacre 2001) and has served nationalism and modernity by informing individual and collective identities. But what happens when we choose to remove this sense of distance and nostalgia for the past from our work and acknowledge the ‘loss of antiquity’ (Hicks 2003)? If we eschew the idea that archaeology exists to connect the present to distant pasts and re-position our discipline to focus upon ‘the interaction between material culture and human behaviour, regardless of time of space’ (Rathje 1979, 2) then we free ourselves from temporal parameters and any material may be subject to archaeological inquiry (Buchli & Lucas 2001, 3-18).

The Archaeology of Tramping. The Field Research of the “Duck Valley” Campsite near Jezerce

by James Symonds

2011 Pavel Vařeka and James Symonds.

NOTE: This is an uncorrected draft of a chapter, for information only!
The edited version will appear as a chapter in the catalogue/book "Czech Tramping - a Weekend Utopia" edited by Prof Knizak, Director of the National Gallery, Prague.

More information on the Prague project, of which this is just a small part, may be found at:

http://www.sparetime.cz/en/

“Spare Time” is an international project that seeks to capture fields of human endeavour not generally seen as... more “Spare Time” is an international project that seeks to capture fields of human endeavour not generally seen as socially formative, but that undoubtedly influence life in general as they become a voluntary stimulus for a greater or lesser swathe of human society.

National Gallery in Prague

The Czech part of the project will reflect on the culture connected with the utopia of the tramping movement, which expanded into a nationwide phenomenon in 20th-century Czechoslovakia. In the first decades of the 20th century, tramping was practiced as a type of escape from the stresses of urban life into nature; by the 1920s and 1930s, it had become a prominent social movement; in the second half of the 20th century, tramping was a getaway from a life ruled by totalitarian regimes. At the time, tramping was also manifested through distinctive forms of architecture, clothing, music, literature, as well as projects carried out by exponents of Czech avant-garde art – for example, the tramping camp built by the Mánes art association on the Malše River in southern Bohemia…

El cementerio moro de Barcia: Breve acercamiento a su estudio

by David González Álvarez

Álvarez Martínez, Valentín; Expósito Mangas, David y GONZÁLEZ ÁLVAREZ, David (2007): “El cementerio moro de Barcia: Breve acercamiento a su estudio”, Actas del I Congreso de Estudios Asturianos, Tomo V (Comisión de Artes, Arquitectura y Urbanismo. Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 131-150.