See my archaeological manifesto

See also Research funding and support

Overviews - themes

Animating the archive - experiments in Archive 3.0 - futures for the Humanities, collective memory and the museum

Critical Studies in New Media - why we should all be interested in the politics of digital technology

Collaboration and cocreation - labs and studios, research networks, and building bridges across disciplines to a bigger picture that can help us all understand what we might do in response to matters of common human concern

Archaeography - archaeological photography, text, image, historiography - how are we to make history on the basis of archaeological fragments?

Art and archaeology - exploring the archaeological imagination

Chorography - regenerating that old genre of regional writing on the land

Traumwerk - archaeological thinking in the new media of Web 2.0 participatory software

Archaeological studies - from prehistory to contemporary beer can design

Practice as research - experiments beyond critique and commentary

The idea of a Humanities Lab - why a Humanist works in a "lab"

Critical theory - asking awkward questions of modernity's fascination with the archaeological

Experiments in (new) media - how are we to represent the past (if at all)? Experiments in media archaeology - [link]

Deep-mapping - archaeologies of the contemporary past


Labs/Studios/Groups/Networks

Stanford d.school - a vision of the future

Metamedia - my lab in Stanford Archaeology Center - archaeological research in design history and media materialities

Stanford Department of Classics - my home department

Stanford Archaeology Center

Stanford Strategy Studio

Stanford Humanities Lab - transdisciplinary experiments - animating cultural archives, building the big picture (based on in-depth expertise), enabling collaborative co-creation in the new humanities - I directed SHL with Jeffrey Schnapp and Henry Lowood until it evolved into separate projects

Critical Studies in New Media - Stanford's research workshop in new media - currently on sabbatical


Projects

The Revs Program at Stanford - the archaeology of car culture where the museum becomes design studio - launched April 2011

Stanford Strategy Studio - great conversations that make a difference - the arts and humanities applied to matters of common and pressing human concern

Ceramics - the materiality of a medium - multidisciplinary and experimental research into ceramics - with Ian Hodder, Gail Mahood, Jody Maxmin - from January 2008 and supported by Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities and Stanford Archaeology Center.

Anglo-American antiquarians - an international research network - designing the Bibliotheca Universalis Antiquaria and examining the place of the antiquarian tradition in the history of science

Presence - "Performing presence: from the live to the simulated" - an international collaborative project 2005-2009 - [link] Main funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK

Life-Squared - the future of the museum explored as we revisited with artist Lynn Hershman a hotel room in 1972 and built an archival experience in a virtual world - [link] - part of the Presence Project and funded by the Langlois Foundation June 2006 - July 2007

Behind the locked door - an excavation of the storerooms of Stanford's Cantor Arts Center - April 2007 - March 2008

Borderlands - Tyne to Tweed a regional archaeology of the Roman north - as chorography - from 2004

Co-creating cultural heritage - enabling people to build their own history and heritage using participatory software - funded by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network 2006-2007

Behind the locked door - an exploration of the storerooms of Stanford's Cantor Arts Center - 2007-2008

Burtynsky at Stanford - an interactive web site accompanying the exhibition at Stanford in the summer of 2005 of the work of this great photographer - currently archived (but see http://archaeolographer.com for a gallery)

Mobile Media 2015 when archaeology met car design - an ethnography-oriented foresight model of material culture in the vehicle interior of 2015 - June 2005 - February 2006. Funded by Daimler Chrysler.

Archaeography - projects - photographic explorations of the archaeological imagination.

43 relics - dumpster diving - 2006.

The locked door: San José 2004 - a forensic portfolio.

Ghosts in the machine - a series of found photographs - daguerreotypes - and their digital regeneration in a media archaeology.

Brith Gof - a theatre company - I have worked with this site specific performance company since 1993 - we have started an experiment in participatory media to (re)generate the company's history.

The Three Landscapes Project - Stanford 2000 - when Cliff McLucas Brith Gof, Dorian Llywelyn (theologian) and Michael Shanks home explored the nature of place and landscape in Wales, California and Sicily.

Theatre/Archaeology - hybrid practice and fused media - with performance artist Mike Pearson Brith Gof.


Main current writing projects

see writing.


Fieldwork and archaeological practice

The Revs Program at Stanford automotive archaeology and the application of connoisseurship to automobility

Borderlands - Tyne to Tweed a regional archaeology of the Roman north - as chorography - from 2004. Now including excavation, with colleagues in Durham UK, of Binchester Roman Town

A chorography of central Greece - with Chris Witmore, wound up in 2008.

Mobile media 2015 - research in media and car futures with Daimler Chrysler.

Sicily - Monte Polizzo - excavating a hilltop site - an arrested fieldwork project 1998-2000.

The early Greek city state - researching the design of the Greek polis - 1988-1999. My biggest project to date.

Beer cans - understanding design - in 1983 - a project in material culture studies (as it became called).

Neolithic bones - archaeologies of the body in prehistoric Europe - 1979-1987 - this began as my undergraduate dissertation.

I also spent a couple of years at the beginning of my career (1980-1981) digging Roman and medieval sites in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as part of the urban redevelopment of the city.


Research funding and support