Just received this announcement of two PhD positions as part of the Unruly Heritage: An Archaeology of the Anthropocene research project from Bjørnar Olsen. The Department of Archaeology and Social Anthropology has two full-time PhD positions vacant from September 1th, 2017 for applicants who wish to obtain the degree of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD). The position is attached…
Author: Christopher Witmore
On the Trace
Tim Flohr Sørensen and Þóra Pétursdóttir are organizing a conference, “On the Trace: Passing, Presence and the Persistence of the Past,” at the Saxo Institute, the University of Copenhagen, September 22-23, 2016. Here is their rationale and call for submissions: In recent decades, the concept of ‘cultural heritage’ as process has largely replaced notions of ‘static’ relics…
Theoretical Archaeology Group_Turkey 2014
Just received the announcement for the next TAG_Turkey from Kenan Eren: The second annual Theoretical Archaeology Group_Turkey meetings will be held on 27-28 November at Mimar Sinan University (İstanbul). TAG_T2 will be open to papers that explore ways of defining the interaction of things and their interrelation with other things and humans symmetrically at different…
Archaeological Description and Doubt
I wrote this paper for a session at the 2011 Meeting of the American Association of Anthropology in Montreal called Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Anthropology: What is the status of our descriptions? It is about time I posted it here. (Note 1) Archaeological description is rather peculiar. As we work at describing old…
Archaeological Orientations: A new series
With the impending publication of an excellent new book, Reclaiming Archaeology: Beyond the Tropes of Modernity, edited by Alfredo González-Ruibal (2013), Gavin Lucas and I have decided that we are somewhat overdue in announcing the book series with Routledge for which this volume breaks the ice – Archaeological Orientations. Here is our mission: An interdisciplinary…
The principle of symmetry according to Tim Ingold: An occasion for more clarification
When deployed in the context of metaphysics, symmetry is an awkward, even unsightly, term. Those of us who have enrolled this principle have been the first to admit this. We have also been the first to state that we are more than happy to take leave of symmetry. But such vocabulary works because it is…