Stanford Archaeology Forum

Please see the new Archaeology Center drupal generated page at: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/cgi-bin/drupal/ .  

  Dear Colleagues, SIXTH WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS (WAC-6), DUBLIN, JUNE 29-JULY 4 2008 The WAC-6 Organising Committee warmly invites you to join us in Dublin this summer for what promises to be an exciting Congress! The main venue for the academic programme is the campus of University College Dublin and the social events and tours will take in some of Ireland’s fantastic historic venues and outstanding archaeological monuments and landscapes. There is a wide-ranging programme of cutting-edge themes and sessions to which participants can contribute, and whose organisers alone represent over 50 different nations around the world. Themes will cover diverse issues including: the archaeology of art, identity, indigenous communities, the human body, migration, landscapes, islands, wetlands, heritage tourism, museums, the politics of archaeology, and the ethics of archaeological practice, for example working with communities and in areas impacted by war, infrastructural developments and changing ecosystems.   

Please see the WAC-6 WEBSITE for the following information: CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS  - due 22nd February (see Submit Proposals page)Paper and poster proposals can be submitted using the electronic forms on our website. Papers can be submitted for particular Sessions or Themes, and posters will also be linked to each of the broad Themes of the Programme. Abstracts for Themes and Sessions are listed in full on the website. REGISTRATION - NOW OPEN! (see Register Tab at www.ucd.ie/wac-6) Register before 26th MARCH to take advantage of the early fee! Fees are detailed on the Registration Fee page. We would strongly encourage participants who are not already members of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) to consider joining, as the WAC-6 registration fee is significantly lower for WAC members. You can join WAC online at Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.. WAC-6 TRAVEL SUPPORT GRANTS – due 8th February In line with WAC’s aim to make its meetings as globally representative as possible we are delighted to offer support in the form of free registration and accommodation, and travel support to participants from economically disadvantaged countries and indigenous communities. Please see the travel support application form on the Grants page of the WAC-6 website. TOURS, EXHIBITIONS, SOCIAL PROGRAMME Participants are invited to experience Ireland’s rich archaeological heritage during the mid-Congress (2 July) tours, with 5 varied tour options to choose from. There is also a selection of post-Congress archaeological (5-7 July) tours. The academic programme will be enriched by exhibitions, multimedia installations and video art, experimental archaeology demonstrations, performances, and a major art exhibition, Ábhar agus Meon / Materials and Mentalities. Furthermore, Ireland’s rich cultural and social life will undoubtedly be a major highlight for many! The formal events of the social programme will be held in some of Dublin’s spectacular historic venues, and there will be time to experience the ‘real Irish Pub’ in its true cultural context! For enquiries about the academic programme please email wac6programme@ucd.ie, or for poster queries, wac6posters@ucd.ie. For queries about registration, accommodation, and Irish visa requirements please contact wac6@ucd.ie We look forward to seeing you in Dublin! Gabriel Cooney, Academic Secretary, on behalf of the WAC-6 Organising Committee www.ucd.ie/wac-6 We would greatly appreciate it if you could forward this email to your colleagues and students.

 New Archaeology Course: Visualizing Archaeological Knowledge in the Information Age

ARCHLGY 103C/303C (Graduates register for 303C)

3-5 units - Winter Quarter, 2008

MW 3.15-5.05 - Archaeology Center, Bldg.500, Seminar Room and Metamedia Lab

Questions: tim.webmoor@stanford.edu

 1st class meeting: Wednesday, January 9th 

Overview

Archaeology has historically been one of the leading fields in conveying the ’stuff’ of the archaeological site and landscape in visual form. More than most disciplines, archaeologists have been at the forefront of developing and strategically deploying and thinking about visual media. For the discipline, visual media serve as ’stand-fors’ the vestiges of the past. From GIS maps and query databases to stratigraphic profiles and artifact sketches to thermoluminescence graphs and photogrammetry, to site maps and feature photographs, little of archaeology can be conveyed or argued without visual media. This is particularly so with a discipline that records as it irrevocably transforms through archaeological excavation and survey. Often all that remains at hand are our visual media. This course will familiarize students with the fundamental role visual media - both analog and digital - have played over the past century in archaeology. It will familiarize students with the ideas of archaeologists concerning the role of representation in the discipline. Arguments will be presented relating to the process of visualizing the stuff of archaeology: representing, mediating, translating, recording, transcribing, archiving. It will be underscored that these processes are active, that visual information is a verb, and that students should be aware of the research goals driving particular methods of visualization. We will unpack archaeological case studies to examine just what occurs when we move from world to word and image. Developing their own projects using various new media, students will be encouraged to understand their own goals for visualization, how it transforms information, what is gained and what is sieved away, and how to communicate most effectively their results. Students will also be exposed to the most relevant thought from cognate fields, such as cognitive science, art history, computer science, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, visual anthropology and visual culture studies. There will be several guest speakers from these disciplines.

Goals for the course 

-exposure to inter-disciplinary thought regarding theories of perception and visual representation

 -familiarity with how media - analog and digital - have been and are being used in archaeology to convey research and argue ideas

 -hands-on experience with choosing appropriate new media for particular research goals

-develop, design and share projects using new media and archaeological or student generated case-studies

Please visit the course wiki for more information. 

The meta-theoretical approach of processual archaeology gave rise to a history of archaeology, concentrating on the discipline as a cultural and political practice. It narrated a historical trajectory of a scientific discourse closely linked to the ascendancy of the nation state in Europe. These histories were extensive chronological accounts delineating the trajectory of archaeology in relation to larger meta-narratives of nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism with Europe as the centre of its historical genealogy. This session is arguing for an epistemic shift. It specifically concentrates on the ideology of archaeological micro-practice as methodological intervention in the colony and underscores the distinction between metropolitan archaeological practice and its colonial instantiation. Archaeological practice in the colony was an efficacious location for the consolidation of the disciplinary discourse and legitimized its scientific validity. The colony was arguably a more effective location than the metropole, for the emergence of the discursive framework of the discipline. The archaeologically potent landscape of the colony - Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Asia, South America, North Africa were productive location for metropole archaeologists like Flinders Petrie, Leonard Woolley, Mortimer Wheeler and many others to formulate the discursive universe of the discipline. This session investigates the modalities of these archaeological micro-practices in the colony not as an instance of a European meta-practice but a key site to examine archaeology’s deep colonial genealogy. It will focus on a deep and particularistic history of archaeological intervention in the colony and seeks to disturb the Eurocentric fixation of history of archaeology. The session will attempt to reinstate the primacy of the colonial location in the meta-narrative of archaeology’s historical genealogy and argue that it was perhaps outside the European metroploe that archaeology as a discipline gained its methodological and discursive authority.

PROPOSAL DEADLINES: 22nd February 2008. 

Website for WAC-6

 Please contact: 

Ashish Chadha : ashishw@stanford.edu 

-or- 

Timothy Webmoor : timothy.webmoor@stanford.edu

The Stanford Journal of Archaeology (SJA), volume five is available from the Archaeology Center’s website - e-journal. The editors - Sebastian De Vivo, Kathryn Lafrenz, and Darian Totten - have collected, reviewed and redacted a representation of the proceedings of the Cultures of Contact Conference, organized and hosted by the Archaeology Center in February of 2006.

I. Total Station:

The first of a series of ARF Practical Equipment Workshops will be for the
Total Station (EDM): Friday, December 7, 9AM-Noon. These workshops are
intended to start with the basics and give participants enough information
to begin to use the equipment owned by the ARF on their own. The workshop
will be lead by Tsim Schneider and Lee Panich. LIMIT 6 people, first
come, first served. Please sign up by e-mailing John Chenoweth.
.

II. Filemaker Databases:

A. Introduction: Thinking-Through Database structure
Monday, December 3 at 3 pm in the Gifford Room. Rus Sheptak will lead
this session on how to think about your data and organize it into tables.
This will be a first step for anyone considering creating a database for a
project, and a good start for those interested in the more extensive
database workshop series in the spring. No limit, no sign up needed.

B. Spring Series:

In the spring series of workshops each of you will work to develop your
own relational database in Filemaker. By the end of this multi-session
workshop you will be able to design and implement a database in Filemaker
that will allow you to collect and manage your data, and let you query the
database to answer your research questions. We will talk about relational
database design; how to get from the data you have and questions you want
to ask to a set of interrelated database tables. Design is only the
beginning. You will learn how to build data input forms that leverage your
design to let you enter data and ask the kinds of questions you want to
answer. Dates and times TBA, Location will be Hearst 16. For questions
or to sign up, contact: Rus Sheptak.

III. Cultural Heritage Imaging:

CHI or Cultural Heritage Imaging is a local non-profit that has developed
a simple, low-cost photo method that can be used to reveal surface
attributes on rock art and other areas of our cultural heritage - from
coins to monuments. Check out their web page at: http://www.c-h-i.org/.
Mark Mudge and Carla Schroer are willing to present a workshop in this
technique in the ARF on Tuesday, December 11th from 1 - 4 PM. Informal
discussion may follow. LIMIT 10. Bring your own (preferably Cannon)
digital camera. Please sign up by e-mailing Donna Gillette.

Greetings everyone,

I am writing to see if there is any interest amongst archaeology graduate students in joining a dissertation writers’ workshop in the winter and/or spring quarters of this academic year. The CASA (formerly CASA!) archaeology graduate students are required to complete a minimum of two quarters of a dissertation writers’ workshop in their 5th year. Traditionally this workshop has been run by CASA faculty members and has included the cultural anthropology dissertation writers. Several CASA archaeology graduate students have requested a separate workshop due to the differences between data sets and methodologies.

The proposed “Archaeology” dissertation writers’ workshop would be held for a total of four three hour sessions throughout each quarter. The dates for this year’s workshop have yet to be set since the faculty still need to discuss it, but if you’d like to participate, please drop me an email and hopefully we can all find a time and day that works for everyone. We plan to keep this workshop open to any archaeology center graduate students in the dissertation writing phase of their program. It is my hope that we will be able to recruit a few faculty members to come and discuss their dissertation writing experiences as well.

Best wishes,

Stacey

contact: scamp@stanford.edu