Here is a kind of manifesto for the archaeology I practice -

Archaeology is THE discipline of things - the history of design, innovation, creativity, how people get on with the material world, materiality itself.

Archaeology deals in the life of things.

I have researched megalithic monuments, ancient Greek perfume jars, the design of contemporary beer cans, managed a project with DaimlerChrysler to develop a model of the car interior of 2015. I run classes on design and creativity. My lab is building an archival facility in the virtual world Second Life - [link]. We are investigating the potential of new participatory software to enable the collaborative co-creation of cultural heritage - enabling local communities to build their own histories.

I am committed to hybrid practice where art becomes scientific research, where the academy becomes an art studio, where pedagogy mingles with outreach into the community and industry, where old disciplinary divisions give way to a concerted address to matters of common concern.

All made possible by our new freedoms of digital authorship, collaboration and creativity. New Humanities Post disciplinary practices

Overviews

Tomorrow's archive

Archaeological studies - from prehistory to contemporary beer can design

Practice as research

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

Historiography - how are we to write history on the basis of archaeological fragments?

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

Main Projects

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 direct SHL with Jeffrey Schnapp and Henry Lowood - [link]

Metamedia - my lab - media projects in their archaeological materiality [link]

Presence - "Performing presence: from the live to the simulated" - a major international collaborative project running from 2005-2010 - [link]

Co-creating cultural heritage - enabling communities build their own history and heritage using participatory software - funded by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network - from September 2006

Life squared - the future of the museum explored as we revisit with artist Lynn Hershman a hotel room in 1972 and build 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 exploration of the storerooms of Stanford's Cantor Arts Center - 2007

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, though accessible

Archaeology plus engineering, the environment, the fine arts, media, law, international relations ... - a talk-show series exploring archaeology's unique perspective on matters of contemporary common concern - sponsored by Stanford's Aurora Forum - running through 2007

DaimlerChrysler 2015 when archaeology met car design - an ethnography-oriented foresight model of material culture in the vehicle interior of 2015 - June 2005 - February 2006

43 relics - dumpster diving - 2006

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

The archaeological imagination - a manifesto for Left Coast Press 2007/2008

A chorography of central Greece - a work in progress with Chris Witmore, to be wound up in 2007

Archaeology - the discipline of things - a book in progress with Bjornar Olsen, Tim Webmoor and Chris Witmore

Conversations through archaeology - since 1999 Bill Rathje and I have held a series of conversations with a host of archaeologists who have visited our new Archaeology Center at Stanford. We have talked about their experiences of the discipline, their thoughts about what matters in archaeology and where it is going. We have recorded, transcribed and annotated the conversations and think the result gives a fascinating insight into the state of archaeology - a text(book) that combines the personality of some of its chracters with the immediacy of personal engagement - and the notes take the reader deep into the real work of archaeology. With Lewis Binford, Victor Buchli, Meg Conkey, Ian Hodder, Kristian Kristiansen, Mark Leone, Randall McGuire, Mary and Adrian Praetzellis, Colin Renfrew, Michael Schiffer, Alain Schnapp, Patty Jo Watson, Alison Wylie.

Origins - how new archaeological thinking is changing the way we understand history - a long term book project exploring the big picture of human history that only archaeology can afford

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

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

The early Greek city state - researching the design of the polis - 1988-1999

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

Deep mapping - archaeologies of the contemporary past

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

Research funding and support