Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Fall 2009

This Fall we had the chance to teach a class about serious games using Okapi island as a base and we had four research apprentices working to improve the island.  As a result, we had some pretty amazing progress on the place.  As you can see from the image above, we have our entrance relocated [...]

The Evaluation of Digital Work in Archaeology

During the Visualisation in Archaeology closing discussion session we collectively struggled with methods for evaluating visual works by archaeologists as a means of legitimizing the work as an intellectual product on the same level as a journal article or book.  This is especially important for those of us who devote so much time to making [...]

Neue Grafik Archaeologie

My friend and fellow UC Berkeley grad Tom Sapienza made these “cover remixes” and I asked if I could share them on my blog. There is a heavy Berkeley representation among these, unsurprisingly.
My absolute favorite:

A few more:

Archaeology in Action – Mixed Media Edition

The weather has turned chilly and I have returned to one of my favorite forms of structured procrastination–maintaining the Archaeology in Action group on Flickr.  Again, I had to weed out various travel photos, museum shots, and landscapes without explanation, but found a whole bunch of really good images that I had to share.
This is [...]

Archaeological Photography – Experimenting with a Light Tent

I’ve been trying to come up with a better strategy for photographing artifacts while in the field in Jordan. There is a lot of nice, natural light but it’s so windy all the time that a rig with sheets or with paper scales can be difficult to manage. I decided to try out an inexpensive [...]

Four Stone Hearth #80

While much of the world has already woken up, drank their coffee and read the newsp….er, checked out news online, it’s 6am here in California and time for a new Four Stone Hearth! I like the big, round numbers in our honored series, having hosted Four Stone Hearth #60 just a little while ago. So [...]

Human Subjects Review and Digital Archaeology

On Wednesday I’m spending part of the class time giving a lecture on media licensing (heavy on the Creative Commons) and Human Subjects Review/IRB/ethics issues within digital media and archaeology. While the former has been a regular feature of the class, the latter will be a new feature. The University of California, Berkeley is a [...]

Tara – From the Past to the Future

Last year at the World Archaeological Congress in Dublin we witnessed a debate over Tara and a large highway project that may destroy the site. Archaeologists (or Seandálaíochta!) in Ireland are trying to save the famous site, and there are 40 papers being presented about Tara; check it out here:
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Conference Live Web Stream
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The symposium will [...]

Archaeology and E-Scholarship

Dodging between rainstorms and trying to finish up my Visualisation in Archaeology paper, I managed to make it to the “Taking Control of Your Own Publications” E-Scholarship presentation at the department. Sadly, as usual, it was poorly attended–I really wanted to also check out a talk in Near Eastern studies, but at a place like [...]

Writing, Editing, Publishing

Last week I was pushing pretty hard to get a paper and a powerpoint together for the UMAC conference that I mentioned briefly before. The paper was apparently controversial (though well received by the majority of my colleagues) and I had to take the photos and the blog for the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project down for [...]