Mar 28
Over the last 10 years Ireland has been abuzz with archaeological activity – a positive (and now sadly missed) benefit of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ construction boom. Dining and Dwelling is the sixth monograph to be published in this series by the National Roads Authority (NRA), and it must be also be a world first in that it firmly establishes a developer, albeit a semi-state body, as the foremost publisher of a nation’s archaeological work. Read more
I love me tenders. Uh Huh Huh. But Lawdy Miss Clawdy, I got a woman, in the ghetto, and I’m all shook up. Can’t help falling in love, hound dog, so don’t step on my blue suede shoes. I’m lonesome tonight. We can’t go on like this, with suspicious minds. A little less conversation. It’s now or never. Return to sender. Thank you very much. Elvis has left the building. Read more
Dear archaeologists:
I am writing on behalf of my fourteen-year-old daughter. Her goal for several years now has been to become an archaeologist when she grows up. At her middle school the students each have to attend one semester of a career-planning course and during her time in this course, her instructor has tried on many occasions to dissuade her from this profession. Read more
Given enough time, a hypothetical chimpanzee typing at random would, as part of its output, almost certainly produce all of Shakespeare’s plays. If you’ve not got that long to wait, this book is the next best thing. Immortal, and completely bananas.
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was formed in 1958 to create new effects and music for radio programmes. Based in the legendary Room 13 of Maida Vale studios in London,it closed in March 1998, and by that time most of their traditional work had been outsourced to other companies. Read more
And finally… Archaeology!
Broadcast on RTE Radio 1, Tuesday 27th October. I’m sandwiched somewhere between the serious history stuff (the 1941 German bombings of the North Strand in Dublin) and the competition fluff (True or false – is Cheryl Cole a member of girls aloud?). Read more
Ignoring Captain Boner and the topsoil strippers for a moment, there’s something odd about this photo that I can’t quite put my finger on. It features this years winning entry to the ‘2009 Sexiest Field Crew’ competition – a global search led by sexyarchaeology.org to find the new vanguard of dirty pretty things destined to inherit the earth.
Like radio four, meals on wheels, incontinence pants and a flair for shuffling, archaeology is something people only ‘get’ once they grow old. Look around at an average week night archaeology talk, and most of the crowd look like they were dug up in Spitalfields in ’96. Read more
It’s a common misconception that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. In fact that’s a lie.The rain in Spain falls mainly in Ireland. Thanks a million Amigos!
And just as Eskimo’s have 17 thousand different words for snow, field archaeologists have at least double that number for rain. From the tundra-cold sideways strain, to the fine micro drizzle that gets you wetter than if you’d jumped headfirst into a lake, the archaeological palette is finely tuned to rain’s many qualities of wetness. Read more
These pictures, fresh from the Strathearn Environs & Royal Forteviot (SERF) project in Perthshire, show the unfolding moments as a crane lifts a gigantic capstone from an early Bronze Age tomb – revealing a stone lined grave that last saw the light of day some 3500 years ago. You can almost hear the archaeologists gasp, Howard Carter-Style, before professionalism kicks back in and they get down to the graft of recording. Read more
There’s an enduring myth that archaeology is an ‘unrepeatable experiment’, a bit like loosing your virginity with a sheep. Or perhaps that description just applies to people with a speech impediment.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m an Archie… Acheu… I dig up old stuff.’ Read more
Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey) from Anon. on Vimeo.
Fragments of “found” video footage from British nightclubs are spliced together, repeated and slowed down, while a perfectly edited collage of ambient sounds – snatches of rave tracks, crowd noise, men bellowing across provincial shopping precincts – filters in and out. There’s a loose chronology – northern soul, soul weekenders, casuals, acid house – but the two defining themes of the film are timeless.This year sees the 10th anniversary of Mark Leckey’s short film, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore. Leckey is best known for his exhibition Industrial Light & Magic, which won the 2008 Turner prize.
Firstly, what deeply strange places nightclubs are; hundreds of strangers, all as high as kites, crammed together in a deliberately disorientating space. And secondly, how much poignancy there is in something ostensibly celebratory; the idea that “the best days of your lives” will be wiped away by a change in fashion. Leckey captures this beautifully in the occasional sound of tolling bells, the endless headlong rush of the video timecodes, the snippets of empty rooms and the suddenly frozen images of young, apprehensive faces.
Article by Justin Quirk
Lights dimmed, introductions over. The biggest audience of my fledgling career – and I stood on stage as if balanced on a dangerous precipice. Above: clear blue skies soared to impossible heights. Below: perilous waters dashed against the rocks. I shuffled towards the edge and bit down hard. This was the Champions League. This was the Bernabeu. This was the British Museum. And I was Layton Orient. Read more
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