Archaeology Gigs #1
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
Riders on the storm
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
Opening the tomb…
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.
“The huge capstone sealed the grave so well that organic materials survived intact as well as various metal objects that were buried with an important Bronze Age individual. Dr Kenneth Brophy, SERF co-director, said: ‘The high quality of preservation is virtually unique in Britain and is of exceptional importance for understanding the important centuries when metals were first introduced into Scotland.’
Although few remains of a body were discovered, it was clear that the deceased had been laid on a bed of quartz pebbles in sand in a large stone coffin. Amongst the grave goods was a bronze dagger with a gold band, possibly still in its leather sheath, a discovery of national significance. Beside this lay a leather bag or container, strange wooden objects and other plant matter which may represent floral tributes. Remarkably, large portions of the birch bark coffin survived as well.”
The Unrepeatable Experiment
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
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Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey) from Anon. on Vimeo.
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.
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.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
The British Museum
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
