As I gear up for the start of the semester, the Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting, and catching up on some overdue or soon to be overdue projects, I’m going to lean on some other fine folks for some content on the ole blog.
First, go and check out Colleen Morgan’s fine study of Punk Archaeology in Aqueologia Publica 5 (2015): “Punk, DIY, and Anarchy in Archaeological Thought.” She unpacks the potential scope, history, and significance of punk archaeology by situating it within larger academic and social movements committed to social justice, DIY practice, and anarchy. She not only established the history of punk’s place within archaeology and academia, but provided some loose guidance for its future (as is only fitting). The only thing I would have added to the essay is that the book, Punk Archaeology, that came out of our 2013 conference was the inaugural volume for the Digital Press which took the notion of the zine and applied it to academic publishing. The book is both about punk, and punk in its publication. The co-editors collaborated throughout the publication process and participated in every aspect of the work from lay-out to copy editing, proof reading, and distribution. While the institutional affiliation of the The Digital Press probably distances it from being genuinely anarchic, an approach to publishing that intentionally challenges conventional organization of academic production and emphasizes the process as well as the product.
You should also go and check out Andrew Bevan’s very recent piece in Antiquity 89 (2015), “The Data Deluge”. In this short, but direct article, Bevan thinks critically about the quantity of data archaeological projects are producing and the limited tool kit that we currently deploy to understand that data. He urges archaeology as a discipline to both develop better tools for understanding archaeological data, and to think more critically about the data that we are producing.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 