The first time I TAed an archaeology class, we began by having our students draw a picture of an archaeologist. The result was predictable: a pile of comically bad drawings of Indiana Jones, leavened with a few nerdy-looking academic characters. That semester, we went on a mission to wipe this image out of our students’ minds, and replace it with the silhouettes of Lewis Binford and Ian Hodder.
The ghost of Indy is hard to stamp out. Everywhere archaeologists gather, we complain about how archaeology is portrayed in pop culture: it’s sensationalistic, cheesy, misleading, schlocky! It gives people the wrong impression of what archaeology is.
This last existential verb is the source of our trouble. We archaeologists know what archaeology is, and refuse to let anyone define it except us. But the cat has always been out of the bag: archaeology has cast a giant shadow on the public imagination from the moment it first emerged as a profession. And the nature of shadows is to distort, and shift, and show us what we want to see. On that note, I offer you two propositions about the discipline.
1) In the popular imagination, archaeology is a form of science fiction.
2) Archaeologists should embrace this, and start writing science fiction that promotes their vision of the past and agenda for the present.
You heard that right: for most people, archaeology is just a flavor of science fiction. And that’s not a bad thing. If this has made your head start rotating and shooting deadly laser beams, take a deep breath before reading further.
‘Popular culture’ and the archaeological imagination: A commentary on Cornelius Holtorf’s Archaeology is a Brand! (2007)
Posted by Christopher Witmore
When presented with the question of “why I became an archaeologist” I tend to cycle between 3 different responses; responses all rooted in childhood experiences. Indeed, which of these I dispense varies with whom I am speaking. My answers are:
1) I enjoyed both digging up and collecting bits and pieces of glass and metal on the family farm as a kid.
2) From age 10, when my mother purchased the subscription, I regularly read about archaeology in National Geographic (this routine was tempered by my love of fantasy world literatures).
3) Indiana Jones was one of my childhood heroes.
Now it should go without saying that none of these responses, when taken on their own, even comes near to accounting for why I was drawn down the long path (the length of which, of course, varies) to becoming an archaeologist. Far beyond what may have been my other, and diverse, childhood influences — films from Spartacus and Clash of the Titans to Excalibur and Conan, a passing obsession with Dungeons and Dragons, authors of fiction like J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis (Michael Shanks once told me that almost half of the undergraduates at the University of Wales Lampeter were drawn to archaeology because of the allure of the fantastical realms created by Tolkien and Lewis), and, of course, the associated backyard battles with my brothers clad in armor fashioned from scraps of plywood, tin roofing and duck tape — one has to account for the wider web of other influences, no matter how standout or subtle, that impacted their formation along the circuitous course to an advanced academic degree in archaeology and beyond. The distance between now and then is tremendous. Still, childhood fascinations count for a great deal — the past was a place of wonderment and imagination.
In retrospect, and given my rural roots in the North American Southeast, the portrayal of the past (whether fact or fiction) and archaeology on television, in magazines and novels had a profound impact. And yet, surprisingly few have chosen to take these fields of cultural production seriously (Finn 2004; Holtorf 2004 and 2007; Lucas 2004; Pearson and Shanks 2001; Shanks 1992; also refer to Michael Shanks on the archaeological imagination).
In his latest book, Archaeology is a Brand!, Cornelius Holtorf asks his readers to hold the almost obligatory negative responses so often tempered with ridicule and scorn by academic archaeologists and to consider the topic of “archaeology in popular culture” with an ‘open mind’ (also see Holtorf 2008). In this, he is neither concerned with past-as-play videogames like Praetorians, the fascination with the fantasy worlds of Avalon and Middle Earth, movies such as Alexander (Cherry 2009(in press)), nor the jousting competition at King Richard’s 16th-century faire. Quite specifically, the book addresses the “meaning” of archaeology as generated in television, movies, literature (both fictional and nonfictional), newspapers, or even National Geographic; all mass media which Holtorf takes to be “popular culture” (though he prefers the term Alltagskultur or “everyday culture” as enrolled by German folklorists (2004, 7-12)). The argument, echoing the sentiments of Gavin Lucas, is that the major allure of archaeology lies more in popular culture than in “any noble vision of improving self –awareness through “historical perspectives”” (Holtorf 2004, 3 after Lucas 2004, 119). Moreover, this fascination, for Holtorf is “rooted in a few key stereotypes and clichés” (2004, 130): 1) the archaeologist as adventurer (also refer to Holtorf's recent Archaeolog entry: Hero! Real archaeology and ”Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”); 2) the archaeologist as detective; 3) the archaeologist as infallible producer of “profound revelations;” and 4) the archaeologist as heritage steward.
Focal Things and Digital Enframing. Archaeology's Webwork as Archaeolog Reaches 100 Posts
Posted by Timothy Webmoor
'A book in a room' - Three Landscapes
Philosophers of Technology are not a well established bunch. While they form even less of a ‘tradition’ of study in Europe, they do take their earliest progenitor to be the Continental thinker Martin Heidegger (Achterhuis 2001; Ihde 1983, 2005). It seems strange that thinking carefully about what stake technologies have in society should not have found earlier impetus. After all, tool-making has up until recently been synonymous with being human (classic summary in Mumford 1967). And as early as Plato, technological devices figured prominently in lessons on the ‘good life’, involving the role of techne (esp. in the Republic VII). The major reason appears to be that philosophy, no less than science, has on the whole been swept up with the instrumentalist rendering of technology; as the application side of scientific R and D (Scharff and Dusek 2003:3-6). The predominance of an analytic tradition in the UK and North America meant that technology fell through the cracks between epistemology and ethics, between how knowledge is obtained and how it should be used. Even the Continental tradition remained cast in Comte’s persuasive model of technology as applied science; though many had turned sour on Comte’s optimistic technoutopianism (Comte 1988).
This is why, in his characteristic irreverence, Heidegger bypasses well worn metaphysical trails and goes straight for the essence of technology (Harman 2007). (Well, ‘straight’ is definitely a matter of opinion given Heidegger’s abstruse writing.) He prompted us with the question of what is it to be in the midst of all of our technological doings (Heidegger 1977). Similar to Marx putting technology at center stage, yet developing neither a strong technological determinism nor a societal determination of technology, Heidegger’s character of technology is ambivalent. There is a mix of optimism and pessimism. There is the contrast between craftwork and modern, technologically assisted labour. In this romantic view, ‘traditional’ crafts gather together humans and nonhumans into meaningful activities. Borgman (1984:196) aptly terms these ‘events’ of craftwork focal things. Heidegger’s early discussion in Being and Time doesn’t, however, give us much to extrapolate from to our own modern, technologically immersed environments; who even has a jug laying about? When he expands his consideration of technological things in his later, famous essay, he does provide more contemporary examples of how modern technology turns everything to stone, so to speak (1977). Technology serves a cultural way of being that wills humans and things to be ‘standing reserves’, or causes, for manipulable ends (Feenberg 1999:183-4). This is technology as enframing, and contrary to craftwork this type of being with technology closes-down our insight into, or awareness of, the world around us. We will degenerate through this relation with technology into narcissistic controllers, hung up on the power of our subjectivity. I think there are interesting implications in Heidegger’s pessimistic depiction of technology which could usefully be expanded to the reign of ‘social' constructivism in the academy (Webmoor and Witmore 2008), as well as to pressing environmental and economic problems (these latter courses have, in fact, been suggestively pursued by ‘Deep Ecologists’ and ‘Buddhist Economists’; Naess 1973, Schumacher 1989).
I want to keep with thinking about technology, though, in view of our own dealings with new technology, and, specifically, the emergent role of new media for archaeologists. In fact, in view of what’s before your ‘window’ right now. Archaeolog has reached the milestone post of 100 contributions. This seems to be a most opportune time to reflect a bit on what sort of technology archaeolog is as a form of e-publication. Like Heidegger’s successors in the Philosophy of Technology, emergent digital media in archaeology is a relatively new phenomenon; its practitioners and ideas concerning its roles unconsolidated. It is an exciting time. Yet it is important to anticipate where mediǟrchaeology will go. We certainly have valuable signposts from both Heideggerian and reflexive archaeologists to encourage trailblazing these questions. So, do the mantras of ‘user generated’ and ‘user customization’ associated with new media really limn the narcissistic degeneration and auto-absorption that Heidegger pessimistically ascribed to modern technologies? Does it enframe in ‘Microsoft windows’ our relations with each other?; will we be left with virtual ‘de-worlds’? Or should we look to Heidegger’s later thought (1966) where he suggests that through a passive revolution we can attain a more positive, ‘free relation’ to technology? A relationship of distance which “will become wonderfully simple and relaxed” (1966:54). Later work in the Philosophy of Technology, especially that focused upon computing and internet technologies (Dreyfus 1979, 1999; Heim 1997; McCluhan 1966), seems to have incorporated Heidegger’s mixed message and oriented for a destination off-the-map combining ancient skepticism, Enlightenment optimism, and Romantic uneasiness (Mitcham 1990:32-33). E-publication in archaeology, and blogging more generally, has received just such a sort of mixed assessments.
Digital Desiderata: the Future of Archaeology's 'Second Life' in Augmenting Media (1.1)
Posted by Timothy Webmoor and Michael Shanks
A conversation at the Metamedia Lab with Torin Golding (avatar), the creator of ROMA, the largest archaeological site in SecondLife.
Digital technologies are changing the nature of scholarship. Far from an exception, archaeology too is changing. It may be that archaeology is traditionally thought of as a 'down and dirty' profession, done 'out there' in the field, the popular/public image of an archaeologist-at-work - we even like this conception of the 'rude scholar', equally at home before a bookshelf or a mountain. At the same time it is a discipline with a particular history of technophilia. For a set of closely related reasons (epistemological and ontological), it is especially beholden to technological desires. Why? By some accounts bridging the gap of 'record' to generalization, technology, specifically the tried-and-true instruments of technoscience, were to assure the objectivity of 'second order observations'. The complex - 'polysemous' and rich - quality of archaeological materials could be transformed through instruments' reproducible procedures into 'data'. They were neutral devices. We can count with/on them. Most often this technology visualizes the results of such algorithmic alchemy.
Indeed, archaeology has also been one of the leading fields in conveying the 'stuff' of the archaeological site and landscape in visual form. More than most disciplines, archaeologists have been at the forefront of developing and strategically deploying and thinking about visual media. For the discipline, visual media serve as 'stand-fors' the vestiges of the past. From GIS maps and query databases to stratigraphic profiles and artifact sketches to obsidian hydration composition graphs to photogrammetry, site and feature photographs and theodolite maps, little of archaeology can be conveyed or argued without visual media. This is particularly so with a discipline that records as it irrevocably transforms through archaeological excavation and survey. Often all that remains at hand are our visual media. These become the guarantors of what was once 'out there'; the anchors to what we say. Unfortunately, archaeologists too often restrict their usage and familiarization with visualization to GIS or 3-D 'fly-throughs'.
This legacy, perhaps more prominent in North America and the U.K., brings us to the current 'new' technologies of digital media. Some Archaeology and Media type readers are becoming available to archaeologists. Most of these books on media tend to have anachronistic arguments. Perhaps for reasons of 'viability' in the publishing world, or because of the still strong influence in Britain and the States of viewing media not in its technical capacities but as a powerful mechanism of the culture industry's status quo. Asked about media and quite a few colleagues would talk about popular reception in mainstream media, the role of television and radio(?!). Some are still stubbornly instrumentalist, especially in their view of GIS, AutoCAD and VR applications.
This is not (yet) a media manifesto for the discipline.
We do believe that the digital turn in both society and the discipline holds promises for increased public interest and engagement. Not simply through the limited (old Web 1.0) idea of internet 'access', but through the emergent Web >2.0 platform enabled actions of: user-generated content, mixing, mashups, database proliferation, etc. Yet it also may threaten the 'boundaries' of the discipline through the dispersion of archaeological information across vast networks not beholden to peer-review or other established measures of quality and accuracy.
More conference proceedings - particularly at WACs and TAGs and CHATs - cull papers on new media and other internet based technologies. There is the estimate that a new blog is born every 1/2 second on the internet; a good number (see Witmore's March 1, 2006 entry) dedicated to archaeology. No project has yet been entirely devoted to the issue of the increasing ubiquity and convergence of digital media in society and its demonstrable impact upon archaeology. So in the setting of an on-line journal dedicated to archaeology, it seems an appropriate time to look at some of these new media in detail - with the features and interactivity that only a blog such as Archaeolog can provide. So in this initial installment, we are going to hold a discussion about Second Life.
Interest and use of this on-line gaming-cum-social-network phenomenon in archaeology is emerging. Some of this interest has been shared already on Archaeolog (see Tringham's November 19, 2007 entry). Metamedia and Stanford Humanities Lab also collaborated early on with new media artist Lynn Hershmann to explore how to animate archives - link. Not just a game for an isolated group of bug-eyed, monitor masochistic techies, Second Life brings up many salient issues for archaeology: what is the nature of representation; what is accuracy versus imaginative dissonance; how do we get people to commit to visualized information; is the partially immersive the way forward for World Wide Web 3.0; how do we engage differently with digital heritage; what is remixing and co-creation of the past? To illumine many of these concerns for the future of the past, we sat down with Torin Golding, the avatar of the creator and manager of one of the earliest and largest archaeological sites in Second Life (SL). In the first part of this discussion we will simply highlight some of the parameters for understanding the buzz around SL; present some demographics and other facts. To really get the detail, an ethnography of digital culture would be requisite (for a partial account see Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by T. Boellstorf). For now we will give SL in broad-strokes and hope that most users of Archaeolog are somewhat familiar with the avatar world. For those unfamiliar or who have just wandered aimlessly a bit, Torin Golding's experience of getting started will provide a field guide of sorts. The next part (1.2) of the discussion will get at the practicalities of running an archaeological island in SL, as well as frame the pressing issues relating to the digital futures of the past.
Christina J. Hodge, MA, PhD, RPA
Senior Curatorial Assistant, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Boston University
The Oxford English Dictionary (2008) defines time as a "space" or "extent of existence" and "the interval between two successive events or acts." Timelines exemplify this definition. Entrenched methods of representing time's passage, they assign social meaning as "history." When we come across one in a book, exhibit, or presentation, we comprehend its string of dated moments and selective illustrations. Timelines are interdisciplinary and ubiquitous. Their superficial simplicity makes them a popular method of mediating engagement with the past and distilling complex processes for public consumption. Even when authorship is unclear, authority is implicit and strong. Imagining the between spaces, the elided events and edited convolutions, takes some effort. Or an intervention.
A timeline of city history is part of the décor of my home subway station, Davis Square on the Red Line in Somerville, Massachusetts. The station was completed in 1984, and most of its interior dates from that time. Structural elements are raw concrete, sheet aluminum, and dark purple-brown brick. The public art program at the station is conspicuously disjointed. Drawings by elementary school children have been transformed into ceramic wall tiles. Casabianca by Elizabeth Bishop is carved discreetly into the bricks of the platform floor. A collection of giant geometric shapes, splashed in now-murky primary colors, stretches above the inbound platform. The collage may or may not spell out "Davis."
Figure 1. Interior of Davis Square Station, photograph by the author.
Presentation of the creative, relativist and multicultural blog of the Neixón hillforts archaeological project (Galicia, Spain)
Posted by Xurxo M. Ayán Vila
Xurxo Ayán Vila (Spanish Higher Council of Scientific Research)
David Blanco Míguez (University of A Coruña)
The Internet must be seen as a social phenomenon and its spatial properties should be critically interrogated... Our cultural archaeological production is today implicated in the discourses and contestations of identity, social roles and representations, in new ways, through new media and within new spatial configurations. If archaeologists are to play an active role in the process, and thereby come closer to disciplinary maturity, then we have to understand these processes and their position in the new cyber-order.
(Hamilakis, 2000: 257)
Since 2003 a team composed of a variety of professionals connected with the Landscape Archaeology Laboratory of the Padre Sarmiento Institute for Galician Studies (CSIC-Xuga) in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia, Spain) have been working on the archaeological site of Castros de Neixón - two hillforts located in a small peninsula in one of the Galician rias. In step with this project, an international work camp for young people aged 18 to 30 has been set up. The project has several broad aims: the recovery of the cultural heritage of this area; the design of and display of cultural materials in the Archaeology Center of Barbanza (open to the public since 2002); the promotion of the archaeological area of Neixón as a tourist attraction, and the communication of the scientific knowledge produced by our research to both local communities and society at large.
The project's logo ("Neixón" in Galician is pronounced like "nation" in English)
Scientific interdisciplinarity, work by volunteers in the international work camp, and local involvement constitute the three main pillars of the Arqueoneixón project (Ayán et al. 2007). These mainstays provide the basis for a scientific project that, despite having been designed in an academic context, seeks to permeate the social, economic, cultural and symbolic fabrics of the archaeological area of Neixón.
Hero! Real archaeology and ”Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
Posted by Cornelius Holtorf
All three previous movies about Indiana Jones have become quintessential adventure films, together grossing more than $1 billion at the box office alone, not counting associated merchandise and spin-off products like computer games, novels and a TV series. The films were inspired by King Solomon’s Mines (1950) and Secret of the Incas (1954) but created something of their own genre. In recent rankings – two decades after the height of the cinematic Indiana Jones fever – the character still made no. 4 and 7 respectively among ”The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time” (see also here). On May 22, Indy will be back!
Between Media Archaeology and Memory Practices: Two Recent Excavations
Posted by Christopher Witmore
The recent opening of Paul Clancy’s “The Search for the Soul of a Building” in Providence, RI provided occasion for me to resurrect a languishing Archaeolog entry I had started back in the late spring and which has been annoyingly stapled to may desktop every since.
Regarding the exhibition, Clancy’s subtext is what drew my interest: “A Photo-Archaeologist Dig”. Clancy documents transformations in the urban fabric of cities like Boston and Providence. For Clancy, his photographs of derelict structures or buildings in the process of being torn down become “markers of time and place.” His ‘dig’ consisted of, among other matters, scenes of the former police and fire headquarters of Providence in various states of demolition. Clancy’s photographs experiment with the effects of age: the patina of old film stock, the worn surface of metal plate photos such as daguerreotypes. Scratched, exposed, and degraded surfaces in his photography speak to the textures of ruins, of perpetual perishing, of entropy. The works were all set in frames upon the white walls of a gallery at 17 Peck (http://www.17peck.com/). All these works are for sale.
Back in the spring we had a couple of MA students conduct ‘excavations’ of photographic materials here at Brown University. As with Clancy’s exhibition, these projects take photographs seriously as ‘markers’ of transformation, as articulations of arrested moments, as memories. This work falls under the rubric of media archaeology.
Remixing Çatalhöyük Day
9am - 5pm PST
November 28, 2007
Join us for Remixing Çatalhöyük Day, a public program sponsored by OKAPI
and the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük. Visit OKAPI Island in the
3-D virtual environment of Second Life (see Getting Started below) and
explore the past and present of Çatalhöyük, a 9000-year-old village
located in present-day Turkey. OKAPI Island features virtual
reconstructions of the excavation site and multimedia exhibits of research
data. The Island was constructed by a team of undegraduate research
apprentices during the Spring and Fall 2007 semester. The Remixing
Çatalhöyük program includes lectures, guided tours, games, and much more.
Mark your calendars!
Experience, modes of engagement, archaeology. (WAC-6 session: Participants Welcome!)
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
We welcome submissions for the WAC session “Experience, modes of engagement, archaeology”. This session is co-organized by Matt Ratto (Sweden/Canada), Krysta Ryzewski (US), and Michelle Charest (US/Ireland), and will be part of the Theme: Archaeological Theory? Legacies, Burdens, Futures, organized by Andrew Cochrane, Ian Russell, Timothy Webmoor, and Christopher Witmore. We invite presentations that critically examine archaeological experience and modes of engagement; we aim to include a broad range of perspectives and approaches.
Session Abstract:
Are multimedia, information technologies, digital visualizations and web 2.0 forums indispensable (or quickly becoming so) to the 21st century archaeologist's toolkit? Are they as instrumental as "older" analog or paper-based technologies, such as 35mm film, 16mm tape, and printed maps? This session embraces emergent, analog and paper-based media and moves beyond the observation that they can be important tools of practice by demonstrating how they affect practice and theory. Participants will employ multimedia approaches to ask, how are archaeology and heritage experienced by archaeologists and/or non-archaeologists? And, how do these archaeologies of experience impact our practices, interpretations, and theoretical agendas?
Clockwise from bottom left: WWII graffiti by RAF and USAF in Eagle Pub, Cambridge (UK); Megan Goetsch participates in a peripatetic video (click here); Excavating the African Meeting House, Boston; Historical Postcard from Mexico; the Archive.
The session places emphasis on experience documented through media. This emphasis raises questions about: archaeology and digital representation, the creation and destruction of archaeological information, authenticity in reconstructions/interpretations, how archaeologists create their own identities, how archaeology affects non-archaeologists, the non-linearity of archaeological practice, the documenting of individual histories, and how the three dimensionality of multimedia recording affects contextual relationships of materials. By approaching archaeology through the lens of experience it is possible to blend the traditionally divided realms of theory and practice. This session works with the interrelated agendas of the present, and the changing pace and character of archaeology in the future. Participants are strongly encouraged to offer creative, non-traditional, or multimedia conference presentations.
Creative Documentation and Archaeological Practice: Surveying Archaeologists on Film
Posted by Krysta Ryzewski
The Greene Farm Archaeology Project (GFAP), in Warwick, Rhode Island, began in 2004 as a transdisciplinary and long-term project designed to facilitate research among a broad range of scholars and volunteers, using established and experimental archaeological methods. The central focus of the project is on researching 400 years of cultural and natural landscape transformations on one of the few remaining Providence Plantations (see project wiki http://proteus.brown.edu/greenefarm/Home).
Greene Farm landscape (2004).
In 2005, artist Lee Fearnside approached GFAP interested in filming a documentary called Telling Stories, focusing on how archaeologists create knowledge through discovering history. As archaeologists and historians having little knowledge or experience with filmmaking, we permitted Fearnside access to the project without considering how her work might affect our practices directly and indirectly. We were especially interested to see how Fearnside would translate and represent archaeology in her art, as she had no archaeological background except for having read Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten. Over the course of two years, Fearnside filmed the field crew during excavations and in the laboratories. Though still a work in progress, I recently screened a rough cut of the film for the members of the Greene Farm field crew and gathered their response through a detailed survey and several discussions.
As an anthropologically trained archaeologist, I am particularly interested in examining the reception of the film by those whose work, voices, images, and interpretations appear in it. The field crew’s feedback and reactions are especially valuable in thinking about the many implications for relationships between artistic film/creative documentation and archaeology projects, and more importantly, the implications for how digital media affects archaeological practice. The following commentary focuses on an experiment stemming from the crews’ mixed reactions to the film. This is not an attempt to discuss the quality of the film (which is remarkable) or whether the filmmaker successfully captures the “creation of knowledge”. Instead, the purpose is to explore some of the questions and observations resulting from the intersection of the creative documentation and archaeological projects, as initially raised through the voices of the crew.
A group of photographers and artists are documenting the accretion of the 'underground' urban landscape through graffiti art. Based in San Francisco, but also looking at graffiti in Los Angeles and New York, Cassidy Curtis and his team at Graffiti Archaeology document the changes through time of graffiti art at several tagging locations. All of the photographs are then 'photoshopped' together, placed in sequence, and made freely available via a custom flash program on the web. Arresting our web-enhanced gaze, it is a visual record manifesting what is routine and intimate, yet often simply hurried by.
A World Heritage site always attracts a lot of attention. Such archaeological sites are viewed to materially represent irreplaceable ‘heritage’ on a global scale and are defined and protected through the United Nations’ UNESCO declarations (eg. UNESCO 1988). Teotihuacan, Mexico is no exception.
Replete with two monumental pyramids (the Pyramid of the Sun being the 3rd largest Pyramidal structure in the world) set amidst the ruins of a once densely populated, urbanized city (the first of its kind in Mesoamerica), “Teotihuacan”, or the “city of the gods” as the Aztec later identified it in Nahuatl, has attracted, both historically and contemporaneously, a broad range of interests. As most of us may personally attest to in visiting these world monuments, such interests run the gamut from the archaeological
to new age spiritualism.
Working at Teotihuacan, I often heard the phrase ‘yahoos’ being used to refer to the unsanctioned, occult practitioners who regularly gather at the site for their rituals.
Enter , the billion dollar, international internet company based in the Silicon Valley of California. To celebrate the media giant’s 15th anniversary, Yahoo! announced that it would create a ‘time capsule’ to gather together a snap shot of contemporary human life. Beginning this past October 10th, the search firm began collecting text, audio-visual and video contributions from any and all interested parties worldwide – estimated in analog terms to represent about 5 million books worth of data (OCRegister 2006). These would be uploaded via the internet.
This media-bundling was then digitized and beamed into space via laser a few months ago on October 25th. Following in the original steps of the affable ‘yahoo’ Carl Sagan, this digital ‘time capsule’ was made in hopes of communicating to digitally attuned extraterrestrials the diversity of life and culture on Earth. As a spokesperson for Yahoo! stated: the purpose was to join the "past and present with the universe's potential future by sharing today's culture on Earth with other life that may exist light years away" (Subzeroblue 2006).
A ‘hard copy’ of the time capsule will be buried on the Sunnyvale grounds of the corporate offices. But, in keeping with the ethos of ‘digital democracy’ inherent in the conception and content of the Time Capsule Project, the company wanted to laser the digitized information in real-time at a prominent locale. You guessed it. This Yahoo! chose the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.
While browsing the discount shelves at a bookstore in downtown, or rather ‘downcity’ (as the locals call it), Providence yesterday and I came across a peculiarly shaped book stamped:
BEIJING 10/2003
AI WEIWEI
Hard bound, covered in a grey paper, imprinted with a weave texture to give the appearance of cloth, the book has the dimensions of a brick, 11.1cm X 24.3cm X 5.9cm.
The first page along with each and every one of the next 862 pages contain two images side by side. Following these images are 2 pages containing 12 lines of Chinese followed by 2 pages containing 14 lines of English text, Arial Font. The text is white printed on a black background. The remainder of the work contains a map of Beijing which is then subdivided into a series of 16 maps by day over the following pages. It ends with the publisher’s credits: timezone 8.
Google “archaeology” and you will get somewhere around 52,400,000 hits. Though such numbers will vary from time to time. Google lists entries on the basis of their degree of connectivity within the web. So, in some way, the more people who link to a site from their own homepage the more that site will rise within Google ratings, though there are other ways to up one’s ratings. Here is the top ten list as of February 23, 2006:
1) Archaeology Magazine: This popular magazine also provides the latest news in archaeology from around the world.
2) About.com: Archaeology: Articles and directory of Internet sites, including a world atlas of archaeology on the web.
3) Current Archaeology: The attractive site of Britain's popular archaeological magazine. Illustrated timeline of British archaeology, articles from past issues, contents of the ...
4) SAAweb - Society for American Archaeology: An international organization dedicated to the research, interpretation, and protection of the archaeological heritage of the Americas.
5) ArchNet - WWW Virtual Library – Archaeology: ArchNet, The World-Wide Web Virtual Library for Archaeology.
6) The Society for Historical Archaeology: This US-based society focuses on the New World, but also includes European exploration and settlement in Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
7) Internet Archaeology - Electronic Journal - Home Page: Fully refereed electronic journal for archaeology, international in scope. A collaboration of the British Academy, CBA and the Universities of Durham, ...
8) The Archaeology Channel – Welcome: Archaeology and related subjects presented through streaming media by the Oregon-based Archaeological Legacy Institute. Videos can be viewed on-line and ...
9) Biblical Archaeology Society: The Biblical Archaeology Society publishes Biblical Archaeology Review, Bible Review, and Archaeology Odyssey, and educates the public about archaeology and ...
10) Archaeology in the Yahoo! Directory: Find a collection of selected links dealing with marine archaeology, education, Egyptology, fieldwork and expeditions, museums and exhibitions, …
This list contains a combination of popular magazines, archaeological societies, Internet content providers, etc. So how do they define archaeology?
, the billion dollar, international internet company based in the Silicon Valley of California. To celebrate the media giant’s 15th anniversary, Yahoo! announced that it would create a ‘time capsule’ to gather together a snap shot of contemporary human life. Beginning this past October 10th, the search firm began collecting text, audio-visual and video contributions from any and all interested parties worldwide – estimated in analog terms to represent about 5 million books worth of data (OCRegister 2006). These would be uploaded via the internet. 
