See also Research funding and support

Overviews - themes

Animating the archive - experiments in Archive 3.0

Archaeography - archaeological photography, text, image, historiography - how are we to make history on the basis of archaeological fragments?

Art and archaeology - exploring the archaeological imagination

Chorography - regenerating that old genre of regional writing on the land

Traumwerk - archaeological thinking in a new medium

Archaeological studies - from prehistory to contemporary beer can design

Practice as research - experiments beyond critique and commentary

The idea of a Humanities Lab - why a humanist works in a lab

Collaboration and cocreation - labs and studios, and the politics of the past

Critical theory - asking awkward questions of modernity's fascination with the archaeological

Experiments in (new) media - how are we to represent the past (if at all)? Experiments in media archaeology - [link]

Deep mapping - archaeologies of the contemporary past

Stanford Humanities Lab - transdisciplinary experiments - animating cultural archives, building the big picture (based on in-depth expertise), enabling collaborative co-creation in the new humanities - I direct SHL with Jeffrey Schnapp and Henry Lowood - [link]

Metamedia - my lab - archaeological research in design history and media materialities [link]

Ceramics - the materiality of a medium - from January 2008, supported by Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities and Stanford Archaeology Center.

Presence - "Performing presence: from the live to the simulated" - a major international collaborative project running from 2005-2010 - [link]

Anglo-American-antiquarians - starting up 2008 with seed funding from Stanford and Brown University.

Co-creating cultural heritage - enabling people to build their own history and heritage using participatory software - funded by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network 2006-2007.

Life-Squared - the future of the museum explored as we revisit with artist Lynn Hershman a hotel room in 1972 and build an archival experience in an online world - [link] - part of the Presence Project and funded by the Langlois Foundation - June 2006 - July 2007.

Behind the locked door - an exploration of the storerooms of Stanford's Cantor Arts Center - 2007-2008.

Burtynsky at Stanford - an interactive web site accompanying the exhibition at Stanford in the summer of 2005 of the work of this great photographer - currently archived.

Mobile Media 2015 when archaeology met car design - an ethnography-oriented foresight model of material culture in the vehicle interior of 2015 - June 2005 - February 2006. Funded by Daimler Chrysler.

Archaeography - projects - photographic explorations of the archaeological imagination.

43 relics - dumpster diving - 2006.

The locked door: San José 2004 - a forensic portfolio.

Ghosts in the machine - a series of found photographs - daguerreotypes - and their digital regeneration in a media archaeology.

Brith Gof - a theatre company - I have worked with this site specific performance company since 1993 - we have started an experiment in participatory media to (re)generate the company's history.

The Three Landscapes Project - Stanford 2000 - when Cliff McLucas Brith Gof, Dorian Llywelyn (theologian) and Michael Shanks home explored the nature of place and landscape in Wales, California and Sicily.

Theatre/Archaeology - hybrid practice and fused media - with performance artist Mike Pearson Brith Gof.

Main current writing projects

The archaeological imagination - a manifesto for Left Coast Press 2007/2008.

The Design of New Media - An Archaeological Perspective. Something of a write-up of my experiences with the workshop Critical Studies in New Media.

Archaeology - the discipline of things - a book in progress with Bjornar Olsen, Tim Webmoor and Chris Witmore. To be published by California University Press.

Conversations through archaeology - since 1999 Bill Rathje and I have held a series of conversations with a host of archaeologists who have visited our new Archaeology Center at Stanford. We have talked about their experiences of the discipline, their thoughts about what matters in archaeology and where it is going. We have recorded, transcribed and annotated the conversations and think the result gives a fascinating insight into the state of archaeology - a text(book) that combines the personality of some of its chracters with the immediacy of personal engagement - and the notes take the reader deep into the real work of archaeology. With Sue Alcock, Lewis Binford, Victor Buchli, John Cherry, Meg Conkey, George Cowgill, Ian Hodder, Kristian Kristiansen, Mark Leone, Randall McGuire, Lynn Meskell, Mary and Adrian Praetzellis, Colin Renfrew, Michael Schiffer, Alain Schnapp, Patty Jo Watson, Alison Wylie.

Origins - how new archaeological thinking is changing the way we understand history - a long term book project exploring the big picture of human history that only archaeology can afford. First manifestation of some of its argument will be the book Ten things - An Archaeology of Design.

Main publications - see writing.

Fieldwork and practice

Borderlands - Tyne to Tweed a regional archaeology of the Roman north - as chorography - from 2004.

A chorography of central Greece - a work in progress with Chris Witmore, to be wound up in 2008.

Sicily - Monte Polizzo - excavating a hilltop site - an arrested fieldwork project 1998-2000.

The early Greek city state - researching the design of the polis - 1988-1999. My biggest project to date.

Beer cans - understanding design - in 1983 - a project in material culture studies (as it became called).

Neolithic bones - archaeologies of the body in prehistoric Europe - 1979-1987 - this began as my undergraduate dissertation.

I also spent oa couple of years at the beginning of my career (1980-1981) digging Roman and medieval sites in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as part of the urban redevelopment of the city.

Research funding and support