Category: Archaeology
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The (Entirely Inaccurate, Completely Nonsensical) Plastic Skeleton Wars Continue
Let’s be real – you know exactly what this blog post is about. I’ve been writing about these cursed plastic objects for years now. After doing an overview of the worst iterations of animal skeleton decorations in 2017, an investigation as to why they look as horribly and inaccurately as they do in 2021, and
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Is the Museum of the Future Contextless?
Jenna Stoeber recently published a video review of the new Nintendo Museum which opened in Kyoto, Japan on October 2nd 2024. It was – and still is – an immediate hit, with fans of the beloved video game company flocking from around the world to visit. But the museum itself seems to leave much to
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Mattie Lubchansky’s ‘Simplicity’ and Weaponising the Museum of the Future
The following blog post will contain spoilers for Mattie Lubchansky’s recent book Simplicity, which is out now and I highly recommend folks – especially those of you who work in the museum and anthropology fields – read it first! Simplicity (Lubchanksy, 2025) is not about museums. I mean, it kinda is – but it’s more
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Who Gets to Feel Good in Archaeology?
Over the past decade, there has been a lot of attention drawn to the benefits of archaeological fieldwork on the mental health of participants (e.g., Finnegan 2016, Rathouse 2019, Everill et al. 2020, Dobat et al. 2022). And while it is wonderful to see people have such a positive experience with archaeology, I have to
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Archives are for the Gamers (and Everyone Else): Making Archives Available for All
This past Christmas, my dad gifted us an Atari 2600 from about 1982. Originally launched as the Video Computer System (VCS) in 1977, this compact console would eventually be renamed as the Atari 2600 in 1982, coinciding with the launch of the company’s new 5200 SuperSystem console (Lendino 2022). While we have no idea if
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The Dangers of ‘Dialogue’ in Violent Times: Obscuring Power Dynamics in the Heritage Sector (and Beyond)
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference that included a session on what the organisers referred to as ‘the Israel-Palestine Conflict’. Now, of course, this in itself was full of warning signs (are we really going to minimise genocide by referring to it as a ‘conflict’?), but given the silence of many parts of
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The Call is Coming From Inside the Discipline! The Inability to Recognise Racism within Archaeology
Over the past few months, I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with some of the rhetoric I’ve heard from white colleagues in the archaeology sector with regards to racism. Mainly, there seems to be this sense that racism is either something that occurs outside of the field – in that there are bad faith
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Dreaming of the Past: Using Narrative & Fiction to Understand Archaeology in “I Am Dead”
Please note that this blog post contains spoilers for the game “I Am Dead”. I’ve already written at length about how much I loved I Am Dead (Hollow Ponds, 2020) as an archaeologist and as a museum worker. However, I want to discuss another element of the game a bit further – more specifically, the
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Does Zooarchaeology Matter? A Case for Actionable Animal Archaeologies
The following is a transcript of my keynote talk from the Zooarchaeology Saves the World conference held in May 2022. Introduction Does zooarchaeology matter? Perhaps this is an intentionally provocative question to ask zooarchaeologists but given the status of the world today – the intensification of climate change, the rise of fascism across the globe,
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Stuck in the Past: Silence & Complicity in Archaeology’s Current Harms
I have been meaning to write a proper blog post about my frustrations regarding some of the discourse within archaeology around making amends for the discipline’s contributions to oppression and violence – in fact, this post has probably been sat unfinished in my drafts for a few years now. But these frustrations have certainly reached
Animal Archaeology 