Conference report, published in Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, 43/2015 (2016), pp. 178-80.

The Centre for Post Digital Cultures invites you to its second annual conference, which will explore the phenomenon of ‘Pirate Care’. The term Pirate Care (Graziano, 2018) condenses two processes that are particularly visible at present. On the one hand, basic care provisions that were previously considered cornerstones of social life are now…[Read more]

This contribution provides a first characterization of the environmental development for the surroundings of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Göbekli Tepe. We base our analyses on a literature review that covers the environmental components of prevailing bedrock and soils, model- and proxy-based climatic development, and vegetation. The…[Read more]

Although Scandinavian flint is one of the most important materials used for prehistoric stone tool production in Northern and Central Europe, a conclusive method for securely differentiating between flint sources, geologically bound to northern European chalk formations, has never been achieved. The main problems with traditional approaches…[Read more]

We analyze the processing of cereals and its role at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Anatolia (10th / 9th millennium BC), a site that has aroused much debate in archaeological discourse.

Este escrito trata sobre la vinculación entre la obra de Vere Gordon Childe y los planteos de la Arqueología Social Latinoamericana que tomó explícitamente al primero como referente y estímulo inicial de una arqueología marxista que ligara el pasado y el presente. Se revisan algunas continuidades, diferencias y convergencias entre este arque…[Read more]

The prints featured in this exhibition are all products of the Meiji period (1868–1912), a time of massive cultural and institutional transformation in Japanese culture. The era is characterized by rapid westernization brought about after the opening of Japanese ports in 1854 and the subsequent restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1868. The p…[Read more]

In the 21st century, digital practices are transforming both archaeological practices in the field and the concept publication. The fragmentation of archaeological knowledge as digital data produces portable, sharable, remixable, and transformable publications that are less stable and less definitive than their predecessors in print. As a result,…[Read more]

During the last five decades, public, intellectual, and academic debates have created an increased awareness of so-called transhumanist discourses and social movements accompanied by a diverse body of theoretical works in philosophy, social sciences, and humanities which can broadly be described as posthumanist. Building on a three year long…[Read more]

Essay for the online manual on how to open a pirate kindergarden, commissioned by Soprasotto and WeMake, Milan (IT).

An interpretation of the rock art appearing in The Shaft at Lascaux and a discussion of Aurignacian Rites of Passage

An interpretation of the Red Mammoth Panel in Chauvet linking Chauvet to Lascaux in a single ritual landscape

Studies of Egyptian Late Period statuary often assume that the extant corpus is a representative sample of the artistic output of the Twenty-Sixth to Thirty-First Dynasties (c. 664–332 BCE). This assumption ignores the various human processes that affect the survival of statues after their initial dedication. In particular, the Roman practice of c…[Read more]

As the 2017-18 academic job cycle came to an end I found myself, for the first time in five years, in the enviable position of not having to resume my search for employment again in the fall, thanks to a two-year position at a very eminent institution. This good fortune has prompted me to compile my reflections on the classical archaeology job…[Read more]

This Chapter provides simple but valuable insights to Upper Paleo abstract values such as Time, Life After Death, Social Roles, etc. Introduction to ‘Soft Cultural Institutions’. Understanding how abstract valuations become embedded into social structure is especially important in terms of understanding nonverbal language and symbolic sets.

The Index of Deities and Demons is the heart of One Godz. This Index presents almost all Deities and Demons represented on the cave walls of Chauvet and Lascaux along with their defining Basis Points drawn from Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns. This chapter demonstrates the actual process of attaching meaning to symbolism while mediating subjectivity.

This is an Accepted Manuscript, for an article forthcoming in Antiquity (2019), and remains subject to pre-publication type-editing and proofing. Please cite as James M. Harland, ‘Memories of Migration? So-called “Anglo-Saxon” Burial Costume of the 5th Century AD,’ Antiquity 93 (2019). A link to the final publication at Cambridge University Press…[Read more]

The specific outlook and reach of administration in Prepalatial Crete is the topic of heated debate. The materials most frequently implicated in this debate are clay sealings, usually taken as a clear demonstration of administrative concerns. However, although early sealings might have been used for this purpose, this view tends to be influenced…[Read more]

This is the paper I gave at the Public Archaeology Twitter Conference 3 (2019). The conference theme was storytelling in archaeology.

The paper is an archaeological comic. Each panel of the comic was one tweet. The whole comic was composed by threading the tweets. The comic tells the story of the discovery and excavation (2014-15) of a site in…[Read more]

At the end of the Pleistocene (25,000-15,000 BP), there is a shift to more arid conditions in the Negev and the Sinai corresponding to the Last Glacial Maximum. For the Nile Valley and the Levant, the lowering of the Mediterranean sea level, the expansion of the Sahara and the desiccation of some major eastern African lakes had important…[Read more]