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 article explores the changes to the legal status of Scots in ‘English Ireland’ after the advent of the Scottish Wars of Independence (c.1295). There appears to have been a drastic change in status as the Scots in Ireland were not explicitly labelled before 1295, but were afterwards and they were arrested on sight usually. It is also peculiar…[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 paper examines two issues: misconceptions concerning English law in high medieval Ireland; and the invention and mutation of an exceptio (objection) in court which was based on a fabrication. The plea, or defensive claim, was that the plaintiff in a court case was an unfranchised Gael (Hibernica/Hibernicus) and therefore could not sue a civil…[Read more]

While the trope of the Islamic pilgrimage (ḥajj) is well known, the impact of the imagery and concept of travel on poetic production from the Islamic world, particularly in Persian, has not merited the same scrutiny. This chapter introduces one of the most important and yet least-studied Persian travel narratives to an interdisciplinary r…[Read more]

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]

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]

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]

This article examines how the Persian prison poem (habsiyāt) incorporated Islamic legal norms for governing non-Muslim peoples into its poetics. By tracing how Khāqāni of Shirvān (d. 1199) brought the aesthetics of incarceration to bear on Islamic legal regulations pertaining to non-Muslim communities (ahl al-zemma), I offer a new perspective on…[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]

During the Nubia Salvage Campaign and the subsequent expeditions from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, numerous sites attributed to the Late Palaeolithic (~25–15 ka) were found in the Nile Valley, particularly in Nubia and Upper Egypt. This region is one of the few to have allowed human occupations during the dry Marine Isotope Stage 2 and is there…[Read more]

Architecture Space and Society Research Centre, Birkbeck (University of London) Friday 1st March 2019
Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conquest-and-construction-tickets-55022443610

During the 2001 excavation season at Göbekli Tepe, a fragment of a small miniature mask depiction was found in Enclosure D. The fragmentarily preserved object was originally ovaloid in form, the back is concave. It features a very prominent nose and large, nearly open-worked eyes. An indention supposedly depicting the mouth is rather small, on…[Read more]

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments and academic malpractices in Italy, and how these factors affect Italian scholarship in the history of science.

This is the abstract for my paper presented on 31 January 2019 in the third Public Archaeology Twitter Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is STORYTELLING. My paper is a re-telling of an archaeological excavation, inspired by John Swogger’s re-imagining of a peer-reviewed archaeological journal article in comic format. Read the…[Read more]

Die agrarische Wirtschaftsweise ist eines der definierenden Elemente des Neolithikums in Schleswig-Holstein. Doch ist es plausibel, dass diese Form der Ökonomie in gleicher Weise über mehr als 2000 Jahre betrieben wurde? Lassen sich einzelne Landnutzungsphasen identifizieren? Welches waren die bevorzugten Siedlungsräume der neolithischen Be…[Read more]