In a groundbreaking endeavour to triangulate three important traditions of our collective cultural heritage, the Arkeologisk Museum of the University of Stavanger presents Eden and Everything After, a conceptual exhibition organised around notions of the loss of – and slim hope of reconnection with – the lost paradise. Mirroring the boldly exp…[Read more]

Poland has been recognized as important in the widespread migration of the Vikings, yet subject to little theoretical inquiry. I became particularly interested in the ways in which the Vikings in Poland understood and negotiated their world. To my knowledge, nobody has drawn together the pan-European evidence about the image of the two mythical…[Read more]

The paper presents for the first time to the public some wooden fragments of an ancient Egyptian ‘mummy cover’, kept in the ‘Egyptian Corner’ of the University of Pavia Archaeology Museum (Italy). The fragments, belonging to an original ancient Egyptian artefact which dates back to the end of the New Kingdom, are here published after a restora…[Read more]

We offer an archaeological analysis of the visual display of “space heroes” and Orthodox icons in the Russian Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS). This study is the first systematic investigation of material culture at a site in space. The ISS has now been continuously inhabited for 20 years. Here, focusing on the period 200…[Read more]

Presentación del libro “Atomic Surfer” [CANCELADA] Librería Mágica
11 de diciembre de 2021

In: “Connecting Territories: Exploring People and Nature, 1700-1850,” eds. S. Boscani Leoni, S. Baumgartner and M. Knittel, Leiden, Brill, 2021, pp. 54-57.

A 12-page paper illustrating the likely presence, in geoglyph form, of a probably long-established cult art form in the UK, as elsewhere.

The aim of space archaeology is to understand the interaction of technology and human behaviour in off-Earth environments. This paper presents the methodology and results of the first archaeological study focused on human habitation in outer space. The International Space Station (ISS) is the only extant, continuously-occupied location in space,…[Read more]

Space archaeology is defined as the study of “the material culture relevant to space exploration that is found on Earth and in outer space (i.e., exoatmospheric material) and that is clearly the result of human behavior” (Gorman & O’Leary 2013: 409). The aim of space archaeology is to understand the interaction of technology and human behav…[Read more]

The Late Bronze Age is renowned for heightened interregional interaction in the entire Near East and Eastern Mediterranean as wealthy states like Egypt and Hatti jostled with each other in the pursuit of valuable commodities, technologies and materials. This increased political and economic interaction is credited in relatively recent scholarship…[Read more]

This paper publishes a ceramic bowl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art depicting a Parthian shot. Although it lacks archaeological provenance, the bowl can be dated to the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE, and probably comes from northwestern Iran. It is, therefore, one of the few possible instances of a Parthian shot from the Arsacid Empire.

Text to a presentation on the misrepresentation of ancient Egyptian psychoactive consumption in academic publications and public media that was given by me at the Alternative Egyptology Symposium, hosted by the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, 14-04-2021. There is an academic paper in preparation.

REASON, IDEA, PHILOLOGY INTELLECTUAL HISTORY IN LITERARY CONTEXTS (WRITTEN
ON THE MARGINS OF CYPRIAN NORWID’S “MILCZENIE” (“SILENCE”))
The article examines the 19th century evolution of history of ideas and its relatedness to literary studies.
The debate whether philology, philosophy, and history are autonomous humanistic disciplines or
they…[Read more]

Pestilential diseases formed a category of epidemic and often fatal diseases, whose outbreak, causes and treatment were challenging to explain in the Renaissance. In exploring this theme in sixteenth–century Galenic medicine, I examine the Platonic account of “occult” diseases and treatment that was proposed by the French physician Jean Ferne…[Read more]

This article discusses major issues of interdisciplinary research. In the introduction, the concepts of ›disciplinarity‹, ›multidisciplinarity‹, ›interdisciplinarity‹ and ›transdisciplinarity‹ are being explicated. This is followed by a comparative treatment of experiences with designing and practicing interdisciplinarity in various fields…[Read more]

In this paper I outline some of empirical and theoretical problems associated with the dividing Mycenaean Greece into a core and a periphery. The periphery has traditionally been defined in contrast to a homogeneous palatial core, but recent research has shown that this homogeneity is illusory. I suggest, following Knappett’s discussion of M…[Read more]

A recent genetic study has revealed that the adult male buried in the most elaborate recess of the Neolithic passage-tomb at Newgrange was the child of a first-degree incestuous union, suggesting that the complex was built as a burial monument for an endogamous family elite who may have been regarded as “god-kings.” The present paper shows how clo…[Read more]

A short essay on the different forms of money used in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Translated into German by Julia Linke.

This chapter surveys the means by which the Late Bronze Age polities of Mycenaean Greece acquired goods and services, with a focus on regular extractive transactions.

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “ab…[Read more]