Personal perspective on the current state of open access and publishing practices in the fields of Television and Media Studies, and pointers to a variety of scholar-led initiatives and options of where scholars can actually publish open access in their field without the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs).

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]

Cities of InfraRed is an abstract for my proposed contribution to a book that is being put together by Cornelia Sollfrank, Shuhsa Niederberger and Felix Stalder. The book has the working title of Aesthetics of the Commons, and arises out of the Creating Commons research project at the Zurich University of the Arts.

A version of Cities of…[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]

This chapter examines the impact of a putative oral Homer upon the work of recent performance-makers. The influence of oral-poetic theories is (as yet) an under-explored area of study, neglected by scholars whose literary expertise leads them to focus on dramatic texts and production histories, with each revisionary text or production regarded as…[Read more]

This paper argues that the Augustan period witnessed a dramatic reconception of Roman religion—a reconception that played a vital role in the emperor’s efforts to create a unified sense of identity that included both Romans and Italians. Instead of a religion of place tied to specific historical developments, both Virgil in the Aeneid and A…[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]

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]

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]

This A3 poster shows the difference between the structures of academic and journalistic pieces of writing. I call these the ‘Academic Triangle’ and the ‘Journalistic Triangle’. There’s lots of great advice online to help you write one way or the other. But this poster contrasts the two styles side-by-side, using an important archaeological paper…[Read more]

In accordance with current perceptions, the Neolithic landscape of Southern Scandinavia appears to be dominated by two innovations that are connected to the transition to the Neolithic in this region: agriculture and monuments such as megalithic tombs or Single Grave burial mounds. So it seems natural to assume that these aspects also dominated…[Read more]

The Neolithic and Bronze Age burial ground of Flintbek provides a well-documented case study of a monumental landscape, whose shaping and development through ritual practices of monument building can be studied over the course of centuries. The minute excavation and data analyses (Mischka 2011a) enable a discussion of the interrelations between…[Read more]

This study juxtaposes the concerns of Catholicos Timothy I (r. 780–823), leader of the Church of the East, with those of al-Jāḥiẓ (about 776–868/9), a popular Muslim writer, regarding the dangers for each community when Christians appear as plaintiffs or defendants in Islamic courts. Timothy’s Canons attempt to obviate some of the reasons…[Read more]

This is a paper that I presented at the 2019 MLA in Chicago. In this paper I situate discussions of the field of Iberian Studies within the context of the crisis of the Humanities and the future of Cultural Studies.

Over the course of the twentieth century a number of experimental studies have
investigated the construction of megalithic monuments such as Stonehenge
(Atkinson, 1956; Osenton, 2001; Parry, 2000; Pavel, 1992; Ravilious, 2010;
Richards & Whitby, 1997). These studies have typically highlighted the challenges
posed — or benefits offered — by one…[Read more]

This is the presentation of a conference paper at the Theoretical Archaeology Group conference 2018 (Chester). The conveners of the conference session ‘Practising Creativity: Experimentation, Mistakes and Successes in Art-Archaeology’, James Dixon and Seren Griffiths, ask participants to discuss experimentation in art-archaeology. Artists have…[Read more]