Structural archaeologist Geoff Carter's radical view of building in the ancient world, especially the archaeology of the lost timber built environment of Southern England. It is new research into of prehistory of architecture, available in a series of articles that are designed to be read in order, and to be accessible to the non-specialist - and there is even some humour
Found Down The Back of a Digital Sofa. Just to avoid confusion and to let off steam under the pressure of lock down I have created a new blog as repository for Non Archaeological satire, art, cartoons and photography.
When you work is not good enough for sector of Higher Education increasing reliant on Science denial and academics purporting the views and perception of our ancient dead - you are driven to a satirical view of the world.
The current post concerns a traditional North East Digital Arts Festival of Vegetable Baiting, thus, given the obscurity and specialist nature of my subject matter, the constant need to contextualise and explain the jokes or humour rather precludes its designation as the latter; similarly, some passing familiarity with the subject matter might be considered a not unreasonable prerequisite for satire; you have been warned.
This is all undoubtedly of no interest and represents the dark side of a warren of rabbit holes so obscure that no reasonable man could be expected to believe that any of it was real.
I felt it was high time someone gave academics the sort of clap that they so richly deserve, although I am still working, if only to rob Universal Credit of another victim, However, as a birthday present to myself, {& in lieu of everything}, I have spent the last month working on a Major New Motion Picture Presentation of a Novel Graphic Pictorial Novelette Cartoon Video.
What started as a couple of dozen pocket cartoons has got out of hand, and developed a life of its own, or rather several bizarre and somewhat unpleasant lives of their own.
Now view on . . . .
– [Archaeologist Ordinaire from the infamous University of Tyneside].
This full colour mini-series was the departments attempt to persuade Dr Thunderbird-Jones to retire, however, the Corvid19 outbreak has effected their plans. Paranoid Pictures have dropped the project and what we are left with a digitally compressed mini- box-set of the original story board, now sponsored by among others Granny Boogol Foods, Grizzled Maxwell Models, Gold Head Associates, and the Magic Mount eBank.
Warning; contains adult humour and scenes of an archaeological nature.
NOMINATED FOR THE
UNIVERSITY OF TYNESIDE
DIGITAL GURNER PRIZE
for meaningless Art
UTARTS
NOTES.
The Life & Times of Charlie Thunderbird-Jones
The events depicted in this Cartoon are entirely fictitious and any
resemblance to person and events, real or imagined, is entirely
malicious, made with duplicitous intent to ridicule, vilify and abuse
persons who shall remain nameless, notwithstanding the inherent
mendacity of this statement above & below, which lacks veracity, being
wholly without any basis in fact.
While individual cases should be judged on their merits, it is clearly to
be misunderstood that any / no { delete as appropriate} implication that
any member of a University staff is a deceitful dishonest double-
dealing moron with the wit, intellect, moral veracity and genetic
potential of a bivalve mollusc is entirely intensional or not as the case
may be; period.
By Watching this video {Insert name here} you are assumed to agree and
fully support the to the following; a unanimous loss of all personal
rights, privileges, privacies, personal data, medical history,
embarrassing photographs, voting record, internet history and the
complete exoneration of any persons associated with the University of
Tyneside in any conceivable space, before, after or during any time
specified.
No insult was intended to any Gods, God, Goddessess, Personal Deity,
invisible friends; Divine, Celestial or Supreme Beings, Beings of
light {excl. ectoplasm}; Members of the Heavenly hosts including
Cherubs, Seraphs, Archangels and Angels, {incl. Guardian}, Spirits,
For some time I have been discussing some interesting research
with Michael Carter of Ryerson University; He has been working on a project to
utilise modern graphics engines to build virtual Native longhouses. This site gives a run-down on development of the research;
This research touches on a many issues central to the use of
modern computer graphics in the realisation of the past. For my part, I am obliged by the limitation
of deductive processes and reverse engineering to sidestep the issue; the intent
of my practice is to understand the engineering principles behind a structure,
with the classes of evidence available I cannot realistically understand its
skin. This is disappointing, because
that is the vision that people think they want.
However, once you start imagining the past, there is a danger that pictures
become more important than the evidence, because now they can be a lot more
“real” than the archaeology. For me the
expression, recognition and understanding of doubt are significant issues.
The Good and the Bad form a nice clear dialectic, for the
path of blogger has both yin and yang; it has satisfied my desire to express myself;
however, this has also become a burden, a duty, and a source of guilt. Blogging has empowered me, but with power has come responsibility; while blogging may be free, it is also by the same token valueless. It
is seen as something light and transient, but its presence may be permanent and
its effects long lasting. As for the Ugly - it is rather lost without the Beautiful, rendering the question a little unbalanced, as one of the ancients put it;
Today is red nose day - for Comic Relief a charity event organised by British comedians.
Archaeology is one those subjects traditionally associated with drinking, it was one of the few compensations for low wages, poor working conditions, and zero career prospects, although quite why well paid academics should be red noses has never been fully explained.
One thing that was apparent at the CAA conference [Computer Applications in
Archaeology] at Southampton, was the ability of our current
technology to produce any image we can imagine with a remarkable degree of
realism. The look of the past, the
shared visual culture, is commercially important to the entertainment industry,
and in some senses is the end product offered to consumers of archaeology as
infotainment. As a structural archaeologist, while I am groping towards an
understanding of how a Neolithic longhouse was engineered, the one thing I am
certain of is that I don’t know what a building ‘looked’ like.
So, given the ability to visually express anything we can
imagine - how do we express doubt?
In my view, the inability of conventional archaeology to interpret the majority of the excavated evidence from prehistoric sites, in particular postholes, has led to development of “New” archaeology, where academics study and become experts in those aspects of culture we don’t find. In those countries like Netherlands and Germany, where their archaeology is better understood, their narrative of the Neolithic is generally about agriculture, while in Britain it is more often expressed in terms of the perceptions, beliefs, rituals, personhood, and cosmologies.
It is not that writing a book is boring, or that I am looking for displacement activities, it's just that I have pencils and paper that I have to use up before they reach their sell by date.
Another bout of compulsive cartooning has been brought on by more bad news on the work front, as another light at the end of the tunnel blinked out; leaving me alone in the dark, with a pencil....
As a break from postholes, here are some more cartoons to celebrate the holiday season, which always a bit of joke in England, not least because of the weather, especially if you are digging.
I recently suggested that post-processual archaeology was a faith-based approach that mystifies the evidence, but on reflection, thinking of it as a religion, is probably to exaggerate its objectivity. This time, I’m looking at the messages we're getting about, and apparently from, the past, and asking if this new archaeology a New Age cult?
I shall do this with the help Neil Oliver’s BBC program, History of Ancient Britain, which has, through no fault of its own, been singled out to be my Auntie Sally. His program is more than just a warm glass of intellectual Drambuie on a Sunday night, but actually reflects some state of the art archaeological thinking, as one might expect of the BBC.[1]
For the sake of balance I will try to explain why some archaeologists have painted themselves into the corner of their yoga mats, and readers should be warned be there maybe some intellectual cartoon violence, and outbreaks of Kermodian ranting.
This is my favourite cartoon; it is by the late Bernard Kliban, a New York cartoonist, and one of the founding fathers of the modern cartoon, and in my opinion, a genius of his art. Sometimes the world becomes so strange and distorted, that it takes cartoon to get it into perspective.
I hope you read article no. 30. That’s where I let slip that ‘timber circles’ were buildings, some roundhouses were multi-storey, and Hadrian had a timber wall for while -- so you know I’m not here for the beer. But I wish we both down the pub; we could have a chat about all this, a dialogue where we could respond to each other. It would be good: I like you a lot already; you have had the good sense, taste, and intellectual interest to invest your hard won browsing time in reading this blog.
Speaking of beer, back in some golden summer of British archaeology, before the invention of health and safety, when the only unit of alcohol of note was a pint, muddy people would sit in pubs and have conversations about what they had just dug up, and what it all meant. If it was not obvious, at some point someone would say “it must be ritual then,” and we would all laugh, and then someone would be sent for to the bar for some more inspiration.
Found Down The Back of a Digital Sofa. Just to avoid confusion and to let off steam under the pressure of lock down I have created a new blog as repository for Non Archaeological satire, art, cartoons and photography.
