Ontologies of the Future and Interfaces for All: Archaeological Databases for the Twenty-First Century

Archaeological database management systems serve the basic and important functions of ordering, archiving, and disseminating archaeological data. The increased availability of computers and data storage over the past two decades has enabled the exponential growth of archaeological databases and data models. Despite their importance and ubiquity, archaeological database systems are rarely the subject of theoretical analysis within the discipline due to their “black box” nature and the perceived objectivity of computerized systems. Inspired by H. Martin Wobst’s meditations on materiality and disciplinary ethics, in this paper I explore how archaeological database systems structure archaeological interpretation and disciplinary practice. In turn, I offer suggestions for how archaeological database systems can better support pressing anthropological research topics of the 21st century including multivocality, participatory research and ethics, social memory, and social complexity studies.     

Beyond Brassens: Twenty-First Century Chanson and the New Generation of Singer-Songwriters

This article considers the relevance of the notion of ‘generation’ for the study of cultural shifts in the production and critical reception of singer-songwriters in contemporary France, in the period 2005–12. Defining a ‘generation’ as an age cohort sharing socio-cultural characteristics and patterns of socialisation, it focuses on Camille, Benjamin Biolay, La Grande Sophie, Barbara Carlotti and other singer-songwriters who were all born in ‘the long 1970s’, and who achieved notoriety and success in the period in question. It demonstrates that the traditional discourse of chanson, dominant since the 1950s, defined by literariness and embodied by Georges Brassens, is being replaced by an emphasis on seduction, Anglophilia and multi-instrumental sophistication. Although these features have been central to the compositions of a number of ‘older’ singer-songwriters, including Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy and Alain Souchon, the deployment by today's critics of the notion of ‘generation’ helps to give superficial coherence and symbolic originality to the younger artists who uphold these values and techniques. As a result, and because the music reviews referenced in this article are extracted from ‘high-brow’ magazines (including Télérama), this article also considers the changing place of chanson in the elite discourse of contemporary France.