Fractured Media: Challenging the Dimensions of Archaeology’s Typical Visual Modes of Engagement

As new media technologies increasingly populate our toolkits, questions arise about whether archaeologists are yet even competent users of orthodox media. Prior to engaging with emerging tools, this paper takes one step back to probe the subtexts of traditional two-dimensional archaeological images. Of interest is whether the many implications of these images can be made poignant via personally manipulating and imposing upon their form and function. Influenced by the work of various playwrights, artists, anthropologists, cultural theorists, and archaeologists, this paper examines what is legitimate in our practices of picturing the past, and what it means to explicitly—perhaps illicitly—interfere with typical archaeological visuals. Via tentative experiments with assorted maps, photos and illustrations, I endeavour to turn these orthodox modes of engagement into more defiant tools of discovery and critique. Ultimately, my objective is to disrupt convention and prompt archaeologists to confront and respond to themselves (and their responsibilities to others) in their everyday interactions with media.     

Differential diagnosis of a calcified object from a 4th–5th century AD burial in Aqaba,Jordan

In 1997 a calcified object was recovered from the pelvic region of an adult male excavated from an ancient cemetery in Aqaba, Jordan. The cemetery (n = 48) dates to the middle 4th to early 5th century AD and is associated with the Byzantine‐period marine trading centre of Aila located on the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. The oblong calcification consisted of linearly aligned tubules within a thin shell. Twenty‐eight conditions potentially resulting in calcification within the pelvic region were considered. Of these, five were retained as possible diagnoses due to the object's location and size and the presence of a thin shell and fully calcified tubules. In the end, the object appears to be a calcified, but unidentified, parasite. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Challenging “Islamic Fundamentalism”

The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society Series #9, Mark Juergensmeyer, editor. Against Islamic Extremism: The Writings of Muhammad Sa^cid al-^cAshmawy. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, editor. Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Inter-religious Solidarity Against Oppression, Farid Esack.     

Reviews

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