Michael Shanks - Archaeologist at Stanford

I research and teach archaeology at Stanford University in California. A lot of my work has focused on theory - how archaeologists work to reconstruct the past. I have also delved deeply into the early Greek cities in the Mediterranean, into early farming societies and their monuments, into the Roman and medieval north of England.

My perspective is a broad one. For me, archaeologists do not discover the past; they work on what remains. Archaeology is about our relationships with what is left of the past.

And more - archaeology is THE discipline of things - the history of design, how people get on with the material world, materiality itself.

I have always adored the company of artists - my wife Helen works in ceramics (see some of her wonderful work here) - I have had the privilege of working with some amazing talents (notably Brith Gof).

I am currently enjoying a renewed childhood with my children Molly and Ben, who forever remind me of how to be fascinated by the most mundane of things.

Research and Projects | Writing | Weblog | Galleries | Photoblogs | Classes | Resumé

Metamedia - my lab - media projects in their archaeological materiality [link]

Stanford Humanities Lab - transdisciplinary projects - I direct SHL with Jeffrey Schnapp and Henry Lowood - [link]

Weblog - all things archaeological - [link]

Archaeographer - exploring representations of all things archaeological - [link]

Figure and Ground - "at a scene of crime anything might be relevant" - experiments in an archaeological sensibility - [link]

Chorography - deep maps and temporal topographies - [link]

Traumwerk - hypermedia and collaborative authoring - experiments in archaeological thinking, writing and imaging - [link] also [link] and now at [link]

Presence - "Performing presence: from the live to the simulated" - major international collaborative project 2005-2010 - [link]

DaimlerChrysler 2015 - major collaborative project - an ethnography-oriented foresight model of material culture in the vehicle interior of 2015 - June - November 2005

Seminars

Critical studies in new media - Mellon sponsored graduate workshop within Stanford Humanities Center, this year 2005/2006 exploring the politics of presence

Stanford archaeological theory - reading group at Stanford Archaeology Center

See also

Archaeography - collective photoblogging - where photography meets archaeology - [link]

Archaeopaedia - a collaborative encyclopaedia of all things archaeological - just getting started - [link]

Archaeolog - collaborative blog on archaeology - [link] - coming soon

Philolog - weblog exploring Classical philology - just getting started - [link]

Though increasingly outdated, my conventional web site site goes back several years and is still available - [link]