Two Flip Board Magazines

I am experimenting with Flip Board Magazines. If you are a Flip Board user and want some slightly curated content on cultural property issues, art crime, and antiquities trafficking check out:

Anonymous Swiss Collector: flip.it/lYao9

If you want archaeology and heritage misc. check out:

The Archaeologist: http://flip.it/aFXeD 

I am enjoying the smoothness of flip board. Let us see where it goes. If you are not familiar with it and have either an iphone or an android phone, check it out.

Walmart and the destruction of Mexican Heritage

I have just written a guest post for Union Solidarity International about the construction of a Walmart at the World Heritage Site of Teotihuacán near Mexico City in 2004. The New York Times has recently exposed the significant amount of bribery and corruption that fuelled the permission to construct the store and several unions, including one that represents archaeologist and heritage workers in Mexico, are threatening action.

Please have a look: http://usilive.org/walmart-destroys-mexicos-cultural-heritage/

Excavating digitally with images. Also a bit of time travel.

These are fast times, amigos, fast times. Fast times for a (archaeol)(crimn)(soci)(whatever)-ologist who spends much of her day looking up photos of old stuff and people messing around with old stuff on the internet.

Indus figurines and early image search

Google image search has been my bread and butter since it was unleashed on the world back in 2001. Discovering it coincided with starting an online journal and thus the journal was illustrated. Discovering it also coincided with my undergraduate archaeology degree and my need to add flourish to whatever it was I was academically up to. I remember writing a paper on female Indus Valley Civilization figurines which I filled with various images that I had pulled off of google image search. My professor called me back after class and asked "where did you GET these images". I showed him how to use google image search. Minds were blown. I was hauled in to show a number of different people how to use it.

Over the past little while I have found some new features of Google image search to be a bit unwieldy. I really only noticed it over the weekend. I think I am supposed to use image search in a new way but I haven't figured out what the way is. I want to just turn the new stuff off...the giant preview of the image that is super low quality and totally useless, the three buttons... Looking at it now I don't really know what I am complaining about but I can tell you one thing. If you click the button to take you to the image, then click the back button, you don't end up where I would expect you to end up. Maybe that is just me. Maybe I am just old. Maybe I need an undergrad to tell me how it works.

Yet, with all the new, and all my complain, I just had a delightful experience. I am on the edge of writing to someone about a particular image taken during the excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamen. I remembered the story of this image on Saturday and I think he might like it. I wanted a large version of the photo and, because I can do such things, I used the feature of google image search that lets you search with an image for similar images. I directed it to my small version of the photo and expected to get a pile of similar and same images. This is what google gave me instead:

Ten-year-old me would have about died at the sudden explosion of interlinked Egypt info. Look at it all there. Thirty-year-old me just sat back and marvelled at the amount of information that it could glean from the one image and the arrangement of it all on the page. Since they deployed that right hand info pane I have mostly been making fun of it. I have probably notified them of incorrect images over there two dozen times. But, when they get it right, it is just lovely. Something you can get lost in.

Okay, sure, not for the specialist viewer, but go back in time to when you were 10 and you were, I don't know, producing a school report and presentation trying to explore the question "Was King Tutankhamen Murdered?" (report available on file at my parents' house). Having this sort of presentation of the past would have been magic. It still feels like magic.

Lord of the Rings remains and A Very Hobbit Christmas in Middle Earth

I am often in New Zealand...at least more often than I am in various other places. While here I tend to think about three things: the global and local Indigenous movement(s), the maintenance of a national symbology, and The Lord of the Rings. These are not mutually exclusive categories. Also, I mostly think of the latter but I pretend to think of the first two to, you know, seem like I am not just slacking off every time I am here.

Seriously, y'all, I went to Te Papa yesterday to see, umm, the repatriation hall...again. I was certainly not there to play video games and have my photo taken with the three trolls from The Hobbit.

Why, look here! The new edition of the University of Glasgow's Love Archaeology is out.

Not only do they have Arthur Demerest writing on the ol' 2012 deal, not only do they have an article on LARPing (haven't read it yet), they have allowed me to blather about New Zealand Lord of the Rings sets, elf extras, and passing a lack of Helm's Deep on the way to wherever. These were heritage experiences. Oh yes.

Being here in New Zealand for The Hobbit is great. I get to claim I went to the film twice for purely academic reasons. Also I get to take photos of Tolkien inspired thingamadoos and sleep soundly, soothed by the clear fact that I can no doubt use them for something eventually. That I can call this working.

Take a look at LoveArchMag Issue 3: Myths and Monsters. Visit New Zealand. Accept that this seriously delights me.

Also, here is Poi-e, because it has been a while AND it seems like the Patea Maori club has a nice new building with Maori folks riding moas flanked by strange lizard people decorating the top bit of it. That makes more sense than it seems to. Kia ora all!

Baktuns, The End of the World, Conceptions of the Future, and Being a still-confused 30-year-old

At the moment I am so deep into vacation that I can't bear to look at anything but non-challenging novels and crosswords in the local paper, but I am sure you mighty heritage bloggers out there have all commented on the quiet death of the 2012 myth. I'm quite happy to see it go myself. For the past 11 years this has constant subject of my general conversation with those not in the IN in archaeology circles. Not by choice, no, it just wiggled its way into conversation. Roughly 11 years ago I decided to 'focus' on the Maya and there 2012 was, waiting for me. I expect a few conversations about how 'nothing happened' in the coming weeks and then, poof, back to crystal skulls like normal.

Now for a personal heritage moment: the passing of the 2012 myth makes me feel surprisingly NOT old. I first heard word about it when I was 19 and I distinctly remember calculating that I would be 30 years old in December of 2012. I had such a strong feeling that 30 was incredibly old and thus 2012 was conceptual eons away. So far that it seemed like a convincing end of the world. I remember that period of my life as a time of hope and fear. Like I had to establish lines of thought and action to extend into a mysterious future that I was not really very good at thinking through. The future has always eluded me. It seemed so easy to 'miss-step' back then. Perhaps it was.

But things have 'worked', so to speak. I suppose they have to. In a way that is why I don't write in this blog very much: I am in Anonymous Swiss Collector mode. Also, I don't feel as old as I thought I would 11 years ago. It is 2012 and somehow 30 feels young and inexperienced. Maybe that is what one always feels? I think I would choose curiosity, even when laced with a bit of fear, to total confidence and stagnation. The world hasn't ended, the cycle has just started again.

Happy 13th Baktun everyone...or 14th depending on who you ask.

Introducing the Trafficking Culture Website

Finally, finally I get to show you folks the website for the University of Glasgow's Trafficking Culture project! Direct your browsers to:

http://traffickingculture.org

I think the real gem of the whole thing is the Encyclopedia, which is meant to provide brief overviews of interesting case studies, but our Publications section is useful (download those PDFs people), and of course, you can find out about me and what I am up to.

Remember this is a work in progress...very very very in progress. It is a strong start to something that we hope will grow, both in obvious ways (expanding the Encyclopedia, adding more hosted Publications by people not specifically IN the project) and not so obvious ways. Each of our individual research foci will be expanded upon, contain period project updates, and will eventually incorporate multimedia elements and so on. We will be hosting and presenting all sorts of data (we hope). 

Also, the site might expand in ways we can't even imagine. The sky is the limit. Suffice to say it is a fair go and I think it is a good starting point. I'm proud of it! 

What do you all think?

Cultural Continuity

Now for a dose of heritage and modernity:

Feast Day at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia (postcard from 1910) 

Feast Day at Tiwanaku, Bolivia (photograph from 2005)

The first is on sale on ebay and I long to buy it. I won't (since I won't buy from ebay); but the tone of the shot is so remarkably familiar. The masks. The dudes milling about. The chance to start dancing/drinking/rockin a zampoña at any moment. It is the same place. Heck, chances are these were taken within a few meters of the same spot.

Update: Location, Research and Ideas

Although I don't particularly like this blog to swing into the personal, I have been told by a person wiser than myself that I should be a bit more forthcoming about where I am at and why. He is right. This blog exists mostly to toss my random ideas out there, but if any of them stick on anyone I would like them to get in touch. So here it is folks:

In the past month I have received my PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and I have moved to the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow. I am now working with Simon Mackenzie, Neil Brodie, and Suzie Thomas on that well-funded Illicit Antiquities/Criminal Networks project that people have been buzzing about.

I've been awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and a Core Fulbright Scholar Award to do this. Geographically, I will be focusing on Latin America with a bit of a weight on Andean South America (although I have been thinking a lot about Panama and Costa Rica and love Belize with all my heart). Everything is in the earliest of stages for me, but my work is set to focus on the trickle down of national and international antiquities protection law to communities who actually come in contact with and, at times, manage, the ancient past.

A strong strain in all of this will be looking at comparative criminal markets/networks: what else is going on in these areas, how are those networks related or different, how are the perceived, how are they regulated (or not regulated) mostly just to see if anything is there. Sure, yes, in this part of the globe the obvious criminal network is cocaine. I see this as an interesting possibility as in Bolivia, coca production and consumption is tied up in deep cultural memories and very modern displays of political/social/cultural identity. But beyond this, my mind comes back to sorts of, how should I say it, institutionally/professionally sanctioned illicit markets and networks. Biological samples from living Amazonian groups? Medical/botanical Indigenous knowledge that wiggles its way into proprietary western pharmaceuticals?  I have a lot of ideas. I'm still working them out.

Fieldwork is going to happen and it will be in Bolivia first. I am currently looking for some sort of NGO to be my host institution without much luck, mostly because I need to move away from being associated with just archaeology and archaeologists. I don't think the host institution needs to do much to "host" me: I come with my own money and a book grant for the institution through the Fulbright, but sorting it out is new to me. Although I am open to suggestions, I think if I have to do initial fieldwork quite soon (sorting out the timeline), Copacabana might be the right place. A largely Indigenous community that manages major tourist archaeological sites but also might have thoughts on trans-lake movement of illicit/illegal goods (aha, you say, alternative criminal networks!). Also I have been to Copacabana. It seems doable. Email me with ideas folks!

More broadly, the project will have a website quite soon and you will be able to find out more there. Until then I am very eager to get in touch with people who have ideas and opinions about all this. I know that there will, no doubt, be backlash from certain sectors but I sincerely hope that the various interest groups can come together on this one. I'm really interested in hearing from dealers and collectors, even if my work probably won't come very close to you all very often. As valid stakeholders in all this, your ideas and opinions matter. I suppose what I am saying is that I am not in this to pick fights, rather I am here to learn.

Hopefully this will be exciting and great. The people I am working with are truly amazing (and quite a lot of fun) and I can't imagine where I would rather be.

The Lady Eve: 1940s Amazoniana

The Lost World (1925):
Silent Film, South America, and Dinos. YES Please!

It should come as no surprise that I thrive on historic western impressions of the Amazon. I don't think I have much scholarly to say about it, but I enjoy historic travel literature from South America probably far more than I should. Every cultural misunderstanding, every bit of Western bafflement, every bit of overt and subtle racism. I love it. I can see one version of the present constructed out of those foundations, a fact which allows me to act all scholarly in the face of some of the most outlandish stuff in there. Once I have that scholarly excuse, I can totally nerd out with my imagination. Someone please hand me my pith helmet, I'm ready to descend the Amazon and find a city of gold or, well, a plateau full of stop motion dinosaurs.

Amazoniana. That is what this is.

Last night I watched the 1941 film The Lady Eve for the first time. The real treat was the intro. For the first few minutes of the film we see Henry Fonda's character leaving the Amazon after a year. He is a wealthy heir to brewing money but his true passion lies with snakes... South American snakes of course.

Gordon Willey: how can we compete with that style?

The scientists all wear your standard field gear, plus beards and pith helmets. I questioned this for a few minutes but then accepted that people probably did dress just like this. Having just saved a photo of archaeologist Gordon Willey in the Viru Valley dressed based this general theme onto my computer, I had to take it as it comes.

What was interesting was the portrayal of the "natives". Unlike the pith helmeted scientists, the "natives" wear straw hats. The one "native" has no shirt on and the others are all rumpled. The men never turn around and are referred to as "boys". Pretty standard. The portrayal of the one female "native", though, is quite weird. I can't find a still so you will have to use your imagination. She is very light skinned but with dark hair and is shown with long flowing hair and wearing a flowered sarong a la Polynesia. She pouts onto the screen with a large wreath of leaves around her neck. One character gives her a rather harsh goodbye (you imagine they had a thing going) and she puts the wreath around his neck. End Amazon.

So yes, the implication is that this is his Amazonian lover being left behind with very little thought. To add to that, right there, with her present, the scientists joke with Henry Fonda to be careful because he has been away from women for so long: the vultures will descend upon him and his money. "Come on guys!" said I. "She is standing right there!". Throughout the film Fonda mentions not having been near women in a year. Sheesh.

Aside from the weird Polynesian image being used to represent a native Amazonian female, there is a very interesting sexual thing going on here. The Amazonian female is both a sexual object, perfect for field flings, but ultimately discardable when one returns to reality. She is also not a 'real' woman. She was never even close to a marriage prospect so she doesn't even qualify in conversation. She is Female. She isn't a Woman. No one questions it. In 1941 I suppose this idea wasn't problematic.

I wonder if things have changed very much. How do Western eyes REALLY view the bare-breasted Amazonian female in your standard National Geographic photo spread? The darker parts of me think that she is still a sexually charged curiosity above anything else.

I'm sure none of you every want to watch a film with me ever again!

EDIT: Thanks to archive.org you can watch all of the The Lost World! http://archive.org/details/lost_world

Screaming Mummies and Stolen Paintings: Is this why people collect human remains?

(cross posted on Property of an Anonymous Swiss Collector)

Lately I have been on a art-crime reading kick. Nothing fancy, just popular non-fiction about art theft in my lighter or lazy moments. Such reading makes me feel like I am working (even though I am not) and gives me various things to think about.

Last night I was reading about what seems to be the constant (and often successful) push for versions of Edvard Munch's The Scream to tumble into the stolen art abyss. Everyone seems to be stealing The Scream all the time. Dare I say it calls out for theft? I dare! I keep thinking about the next step in such art thefts and I guess that is the greatest mystery of them all: how can anyone possibly sell off The Scream? Who buys that?! This, of course, is where the "Dr No", directed theft for a secret private collector idea comes in.

I know, I know, people like that can't possibly exist: they are the stuff of novels and kind of crappy films. Yet, if I evaluate prominent art theft on a work by work basis, I imagine that The Scream has just the right tone and mystique to appeal to those master criminals of infinite resource out there. The Scream is the kind of piece desired by those who don't plan on sharing their art collection. It is internal....private. It is an angsty piece for your solitary, self-serving billionaire.

I have to admit, I've never really liked The Scream. Munch just isn't quite what I am looking for. There is something enchanting about his quite edgy 1894/95 Madonna (stolen along with The Scream in 2004), but I think my experience of emotion just does not match Munch's (probably for the best, yeah?). Yet I was instantly interested when I read that there is some evidence that the main figure in The Scream was inspired by Munch's viewing of a Peruvian mummy. "Oh! Yes!" said I.

Gauguin's "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" (Which is in the MFA? I should go look I suppose) has a possible Peruvian Mummy-inspired figure too. Gauguin felt that this painting should be read right to left and the mummy figure is the left-most (last) figure: to quote Gauguin "an old woman approaching death appears reconciled and resigned to her thoughts". The artist vowed to commit suicide after the completion of this painting (his masterwork) but he stuck it out for a few more years, dying in 1903 of a syphilis, alcohol, morphine overdose triple threat.

So how did this happen? Ancient Peruvian death as an image of modern angst by the fin de siècle suicidal artist set? I don't actually know. I have no idea.



Well, maybe I do have a bit of an idea. I sort of see two strains at work here. The more obvious is the sort of call of the non-Western in the emerging art movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. We all know antiquities and non-Western cultures played their part: your Cycladic figurines and African masks in Picasso... the moment that Matisse realized that Polynesian folks are awesome. Yet I always thought this was a bit cringe-worthy: placing a Western veneer on something else to make it palatable. In 2005, in an exhibit at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, I saw a Maori cape made out of Cambridge scarves. It felt like something that needed to be said.

The second strain is our pan-human curiosity about death. Mummies are death defiers. By simply still existing, they violate the rules of human existence and, thus, seem to hold some sort of secret about the human condition. Skin retracts when it desiccates (is that a word?), mummies tend to look like they are screaming (see a whole archaeology.org article on the topic of screaming mummies), various ancient Peruvians made mummy bundles that often had hands near faces, and BAM you have a dead body that knows the great unknowns of human existence and seems to be horrified by the enlightenment.

In a previous blog entry, I expressed some shock that people actually collect South American mummies. Yet, now that I think about it, perhaps that is not so shocking. If these bodies meant so much to Matisse and Munch that they based the focal points of their masterworks on them, someone else is going to see that. Chalk this blog entry up to trying to understand.