Photobombing: Mobility, Humour and Culture

The photobomb, in name and practice, is a phenomenon of Web2.0 – in the sense of being a participatory and read/write Web. This paper contributes to the academic discourse concerning the anthropology of the Internet. Photobombing exploits the ready availability of channels for individual expression created with writability, the importance of user-generated humour for the Web and theubiquity of digital photography devices. The issues of the visual and of humour\ud are both problematic territory for academic research and, despite their significance\ud within the context of digital culture, have received little focused attention in this\ud context (Gillispie, 2003). By drawing upon an observational methodology we\ud construct a typology of photobombs drawn from a variety of sources to understand\ud the simplicity and subtlety of humour being employed as well as the way in which\ud the photobomb – as a discrete artefact - is embedded and interlinked with other\ud (digital) cultural practices. The approach employed here for photobombs offers insight into the potential for the wider application of typological methods in the search and retrieval of (digital) visual object

The apparatus of digital archaeology

Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses – technological, methodological, software, hardware, material, immaterial – which in their own ways and to varying degrees shape the nature of Digital Archaeology. Our attention, however, is perhaps inevitably more closely focussed on research questions, choice of data, and the kinds of analyses and outputs. In the process we tend to overlook the effects the tools themselves have on the archaeology we do beyond the immediate consequences of the digital. This paper introduces cognitive artefacts as a means of addressing the apparatus more directly within the context of the developing archaeological digital ecosystem. It argues that a critical appreciation of our computational cognitive artefacts is key to understanding their effects on both our own cognition and on the creation of archaeological knowledge. In the process, it defines a form of cognitive digital archaeology in terms of four distinct methods for extracting cognition from the digital apparatus layer by layer

'The Work of Teacher Education' : Final Research Report

Partnership teacher education – in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers – works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research. The most time-intensive activity for the higher education tutors in our sample was maintaining relationships with schools and between schools and individual trainee teachers. The need to maintain relationships to such a degree is caused in part by the creation of a marketplace of ‘providers’ of teacher education who compete for funding on the basis of inspection and quality assurance data and also by the very early school placements that characterise the English model of initial teacher education in comparison to other European models such as that of Finland

Worked shell from the Northern Moluccas

The Northern Moluccas occupy a pivotal geographical zone at the interface of the Island Southeast Asian and Melanesian spheres. Whether one looks at genes, languages, Holocene animal translocations, or the archaeological record, it is clear that the cultures through time on these islands have both been shaped by, and have contributed to shaping, the complex fusion of influences that characterises the Asia/Pacific margin. The project reported on in this monograph intensively investigated this area for the first time, and uncovered a rich range of sites spanning c. 35,000 years of the islands’ history. There are few constants in the archaeological record that can be tracked through time. The vertebrate record of the Northern Moluccas shows dramatic shifts at different points in the past, and the ceramic record is necessarily restricted to the last few thousand years. The pre‑eminence of lithic technology in the study of human cultural change through time is due to its global presence as a robust archaeological constant, but in Island Southeast Asia, and the Northern Moluccas in particular, another constant has emerged: shell technology. From the earliest archaeological deposits at the oldest excavated site, Golo Cave, a range of shell technologies were in use ranging from the formal to the expedient (Szabó et al. 2007; Szabó and Koppel 2015). In contrast, associated lithic technologies were found to be non-standardised and uncomplicated in their manufacture (Szabó et al. 2007). While, to some extent, the early diversification of shell technologies at Golo Cave can be seen as a response to the low-quality lithic materials that were locally available, this in itself does not provide an adequate explanation. The diversity of shell-working from the lowest levels at Golo, both in terms of materials used and reduction techniques employed, clearly implies that a broad tradition of shell-working was well established by the time the site was initially occupied. Additionally, the techniques applied to various types of shell diverge from those applied to lithic material, confirming that shell was no simple technological substitute for stone. The range of stratified sites excavated as part of this archaeological project provides snapshots through time of the rise and decline of a variety of shell-working traditions. Some have clear links beyond the Northern Moluccas whilst others are seemingly idiosyncratic. The shell artefacts will be reported upon site by site, with temporal patterning and extra-Moluccan associations being considered in the discussion section

Do-It-Yourself digital archaeology: introduction and practical applications of photography and photogrammetry for the 2D and 3D representation of small objects and artefacts

Photography and photogrammetry have recently become among the most widespread and preferred visualisation methods for the representation of small objects and artefacts. People want to see the past, not only know about it; and the ability to visualise objects into virtually realistic representations is fundamental for researchers, students and educators. Here, we present two new methods, the ‘Small Object and Artefact Photography’ (‘SOAP’) and the ‘High Resolution “DIY” Photogrammetry’ (‘HRP’) protocols. The ‘SOAP’ protocol involves the photographic application of modern digital techniques for the representation of any small object. The ‘HRP’ protocol involves the photographic capturing, digital reconstruction and three-dimensional representation of small objects. These protocols follow optimised step-by-step explanations for the production of high-resolution two- and three-dimensional object imaging, achievable with minimal practice and access to basic equipment and softwares. These methods were developed to allow anyone to easily and inexpensively produce high-quality images and models for any use, from simple graphic visualisations to complex analytical, statistical and spatial analyses.Introduction Materials and methods Expected result

The aesthetics of the city–image

In this paper, I will examine the aesthetic implications of the theories which regard the city as an image. Essentially, I will focus on the positions of the two practitioners, Kevin Lynch and Juhani Pallasmaa, who are an urban planner and an architect respectively, in order to confront two very different approaches to the ‘image’; namely, an empirical approach and a phenomenological one. I am interested in what the city becomes when it is looked upon as an image and I will reflect on the experiences of the city‑image in its various aspects. The aim of this discussion is an attempt to outline certain research areas for exploring the aesthetics of the city centred on the image, with the practitioners’ theories enabling us to widen the scope of this exploration