Slow and Punk Archaeology Revisited: In Praise of Fragments

I’m off tomorrow to attend a conference at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. The conference is titled “The Digital, The Archaeological, and the Ethical.” My paper touches on these topics a bit more obliquely than perhaps I would have wanted, but in the end, I think it works. Slow and Punk Archaeology Revisited: In Praise of Fragments A few years ago, I floated the idea of punk archaeology. This was really a call to celebrate the spontaneous, collaborative, and often improvised character of field archaeology outside of the well-heeled and established practices of Big Digs. At the time, I also had a growing interest in conviviality (in the sense of Ivan Illich) and do-it-yourself practices. As an undisciplined thinker punk and conviviality became blurred in my mind and this commingling led me to look at the slow movement. The slow movement, perhaps best known for its rejection fast food, shared Illich’s critique of the general acceleration of life in the 20th and 21st…