Michael Wilcox

Michael Wilcox will be joining us from  April 2015 as Atelier archivist and researcher. A retired archivist with a background in archaeology, he has been involved in several previous productions in the background but will now take on occasional research assignments relating to new productions.

Rio Sonora Fieldschool

Michael and I were delighted to be able to join in as participants in  the Southwest Folklife Alliance’s  Rio Sonora Fieldschool  based in Banamichi Mexico this past June.  The idea of filming the  field program and its visits on a casual basis soon turned into a more serious project to carefully record each local visit …

Refining a Pilot Film

 Archaeology from the Ashes is a film short about wildfire and  archaeology  in California. It focuses on the San Diego back country, where a complex topography and a convoluted wildland/urban interface together with older fire suppression practices  which are now widely questioned contributed  to the ferocity of a string of wildfires between 2000 and 2010.  One …

A Visit with Lucy, Darwin and Michele Guieu

Michele Guieu is a French artist who recently created a largely  ephemeral installation contemplating her own relationship with and influences from palaeontology, Darwinian evolutionary theory and her experiences living in Africa with her parents as a child. The Art Produce Gallery is a small space adjacent to an excellent coffee bar in San Diego. It’s …

Screen Media Commentary: Six Generations

RESEARCHER GAVE CHUMASH THEIR HERITAGE??????? This article (and film clip) appeared in the LA Times today. The headline is problematic, since Harrington’s  handling of his fieldnotes meant that the information only came back to the Chumash through the hard work of many who searched out the fieldnotes and deciphered them rather than through some generosity …

Bonekickers

Here’s the problem: They make TV dramas about all sorts of occupations; crab fishermen, lawyers, doctors, ice-truckers. The excellent A Very Peculiar Practice even made academic environments look intriguing and Third Rock from the Sun had some fun with anthropology.  So why can’t they make a good dramatic or humorous series about archaeologists then? Bonekickers, a 6 part series shown in …