A Sunday Post on Monday Morning

There are websites I go for information, ideas and entertainment, and there are websites I go to, for want of a better phrase, review the opposition. The EU Times is one of these sites. Despite putting on a pretence of objectivity with its detached news-writing style, the article names and tagging system quickly reveals an unhealthy interest in 'immigration', 'homosexuals' and 'terrorism', and simple deconstruction reveals an extreme-right bias. It appears to be run on donations and, judging by the copious image links of the prize-to-be-won variety, advertising money. It was the subtle title 'Europe Becomes Less European With Each New Wave of Mass Immigration', however, that caught my eye -in particular the curious mention of Yorkshire & Humberside's own BNP MEP, Andrew Brons. He reportedly states:

"Third World cultures are like overcoats that can be taken off at the port of entry and replaced with a European cultural overcoat that can be issued with residence and citizenship papers...The children of such immigrants are allegedly as European as the indigenous population. They’re not. Distinctive cultures are made by distinctive peoples and not the other way round...We are not the products of our culture; our cultures are the products of our peoples."

Several thoughts immediately sprang to mind -first of all that there is some kind of inadvertant praise placed on the 'distictive', homogenous culture of the 'Third World', and secondly that this University of York educated, National Front leader understands culture very, very little. Not to mention the fact that cultural contact is more likely than not going to give rise to cultural blending, whether or not the contact is hostile, cultures are too flexible to be passed onto succeeding generations wholly intact. Cultures are not static as he and the extreme right wing tend to assume.

But in mor uplifting news, Nanowrimo has started, and has already impinged on my tardiness by making this post too late for Sunday. Nontheless, I have just over 1000 words down on the page, as does Rachel, although we intend to double that each night this November. Excerpts from that later.

Over the week I may introduce another poll and change the logo. There's also a planned move to Wednesdays for a second weekly post, although Sunday Songs will remain here.

Speaking of which, this week's song is Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.



After a lot of thought and competition by other songs, I chose this one for a variety of reasons. While the lyrics are good for once I think they are of secondary importance to the powerful and talented voice of Grace Slick, whose delivery here is a superb, building tension that relates so well to the other instruments. It also keeps me uplifted on my cold, depressing journey to work in the mornings, and so deserves extra special praise.

More Developments

The first version of this post was intended to be a discussion about dissemination. It failed because, in writing it, it grew into a gigantic beast that would not make easy reading, and so for that reason it now resides in a Word document, waiting to be tamed and released as part of a coherent package. Perhaps it will form part of my anti-postprocessual manifesto, but for now it exists merely as an independent critique. With two presentations to do and two looming essays to bear in mind, there are also a number of other ideas for the future, and possible avenues for this blog to explore. I won't bore anyone too much by producing a list.

Nanowrimo is fast approaching, and my plans for my own story have been developing accordingly. After drafting my plot three times, I have finally felt confident enough about the story to release a brief synopsis (which can be viewed here), although there are many details that still need to be figured out. Steve's advice has been to keep some aspects fluid and seed in some ideas that could be chased later if necessary, and this seems prudent. Rachel too has decided to get involved this November, and has started her own blog in order to cover it. She informs me that it will detail many other things, so watch out for new posts:

Link to Rachel's blog

Ever since work I have had The Nolan's I'm In The Mood For Dancing relentlessly buzzing around my head, and the only cure has been Neil Young's Rockin In The Free World.



And on this basis alone it deserves to be this week's Sunday Song. Anti-Republican, forceful and almost angry, it has been perfect listening on cold trips to the outside world, as well as being an interesting exploration of the concept of freedom, and its upsides and downsides. It also rips George Bush snr's 'Thousand Points of Light' speech to shreds, champions the poor and marginalised, and provides a reaction to religious turmoil in the Middle East -making this song especially relevant and enduring.

Archaeology Time?

This week, I've been inducted (induced?) into the Archaeology Department graduate society, run clean out of money and worked long shifts that take up the hours of daylight.

But apart from that, I've also been focused on archaeological writing. By and large I've been taking notes in anticipation of the de facto start of term, of which my time will be divided between 'Field Archaeology', 'The Vikings', and 'Narrating Our Pasts'. There is also a Centre For Medieval Studies lecture running tomorrow from 5:30pm, entitled 'Popular Politics in Late Medieval English Towns' and delivered by Christian Liddy of Durham University, which I intend to make an appearance at.

But my main interest this week has been the development of an article I drafted several weeks ago, now titled 'Post-Holier Than Thou'. A 4-page toe-in-the-water affair, it was always my intention to gather my thoughts before the autumn term, summarising my academic opinions from the end of my undergraduate degree and through its gestation period over the summer. The finished work, the first of three planned articles, has been submitted to The Post Hole (a student-run archaeology magazine at York) with the prospect of being published on Monday 25th October. It concerns the results of my dissertation research, and the problems I have harboured for a while now with postprocessual archaeology -but it is delivered, I hope, in a manner that allows it to be accessible to all years of students of archaeology. As soon as the resources I require for the second installment exist in an accessible format (which I am ensured they will be within a few weeks), the process of writing the second part will be underway.

In other news, today's Sunday Song is one that I've found myself turning to secretly all week. A mainstay of iPod playlists ever since my AS year, Interpol's The New, from their debut album Turn On The Bright Lights, has always been listenable to me. From the tired, almost optimistic lyrical openers in the melodic first half to the avant-guard detuning of guitars in the choatic second, a sense of self-doubt in ability dogs Bank's tone throughout. While the sense of urgency in the second half is fun, I find the more conventional first more rewarding.

And there's your lot.

Nanowrimo

So the last few days have been dominated by the prospect of original writing. With November fast approaching, The National Novel Writing Month rears its' head once again. Nanowrimo, as it is known, is a challenge whereby thousands of people across the world attempt to write a 50,000-word novella within the 30 day month of November. Derided for not actually having a reward other than the satisfaction of completing the challenge, the upside is a more informal attitude in the absence of monetary gain, and the sense of community and support fostered in the forums. For the last two years I found out only during November itself and was, consequently, too late to get involved, but this year I was prewarned and have been considering my contribution ever since.

My initial idea, now discarded, was a science-fiction piece called Remus Restored. The plot concerned a youth on a distant planet 600 years from now, colonised by a group of pioneers from Earth from the settlership Remus, who is desperate to return to the homeplanet (now abandoned). Raised on old, traditional stories about the Blue Marble, this youth escapes the drudgery of his backwater world and embarks on an adventure, encountering space pirates, slave ships, and ambitious interplanetary empires. Upon encountering Earth, my character was to discover that the planet was under strict quarantine, enforced by a rouge AI-controlled missile silo on the Moon that had systematically destroyed all inbound and outbound traffic (initially to stop the spread of a real contagion), but which had never been deprogrammed after its controller's own demise. After besting the missile silo, the character was to then return to Earth, and discover the remains of humanity.

To hell with that, I thought later. I'm an archaeology graduate, and qualified to write much more than that. Thus I am proud to present my next idea, the provisionally titled An End To Eagles.

While this is so far a very briefly sketched-out option, the plot is as follows:

The protagonist is an auxiliary in the militarised zone around Hadrian's Wall towards the end of Roman rule, patrolling and pacifying the northern tribes. After a succession of ambitious generals drain the army of manpower, crisis erupts. The Picts beyond the border are beginning to break through to the north as the Roman forces are starved of manpower, law and order in the cities is beginning to lose out to civil revolt, and Gaul has been overrun by foreign forces, cutting off contact with the rest of the Empire. As the new military chief Constantine proclaims himself emperor of the west and departs to take the imperial throne, the protagonist begins to feel the strain of being Roman in a new world where being Roman isn't enough anymore. As the Picts, Saxons and rebels start to rise, the walls of empire are soon to cave.

As the point is not quality but quantity, hopefully I'll be able to draw on enough material with this to hit 50,000 words. Research is going to be necessary, but since making it perfect is of secondary importance having a coherent plot will be key.

In other news, today's Sunday Song is In An Aeroplane Over The Sea, by Neutral Milk Hotel (the lyrics are published in my Facebook Notes). A stream of consciousness, the lyrics appear not to fit together and seem dream-like. The strange noise that occurs both on the track and throughout the album, made as far as I know from feedback produced by playing a violin directly into an amp, resembles the ghost of Anne Frank. This overall dream-like effect makes the track singularly brilliant and endlessly listenable, with bittersweet lyrics drifting between happiness and sorrow. Best of all are the skilfully delivered one-liners like 'how strange it is to be anything at all' (the song's final line) that define feelings previously thought to have been too vague to put into words.

Also, it's very easy and satisfying to play on guitar.

The First Step

Perhaps the first post is always the hardest to write. An introduction to myself, an introduction to my ideas, and an introduction to the content that will inevitably find its way here -all of these are such a mouthful to coherently produce in the very first missive. Then there's writing style, post format and regularity to formulate, and I don't even know exactly who I'm addressing at this stage. Or even how many of you there are! I'm going to attempt it anyway, of course. You know me well enough by now.

First: myself. While I very sincerely doubt I'll attract followers who aren't known to me personally in some way, I find it necessary to properly introduce myself. A young, poor, and persistently anxious person, I am a masters student at a northern English university, studying archaeology but with an interest in history, philosophy, literature, politics, geography (of the human variety) and music. I verb for a noun: I work for a pittance, I volunteer for a conservation charity, I write for pleasure, I study for a variety of reasons. Which leads me to:

Second: my ideas. While I reason that my ideas will naturally surface from time to time in my future posts, some sort of rationale is needed. This is not easy, given the variety of subjects I intend to explore. At a higher level I am a socialist, of a sort of Orwellian bearing. I sympathise with feminist, anarchist, communist, libertarian, internationalist and environmentalist tendencies, although I wouldn't consider any of these to have a hand directly on the rudder. In my work I tend to advocate processualism and shun post-processualism (post-modernism), as well as history-based approaches, purely economic explanations for the past, and purely military explanations for the past. I believe societies are and have always been much more complex than that, and always try to view things in a relativist manner.

Third: the nature of this blog. I intend to use this blog as a sounding-board, or perhaps echo-chamber, for my many various thoughts, and mantelpiece for curiosities and experiences. Thus we come to the rationale behind 'strata' as a name for the blog: it encompasses a plethora of topics while evoking the field of archaeology, which this site is, primarily, a depositary for (I have Rachel to thank for the name). But hopefully ideas for creative writing, world theories and interesting factoids will make an appearance as my thoughts lead me to interesting and strange new landscapes.

Hence the logo, by the way.

James