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.