The Research

There are two major areas that in interested in researching.

The first is how do cultures change. That’s a big topic because it would be helpful first to say what culture is. I quite like Jack Cohen’s definition non-biological inherited privilege, but I’m not sure if it’s right. Possibly I should take another of his ideas and say that it’s about how extelligence changes. Basically when people become Hellenised or Romanised or Americanised, what is it that changes and how does it occur? I like the raw concept of agency as a model but I’m slightly out of step with most archaeologists as I don’t consider agent to be a synonym for individual. I’m slightly further out of step with many archaeologists in that I’m not at all sure that the individual is a helpful concept, though it has been the central feature of post-Thatcherite archaeology in the UK. I’m trying to devise a model that integrates what happens at the sub-individual level with the supra-individual level. Having said that I’m not completely out on my own archaeologists are happy with concepts like structuration and memes or dividuals, but not often at the same time.

My other major interest is archaeoastronomy. I’m interested in how people saw their world working and how they considered their position in space as well as time. It is another minority interest but again it’s not too far from the mainstream. It’s rather like a holistic version of landscape archaeology.

I’m currently completing my PhD thesis which brings both of these strands together looking at the cosmology and identity of Greek colonists in Sicily and how it may have changed over time with acculturation.

While studying for the PhD I also found a possible correlation with the heliacal rising of Delphinus and the Delphic calendar. You can read about it in Antiquity or in English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian and Spanish.

Published
* 2005. “Cosmology as an Indicator of Ethnicity? The Case of the Greek Colonies of Sicily” Abstracts of the 106th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. Boston: AIA, p.38.
* 2005. Knowing When to consult the Oracle of Delphi. Antiquity 305. pp 564-72. (co-authored with Efrosyni Bousikas)
* 2005. Increased Joy through Delegated Reading. Archaeological Computing Newsletter 63.
In Press
The Sky – Chapter for the Oxford Hellenic Handbook.
In Progress
* The difficulties of extrapolating astronomical practices into prehistoric periods.