The well known Belgian ethnographic film-maker Luc de Heusch started his career as a poet who was part of the CoBrA group (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). He later fell under the influence of Claude Lévi-Strauss as well as Marcel Griaule and Jean Rouch. He was professor of anthropology at the FreeContinue Reading
William L. Rathje (PhD Harvard 1971), professor emeritus of archaeology at the University of Arizona, studied rubbish as an insight into human behaviour. “The only way to know a person is by what they throw away”, he has repeatedly said. Jeff Harrison has written a comprehensive tribute for Univ. of Arizona NewsContinue Reading
Sadly, on Friday night March 2nd, Peter Loizos died in London. He is survived by his wife Gill and three children. Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Peter worked there from 1969 to 2002 and headed the department for a time. During theContinue Reading
Stephen Nugent at Goldsmiths College has sadly announced the death of Josep R. Llobera. Born in Havana and brought up in Catalonia Josep had made Britain his home since 1969. He taught for many years in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths and following his retirement was a Visiting Professor inContinue Reading
Last month, one of our esteemed colleagues – Peter Gathercole – passed away, aged 81. Born in Norfolk in 1929, Peter was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and London. He then trained as a curaror in Birmingham, working for two years at the Scunthorpe Museum and eventually moved toContinue Reading
From Daniel Miller, UCL I hope readers won’t mind a short personal condolence to the family and friends of F.R. Allchin who was my PhD supervisor. Based at the University of Cambridge since 1959 he was the leading UK expert on the archaeology of South Asia, co-author with his wifeContinue Reading
Materialworldblog greatly regrets the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss. For a series of comments, in French, on his life see Le Figaro, and an obituary here. As well as a note from Le Monde. For a series of links to media commentary in English see the AAA blog, here.Continue Reading
An event to celebrate the career of Denis Cosgrove will take place on Friday 30 May, at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, from 5pm (tea served from 4pm). This event will include talks by some of the people who knew and worked with Denis since theContinue Reading
We provide a link to an obituary by Neal Ascherson for Peter Ucko, former Secretary of the World Archaeological Congress and former Director of the Institute of Archaeology UCL, that was published in the Independent UK on the 21st June. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2686806.ece Click below to continue: Michael Rowlands provides some furtherContinue Reading
Students who came to several of the regular material culture seminars last year at the Department of Anthropology UCL were probably somewhat amazed that there, in the audience, was a slight woman, evidently in her eighties, who listened and questioned, and was still clearly an active participant, despite having becomeContinue Reading
July 29th 1929 to March 6th 2007 Academic creates genuine breakthrough in thinking about key issues with carefully composed original thesis. Comes to be better known. Responds to the hype by writing pretentious, largely ungrounded but clever sounding prose about more or less everything. After a while best known throughContinue Reading