We’re rolling out Episode 6 in our first season of Caraheard a bit early this week because our unofficial, non-sponsor The University of North Dakota Writers’ Conference, begins tomorrow at 10 am.  

Richard’s show notes have been putting mine to shame so I need to step it up today. In this week’s episode we discuss the storage crisis in archaeology prompted by a recent forum in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. I start with the observation that everything is getting bigger and expanding (as Woody Allen once observed, the universe is expanding) except archaeological storage. In fact, companies like Amazon have multiple warehouses ranked among the largest buildings in the world and they’re patrolled by ROBOTS. Richard returns us to archaeology and contextualizes the storage crisis within larger issues of archaeological method (including storing artifacts in plastic bags purchased from a guy who sells pomegranate seeds). Richard and, then Bill, finally, get to the point that storage crisis is a proxy (war?) for larger issues within the discipline, before returning the discussion to the reality that modern consumer culture is rapidly becoming part of that archaeological record. So maybe, the archaeological universe is expanding. 

Enjoy this week’s podcast, check us out on iTunes, and feel free to drop us a line in the comments here, over at Caraheard.com, or via email. Let us know how wrong we are, what would make listening to our podcast better, or anything else!  

Some things we mention during the podcast:

First, the Morag Kersell et al. forum in the JEMAHS is here, and my blogged response is here.

The famous (and let’s hope ironic or at very least post-ironic) Lansing Community College job ad is here.

The Tragedy of the Commons.

I could not find a link to Richard’s flocks of hypersexualized rabbits, but I’m sort of fine with that.

Richard’s dissertation.

R. Scott Moore’s dissertation on the pottery dump at Isthmia.

Here’s a brief biography of Paul Clement who was the director of the UCLA excavations at Isthmia.

Here’s a discussion of the Fountain of the Lamps. 

Here’s an example of what can be done with material in storerooms excavated many years ago at Polis-Chrysochous.

I think we’ve linked to Corinth excavations before, but here is a link again.

Here’s David Yoder’s article in Advances in Archaeological Practice titled “Interpreing the 50 Year Rule: How a Simple Phrase Leads to a Complex Problem.”

Finally, if you want to buy a genuine American antiquity, you can go shop here.