Abstract

Professor Bailey discusses the various relationships between art and archaeology, and argues that the most exciting current work is pushing hard against the boundaries of both disciplines. His proposal is for archaeologists and artists to take big risks in their work and to cut loose the restraints of their traditional subject boundaries. The result will be work that is neither art nor archaeology, but something else altogether and something that can take the study of human nature into uncharted and exciting new territories.

Douglass Bailey

Douglass Bailey holds the Chair in Anthropology at San Francisco State University. His interests are wide, ranging from the interface of archaeology and contemporary art, to early twentieth century photography, to early sedentism in the European Neolithic, to the politics of archaeology. Douglass took his PhD in Archaeology from Cambridge in 1991 and has published and lectured widely. His most recent book isPrehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic (Routledge).