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Releasing the Amphora - TAG (Syracuse)

At the 2019 meetings of the Theoretical Archaeology Group at Syracuse University, Doug Bailey used a lump-hammer to smash a historic period amphora from excavations that preceded the building of the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. Doug then gave individual fragments to anyone in attendance who wanted one and asked them to take the fragments back home, to work, on vacation or wherever they were going. The only request was that fragment adopters should share reports on what there fragments were doing, where they were traveling…basically whatever they got up to.

Fragment adopters have been sending updates about their fragments’ activities to the project’s Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Releasing-the-Amphora-347052559341222/

Here is a short video from the session.

One short part of Doug Bailey's presentation at the 2019 meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group help in Syracuse during which he smashed an historic amphora and then asked audience members to "adopt" the resulting fragments and take them home with them. Some (mistaken) spectators thought that this was a joke and that the pot was a fake. It was not a fake and it is not a joke. It is a provocation to think about what archaeology and about what might lay beyond the boundaries or both art and of archaeology.