Douglass Bailey, Chair
Professor
Ph.D Cambridge University, 1991
Office: SCI 378, Office Hours: MW 2-4 or by appt.
Phone: (415) 338-1427, Email: dwbailey@sfsu.edu
Interests: Archaeology, Art and Visual Culture, Sedentism, Theory, The Contemporary Past
My research and teaching interests range widely. Current work focuses on the archaeology of art and visual culture; I have been studying topics as diverse as prehistoric anthropomorphic figurines, Surrealist periodicals, and early 20th century photography. A long-running interest is the prehistory of eastern Europe; I have published widely on Neolithic architecture, landscape, and the body. Currently, I am co-PI of the Southern Romania Archaeological Project, a long-running, excavation and survey carried out in collaboration with colleagues in Bucureşti and Alexandria, Romania. More recent work celebrates the complexities of representation, material culture and the role of the human senses in understanding.
Background
Before I joined SFSU in 2008, I was Head of Archaeology and Conservation at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. I joined the Cardiff team in 1993 as a Lecturer and was awarded a Personal Chair in 2006. Before joining Cardiff I had held a National Academy of Science Visiting Fellowship at the Archaeological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In 1991, I took my PhD from the Archaeology Department at Cambridge University (Dissertation: Social Reality of Figurines from the Chalcolithic of Northeastern Bulgaria) where I studied under Colin Renfrew and Ian Hodder. I had received an MPhil, again from Cambridge in 1986 (Thesis: Early Bronze Age Boatbuilding and Seafaring). My undergraduate degree is in Classics (Dartmouth, 1985).
Projects
Spirits of Clay: Jomon and European Figurines
With Dr Simon Kaner (University of East Anglia, UK), I am coordinating a series of museum exhibitions and academic symposia. The project brings together prehistoric figurines from two of the world’s great traditions: the Japanese Jomon and the East European Neolithic. Through an exhibition at the British Museum (winter 2009/10) and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (spring 2010), the project will assemble some of the outstanding examples of prehistoric art. Each exhibition will be the focus of an academic symposium at which archaeologists, anthropologists, creative and visual artists will present new interpretations and approaches and debate questions of explanation and meaning. Major funding has been provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and a range of public organizations in Europe and Japan.
Landscape Transformations: Măgura’s Past and Present
With Dr Steve Mills (Cardiff University, UK), I am co-PI of a European Union project investigating cross-disciplinary approaches to art and the landscape. Basing our work on the modern village of Măgura, in southern Romania, the project wrestles with issues of representation and documentation. Using a diverse set of methods and approaches the project is creating a multi-media, multi-period interpretation of a rural community which has been the center of life for over 8000 years. Participants range from archaeologists, historians, ethnographers, land artists, photographers, and ethnographic film-makers to local school children, politicians, shop-keepers, and village residents.
Southern Romania Archaeological Project
With Dr Radian Andreescu (National Museum of History, Bucureşti), I am co-Principal Investigator of a multi-national excavation project (50-70 person team) in southern Romania. The Southern Romania Archaeological Project (SRAP) started in 1998 and is scheduled to continue through 2010. The project investigates the origins and consequences of sedentism from 8000-2500 BC along the Teleorman River, a Danube tributary. SRAP is a collaboration between Cardiff University, the National Historical Museum of Romania and the Teleorman Regional Historical Museum in Alexandria (Romania). Participants are drawn from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth (Mark Macklin, Tom Coulthard), Nottingham (Amy Bogaard), St. Andrews (Ruth Robinson), Sheffield (Mike Charles, Rob Craigie), Bristol (Richard Evershed) and Leiden (Laurens Thissen). Funding has come from UK (British Academy, Society of Antiquaries of London) and Romanian sources (Ministry of Culture, Teleorman County Council).
Representation and Visual Culture
With Professor Michael Shanks (Classics, Stanford) and Professor Mike Pearson (University of Wales at Aberystwyth I am collaborating in inter-disciplinary work on visual culture, performance, and the representation of ancient and modern worlds. We are combining cutting-edge methods in performance studies and site-specific work with traditional archaeological data and interpretation. Together we have run a series of important conference sessions (Bristol, Thessaloniki, Uppsala, Gotenbörg). A current strand of this research is my photowork on the dying villages of Teleorman County, Romania. A new project is a trans-disciplinary journal (created with Shanks at Stanford) which draws its stimulus from DOCUMENTS a radical journal edited by George Bataille (and colleagues) in Paris (1929-30).
Podgoritsa Archaeological Project
From 1993-1995, with Ruth Tringham (UC Berkeley) I was co-Principal Investigator of the Podgoritsa Archaeological Project (15-25 people) in northeastern Bulgaria. At Podgoritsa we investigated the extra-mural dimensions of a late Neolithic (fifth millennium BC) tell settlement. Results documented the vacillation in availability of landscape (for cultivation and for other uses) and the gradual rise in local water-tables, a rise that conditioned the eventual abandonment of the settlement. Funding came from UK sources as well as from US National Science Foundation. Project results were published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.
Publications
My publications include six authored or edited books as well as journal articles and book chapters, reviews and more popular commentaries. A few that I am most satisfied with include the following:
Books
Bailey, D.W., Whittle, A. and Hofmann, D. (eds) 2008. Living Well Together: Sedentism and Mobility in the Balkan Neolithic. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bailey, D.W. 2005. Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic. London: Routledge.
Bailey, D.W., Whittle, A. and Cummings, V. (eds) 2005. (un)settling the Neolithic. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bailey, D.W. 2000. Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity. London: Routledge.
Bailey, D.W. 1998 (edited) The Archaeology of Value: Essays on Prestige and Valuation. Oxford: BAR.
Bailey, D.W. and Panayotov, I. (eds) 1995. Prehistoric Bulgaria. Madison, Wisc.: Prehistory Press.
Articles and chapters
Bailey, D.W. 2008. The corporeal politics of being in the Neolithic. In J. Robb and D. Borić (eds) Past Bodies, pp. 9-18. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bailey, D.W. 2007. The anti-rhetorical power of representational absence: faceless figurines in the Balkan Neolithic. In C. Renfrew and I. Morley (eds) Material Beginnings: a Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation, pp. 117-26 Cambridge: McDonald Institute.
Bailey, D.W. 2006. Holocene changes in the level of the Back Sea: consequences at a human scale. In V. Yanko-Hombach, A.S. Gilbert, N. Panin, and P.M. Dolukhanov (eds) The Black Sea Flood Question: Changes in Coastline, Climate, and Human Settlement, pp. 515-36. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Bailey, D.W. 2005. Beyond the meaning of Neolithic houses: specific objects and serial repetition. In D.W. Bailey, A. Whittle and V. Cummings (eds) (un)settling the Neolithic, pp. 95-106. Oxford: Oxbow.
Bailey, D.W., Andreescu, R., Howard, A.J., Macklin, M.G. and Mills, S. 2002. Alluvial landscapes in the temperate Balkan Neolithic: transitions to tells. Antiquity 76: 349-55.
Bailey, D.W. 1999. What is a tell? Spatial, temporal and social parameters. In J. Brück and M. Goodman (eds) Making Places in the Prehistoric World, pp. 94-111. London: UCL Press.
Bailey, D.W. 1998. Archaeology as socio-politics: practice and ideology in Bulgaria. In L. Meskell (ed.) Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, pp. 87-110. London: Routledge.
Bailey, D.W., Tringham, R.E., Bass, J., Hamilton, M., Neumann, H., Stevanović, M., Angelova, I. and Raduncheva, A. 1998. Expanding the dimensions of early agricultural tells: the Podgoritsa Archaeological Project, Bulgaria. Journal of Field Archaeology 25(4): 373-96.
Bailey, D.W. 1996. Interpreting figurines: the emergence of illusion and new ways of seeing. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6(2): 291-5.
Bailey, D.W. 1994. Representing gender: homology or propaganda. Journal of European Archaeology 2(2): 193-202.
Bailey, D.W. 1994. Reading prehistoric figurines as individuals. World Archaeology 25(3): 321-31.
Bailey, D.W. 1990. The living house: signifying continuity. In R. Samson (ed.) The Social Archaeology of Houses, pp. 19-48. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
