Cassie Newland

My Research
My Mlitt/Ph.D. research focuses upon the historical archaeology of the Imperial Wireless Scheme (IWS). The IWS was first proposed in 1906 as a network of interlinked long wave radio stations connecting Britain with the dominions. Political and legal wrangling between the British Empire, the Marconi Company and the newly independent nations of Australia and South Africa - coupled with the outbreak of WWI and resulting technological advances - meant that the scheme passed through many phases and iterations before its completion reshaped the globe.

The last two decades have witnessed another sea-change in global communications. Satellite links have led to the rapid decommissioning of long and short wave stations. The uniform structures and giant aerials that shaped geographical and political landscapes of the 20th century have little potential for reuse and are vanishing fast. Some archaeological study has been undertaken, notably the recent Cornwall County Archaeology reports on the Bodmin, Poldhu and Lizard sites and an English Heritage publication, Buildings of the Radiocommunications Industry in Essex (Cocroft and Menuge 2001) but the focus of such work has been on single sites or standing buildings rather than radio communications in the wider, imperial contexts studied by my research.

Through desk-based research and fieldwork in India and southern England, my research explores IWS sites, structures and technologies, examining the geographical and cultural impact of imported architectures and technologies on local situations. Drawing upon recent work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), the research uses archaeological methods to study the materialities and immaterialities of the complex technologies of the IWS in early 20th century British colonialism.