Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Online journal alert Nigel Strudwick alerts us that a new issue of the British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES) is up. We'd like to promote this and urge everyone to have a look. Contact the BM and tell them if you like it. We rather prefer the idea of not publishing "issues" but simply putting up papers as they come in. We note that there was a fairly long hiatus between issues 3 and 4 (2 years).

Thus far, we haven't really seen Web publishing of scholarly (i.e., peer-reviewed) articles take off as we thought it would. We suspect it may be largely a cost issue since there still needs to be people paid to process articles, send them out for review etc., and a good system of vetting them through free (not in the monetary sense) access. There's a biomed online "journal" that seems to be working somewhat along these lines, but the name and URL escapes us at the moment.

Might also be that paper journals still hold pride of place among professionals. The Web, sadly, is still viewed as something of a free for all of dubious information, not to mention the fact that it can be difficult to cite a web site when the text can be changed with a few keystrokes and the URL can go up in smoke in a moment.

Show them the money! UTSA archaeology center awarded $2 million contract

The University of Texas at San Antonio Center for Archaeological Research received a $2 million contract by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The center will provide technical expertise and archaeological services statewide for road construction projects over the next two years.

UTSA's center employs 35 people and is one of only two nonprofit educational institutions in Texas that competes with private organizations for archaeological services associated with state road construction contracts.


Biblical Archaeology update Scholar stresses Galilee archaeology

A close study of the archaeological evidence of first century Galilee provides a historical context for the movements of Jesus, says an Irish theologian.

And it is time that New Testament scholars paid closer attention to the recent archaeological discoveries that provide that historical context for the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

"It is time to bring spade and text together," said Sean Freyne, the first of three internationally recognized experts to speak this week at Rocky Mountain College on the "Historical Jesus in the 21st Century."


Money quote: Freyne, professor emeritus of theology at Trinity College in Dublin, told a crowd of about 250 packed into Taylor Auditorium that archaeological evidence should tell its own story, not with a predetermined goal to prove.

Bingo.

Seeing Clacton man in a new light

STOOPED, violent, unable to utter more than a grunt and hell-bent on terrifying innocent bystanders with Stanley knife-type weapons.

This is the image that archaeologists have painted of the ape-like man that lived in the Clacton area 400,000 years ago.

But new research has caused historians and archaeologists to re-evaluate the culture that has been dubbed “Clactonian”.

Until recently it was thought that crude, sharp-bladed flint weapons found off Jaywick in 1911 were evidence of an isolated, unsophisticated type of prehistoric ape-like man.


Roman work in Faliron stream

Last week’s heavy rainfall in Athens has led to the discovery of a Roman marble statue which had been apparently dumped in a streambed in the southern suburbs, an archaeologist said yesterday.

The 1.8-meter tall marble torso of a young man was spotted on Thursday night in the Pikrodafni streambed, in Palaio Faliron — near the intersection of Dimocratias and Pikrodafnis Streets — by a passer-by who alerted authorities, said Yiorgos Steinhauer, head of the Culture Ministry’s local antiquities department.

The first-century-AD work is a Roman copy of a fourth-century-BC classical original and possibly represents Apollo Lykeios. Steinhauer said the statue could have been recently discovered by builders during construction work, and dumped in the streambed for fear archaeologists might stop the works if alerted to the find.


That's the whole thing.