Last week's news from the EEF:
Press report: "In the Wine Cellar: Egyptian winemaking methods
still very alive".
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/living/12668952.htm
About AE winemaking, how the fermentation was done, why
amphoras had pointed bottoms, how the jars were labelled, etc.
[Eds. Nice article on many aspects of winemaking, especially functional considerations of large storage jars.]
Press report: "Sudan: Hungarian Archaeology Expedition in Nubia"
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Trends&loid=8.0.209989248&par=0
"A team of Hungarian archaeologists, headed by Egyptologist Gabor
Lassanyi, will conduct excavations in Sudanese Nubia. (...) Work
will be conducted close to the Merowe Hamadab dam."
Press report: "Alexandria's elegant showcase"
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/761/he1.htm
History and description of the Alexandria National Museum,"a beacon of culture".
Press report: "Was the mummy found on our shelf at schoola murder victim?"
http://snipurl.com/hvj0
A disarticulated mummy owned by the Uplands Community College,a.k.a. the Kittermaster Mummy, was tested by Manchester University.
Press report: "Dig Days: Treasures under the modern houses"
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/761/he2.htm
Dr Zahi Hawass tells about his past excavations at Giza, the Valley
of the Golden Mummies (Bahariya Oasis), and Saqqara.
Digitized book from Digital General Collection, University of Michigan
-- Irena Lexová, Ancient Egyptian Dances, Oriental Institute, Praha, 1935. 84 pp., 78 figs.
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=genpub;idno=AEN4525.0001.001
Online info-sheet of the Museum of Reading (PDF, 28 kB):
"The Lower Part of a Stela from Buhen, Southern Egypt, About 1800 BC"
http://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/Documents/CM-anw11.pdf
Online version of: Herbert W. Fairman, An Introduction to the Study of
Ptolemaic Signs and their Values, in: BIFAO, vol. 43, pp. 51-138 (1945) - pdf-file: 7.7 MB
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/doc/PubEnLigne/BIFAO/b.php?f=Bifao043_art_02.pdf
Classic paper on the Ptolemaic writing system.
Online version of: Helen Fenwick, Ancient roads and GPS survey: modelling
the Amarna Plain, in: Antiquity, vol. 78, pp. 880-885 (2004) - pdf-file:
327KB
http://antiquity.ac.uk/Ant/078/0880/Ant0780880.pdf
"Remote mapping is painting in the context and filling the gaps of some of
the best known archaeological places. Here Helen Fenwick shows what can be
done to understand the 'blank' part of the great site at Tell el-Amarna
using a differential GPS."
End of EEF news
Unique
archaeology park grand opening will be Saturday
Hamilton County Parks and Recreation will unveil the second phase of artifact-laden Strawtown Koteewi
Park Saturday in the form of more than six miles.
Saturday marks the completion of two-year, $500,000 trails project. It now will pave the way to other developments at the park like a recreational lake, according to Hamilton County Parks and Recreation Assistant Superintendent Chris Stice.
Named after the Miami word for "prairie," the park spans 750 acres, and already archaeologists nationwide have pegged it one of the premiere archaeology sites in the country, Hamilton County Parks and Recreation Amanda Smith said at a demonstration earlier this year.
SETI archaeology? Tapping Archaeology to Seek the Cosmic Rosetta Stone
The images are vivid, capturing the essence of exploration. Archaeologists digging up the remains of long lost civilizations. Anthropologists encountering exotic cultures with strange languages.
But do archaeologists and anthropologists have anything to teach the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI), where encounters are at the distance of light-years, and a round-trip exchange could take millennia?
“Absolutely!” was the resounding response at a conference held last year of the American Anthropological Association.
Eh, we'll see. Sounds more like thinking you know something about how an engine works and then being presented
with a Formula 1 car and a wrench.
More on the Argentine mummy controversy In Argentina, plan to show mummified trio assailed
Their facial features are clear, and their muscles are firm. The blood remains frozen in their veins,
and the vivid clothes they wore the day they died remain intact.
The three Incan children -- believed to be victims of a mountaintop sacrifice about 500 years ago -- are among the best-preserved mummies ever found, and Argentine officials hope to display them this fall in a museum in this city.
But not everyone is looking forward to the public unveiling of human remains that look anything but ancient.
Members of an Argentine indigenous organization are trying to legally block the display, saying it dishonors their ''little brothers and sisters."
Not much new, really.
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY: 8,000-YEAR-OLD DUG OUT CANOE ON SHO[W]
There is a star attraction at the International Conference of Experimental Archaeology which opened
today in Anguillara. It's a dug out canoe built 8,000 years ago by primitive people who had set up camp along the
shores of Lake Bracciano. 9.5 m long, according to initial studies, the canoe will enable us to understand the
naval construction techniques of this type of craft which, in those days, could also go out into the open sea.
Back to the Tara road controversy Where the relics meet the road: Ireland's highway dispute
A sacred hill, where ancient kings were once crowned and buried, is now at the center of a dispute
about the rush of modern life in this newly wealthy country.
In the valley below the famous Hill of Tara - ancient Ireland's ceremonial seat and the island's most important
prehistoric site - the government is planning to build a major highway to Dublin.
The highway has bitterly split the country, pitting the preservation of Ireland's Celtic past against its rapidly
changing present; the ancient capital against the modern one.
Artifacts found on Davids Island
Archaeologists digging on Davids Island have unearthed several small chips of quartz that were broken off by ancient American Indians fashioning tools or weapons on the island.
They do not yet know whether the small chips, called flakes, indicate a previously unknown hunting camp. They may have simply been moved at some point in soil taken from a hunting camp that was found not far away in the 1980s, when similar work was done, said Nancy Brighton, an archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the project.
New finds show dates were staple of Achaemenid diet
Iranian archaeologists have recently found a great number of date stones in the ducts of the sewage system of Persepolis, which indicates that dates were an important part of the Achaemenid diet.
The archaeologists are currently involved in a project meant to identify the typical cuisine of the Achaemenid era.
“With sieves and water we separate the seeds of plants from the Achaemenid era, and then the seeds are studied for identification,” said Alireza Asgari, an archaeologist from the Parseh and Pasargadae Research Foundation, which is working on the project.
Hmmph. Iran to rebuild spectacular tent city at Persepolis
It was once the scene of a lavish celebration of Iranian monarchy and a symbol of loathing for the revolutionaries who swept the shah from power.
Now Iran's Islamic rulers are to reconstruct a spectacular tent city that hosted kings, sheikhs and sultans in a 1971 extravaganza billed as the greatest cultural gathering in history. The party was staged by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi beside the ancient ruins of Persepolis to pay homage to 2,500 years of the monarchy.
Project would recreate Roman monument
Historian John Nicols and physicist Robert Zimmerman have joined with architects James Tice and Virginia Cartwright to lead a group of scholars and students seeking to create a replica of the Horologium / Solarium of Augustus, a 60-foot granite obelisk erected at Heliopolis in the seventh century B.C. by Psammetichus II and brought to Rome by Augustus in 10 B.C. The obelisk was to be used as the "gnomon" (the staff against which the shadow is projected from the sun to the ground) of a new solar calendar and "clock."
"It was a momentous event in the history of time, for it marks the revolutionary shift in time-keeping from the lunar to a solar-based system we now use," said Nichols, who specializes in ancient history and the history of science.
Mystery! Missing Mars statue sparks hunt
Historians have appealed for help in solving the decades-old mystery of a missing one-tonne lead statue at a castle in north Wales.
Mars, the Roman God of war, used to guard the entrance of Chirk Castle but disappeared sometime after 1911.
He stood with counterpart, Hercules, for 50 years until they were separated.
Hercules was found in a nearby wood in 1983 and brought back to the castle by helicopter. Experts have now renewed the hunt for the 12ft tall Mars.
Geomagnetic survey!
That's it. Tons of stuff today, so little commentary. And no cheering at that.