is way more interesting than trolling the Web for archaeology stories) so we're just taking some of the highlights.
Anyway, this piece from the IHT: What is lost, archaeologists try to find
Nothing lasts forever. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, may be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean.
"Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis, an emeritus professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University.
First story we've seen working in the Katrina angle. Nothing terribly new, although some of it might be new. Mostly a nice review of some recent work at various places. We started to roll our eyes on the Atlantis bit, but it ended up providing another example of a city destroyed and only recently come to light.
Mummy update Mummy found in Syria
Syrian archaeologists have discovered a sarcophagus with the best-preserved mummy ever in a tower tomb in Palmyra.
The two-meter-long conical sarcophagus is made of stone. The name of Hanbal Saadi, who the scientists believe was the owner of the tomb, is engraved upon it.
The mummy is 175 centimeters (5 feet 9 inches) long.
Not much there.
Historical, but it's all over the news Old ship's remains discovered at city construction site
The remains of a massive Gold Rush-era sailing ship dating to the early 1800s have been discovered at the site of a large construction project in downtown San Francisco, archaeologists at the scene confirmed Tuesday.
The ship's decaying bow peeked through mounds of earth as workers under the direction of an archaeologist brushed away generations of dirt from its aging timbers. A dig crew unearthed the first portions of the ship last week as they carved away dirt to lay the foundation for a 650-unit condominium development.
Thor Heyerdahl redux ‘Bronze age’ boat set to sail from Oman to India
Researchers have built a reed boat modeled on vessels that plied the seas more than four millennia ago and will try to sail 965 kilometers across the Arabian Sea from Oman to India, following what they believe was a Bronze Age trade route.
The 12-meter Magan, named after an ancient name for Oman, is made of reeds formed into bundles, lashed together with rope made from date palm fibers and covered with a woven mat coated with black bitumen or tar to make it waterproof. The vessel will be powered by a square-rigged sail made of tightly woven wool and maneuvered using two teak steering oars.
Some news from the EEF:
Press report: "Secrets of the Pharaohs' Physicians Revealed"
http://snipurl.com/hj9t
Although this is about an exhibition [see above], it is also of general
interest. Dr James Allen (MMA) talks about AE medicine.
Press report: "Dig days: Surprise delivery"
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/759/he2.htm
Dr Zahi Hawass receives by mail a "piece of alabaster with hieroglyphic
inscriptions....dating from the New Kingdom, and the inscription was
an utterance to the god Osiris from the Pharaoh. Also on the fragment
was a part of the cartouche of Seti I. "
[Eds. Please do not send us artifacts by mail. Unless they're extremely valuable.]
Online Bachelor of Science thesis: Matthew Pendlebury, 3D Virtual Reality
reconstruction on the Internet using VRML, Department of Computing,
Manchester Metropolitan University, 1996. 81 pp. - pdf-file: 1.5 MB
http://www.doc.mmu.ac.uk/RESEARCH/virtual-museum/Menna/report.pdf
"This project details the investigation into the use of Virtual Reality
Modelling Language (VRML) to reconstruct historical monuments so that
they can then be easily accessed over the Internet ... To demonstrate the
principles involved and to further investigate the practical issues, a
prototype has been developed. The prototype is based around the Tomb of
Menna in Egypt and uses his
Guido Heinz, Hartmut Müller, Surveying of Pharaohs in the 21st Century,
Proceedings of: From Pharaohs to Geoinformatics, FIG Working Week 2005 and
GSDI-8, Cairo, Egypt, April 16-21, 2005 - 8 pp., pdf-file: 320 KB
http://www.i3mainz.fh-mainz.de/publicat/mueller05/fig05_heinz_mueller.pdf
"After a several years lasting process of restoration, conservation and
technological investigation, the two statues [of Pharaoh Pepi I.] were
documented geometrically. The shapes of the sculptures
were recorded using a 3D laser scanner. Special features like the seams
between the copper sheets forming the statue and the rivets connecting them
were measured using close range photogrammetry ... This paper shows the
concepts of the recording, problems and some results."
[For other articles by Guido Heinz et al about these statues, see EEFNEWS
(341).]
Online version of: H. Rushmeier, J. Gomes, F. Giordano, H. El Shishiny, K.
Magerlein, F. Bernardini, Design and Use of an In-Museum System for Artifact
Capture, Paper read at the IEEE/CVPR Workshop on Applications of Computer
Vision in Archaeology, Madison, WI, June 2003 - pdf-file: 2.5 MB
http://snipurl.com/hiec
"We describe the design and use of a 3D scanning system currently installed
in Cairo's Egyptian Museum.The primary purpose of the system is to capture
objects for display on a web site communicating Egyptian culture. The system
is designed to capture both the geometry and photometry of the museum
artifacts. We describe special features of the system and the calibration
procedures designed for it. We also present resulting scans and examples of
how they will be used on the web site."
[Eds. This is great. We'd like to see a system that professionals could use to actually make measurements off of some of these things though, rather than just looking at them, along with detailed data.]
End of EEF news
[Update]: We're being spammed! ArchaeoBlog received two comments from "readers" named "jordan" and "trinity" regarding our comments on DNA Testing (and you know, we really do a great deal of posting on DNA testing). Anyway, they direct you to their "blog" on DNA testing, which is really just an ad site. We won't give you the link because they'd probably find out where it was directed from and besides, we don't want to give these cretins more hits than they deserve. Just be forewarned.