Possible archaeological resource? The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives Exhibition is a new web site with formerly classified aerial photos from WWII. The photos up now tend to be the more sensational sorts (D-Day). It might be interesting once they get a larger collection online to see some landscape photos that may reveal archaeological sites that were either previously unknown, or maybe to provide a baseline for how land use practices over the last 50+ years are affecting known sites by comparing them to, say, current satellite photos of the same area.

New paper alert The October 2005 (VOlume 70) (oddly, not available online yet) has one by Debra George, John Southon, and R.E. Taylor, Resolving an Anomalous Radiocarbon Determination on Mastodon Bone from Monte Verde, Chile. Two pieces of this bone were found in different contexts -- one surficial, one in subsurface context -- and were both C-14 dated to the tune of a 5,000 year difference. The subsurface one dated to 11,990+/-200 BP while the surface one dated to 6,550+/- 160 BP. Since there has been considerable debate on the dating of this site, especially whether or not there is a 'reservoir effect' (dumping of older carbon to produce artificially old dates) in the area. This seems to have been discounted, but this odd date remains.

George et al. took additional samples from the bone for testing. One of their hypotheses was that there may be too little bone collagen (<1%) left in one or both of the bones to provide an accurate date. They cite several examples from the literature of low-% collagen bone dates that result in artificially recent dates. Nevertheless, they found that each sample contained 21% and 30% collagen and found that their "values. .on all four fractions from the two bone fragments are statistically identical" at 12,460+/-30 BP. While this is older than the ostensibly good previous date, they believe this results from a larger uncertainty in the previous one (+/- 200 RC years). Other than that, they don't have an explanation for the anomalous earlier date other than that the portion of that piece that was used in the dating process was far more degraded than the one they used.



Back to the past in Iran? VP: Reliance on foreigners in archaeological field should reduce

Vice-President and Head of Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) Esfandiar Rahim-Moshaie said on Tuesday that good capacities have been developed in the field of archaeology and urged the need to reduce the country's reliance upon foreigners by making full use of such capacities.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the inaugural ceremony of the 3rd International Symposium of Archaeology (November 8-11) held at Fakhreddin As'ad Gorgani Hall in the northern city of Gorgan, he added that international cooperation in the sector is inevitable.

Hard to really decipher what's going on, but it seems as if the recent return to a more authoritarian regime may be putting the brakes on the budding return of Western archaeologists to Iran. Only the first paragraph of this story seems to say as much and the second paragraph kinda of seems to contradict that. If we have the interpretation correct, however, it's not particularly surprising. Sad, but not surprising.