Someone named "Petty Piper" has a blog post comparing Looting and Archaeology (no copying of text seems to be allowed, so this is a transcript):
Archaeologists are paid just like looters. The only difference is what each sect prioritizes. Archaeolgists prioritize the history behind the artifacts, while looters value the sale price. The end result is the same, though; this item is taken from it's (sic) home to sit on a shelf somewhere else.
There's a grain of truth in the post, obviously, but as About.Com's Kris Hirst puts it in the Comments, the end result is not the same, except in a very limited sense.
Researchers find ancient pottery operation at Angel Mounds
An archaeological dig at southern Indiana's Angel Mounds complex has uncovered a pottery-making operation that reveals the artistic skills of the Indians who lived there hundreds of years ago.
Indiana University researchers believe they've uncovered remains of a potter's house once used by the Indians who inhabited the area overlooking the Ohio River from 1100 to 1450 A.D.
Excavations have revealed pottery tools and masses of prepared but unfired clay awaiting shaping into bowls, jars or figures which suggest that the structure that once stood there was used to make the pottery now found in shards across the site.
Seems like a great site. It's being dug as a field school.
Use of dumb archaeological pun #144,397 Can you dig it?
IT is hard to imagine the job of an archaeologist being a money-spinning one.
But surprisingly much of Rachel Grahame's work as a projects officer at Hartlepool-based Tees Archaeology is commercial.
Rachel said: "Some of the things we do are community excavations like the one at Catcote. But 90 per cent of what we do is commercial.
"If somebody's building something then they quite often have to pay for archaeologists as part of their planning consent.
"So if you're building a housing estate on top of a Roman Villa you have to pay to have it excavated first."
It's mostly an interview of this one person.
We do that Archaeologists seek to plumb mysteries of ancient tribe
Archaeologists are seeking funding to learn more about the Saponi Indians, a little-known tribe that centuries ago lived at what is now the site of the Smith Mountain Dam.
Howard MacCord, chairman of the research projects committee for the Archaeological Society of Virginia, said the society wants to complete the work of Carl F. Miller. The archaeologist collected artifacts in 1963 and 1964 during construction of the Smith Mountain Dam.
``It was the site of an Indian village and it is all under water now,'' he said. ``It is important that this be done some day. It has been over 40 years.''
Couple of items from last week's news from the EEF:
Press report: "The mummy of Queen Hatshepsut arrived at Cairo Airport yesterday."
http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Culture/000001/0203000000000000000628.htm
[Uhh... the so-called (putative; not a fact) mummy of
Hatsheput was already in the Egyptian Museum (see
http://snipurl.com/o4u0); does the above mean that the
_other_ mummy from KV60 has also been transported
from Luxor to Cairo??]
(that was a comment from Aayko, btw)
Press report: "Mummy Mystery. It's the oldest of cold cases: A
girl's death 2,200 years ago. Can modern technology explain it?"
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/14636650.htm
About the CAT scanning of a girl's mummy in the Philadelphia's
Academy of Natural Sciences, as part of the work of the Akhmim
Mummy Studies Consortium (see below, section VIII).
R. Krivánek, M. Bárta, Geophysical Prospection in South Abusir, Egypt,
2002, Paper presented at the CIPA 2003 XIXth International Symposium "New
Perspectives to Save Cultural Heritage", 30 September - 04 October, 2003,
Antalya, Turkey - 3 pp., pdf-file (150 KB)
http://cipa.icomos.org/fileadmin/papers/antalya/110.pdf
"Non-destructive geophysical prospection of large areas choosen by
egyptologists outside of previous and present archaeological excavations
brought a new view on extent and quantity of archaeological remains
(cemetery) beneath the sand and also practical experience (limits and
possibilities of applied geophysical methods) in various terrain desert
conditions."
End of EEF news