Thievery! Indian bowls, bottles taken from locked room at Southern Arkansas University

An invaluable collection of intact bowls and bottles crafted centuries ago by Caddo Indians has been stolen from a storeroom at Southern Arkansas University, where they were awaiting return to members of the tribe.

Whoever took the artifacts, bearing intricate designs characteristic of the Caddo, will probably be able to dispose of them quickly on the antiquities black market, said David Jeane, a research archaeologist at the university.

“The Caddo were probably some of the finest ceramists of any of the North American Indians,” Jeane said. “Their pots are considered high art and they will go rapidly on the market.”

Peru link to Indian archaeological find?

Geologists have discovered a striking archaeological feature on a hillock in the Kutch district of the western Indian state of Gujarat.

This feature is shaped like the Roman numeral VI. Each arm of this feature is a trench that is about two metres wide, two metres deep and more than 100 metres long.

The feature has evoked the curiosity of archaeologists because such signs have mostly been observed so far in Peru.

Ergh. The headline is misleading -- it doesn't anything particularly to do with Peru. It's an interesting feature though, that will be difficult to date. Suppose it depends on how regular the lines actually are.

U.K. census finally online -- 921 years later

The Middle Ages met the Internet age Friday when the Domesday Book, a survey of England conducted almost 1,000 years ago, went online.

The Domesday Book -- the oldest record held by Britain's National Archives and one of the country's most valuable documents -- details the landholdings and resources that belonged to King William the Conqueror in 1085. It gives a minute record of the wealth of England and the families settled throughout the countryside at that time.

Now, the text of the book in the original Latin, along with an English translation, was put online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday.

Hmmmmm. . . . Expert: Tablet May Have Oldest Writings

An almost 7,000-year old stone tablet found in Bulgaria bears carvings that might turn out to be one of the world's oldest inscriptions, a prominent Bulgarian archaeologist said Thursday.

"These signs are unique and apparently bear a meaning," Nikolai Ovcharov told a press conference. Ovcharov said he had received the tablet from a private collector who had unearthed it 20 years ago.

Seems rather dubious, due to the lack of context.

Cuba: New Aboriginal Settlement Found

Recent underground explorations in the locality of Boquerones in the central Cuban province of Ciego de Avila have yielded new evidence of aboriginal settlements.

Expedition head, speleologist Felix Pereira, told ACN that a new archeological site had been found in a local cave. Surface exploration down to 50 centimeters exposed fragments of Silex, a stone used by Cuban aboriginals for tools and food remains of fish, crabs and shells.

Biblical archaeology update Old Testament dispute continues

Some scholars are busily debunking the Bible's account of the great King David, asking: Was he really all that great? Was he largely legendary, Judaism's version of Britain's legendary King Arthur or totally fictional?

. . .

Though some scholars claimed David never existed, in 1993 archaeologists discovered a stone inscription from 835 B.C. that mentions "the house of David." The authors say that established the existence of a dynastic founder named David and that shortly after his 10th-century era a line of kings "traced their legitimacy back to David."

22 Post Sassanid Cemeteries Discovered in Kurdistan

22 cemeteries, 11 historic hills, 3 archeological regions, and a number of clay dishes all dating back to the post Sassanid era were found by experts and archeologists in the city of Marivan, Iranian western province of Kurdistan. In addition, a historic fortress which was being used during the different periods that followed the Arabs' barbaric invasion of the Persian Empire and the beginning of the Islamic era in 651 AD as well as a pre-historic graveyard were discovered in a nearby village.

‘Bog bodies’ shed light on Iron Age life

Life in the Iron Age may have been nasty, brutish and short, but people still found time to style their hair and polish their fingernails — and that was just the men.

These are the findings of scientists who have been examining the latest preserved prehistoric bodies to emerge from Ireland’s peat bogs, the first to be found in Europe for 20 years.

One of the bodies, churned up by a peat-cutting machine at Clonycavan near Dublin in 2003, had raised Mohawk-style hair, held in place with gel imported from abroad.

Nothing really new, but a good little article anyway.

KV-64(?) update Radar surveys suggest another tomb in the Valley of Kings

Another unopened tomb may lie hidden next to King Tut's burial chambers, archaeologists report.

In an in interview with Archaeology Magazine, archaeologist Nicholas Reeves of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP), reveals that radar surveys suggest an undiscovered burial shaft, similar to a burial cache opened earlier this year dubbed KV 63, lies buried about 50 feet north of King Tut's tomb.

"My aim in posting our data was not to claim a prize for discovering the next Tutankhamun. It was to alert people to the immense potential the Valley of the Kings still holds, despite two centuries of serious archaeological abuse," Reeves says. The newly reported find, tentatively "KV64", may contain more burial materials from Tut's tomb, or perhaps the burial chamber of one of his wives.

That's the whole thing. The interview is here. Sayeth Reeves:

What I want from the announcement of "KV64" is for the treasure potential of the site to focus attention on the less spectacular though just as important aspects of work in the Valley of the Kings. We need to rein in our natural desire for more tombs, for the quick fix, to systematize our efforts and put a lot more emphasis, while we can, on every aspect of the Valley's miraculously preserved record.

Bingo.

Remote sensing update Australian archaeologists find ancient settlement in Syria

Australian archaeologists have used American spy satellite images to find the remains of ancient human settlements in Syria.

The researchers, led by Australian National University PhD student Mandy Mottram, say the declassified images from the 1960s allowed them to predict where ruins were hidden beneath the ground.

Ms Mottram says the remains of pottery factories, tombs and an ancient basilica were among the finds in an area northeast of Syria's second largest city, Aleppo, in the Euphrates River valley.

She says the basilica may have tumbled at some stage during an earthquake because there were a couple of large earthquakes that hit the region in medieval times.

"But it's still got walls preserved and it quite possibly was part of a monastic community which existed on the top of this mountain," she said.

Ms Mottram's team hopes to establish a record of human occupation dating back 1 million years.

That's the whole thing.

Student archaeologists dig on Eastern Pequot reservation land

For more than 300 years, a few piles of rock have sat in a valley on the Eastern Pequot Tribe's reservation without getting much attention.

But for the last five weeks, students from the University of Massachusetts Boston, along with tribal members, have dug through and around those rocks to chart the tribal history that once stood all around them.

"We had no idea the complexity of this site," said lead anthropologist Stephen Silliman, an assistant professor at UMass Boston. "A lot of things were going on here."

Maui Waui update Maui Temples Reveal Polynesian Past

An ancient temple system on the Hawaiian island of Maui is about 400 years older than previously thought, according to an extensive archaeological study.

The finding contradicts a prior theory that Maui’s temples were built within a span of just a few decades around the year 1600. Some researchers now think the temples were built over the course of 500 years, with construction cycles peaking during periods of significant political change.

Blogged earlier. Updated.

Greek archaeologists confirm authenticity of 'Theseus Ring'

The long-lost 'Theseus Ring,' a gold ring found in the Plaka district of Athens in the 1950s and generally dismissed as a fake, has been identified by Greek archaeologists as a genuine 15th century BC artifact, reports said Wednesday.

The Greek press had reported the discovery of a gold signet ring, with dimensions 2.7 x 1.8 cm dating from the Minoan period, and the National Archaeological Museum wanted to purchase it for 75,000 euros from the woman who owned it.

Venture Smith update Archaeologists find no DNA in search for slave 'Paul Bunyan'

Archaeologists excavating the 200-year-old graves of a slave family said Tuesday that they recovered no genetic material from the man dubbed "the black Paul Bunyan."

Scientists had hoped to find DNA that would trace Venture Smith's life back to Africa, filling in the gaps of one of the earliest and most important slave biographies. Descendants had hoped genetic evidence would support the tales of a 6-foot-1 lumberjack slave whose fabulous feats of strength helped win his freedom.

"We didn't get much," Nicholas F. Bellantoni, Connecticut's state archaeologist, said about Venture Smith's grave. "Everything had been decomposed."

Breaking news: Lost city. . .found? Lost city 'could rewrite history'

The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.

Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.

The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.

Color me skeptical. The heavy use of Graham Hancock as an expert ought to send up a red flag the size of Cleveland. More probably, it's a far more recent site with bad C14 dates.

Update: Actually, it seems to be old news that is not terribly convincing. So, eh, file this one in the same drawer with the Bosnian pyramids.

Brian Hunt (via EEF) sends along two new articles posted on the Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) web site:

Conservation at Giza
http://www.aeraweb.org/spec_conservation.asp

Flint tools at Giza
http://www.aeraweb.org/spec_flint.asp

Teacher or Scholar? Brannon Denning subbing at Instapundit has a couple of links up to a discussion about the following paper:

Is There a Correlation between Scholarly Productivity, Scholarly Influence and Teaching Effectiveness in American Law Schools? An Empirical Study

Abstract:
This empirical study attempts to answer an age-old debate in legal academia: whether scholarly productivity helps or hurts teaching. The study is of an unprecedented size and scope. It covers every tenured or tenure-track faculty member at 19 American law schools, a total of 623 professors. The study gathers four years of teaching evaluation data (calendar years 2000-03) and creates an index for teaching effectiveness.

This index was then correlated against five different measures of research productivity. The first three measure each professor's productivity for the years 2000-03. These productivity measures include a raw count of publications and two weighted counts. The scholarly productivity measure weights scholarly books and top-20 or peer reviewed law review articles above casebooks, treatises or other publications. By comparison, the practice-oriented productivity measure weights casebooks, treatises and practitioner articles at the top of the scale. There are also two measures of scholarly influence. One is a lifetime citation count, and the other is a count of citations per year.

These five measures of research productivity cover virtually any definition of research productivity. Combined with four years of teaching evaluation data the study provides a powerful measure of both sides of the teaching versus scholarship debate.

The study correlates each of these five different research measures against the teaching evaluation index for all 623 professors, and each individual law school. The results are counter-intuitive: there is no correlation between teaching effectiveness and any of the five measures of research productivity. Given the breadth of the study, this finding is quite robust. The study should prove invaluable to anyone interested in the priorities of American law schools, and anyone interested in the interaction between scholarship and teaching in higher education.

Which basically provides numbers for what most university students have known for ages: That being a great and productive scholar doesn't necessarily translate well into the classroom. I suspect that this carries over from the law schools into virtually every other discipline at the academy. I suspect most people assume there is a negative correlation: that good instructors are probably not as productive in terms of publications as their. . .instructively challenged peers. I can think of 3 reasons why people think this:

1) Time: Being a good instructor takes a decent amoutn of work, both in planning lessons and in honing one's delivery. Some people are naturally very good at lecturing, but most of us have to work at how we present material. That can often take time away from researching and writing.

2) The popularizer effect: Most people within a discipline have an automatic suspicion for colleagues who are good at conveying material to non-experts. Some of it may be envy at the guy splashed all over television and making more money than they are, but it's also a function of having to dumb down the issues for a lay audience. One automatically assumes that they must not know what they're talking about if they aren't using all the jargon, the cautions, the subtlties, etc.

3) The really smart ones just don't think like the rest of us: We tend to think that the more brilliant a person is, the more they just can't relate to us mortals. The classic absent-minded professor schtick. A corrolary might be that they also must be incredibly arrogant (cf., Professor Kingsfield of The Paper Chase).

But besides the impressions, a probably undeniable fact is that teaching is generally considered a chore and doesn't count as much in tenure decisions (thought this is changing). The main metrics for tenure are publications and citations. Consequently, natural selection acts to promote and retain people who publish a lot and teaching ability is just a hanger-on without any fitness value. Some professors are indeed excellent and prolific researchers and outstanding lecturers to boot. But since teaching ability isn't usually rewarded as highly, this is a rare combination.

We were having this discussion at the office yesterday regarding tenured positions at certain pretigious business schools going to highly published researchers, while a slew of adjuncts will teach for years and never get tenure. Perhaps this is the way many departments are moving, segregating teaching from research. Personally, I don't believe this is a good direction to be headed since I think it is vitally important that it is really the duty of researchers to communicate their findings to the public. And not just because many of them operate on the public dime either; supposedly we're all doing this to further some common goals of humanity. We owe it to the rest of humanity to explain what we're doing and why we think it's important. Not to preach, but to explain; preachiness just breeds resentment. We;re all fond of saying communication is the key to good relationships, but we need to practice that in our professional lives as well.

Hey, maybe more academics should take up, say, BLOGGING.

Maui architecture, social growth studied

A U.S. scientist says the growth of indigenous architecture and social complexity on the Hawaiian island of Maui occurred during a span of at least 500 years.

In the most detailed study to date on the antiquity of the island's extensive temple system, researchers challenge previous conceptions of ancient Hawaiian civilization by identifying cycles of temple construction that coincide with politically charged periods of warfare and island consolidation.

"Because the islands are relatively isolated from the rest of the world, the development of monumental architecture and complex society in Hawaii is of keen interest to archaeologists," said Northern Illinois University Assistant Professor of Archaeology Michael Kolb. "In many ways, Maui represents an excellent test case for state development.

Update: More here.

Rolling stones helps broch study

Archaeologists and volunteers spent more than two years constructing a 10m tall replica of an Iron Age stone-built tower - only to demolish it.

The project, run in a quarry at Spital, near Thurso, Caithness, was part of research into brochs.

There are estimated to be 200 of them lying in ruins in the region.

What a broch is.

A 3,000-year-old voyage of discovery

IN ANCIENT times, when Scotland was virtually covered in dense forest, there was only one way to get around. Traveling by boat helped early Scots to find food and trade goods with their neighbours.

Now, with the excavation of a 3,000-year-old log boat, archaeologists are hoping to learn more about how prehistoric Scots used the vast network of rivers and lochs.

The Bronze Age dug-out was found in mudflats at Carpow, on the south side of the River Tay estuary, in autumn 2001. A group of three amateur archaeologists – Scott McGuckin, Martin Brooks and Robert Fotheringham – had spotted the worn but still recognisable prow of boat sticking out from the mud and peat.