Colorado River streamflow history reveals megadrought before 1490

An epic drought during the mid-1100s dwarfs any drought previously documented for a region that includes areas of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The six-decade-long drought was remarkable for the absence of very wet years. At the core of the drought was a period of 25 years in which Colorado River flow averaged 15 percent below normal.

The new tree-ring-based reconstruction documents the year-by-year natural variability of streamflows in the upper Colorado River basin back to A. D. 762, said the tree-ring scientists from The University of Arizona in Tucson who led the research team.

The work extends the continuous tree-ring record of upper Colorado streamflows back seven centuries earlier than previous reconstructions.

Smack in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period. I believe. . . .the Anasazi collapse was later than this. I recall that this Great Draught was supposedly blamed for the Anasazi collapse, but in recent years explanations have turned more towards social explanations. If they were this severe for an extended period of time, one might think that no social structure could keep things going for that long in such difficult conditions, so perhaps it was draught after all and the Anasazi just couldn't cope whatever they tried.

Alexander's dike update (no snickering) How geology came to help Alexander the Great

An elongated region of sandstone reefs acted as a 6-kilometre natural breakwater in the area 8,000 years ago. By 6,000 years ago, rises in sea level had reduced the length of the island from 6 to 4 kilometres. This, combined with an increase of sediment supply due to agricultural activity and a rise in inland rainfall, particularly after about 3,000 years ago, created a natural sandbar that sat an average of 1-2 metres below mean sea level in Alexander's time, they report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1

So, there was a natural sandstone at some location (not shown?) that had been increasing sedimentation between the island and mainland, increasing after 3k BP. Thus, Alexander only had to build in 2-3m of water.

Walk like an Egyptian -- or a Roman -- experience what the past really looked like

What was it like to walk round the Colosseum when the Roman Empire was at its height" How would the experience have differed from that of a tourist today"

Our understanding of what life was like in bygone eras could be boosted, thanks to a new initiative aiming to depict more accurately and realistically how heritage sites may have looked in their heyday.

Computer scientists and cultural heritage researchers are assessing whether today's increasingly sophisticated 3-d computer technology can be combined with the most recent historical evidence to produce significantly improved visual reconstructions of churches, palaces and other ancient sites.

20,000 Aboriginal artefacts found at Defence HQ site

The discovery of thousands of Aboriginal artefacts has forced a construction company to alter the design of the new Defence headquarters complex at Bungendore.

About 20,000 Indigenous tools from at least 5,000 years ago have been unearthed at the site along with the remains of mid-19th century hotel.

Consulting archaeologist Doug Williams says roads within the facility have been redirected to retain the heritage values.

Ancient "Royal Temple" Discovered in Path of Ireland Highway

The discovery of a major prehistoric site where experts believe an open-air royal temple once stood has stalled construction of a controversial four-lane highway in Ireland.

A large circular enclosure estimated to be at least 2,000 years old was exposed at Lismullin in County Meath, by road-builders working on a 37-mile-long (60-kilometer-long) road northwest of Dublin (see map of Ireland).

The find is located just 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) from the Hill of Tara, once the seat of power of Ireland's Celtic kings, and likely represents a ritual site, according to government archaeologists attached to the road project.

Hmmmm. Do a search of this blog on "Tara", there will probably be several stories on this over the past couple of years.

Did comet start deadly cold snap?

A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths and many other prehistoric creatures, according to a team of U.S. scientists.

Evidence of the ecological disaster exists in a thin layer of sediment that has been found from Alberta to New Mexico, say the researchers, whose work adds a dramatic and provocative twist to the decades-old debate about the demise of the mammoths, mastodons and sloths that once roamed North America.

The sediment layer contains high concentrations of iridium, fullerenes and other compounds associated with space rocks and impacts, says Luann Becker, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has been analyzing the sediments.

Interesting, but I remain skeptical. For one thing, mammoths seem to have gone extinct over time from south to north rather than north to south as one would expect from a far-northern impact (or from overkill; don't have the refernece handy though).

Archaeologists believe remnants of Fort Duquesne unearthed

About two weeks ago, archaeologist Tom Kutys thought he'd found a stone wall when he came across mortared capstones in a trench at the state park that once was the site of French and British forts.

Instead, archaeologists at Point State Park believe they very well might have uncovered long-buried remnants of Fort Duquesne, Pittsburgh's original fort.

"If we are correct about this, we are looking at the earliest example of European masonry in Pittsburgh," said Brooke Blades, an archaeologist with A.D. Marble and Co., which is working on the $35 million renovation of the park in downtown Pittsburgh.

After excavating around Kutys' discovery, workers found what they believe to be a drainage system that once served the fort in the mid-1700s, he said.

Archaeologists unearth 4th century marvel

Archaeologists have discovered a 4th century Christian church in southern Serbia, the Blic newspaper reported on Tuesday.

"It's an exceptional discovery," Gordana Jeremic, the lead archaeologist at the Mediana site near the city of Nis, was quoted as saying.

The ruins were located only several metres from another church that was discovered in 2000, the paper reported.

Seen a couple of stories on it, but none are very detailed yet.

Archaeologists discover ancient tools in Auburn

An archaeological survey made necessary by an airport construction project has uncovered parts of ancient tools that are thought to date back 9,000 to 11,000 years.
When an archaeologist pulled a pointed brown stone -- an inch long and part of an ancient tool possibly used to clean animal skins -- from the ground west of the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport in December, it was enough to bring a full archaeological excavation to the site.
Last week, a member of a digging team found another piece of stone tool that dig organizers said matches the first piece.

Battlefield archaeology update ?For Antietam archaeologists, spent bullets tell a story

A team of archaeologists from the National Park Service is uncovering bullets and shrapnel that paint a grim picture of the carnage at the battle of Antietam.

It was the single bloodiest day in the Civil War, and the archaeologists are getting plenty of reminders why.

The team used metal detectors to find more than 400 objects, mostly bullets and shrapnel, in a section of the battlefield recently.

Short article but there's a pseudo-link to the NPS web site.

Archaeologists to study antebellum UA dorm site

Archaeologists will begin digging in the spot of the university’s original dormitories today, a site long since covered in asphalt as part of Capstone Drive on the north side of the Quad. They plan to find out whether any artifacts remain underground.

The initial work should take less than three weeks and cut only through parking spots. The street will remain open to traffic.

In the fall, the university will begin a campus transit system, altering traffic flow on some streets and closing others to make way for buses.

How Alexander the Great used 'Mother Nature'

Archaeologists have known for some time that Alexander used the debris of the abandoned mainland city to build a causeway 3,000 yards long and up to 180 yards across. Once within reach of the city walls, he used siege engines to batter and finally breach the fortifications.

But building a causeway in deep water would have meant raising the level of the sea floor considerably - an impossible feat in such a short space of time. However, researchers in France who analysed the coastal sediment record for the past 10,000 years have discovered how Alexander's engineers exploited a natural underwater "sandbridge".

The ''sandbridges'' are formed when sediment is deposited rapidly at a spot behind an island.

I'm still not sure how it worked.

Archaeologists uncovering Magnolia slave artifacts

Before starting restoration work on several of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens' slave cabins, the owners hired Craig Hadley to dig into the past and find out more about how the slaves lived and worked.

It was a wise move.

Hadley, director of the Living History Group, has overseen a team of archaeologists and others who have spent about three months excavating areas where the plantation's slaves spent most of their time.

"All of these things tell of a story of the people who lived out here," he said. "Archaeology doesn't lie. It may be pretty obscure to read sometimes, but it doesn't lie. The things we find are telling the story of their lives."

Bulldozing update There's been some commentary here regarding the use of heavy earth-moving equipment in archaeology. Seems to be second only to Oak Island in generating comments (I guess the next Internet sweeps week I need to post something about bulldozing Oak Island. . . .)

No, it's not something you'd ordinarily see on National Geographic, yes, sometimes (I don't think very often) it's used to remove uninteresting/not-significant deposits (itself a controversial topic), but no, it's not used all that often.

Ideally, if we had unlimited time and money, we could spend our entire careers carefully doing everything by hand trowel, dental pick, and the ubiquitous brush and thus never miss a thing. But, like everything, there are a thousand different priorities and proxies demanding we do this or that one way or another. Mitigation work has its own set of requirements -- time, money, results -- as does purely academic work. Funding institutions, whether private or public, have their priorities and demands, as do departments that require publications based on original research. It's not always a simple or easy decision to decide how to proceed.

It's tempting to get all Ivory Tower and just say "Trust us, we know what we're doing", but that just makes us look arrogant, and not terribly tactful politically, especially when we're feeding at the public trough. So, I for one welcome the criticism, if applied judiciously and politely (no complaints so far, y'all are remarkably civil for the Internets).

We may need more discussion within the ranks on conservation, which I've pointed out on several occasions. There's an awful lot of junk sitting in museum basements and countless storage buildings scattered around the world, and we still do destructive analyses that may not be warranted. In some cases, that "some day" everybody talked about coming when we could scan an object and see everything inside of it -- e.g., mummies -- without having to bust it open is here. Watching Zahi Hawass (not to pick on him personally) open an Egyptian sarcophagus on international television and while we watched have said mummy literally crumble to dust was an eye opener.

I'm not taking a position here. Really. (Really!) But asking the question and having to justify ourselves and our actions shouldn't be off limits.

Archaeology Channel video This from Pettigrew:

Digital laser imaging technology is not only
very cool, but it is also much faster and more accurate than hand
drawing for architectural features found at archaeological sites.
This fact is made obvious in Mesa Verde: A CyArk Case Study, the
latest video feature on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The
Archaeology Channel (http://www.archaeologychannel.org).

The complex World Heritage site of Mesa Verde is a good challenge for
CyArk, a Kacyra Family Foundation project that is preserving the
world's most valued cultural heritage sites in three-dimensional
digital form. Ancestral Puebloans at Mesa Verde built cliff
dwellings in AD 1200-1300. A field team in 2005 visited one site
there, Spruce Tree House, to test CyArk's advanced documentation
techniques. This video shows how CyArk is preserving the site in
digital imagery through laser scanning and the most accurate 3D
models possible today.

Shaveblogging update

In the mail: A free Schick Quattro Titanium razor. It looks very official. Says it's the "Property of Schick Shave Lab" and promises to put "More Strut in [My] Giddy-Up".

I'm a-gonna have a go with it in a couple of weeks or so. Last weekend I picked up a 1950s Gillette adjustable double-blade like this one:


For only 75 cents! Obviously, the Pacific Northwest is not a bastion of shaving technology.

It's a LOT heavier than my ladies' Gillette and, to be honest, I have no idea yet what is actually being adjusted. But, you know, at 5 am I don't have much presence of mind to analyze these things in detail.

Anyway, I guess Schick has finally noticed what a connoisseur of shaving implements I am and has started sending me product to review.








Okay, I probably made it onto a random mailing list.






Or maybe. . . .it's poisoned! Sent to me under the guise of a product sample, only to hold a hidden vial of cyanide ready to pour itself into any little nick or cut that I may experience during use! No doubt by a secretive group of post-modern sociocultural anthropologists striking a blow against the heteronormative patriarchy!

Well, I've said before I've always wanted a nemesis.

Geico cavemen sitcom update: Not lookin' good Someone named Derek Flint thinks the pilot stank:

“Cavemen” is literally a thirty second commercial expanded to twenty-two minutes. But… it’s actually much worse than that. Just like their source material, the origin of these domesticated Cro-Magnons is never explained. I guess “Encino Man” is part of the prequel trilogy.

A while back I predicted difficulty: The writers will also have to be very clever working in the predjudice angle.

Seems I was prescient:

The creators have tried to infuse social satire by making the show an allegory for prejudice. They draw astoundingly leaden parallels to every minority group in the world without a laugh in sight.

Seems they missed the 'clever' part.

I still think it'd be a neat idea, but tough to pull off.

UPDATE: Looks like ABC is going ahead with it.

Researchers learn why tar pits are bubbly

Like many other visitors to the La Brea tar pits, sisters Samantha and Katie Salazar watched a basketball-sized bubble emerge from dark, slimy gunk Sunday and wondered, why are the tar pits bubbly?

For years, educators at the Hancock Park site could only guess that methane gas was being released as the byproduct of oil creation 1,000 feet below the surface.

Researchers at UC Riverside have finally found the answer: Hardy bacteria embedded in the natural asphalt are eating away at the petroleum and burping up methane.

One of these days I'm going to fly down there just to see this.

Work begins to uncover secrets of Silbury Hill

Work began yesterday to save an ancient landmark in Wiltshire from collapsing.

Silbury Hill, which at 130 feet high is the largest prehistoric man-made construction in Europe, continues to mystify archaeologists.

English Heritage is to spend £600,000 this summer trying to preserve the mound.

Specialist engineers will enter the mound through a tunnel which was dug in 1968 by a team led by the archaeologist, Prof Richard Atkinson. That tunnel was the last of three made over two centuries by archaeologists.

Group gets rare archaeological tour if nuclear research area

Visitors to the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho received a rare tour of archaeological sites within the 890-square-mile federal nuclear research area on Friday.
The Olympian - Click Here

For the last 10 years the INL has allowed one group per year to tour the archaeological sites.