And now. . . .the news from the EEF (first in a couple of weeks, I'm afraid)
Press report: "Integrated project to restore pyramids blocks"
http://snipurl.com/1d2ra
[http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Culture/000001/
0203000000000000000725.htm]
Second part of Dr Hawass's story about his hat, and how it saved him from the "curse of the Pharaohs", although not totally:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/836/he2.htm
Press report: "Ancient Egyptian make-up uncovered"
http://tinyurl.com/26jvq4
[http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/news/science/ancient-
egyptian-make-up-uncovered-$1065688.htm]
"A new analysis of ancient Egyptian pots on display in the
Louvre in Paris has challenged what people believed their
contents to be. The four hieroglyphic-covered pots have
been labelled for the past 100 years as Canopic jars holding
the embalmed remains of the Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II.
But French chemists now believe that they hold ordinary
cosmetics, the New Scientist reports."
-- Another press report on this:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=30029305
-- The New Scientist's press report is at:
http://snipurl.com/1d39f
[http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg
19325954.500-pharaohs-pots-give-up-their-secrets.html]
--Photo of the jars (see EEFNEWS (443)):
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/01/23/gallery/jars_zoom.jpg
Archaeology's Interactive Dig "Excavating Hierakonpolis"
has been updated with four 'Field Notes' about the 2007 season:
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field07/4.html
End of EEF news
Wait! That EEF news was from a week ago! Here's this week's, too!
Press report: "Mummy is back, and a little more presentable "
http://snipurl.com/1dmld
[http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/
visitstlouis/story/071BF3EE65F504738625729F000D6
D71?OpenDocument]
"For 51 years, visitors to the St. Louis Art Museum were
fascinated -- and a little horrified -- by mummy Pet-menekh
and the black toe that protruded from his foot wrappings.
After more than 20 years away and an extensive face lift,
the 2,300-year-old mummy returned to the St. Louis Art
Museum in 2001. "
Press report: "Modern technology reveals mummy's past
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070316/ap_on_sc/mummy_child_5
Extensive research was done on a child mummy in the Saint Louis
Science Center. "The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely
came from a wealthy family. (...) A small snippet of the mummy's
wrapping tested for carbon dating suggested the child had lived
between 30 B.C. and 130 A.D. (...) Three-dimensional images
from CT scans of the child's bones, skull, teeth and body cavity
suggested the child lived to be seven or eight months. (...)
DNA [was extracted] using routine methods. Tests showed the
boy's mother was European." With a photo of the mummy,
which now has gone on display.
-- The press release of the Center and other info about the
research project (incl. a video presentation) can be found at:
http://www.slsc.org/content.aspx?id=2903
Press report: "Investigating evolution and mutation through
ancient DNA research"
http://snipurl.com/1dmmq
[http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Massey_News
/issue-02/stories/03-02-07.html]
"This month Professor Lambert embarks on a new phase of
ancient DNA research. (..) The DNA from mummified Sacred
Ibis, in some cases as much as 6000 years old, will be
compared with samples collected right up to the present
day from the widespread population of Sacred Ibis still
roaming in Africa. (..) One of his collaborators, Professor
Mark Spigelman (University College, London) has developed
methods to sample fully wrapped mummies with an
endoscope that will leave little, if any evidence of this
intrusion in the name of science."
Press report: "A Sliver of Ancient Egypt in Central Park"
http://www.nysun.com/article/50597
"Only 22 [obelisks] remain in the world. Egypt still possesses
five and Rome has 13. The Romans originally looted the obelisks,
but the 16th-century Pope Sixtus V directed their present
locations in the Eternal City. Istanbul, London, Paris, and
New York each have one obelisk.". The story of the only
AE obelisk in the Americans, behind the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, in Central Park.
Press report: "Valley of the bulldozers: Death on the Nile"
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2374347.ece
About the destruction of Qurna. "It has been decided that
30 of the village houses will be preserved for posterity. Of
course no one will live in them. And the people of Qurna,
what will become of them? They will be off the map. And
if any returning visitors wonder where they have all gone,
they will have left no trace and the question will fade
unanswered. Because the concern of the tourist business
is not the living but the dead, and the longer they have been
dead, the better. "
* Press report: "Pyramid's Secret Doors to Be Opened"
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/03/20/hawass_arc.html
"By the end of this year (..) people all over the world will
know what is behind the second door in the southern shaft
and the third door in the northern shaft," Hawass said."
Janet H. Johnson (Ed.), Life in a Multi-Cultural Society:
Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond. SAOC 51.
Proceedings of a symposium held at the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago in September 1990. The book was
published on paper in 1992, and now (March 2007) the OI
offers a digitized version, for free (PDF, 40.5 MB).
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/saoc/saoc51.html
Some relevant articles that appeared in: Pamela B. Vandiver,
Martha Goodway, Jennifer L. Mass (Eds.), Materials Issues in
Art and Archaeology VI. Materials Research Society Proceedings
Volume 712 (2002, Out of Print). These papers of Symposium II
of the 2001 MRS Fall Meeting are online for free [by mistake?].
TOC of the Proceedings as a whole: http://snipurl.com/1dmn1
[http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?SID=1&VID=
111&CID=2523&DID=95620&RTID=0&CIDQS=&Taxonomy
=False&specialSearch=False]
-- Patricia S. Griffin, "Reconstructing the Materials and Technology of
Egyptian Faience and Frit", pp. 323-356 (PDF, 7.03 MB)
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?cid=2523&did=57567&doc=file.pdf
"This paper presents a research project undertaken at the Cleveland
Museum of Art to study and characterize its collection of more than
one hundred and fifty Egyptian artifacts made from faience or frit.
An overview of the project is presented here, followed by a summary
of faience technology that draws upon other published studies as well
as the insights gained during this project. Where appropriate, this
technological discussion will be illustrated using examples of Egyptian
artifacts studied during this project. For some objects discussion will
be limited to one or two aspects of manufacture. However, the
proposed manufacturing sequence of several key artifacts will be
described more fully. "
-- Alison Whyte, Susan Stock, Alison Murray, "An Unusual
Dark Patina on Egyptian Copper Alloy Objects in the Royal
Ontario Museum Collection", pp. 269-280 (PDF, 344 KB) [this
one was already mentioned in EEFNEWS (435).]
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=2523&DID=57575&DOC=FILE.PDF
-- Carolyn Riccardelli, Jennifer Mass, and Jonathan Thornton,
"Egyptian Faience Inlay Techniques: A Process for Obtaining Detail
and Clarity by Refiring" pp. 545-570 (PDF, 2.14 MB):
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=2523&DID=57548&DOC=FILE.PDF
"The faience of the New Kingdom period is frequently decorated
with an expanded palette of red, black, and yellow. This polychrome
decoration was often accomplished by inlaying one color of paste into
another. The aesthetic success of these inlay techniques reveals a
fundamental understanding of the materials' characteristics before,
during, and after firing, and knowledge of how to manipulate these
characteristics. The goal of this research is to more fully understand
ancient Egyptian faience inlay techniques by characterizing the properties
of a set of standard reproductions. "
-- Dudley F. Giberson, Jr, "Core Vessel Technology: A New Model",
pp. 571-578 (PDF, 243 KB):
http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=2523&DID=57549&DOC=FILE.PDF
"Ancient Egyptian XVIII Dynasty core vessel manufacturing technology
had many sequential steps to make a core vessel, but there were only
three essential elements to the process. One, the base layer of glass
was applied as a frit glass; two, the objects were manufactured over
a vertical heat source; and three, the vessels were made in very low
temperatures (maximum 1500F.)."
Vivienne G. Callender," A Contribution to the Burial of Women
in the Old Kingdom", in: Archiv Orientální, vol. 70, pp. 337-350
(2002) - pdf-file (6.8 MB)
http://www.gizapyramids.org/pdf%20library/callender_archiv_or_70.pdf
"After a period of virtually total neglect, the theme of female
burials in the Old Kingdom has lately been receiving a little
scholarly attention ...This imbalance naturally reflects the
situation of the cemeteries themselves, where the majority of
tombs belong to men; nonetheless, apart from the wellknown,
general comment that there are far fewer female tomb owners
than male owners, there are some aspects of the information
regarding female burials that need to be brought forward for
our attention."
NOW. . . .end of EEF news
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Mummy update 
Jet Li unearths role in "Mummy 3"
What? Not in Egypt? Sacrilege! And, um, what about Anck Su Namun? That would, errr, detract from the, ummmm, realism! Yeah, that's it. Historical accuracy is my only concern.
Okay, one for the chicks, too:
Interestingly, Vosloo was on a short-lived ABC series called Veritas: The Quest which, IIRC, had some form of ancient history theme. Can't remember for the life of me what it was about though.
Jet Li unearths role in "Mummy 3"
Jet Li is in negotiations to play the villainous title character in "The Mummy 3," whose plot details are being kept under wraps.
Rob Cohen ("Stealth") will direct the Universal Pictures project. The action will be set in China, with Li's story beginning in ancient times before moving to a post-World War II setting. It is also known that one sequence involves the famous terra-cotta warriors, the collection of 6,000 men and their horses that were originally constructed to protect the tomb of an emperor.
What? Not in Egypt? Sacrilege! And, um, what about Anck Su Namun? That would, errr, detract from the, ummmm, realism! Yeah, that's it. Historical accuracy is my only concern.
Okay, one for the chicks, too:
Interestingly, Vosloo was on a short-lived ABC series called Veritas: The Quest which, IIRC, had some form of ancient history theme. Can't remember for the life of me what it was about though.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
A 'dirt-loving kind of guy' mines for finds in old outhouses
Just make sure it's old.
The privy in John Hanley's back yard is no longer private.
But after a century of benign neglect, it's a hole once again.
"Staunton is a gold mine," Hanley said earlier in the week. "Beneath almost any yard you'll find jewelry, buttons, bottles - all kinds of artifacts."
Hanley's Sunnyside Street mine is a 3-foot-by-3-foot shaft that roughly corresponds to the business end of an outhouse. The organic matter has long ago converted to soil (and lost its odor); the rest is treasure for urban archaeologists.
Just make sure it's old.
Bosnian archaeologists discover fabled ships
A team of Bosnia-Herzegovina's archaeologists have discovered for the first time the remnants of fabled Illyrian ships in a marshland in southern Herzegovina, the team's head said on Tuesday.
Snjezana Vasilj told local media in Mostar that the ships were discovered about eight metres under the water of Hutovo blato, a marshland near the southern town of Capljina.
The Illyrian ships, believed to be more than 2 200 years old, had been known to historians only through Greek and Roman myths and legends, but their existence had never been physically proven, said Vasilj.
Archaeologists investigate nighthawking
DO they really call it 'nighthawking' over there?
A team from Oxford Archaeology has announced plans to examine the practice of 'nighthawking', or the removal of antiquities from archaeological sites illegally.
More and more illicit archaeological treasures and antiquities are being traded on websites such as online auction house eBay, causing concern among experts.
The archaeologists claim that the current monitoring of and law enforcement activity against nighthawkers is piecemeal and more resources are needed to combat the problem.
DO they really call it 'nighthawking' over there?
Skelatal [sic] remains discovered during dig at Mildenhall
As the archeological team from Suffolk County Council was in the middle of a routine dig in the RAF Mildenhall officers' housing area in Beck Row March 12, they knew they'd stumbled across an interesting find when a shovel hit something solid.
That "something solid" turned out to be the skull of a human skeleton -- thought to be almost 2,000 years old.
After just more than a day spent carefully digging out the area using nothing but small trowels and brushes, a complete skeleton was revealed.
Nile comes through again NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
Conclusion:
Too bad there's nothing to compare pharonic Nile readings with. Or maybe some enterprising grad student out there can go look for something. . . .
Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.
Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied.
"Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt," she said. "These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time."
Conclusion:
The researchers found some clear links between the sun's activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
Too bad there's nothing to compare pharonic Nile readings with. Or maybe some enterprising grad student out there can go look for something. . . .
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Computer pioneer, developer of Fortran, dies in Oregon at 82
Sometimes I don't know whether to love him or hate him for this. But yes, back in my undergrad days when I was a budding comp sci major, I did write several programs in both machine and assembler. COme to think of it, I spent an entire semester writing assembler programs. . .gee, it must be true that you block out bad memories. Anyway, comp sci programs by that time didn't teach Fortran, that was left to the engineering schools. We were all into structured languages, and Pascal was the big teaching language at the time. But a lot of programs written by archaeologists were initially done in Fortran, so I eventually became pretty familiar with it. In fact, I ended up translating both an occurrence seriation and a surveying data reduction program from Fortran to Pascal and thence eventually to Visual Basic for Access. I was always taught that "GoTo" was just a nitch up from Satan on the Ultimate Evil scale.
And yeah, writing assembler s.u.c.k.s. Pretty darn efficient though. But, as you can tell, it kinda soured me on the whole computer science route. . . .
John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, has died. He was 82.
Backus died Saturday in Ashland, Ore., according to IBM Corp., where he spent his career.
Before Fortran, computers had to be meticulously "hand-coded" — programmed in the raw strings of digits that triggered actions inside the machine. Fortran was a "high-level" programming language because it abstracted that work — it let programmers enter commands in a more intuitive system, which the computer would translate into machine code on its own.
The breakthrough earned Backus the 1977 Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, one of the industry's highest accolades. The citation praised Backus' "profound, influential, and lasting contributions."
. . .
"Much of my work has come from being lazy," Backus told Think, the IBM employee magazine, in 1979. "I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs."
Sometimes I don't know whether to love him or hate him for this. But yes, back in my undergrad days when I was a budding comp sci major, I did write several programs in both machine and assembler. COme to think of it, I spent an entire semester writing assembler programs. . .gee, it must be true that you block out bad memories. Anyway, comp sci programs by that time didn't teach Fortran, that was left to the engineering schools. We were all into structured languages, and Pascal was the big teaching language at the time. But a lot of programs written by archaeologists were initially done in Fortran, so I eventually became pretty familiar with it. In fact, I ended up translating both an occurrence seriation and a surveying data reduction program from Fortran to Pascal and thence eventually to Visual Basic for Access. I was always taught that "GoTo" was just a nitch up from Satan on the Ultimate Evil scale.
And yeah, writing assembler s.u.c.k.s. Pretty darn efficient though. But, as you can tell, it kinda soured me on the whole computer science route. . . .
More 'History of Smut' on ArchaeoBlog The world's oldest condom
More text at the site, but not much. Dates from 1640s.
Also, they're checking Ötzi the Ice Man's wallet again, just in case.
UPDATE: Date changed. 1640s. Rented fingers.
More text at the site, but not much. Dates from 1640s.
Also, they're checking Ötzi the Ice Man's wallet again, just in case.
UPDATE: Date changed. 1640s. Rented fingers.
Monday, March 19, 2007
The detritus of graduate school
So I cleaned out my file cabinets some more over the weekend. I had already sifted through two drawers several months ago and got rid of a bunch of papers. Papers? Photocopies of journal articles, book chapters, unpublished stuff, etc. Back in that first year or two of grad school back in 19*mumble-mumble* -- actually, mostly only the first year -- we had to read dozens and dozens of papers for two classes: RC Dunnell's theory class and DK Grayson's zooarch class. The former covered almost entirely North American works, mostly from the 1940s onward. Dunnell's theory class was actually two quarters, the first on unit construction and the second on explanation. Grayson had us read and write abstracts on dozens more having to do with all manner of faunal-related papers. MNI, NISP, pollen, and, my personal favorites, pack rat middens and sloth dung.
So anyway, copies of all of them were on hold at the library so every week we'd all trundle over there, check them out, walk over to the copy center and make copies and chat up the little hotties they had working the counters. Lord knows how much money we spent on copies. I saved most of them and, in fact, had my own unique cross-referenced filing system. Each copy would have a number and some key words (author, topic, etc.) and into the files they'd go. I got this system from Aidan Southall who I worked for at U Wisconsin. Eventually I migrated some of the 3x5 index cards over to EndNote. Worked pretty well, actually.
Among the greatest hits:
Kuhn, S.L. 1992 Blank form and reduction as determinants of Mousterian scraper morphology Amer. Ant. 57(1) p 115-128
Hansen Henry P. 1942 A pollen study of peat profiles from lower Klamath Lake of Oregon and California in L.S. Cressman. Archaeological Researches in the Northern Great Basin. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publications 538: 103-114.
Antevs, Ernst 1955 Geologic-Climatic dating in the west Amer. Ant. 20(4) 317-335.
I retained some of them, either because they are hard/impossible to come by electronically or I liked them particularly well. Yeah, you young whipper snappers in grad school now have it easy! When I was your age I had to slog through 10 foot snowdrifts just to go to the library and find a journal article to photocopy -- and I appreciated it!
Heh.
So I cleaned out my file cabinets some more over the weekend. I had already sifted through two drawers several months ago and got rid of a bunch of papers. Papers? Photocopies of journal articles, book chapters, unpublished stuff, etc. Back in that first year or two of grad school back in 19*mumble-mumble* -- actually, mostly only the first year -- we had to read dozens and dozens of papers for two classes: RC Dunnell's theory class and DK Grayson's zooarch class. The former covered almost entirely North American works, mostly from the 1940s onward. Dunnell's theory class was actually two quarters, the first on unit construction and the second on explanation. Grayson had us read and write abstracts on dozens more having to do with all manner of faunal-related papers. MNI, NISP, pollen, and, my personal favorites, pack rat middens and sloth dung.
So anyway, copies of all of them were on hold at the library so every week we'd all trundle over there, check them out, walk over to the copy center and make copies and chat up the little hotties they had working the counters. Lord knows how much money we spent on copies. I saved most of them and, in fact, had my own unique cross-referenced filing system. Each copy would have a number and some key words (author, topic, etc.) and into the files they'd go. I got this system from Aidan Southall who I worked for at U Wisconsin. Eventually I migrated some of the 3x5 index cards over to EndNote. Worked pretty well, actually.
Among the greatest hits:
Kuhn, S.L. 1992 Blank form and reduction as determinants of Mousterian scraper morphology Amer. Ant. 57(1) p 115-128
Hansen Henry P. 1942 A pollen study of peat profiles from lower Klamath Lake of Oregon and California in L.S. Cressman. Archaeological Researches in the Northern Great Basin. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publications 538: 103-114.
Antevs, Ernst 1955 Geologic-Climatic dating in the west Amer. Ant. 20(4) 317-335.
I retained some of them, either because they are hard/impossible to come by electronically or I liked them particularly well. Yeah, you young whipper snappers in grad school now have it easy! When I was your age I had to slog through 10 foot snowdrifts just to go to the library and find a journal article to photocopy -- and I appreciated it!
Heh.
TV archaeology update As I posted here, I bought the DVD set of Kolchak: The Night Stalker a while back and have been slowly watching my way through it. I watched one last night called The Energy Eater in which an Indian god ("Machemondo") is brought back to life after a hospital was built on the site he resided in. Archaeologically, they go back to Indian legends and European mentionings of him, blah blah blah. Unfortunately, they go a bit off the rails at one point when the supposed expert, a latter-day Indian shaman, points to some petroglyphs in a book that were "from the Neanderthal period". Oye.
Sudan archeology flourishes before the flood
Sudan’s archaeology is finally stepping out of Egypt’s shadow as teams work against the clock to rescue an entire swathe of Nile Valley heritage from the rising waters of a Chinese-built dam.
"The paradox is that, yes, an entire area is being wiped off the map but thanks to the rescue project, Sudanese archaeology is being put on the map," said Sudan’s antiquities chief Salah Ahmed.
The Merowe dam is a controversial hydro-electric project — one of the largest in Africa — being erected on the Nile’s fourth cataract and due to start flooding the valley over more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) within months.
On a Pueblo dig: Exploring enigma of 'lost' peoples
"Higher in the canyon I settled in a copse of half-lit junipers, took off my pack, and pulled out a down sleeping bag designed for nearly twenty below zero," explorer Craig Childs writes in "House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest." "It would be barely warm enough tonight."
Childs battled nature in a search for the truth behind the supposed disappearance of a real prehistoric Native American culture, the Anasazi -- ancient Pueblo peoples whose culture thrived between the 11th and 13th centuries in Chaco Canyon, modern-day New Mexico. He hiked countless miles under summer's oppressive desert sun, and braved subzero temperatures throughout isolated winter nights. Even during droughts the risk of a rare flash flood was always present, even if clean drinking water was not.
The link is a book review. Nothing in the review seems too bizarre. Childs apparently goes along with the more recent arguments on more violent Anasazi.
Fight! Fight! Campaigners hit out as historical sites are dismantled
That's the whole thing.
The group lobbying for the re-routing out of the M3 motorway is hitting out at the removal of a series of ancient underground buildings from the site in the past week.
A team of archaeologists removed the souterrains this week, which date back to the early Christian era.
The National Roads Authority says historical buildings like this were relatively common in Ireland.
Siobh€n Rice of the TaraWatch lobby group says she is heartbroken over the works.
"We have asked time and time again that independent archaeologists be allowed to inspect these sites - and to no avail. All of our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I don't think it would happen in any other country in Europe - it's an absolute disgrace," she said.
That's the whole thing.
Ancient perfume found on Venus` island
Archaeologists exploring Cyprus, said to be home to Venus, the goddess of love, have stumbled upon the world`s oldest known perfume factory.
A display of the prehistoric scents and 60 objects from the Cyprus discovery can be seen at Rome`s Capitoline Museums, ANSA reported. The distilling equipment is believed to be 4,000 years old.
Hmmmmm. . . . Archaeologists have a dig about colonial relics left on shelf
It looks as if they're referring to the results of excavations required before building -- kind of an unfunded mandate. "Save everything, and someday we'll have somewhere for you to put it, but for now, keep them at your own expense."
ARCHAEOLOGISTS digging up artefacts in Sydney are being forced to store them in their own homes because there is no central repository for them.
Although the state's Heritage Act provides for the establishment of a repository for relics of colonial times, the Heritage Office is asking land owners to ensure they look after the items themselves.
The lack of space is preventing students, academics and genealogists from finding the material easily.
It looks as if they're referring to the results of excavations required before building -- kind of an unfunded mandate. "Save everything, and someday we'll have somewhere for you to put it, but for now, keep them at your own expense."
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Non-archaeological post
Another adventure into the ancient history known as The '70s. Today I was listening to my old Boston record/LP "Don't Look Back", largely because Brad Delp just died. There's a track that has an incredibly low-frequency note, probably synthesized. As a lad, this fascinated me greatly as it would cause one's woofer to bounce around producing it (if it could reproduce it that is). Anyway, it started booming and I heard a rattling coming out of one speaker:
So I took off the cover and lo and behold, a piece of the rubber surround of the woofer was falling off! I touched it and the whole surround turned out to be dry and flaky and, sure enough, completely shot:
The woofer is the big one in the center; that cone on the bottom is a passive radiator; more about that later. Both cones had bad surrounds so basically the thing is shot. New speakers? Probably not. About 10-12 years ago one of my cats decided to have a go at the other one and ripped two of the cones in that one. At the time, I found someone in Phoenix who sold replacement parts for Genesis speakers. I eventually found this place which seems to be run by a former employee of Genesis Physics, not related to Genesis Loudspeakers who are making speakers now.
Yeah, in my youth I was a stereo freak. Not an "audiophile" since those are the high end snobs who will happily pay a couple hundred bucks for gold-plated connector cables despite their having never passed a blind listening test. (I can almost see the vituperative emails coming in now) I bought these Genesis 2+'s way back in 19mumble mumble and have dragged them around the country ever since. They still sound great so I plan on replacing either the surround material or the drivers.
To be honest, I don't think speaker technology has changed all that much since the '70s. The 1970s were probably the golden age of loudspeaker design and everything since is mostly, I think, a refinement of what was developed then. Genesis was founded by some guys who worked for EPI and left to form Genesis Physics. They made a great speaker for a reasonable price. Their main innovation was an inverted dome tweeter. They also used the passive radiator in some of them. Passive radiators got kind of a bad rap when they first came out because Panasonic used them in their cheapo speakers. Still, it was a good technology for getting those really low bass notes instead of a port; basically, as in the Wiki entry linked above, you could tune the speaker box to move the radiator based on the movement of the air by the woofer. Consequently, these suckers will rattle the house.
Back then, there was a lot of innovation going on and a lot of weird stuff coming out. Electrostatics were probably the best, but they suffered from a lack of bass. A lot of companies tried stuffing more and more drivers onto their speakers and I think Cervin-Vega ended up with like 70 each in one model. That one, incidentally, was the only speaker my stereo-geek store people ever said they couldn't tell from a live performance. C-V's were the rock-and-roller's best friend. Someone I knew had a pair of big 15"-woofer C-V's and we used to blast Foghat out of them. Yeesh. Show my age much?
There was also a weird one where the driver was sort of an inverted cone sitting at the top. Never heard one of those. I think my Ultimate Speakers back then were Acoustic Research AR-9's. There were also Dalquist Dq-10's that had 5-6 drivers each and they were all staggered because sound of different frequency reached the ear faster. By staggering them, they reasoned that all frequencies would reach you at once and that would somehow sound more natural. I did hear those once, but they didn't seem all that exciting.
I still have a soft spot for Advents which my friend Del had; very good speakers. That link is to a modern review of them. The person that does my hair bought some from a friend for her shop and I was soooo jealous. They look great, too.
As I said, speakers don't seem to have changed much. We were even playing around with surround sound then. You could hook up four speakers in serial around a room (which I did) and have a pseudo-surround sound going. I first bought some small speakers called Matrix which were actualy quite good for their size. Then I got a Hitachi cassette deck, and Onkyo amp, tuner, and turntable. And I still have them all! Although the Hitachi doesn't work. . . . .
And the big Bose controversy continues. Geez. The big rap against Bose has always been that they tend to use audio trickery to make the speakers sound better than they are. That is, they use sorta cheapo drivers and position them to reflect off of walls and stuff and make it sound like you're in a huge room, due to all of the reflecting. There's something to this, of course, and personally I find snobbery more than a bit off-putting. Still, I tend to have a reflexive dislike of Bose, influenced by the fact that I got roped into a Bose store for a half-hour infomercial. Used car salesmen, they are. They tend to market to those who have limited experience with audio, mostly people who have heard only small radio speakers with little bass or treble. Hence, you hear these things just filling up a room with sound and it's quite impressive. Some reviewers really liked them in some respects, and they did make a lot of room-filling sound. But once you listened to them (I'm talking about the classic Bose 901's here) for a while, you realize they sound pretty mushy, mostly because they only used a single type of driver for all frequencies.
So, eh, I'll see about getting new drivers and post an update once they go in. In the meantime, I'm listening to some old Jimmy Buffett LPs. I got turned on to Buffett on my field school on San Juan Island, WA. Talk about a cushy field school. We'd bomb around the island, drink (a lot), hang out at the beach, and pretend we were expat bums. Er, plus, I had a bit of a fling with a perfectly lovely young lady named Siendie. *sigh* Jimmy Buffett, archaeology, a touristy island, and a summer romance: sometimes it just all comes together.
Another adventure into the ancient history known as The '70s. Today I was listening to my old Boston record/LP "Don't Look Back", largely because Brad Delp just died. There's a track that has an incredibly low-frequency note, probably synthesized. As a lad, this fascinated me greatly as it would cause one's woofer to bounce around producing it (if it could reproduce it that is). Anyway, it started booming and I heard a rattling coming out of one speaker:
So I took off the cover and lo and behold, a piece of the rubber surround of the woofer was falling off! I touched it and the whole surround turned out to be dry and flaky and, sure enough, completely shot:
The woofer is the big one in the center; that cone on the bottom is a passive radiator; more about that later. Both cones had bad surrounds so basically the thing is shot. New speakers? Probably not. About 10-12 years ago one of my cats decided to have a go at the other one and ripped two of the cones in that one. At the time, I found someone in Phoenix who sold replacement parts for Genesis speakers. I eventually found this place which seems to be run by a former employee of Genesis Physics, not related to Genesis Loudspeakers who are making speakers now.
Yeah, in my youth I was a stereo freak. Not an "audiophile" since those are the high end snobs who will happily pay a couple hundred bucks for gold-plated connector cables despite their having never passed a blind listening test. (I can almost see the vituperative emails coming in now) I bought these Genesis 2+'s way back in 19mumble mumble and have dragged them around the country ever since. They still sound great so I plan on replacing either the surround material or the drivers.
To be honest, I don't think speaker technology has changed all that much since the '70s. The 1970s were probably the golden age of loudspeaker design and everything since is mostly, I think, a refinement of what was developed then. Genesis was founded by some guys who worked for EPI and left to form Genesis Physics. They made a great speaker for a reasonable price. Their main innovation was an inverted dome tweeter. They also used the passive radiator in some of them. Passive radiators got kind of a bad rap when they first came out because Panasonic used them in their cheapo speakers. Still, it was a good technology for getting those really low bass notes instead of a port; basically, as in the Wiki entry linked above, you could tune the speaker box to move the radiator based on the movement of the air by the woofer. Consequently, these suckers will rattle the house.
Back then, there was a lot of innovation going on and a lot of weird stuff coming out. Electrostatics were probably the best, but they suffered from a lack of bass. A lot of companies tried stuffing more and more drivers onto their speakers and I think Cervin-Vega ended up with like 70 each in one model. That one, incidentally, was the only speaker my stereo-geek store people ever said they couldn't tell from a live performance. C-V's were the rock-and-roller's best friend. Someone I knew had a pair of big 15"-woofer C-V's and we used to blast Foghat out of them. Yeesh. Show my age much?
There was also a weird one where the driver was sort of an inverted cone sitting at the top. Never heard one of those. I think my Ultimate Speakers back then were Acoustic Research AR-9's. There were also Dalquist Dq-10's that had 5-6 drivers each and they were all staggered because sound of different frequency reached the ear faster. By staggering them, they reasoned that all frequencies would reach you at once and that would somehow sound more natural. I did hear those once, but they didn't seem all that exciting.
I still have a soft spot for Advents which my friend Del had; very good speakers. That link is to a modern review of them. The person that does my hair bought some from a friend for her shop and I was soooo jealous. They look great, too.
As I said, speakers don't seem to have changed much. We were even playing around with surround sound then. You could hook up four speakers in serial around a room (which I did) and have a pseudo-surround sound going. I first bought some small speakers called Matrix which were actualy quite good for their size. Then I got a Hitachi cassette deck, and Onkyo amp, tuner, and turntable. And I still have them all! Although the Hitachi doesn't work. . . . .
And the big Bose controversy continues. Geez. The big rap against Bose has always been that they tend to use audio trickery to make the speakers sound better than they are. That is, they use sorta cheapo drivers and position them to reflect off of walls and stuff and make it sound like you're in a huge room, due to all of the reflecting. There's something to this, of course, and personally I find snobbery more than a bit off-putting. Still, I tend to have a reflexive dislike of Bose, influenced by the fact that I got roped into a Bose store for a half-hour infomercial. Used car salesmen, they are. They tend to market to those who have limited experience with audio, mostly people who have heard only small radio speakers with little bass or treble. Hence, you hear these things just filling up a room with sound and it's quite impressive. Some reviewers really liked them in some respects, and they did make a lot of room-filling sound. But once you listened to them (I'm talking about the classic Bose 901's here) for a while, you realize they sound pretty mushy, mostly because they only used a single type of driver for all frequencies.
So, eh, I'll see about getting new drivers and post an update once they go in. In the meantime, I'm listening to some old Jimmy Buffett LPs. I got turned on to Buffett on my field school on San Juan Island, WA. Talk about a cushy field school. We'd bomb around the island, drink (a lot), hang out at the beach, and pretend we were expat bums. Er, plus, I had a bit of a fling with a perfectly lovely young lady named Siendie. *sigh* Jimmy Buffett, archaeology, a touristy island, and a summer romance: sometimes it just all comes together.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Chinese tombs may surpass Egyptian wonders
At this point, I'm all for leaving them alone until remote sensing can show exactly what's there. Only because that day is not all that far off.
The tomb of China's first emperor is potentially one of the most spectacular on Earth, but a heated debate is developing over whether to excavate it at all.
Chinese archaeologists have expressed concern that they do not currently have the expertise to properly preserve what they find inside the tomb - located in China's central province of Shaanxi – but new technologies may be closing that gap.
Qinshi Huang's enormous tomb complex is the home of Xian's famed terracotta warriors; 8,000 life-size figures that were discovered by accident in 1974. The tomb itself, though, has not yet been disturbed.
At this point, I'm all for leaving them alone until remote sensing can show exactly what's there. Only because that day is not all that far off.
Unearthing La Tène's Celtic mysteriesAdd story to my swissinfo panel
n 1857 Swiss archaeologist Hans Kopp stumbled on a Celtic treasure trove, including 40 iron swords, at La Tène on the northeastern shores of Lake Neuchâtel.
To celebrate the 150-year anniversary of Kopp's important discovery, three Swiss museums with the largest La Tène collections have got together to launch the "Year of the Celts".
Alongside a series of exhibitions and events to mark the occasion, a three-year research project, financed by the National Science Foundation, will be attempting to shed new light on La Tène culture.
"We launched the project on two levels: for the general public to highlight the richness of our own collections, and on a scientific level to enable us to get much closer to the true meaning of La Tène," Madeline Betschart, director of the Schwab Museum in Biel, told swissinfo.
Modern technology reveals mummy's past
The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died — and at such a young age — remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the Saint Louis Science Center, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy.
Acquired by a Hermann, Mo., dentist at the turn of the century in the Middle East, the mummy ended up in an attic of some of his relatives, before being donated to the Science Center in 1985.
It sat in a museum warehouse until Al Wiman joined the Science Center as vice president two years ago and suggested that modern medical technology could unlock its secrets.
Mummies' parasites
Great graphic:
Ana Vicente and her team at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro began their quest for ancient pinworm RNA at San Pedro de Atacama, a pre-Incan village that was once part of an important trade route to the Pacific coast. Considered the driest place on earth, the region boasts 35 mm of rainfall in its wettest years and is considered a veritable time capsule for archaeologists, says paleoparasitologist Adauto Araujo, "There are so many bodies there, that archaeologists no longer excavate them."
Great graphic:
Ancient Mashed Grapes Found in Greece
Either the ancient Greeks loved grape juice, or they were making wine nearly 6,500 years ago, according to a new study that describes what could be the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes.
If the charred 2,460 grape seeds and 300 empty grape skins were used to make wine, as the researchers suspect, the remains might have belonged to the second oldest known grape wine in the world, edged out only by a residue-covered Iranian wine jug dating to the sixth millennium B.C.
Headless Bodies Hold Secrets to Pacific Migration
Old news.
The peculiar 3,000-year-old skeletons belong to the Lapita people, the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Their DNA could shed light on how the many remote island specks surrounding Vanuatu were colonized, the researchers say.
"Both Vanuatu and Western Polynesia were first settled by the Lapita culture but their populations are somewhat different genetically and this has not yet been explained," said dig leader Matthew Spriggs, an archaeologist with the Australian National University.
Old news.
Pharaoh's pots give up their secrets
FOR a century, they have been on display in the Louvre museum in Paris, labelled as Canopic jars holding the embalmed innards of the great Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II. But the four pots, covered in hieroglyphs, are not what they seem.
An analysis by French chemists has revealed that the jars in fact contain ordinary cosmetics, produced at a much later date.
. . .
he Louvre now believes the pots were made for a temple to the sun god Amun-Ra. Because Rameses II built the temple, his name is on the jars, but they were probably used to hold ritual ointments, then later recycled as containers for resin-embalmed remains.
(Yet another) Walker "Site" update Let the evidence speak at the Walker Hill Site
Well. . . .it'd be great if evidence did speak for itself, but most artifacts, I find, don't come out of the ground with tags explaining what they were.
Individuals have made gravely incongruous statements about the scientific process being followed, and what can be learned from it. The irony in this situation is that the people making these statements have themselves unabashedly disregarded the scientific process.
We are professional archaeologists, with over 40 years of collective experience in 16 states, as well as overseas. We caution against accepting the OSA's pronouncements as scientifically valid. He fails to substantiate his arguments, and therefore he has no basis for dismissal of the site. The motivations behind the attacks are not known or understood, but we remain dedicated to the scientific method, and we will not be deterred by poorly constructed criticism.
To quote a fellow scientist regarding the controversy surrounding the site, "The nice thing about science is that the evidence tells the story." Let the evidence speak. That is what we, the researchers, are trying to do.
Well. . . .it'd be great if evidence did speak for itself, but most artifacts, I find, don't come out of the ground with tags explaining what they were.
Ancient tombs found in Nayarit
The age/sex item caught my eye, though I don't know why. Seems unusual.
Mexican archaeologists found more than 100 bodies in 29 different pre-Hispanic tombs dating back about 2,000 years in Nayarit.
Raúl Barrera, who leads the archaeological project for the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said most of the remains belonged to women between the ages of 35 and 40.
Archaeologists have not yet been able to determine which civilization the remains are from, although they know the find dates back to the period 200 B.C. to A.D. 600.
The age/sex item caught my eye, though I don't know why. Seems unusual.
Recent battlefield archaeology Digging up the past in Belgium
UPDATE: More here.
Plus, I missed this:
Dowsing. Shot that whole thing to bits right quick.
Today, with the spring sun trying to burn through an early morning Belgian mist, it is hard to imagine that this innocuous looking potato field was once the hellish moonscape of the front line.
By the end of World War I life on the surface had become untenable. Tons of steel fell from the sky in a near continuous bombardment.
UPDATE: More here.
Plus, I missed this:
"It's a mixture of ancient and modern. We've used ground penetrating radar, which gave us a certain trace. And then we've used the ancient method of dowsing, and that matched exactly," said Peter Barton .
Dowsing. Shot that whole thing to bits right quick.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
A NAGPRA conundrum Research backs Ho-Chunk claim on mounds
Just reading this, the data don't look all that strong to link any particular tribe. But it seems fairly given that a number of "tribes" shared the area in the past.
According to research by Beloit College archaeologists, the animal-shaped mounds, which date as far back as 700 A.D., can be traced to ancestors of the Ho-Chunk.
“There are a lot of gaps in our knowledge, but we're using two lines of evidence that seem fairly reliable right now. And it's on that basis that most people assert that connection between the effigy mounds and Ho-Chunk ancestors,” said Dr. Robert Salzer, a former Beloit College anthropology professor and one of the archaeologists conducting ongoing research related to the effigy mounds.
. . .
Members of the Chippewa tribe recognize the validity of the Ho-Chunk's historical connections to the Beloit area as well, but are quick to point out the Ho-Chunk is not the only tribe that can prove a connection. U.S. government documents indicate the region around modern-day Beloit was shared by a number of tribes, including the Chippewa.
Just reading this, the data don't look all that strong to link any particular tribe. But it seems fairly given that a number of "tribes" shared the area in the past.
Archaeologist for a day in Israel
I've often wondered how well these things go. I imagine it's okay if the stratigraphy isn't terribly complex and people can basically just scrape away. But then, I've never actually read anything that is particularly critical of these sorts of digs.
Deep in a 2,000-year-old tunnel system outside Jerusalem, a young woman unearthed a rare oil lamp used in ancient rituals during an archaeological dig.
For Abby Krewson, the discovery is especially gratifying: Krewson is a 10th-grader from Philadelphia participating in a "dig for a day" archaeological experience with her family and a Bible college group.
"I didn't expect to find something like that, so it's very exciting," Krewson said.
I've often wondered how well these things go. I imagine it's okay if the stratigraphy isn't terribly complex and people can basically just scrape away. But then, I've never actually read anything that is particularly critical of these sorts of digs.
Ancient Jewish neighborhood discovered
That's also the whole thing. Probably will be updates on this.
Israeli archaeologists uncovered the remains of a Second Temple-era Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. A network of ancient streets, homes and ritual mikvah baths were found recently in the capital's Arab district of Shuafat when municipal workers laid tracks for a light railway, Ma'ariv reported Tuesday.
The Antiquities Authority estimated that the finds, which currently spread over an area of some 100 acres, date to a period after the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. Evidence suggests the neighborhood was affluent and religiously observant.
"In the digs, many stone tools and caches of coins were discovered, including a rare gold coin with the image of the Emperor Trajan," Antiquities Authority official Rahel Bar-Natan said.
That's also the whole thing. Probably will be updates on this.
Archaeologists: Circular formation may be ancient Indian earthwork
That's the whole thing.
Ball State University archaeologists say a circular formation discovered in a wooded area next to a highway west of Muncie is likely built by prehistoric Indians.
Workers with the Delaware County Office of Geographic Information System found the earthen structure more than a year ago while studying contours on a large topographical map.
The circular formation on a wooded tract near Indiana 32 between Muncie and Yorktown was recently brought to the attention of the Indiana Department of Transportation, which plans to widen that segment of the highway to four or five lanes.
Ball State archaeologist Don Cochran says the 150-foot diameter circle was likely constructed by excavating a ditch around a space archaeologists call a central platform.
That's the whole thing.
Archaeologists make finds at historic fort
Did you know that the Mackinac Bridge will provide you with a driver if youare too chicken have a phobia about such a large, open-water bridge crossing?
A preliminary report by the Colonial Michilimackinac archaeology team has been released about its findings during the 2006 season.
Colonial Michilimackinac, an early 18th-century French fort and fur trading village, has been continuously excavated for 48 years. Last year was the ninth season of excavation at the easternmost unit of the fort's South Southwest Rowhouse.
The archaeology team, led by Curator of Archaeology Lynn Evans, spent last summer excavating deep features of the rowhouse, including the root cellar and the south wall. The team finally reached the bottom of the main area of the cellar, first defined in 2000.
Did you know that the Mackinac Bridge will provide you with a driver if you
Archaeology issues delay bridge bid
Archaeological concerns have delayed the bid opening on a new bridge to replace the B.B. Comer Bridge in Scottsboro until April 27.
Johnny Harris, Division 1 engineer for the Alabama Department of Transportation, said Friday the date was moved from March 28 because of "archaeological issues" in the Tennessee River near the steel-truss bridge, built in 1930.
The department delayed bid opening, he said, after realizing archaeological finds were made by the Tennessee Valley Authority before it raised the river in 1939.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Lucy update Lucy fossil is up for travel, African leader says
The president of Ethiopia on Wednesday dismissed the concerns of scientists who worry that Lucy, the famous fossil found in the African country, is too fragile to travel this summer for an exhibition in Houston.
"They are entitled to their opinion," said Girma Wolde-Giorgis, who visited Houston to complete arrangements for the exhibit, which opens at the Houston Museum of Natural Science on Aug. 31.
At 3.2 million years old, Lucy's bones don't belong to the oldest human ancestor ever discovered, but hers is among the most complete skeletons recovered. There are several hundred fragments of bone in the collection, representing 40 percent of a single hominin skeleton. Most of the oldest hominin fossils have been found in Ethiopia, Kenya and Chad.
Reading Between the Lines
A thin beam of X-rays scans the writings of the legendary Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, a hidden text that may be the most important ancient scientific document discovered since the Renaissance. As faint lines emerge on a large computer monitor at Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, I can just barely make out the ghostly image of the Greek letter lambda.
As a Webcast producer for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, I have been documenting this experimental use of one of the most sophisticated tools of modern science, to decipher a 1,000-year-old book made of goatskin. Known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, dubbed Archie for short, it looks terribly fragile. The edges of most of the book's 174 pages are burned, and tears, holes and spots of purple mold dot their surface. The parchment is smaller than I thought it would be, not much larger than a hardback novel.
Experts reveal 'ancient massacre'
Bones found at a prehistoric burial site indicate they belonged to victims of an ancient massacre, say scientists.
Remains of 14 people were discovered at Wayland's Smithy, near Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire, in the 1960s.
Latest techniques date the bones at between 3590 BC and 3560 BC, and have led experts to believe the people may have died in a Neolithic Age massacre.
160,000-year-old jawbone redefines origins of the species
Modern humans were living in northern Africa far earlier than previously thought, according to scientists. A new analysis of a 160,000-year-old fossilised jawbone from Morocco shows that the homo sapiens in the area had started having long childhoods, one of the hallmarks of humans living today.
It is known that the species homo sapiens emerged in Africa 200,000 years ago, but the oldest fossils that resemble modern humans come from sites in Europe dated to around 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.
The latest find shows that the key time in the development of a complex human society came much earlier than previously thought. The longer people had to learn and develop their brains as children, the more sophisticated their society could become. The new study pushes the date that modern humans emerged back by more than 100,000 years.
Philistines, but Less and Less Philistine
Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines.
In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.
Archaeologists have now found that not only were Philistines cultured, they were also literate when they arrived, presumably from the region of the Aegean Sea, and settled the coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B. C.
Pig study forces rethink of Pacific colonisation
A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific.
Using mitochondrial DNA obtained from modern and ancient pigs across East Asia and the Pacific, the researchers demonstrated that a single genetic heritage is shared by modern Vietnamese wild boar, modern feral pigs on the islands of Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea, ancient Lapita pigs in Near Oceania, and modern and ancient domestic pigs on several Pacific Islands.
The study results, published today in the prestigious academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, contradict established models of human migration which assert that the ancestors of Pacific islanders originated in Taiwan or Island Southeast Asia, and travelled along routes that pass through the Philippines as they dispersed into the remote Pacific.
Shameless attempt to produce traffic by linking to a picture of Kylie Minogue's butt Why cavemen liked curvy cavewomen...like Kylie
Said posterior:
Continuing:
This has got to be tongue-in-cheek (as it were), a bizarre rendering of the actual work (which I suspect), or really bizarre interpretations by generally good archaeologists (Schild). Seems a bit of a stretch to say these figurines were the Magdalenian equivalent of a Playboy centerfold. That would imply that these things were supposed to directly represent an ideal human form (without a head???), which seems, well, a little screwy.
Besides, I know of no one who would think Minogue's rump, as attractive as it is (if you're into that sort of thing), would be classified as "big".
And I'll just leave it right there. This is a family blog, after all.
HERE are a few exceptions which will always stand out, but most female stars yearn for a diminutive derriere.
However, it appears that the small and slender bottom is very much a recent trend after an archaeological discovery revealed how Stone Age pin-ups were far from size zero.
Ancient carvings depicting the female form 15,000 years ago reveal that prehistoric women were revered for their curvaceous bodies and prominent buttocks.
The most popular were the cave-dwellers’ equivalents of Kylie Minogue (pictured), whose renowned behind is the world’s most popular posterior.
Said posterior:
Continuing:
Men looking for a mate ignored skinnier women and fought for females with the shapeliest behinds.
Experts said a well-presented bottom was a sign of wealth, health and a good diet.
They also suggested she would be a successful mother, able to produce lots of children and sent out a message to other men that her partner was a strong and successful hunter – making him more attractive to other women.
This has got to be tongue-in-cheek (as it were), a bizarre rendering of the actual work (which I suspect), or really bizarre interpretations by generally good archaeologists (Schild). Seems a bit of a stretch to say these figurines were the Magdalenian equivalent of a Playboy centerfold. That would imply that these things were supposed to directly represent an ideal human form (without a head???), which seems, well, a little screwy.
Besides, I know of no one who would think Minogue's rump, as attractive as it is (if you're into that sort of thing), would be classified as "big".
And I'll just leave it right there. This is a family blog, after all.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Archy blog update Came across this the other day, and here's a recent post.
In Defence of Archaeology
This is the thing that always annoyed me about the trend in archaeology (especially since the WIlley and Phillips tome) towards being. . .*dramatically building music*. . .Cultural Anthropologists. Nearly every archaeology textbook of the last 40 years has described the archaeological record as being so very "incomplete" and only a bare remnant of a rich cultural past, and if we only had more junk we could realize our goal of reconstructing past behavior and reach the holy grail of archaeological theory: Talking like sociocultural anthropologists. Yes, we certainly need to spend endless hours debating what the true definition of "culture" is and whether structural-functionalism is really worthwhile, and whether we're being sufficiently emic or not.
We really need to get over this whole "incompleteness" thing. A "complete" archaeological record is an absolute myth. Sure, you could imagine a world where every single item ever used by anybody everywhere is preserved after it was made, but then what? If everything we manufactured never decayed, we'd just end up piling all the useless stuff in piles and, poof, there goes context. Or destroying it ourselves and using it in some other context.
The great strength of archaeology resides strictly in the fact that we can't observe behavior directly -- time depth won't allow it. Time is the greatest asset of archaeology and that logically excludes "complete" data.
In Defence of Archaeology
Somebody once said to me, "You archaeologists don't really know anything, do you? I mean, it's just guesses, right?". Well, sometimes I do despair about archaeology as a science. Can we actually know anything about what life was like for people in the deep past? Are we doing science at all or just deluding ourselves?
. . .
But the thought that really cheers me is that although archaeology may not always understand societies of the past very well, it wouldn't actually be much easier if we had time machines. Because who really understands today's societies in all their multifaceted kaleidoscopism? Social anthropology and sociology have huge problems in getting any perspective on what's going on. Sure, they can talk to the people whose lives they want to learn about. But they can never be sure whether their informants are telling the truth, whether they actually have the knowledge necessary to answer the questions of social scientists, or if the sample of people they talk to is really representative of the group they aim at.
This is the thing that always annoyed me about the trend in archaeology (especially since the WIlley and Phillips tome) towards being. . .*dramatically building music*. . .Cultural Anthropologists. Nearly every archaeology textbook of the last 40 years has described the archaeological record as being so very "incomplete" and only a bare remnant of a rich cultural past, and if we only had more junk we could realize our goal of reconstructing past behavior and reach the holy grail of archaeological theory: Talking like sociocultural anthropologists. Yes, we certainly need to spend endless hours debating what the true definition of "culture" is and whether structural-functionalism is really worthwhile, and whether we're being sufficiently emic or not.
We really need to get over this whole "incompleteness" thing. A "complete" archaeological record is an absolute myth. Sure, you could imagine a world where every single item ever used by anybody everywhere is preserved after it was made, but then what? If everything we manufactured never decayed, we'd just end up piling all the useless stuff in piles and, poof, there goes context. Or destroying it ourselves and using it in some other context.
The great strength of archaeology resides strictly in the fact that we can't observe behavior directly -- time depth won't allow it. Time is the greatest asset of archaeology and that logically excludes "complete" data.
Archaeologists discover Roman village at foot of Silbury Hill
The Romans did more than stop and stare in wonder at the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe - they built a substantial village at the foot of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, it is revealed today.
Although archaeologists and treasure hunters have been pottering around the hill for centuries, the discovery by English Heritage scientists - through a geophysical survey, without a sod of earth being turned - was completely unexpected. Only scattered Roman remains, including a few coins probably dropped by a traveller, have ever been found in the area.
Archaeology study begins at Forks slave site in Natchez
Archaeologists are in Natchez this week hoping to find intact archaeologic deposits related to the Forks of the Road slave market.
Historians say the Forks of the Road site probably looked like "a sprawling prison camp" where slaves would be haggled over and sold to cotton plantation owners who came from across the South.
The survey is funded by the National Park Service and contracted by the city of Natchez.
Lost civilization dwelling mound. . . .found First-Ever Dwelling Mound Found in Germany
It's a tell!
A 7,000-year-old dwelling mound has been found in Germany, causing a stir among archaeologists. It is the first find of its kind in Western Europe.
A room with a view has always been a coveted thing. Over the millennia, humans discovered that it could be achieved by simply staying put over generations and not picking up the garbage. By building and rebuilding on the rubble of their own architectural remains, sedentary humans managed to achieve an impressive height.
It's a tell!
‘Indus Valley civilization was more varied and wider’
Indus Valley civilization was much more varied and wider than historians believed till date,” said Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Boston University, Mohammed Rafique Mughal on Monday.
"Extensive exploration and excavation of sites in the upper Indus Valley and the lower Sindh have revealed a widespread cultural phenomena which existed at that time," said Mughal, delivering the Dr I H Qureshi Memorial Lecture, the Harappan civilization, at St Stephen's College.
Claiming that field researches at Harappan sites—both in India and Pakistan —are leading to fresh interpretations, Mughal said, "While we are still striving to understand various aspects of this civilization, certain cultural patterns are emerging from the current research that offers new perspective to various aspects of the Harappan Civilization."
Paper challenges 1491 Amazonian population theories
Hmmmm. This seems to be using only data from Amazonia proper. I had thought that the hypothesis being refuted here was mostly only used in the Maya territories where you have extensive -- and large -- settlements all over the place.
There's a scholarly debate brewing about whether pre-Columbian Amazonian populations settled in large numbers across Amazonia and created the modern forest setting that many conservationists take to be ‘natural.'
This view has become fashionable among many archaeologists and anthropologists, and is challenged in a recent paper from Dr. Mark Bush of the Florida Institute of Technology. The findings of Bush’s research may rekindle a debate has major implications for land use and policy-setting in the rain forest.
"We don't contradict that there were major settlements in key areas flanking the Amazon Channel -- there could have been millions of people living there," says Mark Bush, a British-born paleo-ecologist who travels to extremely remote rain forest locations to collect core samples from ancient lakes. He then analyzes those samples for pollen and charcoal and thus is able to conclude with a high degree of accuracy the extent of human settlement in that region.
Hmmmm. This seems to be using only data from Amazonia proper. I had thought that the hypothesis being refuted here was mostly only used in the Maya territories where you have extensive -- and large -- settlements all over the place.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Walker "site" mini-update A chopper? A knife? Or plain old rocks?
Mostly what was in an earlier post. But there are a few more tidbits:
Errr. . . to see some glacial stratigraphy and a few rocks?
And:
Probably a good idea.
Stone pieces found on a hill above Walker, Minn., don't look like prehistoric tools, don't indicate the earliest human habitation in the state and don't even make the hill an archaeological site, the state archaeologist said Monday.
Mostly what was in an earlier post. But there are a few more tidbits:
Sue Mulholland of Duluth, an owner of an archaeological firm and president of the Minnesota Council for Archaeology, said of Anfinson's conclusion, "I think he's slamming the door a little too soon."
Some people in Walker, a county seat of about 1,100 people 190 miles north of Minneapolis, think the site could become a tourist attraction.
Errr. . . to see some glacial stratigraphy and a few rocks?
However, David Mather, the state's archaeologist for the National Register of Historic Places, who was involved with the Walker site, said most archaeologists he talked with felt there were some genuine artifacts, or items they did not feel comfortable dismissing.
But Mather added that "none of the artifacts are what we would call a museum piece, I suppose."
And:
The Walker City Council, which was to discuss Anfinson's report Monday night, has agreed to leave the site alone and access the community center from hilltop streets.
Mather said his office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development branch still believe the site should be preserved for further examination.
"We can professionally disagree," he said. "[But] if it's gone, it's gone forever, and all it will be is a question mark."
Probably a good idea.
Ship excavation sheds light on Napoleon's attack on the Holy Land
Which navy commissioned the boat that sunk off the coast of Acre 200 years ago, which battles was it involved in and how did it end up at the bottom of the sea? The recent findings of marine archaeologists at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies of the University of Haifa may provide the answers to these questions.
The ship, which sunk off the coast of Acre during a battle between Napoleon, the British navy and possibly the defenders of Acre, 200 years ago, is under excavation and its finds are beginning to shed light on Napoleon's attempt to conquer the Holy Land.
Colin Renfrew expands our understanding of cognitive archaeology in Assembly Series lecture
Lord Colin Renfrew has been an influential and innovative archaeologist for more than three decades. His groundbreaking research has provoked theoretical debate on archaeological methods and interpretation. He will present this year's John and Penelope Biggs Lecture in the Classics titled "Becoming Human: The Cognitive Archaeology of Humankind" at 4 p.m., March 22 in Graham Chapel, as part of the Assembly Series.
Colin Renfrew
Renfrew is internationally renowned for his contributions to archaeological science, including his work on radiocarbon dating, European prehistory, DNA and archaeogenetics, and the origins of language. In the 1980s, he was a pioneer in the development of social archaeology, that focuses on the dynamics of social relationships in the past and their role in archaeological interpretation. He has dedicated himself to the prevention of looting of archaeological sites, and raising awareness of the ethical aspects of his profession.
Life imitates. . . .commercials 'Stone Age' called insult
For once, I am nonplussed.
"All anthropologists would agree that the negative use of the terms 'primitive' and 'Stone Age' to describe tribal peoples has serious implications for their welfare," the British-based Association of Social Anthropologists said Tuesday. "Governments and other social groups have long used these ideas as a pretext of depriving such peoples of land and their resources."
The edict is the result of a kerfuffle that began last March when Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament, described two Botswana tribes as "trying to stay in the Stone Age" and "primitive" during a spirited debate. Though she later said she was misunderstood, Mrs. Tonge was criticized in the British press as "primitive" herself.
. . .
It presents an odd cultural moment for the Martin Agency, a Richmond-based advertising agency that created sullen cave men characters to market Geico insurance. The wildly successful campaign features well-dressed but disgruntled Neanderthals arguing against the use of cave man images to market Geico's claims department -- "so easy a cave man could do it."
. . .
"Anthropologists side with Geico's cavemen," said Ted Nudd of Adweek, an industry publication.
For once, I am nonplussed.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Bookstore score
That's Willey and Phillips' Method and Theory in American Archaeology, a true classic. I think this is, in fact, the original 1958 edition. A brief synopsis:
One could probably argue with that definition, but it works okay. The quote there is probably the most famous (in archaeology circles anyway) part of it, and the subtitle, probably not readable in the photo says: "Archaeology and Anthropology meet in this study of the prehistory of the Americas". Some have argued that processual archaeology really got its start in 1947 with Taylor's A Study of Archaeology but, to my knowledge, Taylor's work didn't have immediate effect and wasn't quite as explicitly theoretical in its approach.
Haven't cracked the thing open (much) yet, but it seems almost new. No dog-eared pages, the spine is not cracked, etc. The original price was $1.95 and I paid $1.98. See, keep these archaeology books long enough and they'l increase in value. . . .
That's Willey and Phillips' Method and Theory in American Archaeology, a true classic. I think this is, in fact, the original 1958 edition. A brief synopsis:
Processual archaeology is a form of archaeological theory which arguably had its genesis in 1958 with Willey and Phillips' work, Method and Theory in American Archeology in which the pair stated that "American archeology is anthropology or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips, 1958:2). This idea implied that the goals of archaeology were, in fact, the goals of anthropology, which were to answer questions about humans and human society. This was a critique of the former period in archaeology, the Culture-Historical phase in which archaeologists thought that any information which artifacts contained about past people and past ways of life was lost once the items became included in the archaeological record. All that could be done was to catalogue, describe, and create timelines based on the artifacts (Trigger, 1989:148).
One could probably argue with that definition, but it works okay. The quote there is probably the most famous (in archaeology circles anyway) part of it, and the subtitle, probably not readable in the photo says: "Archaeology and Anthropology meet in this study of the prehistory of the Americas". Some have argued that processual archaeology really got its start in 1947 with Taylor's A Study of Archaeology but, to my knowledge, Taylor's work didn't have immediate effect and wasn't quite as explicitly theoretical in its approach.
Haven't cracked the thing open (much) yet, but it seems almost new. No dog-eared pages, the spine is not cracked, etc. The original price was $1.95 and I paid $1.98. See, keep these archaeology books long enough and they'l increase in value. . . .
No, it's not Cahokia
Not a bad article.
"The people who are looting — if they did one and found nothing, they wouldn't come back," he said.
Leach, an amateur archaeologist, is hoping at least one West County city will pass a law to help crack down on the robbing of ancient burial sites.
He's also trying to persuade people to adopt mounds and watch over them. "It's just one person who is going to say, 'They may bulldoze every other mound in Missouri or loot every other mound, but not this one,'" Leach said.
Not a bad article.
Fight! Fight! At ArchaeoBlog!
3 long comments. I, er, actually, didn't pay any attention to the first one. And the last two just came in at about the same time (yesterday or today).
And I'm not all that motivated to look into any deeper than that. But, there it is.
UPDATE: Well, okay, I did a little search:
A new light shines on the Oak Island Treasure Mystery
Keith Ranville's New Oak Island Money Pit Theory
"READINGS OF OAK ISLAND MYSTERY INSCRIPTION" (discussion forum)
3 long comments. I, er, actually, didn't pay any attention to the first one. And the last two just came in at about the same time (yesterday or today).
And I'm not all that motivated to look into any deeper than that. But, there it is.
UPDATE: Well, okay, I did a little search:
A new light shines on the Oak Island Treasure Mystery
Keith Ranville's New Oak Island Money Pit Theory
"READINGS OF OAK ISLAND MYSTERY INSCRIPTION" (discussion forum)
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Sorta non-archaeological story ‘Petrified lightning bolts’ give peek into ancient climates
They used TL to date them. Doesn't seem to anything new here as archaeologists have done a lot of climate reconstructions in the Libyan desert. Guess it's one more piece of data though, and might be useful in cases where there is no archy data.
When lightning strikes sand or soil, it melts and fuses grains into features that some have called petrified lightning bolts. Their scientific name is fulgurites, after fulgur, the Latin word for lightning.
Fulgurites are branched, thin, hollow tubes usually 1 or 2 inches in diameter and a few feet to tens of feet long. They are rough on the outside (where sand grains and other material stick to the molten material) but glassy smooth on the inside, with many bubble holes produced by vaporized gases.
They usually are considered mere curiosities, but a recent bit of research reported in the Feb [??] issue of the journal Geology put fulgurites to a scientific use, to obtain 15,000-year-old climate data.
They used TL to date them. Doesn't seem to anything new here as archaeologists have done a lot of climate reconstructions in the Libyan desert. Guess it's one more piece of data though, and might be useful in cases where there is no archy data.
Ick is right Unbrushed Teeth Reveal Ancient Diets
Ick factor aside, ancient tartar-encrusted teeth may be a biological gold mine for scientists, thanks to a new technique for extracting food particles from teeth that once belonged to prehistoric humans.
The method already has solved a mystery surrounding what early coastal Brazilians ate.
In the future, similar studies may reveal clues about other ancient diets, particularly in areas with little plant preservation from earlier times.
Walker "site" update State archaeologist casts doubt on ancient find in Walker
Hmmmmm. . . . .link to the actual report here. The conclusion is based on conversations with several lithic specialists (who know the area) who were apparently unanimous in their rejection of the objects as cultural. So, they've got an uphill battle to demonstrate that this is an actual archaeological site. I predict it goes nowhere (the absence of any other features or faunal remains is also very troubling).
The state archaeologist is casting doubt on claims that an archaeological dig in the northern Minnesota city of Walker has turned up ancient stone tools between 13,000 and 14,000 years old.
Minnesota State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson, in a report released Monday, said the materials found at the excavation site were more likely to have been produced by natural forces such as flowing water or glacial movement.
The majority of the artifacts "did not demonstrate the characteristics that one would expect from humanly produced stone artifacts," he said in his eight-page report.
Hmmmmm. . . . .link to the actual report here. The conclusion is based on conversations with several lithic specialists (who know the area) who were apparently unanimous in their rejection of the objects as cultural. So, they've got an uphill battle to demonstrate that this is an actual archaeological site. I predict it goes nowhere (the absence of any other features or faunal remains is also very troubling).
New video The Archaeology Channel has a new video up:
Admittedly, I haven't watched the whole thing, just the first 1/3 or so. I just give this one an "Eh."
This film is a parody of the very popular television series, Digging
for the Truth, which is broadcast by the History Channel. The
episode parodied is Mystery of the Anasazi. In this light-hearted
commentary, Bradley Garrett and Adam Fish highlight certain
superficial aspects of the television production and question its
authenticity and authoritativeness. In the process of poking fun,
they allude to issues of concern surrounding the presentation of
archaeological knowledge through the style of modern day popular
television.
Admittedly, I haven't watched the whole thing, just the first 1/3 or so. I just give this one an "Eh."
Monday, March 05, 2007
Ruins in Athens May Be an Ancient Market
More here.
Archaeologists have discovered extensive remains of what is believed to be an ancient marketplace with shops and a religious center at the southern edge of Athens, the Culture Ministry said Friday. The finds, in the coastal neighborhood of Voula, date from the 4th or 5th century B.C.
"It is a very large complex," the ministry said. "It was a site of rich financial and religious activity, which was most probably a marketplace."
Marketplaces _ or agoras _ teemed with shops, open-air stalls and administrative buildings, and were the financial, political and social center of ancient Greek life.
More here.
Cubans traded their gold for cheap brass pendants
You know, I never really considered how valuable gold was considered in the New World. It seems to have been mostly associated with royalty, but was it the most valuable metal, or just the most common?
Recent research in Cuba has highlighted the contrast between European and ancient American values. Cheap brass dress accessories from Western Europe traded for many times their price in gold with Caribbean natives who prized the alloy more than the pure metal.
“It would have been impossible for the first Europeans arriving in the Caribbean to envisage the colossal value that their metal would accomplish in trade with the indigenous population,” write Marcos Martin-ón-Torres and his colleagues in the Journal of Archaeological Science. “Early chroniclers report that pure gold or caona was considered the least valuable metal, significantly less esteemed and less sacred than copper-based alloys.”
You know, I never really considered how valuable gold was considered in the New World. It seems to have been mostly associated with royalty, but was it the most valuable metal, or just the most common?
Homo hobbitus update Surviving the Hobbit Wars
Dr Mike Gagan will be getting into more than one of the world's most exciting archaeological digs when he abseils down to an ancient graveyard on the Indonesian island of Flores in June.
The Australian National University palaeoclimatologist will also be entering a drama that has a reputation for fierce personal and ideological rivalries, international intrigue, stolen goods of priceless value, broken and mended agreements, intense media interest, and a central theme which raises questions about the very nature of what it means to be human.
Arrrrrrr. . . . Officials Plan 3-Year Excavation of Sunken Ship Believed to Be Blackbeard's
A shipwreck off the North Carolina coast believed to be that of notorious pirate Blackbeard could be fully excavated in three years, officials working on the project said.
"That's really our target," Steve Claggett, the state archaeologist, said Friday while discussing 10 years of research that has been conducted since the shipwreck was found just off Atlantic Beach.
The ship ran aground in 1718, and some researchers believe it was a French slave ship Blackbeard captured in 1717 and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge.
Builders Discover 46 Ancient Tombs in Colombia
There's nothing really in the article about how they determined any of this stuff. Except for a bit about a female "shaman".
A group of construction workers stumbled upon 46 ancient tombs, between 1,500 and 2,500 years old while digging to build a new soccer stadium in Deportivo Cali in southwestern Colombia, an archaeologist team said on Wednesday.
The tombs were found in Malagana, on the basin of the Cauca River. Anthropologist Jose Rodriguez, who headed a team from Colombia's National University, said that the tombs showed evidence of cannibalism and warrior activities.
There's nothing really in the article about how they determined any of this stuff. Except for a bit about a female "shaman".
Unearthed after 28 centuries
That's the whole thing.
An ancient tree trunk unearthed by a landslide in southeastern Switzerland nearly two years ago is more than 28 centuries old, local authorities said Thursday.
The white pine was formally dated by scientists to 808 BC, about 2 815 years ago, Mathias Seifert of the archaelogical service in the canton of Graubuenden told the Swiss news agency ATS.
The tree was found on the banks of the Landquart river near the resort of Klosters in August 2005 following a spate of bad weather that caused flash floods and landslides in the mountainous area.
Seifert said he sent the trunk for radio carbon dating after examining the tree rings, which usually betray the age of a tree. The white pine had probably been preserved by a glacier or ice, he added.
That's the whole thing.
Friday, March 02, 2007
In the mail Got this a couple of days ago, F Anyone's I:
Be famous!
I am contacting you from Morningstar Entertainment. We are trying to
find a REAL ARCHEOLOGIST for the show host for a new cable series that we
are producing.
This is what we are looking for:
Male/female, 20's-50's, dynamic, interesting,roguish, someone who stands
out. A PHD & MA is a plus.
Salary will be discussed at audition.
We are looking for people from all over the United States or Britain.
If you know of anyone who would be right for this, they should:
- Please send headshot & resume or cover letter & photo ASAP via email
to: tinacasting789@yahoo.com
or to:
Tina Seiler Casting
PO Box 2001
Toluca Lake, CA 91610
Thank you.
Tina Seiler
Casting Director
818/382-7929
Be famous!
Greek archaeologists find Hera statue
But where'd the head end up?
A 2,200-year-old statue of the goddess Hera has been found in a wall of a city under Mount Olympus, mythical home of Greece's ancient gods, archaeologists announced Thursday.
The headless marble statue was discovered last year during excavations in the ruins of ancient Dion, some 50 miles southwest of Thessaloniki.
Archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis said the life-sized statue had been used by the early Christian inhabitants of the city of Dion as filling for a defensive wall.
But where'd the head end up?
Underwater archaeology update Science Team to Search Gulf of Mexico
I've been skeptical they'll find anything. One would assume sediment desposition over this time would have buried stuff pretty deep. Maybe they know something not in the article.
Famed undersea explorer Robert Ballard is leading a team of scientists heading into the Gulf of Mexico for a weeklong examination of Texas' ancient shoreline to see if anybody may have lived there.
Ballard, whose discoveries include the wrecks of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, is among dozens of geologists, biologists and marine archaeologists exploring the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, a protected area of underwater salt domes that are topped with reefs that host brightly colored sponges, plants and other marine life.
But 15,000 or more years ago, with much of North America locked in the last Ice Age, water levels of the Gulf of Mexico were 200 feet lower, meaning the area was the Texas shoreline some 100 miles south of where it is now.
I've been skeptical they'll find anything. One would assume sediment desposition over this time would have buried stuff pretty deep. Maybe they know something not in the article.
Don't sink the boat
Just goes to show, it's tough to preserve something better than it had been for 3,000 years.
Ever since its discovery in 1954, the magnificent 4,600-year-old wooden funerary barge of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, has been kept in poorly managed conditions. Its progressive deterioration has been calamitous. At long last, however, the responsibility of preparing a condition and conservation report on the vessel has been handed to Hani Hanna, chair of the International Conference on Heritage of the Naqada and Qus region, Egypt 2007.
. . .
The list seemed endless, and eyebrows were raised when Hanna told his audience at the international conference that extensive damage had also resulted from defective former restorations, and the metamorphosis of consolidation, coating and restoration materials. Much to everyone's astonishment, he added: "there are several oil paint spots resulting from the painting of the interior of the museum building."
Just goes to show, it's tough to preserve something better than it had been for 3,000 years.
Errrrrrr. . . . How Vikings Might Have Navigated on Cloudy Days
OTOH: Unlike with Viking sundials, archaeologists have yet to find any remnants of sunstones. You'd think if they were so important to navigation, someone would have been buried with one in one of those way cool ship burials.
Vikings navigated the oceans with sundials aboard their Norse ships. But on an overcast day, sundials would have been useless. Many researchers have suggested that the on foggy days, Vikings looked toward the sky through rock crystals called sunstones to give them direction.
No one had tested the theory until recently.
A team sailed the Arctic Ocean aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden and found that sunstones could indeed light the way in foggy and cloudy conditions.
OTOH: Unlike with Viking sundials, archaeologists have yet to find any remnants of sunstones. You'd think if they were so important to navigation, someone would have been buried with one in one of those way cool ship burials.
Peruvian citadel is site of earliest ancient solar observatory in the Americas
The photos at that link give a good indication at how it was used.
More here, too.
Chankillo is a large ceremonial center covering several square kilometers in the costal Peruvian desert. It was better known in the past for a heavily fortified hilltop structure with massive walls, restricted gates, and parapets. For many years, there has been a controversy as to whether this part of Chankillo was a fort or a ceremonial center. But the purpose of a 300meter long line of Thirteen Towers lying along a small hill nearby had remained a mystery..
The new evidence now identifies it as a solar observatory. When viewed from two specially constructed observing points, the thirteen towers are strikingly visible on the horizon, resembling large prehistoric teeth. Around the observing points are spaces where artifacts indicate that ritual gatherings were held.
The current report offers strong evidence for an additional use of the site at Chankillo � as a solar observatory. It is remarkable as the earliest known complete solar observatory in the Americas that defines all the major aspects of the solar year.
The photos at that link give a good indication at how it was used.
More here, too.
Geico Cavemen update
TV is So Easy, Even a Caveman Can Do It
Not much more at the link. I'd been meaning to post that I thought a sitcom had to come out of these guys, but too late now to look prescient. Nevertheless, I predict it will be difficult to succeed. The gimmick seems to work well in small doses, but I suspect it will be tough to pull off on a regular basis. They're kind of "normal" in the commercials, but what sort of caveman quirks will they have on TV? Anything like the Beverly Hillbillies' schtick? Great physical strength, befitting Neanderthals? A proclivity to eat raw meat despite their suave demeanor? The writers will also have to be very clever working in the predjudice angle. And will they work some cool archaeology gags in anywhere? Do they need a technical advisor? Call me!
And sayeth Patrick, will they kill and eat the Gecko?
TV is So Easy, Even a Caveman Can Do It
ABC is looking to an unlikely place to find the next big television show: Geico TV commercials.
Yes, the net is developing a half-hour comedy based on the cavemen characters from the popular insurance ads. The show would revolve around three pre-historic men who must battle prejudice as they live their day-to-day lives in modern Atlanta. Who smells Emmy?
Not much more at the link. I'd been meaning to post that I thought a sitcom had to come out of these guys, but too late now to look prescient. Nevertheless, I predict it will be difficult to succeed. The gimmick seems to work well in small doses, but I suspect it will be tough to pull off on a regular basis. They're kind of "normal" in the commercials, but what sort of caveman quirks will they have on TV? Anything like the Beverly Hillbillies' schtick? Great physical strength, befitting Neanderthals? A proclivity to eat raw meat despite their suave demeanor? The writers will also have to be very clever working in the predjudice angle. And will they work some cool archaeology gags in anywhere? Do they need a technical advisor? Call me!
And sayeth Patrick, will they kill and eat the Gecko?
Thursday, March 01, 2007
And now. . . .the news from the EEF
Press reports: "France to return 'pharaoh's hair' to Egypt"
http://snipurl.com/1boji
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070226/wl_mideast_afp/
franceegyptarchaeology_070226154815]
http://snipurl.com/1bojj
[http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=
20070226-013711-2645r]
http://snipurl.com/1bojk
[http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/
0,9294,2-11-1447_2075336,00.html]
"France is to hand over to Egypt a lock of hair said
to belong to the mummy of Ramses II that was put on sale
on the Internet last year. (..) French authorities recently
wrapped up a judicial investigation into the case, but are
not[!] expected to press charges against the seller."
[For the surfacing of this hairy scandal, see EEFNEWS (434).]
Press reports: "5-year-old gives up her year's savings
for U of M mummy-- $6.75 "
http://snipurl.com/1bojm
[http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/
0,2845,MCA_25340_5376781,00.html]
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/20070225-014557-9651r/
"Geni Gallant is 5 years old and passionate about ancient
Egypt. She's so passionate, in fact, that when the Oklahoma
native found out that the University of Memphis' Institute
of Egyptian Art and Archeology needed money to buy
new cases for its mummy collection, she saved up for a
whole year to donate to the cause."
Press report: "The tragedy of Isadora in pictures"
http://news.gom.com.eg/gazette/tourism/detail_8_88.shtml#
About the tomb of Isadora in Touna el-Gebel, and the
story of this Roman Period lady as told by the tomb scenes.
Press report: "Egyptian obelisk to be be erected in Beijing"
http://www.ansamed.info/en/egypt/news/ME09.YAM19102.html
"An [newly constructed] Egyptian obelisk will be erected in Beijing
as part of the ceremonies to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the
relations between Egypt and China."
The Australian Centre for Egyptology, Macquarie University,
Sydney Australia, has begun to put online (as PDF files) some
of its 'out of print' publications. Two have appeared:
-- ACE Studies I: The Family in the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt,
by Sheila Whale, 1989
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/Studies%201.htm
-- ACE Reports 8: The Teti Cemetery in Saqqara, Volume I,
by N Kanawati and A Hassan, 1996
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/REPORTS%208.htm
-- And don't overlook their section of downloadable selected
newsletter articles, the full Newsletters archive, and the Reports
of previous excavation and research:
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/resourcematerialtext.htm
Shannon McPherron has put up some relevant papers on
her website - about prehistoric Egypt mostly:
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Deborah Olszewski, Harold
L. Dibble, Jennifer Smith, Utsav A. Schurmans, "High
Desert Paleolithic Survey at Abydos (Egypt): Preliminary
Report", in: Journal of Field Archaeology vol. 30 (2005),
pp. 283-303; in PDF (3.17 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1boko
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/
pdf/olszewski_et_al05.pdf]
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Harold L. Dibble, "Using
Computers in Adverse Field Conditions: Tales from the
Egyptian Desert", in: The SAA Archaeological Record 3(5)
(2003), pp. 28-32; in PDF (1.24 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1bokq
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/pdf/
mcpherron_and_dibble_2003.pdf]
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Deborah Olszewski, Harold L.
Dibble, Marie Soressi, "Middle Egypt in Prehistory: A
Search for the Origins of Modern Human Behavior and
Human Dispersal", in: Expedition 43(2) (2001), pp.31-37;
in PDF (6.30 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1boku
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/pdf/
Expedition2001.pdf]
-- For the Abydos Survey for Prehistoric Sites (ASPS) project,
mentioned in the above papers, see EEFNEWS (397).
End of EEF news
Press reports: "France to return 'pharaoh's hair' to Egypt"
http://snipurl.com/1boji
[http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070226/wl_mideast_afp/
franceegyptarchaeology_070226154815]
http://snipurl.com/1bojj
[http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=
20070226-013711-2645r]
http://snipurl.com/1bojk
[http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/
0,9294,2-11-1447_2075336,00.html]
"France is to hand over to Egypt a lock of hair said
to belong to the mummy of Ramses II that was put on sale
on the Internet last year. (..) French authorities recently
wrapped up a judicial investigation into the case, but are
not[!] expected to press charges against the seller."
[For the surfacing of this hairy scandal, see EEFNEWS (434).]
Press reports: "5-year-old gives up her year's savings
for U of M mummy-- $6.75 "
http://snipurl.com/1bojm
[http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local/article/
0,2845,MCA_25340_5376781,00.html]
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/20070225-014557-9651r/
"Geni Gallant is 5 years old and passionate about ancient
Egypt. She's so passionate, in fact, that when the Oklahoma
native found out that the University of Memphis' Institute
of Egyptian Art and Archeology needed money to buy
new cases for its mummy collection, she saved up for a
whole year to donate to the cause."
Press report: "The tragedy of Isadora in pictures"
http://news.gom.com.eg/gazette/tourism/detail_8_88.shtml#
About the tomb of Isadora in Touna el-Gebel, and the
story of this Roman Period lady as told by the tomb scenes.
Press report: "Egyptian obelisk to be be erected in Beijing"
http://www.ansamed.info/en/egypt/news/ME09.YAM19102.html
"An [newly constructed] Egyptian obelisk will be erected in Beijing
as part of the ceremonies to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the
relations between Egypt and China."
The Australian Centre for Egyptology, Macquarie University,
Sydney Australia, has begun to put online (as PDF files) some
of its 'out of print' publications. Two have appeared:
-- ACE Studies I: The Family in the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt,
by Sheila Whale, 1989
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/Studies%201.htm
-- ACE Reports 8: The Teti Cemetery in Saqqara, Volume I,
by N Kanawati and A Hassan, 1996
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/REPORTS%208.htm
-- And don't overlook their section of downloadable selected
newsletter articles, the full Newsletters archive, and the Reports
of previous excavation and research:
http://www.egyptology.mq.edu.au/resourcematerialtext.htm
Shannon McPherron has put up some relevant papers on
her website - about prehistoric Egypt mostly:
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Deborah Olszewski, Harold
L. Dibble, Jennifer Smith, Utsav A. Schurmans, "High
Desert Paleolithic Survey at Abydos (Egypt): Preliminary
Report", in: Journal of Field Archaeology vol. 30 (2005),
pp. 283-303; in PDF (3.17 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1boko
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/
pdf/olszewski_et_al05.pdf]
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Harold L. Dibble, "Using
Computers in Adverse Field Conditions: Tales from the
Egyptian Desert", in: The SAA Archaeological Record 3(5)
(2003), pp. 28-32; in PDF (1.24 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1bokq
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/pdf/
mcpherron_and_dibble_2003.pdf]
-- Shannon R. McPherron, Deborah Olszewski, Harold L.
Dibble, Marie Soressi, "Middle Egypt in Prehistory: A
Search for the Origins of Modern Human Behavior and
Human Dispersal", in: Expedition 43(2) (2001), pp.31-37;
in PDF (6.30 MB)
http://snipurl.com/1boku
[http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/mcpherron/pdf/
Expedition2001.pdf]
-- For the Abydos Survey for Prehistoric Sites (ASPS) project,
mentioned in the above papers, see EEFNEWS (397).
End of EEF news
Archaeologists unearth gasworks
Investigators have uncovered a major example of Scottish industrial archaeology in the middle of Edinburgh.
They have found the remains of the capital's original gasworks, which was opened almost 200 years ago.
The site, which was discovered during redevelopment of the area, lies to the east of Edinburgh's Waverley station.
A brothel? What came before the schoolhouse?
Before the Silver City Schoolhouse was built in 1867, something else stood in its spot. What it might have been is anybody's guess.
But residents who spent last weekend digging under the older, southern wing of the schoolhouse discovered a rock wall that did not belong to the schoolhouse.
On the wall was a pair of 19th-century children's shoes.
"The wall appears to be older than the school," said Ron Reno, a Silver City resident who is also an archaeologist with Zeier & Associates of Minden.
Medieval burial ground unearthed
Human remains have been found by developers building a new hotel and student block in Preston.
The bones, discovered in Marsh Lane, are believed to be from a medieval burial ground.
Five coffins and a number of skeletal remains have been uncovered, along with medieval glass and floor tiles thought to be up to 700 years old.
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The site has been fenced off and work halted to allow archaeologists to examine it.
Looters pillaging Native American sites in Palm Beach County
Piece by piece, year after year, relics that tell the history of Palm Beach County are vanishing.
Development along the coast and expanding westward has paved over countless sites once home to Florida's earliest civilizations. The sites that remain along the western edge of the county are being pillaged by thieves, who've dug up centuries of unrecorded history in search of lucrative clay pots, tools and jewelry that can be sold to collectors.
It's a practice that's illegal at the local, state and federal levels, but one, county officials admit, they're largely powerless to stop. The ancient sites, some thought to be burial mounds dating back thousands of years, are too remote and too inaccessible to be patrolled every day. Despite limited exposure, researchers have already uncovered some artifacts -- crystal-beaded necklaces, metal figurines and gold beads -- that hint at a thriving civilization that lived off the land and traded with early explorers around the time of Shakespeare and the Renaissance in Europe.
Possible TMI? Ancient Egypt Meds: Prayer, Laxatives
Well, based on my experiences in Egypt, that's probably the least of one's worries. . . .
Although findings are preliminary, it appears that treating constipation preoccupied early doctors.
"The ancient Egyptians used a diverse range of plants for an equally diverse range of medical conditions," lead researcher Ryan Metcalfe told Discovery News. "Laxatives dominated the field, with bulk laxatives, such as figs, bran and dates in common use."
Metcalfe, a scientist in the university's School of Medicine, added that the Egyptians used bowel stimulants such as the bitter fruit coloynth and castor oil, "which remained in clinical use until about 40 years ago."
Well, based on my experiences in Egypt, that's probably the least of one's worries. . . .
Lake Pueblo still yields plenty of artifacts
So, either lots of good people who leave things lie or crude looking artifacts that no one even sees.
More than a million fishermen, boaters, campers and hikers tramp along the shores of Lake Pueblo every year but even with all of that modern traffic, signs of earlier residents still exist.
That’s the finding of an ongoing archaeological survey of the reservoir’s shores to compare results with earlier work done in the mid-1960s before the dam was built.
Anne Whitfield, a member of the Pueblo Archaeological and Historical Society, is one of the local people working on the project and said, “It was shocking how much we were able to find.”
So, either lots of good people who leave things lie or crude looking artifacts that no one even sees.
Ruin raiders target ancient relics in Shaanxi
Police have stepped up patrols to combat ruin raiders in the underground ancient relics of Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, after authorities caught two local farmers stealing tile-ends.
Local police arrested the farmers on Monday.
Authorities received reports that some farmers living among the ruins were looking for relics from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 24), buried in the Chang'an City ruins.
And in related news. . . . Cemetery of headless skeletons holds key to origin of Polynesians
Archaeologists in Vanuatu have unearthed an ancient cemetery containing the headless skeletons of what are believed to be the earliest known ancestors of Pacific Islanders.
The 3000-year-old remains are those of the Lapita people, who colonised Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, says Professor Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University, who led the dig.
He expects tests to confirm that the skeletons belong to the ancestors of Polynesian groups like Maori, Tongans and Samoans.
New DNA study helps explain unique diversity among Melanesians
Small populations of Melanesians — among the most genetically diverse people on the planet — have significant differences in their mitochondrial DNA that can be linked to where they live, the size of their home island and the language they speak, according to a study being published in the new online journal, Public Library of Science ONE (http://www.plosone.org).
The study, "Melanesian mtDNA complexity," was lead by Jonathan Friedlaender, emeritus professor of anthropology at Temple University. The study appears in the Feb. 28 issue.
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