I have written a book for a popular audience, and it has been a long and interesting process. I'll probably write about it in detail when things have moved farther along. For now, I am very pleased to have signed a contract with an agent. The book is about two projects I directed near Cuernavaca, Mexico. It tells the story of the residents of these sites (Aztec provincial peoples), and also about how archaeology gets done: everything from screening dirt and identifying faunal remains to my random sampling disaster involving broken glass, beans, and peso coins, to getting excavation permits to trying to keep our kids safe and healthy in Mexico. As I started writing the book, I went to the website of Norton press, figuring that would be an ideal publisher. "We don't deal with authors, only with agents." Hmmm, that led to a big search of agents, and instructions on how to find an agent, what does an agent do, etc.

I sent off a bunch of book proposals to agents, and got a big stack of rejection letters. Some agents came right out and said "not commercial enough," and the others said something else but their reason was probably the same. That was an upsetting experience. I am used to my writing being judged for its scholarly and scientific value, not for its commercial potential. And I am used to being successful with my publishing efforts, without a lot of rejections. But fifteen rejections for one project? A humbling experience.

One agent expressed interest in the topic, but said that my writing was "clear but not vivid." She was not ready to offer a contract unless I could improve the writing. Well, "clear but not vivid" is pretty darn good for an academic, but evidently not for popular nonfiction. So I paid for a writing coach, who went over the entire manuscript and gave me excellent advice and editing. She especially liked my use of Monty Python's "Life of Brian" to make a point about provincial peoples in empires ("What have the Romans ever done for us"?). Writing in a narrative style is very different from writing in an academic style. I think I finally figured it out, and it was fun doing the revisions on the chapters. So, now evidently my writing is sufficiently vivid for an agent to offer me a contract.

There will still be a bunch of revisions to do, artwork to assemble, and then we have to find a publisher. But at least the project is moving forward, and my prose has moved beyond "clear" to "vivid."

I received an email from Alice Beck Kehoe, an archaeologist/anthropologist who holds some ever-so-slightly fringe ideas about pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact - a bit like Betty Meggers, an anthropologist whose expertise was demonstrable but many of whose ideas were contrary to evidence or parsimony.  She emailed me because of a book I mocked, briefly, in a post on The People of Alor: Ethel Stewart's utterly bizarre The Dene and Na-Dene Indian Migrations 1233 A.D.: Escape from Genghis Khan to America, a book claiming to set out the evidence for a recent migration of Sino-Tibetan-speaking people to North America because of the Mongol invasion of the Western Xia polity in the early thirteenth century.  These migrants then became the Athabaskan-speaking populations of western North America, including the Haida, Navajo, and Apache.  I mocked the book because it's totally unsupported and among the worst of fringe archaeology, claiming something downright silly and in defiance of the facts.

Read more »

My very own copy of Gezer VII: The Middle Bronze and Later Fortifications in Fields II, IV, and VIII just arrived. You can get your copy at Eisenbrauns. The drawings are great, the photographic reproductions are much better than in the previous 6 (or is it 5?) Gezer volumes. The volume comes with a CD full of plans and photographs.

I was the area supervisor in Field II (area 4) in 1973. This much belated volume documents my work and that of many others who labored under the sun. Much of my own work that year focused on the excavation of wall 4026. A few years ago I wrote a couple of speculative posts about this wall. Joe Seger, Sy Gitin and Karen E. Seger address wall 4026 on pages 109 and 110. Here is, in part, what they say about my favorite wall,

The most likely interpretation is that Wall 4026 served as a defensive parapet or outer screening wall set on the edge of the glacis plateau. It would have thus formed a protective room or corridor along the foot of the MB fortification wall (that is, along Mcalister’s Inner Wall system). Wall segments positioned just outside the main wall line on the plateau of the glacis with the same putative functions were found in Field IV.

Joe was kind enough to send me a pre-publication draft on which I built my more speculative posts. So, none of this is a surprise.

I’m sure that Joe and the rest of the publication team will agree that the length of time that it has taken to publish this report is unconscionable! Many, more recent excavations have done better. As is often said, “To excavate is to destroy.” Without documentation, that destruction is permanent. Without timely documentation, the destruction might as well be permanent for those who do not out live the delay. No excavation should enter the field unless it has a clear, doable publication plan. Such a plan should, at worst, be able maintain a schedule measure in years rather than decades.

Still, it is good to see this volume and to remember those wonderful times and people.

Today’s list of Open Access (free to read) articles:

A Dagger grave from the Law of Mauldslie, Carluke, Lanarkshire
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=95

Intermittent occupation and forced abandonment: excavation of an Iron Age promotory fort at Carghidown, Dumfries and Galloway.
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=137

Notice of Four Stained-Glass Shields of Arms and a Monumental Slab in St Magdalene’s Chapel, Cowgate.
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=21

The Old Blackfriars of Glasgow.
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=39

Notice of the Discovery of a Cist of the Early Iron Age on the Estate of Moredun, near Gilmerton.
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=38

Learn more about Open Access and Archaeology at: http://bit.ly/YHuyFK

Stanford University / March 7th-8th, 2014
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/classics/cgi-bin/web/node/4587

Deadline for Abstract Submission: August 1st, 2013

In the realm of Roman cultural studies, exciting conversations are taking place on parallel but largely unengaged tracks. Scholars of Latin literature have long studied Rome’s competitive emulation of Greek literary models: this practice has been identified in the earliest moments of Roman literature, which indeed tropes itself as a “takeover” of a specific form of Hellenism (Feeney 2005, rev. Suerbaum 2002). More recently there has also been a surge of interest in Roman material appropriation, particularly plunder and the significance of its display in the city (e.g., Miles 2008, Rutledge 2012). Until now, however, disciplinary boundaries have obscured possible parallels between literary and material modes of cultural appropriation. This conference aims to dissolve these boundaries—to bridge the “dirt-word” divide—by initiating an interdisciplinary conversation on appropriation in Rome, from plunder to evocatio to literary quotation and aemulatio.

More than a decade ago, Stephen Hinds’ Allusion and Intertext (1998) made a memorable first foray into tackling the “dynamics of [Roman] appropriation,” but many more questions remain on the table. One of this conference’s primary goals is to highlight significant points of contact and divergence between Rome’s various appropriative activities: how is quotation like/unlike spoliation, or evocatio like/unlike commercial importation? More importantly, what are the heuristic possibilities of treating appropriation in Rome as a foundational practice through which Roman culture made and remade itself? In other words, how does the importation, incorporation, and even worship of various kinds of literary and material cargo—a veritable “cult” of cargo—texture Roman culture?

To facilitate answering these questions and others, we encourage participants to experiment with bringing modern theoretical perspectives to bear on Roman appropriative practices. For example, Robert Nelson’s frequently cited discussion of appropriation, which compares appropriation to Roland Barthes’ theory of myth, suggests one approach: “appropriation, like myth…is a distortion, not a negation of the prior semiotic assemblage. When successful, it maintains but shifts the former connotations to create the new sign and accomplishes all this covertly, making the process appear ordinary or natural” (2009: 163). Nelson’s theorizing represents but one possible framework for enriching our discussion of appropriation in Rome. Other models are earnestly sought, and all will be interrogated rigorously in our efforts to generate new models capable of shedding light on the full range of Roman appropriative activities.

Suggested topics:

Papers are invited on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to the following.

• To what extent do pre-existing theoretical models of appropriation help us understand the Roman material?
• Is there a Roman discourse of appropriation? How do Romans reflect upon and justify their practices of cultural borrowing?
• Relatedly, how does appropriation function as a gauge or index for improving or declining social mores?
• What are the mechanics of Rome’s self-fashioning through appropriating foreign cultures?
• Similarly, what are the mechanics of Rome’s self-fashioning through appropriating previous iterations of itself? Specifically, how does Rome in the imperial period appropriate Republican versions of itself?
• How do Roman practices of material, literary, and cultural appropriation change over time?
• How are acts of Roman appropriation remembered? How long do appropriated res derive their meaning from the fact/memory of their appropriation?
• To what ends, and by what processes, is Rome appropriated in Late Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the modern age?

Submitting an abstract:

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to stanfordcargoculture@gmail.com. Final papers will be 20 minutes long. When submitting your abstract, please remove all identifying information from the abstract itself (i.e., name, university); provide this information in the body of your email. Abstracts are due by August 1, 2013. Individuals will be notified of their acceptance within one month of the deadline.

Confirmed participants currently include: Emma Dench (Harvard); Basil Dufallo (University of Michigan); Stephen Hinds (University of Washington); Scott McGill (Rice University); Ellen Perry (College of the Holy Cross); Stefano Rebeggiani (La Sapienza); Ann Marie Yasin (University of Southern California).

GLOUCESTER, VIRGINIA—Fifty-seven acres of private land in Virginia thought to be the site of Werowocomoco, home to the great leader Powhatan and his daughter Pocahontas, will be preserved. Powhatan ruled a population of 15,000 to 20,000 people in the early seventeenth century, when Jamestown was founded some 15 miles away. Landowner Lynn Ripley found arrowheads, spear tips, pipe stems, pottery shards, and pieces of copper while walking her dog. Using the writings of Captain John Smith and historic maps, archaeologists have concluded that she discovered Werowocomoco, and to date, only about two percent of the site has been investigated. “I want people to understand there was a real civilization, a complex cultural community that existed prior to European colonization,” added Ashley Atkins, a doctoral candidate at the College of William & Mary. 

David Hayward shared a cartoon today depicting the church as a deliberately slow and obstructionist entity:

He notes that this is not something that the church is by definition, nor something that it must be.

And so I want to take a moment to remember some of the progressive voices in the Christian tradition:

• the precursors of Christianity, the prophets of ancient Israel who challenged the notion that God belongs to one people (or vice versa), and the ethnocentric and nationalistic religiosity which goes along with such a view;
• Jesus, who crossed religious boundaries separating clean and unclean, male and female, Jew, Samaritan, and Gentile, friend and enemy;
• his early followers, who stood for table fellowship and accepting Gentiles as they were, rather than requiring that they convert and be circumcised;
• the Christians who’ve stood against militarism, against dictatorship, and who’ve been at the forefront of movements to abolish slavery, give women equal rights in society and in the church, and do the same for gays, lesbians, and transgendered people.

It doesn’t seem as though the Christian tradition has ever been without a slower-moving form. But it also seems to me that, in every age, there have been other voices which both the fundamentalists and the outside critics of Christianity or religion in general would happily forget.

But we ought not to forget, nor to surrender Christianity identity to its slowest-moving versions, nor allow churches to be held hostage by their most backwards-looking members.

ABU SIR AL MALAQ, EGYPT—Egyptian archaeologist Monica Hanna documents looting in her country and brings it to the attention of government officials and the media. She noticed that foreign archaeologists were reluctant to report theft and damage to the sites where they worked because they were afraid of losing work permits from the Egyptian government, and that antiquities inspectors were often ignored when they reported looting. In addition to assisting others with monitoring archaeological sites, Hanna is part of the effort to develop a website that will allow anyone to report problems anonymously. Yet, some people have responded to her crusade with threats. “That means she is doing her job well. She is scaring some of the syndicate people who live around and feed off of the antiquities,” commented Salima Ikram, Hanna’s former teacher at American University.

Dr. Monica Hanna, an Egyptian archaeologist, surveys the burial grounds in Abu Sir al Malaq. ‘You see dogs playing with human bones, children scavenging for pottery and painted sarcophagi. You also find very well mummified fragments. It is very macabre,’ Hanna says. Hanna is a leader in exposing the looting of Egyptian antiquities.

She’s my archaeological hero & she should be yours, too.

Hanna, 30, is a leader in exposing the antiquity-looting that has exploded since Egypt’s 2011 revolution. She appears on Egyptian television debating government officials, takes reporters to looted sites, and encourages Egyptians to protect their heritage.

To Nigel Hetherington, an archaeologist and co-founder of Past Preservers, which connects academia and media on archaeological issues, she is “amazing … a revolutionary in the true sense of the word.”

“She is out to get the bad guys and harness the feeling the Egyptians have of their own heritage, and turn it into actual force for good,” he said.

Read more: http://triblive.com/usworld/world/4198483-74/hanna-heritage-archaeological#ixzz2WbJgz0Sp

Historical and ideological premises and developments until Julian the Apostate
Parma (Italy), 28-29 November 2013

In common perception, AD 313 represents one of the most important years in the history of the Western world. In that year the notorious meeting between Constantine and Licinius took place, which led - according to a branch of modern historiography - to the so-called "Edict of Milan", whose historicity has been strongly questioned. Indeed, evidence on Constantine's religious policy and the surviving documents concerning the measure of 313 demonstrate how its importance needs to be settled back in the context of the relationships between Constantine and Licinius and reconsidered in the light of religious measures taken by Galerius and Maximinus Daia.

Moving from an edict issued by Galerius in 311, Constantine and Licinius brought to an end (despite occasional further outbreaks) anti-Christian persecutions. The way was now open for an ever more pervasive Christianization of the Empire on a social, political and cultural level, even if some interesing phenomena of cryptopaganism can still be found in later periods, until Julian's short "restoration". More than a "revolution", what was taking place was then a fundamental step in the "evolution" of imperial religious policy.

Association Rodopis, in partnership with Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi (Society of Late Antique Studies) and in cooperation with the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza (Department of Law) of the University of Parma (Italy), organises a Postgraduate Conference in order to investigate specific juridical aspects of these changes - taking 313 as a benchmark - putting them it back into context, underlining elements of continuity and re-defining divergences and innovations in respect to previous religious policy, and considering further developments.

We accept proposals for 20 minutes papers concerning economic, juridical, social, political and cultural aspects of the Constantinian era, with a particular focus on the first decade of the IV century. Papers dealing with the analysis of the documents concerning the "edict of Milan" and with the religious policy of the other protagoninsts of the period are also welcome, as well as contributions concerning the reception and different interpretations of the measure by its conteporaries, both pagan and Christian, and by Roman authorities. Proposals may concern the relatioship between religion and law until the reign of Julian the Apostate.

Those willing to take part at the Conference are invited to send an anonymous abstract in pdf format (file name: first three words of the title) of max 300 words to the following e-mail address: postgraduateconference.rodopis@gmail.com, by 15 September 2013.

Abstracts will be selected within the following three weeks.To allow everybody's comprehension, papers will be accepted exclusively in Italian and English.

Viola Gheller (Associazione Rodopis - Università degli Studi di Trento)
Prof. Salvatore Puliatti (Associazione di Studi Tardoantichi - Università degli Studi di Parma)

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON--When faced with a military crisis in Mali, librarians and archivists rescued more than 300,000 historic manuscripts from Timbuktu. The books and records were placed in metal boxes, but they are now showing signs of moisture damage. The crowd-funding campaign “Libraries in Exile” is raising funds for equipment and personnel to preserve Timbuktu’s libraries. “The purpose of this campaign is to fund the preservation effort required to store the manuscripts in an archival, moisture-resistant manner during their exile from Timbuktu. If physical harm from the current packing situation continues and if mold and mildew spread in the corpus due to increased humidity, the damage will be devastating,” reads a statement from the campaign.

Railing coping (uṣṇīṣa) carved in limestone

AD 300

India

Railing coping (uṣṇīṣa) carved in limestone:
-with young men carrying a garland emerging from the mouths of makaras. The lower parts of the garland are adorned with male worshippers flanking a dharmachakra (‘First Sermon’), a tree (the ‘Enlightenment’) and a lost object. Borders top and bottom decorated with vine cartouches and makaras. 

(Source: The British Museum)

Hilts of Japanese straight swords, Kofun period, circa 600.

Courtesy & currently located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo taken by Uploadalt.

University of Florida Classics Graduate Student Conference
Friday & Saturday, October 24-25, 2013
Keynote Speaker: TBA

Ancient culture and literature developed and manipulated gossip, rumor, defamation and calumny in many ways for the detraction, augmentation, or proliferation of reputation. Such rumor, whether true or false, good or bad, has long occupied a principal role in the development of reputation and the pursuit of truth. In his Works and Days, for example, Hesiod suggests avoiding the talk of men, since talk is “mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of” (760-763). Fama proves crucial to the development and organization of Vergil’s Aeneid. Report rebuking various individuals and peoples, e. g. the Vandals, has left for modern historians the task of sorting fact from fictions promulgated as truth. Indeed, the uses and misuses of rumor and reputation are many.

We invite papers that investigate a range of issues surrounding rumor and reputations from Bronze Age to Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium. Abstracts can, but need not, belong to the following topics:

• the nature, causes and function of ancient rumor
• the growth or erosion of reputation
• the fear of rumor or reputation
• the development of historical reputations
• the political applications of rumor
• the use and misuse of public and personal opinion
• the language of rumor
• rumor and stereotypes

We welcome submissions from graduate students representing various disciplines, including classics, comparative literature, linguistics, history, art history, archeology, religion, philosophy and education. We ask that you submit an anonymous abstract of no more than 300 words as an attachment to floridaclassicsconference@gmail.com by August 20th, 2013. Please include in the body of your email your name and university affiliation as well as your phone number and the email address at which you can best be reached. Notifications will be sent out by be sent shortly thereafter. Questions may be addressed to Andrew Roth and Sara Agnelli at floridaclassicsconference@gmail.com.

SHUOZHOU CITY, CHINA—The 1,500-year-old domed tomb of a military commander of the Northern Qi dynasty and his wife has been rescued in northern China. The tomb was looted before archaeologists arrived on the scene, so most of the grave goods and the two bodies are gone. Its plastered walls are covered with murals, including images of guards with swords, horses, musicians, and the couple enjoying a banquet. “The domed ceiling is painted uniformly in dark gray color to signify the infinite space of the sky. The Silver River (representing the Milky Way) flows across the sky from the southwest to the northeast, and inside the river a fine fish-scale patterns representing waves in the water,” according to archaeologist Liu Yan, who reported the discovery in Chinese Archaeology. Archaeologists also found painted blue lines and gauze fabric placed by looters who were preparing to detach the paintings from the surface of the walls.

Archaeologists Unearth Roman Frontier Fort and Settlement in England

Located near the small coastal town of Maryport in northwestern England, remains of the ancient Roman fort of Alauna were first uncovered by amateur archaeologist Joseph Robinson in the late 19th century. Among the finds were an assemblage of no less that 22 stone altars, some bearing inscriptions, that tell a story of successive Roman commanders who commanded this, one of Imperial Rome’s northernmost outposts during the height of the Roman Empire’s expanse. The altars now grace the nearby Senhouse Museum, which serves as a popular tourist attraction.  

Now a team of archaeologists and volunteers have returned to the site where the original stone altars were found to uncover more clues about the layout of the fort and its associated settlement, and about the lives of the military officers and soldiers who manned this remote garrison. Led by Newcastle University’s Professor Ian Haynes and site director Tony Wilmott, the archaeologists have been here before. 

Says Haynes: ”The last two years’ excavations focused on the area in which the altars were discovered in 1870.

 This year sees some further work at the 1870 site and the start of a three year project focusing on the place where, in 1880, local bank manager and amateur archaeologist Joseph Robinson uncovered further altars and two possible temples.

 Photographs and other documents from the 1880s indicate that the antiquarian investigation only unearthed part of the site and it is clear that much remains to be discovered.” [1]

More here.

“Among the many culinary treats Italy has given the world is gelato, a frozen dessert with roots in ancient Mesopotamia. Gelato lovers from all over the world are flocking to a university outside Bologna, Italy, to master the art of gelato-making. Here’s a free lesson: Don’t call it ice cream.”

The 2012-2013 Placement Service Year will end on June 30, 2013.  During the next few weeks, we will perform maintenance on the Placement Service Portal Page to prepare it for 2013-2014.  If you plan to enroll with the Service for 2013-14, PLEASE WAIT for our announcement that will state when enrollment is open for the upcoming Placement Year.  If you enroll prior to our announcement, you will not be issued a refund.

After more than 30 years, the AIA has chosen to terminate its participation with the APA in the Placement Service.  For more information, please visit http://apaclassics.org/index.php/apa_blog/apa_blog_entry/4171/.  If you are currently an AIA member, and you plan to enroll with the APA Placement Service in 2013-2014, you will have to pay the higher, non-member fee (USD $55.00) to enroll.  The APA Member’s fee to utilize the Placement Service is USD $20.00.  The APA welcomes all students of the ancient world, and its members advance the study of the classical antiquity in all its aspects.

Announcing the Perseus Catalog, release 1.0

The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce the 1.0 Release of the Perseus Catalog.
The Perseus Catalog is an attempt to provide systematic catalog access to at least one online edition of every major Greek and Latin author (both surviving and fragmentary) from antiquity to 600 CE. Still a work in progress, the catalog currently includes 3,679 individual works (2,522 Greek and 1,247 Latin), with over 11,000 links to online versions of these works (6,419 in Google Books, 5,098 to the Internet Archive, 593 to the Hathi Trust). The Perseus interface now includes links to the Perseus Catalog from the main navigation bar, and also from within the majority of texts in the Greco-Roman collection.

The metadata contained within the catalog has utilized the MODS and MADS standards developed by the Library of Congress as well as the Canonical Text Services and CTS-URN protocols developed by the Homer Multitext Project.  The Perseus catalog interface uses the open source Blacklight Project interface and Apache Solr. Stable, linkable canonical URIs have been provided for all textgroups, works, editions and translations in the Catalog for both HTML and ATOM output formats. The ATOM output format provides access to the source CTS, MODS and MADS metadata for the catalog records. Subsequent releases will make all catalog data available as RDF triples.

Other major plans for the future of the catalog include not only the addition of more authors and works as well as links to online versions but also to open up the catalog to contributions from users. Currently the catalog does not include any user contribution or social features other than standard email contact information but the goal is to soon support the creation of user accounts and the contribution of recommendations, corrections and or new metadata.

Follow the links above for comments from Editor-in-Chief Gregory Crane on the history and purpose of the catalog.

The Perseus Digital Library Team

Spelling matters. How do you get the archaic contraction “pow'r” right and yet “prostrate” wrong?

Let the jokes about whether angels are male begin…

From Instagram via Jim West

 

Gold coin (stater) of Vasudeva I

164-200 BC

Kushan Period

Minted in India

Gold coin (stater) of Vasudeva I, showing a three-headed deity (Śiva) holding a trident and a diadem, accompanied by a bull.

(Source: The British Museum)

Breaking News:  Arthur Houghton has uncovered this shocking information which I publish in full.  I direct all inquiries to him.  I would have not believed it myself, save for all the recent revelations of Government misconduct at State, the IRS and NSA:  

Peter, it has come to my attention that the FBI, Criminal Justice Information Systems, has begun to surreptitiously monitor your blog and in particular the several exchanges that we have had in recent days.  I have this information from sources that are internal to the Bureau and that I do not wish to reveal further -- but I can say that they are firm and incontrovertible.    It is a remarkable event, unparalleled in my experience, but consistent with what we now know about the monitoring of US citizens by our national security services.

The fact that this information should become known to us, moreover, should be an extreme embarrassment to the Bureau -- even a breach of security.  I submit that the Department of Justice Inspector General should be asked to investigate who is doing the monitoring, whether they have been authorized to do so and if so by whom, what legal authority lies behind it, and whether there are others, perhaps many others, who are being subjected to the same secret surveillance.

Would you be good enough to let me have your thoughts on this?

Many thanks,

Arthur

Arthur Houghton, former State Department diplomat, White House official, museum curator and CPAC member, is again in the news.   Last week, Houghton exposed Government surveillance of the CPO blog.  This week there are far bigger fish to fry, in particular malefactor source countries.  Arthur states,

"Peter, I have completed my discussions in Washington with political figures associated with the Congress and can report that there is considerable interest in ensuring that Americans are not disadvantaged by the practices of other countries with regard to cultural property matters, but also that countries that willfully destroy their own past, either by allowing their domestic markets to flourish -- or -- far worse in everyone's view -- by permitting and even encouraging public and private development that destroys their past history and their archaeological sites. Chinais, of course, the prime example, but the destruction of the Mayan temple in Belize, and the long distant but comparable case of the Bamiyan Buddhas was also mentioned several times. One asked what would be more effective -- modifying the Convention on Cultural Property to exact sanctions against states that violated the precepts of the Convention, or enacting legislation that would have the same effect and that, even if unilateral, could motivate other countries (the EU say) to do the same thing.

The idea would be to have a world in which our archaeological friends would get exactly what they want, enough punishment for malefactor source countries to ensure that they began taking care of their own history.  Any existing MOU with a malefactor country would be made null and void and would remain so unless and until the country involved could demonstrate compliance with the Convention.  Other acquiring countries would be encourage to do the same.

The essence of the idea is, of course the concept of "willful misbehavior". We all recognize that many source countries have adequate laws but inadequate enforcement and oversight, and do what they can to ensure that development policies do not do damage to their antiquity sites. Every effort should be made to help these countries protect their patrimony, consistent with their own laws.  But there are the others, the malefactors, and as my contacts believe, they should suffer the consequences of their actions.

"Can you see any reason why anyone would disagree?" one asked. I thought for a minute and then replied. "not one." He then went on to suggest that a study group be formed that would look at the matter and propose recommendations for action. He asked if I knew of people who might join such a study group. "Yes," I said, "I believe I can find one or two." 

Please feel free to publish this information and comment on it as you wish.

With warm best wishes,

Arthur"

Comment:  I myself think its high time to focus some attention on malefactor source countries.   All the archaeological community's selective outrage against collectors has had the effect of diverting attention from poor stewardship of cultural resources in countries like Greece, Italy, and China.   Under the circumstances, Houghton's initiative should be welcomed by everyone who truly cares about cultural heritage. 

Addendum:  AH asked me to add this definition of "Malefactor Source Countries":

"Malefactor Source Countries are those that a) have unregulated markets in antiquities that motivate the looting of archaeological sites or material; b) engage in public development (roads, buildings) that destroy archaeological sites or material; or c) have laws that allow or encourage private development that has the effect of destroying archaeological sites or material."

A list of these should be posted.  I nominate China as exhibit A.

Factum Foundation

Factum Foundation is a registered Foundation, established in 2009 and based in Spain, dedicated to the development and use of non-contact high-resolution digital recording as part of a coherent approach to the preservation, understanding and public exhibition of objects from our cultural heritage.

Advances in digital technology are dramatically and radically changing our understanding and appreciation of our shared cultural heritage. Science and technology are assisting art by providing forensically accurate information to both specialists and an interested public.
The foundation is dedicated to demonstrating that the way we understand the original object is part of a dynamic process and not a fixed state of being. When the dynamic nature of originality is successfully presented, works of art come alive - their complex biographies inform the present and influence the future.  When viewed in this way they cease to be discrete objects to be viewed in museums and become complex subjects that can reveal their past (and also reveal how they have been valued and cared for by previous generations in diverse locations). Read more

Projects

Facsimile of the Eastern End of the Throne room of Ashurnasirpal II

2010-2013

Facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun

2009-2013

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s another information literacy tutorial song parody video I made. This one focuses on the SMELL Test. The lyrics follow below.

 

Wish Things Were Clear
So – so you think you can tell
Good sources by SMELL
Research from bunk
Can you tell a real deal
From a fake free lunch
A theory from a hunch
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Real experts for kooks
Dogmas for degrees
Hot air for expertise
Wise guidance for strange
Did you exchange
A book with lots of detail
For a too-simple web page?

How I wish, how I wish things were clear
The internet’s a mess
Of opinion and guess
Through which we steer
So many out to deceive
You can’t believe
Everything you hear
I wish things were clear

 

[First posted in AWOL 18 July 2009. Updated 18 June 2013]

Digital Library for International Research, Middle East Research Journals Project

The Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (2002-2006), provided digital access to five complete journals held at American Overseas Research Centers in the Middle East in the CAORC consortium. Additional materials created for this project are bibliographic records for 1,900 journals held at seven centers in the Middle East, a searchable index of three research journals, preservation microfilm for five research journals.

A searchable article-level index is available for the following titles:

• Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (Jerusalem, 1920-1948)
• Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine (London, 1931-1950)
• Sumer (Baghdad, 1945-2000)

Digital full-text is available for the following journals:

• Arkeoloji Dergisi, Izmir, 1991-1998
• Arkeoloji-sanat Tarihi Dergisi, Izmir, 1984-1996
• Bogazici University Journal-Beseri Bilimler, Istanbul, 1973-1981
• Revue archéologique syrienne, Aleppo, 1931-1938
• Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society, 1933-196

For Its Latest Beer, a Craft Brewer Chooses an Unlikely Pairing - Archaeology - NYTimes.com

De archieven van de KU Leuven uit de periode 1425-1797 zijn opgenomen in het Register van het Geheugen van de Wereld. Dat is de lijst van topstukken en collecties documentair erfgoed van wereldniveau die door de UNESCO wordt erkend. De Leuvense archieven zijn volgens UNESCO een van de meest homogene universitaire archieven uit het Ancien Régime. Ze geven een inzicht in het functioneren van een vroegmoderne universiteit, en in de interactie tussen studenten, professoren en de maatschappij.

Ook een tweede dossier uit ons land werd door UNESCO aan de lijst toegevoegd: de Universal Bibliographic Repertory, ontwikkeld door professoren Paul Otlet en Henri La Fontaine. Zij ontwikkelden dit repertorium in de late 19de eeuw als een nieuw instrument om informatie te ontsluiten. De Universele Bibliografische Index wordt nu beschouwd als het eerste model voor een zoekrobot.

Foto: de inschrijving van Erasmus aan de Leuvense universiteit in 1517 (© Rijksarchief)

Today the science news outlets are abuzz with the claim that a newly identified mixed language has been identified in Australia, Light Warlpiri, based on a press release from the Linguistic Society of America, which is reporting a new article by Carmel O’Shannessy entitled “The role of multiple sources in the formation of an innovative auxiliary category in Light Warlpiri, a new Australian mixed language”.   The article in the Examiner is the best of a mixed bunch, but you need to overlook the unfortunate header describing it as the ‘newest language on earth’, which isn’t even remotely true.  But as we’ll see, even the more modest claims in the press release and news articles are misleading.

Warlpiri itself is a Pama-Nyungan language spoken in northern Australia by several thousand people, and is one of the better-known and less threatened (though still endangered) languages of Australia.    Light Warlpiri is spoken by about 300 Warlpiri people in one community, Lajamanu; it mixes English, Kriol, and Warlpiri, with an English verb structure and a Warlpiri and Kriol noun structure, and some elements all its own.   Mixed languages are not creoles (take note) – without going into a long digression, creoles emerge in situations where speakers do not have full access to one of the source languages.  Mixed languages are created in highly bilingual situations -  most speakers of Light Warlpiri also speak Warlpiri, Kriol, or English (in some combination).  Mixed languages can arise (which is what seems to have happened here) when code-switching (which happens in nearly every bilingual speech community) becomes formalized as a set of linguistic patterns.

However, beware!  Light Warlpiri has had a Wikipedia page since 2008 , and Carmel O’Shannessy first identified it in an article ‘Light Warlpiri: A New Language‘, back in 2005 in the Australian Journal of Linguistics, and identified it as a mixed language. According to Google Scholar, it’s been cited 40 times to date.  This is hardly a new discovery.  I get why O’Shannessy is still calling it a ‘new mixed language’ in the article – it’s new-ish, in the sense that it’s only been around for roughly 40 years, and its discovery is new-ish, in that it’s only been known to linguists for fewer than 10 years.  I’m trying not to be pedantic here: it’s not like this has been known for decades, so in some sense it is ‘new’.  But reading the press on this, you’d think that no one had ever heard of Light Warlpiri until today, which is totally false.

O’Shannessy’s new article, which is the one that the LSA press release is touting, is a fuller description of the grammar and history and identifies a new class of auxiliary verbs and some other features in Light Warlpiri that differ in structure from any of the source languages.  This is pretty neat, and is certainly a new discovery.  There may be some broader implications for understanding the development of certain features cross-linguistically, as the press release suggests.  But this is not a new language, nor is it newly discovered, nor newly identified as a mixed language: the article is not making these claims.  In this sense, the LSA press release is quite misleading, and the news articles that are based on it are spreading this misinformation.

Filed under: Linguistics

MovE (Musea Oost-Vlaanderen in Evolutie) bestaat tien jaar en dat werd gisteren gevierd met een bijeenkomst in Ename, waar ook de nieuwe website erfgoedinzicht.be – de opvolger van de oude MovE-website museuminzicht.be – werd voorgesteld. De inhoud van de databank werd verruimd van museaal erfgoed naar allerlei erfgoedcollecties. Naast Oost-Vlaams erfgoed, evenementen en instellingen, komen hier nu ook de West-Vlaamse bij, als resultaat van een samenwerking met de provincie West-Vlaanderen. Erfgoedinzicht.be zet nu ook via thema’s het erfgoed in de kijker.

Nice illustration of Rome

archaeology:

Rome, an ancient supercity.

lareaguido:

Roman “Still Life with Peaches, found at Herculaneum”

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι:
ὑμεῖς γὰρ θεαί ἐστε πάρεστέ τε ἴστέ τε πάντα,
ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν
(Iliad 2.484-486)

Tell me now, Muses, you who have Olympian abodes,
since you are goddesses and you are present for all that happens and you know everything,
while we only hear the kleos and we know nothing


Nikola: All right, but when you've learned my song, would... you sing it exactly as I do?
Sulejman: I would.
N: You wouldn't add anything... nor leave anything out?
S: I wouldn't... by Allah I would sing it just as I heard it. ...It isn't good to change or to add.
(Lord, The Singer of Tales, 27)

The notion of “innovation” is one of the most difficult ones that we grapple with when we, as members of a highly literate culture that prizes creativity and the concept of “genius,” encounter an oral tradition that explicitly claims not to prize it. Just as the South Slavic singers that Milman Parry and Albert Lord interviewed with the help of Nikola Vujnović claimed to always sing their songs the same way every time, so too the Homeric narrator claims to repeat exactly what he has heard from the Muses, because he himself “knows nothing.” In such a tradition, the poet claims that his song is the truth, and as such it must be unchanging. In reality, we as outside observers of the tradition, can demonstrate that in fact the songs do change from performance to performance and tradition, far from being fixed and static, dynamically evolves over time. But for the singers on the inside of the tradition, the song remains notionally unchanging.

What, then, is “genius” in an oral tradition? What distinguishes one poet from another? We should first acknowledge that in even asking this question we are revealing our own bias. But as Milman Parry himself put it [Parry 1932, 12-14 (= Parry 1971, 334-35)]: “One oral poet is better than another not because he has by himself found a more striking way of expressing his own thought but because he has been better able to make use of the tradition. . . . The fame of a singer comes not from quitting the tradition but from putting it to the best use.”

I have explored the history of our modern Western struggle with separating genius from innovation when it comes to Homer in a lengthy essay called “The Invention of Ossian” (available here). In this post I would like to approach the question a little differently by considering the role of performance and audience in the shaping of tradition.


I recently had the opportunity to attend a concert by Fleetwood Mac, a band that reached its peak of album sales and popularity in the mid-to-late 1970s. All the members of the band are much older now and their vocal abilities are no longer what they once were, and yet the giant arena in Houston (the Toyota Center) was sold out, and the band gave an outstanding three hour performance that thrilled the crowd. Why did we all pay so much money to attend this performance, when we could have listened to a technically superior version of all the songs on CD or mp3? There is something primal, it seems to me, in our desire to gather together as a community to hear music. Even today in 2013, in the fourth biggest city of the United States, in a giant basketball arena full of strangers, we still seek to experience music with other people. As disparate from each other as we all were, we were united through our shared love of the music for the duration of the performance. That experience, I would argue, is one that we can share however distantly with the traditional audiences of the Homeric or South Slavic epic traditions, whose members would have been united by their deep familiarity with and love of the poetry of their traditional culture. Because such poetry was experienced only in performance, I would argue that there would have been an even more important bond between the experience of performance and the connection between audience members generated by the performance.

Another aspect of the concert had me thinking about Homer. As much as we appreciate live performance today for its communal aspects, and for the interaction it creates between performer(s) and audience, there is inevitably a certain pull that we feel towards the “traditional” way of doing the song - that is the version that we know from our ipods and CDs, the version we have heard countless times. At this particular concert, as thrilled as I was to hear the legendary Stevie Nicks singing live, I was disappointed that many songs had been rearranged to better suit her now more limited vocal range. I'm sure we all would have preferred the arrangements with which we were all very familiar. Moroever, there were times during the concert when the band performed some new material. The energy in the room substantially dropped; people sat down, went to the concession stand, or the bathroom. This got me thinking: what other form of entertainment or art is like this? If your favorite tv show comes out with a new episode, or your favorite novelist comes out with a new novel, you are delighted and race to view it/read it. Yet here we all were disappointed that the band was singing a new song. I don't think this is only the case for bands like Fleetwood Mac who were popular 35 years ago. I can remember going to an R.E.M. concert when I was young and experiencing the same sensation. I can't remember what the new songs were that R.E.M. performed that night. For all I know they may have been their next number 1 hits, but in that moment of performance, I wanted what I already knew - and so did the rest of the audience.

Unlike a modern band, the traditional singers of the South Slavic or Homeric traditions did not need to sell new albums. There were of course no albums to sell or equipment on which to play them. The singers made their living performing live what audiences wanted to hear, and it seems that what they wanted to hear were the songs that they all knew and loved. It is hard for us to get our heads around the fact that the best singers would not have been the ones thrilling their audiences with a new song or a new way of telling the story. But perhaps it can help us to understand this process better if we realize that this kind of poetry was only experienced in performance, which is to say, before an audience who knows the song already and has to be pleased.

There is something about live performance that creates community and thereby reinforces tradition. “Newness” is not what is wanted or called for in that moment. And yet newness does happen. The songs at the Fleetwood Mac concert were sung a bit differently (though still, ultimately, they were “the same”) and new songs were performed. Audience interaction contributed to and shaped what transpired. The tradition was perpetuated, but was also evolving, through performance.

A faience tile in the form of the Eye of Horus found at the site (Source: Ahram Online).

“At the Hyksos fort at Tel El-Yahoud area in Qalioubiya governorate in northern Egypt, an Egyptian excavation mission by the Ministry of State for Antiquities has stumbled upon an ancient Egyptian town from the Middle Kingdom, which dates from approximately 2000 BC to 1700 BC.

The town includes a residential area with a collection of houses and royal palaces, as well as a four metre-tall mud brick fortress and a necropolis with a large number of rock-hewn tombs.

A collection of lamps, amulets, clay pots, scarabs and faience floor tiles that were once used to decorate the palace of the New Kingdom kings Meneptah and Ramses II were also unearthed. A collection of mud brick tombs from the Hyksos era was also found, as were remains of a temple dedicated to the god Sotekh who was worshipped during the Hyksos era was also unearthed.

Adel Hussein, head of the ancient Egyptian department at the antiquities ministry, pointed out that such a site is very important as it reveals the daily life of ancient Egyptians from the New Kingdom until the Graeco–Roman era” – via Ahram Online.

Read more here.

More fascinating news! It’s so exciting when new artefacts are discovered, particularly if they reveal more about daily life!

http://www.cipg.eu/2013

The conference day on Greek Palaeography and modern technology (Wolfenbüttel,
Thursday, September 26, 2013) might perhaps be of particular interest to some
on this list. We include the full conference announcement for your information:


Registration for the next International Greek Palaeography Conference
(CIPG) is now open. Hosted by the University of Hamburg (September
22-28, 2013), this conference offers more than 70 short papers covering
a range of palaeographical topics including the use of information
technology and materials science for the study of Greek manuscripts.
Additional highlights include an exhibition of manuscripts from Northern
German libraries and a visit to Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel.

For a more detailed announcement, programme and registration
information, please go to <http://www.cipg.eu/2013>.

Die Anmeldung zur nächsten Internationalen Konferenz für Griechische
Paläographie (CIPG) ist eröffnet. Auf Einladung der Universität Hamburg
wird vom 22. bis 28. September 2013 in mehr als 70 Kurzvorträgen
paläographische Themen einschließlich der Nutzung von Informatik und
Materialwissenschaft für die wissenschaftliche Erschließung griechischer
Handschriften behandelt. Zusätzliche Höhepunkte sind eine Ausstellung
norddeutscher Handschriften und der Besuch der Herzog August Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel.

Ankündigungsdetails, das vorläufige Programm und Informationen zur
Anmeldung finden Sie unter <http://www.cipg.eu/2013>.


Sincerely yours / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
CIPG 2013 conference organisers

--
Konferenzorganisatoren CIPG 2013
Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie
Von-Melle-Park 6
20146 Hamburg

Tel.: 040/42838-4771

<http://www.cipg.eu/2013>

http://www.academia.edu/3192541/Corpus_of_Maya_Hieroglyphic_Inscriptions._3D_Imaging_Report_2013

The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce the 1.0 Release of the Perseus Catalog.

The Perseus Catalog is an attempt to provide systematic catalog access to at least one online edition of every major Greek and Latin author (both surviving and fragmentary) from antiquity to 600 CE. Still a work in progress, the catalog currently includes 3,679 individual works (2,522 Greek and 1,247 Latin), with over 11,000 links to online versions of these works (6,419 in Google Books, 5,098 to the Internet Archive, 593 to the Hathi Trust). The Perseus interface now includes links to the Perseus Catalog from the main navigation bar, and also from within the majority of texts in the Greco-Roman collection.

The metadata contained within the catalog has utilized the MODS and MADS standards developed by the Library of Congress as well as the Canonical Text Services and CTS-URN protocols developed by the Homer Multitext Project.  The Perseus catalog interface uses the open source Blacklight Project interface and Apache Solr. Stable, linkable canonical URIs have been provided for all textgroups, works, editions and translations in the Catalog for both HTML and ATOM output formats. The ATOM output format provides access to the source CTS, MODS and MADS metadata for the catalog records. Subsequent releases will make all catalog data available as RDF triples.

Other major plans for the future of the catalog include not only the addition of more authors and works as well as links to online versions but also to open up the catalog to contributions from users. Currently the catalog does not include any user contribution or social features other than standard email contact information but the goal is to soon support the creation of user accounts and the contribution of recommendations, corrections and or new metadata.

Follow the links above for comments from Editor-in-Chief Gregory Crane on the history and purpose of the catalog.

The Perseus Digital Library Team

Carved Ivory Panel of a Woman

800 BC

Phoenician

(Source: The British Museum)

The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce the 1.0 Release of the Perseus Catalog.

The Perseus Catalog is an attempt to provide systematic catalog access to at least one online edition of every major Greek and Latin author (both surviving and fragmentary) from antiquity to 600 CE. Still a work in progress, the catalog currently includes 3,679 individual works (2,522 Greek and 1,247 Latin), with over 11,000 links to online versions of these works (6,419 in Google Books, 5,098 to the Internet Archive, 593 to the Hathi Trust). The Perseus interface now includes links to the Perseus Catalog from the main navigation bar, and also from within the majority of texts in the Greco-Roman collection.

The metadata contained within the catalog has utilized the MODS and MADS standards developed by the Library of Congress as well as the Canonical Text Services and CTS-URN protocols developed by the Homer Multitext Project.  The Perseus catalog interface uses the open source Blacklight Project interface and Apache Solr. Stable, linkable canonical URIs have been provided for all textgroups, works, editions and translations in the Catalog for both HTML and ATOM output formats. The ATOM output format provides access to the source CTS, MODS and MADS metadata for the catalog records. Subsequent releases will make all catalog data available as RDF triples.

Other major plans for the future of the catalog include not only the addition of more authors and works as well as links to online versions but also to open up the catalog to contributions from users. Currently the catalog does not include any user contribution or social features other than standard email contact information but the goal is to soon support the creation of user accounts and the contribution of recommendations, corrections and or new metadata.

The Perseus Catalog blog features documentation, a user guide, and contact information as well as comments from Editor-in-Chief Gregory Crane on the history and purpose of the catalog.

The Perseus Digital Library Team

AntiquityNOW Month partner Girl Be Heard is fighting back against gun violence.  9mm America is a show written and performed by young girls living in neighborhoods where gun violence is a constant threat.  One girl explains that her neighborhood is … Continue reading →

A former student of mine, Rev. Jill Moffett Howard, will be taking a trip to Auschwitz, and will be blogging about her experience. She’ll be traveling with Holocaust survivor Eva Kor, who established the CANDLES Holocaust Museum here in Indiana.

The blog is called Touring Auschwitz, and the address is:

http://touringauschwitz.wordpress.com/

Unfortunately our telephones (and possibly fax machine) are currently out of service so if you need anything or simply have a general query please send us an email at  iclass.enquiries@london.ac.uk

Prizes for the most inventive alternative!

*Update: They seem to be working but please be patient as we try to adjust to the change!*

In looking at the calendar, Bill and I leave Polis for Larnaka on the morning of Wednesday the 26th since I fly back to the US on the 27th. So, since I will be taking a research trip to Nicosia on Friday, that leaves us only 6 more work days. This means that we are in the danger zone. We have to be careful with our work plan so that we do not forget to get something critical finished (like an important excavation pass analyzed), nor do we want to be running around frantically next Tuesday trying to accomplish everything – the voice of experience says that this leads to disaster. This means prioritizing tasks and estimating realistically how long these tasks will take – since they almost always take longer than expected.

On the ceramic front, we are going back through the pottery I have analyzed over the last three seasons and trying to refine my ceramic identifications if possible, looking for comparanda, and choosing pieces for inclusion in a catalog for an article on the basilica. This has been a little nerve racking for me. As Brandon said to me this morning – it is a no-win situation since if your first identification is correct, you are just doing your job, but if you find you need to change your identification in some way, then you blew it. In our work on dating the construction of the basilica, we have been focusing on the context pottery that was collected during the excavation, and this are small sherds. It was only in the last day or so that I tookthe opportunity to look at the ceramics that were pulled at the time of excavation because they were more complete, or appeared especially diagnostic. After dealing with thousands of small, broken sherds, these pieces are fun to look at because they look so nice. The only drawback to looking at the ESA plate Brandon is examining in the picture was the dead mouse in the box.

RSM

Ziggurat (holy tower) of ancient Ashur

December 14, 1994

With the tale of Aesculapius and his relocation to Rome from Epidaurus in Metamorphoses 15, it might help to bear in mind that after nearly being killed by his father Apollo, in some versions of his life he was "killed" by Zeus:

According to Roman era mythography,[14] the figure represents the healer Asclepius, who learned the secrets of keeping death at bay after observing one serpent bringing another healing herbs. To prevent the entire human race from becoming immortal under Asclepius' care, Zeus killed him with a bolt of lightning, but later placed his image in the heavens to honor his good works.

In Metamorphoses 2, Ovid has Ocyrhoe, the daughter of Chiron, blurt out the end of Aesculapius, changing into a horse as she speaks:

‘Grow and thrive, child, healer of all the world! Human beings will often be in your debt, and you will have the right to restore the dead. But if ever it is done regardless of the god’s displeasure you will be stopped, by the flame of your grandfather’s lightning bolt, from doing so again. From a god you will turn to a bloodless corpse, and then to a god who was a corpse, and so twice renew your fate.'

The act of healing that brought death and godhead to Aesculapius is usually considered to be his restoration of Hippolytus.

Rome's welcome of Aesculapius clearly echoes the paean of Athenians upon recognizing their strange visitor to be Aegeus's long-hidden son and the city's future king, Theseus. In the Olympian mode, Theseus occasioned the end of both his father and his son.

The juxtaposition of the death of Hippolytus with the transfer of Aesculapius to Rome suggests, once again, that the turn of the poem, and of the world, from Greece to Rome is linked both to an alteration of identity and to something like a metamorphosis of death. Italy emerges in book 15 as an after-living -- a wooded land in which the Trojan people, Pythagorean thought, the son of Theseus, and the son of Apollo do not die. Rather, having suffered a Glaucus-like sea-change, they appear new and strange. The power is there, but estranged from itself. The welcoming throngs don't re-cognize Aesculapius, he's new.

This life after life seems less an overcoming Hades and the Olympians than a distancing, a flowing away from them, an attenuation and a concealment. As forecast by Saturn's flight to Italy, who too lives on, in Latium.

Does anyone have access to this item:

Joseph Sievers, Forgotten Aspects of the reception of Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum: Its Lists of Contents, in Eve-Marie Becker, Stefan Scholz, “Kanon in Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion”, DeGruyter, 2011. p.363-386.

Somewhat annoyingly, Cambridge University Library did not appear to have the book, and it isn’t listed in COPAC either.

If your library has it, please drop me a line using the contact form. Thank you.

UPDATE: I have it – thank you all who replied.

The title of this post is a phrase in Latin that means “Thus does the glory of the world pass by”—so fleeting are our worldly creations. It was the first response of a colleague of mine when we saw the construction site pictured below, because this is not just any construction site.

Erbil citadel gate under construction

What you’re looking at in that photo is a demolished section of the city wall of the Erbil citadel. The second photo shows the citadel mound, with the demolished section of wall in the center.

Citadel mound from below

The citadel is said by some to be the oldest continually-inhabited urban space on the planet. Located up high above the modern city of Erbil, the citadel has been fortified for thousands of years, although the walls as they currently stand date to the Ottoman period. Older iterations, though, saw rulers from a whole succession of empires dating back as far as the Ur III period in the late 3rd millennium BCE.

Under Saddam Hussein, the large Ottoman gate that stood at precisely the location in the picture was torn down. Built in its place was an ersatz structure in a vaguely historicizing mode, harkening back to ancient Babylon.

In the aftermath of the second Iraq war and the growing wealth and independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, the decidedly anti-Saddam Kurdish government began a vast project of restoration and reconstruction on the Erbil citadel, beginning with the dismantlement of the Saddam gate. Today, his creation has been torn down (thus the huge hole in the wall as pictured above), and will soon be replaced by yet another monumental facsimile, this one recreating the Ottoman gate that Saddam removed. This construction project seeks to reclaim the Ottoman past of the site, but also excises the legacy of Saddam with surgical precision, for better or worse.

The scale of the work is overwhelming and it was profound to see the site right in the middle of its transformation, with the raw rebar and concrete of the edges of Saddam’s gate still exposed. It stands now as a vivid example of the messy intersection of past and present, where ‘history’ becomes a powerful tool of legitimization for leaders and politicians of all stripes. But, the gate also stands also as the physical manifestation of that saying sic transit gloria mundi—of the constancy of change.

Tuoi Tre News has a three-part feature on underwater archaeology in Vietnam.

Tuoi Tre News 20130616

‘Cemetery’ of ancient shipwrecks in Quang Ngai
Tuoi Tre News, 11 June 2013

Drying up the sea to find shipwrecked antiques
Tuoi Tre News, 13 June 2013

Aquatic archaeology in Vietnam inadequate
Tupi Tre News, 16 June 2013

The waters off the central region of Vietnam are located on the ancient ‘Ceramic Road’ – formerly a trade route linking the Orient and the Occident. It is estimated that dozens of ships carrying ceramic wares wrecked in the area.

The area has long been a place where locals and fishermen dredge for antiques from the seabed. Antique dealers also arrive to buy items that are hundreds of years old.

The waters belong to Chau Thuan Bien Hamlet in Binh Son District of the central province of Quang Ngai.

Full story here.

15.0759838 108.71257909999997

From MIT Press

Open Access

By Peter Suber

Overview

The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

Signup to our open access newsletter and receive updates whenever the MIT Press releases books that are open access!

About the Author

Peter Suber is  Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

Reviews

“[A] very important book...a must read for all scholars and researchers who publish their own work or consult the peer-reviewed published work of others—in other words, virtually all academics.” — Rob Harle, Leonardo Reviews

For Buying Options, Start Here

Paperback | $12.95 Trade | £9.95 | ISBN: 9780262517638 | 230 pp. | 5 x 7 in | July 2012
 

Essential Info

• Open Access ePUB Version.
• Open Access Mobi Version.
• Open Access PDF Version
• 
  
• Open Access Version HTML Version
• Updates and Supplemental Content

Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2013; 33: 1722-1727

Male-Specific Region of the Y Chromosome and Cardiovascular Risk Phylogenetic Analysis and Gene Expression Studies

Lisa D.S. Bloomer et al.

Abstract

Objective—Haplogroup I of male-specific region of the human Y chromosome is associated with 50% increased risk of coronary artery disease. It is not clear to what extent conventional cardiovascular risk factors and genes of the male-specific region may explain this association.

Approach and Results—A total of 1988 biologically unrelated men from 4 white European populations were genotyped using 11 Y chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms and classified into 13 most common European haplogroups. Approximately 75% to 93% of the haplotypic variation of the Y chromosome in all cohorts was attributable to I, R1a, and R1b1b2 lineages. None of traditional cardiovascular risk factors, including body mass index, blood pressures, lipids, glucose, C-reactive protein, creatinine, and insulin resistance, was associated with haplogroup I of the Y chromosome in the joint inverse variance meta-analysis. Fourteen of 15 ubiquitous single-copy genes of the male-specific region were expressed in human macrophages. When compared with men with other haplogroups, carriers of haplogroup I had ≈0.61- and 0.64-fold lower expression of ubiquitously transcribed tetratricopeptide repeat, Y-linked gene (UTY) and protein kinase, Y-linked, pseudogene (PRKY) in macrophages (P=0.0001 and P=0.002, respectively).

Conclusions—Coronary artery disease predisposing haplogroup I of the Y chromosome is associated with downregulation of UTY and PRKY genes in macrophages but not with conventional cardiovascular risk factors.

Link

ARCHAEOLOGIST AND PALEOJUDAICA READER DAVID STACEY E-MAILS:

Jim - With the 50th anniversary approaching, Eretz magazine - a popular though serious English Language Israeli journal dedicated to the history, archaeology and geography of Israel - is going to produce a Masada 50th special edition. I have been asked to contribute an article from the volunteers perspective - I was there for all but the first fortnight of the second season. I am having great difficulty locating surviving international volunteers particularly those who did not continue in archaeology. Should there be any ex Masada volunteers reading your blog, who would like to share their anecdotes, I would be grateful if they would contact me david.stacey63@ntlworld.com

Background here.

For Its Latest Beer, a Craft Brewer Chooses an Unlikely Pairing: Archaeology

By STEVEN YACCINO

 New York Times

Published: June 17, 201

CLEVELAND — The beer was full of bacteria, warm and slightly sour.

By contemporary standards, it would have been a spoiled batch here at Great Lakes Brewing Company, a craft beer maker based in Ohio, where machinery churns out bottle after bottle of dark porters and pale ales.

But lately, Great Lakes has been trying to imitate a bygone era. Enlisting the help of archaeologists at the University of Chicago, the company has been trying for more than year to replicate a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer using only clay vessels and a wooden spoon.

“How can you be in this business and not want to know from where your forefathers came with their formulas and their technology?” said Pat Conway, a co-owner of the company.

As interest in artisan beer has expanded across the country, so have collaborations between scholars of ancient drink and independent brewers willing to help them resurrect lost recipes for some of the oldest ales ever made.

“It involves a huge amount of detective work and inference and pulling in information from other sources to try and figure it out,” said Gil Stein, the director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, which is ensuring the historical accuracy of the project. “We recognize that to get at really understanding these different aspects of the past, you have to work with people who know things that we don’t.” ...

See the chronicle of news about the Oriental Institute.

Adam Blistein recently sent a message to all members inviting you to volunteer to stand for election to Association offices and to serve on APA committees.  The required form may be accessed here, and you may find full information about what is involved in serving in the various positions here. 

Why do we send this message every year, and why is it important that we have members respond? 

Things are changing fast in the world of education and research, and it is crucial that the principal professional organization of American Classicists should have the benefit of the wisdom of a broad and deep representation of the membership as we plan our responses to these transformations.  It’s especially important that we can draw upon the insights and the energy of our younger members.  You are the ones who have the best knowledge of the opportunities and the risks coming our way in terms of the electronic revolution, educational change, and career transformation.  You are also the ones who are going to be living your professional lives while swimming in the current of these changes, and serving as an officer or committee member enables you not only to get a national perspective on these issues but also to have some chance of influencing them.

We are well aware that everyone is busy, and younger members in particular will rightly be concerned about the value of spending time doing something for the APA and the profession as a whole when they could be working on their research and teaching.  When I was Chair of my department I spent a good bit of time giving advice to junior colleagues about how to manage their priorities as they came up through the ranks—even if they didn’t always take my advice!  So, by all means talk to your Chairs and senior colleagues and get their opinion.  But the value of this service is very high to the individuals who volunteer as well as to the profession, because you meet a number of colleagues you wouldn’t otherwise meet and you learn a lot about the world of Classics in the broadest sense. 

The APA is very fortunate to have the dedicated services of a professional Executive Director, Adam Blistein, and with his small staff he keeps the organization running throughout the year.  Yet nothing of what we do would be possible without the service of dozens of our members who volunteer or agree to stand for election.  Ever since Robert D. Putnam’s 1995 essay on “Bowling Alone” it’s been something of a cliché in sociology that participation in community activities and in civic groups of all kinds has been steadily declining for decades.  His thesis has attracted a lot of criticism from scholars, and I’m certainly not competent to assess the debate.  What I do know is that every year the APA at least does its bit to prove him wrong.

Have a look at the list of possibilities for service, and see what you might find interesting and rewarding to become involved in.  You’ll do some good for your colleagues and your profession, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people, and you’ll make some new friends.  It’s worth it. 
 

Denis Feeney
President

In my Sunday school class this weekend we reached chapter 8. It was nice, after so many chapters, to finally reach what the NIV renders as “the point of what we are saying.”

Those who may have felt like shouting “Get to the point!” in previous classes presumably felt vindicated.

But what is the point of the epistle to the Hebrews? It might seem to be simply that “we have this sort of great high priest.” But digging a little deeper into the details reveals that there is more to it.

The idea of Jesus as high priest is of course an attempt to make sense of the death of one believed to be the Messiah. Many early Christians used the language of “seated at the right hand” to refer to his exalted status, and that allusion to Ps. 110 led the author to the Hebrews to an intriguing possibility: that the king depicted in that psalm could also be a priest. This could be connected with the idea of a new covenant, bringing with it a different sort of priesthood. And thus we get the longest single quotation from the Jewish Scriptures at this point in the book, providing the book’s pivot and focal point, Jeremiah’s words about a new covenant.

I can’t help but wonder whether it was material such as that found in Hebrews which, though it probably seemed a liability to some in the period in which it was written, seemed prophetic after the destruction of the temple in the year 70.

The notion of Jesus as the superior high priest of a superior covenant with a superior tabernacle has often led to Christians adding the corollary that it is the possession of a superior people. This misses the point entirely, and is a bad misreading of an inner-Jewish argument by non-Jewish Christians. The idea of a new covenant, and a superior purification, was aimed at seeing the same people be more obedient and less stubborn as they were spiritually transformed. Instead of being read in terms of supersessionism, it needs to be understood as a warning. And that is indeed how the author to the Hebrews takes it. The message is not “You are no longer Jews, no longer part of the old covenant, and therefore you should look down on those who have not shifted their allegiance as you have.” It is rather, as the author to the Hebrews himself puts it, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:1-3).

What do you understand the point of Hebrews to be?

As of July 1st 2013, the services provided by the Photographic Archives of the Gennadius Library will cease to exist

Bronze Age rock art along Sweden’s south-east coast is rich but not as varied as that of the famous west-coast region. One motif that we have been missing is the four-wheel wagon. It isn’t common anywhere except on one site, Frännarp in inland Scania (below right), but we have had none whatsoever where I am.

Wagons at Frännarp in Scania

The other day we got our first wagon: at the rich classical site of Himmelstalund on the outskirts of Norrköping in Östergötland province. According to period convention, it is depicted in a flattened perspective with the wheels seen from the sides and the carriage from the top. The drawbar is cut by a later ship (off camera), and it appears that there were never any draught animals. The wagon probably dates from the centuries about 800 BC.

This rock art is carved into the smooth surfaces left by the inland ice. The paint and chalk is recent. The red-painted figure above the Himmelstalund wagon is a pair of incomplete foot soles or shoes. The thin chalk lines represent two ships that appear to have been mostly weathered away before the wagon was carved. People returned to these panels and made additions for centuries.

Note that the person who painted the foot soles didn’t see the wagon or the faint ships! This shows how important it is to return to rock art panels regularly with skilled personnel for renewed study. In this case I can take a small amount of avuncular pride in the find, because Theres Furuskog is a long-time collaborator of mine who has done GPS surveying, fieldwalking and metal-detecting with me on many sites in Östergötland and Södermanland. She has also worked for years with cleaning and painting rock art. Her find is a prime example of how important it is to employ educated, intelligent and experienced people for such tasks.

Another fine first in east-coast rock art was the sun horse of nearby Gärstad, found in 2011.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working my way through Richard Maguire’s recent dissertation on the Late Antique Basilicas of Cyprus. While he dedicates the  main body of his dissertation to a series of nuanced case studies, the real jewel of his dissertation is the gazetteer of Cypriot churches. As long time readers of this blog know, I’ve been piddling about with a catalogue of churches on the island (it was really just a list) for years.. Maguire’s dissertation has put an end to that project (thankfully)!

One of the most immediately useful observations in Maguire’s gazetteer is that the church on the Acropolis of Amathus has a 13 x 13 square as its core. The basilica is #6 in his gazetteer and coins have dated the building to the final quarter of the 6th century.

Its 13 x 13 m core consists of the nave and aisles and is roughly similar to the core of our church in the area of EF2 at Polis. Of course, the 13 x 13 square does not align perfectly with our church, but then again, our church is a good bit rougher than the elaborate Amathus church.

What makes this parallel more compelling is that, like the Amathus Acropolis basilica, our church has south porch with four piers. It joins with a narthex that extends beyond the southern aisle. More importantly, our church appears to date – on the basis of ceramic evidence, to no earlier than the final decades of the 6th century. So our church and the church at the Acropolis at Amathus are more or less contemporary.

.
 Souren Melikian (provides "unique coverage of the art scene and market from the view of a collector who is also a cultural historian") has written a feelgood article for the New York Times which would like to persuade us all to think that antiquities collectors are not such a bad lot, that provenance matters to them ("Antiquities, With a Proven Record, Drive Auction Market", NYT ), and slowly, but surely, the dirty antiquities market is cleaning itself up. In fact it would seem he's saying that we need not feel any angst about the market, we need not do anything about it as the situation is righting itself:

The market for antiquities from the ancient world is undergoing an upheaval that sends some works of art skyrocketing to unimaginable heights while scores of others are effectively becoming unsalable. The reason for this discrepancy lies in the Unesco convention adopted in 1970 [...] the convention is effectively being implemented by international institutions and, increasingly, by prudent collectors and dealers, fearful that the legitimate ownership of their acquisitions may be challenged in the future. As a result, important works of art that can be proved to have reached the market before 1970 shoot to vertiginous levels, while those that cannot fail to sell with increasing frequency.

Would that it were true, and of course it is not, not by a long chalk. The problem if anything is getting worse. (He's done this before, too: "How UNESCO's 1970 Convention Is Weeding Looted Artifacts Out of the Antiquities Market" PACHI, Saturday, 1 September 2012). Donna Yates is not at all convinced by his anecdotal evidence, based on her study of several thousand Pre-Columbian pieces, that is not a pattern that can be confirmed by hard figures ("No, NYT, listing a couple of lots doesn't prove that antiquities buyers care about provenance!" June 14,  2013. She calls the article "dumb and wrong".

the listing of a couple of random lots does not prove that buyers prefer pre-1970 pieces. You need stats for that. Real numbers. Trends. Etc. Not just a few random lots. You know what? I just finished a paper this week containing JUST those sorts of numbers. And...well, 1970 is not a factor for what I was looking at. Data from this year. Seriously. This is bad. Paper forthcoming. Sigh.

Good for her, and we all look forward to that paper. Mr Melikian however needs to pay more attention to what he's writing about in another area too. He intones:

The reason for this discrepancy lies in the Unesco convention adopted in 1970 to safeguard the buried heritage of mankind and shield standing monuments from looting. While many countries, including the United States, did not sign up [...]

Quite apart from the acronym not being capitalised, it should be well known to a NYT cultural-antiquity-guru-columist that the USA became a state party to the Convention back in the early 1980s. Though the fact that this has had in fact next to no effect on the way antiquities from both sides of the Atlantic are traded over there may be some justification for him simply not being aware of that fact. Neither does it bear any relationship to the truth to say that it is "prudent dealers" who are "implementing" it. The loudest dealers are OPPOSING the implementation in the US, even in residual half-hearted form, very loudly. Surely Mr Melikian is not unaware of that? If he is, I find that difficulty to understand, he must be out of touch with the US coiney blogs and forums.

But for goodness sake, the man says these dealers are implementing something, and then completely gets it round his neck what that something is. It simply is not true that the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was "adopted" (sic) "to safeguard the buried heritage of mankind and shield standing monuments from looting". It is simply not true, that is a US collectors' myth without any foundation in the text (or title) of the document itself. I wonder how long that fallacy will persist, certainly as long as newspapers like the NYT keep repeating it unthinkingly.

[Melikian is not all bad though, he does not like UK policies on artefact hunting and metal detecting  - see:  "The Amateurish Destruction of World History by Britain at Crosby Garrett", PACHI  Monday, 11 April 2011.

Preliminary studies have determined that the remains was a man who died suddenly, around 26 (Source: Expreso.pe).

“A Spanish mission, led by Professor of Ancient History at the University of Jaén (UJA) Alejandro Jimenez has managed to open an intact tomb (over 4,000 years old) at Qubbet el Hawa, one of the largest private cemeteries in Egypt .

Professor Jaen, who found several years ago the Chamber of Secrets with the help of Dr. Mohamed el-Bialy, the then head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Aswan and Nubia, has worked for three years to have access to the large slab polished stone that sealed the chamber.

Upon removal of the slab, the excavators were able to access the inside of the chamber and a coffin containing the mummified remains of an ancient ruler of Elephantine from the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III (1818 – 1773 BC)” – via Expreso.pe.

Read more here (in Spanish).

You can watch a video report of the opening of the tomb here: 

Exhibition combining the art of Vermeer and his contemporaries with rare musical instruments, songbooks and live music.

In recent years and elections one would have thought that homosexuality and abortion were the new litmus tests of authentic Christianity. Where did this come from? They never were the criteria of proper membership for the first 2000 years, but reflect very recent culture wars instead. And largely from people who think of themselves as “traditionalists”! (The fundamentals were already resolved in the early Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed. Note that none of the core beliefs are about morality at all. The Creeds are more mystical, cosmological, and about aligning our lives inside of a huge sacred story.) When you lose the great mystical level of religion, you always become moralistic about this or that as a cheap substitute. It gives you a false sense of being on higher spiritual ground than others.

Jesus is clearly much more concerned about issues of pride, injustice, hypocrisy, blindness, and what I have often called “The Three Ps” of power, prestige, and possessions, which are probably 95 percent of Jesus’ written teaching. We conveniently ignore this 95 percent to concentrate on a morality that usually has to do with human embodiment. That’s where people get righteous, judgmental, and upset, for some reason. The body seems to be where we carry our sense of shame and inferiority, and early-stage religion has never gotten much beyond these “pelvic” issues. As Jesus put it, “You ignore the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy, and good faith . . . and instead you strain out gnats and swallow camels” (Matthew 23:23-24). We worry about what people are doing in bed much more than making sure everybody has a bed to begin with. There certainly is a need for a life-giving sexual morality, and true pro-life morality, but one could sincerely question whether Christian nations and people have found it yet.

Christianity will regain its moral authority when it starts emphasizing social sin in equal measure with individual (read “body-based”) sin and weave them both into a seamless garment of love and truth.

via Danut Manastireanu, who says that the quote is adapted from a talk by Richard Rohr with the title, “Spiral of Violence: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.”

ἀνὴρ δὲ χρηστὸς χρηστὸν οὐ μισεῖ ποτε.

A good man never hates another good man.

Filed under: Menander

I might get a protest comment from Dr Kwame (depends if they have Benin stuff), but I'll join Peter Tompa in suggesting readers might want to add their name to the Tropenmuseum petition. Having said that, financing a cultural institution of this type is not in the remit of the Ministry of Foreign affairs anywhere else, so one can forgive the Dutch one for pulling 20 million Euros (so they say) from this one. Also it seems its not actually the museum that is threatened so much as its library and library staff, but hey, PACHI LOVES libraries and books. Go on, sign it (but you might like to use GoogleTranslate on the Dutchstuff to make sure what it is you are putting your name to). Do it now, they want to get loads and loads of signatures by 30th June

[Its a bit surreal this for me, "trup" in Polish means "corpse", "tropenmuseum" sounds vaguely obscene]

Sahabettin Harput, local governor of the Turkish city Bursa (Greek Prousa) announced the excavations at the area where a 1500-year-old Byzantine basilica was discovered will start in July.

To honor the Blegens, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation presented a colloquium at Cotsen Hall on May, 31, 2013.

Guided tours to the Cycladic Collection of the MCA, one of the most important collections of its kind worldwide.

Excavations in Ancient Corinth by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens officially came to a close Friday June 14.

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: How the Talmud Maps Behavior by Exploring Definitions, Not Listing Rules: Daf Yomi: The rabbis examined practical dimensions of deep questions, including those raised around saliva, urine, and sex.

This week’s Daf Yomi reading was a wonderful example of the range of the Talmud’s concerns, and the twisting paths that connect them. What starts out as a discussion of the laws of tefillin becomes an examination of the biology of urination and spitting, which is really a debate on the definition of substances and objects. Finally the rabbis turn to questions of sex, marriage, and the status of women, in which the notion of original sin and its punishment is refined in very unexpected ways. Chapter 10 of Tractate Eruvin is all by itself a good argument for the idea that the Talmud is not just a book but an ocean.

UPDATE: Almost forgot, earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

Last Saturday, the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki inaugurated the photography exhibition: “Across Time: Nudes and Standing Stones.”

Last Saturday, the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki inaugurated the photography exhibition: “Across Time: Nudes and Standing Stones.”

IN THE MAIL:

Deborah W. Rook (ed.) with Holly Morse, Society for Old Testament Study Book List 2013 (London: Sage, 2013)

As it’s now up on the website, I guess I can make the announcement - from the start of September, I will be joining the Department of Classics at Royal Holloway on a three year lectureship.

I’ve known about this for a while now and have been passing on the news to people in person, but for various reasons I wanted to wait for something more official before telling the internet. Obviously, I’m delighted. As anyone who has been following the job market knows, a three year job at the moment is an amazing break (and I have to admit that it’s only really just sinking in!). London is a brilliant place for me for personal as well as professional reasons; one of the things I am most looking forward to, if I’m honest, is the novelty of living with my husband. (Radical, I know.) The department at Royal Holloway, despite its well-publicised peril a few years ago, is full of interesting people working on interesting things, and I’m looking forward to getting to know them better in both teaching and research.

I will be sorry to leave my colleagues at Birmingham. Despite recent upheavals, they have been unfailingly generous and kind to me, particularly given that I’ve been on a Teaching Fellowship (and thus on a two-legged academic contract). They’ve been great to work with, and have put up with all sorts of things from me, most recently wandering around asking ‘what do you think the connection is between classics and spiritualism?’ and making loud verbal expressions of frustration at unhelpful secondary literature. However, I will be there until the end of August, so I have a while yet to enjoy their company.

I’ll blog some more about the teaching I will be doing at Royal Holloway later in the summer, but for now, it’s back to the research grindstone…

Archaeologists from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw have discovered a flint mining site in the Holy Cross Mountains.

Review of Giacomo Manganaro, Pace e guerra nella Sicilia tardo-ellenistica e romana (215 a.C.-14 d.C.): ricerche storiche e numismatiche. Nomismata, 7. Bonn: 2012. Pp. 170. €39.00. ISBN 9783774937710.

Review of Timothy Luckritz Marquis, Transient Apostle: Paul, Travel, and the Rhetoric of Empire. Synkrisis: Comparative approaches to early Christianity in Greco-Roman culture. New Haven; London: 2013. Pp. xvi, 196. $55.00. ISBN 9780300187144.

Concrete dome of the Pantheon.

 

---

This article titled “Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik – review” was written by Robin McKie, for The Observer on Monday 17th June 2013 08.01 UTC

In 1961, Oxford archaeologists uncovered a pit at the site of General Gnaeus Julius Agricola’s headquarters at Inchtuthil in Scotland. Unsavoury Caledonians had made his troops’ position untenable. So the Romans decided to quit their empire’s northernmost outpost, though not before going to extraordinary efforts to ensure they left nothing behind that could aid their enemies.

They dismantled and burned their fort. Then they dug a large hole into which they dumped their most precious metal items: 763,840 2in nails, 85,128 medium nails and 25,088 large nails. “These had held the fort together and would have been as useful as leaving a cache of weapons, so the Roman troops buried them,” writes Mark Miodownik, professor of materials and society at University College London. All other steel items were taken south: weapons, armour – and the soldiers’ razors, which “allowed the Romans to retreat clean-shaven, groomed in order to distinguish them from the savage hordes that had driven them out”.

It is an intriguing observation. From this perspective, outlined by Miodownik, Roman civilisation appears to be the result not of advanced military expertise, but of an ability to manufacture and mould superior materials, in this case high-quality steel.

Nor is Miodownik short of other examples. Consider concrete. The Romans invented the stuff. Using cement from Pozzuoli near Naples, which they mixed with small rocks, they constructed ports, bridges, aqueducts and the rest of their empire’s infrastructure. Best of all, they used it to build the dome of the Pantheon in Rome. Still standing today, it is 2,000 years old but remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.

Then there is glass. Both the Egyptians and Greeks manufactured it. However, the Romans perfected glass-making and brought it into everyday life – with profound consequences. “Before the Romans, windows were open to the wind (the word means ‘wind eye’)”, we are told. Glass changed that experience and also transformed our appreciation of wine, after the Romans started using glass to create drinking vessels which had previously been made of opaque materials such as metal, horn or ceramic. As Stuff Matters tells us: “The invention of drinking glasses meant that the colour, transparency and clarity of their wine became important too.” Certainly, from this perspective, it’s not hard to pinpoint what the Romans have done for us.

There is more, however. The Chinese, although highly proficient at manufacturing steel, porcelain and paper, never quite got the hang of glass. Yet it led to the invention of the telescope and the microscope, each critical to the scientific and medical revolutions that started in the west but which failed to ignite in China. And you can see why. Without a telescope, you cannot observe Jupiter’s moons and make measurements that underpin an understanding of the universe. And without a microscope, you cannot see bacteria and understand their role in the spread of disease.

In short, a proficiency with materials has consequences, a point expertly illustrated in this deftly written, immensely enjoyable little book. A vast library of modern materials underpins our lives today and makes them bearable: chocolates that are artfully structured to explode like taste-bombs in our mouths; silica aerogel, the world’s lightest solid, which is actually 99.8% air and which provides almost perfect thermal insulation; and carbon-fibre technology, which has transformed sports including cycling, tennis and Formula One, and which might be used one day to construct a “space ladder”, an elevator that would rise from Earth’s equator to a satellite, carrying passengers and tourists.

Our awareness of the importance of materials is also revealed by the names we have given to the key stages of civilisation: the stone age, the bronze age and the iron age. The steel age probably arrived with the Victorians, while we can consider ourselves to be in the silicon age today. Who knows what will follow.

Whatever it is, it will define our world. As Miodownik says: “We may like to think of ourselves as civilised but that civilisation is in large part bestowed by material wealth. But without this ‘stuff’, we would quickly be confronted by the same basic struggle for survival that animals are faced with.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

See on Scoop.it – Archaeology News

With help from a University of Chicago group, a craft beer maker has been working for more than year to replicate a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer.

The beer was full of bacteria, warm and slightly sour.

By contemporary standards, it would have been a spoiled batch here at Great Lakes Brewing Company, a craft beer maker based in Ohio, where machinery churns out bottle after bottle of dark porters and pale ales.

But lately, Great Lakes has been trying to imitate a bygone era. Enlisting the help of archaeologists at the University of Chicago, the company has been trying for more than year to replicate a 5,000-year-old Sumerian beer using only clay vessels and a wooden spoon.

“How can you be in this business and not want to know from where your forefathers came with their formulas and their technology?” said Pat Conway, a co-owner of the company.

As interest in artisan beer has expanded across the country, so have collaborations between scholars of ancient drink and independent brewers willing to help them resurrect lost recipes for some of the oldest ales ever made.

the full article can be read here… on www.nytimes.com

A nice, easy one:

რამეთუ ჟამი ახლოს არს

ὁ γὰρ καιρὸς ἐγγὺς

…for the time is near.

Source: Revelation 1:3 (available here from TITUS).

Funerary urn depicting the god of rain and lightning, 200-400, ceramic. Zapotec civilization, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Courtesy & currently located at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, USA. Photo taken by vera.

Here is a round-up of today's proverbs and fables - and for previous posts, check out the Bestiaria Latina Blog archives. If you have not downloaded a free PDF copy of Brevissima: 1001 Tiny Latin Poems, it's ready and waiting, as is Mille Fabulae et Una: 1001 Aesop's Fables in Latin. If you prefer the heft of a book in your hand, you can get the books in printed form from Lulu.com.

HODIE (Roman Calendar): ante diem quartum decimum Kalendas Iulias.

MYTHS and LEGENDS: The art image for today's legend shows Hylas and the Nymphs; you can also see the legends for the current week listed together here.

TODAY'S MOTTOES and PROVERBS:

TINY PROVERBS: Today's tiny proverb is: Datum serva (English: Preserve what is given to you).

3-WORD MOTTOES: Today's 3-word verb-less motto is Virtus propter se (English: Excellence for its own sake).

ANIMAL PROVERBS: Today's animal proverb is Sicut canis ad Nilum, bibens et fugiens (English: Like a dog at the Nile, drinking and fleeing - an allusion to the famous Aesop's fable).

POLYDORUS: Today's proverb from Polydorus is: Dei laneos pedes habent (English: The gods have feet of wool - which is to say, you don't hear them coming).

PROPER NAME PROVERBS: Today's proper name proverb from Erasmus is Aegypti nuptiae (English: The wedding rites of Aegyptus; from Adagia 3.1.3 - this refers to any tragic and unlucky event, like the sad wedding when King Aegyptus married off his fifty sons to the fifty daughters of his brother, Danaus, whereupon all the sons but one were murdered by the Danaides).

GREEK PROVERBS: Today's proverb is Δυεῖν ἐπιθυμήσας, οὐδετέρου ἔτυχες (English: Wanting to grasp both, you managed to get neither).

BREVISSIMA: The distich poster for today is Parentum Errata. Click here for a full-sized view; the poem has a vocabulary list and an English translation, too.

And here are today's proverbial LOLcats:

TODAY'S FABLES:

FABULAE FACILES: The fable from the Fabulae Faciles widget is Accipiter Columbam Insequens, in which the tables are turned on a ruthless hawk (this fable has a vocabulary list).

MILLE FABULAE: The fable from the Mille Fabulae et Una widget is Oves Timidae et Pastor, a funny story about a shepherd trying to infuse some bravery into his flock of sheep.

GreekLOLz - and Latin and English, too. Below is one of my GreekLOLz; for the individual Greek, Latin and English versions of the graphic, see the blog post: Ἀρχὴ ἥμισυ παντός. Principium dimidium totius. To start is half of the whole.

caravaggista:

My (non-definitive) guide to Applying to Graduate School in Art History is finished! You can download it for free in PDF format here. If you find it useful, please pass it along to your friends & also let me know! 

Definitely recommended, Amy of caravaggista did a great job writing this (plus it’s free!)

This petition request was sent to me.  I'm publishing it here for your consideration. 

Dear Friends  of Tribal Art and Textiles,

We are at a crossroads where one of the great lights of non Western world heritage will be extinguished  in  name of budget cuts. This is not just a loss to the Netherlands but to the World and the Dutch Government should know we care! Please read below and add your name most urgently to this petition as described. Time is of the essence!

Amsterdam's Tropenmuseum (Museum of the Tropics) is one of Europe's leading ethnographic museums. Between its rich permanent collection, which reflects Dutch colonial history, and its vivid temporary exhibitions, visitors can glimpse the past, present and future of non-Western cultures around the globe. A visit to the Tropenmuseum is a journey through time and around the world. One gets to know widely different cultures and get an excellent impression of everyday live in the tropics. The museum accommodates eight permanent exhibitions and an ongoing series of temporary exhibitions, including both modern and traditional visual arts and photographic works. The museum's rooms, expertly guide people through Asia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America via authentic art, household and religious objects, photographs, music, film and interactive displays. The museum is also renowned for its efforts in child-friendly exhibitions. Tropenmuseum Junior offers an educational, inspiring and entertaining programme for kids (6 to 13 year olds), aimed at introducing them to different cultures.

As the public face of the Royal Tropical Institute, a foundation that sponsors the study of tropical cultures around the world, the Tropenmuseum is a grand institution, both inside and out. The museum was established in 1864 and it's beautiful brick building dates from 1926 and sits alongside the spacious greenery of Oosterpark. The Tropenmuseum is one of the most fascinating anthropological museums in the Netherlands, but is now in great danger.

URGENT please help the Tropenmuseum stay alive and open...- if it disappears nothing will ever be able to replace it !!

PLEASE SIGN before 30 June !!!

http://petities.nl/petitie/hou-het-tropenmuseum-open

Send this email also to other people who would be willing to participate in signing this important petition

Please read the following information regarding the Tropenmuseum's current plight and sign the petition as requested. On the agenda is a Dutch government decision to give the Tropenmuseum funds to survive another two years, after which the Tropenmuseum will be have to merge with the Volkenkunde Museum in Leiden and the Africa Museum in Berg en Dal. If this does not happen the museum will be closed down !

The KIT Library and research and Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam's ethnographic and multicultural museum, is being hit hard by budget cuts. Over half of the staff will lose their jobs and the research library, filled with one of a kind publications from around the globe dated from as early as 1400 AD, will simply shut down. We need 40,000 signatures Dutch or Worldwide, to put the Tropenmuseum back on the government agenda and to tell the government that the public is not okay with this closing down of this universal institution!

We need the signatures BEFORE 30 JUNE!

http://petities.nl/petitie/hou-het-tropenmuseum-open

For non dutch speakers, on the site: please fill in your first name and last name (Ik = Identity = put your name), city (Wonende te = City = put your city) and your email and send.

Then click on the confirmation link in the email you will receive after from the petition site

Please help us save the Tropenmuseum - if it disappears nothing will ever be able to replace it !!

Please forward this request for help to whom ever you think is interested.

Thank you

At the Imouseion Project Workshop in Paris held at the beginning of June I learned about Greg Nagy’s project of an online course about the Homeric epics, the concept of Greek heroes and how the Greeks themselves dealt with it. The project has been launched in March and students can join until July 2013. See here for a general overview of its aims and content.

I just enrolled today and browsed through the first lesson. The choice of the first texts are particularly well fitting and the videos accompanying them give the necessary insights to understand their depth or to compare them with more modern experiences.

The whole course will be taught by a group of scholars including, besides Greg Nagy, also Lenny Muellner, Kevin McGrath, Alex Forte, Claudia Filos, Natasha Bershadsky, Glynnis Fawkes and Sean Signore. All are either teaching or studying at several US-universities. For each lesson, or hour, several texts are given. They are explained and discussed and the sessions ends with two sections of questions, one more about facts and the second about the texts and their meanings.

There is also a discussion section and an information blog giving the latest news about the progress of the course. Finally one can also find a link to the e-book version of Greg Nagy’s latest book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, which is based on his teaching material assembled over more than 30 years for this topic.

I am looking forward to having time for looking into hour 2!

The three short tales inserted between Hippolytus and the voyage of Aesculapius in Metamorphoses 15 pose interpretive challenges that have scholars such as Raymond Marks working to unlock their riddles. Here we just have time for a few comments.

The three tales -- two of them in anecdotal form -- form a cascade of similes having to do with wonder.

This strange event [the transformation of the mourning Egeria into aeternas undas] amazed the nymphs, and the Amazon’s son was no less astounded, than the Tyrrhenian ploughman when he saw a fateful clod of earth in the middle of his fields, first move by itself with no one touching it, then assume the form of a man, losing its earthy nature, and open its newly acquired mouth, to utter things to come. The native people called him Tages, he who first taught the Etruscan race to reveal future events.  No less astounded than Romulus, when he saw his spear, that had once grown on the Palatine Hill, suddenly put out leaves, and stand there, not with its point driven in, but with fresh roots: now not a weapon but a tough willow-tree, giving unexpected shade to those who wondered at it.
    No less astounded than Cipus, the praetor, when he saw his horns in the river’s water . .  .

The story of Tages packs a wondrous occurrence into a few lines -- a clod of earth autonomously gains a mouth and teaches the Etruscans how to read future events in signs. Barely is that noted than the spear of Romulus returns to its "roots" as well as sprouting leaves and branches. Then horns appear on the temples of Cipus, and an Etruscan priest finds huge import in them for both him and the Romans -- but Cipus deflects it through an alternate "interpretation" that frees both him and the city from the burden of kingship.

All three tales are concerned with self-instantiating signs that initiate, rather than reflect, an event. Instead of being the bearers of some definite meaning that precedes them, they suddenly put themselves there. If they seem to demand that meaning come, it only comes after they posit themselves. Their very status as "sign" depends on their working as wonders. Ovid, the poet of the new and strange, is thinking about the link between signs and wonders.

In the case of Tages, the notion of an autochthonous language -- arising from a ploughed field -- is at least consistent with what little we know of Etruscan today -- apparently an "isolate," it's unrelated to Indo-European, not part of our common linguistic ground. How does a unique language of signs occur? When a language self-originates how does anyone understand it? How does language, a shared thing, come to be?

Etruscan figures

Tages' power of speech is immediately reduced to a system of signs (the Etruscans were said to have recorded his teachings in secret books) that must be interpreted, as they speak not of the past or the present, but of the future. Meaning is to come, but the sign is here, and to make it speak, one must be versed in the sign system and in the methods of its decoding:

Observatio was the interpretation of signs according to the tradition of the "Etruscan discipline," or as preserved in books such as the libri augurales. A haruspex interpreted fulgura (thunder and lightning) and exta (entrails) by observatio. The word has three closely related meanings in augury: the observing of signs by an augur or other diviner; the process of observing, recording, and establishing the meaning of signs over time; and the codified body of knowledge accumulated by systematic observation, that is, "unbending rules" regarded as objective, or external to an individual's observation on a given occasion. Impetrative signs, or those sought by standard augural procedure, were interpreted according to observatio; the observer had little or no latitude in how they might be interpreted. Observatio might also be applicable to many oblative or unexpected signs. Observatio was considered a kind of scientia, or "scientific" knowledge, in contrast to coniectura, a more speculative "art" or "method" (ars) as required by novel signs.[356]

Even this brief glimpse of ostenta gives us a sense that the field of semiotics, the study of signs, did not begin with Pierce or de Saussure. The Etruscans were semioticians avant la lettre. Priests, poets, and seers have made the nuanced description, tabulation, and interpretation a matter of study and practice for millennia, much as the Greeks analyzed the large and various tropes and devices of rhetoric, and their role in cognition and persuasion, with keen and supple attention.

Cipus engages in an elaborate interpretive duel with the priest and his people to ward off the potential doom -- again, the question of kingship and succession -- hatched upon the dilemma of his horns. Karl Popper wrote two long volumes to work out a theory of knowledge whose political dimension is a not dissimilar struggle to oppose absolutism. Where signs demand elucidation, expect a contest of readings -- not just readings, but theories of reading. In the end, Cipus's Roman reading takes on the trappings of demagoguery to overcome the Etruscan seer's interpretation. The dilemma turns out to revolve around the portas, the gates of the city -- whether they shall be open and he shall enter like a victorious general, or closed to him, and implicitly, all future generals. Caesar and Ianus are not far off.

After Pythagoras's musings and the transformation of Hippolytus, which frame and wind around the life and death of King Numa, Ovid chooses to put the riddle of language -- of the sign -- before us. For the poet, signs are the materials of his craft -- for the vates, the seer, they carry the future, but only if they can be read:

Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.

As we near the final tales of the Metamorphoses, stories of gods and Caesar, the succession of Augustus and the fate of Rome, it is small wonder to find Ovid foregrounding the interplay of signs, power, and the act of reading.

Open Access (free to read) articles:

Community Participation in Ethnic Minority Cultural Heritage Management in China: A Case Study of Xianrendong Ethnic Cultural and Ecological Village
http://www.pia-journal.co.uk/article/view/pia.307

Excavations on Torr an Aba, Iona, Argyll
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=118

Gauntlets
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/archjournal/contents.cfm?vol=70

Touching the Past?
http://www.pia-journal.co.uk/article/view/pia.249

Notice of a Celtic Bell of Bronze from Little Dunkeld.
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/psas/contents.cfm?vol=23

Learn more about Open Access and Archaeology at: http://bit.ly/YHuyFK

Het Gallo-Romeins Museum in Tongeren brengt naar aanleiding van de tentoonstelling ‘De Etrusken – Una storia particolare’ een eerbetoon aan de Vlaamse dichter Anton van Wilderode. Tijdens zijn reizen door Italië in de jaren 1970 raakte van Wilderode gefascineerd door de Etruskische dodencultus. Het werk van de dichter werd nu opgediept en wordt als een hommage meegegeven aan de bezoekers van de tentoonstelling. Het boekje is gratis verkrijgbaar in het Gallo-Romeins Museum.

Anton van Wilderode reisde veel en graag. Een van zijn lievelingsbestemmingen was Italië, niet toevallig het land van zijn favoriete dichter Publius Vergilius Maro. In de zomer van 1978 deed hij ook de streek van het oude Etrurië aan. Hij raakte gefascineerd door de Etruskische dodencultus. De neerslag hiervan is terug te vinden in de bundel ‘De overoever’ (1981). Met de elegische mijmeringen neemt de dichter ons mee naar de Etruskische necropolen zoals die van Norchia, Cerveteri en Tarquinia.

Het Gallo-Romeins Museum heeft nu uit deze bundel een tiental gedichten verzameld. De gedichten werden geselecteerd in samenwerking met de ‘Internationale Vriendenkring Anton van Wilderode’. Ze werden gebundeld in een mooie folder, gratis op te pikken tijdens het bezoek aan de tentoonstelling. Bovendien zal het Gallo-Romeins Museum elke week één van de gedichten posten op zijn Facebook-pagina.

De tentoonstelling over de Etrusken loopt nog tot en met 25 augustus.

Externe link: Gallo-Romeins Museum

Woman headed Goblet

1450-1200 BC

Syrian, found in Cyprus

(Source: The British Museum)

Daughter of Amenophis IV or Akhenaten (1351-1334), Egyptian, limestone/ red paint.

This female head has an elongated skull, and is probably a child of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (1351-1334 BCE). The eye is hollow for inlaying. The piece is broken across the neck, and is a forgery executed in the 18th Dynasty, Amarna Period style.

Courtesy & currently located at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA.

LIMA, PERU—Archaeologist Gladiz Collatupa and art historian Sonia Rojas work with customs officers in a post office in Lima, where they examine packages for looted archaeological artifacts and other cultural items. So far they have rescued books from the National Library, a nineteenth-century oil painting, coins, fossils, and historic documents. Sometimes they identify looted pre-Columbian cloth that had been used to decorate reproductions of ancient dolls.  “You never know what you’re going to find. Every box could contain a surprise,” said Rojas. The seized items are handed over to the National Museum.

GUANGZHOU, CHINA—Construction workers building a subway system in the Menggang district of Guangzhou have reportedly destroyed a number of ancient tombs on Da Gong Mountain. “Yesterday we were still conducting archaeological excavations, but all five tombs were gone this morning,” an unnamed archaeologist told a reporter from the South China Morning Post. The tombs ranged in age from 2,200 to more than 3,000 years old. Zhang Qianglu of the Guangzhou Archaeology Research Center said that the side of the mountain is covered with historically significant tombs. More than a dozen of them are thought to have been destroyed to date by the subway project.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—The city of Mahendraparvata has been mapped on Phnom Kulen Mountain, located to the north of the Angkor Wat Complex in Cambodia, by archaeologists using airborne laser technology carried by a helicopter. Some 36 buildings had previously been recorded on the jungle-covered mountain, but it wasn’t known how they fit together. More than two dozen temples, and traces of canals, dykes, and roads laid out in regular city blocks have now been mapped. “We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation. One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilization,” said Damian Evans of the University of Sydney.

Interesting commentary by the author of a 1988 undergraduate thesis that revolved around re-measuring part of Morton's skulls and concluding (contra Gould) that Morton's measurements were accurate.

I haven't read it fully (it is in four parts), but here is the concluding paragraph from part 4:

In the final analysis, the Morton-Gould Affair, which has been popularized as a diagnostic example of the role of unconscious bias in science, is simply a case of two over-eager scholars jumping to conclusions based on a small amount of data. It is unfortunate that the discussion of Morton’s work has occupied so much energy over the past 30 years, when a more important issue is Gould’s historically inaccurate misrepresentation of Blumenbach’s work, which unlike Morton’s was a foundational element of modern physical anthropology and public policy regarding racial variation that still impacts us today. A proper representation of Blumenbach’s theories and an accurate translation of his major Latin publications into modern English and German are long overdue and would be of great benefit to science and society at large.

Should be interesting reading for anyone fascinated by the history of ideas.

So yesterday, Brandon Olson and I, drove to Athienou. The goal of the trip was for Brandon to show Jody Gordon and some of the Athienou Archaeological Project how he uses Agisoft Photoscan. Agisoft Photoscan is a software program that allows you to create a multiview 3D reconstruction of a site or an object. It is a nifty program and Brandon and Bill have gotten good at using it. Since we needed to drop off a rental car in Larnaka, I went along with Brandon and brought the LaserScan C10 to test it out. The scanning went well, even though you could feel the difference in heat between Athienou and Polis – or at least I could. After scanning part of their current excavation, we took the scanner down into a tomb and tried it there. It was fun to watch because the green laser beam showed up really well as it worked its way around the tomb.

The Outside of the Tomb

The Inside of the Tomb (with the front cut away)

RSM

© Carole Raddato

Mixed portraiture type: Baiae & Imperatori 32.

The photograph was taken during the exhibition “L’image et le pouvoir. Le siècle des Antonins” (Image and power. The age of the Antonines) at the Musée Saint-Raymond in Toulouse (France).

The head is currently in storage at the Louvre, Paris.

Inv. Ma 1187

This is not Latin, but I thought it might be of interest - the Royal Shakespeare Company is organizing all kinds of great events for a staging of Midsummer Night's Dream, including lots of creative online activities. In that spirit, I created these LOLCats with lines from the play (I've been doing Shakespearean LOLCats for a couple of months now)... enjoy! Here are some of my favorites; you can see the complete album (40 LOLCats) at Google+.

Helmet

900-800 BC 

Urartian

Pointed bronze helmet; shape designed to deflect arrows and holes around bottom served to attach a leather or felt lining; pattern of dots, and crook-shaped bull’s heads framing the Urartian version of the Egyptian sun-disc.

(Source: The British Museum)

Via the excellent AWOL I learn of a digital repository for PhD theses.  Oxford, it seems, has declined to support the British Library’s EthOs initiative, preferring to keep material produced at Oxford on an Oxford website: Oxford University Research Archive.

This afternoon I did a search of the archive (from my smart phone – the site is not well adapted for it, tho), and found rather little.  But I did find some things of interest to us:

• Chase F. Robinson, The conquest of Khūzistān: a historiogr​aphical reassessme​nt, 2004.
• Jeff Childers, Studies in the Syriac versions of St. John Chrysostom​’s homilies on the New Testament.
• Tara L. Andrews, Prolegome​na to a critical edition of the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, with a discussion of computer-a​ided methods used to edit the text, 2009.
• R. W. Burgess, Hydatius, 1989.
• Matthew Nicholls, Roman Public Libraries, 2005.
• Cyril Mango, &c, From the Bosporus to Oxford: unseen photograph​s from Prof. Harrison’s Byzantine excavations in Istanbul, 2011.

Not a great haul from one of the world’s leading classical universities; but perhaps it is early days yet.  They are clearly digitising theses, which can only be good.

Lord Renfrew has written a piece for SAFE (here) in which he says, among other things:

It is difficult to prevent the looting of the cultural heritage in faraway places. But you can help prevent looting, and undermine the traffic in illicit antiquities, by ensuring that your local museum (and local private collectors) have a clear and published ethical acquisitions code — and that they stick to it! If museums did not buy or accept gifts of “unprovenanced” — i.e. usually looted — antiquities, collectors would not buy them.

Is that actually true? Has Lord Renfrew spent much time recently on the antiquities collectors' forums? This is basically the same tenor of argument that he was advancing back in "Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology" (2000), has nothing changed in the intervening decade and a half?

It seems to me an odd thing to say. About the only real effect museums ethics have on collectors is on the US ones who cannot get a tax kickback on objects they donate to museums if the museums refuse to accept them. That, I think, is the real extent of the model Lord Renfrew would like us to believe. Personally I think the evidence points the other way, the more museums refuse to touch dodgy and unpapered stuff, the more private collectors will be enjoined to by profit-seeking dealers and their middlemen suppliers.

I came to Rome to begin work on my dissertation, which focuses on the 4th century CE Basilica of Junius Bassus. Once a magnificent pavilion whose walls were covered in marble decoration, the Basilica has only a few pieces that survive: four large panels of opus sectile, or inlaid marble. Two of these show a tigress attacking a helpless bovine creature.

One of the remaining panels from the Basilica of Junius Bassus.

One of my first tasks when I arrived in Rome was to lay eyes on the surviving panels—it’s always exciting to see something you’ve been working on and have only seen in books!

Me with the tiger panel in the Capitoline Museum

A major part of art historical research is to gather comparanda. Comparanda are materials for comparison, which may come from the same period or the same place, use the same materials, or display the same iconography.

On my hunt for comparanda this week, I visited a very well-preserved opus sectile room from Ostia, Rome’s ancient port. The room is installed at the Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo in E.U.R., Mussolini’s 1930s project for the Esposizione Universale Roma. The streamlined Fascist architecture of the outside of the museum gave way in the interior to a Late Antique polychromatic hall, every inch of which was covered in geometric or figural decoration in finely cut marbles.

One wall of the hall from Ostia, as installed in the Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo in Rome

This instance makes a useful point of comparison for the Basilica of Junius Bassus for several reasons. First, the hall is made of the same materials as the Basilica of Junius Bassus, but because it’s better preserved, it can give us an idea what the Basilica of Junius Bassus might have looked like when Bassus first built it. The Ostian hall at the Museo dell’Alto Medioevo is also from the same period and the same region in Italy. It even displays a very similar motif: a lion attacking a horse-like creature.

This panel is a close cousin of the tigress panels at the Basilica of Junius Bassus.

Similarities between the Ostian hall and the Basilica of Junius Bassus let us know that the same group of artisans may have worked on these two projects. The patrons of these two buildings might have selected the designs for their halls using a pattern book, much like we would choose from a wallpaper sample book or catalogue when designing a space today. Together, the Ostian hall and the Basilica of Junius Bassus help us begin to form a picture of the way a fourth-century Roman patron fashioned the space around him.

Leaving Ge’ermu at dawn, we resumed our journey westward, accompanied on the road only by towering trucks maneuvering themselves slowly toward mining operations on the Chaidamu (Qaidam) salt flats; there were barely any passenger vehicles.  At some point, we crossed one of the major salt lakes, Chaerhan salt lake, on a 32 km land bridge built on top of it.

Surrounded by a vast and barren landscape studded with sculpted sandstone mounts known as the Yadan landform, the road in front of us looked dismal and yet entrancing in an overcast morning. A few hours on, the sky cleared and the sands radiated in warm beige under the midday sun as shadows of the clouds moved across the land.  Just when I was enthralled by the scenery, salt lakes suddenly appeared in between the undulating hills, adding a burst of shimmering turquoise to the landscape. Magical.

The desiccated soil cracked under my feet as I approached the lakeshore lined with white salt crusts. The water felt cool and refreshing in the dry heat. We spent an hour climbing the hills around the lakes. For the first time on the trip, I had the feeling of being in utter wilderness and there was something spellbinding about it.

Later that afternoon, we entered Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the province of our final destination, but it would take us another 3 days to travel across it. Since this was my third time in Xinjiang, it felt like coming back to a second home. Due to a history of ethnic riots and conflicts, the government has tightened security on the road by installing checkpoints at the borders between prefectures. There are barricades at these checkpoints and every vehicle is pulled over where a security officer goes through the contents of the vehicle and checks the passengers’ identification documents. This is obviously no laughing matter as we were asked if we had carried in the vehicle guns and grenades. We were also told we were not supposed to carry fire extinguishers and the gas can with backup gasoline.

There was a final barricade before we reached our pitstop, Ruoqiang 若羌. The Altyn-Tagh stood tall and mighty in front of us. Another few hours on the windy roads through its rugged and rocky peaks and a continual descent of 56 km, we arrived at another endorheic basin, the Tarim Basin, home to the Taklamakhan Desert and ancient oases that once fostered settlements with rich material cultures. We stopped by the ancient city of Milan 米蘭, dated to the Eastern Han and Tang Dynasties (2^nd - 10^th centuries CE). The city is situated in the southeastern corner of the basin, covering an area of 46.5 km². In the hue of the evening sun, which was setting at around 9pm, the weathered ruins of the city walls and Buddhist stupas mirrored the natural landforms on the Qaidam Basin. After 17 adventurous hours on the road, the lingering heat of the night in Ruoqiang reminded us that the Taklamakhan desert awaited us the next day.

The ancient city of Milan at sunset

Just about three years ago, while teaching my undergraduate Language and Culture course, I ended up poking around the etymology of the word honk and turned up some neat things, leading to the germ of an idea for a student project that I ended up calling Lexiculture.    That term, I did a test run with my students, using the word ‘chairperson’ as a really interesting in-class exercise, and then got to work putting it together as a full class assignment in the fall of 2010.   This was considerably advanced about a month later at the Language, Culture, and History conference in Wyoming, organized by Leila Monaghan, and discussions I had with many of the participants there about how to think about the linguistic anthropology of English words: moving beyond lexicography and etymology towards a real integrated approach to language and culture using words.

When I ran this in 2010, I introduced Lexiculture using an in-class exercise where we jointly researched the surprising history of the local term Michigan left.   I then put together a list of projects for them to choose from (or let them choose their own) and set them to work. I was working under a few impediments: I had never done this before, so I was sort of muddling along.  I didn’t give the students quite enough guidance to undertake research projects with good results.  At the time, I couldn’t find a good text to help the students conceptually or methodologically.  So it turned out to be OK, and we got some good results (I especially liked student papers written on the words wife-beater, bitchin’, and ketchup/catsup) but it wasn’t a complete success.    In 2011 I was on sabbatical so I didn’t teach that course, and in 2012 (my last year prior to submitting my tenure file, which is happening now), I decided to focus on some research projects (wisely, I think), and to make the course a bit more traditional.

Well, now it’s 2013, and my tenure file will be set in stone by September, and instead of kicking up my feet and phoning in the last 30 years of my teaching career, I figure it’s time to dust off the notes and put Lexiculture back together.    I’ve had the great fortune to have found a wonderful short, inexpensive text: How to Read a Word by Elizabeth Knowles, which has some good, not-yet-outdated methodological suggestions but more importantly is conceptually critical to get the students thinking about how the history of words intersects with sociocultural change in the English-speaking world.   So using that text, and a revised set of topics, and a stronger methodological introduction to the subject, I’m at it again this fall.

So here are a few of the words / topics on my list for this year:

Information Superhighway: I want to know how this transformed from an index of the speaker’s technological knowhow in the early 1990s, to a sign of outmodedness a decade later.

Stalemate: I want to know by what process this chess term became figuratively adopted for a situation where victory is impossible.

Uppity: What is the metalinguistic discourse surrounding the use of this word in, by, and around African Americans, both in the 19th century and today?

I have a longer list, but I need more, and here’s how you could help.  I’m looking for more English words or phrases  that students could research and that could help illuminate something of social significance.  Some basic requirements:

- The topics need to relate to the last 200-300 years, with a heavy emphasis on post-1900 material. Prior to 1800, the full-text searchable databases / corpora that the students will need are relatively few and inaccessible.
- While the papers will focus on single words or short phrases (i.e. the sort of things that can be researched readily without too much training), I’m not just interested in etymology, but rather, in words or phrases that have cultural significance or whose contextual importance has changed over time.
- The words/phrases could be primarily analyzable quantitatively (using corpora, Google Ngram Viewer, etc.), qualitatively (broader social analysis or close reading of specific textual examples) or both.
- The words/phrases can’t have been over-researched – e.g., tweet and LOL and cool have been researched in such detail that there’s too much risk of plagiarism and not much interest in it for me.

Any ideas for suitable words or phrases would be appreciated in the comments below.  So tell me: do you have a great idea for some lexiculture?

Filed under: Anthropology, Linguistics

By: Mitch Allen, Left Coast Press, Inc. & Mills College

Arguments over open access in scholarly publishing have crossed the radar of every scholar, publisher, or librarian not suffering from terminal senility. Open access would represent a global shift of control of scholarly publications from largely (but not exclusively) the private sector’s group of publishing houses to some as-yet-undefined group of scholarly individuals and institutions. Eric Kansa’s recent post on the ASOR blog has elevated it to the level of a social revolution and moral crusade. Eric, who has built his career around developing open access options for archaeology—his Alexandria Archive one of the most innovative initiatives around—can be forgiven his rhetorical excesses for this reason. But it does not get us to a solution for how to move forward on a sustainable publication model in archaeology any more than calls for the disbanding of global capitalism will end economic inequality in the 21^st century world.

We already live in an age of open access for archaeological publishing. Anyone looking for information has thousands of free sources to consult. There are people and organizations compiling archaeological news digests each day. ISAW’s Chuck Jones has a blog that daily adds to the listing of open access sites on the web. Each excavation project has its own website which, in addition to photos of happy but dirty students playing in the squares, contains the annual preliminary reports— documents that have previously been difficult for archaeologists to obtain— and a smattering of photos of recent important finds. Anyone wishing to publish their own archaeology book, even ones attempting to show how the pyramids were built by aliens in 10,000 BC, needs only to send a few hundred dollars to Amazon or Lulu or iUniverse to have their dream of being a published author fulfilled. More importantly, increasing amounts of fugitive archaeological data are being curated through the Alexandria Archive, The Digital Archaeological Record, and other similar programs. Professional conferences are now being taped and hosted on YouTube.  Even the commercial book sector has discovered the value of posting their books on Google Book Search or Amazon’s Search Inside the Book for potential buyers to preview a percentage its contents. I recently made the claim that we are in a golden age of archaeological publishing (Allen and Joyce 2010). I still believe that.

So the debate about open access is really a much narrower one, focused on only a few areas of scholarly dissemination—journals and books made available by professional publishers. Much of this comes from large commercial publishers like Elsevier or Springer, some from smaller presses like Left Coast or Eisenbraun’s. A substantial amount of this publishing is done by not-for-profit operations like scholarly societies, university research units, or university presses. A recent study indicated that a full 20% of journal publications came from the latter source. ASOR falls in this category with its three journals and two book series providing a significant amount of the organization’s revenue.  It is this “commercial” side of the academic dissemination system that has become the target of the open access movement, ignoring the myriad of already open access sources. Why?

Because these are the publications that count in the academic world. Refereed journal articles and books from reputable scholarly presses are what make an archaeological career. It is this sense of value that drives libraries to spend vast sums on scholarly journals and to buying most (it used to be all) books from serious publishers in a given field. Ditto the individual scholar. You are expected to have read the important stuff in your field, and these generally come from a limited number of reputable presses.  That reputation comes at a cost—at Left Coast we’ve been working for the past 8 years to build the reputation that our works are serious, scholarly, important. Oxford University Press has a 400-year head start on us and the junior scholar, faced with the problem of finding an academic job and getting tenured at it, will often go to an OUP or some other century-old publishing house like Brill or Routledge in the hopes that it will count more for their career. Ditto the journal article: scholars will strive to get their work into BASOR instead of a journal launched three years ago because the presumed academic rewards will be greater.  If this weren’t true, the entire commercial publications sector would crumble as scholars fled to the simplest, quickest publication outlet to show their latest work. The problem, then, doesn’t lie with the commercial presses but with the academic reward system. Convince the university provost and the physicist and nursing prof on the university tenure committee that the Open Journal of Near Eastern Archaeology is as important a publication venue as Levant or JCS and the entire commercial system will quickly vanish.

The tenure system is slated to reform about the same time that the demise of global capitalism occurs.

Eric correctly notes the other key issues: the cost of publication and the issue of long term sustainability. Each of these would require much more than a blog post to adequately address so I can only offer a few points here.

The current system relies on the publisher to invest its money in production, printing, publicity, distribution, warehousing, and accounting in order to disseminate scholarly publications, with the hope that the purchasers, mostly libraries, scholars, and students, will repay their efforts.  In each case, the publication has to pay for itself through these revenue  sources and hopefully generate a  “surplus” (the term of choice for not-for-profits) or “profit” (in the commercial sector) to enable the publisher to generate more material the following year. Open access doesn’t eliminate any of these costs, including the need for surplus, but shifts them from the purchaser to the producer. Who will that financier be? Grants and subsidies? Advertising? Author-pays? The university library? Not-for-profit organizations like the Alexandria Archive or ASOR? All of these options raise more issues of long-term financial sustainability and stability than the current publication system.  If the solution were simple, someone would have figured it out by now.

Then there is the 20% of scholarly work produced by scholarly organizations like ASOR. How do they replace their lost income when their income-generating publications are available for free to all? ASOR has been grappling with this question for several years now, without a solution.

Given the evils of global capitalism in publishing or elsewhere, it does have the advantage of often being a self-correcting system. Thus, small presses like Left Coast can thrive because we are closer to our audience than a behemoth multinational media corporation and will charge less for our books. Large journal publishers like Springer and Sage have acceded to the demand for open access articles by allowing their journal articles to become so… for a fee.  Organizations like JSTOR are trying to break down the firewall that surround library collections by allowing independent scholars to subscribe to their Register & Read program. College libraries have demonstrated they can band together into consortia to negotiate with publishers for better value for their subscription dollars.  Further changes of this sort will appear as the existing system adapts to the issues raised by the open access movement.

Ultimately, we’ll probably end up with a hybrid system that includes both open access and commercial publication channels. We’ll all wish that some of the commercial material were available for free and try to find ways of accessing it at the lowest cost. We’ll also bemoan the unequal quality and coverage of the archaeological information available through open access channels.

Could it ever end anywhere else?  Well, maybe after the demise of global capitalism.

Mitch Allen is the Publisher of Left Coast Press, Inc. and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Mills College. Left Coast Press is on Facebook and tweets @LCoastPress.

Reference:

Allen, Mitchell, and Rosemary Joyce. 2010. Communicating Archaeology in the 21^St Century, in VOICES IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY: Society for American Archaeology 75^th Anniversary Volume, Wendy Ashmore, Barbara Mills, Dorothy Lippert, eds., Washington: Society for American Archaeology.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

In 1889, an Italian librarian's faulty identification sentenced to archival obscurity an antique Torah scroll that has turned out to be the oldest complete such scroll in existence. The University of Bologna Professor Mauro Perani has announced the results of carbon-14 tests authenticating the scroll's age as roughly 800 years old. The scroll dates to between 1155 and 1225, making it the oldest complete Torah scroll on record.

Like all Torah scrolls, this one contains the full text of the five Books of Moses in Hebrew and is prepared according to strict standards for use during religious services. What a 19th-century cataloguer had interpreted as clumsy mistakes by what he guessed was an awkward 17th-century scribe provided the very clues that led Perani to investigate further.

In 2012, a colleague and I decided to write a new catalog of the [University of Bologna] library's Hebrew manuscript collection. The original librarian and cataloguer from 1889, Leonello Modona, was an educated man but not a scholar. He had dated this scroll to the 17th century with a question mark. I consulted with other colleagues and experts who agreed that this scroll originated from some time between the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 14th century. I then pursued carbon-14 testing at the University of Sorrento; the results showed a date of between [the] second half of the 12th century to [the] beginning of the 13th century. In addition, a second
carbon-14 test at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign confirmed the first result.

At the end of the 12th century Maimonides [a famous rabbinic authority] set down the rules for how to copy Torah scrolls, and those fixed rules have been followed ever since. This scroll's copyist did not know of those rules. Those rules would have forbidden him from using some of the graphical elements found here, such as use of compression of letters, line justification, and which letters can have [decorative] "crowns" on top. There is more freedom here. There are also passages whose graphical layout is identical to that of the Aleppo Codex [a Bible in book form], which dates to the 10th century. This all means that either the Torah scroll was made before the death of Maimonides, who died in 1204, or the copyist had not yet learned of those rules.

This scroll has been at the University of Bologna library for centuries. It's very possible that at some time it came into the possession of a monastery, was later taken to Paris after Napoleon suppressed the monastic and religious orders, and finally restored to Bologna after Napoleon's collapse. This is important because this is the entire Torah scroll, the most ancient entire scroll that we know of. We have fragments of other Torah scrolls from the Cairo Geniza that date to the same time or earlier, and they show identical styles to this copyist. Maybe we will find another Torah scroll that is older, but for now this is it.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/05/130530-worlds-oldest-torah-scroll-bible-bologna-carbon-dating/

Gold Strip

800-700 BC

Found in Ziwyie, Iran

(Source: The British Museum)

Twenty tombs from the Han dynasty (206 B.C-220 A.D.) have been discovered close to Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric
power station, in the southwest Chinese municipality of Chongqing, reported the official news agency Xinhua.

According to the Chongqing Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, archaeologists came upon the burial sites in Ma'anshan on the banks of the Yangtze River in the Fengdu region. Discovered inside the tombs were 430 objects, from ceramics to works in iron
and bronze.

The discovery will provide Chinese archaeologists with important data about the funerary customs, economic conditions and social structure at the time of the Han dynasty, the source said.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=786979&CategoryId=12395

An ancient limestone platform dating back to 425 B.C is the oldest wine press ever discovered on French soil. The press is the first evidence of winemaking in what is now modern-day France, according to new research published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The evidence suggests inhabitants of the region of Etruria got the ancient residents of France hooked. (Etruria covered parts of modern-day Tuscany, Latium and Umbria in Italy.)

"Now we know that the ancient Etruscans lured the Gauls into the Mediterranean wine culture by importing wine into southern France," study researcher Patrick McGovern, who directs the Bimolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said in a statement. "This built up a demand that could only be met by establishing a native Industry."

Humans first domesticated the Eurasian grapevine some 9,000 years ago in the Near East, perhaps in what is now Turkey or Iran. Gradually, the intoxicating beverage spread across the Mediterranean Sea, conveyed by Phoenicians and Greeks. By 800 B.C., the Phoenicians were trading wine with the Etruscans, storing it in large jars called amphoras.

Shipwrecks from around 600 B.C. are filled with these Etruscan amphoras, suggesting that residents of the area that is now Italy were by then exporting their own wine. In the coastal town of Lattara, near modern-day Lattes, France, a merchant storage complex full of these amphoras has been found, dating back to the town's heyday of 525 B.C. to 475 B.C.

McGovern and his colleagues analyzed three of these amphoras to find out if they really contained wine. They also analyzed an odd limestone discovery shaped like a rounded platform with a spout, thought to be a press of some sort. Whether the locals used the press to smash olives or grapes was unknown. The researchers followed careful standards for the artifacts they analyzed: Amphoras had to be excavated undisturbed and sealed, with their bases intact and available for analysis. They also had to be unwashed and had to contain
possible residue. Only 13 jars met those standards. The researchers chose three representative amphoras for molecular testing, and also tested two later amphoras that almost certainly contained wine for comparison. The analysis revealed tartaric acid, which is found naturally in grapes and is a major component of wine. Other wine-related acids - including succinic acid, malic acid and citric acid - were all present.

Of course, ancient wines weren't just for recreational quaffing; they were also used as medicinal mixtures, McGovern said. More importantly, the limestone press contained traces of tartaric acid, revealing that the residents of Lattara not only imported wine, but also made it. The press was in use by about 425 B.C. to 400 B.C., making it the first known evidence of winemaking in what is now France.

"France's rise to world prominence in the wine culture has been well documented, especially since the 12th century, when the Cistercian monks determined by trial-and-error that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were the best cultivars to grow in Burgundy," McGovern said. "What we haven't had is clear chemical evidence, combined with botanical and archaeological data, showing how wine was introduced into France and initiated a native industry."

http://news.discovery.com/history/us-history/earliest-french-wine-making-discovered-130603.htm

An ancient Egyptian iron bead found inside a 5,000-year-old tomb was crafted from a meteorite, new research shows. The tube-shaped Piece of jewelry was first discovered in 1911 at the Gerzeh cemetery, roughly 40 miles (70 kilometers) south of Cairo. Dating between
3350 B.C. and 3600 B.C., beads found at the burial site represent the first known examples of iron use in ancient Egypt, thousands of years before Egypt's Iron Age. And their cosmic origins were suspected from the start.

Soon after the beads were discovered, researchers showed that the metal jewelry was rich in nickel, a signature of iron meteorites. But in the 1980s, academics cast doubt on the beads' celestial source, arguing that the high nickel content could have been the result of smelting. Scientists from the Open University and the University of Manchester recently analyzed one of the beads with an electron microscope and an X-ray CT scanner. They say the nickel-rich chemical composition of the bead's original metal confirms its meteorite origins.

What's more, the researchers say the bead had a Widmanstätten pattern, a distinctive crystal structure found only in meteorites that cooled at an extremely slow rate inside asteroids when the solar system was forming, according to Nature. Further investigation also showed that the bead was not molded under heat, but rather hammered into shape by cold-working. The iron beads' inclusion in burials also suggests this material was deeply important to ancient Egyptians, Tyldesley added. Strange as the find may seem, it's not the first time scientists have
uncovered the cosmic origins of an ancient artifact.

Back in September, German researchers found that a heavy Buddha statue brought to Europe by the Nazis was carved from a meteorite between the eighth and 10th centuries. They even linked it to a specific space rock - the Chinga meteorite, which scientists believe fell to Earth 10,000 to 20,000 years ago and left a scattering of space rocks around the Siberian and Mongolian border.

The new research on the Egyptian bead was detailed on May 20 in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/egyptians-crafted-jewelry-from-meteorites-130530.htm

The oldest known fossil primate skeleton, dating to 55 million years ago reveals that one of our earliest ancestors was a scrappy tree dweller with an unusual combination of features. The discovery, made in central China's Hubei Province and reported in the journal Nature, strengthens the theory that Asia was the center of primate evolution. The new species, Archicebus achilles, also suggests that our earliest ancestors were very small.

"Archicebus was a tiny primate weighing less than 1 ounce," co-author Daniel Gebo of Northern Illinois University told Discovery News. "It would easily fit in the palm of your hand. Its eye orbits were not large, suggesting it was active during the daytime." He added, "Archicebus likely bounced and climbed around the canopy, being entirely arboreal, looking for food items out on the terminal branches of trees. It had incredibly long legs and was an adept leaper. Think of little lemurs moving through the branches of trees within a rainforest setting."

Analysis, including state-of-the-art Synchrotron CT scanning, determined that the skeleton of Archicebus is about 7 million years older than the oldest fossil primate skeletons known previously, which include Darwinius from Germany and Notharctus from Wyoming. The tiny primate lived close to the evolutionary divergence between the lineage leading to modern monkeys, apes and humans (collectively known as
anthropoids) and the lineage leading to living tarsiers. Gebo thinks the split might have happened as "each lineage tried to make
themselves anatomically and ecologically different to avoid direct competition with each other, since this leads to extinction."

"Archicebus is a quite odd creature," lead author Xijun Ni of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Discovery News. "It has many features that support its tarsiform (like tarsiers) affinity, but also has many features typically seen in anthropoids." It had the feet of a small monkey, but the arms, legs, skull and teeth of a
very primitive primate. The researchers were surprised that it had such small eyes. Modern tarsiers have some of the largest eyes, relative to body size, in the animal kingdom. They allow the tiny primates to see well at night.

Although Archicebus hailed from Asia, the earliest known humans came from Africa. "This suggests that a primitive anthropoid colonized Africa from Asia, and from these early African anthropoids all later catarrhines (monkeys, apes and humans) evolved," Gebo said.

Eric Delson is a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College. When sent the study, Delson told Discovery News, "Archicebus is a fantastic new fossil, which preserves more details of its anatomy than anything of a similar age." Delson expects more very early primates to be found in Asia, particularly in central China.


http://news.discovery.com/animals/oldest-primate-130605.htm

Michael Hillmann, professor of Persian at the University of Texas at Austin made available several of his books on academia.com.
Downloading requires registration.

Advanced Persian Reading
'Advanced Persian Reader' Prefatory Materials and Unit 1

Classics of Persian Poetry: A Primer for Students–Prefatory Materials

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 1

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 2

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.1

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.2

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.3

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 4

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 5.1

'Persian Carpets-Chapter 5.2

'Persian Carpets' 6–Bibliography

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Prefatory Materials

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 1

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 2

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 3

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 4

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 5

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Bibliography

'Persian Listening' (2008)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Reading and Writing' (2010)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Conversation(s)' (2014)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Grammar and Verbs' (2012)...Prefatory Materials

'Iranian Culture: A Persianist View'–Epilogue

Our associates at the BBC been in contact with us and they have a great opportunity for female experts coming up. Below is their announcement that we would like to share with you. Sorry to all the male experts, next time! But please do pass this on to any female colleagues.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hunt is now on for expert women in Scotland as the much acclaimed Expert Women free training day is announced for Wednesday 28th August at the BBC’s Pacific Quay building in Glasgow.

The BBC Academy in conjunction with BBC Scotland is holding the free introduction to the world of broadcasting to help recognised female experts feel comfortable appearing on television, radio and online as contributors or presenters.

The free training days help to boost the representation of women experts in the media. Following the acclaimed events held in London and Salford earlier in the year, there will also be events later this year in Northern Ireland (Belfast) and Wales (Cardiff).

Up to 30 women will attend the day in Glasgow which will offer a range of practical media experience, including training sessions on camera and in a radio studio as well as masterclasses and networking with experienced programme makers and industry leaders.

The experts will all be specialists in fields requested by the region’s news teams and other programme makers. For Scotland these are: Cultural Commentary, History, Art History; Curating, Natural History, Sport, Political Analysis, GPs and Medicine, and Science.

The events in London and Salford this year had more than two-thousand applications and trained over

Previous Expert Women’s Days have been attended by Tim Davie (former Acting Director-General;

The BBC Expert Women YouTube channel features videos of successful Expert Women trainees presenting to the camera on their specialist topic. Originally filmed as audition tapes for one of the events, the short clips have now been compiled into an easily accessible database of female experts that is sorted into their broad subject areas.

For information on how to apply, go to:
www.bbc.co.uk/academy/news/view/bbc_expert_women_scotland

The imperative of sciō is scītō in the singular and scītōte in the future. These are the future forms, but they are used in the present tense.

Even if you’re a whiz and you know that already, it might be a little less where how to use this imperative in a Latin sentence. The Romans don’t appear to have ordered others to do things like ‘know these by heart before Friday’s exam.’ Instead, the imperative of ‘know’ was more often something like ‘rest assured’ or ‘recall,’ confirming or searching for what is already known rather than standing for the imperative ‘learn.’

• Scītōte vobīs semper deum propitium esse, sī bonīs: Know that the god will always favor you, so long as you are good.
• Scītō tibi gratiās dābō: trust that I will return the favor.
• Scītō exemplum tuī patris: recall the example of your father.

This is also true of habeō, where it means understand, and mēminī. 

• Habētō tibi me nōn irātum esse: realize that I  am not angry with you.
• Habetōte vostrum finem: know your limits.
• Mementō ora candentia parentis: recall your mother’s glowing features.

From the examples in Lewis and Short, I cannot be sure, but it appears that the imperatives of sciō will always take a direct object or an infinitive construction, and never the dē + ablative construction that may appear with other moods of sciō.

The Essential A  & G: 182a.

[First posted in AWOL 13 May 2010. Updated 17 June 2013]

Seven periodicals from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi (1933-1997)

• 0Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi Makaleler Bibliyografyası I [1933-1980]
• 01. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1933]
• 02. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1934]
• 03. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1936]
• 04. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1940]
• 05. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1949]
• 06. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1956]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 07. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1957]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 08. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1958]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 09. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1959]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 10. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1960]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 11. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1961]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 12. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1962]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 13. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1964]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 14. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1965]
• 15. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1966]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 16. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1967]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 17. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1968]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 18. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1969]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 19. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1970]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 20. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1973]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 21. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1974]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 22. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1975]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 23. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1976]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 24. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1977]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 25. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1980]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 26. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1982]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 27. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1988]
• 28. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1989]
• 29. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1991]
• 30. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1992]
• 31. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1997]
  

Türk Etnografya Dergisi (1956-1997)

• 1. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1956]
• 2. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1957]
• 3. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1958]
• 4. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1961]
• 5. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1962]
• 6. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1963]
• 7+8. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1964+1965]
• 9. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1966]
• 10. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1967]
• 11. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1968]
• 12. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1969]
• 13. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1973]
• 14. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1974]
• 15. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1976]
• 16. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1977]
• 17. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1982]
• 18. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1988]
• 19. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1991]
• 20. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1997]

Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi

• 01. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2000]
• 02. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2001]
• 03. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2003]
• 04. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2004]
• 05. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2005]
• 06. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2006]
• 07. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2007]
• 08. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2008]
• 09. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2009]
• 10. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2010]

Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu Yayınları

• 01. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1990]
• 02. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1991]
• 03. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1992]
• 04. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1993]
• 05. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1994]
• 06. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1995]
• 07. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1996]
• 08. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1997]
• 09. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1998]
• 10. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1999]
• 11. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2000]
• 12. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2001]
• 13. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2002]
• 14. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2004]
• 15. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2006]
• 16. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2007]
• 17. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2008]
• 18. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2009]
• 19. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2010]
• 20. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2011]

Kazı Sonuçları Toplantıları

•   2. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1980]
• 03. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1981]
• 04. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1982]
• 05. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1983]
• 06. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1984]
• 07. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 08. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 09. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 10. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 11. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 12. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 13. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 14. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 15. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 16. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 17. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 18. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 19. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1997]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 20. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 21. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 22. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 23. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 24. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 25. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 26. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 27. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 28. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 29. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 30. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 31. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 32. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 33. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt

Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantıları

• 01. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 02. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]
• 03. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]
• 04. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]
• 05. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]
• 06. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]
• 07. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]
• 08. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]
• 09. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]
• 10. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]
• 11. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]
• 12. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]
• 13. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1997]
• 14. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]
• 15. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]
• 16. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]
• 17. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]
• 18. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]
• 19. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]
• 20. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]
• 21. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]
• 22. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]
• 23. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]
• 24. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]
• 25. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]
• 26. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]
• 27. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]

Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantıları

• 01. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1983]
• 02. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1984]
• 03. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 04. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]
• 05. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 06. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]
• 07. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]
• 08. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]
• 09. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]
• 10. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]
• 11. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]
• 12. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]
• 13. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 14. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 15. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 16. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 17. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 18. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 19. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 20. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 21. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 22. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 23. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 24. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 25. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 26. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 27. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 28. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 29. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt

See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Rome, an ancient supercity.

Walking through the remote Greek mountain landscape is what I typically do this time of the year. For a variety of financial and institutional reasons, however, I must put a hold on project development for this summer, while I do my best to remotely contribute to the Lidoriki Project and the revival of the Morea Project (through the Parrhasian Heritage Park). My fieldwork this summer, has been

New high-definition scans of the tomb of Tutankhamun now online, courtesy of the Factum Foundation.

I’m currently in Cambodia working with the Greater Angkor Project and recently some research by my friends/colleagues here have been in the media in a big way (links at the end). I was going to wait to post about this work until a bit later, but today I saw a post in my twitter feed that seemed to downplay the importance of this find by stating we already knew about this city. Normally, I find that the press often overstates and oversimplifies archaeological findings, but in this case I think the LiDAR findings, including those on Phnom Kulen which have been in the news, are worthy of some of the hype.

Above: A LiDAR image of the city of Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen.

The news stories have largely focused on the discovery of a “lost city” on Phnom Kulen, but this is part of a larger LiDAR survey over part of the Angkor region. LiDAR is a laser scanning technology that gives you an incredibly detailed view of the landscape, including features you can’t see under dense tree cover or that may not be clear on the ground level. LiDAR has been used before in archaeological studies, but the current project is the largest archaeological use of LiDAR to date. It is also incredibly expensive, and required the formation of a consortium to help fund and support the project (more here).

Archaeologists and historians have long known that Phnom Kulen was important to the early history of the Angkorian empire. Firstly because there are some early brick temples, but also because historical texts state that the “founder” of Angkor, Jayavarman II, held his consecration ceremony at Phnom Kulen. I visited Phnom Kulen in 2008 and saw the archaeological work being done by the archaeologist J.B. Chevance and the the Phnom Kulen Program (see more here and here .

The forest was quite dense, he needed to have the areas around the temples cleared for land mines, and while these historical documents had suggested a city, his comprehensive and extensive work did not clearly uncover a city or major habitation areas. But on the ground archaeology is difficult, and recent remote sensing technology has been incredibly helpful in identifying cultural features on the landscape that are difficult to see on the ground.

Readers who are not archaeologists may also not understand that many archaeologists hold a healthy amount of skepticism regarding historical documents. Texts are often written years removed from when an event took place, contain the bias of the writer, and often have a broader agenda than simply stating what happened when. Historical texts provide a hypothesis to be tested with archaeological data. The goal of archaeology, generally, is notto prove that historic texts were true. If we cannot find archaeological data to support historic texts, then we begin to think more critically about them. Up until now, archaeologists had to consider that the lack of evidence for a Jayavarman II city on Phnom Kulen could indicate that historic texts were incorrect. So yes, there was an idea that Mahendraparvata existed on Phnom Kulen, but archaeologists weren’t exactly sure what the texts were describing where it was or the extent of this place. In this way, the information about Mahendraparvata was lost, and the LiDAR data really did lead to the discovery of a lost city.

I’m generally a bit of pessimist, but this work is really, really, really, cool. So it’s ok, dear reader, to let yourself get swept up in the romance of archaeology. There is still so much we don’t know about Cambodia’s archaeological past and this place is deeply fascinating. But I’m not sure how many more lost cities or lost temples there are to be found here, so let’s enjoy a great archaeological discovery like this when we find one.

The LiDAR data will be published later this month and at that point I hope to share more about the work I’ve been doing excavating as part of GAP in the Angkor Wat enclosure. Let’s just say LiDAR data has a lot to tell us about the urban core of Angkor as well.

Below: Excavation units at Angkor Wat

LINKS:
Sydney Morning Herald Link 1

Sydney Morning Herald Link 2

Sydney Morning Herald Link 3

Phnom Penh Post

Reports of a newly-discovered rock art site in Surat Thani depicting deer.

Prehistoric cliff paintings found in Surat Thani
Pattaya Mail, 15 June 2013

Park rangers in Surat Thani are securing a recently discovered site of prehistoric paintings on a cliff in Phanom district, estimated to be thousands of years old.

Deer-like animals and an unknown image were portrayed in the paintings.

The site is 200 meters up a cliff after a 2 kilometers walk from Ban Song Phi Nong in Mu 5, Khlong Sok sub-district, Phanom district.

Full story here.

9.1382389 99.32174829999997

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine project seeks to collect and make accessible over the Web all of the previously published inscriptions (and their English translations) of Israel/Palestine from the Persian period through the Islamic conquest (ca. 500 BCE - 640 CE). There are about 15,000 of these inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, by Jews, Christians, Greeks, and Romans. They range from imperial declarations on monumental architecture to notices of donations in synagogues to humble names scratched on ossuaries, and include everything in between.

There are approximately 1,500 inscriptions currently in the database, with more added regularly. These inscriptions can be accessed via the "Search" Button on the left. 

Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine is an ongoing project at Brown University. It has been generously supported by the Center of Digital Scholarship and the Office of the Vice President of Research at Brown University. We welcome your feedback.

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Inscriptions

ancient-mesopotamia:

Reconstuction model of Ishtar Gate, Babylon.

The 2013 season at Ancient Corinth officially came to a close Friday June 14. South of the South Stoa, students excavated in Byzantine and Late Roman levels.

 [First posted in AWOL 23 July 2010. Updated 17 June 2013]

 Inscriptiones Graecae: Elektronische Edition

Inschriften sind die Fußnoten im Buch der Geschichte der alten Welt; nur daß über weite Strecken der Haupttext fehlt.

Inschriften sind Primärquellen zur Geschichte, Religionsgeschichte, Sprachwissenschaft, Onomastik usw., die die antiken Autoren ergänzen, illustrieren, korrigieren. Jede Inschrift ist ein Original. Meist verstümmelt gefunden, sind sie in hohem Maße der Ergänzung und Interpretation bedürftig. Mitunter gelingt es, verstreute Fragmente ein- und derselben Inschrift zusammenzusetzen. Der Zustrom an neuen Inschriften hält unvermindert an: jährlich werden ca. 1000 neu publiziert.

Inschriften sind in der Regel auf Metall eingeritzt oder punziert, auf Stein eingemeißelt und mit Farbe (rot, blau) ausgelegt. Qualität und Menge der Inschriften ist abhängig von den zur Verfügung stehenden Gesteinen. Metallplatten sind besonders auf der Peloponnes verbreitet. Bleiplättchen werden, zusammengerollt, für Verwünschungen bevorzugt. Silber und Gold sind äußerst selten. Die ältesten Inschriften stammen aus dem 8. Jh. v.Chr. Es gibt keinen Zwischenraum zwischen den Worten (scriptio continua); Interpunktionen finden sich in frühester Zeit willkürlich, in der Kaiserzeit nach röm. Vorbild gelegentlich; dann auch Abkürzungen.

Der Inhalt der Inschriften äußerst mannigfach. Am häufigsten sind Grabinschriften auf Grabstelen (mit Relief), -säulen, -altären: Namen der Toten und Gruß. Eine besondere Form bilden Grabgedichte - Weih-Inschriften an die Götter, oft auf dem geweihten Gegenstand selbst angebracht; häufig nach einem Sieg bei sportlichen oder musischen Agonen gestiftet [16]. - Ehren-Inschriften, vor allem Unterschriften von Statuen, erst seit dem 4.Jh. v.Chr. häufiger, in röm. Zeit massenhaft. - Bildhauer-Inschriften, in denen sich der ausführende Künstler nennt. - Dekrete mit den Beschlüssen der Gesamtgemeinde oder ihrer Abteilungen und Vereine, im Formular in den einzelnen Poleis verschieden. Es überwiegen Ehrendekrete für Bürger anderer Poleis, Könige, römische Magistrate, denen das Ehrenbürgerrecht (Proxenie) verliehen wird. - Freilassungsurkunden von Sklaven, oft als (fiktiver) Verkauf an eine Gottheit vollzogen und in deren Tempel dokumentiert. - Grenz- und Hypothekensteine (horoi). - Gesetze und Regelungen privatrechtlicher sowie öffentlicher und sakraler Angelegenheiten bis hin zur Kodifizierung geltenden Rechts. - Religiöse Texte, Hymnen (mit Noten). - Briefe von hellenistischen Königen und römischen Kaisern. - Bauinschriften, Abrechnungs-Urkunden, Inventarlisten von sakralem Gerät. - Listen und Kataloge von Gegenständen (z.B. auf den Schiffen der athenischen Flotte) und Personen (z.B. von eponymen Beamten, Priestern). - Zwischenstaatliche Urkunden (Asylieurkunden, Staatsverträge, Akten der Rechtssprechung).

Die Sammlung der antiken Inschriften wurde im Jahre 1815 von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften auf Antrag von August Boeckh beschlossen. In den vier Bänden des "Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum" wurden 1828-1859 alle damals bekannten Inschriften gesammelt und kommentiert. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff vereinte 1902 das Prinzip der Autopsie mit dem der Vollständigkeit, beschränkte zugleich die auf 15 Bände geplanten "Inscriptiones Graecae" (IG) auf Griechenland, Italien und die Inseln der Ägäis. Zur Aktualisierung der Sammlung sind Neuauflagen (editio altera) sowie Supplementbände vorgesehen.

Die digitale Edition enthält, beginnend mit dem im Jahre 2001 erschienenen Band IG IX 1², 4, Texte und deutsche Übersetzungen aller Inschriften; die Aufnahme von Übersetzungen in anderen Sprachen ist vorgesehen. In den Übersetzungen wurde auf diakritische Zeichen weitgehend verzichtet; Ergänzungen sind nicht eigens gekennzeichnet, sondern ergeben sich aus dem Vergleich mit der Edition. In bestimmten Fällen sind weitergehende Ergänzungen aus dem kritischen Apparat in eckigen Klammern [ ] wiedergegeben; für den Sinnzusammenhang notwendige sowie erklärende Zusätze sind durch runde Klammern ( ) kenntlich gemacht. Lücken gleich welchen Umfangs werden einheitlich durch "- - -" gekennzeichnet. Alle Zeitangaben sind v. Chr., sofern nicht anders angegeben. Die Abkürzungen "S. d." (= "Sohn des") und "T. d." (= Tochter des") umschreiben das griechische Patronymikon.

• Startseite
• Digitale Edition
• Suche

Übersicht

Attika, 5.Jh. v.Chr.

IG I³, 2, 500 - IG I³, 2, 1517

IG I³, 2

Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores. Fasc. 2: Dedicationes, catalogi, termini, tituli sepulcrales, varia, tituli Attici extra Atticam reperti, addenda. Edid. David Lewis et Lilian Jeffery adiuvante Eberhard Erxleben. - XIII, S. 489-998. Berlin 1994

Attika, Spätantike Inschriften

IG II/III² 13248-13690

IG II/III² 5

Inscriptiones Atticae aetatis quae est inter Herulorum incursionem et Imp. Mauricii tempora. Edid. Ericus Sironen. - X, 218 S., LI Tab., Berlin 2008

Aigina

IG IV² 2, 746 - IG IV² 2, 1239

IG IV² 2

Inscriptiones Argolidis. Fasc. 2: Inscriptiones Aeginae insulae. Schedis usus quas condidit Hans R. Goette edid. Klaus Hallof. - XIII, 200 S., XXVIII Tab., Berlin 2007

Inseln des Ionischen Meeres

IG IX 1², 4, 786 - IG IX 1², 4, 1779

IG IX 1², 4

Inscriptiones Phocidis, Locridis, Aetoliae, Acarnaniae, insularum maris lonii. Fasc. 4: Inscriptiones insularum maris Ionii. Schedis usus quas condidit Guentherus Klaffenbach auxitque Daniel Strauch, adiuvante Mathias Lawo edid. Klaus Hallof. Titulos Ithacenses retractavit John M. Fossey. - XII, 402 S., XLIV Tab., Berlin 2001

Ostlokris

IG IX 1², 5, 1780 - IG IX 1², 5, 2047

IG IX 1², 5

Inscriptiones Phocidis, Locridis, Aetoliae, Acarnaniae, insularum maris lonii. Fasc. 5. Inscriptiones Locridis orientalis. Schedis usa quas condidit Guentherus Klaffenbach edid. Daniela Summa. - X, 148 S., 20 Tab., Berlin 2011.

Kos. Kalymna. Milesische Inseln

IG XII 4, 1, 1 - IG XII 4, 1, 423

IG XII 4, 1

Inscriptiones Coi, Calymnae, insularum Milesiarum. Curavit Klaus Hallof. Pars I: Inscriptionum Coi insulae: Decreta, epistulae, edicta, tituli sacri. Edid. Dimitris Bosnakis, Klaus Hallof, Kent Rigsby. - XI, 339 + vii S., Berlin 2010.

Samos. Ikaria. Korassische Inseln

IG XII 6, 1, 1 - IG XII 6, 2, 1290

IG XII 6, 1

Inscriptiones Chii et Sami cum Corassiis Icariaque. Pars 1: Inscriptiones Sami insulae: Decreta, epistulae, sententiae, edicta imperatoria, leges, catalogi, tituli Atheniensium, tituli honorarii, tituli operum publicorum, inscriptiones ararum. Edid. Klaus Hallof. - XII, 345 + viii S., Berlin 2000.

IG XII 6, 2

Inscriptiones Chii et Sami cum Corassiis Icariaque. Pars 2: Inscriptiones Sami insulae: Dedicationes, tituli sepulcrales, tituli Christiani Byzantini Iudaei, varia, tituli graphio incisi, incerta, tituli alieni. Inscriptiones Corassiarum, edid. Klaus Hallof. Inscriptiones Icariae insulae, edid. Angelus P. Matthaiou. - VII, S. 346-756, LVIII Tab., Berlin 2003

Young earth creationists are notorious for two things (among others):

1. a handful of them have obtained a PhD in a relevant scientific domain, doing research the legitimacy of and basis for which they intend to repudiate as soon as they have the letters after their name, with the sole aim of adding legitimacy to the ideology that they adhered to before ever studying science; and
2. they claim that the overwhelming consensus of those who have PhDs in biology, genetics, paleontology, geology, and other relevant scientific domains is wrong, and that these experts are untrustworthy.

They cannot have it both ways.

Either a PhD is indicative of expertise in an area, in which case laypeople ought to accept an overwhelming consensus of the experts where one exists (as it does in relation to evolution and the age of the earth); or it is not, in which case a few young-earth creationists having PhDs does nothing to support their cause.

Sites and Finds

Deep Time at Tall Hisban, Jordan

In Focus: Abel Beth Maacah

Bethsaida, Israel—Take a Tour of Current Excavations

Illustrated lectures

Everyday Life from the Archaeological Record: Prof. Aren Maeir

Sarah Parcak: Archeology from space

Ashkelon: Seaport of the Philistines, Lecture by Lawrence Stager

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All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

Despite loud (and in my opinion, well argued) opposition to the Swedish restrictions on metal detector use by honest amateurs, our authorities are sadly not coming round to anything resembling the Danish legislation that works so well.

My friend and fieldwork collaborator Tobias Bondeson is a skilled amateur detectorist who regularly publishes scholarly papers on his finds. He pointed me to the latest developments in Swedish officialdom on the topic, a 26 March proposition from the Ministry for Culture to Parliament: Kulturmiljöns mångfald, ”The Diversity of the Historic Environment”. Tobias sent me some insightful comments on 19 April on the bits about metal detectors. Here’s a summary.

• The proposition’s definition of a metal detector, ”a device that can be used to detect underground metal objects electronically”, inadvertently also covers magnetometers and, to some extent, ground-penetrating radar gear. These latter can’t be used to find small things like coins and should carefully be excluded by the rules designed to keep crooks from picking up Iron Age coins.

• The crucial distinction between ploughsoil (where everything is out of stratigraphic context) and untouched stratigraphy is still left out of the discussion despite decades of people pointing this out.
• The suggested legislation introduces the intent to find antiquities into whether or not an applicant should be given a permit to use a metal detector. If you have that intent, then no permit. But a person’s intent can’t be observed. And there are no amateur metal detectorists who would not like to find antiquities. The important distinction is whether a given detectorist is honest and submits his finds to a museum according to the rules, or if he is a crook.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need a system similar to how we deal with hunting rifles. Anybody who can demonstrate the necessary knowledge of how to use this tool constructively and responsibly should be given a licence to do so. And if a person turns out not to measure up to our collective trust in them, then we revoke that licence.

In Sweden right now, it is easier to get a permit to use a device that is immediately lethal to a 600 kg bull elk at 200 m than to get a metal detector permit. And meanwhile, our cultural heritage is eroding bit by bit in the ploughsoil. The distribution maps of more categories of archaeological find and site than I care to count show Sweden as white space while Denmark is full of the stuff. We should foster a culture of responsible metal-detector associations and let the detectorists police themselves while contributing their time and expertise pro bono to archaeological research and enjoying their heritage.

Architip is a new app that uses augmented reality (AR) technology to help users see what ancient sites in Israel used to look like. From The Times of Israel:

Augmented reality is a technology that uses mathematics, models, location services, camera technology, and advanced algorithms to impose a virtual image that melds into a real-life one. “For example, you might look at an ancient mosaic on the floor of a synagogue or church, and barely see the decorations on it because of the fading,” said Yaron Benvenisti, CEO of Architip, which is located in Jerusalem and has been operating for about six months. “With Architip, you would see the mosaic in full color, with all its drawings intact.”

Because each site needs to be mapped and augmented separately, Architip is being marketed as a “white label” engine, which will be used at specific sites. As a pilot, the Architip R&D team, led by Israeli AR and computer vision pioneer Sagiv Philipp, has mapped and “virtualized” the Tel Lachish archaeological site in central Israel. Tel Lachish was a fortified city surrounded by towers, and had many stately buildings, but looking at the site today, it’s hard to visualize the city as it was. With Architip, users can see the site in all its ancient glory just by holding up their smartphone’s camera at the location and looking at the screen.

“With Architip, you can see Tel Lachish as it was,” Benvenisti said, “walking through its streets and seeing the reconstruction through your device.” All a user has to do is point their device at a specific point, and Archtip’s technology does the rest.

The full article, including an illustration, is here. The company website includes a video demo that shows other features. I think that Lachish may be an ideal first choice if you’re just testing things out, but they’re going to have to choose more popular sites if they want more than a handful of users.

HT: Stephen Smuts

Time, Space, and Faith: Religion and Doctor Who

John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, 2^nd November 2013

Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon in both the UK and the United States, continuing to go from strength-to-strength as it celebrates its 50th anniversary in November 2013. Over the show’s long history on television—and in various spin-off TV shows, audio adventures, novels and comic books—religion and religious themes have consistently been a subject of interest. From early depictions of Buddhism and pagan religion to recent years when the show has attracted everything from Church of England conferences dedicated to its use in preaching to guest appearances by Richard Dawkins, religion has always had some role within the universes of Doctor Who. Proposals for 20 minute papers are therefore invited for a day conference on this theme to be held at the historic John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester on November 2^nd 2013. Possible subjects include, but are not limited to:

• Religious or mythic themes (salvation, return, ritual etc.) in the series.

• Critiques and deconstructions of religion in Doctor Who.

• The use of Doctor Who to chart British religious history from 1963 to the present.

• Death and the afterlife in Doctor Who and Torchwood.

• The Doctor as a Christ figure.

• Portrayals of non-Christian religion in the classic series or BBC revival.

• Fan response to “religious” episodes.

• The use of Doctor Who by religious organisations.

• Religion in audio adventures, comic books and novels.

• Canonicity and Doctor Who as a surrogate religion.

• Doctor Who as a tool for theological reflection.

• Using Doctor Who to teach Religious Studies.

Abstracts should be 250 words in length, and include a short biography of the author. Abstracts should be sent to DrWhoReligion@gmail.com. Deadline for receipt of abstracts: 16^th August 2013.

 

On Friday, our traditional day off here in Polis, I went for a walk in the country with my friend and fellow archaeologist Tina Najbjerg. We walked up to the ridge that separates the fertile Chrysochous Valley from the more arid and remote Akamas Peninsula in Greece. Our walk even included the picturesque ruin of a small, maybe Middle Byzantine monastery know as the Pyrgos tis Regainas. 

Hogarth describes part of the walk like this in his Devia Cypria (1889):

“On this side of the Akamas we enter a land of classical and mediaeval romance ; for here, according to Cypriote tradition, was the Fontana Amorosa of Ariosto, and a distinct and far more beautiful “Vrisis ton Eroton”, where the natives say that Aphrodite wedded Acamas. There can be little doubt that the two have probably but one origin, and that the real ‘fount of love ‘ is the present “Vrisis ton Eroton”", although the western tradition has identified itself with a separate spring. The latter rises at the foot of the cliff in a tiny bay half-an-hour’s ride north of Agios Nicola, and is a prosaic little fount enough; but the former, three and a half miles to the south, near the Potami tchiflik, has no rival in Cyprus. Approaching from the sea the traveller follows a rushing stream up a densely wooded ravine, barred at last by sombre cliffs, whose top can scarcely be discerned through the arch of boughs; spreading and shimmering over the slanting face of the rock falls a mountain stream, until near the base the cliff slopes inwards and the water falls from a forest of maiden-hair fern in a thousand silver threads to the pool below : across the threads here and there shoot stray shafts of sunlight, penetrating the dense shade of a gigantic fig-tree, and three separate springs rise on either side under the cliff and gurgle down to join the pool. The traveller, whose eyes have seen only the rock and scrub of waterless Cyprus, seems in an enchanted spot, not seeing from whence the water comes, and he ceases to wonder that native fancy has peopled the spot with legendary loves, and sailors carried westward vague reports of its beauties to the ears of Ariosto.

Between the rival fountains and a little back from the coast lies a mediaeval relic now known as Pyrgos, the ‘ Tower ‘ ; an arched gateway gives entrance to a small cloister of which only the northern side is standing, the wall showing traces of fresco. Round about are foundations of out-buildings, and disused paths lead through the brushwood : east of it is a little spring and some fine pine-trees. There can be no doubt that it was once a small monastery, or a metoichi of a larger one.”

It seemed pretty nice to me too. In fact, it was nice enough that I just enjoyed the shade of the oaks and the little ruined monastery and left my camera in my bag for a while.

They day was warm and just a bit hazy. Our main goal of the walk was to take in the amazing views.

View north over the Chrysochou Bay

Standing atop that ridge and look around, I got the uncanny feeling that I could be anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean and have these views (well, not anywhere literally, but that the Mediterranean countryside looked like this). I’m not a naturalist, but even I could identify the wild olives, carob, scrubby oaks, and pine common to the Mediterranean littoral. They left scratches on my legs from the bare branches that goats have The rocky ground, the thin soils, the sea borne breeze, even the smells of goats, oregano, and salt air made our walk familiar. 

A view south to the Akamas

While rickets is primarily thought to be a disease of industrialization, there was an earlier spike in prevalence especially within Europe. Rickets is primarily due to lack of exposure to ultraviolet B rays, caused by lack of sun exposure, poor environmental conditions or bad nutrition. The early post-modern period in Europe was plagued by low … Continue reading »

siccus, sobrius est Aper. quid ad me?
servum sic ego laudo, non amicum.

Aper is dry and sober. What good is that to me? It’s what I praise a slave for, not a friend!

Filed under: Martial

Op de grens van de gemeenten Mol, Lommel en Bergeijk (NL) werd dit weekend het historisch-archeologisch infobord ‘Drieperiodenheuvel Mol’ onthuld. De heuvel, opgebouwd uit plaggen, werd in 1962 opgegraven. De oudste begraving komt uit de jongste periode van het Neolithicum, circa 4500 jaar geleden. Bij het graf werden drie klokbekers en vuurstenen aangetroffen. Nadien volgden er nog begravingen tijdens de Bronstijd, ongeveer 3500 jaar geleden. Een van de graven bevatte kralen en barnsteen als bijgift. Meer informatie over de ontsluiting van de site vind je op gemeentemol.be.

The mosaic survived the Iconoclasts to be found by the looters and to be saved again by a handful of dedicated Jordanian and international archaeologists.

The public choice award winner, chosen in an online poll from among the 30 laureates for 2013, is The Propylaea Central Building in Athens, while the Committee for the Conservation of the Acropolis Monuments is among the seven Grand Prix winners.

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: The Other Old Testament (Philip Jenkins). Excerpt:

Although Barnabas is notionally quoting the Exodus story, his citation has precious little in common with the original. He has moreover added a whole eschatological and messianic dimension that absolutely is not in the original. Although he might be inventing these words himself, it is also likely that he is transmitting a whole tradition of Christian midrash on the original Biblical texts.

Christians also drew on the pseudepigrapha, the works attributed to great figures of the Old Testament, to Abraham, Moses or Ezra. Many such works had originated from Second Temple Judaism, but Christian editors soon revised them to their own purposes.

And they wrote a few themselves, very likely more than are immediately obvious.

AMBIVALENCE: Tisha B’Av in the 21st century (Binyamin Kagedan, JNS.org). Excerpt:

How could Tisha B’av, traditionally one of the most intense and salient religious experiences of the year, be wholly foreign to a large portion of American Jewry? Surely it cannot simply come down to the fact that most people are averse to fasting—if that were the case, how could we explain the ongoing popularity of Yom Kippur?

The actual answer revolves around the traditional thematic elements of the fast. The narrative of Tisha B’Av centers on the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem, a national calamity that marked the end of Jewish sovereignty in ancient Israel and the official onset of the long Jewish diaspora. The day’s liturgy mourns the disappearance of high priests and animal sacrifices, and woven into its eulogizing is the wish for a return to these original forms or worship.

The archaeological community in Greece and beyond sends farewell to Spyros Iakovides, a great archaeologists and academic, specialized in the Mycenaean world. Born in Athens (1923), Spyros Iakovides graduated from the University of Athens with a degree in Archaeology (1946).

JUNE 15, 1954: Remains of King Herod’s Palace Discovered in Israel.

Monica Hanna works with no fear to monitor archaeological sites and forms a website will allow people, including tourists, to anonymously report damaged antiquities.

Review of Sergei A. Kovalenko, Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum: State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Coins of the Black Sea Region, Part I: Ancient Coins from the Northern Black Sea Littoral. Colloquia antiqua, 3. Leuven; Paris; Walpole, MA: 2011. Pp. xvi, 192. €87.00. ISBN 9789042921375.

Review of Radek Chlup, Proclus: An Introduction. Cambridge; New York: 2012. Pp. xvi, 328. $110.00. ISBN 9780521761482.

Over the course of this series, I’ve examined a number of biblical texts that contain either explicit claims or strong implications about their own composition. I systematized those texts into a spectrum of “types” or “models” of inspiration, ranging from maximal/direct to minimal/indirect divine input. I divided my spectrum into four categories:

• Inspiration by dictation: God tells somebody what to say or write
• Inspiration by disclosure: God reveals something to someone, and that person passes on these insights
• Inspiration by deeds: people compose texts (oral or written) in response to things they believe God has done
• Inspiration by devotion: people compose texts about various topics, informed by their commitment to God

Neighboring categories obviously admit of fuzzy boundaries, but precise categorization of any given text takes a back seat to fairly representing the range of claims that biblical authors actually made about where they got their motivation and material.

Now the time has come to consider how well this spectrum reflects not just textual claims and implications, but actual reality. Logically, an atheistic assessor will reject the idea that any “inspiration by dictation” or “inspiration by disclosure” ever really happened, although atheists may allow that the biblical authors believed such things had happened to them. There may also be theists who would lean toward thinking of “dictation” and “disclosure” more in terms of the writer’s subjective perceptions. This shift from “what happened” to “what the writers thought had happened” may not match up with the texts’ surface claims (though we should be careful not to assume too much without more sustained consideration of genre conventions, standardized phrases, and so forth), but it’s consistent with these observers’ belief systems and charitable to the biblical authors.

I can also imagine more skeptical—no, make that cynical—readers rejecting even the “softer,” more subjective versions of “dictation” and “disclosure” by asserting that some of the biblical authors, or their later publicists (so to speak), knowingly made false claims of “dictation” and “disclosure,” and even of “deeds.” Mythicists, for example, might argue that the gospel writers knew there was no such person as Jesus, but perpetrated (pious?) frauds on their readers. Under this extreme scenario, all “inspiration” collapses into the “devotion” category, though through a mythicist-type lens the “devotion” could be more to a cause, or simply to power, rather than to a deity. While I by no means agree with such a cynical approach, it at least the merit of consistency between the assessor’s convictions and his or her assessment of biblical claims about the writers’ sources.

In short, no logical problems follow from accepting that the 4D spectrum accurately reflects biblical writers’ claims, but from rejecting the claims themselves, including selective rejection of the reality of “divine dictation” and “divine disclosure” while affirming the “deeds” and “devotion” categories on the spectrum. I don’t personally take such an approach; as a Christian theist, I do not reject out of hand the possibility of “dictation” and “disclosure.” Nevertheless, I consider such approaches completely logical and self-referentially coherent.

However, I have encountered Christians—and I know that other bibliobloggers have, too—who enthusiastically affirm the “dictation” and “devotion” categories on my 4D spectrum but who want to collapse all apparent instances of “inspiration by deeds” or “inspiration by devotion” into the other two categories. For example, despite the fact that the prologue to the gospel of Luke lists only mundane sources of information (written and oral traditions about Jesus), some Christians insist that Luke must have also had supernatural input as he wrote his gospel. Despite the fact that Paul explicitly labels some of his advice in 1 Corinthians 7 as his own (trustworthy) opinions, some Christians insist that Paul must have gotten those opinions from the Holy Spirit rather than from a purely human process of inference from Jesus’s teachings on related subjects (as Paul explicitly claims). It’s almost as if some Christians have “Qur’an envy” and want the entire Bible to effectively be first-person divine speech—which it obviously isn’t and doesn’t claim to be (precisely the opposite in some cases). Unlike the hypothetical atheists described above who reject “dictation” and “disclosure” and lump everything into “deeds” and “devotion,” however, Christians who reject “deeds” and “devotion” and lump everything into “disclosure” and “dictation” advance a self-referentially incoherent argument. If you trust the author of Exodus enough to take the story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments as an accurate historical report, why wouldn’t you also trust Luke or Paul enough to take their testimony about their own writing activity as accurate historical reports? Affirming that the biblical authors are right when they claim or strongly imply (relatively) direct divine input into their writing but suggesting that the biblical authors are wrong (possibly through ignorance) when they claim or strongly imply minimal or very indirect divine input into their writing simply makes no sense. You just can’t be a “Bible-believing Christian” and believe that the Holy Spirit told Paul what to write in 1 Corinthians 7:25. It doesn’t fly.

I usually think about my 4D spectrum as a right-to-left spectrum, but try to imagine it for a moment like Jacob’s ladder instead, with “devotion” on the ground and “dictation” in the heavens. Different “users” of the spectrum may vary in how high they’re willing to climb the ladder—but it’s logically inconsistent to trust the top of ladder without trusting the bottom, and you’re likely to create all kinds of (intellectual and spiritual) trouble for yourself if you try to stand on the upper rungs while sawing off the lower ones.

But it’s just possible that the entire spectrum approaches the topic of “inspiration” from an errant vector. My 4D spectrum, and my entire series thus far, has operated within the usual conservative Christian parameters of thinking about “inspiration” as something that happens more or less at the same time as a text’s composition. What if that’s entirely wrongheaded? I’ll take up that question in the next installment in this series.

The Three Sisters is (um, are?) the name of an ancient farming technique, in which beans, maize and squash were planted in the same place.

The Three Sisters, photo by Abri le Roux...

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ancient-mesopotamia:

Hanging Gardens of Babylon art.

The 3rd century Ancient Roman amphitheater Palais Gallien, of Bordeaux, France. This is a large amphitheater which would have once been able to accommodate up to 22,000 spectators.

Photos courtesy & taken by GFreihalter.

Over the weekend The Age had a feature on the discoveries of urban sprawl at Phnom Kulen, which predate Angkor by a few hundred years. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Greater Angkor Project in recent years and it’s great to see the news of the excellent LiDAR data being released to the public. Certainly much more news to come from this region! Be sure to click on the first link to watch the video.

photo: dalbera

The lost city
The Age, 14 June 2013

Archaeologists Discover Lost City In Cambodian Jungle
NPR, 14 June 2013

Lost medieval city found in Cambodia
AFP, via ChannelNews Asia, 15 June 2013

Scratched and exhausted, Damian Evans pushed through dense Cambodian jungle into a clearing where mountain villagers long ago attempted to grow rice, stepping onto a weed-covered mound.

“Bingo”, the Australian archaeologist said as he picked up and examined an ancient sandstone block. “This is a collapsed temple that was part of a bustling civilisation that existed 1200 years ago . . . it looks like the looters were unaware it was here,” he said.

Over the next few hours, Evans and a small group of archaeologists hacked through more landmine-strewn jungle and waded through swollen rivers and bogs to discover the ruins of five other previously unrecorded temples and evidence of ancient canals, dykes and roads, confirming data from revolutionary airborne laser scanning technology called lidar.

The discoveries matched years of archaeological ground research to reveal Mahendraparvata, a lost mediaeval city where people lived on a mist-shrouded mountain called Phnom Kulen, 350 years before the building of the famous Angkor Wat temple complex in north-western Cambodia.

Full story here.

13.6127778 104.11249999999995

After a multi-year diversion into divination, I’m back worrying about literacy and scribal practices at Ugarit and vicinity. Back in 2008 I speculated that KTU 1.79 and KTU 1.80 (RS 13.006 and RS 15.072) might have something to say on these issues. These two descriptions of sacrificial practice were both found in the Royal Palace at Ugarit. But, as Pardee argues, they do not reflect royal scarified practice. Internally, the texts locate these sacrifices in the hinterlands of Ugarit - certainly not in the Palace or the big city.

van Soldt, 292 tells us, “Five major archives were discovered in this Late Bronze Age building, among which a clear distribution of genre and consequently, of language and script can be established.” So I wondered about the exact find spots of KTU 1.79 and KTU 1.80. KTU 1.80 seems rather straight forward. It was unearthed at a depth of 0.82 meters in room 41 of the Royal Palace of Ugarit. I’m not sure that the situation with KTU 1.79 is so clear. The official inventory places its discovery at a depth of 0.80 meters in Courtyard I of the Royal Palace. I wonder.

The two tablets have much in common. Both are about the same size and color; both have the very unusual property of extending a line or lines from the obverse around the right edge and continuing it well across the reverse; both show the same peculiarities of ductus - for example, strange writing of the Š with two unusually oriented Winkelhaken; failure to rotate the stylus when forming vertical wedges. Both are on the same subject, have similar formal structures and refer to the same person (Ṣitqānu) and same place (the Ilishtami plantation).

Were these tablets kept more than 30 meters apart with neither of them clearly associated with a major archive? I somewhat doubt it. Room 41 is quite a ways from the find spots of other alphabetic tablets (of any tablets for that matter). The nearest archive is 25 meters or so to the east. Why would one keep such a tablet all by itself in Room 41 or, more likely, above Room 41? While a few other tablets were recovered from Courtyard 1, it is mid-way between the West Archive about 20 meters to the north, and the Annex Office Archive about 20 meters to the south. (Don’t worry about tablets found in courtyards, they likely come from the collapse of a second story.) Pardee, 428, makes an interesting observation about KTU 1.79, “The state of wear on the surface indicates that the tablet had to be exposed to the elements for a sufficient period [to cause that wear].” But when and under what circumstances? Pardee concludes, “We shall probably never know how these two tablets, which seem to have no relation to the palatial concerns, finally came to be separated by 30 meters.” While I think they were both written in the hinterlands, I wonder if perhaps they were both originally stored in Room 41 and became separated at some later (modern?) time. If so, they were both kept together in a part of the palace where few other tablets were stored. Pardee wonders if “ . . . the isolation provides an indication of fortuitous presence in the Palace.”

Is this important to the larger question I am investigating? I don’t know. It sure is a curiosity. In a future post I’ll discuss Pardee’s question concerning the possibility of one or both of these tablets being scribal exercises - as some scholars have suggested.

References:

Pardee, Dennis, Les Textes Rituels (Ras Shamra-Ougarit XII; Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 2000).

van Soldt, Wilfred H., “Private Archives at Ugarit,” in Bongenaar, A. C. V. M., ed, Interdependency of Institutions and Private Entrepreneurs, Proceeding of the Second MOS Symposium (Leiden, 1998) (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 2000), 292 - 245.

GreekandLatinUCL  (on YouTube)

The Department of Greek and Latin at UCL is one of the premier Classics departments in the UK. It offers study programmes at the BA, MA and PhD level, produces high-quality research and is keen to share its expertise with the general public.

UCL Greek & Latin has more than ten permanent members of staff as well as part-time staff and postgraduate researchers with diverse backgrounds and a variety of research interests. We are a vibrant community that covers all the main areas of ancient Greek and Latin language and literature as well as aspects such as philosophy, palaeography, linguistics and the reception of the ancient world in the modern period. 

For more information on the Department visit: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/

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  13:32

  UCL Greek Play

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  UCL Greek Play
  Every year UCL produces a Greek play, funded by the Department, which over the course of its run attracts more than two thousand people to see it. In 2011 & 2012 the Department of Greek and Latin offered an ...
  
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  56:06

  Professor Eric Csapo (University of Sidney) - 'The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude'

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  Professor Eric Csapo (University of Sidney)
  'The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude'
  the 2013 A. E. Housman Lecture
  The UCL Department of Greek and Latin regularly hosts a public lecture named in honour of its ...
  
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  54:01

  Dr Peter Meineck (NYU) - The Theatre that Moved the Soul, Lecture at UCL

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  The Theatre that Moved the Soul: Understanding the Power of Ancient Greek Drama through Modern Cognitive Science - Dr Peter Meineck (NYU)
  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/classi......
  Filmed and edited by Marco Cosentino
  

Aandacht voor onroerend erfgoed tijdens De Zevende Dag, het gebeurt niet iedere week. Vandaag mocht Kristl Strubbe, directeur van Herita, plaatsnemen op de praatstoel bij Ivan De Vadder om het te hebben over de doelstellingen van haar organisatie: “Herita wil mensen warm maken voor monumenten, landschappen en archeologie. We willen niet alleen monumenten openstellen, maar ook formules ontwikkelen om een breder publiek aan te spreken en tot engagement te bewegen. Onze monumenten moeten leven en hebben nood aan evenementen.” Je kunt het interview herbekijken op deredactie.be.

My paper “Portentous Birds Flying West: On the Mesopotamian Origin of Homeric Bird-Divination,” (JANER 13:1 [2013], 49-85) is now out. It’s available if you’d like to see it.

Considering how long it has taken for this paper to see the light of day, I’m grateful that some life altering event like tenure did not depend on its timeliness. Still, it is great to see it out.

Here is the paper’s abstract,

Drawing on the Akkadian omen series Šumma Ālu and its predecessors, this essay argue for a Mesopotamian origin of Homeric bird-divination. Against the suggestion of Högemann and Oettinger that Greek bird-divination has its closest parallels with Hittite bird-divination, I argue that both in its function as a tool for divination and in its specific content, Homeric bird divination, if not all such ancient Greek divination, finds much closer parallels in Mesopotamian divination traditions than it does in Anatolian traditions. I suggest that the late 8th century B.C.E. and the decades before and after 1200 B.C.E. represent two periods when conditions were particularly ripe for the introduction of Mesopotamian bird-divination into the Aegean and that itinerant diviners, perhaps in the employment of armies, were the most likely conveyors of this particular form of divination.

Those abnormal readers who see the ancient world largely from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible may wonder what this has to do with our shared corner of that world. On the one hand, despite the fact that I cite the story of Noah releasing birds in a footnote, this paper has little to do with the Hebrew Bible. On the other hand, in the context of the larger issue of cultural diffusion in the Ancient Near East and the eastern Mediterranean in the Iron Age (or is it in this case perhaps the Bronze Age?), I think this paper has a lot to say. If I am correct, a tradition of divination traveled from its Mesopotamian home across Syria or perhaps southern Anatolia arriving in Ionia no later than 7th century BCE and likely earlier. It is not at all difficult to image that this or similar traditions were available to the Biblical authors. But that question must wait for my paper on the snake in Genesis 3 to appear. I am in the process of consulting snakes and birds to determine just how long that will take.