Maia Atlantis: Ancient World Blogs

Il territorio di Stintino (Ss) dall’epoca preistorica alla fondazione del paese e l’importanza del ruolo della Tonnara: saranno questi alcuni dei temi che saranno trattati sabato 4 settembre al convegno di studi ”Stintino tra terra e mare”, in programma nella sala consiliare alle 16.

Il convegno, che e’ organizzato dal Centro studi sulla civilta’ del mare con il patrocinio del Comune di Stintino, si aprira’ con i saluti del primo cittadino, Antonio Diana, quindi sara’ compito del presidente del Centro studi sulla civilta’ del mare, Salvatore Rubino, aprire i lavori e all’assessore alla Cultura Antonella Mariani invece introdurre i relatori.

Ad aprire il ciclo di relazioni sara’ Elisabetta Alba con un intervento sul territorio di Stintino in epoca preistorica e protostorica. Sara’ quindi la volta di Alessandro Teatini che illustrera’ al pubblico la situazione del territorio di Stintino in eta’ romana, attraverso una serie di appunti e suggestioni ”per un’archeologia tra terra e mare”. I due studiosi Alessandro Soddu e Franco G.R. Campus invece si soffermeranno sulla Nurra nel medioevo tra storia e archeologia.

Anna Segreti Tilocca invece parlera’ dell‘importanza degli archivi pubblici e privati per la storia di una comunita’. A Mara Maoddi e Silvia De Franceschi sara’ affidato il compito di illustrare la fruizione e valorizzazione digitale dell’archivio della Tonnara Saline. Con Gabriella Mondardini si parlera’ di imbarcazioni con la relazione sulle barche e il sacro: il battesimo di una barca a Stintino. Salvatore Rubino ed Esmeralda Ughi spiegheranno al pubblico il passaggio dal Museo della Tonnara al museo di comunita’. Chiuderanno gli interventi Carlo Gabriele Callari e Melania Bugiani che parleranno del nuovo museo di Stintino e della necessita’ di preservare e riscoprire l’identita’ locale.

Fonte:

http://www.libero-news.it/regioneespanso.jsp?id=479112

The Smithsonian Human Origins Program Base Camp at Olorgesailie, Kenya
Photo courtesy the Human Origins Program

It is not often that we find working scientists, in the midst of their fieldwork, willing to expend the effort and time to draw the general public into their domains as their work unfolds upon the scene. This can be said to some degree for scholars and excavation directors who, while busy at work on their excavation sites, will take the time to address crowds of tourists and visitors at historically significant locations and inform them about their projects and the latest finds. Rarer still is the occasion where the public is given the opportunity for live visual and audio contact with key scientists at an important site thousands of miles away, where discoveries are being made that will help "write the books" about their subjects. A Smithsonian Institution team of scientists at the famous site of Olorgesailie, Kenya, have done just that for the first time on August 2, 2010. With a little help from ground technology and a satellite, a Smithsonian staff "transported" a Washington, D.C. group of interested public participants into the African field location, briefly oriented them about the site, showed them some representative finds, and entertained a series of questions from the live audience. Thanks to the outreach of Dr.'s Briana Pobiner and Alison Brooks, who conducted the session from the African location, that public audience walked away from the session enriched with a better understanding and appreciation for what was going on at the remote location and it's significance to the field of human origins research. They learned, for example, that in addition to the well-known discoveries already made there about hominids who lived there more than 600,000 years ago, work in the area has recently revealed evidence of a later human presence (around 300,000 years ago) with more evolved tool-making skills, made from materials that had to be obtained from more distant locations. This implies a social capability for developing a network of contacts to make this possible. One does not read as much about this in the easily available public literature, but this group got the scoop first hand, straight from the scientists themselves, almost as if they were standing before them in a room. There were a few technical glitches, to be sure, given that this was a first attempt (such as audio clarity being obstructed by the affect of the stiff African breeze at the remote site on the equipment there), but this somehow bestowed a sense of reality to the event that one could not get by reading a dispatch or an article.

Program planners hope to do this again. I, for one, give them my vote.

More information about the scientists and the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution can be obtained by going to http://humanorigins.si.edu.

Hier findet sich ein aktueller Zeitungsbericht der Hessischen/Niedersächsischen Allgemeinen Zeitung über die Grabungen in Hedemünden.
Ergänzend finden sich weitere Informationen auf den Internetseiten des zuständigen Archäologen Dr. Klaus Grote und Landkreises Göttingen. Auf der zuletzt genannten Seite möchte ich auf den sehr stimmungsvollen Audio-Guide hinweisen.

Where's the Scandal?

Malcolm Hay runs an "antiques" business from his home in Kensington. In 1999, he sold "hundreds of broken pottery pieces" to a visiting dealer from Athens with whom he had previously done other business. The invoice shows that:

on July 15, 1999, he sold a female trader from Athens 582 potsherds and other small items for £1,800. He said he bought them at fairs and described the artefacts as “junk”. But at the same time, Greek police were investigating the female trader, who ran a shop in Athens. She was found to have more than £100,000 worth of unbroken pots and figurines from around 4-6BC, which by national law belonged to the Greek state. She then claimed she bought them from Mr Hay.

The upshot of all this is that there was a trial concerning these stolen antiquities bought at which both Hays and the Athens dealer were defendants and...

To Mr Hay’s “complete shock”, he was found guilty and jailed for four years. He has appealed against the verdict and is awaiting a hearing later this year. If he loses the appeal, the extradition process will begin again.

Hays maintains he is innocent. Apparently he is claiming that the objects about which the Athens court were concerned were not bought from him and he has been framed by his client. He implies she had received the artefacts from somebody else.

But then, somebody who buys loose items like this from individuals at "fairs" and is unable to show that he took any steps to verify that those particular items were not stolen from archaeological sites and illegally removed from the source country is surely asking for trouble in the antiquities trade. If he had such documentation on file it would be an easy matter to show this to the Athens court, quashing the accusation that the items were illegally obtained. Likewise if he cannot actually document what objects were actually packed up in his place of business and on their way to an Athens shop, more fool him. It is becoming increasingly the case that to fend off such doubts, the collecting history of artefacts on the market is indispensible. The no-questions-asked market is (all too) slowly becoming a market where ethical collectors and dealers are asking for this vital information in order precisely to avoid situations where they can be later accused of handling stolen material.

This is precisely what is needed. A group of apparently stolen items is identified and the chain of ownership followed back to the person who cannot document that they came by them by legal means. The more smuggling cases that do not end in mere "repatriation" but actually tracing the paper trail back, the sooner this market will be cleaned up. Mr Hay should have kept better records, as all dealers in ancient artefacts know (since the 1970 UNESCO Convention showed the way things were going) they should, he did not and may end up having a long stay in jail for it.

A lawyer for the US coin dealers says on his blog that

Greece's heavy handed approach to these issues suggest that our own government should resist excessive Greek demands as to the scope of any MOU.

Well, as far as I can see what the paper he quotes (the Daily Torygraph) is on about are those nasty Europeans who want to arrest Brits. The "heavy hands" complained about are the British. [The Telegraph suggests that The apparent crime, “illicit appropriation of an antique object”, is not even an offence under British law. Well, it is, see the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, in particular Art 2 (3). ]

Some artefacts which an Athens court has determined are stolen surface and it is determined that the supplier of some of them was Mr Hay, and Mr Hay cannot show (a) where precisely the items he sold came from and (b) that he took any steps to avoid buying stolen property or (c) indicate precisely who sold the material to him whom the Greeks could prosecute as well. Is it ACTUALLY so difficult for dealers in portable antiquities to keep proper records of what they handle like dealers in other commodities (such as eggs)?

The Greeks have asked the US to instruct its customs officials to make sure no illegally exported items comes onto the US market, this will protect US dealers from suffering the same fate as Mr Hay when buying material now "surfacing" on the US market.


For more on the case see:
Greek courts use anti-terror rules in bid to have dealer extradited, Antiques Trade Gazette 18 February 2008.
European Arrest Warrant sees dealer taken into custody again Antiques Trade Gazette 22 February 2010.
Greek court gives UK dealer three years in prison, Antiques Trade Gazette 23 March 2009.

Marc Glendening Beware of Greeks Bearing Warrants; What exactly does the EAW do for us?

Richard Edwards and Jackie Williams, Antique dealer attacks 'scandalous' European extradition laws , Daily Telegraph.

British antiques dealer sentenced to four years in prison for something not even a crime in UK on the Fuckfrance nationalists' blog - note the comment near the bottom from a US-spelling UncleBernie: "ownership of ancient artifacts is a right...".

I hate arguments that take some form similar:

Interpretation A cannot be correct because Greek word X never (or rarely) appears beside (or in proximity) to Greek word Y.

Regardless of the truth of the statistical information, I’ve never actually seen a situation where the statistical information provides anything that couldn’t be determined or recognized by the realities of semantics or syntax.

PS – I hate the word “syntactical.”

Filed under: Greek, Rant

Video from this year’s Conventiculum Lexintoniense

This year the Conventuculum featured longer-form orationes, and there is one speaker (Professor “David Mani” David Money) who spoke De arte versus componendi. If anyone has any information on this lecture (in particular the correct spelling of his name), please put some info in the comments–I’d like to transcribe his elegiac (starting ~5:40) over the next few days…

…[added 9/2/2010] A kind commenter (the author?) transcribed the verses–check them out below.

There are various figures with artworld connections on Vanity Fair's annual list of the world's 100 most influential people (to be published in the October issue, but online now). Only two, however, were selected expressly for their visual art creds....

A bit off-topic, but I think students of any language (not just Latin) would find food for thought in Guy Deutscher’s cover story from the most recent NY Times Magazine. Of course, anyone who studies a foreign language quickly recognizes a fundamental relation between language and thought (one of the first questions brighter Latin students ask is “How did the Romans know if terra meant “land, “a land", or “the land"). But I guess I never gave the exact nature of the link much thought.

Read more! »

International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University
May 12-15, 2011

Special session: Translating and Adapting Old Testament Wisdom

We are seeking papers focused on the translation, adapation and use of
proverbs and other types of Old Testament wisdom in all forms of
expression including textual, and musical.

Please send abstracts to:
Professor Laurie Postlewate
Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
212-854-2053
lpostlew@barnard.edu

The Societas Daemoniaci has room for one more paper in their 2011 ICMS session "Hell Studies"! Papers addressing any aspect of the study of Hell, demons, the devil or the damned are welcome. More information can be found at the Societas Daemoniaci website, at http://societasdaemoniaci.blogspot.com, or contact organizer Richard Burley at societas.daemoniaci@gmail.com.

Call for Papers:

MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research
of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory And Practical Application)
The 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, MI (as ever)
May 12-15, 2011

Panel 1:
Outlaws, Outliers, and Outsiders

This panel explores the intersection of myth and reality, of
boundaries and borders between this world, other worlds and their
inhabitants. From tales of outlaws exiled by law to those who lurk on
the boundaries of "civilization," this panel welcomes papers on all
manner of outsiders in any genre.

Panel 2:
Prehuman, Nonhuman, Posthuman: Monsters in the Middle Ages

This panel explores the concept of monstrosity in the Middle Ages, as
well as connections between understandings of the monstrous in the
medieval and all subsequent periods. Submissions are welcome on all
aspects of the monstrous in all fields of study from the medieval to
modern medievalism.

Send abstracts via email to:

Renee Ward
rmward@ualberta.ca
rward@wlu.ca

Teaching off the Grid: The Promise and Perils of Using Non-Canonical Texts in the Classroom (Roundtable discussion)



The “canon wars” of the 1980s and 90s may seem a distant memory, yet literary canonicity continues to be a vexed and embattled concept. While the list of texts considered canonical for the medieval and early modern periods is constantly growing, the canon by nature is exclusive and omits a large number of important, interesting, and very teachable non-canonical literary texts. Often, practical difficulties—including departmental requirements, a lack of suitable editions, and the absence of pedagogical discussion about these texts—hinder the inclusion of such promising texts in our classrooms.



This session seeks to overcome some of these difficulties by exploring specific pedagogical strategies for including non-canonical medieval and early modern literary texts in the classroom. Short (10-15 min.) papers will discuss approaches to teaching specific non-canonical texts, with particular attention to how these texts can be placed in dialogue with more canonical course readings. (The session will attempt to avoid papers that debate the canonicity of any particular text.) What unique insights do non-canonical texts offer students? What might we lose by introducing non-canonical texts into our classrooms? Papers focusing on early modern literary texts are particularly encouraged.



Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to Gina Brandolino (g.brandolino@gmail.com) and Nate Smith (smith2nb@cmich.edu) by Sept. 15, although early submissions are appreciated.

While dabbling in digital music software and technologies, I came across this interesting set of posts in The Halls of Valhalla blog. It turns out that the author, an audio software engineer, was originally trained as an archaeologist… “The study of ancient acoustics, or archaeoacoustics, covers a variety of sonic phenomena of the prehistoric world, from research into early musical instruments such as bone flutes and percussion instruments, to the possibility of whether grooves in pottery could have recorded sounds from thousands of years ago. … Iegor Reznikoff has studied the location of Paleolithic art in European caves, and has found a strong correlation between the presence of art or distinctive markings in a given location, and the quality of the resonance in those locations.”

At the major temple complex (900-600 BC) of the Peruvian archaeological site of Chavín de Huántar, John Rick (Stanford University) has “put forth a provocative theory: that the structures at Chavín were used in rituals where the dominant ‘priests’ (or whatever class was in power) relied on sensory manipulation, in combination with hallucinogenic drugs, to reinforce the perception that they had supernatural authority. … The stone passages known as galleries have very unique sonic characteristics, where sounds are difficult to localize. Within these galleries, Rick recently excavated a number of decorated trumpets, carved from the Strombus conch:”

“The ritual would have begun, most likely, by ingesting a hallucinogenic powder or a liquid extracted from the San Pedro cactus. As the Chavín subjects walked through the dark, cramped halls, the sound of Strombus trumpets echoed around them from some unseen source. Water roared through canals beneath their feet (or, strangely, overhead), producing a heavy percussion amplified by the drugs. Mirrors placed in ventilation ducts to reflect the sun poured brilliant shafts of light into the subterranean hallways, only to be ‘turned off,’ thrusting the occupant into blackness as dark as obsidian. By the time the subjects emerged from the chambers, staggering and stunned, their perspective had been altered forever. The unmistakable impression: somebody powerful was in charge.”

So where does this all link up with the digital world? Well, Stanford U’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics performed research at the archaeological site. They developed specialized equipment such as a “Configurable Microphone Array with Acoustically Transparent Omnidirectional Elements”:

“The reverb time increases as a function of the number of turns between the source and the receiver, with sources several gallery turns away from the receiver having a longer perceived reverb time. The reverberation in the Chavín galleries is characterized by dense and energetic early reflections, and low inter-aural cross-correlation. All 3 of the galleries have a quick onset, where the reverberation reaches Gaussian statistics within 20 milliseconds of the initial impulse. The quick build to Gaussian (i.e. random) statistics, and the low amount of cross-correlation between the left and right ears, is responsible for the strange sonic characteristics of the galleries, where it is difficult to localize where a signal is coming from in the absence of a direct signal.” You can read more about their findings at the Chavín de Huántar Archaeological Acoustics Project website. Finally, here’s a nice example of how the conch trumpets mentioned sound inside one of the galleries at the site:

Tito la Rosa performing in Chavin de Huantar, Peru 2008. from otoplasma on Vimeo.

Japanese archaeologists announce the discovery of six 13th century Buddha statues at Banteay Kdei.

Archaeologists discover ancient Buddha statues in Cambodia
IBN News, 25 August 2010

Japanese archaeologists have discovered six ancient Buddha statues in Cambodia, a member of the team has said. Yukitsugu Tabata, an archaeologist and a team leader at the excavation site told Kyodo News that the six statues were unearthed Friday at Banteay Kdei Temple, which is located 7 kilometers east of Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat Temple.

Texas A&M may be among the first to develop an economic calculus to evaluate teaching and teachers but unless there is a near sea change in how we all think of education, how we value education such a calculus will be coming to your favorite university as well.

A several-inches thick document in the possession of A&M System officials contains three key pieces of information for every single faculty member in the 11-university system: their salary, how much external research funding they received and how much money they generated from teaching.

The information will allow officials to add the funds generated by a faculty member for teaching and research and subtract that sum from the faculty member's salary. When the document -- essentially a profit-loss statement for faculty members -- is complete, officials hope it will become an effective, lasting tool to help with informed decision-making. [The Eagle.com]

Somehow, I thought that the reason for the existence of academia and its professors was for the good of human society in all its facets: library arts to prepare citizens for a democratic society; research to expand the horizons of humanity at large; and, oh yes, marketable skills for the good of the individual students. What does any of this have to do with calculating the economic value of a department or an individual professor? Based on what seems to be unfolding at Texas A&M, the main reason for the university's faculty is purely the economic maintenance of the university itself.

Sure, the people interviewed for the Eagle.com article express caveats and talk about it being a work in progress and worry about this or that. The article points out the differences between what Texas A&M is doing and what some conservative think tank recommended. But the very existence of such a calculus for any reason other than pure research (and even then) demonstrates just how far our collective view of education and its highest embodiment has fallen.

Via Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

This is a call for papers for Kalamazoo in May 2011, for a session
called "Desire (and Its Malcontents) in Late Medieval England."

Desire--for another, for some object, or for some objective--is
fairly universal among people, but as a strong emotion it can either
overcome rational control or be brutally suppressed, at either
extreme. Most of us control it and act with reason to fulfill our
desires or deny them, depending on the socially acceptable means of
obtaining them and on circumstances regarding the objects themselves.

Late medieval England witnessed a burgeoning of lay interest in
literature and piety in ways not previously documented closely; that
is, the growth of a literate middle class produced a growth of written
and other materials that reflected their interests, even as these
materials pandered to those interests. It also produced a large and
growing body of vernacular literature, increasingly secular in nature.

This session intends to bring together historical, literary,
pastoral, devotional, artistic, and other studies that investigate the
emotion of desire, whether through its depiction as a natural feature
of human existence, as a feature to be suppressed and inhibited, as
one to be sublimated in other directions, or as one to be viewed in
some other fashion.

Comparisons with our own attitudes will be unavoidable, but the
papers should focus on late-medieval attitudes as revealed through
physical remains. At the same time, the remains should be allowed to
speak for themselves as contemporaries would have intended and
understood them, not as modern theories would prefer to interpret them
in ahistorical ways.

Since this is not a pre-organized session with empty slots, 3 or 4
papers (which will be limited to 20 or 15 minutes' speaking time,
respectively) are welcome. Please send abstracts by September 15th to
me privately (not to the list) by e-mail (lidaka@wvstateu.edu or
j.g.lidaka@gmail.com) or s-mail, as below. Please be sure to supply
the other documentation the Medieval Congress requires:
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper

I'm co-teaching a seminar on Neanderthals and the origins of modern humans at UCD this fall, and so far having a really good time. Today, I introduced the topic of Mousterian stone tool technology to my students, including this classic tip on how to distinguish convergent scrapers from Mousterian points... "In fact, the major problem in classifying Mousterian points is distinguishing them not

Catalog der Texte der Hethiter (CTH)
Catalogue des textes hittites - Catalogue of Hittite Texts
in Fortführung der Arbeit von E. Laroche bearbeitet von S. Košak und G.G.W. Müller

Published online as a part of the Hethitologie Portal Mainz

I think as we approach a three day weekend in the USA and the end of the second week of classes at my new station in life, I should highlight that the deadlines for submissions to the Kalamazoo Congress are coming up in 2 weeks. Keep that in mind folks!

Cover of "De rand van het Rijk"

Today, my new book on the Romans in the Low Countries (this one) was officially presented. Livius Onderwijs, my employer, organized two lectures, one on Roman Tongeren and one on Roman Velsen: a city in Belgium and a naval base in Holland. The second speaker was Arjen Bosman of Gent University, my co-author.

One of the points he mentions in our book is that there was probably no gap between the two bases at Velsen. Until now, it was believed that Velsen 1 was used from 15 to 28, and Velsen 2 from 41 to 47. But Arjen has found evidence for continuous occupation, like a dendrochronological date in 37.

In an interview with an Amsterdam newspaper we told the kind journalist that Arjen’s discovery – in itself not terribly important – meant that people living in what would later be called Amsterdam would have seen Roman ships every day. The man or woman who lost a fibula that was excavated in the 1970s, belonged to the Roman Empire.

The journalist sent us the interview, we corrected a sentence or two, and gave the text our imprimatur. I knew that the paper would also publish a brief summary to make people curious about the main article, which was fine with me.

I should have asked if I could check the summary as well. I was surprised, this morning, by a phone call from a radio station: could I please tell a bit more about those excavations and that new foundation date of Amsterdam? I was surprised, because there’s no excavation (Arjen is reinvestigating old finds) and we hadn’t said anything about the foundation of the city. We had only said that this part of the world had been within the Empire, and that is also what the journalist had written down. The radio reporter told me she had read it on the website of the newspaper. I went on the air and told that the claim was exaggerated.

It was only later that I saw that webpage. It contained the summary of our article and was free of factual errors, although “investigation” had been changed into “excavation”, and it was not immediately clear that it dealt with Velsen. The real problem, however, was the caption: “Amsterdam inhabited for 2,000 years”, from which a careless reader might indeed deduce that the Romans had founded the city.

When I bought the newspaper itself, I noticed that this piece was on the frontpage. When I returned home, I found several e-mails from people who had been led to believe that Amsterdam had been a Roman town. To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence for this. There must have been people living over there (someone must have lost that fibula), it was part of the Roman Empire, there are careless summarizers and ditto readers, and yours truly has failed to check a summary. That’s all.

Before some readers think it's my fault, I just need to make yet another Google-hates-us-all post concerning the bloated bureaucracy's inability to handle long comment posts in its Blogger sites. You may have seen the dreaded user-hostile Google error if your posts were too long. Strangely, when I reach this error page, it turns out that the comment had posted anyways! I recommend to commenters

Readers of Looting Matters will be interested to know that the online catalogue for the sale of antiquities on 6 October 2010 is now available.

There are several interesting lots including one ex-Borowski Corinthian pyxis (lot 70) [estimate $3100-4700] that sold at Christie's 12 June 2000 (lot 20) for $1410.

There is also an Attic black-figured Nikosthenic amphora (lot 93), with the inscription Pamphaios mepoies(e)n that appeared in the Phoenix Ancient Art catalogue, "The Painter's Eye, The Art of Greek Ceramics. Greek Vases from a Swiss Private Collection and other European Collections" (Geneva-New York, 2006, 8-11, no.2) [details].

Several pieces are accompanied by an "Art Loss Register certificate" (e.g. lots 85, 87, 89, 90, 92,  94).

The British Museum was evacuated on Saturday after visitors complained of an odd smell along with irritated eyes and throats. Visitors were escorted out of the building shortly after 1pm and the museum remained closed while investigators attempted to determine the cause of the scare. A spokeswoman for the museum said 8,000 people were inside the premises at the time of the evacuation.

Well, it is obvious what it was isn't it? The British Museum houses the portable AntiquitiesScheme, dealing with hundreds of thousands of metal detected finds from all over the country. On this blog I have observed that collectors of corroded dugup metal objects like coins exhibit strange symptoms of clogged synapses fogging cognition and logical thought and have hypothesised that there might be something in the metal corrosion products (perhaps a fungus, or maybe a toxic corrosion inhibitor added to them in the source country) which is causing this effect. In the case of the British Museum we see a huge accumulation of such objects, and the concentration of the harmful substance revealed itself over the weekend in sufficiently high concentrations to be noticed. Collecting of dugup antiquities corrosion products therefore is not only damaging to the archaeological heritage, it could also be damaging to the health.

:>)
.

Some archaeologists argue that sound effects were an important, perhaps even decisive, factor in how early humans chose and built their dwellings and sacred places. However, assessing the claims of...

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In his post 'What Do Dated Police Investigations Involving Coins Actually Tell Us?', Peter Tompa really gets himself confused. He mentions the case of the Eid Mar denarius apparently illegally excported from Greece and seized from the London office of CNG discussed recently by David Gill in the context of the request of the Greek government to the US to take steps to curb imports of antiquities which have been illegally exported from Greece. Tompa asserts (my emphasis), without giving any authority for the statement:

Those who support import restrictions claim such coins should be treated as presumptively Italian and not presumptively Greek.

Eh? Likewise the coin which I discussed recently in a related context was a Thracian type which apparently had been previously on sale within Greece, but Tompa says:

Thrace encompassed the borders of present day Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. It would be interesting to learn whether Gill, Barford and friends believe Thacian coins should therefore be considered presumptively Greek, presumptively Bulgarian or presumptively Turkish.

An American-made car stolen from Hamburg and being sold in Burnham obviously should go back to the person from whom it had been stolen and not the factory in Detroit. "Barford believes" that Thracian coins are Thracian coins, but ("coins travelled widely in the ancient world" as they say) if found in a hoard in Komotini in Greece, were stolen from the archaeological record of Komotini Greece. That really stands to reason.

Likewise the suggestion that the Italians have asked the United States of America to consider anything of Roman type or origin to be Italian cultural heritage wherever it was found is pure fantasy. In fact I am on record here suggesting it is ACCG mendacity, but perhaps (now we see the ACCG's Washington lawyer stating it as fact) it is shown to be sheer ACCG stupidity.

UPDATE 2.09.10. There really must be something in the corrosion products of old dugup coins that clogs the synapses.

Washington lawyer Peter Tompa returns (A Question of Presumptions) to the matter of the CNG Eid Mar denarius with a stubborness which should be reserved for more worthy matters. That is because he gets it completely round his neck. This is the beginning of what he wrote:

There were several responses to my last post that suggest that the AIA and archaeologists do not support treating Roman Denarii as presumptively Italian, but at the same time it was also suggested that it is okay to presume that an unprovenanced Roman denarius is indeed presumptively Italian because, not surprisingly, such coins can be found in Italy.

Well, there are two things to note here, now he's given up giving the link to these "several responses", one of them is the post above. Secondly who on earth said that the Eid Mar coin was "Italian" cultural property? This is a totally invented argument. CNG is a close pal with the ACCG and Mr Tompa (being a "Cultural property Observer") surely knows the story. As reported by Leo Worden in COINage magazine Vol. 42, No. 11 (November 2006, so not that long ago), and as I wrote quite clearly, the coin was returned to Greece.

In any case, unlike many Republican denarii, these were not struck in Rome, but by Brutus' army on the march and it is believed that the mint for this group of denarii was precisely ... Greece (Drama and one other place I've forgotten). But the point is that this particular coin was offered to the London buyer by an anonymous Greek guy who it later turned out already had a record for trafficking ancient Greek artefacts (but the London dealer did not bother about checking that). Nobody even suggested in 2005 or later that this was an "Italian" object. I really cannot think where Tompa got that from.

But Mr Tompa's thought processes get even more difficult to follow when his pal PhDiva ventured her (rather wide of the mark) thoughts on the matter, Tompa declared solemly Hi Dorothy- Late Roman coins frequently do have mint marks, but not earlier denarii. Hmmm. The one we are discussing does not, but I have a big fat book about the Warsaw collection of republican denarii, and most of them have the letters R.O.M.A. in the exergue.
Perhaps Mr Tompa would like us to believe this does not indicate where these coins were issued, but it meant Radix Omnium MAlorum - or something like that?

* * *

Summing up, and compounding the confusion, Tompa suggests that "If, on the other hand, the AIA and other responsible archaeological bodies would abandon supporting such presumptions [that is the made-up ones it never crossed their minds to support] and instead limit their support for [to?] the repatriation of artifacts proven to be taken from illicit investigations, that would be a major step forward to bridging the gap between collectors and archaeologists.

Well, that is nonsense, but on the other hand: If responsible US dealers and collectors of archaeological material would abandon supporting the no-questions-asked trade [in particular stopped buying items which have no documentary proof of licit export from the source country] and instead showed their active support for the quashing of the trade in artefacts likely to have been recently derived from illicit exploitation of the archaeological record, that would be a major step forward to bridging the gap between collectors and archaeologists.

Photo: the Wikipedian image of an Eid Mar denarius (unprovenanced of course)

Workers at a housing project in Sheshatshiu, central Labrador (Canada), have uncovered 3,000-year-old artifacts, including tools and weapons. What started as a housing development has evolved into an archaeological dig....

Archaeological remains dating back to the last Ice Age have been found during work to upgrade a major road, the Highways Agency said. The remains, along with Iron Age and...

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Researchers in South Africa have revealed the earliest direct evidence of human-made arrows. The scientists unearthed 64,000 year-old 'stone points', which they say were probably arrow heads. Closer inspection of...

An academic excavation team said it had uncovered artifacts which indicate that an ancient Bronze Age kingdom in northern Syria had strong international trade relations with Nile river dynasties. Peter...

The prehistoric hunter known as Oetzi the Iceman may not have died at the site in the Italian Alps where he was found 19 years ago, but was only ceremonially...

The skeletal remains of a young man found in a flooded cave in 2006 by German cave divers have recently been recovered following three years of in situ study. The...

In an excavation at Moel y Gaer hillfort, Llanbedr near Ruthin (Denbighshire, Wales) last year, students from Bangor and Vienna uncovered evidence of how the banks of the fort had...

A recent archaeological dig at Rotary Park has set Columbia Borough's historical clock back a few thousand years, revealing an American Indian community dating to a time when Stonehenge was...

Evidence of the importance of Folkestone (Kent, England) as an Iron Age site has been unearthed as part of an archaeological project in the town. Work on A Town Unearthed:...

Museum volunteer David Bertrand of Georgetown (South Carolina, USA) recently discovered a mysterious object that has archaeologists baffled. The object, made of unglazed clay and about the size of an...

A Bronze Age henge has been discovered on land near Letchworth (Hertfordshire, England). Archaeologists have found a circular area about 50 metres wide surrounded by a bank at Stapleton's Field...

One of the most spectacular archaeological finds in recent years is the discovery of the Nebra sky disk. The disk was buried about 3,600 years ago after a catastrophic volcanic...

If you had a dinner invitation in Utah's Escalante Valley (USA) almost 10,000 years ago, you would have come just in time to try a new menu item: mush cooked...

Five thousand years ago, the eastern coast of England, near present day Lincolnshire, was a swamp, inhabited by Bronze Age communities. Now, drained and cultivated, it supports English farms. But,...

This has to be one of the strangest stories - the Turkish Environment Minister is claiming Allianoi did not exist ... I know there is at least one ancient source mentioning the town in the Roman period, and if you look back at my old posts and the article I wrote about it in Minerva, there is a heck of a lot of archaeological remains there.

The only comparison I can think of is Marathon. For years the Greeks said it was in one spot; then they decided to build an Olympic rowing lake there, and announced that it was no longer the site of the Battle of Marathon, and that the battle had taken place elsewhere.

There is one difference - Marathon had only a few archaeological remains at the site, Allianoi is a huge site with an enormous amount of well preserved ruins, many of which still have roofs.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=saving-an-ancient-city-that-doesnt-exist-2010-09-01

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-220734-100-environment-minister-takes-on-pop-star-over-dam-controversy.html

No doubt there will be wild jubilation in the caves of the coin elves tonight as the news seeps underground that ancient coins were not included by the State Department in the extension of the bilateral cultural property agreement between Italy and the USA. Nobody knew whether Italy had asked for this or not, it seems they had not. I am not sure how widespread illicit metal detector use is in Italy, perhaps the clue should be sought here, that many of the objects on the US market of concern have probably come (or are perceived as having come) from tombs, and it is the tombaroli who are more of a concern for the Italian government than "detectoroli", [perhaps because the former will frequently operate in organized groups, while the latter are individuals?]. Whatever the reason, they were not included by the Italians this time under the heading of archaeological material being plundered from ancient sites and assemblages to feed the international no-questions-asked antiquities market. This seems muddled thinking on their part and raises questions about what it is the Italians are trying to protect and how. But the coin collectors of the United States are no doubt congratulating themselves on this "victory" over the people of Italy and their continued to import to the US whatever numismatic items they want from Italy. Like this Republican denarius which can be turned into a tasteful (ahem) piece of wearable numismatia maybe?

Perhaps the ACCG could see their way to sending a thank-you letter and a bouquet to the State Department?

AP is reporting that archaeologists have uncovered an Iron Age II temple (8th century) at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada in Jordan. Among the finds is a four legged zoomorphic figure that Ziad Al-Saad, head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, identifies as Hadad. Is it a bull? They also uncovered other figurines and vessels apparently used in worship at the site. More details and pictures please.

Update: Yes it is a bull. Fox News, of all places, has a picture of several figurines and pot sherds. Still, even more pictures and details please.

Update, September 2, 2010:

Todd Bolen has a good discussion of the find with pictures of the temple that were taken six(!) years ago.

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1) Wayne Sayles has a new post on his blog about the ACCG's faltering Freedom of Information request about intergovernmental negotiations on cultural property movement across trands-national borders. Mr Sayles seems however not really to be aware that there is another (real) world outside the frontiers of his own country. He writes that:

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, was born from the notion that "the people" (as in each individual citizen) have a constitutional right to know how the government acts in their behalf. This is of course a democratic notion that nationalist governments do not share.

Well, two mouse clicks away on Wikipedia (a resource not unknown to Mr Sayles I wist), we find an article listing all those other (62) non-nationalist governments that have passed Freedom of Information legislation. Apart from the European Union and the United States itself, they are (alphabetically) Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cayman, Chile, People's Republic of China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Macedonia, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Republic of China, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe. Three of them, Colombia, Paraguay and Finland had such legislation before the US. (The same source asserts that equivalent legislation is "pending" in another sixteen countries.) Such a list really casts some doubt on what the coin dealer lobbyist means by the term "nationalist". What nonsense is this?

2) Sayles' blog now has a logo indicating that an organization called "online schooling" has selected it (and Dave Welsh's blog) as among the "top 40 coin collecting blogs" ["these experts can tell you everything tyou need to know"]. I was going to congratulate him, but then began trying to find out what this award was and who "online schooling" were. When I did it all looked a bit pathetic.

"Awards candidates are found by one method: Anonymous nominations that are open to the internet community. This allows us to generate a candidate list that is based upon what the internet determines as being good, original content. We stay away from a voting system because the only information that gives us is how well a site's readership can click a button.

So a pal can nominate any site they like and the judges look at it. As for the "educational resources" claim, the Sayles blog is up there alongside: Top Alcohol Blogs, Top Marijuana Blogs, Top Perfume Blogs, Top Piercing Blogs, Top Disney Blogs, Top Skateboarding Blogs, Top Surfing Blogs, Top Extreme Sports Blogs, Top Baseball Card Collecting Blogs, Top Mom & Dad Blogs, Top Comic Blogs, Top Clubbing Blogs, Top Star Wars Blogs... you get the idea. Have a look at the "infographics" it offers and calls education.

Mr Sayles attacked my credibility the other day, his advertisement of the inclusion of his blog as an educational resource in such company is an interesting comment on his own idea of credibility.

Scotus capitus is in the list too. But quite a few coin collector's sites that are indeed educational are missing.

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=119766

Yesterday, Martin Rundkvist posted the 100th edition of Four Stone Hearth at Aardvarchaeology. He also announced that he is relinquishing his task as coordinator. Martin has been an excellent carnival coordinator and those of us who post on the edges of anthropology owe him many thanks for his efforts to make it easy to keep informed in all things anthropological. Thank you Martin!

My old friend Afarensis has agreed to take up the mantle. And I thank him too.

Four Stone Hearth is a great resource for those of us who profit from the work of anthropologists but who are too lazy to follow their blogs on as regular basis as we should. One thing I like about this carnival is that it has, with only a few exceptions, stuck too its charter: archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, bio-physical anthropology, and systematic theology linguistic anthropology. But perhaps that is easy when the charter is rather broad in the first place.

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Over the past couple of days I and others have been receiving some revealing fan mail about this blog from metal detectorists Norman and Linda Kennedy. This couple claims to run a personal coaching and career consultancy agency (Personal Development Top Earner) based in Papamoa New Zealand. But he is using all his diplomatic skills and professional eloquence to defend UK artefact hunting from criticism. Mr Kennedy says that during the creation of the 1996 Treasure Act (he calls it the Treasure Trove law) "we had to put all the arguments to the government including ways of getting rid of you guys" - that's archaeologists. He asserts that this has "been contemplated for years, as you cost me the taxpayer so much money". He says that the British government is looking for ways of cutting public expenditure and he threatens that he will personally "be first in the Que put you archaeologist name forward first". He points out that English Heritage have had their financing cut and "the next cuts will be the Archaeological department's just watch and see". He says "i may be semi illiterate but this does not stop me from sending letters to my local government and councilors or creating blogs or websites" to undermine the archaeologists' case.

Are you listening to this PAS? These are your "partners" speaking here. The ones you were supposed to be doing outreach to. By their own account, they were trying to abolish archaeology in the mid 1990s and are still adamant on doing it. The difference being now after thirteen years of PAS propaganda, the policy makers and public now see archaeology as a search for glittering goodies, and well, metal detectorists can do that as well as, or better than "archaeologists", and for free, so what IS the justification for keeping archaeologists? After thirteen years of presenting the entire British public with one particular picture of what archaeology is about, how long will it take the to undo that damage?

Over on Heritage Journal what seems from the inimitable written style to be the same person has just made the following comment on my writings on the relationship between the preservation of the archaeological record and the current form of policies on artefact hunting and collecting:

this guy is 90% Bullshit and 10% glorified grave digger full untruths wind and piss so to speak. So please do not take any notice of anything he says,as he is big lier,Norm

Well, if the PAS was any kind of a real "partner" to artefact hunters they'd be over here and by trenchant comments indicating where what I say about artefact collecting is"untruths, wind and piss so to speak". Is it justified to call somebody a "liar" (please note spelling Norm) just because what he says about something contains some uncomfortable truths? Its all out here in black and white, take it or leave it, this is my blog and I am entitled to express my own opinions on it. Please Mr "Norm" instead of launching personal attacks full of dropped prepositions and four-letter crudities, if you feel that it is a false picture, start your own blog and set out what you feel to be the true state of things. Of course you would be saved all the bother if the metal detecting forums and artefact collecting were open access and members of the public cpuld read for themselves what goes on over there. Until they are, they will just have to take other people's word for it. I say all is not well and am prepared to justify it using concrete facts and concrete examples. Are artefact hunters and collectors and their PAS "partners" able to rebuff all of those criticisms using the same methods? Or do they think a dialogue of the deaf is the only way forward available to them?

It seems that Mr and Mrs Kennedy's business is really called "Polaris Media Group" which apparently until a year ago was called "Liberty League International" and both are widely discussed in the Internet - they seem not to have very good reputations (try googling them). Here is Norman Kennedy calling somebody else a "lier" in relation to some of this criticism.

Here's a curious thing - our URL seems to have changed. It was http://www.bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com. But now it is http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/. I have no idea why this has happened. Can anyone shed any light?

There were several responses to my last post that suggest that the AIA and archaeologists do not support treating Roman Denarii as presumptively Italian, but at the same time it was also suggested that it is okay to presume that an unprovenanced Roman denarius is indeed presumptively Italian because, not surprisingly, such coins can be found in Italy.

To me, this is a fine distinction without much of a difference. And, for that matter, not a very helpful one. Certainly, using such an analysis one could also presume that Roman denarii are the cultural property of any number of modern nation states in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and even the Far East where they are found, including places where it is okay to collect them.

If, on the other hand, the AIA and other responsible archaeological bodies would abandon supporting such presumptions and instead limit their support for the repatriation of artifacts proven to be taken from illicit investigations, that would be a major step forward to bridging the gap between collectors and archaeologists.

Here at the Poggio Colla excavation, I eat dinner every evening at the student dig house, where Beppina and her husband Bruno lay out a fantabulous spread. The house is called 'Podere della Vigna,' which pretty much translates as 'vineyard.' I actually do have to walk through a vineyard to get there. One of the best parts is that there at the top of the hill Beppina and Bruno have taken in a little stray who has melted the hearts of every college-aged person in the near vicinity.

His name is Romeo. Let's all say it in Italian: Row-may-OH.



Every excavation or study abroad project ends up having a faunal mascot of some sort. This little guy has turned into ours. Somehow every little thing he does is mesmorizing. Watching his every move is more fun than TV. If he happens to be present during any educational lecture, the learning that actually occurs is minimal. As it's been a while since I posted any gratuitous pictures of cuteness, I might as well let loose with them now.

He recently learned to pounce, so he attacks everything. He can be a vicious little thing now that he's also learned to bite. The other day he got me on the chin and then, as dainty as you please, he practically bit off my nostril.

He can even camaflougue himself.

And of course, he's adorable especially when he runs out of steam.

Comatose.

Importante ritrovamento archeologico nel piacentino, precisamente nel villaggio neolitico di Travo. 120 tombe risalenti al VI – VII secolo d.c. sono affiorate in località Sant’Andrea.

Gli esperti presumono che nella zona si siano alternate diverse generazioni, dalla preistoria al medioevo e fino ai giorni nostri. Sono stati ritrovati anche oggetti in ceramica, pozzi, canalette di drenaggio e resti di mura di pietra. E’ la prima volta che una necropoli così estesa viene scoperta nella zona.

Il gruppo archeologico “La Minerva” presenterà l’importante scoperta il 2 settembre presso la biblioteca di Travo alle 21, ingresso gratuito.

Info:

http://www.archeotravo.it/index.php

Fonte:

http://www.piacenza24.eu/index.php?n=25227

ISAW/American Turkish Society Lecture: Felix Pirson (December 1, 2010). ISAW/American Turkish Society Lecture Speaker: Felix PirsonLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: December 1, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. ...

Visiting Research Scholar Lecture: Mathieu Ossendrijver (November 16, 2010). Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy - Science in Action Speaker: Mathieu OssendrijverLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: November 16, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. ...

Upcoming public events at ISAW. Calendar > regularly updated, so check back often for newly scheduled events September 30: Archaeological Insitute of America Lecture Speaker: Roger BagnallLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: September 30Time: 6:30 p.m. Amheida: Excavating a City ...

Visiting Research Scholar Lecture: Jacco Dieleman (October 5, 2010). Visiting Research Scholar Lecture The Artemis Liturgical Papyrus Speaker: Jacco DielemanLocation: 2nd Floor Lecture Room Date: October 5, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. This presentation will offer a preliminary survey of an unpublished ...

Visiting Research Scholar Lecture: Lidewijde de Jong (December 14, 2010). Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Death in the province: mortuary practices and Roman imperialism in Syria and Lebanon Speaker: Lidewijde de JongLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: December 14, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. ...

Visiting Research Scholar Lecture: Gilles Bransbourg (November 30, 2010). Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Late Roman Taxation: The East/West Divide Speaker: Gilles BransbourgLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: November 30, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. ...

Visiting Research Scholar Lecture: Jonathan Ben-Dov (October 19, 2010). Visiting Research Scholar Lecture The Astronomical Book of Enoch - Jewish Apocalypticism and the History of Science Speaker: Jonathan Ben-DovLocation: 2nd Floor Lecture Room Date: October 19, 2010Time: 6:00 p.m. ...

Archaeological Insitute of America Lecture: Roger Bagnall (September 30, 2010). Archaeological Insitute of America Lecture Amheida: Excavating a City in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt Speaker: Roger BagnallLocation: 2nd floor lecture hallDate: September 30, 2010Time: 6:30 p.m. Amheida is a ...

Lod Mosaic Roundtable: Miriam Avissar, Senior Archaeologist, Israeli Antiquities Authority et al. (October 2, 2010). Lod Mosaic Roundtable Speaker: Miriam Avissar, Senior Archaeologist, Israeli Antiquities AuthoritySpeaker: Glen Bowersock, Professor Emeritus of Ancient History, Institute for Advanced StudySpeaker: Sarah E. Cox, ...

Conference (November 12, 2010). A Mathematician's Journeys: Otto Neugebauer between history and practice of the exact sciences Location: 12 November: Courant Institute; 13 November: ISAWDate: November 12, 2010Time: 9:00 a.m. A Conference at New York University, November 12-13, 2010. ...

Crossposted to Teaching Thursday.

This week the Chronicle of Higher Education's technology blog featured a short article on two faculty members who offered a course to the public for free and attracted over 2,000 non-credit earning students.  The article argues that, for some classes, opening the course to the public created a more diverse and dynamic classroom environment only really possible through online teaching.  In Profs. Downes' and Siemen's class, non-credit students and paying, for-credit students mingled in discussion forums, witnesses the same lectures, and engaged the same readings, but unlike efforts pioneered by places like MIT where the lectures and syllabi are made public, these non-credit students were invited to participate fully in the educational process as well by engaging with their fellow students and, presumably, the faculty member.  In short, their class emphasizes the interactive potential of online teaching over and above the internet's well-known ability to disseminate prepared content.

I couldn't help but also see this as an opportunity to democratize the university experience in a fairly radical way.  Not only would students have to consider how a particular class or material or problem solving exercise helps them to navigate the unpredictable shoals of a distant, abstract "real world", but they will be forced to confront the "real world", right there, in the classroom.  In other words, such a public course might help students overcome the separation between what happens in the classroom where students sometimes regard skills, methods, and knowledge as simply "course objectives" or tools to get an "A", and what happens in the real world where these skills, methods, and knowledge function in a far more ambiguous way and the rules followed to get an "A" rarely apply neatly.  Expanding the conversation by bringing the real world into the foyer of the Ivory Tower could have a revolutionary effect on how students understand the application of classroom skills.

I've just begun to discuss the possibility of running some classes like this at the University of North Dakota.  As part of my sounding out processes, I talked to my good buddy, online teacher extraordinaire, and frequent Teaching Thursday contributor, Mick Beltz, and he and I came up with some issues that will have to be considered before developing and deploying a class to the general public.  Both of us bring the perspective of teachers in the humanities with some online teaching experience.

So, five observations.

1. Technology. The first thing I thought of is how do we run a course like this.  It seems that the classes described in the Chronicle article ran through Moodle which is open source and, presumably, more flexible (or at least developable) than Blackboard in some ways.  The course will also have to be able to function with almost no live technical support.  I can't imagine any university who would want to commit large scale technical support to a class full of non-credit, non-paying students. So every aspect of online delivery would have to be iron-clad to work and very straight forward to access.

2. Scaleable content and exercises. Once one had assurances of a solid platform, then the content would have to be scaled in some way. For example, a course that relied on a $400 textbook would not be a very appealing class to open to the public because few public, non-credit students will be interested (it seems to me) in purchasing a $400 textbook.  Open source content and public domain texts would work better.  Multiple-guess type questions are more easily scaleable than essay tests and papers.  Currently I teach my online History 101 class as asynchronous - meaning all the content is available from the first day.  This may not scale well for a massive online course where a less-engaged public might not be inclined to complete weekly assignments in order and prefer to skip around defeating any pedagogical goals dependent upon the sequential engagement with content.

3. Access and Control. One key to managing the relationship between paying, for-credit students, and non-credit students is creating levels of access that, for example, prevent open discussion boards from turning into the worst kind of comment sections on a blog.  I initially thought that limiting the length of time a discussion board was accessible would limit the opportunities for crazy comments or spam.  Mick offered a better solution.  He suggested that discussion boards be controlled through "adaptive release" exercises.  In other words, to get access to a discussion, you have to score above a particular grade on a quiz based on the readings.  Of course, a clever instructor could develop a whole series of adaptive release access points; with achievement would come ever more intimate levels of access much in the same way that video games release bonus features at certain levels.  This adaptive release model would not only limit access to people with malicious intent (to some extent), but also create incentives to non-credit students to engage the material in the class.

4. Goals and Objectives. A public course - like any course - will need a clear sets of goals and objectives. There is no escaping that any course like this would have to be experimental at first.  And like any experiment, we would have to establish certain metrics to determine whether the class was successful or not.  The simple statistics, like number of students and length of time on-site (as a metric for engagement) would be useful, but we would also want to see if we could gather data on student engagement more broadly.  The goal, to my mind, would be to draw people into the subject matter.  Following the model of many video game creators, we'd want our course to create an immersive space, and we would have to monitor certain clear criteria to determine whether this was successful.  We might also borrow from are colleagues in marketing to understand better the various metrics used to determine the success or failure of a website or a viral or web-based marketing campaign.

5. Resources.  The biggest hurdle to implementing a class like this would be to determine whether the benefits of the course are worth the commitment of resources.  A public access course has the potential to break down barriers between "the academy" and the public, engage types of learners who might not be inclined to enroll for credit at a university, and expose students to ways of thinking, priorities, and experiences rare or impossible in the classroom.  On the other hand, how many hours per week does managing a potentially massive online class take, how robust of a cyber-infrastructure, and, even, what is necessarily to publicize the course and actually get non-credit students to "enroll".  As much as we'd like to say that we're teaching the world "for free" there is always some cost in time and resources.

Those are just my preliminary thoughts on the potential issues and rewards of teaching the world for free.

Archaeological chronology aims to answer the question "When did this or that event happen?". This question can usually be re-phrased as "When was this or that thing made?", where the thing under study may be anything from a bead up to the Great Wall of China.

Most dating evidence is based upon similarity: people are almost incapable of doing anything in exactly the same way for any long stretch of time, and when they try to return to an old way of doing something, they never get all the details right. Such similarities (again on all scales of evidence) are dealt with in a more or less formalised way by means of a tool kit called typology. Collect a group of similar pots / house foundations / Great Walls, note explicitly the details that unite them and separate them from their peers, and you have a type definition. Thus defined, all types have a chronological delimitation, though many may be too long-lived to be very useful, and the presence of one type of pot doesn't rule out the parallel existence of several other types.

The very birth of archaeology as a scientific discipline is reckoned from the first chronological and typological breakthrough: C.J. Thomsen's 1821 division of Scandinavian Prehistory into three Ages where cutting tools were made of different materials. First stone, then bronze, and then iron. Chronological research is still working to sub-divide the three Ages into ever finer well-defined slices.

The definition of an archaeological period takes the form of a list of types found associated with each other: pots, houses etc. How can we know in what order these periods occurred? We still largely do this by typological seriation and stratigraphy.

Seriation is a more or less formalised process where you order a collection of pots / houses / Great Walls according to similarity. You put two pots on a table, grab a third pot and decide if it should go between the two or over to either side. This is formalised as pot 1 having traits ABC, pot 2 BCD and pot 3 CDE. Then test if the series you've established is chronological, firstly by seriation of closed find associations (graves, hoards) by the same means, then by stratigraphy. Are ABC pot sherds usually in layers located on top of separate layers with CDE pot sherds? Or the other way around? Or are they usually mixed up?

So far I've spoken only about relative chronology, where we can say with confidence that the types listed for period B fill the interval between periods A and C. What about absolute chronology, that allows us to say that the period B types appeared in the AD 10s and were replaced by period C types in the AD 150s? There are many methods, most importantly radiocarbon.

Radiocarbon dating is a complicated field of research that moves forward rapidly. Briefly put it will tell you when a certain living thing died. With current technology, the accuracy is usually counted in decades. Much of the intricacies with radiocarbon have to do with the relationship between the death of that living thing and the event an archaeologist wants to date. If you find a piece of charcoal on a settlement site, you first need to think about how it ended up there. Stratigraphy is paramount: is it under a stone foundation? Or is it in a ditch that cuts across a house foundation? If you can't answer such questions, don't even submit the sample. And you need to think of intrinsic age: the heartwood of an old oak died centuries before someone cut the tree down. A wood anatomist can judge this for you. Bones have no intrinsic age, but their apparent age is skewed by the amount of seafood the creature ate in life.

Other important absolute dating techniques are historical dating (e.g. coins with dates on them or the names of rulers whose regnal dates are known), dendrochronology (the width of tree rings varies with the weather, forming a chronological bar code) and thermoluminiscence (quartz in a brick or potsherd or hearth stone accumulates radiation energy after being set to zero by strong heat).

Techniques like radiocarbon have not made typology or stratigraphy obsolete. For one thing, you need robust typological definitions to be able to generalise the radiocarbon date of a single object to an entire group of similar ones. Furthermore, fashion changes at shorter intervals than the current accuracy of a radiocarbon date. This means that you can often get a tighter date from typology than from radiocarbon. Southern Scandinavia's Migration Period lasted about 170 years and is thus about three radiocarbon dates long. But seriating a sample of female graves from Gotland, I managed to define four successive fashion phases for the same interval.

For a more thorough treatment of the subject, see Kris's long post over at About.com.

[More about archaeology, chronology; arkeologi, kronologi.]

Read the comments on this post...

"The problem with American civil religion is that it reduces faith to a particular brand of nationalism, which is precisely the opposite of the message preached by Jesus and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. By ignoring passages about social justice and community and highlighting appeals to individual liberties, Deuteronomistic theology, the Exodus, and conquest narratives, Beck attempted to weave together a generic, nationalistic religion that he hopes will appeal to the lowest common denominator of both faith and politics – personal ‘salvation’ via individual liberties – and overlook the more pervasive themes of social justice, equality, and community – which all people of faith are called to do! We are called to live together in community together as one body, not as rugged individuals."

-- Bob Cargill, in a post which rightly bears the title "excellent article on glenn beck’s call to a generic american civil religion"

Happy birthday to me, seven years old today. The first post on this blog was on 2 September 2003, Welcome to the NT Gateway Weblog where I wrote that

I've been inspired to set this up by Jim Davila's fine Palaeojudaica weblog at http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/, not least because of a comment he made in that recently that it would be helpful to have more people doing the same kind of thing. I've very much enjoyed reading his blog over the last few months and while I doubt I will be able to do as good a job as he, I am nevertheless encouraged to try something similar myself.

Well, Jim's still at it, I'm still at it, and now there are lots more people too, as well as many others who have come and gone.

For the first five and a half years of this blog, I was blogging under the NT Gateway banner, but now, as I hope you know, that has a blog of its own where I post along with Holger Szesnat, mainly on new internet items of interest that appear on the site.   So this is the first full year of the morphed NT Blog and I continue to work on my NT Pod too, a podcast that now has forty episodes and is just over a year old.

Thanks for the continued encouragement and support for these seven years.  Here's to the next seven!

Help Preserve Archaeology in Greece: Join the AIA in writing to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC)

August 30, 2010

On October 12, 2010, the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) will consider establishing a Memorandum of Understanding with Greece (the Hellenic Republic) by which the United States would help preserve the country's rich archaeological heritage. CPAC has called for written comments and it is extremely important that archaeologists, students and the general public send in letters showing their support. The deadline for submitting a letter is September 22, 2010 so please act quickly! This page gives you information about CPAC, lets you download templates for letters, and gives a few suggestions for further reading.

As some of you have already noticed, I have turned comment moderation back off. The Internet terrorist who has been posring spam comments seems to want to force bloggers he disagrees with to moderate comments, presumably to hinder free discussion (with which comment moderation interferes). And giving in to what bullies want just encourages them to continue their behavior.

So comment moderation is off, and hopefully no one will find the occasional easily-recognizable spam message (which will always be deleted quickly from the blog anyy, so please don't respond to them) too much of a nuisance. It is a small price to pay for being able to discuss things and express ourselves freely.

Thanks!

L’Archeoclub d’Italia Onlus sede Mentana-Monterotondo comunica che domenica 12 settembre dalle ore 10 alle ore 13 sarà possibile visitare gratuitamente l’area archeologica della via Nomentum-Eretum in località Tor Mancina, all’interno della Riserva Naturale Macchia di Gattaceca e Macchia del Barco; visite guidate gratuite alle ore 10.30 e 11.30.

L’area archeologica si trova in via di Castelchiodato snc, all’interno dell’Istituto Sperimentale per la Zootecnia di Monterotondo. Per chi viene da Monterotondo: 1 km circa dopo il cimitero di Monterotondo, in direzione Mentana. Per chi viene da Mentana: prendere via Reatina e al bivio con Castelchiodato e Monterotondo, percorrere circa 1 km circa in direzione Monterotondo.

Per informazioni e prenotazione visite guidate:

tel. 069091245
email archeoclubmm@hotmail.com

While composition teachers tend to insist on rules, writers often flout them. One rule I have flaunted over the years is the one against using conjunctions (copulatives) between every coordinating ...

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Announcement of the forthcoming Epigraphic Congress in Berlin, 2012. (The website is available in multiple languages.)

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

der 14. Internationale Kongress für Griechische und Lateinische Epigraphik wird auf Einladung der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Verbindung mit dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut vom 27. bis zum 31. August 2012 in Berlin stattfinden. Die Internetseite des Kongresses ist unter

http://www.congressus2012.de

zu erreichen. Über den jeweils neuesten Stand der Kongressvorbereitung wird mit einem Newsletter informiert werden. Bitte melden Sie uns unter

http://www.congressus2012.de/de/newsletter.html

dass Sie den Newsletter erhalten wollen; auf diese Weise erhalten wir auch ihre neueste E-Mail Adresse. Die Anmeldung für den Newsletter ist noch keine Anmeldung zum Kongress.

Wir wären Ihnen sehr dankbar, wenn Sie diese E-Mail an alle Interessenten und Institutionen weiterleiten würden, besonders an jüngere Kollegen und solche, die über keinen eigenen E-Mail-Anschluß verfügen. Falls diese uns entsprechend schreiben, werden wir ihnen die Informationen auf normalem postalischem Weg zusenden.

Wir bitten um Entschuldigung, falls Sie diese E-Mail mehrfach erhalten sollten.

In der Hoffnung, dass sehr viele von Ihnen unserer Einladung nachkommen,
mit freundlichen Grüßen
Werner Eck

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Archaeo­logists-attack-BP%E2%80%99s-drilling-plans/21319

The drilling of new oil wells of the Libyan coast will not directly affect or destroy the archaeological sites. Even Apollonia, parts of which are some five meters underwater, will be safe - and the Libyans are promoting archaeology tourism, so they wouldn't let anything happen to them.

The main issue seems to what could potentially happen should there be another leak of the type we just had in the Gulf of Mexico. It does seem odd that BP is drilling wells deeper and deeper, when they are still not sure how to deal with them.

The Libyan economy is based on oil, so the wells will go ahead and protests are largely futile. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that there isn't another disaster.

.

The Archaeological Institute of America is the closest that country gets to a central national archaeological institution, not quite what the 1970 UNESCO Convention Art. 5 had in mind, but a stop-gap. It has launched an informative website urging archaeologists, students and the general public to send in letters commenting on the proposals to agree to check incoming ancient artefacts from Greece to see that requisite export procedures have been followed. US dealers in these ancient artefacts do not appreciate US customs looking too closely at where the items they sell come from, and are busily persuading collectors too that export licences are in some way an "evil" concept and the very idea is in some way threatening their (collectors') "rights".

Please take some time to read the dealers' arguments and some of the counterarguments easily available in the Internet in places like "Looting Matters", SAFEcorner (and if you have a stomach for it, this blog) and then take a few moments to shoot off a letter to the State Department, either on the side of the Philistine Wreckers or the Preservationists.

Please note that most of the 87 public submissions currently up on the website assume that this agreement will only cover coins and not other artefacts. This means they have not actually read the summary of the request. These are superficial knee-jerk reactions caused by shock-horror rabble rousing tactics by lobby groups such as the ACCG and also dealers such as CNG (see earlier post on this). Note the number of them that assert that the plans are allegedly to make ALL Greek coins the subject of the agreement and not just those being exported to the USA from Greece and they are expressing their opposition to moves that are not being contemplated at all. These two characteristics will presumably lead to the CPAC rejecting all these comments, because they do not actually address the questions asked. The collectors seem to think bombing the State Department with repetative but irrelevant opinion will get them an ear.

By the way, the online form allows people not living in the US to comment, obviously the US is very concerned about its image in the world, bad enough at the best of times, so if you are an outside onlooker also let the State Department know what you think about the CCPIA and the current form of the US antiquities market. Myself I would like to urge the people of the US to "say no to Plunder, say yes to bilateral cultural agreements" to curb illegal exports of archaeological material.

See also the SAFE comments on this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/7976052/New-York-art-courier-loses-1.3-million-painting-on-night-out.html

.

The Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild last week made a comment on the content of this blog over on Looting matters. He admonished David Gill:

I hope you'll save yourself the embarrassment of ressurecting that ludicrous claim that ACCG itself violated some law by launching a test case in U.S. Federal Court. That charge by one of your colleagues has already spun itself into oblivion along with whatever shred might have been left of the author's credibility.

"Spun into oblivion" eh? Should I be embarrassed that an organization like the ACCG questions the credibility of my arguments?

If US law says that to export certain types of objects from a certain place and after a certain date, they have to be accompanied by certain documents (there is choice of two types laid down by the CCPIA) anyone who imports objects of those types from those places after a certain date without them is illegally importing them. Likewise if they take their car on the road without the documents US law requires the driver to be able to produce, they are driving their car illegally. Or have a gun without having applied for the requisite permits and undergoing the attendant screening. I do not see anything embarrassing about pointing that out.

The ACCG imported a few dozen ancient coins into the US in defiance of the existing legislation in order to precipitate a court case. They could see no way to provoke the desired effect by legally importing the coins. It seems to me that it is the coineys who are getting embarrassed by it being pointing out.

BISHOP TOM WRIGHT is interviewed by the BBC on moving to St. Andrews.

Via Mark Goodacre's NT Blog.

Well, I have survived the school holidays (just!), so now it is back to work. I know that lots of you have been working in Pompeii and the other sites over the summer. Is anyone interested in posting a brief report about their work? Photos?

I'd also like to remind you all to update your Blogger profiles with your research interests, and also to add your details to the Directory of Projects and Research Interests (link to right). Let's keep building our community and helping each other.

If anyone has published anything this year that I haven't noticed (sorry!), please post the details or - if you are too modest to do that - send them to me to post. The same applies to discussions. I will happily start a discussion on a topic if you let me know what you want to talk about! And remember, you don't have to post in English - Italian, French, German are all OK.

Finally, email me if there is anything else that you would like to see on Blogging Pompeii, if you have any suggestions about the development of the blog, or if there is a review or interview you would like to contribute.

Thank you!

Source: Late Antiquity Discussion Forum. 

Call for Papers

Deadline: November 15, 2010. 

The Society for Late Antiquity announces the 9th Biennial Conference on Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, to be held at Penn State University (University Park) June 23-26, 2011. The conference will explore the theme of "Politics in Late Antiquity, ca. 200-700". 

Along with the cultural and religious transformations of the late Roman and post-Roman eras, the political culture of the empire was transformed, from the aristocratic and senatorial monarchy of the early empire to the equestrian and military government of the third and fourth centuries to the emerging Christian monarchy of the Theodosian empire and beyond. Each of these traditions had a long afterlife in the post-Roman West and Byzantine East. The Program Committee seeks contributions that address any aspect of the political life in late antiquity, with particular emphasis on 1) the functioning of Roman and post-Roman government and the tensions between center and periphery 2) the gap between rhetoric and reality in the practice of politics 3) the material expressions of politics and government, as reflected in art, architecture, and archaeological evidence. 

As in the past, the conference will provide an interdisciplinary forum for historians, philologists, art historians, archaeologists, and specialists in the early Christian, Jewish and Muslim worlds to discuss a wide range of European, Middle-Eastern and African evidence for cultural transformation in late antiquity. Proposals should be clearly related to the conference theme, stating both the problem to be discussed and the nature of the presenter's conclusions. 

Abstracts of no more than 500 words, for 20-minute presentations, should be sent as email (attachments in MS Word only) addressed to: 

Professor Michael Kulikowski

c/o Tiffany Mayhew

108 Weaver Building 

Dept of History 

Penn State University 

University Park, 

PA 16802

Phone: (814) 865-1367

Email: ShiftingFrontiers2011@gmail.com 

Late last week, we confirmed our scholarship winners, sent out $2,000.00 in tuition checks, and two free copies of Logos Bible Software 4 Scholar's Library collections which should be arriving to the students any day now.

Our SeminaryScholarship.com winner was selected and confirmed right away, but because our varied attempts to reach the originally selected BibleCollegeScholarship.com winner were of no avail, everyone who applied had a second chance to win as we selected an alternate winner. So, without further ado, here are our winners:

SeminaryScholarship.com Winner: Mrs. Barbara W. of Raleigh, NC.

Barbara is currently an online student at Baptist Bible Graduate School and Seminary in Pennsylvania. She has been teaching Social Studies and MS Band and Choir at Friendship Christian School since 2002. After receiving a MA in Biblical Ministries she plans to continue teaching at FCS and begin work in women’s ministries through teaching and writing Bible studies.

BibleCollegeScholarship.com Winner: Joseph K. of Kenosha, WI.

Joseph attends LeTorurneau University in Longview, TX. Along with Bible courses, he is currently studying computer science with a focus in network security. Come to find out, while connecting with him and his family back home, Joseph is the grandson to well-known Christian apologist and philosopher Dr. Norman Geisler, who is author or co-author to some 70 books and hundreds of articles, many of which are available for Logos Bible Software.

Apply or Reapply for the new round!

Thank you to all who have applied for the scholarships. Whether you applied before or not, be sure to visit the sites as a new giveaway round has begun. Remember that you can enter once per round, but you can increase your chances of winning by telling friends and family to apply as well. Just make sure they enter your name in the "Other" box, when they're asked how they heard about the scholarship.

Seminary students, apply here:

Bible College students, apply here:

You should follow us on Twitter here.

After a frenetic period of When on Google Earth activity, taking us from Lee's WOGE 93 to the landmark WOGE 100 at the Moore Group in 8 days, welcome to an exciting new century of WOGE at TSA.

Having spotted the Gereza fort, Kilwa Ruins, Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania, this is my challenge; be the first to correctly identify the site below, and its major period of occupation, in the comments below, and you can host your own!

Now with extra clue - see comments below!

The rules:

Q: What is When on Google Earth?

A: It’s a game for archaeologists, or anybody else willing to have a go!

Q: How do you play it?

A: Simple, you try to identify the site in the picture.

Q: Who wins?

A: The first person to correctly identify the site, including its major period of occupation, wins the game.

Q: What does the winner get?

A: The winner gets bragging rights and the chance to host the next When on Google Earth on his/her own blog!

Be the first to correctly identify the site below and its major period of occupation in the comments below and you can host your own!

More When On Google Earth

For a list of previous winners see Electric Archaeologist here …

or join the Facebook group here….

I'M OFF to the British New Testament Conference, which is in Bangor, Wales, this year. I'm not presenting a paper this time, but I will be co-chairing the New Testament and Second Temple Judaism Seminar, as usual. The programs of all the seminars are available here.

The conference takes place today, Friday, and Saturday. I will try to keep blogging as usual, time and internet connection permitting, but I have also pre-posted a few things, so there will be something new here each day in any case.

Today is another traditional date for the original Marathon -- the run of Pheidippides. The Rogue Classicist has a page of correspondence on this event. Unlike the traditional story ...

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At Actium, Octavian (the future Emperor Augustus), supported by his military leader Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, defeated his fairly-matched rival, Mark Antony, supported by the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, on September 2, ...

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The Teaching the Bible epub from the SBL is back after its summer break:

Teaching the Bible, September 2010

It includes an article by Jeff Staley on The Crucifixion of Jesus in Films and in the Gospels which looks well worth a read. Thanks to Jim Dvorak for pointing out that article to me.

A quick one today. History of the Ancient World has a link to a Toronto U PhD thesis (pdf) "The Auxilia in Roman Britain and the Two Germanies from Augustus to Caracalla: Family, Religion and ‘Romanization". Chapter 1.II has some interesting thoughts on the auxilia in Germany at the time of the Varusschlacht. Thanks to Lindsay Powell for the heads up.

For the second month running, Jim West has done an excellent job of producing a Biblical Studies Carnival, rounding up all sorts of interesting posts on Biblical Studies and related areas from all over the blogosphere:

August 2010 Biblical Studies Carnival

I am proud to say that I actually remembered and got round to nominating several posts this time around.

Meanwhile, several have the good news that the University of Sheffield Biblical Studies Department has a new blog.

For those interested in who has the most popular Biblical Studies related blogs at the moment, Free Old Testament Audio Website Blog has the latest.

And while we are on the subject, I was disappointed to notice recently that the Biblioblogs.com website had gone down. It looks like the domain name was not renewed, and the content has all gone, at least for now, which is a shame.

... or "sheer genius," as Gary Corby says.

Virgil is singing arms and the man
(JPEG image, click on it to enlarge)

Enjoy!

This blog is an adjunct to The Roman History Reading Group which meets on the first and third Wednesday of each month except August in our chat room from 9:30 to 11:00 p.m. US EDT (UTC/GMT -04).  This means that in Asia and Australia/Pacific, it's daytime. Here is a world time clock as a general assistance for non-USAns.

Chat room location (with instructions) at Google Talk.

2010 Reading Schedule

September 15, October 6 & 20
Sections of The Aeneid (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Online: Dryden Translation

Join us!

We are now also on Facebook.

Find our updates on Twitter.

Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean. Reports
ISSN: 1234-5415

Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean. Reports, appears annually, in English, presenting the full extent of archaeological, geophysical, restoration and study work carried out by expeditions from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw. The PCMA is present in the Near East and northeastern Africa (Egypt, Sudan, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Kuwait, formerly also in Iraq). Projects cover all periods from prehistory and protohistory through the Islamic age, emphasizing in particular broadly understood Greco-Roman culture and Early Christianity in the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean.

Reports 2006 (PAM XVIII)

Reports 2005 (PAM XVII)

Reports 2004 (PAM XVI)

Reports 2003 (PAM XV)

Reports 2002 (PAM XIV)

Reports 2001 (PAM XIII)

Reports 2000 (PAM XII)

Reports 1999 (PAM XI)

Reports 1998 (PAM X)

Reports 1997 (PAM IX)

Reports 1996 (PAM VIII)

Reports 1995 (PAM VII)

Reports 1994 (PAM VI)

Reports 1993 (PAM V)

Reports 1992 (PAM IV)

Reports 1991 (PAM III)

Reports 1990 (PAM II)

Reports 1988-1989 (PAM I)

List  of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

The Malaysian cabinet has given the go-ahead to nominate the Lenggong Valley in Perak as a World Heritage Site. Archaeological sites in the Lenggong Valley reveal a long period of habitation from the Pleistocene right up to the bronze age.

Cabinet Agrees To Make Lenggong Valley in Perak Heritage Site
Bernama, 25 August 2010

The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Information Communication and Culture Ministry’s plan to
make the Lenggong Valley in Perak a World Heritage Site after George Town in Penang and Melaka.

Its minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said Malaysia would submit a report and proposal to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) for the area to be declared a World Heritage Site.

“If Unesco agrees to the proposal, we have another historical site on the world heritage list; this one with archaelogical remains and artefacts from the Palaeolithic (old Stone Age), Neolithic (new Stone Age) and Bronze Age,” he said after a post-Cabinet meeting, here, Wednesday.

I can't help but notice that the word for 'house' has traveled far and wide around the Eastern Mediterranean in the earliest times:Egyptian par 'house' (written pr)Hattic wel 'house' (< Proto-Hattic *pel ?)Hittite pir 'house'Luwian parnas 'house'My spidey senses tell me that it all stems from the Egyptian language. I suspect the word also entered Proto-Aegean as *par hence some attested nouns in

Long ago, I had privately indulged in tentatively reconstructing letter-names in the Etruscan alphabet based on the hunch that they could likely be related to those found in Greek (ie. alpha, beta, gamma, delta, etc. < West Semitic). Perhaps we could theorize something like *alφa, *peta, *camla, *talta, etc. Contrary to this, it seems that many specialists have assumed that the Etruscan

Posted on behalf of Marcus Dohnicht.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,
liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

der 14. Internationale Kongress für Griechische und Lateinische Epigraphik wird auf Einladung der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Verbindung mit dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut vom 27. bis zum 31. August 2012 in Berlin stattfinden. Die Internetseite des Kongresses ist unter

http://www.congressus2012.de

zu erreichen. Über den jeweils neuesten Stand der Kongressvorbereitung wird mit einem Newsletter informiert werden. Bitte melden Sie uns unter

http://www.congressus2012.de/de/newsletter.html

dass Sie den Newsletter erhalten wollen; auf diese Weise erhalten wir auch ihre neueste E-Mail Adresse. Die Anmeldung für den Newsletter ist noch keine Anmeldung zum Kongress.

Wir wären Ihnen sehr dankbar, wenn Sie diese E-Mail an alle Interessenten und Institutionen weiterleiten würden, besonders an jüngere Kollegen und solche, die über keinen eigenen E-Mail-Anschluß verfügen. Falls diese uns entsprechend schreiben, werden wir ihnen die Informationen auf normalem postalischem Weg zusenden.

Wir bitten um Entschuldigung, falls Sie diese E-Mail mehrfach erhalten sollten.

In der Hoffnung, dass sehr viele von Ihnen unserer Einladung nachkommen, mit freundlichen Grüßen
Werner Eck

Alas, lovely trench PC 42's days have come to a close.



Actually, they came to a close at the beginning of August, but, well, I haven't quite got around to commemorating the trench's final moments.

In the end, PC 42 was excavated down to bedrock which revealed several walls and a good deal of construction evidence. We found a fair number of post-holes and cuttings in the bedrock and a lot of levelling fill.

Most of PC 42's scarps were a nightmare, thanks to tree trunks and the ancient dumped debris that makes sculpting scarps into vertical faces - 'like glass'- the bane of undergraduates.

On the last day of fieldwork, a tarp was laid in the trench and all the dirt we had removed during the season was dumped back in. This is called 'backfilling' and is done in order to protect the trench from the elements, as well as clandestinii (looters). Watching all that dirt go back in - well, it hurts the heart a little to see it done.

Backfilling at Poggio Colla in 2004.

It also hurts everywhere else a little, too. Actually, a lot. I'll be honest. Backfilling was the one day where the physical pain was so bad I wanted to cry. It was a nice reminder that age and decrepitude even conquers archaeologists.

Ultimately I did survive Backfill Day, though. So too did PC 42's students, who were total champs and made the season really spectacular.

Thanks, guys: Cassie, Kristen, Morgan, me, Sarah, Jack.

For now, PC 42 sits lonely upon its wooded hill, tree roots already weaseling down into the soft empty soil that has replaced its 2300 years of stratigraphy. The Mugello Valley is a quieter place, without the hoard of filthy American students stomping about in a fine impersonation of 'Pig Pen.' I went on to see a large part of Italy over the subsequent three weeks (more on this later), but in the end, the Mugello still holds pride of place as my favorite part of Italy. Mushroom hunters, wild boars and lightening storms just aren't the same anywhere else!

Me and the Mugello at dusk, as seen from the amazing restaurant 'Casa di Caccia.'

Three days in Rome and now on a ship bound for Delphi.

Visited the Roman Forum and Colesseum Monday. Both are much changed since I was last there. Fifteen Euros to enter the Colesseum and it was packed. The cats have been replaced by people.

The Forum is quite different with a lot of digging going on. I had forgotten the change in grade between the Arch of Titus and the flat area in front of the Rostra. Must be 50 feet lower. Villa of Caligula now excavated at the northwest corner of the Palatine Hill. The Curia is a museum. There are lots of nice photo positions from the Palatine down onto the Forum, but the Hill remains a mystery because very little is identified there.

The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has launched a website that explains how to submit comments to the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC).

I have elsewhere provided links to the request by the Greek Government for import restrictions.

Do you need to learn more to make an informed submission to CPAC? First, read an earlier overview of stories relating to Greece (June 2009).

Here is a selection of some of the posts that are relevant to Greece:


Attica

• Funerary stela
• Marble lekythos

Corinth

• Kouroi: update
• Corinthian pottery

Macedonia

• Antiquities seized
• Bronze krater returned
• Gold funerary wreath

Cycladic

• Keros haul material at auction

Crete

• Minoan larnax in New York
• Minoan larnax in Houston
• Minoan larnax in Atlanta
• Statue from Gortyn

Byzantine material

• Byzantine material returned to Greece
• Theft from Byzantine church at Olympia

Coins

• Denarius
• Octodrachm seized in Switzerland
• Coins seized in Macedonia

Other material

• The Atlanta pithos
• Gold wreath in London auction
• Antiquities seized in Northern Greece
• Antiquities returned from Belgium, Germany and the UK
• Antiquities returned from Budapest
• Shelby White returns antiquities to Greece
• The Preveza athlete
• Radical collectors and the Aidonia Treasure
• Material returned to Greece from the J. Paul Getty Museum
• Greece and Italy: joint agreement

The Schinoussa archive

• Work by Christos Tsirogiannis

Image
Messene © David Gill

I was in the TLS office this afternoon, but rushed off smartish to catch the 5.45 and watch the Blair interview on telly at home. That's illogical I know -- as I could perfectly well have recorded it/watched it on iplayer or whatever -- but there is still something alluring in the idea of sitting at home and watching a television programme at the same time as millions of others, even if you are nowhere near them (it's a sort of 'virtual community').

Of course, I knew that it would feel like a book promotion exercise -- but two things had tickled my curiosity.

First, I had been intrigued by the "Blair and alcohol" stories from the book on the news this morning. I had always taken TB to be a Perrier water and rocket salad kind of guy -- but the idea that he was (like the rest of us over busy over-50s) a GandT plus half a bottle of wine made him seem much more interesting. (And remember what doctors are always told...or so I'm told ... take what they admit to and then double it...)

Second, there had been a curious item in the Sky tv guide about the interview:

"Questions like, "What did you have for breakfast this morning?" and "Do you think Mary Beard is the new Su-Bo?" won't feature in this tussle between the former Prime Minister and adorable political elf Andrew Marr."

For about 5 seconds, I managed to convince myself that this might just be flattering (if it really was referring to me, that is). You know ... Mary Beard will make ancient Pompeii as appealing to millions on the telly as Susan Boyle made... whatever it was she made apealing. Realism soon suggested, however, that the implication was much more likely along the lines of "how does a slightly weird over 50 year old think she can inflict herself on us", with more than a hint of allegations of social inadequacy!

But, anyway, it got me racing home for the interview, which was probably a mistake.

For a start, Andrew Marr (was he Blair's choice?) wasnt really all that good at it. Satisfying as it may seem, there really is not much point in quizzing Blair on Iraq any more. He's been quizzed so often on this that you couldn't trip him up. (To compare large with little, I have been quizzed so often on 9/11 (though less than one thousandth of the times that Blair has been quizzed on Iraq) that the discussion is not really much worth having. Whatever you think, you get a line and get practised in it...mine happens to be true, but how would anyone know?) It would have been much smarter to go in on Kosova or Sierra Leone, where the whole range of arguments are much more fluid.

That apart, I had two main reactions.

1) Blair was smart on conceding the little things (and so looking generous) and not giving an inch on the big. It does not honestly matter a jot to most of us whether he thinks the hunting ban an error. As it happens I am with him on that (and probably for different reasons), but suspicious that he uses that "mistake" as a nifty carapace for a lot of other bigger ones.

2) There is also his habit of somehow blaming the "outside" when it comes to serious problems. I dont just mean the "intelligence" about WMD again, though the idea that only the intelligence services made an error irritates me beyond measure. A couple of weeks before the final Iraq war decision, I was at a meeting in Cambridge (with the then local Labout MP present), at which a lot of Cambridge scientists (a good number of whom were far from left wing) said that the intelligence that they had heard, and that had been displayed (somewhat shamefacedly) by Colin Powell at the UN, did not add up. What we were being shown as mobile labs could not possibly have been. How did that kind of information not get back to Blair? The government's job is not to receive intelligence, but to interpret it. And so it went on this evening. The reason the the Iraq war had gone wrong he said was all those "outside forces".

So a bit of a waste of time rushing home. But by the time I left the TLS I had had a much better idea of why the Blair book was interesting from Peter, who was busy reviewing (and I'm not going to give away what he will say just yet, but read it when it comes out). And tonight I shall listen to Chris Mullin's next volume of diaries on Book of the Week (I declare an interest -- it's from the same publisher as my Pompeii etc). A smarter observation of the workings of power, I think.

 

Eisenbrauns is running a great sale for all you Assyriologists out there. This is a great deal; some of these titles have never been discounted more than 20% before. Here's the BookNews announcement:

BookNews from Eisenbrauns

The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project has given us permission to
run a sale on 35 of their titles. For the month of September,
you can save 20-50%, an unprecedented discount on some of
these titles.

As always, all sales on this web sale are final; no returns will be
permitted. Offer good only on orders placed at www.eisenbrauns.com
through September 30, 2010.

To easily access all the sale items, please visit:
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/SPECIAL
================================================================
"Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7 - 11, 1995"
Edited by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1997. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514577031
List Price: $79.00 Your Price: $39.50

"The Mechanics of Empire: The Northern Frontier of Assyria as a
Case Study in Imperial Dynamics"
by Bradley J. Parker
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590528
List Price: $124.00 Your Price: $62.00

"The Helsinki Map of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian Period"
Edited by Simo Parpola and Michael Porter
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
List Price: $19.95 Your Price: $13.97

"The Heirs of Assyria: Proceedings of the Opening Symposium of the
Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in
Tvarminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998"
Edited by Sana Aro and Robert M. Whiting
Melammu Symposia - MS 1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590436
List Price: $59.00 Your Price: $29.50

"Mythology and Mythologies: Methodological Approaches to Intercultural
Influences: Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian
and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in Paris, France,
October 4-7, 1999"
Edited by Robert M. Whiting
Melammu Symposia - MS 2
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590498
List Price: $110.00 Your Price: $55.00

"The Prosopography Neo-Assyrian Empire, volume 1, part 1:
A (Names Beginning with A)"
Edited by Karen Radner
Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire - PNA 1/1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1998. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514581632
List Price: $84.00 Your Price: $50.40

"The Prosopography Neo-Assyrian Empire, volume 1, part 2: B - G"
Edited by Karen Radner
Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire - PNA 1/2
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1999. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514586453
List Price: $79.00 Your Price: $47.40

"The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire,
Volume 2, Part 1: H - K"
Edited by Heather D. Baker
Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire - PNA 2/1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590450
List Price: $74.00 Your Price: $51.80

"The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 2,
Part 2: L - N"
Edited by Heather D. Baker
Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire - PNA 2/2
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590559
List Price: $94.00 Your Price: $65.80

"The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 3,
Part 1: P - S (Sade)"
Edited by Heather D. Baker
Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire - PNA 3/1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2002. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590566
List Price: $79.00 Your Price: $55.30

"The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh"
by Simo Parpola
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1997. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514577604
List Price: $44.00 Your Price: $30.80

"The Standard Babylonian Etana Epic: Cuneiform Text, Transliteration,
Score, Glossary, Indices and Sign List"
by Jamie Novotny
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 2
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590474
List Price: $39.00 Your Price: $27.30

"The Standard Babylonian Epic of Anzu: Introduction, Cuneiform Text,
Transliteration, Score, Glossary, Indices and Sign List"
by Amar Annus
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 3
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590511
List Price: $44.00 Your Price: $30.80

"The Standard Babylonian Creation Myth: Enuma Elish"
Edited by Philippe Talon
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 4
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2005. Paper. English and French.
ISBN: 9789521013287
List Price: $44.00 Your Price: $35.20

"Evil Demons: Canonical Utukku- Lemnu-tu Incantations"
by M. J. Geller
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 5
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2007. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789521013317
List Price: $77.00 Your Price: $61.60

"The Neo-Assyrian Myth of Ishtar's Descent and Resurrection"
by Pirjo Lapinkivi
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 6
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2010. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789521013331
List Price: $35.00 Your Price: $28.00

"Ludlul bel nemeqi: The Standard Babylonian
Poem of the Righteous Sufferer"
by Amar Annus and Alan Lenzi
State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts - SAACT 7
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2010. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789521013348
List Price: $35.00 Your Price: $28.00

"Neuassyrische Glyptik 8.-7.Jh.v.Chr.: Unter besonderer
Berucksichtigung der Siegelungen auf Tafeln und Tonverschlussen"
by Suzanne Herbordt
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1992. Paper. German.
ISBN: 9789514560477
List Price: $69.00 Your Price: $55.20

"The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the
Assyrian Royal Inscriptions"
by Marco de Odorico
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 3
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1995. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514571251
List Price: $64.00 Your Price: $38.40

"Nippur in Late Assyrian Times, c 755-612 B.C."
by Steven W. Cole
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 4
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1996. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514572869
List Price: $54.00 Your Price: $43.20

"Neo-Assyrian Judicial Procedures"
by Remko Jas
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 5
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1996. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514572876
List Price: $52.00 Your Price: $41.60

"Die Neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden als Quelle fur Mensch und Umwelt"
by Karen Radner
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 6
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1997. Paper. German.
ISBN: 9789514577833
List Price: $76.00 Your Price: $45.60

"References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources"
by Martti Nissinen
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 7
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1998. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514580796
List Price: $54.00 Your Price: $27.00

"Die Annalen des Jahres 711 v.Chr."
by Andreas Fuchs
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 8
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1998. Paper. German.
ISBN: 9789514584107
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $34.30

"The Role of Naqia / Zakutu in Sargonid Politics"
by S. C. Melville
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 9
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1999. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590405
List Price: $45.00 Your Price: $31.50

"Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Forman der Kommunikation zwischen
Gott und Konig im 2 und 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr."
by Beate Pongratz-Leisten
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 10
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 1999. Paper. German.
ISBN: 9789514590412
List Price: $94.00 Your Price: $56.40

"A Survey of Neo-Elamite History"
by M. W. Waters
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 12
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590443
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $39.20

"A Sketch of Neo-Assyrian Grammar"
by Jaakko Hameen-Anttila
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 13
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590467
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $34.30

"The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia"
by Amar Annus
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 14
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2002. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590573
List Price: $62.00 Your Price: $37.20

"The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence"
by Pirjo Lapinkivi
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 15
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2004. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590580
List Price: $75.00 Your Price: $52.50

"Grammatical Variation in Neo-Assyrian"
by M. Luukko
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 16
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2004. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590597
List Price: $75.00 Your Price: $45.00

"La Magie neo-assyrienne en Contexte: Recherches sur le métier
d'exorciste et le concept d'a-šipu-tu"
by Cynthia Jean
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 17
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2006. Paper. French.
ISBN: 9789521013270
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $34.30

"Voyages et voyageurs a l'epoque neo-assyrienne"
by Sabrina Favaro
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 18
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2007. Paper. French.
ISBN: 9789521013294
List Price: $65.00 Your Price: $52.00

"Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in
Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel"
by Alan Lenzi
State Archives of Assyria Studies - SAAS 19
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2008. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789521013300
List Price: $72.00 Your Price: $57.60

"The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia:
The Mesopotamian Mis Pi Ritual"
by Christopher Walker and Michael B. Dick
State Archives of Assyria Literary Texts - SAALT 1
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789514590481
List Price: $119.00 Your Price: $95.20

Charles Jones at The Ancient World Online reports on the antiquity related material available from the Claremont Colleges Digital Library. While I was generally aware of these collections and for several years of my life worked within a few feet of a couple of the collections, it is rather impressive to see them all in one place.

But that doesn’t keep me from still being upset that the “Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets” are no longer part of the collection, nor is the binding that once enclosed one of the Nag Hammadi Codices. I guess all the remaining stuff couldn’t fetch enough money from private collectors.

We’re all done here in Halland, for this time around. Tomorrow we set sail, or rather start up the Land Rover, for Västra Götland County and Lilla Edet. In Lilla Edet we’ll have one or two days work, again a survey for coming wind farm, though a small one.

Lets find out what awaits us…

Magnus Reuterdahl

I had the opportunity to attend the last session of the Digital Classicist 2010 seminars. Linda Spinazzè, a young scholar from the University of Venice, presented a very interesting project, entitled Musisque Deoque. The project deals with Latin literature and proposes to provide digital editions of a set of ancient texts.
The choice of texts goes from the 3th century BCE up to the 7th century CE. For each of them a Latin text is provided where the editorial variants are highlighted and explained in a separated apparatus criticus. For each of the elements given, precise indications are made to offer the readers an easier understanding of the often difficult and varying abbreviations in an apparatus.
Further a research option for metrical criteria is provided, where the texts are listed under different meters and can be approached from this point of view.
In the paper however Linda Spinazzè announced another aspect of the project, manuscripts tracing on the net. She is currently developing a tool which would help to find the digital images of the variants listed in the apparatus of the text. The apparatus created by these means would therefore become extremely valuable as it would help to fill the previously inevitable gap between the manuscripts, disseminated in the libraries all over the world, accessible to few and showing each only one stage of the transmission, and the printed editions, a reproducible and easily available summary of all the manuscripts where one version is given as main text and the other variants are summed up in the appartus.
This project is therefore based on another approach than for instance the Homer Multitext Project. Whereas the project on the Homeric text starts from the manuscripts and finds new ways of presenting the complex state of preservation of the text, the Musisque deoque approach is starting from the currently available editions and tries to go back to the manuscripts, if they are available. The approach is less revolutionary than the one of the Homer Multitext Project, but it has the advantage to be applicable to a corpus of diversified texts, with different histories of transmission.

From Wednesday to Sunday the 29th Christian Krug visited the Berlin team. He brought a little remote-control helicopter with camera to take some aerial shots of the excavated areas. He has worked on Lebanese sites before, but it was his first time in Ostia. To make this work possible, Axel had to run about the [...]

The site Cherada has a list of videos on YouTube featuring music of Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg. One of my favorite works by this favorite composer of mine is his Symphony No.3. Here's the first movement:



There's a lot more there by Atterberg, and as you get towards the end of the list you'll start to find links to some other great works by other composers as well.

I checked in, and at 2:30 went down to the book displays.  These were fairly limited, but since I was resolved not to buy any more academic books if I could help it, this was all to the good.  About 60 participants are listed.

The first session at 3:30 was a lecture by Caroline Humfress on Patristics and Roman law.  This began with the observation that lawfare (a favourite subject of Ezra Levant) — the use of the courts by special interest groups to extend their imperium — is on the increase in our day, and that where religion and law meet is therefore a subject of current interest.  The lecture proceeded to identify various ways in which the law has moved from being increasingly secular and secularising, through to the 1980’s when a reverse trend began to be noticed, to this decade when books on religion and law are being published all the time and the “deprivatisation” of religion is now on the table.  The lecture was delivered with great clarity, over an hour and a quarter, and was of great interest.  Unfortunately it did not stick in my memory!

This was followed by two sessions with three alternatives.  I chose Thomas Fedrick Illsley’s The defence of Eusebius of Caesarea in 17th century Anglicanism.  The Catholic writers Baronius and Petavius had listed the ways in which the fathers disagreed, in order to promote the idea that the church must be able to decide which is right, and exalted Athanasius.  Eusebius came in for criticism as a semi-Arian.  In response to this Bishop Bull in his Defence of the Nicene Creed and William Cave in a letter to someone (I couldn’t catch this) looked more at what the Nicene definition meant at the time.  They listed ways in which Eusebius definitely rejected the Arian propositions of Arius himself, the only ones around at the time.  Eusebius does frequently indicate that the Son is subordinate to the Father; but always in status, not in nature.  They pointed out that he signed the creed, they made use of the shorter form of his letter to the churches of Caesarea (the additional material in Theodoret they rejected as an addition), and they indicated that, while he may not have agreed with Athanasius, his views were indeed those of the Nicene council, reached after careful thought, agreed to in the case of peace, and should be judged accordingly and not by later invective in Jerome against Rufinus.  At the end of the session Timothy Barnes arose and suggested that the real case against Eusebius has to be found in the Eclogae propheticae, only discovered ca. 1840, where Christ is called “deuteros theos” repeatedly.  This Bull and Cave could not have read.  He then made the point that the same expression was found in the Praeparatio evangelica and enquired how they dealt with this.  The answer was as second in status, not in nature; Eusebius believed that the Father and Son were of the same substance.  The speaker also made the point that the unnatural concentration on the word “homoousios” was really Arian propaganda, to make the Nicene definition seem strange by concentrating on one unusual word, and that the whole creed should be considered.

The final paper (at 5:25) was by Sebastian Moll, Marcion after Harnack.  Dr Moll began by saying that he would far rather address an English audience than a German one, as the latter would tend to say “how dare you disagree with Harnack”!  He listed four things about Marcion which Harnack stated in 1921; and suggested that all were flawed.  Most interesting to me was when he quoted Harnack demanding that the Old Testament be dumped, and then suggested that actually nothing in Marcion himself corresponds to this (Apelles held this view, but not Marcion).  Rather, he suggested Marcion thought the Old Testament really did reveal the evil God, and, being a dualist, retained that for just that reason, like one of two eyes.  His revised ‘Gospel’ was likewise intended to portray the good God.  All this led me to think that I should revisit the Marcion testimonia, to see what they really say! 

During the coffee breaks I found myself talking to Richard Price, who has translated large wodges of the acts of the ecumenical councils for Liverpool University Press.  It was very interesting to hear about his work, and how many people are not even aware that there are acts available for these councils.

At dinner there was discussion of whether there will be a volume.  I hope both these papers will appear! I sat next to Andrew Maguire of earlychurchtexts.org, and was interested to hear that the letter of Theodoret on the death of Cyril of Alexandria was online at his site (here).  The letter may be spurious, but who knows?

Tomorrow has a very long list of papers I would like to hear, plus a tour of the cathedral led by one of the canons.  But there is relatively little on Friday, so if the weather is good I might duck that!

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=volunteers-concerned-on-dam-construction-on-ancient-city-2010-09-01

I wish they'd work out that dams are not good energy sources there, and only destroy archaeology.

NEW WORLD HEBREW FORGERIES have been getting some unfortunate media attention lately. For some reason the Los Lunas "Mystery Stone" forgery in New Mexico is given gullible positive coverage by Digital Journal. Also, a visit to the stone is chronicled much more sensibly in Mama Dragon, in which post the burning bush is repeatedly addressed as "dude."*

Note also Glenn Beck's recent foray back into Hebrew studies with a segment on the Bat Creek Stone. The Bat Creek stone inscription was also debunked back in 1993 in the July/August issue of Biblical Archaeology Review by P. Kyle McCarter, supporting earlier conclusions by Frank Moore Cross. (Not online. Sorry.) Cross and McCarter are two of the most distinguished living Northwest Semitic epigraphers. (Full disclosure: Cross supervised my doctoral dissertation.) Both the paleography (letter shapes) of the letters that look like Hebrew and the content (the apparent geographical name Yehud) do not work for Second Temple Hebrew (or, in combination, any other kind).

Beck also mentioned the Newark Stones, which are clearly not actually Second Temple Hebrew inscriptions, although it has been argued that they are medieval Jewish relics that were salted into the digs where they were discovered. At least the residents of Newark were pleased with Beck's mention of the stones:

NEWARK -- The day after the Newark Earthworks were mentioned by television and radio host Glenn Beck on FOX News, there was an increase in visitors at the Great Circle.

"Our phones are ringing off the hook," said Susan Fryer, executive director of the Greater Licking County Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is housed at the Great Circle in Newark.

"So far we've had about 34 visitors today, and about one-third of those are here because they saw it on Glenn Beck," Fryer said mid-afternoon Thursday.

Many of the visitors, Fryer said, were from Ohio and had thought about visiting but never did until they saw the program.

[...]

*Via James McGrath on FB.

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/mg20727750.200-ikiztepe-archaeologist-bronze-age-brain-surgery.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5ifnA0hlXulN1E1oZw9Qk88tHnAgA

Those of us who write or teach extensively about our union with Christ emphasize being over doing. And we should. In the context of our spirit union, doing flows from being. But if we are to give Jesus free reign to live His life through us—if we are to truly experience His abundant life—we are going to have to make some choices. One of those choices involves detaching ourselves from a preoccupation with the values of this world...

When I was on the road speaking to groups, I was always glad to have people come to conferences. However, I knew that if they were just looking for another wedge of pie that might make life a little happier, a little easier, a little less stressful, then they were missing the point. Jesus doesn't have another Band-Aid to patch you up with. He really doesn't...

Not to belabor the point, but there's so much activity for what we don't need. I'm not speaking against things. But if we're talking about a lifestyle of living from the unseen and eternal realm, some of us are going to have to make some changes. Otherwise, we're constantly going to be too distracted to ever be in touch with anything but the seen and temporal. The more we let the world beset us by dictating priorities, the more traps we are going to get into. That's a fact. I simply want you to mull this one over with the Holy Spirit. Do you really need everything you're working for?— The Rest of the Gospel: When the partial Gospel has worn you out, pages 215, 216-217

<idle musing>
Yep. That's the part that gets people. Everyone wants more of God's blessings, but do we want more of just God? Tozer said that anytime we say "God and" we have fallen into idolatry; I'd say he is right.

We have to live dead to self—and alive in Jesus. That means we make choices. Some are pretty easy and obvious, but others aren't always understood by those around you. But, you make those choices because you want more of Jesus in your life, shining through you, pouring out of you. The world won't understand that; you'll get a blank stare sometimes, other times downright hostility. No matter; it's worth the cost.
</idle musing>

Phoenix (Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam)

Greek family values: a mother has killed her husband and believes that her lover has killed her son. She rushes forward to see the dead body, but the bloody remains turn out to be her lover. Supreme irony, because the audience of the Electra already knows that Orestes has killed Aegisthus and knows which shocking discovery Clytaemnestra is about to make. No one will deny that Sophocles is one of the greatest playwrights ever.

It is easy to understand why classicists, time and again, return to Sophocles and his two Athenian colleagues, Aeschylus and Euripides. Already in Antiquity, people believed that no playwright could possibly surpass these men. There was a scholarly edition of their works of which a part survives (all Euripidean tragedies starting with an E). We also know that there used to be an annotated school edition of three times seven tragedies, a kind of “the best of”, chosen by a very good scholar. His selection is, from an educational point of view, excellent: with three tragedies about Electra, we learn a lot about the personal approach of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Perhaps our scholar did his work a bit too well, because his school edition became so popular that all other plays were lost. It was quite a sensation when in 2007 substantial parts of Euripides’ Phaethon were discovered. Yet, there have been many more ancient playwrights. They are all lost, except for one: Ezekiel, a Jewish author of the second century BCE. His work is not lost. Classicists just ignore it.

The Exagoge is one of the most fascinating pieces of ancient poetry, because the author uses a Greek genre, tragedy, to tell a Jewish story: the Exodus. About a quarter of it survives, and there are some brilliant lines, like Ezekiel’s description of the phoenix, of which our Athenians would not feel ashamed.

Another living creature we saw,
full wondrous, such as man has never seen;
’twas near in scope to twice the eagle’s size,
with plumage iridescent, rainbow-hued.
Its breast appeared deep-dyed with purple’s shade,
its legs were red like ochre, and its neck
was furnished round with tresses saffron-hued;
like a coxcomb did its crest appear,
with amber-tinted eye it gazed about,
the pupil like some pomegranate seed.
Exceeding all, its voice pre-eminent;
of every wing’d thing, the king,
it did appear. For all the birds, as one,
in fear did haste to follow after him,
and he before, like some triumphant bull
went striding forth with rapid step apace.

[Tr. R.G. Robertson]

And now we hear that hitherto unknown fragments have been discovered, from which Oxford classicist Dirk Obbink deduces that the Exagoge was widely read. This is interesting in itself, because we usually don’t know a thing about who read what. It is also interesting because Greek Judaism, which must have been very important, is not as well understood as its Rabbinical counterpart. Still, many Jews disagreed with the Maccabees that Judaism and Hellenism were incompatible, and did not follow the Pharisees in their use of Hebrew. Ezekiel belongs to this “other Judaism”, which did not make it.

And finally, the Exagoge shows that people who would no doubt be called ‘barbarians’ by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, appreciated at least one aspect of Greek civilization: the theater. The writing of tragedies was not just a Greek specialism, and classicists should, in future publications, devote a chapter to Jewish tragedy too.

Alexander Flasterstein at the piano, entertaining the WW II troopsIf you've been wondering where I've been for the last week, here's the reason for my absence: My father, 96, died peacefully on Friday at the apartment he shared with...

As classes start back up, I am reminded of some of the particular content organization challenges that college web sites face; and I’m reminded of this comic: There seems to be some consensus regarding the disconnect between the messages being sent and the information requested. I wonder if there is some kind of data - perhaps we could call them “analytics” - that could tell us which pages are accessed, and with what frequency, and for how long? It might do wonders for helping us generate web content that serves identifiable and actual needs.  

As classes start back up, I am reminded of some of the particular content organization challenges that college web sites face; and I’m reminded of this comic: There seems to be some consensus regarding the disconnect between the messages being sent and the information requested. I wonder if there is some kind of data - perhaps we could call them “analytics” - that could tell us which pages are accessed, and with what frequency, and for how long? It might do wonders for helping us generate web content that serves identifiable and actual needs. And I’m not talking about the W&J web designer here either - who actually does have analytical data. It still comes down to the folks who make decisions about content and whether those decisions are based on data or other inexplicable intuitions. Intuition can actually be valuable in terms of design - but content creation should be based upon data.  

.

In a somewhat enigmatic post ('What Do Dated Police Investigations Involving Coins Actually Tell Us?')Peter Tompa attempts to say something coherent about something I wrote here, he even (atypically for him) gives an actual link to the post. Sadly what he says is less than coherent and in one place is downright wrong headed (see post below). He starts off:

Cultural Property crusaders David Gill and Paul Barford have dredged up two somewhat dated investigations by Greek authorities relating to coins on their respective blogs. [...] Gill and Barford suggest these incidents somehow lend support to Greece's request for an MOU with the United States. But do they?

Well of course the Mr Tompa who is a lawyer representing the coin trade concludes they do not... because "the dealers in question fully cooperated with the authorities" and "in each case, the investigations took place in Europe and not in the United States".

Well, firstly neither case is particularly "dated", Tompa himself was writing about the one I mentioned not so long ago (fluffed it of course). Secondly when caught, yes the dealers appear to have given gave up their title to the coin. The one I mentioned had allegedly been on the black market in Greece two years earlier but still a dealer was selling it. In the Eid Mar case some blokes just walked into a shop with a newly surfaced coins and a few hours later were leaving the country with a big wadge of cash. Hardly much time for some due diligence. CNG the buyer of this coin has offices in the US and it is not out of the question that if the coin was not investigated by the police, the coin may have been passed to the latter for sale. (CNG by the way seems to be one of the major supporters of the ACCG.)

The "relevance" which Tompa questions is that in neither of these cases did the dealers have any problem with getting their hands on illegally obtained coins with the aim of putting them on the market, alongside any number of totally unprovenanced ancient coins and nobody, seller, buyer collector or lawyer is asking any questions. In among those that genuinely DO come, I have no doubt, from collections formed in the 1820s, others like the two discussed here have entirely questionable origins.

Tompa suggests that import restrictions on illegally exported coins:

be used to return artifacts traced back to illicit excavations in modern nation states like Greece through good police work.

I'd go further, let's use these measures to make their illegal excavation and illegal export less profitable. Let us see ethical collectors and ethical dealers asking their suppliers far more nuanced questions about where items came from. In themeanwhile let us see a lot more checking of antiquities as they cross international borders to see if the paperwork is in order, or whether the items are 'tainted' by their lack.

Welcome!  The archaeology lecture series will have two  two talks by Dr. Anthony Mangieri on September 8. Using Greek vases, the inscriptions on them, and often colorful Greek literature, drama, and poetry, he explores what we can reconstruct about women's lives in the classical period. 

His day talk examines vases featuring such famous and infamous female figures as Helen, Klytaimnestra, Kassandra, Iphigeneia, and Danae. His evening lecture on virgin sacrifice is the focus of his current book-length study. 



September 8 (Wednesday)
Dr. Anthony Mangieri
Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta 
"Legendary Heroines and Greek Womanhood in Greek Vase Painting" 
2:20 PM, Wilson Hall 168

Dr. Anthony Mangieri 
Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta
"Virgin Sacrifice in Greek Art:  Women, Identity, and the Trojan War"
7:30 PM, Chan Auditorium

Our events are always free and open to the public, so please feel free to forward this information to anyone who might be interested.

These two lectures are co-sponsored by the UAH Women's Studies Program which welcomes Dr. Molly Johnson as its new Director.

Hemos encontrado en youtube (canal de algualcilelquez) un vídeo de Fernando Marcén sobre Los Bañales donde, con el acompañamiento de la banda sonora de la película Ben-Hur, se ofrece una visión completa del yacimiento de Los Bañales y monumentos romanos de las Cinco Villas.  Aquí lo tenéis.

Jeremy has posted the biblioblog Top 50 rankings for August 2010.

Greece has made a formal request for the U.S. to impose import restrictions on archaeological and ethnological material (Neolithic through mid-eighteenth century) that comes from the Hellenic Republic.

Despite their own efforts and enforcement of national law, Greek officials claim that “a considerable number of antiquities has been and continues to be smuggled out of Greek territory, causing serious jeopardy to the cultural heritage of the county.”

The U.S. Department of State’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) will hold meetings in Washington, D.C., next month to review the new request and will hold a public session on October 12 from 10:00am to 1:00pm.


If you would like to make comments at the meeting or attend as a spectator, you must call the Cultural Heritage Center and sign up by September 22.

As always, if you cannot make the meeting but still want to voice your support for the protection of Greece’s heritage, you can write a letter to CPAC. The AIA has great resources on their website that make this easy to do. See their letter template, which takes about five minutes to fill out.

The AIA also has a great summary of the process by which an MoU is agreed on and renewed under the Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983.

This past spring, Italy’s MoU was up for renewal, and at the meeting, coins dominated the debate. Disappointingly, they were not added to the list of materials protected under the bilateral agreement.

The DoS thus far has only made available a public summary of Greece’s request, which doesn’t get too specific about the kind of material the country wants protected. Greece did conclude, however, that looters prefer “ceramic such as pottery, metal such as jewelry and coins, and stone such as statues.”

Can we assume that coins will be on the table?

Nathan Elkins wrote a great feature, “Why coins matter,” for SAFE last year about how the systematic looting of archaeological site for the purpose of finding coins to sell on the market creates an irreparable loss of cultural information. Read it, and peruse our resource page Coins Matter to learn more. Urge CPAC to seriously consider protecting coins in your letter if you feel compelled to do so.

Photo: Michael Setboun

Grötkräkla, "porridge sceptre"

The Four Stone Hearth blog carnival first opened its gaudy tent flap almost four years ago, in October 2006. Since then, 50 blogs have hosted it, 32 of which are still active. The record for most 4SH hostings is shared by Afarensis and Remote Central, both of which have hosted seven carnivals. Well done, everybody!

Here are the submissions for the 100th instalment:

• Krys at Anthropology in Practice discusses the Piltdown hoax.
  
• Dan at Neuroanthropology writes about linguistic relativism, the idea that our language forms our world rather than the other way around.
  
• Raymond at The Prancing Papio presents a study suggesting that a girl having brothers delays her menstruation and sexual activity.
  
• Eric (formerly of The Primate Diaries), meanwhile, discusses a paper on the evolution of menopause in women.
  
• Franco at Culture Potion talks about eskimo art with loads of wonderful pics.
  
• Ciarán at Ad Hominin discusses the recent study suggesting that tool use may be a million years older than we thought.
  
• Judith at Zenobia presents Queen Boran who was made Great King of Persia in AD 629.
  
• Colleen at Middle Savagery talks about archaeological field schools and management styles.
  
• And finally, I've got a paper out that stimulated some interesting blog discussion regarding the goals of archaeology.

The carnival rarely gets many submissions: as you can see, even this even-number instalment got only nine counting my own. This means that bloggers don't care much about the Four Stone Hearth. Does the carnival have regular readers that follow it around to the various venues where it appears? Dear Reader, if you are a committed 4SH regular, please say so in a comment.

Blog carnivals seem to be going out of fashion. The Skeptics' Circle, The Tangled Bank and The Carnival of the Godless have all folded. Months pass between instalments of the History Carnival. And I've decided to let go of the Four Stone Hearth. Anybody want to take over as its coordinator? I've paid the domain registration for the next twelve months. Will #100 be the last time the Four Stone Hearth is lit?

Read the comments on this post...

L’université du Luxembourg recrute pour la faculté des lettres, des sciences humaines, des arts, des sciences de l’éducation un assistant-professeur (m/f) en cultures anciennes dans l’espace de la Grande Région. Ref : F3-030034. Temps plein, statut de salarié à partir du 01 février 2011.

I've just learned that there is a new blog in town: Sheffield Biblical Studies. Here's a description, from the first entry, which is dated to today:

This blog will be a mix of news, events, book reviews and anything relating to biblical studies in general. There will be a range of contributors, including students, associated with the Department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield. There may even be a bit of engagement with theology, and by that I might mean a little more than my own discussion of a certain theology in the form of Red Toryism.

In addition to the expected usual range of biblical studies topics, there will also be discussion relating to the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (2011). Sheffield Biblical Studies will be doing several things for this anniversary and there will be more on that in due course. For further information see the links on the side bar, including the Sheffield KJV project being on Twitter.

Although it will have multiple contributors, we're already hearing the voice of one of them addressing us in the first person. Any guesses as to whose voice it might be? :)

Welcome to the blogosphere, Sheffield Biblical Studies!

Almost a year ago this month, the Great Move occurred as the administration rooted the Department of History from its long-standing and exceedingly-comfortable space in Merrifield hall and moved us across the quad to O'Kelly.  We are now settled into what I think most of us regard as equivalent, if not superior space, at least in the case of my office.

As I was reflecting on the events surrounding our move, I stumbled on a very recent article by John Schofield (whose work I am really coming to appreciate and notice) in the journal Archaeologies called "Office Cultures and Corporate Memory: Some Archaeological Perspectives".  He describes the archaeology of office culture and corporate memory through a study a move made by English Heritage in 2006.  The English Heritage office moved from a prestigious Savile Row address in London to a new "more modern" office space further from the city center.

The paper itself is a vivid - but not exceedingly detailed - account of the things left behind in the office of the English Heritage as well was the spaces, behaviors, and memories embedded for him the spaces so recently occupied by co-workers.  At the end of his article, he comments on the feelings associated with abandoned and empty places:

As an archaeologist I am fascinated by empty buildings and by the material culture of abandonment. One of my earliest lessons in archaeology concerned Skara Brae, a story of hurried desertion with precious objects left where they fell.  More recently I have studied and inspected military buildings forsaken at the end of the Cold War... In Malta I have studies former bars that closed abruptly with the Navy's withdrawal in the mid to late 1960s, bars that have remained firmly locked ever since. I like these empty places and do sometimes feel something as I wander about.

As I look back on some of my blog posts from the days of the move, I think the final line of the quote captures the experience of wandering through the abandoned offices in Merrifield.  I felt something even though I did not have a particularly long history history associated with Merrifield Hall, nor did I enjoy a particular luxurious or historically rich accommodation there.

Transactions of the American Philological Association
Autumn 2010 / Volume 140 / Number 2

Contents

I. Presidential Address

Josiah Ober

Wealthy Hellas

II. Papers

Alex Gottesman

The Beggar and the Clod: The Mythic Notion of Property in Ancient Greece

This paper calls attention to the need to think about Greek property based on the evidence available. While scholars note the absence of relevant legal or economic sources, I argue that certain mythic texts reveal important aspects of the ideology of property and, specifically, that property relations tended to be understood in terms of exchange relations. Being an owner meant engaging in certain kinds of exchange, and abstaining from other kinds of exchange. The myths that I consider here reveal this notion by suggesting that property is destabilized when property owners conduct exchange in the wrong way.

Alex C. Purves

Wind and Time in Homeric Epic

This paper examines the relationship between wind, narrative, and time in Homer. It begins by considering Fränkel’s observation that weather rarely occurs outside the similes in the Iliad, and goes on to show that wind plays a subtle but fundamental role in shaping the narratives of both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Owen Goslin

Hesiod’s Typhonomachy and the Ordering of Sound

I argue that Hesiod shaped his Typhonomachy with a particular interest in the relationship between sound, communication, and authority. Typhon’s defeat results in the reordering of the sonic world of the Theogony, and as such is a necessary precursor to the birth of the Muses. Hesiod thereby shows how the conditions for song are not a natural element of the cosmos, but result from Zeus’s suppression of Typhon. This victory is significant for the Theogony as a whole, in so far as it enables communication between gods and men, and thus renders the structure of the cosmos intelligible to mortals.

José M. González
The Catalogue of Women and the End of the Heroic Age (Hesiod fr. 204.94–103
M-W)

The Catalogue of Women supplies the crucial link between Hesiodic poetry and heroic epic. The heroic world of archaic poetry cannot be fully understood without it. But the interpretation of fragment 204 M-W, which describes the end of the heroic age, has long been burdened with misleading and unnecessary assumptions. This article challenges three particularly influential ones: that the passage contrasts demigods to “ordinary” mortals; that Zeus only feigns to destroy the demigods; and that [βίοτον κα]ὶ̣ is an acceptable supplement to line 103. My analysis shows that the Catalogue does not represent a departure from, but a creative reappropriation of, traditional epic material.

William Hutton

Pausanias and the Mysteries of Hellas

Instead of being an amorphous collection of useful facts for travelers, Pausanias’s Description of Greece offers a carefully structured meditation on the state of Greece in the Roman period. By mustering certain narrative themes and techniques around the pivot-point of his description of Olympia, Pausanias compares and contrasts the Roman conquest of Greece with the Spartan conquest of Messenia and offers his own text as an affirmatory parallel to a sacred document that was restored to the Messenians at the time of their liberation. Appreciation of the author’s ambitious program of structural and thematic patterns explains many aspects of the text that previous scholars have found perplexing, including its abrupt and enigmatic ending.

Dunstan Lowe

The Symbolic Value of Grafting in Ancient Rome

Some scholars have read Virgil’s grafted tree (G. 2.78-82) as a sinister image, symptomatic of man’s perversion of nature. However, when it is placed within the long tradition of Roman accounts of grafting (in both prose and verse), it seems to reinforce a consistently positive view of the technique, its results, and its possibilities. Virgil’s treatment does represent a significant change from Republican to Imperial literature, whereby grafting went from mundane reality to utopian fantasy. This is reflected in responses to Virgil from Ovid, Columella, Calpurnius, Pliny the Elder, and Palladius (with Republican context from Cato, Varro, and Lucretius), and even in the postclassical transformation of Virgil’s biography into a magical folktale.

Issue 141.1, to appear in late spring 2011, will feature the following articles:

James Porter, "Making and Unmaking: The Achaean Wall and the Limits of Fictionality in Homeric Criticism"
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, "Priam’s Catabasis: Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in Iliad 24"
John Heath, "Women's Work: Female Transmission of Mythical Narrative"
Mary Boatwright, "Women in the Forum Romanum"
Randall J. Pogorzelski, "Orbis Romanus: Lucan and the Limits of the Roman World"
Timothy Stover, "Unexampled Examplarity: Medea in Valerius Flaccus"
Giovanni Ruffini, "Village Life and Family Power in Late Antique Nessana"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307752/Churchill-Martin-Luther-King-President-Obama-revamps-Oval-Office.html

But Martin Luther King, who's replacing him, was also a great statesman.

This is a fairly good paper. Many articles in the literature either date human expansions by genetic methods (which tell us about the age of common ancestors, or the accumulated genetic variation and its characteristics -e.g., linkage disequilibrium- but tell us little about where the ancestors lived), or by geo-demographic methods (which tell us about how populations grow and expand on the map given various parameter settings), or by archaeological methods (which record the spatio-temporal occurrence of sites, but are difficult to interpret and are subject to various biases).

The current paper combines the latter two methods to present a picture of the spread of humans across northeastern Eurasia (from southern Siberia) and eventually into the Americas. The point of origin (southern Siberia) is inferred via the dating of earliest archaeological sites, population growth and expansion is modeled via a simple diffusion equation, which is reality-checked via calibrations at other sites.

The authors make a good point about the mess that population genetics is with respect to dating human movements, so their decision to avoid it is understandable. However, genetics will eventually be able to complement the other two approaches, by the study of ancient DNA from the different sites (whenever they are associated with human remains). So far, ancient DNA in the region has been limited to Holocene remains, which postdate the events of interest, but if 30,000 year old Kostenki can yield useful results, I don't see why human remains from northeastern Eurasia cannot, as conditions for DNA preservation there (=cold) are good.

While archaeological dates (which are based on physics and have small confidence intervals) are far more secure than genetic ones, they have the problem of "who done it", as we can never be sure that the occupants of an early site are the same people as the later occupants of the same site. This can be done -to an extent- with craniometry, the fourth method of estimation human movements, but (a) interpreting population continuity in the face of ongoing adaptation of the human neurocranium is difficult and (b) you can get DNA from very incomplete bone and tooth remains, but you need a mostly complete skull to make statistical use of it using craniometry.

There have been long debates about the identity of the Paleondians, the long-skulled early inhabitants of the Americas, that do not resemble modern Amerindians, but DNA analysis of several ancient examples from both north and south America has revealed similar types of DNA as those found in the current inhabitants.

PLoS ONE 5(8): e12472. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0012472

Archaeological Support for the Three-Stage Expansion of Modern Humans across Northeastern Eurasia and into the Americas

Marcus J. Hamilton, Briggs Buchanan

Abstract

Background
Understanding the dynamics of the human range expansion across northeastern Eurasia during the late Pleistocene is central to establishing empirical temporal constraints on the colonization of the Americas [1]. Opinions vary widely on how and when the Americas were colonized, with advocates supporting either a pre-[2] or post-[1], [3], [4], [5], [6] last glacial maximum (LGM) colonization, via either a land bridge across Beringia [3], [4], [5], a sea-faring Pacific Rim coastal route [1], [3], a trans-Arctic route [4], or a trans-Atlantic oceanic route [5]. Here we analyze a large sample of radiocarbon dates from the northeast Eurasian Upper Paleolithic to identify the origin of this expansion, and estimate the velocity of colonization wave as it moved across northern Eurasia and into the Americas.

Methodology/Principal Findings
We use diffusion models [6], [7] to quantify these dynamics. Our results show the expansion originated in the Altai region of southern Siberia ~46kBP , and from there expanded across northern Eurasia at an average velocity of 0.16 km per year. However, the movement of the colonizing wave was not continuous but underwent three distinct phases: 1) an initial expansion from 47-32k calBP; 2) a hiatus from ~32-16k calBP, and 3) a second expansion after the LGM ~16k calBP. These results provide archaeological support for the recently proposed three-stage model of the colonization of the Americas [8], [9]. Our results falsify the hypothesis of a pre-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas and we discuss the importance of these empirical results in the light of alternative models.

Conclusions/Significance
Our results demonstrate that the radiocarbon record of Upper Paleolithic northeastern Eurasia supports a post-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas falsifying the proposed pre-LGM terrestrial colonization of the Americas. We show that this expansion was not a simple process, but proceeded in three phases, consistent with genetic data, largely in response to the variable climatic conditions of late Pleistocene northeast Eurasia. Further, the constraints imposed by the spatiotemporal gradient in the empirical radiocarbon record across this entire region suggests that North America cannot have been colonized much before the existing Clovis radiocarbon record suggests.

Link

"Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple"—Barry Switzer, quoted in Feet of Clay

Christos Tsirogiannis is conducting important research on the Medici Dossier. A polaroid in the archive shows an Attic red-figured calyx-krater with a Dionysiac scene. The krater is still encrusted with mud and salt deposits; it appears to be fresh out of the ground.

The krater appears to be the one acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (inv. 83.80). The MIA website has the following description:

On the front is a lively procession, with the wine god Dionysus amid his entourage of cavorting satyrs and maenads, or female devotees. Of particular interest is the child-satyr who, in an apparently unique representation, rides on the shoulders of one of the maenads.

The child-satyr is seen quite clearly in this image.

The krater was acquired from Robin Symes in 1983 (see Star Tribune November 14, 2005, "The Minneapolis Institute of Arts bought its vase "in good faith" from Robin Symes, ... said museum spokeswoman Anne-Marie Wagener", archived here) and was reported by Michael J. Padgett to have been "in private collections in Switzerland and Great Britain for ca. 15 years before 1983".

The Star Tribune also reported in 2005 that the acquisition had been "recommended" by the MIA's then "head curator" Michael Conforti, an advocate of the "licit market" in recently surfaced antiquities.

The apparent appearance of the krater in the Medici Dossier suggests that the krater was indeed once in Switzerland. It is also a reminder that "Swiss private collection" does appear to be a euphemism for something else.

Padgett also commented on the attribution to the Methyse painter.

When Robert Guy saw the krater on the London market, he noted its resemblance to the style of the Methyse Painter but stopped short of an attribution. After its acquisition by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Dietrich von Bothmer examined detailed photographs of the vase and confirmed an attribution to the Methyse Painter (letter of 17 February 1984).

I take this to mean that Robert Guy saw the krater in London when it was in the possession of Robin Symes. (Guy was the source for pot-sherds acquired by Harvard University Art Museums, as well as additional fragments for an Attic red-figured amphora attributed to the Berlin painter subsequently returned to Italy.)

The Polaroid SX-70 that provided an instant colour print was apparently introduced to the market in 1972 and this seems to provide a terminus post quem for the image. The appearance of a mud-caked krater in a Polaroid image suggests that the collecting history does not stretch back to the late 1960s as Padgett had indicated ("for ca. 15 years before 1983"). One wonders if this timescale had been adopted to place the krater prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

It is known that Italian prosecutor Maurizio Fiorilli is keen to have the krater returned to Italy. He specifically mentioned the MIA in an interview for the British press in November 2009.

The Director of MIA, Kaywin Feldman, has taken a critical position of Italy in the recent revisiting of the MOU. Now she has the opportunity to show that she is keen to co-operate with the Italians. It is, after all, nearly five years since it was pointed out that the krater appeared in the Medici Dossier ("A Greek vase owned by the Minneapolis museum appears to match a photo of a vase that Italians say was looted": "Italy claims Minneapolis museum holds looted vase", Star Tribune, November 9, 2005), and over four years since the MIA was said to be "researching the vase" (Steve Karnowski, "To protect the treasures, museums find detective work pays", AP, June 14, 2006), and approaching three years since Feldman was appointed to the MIA.

Feldman took up the post of president of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in June 2010. The AAMD has a clear position on recently-surfaced antiquities. The AAMD

Recognizes the 1970 UNESCO Convention as providing the most pertinent threshold date for the application of more rigorous standards to the acquisition of archeological material and ancient art. Widely accepted internationally, the 1970 UNESCO Convention helps create a unified set of expectations for museums, sellers, and donors.

In addition:

AAMD deplores the illicit and unscientific excavation of archaeological materials and ancient art from archaeological sites, the destruction or defacing of ancient monuments, and the theft of works of art from individuals, museums, or other repositories.

There is a crucial section:

If a member museum, as a result of its continuing research, gains information that establishes another party’s right to ownership of a work, the museum should bring this information to the attention of the party, and if the case warrants, initiate the return of the work to that party, as has been done in the past. In the event that a third party brings to the attention of a member museum information supporting the party’s claim to a work, the museum should respond promptly and responsibly and take whatever steps are necessary to address this claim, including, if warranted, returning the work, as has been done in the past.

I presume that Feldman will release the details of the MIA's internal enquiry (presuming that a report was compiled). If it is accepted that this krater surfaced via Medici, will the MIA be handing the krater back to the Italians?


Image
From the Medici Dossier courtesy of Christos Tsirogiannis.

I drove up to Durham yesterday — 277 miles — in glorious sunshine and got myself checked into the Durham East premier inn.  The conference arrangements have been somewhat haphazard, so I called St. Johns College and enquired about early arrival today.  They told me that I could have saved myself the hotel bill!  Memo: check such things with the people providing accomodation.

This morning is an equally beautiful day.  Central Durham is very lovely in the sunshine.  I got my room, got my car parked, and then spent the morning wandering around enjoying the weather.  The light and the sun reminded me of Rome.  I went into a BHS and had a roll and a glass of coke, in a restaurant with a view over the river.  The world was full of light, and a delight to wander around in.

Formal check-in for the conference is 13:30, at which point I hope to find out who is attending etc.  I’ve just found the computer room — I have been unable to get my laptop to communicate with the wifi network, for lack of the necessary instructions — and hope to blog throughout the conference.

Mind you, with the weather as it is, who wants to be indoors?  If all the papers tomorrow look boring, I might drive up to Hadrian’s Wall!  It’s within striking range from here.

There’s at least one paper today that I definitely want to hear.  There’s also a number of “plenary addresses” — anything lasting 75 minutes is suspect to my mind — but the first one, on the connection between the Fathers and Roman Law, might well be interesting.

Since I don’t formally arrive until 13:30, I need to shoot off and get some lunch first.  Fortunately there is a Tesco Metro nearby, and an M&S.

More updates later.

Larry Hurtado has some brief reflections concerning fundamentalist perspectives–both liberal and conservative–on Scripture:

Although each regards the other as its polar opposite, I suggest that actually both extremes tacitly share the same premiss:  If the biblical writings are really historically conditioned they cannot be Word of God.

The whole post is worth a read.

Jim West has stepped into the gap and has taken it upon himself to provide what others have failed to: yet another Biblical Studies Carnival!

Last week, the UK newspapers were full of an amazing new revelation. The Romans wore socks! The newsmen arrived at this earth-shattering conclusion via a convoluted path -- they were supposed to be reporting the excavation of an exciting Roman industrial complex -- and chose to spin their revelation as a new take on the tired stereotype of the "socks and sandals" fashion crime.There are a number

I've written a couple of blog posts about Peter Watson's The Medici Conspiracy, and I'll be posting more soonish. It's a fascinating book, and since I know some of the people in it, and interned in the Antiquities department at Sotheby's in the summer of 1994, I can say that although I might quibble over minor points here and there ... it's pretty much on the money.

One of the minor characters in the book is a looter-smuggler named Nicolas Koutoulakis - he's important enough to have featured in the 'flow chart' of looting used by the tombolari supervisors (and if I'm making this sound like a corporation, that's because it was a highly organized business).

That's why I find it shocking that the Met still has an object labelled as given "in memory of Nicolas and Mireille Koutoulakis" - it's the Minoan Larnax pictured here (Met details here).

I discovered this thanks to a post on David Gill's blog Looting Matters: A Minoan larnax in New York 
I don't always agree with Gill on everything, but he's doing an amazing job following up the leads from the events covered in The Medici Conspiracy. The book I read ended in 2006 (I assumed that the paperback was updated), but Gill's blog is almost a sort of sequel or update to the book.

L’Afrique du Nord et l’Égypte antiques dessinent des aires culturelles très différentes, dont l’histoire commune est faite de contacts. Ils connaissent déjà une longue histoire lorsque cet espace, étendu de l’Océan Atlantique à la Mer Rouge, est unifié pour la première fois par l’État romain, qui réduit le royaume de Cléopâtre en province romaine. Il contrôle désormais l’ensemble de la rive méridionale de la Méditerranée. Cette unification politique et administrative de l’Afrique à l’Égypte crée des conditions nouvelles d’échanges. Ces échanges sont le fait de la circulation d’hommes, de marchandises mais également d’idées. Ils participent à la constitution d’une certaine culture commune entre l’Afrique et l’Égypte, dont les traits sont perceptibles depuis une époque bien antérieure à la prise de contrôle par Rome, et dont les formes et les expressions évoluent au cours de la période romaine. Ce colloque international permettra de faire un état de la question sur les échanges entre l’Afrique et l’Égypte, mais aussi sur l’importance des influences mutuelles que ces deux espaces ont exercé l’un sur l’autre jusqu’à la fin de l’Antiquité et la chute de l’Empire romain.

POMPEIVIVA - Home

This great new site provides information about the many Roman archaeological sites around the Bay of Naples which were destroyed by the AD 79 erruption of Vesuvius - not just Pompeii! It covers events, archaeological discoveries and, more importantly, the basics such as how to visit the various sites.

Manolis is asking a very demanding question today. Are you ready to sharpen your knowledge?

Nowadays philologists and historians are too many in Greece and many of them are unemployed. Perhaps they should pursue a different type of career, as this ancient philologist did. He became the tyrant of an island! Who was he?

Sources: Blog di Archeologia Medievale. 

Early Medieval Settlements in Northwest Europe, AD 400-1100

International Conference 

UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin 

26-28 November 2010 

A conference exploring how peoples of early medieval Europe, AD 400-1100, organized their dwellings, settlements and landscapes, so as to constitute and represent their social identities of household, community, religion, ethnicity, status, kinship and gender. A range of international speakers will investigate the subject at scales of household, dwellings, localities and regions. Archaeologists from across Britain and Ireland and northwest Europe will present papers describing recent exciting archaeological discoveries and the stories that they enable us to tell about how people lived together in the past. 

International speakers will provisionally include Helena Hamerow (University of Oxford); Chris Loveluck (University of Nottingham); Martin Carver (University of York); Chris Lowe (Headland Archaeology); Simon Gilmour (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland); Sally Foster (editor Medieval Archaeology); Anne Crone (AOC Scotland); David Griffiths (University of Oxford); Aidan O'Sullivan (UCD); Finbar McCormick (QUB); Thomas Kerr (QUB); Linzi Simpson (MGL); Stephen Harrison (UCD); Fintan Walsh (IAC); Matt Seaver, Jonathan Kinsella, Lorcan Harney (EMAP), amongst several others to be confirmed. 

Organised by INSTAR Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), UCD School of Archaeology, in association with Heritage Council Irish National Strategic Archaeological Research (INSTAR) programme; Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd; Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd (IAC); UCD John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies and National Monuments Section, OPW. 

For further details, please contact Dr Aidan O'Sullivan (EMAP) at aidan.osullivan@ucd.ie 

Not many people can say they work for one of the best workplaces in their state, but the 200 or so Logos Bible Software employees can say that very thing.

After an extensive and rigorous process, which included the completion of surveys by nominee-company employees across the state, Logos has been recognized as a finalist for Puget Sound Business Journal's Washington's Best Workplaces. To celebrate this accomplishment, companies that were identified as Washington's best, based on various employee benefit offerings, leadership culture, and work/life balance philosophies were invited to a special awards event at Safeco Field, home of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners.

When asked about this recognition, here is what Bob Pritchett, President/CEO of Logos, had to say:

"I consider it a blessing to get to work with so many wonderful people at Logos Bible Software, and am glad to see our team recognized. Hopefully this will lead even more great people to join us!"

Bob generously offered to cover the costs for all employees and their spouses who wanted to attend. Once a final head-count was set, he announced that two limousines were set to take us down to Seattle for the event. [Thanks Bob!]

Once we entered the ballpark, we were greeted by Puget Sound Business Journal's staff and ushered toward tables and tables of food, drinks, and concession snacks. After all, we were at a baseball park! You can be sure we had our share of peanuts and crackerjacks, hotdogs, soda, popcorn, and so much more.

Awards were presented to finalists in the small, medium, large, extra large, and non-profit categories, with special recognition— including a custom Mariners jersey—going to the #1 company in each of the five categories. Although Logos was not selected as the top workplace in our category (large), it was a huge honor to be recognized amongst so many great companies who are doing great things for their employees.

Making the evening even better was the opportunity before and after the awards presentation for attendees to go onto the field to throw baseballs while being clocked for speed and to "walk the bases." But when presented with the opportunity to go onto a Major League baseball diamond, would you just walk, or would you run? Run!

Here is a short video of Adam Navarrete, from our marketing department doing just that.

Now doesn't that look fun? Why not check out our jobs page for current opportunities? Maybe next year that could be you!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

CC Flickr User alainlm.

Need a clue? Review events of this week in ancient Roman history [This Day in Ancient History].

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A splendid treat this morning. The German television station NDR had a documentary last night on the third century battle site at Kalefeld. It has a marvellous site. This includes a detailed picture gallery, a making of documentary and, best of all, the entire 45 minute documentary itself. Much recommended.

I was recently alerted (thanks, Jennifer!) that the Fantasy (er…History) Channel is airing a new series (begins 9/8) called “Chasing Mummies.” Naturally, it features everyone’s favorite camera-shy Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass. The most interesting episode may be the second in the series, entitled “Bats.”  Here’s the promo:

It’s time for Leslie, the Executive Producer, to do Zahi a favor, and it requires going where few cameras have been before — to the mysterious caves below the Giza Plateau. Zahi is determined to disprove the theories of the so-called “pyramidiots,” who believe that there are secret underground chambers leading to the Sphinx. Little did anyone know that these caves were home to thousands of bats! If that wasn’t enough for Zahi, he’s also agreed to make an appearance at a local wedding celebration and as viewers have learned, Zahi’s likes to celebrate the dead…not the living!

Hmmm. Zahi going underground into the cave system under the Giza Plateau — you know, into the caves that he initially said didn’t exist (after news of their discovery broke; Zahi: “We know everything about the plateau – amateurs cannot find anything new”). Zahi later said these caves (that I guess came into existence after his opinion) didn’t need discovering (I presume because he didn’t discover them). Ya gotta love him.

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Technorati Tags: Andrew Collins, caves, giza, Pyramids, Sphinx, Zahi Hawass

Today's New York Times included a letter to the editor entitled "More people need to learn about the dangers of 'fracking'". I wonder if I'm the only fan of Battlestar Galactica who read this and thought it was about a rather different topic (even if not spelled in the generally accepted fashion).

Also, for the benefit of refugees from the colonies who may be thinking of heading there, the New York state senate has passed a fracking moratorium. Just thought you should know.

Obviously any similarities to interplanetary vulgarity in this post are entirely coincidental.

There are a lot of apps for iPads that are useful for educational purposes, some of which I've already mentioned before. Dropbox lets you get your documents from other computers to your iPad in a very convenient fashion and maintaining the same system of organization that you have elsewhere. It also lets you share documents with others (e.g. what we may soon stop calling "handouts" as a result of this technology).

It is certainly true that the iPad is not strictly speaking an eBook Reader of the sort that uses e-ink. But thus far my impression is that the latter are completely useless for educational purposes.

One app in particular makes the iPad useful for students and educators: iAnnotate. It allows you to not merely read but scribble on it - or rather, to underline, highlight, and make marginal notes. Although it certainly is slightly less easy to highlight a specific section accurately than it is with a pen, you can easily erase your annotations and markings (something that cannot be done with paper). And so there are advantages, while disadvantages are minor. And being able to write notes and comments, highlight, and underline is crucial for those using iPads for educational purposes.

I'm also looking forward to trying out Inkling. At present it doesn't integrate with Dropbox. Instead it is focused on delivering textbooks to the iPad and allowing for not only annotation but interaction. Coursesmart also delivers textbooks textbooks to the iPad, and allows for notes to be added, although in the present version once you open a note, it is impossible to close it if you change your mind. A new page also regularly takes unacceptably long to load. So there is definitely room for improvement - but also progress being made.

Other apps aimed at students include iStudiez, which is like the built-in calendar but with additional features specifically aimed at students (lists of instructors, syllabi, due dates and grades). And CourseNotes is useful for taking notes if you think you might want to go on to share them on Facebook!

Given the apps that already exist for the iPad and what they can do, I can't see the other eBook Readers ever making it into the educational market. Those devices don't allow easy flipping or annotation, and don't let you take notes as well. And so when it comes to the question of new devices for educational use, the iPad wins no question.

[NOTE: This post can also be found on the Butler University iPad blog].

Here is a quote from John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848):

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human development, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been one of the primary sources of progress.

Now, let's re-do the quote, substituting "archaeology" for "humans":

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of archaeological development, of placing archaeologists in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been one of the primary sources of progress.

I am often bored with the standard archaeology journals. Same old stuff, by the same old writers. I often find myself excited by new issues of journals in other fields, such as Urban Design International or Journal of World History, or perhaps Comparative Studies in Society and History, or Society and Natural Resources. I'm not trying to make the old point that theory and concepts in archaeology are borrowed from other fields. Some ideas are borrowed, but in my view, most of our theory and concepts are home grown.

Rather, my point is that interaction with diverse scholars in diverse fields generates scholarly and scientific progress. Insights from other fields help archaeologists develop creative and useful approaches to our subject matter, and insights from archaeology can help other scholars improve their own disciplines (although this latter point may require some extra persuasion, since it may be hard to convince, say, economists, that archaeologists have something interesting to say about economics).

Here are just a few recent interesting articles from the journals mentioned above. There are all sorts of interesting and relevant papers out there, one just has to take the time to find them (and read them.......).

Fargher, Lane F. and Richard E. Blanton  (2007)  Revenue, Voice, and Public Goods in three Pre-Modern States. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49:848-882.

Frank, Andre G. and William R. Thompson  (2005)  Afro-Eurasian Bronze Age Economic Expansion and Contraction Revisited. Journal of World History 16:115-172.

Hakim, Besim S.  (2007)  Generative Processes for Revitalizing Historic Towns or Heritage Districts. Urban Design International 12:87-99.

Janssen, Marco A., John M. Anderies and Elinor Ostrom  (2007)  Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems of Spatial and Temporal Variability. Society and Natural Resources 20:307-322.


PS - I got the quote from Mill, and some ideas about urbanism, from "Urban History for Planners": by Carl Abbott, Jr. Planning History 5(4), 2006, pp. 301-313.

While visiting my Aunt Kalliope in Athens, I noticed this autographed portrait of Angelos Tanagras (her dearly loved uncle) hanging in the living room. The lighting was low and I wasn't able to take a good photo. Next time, I hope to take it out of the frame and scan it. It's definitely the greatest photo of Tanagras I've ever seen. As the medals testify, he was an admiral and decorated for his

The Voyage of the Balangay, a reconstruction of a Filipino watercraft that sailed the Philippine waters last year is now in its second leg of its journey – a trip through the waters of Southeast Asia. The Balangay recently called at Kota Kinabalu and is on its way to Kuching before continuing on to Singapore and Vietnam.

Retracing the sailing bravado of Filipino ancestors
Daily Express, 22 August 2010

They were the first Filipino group to climb Mt Everest from its north face and reach the top not just once but three times! Now they have decided to test their mettle on something equally extraordinary.
“Going to the sea in an ancient migratory barangay sail boat is more than coming down to earth,” joked Art Valdez, 61, leader of “Voyage of The Barangay” which sailed into the beach off Kinabalu Yacht Club, Saturday.

Before breaking into international waters into Sabah on its way down to Singapore, then upwards to Vietnam and Shanghai, Valdez and his flotilla of three barangays had spent a year sailing around the Philippines, making 80 stops in all.

The international leg first took them to Sandakan, then up to Kudat, around the tip of Borneo to Kota Kinabalu. Everywhere they went, they were greeted with rousing welcome.

“We are out to show the young the sea is part of the natural environment and part of the natural highway for the peoples of the Philippines and Southeast Asia,” said Valdez, a friend of Tengku Datuk Dr Adlin, Chairman of Sabah Tourism Board.

Jack Sasson draws my attention to the website of Factum Arte, an organization working with museums and other institutions on the production of 3D facsimiles of artifacts, structures, etc. that can be used for conservation and documentation purposes. They also prepare facsimiles for exhibitions. Especially interesting are their archaeological projects:

A facsimile of Princess Wallada’s Box Madrid 2010 Commission by The Conjunto Arqueológico Madinat al-Zahra	Work in the tomb of Tutankhamun Madrid 2009 Recorded in Luxor, Valley of the Kings pdf report available	Facsimile of a section of Burial chamber from the tomb of Seti I Madrid 2003 Recorded in Luxor, Valley of the Kings pdf report available 2nd pdf report available	Facsimile of Thutmose III´s tomb Madrid 2004 National Gallery of Art in Washington and other venues in USA & Europe
Facsimile of the Asurnasirpal II´s Throne Room. Madrid 2006 The British Museum, Pergamon Museum, Princeton Art Museum, Harvard Scakler Art Museum and Dresden Museum	Facsimile of the Dama de Elche Madrid 2004 Commission by Museo Arqueologico Nacional and MARQ pdf report available

One of the Neo-Assyrian winged lions from Nimrud at the British Museum assembled prior to moulding. The winged human headed lion is over 3 meters tall. It has been assembled with the carved carpet piece, also from the British museum.

Check it out. It may prove to be salivation to those in need.

Via Boing Boing

POMPEIVIVA website now complete.

The site is in Italian, English and Spanish, and includes information about how to get to Pompeii, Herculaneum, Boscoreale, Stabiae and Oplontis, how to buy tickets, suggested tourist itineraries, opening hours, events and exhibitions and even rules for visiting.

An excellent interactive site.

In 2002 the Michael J. Carlos Museum acquired a Minoan larnax. Its full collecting history has not been disclosed. Then in 2006 or 2007 Houston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFAH) received a larnax as a gift from Shelby White. Its full collecting history has yet to be revealed.

However these two larnakes were preceded by the anonymous gift of a LMIIIB example "in memory of Nicolas and Mireille Koutoulakis" to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1996.521a,b). Koutoulakis, it will be remembered, appeared in the infamous "organigram" that featured in the "Medici Conspiracy".

So what is the full collecting history of the New York larnax? Who was the anonymous donor? When was the larnax removed from its (supposed) funerary context on Crete?

A further larnax to note here is the ex-Borowski example in Bible Lands Museums in Jerusalem (inv. 4738; Glories of Ancient Greece no. 20) [noted]. It is close (as the catalogue makes clear) to an east Cretan example in the Ayios Nikolaos Museum (inv. 282; Im Labyrinth des Minos no. 260). What is the full collecting of the Borowski larnax?


Further reading
Bernheimer, G. M. 2001. Glories of ancient Greece: vases and jewelry from the Borowski collection. Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum.
Watrous, L. V. 1991. "The Origin and Iconography of the Late Minoan Painted Larnax." Hesperia 60: 285-307. [JSTOR]

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Papyrology

The 25th International Congress of Papyrology took place at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from July 29 to August 4, 2007. This was the second time that the Congress convened in Ann Arbor (following the 12th Congress in 1968) and the third in North America (the 16th Congress in 1980 met in New York).


Of the approximately 150 papers delivered during the Congress, 80 fully-referreed articles are included in this publication.


This is the first time the Proceedings of the International Congress of Papyrology has been published primarily as an online edition. Individual articles are freely available to search, browse, and download. Additionally, the complete proceedings are available to purchase as a hardcover print on demand volume.


Editor: Traianos Gagos


Assistant Editor: Adam Hyatt
Additional Editors: Arthur Verhoogt, Terry Wilfong

• Purchase a Print Copy
• Download Entire Volume (.pdf 42 MB)

Table of Contents

Front Matter

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Dedication

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Table of Contents

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PrefaceTraianos Gagos, Adam Hyatt, Arthur Verhoogt, Terry Willfong

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Organization of the Congress

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List of Participants

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Congress Program

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List of Abbreviations

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Bureaucracy and Power in Diocletian's Egypt: The World of P.Panop.Beatty 1Colin E.P. Adams

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A Nun's Dispute with Her Mother in P.Lond. V 1731María Jesús Albarrán Martínez

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New Light on the katagraphé and its Pharaonic BackgroundSchafik Allam

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“Neither a Truant nor a Fugitive”: Some Remarks on the Sale of Slaves in Roman Egypt and Other ProvincesPeter Arzt-Grabner

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Vecchi e nuovi personaggi della famiglia degli Apioni nei documenti papiraceiGiuseppina Azzarello

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An Approach to the Papyrological Understanding of Paul's Labouring “Night and Day” (1Thess 2:9)Andreas Bammer

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The Syllabic Word-Lists in P.Bour. 1 ReconsideredNele Baplu, Marc Huys, Thomas Schmidt

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The Onomastic Evidence for the God HermanubisAmin Benaissa

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The Derveni Papyrus: Problems of Edition, Problems of InterpretationAlberto Bernabé

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Toponymie et cartographie du nome mendésien à l'époque romaineKatherine Blouin

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Per una ricostruzione del De vitiis di Filodemo Mario Capasso

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Soknopaiou Nesos 2004–2006Mario Capasso

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Aristoboulos and the Hieros Logos of the Egyptian JewsLivia Capponi

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Per una nuova edizione dell'Index Stoicorum di Filodemo (P.Herc. 1018)Maria Clara Cavalieri

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T.C. Skeat and the Problem of Fiber Orientation in Codicological ReconstructionS.D. Charlesworth

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The Customs Districts of Roman EgyptMichel Cottier

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Soknopaiou Nesos Project: the resume of the archaeological investigation: The settlement and its territoryPaola Davoli, Ivan Chiesi, Simone Occhi , Nicola Raimondi

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P.Herc. 1399: il primo libro del Περὶ ὁμιλίας di FilodemoGianluca Del Mastro

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Nouveaux textes coptes d'AntinoéAlain Delattre

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Du nouveau sur le P.Herc. Paris 2: la reconstruction des six dernières colonnes du rouleauDaniel Delattre

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La paraphylaké des villages dans les baux fonciers byzantins du nome HermopoliteMarie Drew-Bear

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Standard Koine Greek in Third Century BC PapyriT.V. Evans

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Greek Anthologies on Papyrus and their Readers in Early Ptolemaic EgyptMaria Rosaria Falivene

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Tholthis, sede dell'ufficio di LeodamasLorenzo Fati

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Topics and Models of School Exercises on Papyri and Ostraca from the Hellenistic Period: P.Berol. inv. 12318José-Antonio Fernández-Delgado, Francisca Pordomingo

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Ein Weg für ein besseres Verständnis von P.Mich. Inv. 6898Hans Förster

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Les tribulations d'un pétitionnaire égyptien à Constantinople. Révision de P.Cair.Masp. III 67352Jean-Luc Fournet

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Identity and Security in the Mediterranean World ca. AD 640 – ca. 1517Gladys Frantz-Murphy

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Una citazione del IV libro Sulla natura di Epicuro nel P.Herc. 807 (Filodemo, Περὶ θανάτου?)Laura Giuliano

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Information Packaging in Arabic Private and Business Letters (8th to 13th c. CE): Templates, Slots and a Cascade of Reduction and RearrangementEva Mira Grob

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Christian Jensen's and Wolfgang Schmid's Unpublished Herculanean Papers: A Preliminary Report on the Content and the Relevance of the MaterialJürgen Hammerstaedt

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An Arabic Will Written On a ShipAlia Hanafi

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Revisions for P.Mich. X 578 (Census List)Ann Ellis Hanson

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The Practice of Taxation in Three Late Ptolemaic PapyriFrancisca A.J. Hoogendijk

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Le colonne I – X 10 di P.Herc. 1008 (Filodemo, I vizi, libro X)Giovanni Indelli

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Kauf oder Darlehen? Lieferungskäufe über Wein aus dem römischen ÄgyptenEva Jakab

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Zur Flucht von LiturgenAndrea Jördens

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Identifying Hands: Same Book or Same Scribe? A Case Study of Some Plato PapyriMaria Konstantinidou

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The Meandering Identity of a Fayum Canal: The Henet of Moeris / Dioryx Kleonos / Bahr Wardan / Abdul WahbiBryan Kraemer

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Eingabe an einen Beamten (P. graec. mon. 146)Thomas Kruse

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Dorotheos Petitions for the Return of Philippa (P.Polit.Jud. 7): A Case Study in the Jews and their Law in Ptolemaic EgyptRob Kugler

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Antimisthosis in the Dioscorus ArchiveFlorence Lemaire

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ll P.Herc. 1010 (Epicuro, Sulla natura, libro II): anatomia del rotoloGiuliana Leone

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Seeing the Whole Picture: Why Reading Greek Texts from Soknopaiou Nesos is not EnoughSandra L. Lippert

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P.Mich. inv. 3443Nikos Litinas

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Su alcuni desiderata della Papirologia ErcolaneseFrancesca Longo Auricchio

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A Date for P.KRU 105?L.S.B. MacCoull

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P.Herc. 817 from Facsimiles to MSI: A Case for Practical VerificationRoger T. Macfarlane

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A Bilingual Account from the Aswan Quarries (O.Brookl.Dem. 180 / P.Brookl. 81)Rachel Mairs

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The Auditoria on Kom el-Dikka. A Glimpse of Late Antique Education in AlexandriaGrzegorz Majcherek

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Texts in Context: A Methodological Case Study in the Topography of TaleiMyrto Malouta

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Le Signalement des Auteurs et Oeuvres Dans les Papyrus Littéraires Grecs de MédecineMarie-Hélène Marganne

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75 ans de Bibliographie Papyrologique (1932–2007)Alain Martin

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Very Small ScriptsKathleen McNamee

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Seasons of Death for Donors and TestatorsMichael Meerson

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Crittografia greca in Egitto: un nuovo testoGiovanna Menci

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Count Ammonios and Paying Taxes in the Name of Somebody ElseMiroslava Mirković

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Writing and Writers in Antiquity: Two “Spectra” in Greek HandwritingAlan Mugridge

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A Late Ptolemaic Grapheion Archive in BerkeleyBrian Muhs

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The Palau Ribes Papyrological Collection Rediscovered (P.PalauRib.Lit. 9 Re-Edited)Alberto Nodar

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Per una nuova edizione dei papiri di TucidideNatascia Pellé

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A Patron and a Companion: Two Animal Epitaphs for Zenon of Caunos (P.Cair.Zen. IV 59532 = SH 977)Timothy W. Pepper

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Buried Linguistic Treasure in the Babatha ArchiveStanley E. Porter

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Crime and Punishment in Early Islamic Egypt: The Arabic Papyrological EvidenceLucian Reinfandt

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Picknick bei Asklepios? Ein griechisches Ostrakon aus Pergamon in der Berliner PapyrussammlungFabian Reiter

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Incubation at SaqqâraGil H. Renberg

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The Nile Waters, the Sun, and Capricorn: A Greek Prose Fragment in Ann ArborTimothy Renner

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Nuove letture nel cosiddetto secondo libro della Poetica di FilodemoGioia Maria Rispoli , Gianluca Del Mastro

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Conventions Governing the Formatting of Documentary Titles and Passages in Demosthenes' SpeechesMaroula Salemenou

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Fragment of a Report of Proceedings (?)Panagiota Sarischouli

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Book-Ends and Book-Layout in Papyri with Hexametric PoetryFrancesca Schironi

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Brief an einen BischofGeorg Schmelz

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The Evolving Shape of the Papyrus Collection in GenevaPaul Schubert

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Considerazioni Sull'anatomia del P.Herc. 163 (Filodemo, La Ricchezza)Elvira Scognamiglio

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A Tale of Two Tongues? The Myth of the Sun's Eye and Its Greek TranslationMonica Signoretti

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Application of Astronomical Imaging Techniques to P.Herc. 118Russell A. Stepp , Gene Ware

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Osservazioni bibliologiche sull'Athenaion Politeia di BerlinoMarco Stroppa

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Fictitious Loans and Novatio: IG VII 3172, UPZ II 190, and CPJ 24 ReconsideredGerhard Thür

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A Ptolemaic Lease Contract: P.Monts. Roca inv. no. 381 + 569 + 578 + 649S. Torallas Tovar , K.A. Worp

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Re-Mapping Karanis: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Site AnalysisDrew Wilburn

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Subject Index

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