Maia Atlantis: Ancient World Blogs

In the field: The latest dig diary updates

2010-02-09T12:42:06Z

The beginning of this week brought clouded weather and even a little rain, but then the weather improved and we had a number of days with glorious sunshine and high temperatures. All this helped to make great progress with the fieldwork. The new mud-brick tomb is gradually emerging from the sand, and since last week we have gone down about a full metre over the whole surface of our sondage. But unfortunately, so far the few limestone elements that we can see are all unfinished, undecorated and uninscribed. This goes for the doorjambs of the east entrance into the forecourt, for the jambs of the door into the central chapel, and for a pilaster against the north wall. On top of that, most of the wall revetment seems to have been robbed away.

The new mud-brick tomb is gradually emerging This means, of course, that we are unable to give you the name of the mysterious tomb-owner. The few inscribed fragments of objects dating to the New Kingdom and found in the sand fill of the tomb are not decisive: they may have come from adjacent tombs, and some of them look Ramesside in date whereas we would be tempted to date the tomb itself to the late 18th Dynasty.

Brooklyn Museum

With some great pics.

A view south from the precinct’s north enclosure wall of the whole area where we are now working. At the left are Chapel D and the Taharqa Gate; in the center the paving of the approach to the gate; and in the upper right the two squares we have opened on the high ground west of the gate.

Before I get to the work, I want to welcome back William and Elsie Peck, who arrived this week. Bill has been with the Mut Expedition longer than anyone except me, while Elsie joined us in 1979, which was also Mary’s first year. Bill’s first job this season is to map the new paving west of the Taharqa Gate. Elsie once again has taken on keeping the digging records, beginning with what Mahmoud Abbadi is doing in the corridor south of the Taharqa Gate.

Proyecto Djehuty

Joan ha comenzado topografiando algunos sectores del exterior, especialmente en lo alto del yacimiento, donde está excavando Carlos. En uno de los extremos ha comenzado a salir a la luz un depósito de cerámica de principios de la dinastía XVIII, por lo que decidimos ampliar la cuadrícula de excavación. Un par de horas después, Joan y el mudir se han sumergido en las profundidades del pozo funerario de Djehuty para topografiar en detalle la cámara sepulcral, no sólo la estructura, sino también los detalles más sobresalientes de la decoración y de la disposición del texto, las faltas de estuco y las grietas.

Repatriation: 498 Artefacts Return To Egypt

2010-02-09T12:41:54Z

Egypt State Information Service

After a four-year journey of love and peace, the statues and archaeological pieces of the ancient Ptolemaic kings and queens returned home aboard a Liberian cargo ship.

Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said on 7/2/2010 that all 498 pieces returned to Egypt after they were showcased in the “submerged Egyptian treasures exhibition” in a Berlin museum that was inaugurated by President Hosni Mubarak and his German counterpart Horst Koehler on 13 May, 2006.

Online article: Tracking East African Cattle Herders from Prehistory to the Present

2010-02-09T12:41:32Z

Expedition Magazine

In PDF format.
Tracking East African Cattle Herders from Prehistory to the Present
By Kathleen Ryan, Photography by Jennifer Chiappardi
Expedition Volume 51, Number 3 Winter 2009

Cattle herding, as well as dairying, has long been a staple of the subsistence economy in those areas of sub-Saharan Africa suitable for the survival of cattle: the Sahel region and those parts of eastern and southern Africa at sufficient altitude to be free of the tsetse fly. In the semi-arid parts of this vast area, which are unsuitable for agriculture, herding became the primary food production system.

Cattle herding is attested in northern Africa as early as ca. 9000 BP. On present evidence, its earliest appearance in eastern Africa was between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago. The Laikipia Plateau, in north-central Kenya, has evidence of many early Pastoral Neolithic sites, and for this reason our project is concentrating on that area.
The goals of the Laikipia Regional Survey project are to identify Pastoral Neolithic sites, to investigate the inter-relationship between these early pastoralists and the indigenous Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer groups of the area, and to ascertain (via analysis of fat residues on the sherds) whether dairying was practiced. In addition, our earlier ethnoarchaeological research on the subsistence economy of the Maasai (1990–2002) will provide models of settlement and subsistence strategies against which to assess our archaeological findings in Laikipia.

In the lab: Mummy buff unwraps secrets at Hay

2010-02-09T12:40:58Z

The Brown Daily Herald (Anna Andreeva)

Anthropodermic books are not all the Hay has to offer by way of eccentric collection pieces, as independent researcher S.J. Wolfe found. Nestled among the John Hay Library’s rare book collections is an 1859 broadside printed on paper made of processed mummy wrappings.

Wolfe, a senior cataloguer and serials specialist at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass., is currently working on a comprehensive database of all the Egyptian mummies and mummy parts that remain in the U.S. The database has around 1,249 entries, Wolfe said, and represents about 550 individuals.

Each entry in the database covers 25 categories, including the sex of the mummy, when it was first imported into the U.S. and the museum in which it is currently located. While the database is not currently available online, Wolfe said she hopes to post the information on the Web.

Ten years ago, Wolfe began collecting information on Egyptian mummies imported to the U.S. after coming across references to 19th-century American paper allegedly made of mummy wrappings.

Lecture notes: Luxor Temple Mosque and Sphinx Avenue

2010-02-09T12:39:40Z

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Mummification Museum Lecture - Luxor Temple Mosque and Sphinx Avenue – Mansour Boraik

I love Mansour’s lectures; he is amusing, knowledgeable, with excellent English and crafted slideshows. He gave us a through update about the work in Luxor. The President comes on the 2nd March and Sphinx Avenue has to be open then. However excavation and restoration takes a long time so they are having to balance things. The first part of the excavation is being down by mechanical diggers under control of the army who have subcontracted the work. But he is very conscious that “if we miss anything history will not forgive us”.

Firstly he talked about the Abu Hajaj mosque at Luxor temple, it had been his dream to reveal the inscriptions and in May 2007 he visited and took many photos. However the guardians of the mosque would not allow him to change anything. Then in July 2007 there was a massive fire which destroyed the mosque and he was able to take advantage of this and offer to do a complete restoration in return for revealing the inscriptions. The only thing registered as an historical object was the military observation/beacon tower from the Fatimid period.

Egyptomania: 2,500 years of Egyptomania

2010-02-09T12:39:31Z

National Post (Geoffrey Clarfield)

During the Victorian era, Westerners were enchanted by biblical and ancient Greek tales of Egypt’s material magnificence and sophistication; and tantalized by the Pharaonic tombs of the pyramids, as well as the wall paintings of the newly excavated temples that had lain buried for centuries. At the time, a growing number of ancient objects that had survived the spade of the grave robber were slowly being uncovered by practitioners of the then-new field of archaeology.

The subsequent discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb marked the first time that the world had come face to face with the pure and undiluted material magnificence of the ruler of the most powerful kingdom of the ancient world. The event triggered a version of Egyptomania which has come to be known as Tutmania, a fascination with all things related to Egypt and which quickly permeated the world of fashion, jewellery, architecture, literature and film from the 1920s onward.

After some of the artifacts had been displayed in the Louvre in Paris, the art deco design movement became thoroughly Egyptianized, and took over high fashion in London and New York. Its influence can be clearly seen in Manhattan’s Chrysler Building. In the 1920s, you could buy Cartier clocks that imitated the gates of Luxor, drink brandy in an Egyptian-themed passenger lounge on your steamship or eat from plates with Egyptian designs. Women went to parties dressed in Egyptian-inspired dresses wearing jewels ornamented with scarabs and cobras and all the

Photo for Today by Lucia Gahlin

2010-02-09T12:39:21Z

Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh stamped on mudbrick, Amarna

Copyright Lucia Gahlin
Bloomsbury Summer School

With my thanks

Paleography chair being axed at KCL

2010-02-09T09:33:00Z

THE LAST PALAEOGRAPHY (PALEOGRAPHY) CHAIR IN THE UK is being eliminated by Kings College London, and all hell is starting to break loose. As it should.

Writing off the UK's last palaeographer

o John Crace
o The Guardian, Tuesday 9 February 2010

The decision by a London university to axe the UK's only chair in palaeography has been met by outrage from the world's most eminent classicists. John Crace on why the study of ancient writings matters – and why history will be lost without it

Dry, dusty and shortly to be dead. Palaeographers are used to making sense of fragments of ancient manuscripts, but King's College London couldn't have been plainer when it announced recently that it was to close the UK's only chair of palaeography. From September, the current holder of the chair, Professor David Ganz, will be out of a job, and the subject will no longer exist as a separate academic discipline in British universities. Its survival will now depend entirely on the whim of classicists and medievalists studying in other fields.

The decision took everyone by surprise. "It was only recently that Rick Trainor [the principal of King's] was calling the humanities department [to which palaeography is attached] the jewel in the university's crown," says Dr Mary Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge University. "There had been a complete overhaul of minority disciplines in the mid-1990s, so there was consensus that everything had been pared down to the bare minimum."

How things change. With Lord Mandelson – in his incarnation as secretary of state for business, industry and skills – now imposing a minimum 10% cut in spending throughout higher education, universities are looking to slash and burn departments. And esoteric subjects such as palaeography are easy targets; they attract comparatively few students and, most importantly, comparatively little in the way of research grants – the only way the past few governments have measured a subject's worth.

But if Trainor was hoping palaeography would do the decent thing, he badly misjudged the situation. Professor Ganz – the fourth person to have held the chair since it was endowed in 1949 – didn't roll over and die quietly. "On the assumption that this means the end of the chair of palaeography, I am having to fight for my subject," he says, "and I have been deeply moved by the level of support from friends, many of whom I have never met."

That's pretty much all Ganz is saying for now – but, having initially raised a very restrained, academic form of hell, others are now doing the talking for him. A Facebook page to save the chair has more than 4,000 members, and many of the world's most distinguished classicists have petitioned King's to reconsider its position. Even his students are stepping in to defend him. "Without a palaeography professor such as David Ganz, not only will King's be sorely deprived of a basis on which to teach almost every other university discipline," says Alexandra Maccarini, "but the study of humanities everywhere will suffer from the absence of a devoted specialist in the subject."

[...]

If you are on Facebook, please go and join the Facebook page, which is here. I have. And whether you are on Facebook or not, you can sign the petition (currently has almost 5500 signatures, including mine) here.

The article is quite sympathetic and offers a robust defense of palaeography. A couple of excerpts:

Either way, the point is much the same. It's not just that we wouldn't have a clue what the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Cyrus Cylinder (over which the British Museum and the Iranian government are currently locking horns) actually mean without palaeography; we wouldn't know how to evaluate their historical importance. Multiply this by every fragment and every hand-written folio, and the history of the world begins to be up for grabs.
[...]

Giving up on palaeography is like giving up on art, history and culture. It's like deciding we know all we want to know about the past, so we're not going to bother to find out any more: "It's not as if we can come back to it in 15 years' time if we then decide there's enough money," says Beard. "Palaeography can't be taught in an online tutorial; it's a skill handed down from one academic to another. If King's does go through with its decision, it's the end of the subject in this country."

One criticism of the piece though; it shouldn't assume that subjects like paleography can't bring in research grant money. The research councils and other funding sources recognize the value of such things and are quite willing to fund projects on them if they are well thought out. My own (comparably arcane) research on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha depends heavily on palaeographic work (my own and that of many others) and I have raised more than £100,000 in research grants for it in the last five years.

I hope the Principal of KCL reconsiders this action and does the right thing.

Abu’l Barakat’s Catalogue of Christian Literature in Arabic now online

2010-02-09T09:06:12Z

Adam McCollum has kindly translated for me Riedel’s text of the catalogue of Arabic Christian literature by Abu’l Barakat. It’s here: Abu l-Barakat’s Catalog (trans)

I’m placing this file and its contents in the public domain. Please do whatever you like with it, for personal, professional, educational or commercial purposes. It’s free to use for any purpose. Adam also invites comments.

I intend to get an HTML version together as well, but this will take a day or so for me to do. Then I hope to make people in various email lists aware that it exists, and particularly classicists and patristics people, who might be interested to see what has made its way into Arabic.

Relations Annulled

2010-02-09T08:25:59Z

The officials in Iran have been putting on a hissy fit for a couple of months sending threats in the direction of the British museum over delays in sending the Cyrus cylinder to Tehran for a loan as was agreed by the two sides.

Delays in sending the cylinder have been caused by last years elections and the protests in Iran from those who thought that Iran's elections were fixed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cronies which have resulted in mass arrests and deaths including the recent execution of two of those protesters.

The second delay in sending the cylinder is the claim by experts at the British museum of having found clay tablets within its collection which bare similarities in inscription to the Cyrus cylinder.

Hassan Mohseni of cultural heritage and tourism described Tehran's relationship with the British museum as annulled,

I imagine to the relief of the British museum.

Mediterranean Identities Conference: Bursaries

2010-02-09T08:04:26Z

I guess this is my gift to PhD students.

We have applied to the Classical Association and we were awarded six bursaries (50 pounds each) for six students who wish to attend the Mediterranean Identities Conference at the end of March. If you wish to win one of them, then send a cover letter to Mark Bradley in the University of Nottingham at Mark.Bradley@Nottingham.ac.uk In the letter just tell us why you need the bursary and why are you interested in the conference.

Ancient Egypt News for Tuesday 09-02-10

2010-02-09T06:55:59Z

Statue of Cleopatra VII

Artefact of the Day: Mummy of Hornedjitef in the British Museum . Listen to the 15 minute podcast: http://bit.ly/d0hh5R #
Love triangle set in ancient Egypt: Elton John & Tim Rice’s AIDA, Pasadena, Texas, Feb 19th – March 14th: http://bit.ly/af7Hay #
Arts of Ancient Egypt, an introduction to the art and culture of ancient Egypt, at the Met, January 31, 2010
11:30 a.m: http://bit.ly/c7NKj9 #
SSEA Lecture: The Royal Titulary of the 18th Dynasty: Change and Continuity, Feb 12, University of Toronto: http://bit.ly/8IVAnn #
Journal: Egyptology and Forgery in the 17th Century: The Case of the Bodleian Shabti: http://bit.ly/a43w2Z #
A tale of the adventures of an exact replica of Zahi Hawass' famous excavation hat: http://bit.ly/dp88Ir #
Egypt Tourism Fell in 2009, Set to Recover This Year: http://bit.ly/9lik3m #
Cleopatra – the Search for the Last Queen of Egypt opens June 5, 2010 at the Franklin Institute. Tickets on sale now: http://bit.ly/dmhlIt #
2,500 years of Egyptomania & the Tutankhamen exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario: http://bit.ly/bgV9vo #
Expedition: In search of Saharan engravings and rock art in the Gilf Kebir area of Egypt, late 2010 or early 2011: http://bit.ly/d3F3w4 #
Egypt restores rare antiquity stolen from Saqqara – a stone inscribed with text that represents tomb's owner's name: http://bit.ly/aaUEky #
Sandro Vannini's Photography – Archaeologists in the Theban Tomb of Montuemhat (TT34): http://bit.ly/dej8Pe #

Photo Statue of Cleopatra VII by Tiffany Silva. Some rights reserved.

Where I have been, where I am going

2010-02-09T05:38:59Z

I haven’t blogged much lately—at least, not on Higgaion. This simply reflects the number of hours in a day, and how I’ve chosen to spend my discretionary time. All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy, and a grumpy one. I’m increasingly trying to separate my work life and home/personal life, getting my pedagogical and scholarly work done on campus 7:30–4:30, and then leaving it behind when I go home.

The thing is, if I get my pedagogical and scholarly work done 7:30–4:30 daily, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for blogging. Occasionally I will take time to post something when I feel I have something important or useful to say. However, I hereby officially, explicitly, and ceremoniously declare myself free of any felt obligation to post stuff. I am not “retiring” from blogging or any such nonsense, just taking a different approach to budgeting my time.

I appreciate all of you who post regularly on your own blogs; thanks to the iPhone, you provide some of my favorite bathroom reading (was that too much information?), even if I don’t comment frequently. I appreciate all of you who have contributed regularly to the comments on Higgaion over the last few years, and I hope you’ll keep Higgaion on your RSS feed, even my posting slows to a crawl.

By the way, I just started reading Ellen van Wolde’s Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context (Eisenbrauns, 2010). This book includes a fully-detailed English-language version of van Wolde’s arguments regarding the sense of ברא in Genesis 1, and I’m eager to read that. So far, I have finished only the introduction (chapter 1), but I can already report that Van Wolde’s argument is far more complex than it appeared when all that we Anglophone bloggers had to go on was a brief report from a Netherlands newspaper. I will share more of my reactions to van Wolde’s book as I work through it—I hope to keep up a ~~page~~ pace (thanks, G.M.!) of no less than two chapters per week, but cannot really aim higher than that at the moment.

שלום עליכם

The Grammarian’s Linguist

2010-02-09T05:16:30Z

Matthew Dryer is a fantastic scholar & linguist and his methodology and theoretical framework tends to be the most accessible for the non-linguist to understand without buying a big dictionary for definition technical gibberish.

Read about it: HERE.

The paragraph that made me laugh:

Basic linguistic theory has also been influenced to a certain extent by generative grammar, though the influence has primarily been from early generative grammar (before 1970) and is often indirect. The influence largely reflects the fact that early generative grammar examined many aspects of the syntax of English in great detail, and the insights of that research have influenced how basic linguistic theory looks at the syntax of other languages, especially in terms of how one can argue for particular analyses. The influence of generative grammar can be seen in the way that certain constructions in other languages are identified and characterized in ways reminiscent of constructions in English, from cleft constructions to “topicalizations” to reflexive constructions. More recent work in generative grammar, especially Government-Binding Theory, has had essentially no impact on basic linguistic theory (my emphasis).

In other news, I just discovered (via Matthew Dryer’s homepage) that the World Atlas of Language Structures is available for free online: http://wals.info/

I’ve held this book in my hands. It’s amazing. And having a $600 (retail) book available for free online is awesome.

Filed under: Books, Linguistics

My Q&A with Marc Wilson of the Nelson-Atkins: "Getting Back to the Core"

2010-02-09T05:12:37Z

Marc Wilson, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in his office in the museum's Steven Holl-designed additionThe Nelson-Atkins Museum's recent announcement of 75 donors' gifts of 400 artworks in honor of the Kansas City museum's 75th anniversary and its...

PaleoBabble Named to Top 50 List

2010-02-09T05:10:24Z

PaleoBabble has made this list of the top 50 biblical history blogs. Check out the list!

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Discussion of Mythicism Spreads

2010-02-09T04:44:00Z

The discussion of mythicism that has been taking place mostly here and at Vridar has now spread to at least two discussion boards: Think Atheist and the Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board.

I think I have enough to deal with in terms of the discussion here, but if any readers are members of either site, you may want to join in the discussions there.

All I'll say for now is that I encourage the atheists and freethinkers at these forums to live up to their principles and reputations. You rightly stand against pseudoscience in favor of mainstream science. Don't be easily duped into discarding mainstream scholarship in history because a few fringe folks have made a plausible sounding case that appeals to what you'd like to be true. You know better than that. Inform yourselves about rigorous mainstream scholarship in history just as you'd want creationists to do with the natural sciences. It's the right thing to do, and you know it. By all means, make up your own minds. But don't just listen to fringe views expressed on the internet and in self-published books. You know where that road leads, and have surely criticized others for following that path. I don't ask for any sort of special hearing for any particular viewpoint. I just ask you to be true to your principles!

NT Pod 24: Was Mark the First Gospel?

2010-02-09T04:41:58Z

I uploaded the latest NT Pod at the weekend, the second in the current series of back-to-back episodes on the Synoptic Problem, asking Was Mark the First Gospel?. In it I cover some of the main arguments for Marcan Priority, but I decided to save the argument from editorial fatigue for another NT Pod later in the year.

I have also released two extended episodes, which use the audio from my recent classes on the topics, and I will post separately on those in due course.

A Conservative Religious Viewpoint On Abstinence

2010-02-09T03:35:53Z

HT Unorthodoxology

Water Restrictions Eased in Cyprus

2010-02-09T03:03:25Z

Following the recent rainstorms that filled the reservoirs in Cyprus to almost fifty percent capacity, the Agriculture Minister announced that water restrictions on the island have now ended. Despite the fact that the island's reservoirs are not full, the government feels that they can manage the water situation as long as:

"...that the desalination plants don't break down, that it continues to rain and that water is not wasted, either through domestic users or leakage."

This will certainly make the summer more pleasant on the island, even though the hotels have not generally been affected. It does sound though like there will be more vegetation to deal with in the fields.

RSM

Greek Aspect/Aktionsart MA Thesis

2010-02-09T01:43:55Z

No, it’s not mind, but that’s coming at some point.

Thanks to Brian LePort over at Near Emmaus, I was able to find a very recently completely MA thesis on Aktionsart differences between ἔρχομαι and εἰσέρχομαι.

“The Preverb Eis- and Koine Greek Aktionsart” by Rachel M. Shain. (Download Link)

Abstract:

This study analyzes one Koine Greek verb erchomai ‘go/come’ and one preverb eis- and how the preverb affects the verb’s lexical aspect. To determine the lexical aspect of erchomai and eis-erchomai, I annotate all instances of both verbs in the Greek New Testament and develop methodology for researching aktionsart in texts. Several tests for lexical aspect which might be applied to texts are proposed. Applying some of these tests to erchomai and eiserchomai, I determine that erchomai is an activity and eiserchomai is telic. A discussion of the Koine tense/aspect forms and their temporal and aspectual reference is included. I adopt Dowty’s 1979 aspect calculus to explain how eis- affects the lexical aspect of erchomai, using his CAUSE and BECOME operators to account for the meaning of eis-, which denotes an endpoint to motion such that the subject must be at a given location at the end of an interval over which eiserchomai is true.

Since this is a linguistics thesis, expect interlinearized examples — Sorry, Carl, that’s just how they do it. It appears that the author did a 5 year BA/MA program at Ohio State that gave her a double major BA in Classical Greek & Linguistics and an MA in Linguistics. I’m kind of jealous!

It looks like I have something to peruse for a bit.

Anyway…

Brain pointed me to:

http://www.openthesis.org/

Through which I found:

http://www.openthesis.org/documents/Preverb-Eis-Koine-Greek-Aktionsart-550337.html

The page for the thesis didn’t have a PDF download, so I googled the title and ended here:

http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=osu1238085936 (Permanent Link)

PS – Happy LXX Day! I have a post on the LXX half done. Hopefully, I’ll get it up tonight!

Filed under: Grammar, Greek, Language, Linguistics, Morphology, Semantics

Recreating Ayutthaya digitally

2010-02-09T00:42:24Z

The director-general of the Thai Fine Arts Department reports on the progress of a project to digitally recreate the buildings of Ayutthaya.

Ayutthaya Historical Park taking shape
The Nation, 05 February 2010

Vigorous efforts are now up and running to recreate the core zone of the once-splendid capital of Ayutthaya in 3D models and animation.

“We have already recreated six temples in pictures,” Fine Arts Department director-general Grienggrai Sampatchalit said yesterday.

He was speaking after attending a ceremony to worship late Thai kings at the Ayutthaya Historical Park.

The ancient complex at Ayutthaya is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

PTT Exploration and Production has provided more than Bt68 million for the project to conserve the complex in honour of His Majesty the King.

Top 50 Biblical History Blogs

2010-02-09T00:25:32Z

A Blog Of Biblical Proportions has posted a list of the Top 50 Biblical History Blogs. Exploring Our Matrix is #6 on the list - but that's just because New Testament is first and each group is listed in alphabetical order. If only I had thought to call my blog something about aardvarks... :-)

A Mild Retraction – BBC’s 100 Objects

2010-02-09T00:21:37Z

Over the weekend I was listening to more of the BBC’s History of the World in 100 Objects and I feel that I have to take back some of my enthusiasm for the series. The broad generalizations that the host makes about the artifacts and the conclusions drawn about modern and ancient humans are vapid and irresponsible in many cases.

The show is very much a propaganda piece for the British Museum–”oh, history is universal, human experience is universal”–not terribly surprising from a museum that is trying to hold onto their colonial spoils.

Besides all of that, the show can be deeply uninteresting and misses a lot of opportunities to talk about the context of the object–the materials involved, the excavation/accessioning process, etc.

I’ll listen to a few more before unsubscribing from the podcast altogether; I’m at 9 out of 100 objects, so a 10% sample may not be representative.

Anyone else have a listen and form an opinion?

Make Like Cyrus, Please

2010-02-08T23:52:40Z

This is an overdue and overlong entry, but I have been watching the British Museum-Iran controversy unfold over the past couple of days and wanted to cover it here… Nowadays, headlines about Iran tend to be about the detention or arrest of opposition leaders, students, and journalists following the contested June 2009 elections. Or the possibility [...]

Iran Cuts Ties with British Museum

2010-02-08T23:27:46Z

The Islamic Republic of Iran has cut ties with the British Museum over the Museum's decision to delay a loan of the so-called Cyrus Cylinder. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8502654.stm

Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been particularly poor since Iran's stolen presidential election. Indeed, the Iranians have branded the UK the "Little Satan" [to distinguish it from the "Great Satan," i.e., the US] due to the UK's support for the pro-democracy demonstrators. See http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1907066,00.html

In any event, I suspect the current Iranian regime wants to display the seal at least in part because it feels it will confer some sort of legitimacy upon it, as the guardian of the great Persian civilization. If so, this a bit of an odd throwback to the time of the Shah, who also tried to identify his own government with the glories of the past.

And this desire to display an artifact associated with the glories of ancient Persia is more than a bit ironic too. After the Iranian revolution, there was serious talk of bulldozing Persepolis, and even now this world heritage site is both neglected and in danger of damage due to pollution. See http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2002/May2002/10-05.htm

Under the circumstances, I cannot fault the British for holding onto the Cyrus Cylinder. The British have every right to decide when and whether to loan the seal.

And as was noted by Chuck Jones on the SAFE Corner blog (see http://safecorner.savingantiquities.org/2010/01/another-delay-for-cyrus-cylinder.html), this is certainly not a repatriation issue as the Cylinder was found in Iraq. Hence, the arguments usually marshaled for such claims simply do not apply in this particular case.

Annual Eisenbrauns contest

2010-02-08T22:24:13Z

I haven't mentioned it here yet this year, but:

Get those styli ready! We're continuing our annual Valentine's Day contest. If you haven't started composing your sonnet yet, get going on it, this is the week:

http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/VDAY2010

The judging is extremely arbitrary, and the prizes are thus:
1st Place: $75 Eisenbrauns Gift Certificate
2nd Place: $50 Eisenbrauns Gift Certificate
3rd Place: $25 Eisenbrauns Gift Certificate
Honorable Mentions: Fame and glory.

Have fun!

Photoshop History

2010-02-08T22:11:27Z

As we begin Photoshop work in my New Media course, this MacWorld article outlining some of the application’s history is proving to be quite timely. I have a love/hate relationship with the software. I’ve been using it for nearly 20 years myself and it’s remarkably versatile and useful. But the pricing and availability of it at this point has me looking for alternatives for my classes. I suppose I love the software, but hate the Adobe business practices. In any event, it’s always provided an excellent production platform for considering the various social and ethical implications for our current use of media. One of the more recent dramas has been the result of the image below. You can read all about it in the National Post article. BTW, if you haven’t checked out Photoshop Disasters, you ought to give it a look. SOme of the commentary is pretty funny.

Winter and the life archaeological, redux

2010-02-08T21:48:11Z

Last year, I posted a wintertime picture showing a tell-tale sign that an archaeologist might be living close to you in a city that receives regular snowfall. Well, it's been snowing lightly for two days in Denver, but it's nothing compared to the recent Snowmaggedon (a worse name I could not come up with even if I tried) in the eastern US. However, I've received a 'life archaeological' dispatch from one of my partners in crime currently stranded near Pittsburgh, that comprised the following picture and caption:

"It's hard to tell, but that's a perfect 1m trench with a beautiful profile
that I dug. No lithics though. Just snow."

It's reassuring to know it's not just me, sometimes!

Creationism, Sopranos-style

2010-02-08T21:47:10Z

I love The Sopranos. Not only did the show feature great acting and compelling storylines, it also is riddled with seemingly pointless lines that actually capture the essence of some current societal tensions. To wit, this exchange between Tony and Christopher that neatly encapsulates the creationist world view (from the episode "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh").

Tony: "Get this... It says here that if the history of the planet was represented by the Empire State Building, the time that human beings have been on earth would only be a postage stamp at the very top. You realize how insignificant that makes us?"

Chris (pauses for a sec and then): "I don't feel that way."

There you have it!

The Universal Museum: time for a rethink?

2010-02-08T21:42:15Z

I have been re-reading the essay, "The Universal Museum: a special case?" (ICOM News 1, 2004), by Geoffrey Lewis, the chair of the ICOM Ethics Committee.

The real purpose of the Declaration was, however, to establish a higher degree of immunity from claims for the repatriation of objects from the collections of these museums.

His comment was on the "Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums" (December 2002). The declaration included this statement:

Calls to repatriate objects that have belonged to museum collections for many years have become an important issue for museums. Although each case has to be judged individually, we should acknowledge that museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation. Museums are agents in the development of culture, whose mission is to foster knowledge by a continuous process of reinterpretation. Each object contributes to that process. To narrow the focus of museums whose collections are diverse and multifaceted would therefore be a disservice to all visitors.

It was signed by:

The Art Institute of Chicago;
Bavarian State Museum, Munich (Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek);
State Museums, Berlin;
Cleveland Museum of Art;
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles;
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Louvre Museum, Paris;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
The Museum of Modern Art, New York;
Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence;
Philadelphia Museum of Art;
Prado Museum, Madrid;
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam;
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg;
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid;
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
The British Museum, London

It is perhaps telling that since the declaration five of these universal museums have handed antiquities over to other coutnries. These include:

The Cleveland Museum of Art to Italy
The J. Paul Getty Museum to Greece and Italy
The Louvre to Egypt
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York to Italy
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to Italy

These were all objects acquired since 1970. Such repatriations perhaps demonstrate the flawed thinking behind the "Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums".

Has the time come for these major museums to review their policies? Is the declaration now worthless?

Heavy Blinkers

2010-02-08T21:40:46Z

Lately I've been listening to Canadian 90s/00s orchestral popsters the Heavy Blinkers. Here's a fine song off of their '02 album Better Weather, "I Used to Be a Design". I actually prefer this live version since its production is scaled down and Ruth Minnikin's vocals are heavily processed on the album version. The band performing here has since disintegrated, with the female lead singer going on to head Ruth Minnikin and Her Bandwagon, a folky outfit that will have a new album out any day now.

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Fieldwork in Focus: Tel Bet Yerah, Israel

2010-02-08T21:23:12Z

This week's archaeology Fieldwork in Focus comes from Eileen G. Ernenwein at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas, who is heading up joint investigations at Tel Bet Yerah, Israel through the Cotsen Institute.

Dramatically situated on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel, Tel Bet Yerah is the site of a large fortified Early Bronze Age town. Photo by Google Earth

The Cotsen Insitute of Archaeology at UCLA is now accepting applications for a new field school in archaeological geophysics, to be held this summer at Tel Bet Yerah, Israel. The program will take place over the course of five weeks beginning June 26, 2010. Students will learn the fundamentals of archaeo-geophysical methods, which allow us to "see" archaeological features buried beneath the ground surface. Hands-on instruction in survey planning, data collection, processing, and interpretation will be given in the context of the ongoing Tel Bet Yerah Research and Excavation Project.

A student collects Ground-penetrating Radar data with the GSSI SIR-3000 system
Photo Credit: © Jason Herrmann

Dramatically situated on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel, Tel Bet Yerah is the site of a large fortified Early Bronze Age town. In 2010 we will explore a large expanse of the site where virtually nothing is known about the subsurface, and image areas where monumental structures and waterworks may be located. This field school will be held in conjunction with the traditional Archaeological Field School at Tel Bet Yerah, who will benefit from the discoveries made with geophysics, and also help guide the excavations.

Magnetometry data is collected with a Bartington Grad601 Fluxgate gradiometer system at the UNESCO world heritage site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia
Photo © Eileen Ernenwein

The Tel Bet Yerah archaeo-geophysical project will be held between June 26 and July 29, 2010; the costs include housing at Ohalo Manor hostel, meals during the work week (Sunday-Thursday), and transportation from the Ben Gurion airport on the initial day of the fieldwork. College credit is available through the UCLA Field School Program.

Fieldwork in Focus: Tel Bet Yerah, Israel originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 21:23:12.

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Bloody Interesting

2010-02-08T21:21:53Z

I’m putting the finishing touches on the methodological note / discussion starter I’ll be presenting at the upcoming Neo-Assyrian Insights on Ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible section of Western Regional Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Tempe. It’s a lot harder to give a 10 minute talk than a 20 minute talk. My remarks will be based, in part, on a wild, crazy, idea I had a few months ago. At that time, I speculated that Akkadian medical-divination rituals like the one recorded in BAM 323:1-38 might inform our understanding of Leviticus 17:13, the requirement to drain and cover with dust the blood of hunted animals. BAM 323:2-3 reads in translation,

Dust of an abandoned city (epir âli nadî), dust of an abandoned house, dust of an abandoned temple, dust of an abandoned tomb, dust of foundations(?), dust of an abandoned canal, dust of a road; you gather (them) together; mix (them) with bull's blood (dām alpi) (and) make a figure of the evil thing.

In the ritual, after making the figure, the practitioner first transfers a ghost from the patient to the figure and then gives the figure, along with the ghost, a decent burial or at least an out of the way one.

The methodological issue involves how to evaluate or even define markers that would support a suggested relationship between the Biblical law and the tradition of divination (if not between the two texts themselves). The fact is, I’m not sure that one can. And I will tell my audience in Tempe that even if this relationship has an intuitive appeal, this, and many other seeming parallels, is methodologically unsupportable. I will say this despite also showing that many such parallels very likely exist.

Part of my final preparation includes looking at commentaries on Leviticus. For unimportant reasons, I have an abnormally large collection of mostly older Leviticus commentaries in my personal library. One I don’t have is Jacob Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary. Figuring that I might well embarrass myself if I didn’t review Milgrom’s work, I spend this morning looking at it and a few other commentaries and papers at a library that has even more Leviticus commentaries than I do. And am I ever glad that I did.

Milgrom lists seven possible motivations for Leviticus 17:13. His seventh is, “So that the blood will not be used in chthonic rites - that is, for divination.” And this is his preferred motivation.

Whereas earlier I opted for explanation no. 5 [so the blood does not cry out for vengeance - des], I now prefer no. 7. It complements the band on animal slaughter outside the sanctuary, which, in my view, is also directed against chthonic worship. I also like no. 4, blood as life, the very one offered by the text. These two (nos. 4 and 7) are not mutually exclusive: the ban on using blood in chthonic worship (no. 7) implies that, instead, the blood should be returned to God. [1483, references omits]

Hmmm. While I like Milgrom’s thought process, I’m not changing my conclusion. But I am sure glad that I read what he had to say.

Reference:

Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 17-22: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible, Doubleday: New York, 1991

Epigraphy Workshop: MAMA XI Report

2010-02-08T19:58:12Z

On February 1, Dr. Peter Thonemann (WadhamCollege) shared some work in progress inscriptions from MAMA XI with the Oxford Epigraphy Workshop. The first two texts discussed were fragmentary senatorial career inscriptions in Greek from Akmoneia. Only the first two to three lines of the first inscription are preserved, but they indicate that the unknown senator served as a sevir equitum Romanorum and tribunus laticlavius. The second monument, also somewhat fragmentary, was erected in honour of T. Fl. Montanus Maximianus, who Dr. Thonemann identified with Fl. Montanus Maximianus, proconsul of Asia in the reign of Philip. The text reveals that Maximianus served a double quaestorship, in Rome and in Africa, before becoming aedile, praetor and governor of the province of Thrace.

Inscription three was an honorific inscription from Apollonia, dated to the late Hellenistic period. The monument was erected for an unknown benefactor, who was one of a small number of civic benefactors to have received cult honours (the last example dates from the reign of Augustus). The fourth text, from the second or third century A.D., concerned the provision of venationes at Apollonia. This intriguing inscription revealed that special imperial permission had been granted to use sharp weapons, and contained a reference to a goad/pike (designed to prevent the animals being killed immediately).

The fifth and final inscription, from Sebaste, was much later than the other texts, being precisely dated to A.D. 390 by means of a pair of consuls. The Latin text is a revision of AE 1984, 849, which was originally read as a monument erected by [Flavi]us Buran[us] for his wife. In Dr. Thonemann’s new reading, the inscription was erected by Fl(avius) Buraido, a protector in the schola peditum (escole ped[itum] in the text).

CSAD Awarded New Grant for Document Imaging

2010-02-08T19:56:49Z

A joint team from the University of Southampton and the University of Oxford has won a 12-month grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to develop “Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) Systems for Ancient Documentary Artefacts”. The RTI technology, originally developed by Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, enables the construction of digital models of an object’s surface from high-resolution video or still images. This method will allow researchers to study documentary texts in greater detail without being at the mercy of environmental factors such as poor lighting conditions.

The project will be a collaboration between Dr. Graeme Earl and Dr. Kirk Martinez of the University of Southampton, and Professor Alan Bowman (CSAD) and Dr. Jacob Dahl (Oriental Studies) from the University of Oxford. In the course of the next year, the team aims to develop two RTI systems to capture images of documentary texts and archaeological material. The results will be made publicly available through the development of open source software to process the results of the RTI systems, allowing other researchers to take advantage of the new technology.

In the pilot phase, the RTI technology will be tested on documents such as the Vindolanda tablets, Linear B and cuneiform tablets in the Ashmolean museum, and the Staffordshire hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure unearthed in July 2009. In the future, the system will be used to capture images of Sumerian documents for the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. This process will ensure that high-quality images of these materials can be consulted by scholars worldwide.

A full report on the RTI project will be available in the next CSAD newsletter, to be published in mid-2010.

Political Bias and Naïveté in Chinese Archaeology

2010-02-08T19:37:44Z

I just read a paper about possible political and cultural biases in scholars’ interpretations of early China. It presents a shockingly naïve interpretation of the evidence.

Li Liu (2009) Academic Freedom, Political Correctness, and Early Civilization in Chinese Archaeology: The Debate on Xia-Erlitou Relations. Antiquity 83:831-843.

The issue at hand is the perhaps legendary earliest dynasty, the Xia. Did it exist, and can it be associated with the Erlitou archaeological culture? Early written accounts that mention Xia as a pre-Shang polity have been questioned by many historians as biased and inaccurate. Nevertheless, a good number of scholars and others—mostly in China—argue that the Xia did indeed exist, and that Erlitou is its archaeological manifestation. Many western scholars evidently believe that this viewpoint derives more from political ideology or patriotism by Chinese archaeologists than from the evidence.

The article by Li Liu describes a survey of two groups of archaeologists: a “China group” consisting of archaeologist living and working in China, and an “Outside China group” of foreigners. Participants were asked questions about whether they thought that Xia was “historically factual,” and whether it was associated with Erlitou. They were also asked how they reached their opinion. Was it based on the evidence, or was it motivated by political bias (e.g., patriotism, or worry about being accused of pro-western tendencies).

More members of the China group accept the Xia-Erlitou association, but these respondents report that their views are NOT based on political considerations. This is hardly surprising. But what I find astonishing is that Li Liu takes these responses at face value and concludes that political factors do not account for the differences between the China group and the Outside China group. The differences, we are told, cannot be explained by political ideology, political correctness, or patriotism. Rather, it is due to “different approaches and methods” between the two groups.

This conclusion is not warranted. No scholar is going to admit that their views are determined more by politics than by evidence. Even the most absurdly politically biased interpretations are not seen as such by their holders. Scholars will almost always insist that their opinions are empirically based. Issues of bias cannot be investigated by asking people whether they are biased. No one will admit to this; the very idea is absurd. This survey and its results are interesting, but it strains credulity to assert that bias does not play a role in thee views reported.

The measure of all things

2010-02-08T19:31:24Z

The problem with Jung's statement, and with all arguments from the triangle [of good God, all-powerful God, people suffer] that give up on divine goodness or justice, is that in doing so we pay ourselves the compliment of possessing within ourselves the high-water mark of moral consciousness. That is a claim on behalf of the finest moral consciousnesses among us, which I for one find immodest. The implication is that in this respect we are superior to God and in a position to instruct God on issues of right and wrong. But then, who among us is to be the teacher? Especially now, in our so-called postmodern world, there will be many applicants for the position, and not only their credentials but their pedagogical programs will differ from one another. And if our claim to possess a moral consciousness superior to God's in fact amounts to self-deification (as in Gen 3:5, “you will be like God (or gods), knowing good and evil”), the result will be a cacophonous polytheism.—At the Scent of Water, p. 62

Wow! Talk about hubris! We know more than God. We rarely put it that baldly, but that is exactly what we do—all the time. Whenever we whine or complain, we are basically telling God that he isn't doing it the right way, id est, my way.

Lord, forgive us and have us see things through your eyes, not ours!

Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l'empire achéménide

2010-02-08T19:05:24Z

A number of important papers related to the Persepolis Fortification Archive appear on this new volume:

Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l'empire achéménide. Actes du colloque organisé au Collège de France par la "Chaire d'histoire et civilisation du monde achéménide et de l'empire d'Alexandre" et le "Réseau international d'études et de recherches achéménides" (GDR 2538 CNRS), 9-10 novembre 2007, sous la direction de BRIANT (P.) et CHAUVEAU (M.). (20 x 28.5), 428 p., 103 ill., 2009, (1800 g) 95 Euros

Detailed Table of Contents

This and the other volumes in the series Persika are available from De Boccard.

Four Stone Hearth: Call for Submissions

2010-02-08T19:03:43Z

The 86th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at the Testimony of the Spade on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Magnus, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!

The next open hosting slot is on 10 March. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.

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mtDNA of Uzbekistan

2010-02-08T19:00:03Z

International Journal of Legal Medicine doi:10.1007/s00414-009-0406-z

The mtDNA composition of Uzbekistan: a microcosm of Central Asian patterns

Jodi A. Irwin et al.

Abstract

In order to better characterize and understand the mtDNA population genetics of Central Asia, the mtDNA control regions of over 1,500 individuals from Uzbekistan have been sequenced. Although all samples were obtained from individuals residing in Uzbekistan, individuals with direct ancestry from neighboring Central Asian countries are included. Individuals of Uzbek ancestry represent five distinct geographic regions of Uzbekistan: Fergana, Karakalpakstan, Khorezm, Qashkadarya, and Tashkent. Individuals with direct ancestry in nearby countries originate from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Our data reinforce the evidence of distinct clinal patterns that have been described among Central Asian populations with classical, mtDNA, and Y-chromosomal markers. Our data also reveal hallmarks of recent demographic events. Despite their current close geographic proximity, the populations with ancestry in neighboring countries show little sign of admixture and retain the primary mtDNA patterns of their source populations. The genetic distances and haplogroup distributions among the ethnic populations are more indicative of a broad east–west cline among their source populations than of their relatively small geographic distances from one another in Uzbekistan. Given the significant mtDNA heterogeneity detected, our results emphasize the need for heightened caution in the forensic interpretation of mtDNA data in regions as historically rich and genetically diverse as Central Asia.

Link

ARCHEOMED II Workshop internazionale di archeologia subacquea: Le nuove tecnologie – Il Mediterraneo incontra l’Oriente

2010-02-08T18:58:51Z

Evento patrocinato da

UNESCO-MIBAC-MIUR-REGIONE CAMPANIA-PROVINCIA DI NAPOLI-COMUNE DI CASTELLAMMARE DI STABIA

PREMESSA

L’archeologia subacquea rappresenta da sempre un filone di ricerca importantissimo all’interno degli studi sulle civiltà mediterranee, dato che il mare custodisce gran parte delle testimonianze della grandezza di tali civiltà. L’ubicazione e il raggiungimento delle bellezze sottomarine ha sempre rappresentato un vincolo alla fruizione da parte delle persone non avvezze alle pratiche di immersione. Per lungo tempo quindi, il godimento dei beni sommersi era appannaggio dei pochi “esperti” subacquei.

L’avvento delle nuove tecnologie ha permesso al grande pubblico di conoscere e apprezzare la vastità e l’importanza del patrimonio sommerso, grazie a nuove soluzioni volte a consentire al grande pubblico il godimento di questi tesori nascosti, dando vita a numerose iniziative culturali ed educative. In particolare, il mar Mediterraneo, con la sua elevata complessità geologica, offre certamente un’occasione di grande sviluppo economico atteso se si saprà coniugare correttamente il patrimonio archeologico con quello geo-ambientale, attraverso una completa fruizione turistica.

La prima edizione del workshop int.le Archeomed si è conclusa con la firma di un Protocollo di Intesa tra tutte le Nazioni partecipanti ( USA, Italia, Grecia, Spagna, Egitto, Malta, G. Bretagna, Australia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia) che ha contribuito, a seguito, alla ratifica del trattato internazionale sulla protezione del patrimonio storico e culturale subacqueo mondiale dell’UNESCO, da parte di alcune nazioni partecipanti.

Attraverso questo importante strumento si regola giuridicamente una materia finora confusamente trattata e si colma un vuoto normativo che ha permesso gli indiscriminati saccheggi degli ultimi anni. Pertanto l’accordo per la ricerca archeologica nel canale di Sicilia tra Italia e Tunisia è certamente più vicino e potrà offrire a questi due paesi l’opportunità di operare con rigoroso metodo scientifico in quello spazio di mare al fine di recuperare le importantissime testimonianze storiche ed archeologiche necessarie alla definizione sempre più dettagliata della storia di questa parte fondamentale del Mediterraneo e scongiurare il rischio di depredazione purtroppo già avvenute in passato.

OBIETTIVI

L’insieme delle metodologie di studio che si intendono proporre possono concorrere ad individuare un Protocollo di indagini utile all’identificazione e poi allo scavo di beni archeologici sommersi (reperti, relitti, insediamenti abitativi, ecc).

La ricerca in alto fondale apre nuovi orizzonti nella ricerca archeologica subacquea, essendo tali scoperte importantissime sia dal punto di vista strettamente archeologico (le più basse temperature delle acque permettono una migliore conservazione dei beni) e sia per quanto concerne l’aspetto storico relativa all’individuazione delle antiche vie dei commerci.

L’obiettivo finale è quello di rendere quanto più fruibile possibile il sistema archeologico nel suo complesso, anche turistico e, nel contempo, senza trascurare l’obiettivo di conservarlo quale bene da trasmettere alle future generazioni. La novità e l’importanza di nuove scoperte attraverso la ricerca in alto fondale, costituiscono il valore aggiunto, in un mondo in cui si vuole affermare la cultura della conoscenza. Pertanto è fondamentale l’acquisizione, attraverso la metodologia scientifica di un sistema di informazioni in grado di offrire al turista, sempre più colto ed esigente, un’ immersione totale nel contesto territoriale in cui si colloca il sito archeologico, facendo uso delle più moderne tecnologie.

L’iniziativa toccherà anche l’importante tema degli sforzi congiunti finalizzati al rinvenimento, alla fruizione ed al recupero dei beni sommersi, che, oltre a costituire un’attività di rilevante valore culturale e scientifico, rappresenta un prezioso momento di sviluppo turistico, nonchè di ricongiungimento e cooperazione tra i popoli del mediterraneo, che attraverso il recupero del patrimonio sommerso riscoprono le loro radici e tradizioni comuni.

La presenza di una delegazione Giapponese risulta momento di particolare interesse, non solo scientifico e culturale, ma anche quale primo passo verso una nuova cooperazione internazionale con l’Oriente nell’ambito di questa disciplina. In tali aree, infatti, si sta sviluppando una forte attenzione verso l’archeologia subacquea e a tale scopo risulta necessario il know-how dell’esperienza mediterranea maturata nel suddetto settore.

TARGET

Esperti del settore (studiosi e ricercatori)
Scuole di ogni ordine e grado
Università italiane e straniere
Appassionati del settore
Accreditati (giornalisti di settore, opinion makers)
Operatori turistici

SOGGETTO PROPONENTE

FONDAZIONE RESTORING ANCIENT STABIAE

O.N.L.U.S.

Dipartimento Mare ed Archeologia Subacquea

L’EVENTO

L’attività di ricerca che il Programma intende sviluppare è stata individuata al fine di rendere omogenee le varie tematiche scientifiche che possono essere affrontate nello studio di realtà territoriali complesse così come quelle in cui insiste l’area del Mediterraneo. Pertanto il presente programma teso a formulare, con ricerche coordinate, le linee guida di un protocollo comune per l’esecuzione degli scavi archeologici a mare, non può prescindere da una fase preliminare di analisi territoriale integrata.

Un’idea programmatica di tale rilevanza per gran parte dell’intero territorio mediterraneo necessita, dunque, di una grande attenzione da parte della comunità scientifica internazionale nonché dagli Enti preposti allo sviluppo sostenibile per aree così complesse e ricche di storia archeologica.

L’evento sarà completato da una mostra che attraverso immagini e testimonianze pregne di emozioni creerà una giusta atmosfera tale da trasportare il visitatore verso la storia dei popoli e dell’uomo.

LOCATION E DATE

Vesuvian Institute

Date: 26-27/02/2010

www.vesuvianinstitute.org

Aula magna

LE INIZIATIVE

Workshop:
ricerca, protezione e gestione del patrimonio culturale subacqueo

I&CT applicate alla ricerca archeologica subacquea
I nuovi metodi di fruizione e musealizzazione dell’archeologia subacquea quale mezzo per favorire lo sviluppo turistico

Le Mostre:
“La storia della subacquea attraverso la testimonianza delle attrezzature”
La mostra è stata gentilmente concessa da Claudio Ripa

“Il relitto sommerso della Baia di Scauri a Pantelleria”

PROGRAMMA

Venerdì 26 febbraio

LA RICERCA ARCHEOLOGICA SUBACQUEA E LE NUOVE TECNOLOGIE
Prima sessione
Moderatore: Sebastiano Tusa (Soprintendente Mare Regione Sicilia)

Ore 09:00 saluti
O. Forlenza (Assessore ai Beni Culturali – Regione Campania)
F. Spagnuolo (Consigliere Delegato Fondazione RAS)

Ore 09:30 T. Gambin (Università di Malta, Msida – Fondazione Aurora Trust)

Ore 09:50 S. Hermon (Cyprus Institute)

Ore 10:10 S. Mazzola (Dir. I.A.M.C. CNR)

Ore 10:30 P. Mauriello (Università del Molise)

Ore 10:50 V. Morra (Università Federico II, Napoli)

Ore 11:10 Coffee break

Ore 11:30 G. Conte (Università Ancona)

Ore 11:50 F. Giordano (Università Parthenope, Napoli)

Ore 12:10 V. Saggiomo (Stazione zoologica A. Dohrn)

Ore 12:30 G. Russo (Università Parthenope, Napoli)

Ore 12:50 Discussione

Ore 13:10 Conclusioni – L.Ubertini (Università Sapienza Roma – Presidente IHP UNESCO)

Ore 13:30 Pausa Colazione Lavoro

PRESENTE E FUTURO DELLA RICERCA ARCHEOLOGICA SUBACQUEA

Seconda sessione

Moderatore: Piero Pruneti (Dir. Archeologia Viva)

Ore 15:30 S. Tusa (Soprintendente Mare Regione Sicilia)

Ore 15:50 P. Caputo (Resp. Archeologia Sub. – S. S. B. A. Napoli e Pompei)

Ore 16:10 M. Marazzi (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli)

Ore 16:30 C. Mocchegiani Carpano (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli)

Ore 16:50 Coffee Break

Ore 17:10 R. Auriemma (Università del Salento)

Ore 17:30 M. Mazzoli (Pres. A.S.S.O.)

Ore 17:50 F. Enei (Dir. Museo S. Severa)

Ore 18:10 F. Giordano (Università Parthenope, Napoli) – A. Carola (Centro Studi Subacquei, Napoli)

Ore 18:30 Discussione

Ore 19:00 Proiezione documentari di Archeologia Subacquea:

- Progetto Liburna (Massimo D’Alessandro – Studio Blu Production)

- Storia dell’archeologia subacquea campana (Claudio Ripa)

Sabato 27 febbraio

Aula magna

PRESENTE E FUTURO DELLA RICERCA ARCHEOLOGICA SUBACQUEA

Terza sessione

Moderatore: Sebastiano Tusa (Soprintendente Mare Regione Sicilia)

Ore 09:00 P. Gambogi (S.S.B.A. Toscana – presente nel Prog. Venus con Vs. servizio)

Ore 09:20 A. Zarattini (S.S.B.A. Lazio – presenta 5 nuovi relitti profondi in Ventotene)

Ore 09:40 C. Mullen (Dir. Aurora Trust Foundation U.S.A.)

Ore 10:00 S. Zangara (Sopr. Mare Sicilia)

Ore 10:20 A. Laronde (Università Sorbona, Parigi – scavi sottomarini della missione francese in Libia)

Ore 10:40 H. Ozdas (Università di Izmir)

Ore 11:00 Coffee break

Ore 11:20 C. Marabea (University of Ioannina, Greece)

Ore 11:40 Y. Lolos (Hellenic Institute of Marine Archeology, Grecia)

Ore 12:00 D. Petrella (Archeologiattiva – Dir. A.N.A.)

Ore 12:20 K. Hayashida- A.R.I.U.A. (Pres. Asian Research Institute for Underwater Archaeology)

Ore 12:40 G. Cataldi (ProRettore Università “L’Orientale”, Napoli)

Ore 13:00 Discussione

Ore 13:15 Conclusioni – B.Banedetti (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)

Ore 13:30 Pausa colazione lavoro

I NUOVI METODI DI FRUIZIONE E MUSEALIZZAZIONE DELL’ARCHEOLOGIA SUBACQUEA

QUALE MEZZO PER FAVORIRE LO SVILUPPO TURISTICO

Tavola rotonda

Quarta sessione

Moderatore: Valeria Li Vigni (Dir. Museo Pal. D’Aumale – Terrasini)

Ore 15:30 Introduzione – V. Casizzone (Assessore al turismo, Provincia di Napoli)

Partecipano:

M. Gamboz (Dir. Museo del Mare “Serjei Masera” di Piran, Slovenia)

C. Chera (Dir. Museo di Costanza, Romania)

X. Nieto (Dir. Director del Centre d’Arqueologia Subaquàtica de Catalunya – Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, Catalogna, Catalogna)

H. O. Tsukahara (Dir. Ojika Board of Education – History and Folk Museum)

A. Mussari (Dir. Museo del Mare, Napoli)

P. Caputo (Resp. Archeologia Sub. – S. S. B. A. Napoli e Pompei)

W. Kovacic (Museo Parenzo, Croazia)

Ore 17:30 Coffee Break

Ore 18:00 Conclusioni L.A. Savoia (Commissione Nazionale Italiana UNESCO)

CONTATTI

DR PASQUALE GUERRIERI

TEL 081 871 71 14

FAX 081 871 52 60

CELL 3331633751

Commenta la notizia e partecipa alla discussione - (1) Messaggi

¿Quién fue el más grande?

2010-02-08T18:41:51Z

Imaginaos por un momento que quisiérais hacer un ránking de personajes históricos según su importancia. Por ejemplo, imaginaos que quisiérais determinar quién fue el mayor líder político y/ o militar de la historia... ¿Cómo lo hacemos? ¿Cómo determinar la importancia de los logros de cada cual? ¿Tenemos en cuenta los recursos con que contaba? ¿El camino que tomó para llegar a su meta? ¿Los inconvenientes con que se topó por el camino?

Yo he optado por un criterio que creo que es razonablemente bueno, y que a estas alturas ya os sonará a familiar: La edad a que cada personaje llegó a su punto de máximo éxito, esplendor o como le querais llamar. Según este criterio, cuanto más joven, mayor talla política o guerrera; por contra, y mal que nos pese a los cesarianos, cuanto mayor el personaje, menor relevancia o magnitud de los hechos que protagonizó... ¿se entiende?

Pues bien, he seleccionado una breve lista de 6 grandes líderes históricos (a la que seguro sabreis añadir nuevos) y he calculado la edad a que consiguieron llegar a la cúspide del poder (seguro que esto también es discutible)... el resultado es el siguiente... comenzamos por los más ancianos, con lo que "el más grande" aparecerá al final de la lista...

Ránking	Personaje	Fecha nacimiento	Logro	Edad
10º	Trajano	52	Tras su victoria sobre los Dacios, y su campaña contra los partos, Trajano lleva al Imperio Romano a su máxima extensión territorial en el 116	64
9º	Carlomagno	742	Expandió los distintos reinos francos hasta transformarlos en un Imperio al que incorporó gran parte de Europa Occidental y Central. Coronado Imperator Augustus en el 800 en Roma	58
8º	Isabel I de Inglaterra	1533	El mal tiempo, la ayuda holandesa y una buena dosis de habilidad política hicieron que la Armada Invencible fracasara en su intento de invasión de Inglaterra de 1588	55
7º	Julio César	100 aC	En Septiembre del 46 Ac César finalmente celebra sus 4 desfiles triunfales, por sus victorias sobre Galos, Egipcios, Asiaticos y Africanos… obviando la obtenida contra sus conciudadanos en la Guerra Civil...	54
6º	El Cid Campeador	1040	El 15 de Junio del 1094 El Cid tomó posesión de la ciudad de Valencia, siendo proclamado "príncipe Rodrigo"	54
5º	Gengis Khan	1162	En el 1215 sus tropas entran victoriosas en Pekín	53
4º	Atila	406	Tras arrasar Europa y cruzar los Alpes, Atila renuncia a atacar Roma en el 452	46
3º	Napoléon	1769	Bien asesorado, Napoleón se (auto)corona Emperador de los franceses en 1804	35
2º	Escipión el Africano	236 aC	Tras años de combatir a Aníbal, acaba con el poder militar cartaginés en la Batalla de Zama en el 202 aC, dando por concluida la II Guerra Púnica	34
1º	Alejandro Magno	356 aC	En el 331 aC vence definitivamente a los persas en la Batalla de Gaugamela	25

Pues ya veis, El Magno arrasa... discutir si Gaugamela es su momento de máximo apogeo tampoco cambiaría las cosas, ya que murió a los 33 años, lo que aún continuaría situándolo a la cabeza del ránking. Otra curiosidad es que la cincuentena parece ser la edad más frecuente de llegada al éxito político o militar, lo que implicaría normalmente entre 20 o 30 años revios de sangre, sudor y lágrimas.

PS: Obviar a Adolf Hitler me ha parecido una cuestión de decencia, aunque para vuestra tranquilidad, tampoco habría quedado en las posiciones de honor del ránking...

PS2: Si en lugar de la capacidad militar o política hubiera tenido en cuenta otro tipo de capacidades, seguramente habría ganado este otro personaje histórico

Artículos relacionados: La edad y otras curiosidades

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In Peril: Further redundancy at King’s College London

2010-02-08T18:19:29Z

Seen on Classicists (please send any responses to the folks mentioned in the quoted text, not to rogueclassicism!):

You may recall the recent email regarding the abolition of the Chair in

Palaeography at King’s College London as part of a large-
scale ‘restructuring’ of the School of Arts and Humanities. It has now
been announced that one member of staff in Classical Art and Archaeology
at King’s will be made redundant before 31st August 2010. This decision is
outrageous for many reasons, not least that the members of staff in
question have been arbitrarily singled out for their subject specialisms,
despite the nature of their research and teaching as integral to the
Classics department as a whole.

This proposal is damaging to the Classics Department at King’s and
distressing for the members of staff concerned. Furthermore, it is an
alarming indicator of a growing trend towards coercive and arbitrarily
managed approaches to supposedly ‘sub-critical’ subjects. Academics are
being dismissed not because their work lacks excellence but because of a
lack of ‘fit’ with some strategy devised by administration. This threatens
the very nature of academic freedom. It is vital that researchers and
students in these subjects present a united front to stop this trend from
gathering momentum over the next few years.

Please consider offering support to your colleagues at King’s by writing a
letter to the Principal (address below) to oppose the proposed redundancy.
This proposition is part of the same scheme that threatens Professor
Ganz’s position but is a separate and similarly urgent issue. The campaign
to stop these cuts is ongoing, so please consider writing a letter even if
you have already done so for Palaeography.

The full document outlining the ‘restructuring’ has recently been released
by King’s and can be accessed at
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/06/80/12/AHConsultationDoc.pdf (details
on the Classical Art and Archaeology cut can be found on p.5, item 5). A
petition has also been established at
http://www.petitiononline.com/kclCAA/petition.html – please do sign this
in addition to sending a letter – and a website with more information and
links has been created at http://stopclassicsfacultycuts.webs.com.

Many thanks for your continuing support.

The address to write to is: Professor Rick Trainor, The Principal, King’s
College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS (principal) and copy to
Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and
Humanities (jan.palmowski).

… addenda:

Apologies for any confusion my previous message may have caused. It has

not yet been decided which member of staff will be dismissed; this
decision will be made "on the basis of performance" (see p.5 of the
document,
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c6/06/80/12/AHConsultationDoc.pdf). Any one
of the four current members of staff may lose their job. Please write to
retain all four positions in Classical Art and Archaeology at King’s.

I also note that there is a facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=284495344842&ref=nf

Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica

2010-02-08T18:13:03Z

Manuel Ramírez reports on the publication of Cultura Escrita & Sociedad vol. 9 2009, entitled Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica.

In Peril: Closure of the Roman Museum in Canterbury

2010-02-08T18:08:40Z

Raymond Laurence sends this along:

I was wondering if you would be willing to publicize Canterbury City Council’s desire to close its Roman Museum and the protest against this action?

The museum has an interesting history, it was largely created by a Luftwaffe bomb and during the clearance of the bombsite in 1944 an in situ Roman mosaic was discovered worked on by young enthusiasts such as John Wacher, Shepherd Frere and others. I attach a letter sent by students of the University of Kent to the Council. Significantly, 19,000 children visit the museum per annum and it plays a major educational role. It would seem the Tory Council refuses to even allow stakeholders such as Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Christchurch University or the University of Kent to devise a plan of action with the Museums’ Service to keep the Roman Museum Open.

>
Email to John Gilbey leader of the council and the main spokesman for closure = john.gilbey AT canterbury.gov.uk.

Interestingly, this closure runs at loggerheads with Conservative Heritage policy.

> There are following for further info and expressions of outrage:
>
> a) An online petition has been organised http://www.petitiononline.com/Museums1/petition.html
>
> b) A website has been created with information on who to contact within Canterbury City Council – http://savecanterburysmuseums.wordpress.com/

>
> c) There is also a Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/lloyd.bosworth?v=info&ref=name#/group.php?gid=234657429317

Please do circulate this to colleagues as appropriate.

AIA Talks: "Korea & Silk Road" 2-11-2010

2010-02-08T18:03:18Z

7:30pm in Chan Auditorium

We begin our spring series of archaeology events with two fascinating lectures on East Asia. In her research Dr. Sarah Nelson of the University of Denver investigates archaeo-astronomy, origins of agriculture, bronze technology, and gender issues. She is the editor or author of numerous books including Shamanism and the Origin of States, Ancient Queens, In Pursuit of Gender, Ancestors for the Pigs, The Archaeology of Northeast China, Spirit Bird Journey, Korean Social Archaeology, and others.

A big thank you to the Humanities Center and the Global Studies program for their sponsorship of this event.

Dr. Sarah Nelson, University of Denver
Thursday, Feb. 11
12:45: Flutes, Wine, and Astronomy: Shamans in Early East Asia? (Wilson 168)
7:30: Korea and the Silk Road (Chan)

If you'd like to come to the day talk, it will also be your chance to see the new and improved home of Art and Art History in Wilson Hall. We have a wonderful exhibition up now celebrating the life and work of our colleague Mark Marchlinski who passed away last year.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me at JoyceL@uah.edu or call 824-6114.

Please click on the image of our poster, download, and print for your office, house of worship, library, or school!

Asian skeleton found in ruins suggests Roman Empire larger than thought

2010-02-08T17:57:51Z

Archeologists have discovered the 2,000-year-old skeleton of an Asian man in an ancient cemetery in Italy, suggesting that the Roman Empire's reach was far more extensive than previously thought.

Although the Romans are known to have traded for silk and exotic spices with China, it was thought that most of the commerce was conducted through intermediaries along the Silk Route and that no Chinese or other Asians entered the empire itself.

But that orthodoxy will now have to be re-examined after a team of Canadian archaeologists conducted DNA analysis on the man's bones and found that he came from East Asia.

Read the rest of this article...

Water pump uncovered in the grounds of Walton Gardens

2010-02-08T17:56:16Z

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered a water pump - possibly unique - in the grounds of Walton Gardens.

Members of Priestley Field Archaeology Group (PFAG) carried out a three-year excavation on behalf of Warrington Borough Council, which owns the land.

This was after a gardener discovered the chamber in 2000 while digging a flowerbed, which caused a large hole to appear that gave way to an underground room containing a large cast iron wheel and a cylindrical tank.

Read the rest of this article...

Flutes, Wine and Astronomy: Shamans in Early East Asia?

2010-02-08T17:16:44Z

Archaeological Institute of America Free Public Lecture Series:
http://excavate-aia.blogspot.com/2010/02/aia-talks-korea-silk-road-730pm-2-11.html

Flutes, Wine and Astronomy: Shamans in Early East Asia?
Dr. Sarah Milledge Nelson, University of Denver
12:45 p.m.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wilson Hall 168
University of Alabama in Huntsville

Sponsors:

UAHuntsville Global Studies
Archaeological Institute of America

Korea and the Silk Road

2010-02-08T17:13:11Z

Archaeological Institute of America North Alabama Society Free Public Lecture Series:
http://excavate-aia.blogspot.com/2010/02/aia-talks-korea-silk-road-730pm-2-11.html

Korea and the Silk Road
Dr. Sarah Milledge Nelson, University of Denver
7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 11, 2010
Chan Auditorium
University of Alabama In Huntsville

Sponsored by:

UAHuntsville Global Studies
Archaeological Institute of America

Race is on to save UK’s only Roman chariot racetrack

2010-02-08T16:41:13Z

KGO Radio Guest Spot on the Synoptic Problem

2010-02-08T16:15:15Z

You can listen to my guest spot on KGO Radio's God Talk with Brent Walters either via their archive, which has a streaming and an mp3 download function. My contribution starts about seven and a half minutes in and lasts off and on for the hour. The broad topic is the Synoptic Problem, though it ranges onto related topics too.

Open Access Aramaic Texts & Bibliography

2010-02-08T15:52:43Z

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon

What is CAL?
A new dictionary of the Aramaic language, to be called The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, is currently in preparation by an international team of scholars, with headquarters at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. This major scholarly reference work will cover all dialects and periods of ancient Aramaic, one of the principal languages of antiquity, with a literature of central importance for history and civilization, and especially for the Jewish and Christian religions.
Why a New Lexicon?

Many dictionaries of some part of Aramaic exist, but individually and as a whole they are inadequate in important ways. Lexical treatment of Aramaic has been fragmented. Existing dictionaries treat one dialect, or one body of literature, but not the whole language. It is as though we had a dictionary of Shakespeare, and one of Hemingway, without having a dictionary of English! An additional hurdle in the path of users is that Aramaic dictionaries are written in an imposing variety of living and dead languages: not only English but also German, French, Russian, and Latin! Many of the existing dictionaries do not come up to modern standards of accuracy, and practically all are seriously incomplete and out-of-date. Practically every area of Aramaic studies has been enriched by recent discoveries: new inscriptions, new papyri, new scrolls, and new fragments from the Cairo Genizah, a synagogue store-room where a trove of manuscripts was discovered in the 19th century. These recently discovered materials demand inclusion in a lexicon.
A Comprehensive Lexicon

The new lexicon is to be comprehensive in the following ways: 1) it will take in all of ancient Aramaic, not just selected portions; 2) it will be based on a new and thorough compilation of all Aramaic literature, not just on existing dictionaries; 3) it will take account of all modern scholarly discussion of the Aramaic language...

Search the CAL textual databases

Search the CAL Bibliographic Archives

What is Aramaic?

What is CAL?

CAL Publications

Links

2011 Patristics Conference, Oxford

2010-02-08T15:41:01Z

The 16th International Patristics Conference (for summer 2011) is now putting out invitations for papers. The infinitely smarter-looking web site is here.

The conference takes place in Oxford. The days are filled with papers, each of 15 minutes. There is a book display by publishers, often with very good deals. Accomodation is available (at a fairly substantial charge) in an Oxford college. I tend to stay in my old college instead.

I’ve been to the last couple, although only for a day or two. If you are an academic, especially one starting out, you need to go for the networking and career opportunities. For amateurs it is quite optional. I suspect I will book, but go for only a day or two.

UPDATE: The registration fee for the conference this time is £180. That’s a lot. It doesn’t include any accomodation either, which this year is at £50 or 70 a night for a room with only a sink. I don’t recall what the fee was in 2007, but nothing like that, surely? Oh dear… For that fee alone you could spend a week in Egypt, including air-flights.

It also doesn’t include any car parking — in Soviet Oxford, only the commissars get free parking.

I suppose most attendees will get all these fees paid by their employers — i.e. by the taxpayer. But it is a bit disturbing to see prices so high. I know that these conferences have to pay their way, and indeed are a substantial source of profit to the colleges. It’s still sad, tho.

Entrevue avec Fréderic Mitterrand à Clermont-Ferrand (30/01/2010)

2010-02-08T15:36:00Z

Cinq agents de la culture (SRA, SDAP, INRAP) ont pu s’entretenir avec Fréderic Mitterrand, Ministre de la Culture, samedi 30 janvier à la DRAC, à l’occasion de sa visite de Clermont-Ferrand. Cette rencontre sollicitée par l’intersyndicale DRAC-INRAP, fait [...]

It's Monday But Evolution Sunday's Coming

2010-02-08T15:30:11Z

Some may have already celebrated Evolution Sunday yesterday, since there is quite a bit of flexibility as to when one tackles the topic. The point of the event is for churches to actually address the subject head on. Most churches and other religious institutions will hold it next weekend.

Around the blogs and internet relevant resources and posts are beginning to appear. Read the Spirit has a lot of relevant links. Bob Cornwall re-shared a sermon. Some resources from the NY Times from last year are still available. There are some Unitarian Universalist worship materials for the occasion.

8,000-year-old human remains discovered in Malaysia

2010-02-08T14:28:10Z

An archaeological team from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Terengganu Museum report the discovery of human skeletal remains, estimated to be about 8,000 years-old, from a site at Kenyir cave at the state of Terengganu in the Malaysian Peninsula.

Mesolithic Age Skeletal Remains Found In Terengganu Cave
Bernama, 06 February 2010

8,000-year-old human remains found
The Star, 07 February 2010

rchaeologists have stumbled upon human skeletal remains believed to be from the Mesolithic Age in the Bewah Cave in the Kenyir Lake area, according to a university professor.

The remains, believed to be those of a youth, are estimated to be between 8,000 and 11,000 years old, said Prof Datuk Dr Nik Hasan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman, deputy director of the Institute of the Malay World and Civilisation (ATMA) of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

The remains were uncovered by archaeologists from UKM, the Museums Department and the Terengganu Museum Board at a depth of 65 to 70 centimetres, he told reporters after a visit by Terengganu Menteri Besar Datuk Ahmad Said and reporters to the cave Saturday.

Race is on to save UK’s only Roman chariot racetrack

2010-02-08T14:19:03Z

Death in Corinth

2010-02-08T14:18:05Z

Another banner month for Corinth related articles! This past week saw the publication of A.H. Rohn's, E. Barnes's, and G.D.R. Sander's "An Early Ottoman Cemetery at Ancient Corinth," Hesperia 78 (2009), 501-615. It's fantastic that Hesperia is so flexible to publish what is, in effect, a short archaeological monograph! The highly-detailed article documents with great care the 17th century Ottoman cemetery excavated in Panayia Field in Ancient Corinth. The 133 individuals excavated from 81 graves represented both the Christian and Muslim community at Corinth. The excavators suggest that the presence of both groups in the same cemetery and the common appearance of "boot-heel reinforcement cleats" may associate the cemetery with the Ottoman garrison in the town.

If the cemetery is indeed associated with the garrison the ratio of 11 Muslim-style graves to 55 Christian-style graves based, in large part, on the arrangement of the bodies in the graves (p. 516), suggests that the Ottoman garrison may have been relatively well integrated with the local population. This is further indicated by the cross-section of the local demographic represented in the graves with adult men (54), adult women (23) and children of all ages (54) present (pp. 527-528). The analysis of the skull types seem to indicate that many of the women were local while most of the men were from elsewhere (pp.530-531). This would reinforce the notion that this cemetery served the local garrison. The graves also showed some wealth in the community with numerous examples of jewelry (although mostly featuring non-precious metal and stones) and the regular occurrence of the bodies being interned wearing boots suggesting at least some disposable wealth. At the same time, only a few of the graves preserved indications of wooden coffins with nails preserved in a neat halo around the body in at least one grave (p. 512)

It seems that whenever someone excavates a cemetery, there is at least on creepy grave (this is not a technical term), the description of which is worth quoting in full:

Grave 20 contained the body of a young 20–21-year-old male lying extended with his head pointing westward, but face down (Figs. 24, 25). A thick iron rod projecting out of the left side of his neck turned out to be an iron hook that had been inserted into his left shoulder beneath his left clavicle (collarbone). Apparently, he had been suspended from this hook until he died, because both legs and feet extended fully and parallel to one another as they would have while he hung and rigor mortis set in. His right hand had balled up into a fist that clutched the spot where the hook had been inserted into his shoulder. His left arm dangled behind his back. Presumably, once he had died, his punishers had taken down his rigid body and placed it face down (a position of disgrace?) into his final resting place, leaving the hook still embedded. We suspect this represents a death sentence for an individual who defied the order of the local governing body. Ottoman rule at Ancient Corinth during the early 17th century apparently tolerated Christian religious practice, but only as long as the Christians obeyed their rulers and did not cause trouble for them. (p. 521)

The cemetery appears to have fallen out of use during the Second Venetian period at Corinth (1687-1715) and perhaps forgotten by the 18th century. I can't help wonder how quickly the cemetery fell out of use as place of burial or even commemoration for while the men in the group may have represented Ottoman power, the women would have tied at least some members of that group to the local community. Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory has noted that in the Modern period, Greek graves can fall into neglect very quickly if there are no long any close relatives in the community to maintain them. By the Early Modern period (19th century in Greece) the area had been built over with houses. It is remarkable (and a useful reminder) that there was little evidence of the cemetery in the plow-zone. Thus, the function of this area would have been virtually invisible to intensive survey techniques.

With the recent publications of Lita Tzortzopolou-Gregory on the modern period, the work of Joe Rife on the Late Roman and Roman period, it should now be possible to present an almost comprehensive survey of mortuary practices in the Corinthia from Roman times to the present.

Off-Topic Trivia: Things not to say to a PhD student

2010-02-08T14:12:55Z

..
I saw this at the Finds and Features blog and it really made me laugh. Take note!

In the field: Opening the tomb of Sa-Iset

2010-02-08T14:05:42Z

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

Recently I went to Dashur to investigate the tomb of the vizier Sa-Iset and lift the huge sarcophagus lid to discover what it contained.

This tomb was found by Jacques de Morgan in 1890, and the tomb was actually lost for many years, until the Egyptian archaeologists at Dashur uncovered it again in 2006 during survey work at the site.

It was very important that we re-excavate this tomb and open the lid of the sarcophagus. De Morgan found four funerary stelae in the 1890’s, which are currently in the Egyptian Museum. From inscriptions on the stelae and in the tomb we learned that Sa-Iset was a vizier in the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, during the reign of Amenemhat II.

From his incomplete records, we understand that de Morgan opened the sarcophagus lid, but we wanted to be sure of this, and discover if anything remained inside.

Sa-Iset’s burial chamber has a vaulted ceiling and is inscribed with Pyramid Texts. The style of the burial chamber and the style and color of the hieroglyphs are a copy of the pyramid of Unas, the last king of Dynasty 5. This tomb is unique and provides a very interesting example because it is a Middle Kingdom tomb that has Pyramid Texts inscribed on the walls. The use of Pyramid Texts in a Middle Kingdom tomb is very unusual, as the Coffin Texts were much more popular at that time. Coffin texts were a Middle Kingdom variation of the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, which were popular among non-elite individuals. In the New Kingdom, these funerary texts were adapted to become the funerary books that were inscribed on tomb walls.

In the field: Sarcophagus Found in KV31?

2010-02-08T14:01:18Z

News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley)

One of Kate's readers heard a report from an Egyptian guide that a sarcophagus has been found in KV31. See the above page for more.

In the field: Royal Family Necropolis of the Third Intermediate Period at the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri

2010-02-08T14:01:07Z

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Royal Family Necropolis of the Third Intermediate Period at the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri. Dr Szafranski

Discovery of these burials has been a side effect of their excavations of the temple, its surroundings and foundations. The Polish/Egyptian missions has been excavating there for 50 years. The Third Intermediate Period used many temples and locations as necropolis like at the Assasif. This was the time that Africa and Asia came to know each other and to come into conflict. Dynasties 21, 22, 25 and the beginning of 26 are all found at Thebes.

They knew there was a tomb under the protective platform (4th terrace) and around the temple of Tuthmosis III which was discovered 40 years ago. Photographs taken in the time of Naville show many tombs, over 20 were discovered. There was a big earthquake around 1200-900 and the tombs were after that. From 800BC for about 150 years the area was in use as a royal necropolis.

In the field: Deir el Bahri

2010-02-08T14:01:02Z

News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley)

Kate is featuring a 10 minute Cliff Mission video shot by Mr. Dariusz Dudziak in November 2009. Go to the above link to see details.

In the lab: Laser scanning the Sphinx

2010-02-08T14:00:55Z

drhawass.com

Video.

The Sphinx has always been an object of fascination for people for thousands of years. Today, new technology allows us to study it in more detail than ever. We recently cooperated with a team from the Mubarak Scientific City using laser technology to scan the entire Sphinx from nose to tail. The laser scanning was even able to make a detailed record of the face of the Sphinx. We then used the information gathered by the scanning and create the most accurate 3D model of the Sphinx ever. This model can be used to measure the effects of humans and nature on the Sphinx, which is very important for our conservation efforts. It is the best scientific record of the Sphinx I have ever seen!

In recent years, the rising water table has begun to pose a threat to many monuments and sites in Egypt, including Giza, so holes have been drilled under the Great Sphinx of Giza in order to test the groundwater levels and assess the risk. Click here to watch the video in which Dr Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner talk about the conservation effort and how to keep the Sphinx' paws dry.

Tourism: Rock art expedition

2010-02-08T14:00:49Z

New Stuff (The Explorer School)

We are tentatively putting together an expedition for later 2010 or early 2011 in search of Saharan engravings and rock art in the Gilf Kebir area of Egypt. This will be a proper three week expedition totally devoted to exploration though we will visit the Mestakawi-Foggini Cave and Wadi Soura. The idea is to take vehicles to an area never before explored and then walk each day averaging 20-25km of canyon, mountain and cave investigation. We will meet the vehicles again at night but to minimise their destructive impact (tyre tracks last forever) they will stay clear of the exploration area. As on our other expeditions we need fit, enthusiastic people with a flexible approach. If you think you might qualify let us know. There will be room for a maximum of ten people only.

Feature: Carnarvon Never Got to See the Golden Death Mask

2010-02-08T14:00:41Z

Heritage Key (Sean Williams)

When you think of King Tut, do you see a young boy, struggling with the enormity of his power; a slender adolescent in control of the world's greatest empire? Of course not, because you're like me: you see the magnificent death mask, the coffins, shrines, shabtis, daggers, beds, decrepit mummy (with or without penis) et al. We ancient world-lovers are just magpies with laptops really.

But do you ever wonder why, when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon burst into the tomb in 1922, they could see so many 'wonderful things'? Why wasn't Tutankhamun's funerary procession made ancient swag, like those of nearly all of ancient Egypt's kings?

In fact even this isn't strictly true, as Lady Carnarvon points out to us from the cellar-cum-Egyptian exhibition at Highclere Castle: "Howard Carter estimated that around 60 per cent of the jewellery which (sic) would have been in the tomb...was possibly stolen by grave diggers of ancient times." Not a motto modern grave diggers will be thrilled about, but it does explain why the legs of the otherwise dazzling golden throne of King Tut are so bare.

Feature: Sandro Vannini's Photography - Tutankhamun's Senet Game Board

2010-02-08T14:00:31Z

Heritage Key

Four Senet boards were found inside the tomb of King Tutankhamun and suggests that the boy king was a keen player of the ancient game. In Ancient Egyptian society, senet was regarded as much more than just a game, however - it was a matter of life or death. The game involves throwing casting sticks or knucklebones, and over time became regarded as talismans for the journey into the afterlife with luck being a key deciding factor in the game.

Those who would win games of senet were believed to be blessed by powerful gods such as Osiris, Ra and Thoth. Senet boards were also often placed in graves, and they are specifically mentioned in the Book of the Dead.

Feature: Sandro Vannini's Photography - Tomb of Montuemhat (TT34)

2010-02-08T14:00:21Z

Heritage Key

Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini has been busy photographing tombs across Thebes for his new book "The Lost Tombs of Thebes: Lost in Paradise" and you can watch him at work in a Heritage Key video which also features Dr Zahi Hawass and Dr Janice Kamrin (Watch the video). During his photo-spree in this Ancient Egyptian city, Sandro took images of archaeologists hard at work at the site of TT34 - The Tomb of Montuemhat.

Described by the excavation lead Dr Farouk Gomaa as "one of the largest [tombs] in Thebes", the University of Tübingen archaeologist and his team are searching for the sarcophagus of the diplomat Montuemhat. The work on TT34 initially began in 1941 by Zakaria Gomein, whose untimely death is recounted in a Heritage Key video with Dr Hawass (Watch the Video). A breakthrough was made by Dr Gomaa's team in 1988 when they discovered the sarcophagus of Montuemhat's son Nesptah the Younger.

Repatriation: Antiquity from Saqqara

2010-02-08T14:00:09Z

Egypt State Information Service

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawwas said that Egypt is about to restore an antiquity from Spain returns to the Sixth Family. This antiquity was stolen from Egypt and the Spanish authorities succeeded in stopping it.

The antiquity is a stone, inscribed on it a part of a pharaonic text that represents tomb's owner's name.

Exhibition: Cleopatra at the Franklin Institute

2010-02-08T13:59:58Z

Franklin Institute

Thanks to Stan Parchin for the link. Tickets are now on sale for the exhibition (Cleopatra - The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt) to members only until February 28th. The exhibition opens on June 5th 2010. If you're interested in tickets for non-members you can pre-register.

The world of Cleopatra, which has been lost to the sea and sand for nearly 2,000 years, will surface in a new exhibition, "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt," making its world premiere in June 2010 at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Organized by National Geographic and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), the exhibition will feature more than 250 artifacts, and take visitors inside the present-day search for Cleopatra, which extends from the sands of Egypt to the depths of the Bay of Aboukir near Alexandria.

Book review: A Manual of Egyptian Pottery

2010-02-08T13:59:49Z

PalArch (Review by Augusto Gayubas)

Wodzińska, A. 2009. A Manual of Egyptian Pottery. Volume 1: Fayum A-Lower Egyptian Culture. - Boston, Ancient Egypt Research Associates

Dr. Anna Wodzińska, who works at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw (Poland), is the head of the Ceramics Team of AERA (Ancient Egypt Research Associates) Field School. The main aim of the AERA Field School is to teach and train archaeological techniques for both, students and experienced archaeologists alike. Wodzińska developed for AERA four pottery manuals to teach about ancient Egyptian pottery.

Now, the manuals are made available for everyone, the present volume of which is the first that has been published. It deals with seven different ‘periods’ of Predynastic Egypt: Fayum A, Merimde, Omari, Badari, Naqada I, Naqada II, and Buto-Maadi.

Photo for Today by Lucia Gahlin

2010-02-08T13:59:21Z

Throne room of North Palace, Amarna

Copyright Lucia Gahlin
Bloomsbury Summer School

With my thanks

From my diary

2010-02-08T13:21:42Z

I’m going to have to load-shed a bit over the next week. I don’t seem able to shed this cold that I have, and my job is not helping. So … not a lot of action from me for a while. Don’t expect much!

Jean Simmons Remembered

2010-02-08T13:03:35Z

Jean Simmons has died at the age of 80.The wonderful English actress, who came to Hollywood in the 1950s, starred in such memorable epics as The Robe (1953, with Richard Burton and Victor Mature), The Egyptian (1954, with Victor Mature), and Spartacus (1960, with Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier).Reduced to television work in the 1970s and 1980s, redeemed only by her role in The Thorn Birds, she

Digital Classicist Call for Seminar Papers

2010-02-08T13:02:24Z

The Digital Classicist will once more be running a series of seminars at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, with support from the British Library, in Summer 2010 on the subject of research into the ancient world that has an innovative digital component. We are especially interested in work that demonstrates interdisciplinarity or work on the intersections between Ancient History, Classics or Archaeology and a digital, technical or practice-based discipline.

The Digital Classicist seminars run on Friday afternoons from June to August in Senate House, London. In previous years collected papers from the DC WiP seminars have been published* in a special issue of an online journal (2006), edited as a printed volume (2007), and released as audio podcasts (2008-9); we anticipate similar publication opportunities for future series. A small budget is available to help with travel costs.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract to gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk by
March 31st 2010. We shall announce the full programme in April.

Regards,

The organizers
Gabriel Bodard, King's College London
Stuart Dunn, King's College London
Juan Garcés, Greek Manuscripts Department, British Library
Simon Mahony, University College London
Melissa Terras, University College London

* See http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/4/ (2006), http://www.gowerpublishing.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=1064&sort=pubdate&forthcoming=1&title_id=9797&edition_id=12252 (2007), http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/index.html (2008-9). | |

'Stonehenge? It's more like a city garden'

2010-02-08T12:59:19Z

Design watchdog hits out at plans for £20m visitor centre at megalithic jewel in England's cultural crown

Its footpaths are "tortuous", the roof likely to "channel wind and rain" and its myriad columns – meant to evoke a forest – are incongruous with the vast landscape surrounding it.

So says the government's design watchdog over plans for a controversial £20m visitor centre at Stonehenge, the megalithic jewel in England's cultural crown. CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, has criticised the design of the proposed centre, claiming the futuristic building by Denton Corker Marshall does little to enhance the 5,000-year-old standing stones which attract more than 800,000 visitors each year.

Read the rest of this article...

Scholar examines reports of solar eclipses in the Middle Ages

2010-02-08T12:57:33Z

Hundreds of solar eclipses were recorded by medieval chroniclers, offering historians of astronomy with some vital information about how people in the Middle Ages reacted to this phenomenon.

The latest research into this subject has just been published in the Journal for the History of Astronomy. In his article, "Investigation of Medieval European Records of Solar Eclipses," F. Richard Stephenson states he wants to provide "an intriguing insight into the effects of solar eclipses over a wide range of magnitudes on largely untrained and unsuspecting observers."

Read the rest of this article...

£20m Stonehenge visitor centre criticised by Government design watchdog

2010-02-08T12:55:59Z

The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) believes the centre's "twee paths" are "more appropriate for an urban garden" and its "delicate roof" is unsuitable for the wind and rain that sweeps across the majestic Wiltshire plains where the stones stand.

Although the plans, by Australian architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall, have been approved by Wiltshire county council planners and are backed by local architects on the Wiltshire Design Forum, CABE said the "architectural approach" was wrong.

Read the rest of this article...

North Pennines ancient buildings to be protected

2010-02-08T12:52:51Z

Work has begun to protect four ancient monuments in the North Pennines which have suffered centuries of bad weather.

They are Whitesyke and Bentyfield lead mines in Cumbria, Shildon engine house and Ninebanks Tower in Northumberland and Muggleswick Grange, County Durham.

All are currently included on English Heritage's At Risk Register.

Read the rest of this article...

Ben Hur in Colchester? Race is on to save UK's only Roman chariot racetrack

2010-02-08T12:52:02Z

When the white handkerchief dropped, the Ben Hurs of Colchester would have set off down Circular Road North, past the banked tiers of seats, turning left at Napier Road, their iron tyres gouging a deep rut in the track,and back up past St John's gatehouse towards the water-spouting dolphin marking the end of the first lap.

Colchester, it seems, was the Formula One track of Roman Britain, with the only chariot racing circus ever found on the island, and the first found in northern Europe for 20 years. Now modern residents have less than a month to raise the money to save a unique monument and create a visitor centre to reveal the site's history.

Read the rest of this article...

Bog woman given a face

2010-02-08T12:50:12Z

A 2000-year-old body found in a northeastern Jutland bog has received a makeover – coroner style The female known as the Auning Woman, found in a northeastern Jutland bog 1886, and housed at the Museum for Culture and History in...

The female known as the Auning Woman, found in a northeastern Jutland bog 1886, and housed at the Museum for Culture and History in Randers, has finally got a face.

Reasonably well-preserved when she popped up from the bog, the woman’s 2000-year-old skull was broken into several pieces.

Read the rest of this article...

This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vi idus februarias

2010-02-08T12:22:36Z

ante diem vi idus februarias

1909 — birth of David Daube

Announcing the Bentham Papers Transcription Initiative

2010-02-08T11:37:15Z

Jeremy Bentham's body, preserved and on display at UCL.

We at UCL are all terribly proud of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)- whose body, or "Auto-icon" is on display in the South Cloisters. It is widely told that he was the founder of UCL - which isnt true, although he did influence those who did found our University. I dont think I'll ever get bored in saying "Good morning!" to him every day as I walk past. You'll be pleased to know his case gets locked up tight every evening to allow him some rest.

He was a prolific writer, scholar, jurist, philosopher, and social scientist. A.J.P. Taylor described him as `the most formidable reasoner who ever applied his gifts to the practical questions of administration and politics’. Since the 1950s, The Bentham Project has been working towards the production of a new scholarly edition of his works and correspondence, although they've only dented the surface of the 60,000 pages of writing he produced which remain in UCL's special collections.

The Bentham Project did receive some AHRC money a few years ago to start digitising the material, although it was time for a rethink. Enter the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s highly competitive Digital Equipment and Database Enhancement for Impact (DEDEFI) scheme.

I've been asked to join the project in an advisory role. It became clear to me very quickly that in a one year project there was never going to be enough time for two (maximum, under the funding) research assistants to digitise and transcribe tens of thousands of pages of manuscript material. So what, I thought, if we change the focus of the transcription initiative?

The Guardian Newspaper had run a very successful investigation into the UK MP's expense scandal in 2009, using an online crowdsourcing application to let their readership help sort though the 450,000 documents that needed closer study. Would it be possible, I thought, to develop a similar tool for cultural heritage documents? Can we persuade the wider historical community to contribute to the transcription effort?

I am pleased to say that UCL Laws, in conjunction with UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, UCL Department of Information Studies, and UCL Library Services, can announce the launch of the Bentham Papers Transcription Initiative, which has secured £260,000 funding from the AHRC DEDEFI scheme.

The Bentham Papers Transcription Initiative is a highly innovative and novel attempt to aid in the transcription of Bentham’s work. A digitisation project will provide high quality scans of the papers, whilst an online transcription tool will be developed which will allow volunteers to contribute to the transcription effort: providing a “crowdsourcing” tool which will be used to manage contributions from the wider audience interested in Bentham’s work, including school students, and amateur historians. It will be the job of the research assistants to manage interaction with the wider historical community, and monitor the quality of the transcriptions which are added to the database.

The use of such a tool for the transcription of cultural and heritage material is novel (although do shout if you know anyone else planning something similar), and UCL’s CIBER group will monitor the use of the online tool, providing an in-depth study of how such a crowdsourcing application was used during the year- long project.

Work on the project begins on March 1st 2010, and the project shall be shortly hiring for two research assistants. The online tool will be launched mid-summer 2010, when you can contribute to transcribing the works of Jeremy Bentham yourself!

Did I mention I was super excited about this? Grin.

January Comment on Rescue

2010-02-08T10:48:25Z

Oh dear, this came while I was away:

Dear Paul,
I have tried to post the following comment on your weblog (http://paul-barford.blogspot.com). Unfortunately it seems to be rejected each time I try, 'moderation' having been enabled. I would be most grateful if you could post the text below. We remain keen to review your book on this subject as and when (or if) it appears. We would have been happy to respond to your comments and to provide a piece for inclusion in your item concerning the website and the use of the image, had you given us an opportunity. It seems that you are perhaps not so committed to the open exchange of views as you would have us believe.

Well, two things, the comments sent for moderation are held in an archive in "Blogger" whether I am at the keyboard or not. The archives for the period I was away are intact, and there is absolutely no trace of any from RESCUE or Chris Cumberpatch under any name or form. So this is why the comments did not appear, not through me suppressing them. Secondly this blog is not for any "open exchange of views" it is my blog and expresses my views (that is what blogs are for)... not that I am at all averse to having them challenged. So here following is the text Mr Cumberpatch was trying to post as a comment to my post. Let us recall that this referred to the use by Rescue on their website of the Staffordshire hoard - about which I have already expressed my views and reservations in this blog. I considered it regrettable that the image - and thus the treasure hunt associations - was being used at the top of the webpage by Rescue in this context.

"The next edition of RESCUE NEWS will contain further discussion of the issues around the discovery and subsequent treatment of the hoard in question which I believe will make a useful contribution to the wider debate and may well address some of Mr Barford's concerns, raised above.

We have carried numerous pieces in RESCUE NEWS on various aspects of the debate over metal detecting and artefact hunting, including an article by Mr Barford and given this record we regret the tone of Mr Barford's comments above. The use of the image reproduced by Mr Barford is most certainly not an endorsement of artefact hunting or the uncontrolled use of metal detectors for hobby or related purposes and there was no intention in its use to indicate anything to the contrary.

On the other matters mentioned by Mr Barford - RESCUE's clain to be independent is based upon the fact that we are dependent solely on the contributions of our members in order to carry out our work -we receive no funding from government either directly or via quangos and are grant aided only in respect of individual publications.

As to our commitment to archaeology as a discipline, it rests on our wider record. In addition to covering aspects of the debate over looting and the antiquities trade we are active in lobbying politicians at all levels regarding the legislation around heritage protection in the UK (including matters relating to looting and the use of metal detectors). We took a leading role in safeguarding the future of Verulamium in respect of the cessation of ploughing on the site. We actively campaign for protection for archaeological sites and landscape throughout the UK and further afield and are currently engaged in a number of such campaigns both alone and in concert with other concerned groups both local and national.

In practical terms we have arranged for the translation of out joint publication (with ithe Institrute of Conservation)'First Aid for Finds' into a number of languages including Georgian, Macedonian, Japanese and Greek - making the translated text available free of charge to heritage professionals in Macedonia and Georgia where little such guidance was available previously and where wages often preclude the easy acquisition of such material.

We remain extremely concerned about looting and the antiquities trade but we recognise that this is but one of the many and varied threats to the archaeological record. While we shall be sad to lose Mr Barford's support, we shall continue our work on all fronts and welcome new members to help us in this enormous task.

Chris Cumberpatch
RESCUE - The British Archaeological Trust"

Whatever the next issue of Rescue News says about the Staffoirdshire hoard, it seems perfectly legitimate of me to question its use to signify "archaeology" on a public website by an organization concerned with preservation of the archaeological resource. I note that Cumberpatch does not refer to my earlier comment about RESCUE's official statement on the "metal detecting" issue, which accompanied the article of mine which they published in Rescue News 99. It is indeed extremely wishy washy and disappointingly conciliatory. ("RESCUE and metal detecting" Rescue News 98, page 2). It would be nice to see it made more widely available online as part of that "debate debate over looting and the antiquities trade" and an indication in which way RESCUE's lobbying of politicians is going.

«Ιωάννης Γεννάδιος, ο Λόγιος – ο Συλλέκτης»

2010-02-08T10:07:00Z

February 23, 2010 - 2:07 PM - ΟΜΙΛΙΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΗΜΕΡΑ ΜΝΗΜΗΣ ΙΩΑΝΝΟΥ ΓΕΝΝΑΔΙΟΥ Αικατερίνη Κουμαριανού (Ιστορικός – Καθηγήτρια Πανεπιστημίου της Σορβόννης)

“Η προϊστορική κεραμική του Vucedol και η σύγχρονη περιπέτειά της”

2010-02-08T09:54:00Z

February 19, 2010 - 1:54 PM - LECTURE Ruzica Maric, αρχαιολόγος, Διευθύντρια του Μουσείου του Vukovar

Ph.D. scholarship on Second Temple Judaism at Groningen

2010-02-08T09:40:00Z

NOTE THE PH.D. SCHOLARSHIP on Second Temple Judaism at the University of Groningen, on which I posted this weekend.

Row over Cyrus Cylinder takes a new twist

2010-02-08T09:36:00Z

THE ROW OVER THE CYRUS CYLINDER has taken a new twist:

Iran cuts cultural links with British Museum over Cyrus Cylinder

Lucy Bannerman (London Times)

Iran has severed all cultural ties with the British Museum over the institution’s failure to hand over an ancient Persian treasure.

At the centre of the diplomatic row is a 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablet, known as the Cyrus Cylinder, which most historians regard as the world’s first declaration of human rights.

Curators had been due to lend the artefact to Tehran last month, but announced that the handover would be delayed after the discovery of new tablets that they believe could help its research. The delay has provoked the anger of Iranian officials, who announced an end to dialogue yesterday in protest at a decision that they believe is politically motivated.

[...]

Given the shaky prospects of the current Iranian regime, it may be just as well if the artifacts don't go there anytime soon. Background and related thoughts are here.

50th anniversary

2010-02-08T09:29:00Z

50TH ANNIVERSARY:

February 8, 1960: Tel Aviv, Israel — Archaeologists hoped today they may have uncovered another cache of 'Dead Sea Scrolls' in an obscure cave once used as a hideout by rebels against the Romans. They reported finding fragments of parchment scrolls, believed to have been written about the same time as the Dead Sea scrolls. The new scrolls are the first found on the Israel side of the Dead Sea.

This must be referring to Yigael Yadin's excavations of the Bar Kokhba caves, which did produce some impressive epigraphic discoveries in 1960, including battle communiques dictated by Bar Kokhba himself.

Appel à contributions : Romulus Augustule, Le "dernier" empereur romain dans l'Histoire, la Littérature et l'Image, Brest, 12.06.2010

2010-02-08T09:21:19Z

Source : Compitum et Université de Bretagne occidentale.

La déposition de l'empereur romain Romulus en 476 marque dans les esprits la fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident. Son surnom, Augustulus (le petit Auguste) lui est venu de son jeune âge, mais a été saturé du pathos lié à l'événement de 476 perçu comme crépuscule tragique de l'Empire romain. Bien que les sources écrites fassent peu de cas du personnage, il a suscité des fantasmes historiques et une création littéraire. On la trouve par exemple dans un Augustule en langue française de la fin du XIXe siècle, ou dans une pièce de Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Romulus der Grosse, où il est présenté comme un "héros ironique"d'âge adulte. Tout récemment, il est un des personnages centraux de La Dernière légion, roman historique de Valerio Manfredi.

On aborde donc la dimension littéraire et artistique d'un passé que l'on transforme selon les critères de préoccupations contemporaines, en particulier la peur de la fin.

Une Journée d'Etudes transdisciplinaires consacrée à Romulus Augustule aura pour but de croiser des regards d'historiens, de littéraires, de spécialistes des Beaux-Arts et du cinéma sur ce personnage, et sur les images qu'il a suscité, en confrontant aux sources la création littéraire et artistique qui s'est cristallisée sur lui. En l'occurrence, elle s'inscrira dans une problématique de représentation du pouvoir et abordera, en ce sens, les notions de décadence et de chute, de renaissance, mais aussi celle du "prince-enfant" et du "dernier". Elle aura lieu à Brest, le 12 juin 2010 en deux demi-journées de communications et d'échanges. Les intervenants tenteront de brosser le portrait du jeune empereur à partir des sources, et d'interpréter ses destins littéraires et picturaux dans la postérité.

Les propositions devront être adressées avant le 15 mars 2010 (titre, mots-clés, résumé en 3000 signes maximum) à frederique.mengard@univ-brest.fr et bertrand.lancon@univ-brest.fr.

Durée des communications : 20 minutes. Les articles sont destinés à être publiés et feront l'objet d'une lecture par les membres du comité scientifique (en cours de constitution).

Comité d'organisation : Frédérique Mengard et Bertrand Lançon.

Temple Mount Watch: Mughrabi Gate bridge

2010-02-08T09:15:00Z

TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Jordan is still resisting renovations to the Mughrabi (Mugrabi) Gate bridge:

BJordanian Pressure Preventing Western Wall Walkway Construction

by Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) Jordanian pressure is preventing the completion of a walkway to the Temple Mount next to the Western Wall (Kotel), according to Nadav Shragai, senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

[...]

The plan for renovating the walkway to the Rambam Gate has been approved, Shragai said, but the government is delaying its implementation. “At first they wanted the bridge to be suspended from support columns,” the veteran former journalist explained, “but environmental groups objected. In the end it was decided that the bridge would be placed on what remains of the [dirt] ramp, in order to avoid damage to houses in the Mughrabim neighborhood. This plan currently has the necessary approvals and all that is needed is a construction permit from the Kotel Heritage Fund which answers to the Prime Minister's Office. For some reason, because of pressure from the Jordanian government, the government is not granting this permit.”

[...]

Background here.

December: Pompeii added to Google Street View

2010-02-08T09:13:41Z

Google has added Pompeii to its Street View application, allowing internet users to take a 360-degree virtual tour of the ancient Roman city (source BBC).

Gifts for PhD students

2010-02-08T09:07:47Z

A friend recently asked me what gift would I give to a PhD student. That was an odd question, I thought. But then I realised the awkwardness of the situation and the dilemma in which my friend was. PhD students are different and effectively they have different needs. So, here is a list of what I think is suitable.

• Chocolates. There is nothing better than the pleasure a piece of chocolate can give. In addition, it works also as powerful brain food.
• Half a bottle of wine. This is just about right. A bottle will be too much and it will dull any kind of intellectual activity, while half a bottle is enough to relax the brain and bring euphoria.
• Memory pillow. After sitting in front of the computer for too many hours, the student will need a good night’s rest on a pillow that will not hurt his/her neck further.
• A cd with relaxing music or with guided visualisation (preferably involving a sandy beach in a sunny day). Relaxation is essential, especially during the third year.
• A 3 month subscription to Love films or Amazon films. If there is no more time to go to the cinema, then the PhD student could enjoy a good movie at the comfort of his/her own home.

And a word of advice: Avoid giving books at all cost! These can only remind the student of the dreaded deadlines and the pile of responsibilities s/he is facing.

OPEN MEETING OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE

2010-02-08T08:06:01Z

May 11, 2010 - 12:06 PM -

Logos 4: Collapse Sections in Guides

2010-02-08T08:00:01Z

Today's post is from Morris Proctor, certified and authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. Morris has trained thousands of Logos users at his two-day Camp Logos training seminars.

The various guides in Logos Bible Software 4 contain numerous sections. For example, the Passage Guide lists Commentaries, Cross References, Parallel Passages, and so on. Each section searches different resources and is identified with a section title bar. When you click the title bar, that section collapses or expands. What’s more, if a guide opens with a section collapsed, the search in that section is delayed until you expand the section.

So here’s a strategy for using the sections in a guide:

Open a guide from the Guides menu
Generate a report for a passage or word
Collapse all the sections in that guide
Close the guide
Return to the Guides menu and open the same type of guide
Again generate a report for a passage or word

You’ll notice the sections stay collapsed just the way you closed the guide. Now expand a section at a time. Use the information in it and then collapse the section again. This process speeds up searches and allows you to use only the information you need when you need it!

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

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The Zahi Hawass Hat

2010-02-08T07:59:26Z

[this post is not really heritage related] Before I set off for Egypt, an Internet pal in the States announced he had something he would like me to "take to Egypt". I agreed (thnking it would be something like pork scratchings for an expat friend living there), but the package did not arrive in time. I learnt from copies of correspondence that were forwarded to me that the supplier had problems "meeting demand" because their suppliers in Hong Kong were unable to fulfill the orders. Also looking up the supplier in the Internet, I had an inkling what was on its way to Poland....

In the event the package did not arrive in time, and I had to go without it. At home however a few weeks later my nearest and dearest received a spanking new Zahi Hawass hat by courier. The real McCoy with his signature inside and everything. I only saw it yesterday when got home, it is magnificent. The label attached says "Tutankhamen/ DR ZAHI HAWASS REPLICA EXCAVATION HAT/ This is an exact replical of my famous excavation hat. All profits from sales of this hat will go to fund the Suzanne Mubarak Children's Museum in Cairo (100% wool, made in the people's Republic of China". The website given is of Exhibit Merchandising LLC [Streetsboro Ohio 44241] which is where my hat comes from, it is connected with the Turtakhamun exhibition in Toronto and San Francisco (where I hear from other sources that the museum shops were doing extremely well, being sold out of many things faster than anyone expected).

On the reverse of the label is a picture of Hawass smiling away in a hat... not (it has to be said) quite like the one I have which is said to be an "exact replica". The hatband is stitched and mine is not, neither would I think the original Hawass one is plastic. The rim of the Hawass'hat is turned under, while mine is turned up (important if you are going to "be an explorer" in a country where rain actually does fall). In fact, however if you start to look into it Hawass appears in photos in at least three different "Zahi Hawass hats". So, being pedantic about the use of the term "exact replica" is looking a gift horse in the mouth, it was a great thought and a great present, which I shall treasure as an interesting object in its own right.

Zahi Hawass is a cultural icon in his own right. Sadly, I never got to meet him when I was in Egypt (few do), but met a number of (non-Egyptian) archaeologists who did great Hawass impressions. I also met a number of Egyptian archaeologists who had some varied opinions of him. Not all of them, I got the impression, were as frank as others. Still, it was a good talking point. He also has a blog, and indeed fan-club. Certainly he is a figure (one might say phenomenon) which cannot be ignored.

These hats are themselves an interesting phenomenon, and in certain parts of our milieu have become a part of the archaeological dress code. A few years ago I did a count of the archaeologists working in Europe and beyond who habitually wore them and it came to (as I recall) sixteen (more than Mick Aston striped sweaters). Then there is the fictional one, Indiana Jones who might to some degree have started the fashion trend in this particular milieu. I guess however much we may deny it, there may well be a little of the Indiana Jones in all of us - and I might do a post here later about my own "Indy Moment" in a Theban tomb a few days ago.

Now I have to admit I too bought an "Indy hat" before I went to Egypt. I have extremely fair skin which is not at all sun-tolerant and the wide brim protected my nose, ears and neck from some of it. I admit I also had in mind its use as a sunscreen in the course of the siestas I was sure I would be taking in the lunch break. My old canvas widebrimmed hat had seen too many rainstorms and too many better days to take. I went into an outdoor wear superstore and chose (much against my conscience) a Bavarian widebrimmed felt huntsman's hat. When I went to see what it looked like on, the only mirror was in the horse riding section, I noticed three models of leather stetsons, obviously for cowboy fantasists, and I bought one of them instead. In grey-buff suede type leather ("wallaroo Suede" made by Jackaru in Australia). It turned out to be very practical indeed, what I did not count on was the number of times I'd be scraping my scalp on the roofs of tombs in the dark, and wearing a strong high-crowned hat saved me from some nasty cuts by bat-poo stained rocks. It did the job of keeping the sun off ad my head cool and was the sort of colour that when it got dirty (quite often in archaeology), all you had to do was rub some more Theban dust into it and the stains disappeared (the Zahi hat is not). I note though that after three months in the abrasive dust the stitching is going.

I am not really a hat person, I rarely wear one, so I am not too clued up on their typology or terminology. I'd always assumed that these were all the same, but in fact the Zahi Hawass hat is not the same as an Indy Jones hat. I now note that the latter is taller and has a much wider hatband, and is pinched more sharply in the front (sorry if those are the wrong technical terms). Both seem to be of felt however while certain of my archaeologist friends have leather ones. Leather is not so good when you are sweating I find, though might give the illusion of being more low-rock-proof than mere felt. Perhaps now I have one of both I will give them a field trial and see which is best - now where can I find a bat-filled cave, swirling dust clouds and mercilessly baking sun in central Warsaw in February? But then, do I really want to get my new Zahi Hawass hat dirty?

Picture: from the supplier's website.

Myth Monday - Percy-us and Cheiron

2010-02-08T06:55:27Z

I read (with a smile) that youngsters reading the books by Rick Riordan that form the basis for the movie, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, are absorbing the Greek myths gladly and effortlessly. Without having seen the movie -- because it opens later this week -- I can only speculate that it actually does adhere to standard myths, based on the previews and the useful teacher's guide to Rick Riordan's books. Read more...

Myth Monday - Percy-us and Cheiron originally appeared on About.com Ancient / Classical History on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 06:55:27.

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Revisiting November 09: Infra-red cameras catch Illegal Artefact Hunting in the UK

2010-02-08T06:10:35Z

While I was away in Egypt friends were passing to my inbox material they think might be interesting for my research on the antiquities market and associated issues (and this blog too). The next few posts here will be connected with them as I go through the several thousand unanswered emails I have found waiting in my Warsaw inbox (I set up a temporary account in Egypt to which I gave the address to a favoured few). I will not put them all up, but just a few things that take my fancy.

The first (7-9th November) is this clip from a TV programe on BBC1's "Inside Out" (South) programme which had a piece on illegal nighthawking on it. The short clip shows a bit where they film some nighthawks at work on a Scheduled Monument, and then attempt to confront them. Apparently there was a piece of fiulm whener the illegally operating artefact hunters try to whack the reporter with a spade.

Interestingly, on an archaeology discussion list there was discussion of this programme we learn this "When watching the BBC programme this evening they showed a map of the area placed on a car bonnet. I instantly recognised the area, as I used to live very close to it. The sites marked on the map are all in the Butser, south of Petersfield area within very close proximity to Peter Reynold's ancient farm. I know from when I worked at EH, on the Record of Scheduled Ancient Monuments that there is a very important Roman site in that location, spot finds have been located, though no excavation as far as I am aware have taken place. One area even has extant earthworks, perhaps evidence of buildings [...] the nighthawk who was caught walking down the lane had a Hampshire/Sussex accent, perhaps a Portsmouth accent. The location of the site could indicate the latter as the A3(M) from Portsmouth runs right through this location with slip roads again at this location". There are two SAMs with Roman archaeology immediately east of the A road, 33595 and HA542 and Anglo-Saxon cemetery 33410 at Chalton village and some round barrows.

Onside Kick: A Winning Strategy in the CultureGrrl Playbook UPDATE

2010-02-08T05:40:08Z

My e-mail inbox tells me that getting your exhibitions (or other art-related announcements) on CultureGrrl is the goal of many readers. But few of you will make it to the end zone: Although I'm swarmed by by galleries seeking publicity,...

Flood Toll: Rebuilding the University of Iowa Museum of Art

2010-02-08T05:28:11Z

University of Iowa Museum of Art's "Mural," 1943, by Jackson Pollock, as installed at the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IAThe "Envisioning Committee," appointed last year by the University of Iowa's president, Sally Mason, to brainstorm about a new facility to...

Exploring Boundaries

2010-02-08T04:58:01Z

Last night Shirley and I attended the 18th annual Ussachevsky Festival Concert at Pomona College. For us it was only our 2nd annual Ussachevsky Festival Concert. Dedicated to electronic music, this event has a decidedly experimental character. “Electronic music” covers a multitude of sins from completely electronically generated music to live performance with some form of electronic accompaniment or effect.

Last night three pieces featured live performances accompanied by prerecorded material from the same instrument: cello with cello accompaniment, toy piano with toy piano accompaniment, shakuhachi with shakuhachi accompaniment. For those who might not know, I didn’t, a shakuhachi is a Japanese bamboo flute. There were two video presentations. For me, the most satisfying of the two was Maurice Wright’s, "GENUS" (2003). Here’s part of the description from the program, “The opening sounds are difference tones produced from several hundred sine waves in the 4000-Hertz range. Similar sounds are introduced at 2 Hz, 4 Hz, etc., and octave doubling repeats until a cluster of partials randomly detuned once again is concentrated near 4 KHz.” And they called that music. It truly was.

Before I proceed with further comments, let me confess something. Until a very few years ago both Shirley and I were rather firmly of the opinion that to qualify as a concert one of the evening's works needed to be in four movements with the third movement a minuet and at least one of the other movements, preferably the first, in sonata-allegro form. Now that may slightly overstate the reality but not by much. We tended to judge all music by that standard and by that standard last night's event was far from a concert. But over the last few years Tom Flaherty and Genevieve Feiwen Lee of Pomona College have convinced us by their own dedication to alternative music that we needed to broaden our horizons. Both Flaherty and Lee come to this new music with the skills of seasoned performers of classical music. We are not yet fully initiated but the more we hear (and understand) the more we enjoy an evening or afternoon of the more avant-garde. Of course, even using the expression avant-garde in the context of music may show how out of it we really are. When John Cage’s music is on the program, and it was, avant-garde seems a rather antique word.

Now back to last night’s concert, Professor Flaherty, who acted as master of ceremonies, played the cello in the opening piece, and composed one of the numbers, told us somewhat apologetically that the program was more “meditative” than usual. With two exceptions, it was. And of course, I enjoyed those two exceptions the most.

While having its own meditative moments, Professor Lee’s performance of Flaherty’s "Shepard’s Pi" (2010) for toy piano (and computer) was quite amazing as well as amusing. Even the title amused us. Lee seems to love the toy piano and plays it with the same precision, control, and flair that she brings to the concert grand. And given its limited range, she gets almost as much out of it. The interaction between the live performance and the pre-recorded toy piano accompaniment produced some wonderful effects and the whole thing tied together in a very satisfying way.

But the highlight of the evening was Theresa Diamond’s performance of Javier Alvarez’ "Temazcal." Have you ever heard of a maracas solo performance? Well, we heard one last night. Rather wide ranging recorded music with a decidedly Latin American accent accompanied Diamond’s spirited maracas solo. Wonderful!

Returning to Flaherty’s comment about the program being unusually meditative: There were several times when I worried that some of the music actually explored the boundaries between meditative, ponderous, and tedious. That said, both Shirley and I were surprised how quickly the hour and forty-five minute program passed and how much we enjoyed it. I’m already looking forward to the 19th annual Ussachevsky Festival Concert. But before that there will be classical symphonies.

Is Sotheby’s $104.32-Million Giacometti the "Most Expensive Art Work Ever Sold at Auction"?

2010-02-08T03:12:34Z

The $104.3-million man: Giacometti, "L'Homme Qui Marche I," 1960 (cast in 1961)If you're looking for a symbol of a more robust art market, this emaciated six-footer could be it.At today's Impressionist/modern auction at Sotheby's London, Giacometti's "L'Homme Qui Marche I,"...

Exhibition on ancient Vietnam opens in New York

2010-02-08T00:16:43Z

The Asia Society in New York opens the exhibition Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea last week. Readers who might not be able to make it to New York for the exhibition may be interested in the book available here.

Ancient Vietnam exhibition opens in the US
VOV News, 02 February 2010

Ancient Vietnam exhibition opens in New York
Vietnam Net Bridge, 02 February 2010

An exhibition themed “Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea” opened at the Asia Society in New York on February 1.

The exhibition introduces new scholarship on the history of Vietnamese art, with approximately 110 objects dating from the first millennium BCE through the 17th century on rare loan from ten leading Vietnamese museums.

The exhibition represents the first time these works have been exhibited in the US and, for many of the objects, the first time they have traveled outside of Vietnam. Throughout its long history, Vietnam served as a central hub for trade routes that connected the regions of Asia and the west with travelers and merchants traversing its long open plains. Trade vessels from as far as India and Rome found safe haven in its harbors. Objects in the exhibition illustrate the rich and complex patterns of trade and cultural exchange in southern, central and northern Viet Nam, and the varied influences of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Japan, China, Rome and even northern Europe.

Anastilosis

2010-02-08T00:02:22Z

En clara etimología, la anastilosis designa entre los arqueólogos la tarea de volver a erigir un resto arquitectónico (una columna, στύλος) que se había caído.

Concedí en su día el premio Pompilo de oro a la página de recursos del Departamento de Filología Clásica e Indoeuropeo de la Universidad de Salamanca, gestionada por Paco Cortés y Susana González. Ayer descubrí que han procedido a anastilosizarla y dejarla guapa. Ecce omnibus vobis…

Recursos en red para Filología Clásica,

de cuyo regreso todos nos congratulamos. Sus autores han montado un moderno Joomla, con sus correspondientes RSS, y han trasladado a la nueva plataforma la mayoría de los recursos que glosaron con anterioridad (aunque no todos, snif). Μακρός βίος τῷ βασιλέι.

Por cierto que compartían premio con el articulista Raúl del Pozo por su arrimarse tenaz al legado grecolatino. Sigue éste impertérrito dale que dale, ayer sin ir más lejos, con Esto es Rodas. Gratias tibi quoque.

From Ed Balls to Diane Abbott -- and Iris Murdoch: 'School Gate' to Newnham

2010-02-07T23:56:56Z

Those of you who have engaged with our recent schools discussion may like to take a look at the "School Gate" blog debate on whether or not independent schools should be banned. The same blog is also hosting a live online Q and A with Ed Balls on Tuesday -- so why not tune in and hammer him on modern languages, Latin & Greek and Palaeography....(Lord Truth, Bulley, Foska, Alcock... and all you other excellent ladies and gents, I mean YOU).

You might also take a look at School Gate's links to some other great education blogs, including the excellent To Miss with Love. One of the latest posts on this blog is about a state school student who just fails to get into Oxford. The Laura Spence problem -- though without the (ignorant) intervention of Gordon Brown and without a head teacher keen to rush to the press.

The "Miss" of the blog is very 'feet on the ground" about this. But it reminded me how tricky it always is from the Oxbridge point of view. We do our best to admit the best kinds (by which I mean those with the greatest academic potential), but with so many well qualified candidates after each place there are bound to be difficult, disputed cases -- and even occasions where it might seem in retrospect that we made a 'mistake'. (Thank god, you might say -- if Oxbridge really did manage to cream off the best with total efficiency, that would actually be bad news for the university system as a whole.)

The trouble for us is that the rules of confidentiality means that we cannot fight back if the head does go public and say what prejudiced idiots we are. We cant, for example, say that what we discovered at the interview might have had a big impact on our decision to reject the kid... they really do sometimes get honest and say that they actually have very little interest in reading the subject they have applied for, but have just been pushed by Dad or the school (... and then the school complains..).

I thought "Miss" did very well on this one.

But meanwhile, the "is late-night Newnham a heaving mass of passion" teacup storm continues?

The Mail's article on Friday was followed up on Saturday by a feature which asked some of us old girls about what the college was like in the old days. Diane Abbott and I were the chosen representatives of the 1970s... though with rather different things to say about the oppressive authority that reigned. Heaven knows where Diane got the idea that there were "endless rules and regulations" about where you had to wear your mortar board... none of us owned a mortar board, and I still don't. As for her idea that you weren't allowed a man in your room overnight -- that's even more baffling. You weren't allowed a guest of either sex more than three nights in a row, but that was more to prevent sub-letting than fornication.

It's funny how even people as sensible as Diane Abbott can re-mythologise their youth, as a conflict with the forces of puritan authority.

Meanwhile, please have some sympathy with the poor president of the Newnham JCR. For a sart it is far from clear that she actually meant the noises of fornication, and now the purists are picking her up on her spelling (discrete for discreet.... god, I thought, if my emails were scrutinised for their orthography, I'd be in trouble).

But let she who is without sin.... One of those journos picking up the president on her spelling imagined Iris Murdoch as a student at Newnham, with blokes scaling the walls to see her. OK Murdoch was briefly at Newnham as a graduate, but she certainly wasnt an undergraduate (Somerville Oxford had the privilge) .. and I doubt that she ever lived in college.

Children of Men

2010-02-07T22:50:26Z

Today, there was a real cinematic treat on the Space Channel called Children of Men. The film stars the brooding Clive Owen together with a small but strong role by Michael Caine, acted brilliantly as always. Although Julianne Moore (as Julian) is listed on covers as a selling point, I think anyone having watched this can agree that her contribution in the film pales in comparison to the solid

Crazy Thoughts On Blindness And Reading Clay Tablets

2010-02-07T22:38:09Z

Caution: this is another of my wildly speculative posts. Don’t take it too seriously. I’m constructing thoughts not conclusions. Some of these thoughts are unsupportable; some are little more than free associations; some, like the last one, are surely wrong.

[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]

Clay tablet in a
broken envelope.

I’m now on my third pass through several Akkadian prayers. Each time I go through them I see something (or think I see something) that I didn’t notice the previous time. Take a look at these two consecutive lines from a prayer to Shamash.

ana lā nāṭili tašakkan nūra
ṭuppa arma la pêtâ tašassi

For the blind, you provide light.
An encased tablet, (still) unopened, you read aloud.

(For those of you keeping score at home, the text is from BMS 6:109-110 and duplicates; Mayer, 505)

Are these two lines related? If so, how? On first reading, aside from attributing extraordinary abilities to Shamash, I didn’t see much of a relationship between them. I certainly didn't see any more relationship between these two lines and several other similar lines including the one reading “To the impotent, you give an heir.” But the more I look, the more I think these two lines might be related. Each might provide an interpretive context for the other. But I’m not sure.

Notice that Shamash provides light to the blind. There can be little doubt that this means that he brings them sight. But, to what extent can we understand Shamash’s light in this line as informing his ability to read encased tablets in the next line? Everyone, but Shamash, is blind to the contents of an encased tablet. (Actually, this is not always true. Often the envelope had the same text on it as the encased tablet. The whole idea was to prevent forgery.) Alternatively, does Shamash’s ability to read encased tablets inform our understanding of the first line? Do the two lines interact in some way?

Shamash’s light not only brings visible light it also brings life, joy and freedom. The expression nūra sakānu often means “to bring joy” as well as “to bring light.” But “joy” isn’t the only figurative meaning of nūru (light). Expressions like nūra amāru mean “to become free,” “to see the light.” And the phrase ša libbi išqillatu likallim nūrum means “let him bring to light the one who is in the heart of the shell.” According to CAD N2, 349, the “one in the shell” is a child in the womb. Again, we have a meaning in the neighborhood of “to free” in this expression. I think, we can safely understand our first expression as freeing the blind from their blindness. While it is possible to make too much of it, the parallel with the Old Greek version of Isaiah 61:1c, “recovery of sight to the blind,” taken up in Luke 4:18 and Barnabas 14:9, cannot be completely ignored. Compare also 4Q521 2, ii:6. Note that the immediately preceding context of the Isaiah passage includes bringing good news to the poor, binding up the brokenhearted and freeing the captives. In his ability to read encased tablets, Shamash can free their contents from the darkness of their enclosure. But would any ancient have understood this particular metaphorical relationship?

There are several risks in this line of thought. First is the risk of associating “light” with understanding. This is not a normal metaphor in Akkadian. In fact, I don’t know of a single example. If you do, please give me a reference. The more usual metaphor involves an association between hearing and understanding. Second, the motivation for placing these lines in physical proximity may not be recoverable and I may be imposing associations that would not have occurred to ancient readers or hearers of this text.

Now for the truly crazy stuff: Does providing light to the blind, in close association with Shamash’s ability to read enclosed tablets, mean that he enables the blind to read tablets? That thought alone, while crazy enough, may not be too crazy but my next one sure is. I just ran my fingers across the surface of a plaster cast of an Akkadian tablet from Ugarit. Could I learn to read it in the same way modern blind read Braille? I’m not sure. I tried the same experiment with a plaster cast of an Ugaritic tablet. The signs on the Ugaritic tablet are larger and I do think I could learn to read this kind of tablet by touch alone. That gives me hope that I could learn to read the Akkadian tablet by touch also. Is it possible that an experienced scribe who became blind could learn to read tablets by touch? All this seems more than a little like those modern attempts to provide “scientific” explanations for miracles. The thought is fun, the association unlikely.

Reference:

Werner Mayer, Untersuchungen zur Formensprache der Babylonischen „Gebetsbeschwörungen” (Studia Poul: Series Maior, 5; Rome: Biblical Institure Press, 1976)

Para todo menos para comer...

2010-02-07T21:56:14Z

... eso es lo que pasaba con la vajilla en la Antigüedad, que se usaba para muchas cosas ... algunas sorprendentes.

Por ejemplo, tenemos el caso de los Ostraca {de donde se deriva el término Ostracismo}, que eran fragmentos de cerámica que tenían una finalidad bastante drástica: Decidir el destierro de algún ciudadano notable de la antigua Atenas. De alguna forma venían a ser como papeletas de voto, sobre las que estaba escrito el nombre del candidato al exilio. Cada ciudadano reunido en la Asamblea decidía con su ostracon quién debía abandonar la ciudad, ya fuera por haber fallado en el cometido de sus funciones, suponer una amenaza a la democracia, etc.

Ostraka, originally uploaded by iphonetographer.

En la foto adjunta teneis 3 ejemplos de ostraca con el nombre de atenienses célebres: Pericles (que finalmente evitó el ostracismo), Cimón (que fue desterrado en el 461 aC), y Arístides (desterrado en el 483 aC).

Otro curioso uso de la cerámica tuvo lugar 4 siglos más tarde, en la Antigua Roma: Los platillos de cerámica como propaganda electoral.

Como ya sabeis, en los últimos años de la República, todo estaba en venta, desde los cargos más sencillos de la administración romana hasta los cargos más excelsos del Cursus Honorum. Sobornos, chantajes y demás maquinaciones eran herramientas frecuentes de quien quería labrarse un futuro político en Roma. Una versión bastante extendida de estas prácticas consistía en ofrecer banquetes públicos {por lo visto tampoco han cambiado tanto las formas de hacer de los políticos}. Para asegurarse que a todos los comensales les quedaba claro quien era el que le estaba llenando la barriga, los avispados directores de campaña de entoces se encargaban de que los platos tuvieran escrito el nombre del candidato en el fondo...

Copes de propaganda electoral a favor de Cató el Jove i de Catilina (63 a.C.), originally uploaded by Sebastià Giralt.

... en este caso veis 2 ejemplos de platos que fueron usados en las elecciones del 63 aC, en las que aparecen nombrados Catón el Joven (candidato a tribuno de la Plebe) y Catilina (optaba a Cónsul).

Así que ya veis todo lo que se puede llegar a hacer con un simple plato de cerámica...

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Ostraka

2010-02-07T21:26:08Z

Ostraka, originally uploaded by iphonetographer.

Aquí va el texto

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Una navaja "suiza" multiusos... de hace 20 siglos

2010-02-07T21:16:26Z

Vía La Túnica de Neso, Rogue Classicist y otros me entero de que el Museo Fitzwilliam de Cambridge, que acaba de ser íntegramente remodelado, está publicitando algunas de sus piezas más emblemáticas. Entre estas destaca una primera precursora de las navajas suizas o multiuso. Consta de una pequeña navaja, un punzón, un limpiador de uñas y uno de oídos y una pieza balancín con una cucharilla en un extremo y un tenedor en el otro. Aparentemente, se han encontrado ejemplares similares en Inglaterra, Bulgaria o Italia.

Si te hace gracia tener una buena réplica, casi por casualidad he visto que en Armillum las tienen confeccionadas en latón, a un precio de 60€.

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A Roman 'Swiss' Army Knife

2010-02-07T21:06:20Z

On display at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.World's first Swiss Army knife revealed - made 1800 years before today's version - The Daily MailUpdate - David Meadows de-bunks it here, and ... I gotta agree about the fork being a later invention when it comes to eating! Whoops ...

Champagne Coupes Are Back?

2010-02-07T20:50:00Z

Riedel have started making them again, and whilst flutes are better for serving champagne in the sense that the shape means that bubbles rise more slowly to the surface so preserve the 'essence' of the drinking experience ... There is something rather decadent and nicely retro about drinking champagne out of coupes. And who drinks champagne that slowly that one needs to preserve the bubbles for

No country for old tongues

2010-02-07T19:58:09Z

Attn:
Discovery News
BBC News
et al.

We all know how obsessed you are with the oldest of anything. But please, stop. You are doing a grave disservice to languages by saying things like ‘A tribal language thought to have existed for 65,000 years has disappeared forever’ or ‘Languages in the Andamans are thought to originate from Africa. Some may be 70,000 years old.’ This is utter nonsense, even if you find a scholar to tell you otherwise. All languages are always changing, and although some may change more rapidly than others, the idea that a language could persist essentially unchanged for multiple millennia is pure bunk. The idea that we can assign exact ages to languages (other than recent inventions) is even more ridiculous. The only ancient languages are the ones actually spoken in the past, and all currently spoken languages have equally long histories. It is a great tragedy that the Bo language has gone extinct, as it is when, every other week or so, another language goes extinct on this planet. It is a tragedy regardless of how long the language has been spoken, because it represents the end of a particular part of the modern world’s cultural diversity. Your attempt to sensationalize this story by exoticizing indigenous peoples as primitives lost in time is unwelcome and counterproductive. Let me help:

The Bo (Aka-Bo) language was a member of the Northern branch of the Greater Andamanese language subfamily. With its extinction, only one Greater Andamanese language, A-Pucikwar, has any remaining known speakers, and it is highly endangered. The ten Great Andamanese and three South Andamanese languages are all related to one another, although the exact relationships among them remain unclear, but there is no known relationship between the Andamanese languages and any other languages of the world. Their importance for linguistics is that they may represent descendants of the languages of the original migrants to the Andaman Islands many millennia ago, and if we were able to reconstruct the Proto-Andamanese language, potentially to better understand the population and migration history of the Indian Ocean. Their importance for their remaining speakers is inestimably greater.

Filed under: Linguistics

Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica

2010-02-07T19:49:58Z

Acaba de publicarse el nº9 (2009) de la revista Cultura Escrita & Sociedad, que publica Ediciones Trea, bajo la dirección de Antonio Castillo Gómez y la coordinación de Verónica Sierra Blas. El dossier de este número, coordinado por Manuel Ramírez Sánchez (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), se titula Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica, y en él participan cuatro conocidos expertos en la materia. Juan Signes Codoñer (Universidad de Valladolid), publica el artículo "La escritura en la Grecia arcaica: un debate metodológico", mientras que María Paz de Hoz García-Bellido (Universidad de Salamanca) ha realizado el trabajo "El uso de la escritura expuesta como expresión de poder y prestigio en la Grecia clásica y helenística". Por su parte, Marco Buonocore (Biblioteca Apostólica Vatiacana) firma el artículo titulado "Modalidades de la legitimación pública y de la autorrepresentación a través de la praxis documental epigráfica. Algunos ejemplos de la Italia romana", mientras que Javier Velaza (Universidad de Barcelona) cierra el dossier con su artículo "Escritura, autorrepresentación y poder en el mundo ibérico".

En los últimos años se han publicado interesantes trabajos, algunos de los cuales han sido reseñados en las páginas de anteriores números de la revista Cultura Escrita & Sociedad. Entre ellos, por ejemplo, la reciente monografía de Mireille Corbier titulada Donner à voir, donner à lire: Mémoire et communication dans la Rome ancienne, o la obra colectiva L’ écriture publique du pouvoir, a la que habría que sumar la más reciente contribución en lengua inglesa, Ancient Literacies: The culture of reading in Greece and Rome, en cuyas páginas se incluye un capítulo de medio centenar de páginas en el que se ofrece un detenido análisis de la producción bibliográfica generada sobre el estudio de la cultura escrita en la Antigüedad enlos últimos 25 años. Las referencias bibliográficas disponibles en lengua española son más escasas y a estas publicaciones se suma ahora este dossier titulado Epigrafía y cultura escrita en la Antigüedad clásica.

En total, casi doscientas páginas que nos permitirán introducirnos en los usos de la escritura, expuesta en la Antigüedad clásica, yendo más allá del aspecto externo de las mismas o del mero inventario de nuevos testimonios, que es a lo que habitualmente nos dedicamos más los estudiosos de las inscripciones antiguas. Sin hurtar un ápice de información al lector, incluso en ocasiones aportando un caudal de referencias escritas, sobre todo epigráficas, que puedan desalentar a quienes se aventuren en la lectura de estos artículos pertrechados con un escaso bagaje, puedo asegurar que los cuatro especialistas que han participado en este monográ0co dedicado a la Epigrafía y la Historia de la Cultura Escrita en la Antigüedad clásica, ofrecen en sus artículos una excelente muestra de su buen hacer profesional, en un camino en el que aún queda mucho por recorrer.

Check Out Aegean Airlines’ New Look

2010-02-07T19:41:20Z

… promoting the new Acropolis Museum:

SX-DVU A320 Aegean closeup on Flickr.

Weekend Fun

2010-02-07T19:33:16Z

Took a walk and photographed two buildings for Wikipedia.
Went skiing on the golf course.
Had friends over, played a game of Scotland Yard and a game of Power Grid.
Painted three walls in the bedroom. This was sort of a chore, but not in fact boring, and having a nice-looking bedroom is fun. The fourth wall is destined for some faux-Japanese cherry-branch wallpaper on pale grey that looks like something out of a William Gibson novel.
Had family over for a fine Korean dinner cooked by two Chinese sisters.

One piece of fun that I missed out on was Midlake's Stockholm gig. It was sold out. Anyway, I haven't heard their new album, and I usually don't enjoy gigs much when I haven't heard the songs before. So I might as well put some of that concert-ticket money into a CD instead.

And you, Dear Reader? Tell us about your weekend fun!

Read the comments on this post...

mtDNA of Cres Islanders

2010-02-07T19:00:00Z

Coll Antropol. 2009 Dec;33(4):1323-8.

Mitochondrial DNA heritage of Cres Islanders--example of Croatian genetic outliers.

Jeran N, Havas Augustin D, Grahovac B, Kapović M, Metspalu E, Villems R, Rudan P.

Diversity of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages of the Island of Cres was determined by high-resolution phylogenetic analysis on a sample of 119 adult unrelated individuals from eight settlements. The composition of mtDNA pool of this Island population is in contrast with other Croatian and European populations. The analysis revealed the highest frequency of haplogroup U (29.4%) with the predominance of one single lineage of subhaplogroup U2e (20.2%). Haplogroup H is the second most prevalent one with only 27.7%. Other very interesting features of contemporary Island population are extremely low frequency of haplogroup J (only 0.84%), and much higher frequency of haplogroup W (12.6%) comparing to other Croatian and European populations. Especially interesting finding is a strikingly higher frequency of haplogroup N1a (9.24%) presented with African/south Asian branch almost absent in Europeans, while its European sister-branch, proved to be highly prevalent among Neolithic farmers, is present in contemporary Europeans with only 0.2%. Haplotype analysis revealed that only five mtDNA lineages account for almost 50% of maternal genetic heritage of this island and they present supposed founder lineages. All presented findings confirm that genetic drift, especially founder effect, has played significant role in shaping genetic composition of the isolated population of the Island of Cres. Due to presented data contemporary population of Cres Island can be considered as genetic "outlier" among Croatian populations.

Link

Sarvestan Palace

2010-02-07T18:20:37Z

The great dome

The small, fifth-century Sasanian building east of Sarvestan (satellite photo) is usually called a palace, but no one knows what the building really is. It may have been a hunting lodge or a religious site; but it may as well have been a palace, because it resembles the Qalah-e Dokhtar and the palace of Ardašir at Firuzabad. Whatever the function of the ruin near Sarvestan, it is well-preserved, and worth a visit. It will take an afternoon, if you rent a car in Shiraz. And if you don’t like to go to Iran, your photos are here.

D. HAGEDORN, Wörterlisten 13

2010-02-07T16:43:50Z

Inlcudes:

BL XII
CPR XXIX
O.Claud. IV
O.Cret. Chers.
P.Bawit Clackson
P.Clackson
P.Kramer
P.Minnesota
P.Oxy. LXXIII
P.Oxy. LXXIV
P.Poethke

Open Access Papyrological Word List (13th edition)

2010-02-07T16:33:25Z

WÖRTERLISTEN aus den Registern von Publikationen griechischer und lateinischer dokumentarischer Papyri und Ostraka

kompiliert von Dieter Hagedorn unter anfänglicher Mithilfe von Pia Breit, Wolfgang Habermann, Ursula Hagedorn, Bärbel Kramer, Gertrud Marohn, Jörn Salewski und mit Dank für die Überlassung elektronischer Dateien an Charikleia Armoni (für P.Heid. IX und P.Köln XI), Marja J. Bakker (für P.Worp), Alette V. Bakkers (für P.Minnesota), Adam Bülow-Jacobsen (für O.Claud. IV), Willy Clarysse (für P.Count); Nahum Cohen (für P.Berl. Cohen), James Cowey (für P.Paramone), Hélène Cuvigny (für O.Krok.), Ruth Duttenhöfer (für P.Lips. II), Traianos Gagos (für P.Thomas), Nikolaos Gonis (für P.Oxy. LXVIII, LXIX, LXX, LXXI, LXXII, LXXIII und LXXIV), Ann Hanson (für P.Sijp.), Hermann Harrauer (für P.Horak, P.Eirene II und CPR XIX), Francisca A. J. Hoogendijk (für BL XII), Andrea Jördens (für P.Louvre I, P.Louvre II, SB XXI und SB XXIII), Demokritos Kaltsas (für P.Heid. VIII), Bärbel Kramer (für P.Poethke), Johannes Kramer (für C. Gloss. Biling. II), Claudia Kreuzsaler (für SPP III2.5); Nico Kruit und die Herausgeber der BL (für BL XI), Csaba Láda (für CPR XXVIII); Herwig Maehler (für BGU XIX); Klaus Maresch (für P.Ammon II, P.Bub. II, P.Köln IX; P.Köln X; P.Köln XI; P.Phrur. Diosk. und P.Polit. Iud.), Henri Melaerts (für P.Bingen), Fritz Mitthof (für CPR XXIII, P.Erl. Diosp. und SPP III2.2), Federico Morelli (für CPR XXII), Bernhard Palme (für P.Harrauer und CPR XXIV), Amphilochios Papathomas (für CPR XXV), Patrick Sänger (für SB XXV), Philip Schmitz (für P.Iand. Zen.), Paul Schubert (für P.Yale III), Sven Tost (für SPP III2.1), Klaas A. Worp (für O.Kellis und P.NYU II)
kompiliert von
Dieter Hagedorn
13. Fassung vom 7. Februar 2010

KONTRÄRINDEX Rückläufiges Verzeichnis der in den Abschnitten 02, 03 und 05 der WörterListen in der Fassung vom 7. Februar 2010 enthaltenen Namen und Wörter

Field Report: Vietnam - Another Source Country?

2010-02-07T15:30:56Z

As followers of the antiquities trade in general will be well aware, the illicit looting, smuggling, and display of artifacts from prehistoric and historic sites truly remain a global problem. Yet, the on-the-ground situation in certain regions, such as Mainland Southeast Asia, remains under-reported. Although UNESCO conventions, better monitoring and conservation, and increased calls for repatriation by Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia has curtailed the trade in historic period frescoes and statuary from the regions' numerous early states and empires (from Funan, to Dvaravati, to Champa and Angkorian Khmer), the trade in prehistoric artifacts continues unabated. Since at least the 1980s, the looting of innumerable archaeological sites throughout the region, primarily in Cambodia and Thailand, has continued to mar the landscape and enrich the profits of middle-men at the expense of local interests. Furthermore, the mid-later prehistoric (c. 3,500-1,500BP) sites most commonly targeted belong to a very poorly known time period, during which profound changes in daily life, contact with the outside world, and the rituals of death were occurring. A more accurate understanding of these developments is crucial to explaining the origins of the states mentioned above, but every site looted before archaeologists can reach it, or salvaged after the fact, is another piece of the puzzle lost.

For my initial contribution to this blog, as an early-career archaeologist and physical anthropologist with connections to ongoing excavation and outreach projects in Vietnam and Cambodia, I would like to share my observations and opinions about the sale of authentic antiquities in Vietnam, as observed and documented over several trips, the most recent of which ended only one week ago. On the surface, it might appear that the looting problem there pales in significance to the more organized situation in Cambodia, Thailand, or other world regions. However, it appears that this situation is changing. To explain, let me share some brief observations from my most recent research trip (November 2009-January 2010).

Through excavations, classwork and my own reading and research, I have begun to familiarize myself with the diversity of artifacts one might encounter in archaeological sites of various locations and time periods throughout Vietnam, and the contexts they likely derived from, if encountered on the open market. During my latest trip, I stayed in an area of Hanoi (West Lake District) in which many "souvenir" or "antiquities" shops have opened in recent years, primarily along the main street connecting this district to the center of the city, or "Old Quarter" (see above left). Although national heritage law stipulates on paper that any authentic object older than 100 years can not be openly sold, the enforceability of this mandate is very difficult.

It is important to note that most objects sold in antiquities shops in Vietnam's cities are either Vietnam (American) War relics (real and fake), antiques from family collections indeed made in the 20th century, or replicas of historic-period Chinese ceramics, and even some private collectors and shop owners seek to work with officials to create a national registry where vendors can register family collections as authentic pieced with provenance in order to legally sell them. However, not all urban dealers are in favor of this plan, as the State has supreme confiscation rights, even though international treaties apply to illegal exports from Vietnam, and individual "possession rights" for "heirlooms," "national treasures," etc. are recognized. Of course, the vague definition of what might constitute a "national treasure" ensures that many important historic period objects are still sold without provenance, salvaged from shipwrecks, or even sometimes looted from sites or monasteries...to say nothing of prehistoric artifacts. The current situation as I've encountered it on the ground in my investigations suggests that the trade in small items from prehistoric/early historic contexts continues unabated...anywhere these items can be mixed into larger antiques collections, and find a ready (and GROWING!) tourist market.

While in Hoi An, an ancient port city on the central coast of Vietnam, I was browsing the many side streets of the city's "Old Town" district, itself a World Heritage site (as much of the architecture dates from the 1500-1800s). Although the number of shops catering to tourists inside the Old Town itself (supposedly a more commerce-free zone than the newer section of the city outside of the World Heritage boundaries) has increased markedly since my last visit in 2005, the ambiance of the place felt the same. I was saddened, however, to come across several "souvenir" shops openly selling metal, glass and stone artifacts (see above right), including several quite beautiful restrung necklaces, clearly deriving from late prehistoric Sa Huynh and early Cham cultural sites (most likely burials), as the central coast region has long been known as the archaeological heartland of these consecutive cultures. As more excavation, research, and museum display of these artifacts has been done by international teams, the more that accidental finds have been recognized as valuable, and the more deliberate looting has increased.

According to the shop's owner (from whom I received permission to take artifact photographs), new shipments would come into his store every couple of months, mixed in with other objects...from an area no more specific than "around My Son." It's likely that the middleman delivering the artifacts was never told himself, if the original discoverer even knew. No, seeing such objects for sale does not guarantee that they were deliberately looted (as opposed to accidental field finds), but the contexts of many Sa Huynh glass and bronze items as grave goods makes it likely...and does that even matter when an artifact is offered for sale to an unsuspecting tourist? I think not... How much? $70 would get you a small bronze bell (at that shop), $250 a medium sized one, $80 a corroded bronze spear point or fragment of spiral bracelet, beads for $10 a pop. By my reckoning on that day, this was one of six or seven similar shops in the area... An ever-present problem indeed!

What can be done? It's hard to say. While collaborative excavation and student training and outreach is increasing, life remains difficult, and still centered around agriculture, ensuring both continued supply and incentive. Likewise, tourists and expatriates continue to pour into the country (and region). Many provincial museums remain small, under-visited and under-funded, although I've noticed this changing, at least in the north. While some tourists do buy replicas of some of the more elaborate historic bronze and iron objects, it remains too easy to acquire the real thing, and while those I've talked to on the street (motorbike drivers, food vendors etc.) might be both impressed and baffled that one would devote their life to "ancient things" (the literal translation of archaeology in Vietnamese), I have rarely gotten the sense that prehistoric times/artifacts are thought of as "heritage" to most people. This, I feel, has to be the first step, or else more direct intermediary measures such as closing legal loopholes to the local trade or increasing monitoring, will not be enough. For my part, I will continue to work in the area; excavating, educating and sharing all I can about ancient life in a country I feel privileged to explore.

Interview with Franck Goddio

2010-02-07T12:58:43Z

Renowned archaeologist Franck Goddio talks with podcast host Steve Mirsky [below] about his efforts to recover artifacts from the ancient cities of Alexandria, Heracleion and Canopus, with special attention to discoveries related to Cleopatra and her reign.

via Cleopatra’s Alexandria Treasures | Scientific American Podcast.

Exhibition – Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece

2010-02-07T11:49:12Z

Intro to a nice little page on the exhibition … the page includes a ‘What Greek Hero Are You’ quiz and a number of audio bits:

Organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, with loans from museums in the United States and Europe, this exhibition of approximately 100 objects defines various types of ancient Greek heroes between the sixth and first centuries BCE.

at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts – Nashville, TN -.