ArchaeoBlog

Actually, not much, although I suppose I could regale you with the story of how I daringly wrote a couple of paragraphs on the stratigraphic chronology of Kom el-Hisn. Didn’t watch much of the Stupor Bowl, although I liked the outcome. My interest in football starts to wane after the Rose Bowl, although I still see the SB as the formal end of the football season.

I did, however, start reading through the papers in the Science magazine on Ardipithecus Ramidus. Two things have struck me so far. First, they all use ‘hominid’ instead of ‘hominin’ for which I am thankful. Second, they repeat the argument in several of the papers and summaries that this weakens the argument or at least the general feeling that the most recent common ancestor of us and the great apes looked a lot like chimpanzees. That has bothered me for some time, especially when modern chimp behavior is used as an analog for early hominid behavior. I do recall being taught in undergrad school, lo these many years ago, that many chimp and gorilla features, such as knuckle walking, may be recent adaptations specifically by those lines and that we did not necessarily evolve from very similar common ancestors. It assumes that the chimp line was largely static since the split. I’ve kind of harped on this sort of thing before in the context of archaeology, where many use modern hunter gatherers as analogs for our ancestors. There’s a lot of arguments for and against ethnographic analogy, but one doesn’t really expect to see something like it in one of the more biological sciences.

They haven’t yet gone into the defining characteristics of ‘hominids’ but I have only read the author summaries and part of the first paper. They have great stratigraphy though. The fossil-bearing layer is neatly sandwiched between two tightly dated volcanic deposits that suggests that the entire deposit formed within a few thousand years making for a great slice of time.

I just checked the Science web site and it looks like they are offering some of the articles for free (with a registration), so go have a look, if interested.

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

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.

When I first saw this story I went “Eh, an outline of a track, big deal” but it turns out to have a lot of interesting stuff, ripe for a big excavation.

Supervisor wants to excavate old mill

A township supervisor wants to unearth the remains of the old Kooker/Springer Mill at Fischer’s Park.

Dr. Tom Hollenbeck has already asked archaeologists at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania to dig up the site on Kriebel Road.

Two mill stones — partially buried along Kriebel Road — have already been removed, according to Hollenbeck.

Relic of long dead past surfaces Workers find gravestone beneath library front lawn

Workers unexpectedly unearthed an old gravestone while digging a power line trench on the front lawn of the Silas Bronson Library on Friday.

The noontime discovery of a broken gravestone about seven inches below the frozen grass led to the suspension of the excavation work that was being done by Stone Construction Inc. of Southbury.

“We dug it up in a big hunk of frozen soil,” said Jared Isbell, who is a excavation laborer for Stone. “The library director had warned us to look out for this kind of thing, but still, it was pretty weird.”

Lost for posterity?

Just four kilometres from Sisupalgarh is the Dhauli hill. At its base is an Ashokan Pillar with edicts from the Emperor. Ashoka fought the Kalinga War that converted him from a ferocious marauder to a pacifist Buddhist. Ashoka was the Emperor of Magadha. His forebear was Jarasandha — mentor of Sisupala, as mentioned in the Mahabharata. What research has been done on this front? Can any be undertaken if Sisupalgarh is lost forever and goes under the foundations of modern buildings?

I did see any time frame on it. I don’t really know much of anything about it but thought I’d pass it along anyway.

Archaeologists examine finds

A mediaeval gold coin discovered by a man who initially thought it was wrapping paper glittering in the sunshine was one major find produced to experts at an artefacts road show staged at Faulkland village hall.

At the meet the archaeologist event on January 30 medieval pottery, coins dating back thousands of years and Neolithic flint tools were brought in by a huge crowd who unearthed items from all over the parish of Hemington, Hardington and Foxcote.

The purpose of the afternoon was for everyone who had dug up any item of interest in their garden to bring it along and have it examined by the experts, Mark Corney and Julian Richards.

I need to move somewhere tha I can find stuff like that.

100 year-old whiskey dug up from Antarctic ice

In a remarkable feat of icy archaeology, these crates, which have been sitting under a cabin built by Shackleton’s team, have been pried free of the surrounding ice. Whiskey company Whyte and Mackay is elated. The company gave the Sir Shackleton the booze but hasn’t made this particular blend in decades. They’re hoping to sample the blend and replicate it.

The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust originally thought there were only two crates, so the other three came as a bonus. Three are labeled as whiskey and two as brandy. A few bottles might have broken, however, because the archaeologists smelled alcohol as they dug them up. They still need to scrape off the ice encasing the crates and gently remove ice that has formed inside before they know how many of the bottles are intact.

Previous article on it here.

Ancient monastery’s restoration hailed as symbol of interfaith peace in Egypt

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities spent eight years and $14.5 million to carry out a comprehensive restoration and conservation of the ancient monastery, situated in the rugged desert mountains near Egypt’s Red Sea coast.

It was in this remote spot, at the end of the third century, that renowned Christian ascetic St. Anthony took up a residence in a cave, with little more than a spring and some palm trees to sustain him.

Upon his death in A.D. 356, his followers created the world’s first Christian monastery, which houses 120 monks, the burial place of four saints, and church paintings dating to the Middle Ages.

A fine tribute to such an outstanding saint, if I do say so myself.

I can’t say much about the relations between Copts and the general muslim population. I’ve certainly heard of complaints about discrimination, but I never really saw any and no Copt sat me down and confessed to any discrimination. I noticed a lot of the Coptic women, or at least girls, adopted the head scarf. I was surprised when one of the hotel workers in the Fayum — the place was Coptic owned and operated — got done with work and put on the usual muslim garb, complete with scarf.

Stonehenge’s secret: archaeologist uncovers evidence of encircling hedges

The Monty Python knights who craved a shrubbery were not so far off the historical mark: archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of The Great Stonehenge Hedge.

Inevitably dubbed Stonehedge, the evidence from a new survey of the Stonehenge landscape suggests that 4,000 years ago the world’s most famous prehistoric monument was surrounded by two circular hedges, planted on low concentric banks. The best guess of the archaeologists from English Heritage, who carried out the first detailed survey of the landscape of the monument since the Ordnance Survey maps of 1919, is that the hedges could have served as screens keeping even more secret from the crowd the ceremonies carried out by the elite allowed inside the stone circle.

Inevitably, yes, it was the first thing I thought of.

“Shrubberies are my trade. I am a shrubber. My name is Roger the Shrubber. I arrange, design, and sell shrubberies.”

The Dawn of Civilization: Writing, Urban Life, and Warfare

Joan Oates’s sharp blue eyes spotted something that was not right. Standing on the windy summit of a vast, human-made mound in northeastern Syria, the wiry 81-year-old archaeologist noticed an ugly scar that had been left by a backhoe on one of the smaller mounds ringing the ancient city of Nagar, where she has excavated for a quarter century. Oates had just arrived to begin her latest season at the site, and this blemish on her cherished landscape annoyed her. Two young men on her team volunteered to investigate the damage. They returned, shaken. Jumping into the trench, one of them had come face-to-face with a skull. “Everywhere we looked, there were human bones,” one recalls. “There were an enormous number of dead people.”

Long article and I admit that I have only skimmed it.