Inspector Jones?
February 20, 2009
Back in the day, life looked like this.
A STUPENDOUS view of the COLOSSEUM
(Courtesy Library of Congress)
It’s a little known fact, but archaeologists have actually proven that the world simply hadn’t gotten around to inventing color yet, and anyway, cheekbones and marble revetments looked better in the sepia light of the Golden Ages.
This is entirely truthful. Rich with bits of truth, like toffee-studded cookies.
Okay, it is entirely false. But it is true that archaeology and the tricks of the antiquities fields have had to grow up a bit in the last, oh, century and a half or so. And while some of us exhibit only enough technological literacy to babble online, some other people are doing things like “writing PhD theses on Second Life” and “figuring out where they are through not the sun’s rays but a gadget”. Shocking, I know.
“Excavating Second Life Cyber-Archaeologies, Heritage and Virtual Communities.” What a sweet, sweet gig. No visa. No peculiar food poisoning, no artichoke-banana yogurt. No bloody dust colonies of sinus doom from Hades.
On the downside, none of this:
Seen in his natural habitat, the archaeologist of yore glows with shining clothes...
What’s that, you say? You can burn things on Second Life? For academic, instructional and educational purposes involving Neolithic tube tops?
Seriously awesome.
And if for some reason you require stone age level graphics (but with mead!), there’s a game of indeed the Stone Age (alias: Neolithic) running at http://www.greenlandgame.com/ where you can attempt to survive barbarians and that whole realistic bread => people => buckets of people => starvation deal. I may have just invaded barbarians armed with stale bread.
For those not fearing Big Brother, geotagging is what all the cool cats with jetlags need to do (the formal review is even more enthusiastic, but it doesn’t sound field tested). For those with a Big Brother complex, don’t worry, it doesn’t appear to work that well. Also, there is a distinct lack of wifi in most of the interesting corners of the world, namely, most of the mountains out West and the greater sum of Romania. On the other hand, this clearly warrents a personal appraisal…
There’s also a whole host of fun and games (mosaic tetris!) that presumably work to lure small children into the loving arms of stratigraphy, and Lego Indiana Jones on youtube, and…
…couldn’t resist. Oh, Indy. You slay me. So the times are changing- we can no longer swoop in, poke around, and take all the good stuff. Excellent thing. (The loss of the brilliant white seersucker suits and helmets is a sartorial shame, but so it goes). Not that archaeologists (legit archaeologists, not just dudes with metal detectors) have really done that for a while, but it bears repeating. The evolution of the scientific equipment in the corresponding decades have been countless- DNA tests, NAA, TOTAL stations, GIS, mini bottles of shampoo etc.- but honestly, the ability to translate a dig from lantern slides and loci charts into Second Life, and turn that further into an open, public exploration of experimental archaeology- that’s a good thing. A great one.
The next trick might have to be the whole marquee attraction, though- youtube’s related videos give an interesting twist to keyword searches, but the chances of stumbling across the archaeological section of the Library of Congress archives is, I’m going to guess, relatively slim. As much as I joshed the drhawassathon, hey, he’s a charismatic, polarizing figure. People will read, and maybe even do that educational thing I hear is all the rage these days. But is there a better way to thread the research together than hapzard searches and chaotic tags?
Economics of the Ivory Towers
February 17, 2009
Beyond those pesky student loans:
(credit to Dave Gray)
I’m a Jstor addict. This habit would cost approximately 299359 dollars a year if I chose to indulge off campus. Considering the library debate below, this is a serious thing. Open Archaeology is not about the Naked Archaeolgist. Instead, it’s Oxford’s sterling contribution to that whole future thing. Lives do not tend to depend on things like this:
But I’m fairly sure there are articles out there that would probably help, say, malaria patients. And there’s this to be said:
Hmm. Granted, I’m just one of those pesky undergraduates. But I study a discipline where books, those bound paper things, those essentials of life, can cost a clean 480 euros. I’m pretty sure biology students know the price of knowledge, every semester when they swap nights for symbiotic DNA recombination, or whatever it is they mutter, but more importantly when they hand over several hundred dollars for textbooks useable for a single semester.
The world of doctors, PhD or MD, can do better than this.
Edifying news, con’t.
February 16, 2009
In a surprise move, a newspaper article about a nifty local dig was published recently that manages to hit all the key points of archaeology: getting dirty, trash, hard currency, and meticulous curation of bits of organic flotsam.
The archaeologist have dug a trench through the ring from one side of the village to the other in order to examine the remains of the culture. Along with nine others, archaeologist Branden Scott, 26, of Cresco knelt on the ground, scraping away 10 centimeter layers of dirt at a time in a well-documented grid pattern on the ground. Each layer or significant area is marked with flags.
“I have never seen such density of remains. The amount of trash in the pits at this site is unique compared to other sites I’ve seen,” Scott said. He added that usually the land has been tilled through farming practices over time so that the under layers are disturbed, but that Oak Village has been preserved.
Items collected from the site will be preserved. The site will be buried and the levee will be rebuilt. The Corps is expecting to begin work on the levee in the spring.
Field work is ahead of schedule and expected to be complete by the end of this month.
“The Corps have really moved quickly to get this contracted and funded,” Benn said.
If the weather stays warm and ice continues to melt north of the site, Benn said the trench is sure to flood and work will be put off for a few weeks.
The work contract for the Oak Village project was $538,000 and the total cost for the Two Rivers PL84-99 repairs are estimated at $12 million. A temporary levee constructed of rock is protecting Oakville and construction of the new levee should begin this spring.
At A Glance
Archaeologists from Bear Creek Archaeology Inc. typically spend about seven hours a day at the Oak Village site. Bear Creek will devote nearly 9,000 man-hours to this project, not including the time of consultants such as a geomorphologist, a paleobotantist, and a paleozoologist.
archaeologist anticipate recovery of more than 150,000 artifacts that will need to be cleaned, cataloged, and analyzed in detail as well as curated, said Dave Stanley, director of Bear Creek Archeology Inc.
Hundreds of soil samples will be water screened and run through a flotation device to recover botanical remains. Researches will spend nearly 4,300 hours in the field on this recovery project.
I’m thrilled. No, seriously. There’s a budget! There’s transparency! This is what people should know- it’s a taxpayer funded dig, it seems, run by the Army Corps of Engineers, it involves highly skilled work and lots of primitive spa conditions (well, dirt and sweat is a kind of mud bath, if Pollyanna is involved). What kind of work? Well, a stratigraphic excavation based on layers and significant areas, not mad ravaging of my precciioousss. There’s an estimated time frame that isn’t on a geologic scale, although certainly substantial enough to make an impression, and a nice detail of the kinds of processing the site itself gets treated to. (See? Another mud bath! Archaeology, what a cushy life.)
Probably they still have people asking about the damn dinosaurs.
Rawr.
And what a big bad world it is, too
February 9, 2009
Breaking news: Archaeology a poor choice for fame and fortune!
No, seriously. Apparently the whole title and trust fund thing are de rigeur these days for those foolish enough to fall for ye olde thingys.
No? You’re not convinced? Suggestion: Sleep with the department chair. Or worse, read a physics book or five.
Apparently Archaeology isn’t the only battleground of civilization, the NY Times is hosting a rousing discussion about navel-gazing academia, the future of the ivory towers and whether or not the humanities are fit to be the hobbyhorse of those classy dudes figuring out that kissing is fun.
Simplistic? Of course. I’m still a proud archaeology major, student loans and all. And I still believe in the future of literature and art and words that have been savored by mouths in a hundred different languages, or even words saved from the sands. On the other hand, I hear that foraging is no longer the fun and mammoth hunt extravaganza it used to be. And archaeology deserves better than dumpster diving funds. I know it’s crazy to actually postulate some future potentials, but archaeology needs more than bull whips and glittery gold. Or the Naked Archaeologist, because that’s just embarrassing for the species.
That’s right. We need firepower. We need zombies. We need motherfuckin’ Greeks on a trireme.
We need sleep, because our thesis is doing weird things to our occipital lobe.
Every village has one
June 6, 2008
And not an idiot, either. I mean instead the crazy old lady or two, who banter and patter through the whole day. If you speak their language there is no escape but you get in return a series of sitcom-ready punchlines and riddles for fortune cookies. Our set sits between the dig house and the dormitory, just before the street with the tangerine and lime facade. A goodnight is mandatory, even for those of us with a vocabulary limited to “kebab” and they’ll still spill out the good stuff just in case we magically learned the mother tongue during the day.
Hos geldiniz to Tarsus, by the way. Tarsus is much like Tilisca in that it has dust, sunshine and bewildered roosters. Unlike Transylvania, it also has solar powered heated brand spanking new showers, electricity, cooks, tea all the time, wireless internet, Roman terracottas…although it does have blue Dacias. Odd. Also we’re supposed to start work, i.e. up on top of the giant Gozlukule mound, at daybreak, meaning breakfast served at 4:30. That would be A.M.
Indiana Jones, this ain’t. On the other hand people had a tendency to die around him. Bullwhip, sure death….bullwhip, death by paper work…this never ends well.
How do you tell time here? My own little technologically advanced watch requires the addition of eight hours, minus seven minutes, which is totally not helpful. Instead, look up. Bright, scorching sun. But in the morning at daybreak is the first call to prayer; five times a day the loudspeakers come on and the calls echo throughout the mountains. A rooster gets terrified by the proud German clock tower that bongs every hour and half past, so usually midnight is a heap of sqwacks. Possibly he was eaten yesterday though. At one there is a reputed breeze that sweeps the streets and even up on the hill where there is no shade. If the sun goes down, it’s dinner time and then if it is dark it’s time for all good archaeologists to be tucked up in bed.
Speaking of which the exodus to the roof terrace informs me that perhaps I owe a visit to the dinner table.
gule gule
