archaeology
gregladen | July 29, 2008 An ugly fact killing a beautiful hypothesis I'm not mentioning any names, and don't ask me any details. In fact, don't repeat this story.
Some years ago, when I was a mere graduate student, a fellow student working in an unnamed country in Africa discovered a very very old stone artifact. To this day, this bit of chipped stone debris, representing the activities of an ancient very pre-human hominid, is one of the oldest well dated, in situ objects of its kind known.
The stone had some yeck on it, and for giggles, this stone got passed on to a physicist who had invented a new way of…
aardvarchaeology | July 23, 2008A Trondheim colleague has kindly invited me to head a session at the Nordic TAG conference next May. T.A.G. means "Theoretical Archaeology Group", and denotes a series of annual conferences rather than a defined group of people. The invitation hinted that I might perhaps want to contribute something provocative. After a moment's thought, I realised that my attitude to TAG (Nordic or otherwise) goes beyond provocative: I am simply hostile to it. Archaeological theory, in my opinion, belongs within the context of real specific archaeological research and is useless in an abstract form, which…
aardvarchaeology | July 20, 2008
A man in northern Sweden recently found a giant vertebra in a lake at 210 meters above sea level. A preliminary statement from the National Museum of Natural History suggests that it may belong to a whale. The find spot hasn't been near the sea since the end of the latest ice age. I'm looking forward to a radiocarbon date.
Via Aftonbladet.
Update 18 September '09: Verdict: recent sperm whale.
aardvarchaeology | July 18, 2008Amateur archaeologist Bob Lind, whom I have often mentioned here in connection with his wild archaeoastronomical ideas, issued me a challenge today (and I translate):
Hello Martin!
I saw a statement of yours in yesterday's Sydsvenska Dagbladet, where you encourage researchers to blog more, which you have certainly done yourself both regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's stones. And what rot it all is.
Since you have insulted me in writing to journalists and called me an arch-idiot [Sw. ärkeidiot] among other things, while also claiming that my research regarding Ale's stones and Heimdallr's…
gregladen | July 13, 2008It has become axiomatic that the use of adornment by humans is some sort of symbolic act, and thus is linked to the human symbolic and linguistic mind. The human symbolic and linguistic mind is the trait that we axiomatically believe to be the derived human feature ... the cladistic apomorphy that makes us human (as opposed to other-ape). Therefore, the use of adornment is seen by early 21st century archaeologists as evidence of modern human behavior.
Some artifacts from early archaeological sties might be adornment, or they might be 'art' (or at least "arty") and they might be related to…
aardvarchaeology | July 11, 2008Everybody with an interest in anthropology and archaeology who isn't lost in some green summery haze far from the nearest internet connection -- it's time to contribute good new blog entries to next week's Four Stone Hearth blog carnival. You needn't have written them yourself: if you've found something worth reading recently, submit it to Tim at Remote Central.
aardvarchaeology | July 11, 2008I often dig old crap out of the ground, so today's chore at the summer house provided some novelty. I won't say welcome novelty: I re-cut the cesspit and emptied the outhouse barrel, burying new crap.
In recent years, there has been a vogue among archaeological museums to host "incavations". Museum visitors are invited to bring stuff that has meaning to them, and it is ceremonially buried in the museum grounds. It's basically a pomo version of the time-hallowed custom where the town mayor and his buddies would bury a metal box with papers and coins under the cornerstone of the new post office…
aardvarchaeology | July 10, 2008Today we dug and sieved our 33rd and last square-meter test pit at Djurhamn, and I took the gear back to the County Museum's stores. Unless a colleague with better early-modern pottery skillz than mine provides any surprises, it seems that we have not found any of the evidence for 16th/17th century harbour life that we sought. We do however have quite a bit of 18th/19th century household and tavern refuse. And it seems unlikely to be pure chance that the single pit that yielded any bones was the one nearest to the abandoned cemetery depicted on a 1630s map of the area. Osteology will tell.
I…
aardvarchaeology | July 7, 2008
I spent Thursday and Friday digging test pits with a group of energetic volunteers at Djurhamn, the first two of seven planned days in the field. The great Ehrsson brothers are now joined by an equally solid Ehrsson nephew, among other hard-working people. We're looking for archaeological evidence for historically attested land activity around a harbour whose seafloor is covered with 17th and 18th century refuse dumped from ships. Written sources collected by Katarina Schoerner mention "the big quay" and "the military camp" including an "ale hut", but we have no idea where they were, really…
aardvarchaeology | July 5, 2008
The forty-fourth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Greg Laden's blog. Archaeology and anthropology, and all about luta livre!
Luta livre is a broad term referring to wrestling in Portuguese. In Brazil, it may also refer to a martial art that resembles catch wrestling. With the introduction of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where Brazilian fighter Royce Gracie dominated the field with apparent ease, many English language martial arts publications rushed to find and translate older Brazilian articles regarding the history of Gracie jiu-jitsu. It was common knowledge that the…
gregladen | July 4, 2008 (... makes me laugh .. )
The previous Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival was Four Stone Hearth Number 43, here, at Swedish Extravagaza. It was the Lard Edition. Go check it out. The home page for Four Stone Hearth is here. The next edition, due on or about July 16th, will be at YOUR blog if you want it to be (the position is still open). Just let Martin Know at the 4SH home page.
BIOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Neuroanthropology
Chicks dig jerks?: Evolutionary psych on sex #1
In our continuing exploration of facile examples of 'evolutionary' explanations for…
aardvarchaeology | July 3, 2008Journey to 10,000 BC is a new made-for-TV documentary about Clovis-era North American archaeology and palaeontology (not to be confused with Roland Emmerich's baroque fantasy feature 10,000 BC). The format of the film is conventional: a voiceover intercut with clips from interviews with scholars. The academics acquit themselves well and get a lot of interesting information across in the brief soundbites allotted them. This is the film's main strength. The voiceover (written by David Padrusch and Ian Stoker-Long) isn't too bad either: there are a few sensationalistic bloopers and endorsements…
aardvarchaeology | June 28, 2008Drove yesterday to the village of San Giovanni d'Asso (Sw. Sankt Hans pÃ¥ Dass). Stopped on the way at an excavation, the church site of San Pietro in Pava, where as yet poorly known Roman activity gave way to continuous church use from the 6th through the 13th century. Nobody was on site because of the siesta, put I read the signposts in Italian as best I could and showed the kids two recently uncovered skeletons in the churchyard. Tricky conditions, earth hardening in the baking sun, many fresh breaks and trowel abrasions on the bones. I would prefer myself to work at night or under an…
gregladen | June 26, 2008Join Zuska and her commenters in a pile on regarding the Smithsonian Magazine's recent article on the archaeology of southern Africa.
It's racist, it's sexist, and it's even anti-Neanderthal. (The article, not Zuska's post)
Regarding the writing about the use of stone tool technology in the article:
It says, "could be women - but no one really knows, do they? The safe bet is on men." It's the equivalent of saying "the PC police are always watching, so we'd better pretend like there is an actual possibility that we are including women in this discussion, even though we know we're talking…
aardvarchaeology | June 21, 2008The forty-third Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Paddy K's Swedish Extravaganza. Archaeology and anthropology, and all regulated by the rota system!
The Rota System, from the Old Church Slavic word for "ladder" or "staircase", was a system of collateral succession practiced (though imperfectly) in Kievan Rus' and later Appanage and early Muscovite Russia, in which the throne passed not linearly from father to son, but laterally from brother to brother (usually to the fourth brother) and then to the eldest son of the eldest brother who had held the throne. The system was begun by…
aardvarchaeology | June 19, 2008
Back in February I showed you some pix of abandoned tree houses at Djurhamn. One of them had a computer, just like my son once reported visiting a tree house with a typewriter.
I've spent the past three days metal detecting in the same area, falsifying our working hypothesis that there would be easily accessible 16th and 17th century stuff there. But I did find more tree house ruins. And one had an interesting piece of furniture: a gynaecologist's examination chair!? Turned out that the tree house was built on the margin of a dump area where all kinds of strange stuff was sitting, and…
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2008With my buddies Kjell Andersson and Lasse Winroth, and supported by the amazing Ehrsson brothers Rune & Tore, I've been back metal detecting around the Harbour of the Sheaf Kings for two days. Last summer I did some work along the current shores of the harbour site, covering available flat ground and finding nothing I could definitely date before the year 1800. Then I moved inland to the landlocked part of the one-time harbour basin, and immediately found a sword from the early 1500s.
We're currently concentrating on bits of flat ground around the landlocked basin, hoping to find traces…
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2008Two entries of Afarensis's have inspired me to set something down that I've been thinking about for a long time.
Afarensis mentions a forthcoming paper by Lyman, VanPool & O'Brien that will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. They're looking at change in arrowhead types over time from an evolutionary perspective.
"...there is evidence of an initial burst of variation in projectile points at the time bow-and-arrow technology was introduced and that prehistoric artisans experimentally sought arrow points that worked effectively. Following that initial burst, less-…
gregladen | June 14, 2008
A team led by University of Manchester archaeologist Professor Julian Thomas has dated the Greater Stonehenge Cursus at about 3,500 years BC - 500 years older than the circle itself.
They were able to pinpoint its age after discovering an antler pick used to dig the Cursus - the most significant find since it was discovered in 1723 by antiquarian William Stukeley.
When the pick was carbon dated the results pointed to an age which was much older than previously thought - between 3600 and 3300 BC - and has caused a sensation among archeologists.
source
The "cursus" is a rectangular earthwork…
aardvarchaeology | June 13, 2008I've made two archaeological field interventions today. First I seeded a site with finds, then I got some finds out of another site.
Fieldwalking back in March, I found a grindstone and some knapped quartz at a Bronze Age site in Botkyrka parish. Taking their positions with GPS, I've filed a brief archive report on the finds to make sure that the data get into the sites-and-monuments register. But it turned out that the museum doesn't want to actually own that kind of low-end finds unless they're from a stratigraphic context. And I don't want to keep the stuff around either. So this morning I…