archaeology
gregladen | December 18, 2007I'm putting this bit of human biogeography under the "species coming and going" category:
Greenland DNA could hold key to migration mysteries: researchers from PhysOrg.com
Danish researchers are to sieve through human and skeletal remains on Greenland in a quest to explain an enduring enigma over the island's settlement over thousands of years, one of the scientists said Tuesday.
[...]
This is a very large change in diet over a very short period of time. I call Macro Evolution!
Study links success of invasive Argentine ants to diet shifts from PhysOrg.com
The ability of Argentine ants…
gregladen | December 17, 2007
Every few years a paper comes out "explaining" short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano et al.
From the abstract:
Explanations for the evolution of human pygmies continue to be a matter of controversy, recently fueled by the disagreements surrounding the interpretation of the fossil hominin Homo floresiensis. Traditional hypotheses assume that the small body size of human pygmies is an adaptation to special challenges, such as…
gregladen | December 17, 2007From Indiana University's Press Room:
Resting in less than 10 feet of Caribbean seawater, the wreckage of Quedagh Merchant, the ship abandoned by the scandalous 17th century pirate Captain William Kidd as he raced to New York in an ill-fated attempt to clear his name, has escaped discovery -- until now.
An underwater archaeology team from Indiana University announced [on Dec. 13] the discovery of the remnants. IU marine protection authority Charles Beeker said his team has been licensed to study the wreckage and to convert the site into an underwater preserve, where it will be accessible to…
aardvarchaeology | December 14, 2007This is really great. Everybody else has realised that Bob Lind's new "discovery" was a canard. But today, local paper Ystad Allehanda's credulous reporter nevertheless conveys the man's ideas that
Standing stones are unlikely to mark cemeteries. (They are in fact enormously common in early-to-mid-1st Millennium AD cemeteries in Sweden.)
Many of the stones in the new cemetery Lind has been spinning his astronomical yarns about hardly protrude above the turf. The reason, he says, is that the ground level in the meadow has somehow risen 80 cm since the stones were put in place, and nearly…
gregladen | December 13, 2007The rock formation depicted here is believed to have been built by the giant Fin McCool (a.k.a. Fionn Mac Cumhaill) as a causeway to Scotland allowing the giant Benandonner to cross over so the two could engage in a competition of strength. However, a newly formed group called the "Causeway Creation Committee" now asserts that the rock formation is the result of the Noachian Flood.
From the Causeway Creation Committee's web site:
In the interests of the truth and equality the Causeway Creation Committee desires that any new visitor centre at the Giant's Causeway should include a display and…
gregladen | December 12, 2007Scientists studying ancient fish bones in Scandinavia have discovered that warm-water species like anchovies and black sea bream that once thrived in Danish waters during a prehistoric warm period are now returning. Some cold-water species, such as cod, were also abundant during this period, having benefited from a lower fishing effort.
[source]
aardvarchaeology | December 12, 2007
The Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm has recently completed a new permanent exhibition about Swedish prehistory. It was planned under the stewardship of the controversial Kristian Berg, a non-archaeologist whose attitude to the museum placed in his care may be summarised as politically expedient, instrumental and post-modernist.
I haven't seen the new exhibition, and so can't have any opinion of my own about it. But I am not surprised to find that it is getting some very bad press, and with a recurring theme. This exhibition is asking questions and not providing any answers.
"...…
gregladen | December 11, 2007Archaeologists know that a "Roncofact" is an artifact that you find, and realize (or speculate) that it had multiple functions.
"It slices, it dices, it makes Julian Fries...."
A recent study claims that humans, in fact, shun Roncofacts. But wait, there's more..
According to a piece in the New York Times:
In a clever experiment ... psychologists had students fill out a survey using a ballpoint pen that could also serve as a laser pointer. They then had half the students evaluate the pen's laser-pointer function, thus making this group more aware of the pen's dual purpose. Later,... all…
gregladen | December 11, 2007There seems to be some interesting things going on with the recently reported study of rates of evolution in humans. We are getting reports of a wide range of rather startling conclusions being touted by the researchers who wrote this paper. These conclusions typically come from press releases, and then are regurgitated by press outlets, then read and reported by bloggers, and so on. Here is, in toto, the press release from the University of Wisconsin, where John Hawks, one of the authors of the study, works. I reproduce the press release here without further comment.
Genome study…
aardvarchaeology | December 11, 2007Here's another snippet from my on-going book project. Context: I've surveyed the central-place indicators of the Late Roman Period (AD 150-400) in Östergötland, and now I'm moving into the book's main period of study from AD 400 onward, starting with an evaluation of the Migration Period hillforts. Are they useful for my present king-chasing purposes?
A somewhat relevant site type in the search for Migration Period elite settlements is the hillfort, of which Östergötland has many. They appear to have about the same date distribution as the field walls (Late Roman and Migration Periods), but…
gregladen | December 10, 2007There is a new paper, just coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that explores the idea that humans have undergone an increased rate of evolution over the last several tens of thousands of years.
By an increased rate of evolution, the authors mean an increased rate of adaptive change in the genome. By recent times, the authors mean various things, depending on which part of the analysis you examine, and depending on what is meant by "increased." ... In other words, the timing of an event that is not really an event (but rather a change in rate of something) is hard…
aardvarchaeology | December 8, 2007
Bob Lind chalking some apparently quite genuine cupmarks, a ubiquitous type of Bronze Age rock art.
Alternative archaeoastronomer Bob Lind (note that I do not call him an unhinged man with crackpot theories) felt himself vindicated this past summer by the Swedish Heritage Board. On a set of new visitors' signs, the Board didn't actually endorse Lind's alternative interpretation of the stone ship of Ales stenar, but the signs recounted his ideas alongside the scholarly consensus interpretation without taking a stand on the issue. This was enough to make Lind a very happy man.
Now, local…
gregladen | December 7, 2007There was a time, not so long ago, when you could "Google" the terms "Greg Laden" and "Idiot" and get, well, besides the several thousand hits about me being an idiot and stuff, an Amazon.com page for "The Idiot's Guide to Human Prehistory by Greg Laden"
This is a book I never wrote. But the publishers wanted me to. However, there were complications. The first complication was that I found out (from an excellent source) that the owner of the company had "a problem" with evolution, and I came to believe it was likely that certain things would be changed prior to publication. In…
aardvarchaeology | December 6, 2007The twenty-ninth Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at Remote Central. Archaeology and anthropology gonna be fun, gonna be fun, gonna be fun in de sun!
The next open hosting slot is on 27 February. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me. No need to be an anthro pro.
gregladen | December 5, 2007Certain ceremonial objects from the Dogon and other cultures of West Africa are known for their dark patina. There is plenty of ethnological evidence that the thick coating on these wood sculptures, which are often in human or animal shapes, contains blood from animals sacrificed as part of the ceremonies. But the presence of blood had not been proved through chemical analysis.
Now, don't get too excited yet ... I've seen this a half dozen times before. The indicators of blood are everywhere in the environment. It is almost impossible to chemically test an artifact and not find evidence of…
gregladen | December 5, 2007Corn (maize) was domesticated in the earlier part of the Holocene in Mexico from a wild plant called teosinte. Subsequent to the discovery of this area of origin by MacNeish, a great deal of research has gone on to track the spread of maize across the New World, its diversification, its effects on Native American lifeways, and so on.
How do you tell if corn was grown in a particular area? There are several possibilities, including looking for pollen in swamps and lakes or at archaeological sites, finding macro-fossils (don't be fooled by the name .. macrofossils are tiny, like individual…
aardvarchaeology | December 5, 2007
Here's a funny toy: a remote-controlled car with a built-in metal detector. Drive it over a piece of metal and it'll go BEEP and light up. It doesn't have anything like serious ground penetration, but still, a cool toy.
There are several reasons that metal detecting has not been made into a mechanised remote sensing technique. I guess the main one is that only archaeologists would have any use for such a machine, and we don't have the money to make it worthwhile to develop and market it. Also, while building a mechanised detector and find mapper would be easy, it would be considerably more…
aardvarchaeology | December 4, 2007
A long-time friend of my parents wrote me a letter recently, telling me that she'd found something unusual in her late mother's jewellery box. Today I visited her and had a look.
It's a small cast copper-alloy crucifix, darkly patinated, with a semi-obliterated image of the crucified Christ incised onto the front surface. The piece is made like a box, hollow on the back side, with loops at the top and bottom as if it had originally been joined to a back piece. Its dimensions are 82 by 45 by 5 mm, length 70 mm if you disregard the loops.
The crucifix has no provenance, and its owner can only…
aardvarchaeology | December 2, 2007Wednesday 5 December will see the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival appear in all its archaeo/anthro glory at Remote Centrral. If you have read or blogged anything good on those themes lately, then make sure to submit it to Tim ASAP. (You are encouraged to submit stuff you've found on other people's blogs.)
The first open hosting slot is currently on 13 February. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me.
gregladen | December 1, 2007This is interesting:
30.11.2007 / 16:23 WWII army bag is found in desert
LONDON. November 30. KAZINFORM. A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years.
Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army.
Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on World War II.
The bag is being sent to Burnley to Mrs Ross's sister, Irene Porter.
source
This happened to me, too.…