- Apr 2024
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www.pnas.org www.pnas.org
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Simões, Luciana G., Rita Peyroteo-Stjerna, Grégor Marchand, Carolina Bernhardsson, Amélie Vialet, Darshan Chetty, Erkin Alaçamlı, et al. “Genomic Ancestry and Social Dynamics of the Last Hunter-Gatherers of Atlantic France.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 10 (March 5, 2024): e2310545121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310545121.
saw via article:<br /> Europe's last hunter-gatherers avoided inbreeding by [[Dario Radley]]
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archaeologymag.com archaeologymag.com
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Europe's last hunter-gatherers avoided inbreeding by [[Dario Radley]]
Any evidence of moieties in these groups? How would one test this compared to modern instantiations in indigenous peoples?
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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Muhanna, Elias. “A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone.” The New Yorker, May 23, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-new-history-of-arabia-written-in-stone.
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He added, “The linguists are going to be well excited about what they’re finding. But the historian is still, like, ‘Yeah, it’s good. You’ve got names. You’ve got lots and lots of names.’ ”
There's a close similarity of names on stones in early Arabia and the names on stones in a similar time period in early Britain.
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he province of archeology, a fictional archeologist once said, is the search for facts, not truth.
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In 2013, Al-Jallad used the Safaitic database as he worked on an inscription containing several mysterious words: Maleh, Dhakar, and Amet. Earlier scholars had assumed that they were the names of unknown places. Al-Jallad, unconvinced, searched the database and discovered another inscription that contained all three. Both inscriptions discussed migrations in search of water, and a possibility occurred to him: if the words referred to seasons of migration, then they might be the names of constellations visible at those times.
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Al-Jallad began pulling up every inscription that mentioned migrating in search of rain, and soon he had a long list of terms that had resisted translation. Comparing them with the Greek, Aramaic, and Babylonian zodiacs, he started making connections. Dhakar matched up nicely with dikra, the Aramaic word for Aries, and Amet was derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to measure or compute quantity”—a good bet for the scales of Libra. Hunting for Capricorn, the goat-fish constellation, Al-Jallad found the word ya’mur in Edward Lane’s “Arabic-English Lexicon,” whose translation read, “A certain beast of the sea, or . . . a kind of mountain-goat.” He stayed up all night, sifting the database and checking words against dictionaries of ancient Semitic languages. By morning, he had deciphered a complete, previously unknown Arabian zodiac. “We’d thought that they were place names, and, in a way, they were,” he told me. “They were places in the sky.”
There's got to be a great journal article on this!
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he effort to decode the Safaitic texts began in the spring of 1857, when a young Scotsman named Cyril Graham set off from Jerusalem on a tour of Syria.
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The history of Arabia just before the birth of Islam is a profound mystery, with few written sources describing the milieu in which Muhammad lived. Historians had long believed that the Bedouin nomads who lived in the area composed exquisite poetry to record the feats of their tribes but had no system for writing it down. In recent years, though, scholars have made profound advances in explaining how ancient speakers of early Arabic used the letters of other alphabets to transcribe their speech. These alphabets included Greek and Aramaic, and also Safaitic; Macdonald’s rock was one of more than fifty thousand such texts found in the deserts of the southern Levant. Safaitic glyphs look nothing like the cursive, legato flow of Arabic script. But when read aloud they are recognizable as a form of Arabic—archaic but largely intelligible to the modern speaker.
Safaitic is an example of the beginning of writing in Arabia at the rise of Islam and may have interesting things to reveal about orality on the border of literacy.
Compare this with ancient Welsh (and related Celtic languages and stone inscriptions) at about the same time period.
Tags
- search for water
- Peter Webb
- stones
- historical linguistics
- Edward Lane
- safaitic script
- read
- Babylonian zodiac
- Michael Macdonald
- Cyril Graham
- References
- Elias Muhanna
- truth
- Indiana Jones
- migrations
- constellations
- semitic languages
- Ahmad Al-Jallad
- archaeology of orality
- Ali Al-Manaser
- archaeology
- zodiac
- Greek zodiac
- place names
- translation
- 1857
- inscriptions
- Arabian zodiac
- fact
- Fred Donner
- stone inscriptions
- history of Islam
- surface survey archaeology
- quotes
- biblical archaeology
- fact vs. truth
- Aramaic
- VII
- orality on the border of literacy
- Aramaic zodiac
- names on stones
- Robert Hoyland
- Greek
- Babylonian
Annotators
URL
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- Mar 2024
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slate.com slate.com
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[[Mark Lawrence Schrad]] in Why the World of Typewriter Collectors Splits Down the Middle When These Machines Come Up for Sale<br /> at 2024-03-16 12:00 PM <br /> (accessed:: 2024-03-19 10:23:08)
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They collect artifacts, I collect histories.
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- Feb 2024
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www.carare.eu www.carare.eu
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Local file Local file
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StAugustine draws this same parallel when he writes to a communityof nuns, ‘let it not be only your mouth that takes food, but let yourears also drink in the word of God’.3
quoted section from:
St Augustine, Letters, trans. by Wilfrid Parsons, 5 vols. (Baltimore, MD: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), V, Letter 211, ‘To a Convent of Consecrated Virgins’, p. 43.
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- Jan 2024
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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Presuming my 1956 dating for my 4181-3 (SN 004365) slide rule is correct, the 1956 price list has the 10 inch ivorite 4181-3 model for $15.00.
https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KECatalogs/1954/1956Price/1956kecatprice43.htm
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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1956 0 88,500 88,500
My 4181-3 slide rule was likely manufactured in 1956 as it has the SRT scale initiated in 1955 and has a serial number 004365 which is in the series 3 segment which reset in 1956 and ran from 0 to 88,500 that year.
https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/keserialnumbers/Dating-2.htm
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- Nov 2023
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archaeologyofreading.org archaeologyofreading.org
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https://archaeologyofreading.org/ The Archaeology of Reading
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- Oct 2023
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claudemariottini.com claudemariottini.com
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Absalom set up a massebah for himself as a memorial for he said, “‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance’; he called the massebah by his own name” (2 Samuel 18:18).
Use of massebah for remembrance of a name...
Potentially used for other factors? translation? context?
See also: https://hypothes.is/a/oqgH4mx9Ee68_dMgihgD0A (Rachel's massebah in Genesis 35:19-20)
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Israel was forbidden to set up sacred stones, pillars: “you shall not set up a pillar (massebah), which the LORD your God hates” (Deuteronomy 16:22).
Relationship to the first two commandments against worshiping other gods and the use of idols?
How does this relate to the standing stone found in the room at Khirbet Qeiyafa from the time of David?
Dates of this text with respect to Khirbet Keiyafa?
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Mariottini, Claude. “Standing Stones in the Old Testament.” Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament (blog), September 20, 2021. https://claudemariottini.com/2021/09/20/standing-stones-in-the-old-testament/.
Commonplaces: standing stones in the Old Testament!
Tags
- massebah
- Khirbet Qeiyafa
- stone memorials
- standing stones
- 2 Samuel 18
- Doron Ben-Ami
- Old Testament
- menhir
- orality and memory
- Deuteronomy 16
- commonplaces
- biblical stones
- Canaanite religion
- Absalom
- 'ben
- Claude Mariottini
- Elizabeth Berne DeGear
- sacred stones
- archaeology of orality
- sacred texts
- archaeology
- monuments
- open questions
- pillars
- grave markers
- headstones
Annotators
URL
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arkeonews.net arkeonews.net
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3D scans of runestones enable researchers to gain a close-up view of traces of the carving process. This means they can tell the carving technique of the different rune stones apart. Every experienced stonemason holds his chisel at a certain angle and strikes the hammer with a specific force: this is visible in the angle of the traces of the carving and the distance between them. The motor function developed in such work is individual.
Just as the idea of "hand" in morse code or handwriting or typewriting analysis differentiates operators, the same sort of identification process can be done for stonemasons, carvers, and inscribers.
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- Sep 2023
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Local file Local file
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Hamacher, Duane, Patrick Nunn, Michelle Gantevoort, Rebe Taylor, Greg Lehman, Ka Hei Andrew Law, and Mel Miles. “The Archaeology of Orality: Dating Tasmanian Aboriginal Oral Traditions to the Late Pleistocene.” Journal of Archaeological Science, August 10, 2023, 45pp.
Pre-print.
See also: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323000997
Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:d4ccd0952073ac59932f4638381e6b69
Popular press coverage: https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/august/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives
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This paper supports arguments that the longevity of orality can exceed ten millennia,providing critical information essential to the further development of theoretical frameworksregarding the archaeology of orality.
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www.unimelb.edu.au www.unimelb.edu.au
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Knight, Anna. “Tasmanian Aboriginal Oral Traditions among the Oldest Recorded Narratives.” News. University of Melbourne, August 14, 2023. https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2023/august/tasmanian-aboriginal-oral-traditions-among-the-oldest-recorded-narratives.
Popular press synopsis of journal article; see: https://hypothes.is/a/5qru3Fu7Ee62eZPHP6EAyw
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“Our research suggests that Palawa oral traditions accurately recall the flooding of the land bridge between Tasmania and the mainland – showing that oral traditions can be passed down more than 400 successive generations while maintaining historical accuracy.”
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- Mar 2023
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Local file Local file
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Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809.
Tagged this because it's the first appearance of Zettelkasten in an English language setting in the JSTOR repository.
see also: https://hypothes.is/a/RYZOssqXEe2H5wtABI0puA
Started on 2023-03-24; finished on 2023-03-27.
Tags
Annotators
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- Jan 2023
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www.cambridge.org www.cambridge.org
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These may occur on rock walls, but were commonly engraved onto robust bones since at least the beginning of the European Upper Palaeolithic and African Late Stone Age, where it is obvious they served as artificial memory systems (AMS) or external memory systems (EMS) to coin the terms used in Palaeolithic archaeology and cognitive science respectively, exosomatic devices in which number sense is clearly evident (for definitions see d’Errico Reference d'Errico1989; Reference d'Errico1995a,Reference d'Erricob; d'Errico & Cacho Reference d'Errico and Cacho1994; d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Doyon and Colage2017; Hayden Reference Hayden2021).
Abstract marks have appeared on rock walls and engraved into robust bones as artificial memory systems (AMS) and external memory systems (EMS).
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www.vice.com www.vice.com
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Local file Local file
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The wealthy Egyptian Jacques Mosseri financed excavations in thevicinity of the Ben Ezra Synagogue and in the Basatin Cemetery at theend of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Hiscollection remained with the Mosseri family and was unavailable forscholars for many years. In 1970, scholars from the National Library ofIsrael were allowed to microfilm the collection, which resulted in the1990 catalog. In 2006, the Mosseri family loaned its collection toCambridge University for a twenty-year period during which thecollection would be conserved, digitized, and studied and then,conditions permitting, deposited in the National Library of Israel. ForMosseri’s account of how he obtained his collection, see his “A NewHoard of Jewish MSS in Cairo,” Jewish Review 4 (1913): 208–16. Formore information on the subsequent history of the collection, see theintroduction to the 1990 catalog; and http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/jmgc.
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The story includes a detailed description of Goliath’s weaponry: acopper helmet, a coat of mail, a spear, a javelin, and leg guards. Goliath’sequipment has never been found in an archaeological context, and a largenumber of articles have attempted to establish the date of composition ofthe tradition based upon this weaponry. Some date it to Iron Age I (11th–10th centuries BCE), others to the 7th century BCE, and yet others to thePersian period (5th–4th century BCE).4
Comparing stories of Goliath's weaponry to the known archaeology of the time might help us better place the story and dating.
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Garfinkel, Yosef, Saar Ganor, and Michael G. Hasel. In the Footsteps of King David: Revelations from an Ancient Biblical City. Thames & Hudson, 2018. https://thamesandhudson.com/in-the-footsteps-of-king-david-9780500052013.
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- Dec 2022
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www.thenation.com www.thenation.com
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Petrie was also a eugenicist, who believed in the improvement of society through selective “breeding-out” of intellectually inferior races. While revealing evidence for the foundations of ancient Egypt, he attributed it on biometric grounds to a “New Race” of invaders from outside Africa, opening a space of the imagination that has since come to be filled by all manner of theories about the “alien” architects of ancient civilizations. It started with the “race science” that is part and parcel of archaeology’s own problematic history.
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shawngraham.github.io shawngraham.github.io
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https://shawngraham.github.io/hist1900/#the-big-idea
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Kathleen Fitzpatrick</span> in Spending today tinkering with a combi… (<time class='dt-published'>12/18/2022 00:02:04</time>)</cite></small>
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lukechandler.wordpress.com lukechandler.wordpress.com
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www.heritagedaily.com www.heritagedaily.com
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Published in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the paper also shows that the mice share similarities in mitochondrial DNA with Scandinavia and northern Germany, but not with mice found in Portugal.
Use of DNA on rodents to indicate ancient trade and travel.
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- Sep 2022
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www.livescience.com www.livescience.com
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After three centuries of popularity, roundels suddenly disappeared from the archaeological record around 4600 B.C. Archaeologists do not yet know why the roundels were abandoned. But considering over one-quarter of all roundels found to date are located in the Czech Republic, future research similar to the excavation at Vinoř may eventually help solve the mystery of the roundels.
Roundels, primarily located in the area around the Czech Republic, enjoyed about 300 years of popularity before disappearing around 4600 BCE.
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- Aug 2022
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"Whistling" or "screaming" arrows (shaojian) made by the horseback archers of the steppes were described by the Chinese chronicler Sima Qian in about 100 B.C. A small, perforated bone or wood sound chamber—the whistle—was attached to the shaft behind the arrowhead.
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- Jul 2022
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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Vinzenz Brinkmann, Head of the Department of Antiquity at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection in Frankfurt am Main, said when he first started researching polychromy 40 years ago, "no one had interest in this for years, no one collected the clearly visible evidence. Except for me. I collected the evidence like a stamp collection."
Ancient statuary wasn't white as we often see now in museums, but was brightly colored. Statuary that was outside would have been sun bleached over time as well as subject to other weathering to mute or entirely remove color.
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Local file Local file19841
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'I don't think it's anything—I mean, I don't think it was ever put to anyuse. That's what I like about it. It's a little chunk of history that they'veforgotten to alter. It's a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew howto read it.'
Walter and Julia are examining a glass paperweight in George Orwell's 1984 without having context of what it is or for what it was used.
This is the same sort of context collapse caused by distance in time and memory that archaeologists face when examining found objects.
How does one pull out the meaning from such distant objects in an exegetical way? How can we more reliably rebuild or recreate lost contexts?
Link to: - Stonehenge is a mnemonic device - mnemonic devices in archaeological contexts (Neolithic carved stone balls
Some forms of orality-based methods and practices can be viewed as a method of "reading" physical objects.
Ideograms are an evolution on the spectrum from orality to literacy.
It seems odd to be pulling these sorts of insight out my prior experiences and reading while reading something so wholly "other". But isn't this just what "myths" in oral cultures actually accomplish? We link particular ideas to pieces of story, song, art, and dance so that they may be remembered. In this case Orwell's glass paperweight has now become a sort of "talking rock" for me. Certainly it isn't done in any sort of sense that Orwell would have expected, presumed, or even intended.
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- Jun 2022
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www.sas.ac.uk www.sas.ac.uk
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Archaeology of Reading project
https://archaeologyofreading.org/
The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe (AOR) uses digital technologies to enable the systematic exploration of the historical reading practices of Renaissance scholars nearly 450 years ago. This is possible through AOR’s corpus of thirty-six fully digitized and searchable versions of early printed books filled with tens of thousands of handwritten notes, left by two of the most dedicated readers of the early modern period: John Dee and Gabriel Harvey.
Perhaps some overlap here with: - Workshop in the History of Material Texts https://pennmaterialtexts.org/about/events/ - Book Traces https://booktraces.org via Andrew Stauffer, et al. - Schoenberg Institute's Coffe with a Codex https://schoenberginstitute.org/coffee-with-a-codex/ (perhaps to a lesser degree)
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Jean-Claude Gardin (3 April 1925 - 8 April 2013) was a French archaeologist who is recognized as being one of the founders of archaeological computing.
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- Apr 2022
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forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
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Last night while watching a video related to The First Astronomers, I came across a clip in which Australian elder Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson indicates that indigenous dendroglyphs (markings on trees) or petroglyphs (markings on stone in the stony territories) are the libraries of the Indigenous peoples who always relate (associate) their stories from the markings back up to the sky (stars, constellations).
These markings remind me of some of those found on carved stone balls in neolithic European contexts described by Dr. @LynneKelly in The Memory Code and Memory Craft and carvings on coolamon in Knowledge and Power.
Using the broad idea of the lukasa and abstract designs, I recently bought a small scale version of the Aberlemno Pictish Cross as a small manual/portable memory palace, which is also an artwork that I can hang on the wall, to use to associate memories to the designs and animals which are delineated in 18 broad areas on the sculpture. (Part of me wonders if the communities around these crosses used them for mnemonic purposes as well?)
Is anyone else using abstract designs or artwork like this for their memory practice?
Anyone know of other clever decorative artworks one could use and display in their homes/offices for these purposes?
For those interested in the archeological research on dendroglyphs in Australia: - The Western Yalanji dendroglyph: The life and death of an Aboriginal carved tree - Review: The Dendroglyphs or ‘Carved Trees’ of New South Wales by Robert Etheridge (Content warning: historical erasure of Indigenous culture)
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- Mar 2022
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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archaea what strata me which looked at how ancient civilizations understood
archaeoastronomy : the study of ancient or traditional astronomies in their cultural context, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence.
sometimes also spelled archeoastronomy
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Wittry, Warren L. (1964). "An American Woodhenge". Cranbrook Institute of Science Newsletter. 33 (9): 102–107 – via Explorations into Cahokia Archaeology, Bulletin 7, Illinois Archaeological Survey, 1969. ^ Wittry, Warren L. "Discovering and Interpreting the Cahokia Woodhenges". The Wisconsin Archaeologist. 77 (3/4): 26–35.
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Cowan, Frank (2005). "Stubbs Earthworks : An Ohio Hopewell "Woodhenge"". In Lepper, Bradley T. (ed.). Ohio Archaeology : An illustrated chronicle of Ohio's Ancient American Indian Cultures. Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press. pp. 148–151. ISBN 978-1882203390.
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www.haaretz.com www.haaretz.com
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"Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones" (2 Kings 23:14, New International Version)
2 Kings 23:14 indicates that King Josiah cut down the Asherah poles as a monotheistic reform in the second half of the 7th century BCE.
Could these have have been in circles? Could they have been used as mnemonic devices?
link this to the idea of the standing stone found at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
Link this to my Ark of Covenant example.
Link to Stonehenge and other henge examples as well as other timber circles.
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www.haaretz.com www.haaretz.com
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The kothon of Motya in southern Sicily had first been assumed to be an artificial harbor. It wasn’t, archaeologist Lorenzo Nigro of Sapienza proves
Overview of paper: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.8
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- Feb 2022
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www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
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Overview and history of the Antikythera mechanism and the current state of research surrounding it.
Antikythera mechanism found in diving expedition in 1900 by Elias Stadiatis. It was later dated between 60 and 70 BCE, but evidence suggests it may have been made around 205 BCE.
Functions
One of the primary purposes of the device was to predict the positions of the planets along the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system.
The device was also used to track the positions of the sun and moon. This included the moon's phase, position and age (the number of days from a new moon). It also included the predictions of eclipses.
Used to track the motions of the 5 known planets including 289 synodic cycles in 462 years for Venus and 427 synodic cycles in 442 years for Saturn.
Risings and settings of stars indexed to a zodiac dial
Definitions
metonic cycle, a 19-year period over which 235 moon phases recur; named after Greek astronomer Meton, but discovered much earlier by the Babylonians. The Greeks refined it to a 76 year period.
saros cycle, the 223 month lunar cycle which was used by the Babylonians to predict eclipses. A dial on the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses using this cycle.
synodic events: conjunctions with the sun and its stationary points
People
Archimedes - potentially the designer of an early version of the Antikythera mechanism
Elias Stadiatis - diver who discovered the Antikythera mechanism
Albert Rehm - German philologist who the numbers 19, 76 and 223 inscribed on fragments of the device in the early 1900s
Derek J. de Solla Price, published Gears from the Greeks in 1974. Identified the gear train and developed a complete model of the gearing.
Michael Wright - 3D x-ray study in 1990 using linear tomography; identified tooth counts of the gears and understood the upper dial on the back of the device
Tony Freeth - author of article and researcher whose made recent discoveries.
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- Dec 2021
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learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com
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Romito 2 is the 10,000-year-old burial of a male with a raregenetic disorder (acromesomelic dysplasia): a severe type ofdwarfism, which in life would have rendered him both anomalous inhis community and unable to participate in the kind of high-altitudehunting that was necessary for their survival. Studies of hispathology show that, despite generally poor levels of health andnutrition, that same community of hunter-gatherers still took pains tosupport this individual through infancy and into early adulthood,granting him the same share of meat as everyone else, andultimately according him a careful, sheltered burial.15
- Tilley, Lorna. 2015. ‘Accommodating difference in the prehistoric past: revisiting the case of Romito 2 from a bioarchaeology of care perspective.’ International Journal of Paleopathology 8: 64–74.
In a case like this what might have been the reasons for keeping and helping such an individual?
In an oral society, it's possible that despite his potential physical disabilities for hunting that he may have been an above-average store of knowledge from a memory perspective, thus making him potentially even more valuable to his society.
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But ifall we’re doing is cherry-picking, we could just as easily have chosenthe much earlier burial known to archaeologists as Romito 2 (afterthe Calabrian rock-shelter where it was found). Let’s take a momentto consider what it would mean if we did this.
Keep in mind here that these are only singular examples they're talking about amongst millions of data points that we don't have.
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‘What is it about the ancients,’ Pinker asks at one point, ‘that theycouldn’t leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul play?’
Part of their point here seems to be that Pinker is suffering from a form of bias related to the most sensational cases which will tend to heighten the availability bias. (Is there a name for this sort of sensationalism effect?)
Is there also some survivorship bias at play here as well?
We don't have access to a wide statistical survey of dead bodies from a large swath of times and places which makes it difficult to determine actual numbers.
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political self-consciousness sort of 00:55:29 receding as one goes further back in time there was a book published in 1946 by the Dutch archaeologist Henry Frank Ford's called befall philosophy which 00:55:42 was about the the ancient Middle East Mesopotamia and Egypt and all that sort of thing but he wasn't actually arguing that these people didn't have the capacity for philosophy he was simply 00:55:55 pointing out that they didn't have an explicit written tradition of speculative thought like that of the ancient Greeks so that when they did speculate they did it in other ways 00:56:07 through images through discourse on the nonhuman world etc etc to find the idea that there have actually ever been individuals who didn't possess any capacity for philosophical reflection
Henri Frankfort in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946) (later retitled Before Philosophy) argued that non-literate people had philosophy and speculative thought, they just didn't have a written method of expressing it.
Open questions: How might they have expressed it other than orally? How might one tease these ideas out of the archaeological record? Does Frankfort provide evidence?
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crookedtimber.org crookedtimber.org
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They claim that recent evidence suggests how the people who built Stonehenge had abandoned the cultivation of many important crops, and reverted back to gathering for significant aspects of their diet (I think they put a lot of emphasis on hazelnuts if I remember correctly – so they were not 100% hunter-gatherers, no; but they had decided to revert back to more hunting and gathering and to scale down their commitment to agriculture. But they also claim that many scholars staunchly ignore this research/evidence. Why, are they wrong?
Note to self: Watch out closely in this section. One of the other things happening at this time is the lifeway of moving from a mobile society to a sedentary one and this may have had dramatic influence on their orality and memory, particularly as they developed new technology for being sedentary: namely Stonehenge itself as a mnemonic library of sorts as argued by Lynne Kelly.
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- Nov 2021
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www.lynnekelly.com.au www.lynnekelly.com.au
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I have no doubt that the cup marks reflect memory locations. There is some recent research showing that they mark pathways. I need to get that report.
I'm also reasonably certain that cup marks reflect memory locations as well. Is there a way to prove it though?
The idea that there's research indicating they mark pathways sounds fascinating. I'd love to know the journal source for this.
Tags
Annotators
URL
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www.heritagedaily.com www.heritagedaily.com
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https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/11/new-findings-on-jordanian-megaliths/141965
New megaliths found in Jordan in various stages of construction which helped archaeologists suggest a method for their construction by carving the stones from the ground and then supporting them with smaller ones.
Worth checking to see if standing stones may have been found at these sites as well.
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The word dolmen entered archaeology when Théophile Corret de la Tour d’Auvergne used it to describe megalithic tombs in his Origines gauloises (1796).
The first use of dolmen in an archaeological context was in Théophile Corret de la Tour d’Auvergne's Origines gauloises (1796) to describe megalithic tombs.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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There was no ancient poet called “Homer,” he argued. Nor were the poems attributed to him “written” by any single individual. Rather, they were the product of a centuries-long tradition of poet-performers.
Are there possibly any physical artifacts in physical archaeology that may fit into the structure of the thesis made by Lynne Kelly in Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies?
What would we be looking for? Small mnemonic devices? Menhir? Standing stones? Wooden or stone circles? Other examples of extended ekphrasis similar to that of the shield of Achilles?
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- Sep 2021
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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“The scroll is written in code, but its actual content is simple and well-known, and there was no reason to conceal it,” they write in the Journal of Biblical Literature. “This practice is also found in many places outside the land of Israel, where leaders write in secret code even when discussing universally known matters, as a reflection of their status. The custom was intended to show that the author was familiar with the code, while others were not.”
Ancient scribes sometimes wrote in code even though the topics at hand were well known as a means of showing their status.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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When asked for his views on which classic works to include among the Great Books, the science historian George Sarton pronounced the exercise futile: “Newton’s achievement and personality are immortal; his book is dead except from the archaeological point of view.”
How does one keep the spirit of these older books alive? Is it only by subsuming into and expanding upon a larger body of common knowledge?
What do they still have to teach us?
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- Aug 2021
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www.atlasobscura.com www.atlasobscura.com
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/khipus-inca-empire-harvard-university-colonialism
Student shows correlation between string colors and names as well as tie location to social status.
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- Jul 2021
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www.rollstonepigraphy.com www.rollstonepigraphy.com
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http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=921
An archaeological find indicates that alphabetic writing may have occurred earlier in history than we've previously known.
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The objects, which he describes as cylinders, are clay tubes about the size and shape of a little finger—like elongated beads. Because of their shape, and because they were found near pottery vessels inside the tomb, he suspects they might have served as tags that could be strung on the vessels to identify something about them, whether their contents, their owner, or their origin or destination. If that is the case, he speculates that the writing could denote names, or descriptions of property.
These archaeological objects could theoretically have been one of the first written tags in human history.
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The generally accepted origin story of the alphabet as we know it holds that in 1800 BCE, Semitic speakers in Egypt, aware of the Egyptian writing system's mix of characters that stood for words and symbols that stood for sounds, wanted a system of their own and borrowed the Egyptians' alphabetic portion. Semitic languages are the predecessors of most of today's Middle Eastern languages.
Generally accepted origin story of writing.
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- Jun 2021
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narratively.com narratively.com
- May 2021
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www.lynnekelly.com.au www.lynnekelly.com.au
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I had always assumed – without realising the assumption – that the ancient knowledge keepers would have progressed around the henge posts or stones much as I do around a memory palace. It hadn’t occurred to me that there may be experts on each topic, ‘owning’ each post or stone and the knowledge it represented. Is there any way the archaeology could ever tell us if this is the case?
Personally, I had assumed from Kelly's work that individual knowledge keepers may have done this. Particularly in the cases of the most advanced and protected knowledge based on the private spaces she discussed.
The question about archaeology being able to tell us is a very good one. Nothing immediately comes to mind, but it's worthwhile to look at this. Could some artifacts indicate different artists through their own craft be a way of differentiation?
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- Apr 2021
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mymodernmet.com mymodernmet.com
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In 2019, an unusually dry summer caused the waters of the Valdecañas Reservoir to recede, revealing a monument that has come to be referred to as the “Spanish Stonehenge.” NASA satellites captured images of the exposed stones known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, which experts suspect may have been built sometime in the second or third millennium BCE.
Might be worth looking this up to see how it might or might not relate to pre-Celtic migration patterns as they relate to other standing stones in the Celtic and Celtic fringe areas.
Sad that the markings are wearing away in addition to making studying the area much more difficult.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Wikipedia</span> in Waun Mawn - Wikipedia (<time class='dt-published'>04/02/2021 15:33:08</time>)</cite></small>
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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www.lynnekelly.com.au www.lynnekelly.com.au
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Firstly, an entire tribe moving from Wales to the Salisbury Plain took their encyclopaedia with them. This would require the circle to be erected in the same order as in Wales and oriented in the same direction. In effect, these people were taking their database of knowledge with them, the structure in the stones, and the data in their memories. Secondly, a different tribe conquering those in Wales might identify just how effective this memory technique is and steal only the technology. Essentially, they stole the database structure and filled it with their own data. The bluestones are particularly suited to a mnemonic purpose due to the blotches and blobs in their material makeup.
Perhaps there's a third possibility not mentioned here?
Perhaps the group at Waun Mawn, traded a portion of their knowledge and database to a more powerful and potentially more central nearby group of people? The evidence indicates that many of the people buried at Stonehenge were originally from the area of Wales where some of the stones originated. The fact that some stones remained behind may mean that some of the needed local encyclopedia stayed behind.
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Equally, Waun Mawn did not become the core of a monument complexof the kind known around other great stone circles, such as the Ring of Brodgar, Aveburyand Stonehenge. Its development as a major centre in the earlier Neolithic (seeFigure 1)appears to have been curtailed by early dismantling. Although the region was probably notentirely evacuated—the four remaining stones at Waun Mawn possibly symbolise the iden-tities of those groups who remained local—it may have been extensively depopulated. Onlyfurther research into settlement and land-use employing other lines of evidence, such as paly-nology, will provide answers.
Interesting to think that some of these stones may have stayed behind to represent the knowledge of the group that stayed behind. If the stones can be thought of as "books", some of the extra empty ones were relocated with the knowledge of other books moved into them in new contexts.
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The four surviving stones at Waun Mawn are of unspotted dolerite, and possibly derive fromoutcrops 3km to the south-east at Cerrigmarchogion on the Preseli ridge (Bevinset al.2014).
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As some of these samples could alsohave been either residual or intrusive, we propose that the stone circle was erected inc. 3600–3000 cal BC.This date would place Waun Mawn amongst the earliest stone circles in Britain, alongsideLong Meg and her Daughters in Cumbria (109m diameter) and the stone circle beneath thepassage tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey (18m diameter).
Synopsis with dating of Waun Mawn stone circle.
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To resolve this, radiocarbon dating of these samples fromWaun Mawn was conducted in conjunction with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL)dating of sediment from within the packing deposits that were contemporaneous with themonoliths’erection, and fromfilled-in sockets (from after the monoliths’removal). OSL dat-ing determines the burial age of sediments, with the dating signals being reset by light expos-ure immediately prior to deposition (Smedley2018).
Look up this process and evaluate the mechanism for how it works.
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geologist Herbert Thomas,who established that the spotted dolerite bluestones at Stonehenge originated in the PreseliHills of west Wales, where, he suspected, they had originally formed a“venerated stone-circle”(Thomas1923: 258).
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- Mar 2021
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
- Feb 2021
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www.nybooks.com www.nybooks.com
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Foucault probably offers the most helpful theoretical approach. His “archaeology of knowledge” suggests a way to study texts as sites that bear the marks of epistemological activity, and it has the advantage of doing justice to the social dimension of thought.
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- Jan 2021
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Strongly influenced by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, the British anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917), and his American counterpart Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), both published important works in the 1870s arguing that human societies had evolved from a state of savagery (primitive hunting) through barbarism (simple farming) to civilization (the highest form of society). Morgan’s book, Ancient Society (1877), was partly based on his great knowledge of living Native Americans.
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It was a French customs inspector, Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1788–1868), working in the gravel quarries of the Somme river, who in 1841 pub-lished convincing evidence for the association there of human artifacts (of chipped stone, what we would today call “hand-axes” or “bifaces”) and the bones of extinct animals
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In the same period, around 1675, the first archaeological excavation of the New World – a tunnel dug into Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon – was carried out by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.
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The main thing to remember is that every view of the past is a product of its own time: ideas and theories are constantly evolving, and so are methods.
This is also an important thing to remember when reading and evaluating older texts and discoveries.
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- Dec 2020
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It could be argued that the whole philosophy of archaeology is implied in the questions we ask and the form in which we frame them.
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Chairman Mao coined the slogan “Let the past serve the present,” but that was sometimes used as an excuse for the deliberate destruction of ancient things.
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surviving fragments of the Berlin Wall which once divided East from West Germany but which was opened and torn down in 1989.
As a thought experiment, what sorts of evidence of a physical barrier like this would still exist for future scholars to study to surmise its existence a thousand years hence even if all physical remains of the wall were torn down and no written records exist?
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- Oct 2020
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joyofmuseums.com joyofmuseums.com
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Plotting the find sites on a map shows that these petrospheres were often located in the vicinity of Neolithic recumbent stone circles.
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www.1843magazine.com www.1843magazine.com
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This painting was discovered in the Bulu Sipong cave on Sulawesi in 2016 and recent analysis has shown that it is the “oldest pictorial record of storytelling” and the “earliest figurative artwork in the world”, and is at least 43,900 years old. (The oldest known drawing in the world, a 73,000-year-old abstract scribble, was found in South Africa in 2018.)
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- Feb 2020
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osf.io osf.io
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Reverse engineering a bronze cannon from theLaBelleshipwreck
The benefit to archaeology, museum curation, and other areas presented by computer modeling and 3D printing cannot be overstated. These technologies allow us to explore artifacts, sites, and more, in ways that we never could before.
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- Feb 2019
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canmore.org.uk canmore.org.uk
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slighted to clear access to the drove way
Might mean slighting in the sense of straightforward demolition
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- Aug 2018
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intarch.ac.uk intarch.ac.uk
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Open to Exploration
Internet Archaeology is trialling a new feature by Hypothes.is which enables everyone to make annotations on journal content. To get started, just select any text in any article and add your annotation for everyone to see (Annotations are public by default but highlights are private, visible only to you when you’re logged in to your Hypothes.is account). You can even share your annotations on social media,
Try this for more info https://web.hypothes.is/blog/varieties-of-hypothesis-annotations-and-their-uses/
I'm interested to see how everyone uses it!
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intarch.ac.uk intarch.ac.uk
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Internet Archaeology is trialling a new feature by Hypothes.is which enables everyone to make annotations on journal content. To get started, just select any text in any article and add your annotation for everyone to see (Annotations are public by default but highlights are private, visible only to you when you’re logged in to your Hypothes.is account). You can even share your annotations on social media,
Try this for more info https://web.hypothes.is/blog/varieties-of-hypothesis-annotations-and-their-uses/
I'm interested to see how everyone uses it!
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- Jan 2018
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cosmosmagazine.com cosmosmagazine.com
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The crayon, or perhaps more accurately “crayon-like object”, is 22-milimetres long and seven-millimetres wide, an elongated structure comprised primarily of haematitite, although with some small hard pieces of other minerals embedded.
Haltman says "material objects begin in a world of objects but takes place in a world of words." Finding this crayon is congruent to this belief because this object opens a door to a new "world of words." Although primitive in language this crayon would begin a new "nuanced vocabulary" for early man.
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- Nov 2017
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smgprojects.github.io smgprojects.github.io
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ethics of video games in archaeology
Reminds me of this historian’s talk at Pint of Science Montreal 2015. (Sadly, not finding online traces of the event apart from my own section.)
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- May 2016
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archeologiamedievale.unisi.it archeologiamedievale.unisi.it
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This website is a very comprehensive resource about medieval pottery in Italy. It is rather difficult to navigate properly since part of the original navigation was implemented with some scripting method that is now obsolete, but all pages should be reachable by means of normal
href
links. It was updated until circa 2004.
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- Nov 2015
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www.telesurtv.net www.telesurtv.net
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The 74 pieces, acquired legally at the time by the former Spanish ambassador to Ecuador, were given to the Museo de América for restoration on the condition that they be returned when asked.
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www.peruthisweek.com www.peruthisweek.com
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Peru seeks repatriation of 400 cultural artifacts from New York
Repatriation of artifacts currently residing in the Met. A common concern across countries currently seeking repatriation of cultural objects is their ability to display and care for the objects.
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hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com
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A Historic Manuscript on Aztec Life Is “Virtually Repatriated
Interesting ideas of repatriation through technology. Does this count as true repatriation? Does it achieve the same goals?
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- Oct 2015
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www.peruthisweek.com www.peruthisweek.com
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Cusco strike: Archaeology-concession decree repealed
Ownership of archaeological sites in Peru - repealed.
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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Discovery of a colonial era church due to a drought.
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www.wacotrib.com www.wacotrib.com
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<!-- jQuery(function() { // Increase Font Size jQuery('.increase-font-size').click(function(){ var currentFontSize = jQuery('#blox-story-text').find("p").css('font-size'); var currentFontSizeNum = parseFloat(currentFontSize, 10); var newFontSize = currentFontSizeNum*1.2; $('#blox-story-text').find("p").css('font-size', newFontSize); return false; }); // Decrease Font Size jQuery('.decrease-font-size').click(function(){ var currentFontSize = $('#blox-story-text').find("p").css('font-size'); var currentFontSizeNum = parseFloat(currentFontSize, 10); var newFontSize = currentFontSizeNum*0.8; jQuery('#blox-story-text').find("p").css('font-size', newFontSize); return false; }); // end doc ready }); //--> Home Local Downtown Waco Students to help unearth historic fountain of Waco’s Hispanic heritage
Community archaeology! Excavation of a fountain from a Mexican-American neighborhood settled in the late 19th century.
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- Sep 2015
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www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
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9,000-Year-Old Decapitated Skull Found under Amputated Hands
Possibly the oldest known beheading in the America's has been found in Brazil.
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www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
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Ancient tunnels discovered underneath Mexican city of Puebla
Construction often uncovers archaeological features in cities. Commercial archaeologists are often called into construction sites in order to excavate the material.
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www.slate.com www.slate.com
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How Peru is using drones to protect its archaeological treasures
Interesting read on the usage of drones in mapping archaeological sites. The composite image is made by taking overlapping aerial photographs. From this, 3D models of the sites can be made. This article discusses not only the archaeological benefits of drone use, but also how drones can help to keep tabs on any destruction occurring on the site.
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- Oct 2013
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opencontext.org opencontext.org
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step trench
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