Archaeology

Less than 8,000 years ago, evidence shows modern people suddenly appeared en masse outside Africa, on the shores of the Persian Gulf.  An odd event, to be sure.   Jeffrey Rose, writing in Current Anthroplogy, now says the reason is that the land that brought them there more gradually is now under the Gulf itself. It makes sense as a hypothesis - you don't just go from sporadic hunting camps to dozens of archaeological sites without a trail, unless the trail is underwater.  Rose believes the that humans may have inhabited a fertile land mass where the Gulf now is for up to 100,…

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna in the department of physics of  Politecnico di Torino says she has discovered geoglyphs, essentially earthwork graphic designs carved into the landscape, near Lake Titicaca is in the Andes Mountains on the border of Peru and Bolivia.And she did it using Google. You may not be able to see it so clearly but time and wear would certainly have made geoglyphs less obvious, though how and why anyone would have made them is also not obvious - unless they were insuring some deity or another could see something more interesting than farmers when they looked down. Like…

"So did you watch "Big Trouble In Little China?"  I asked Patrick.   He did, he replied, while coding away. "So you saw what I mean.  Chinese people got a lot of Hells, which is bad, but at least they're apparently easy to find.   Western religion has just one, but good luck locating it.   In that movie they just go under some old guy's house and there it is and they get to fight Raiden(1) and stuff and save the world.   If I want to find Hell, I am stuck going into "Revelations" and that isn't much help at all." Because, you see, I had decided I wanted to go to…

It's been hard for archaeologists to pin down the extent of idle wealth in ancient people, but it is generally believed only those in the richest locations, like capital cities, had it.    A recent discovery, in an urban context and at an orderly archaeological dig, may be of great significance in learning about ancient people outside large cities.  Most small pieces of art originating in the Near East are of unknown origin, having been displaced through illegal antique trade, or purchased by museums and collectors before scientific archaeological research began, but an…

Tolerance has meant different things in different eras.  For some religions in the past, there was a 'convert or die' mentality, which tended to drive out competitors but, at least when it comes to works of art, old religions have always survived. A fresco of Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune from the Byzantine period had been discovered at the Sussita site, on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a maenad, one of the companions of the wine god Dionysus, was found also.  The city of Sussita is located within the Sussita National Park under the management of the Israel Nature…

An archaeological team has discovered the oldest Roman baths in Asia Minor - underneath existing Roman baths.  Location:  Sagalassos, Turkey, which was inhabited as a city until the 7th century AD, when it was destroyed by earthquakes.  Prior to the Sagalassos discovery, the Capito Baths in Miletus, built during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD), were the oldest known Roman bathing complex in Asia Minor. This summer, however, below the remains of the previously unearthed Imperial Baths (ca. 120-165 AD – with a surface area of more than 5,000 square meters), a second…

The great thing about being a bureaucrat in a dictatorship is you can take credit for everything that happens in your personal fiefdom and treat people like garbage and there is no recourse.   Well, almost no recourse.   Those guys working for Saddam Hussein didn't fare all that well when their boss started floating rumors he had weapons of mass destruction, but generally the life of a senior guy in a dictatorship is pretty good. For Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, it is better than good because he gets to make people call him "Pharaoh…

The second of six parts of my presentation at Inconjunction 2010. I resented on Archaeology and PseudoArchaeology. It was my first live talk, so I was really serious, but the audience was great and I had some great audience participation at the end. Also, major Props to Anubis2814, he handed the filming despite the technical difficulties.

The Isaiah Scroll is the oldest-known copy of any book of the Bible and after 12 years of researching the Dead Sea Scrolls,  Robert Cargill, an archaeologist from UCLA, got to visit the underground vault beneath the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Religious texts dated between 150 BC and 70 AD and written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment or papyrus, the scrolls include the oldest-known surviving copies of the Bible as well as religious commentary that followed the return from the exile in Babylon.  As the on-air investigator for “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls,” which aired…

I have gotten the dig dates, which will be the last two weeks in July,  and we have the students we'll be working with all signed up. They appear to be a great group of kids, I honestly can't wait to get them in the field and see what they're capable of. So, Monday we will be heading up to the site to do the initial surface collection. In the CRM world we call this a Phase I, Pedestrian Survey.    We'll be calling this a pedestrian survey as well, but we already know there is stuff here, we're just looking for the best place to dig so we don't waste our short two weeks. The…