Archaeology

Recently I was given the opportunity to assist with a dig from the ground up. Which means, assisting in the grant writing phase as well. Assisting may be the operative word here, but any experience is good. What this also means is that I have a new obsession, a charming man by the name of George Boxley (fear not, this entry will be edited soon). Probably the best resource for Mr. Boxley's life is a very interesting account published by the Sheridan Historical Society titled "A Man with a Price on His Head: The Life and Times of George Boxley." Boxley is important in that he was an every day…

Unless you live in a very deep cave somewhere uncharted, you no doubt have heard of the wonder that is Wikipedia. The intriguing site where the common individual can write and edit encyclopedic like entries on anything their minds can come up with. In recent years this phenom of a site has become the number one place to go when you need information. Scary as this sounds, it's true. I myself check the Wiki regularly on all kinds of topics, from TV shows to Famous Figures. I like to think of it as being a good starting point in the long journey of research. I would never cite it in an actual…

"This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." ~ Carl Sagan The first time I heard this quote was in field school. We'd spent the majority of the summer excavating the residence of Dr. J.H. Ward and found about nothing...though I did learn that a claw hammer will totally own century old cement... When asked what he was going to say about the residence since we'd had such a lean collection of artifacts, Dr. Mullins told me, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This was quickly followed with a rather comical debate…

A team of archaeologists has captured a snapshot of rural life in the village of Sanyangzhuang in western China during the Han Dynasty, over 2,000 years ago. Researchers found that the town, though located in a remote section of the Han Dynasty kingdom, appears quite well off. Exploration has revealed tiled roofs, compounds with brick foundations, eight-meter deep wells lined with bricks, toilets, cart and human foot tracks, roads and trees. There is an abundance of metal tools, including plow shares, as well as grinding stones and coins. Also found have been fossilized impressions of…

Writing in American Antiquity, researchers from Arizona State University and North Carolina State University say archaeologists can use computational modeling to study the long-term effects of varying land use practices by farmers and herders on landscapes. By using these techniques, archeologists can develop alternative computerized scenarios that can be compared with traditional archaeological records, possibly enhancing previous findings of how humans and the environment interact. "Using computational modeling is a new approach in the field of archaeology. Archaeology is known for…

Archaeologists say they have disproved the fifty-year-old theory underpinning our understanding of how the famous stone statues were moved around Easter Island. Fieldwork led by researchers at University College London and The University of Manchester has shown the remote Pacific island's ancient road system was primarily ceremonial and not solely built for transportation of the figures. A complex network of roads up to 800-years-old crisscross the Island between the hat and statue quarries and the coastal areas. Laying alongside the roads are dozens of the statues - or moai. The find will…

If you thought that rapid and potentially catastrophic climate change was all bad, think again. High in the Mackenzie Mountains in Canada, a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools is being revealed as warming temperatures melt patches of ice that have been in place for thousands of years. Ice patches are accumulations of annual snow that, until recently, remained frozen all year. For millennia, caribou seeking relief from summer heat and insects have made their way to ice patches where they bed down until cooler temperatures prevail. Hunters noticed caribou were, in effect, marooned on these…

Archaeologists have unearthed a cache of cuneiform tablets found to contain a largely intact Assyrian treaty from the early 7th century BCE. The 43 by 28 centimeter tablet — known as the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon — contains about 650 lines and is in a very fragile state. "It will take months of further work before the document will be fully legible," said Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near&Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. "These tablets are like a very complex puzzle, involving hundreds of pieces, some missing.…

Archaeologists have begun excavating a proto-urban settlement situated where the Balikh River joins the Euphrates River in Northern Syria. The location was at the crossroads of major trade routes across ancient Mesopotamia that followed the course of the Euphrates River valley. Known as Tell Zeidan, the town may have been one of the largest Ubaid temple towns in northern Mesopotamia, as large or larger than any previously known contemporary Ubaid towns in the southern alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today southern Iraq. Because the site was not occupied after…

Historians from the University of Haifa claim that Khirbet Qeiyafa, a provincial town in Israel's Elah Valley region, is 'Neta'im',  an adminstrative center mentioned in the biblical book of Chronicles. Archaeological excavations carried out at Khirbet Qeiyafa have dated the site to the beginning of the 10th century BCE, namely the time of King David's rule. A Hebrew inscription on a pottery shard found at the site also dating back to the 10th century indicates the presence of scribes and a high level of culture in the town. The genealogy of the Tribe of Judah dated to the same period…