Inkulkation.

I hereby challenge rockwash to go out and get one of these trowel tattoos.  Or be like Brad and get the coveted Ötzi tattoo.  Or check here for more science tattoo inspiration.  (Ötzi really did have tattoos, BTW).

Icey Dead People.

18 days of fieldschool in 5 minutes…

See Delia Ni Chiobhain’s new fieldschool movie, either here or in the gallery section…

The ancient Buddhist cave temples at Xumishan face danger
Examiner.com
Much of the art you’ll find here is religious in nature, having been influenced by both Indian and central Asian cultures. Note that the 130 grottoes are …

I think I saw this several years ago, but it is still interesting.

One man can build construction like Stonehenge this video shows it.

Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.

He is a retired carpenter with 35 years experience in construction. In his work experience, over the years, many times he had to improvise on tools to get the job done. At one of these times, about 12 years ago, He had to remove some 1200 lb. saw cut concrete blocks from an existing floor. The problem was that he did not have a machine that could reach some of the blocks. The only obvious answer was to break the blocks into smaller pieces with a sledgehammer and load them into a wheelbarrow. To him, that seemed to be too much work at the time, so he improvised. Using a few rocks and leverage, He removed the blocks from below the floor to an area that the machine could reach them for removal. After doing this several times, the technique became very easy and quick. This experience make him consider the possibility that people may have used this technique before modern day equipment was available.

Nine years later, after retiring, he decided to explore this on his own. He brought home a one ton block of concrete from a job. Once he got home, he realized that he had to use his techniques to get the block off the truck. After unloading, he found that his technique allowed him to move the block around the yard with very little effort. At that time, his family became very interested in what their “crazy dad” was up to ” this time”.

via Mysterytopia: Stonehenge – How is it Built !? Answer is here, finaly!.

From the interesting gizapyramid.com site:

Ancient Construction

I have found that ancient legends from around the world are true. Some megaliths could have been set in place by as few as one man. I could build The Great Pyramid of Giza, using my techniques and primitive tools. On a twenty-five year construction schedule, (working forty hours per week at fifty weeks per year, using the input of myself to calculate) I would need a crew of 520 people to move blocks from the main quarry to the site and another 100  to move the blocks on site. For hoisting I need a crew of 120 (40 working and 80 rotating). My crew can raise 7000 lb. 100 ft. per minute. I have found the design of the pyramid is functional in it’s own construction. No external ramp is needed.

The Forgotten Technology

During the time of my projects, I have videotaped myself for demonstrations for my family and friends. In order to pursue my project further, I am offering edited copies of my home videotapes for sale. The plan is to build a replica of Stonehenge with at least 10 ton blocks on end and 2 ton blocks on top. One man, no wheels, no rollers, no metal, using only sticks and stones. In the future, either myself, sons, or grandsons will be able to show this and other forms of The Forgotten Technology to the world. I believe that I have learned to use the laws of physics to my advantage. If you would like a copy of my tape, send $20 to: W.T. Wallington @ 600 South Main Street, Lapeer, Michigan 48446.

While I doubt Zahi Hawass would agree, it is enjoyable to speculate that there is still a lost secret of levitation that was used in building the pyramids:

Let us first look at some historical records.  Masoudi, an Arab historian of the 10th century wrote that the Egyptians used magic spells to move large blocks.  His account is the following:

“In carrying on the work, leaves of papyrus, or paper, inscribed with certain characters, were placed under the stones prepared in the quarries; and upon being struck, the blocks were moved at each time the distance of a bowshot (which would be a little over 200 feet), and so by degrees arrived at the pyramids.”

Was this story made up by Masoudi, or is there some truth in it?  Is it possibly that he was reporting on an early legend that the blocks were moved mysteriously and the story of the inscribed papyrus was added to embellish the story?  Or were the blocks placed on some unknown apparatus (mistaken by the historian to be a piece of papyrus) that would levitate them.  If you strip away all the additions and embellishments to a legend, sometimes you are left with a strand of truth. – gizapyramid

Cross (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SK 260 941

Also Known as:

• Hanson Cross
  

Archaeology & History

Described in Joseph Hunter’s (1819) rare work as being close to a now-lost stone circle, this wayside cross is shown on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1855 as being at the side of the old Penistone road, across from the guide-stoop which can still be seen.  The cross stood at a peak on the roadside which allowed it to be visible from either direction.

In Neville Sharpe’s (2002) fine survey he found an early account of this lost relic from writings ascribed to one John Wilson, who lived between 1719 and 1783, which told that,

“Ann Hawley, an old woman who lived at Broomhead in 1700, says she remembers Hanson Cross having a head and arms.  The head is still there, but the arms I do not remember.”

References:

Hunter, Joseph, Hallamshire: The History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield, Lackington: London 1819.
Sharpe, Neville T., Crosses of the Peak District, Landmark: Ashbourne 2002.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

LAVA: Laboratory for Advanced Visualization in Archaeology
The LAVA project centers around web based tools for investigating archaeological data sets.  In its initial phase (2009) I designed a 3D tool which would visualize spatial data within an archaeological excavation.  The design of the tool is based upon the Munsel colour wheel and uses multiple regions, arranges spatially, to visualise archaeological databases.  The tool is currently being developed with Dr. Stefan Sinclair at McMaster University.  My overall aim with LAVA is to create a suit of tools that will work with existing web-based collections and which will allow users to create new collections of born-digital materials.

LAVA Tool for archaeological visualisations

This is the research blog for Dr. Megan Meredith-Lobay.  You can find information about my research interests and ongoing projects, as well as publications, teaching-related content, and links to other information about Scottish archaeology, digital humanities, and archaeological informatics.

What is the point of a museum? In part, it is to preserve, document and research its subject. But, it also has a duty to educate and inform the public. Or does it? And at what price?

Education in so many museums (in the UK at least) is often seen as the most important function of the museum. It may not be explicitly stated as such, but in this author’s experience many small and medium-sized museums will devote an enormous amount of effort to education and outreach work, whilst the bare minimum is devoted to research and conservation. Some of this work is of course hugely valued and important, witness the Petrie Museum of Egyptology’s efforts to reach out to the Arabic communities in London. However, in other cases we really should learn to question the success of our museums’ attempts to engage with their day-to-day visiting public.

Recently, I was able to visit the Vatican Museums, notorious for the huge number of visitors which pass through their halls each day. As I processed behind these hordes, (all doing the ‘museum shuffle’) and into the Pinacoteca, I became increasingly frustrated at the attitude of the visitors. Nobody seemed to be interested in the exhibits! There was excited chatter about their friends and families back home, their dinner plans, shopping and a myriad of other subjects, all to the complete exclusion of the artworks. The few who were looking, did so only to take a quick snap and to move on. The actual number of visitors who truly made an effort to read and contemplate the artworks, and perhaps to be moved by them, was minuscule.

So, OK, maybe I am being a bit of a culture snob here; perhaps it’s not the quality of the experience that matters, but the fact that one experiences it at all. Or perhaps not. What was very clear though was that the Vatican was signally failing in its duty to engage the public with its collections. The overwhelming majority of the visitors could not care less about what they were (or were not) looking at, and as I talked informally to a few of them later, most could not recall more than two or three of the thousands of objects they had been looking at a few hours earlier.

Perhaps this is even more evident at that other hugely crowded site – Pompeii. How many of the visitors ever bother to think about the site (other than to look for the gruesome bits), for most it seems that these sorts of locations form the backdrop for an afternoon’s stroll, a bit like a public park. I do, however, have to exclude one group from this comment, that of children under 10. These visitors always seem to make the most of their visits and its my firm contention that if you want to understand an archaeological site, watch the kids as they will be the ones exploring and trying to figure things out!

So perhaps, we need to play Devil’s Advocate here (and there’s nowhere better to do that than at the Vatican!). If museums are failing in their duty to inform and educate their general visitors then should they be open at all? The costs of opening a museum to the public are enormous and few museums can possibly profit financially from the exercise. If we combine this with the inevitable damage that must result from the hordes of sweaty bodies passing though each day, then we have to conclude that these precious artworks are being placed at risk for little or no real benefit. For too long museums have counted their success by the quantity of visits rather than their quality.

A simple, yet provocative, question must be posed: is the risk and the cost of large-scale general admission really worth it?

Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that we should return to Renaissance or Victorian times with private, closed collections. Everyone should have the right to view these works, especially if the museum is state-funded. The question is whether museums can continue to support general admission? Perhaps, as is increasingly the case in Italy, admission should be by prior appointment?

Or … maybe, the flip side of the coin should be embraced. If closing museums is politically impossible, (and of course it is), then perhaps museums need to find better ways to engage with the general public. And here I’m not talking about electronic ‘resources’, audio-guides, websites and other new media, all of which consume enormous amounts of money, and are for the most part more a demonstration of the museum-director’s vanity and desire for career-promotion, than a true attempt to inform and educate.

So what would I like to see? Well, I think the museum profession firstly needs to get itself out of this costly obsession with digital resources. IT is of course vital for the day to day management of a cultural resource, but the return on investment of so many of these hugely expensive websites and digital resources is minuscule. For example, huge sums were spent developing the ludicrous Museo Archeologico Virtuale at Herculaneum, yet when I visited, this enormous barn of a building had just seven people in it – and four of them were staff! What a waste of money!

How much better could money be spent engaging real people, true communicators, people who could convey a passion for their museum or site. Imagine how effective half-a-dozen informal ‘explainers’ could be at Herculaneum or Pompeii (though not perhaps the Vatican). I’m not talking here about formal tours, or the miserable, sour-looking guards who loiter on every corner, but real history-lovers, people who might hang around in interesting places and engage the public. Perhaps they could join visitors while they have their picnics and chat with them – it’s these kind of personal interactions that people enjoy and which could truly make a visit to such a site something to remember.  What the heritage industry needs above all, is something which we all thought it had in abundance: a sense of imagination!

Yet another dissertation on the Middle Neolithic’s in Scandinavia is on the way, this time it’s Kim von Hackwitz who puts foward Längs med Hjälmarens stränder och förbi – relationen mellan den gropkeramiska kulturen och båtyxekulturen aka. Along the shores of Lake Hjälmaren and beyond – the relationship between the Pitted Ware Culture and the Boat Axe Culture. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 51. Stockholm. Written in Swedish with an English summary.

The abstract as well as the thesis is available at academia.edu

Kim will hold her defense December 19^th at Stockholm University, I wish her the best of luck (I’ll be attending). I’ve only glanced through the pages but it seems an interesting read on the now century old but ever pressing issue on whether the Pitted Ware Culture and the Boat Axe Culture are two material cultures that express two different ethnical groups or whether as Kim proposes different expressions in culture that express a dynamic and active society that manifests itself through a variety of different places, which were maintained for specific purposes.

Magnus Reuterdahl

I would like to applaud Google this morning for the  important new project that it is undertaking in Iraq.  As the New York Times reported yesterday,  Google will be creating a new virtual Iraq National Museum,  by imaging the museum’s crucial collections and placing them online.  In a press conference yesterday in Baghdad,  Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Iraq officials and journalists,  ”I can think of no better use of our time and our resources  than to make the images and ideas of your civilization available to all the people of the world.”

Like many,  I am a little skeptical about what use Google might eventually put these images to. The megacorporation has already digitized vast numbers of books (including two of mine) without obtaining permission to do so,  and the company is now trying to purchase sweeping digital rights to these books in a lawsuit hardly anyone understands.

But leaving that aside,  I’d like to point out that Google is far from alone in its interest in creating virtual museums.   Indeed,  some research teams are already way ahead of Google.   At the Unversity of Arkansas,  for example,  a team at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technology led by Angie Payne has already scanned some 350 artifacts from the collection of the Hampson Archaeological Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas.   The result is the Virtual Hampson Museum.

The Hampson Archaeological Museum State Park holds an absolutely superb collection of Native American pottery,  particularly from the Mississipian era.  Now with the Virtual Hampson Museum,  researchers can perform basic measurements on the artifacts and gather data for analyses,  without scraping together grants for traveling.  This will be very important for struggling graduate students in years to come.

Moreover, as more and more museums repatriate key artifacts from their collections–either to Native American tribes or to  countries of origin– 3-D images of the artifacts can be still be preserved online,  providing access to all.  I’d call this the best possible solution right now to a very sticky issue.

The only certain thing to my job is uncertainty.

I feel like I jinxed myself telling people I was going to be doing a 3-week data recovery at Fort Hood. Less than 24 hours later, my boss comes in and tells me that the plans have changed. Now, I’ll only be going to Fort Hood for the first week. Then, back out to East Texas for another pipeline survey.

Just when there was a glimmer of hope at work, it’s snatched away from me. As I’ve said a lot recently, I do love my job, but I’ve hated the work I’ve been doing for a while now. I’m happy to have a job doing what I went to school for, and I work for a really good company. But the endless surveys and report writing are really wearing on me. It’s even harder when you know there’s a cool project going on, and you’re not a part of it.

I’ve always said that I’ll go where they tell me to go and do what they ask me to do. I’m being sent on the survey because they need a solid, experienced person to help out the field director, so getting sent is a positive commentary on my work and the way my bosses feel about me. But still, I’m disappointed, and I’m going to have to try really hard not to let that show while I’m out on the survey.

At least I’m done with the massive report, and drinking a beer in an airport bar as I travel to visit my family for Thankgsiving.

Simcha Jacobovici, Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker and presenter/producer of the hit TV show “The Naked Archaeologist” visited the University of Southampton in May 2009 at the invitation of The Parkes Institute. During his vist he took time to give advice to Film Studies students and to speak to zemedia producer Tim O’Riordan about his work, and how his religion affects his professional life.

I received this flyer from a friend in Britain today, announcing that

“The Naked Archaeologist” wins Special Jury Prize at the 8th Annual Archaeological Film Festival in Brussels. … TORONTO (November 23, 2009) – Toronto based film production company Associated Producers has won the Special Jury Prize from The International Archaeological Film Festival in Brussels for the documentary series The Naked Archaeologist. The Special Jury Prize award was handed out at a gala ceremony at the Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles.

Simply astonishing. The promulgation of inaccurate information has just been lauded and now will continue with the blessing of an organization clearly uninformed about either archaeology or Jacobovici’s willingness to ‘modify’ the facts.

The work of the ASOR Media relations committee just received another clue of it’s necessity.

This week’s staff breakfast was given by Nick Ashton, and concerning the AHOB 3 – or the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project. The project receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, and will run run for the next three years in partnership with the Natural History Museum and several Universities in the UK, as well as one in the States, and in the Netherlands. The project aims to track the dispersal of early humans into northern Europe against the backdrop of global climate change over the last million years. Nick Ashton’s talk concentrated on three aspects of the project:

Module 1: First pioneers in northern Europe. 1.0 – 0.5 million years ago.

Module 2: Neanderthals and the North Sea Basin: Demography and technology, 420,000 – 40,000 years ago.

Module 3: Modern migrants. 50,000 – 11, 000 years ago.

Theories which have been held for over 20 years are now being reconsidered, including the initial population of Britain being dated to 700 or even 800,000 BP, rather than the 500,000 years ago previously thought.

More excavations and research will take place in years to come – certainly looks very interesting!

Paisley Cave human coprolite dating older than 14,000 cal BP. Source: PBS.

There is a tantalizing news item in a recent edition of Nature indicating that the team led by Dennis Jenkins has found a bone tool in the old layers at Paisley Cave in southern Oregon.  This cave already returned a number of pre-Clovis dates on human coprolites.  Although there was some vociferous opposition to this finding, a vigorous defence of these feces was mounted and to my mind was effective.  (Note that one of those claiming the human poop is actually camel poop posts a slightly hysterical online comment on this Nature news item.  This charge of excess fibre is dealt with in Gilbert et al’s 2009 rebuttal in Science, which is not mentioned in the Nature comment.  Clearly there is a new generation of data-selective Clovis Police being groomed out east.)

Anyway, this bone tool, which I assume will be published soon, is said in the Nature article to date to 14,230 cal. BP, from which I infer a 14C estimation of about 12,250 – exactly contempraneous with the poop.  According to the article,

The dating of the bone tool, and the finding that the sediments encasing it range from 11,930 to 14,480 years old, might put these questions to rest. “You couldn’t ask for better dated stratigraphy,” Jenkins told the Oregon meeting.

Seeing the tool itself will of course be very interesting and hopefully definitive, as there is a long history of bone pseudo-tools in North American archaeology.  So far this date has only been announced at an unspecified “meeting” and peer reviewed publication will be essential to form a final judgment.

You can watch a PBS news clip on the poop discovery from a link here which gives a good idea of the setting of the cave, and also includes nice footage of Luther Cressman!

Camel astragalus from Paisley Cave. Source: U of Oregon.

Reference:

Dalton, Rex. 2009. Oldest American artefact unearthed: Oregon caves yield evidence of continent’s first inhabitants.  Nature: doi:10.1038/news.2009.1058.

The city was Cairo, with her mud brick buildings that hugged the ground like they were afraid they’d fly away. I was assigned there by the University; or should I say by some impotent balding professor who didn’t like the way I was eyeing his daughter. Ah well, I should be grateful. If he’d have known the two of us were doing the nookie before I was shipped off… well, I’d probably be looking for dinosaur bones in Antarctica.

Look the name’s Ben, Benny Maine. Been into Archaeology since I was a babe. I guess you could say I was born into it; my mother was a researcher at the same university I was kicked out of, and my father an archaeologist. They met during class and fell in love, as lovebirds do, and their dreams of a peaceful and trouble-free existence were shattered when they had me, old Benjamin Leonardo Maine. See I was a handful to say the least; if there was a tree anywhere within five blocks of home, I’d climb it. No wall or fence could keep me from trouble; I was a rascal and my parents aged prematurely just trying to keep me safe. I remember one time my poor Aunt Gracie was babysitting me while my parents went out to watch a moving picture. She was a dear old lady who thought the world of me, and one hot summer day she’d asked me as I was playing out in the yard if I wanted some lemonade. Now, Aunt Gracie may not have been a popular old bird, but she sure knew how to make good, honest lemonade. So of course I said yes, but being the devilish troublemaker I was, I attached the hose to the outside tap and hid behind the corner of our old mansion. As Aunt Gracie came out through the back door looking for me, I jumped out, turned the nozzle on her and drenched her head to toe in water.

Of course she was unimpressed, and I spent most of my remaining summer locked up in my room as punishment.

Well it seems I’m rambling. I get that from my dad. But you gotta give me some credit. It’s hard to concentrate under this oppressive sun. The sun turns your clothing into stifling blankets and your head underneath that hat into your very own mobile sauna. But don’t even think about taking that hat off, or wearing lighter clothing, because the sun will cook you like a sausage on a barbeque. But it’s not all bad. The nights here are magical. It’s always cool, and the sky is always clear. The stars twinkle with a nonchalance I wish I could emulate, and there’s this breeze that seems to come from everywhere that just blows your discomfort away.

And it was at night when I was sat on a deck chair, laid out flat on my back admiring the view. Behind me were a bar and a live band that belted out the sounds of Billie Holiday and Bert Williams, reminding me of the local speakeasy I used to frequent back in Chicago. Around me were people of like mind, either swaying to the tune or speaking amongst themselves. Not too many to be crowded, but not too little to be lonely, either. I raised my hand, holding an empty martini glass.

“Another drink for the American!”

I smiled and gestured with my hand to show my appreciation. Then I sighed and continued to gaze at the stars. You know, this may not have been such a bad transferral after all.

Helluva way to spend the grant money, that’s for sure.

Little Colorado River from Homol'ovi Ruins State Park

Some of the most important work on the origins of the kachina cult is that done by E. Charles Adams of the Arizona State Museum, particularly his 1991 book focusing specifically on the subject. In this book he summarizes the available evidence for the origin and early development of the kachina cult, and based on the distribution of the archaeological manifestations of the cult that he identifies he concludes that it originated in the Upper Little Colorado River area of east-central Arizona in the period between AD 1275 and 1325.

Wall at Casa Malpais, Springerville, Arizona

Adams’s reasoning for this conclusion is based on his comparison of the distribution of four types of evidence that he presents as reflecting the presence of the cult: rock art, pottery, plaza-oriented village layout, and rectangular kivas. His summaries of the distribution of all these features in space and time are very useful, but his conclusions about the origins of the kachina cult go well beyond the evidence he presents and are not very convincing. His method for determining the origin of the cult is to look at the distribution of the four features he identifies and find where they first overlap. This seems reasonable enough.

Petroglyphs at Puerco Pueblo, Petrified Forest National Park

Unfortunately, there does not turn out to be any place where the features all overlap sufficiently early to be associated with the initial development of the cult, so Adams has to resort to finding a place where three of the elements overlap. The three elements he uses are pottery style, plaza-facing village layout, and rectangular kivas, which he finds present together earliest in the Upper Little Colorado River area in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century. He therefore concludes that this is when and where the cult originated and proceeds to describe its rapid spread to the north and east over the course of the fourteenth century. Unlike many other researchers, including Polly Schaafsma, he considers the cult to be fundamentally indigenous rather than Mesoamerican in origin, although he concedes that some elements of it were probably subject to influence from groups to the south such as the Hohokam and Salado.

Sign at Puerco Pueblo Showing Plaza-Oriented Layout

Adams theorizes that after its initial spread the cult was greatly elaborated at Hopi, where it acquired its strong association with rainmaking and began to be reflected in elaborate kiva murals, and that it subsequently spread in modified form from Hopi to areas that had already adopted the initial cult directly from the Upper Little Colorado, such as Zuni and the Albuquerque area of the Rio Grande valley. It is only at that point, after AD 1400, that Adams sees any influence from the Jornada Mogollon coming up the Rio Grande, and he sees this influence, reflected in the Jornada rock art style and a similar style in some kiva murals, as secondary to the Upper Little Colorado and Hopi kachina cult influence already present in the Rio Grande valley. He even speculates that the Jornada influence may not have affected the kachina cult itself at all, and that it may have had more to do with other societies present among the Eastern Pueblos having more to do with war.

Warning Sign at Edge of Little Colorado River, Homol'ovi Ruins State Park

This theory is problematic for a number of reasons. For one thing, Adams relies very heavily on the distribution of pottery styles as evidence for the spread of the kachina cult, but he never establishes the association between the cult and the styles he mentions. He focuses on the so-called “Fourmile style” (named after Fourmile Ruin in the Upper Little Colorado area), a style of polychrome decoration that affected pottery types throughout the Southwest in the fourteenth century. Among the features of Fourmile style that Adams emphasizes are its use of asymmetrical decoration on the interiors of bowls, its extensive use of bird and feather imagery, and its occasional use of obvious kachina cult symbolism, particularly masks or whole anthropomorphic masked figures. It is the last aspect of the style that is clearly most associated with the kachina cult, and the presence of this sort of imagery on ceramics is certainly as clear a sign of the presence of the cult in a given area as the presence of similar motifs in rock art, but Adams goes beyond this observation to associate any use of the Fourmile style with the spread of the cult. This is not something that can just be assumed, however. It is important to note that the Fourmile style was very widespread, including in areas without any other evidence of kachina cult imagery, and it is quite possible that the distribution of the style is completely independent of the distribution of the cult. That is, the Fourmile style may just have been the style of decoration that was popular at the time that the kachina cult happened to be spreading throughout the northern Southwest, so that groups that adopted the cult may have used its imagery on their Fourmile-style ceramics without there being any particular association between the style in general and the cult. Thus, while Fourmile ceramics with kachina imagery would clearly be evidence of the distribution and spread of the cult, Fourmile ceramics without it would not necessarily be, and Adams’s extensive use of them undermines his conclusions significantly.

Petroglyph Panel Showing Mask at Puerco Pueblo, Petrified Forest

Another major problem with Adams’s approach is the way he largely disregards the rock art evidence. When he realizes that there is no place where all four of his lines of evidence come together at the proper time, it is the rock art evidence that he ignores. This is why he is able to conclude that the cult originated in the Upper Little Colorado area, where rock art evidence for the presence of the cult is very slim (probably due largely to the limited study of rock art in this area). Rock art, however, is the most straightforward and obvious evidence there is for the presence of the cult. Unlike Fourmile style ceramics, Rio Grande style rock art is full of kachina imagery, and it is very different from earlier rock art styles in the area where it appears. Schaafsma’s theory linking the cult to the Jornada Mogollon depended largely on the rock art evidence. Recall that her argument for transmission of the cult up the Rio Grande via the Jornada depended largely on the lack of rock art evidence for the presence of the cult in the Mogollon Rim and Upper Little Colorado area. Adams, although he argues for the transmission (and, indeed, the origin) of the cult in this area merely assumes that the Rio Grande style originated in the Upper Little Colorado area along with the cult and that it is unrelated to the Jornada style, which he sees as a late introduction to the Eastern Pueblos after the Rio Grande style was firmly established.

Petroglyphs at Casa Malpais, Springerville, Arizona

It is not hard to see why Adams puts so much emphasis on pottery and so little on rock art. He is trying to determine the time as well as the place of origin of the kachina cult, and to do that he needs evidence that can be securely dated. In the Southwest pottery styles are very well dated by association with tree-ring-dated contexts where they appear, and they therefore give quite precise dates even for sites that have note been excavated or dated in any other way. Rock art, on the other hand, is notoriously difficult to date. Pictographs, which are painted onto the rock surface often using some sort of organic paint, can sometimes be carbon-dated by samples of the paint or other associated organic artifacts, but this technique has rarely been used in the Southwest, and the much more common petroglyphs, which are pecked or incised into the rock surface, cannot be directly dated at all and can only be assigned very general dates based on their style and/or proximity to dated sites. Thus, associating the spread of the kachina cult with the spread of the Fourmile style, which does seem to have occurred around the same time, gives Adams much more chronological control than Schaafsma has with her rock art styles, and it even allows him to argue, in direct opposition to Schaafsma’s interpretation, that the Jornada style in the Rio Grande valley is later than the Rio Grande style rather than ancestral to it. His justification for doing so is very shaky, being based on similarities between the Jornada style and the style of kiva mural found at sites such as Kuaua, north of Albuquerque, but it is not possible to prove that he is wrong. Nor, for that matter, is it possible to prove that he is wrong to associate the Fourmile ceramic style with the cult, although he does so on similarly shaky grounds.

Casa Malpais from Above

Nevertheless, despite all these problems with Adams’s theory for the origin and spread of the cult, his model for why the cult was adopted so quickly and easily throughout the Pueblo world is quite convincing and useful. The explanation is basically the same as Schaafsma’s: the kachina cult, being a non-kin-based system with the potential to integrate whole communities easily, was very attractive to the rapidly aggregating villages developing throughout the Southwest at this time, and it was therefore adopted as a way of dealing with and resolving the many conflicts that inevitably develop within diverse and rapidly growing communities. He defines the model more rigorously and in more detail than Schaafsma, however, and presents a four-stage process for adoption of the cult, with corresponding correlates that should be identifiable in the archaeological record:

1. Immigration: Starting around AD 1275, when major environmental changes occurred throughout the Southwest, locations that either maintained their attractiveness for settlement or became newly attractive as a result of the changes saw massive influxes of population from the many areas being abandoned at this time.
2. Aggregation: In the locations seeing large-scale immigration, the new immigrants coalesced into large, aggregated villages, either joining previously existing populations or, in sparsely populated or previously unattractive locations, developing their own aggregated villages. These villages are often but not always plaza-oriented.
3. Appearance of kachina cult imagery: Shortly after initial aggregation, the plaza-oriented villages begin to show signs of kachina cult imagery, either in nearby rock art or on locally produced pottery. This demonstrates the adoption of the cult by the village, perhaps in part to deal with the problems caused by rapid aggregation.
4. Continued aggregation: As a result of the usefulness of the kachina cult in integrating the new communities, new immigrants continue to join them and are able to be successfully integrated. This part is important; previous attempts at forming large, aggregated communities in the Southwest had not lasted for long, probably because existing religious and social systems were not able to successfully integrate populations on that scale.

Adams applies this model to the cluster of sites at Homol’ovi Ruins State Park near Winslow, Arizona, where he has conducted extensive research as part of a long-term project by the Arizona State Museum. He finds that the model fits the history of the sites there quite well. Adams’s model can also be used to evaluate the impact of the kachina cult and the development of plaza-oriented village layouts on aggregation in other parts of the Southwest during this time period, and perhaps during others. Adams sets the beginning for his model at AD 1275 to correspond to the environmental changes in the northern Southwest associated with the so-called “Great Drought” of AD 1276 to 1299, and this does correspond to the onset of major aggregation in many areas, but in other areas aggregation began either earlier or later than this, and the adoption (or, perhaps, development) of the kachina cult may have played a role in these contexts as well.

Masonry at Homol'ovi I

Adams’s model may be an effective way to address the relationship between aggregation and the spread of the kachina cult, but it still leaves open the question of why people were aggregating in the first place. This has been a matter of much dispute and argument over nearly the whole history of southwestern archaeology, and many theories have been proposed. Many of the recent theories revolve around changing environmental conditions and the need for changes in subsistence systems, and they address this idea from varying perspectives, often focusing on the need for more centralized decision-making and/or more efficient land use as the result of less reliable or more difficult conditions for agriculture. In his discussion of this issue, particularly in relation to the case study of Homol’ovi, Adams seems to endorse some version of this idea, with a particular focus on the decisions of community leaders. Unlike many archaeologists who study the ancient Southwest, Adams does not present prehistoric Pueblo society as egalitarian, and he assumes throughout his discussion the presence of a two-tiered society with a small priestly class making decisions at a community level and deriving their authority from their control of ritual knowledge. Importantly, however, he notes that this elite never managed to amass the sort of surplus wealth necessary to transform Pueblo society into a truly stratified society with significant economic inequality. Adams attributes this mainly to the marginal nature of the Southwest for agriculture, but it is likely that another major factor is the communal ideology of the Pueblos, which strongly discourages individual gain and encourages leaders to put the needs of the community above their own desires.

Walls at Homol'ovi II

It hasn’t been the most exciting week, but here are a few updates.

Mrs. Poolman’s shrimp and grits turned out great! Being a “born and raised” Yankee, this is a dish that I should not be inclined to like. When I first heard about it, I thought it sounded disgusting.  At the time, I could tolerate grits, but wasn’t real excited about them. And shrimp in some sort of gravy on top of them just sounded gross.

Oh my, has my mind been changed. I had them a year or two ago at a restaurant and fell in love. Mrs. P’s dish is even better. She sauted the shrimp with some blackening spice and then made a spicy creamy sauce to go with it. The leftovers are dinner again tonight. As soon as I can get Mrs. P to write down the recipe, I’ll post it.

Our barrier island boony stomping expedition last week produced fruit today. Reporter Mary Landers wrote a nice article on the project and her editors put it on the front page of the Savannah Morning News. If you are interested, you can see it here.

Mrs. P and I are both off work through the weekend. No CCD class tomorrow night, so we’ll just be kicking back until heading down to Gainesville for the Gator season finale on Saturday.

We are staying home for Thanksgiving. We’ve managed to juggle schedules so that both our kids (Poolboy and Writer Princess), Son-in-Law and Poolboy’s GF will be able to join us for dinner. Some of our good friends, the W’s will also be here. Like us, they have no family in town, so we almost always do our holidays together.

We also keep an eye out for holiday “widows and orphans,” a practice Mrs. P and I have done since the early days of our marriage when we were moving around the country and never had family close. I know one nurse from Mrs P’s unit will be here. We might pick up another widow or orphan before it’s over.

Saturday’s Florida-FSU game should be a good one. FSU is a traditional rival. Also, it’s Senior Day, which means it’s the last home game for Tim Tebow and a pretty great group of seniors. When they introduce Tim T, the applause may register on the Richter Scale.

And finally, Gator fans can breath easy. Urban Meyer put the issue to rest; he is not going to leave UF to go to Notre Dame. I never thought he would, but the rumor persisted. He’s got a great thing going where he is. The grass isn’t always greener. As a matter of fact, in February in Indiana, it isn’t green at all. Ha!

We have much for which to give thanks. Life is great!

Stone Circle:  OS Grid Reference – SK 2154 8684

Also Known as:

• The Seven Stones of Hordron

Getting Here

Park up at Cut Throat bridge on the A57 or alternatively  at the huge parking area that’s signposted a little further uphill. Either way, the easiest access point is at Cut Throat Bridge – though be aware the route between the two areas is the narrow grassy verge of the road: take care, kids and dogs on a very short rein!  There are many ways to access the circle but I’ll deal with only two here: one, a scramble up the steep bank of the edge; and the other, a longer route which takes in a quite a steep path, but is much easier than the first option if you’re not up for a scramble!

Hordron Edge Stone Circle

Route 1: The shorter scrambly route – Climb the stile into the wooded area & follow the path till your out of the wood, carry on for another 100 metres then head to your left & up the banking.  The circle is thereabouts 40 metres onto the moor in the grassland, not the heather.

Route 2: The longer way but following a relatively easy path – Access the moor via the stile and just follow the path for around ½-mile till it veers to the left at Jarvis Clough & takes a steep route uphill.  You then need to head left along the edge for around ¼-mile till you see the circle off to your right in the grassland.

Archaeology and History

Don’t let the bastardization of this site’s name fool you!  The seven stones actually number between 9 and 24, depending on the season and the growth around them.  They’re laid out in a rough free standing circle around 15.5 metres in diameter.

Hordron Edge looking across to Lose Hill

One of the largest stones to the SW is said to mimic the profile of Lose Hill — which it does sort of if you have a vivid imagination.  But it’s not half as close as the top of the stone matches the profile of Lose hill off to your right.  It is a complete coincidence of course.  The stone has suffered much weathering over the millennia and I’m in no doubt it wasn’t an intended original feature. (see pic, right)

Previously, and at some time  preceding the 1992 excavations at the site by John Barnatt, the circle was “tampered” with, leading to a thorough investigation that unearthed several more buried stones, one of which was re-erected.

All in all a fantastically preserved circle and one of the best examples in Derbyshire that’s well worth the effort of a visit.  Watch the weather though; as on all but one of my visits I’ve been drenched!.  The “wow” factor of this site however, makes that a small price to pay for such an awe-inspiring excursion.  With Win Hill and Lose hill looming large to the southwest, Stanage Edge off to the southeast and the great outcrop of Ladybower Tor with it’s rock art to the west, this circle has some of the best scenery of any the circles in Derbyshire.

Folklore

The stone that alleges to line-up with Lose Hill is also known by some of the more imaginitive as the Fairy Stone and there have been reports of strange lights and other phenomena reported around it.  I’ve been up here on probably a dozen occasions and never witnessed anything strange — but then I’m often accused of being closed-minded.  Another way of saying “non gullible” in my book!

References:

Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of the Peak, Turnstone: London 1978.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, Aubrey, Megalithic Rings, BAR 81: Oxford 1980.

Ill handling of heritage sites shows
Times of India – New Delhi,India
While the departments of culture and archaeology of state government are … Srivastava is hopeful of early declaration of the ancient Buddhist sites of …

If you have any interest in History you have seen for sale at places like ebay Roman coins and other ancient treasures in many other varieties.  If you haven’t just type Roman Coins in the search and you will see hundreds on sale in various conditions.

In some cases these are fakes seeking to dupe the unsuspecting.  A few years ago I bought a signed Bobby Thompson baseball which I am still not convinced is real, though the novelty of having a possible signed ball by the player who hit the “Shot heard round the world” makes it fun to have.

So if you bought a fake, sorry, it is ebay after all so you take your chances.  Much like our purchase of Sailor Moon Dvds for our daughter which obvious came from Chinese knockoffs.  The first big clue was on the packaging it was called Sail Or Moon… yeah that is sooo official.

While you might be miffed I am somewhat gladdened if you got a fake.  It means you are not supporting those who are selling history online for a few dollars.   While Roman coins are plentiful in many areas of Europe they can still be significant and important if they are in the ground.  In archaeology this is called stratification.  This means that the layers of soil can tell a story  of the area.  Much like tree rings soil can be found layered and each layer can represent a specific period in time.

When items like coins, broaches, clips, arrow heads or anything like it is moved it destroys the story associated with that object.

Sometimes this happens through plowing or erosion which will move objects from their layer unintentionally.  Sometimes however there are treasure hunters who seeking to make some money will dig up historical items and destroy the context they are in because they do not keep the same type of connection with the objects and where they were found.

Often in the 1700s and 1800s this was fairly common.  In truth much of modern archaeology comes from these older treasure hunters.  But today many of these people are not looking to preserve or discover history, they are looking for a way to make money.  People like me who love history are both tempted and frustrated by these attempts.

I have to admit I have wanted to buy one of these coins because I would love to make that connection with the past.  Just as I love the idea of having say a copy of the first Book of Mormon.

Let me tell another story related to this which might make it more understandable for North American readers.  My brother-in-law works at a sand and gravel pit, almost like Fred Flinstone.  It happens to be near a significant Native American burial sight.  There are artifacts and other items near enough that occasionally he would find an arrowhead or two on the ground during his years of working there.  Without context these arrowheads are just objects so not significant if they are found and taken.

On the other hand not long back he had an issue with a fellow who was trying dig up native artifacts for reasons only the guy knew.  Eventually my brother in law found him and turned him in.  The idea that someone would take from such a unique site angers me.  While it is not clear it feels like these people are either arrogant or ignorant enough to fail to see how they are stealing from us all.

The commitment we should make to future generations is that we will not steal the past.  Too often people have destroyed the past because they have no appreciation of it.  Just as people in Britain shock us because they will spray paint and destroy castles and other significant sites for their own amusement we do the same when we are knocking over grave stones and digging up dino bones or arrow heads because they are “neat”.  If you want to make it important imagine someone digging up your grandparents because they want to take their glasses or watch.  Appalling as that sounds is it really not that different.

If we want future generations to connect with the past lets stop trying to destroy history.

Mike Sullivan writes:

Several of us spent most of last Friday taking a boat trip to one of Georgia’s undeveloped coastal islands

Capt. Jay Fripp and Claudia Venherm

and stomping around looking for archaeological sites that may be threatened by erosion.

Claudia Venherm using a precise GPS to map the shoreline.

It is a joint project with Chris McCabe, the Georgia DNR archaeologist who is stationed on our campus.

Chris and Mary

Mary Landers from the Savannah Morning News came along and wrote a very nice story on the excursion, which can be seen here.

A real estate agent showing a house got to the basement and found about 100 human bones in a corner.

James Kenny, a forensic investigator with the Terrebonne Parish Coroner’s Office, says the bones found Saturday were so old that dirt had saturated the marrow inside them.

He says they probably are remains of Native Americans buried long before the house was built.

Kenny says he learned that the previous residents would often find bones while mowing the lawn or doing yard work, and would put them in the basement.

Half of the split-level house is on top of a circular mound, which parish officials suggest may be an Indian burial mound.

Neither the agent nor the home’s owner would talk to The Courier of Houma.

via Agent showing house finds pile of bones – Yahoo! News.

Hi There Internet land! Vallancey here from Ireland. The original Vallancey was always regarded as a bit of an eegit, but he was one of the first people in the 17th century to suggest that the ancestors of the Irish of his time built the amazing megaliths like Newgrange and Lough Crew etc. He used a wild imagination to infer connections between native American languages, Phonecian, and Irish. Most of the time Monsieur Vallancey was wrong, but in the process of being wrong he kicked off lots of the theories of modern linguistics. So – in the spirit of Vallancey, here goes. The topics in here will vary widely. Hope I can find time to keep up regular contributions. Comments, input, debate always welcome. This is my first attempt at a blog, so I am sure I am doing lots of things wrong. I don’t have a category, for instance. But hopefully I’ll sort this out as I go. Any advice, suggestions are welcome, too!

It’s been interesting re-reading Hunter Davies’ book recording his walk along Hadrian’s Wall in 1974 to see how things have changed since then.

First stop is Wallsend. In Davies’ book, Segedunum fort is still covered by terraced houses. Now the fort has been excavated, and an award winning museum stands beside it.

Later on his wander thrugh the suburb of Benwell, Davies tops to see the Vallum gateway and Temple of Antenociticus. There’s a great explanation and pictures on the Roman Britain.org website. Nowadays they look pristine. Davies complains about the rubbish chucked all over the place. Looks like the kind of place that I’d love to go and spend hours poring over but husband and children drag me away after five minutes. Thank heavens we’ve all got cameras now: they’d have something to keep them occupied!