Hot Cup of Joe

Moving to Wordpress

2007-12-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

I'm making the move to Wordpress. Sorry, Blogger, but I can't risk the chance that you might delete this blog too.

Hot Cup of Joe (at WordPress)

I'll make the move gradually and will post simultaneously between the two blogs for a while, but eventually all business will be at the new blog address: http://ahotcupofjoe.wordpress.com/

Can you believe it? Someone snatched up "hotcupofjoe.wordpress.com just a few days ago? And they aren't doing a thing with it. Meh.

The reason for the move is that I have another blog, which I keep totally separate and anonymous from this one that was removed/deleted. Ostensibly because the Blogger software picked it up as link-spam. Over a week ago, I notified blogger and their automated response to the "restore blog" link was something along the lines of "give us a few days to review your blog."

There was no more advertising than is here (adsense, which is owned by Google -which owns Blogger!) and the content was all original and the links were to legitimate sites. This is outrageous and I urge anyone that has a Blogger account that they blog with to archive their favorite posts and make a back up of your template. You might even consider putting Blogger behind you. I've been blogging on blogger in some form or another since the 90's!

Anyway, I hope that the move to Wordpress will be a good one. It might even inspire me to write more since Wordpress is so much easier to post to and update. It doesn't have the flexibility that Blogger has in that you can't update the template or use javascript, but I'm digging it so far.

Go there and see. And, if you check my blog regularly and usually don't post, please leave me a comment at The Move to Wordpress and let me know what you think. Are you willing to update your blogroll links (if you have a blog with my blog listed)? Are you willing to keep checking me at the new blog site? Are you okay with the new look (couldn't stand the old look)?

Hot Cup of Joe (at WordPress)

Four Stone Hearth XXIX @ Remote Central

2007-12-05T08:21:00.000-08:00

The 29th edition of the Four Stone Hearth is now up at Remote Central.

I was going to say a word about the next edition, hosting, and submitting, but let me just quote the good people at Anthropology.net (i.e. Kambiz, without whom we wouldn't have the Four Stone Hearth to begin with):

The next edition of 4SH will be at The Greenbelt, two weeks from now on December 19th, which would make it the equivalent of the Christmas 2007 edition, as well as being the last one for this year, so if you wish to submit content you can do so by following this link: submit@fourstonehearth.net, or indeed by submitting direct to the host site.

The Anthropology of Catastrophe: Volcanoes

2007-12-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

Humans have always been afflicted by natural catastrophes ranging from tectonic to weather related and, possibly, even impacts from space! But none, perhaps, have found the significance both culturally and destructively, as the volcano. Throughout the history and prehistory of man, volcanoes have erupted, obliterating entire islands, destroying settlements and cities, ruining local crops and affecting climate on a global scale. And, while volcanoes have also long been anthropomorphized to attribute blame or malevolent intent, not a single one ever intended to cause human destruction.

Notable volcanic eruptions in the archaeological and historical record include Thera, Vesuvius, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Pinotubo, among many others.

Vesuvius
Erupted 79 CE – Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy
This was the first documented volcanic eruption in history and was responsible for the instantaneous deaths of thousands who found themselves in the path of the eruption’s heat, poison gases, pyroclastic flows of rock and ash, and the sheer trauma of the blast wave. As most people who have heard of Pompeii are no doubt aware, the site is often billed as an archaeologists’ dream since it represents a “snapshot” in time. The main reason is that settlements like Pompeii and the closer Herculaneum were inundated with volcanic ash and rock in a rapid and hot pyroclastic flow, trapping some residents in death poses until excavated nearly 2000 years later. Recent discoveries at Herculaneum include a wooden throne, preserved in the volcanic ash for over 1900 years.

Thera (Santorini)
Erupted 1627-1600 BCE Aegean Sea
Generally accepted to have brought about the demise of the Minoan civilization and ash layers from the eruption are evident in localities like Crete, and the Santorini archipelagos which includes Thera. The Minoan civilization spread across each of these and other Cycladic islands, with Crete being about 100 miles from Thera. In the Satorini archipelago is Akrotiri, a Minoan settlement buried by the 17th century BCE eruption in volcanic ash. Desturction from this eruption was primarily caused by pyroclastic flow, tsunami and ash deposits. For Minoan settlements on Thera and the Santorini island chain, civilization ended abruptly as they were vaporized, cooked, and buried alive. For the Minoan cities and settlements further away in Crete, they may have had a few more moments until the tsunami created by the massive amount of ash, rock, and other ejecta suddenly plunging into the sea, displacing the water. And, while some Minoan settlements did survive, the eruption of Thera is considered to have contributed greatly to the civilization's demise.

Mt St Helens and Mt Pinotubo
Erupted in 1980 in Washington, USA and 1991 on the Philippine Island Luzan, respectively
Mt. St. Helens was considered a major volcanic eruption, responsible for 57 deaths and thousands made homeless, not to mention the devastation to the environment. However, it small in comparison to its 20th century colleague Mt. Pinotubo, which erupted in the Philippines just a decade later. This one took 800 lives and left 100,000 or more homeless. The Pinotubo eruption was also 10 times larger than that of Mt. St. Helens. In the case of both of these eruptions, scientists and researchers were carefully monitoring the geologic activity associated with the volcanoes and were able to use the data to evacuate and warn local residents. Indeed, of the 800 killed by Pinatubo, the majority lost their lives due to the ash fall which mixed with rain and caused roofs to collapse.

In the case of each eruption, the cultural effects included the cost of rebuilding and recovering infrastructure and private property. The St. Helens eruption cost $1.1 billion to recover from the catastrophe. The residents of Luzon only faced about half that cost, but they, perhaps, suffered far more economically since the Luzon economy was ruined. Clark Air Base, which the U.S. occupied was evacuated and the Air Force never returned, which, by itself, would have spelled trouble for the local economy. The last I heard, the region is still trying to recover the economy and rebuild infrastructure.

How volcanoes destroy
Lava Flows
Although instantly associated with volcanoes, lava flows only account for a fraction of a percent of the total number of deaths due to volcanoes in the last xx years. Lava is slow and can be outrun, but it does damage property and infrastructure in places such as Hawaii where the Kilauea volcano regularly spews forth a basaltic magma that becomes lava as it leaves the ground.

Gases
These kill slightly more people than lava. Denser than air carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide are the most dangerous as they flow into and fill low lying areas. Carbon dioxide is colorless and odorless and can asphyxiate people who breath it unawares. Hydrogen sulfide has a "rotten egg" smell, but a single breath can kill in high enough concentrations. Fortunately, such concentrations are relatively rare. Other gases can also be problematic for humans, albeit indirectly. In 1783, the laki fissure eruption killed an estimated 10,000 Icelanders, but due to starvation and famine after the loss of crops and livestock due to long-term exposure to hydrogen fluoride.

Tephra, Ash, and pryoclastic flows
Tephra includes the fragmented rocks and blocks ejected in the air by the eruption itself. Fortunately, tephra and ash typically affect the regions closest to the volcano, having increasing less effect the further from the eruption you go. Ash, however, can be ejected high into the atmosphere, allowing it to be deposited many miles away. But its that ash and rock that lands near the volcano that is the most problematic. Much of the tephra and ash comes back down into the volcano's crater, but this often results in pyroclastic flow which can leave a wake of destruction in its path as hot ash and rock are forced down and out away from the volcano's cone due to the force of the eruption.

Relatively few people have actually lost their lives due to tephra and ash falls, however, the danger ash poses most is the accumulation on the roofs of homes and buildings, particularly if the ash becomes wet. Wet ash soaks up water, and creates a very heavy mud, about 10 inches of which are sufficient to collapse a roof, injuring or killing the building's occupants.

Pyroclastic flows have claimed far more victims, however, making this one of the more dangerous features of a volcanic eruption. 27 percent of the lives lost in recorded volcanic eruptions were due to pyroclastic flows, the effects of which are most notable in Pompeii and Herculaneum, where pryroclastic flows of ash, rock, gases, and bits of lava quickly rushed in along the ground, burying both cities. Residents had seconds to realize what had occurred, and probably each killed instantly as the heat from the flows cooked their bodies and boiled their brains -the ash burying them along with the buildings, homes, and artifacts of their cities. Alun Salt discusses a recent find of a throne at Herculaneum at Clio Audio, describing the effects of pyroclastic flows and preservation of material remains.

Lahars and Tsunamis
Another immediate killer from volcanic eruptions are the occasional lahars as well as the tsunamis some volcanoes create due to earth quakes caused by the eruption or pyroclastic flows that dump into the sea, displacing water. Lahar is an Indonesian word that refers to the mud flows created by large amounts of ash and water. The heat from a volcanic event can melt snow and ice and, as the resulting water mixes with ash, a mud is formed which then flows down the mountain, obliterating towns and settlements. Lahars and tsunamis are together responsible for a whopping 34% of the deaths that have been recorded due to volcanoes.

But that isn't the most significant killer that results from a volcano. The most significant killer is, by itself, responsible for a full 30% of the deaths related to volcanoes (remember, lahars and tsunamis are two different things -17% each). That killer is post-eruption famine and disease that takes place months later. Gases and ash ejected into the atmosphere can affect crops and livestock and even global temperatures! 1816 was called the "year without summer" due to the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia the year before. Global temperatures dropped to between .4 and 1.0 Celsius and crops were affected around the globe. In Europe, particularly in Great Britain, a typhus epidemic that broke out that year was blamed on the unseasonably cold weather.

Volcanoes and Human Belief, Religion, and Superstition
Volcanoes don't seek human attention or appeasement. But its easy to see how others might think so. Humans have long had very tenuous relationships with their volcanoes, which remain oblivious to the anthropomorphizing applied by cultures in South America, Indonesia, Polynesia, and Mesoamerica. Volcanoes gods exist in many cultures even today and many sacrifices have been made to these gods in the way of virgins and material possessions in attempt to appease the god.

Perhaps the most familiar volcano god to Americans is Pele, since this legend is still told (albeit mostly tongue-in-cheek) in the state of Hawaii where the Kilauea volcano is still active. According to the legend, Pele is the goddess that lives in the volcano and she created (and is still creating) the islands of Hawaii.

In Japan, Mt. Fuji is the source of several myths and legends, including that the goddess Sengen resides there, tossing off the mountain any pilgrim of impure heart. Legend has it that the mountain was created in a single day at around 86 BCE, though the mountain itself can be geologically dated to as far back as 8500 BCE when it was volcanically created. There was, however, an eruption at around 86 BCE, which may have inspired the legend of its creation.

The myth of Atlantis, a story first created in two dialogs by Plato, may have had its inspiration in the oral stories that surrounded the fall of the Minoan civilization and the sudden demise of several of their cities. If true, Plato certainly embellished the account and modified it to fit the the lesson he was trying to teach through Critias and Timaeus, the two dialogs in which he mentions Atlantis. It is fascinating to consider the appeal that the story has on even modern humans and their beliefs.

Finally, it mustn't be overlooked that the very term "volcano" and the study of volcanoes, "volcanology," is derived from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

One might ask why bother living near such an unpredictable god? One reason, of course, is that the god provides a bounty by way of rich soils for cultivation and other resources such as an abundance of chert and obsidian needed for manufacture of stone tools.

For all the difficulties volcanoes have created for man, we, perhaps, have reaped far more benefit.

Additional reading

Appeasing the Volcano Gods
Feldman, Joanne and Robert I. Tilling (2007). Danger Lurks Deep: The Human Impact of Volcanoes. Geotimes, 52(11), 30-35.

The Four Stone Hearth #28

2007-11-21T00:06:00.001-08:00

Thank you for reading this edition of the Four Stone Hearth. As most of you are aware, the Four Stone Hearth (4SH) is a bi-weekly blog carnival dedicated to anthropology, welcoming post submissions on all aspects of anthropology. The name is taken from the "four" major fields in anthropology: archaeology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, and linguistics.

If you're new to blogging, a carnival is an event much like a magazine in that it is usually a regular event that has a common theme and includes articles by many different authors. The difference being that this magazine has editors who take turns "hosting" the event and by publishing it on their own blog. That makes the host's blog a hub to the articles. The benefit to the host and those that submit articles is increased web traffic and the opportunity to get your writing noticed by people who share their interests. If you would like to host an upcoming 4SH or if you're interested in sending articles and posts please send an email to host@fourstonehearth.net (hosting), or submit@fourstonehearth.net (article/post submission).

This week's edition is below the fold, so please click the "Read More…" link and visit the authors of some of the best anthropology writing in the blogosphere!

-Carl Feagans

Cosmopolitan - Bringing Archaeology into Forensics

This is one of my favorite articles so far. Anatoly Venovcev, a 2nd year archaeology student in Canada, discusses an experiment directed by his professor in which archaeological technique is applied to forensic examination of a house fire, complete with pig carcasses! Everyone listed in the 4SH today wrote some good stuff, but I'm sorry, Anatoly wins this week's Editor's Choice Award. Did I mention he included pig carcasses?

Archaeozoology - Exploitation of Wild Mammals in South-west Ethiopia during the Holocene
Archaeozoo is the nom de blog of the author of this article, which is a very interesting read. The author compares and contrasts the biodiversity, particularly with regard to faunal populations of past and present-day Ethiopia and the Afar rift of Africa. Human activity truly can be inferred from examining faunal remains and this article reveals a few tidbits of information on how this is possible.

Primatology.net - Nakalipithecus nakayamai, a Miocene Ape from Kenya
Kambiz discusses recent PNAS paper on the Nakalipithecus nakayamai, a Miocene Ape from Kenya, and goes into some detail regarding the dentition. Included in this article are photos of a mandible and upper canine of the Miocene ape. For any student of primate evolution or anyone interested in primate evolution, this article is a must.

Remote Central - Professor Teuku Jacob - December 6, 1929 - October 17, 2007
Tim Jones highlights the career, achievements and, perhaps, the shortcomings of Professor Teuku Jacob, the most senior palaeoanthropologist in Indonesia who recently passed away. Jacob was recently criticized regarding the damage suffered to the Liang Bua 1 fossil set (Homo floresiensis, a.k.a. the hobbit), but, as Tim shares with us, Jacob was very influential and notable in paleoanthropology and Indonesia. Our condolences to the family and friends of Teuku Jacob.

Shared Symbolic Storage - Evolutionary Metaphysics V
Michael writes that this is an article that should be of interest to anthropologists since it relates to the evolution of the human mind and language. It's so rare that we get posts on linguistics that I dived right into this post almost as soon as it arrived in my inbox. I plan to read his other stuff as well, since linguistics is a field that I find fascinating.

Hot Cup of Joe – Rock Art Analysis
My own short post on rock art analysis. This was originally hosted at Anthropology.net, but I think it got lost in the server change earlier this year, so I thought I might give it new life.

The posts above were submitted directly by the authors, and I thank them, as I'm sure you do. But this isn't the limits of anthropological writing in the blogosphere. There are hundreds of blogs that deal with some form of anthropology or another, so I took the liberty of piecing together a list of articles available, most of them from authors we all know and love already, but, hopefully, there will be some new blogs you can add to your own personal list. If you're like me, your feeds are out of control, but I try to read them all! For those blogs included below that normally contribute regularly to 4SH but didn't get around to it, we understand! It's the holidays… your busy! (Note, if I included anyone that would rather not be listed, please send me an email or leave a comment and I'll remove your post. Maybe).

Thank you, Tim, for providing links to most of these!

The rest:

Aardvarchaeology - Anders Söderberg on Sigtuna Metalworking

A Very Remote Period Indeed - The modern Stone Age family

About.com: Archaeology - New Dating Technique Tested at Lene Hara Cave

Afarensis - Dover Comes to PBS

Anthropology.net - The AAA decides to oppose HTS Anthropology and More on the AAA's decision to oppose the HTS

Antiquarian's Attic – Two Brothers

Bad Archaeology – Modern Ruins

BLDG Blog – Inside The Vault

Centauri Dreams - A Technological Civilization by Night

Dieneke's Anthropology Blog - How humans became warlike altruists

Exploring Our Matrix - The Atheist Contribution to World Civilization

Greg Laden's Blog - Modern Humans and Neanderthals: Did they "do it?"

Hominin Dental Anthropology - New Kenyan fossil at 10 Ma

John Hawks - An interview with Mica Glantz

NorthState Science - Exploring Our Matrix - And Why Intelligent Design Forced Me To Leave The Church

Old Dirt, New Thoughts – A Cold End to the Church Dig

Savage Minds - Family Affair, II: "traditional" families and child abuse

Writer's Daily Grind - Cavemen, the TV show

Yann Klimentides - Recent revisions regarding how the genome works

Remote Central - 7,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings Found Near Chichen Itza

Rock Art Analysis

2007-11-20T22:58:00.000-08:00

Rock art analysis has received a bad rap in archaeology over the years, but in the last decade or so, some advances have been made to begin changing that. It’s easy to see why many archaeologists might have a hard time with rock art in general: rock art is near impossible to accurately date and its artistic nature makes interpretation very subjective. Is the image a symbol for an idea or concept that is consistent from site to site and even cross-culturally, or is it merely the artistic expression of the individual who created it? Does the scene depicted in a rock art panel represent a real event, a myth or story, or is it just the daily musings of an artistically inclined hunter-gatherer?

Despite past marginalization of rock art analysis, the glyphs and images painted, etched and carved are artifacts of the past. They’re material remains of an ancient culture and, in some cases, are all that remain to speak for that culture. Luckily, new techniques and standards are being developed to overcome the marginalization of rock art and look at it with an objective and scientific eye.

Among the chief concerns of archaeologists in examining a rock art site is dating. When were the images on the rock created? Where they created at once? Were there earlier registers with later ones added in stages? Was maintenance done over the millennia on one or more registers? If one register was maintained by re-applying pigment, and not others, why is this so?

There are a few different relative dating techniques that can apply to rock art: examining how one motif overlays another; dating intrusions like water stains; dating artifacts found in the vicinity; and so on. But these only give relative dates to each other and no absolute date from which to begin. There are, however, a few techniques that are being developed that can absolutely date rock art.

Rock Varnish Dating

Microbes on the rock surface capture fine particles of dust that build up laminations in a micro-stratagraphic sequence. From this, several methods can be used to derive an age of the varnish and, thus, the earliest possible age for the glyph. The first involves measuring the cation-ion ratio. The chemistry of the rock varnish is examined at the microscopic level to determine the rate at which major trace elements like potassium and calcium are leached out compared with other elements like titanium. While not the most precise of dating methods, CR dating does compare very well to dating a site based projectile point and ceramic styles.

A second technique involving rock varnish is VML (varnish miscrolamination). This technique looks at rock varnish layers in a way similar to dendrochronology in that it depends on the consistent application of varnish layers over time with exception to significant climatic interruptions. And, it is these climatic interruptions that are depended upon to create visible markers in the layered sequence since they result in micro-stratigraphic layers that are rich or poor in manganese for wet and dry conditions respectively. There appears to be good use for such techniques in samples with ages over 10,000 years.

A third method involves accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radio-carbon dating of organic matter that can become trapped in small crevices and cracks. Like each of the rock varnish techniques, AMS depends on the fact that the varnishing of the rock surface occur after the glyph has been etched. The AMS method can also be used on pictographs, however, if the pictograph was painted with a charcoal-based paint or one created with an organic binder like blood or saliva, assuming that he organic compounds can be extracted. Pictographs can also be dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of wasp or swallow nests since the period in which the quartz granules contained in the nest matrix have been deprived of sunlight, all the while building up luminescence, can be determined. Such a technique doesn’t tell when the pictograph was painted, of course, but it can tell at least how long it’s been present.

The subject of rock art analysis is one that is fascinating and it’s a topic that I, for one, intend to follow more closely. One of my primary interests in archaeology is that of ancient religions and beliefs and, for the pre-literate, pre-pottery societies artistic representation on rock surfaces is among the only material remains these societies have left behind. Indeed, being pre-literate in no way implies that these people did not have stories to tell and a desire to share them with subsequent generations. If one assumes that these people were aware that oral traditions naturally suffer from accident omission, forgetfulness, and exaggeration, wouldn’t it follow that they would want some sort of framework from which subsequent story-tellers can flesh out the tale? Tales of origins, tales of tricksters, tales that answer the why and how questions that burn in all of us. Are we so different today with our blogs and our YouTube and countless other means of recording our histories and the things that we find significant in our attempts to answer the questions of why and how?

The following is a bibliography that I hope others may find useful. Much of the above was derived from it, but I’ll include a few sources I have yet to read but are on my list.

Further Reading:

Dorn, Ronald I; Jull, A.J.T.; Donahue, D.J..; Linick, T.W.; Toolin, L.J. (1989). Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating of rock varnish. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 101, 1363-1372.

Dorn, Ronald I.; Whitley, D.S. (1983) Cation-ratio dating of petroglyphs from the Western United States, North America. Nature, 302, 816-818.

____ (1984). Chronometric and Relative Age Determination of Petroglyphs in the Western United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 74, 308-322.

Liu, Tanzhuo; Dorn, R.I. (1996). Understanding spatial variability in environmental changes in drylands with rock varnish microlaminations. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 86, 187-212.

Liu, Tanzhuo; Broecker, W.S. (2000). How fast does rock varnish grow? Geology, 28, 183-186.

Liu, Tanzhuo; Broecker, W.S.; Bell, J.W.; Mandeville, C.W. (2000). Terminal Pleistocene wet event recorded in rock varnish from the Las Vegas Valley, southern Nevada. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology, 161, 423-433.

Valledas, H.; et al (1992). Direct Radiocarbon Dates for the Prehistoric Paintings at the Altamira, El Castillo and Niaux Caves. Nature, 357, 68-70.

Call for Submissions: Four Stone Hearth

2007-11-19T11:44:00.001-08:00

The next edition of the Four Stone Hearth will be hosted here on 11/21/07 –that's Wednesday!

Think about it: lots of folks will be off for Thanksgiving… sitting around… reading blogs on the computer since they're not at work. Get that exposure for your blog this week! Send your latest anthropology writing to me at cfeagans AT gmail DOT com.

So far, I have 2 submissions! The latest is in linguistic anthropology. Send articles, posts, and blog entries related to archaeology, cultural anthropology, physical/medical anthropology, and linguistics. If I don't get anything, I'll browse the anthro-blogs and find something, so if you see an article of your listed and you'd rather it isn't, send me an email or leave a comment and I'll remove it.

Carnival Time!

2007-11-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

The 27th edition of the Four Stone Hearth is up at Sorting Out Science. Sam Wise has done a great job presenting some of the best in anthropological blogging in the last week or two.

I'll be hosting this carnival here in a fortnight, so if you have posts you'd like to suggest from your own blog or others, email them to me at cfeagans -AT- gmail -DOT- com.

In the meantime, visit Sam and check out the other anthro blogs linked in the FSH this week.

If you're interested in hosting a Four Stone Hearth blog carnival on your blog, send an email to Martin Rundkvist through host@fourstonehearth.net. Submissions for upcoming FSH's can be sent to submit@fourstonehearth.net and they'll be redirected to the host.

The "Number One on Google" Meme

2007-11-05T22:27:00.000-08:00

By way of Northstate Science, who saw it first at Pharyngula, and apparently originated from World's Fair about 2 weeks ago (I'm behind on my blogging...), comes a meme with "the premise that you will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google, you'll find that you are returned with your blog as the number one hit."

Here is my five:

Cavemen Liked Big Butts and They Cannot Lie

2007-11-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

Acouple of online editions of U.K. newspapers reported the recent finds of 30 carvings recovered at an archaeological site in Poland, dating to about 15,000 years ago. Most anthropologists and archaeologists would probably be immediately familiar with the Venus Figurine motif, but the recent media report was been picked up by a few blogs, each appealing to the title gag.

(Note: This post originally appeared on Anthropology.net in March 2007 and I was considering a follow up post linking to it, but couldn't find it in the archives. I think a few posts were lost Kambiz's server move. I'm reposting it here and using it for my Four Stone Hearth entry this fortnight with more (hopefully) on the Venus Figure motif in the future.)

Venus Figurines of the Paleolithic and Their Caricatured Features

Admittedly, the gag is funny, but looking deeper at the Venus Figurines reveals an interesting and fascinating motif and one that, amazingly enough, spans large geographic and chronological ranges. The distinctive motif has been found from Spain and France to Russia and back down to Anatolia and Mesopotamia (Turkey and Iran/Iraq). They date to as far back as 24,000 years and as recent as the Bronze Age, perhaps about 5,000 years ago.

Venus of Willendorf
The motif itself includes several prominent and relatively consistent features. In almost all cases the figure is obese, often very obese. Voluptuous breasts and thighs, and an overall curvaceous appearance are features present almost without fail. Other frequently occurring characteristics include the presence of unusually small arms and legs, prominent buttocks, the lack of feet, and obvious vaginal features like a pronounced vulva. Regional features are also notable: the Venus of Willendorf, perhaps the most recognizable Venus Figurine, appears to be wearing a hat or headdress. The goddess figurines of Çatalhöyük are depicted seated in a throne flanked by felines with her hands resting on their heads. She’s also presented as giving birth and James Mellart, who excavated Çatalhöyük in the 1950s, interpreted the shrine where such a figurine was discovered to be a birthing place. A goddess seated between two felines was also found in a Çatalhöyük granary, suggesting that fertility may, indeed, be a theme there.

But did cavemen prefer big butts? The recent media reports about the Polish Venus carvings note that historians attribute this reverence for curves and voluptuousness as attributes that were considered to be ideal for prehistoric societies since they implied wealth and healthy diet.

They also suggested she would be a successful mother, able to produce lots of children and sent out a message to other men that her partner was a strong and successful hunter – making him more attractive to other women.

But this is the Venus Figurine simplified. The fact is, any speculation on what the figurines really meant is, well, speculation. It’s a fact that they span many societies and still have a relatively common appearance. It’s a fact that they greatly out-number male figurines. It’s a fact that the earliest figurines accurately represented what a fat woman looks like, so there must have been fat women from whom the craftsman / artist derived inspiration. It’s a fact that the earliest figurines included details like vulva. And it’s a fact that some features were prominent (breasts, stomachs, buttocks, vulva) and detailed while others were not (feet, arms, face). It’s a fact that red ochre has been found in association with some of the figurines.

When these facts are considered, it becomes clear that the artist spent some time on the details that he wanted to be noticed and diminished the details that were insignificant. The Venus of Willendorf, for instance had a hat: a very detailed and complex representation of a woven textile that must have involved much of the artist’s time. Seven concentric rows that circle a rosette comprise the headgear and dimples, folds and rolls of adipose were carefully crafted. Yet, the artist omitted a face and feet. Could this mean she’s an anonymous representation of the “perfect” woman for the sophisticated hunter-gatherer? Or could it have been a way of representing a generic mother goddess? The pronounced vulva and red ochre that the Willendorf figure was painted in may have, together, been reminiscent of menstruation and thus fertility. Certainly a prehistoric woman with large stores of fat would be better equipped to nourish children and a caricatured, obese representation might have been used to refer to the mother goddess who nourishes all life. Her lack of feet (they weren’t broken off –they were never added) may have been intentional, affording the goddess figurine no way to depart from her assigned station (a birthing shrine or granary); or, maybe, the artist simply wasn’t good at feet and didn’t find them important. Without feet, the figurine couldn’t have been stood up nor would it sit or lie in any manner that appeared natural or intended. But it could be held and the person holding it would feel the curves and the shape of the figure.

Originally, the Venus Figurine was named “Venus” as a joke. A pejorative meant to demean the “uncivilized” and “primitive” opinion of beauty that the “caveman” obviously had. The irony isn’t lost, however, if the figurine motif is, indeed, a goddess. Venus was, of course, the Roman goddess of beauty and love, an analog of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and consistently depicted in the nude. The Roman/Greek version, however, is more in line with the modern (or, at least, Western) idea of beautiful, sensual, and sexually attractive with her thin form and ample, but not pendulous, breasts. Nor was her pubic region depicted as more than a mere space, absent of vulva, vaginal lips, and the details present in her more ancient predecessor.

There is much more that can be written on the Venus Figurine, so perhaps I’ll revisit this subject again in the future. But I’ll close with the following thought: the most convincing evidence to me that the Venus of Willendorf (and, therefore, probably most of the Venus figurines) was a goddess and not a representation of an actual person is the hat and lack of face. Traditionally, representations of elites (kings, queens, nobility, and gods) include headgear. That the face was omitted might signify that there was more anonymity involved than a female ruler, shaman, oracle, or other elite. Certainly the reverence for feminine attributes might indicate matriarchal societies existed, or at least a much less patriarchal one than more recent human cultures are guilty of.

Further Reading:

Evans, Martin (2007). Why cavemen liked curvy cavewomen ... like Kylie. Daily Express, Tuesday, March 13, 2007. http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=1356

Soffer, Olga; Adovasio, J.M.; Hyland, D.C. (2000). The “Venus” Figurines: Textiles, Basketry, Gender, and Status in the Upper Paleolithic, Current Anthropology 41, pp. 511-537.

Tutankahmen on Display - the Anniversary of the Discovery of his Tomb

2007-11-04T19:11:00.000-08:00

Gold—everywhere the glint of gold! These were the words of Howard Carter as he recalled first seeing the antechamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb as he flicked his flashlight back and forth. Revealed to Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon were effigies of Tutankhamen himself, falcon-headed figures, a golden throne, overturned chariots, a gilded snake, and other treasures. It must have been a terrific sight -one that most archaeologists never come close to seeing as they meticulously dust and scrap matrix away from broken potsherds and dull-by-comparison hearths. And today, November 4, marks the anniversary of Carter and Carnarvon's discovery of Tutahnkamen's tomb, perhaps the single most celebrated pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

And this week, archaeologists removed Tutankhamen's mummy from its sarcophagus, placing it on display in a climate controlled display case. According to the BBC, "only about 50 living people have seen the face of the boy king, who died more than 3,000 years ago" until the display that took place today. Part of the reason for the new venue is due to the heat and humidity introduced into his tomb each year by tourists. But I'm sure another consideration is revenue:

"The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is doing to preserve the golden boy, and all of them I am sure will come to see the golden boy," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters before the body was moved.

Howard Carter and his team (Lord Carnarnvon died a few weeks after the tomb was opened from an infection brought on by a mosquito bite, giving rise to the "curse" myth) set a standard for meticulous excavation of the tomb. It took him nearly a full decade to photograph and record all the details of Tutankhamen's tomb which contained 5,398 items! This, in spite of the fact that thieves made off with at least 60 percent of the original jewelry based on calculations made from comparing the 200 or so pieces that remained with packing inventories. Most of these that remained were actually in Tut's sarcophagus and wrapped in his linens.

The mummy itself didn't fare so well by today's standards of excavation, however. While removing the treasures, Carter dismembered Tutankhamen and "used hot knives and wires to remove the gold mask which was fused to Tutankhamen's face by the embalming process."

Tutankhamen was actually laid out in the sun so the heat would soften the resin and allow the team to remove the wrappings and the artifacts.

Anthropologists find evidence of earliest "Double-Dog Dare:" over 164,000 yrs ago!

2007-10-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite movies during the holidays is the 1983 classic "A Christmas Story" depicting the schemes of Ralphie Parker as he tries to convince Santa Clause (and his parents) to bring him a Red Ryder BB gun, which every adult (including the department store Santa) warns, "you'll put your eye out." In this classic film, a bunch of kids gather around a flagpole, bundled in their winter coats, and dare one of their peers to lick the pole. It's below freezing. The result, of course, is that the aptly named character, Flick, sticks his tongue to the pole. Where it gets stuck.

Flick: Are you kidding? Stick my tongue to that stupid pole? That's dumb!
Schwartz: That's 'cause you know it'll stick!
Flick: You're full of it!
Schwartz: Oh yeah?
Flick: Yeah!
Schwartz: Well I double-DOG-dare ya!
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] NOW it was serious. A double-dog-dare. What else was there but a "triple dare ya"? And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the sinister triple-dog-dare.
Schwartz: I TRIPLE-dog-dare ya!
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Schwartz created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat!

As kids, most of us have been witness or party to the Double-Dog-Dare (and a few unfortunates may have been subjected to the "Triple-Dog-Dare"). But where does it come from? How long have people been "daring" each other? Before the DVD player and VCR, was there a "Jackass" culture that simply lacked a reality-television to properly proliferate?

Anthropologists have shed some new light on this enigma. Read below the fold for more!

Listening to Morning Edition on NPR this morning, between guilt-ridden appeals for pledges (its that time for my local NPR station, ugh...), I heard the following story: Scientists Make Rare Find in S. African Cave.

What was that find, you ask? A petroglyph or pictograph depicting an early human with tongue affixed to a rock while fellow hunter-gatherers look on? Not quite. Admittedly, I've taken some literary license with my blog-take on this story. But throughout the broadcast, one thing kept coming to mind: who was the first person to look at a clam or oyster after prying open the shell and think to himself, "I wonder what this tastes like?"

You see, the scientists above are anthropologists who explored a cave on Pinnacle Point in South Africa on a rocky bluff near the ocean. In this cave, the anthropologists (among them Curtis Marean of Arizona State University) discovered evidence of shellfish and whale used for food, small stone blades, and red ochre with grinding marks where it had been used to create powder to mix a paint. All dated to over 164,000 years ago.

Not only do we see them eating shellfish, but there is a whale barnacle, a special species of barnacle that only appears on the skin of a whale," Marean said. "So that's a clear piece of evidence that they brought in a chunk of whale skin and blubber and ate it at that site, so what we have is the earliest dated systematic use of marine resources.

I missed it during the broadcast, but the online, text version of the story quotes Jonathan Swift's line, "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster" and I'm happy to discover I'm not the only person that was pondering the motivations of the first person to slurp an oyster from its shell.

It's humorous to think of people standing around, 164,000 years ago, bodies painted red from the ochre paint, urging a peer holding a half an oyster shell to "do it!" Perhaps the first person to slurp an oyster was also the first in his clan to paint his body red. I'll never look at an oyster bar or hors devours during happy hour the same again.

But the true motivation behind that first oyster was likely hunger. Perhaps someone in antiquity observed a sea bird or a starfish dining on an oyster (or other shellfish) and realized its potential as a food source seeing an abundance of bedded oysters or dug for clams or mussels in shallows during low tide. I've heard arguments from several anthropologists and archaeologists that a move to shellfish and seafood in the human diet during antiquity may have contributed greatly to our evolution to homo sapiens due to increases in Omega-3 fatty acids and various proteins. Terra Amata near Nice in France is said to have evidence of shellfish consumption by hominids at around 300,000 years ago, so the Pinnacle Point find may not be the first human shellfish use, but it is certainly among the earliest sites where we have evidence for it.

Jonathan Swift's "bold man" may not have been among these early humans, but whoever he was, I'm glad he took that Double-Dog-Dare! I've been a fan of oysters and clams my whole life and I try to have a fried oyster sandwich or steamed clams whenever I return to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia where I grew up. If you've never tried an oyster or clams, I recommend butter sauce after steaming. Dee-lish!

ArtiFACTS: Recent News in Archaeology

2007-10-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

Among the Headlines In Archaeology this Week:

Click the "Read More" link below to read each news item one-by-one or the topic link above to take you directly to the item and a hyperlink to the original story and related links.

50 Fifth Graders Participate in Urban Excavation
Actually there were both fourth and fifth graders from John Muir Elementary School who teamed up with archaeologists from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington to participate in an urban dig in the Rainier Valley. Artifacts of glass, pottery, and metal have been found. Artist Donald Fels will incorporate artifacts and casts of artifacts into sculptures placed along a hillside path in the neighborhood. Students learned basic archaeological techniques, how to use maps, and how the landscape changes and develops over time; and by learning the local history, these students gained a valuable insight into history and hopefully there are a few who will take this to a life-long interest.

Third Graders Get to Watch Archaeologists at Fort Hawkins
Third Graders in the Macon, Georgia area had the opportunity to watch archaeologists at work during a dig at the historic Fort Hawkins, named for Benjamin Hawkins, the man charged with the responsibility for preventing a Creek Indian uprising and protecting local settlers. The fort was established in 1805 and was a supply hub during the War of 1812 as well as an embarkation point for soldiers headed for the First Seminole War. The fort was decommissioned in 1822. Now, a team from Lamar Institute is working to establish the fort's original location and excavate artifacts in order to build an on-site replica of the fort.

University of Hawaii Manoa Department of Anthropology Gets $500,000 Award
The Henry Luce Foundation’s Initiative on East and Southeast Asian Archeology and Early History is making the award of $500,000 to the University of Hawaii's Manoa Department of Anthropology and it will help fund their Asian archaeology program.

Computer Software Reveals Ancient Coastline

The changing shape of Australasia can now be seen in a new interactive digital map that mimics the rise and fall of sea levels over the past 100,000 years.

The map also has pop-up images and text about key archaeological sites and possible routes humans took from Asia to Australia during the last ice age.

Matthew Coller of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia developed the map, based on Google Earth, but with the added dimension of time. He presented a paper on the topic at the Australasian Archaeological Conference titled, SahulTime: a Web-delieverable Temporal GIS for Archaeological Visualizations. The map itself is fun, and I spent a few minutes playing around with it. If I were instructing a class on Hominid Evolution, I think this is one I'd like to put up on the overhead to demonstrate the changes in sea level over the last 100,000 years.

The Italian Antiquities Trial - a Brief Review

2007-09-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

During the summer of 2005, a trial began in Italy with the goal of deciding the guilt or innocence of Marion True along with Robert Hecht, Jr in conspiracy to traffic in illegal antiquities. The trial is still underway in Rome and has certainly fulfilled the 2 year prediction some gave. The result is that several museums have already returned antiquities of illicit origin to their countries of origin, pariticuarly Italy and Greece.

True, the former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Hecht, the descendent of the department store mogul, didn't begin their portions of the trial until Wednesday, November 16, 2005. Hecht was implicated following the 2004 conviction of Giacomo Medici, an Italian art dealer found to be responsible for one of the most sophisticated and extensive illicit antiquities smuggling rings in the world.

Throughout the 1980s, Giacomo Medici probably sold more antiquities at Sotheby’s than any other single owner. Over the years, thousands of objects from Medici had passed through the London salesroom and millions of pounds had changed hands. None of the antiquities had any provenance because all were illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy (Watson & Todeschini, p. 27 ).

True resigned from her position, recently filled by Karol Wight, in October 2005 under the fire of criticism with regard to her handling of acquisitions that had questionable origins. As she and Hecht began the trial in November 2006, Italy was demanding the return of 52 artifacts that were deemed to be stolen or looted and in the possession of the Getty. While Italy was also in negotiation with other museums like the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, talks with the Getty were the most difficult. The Getty initially only agreed to return 26 out of the 52 artifacts and the point of most contention seemed to surround the fate of a bronze statue, known as the Statue of a Victorious Youth, snagged in the nets of an Italian fishing trawler of the Adriatic coast of Italy in 1964.

In December of 2006, however, The Getty returned several antiquities to Greece, including a funerary wreath, a kore, and a grave marker with a marble votive. And it was in this month that Marion True sends a letter to the Getty reflecting her bitterness of the museum board's treatment of her in the media. She accuses the Getty of using her as the fall guy for a practice of antiquities acquisition that was the board's own responsibility.

By March, however, the Italian court gets to hear the contents of a 1992 letter that True wrote to the Getty board in which she informed them that the wreath mentioned above was "too dangerous for us to get involved with." On the surface, it would seem that her intentions are pure, but Swiss antiquities dealer, Christoph Leon, stated that she advised the board to go ahead with the purchase the following year for $1.15 million. Leon is also on trial.

One of the interesting developments of the antiquities trial in Italy is the attention that has been spotlighted on the role of the collector as well as the museum in the antiquities trade. Indeed, without these entities, there would simply be no market for illicit antiquities. In June of 2007, the Italian court turned its attention to the American antiquities collectors who have collections that include objects looted from Italy as well as other countries. An Italian archaeologist, Daniela Rizzo, named Texas oilmen Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, both of whom liquidated their collections along with other assets after loosing their fortunes. Others were also mentioned, including Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, the art philanthropists who once loaned True $400,000 allegedly repaid at around the time the Fleischmans sold part of their collection to the Getty for $20 million.

Its worth noting that 90 percent of the art collections in American art museums are the result of private donation. The collectors aren't simply being altruistic, the donations result in tax deductions equal to the current market value of the object being donated -often far beyond the price they paid for it. And museums struggling for funds are all-too-eager to accept these donations to increase their presence, particularly when the antiquities are top-rate. About a dozen of the 52 artifacts that Italy wanted returned was donated by the Fleischmans.

Most recently, while the trial of Marion True and Robert Hecht continues, the Getty has agreed to return some 40 artifacts to Italy, including red and black figured craters and kylixs and amphorae, statues and bronzes. They're even returning the Cult Statue of a Goddess. Most of the artifacts are destined to be transferred in the next several months, but the Cult Statue of a Goddess will remain on display until 2010 at the Getty Villa. The agreements that have been arrived at are important. Even though the artifacts are illicit in origin, they do serve to represent a cultural heritage and cultural ties between nations is extremely important in the field of archaeology.

The fates of Marion True, Robert Hecht and the Victorious Youth remain to be seen. Italy and the Getty agreed to "defer discussions" of the disputed bronze "until the outcome of the ongoing legal proceedings which are now underway in Pesaro, Italy."

Related Sources

Watson, Peter; Todeschini, Cecilia (2006) The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy 's Tomb Raiders to the World's Great Museums. New York: Public Affairs

The Getty (2007). Italian Ministry of Culture and J. Paul Getty Trust Reach Agreement. Press Release.

Povoledo, Elisaetta (2006). Italy Expresses Dismay with Getty's Stand on Disputed Art. The New York Times, 11/24/06, E,1.

Higgins, Charlotte (2006). Getty returns disputed works to Greece: Antiquities may have been exported illegally: Museum tightens policies on provenance of objects. The Guardian, 12/13/06, pg. 5.

Felch, Jason; Frammolino, R. (2006). Getty lets her tak fall, ex-curator says; The trust's silence in the art looting case is taken as sign of her guilt, Marion True asserts. Los Angeles Times, 12/29/06, Home Edition, B, 1.

Avast Ye Scurvy Dogs!

2007-09-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

Today be talk like a pirate day! Arrr!

The Bosnian Pyramid: a Brief Summary

2007-09-13T22:20:00.001-07:00

n the Spring of 2006, the self-qualified "archaeologist" Semir Osmanagic announced that he discovered pyramids near Visoko, Bosnia. And not just any pyramid, but the largest pyramid in the world. And not just any largest-pyramid-in-the-world, but the oldest largest-pyramid-in-the-world!

And throughout the remainder of 2006 through 2007, Osmanagic and his followers pursued an incredible hypothesis regarding what geologists have previously and since regarded as hills. The core hypothesis they hold is that the hills at Visoko are man-made pyramids created between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, which they claim will "change the history of Europe and The World as we know it (Ahmetovic, 2007)."

If nothing else can be said, it must be admitted that the Osmanagic PR machine is good. The mainstream media jumped on the story, accepting at face-value what Osmanagic was claiming seemingly without consulting anyone in academia on the issue. Because of this, an interesting phenomenon occurred, one that even I fell victim to: there was tacit acceptance that something genuine was found since the media billed Osmanagic as a legitimate authority. They also implied that his methods were valid as well.

It wasn't long before science bloggers were pointing out some of the fallacies and I quickly realized the error of my assumptions as I reviewed Osmanagic's site and things just didn't add up. I initially assumed that since media sources like the BBC and The Economist were giving credibility to Osmanagic's "discovery," that there must be something to it. But with even my first post on the subject, I noted that one should be skeptical when comments like "nature does not make geometrical shapes" are used and it seemed strange that a researcher would make a direct appeal to the public rather than publish such a find in academia. This was, of course, before I knew who Osmangic was or what his qualifications (or lacks thereof) were.

Semir "Sam" Osmanagic is a Bosnian-American and entrepreneur from Houston, TX who is also an author, having written The World of the Maya (2005), which provides for some very outlandish ideas of the Mayan civilization, placing as their ancestors the Atlanteans (yes, of Atlantis not Atlanta, GA). The Atlanteans, of course, came from Pleiades –according to Osmanagic (Osmanagic, 2005):

These beings of Atlantis are to be found in various locations through-out Mexico – from Tula (north of Mexico City) and Oxkintok to Chichen Itza […] [t]he Mayan hieroglyphics tell us that their ancestors came from the Pleiades… first arriving at Atlantis where they created an advanced civilization […] [t]he Maya inherited knowledge from their ancestors at Atlantis and Lemuria (Mu).

Even in light of the skeptical questions being asked by those of more qualified authority through science blogs and publications, and even though there were some very rational and informed criticisms being offered, mainstream media continued to present the story as if it were a valid one. On October 27, 2006, ABC's Nightline, anchored by Martin Bashir, aired a segment in which Nick Watt reported on Osmanagic, interviewing him and allowing him to continue his PR push and his appeal to the public. In this report, Osmanigic was given several soundbites including, "If you've found stone blocks built by man, then it will be obvious for everyone that this is a huge man-made structure in the shape of the pyramid" (Watt, 2006).

Except that it hasn't been shown that "stone blocks built by man" have been discovered. Geologists recognize the features at Visoko as examples of orthogonal jointing and tectonic uplift. The very systematic, "ladder-like" pattern that I've seen depicted in some of the Osmanagic photos may be evidence of 90 degree rotation of tectonic stresses. The primary joints are created first by tectonic force, and then the tectonic stresses over time are applied in a new vector creating a new set of joints at 90 degrees from the original (Bai, Maerten, Gross, & Aydin, 2002). Imagine the force necessary to break a cracker in half, then half again in the other direction. Other claims of a similar vein by Osmanagic included that there exists a man-made "pavement," which is contradicted by the presence of geologic evidence once again. The "pavement" stones are more examples of tectonically influenced jointing and fracturing –the evidence is the presence of ripple-marks created before the tectonic events, when the sediment was just underwater. Needless to say, this sediment has been above water for millions of years –long before the evolution of hominids, much less hominids that were able to construct pyramids.

The Osmanagic team of mystery-mongers and the significance-junkies that follow them closely have gone back and forth in their efforts to "excavate" the site. Several geologists and archaeologists have visited since Osmanagic made his claim, and even before, and the professional opinions of those that are qualified to assess the site are that geology explains the curious features and that there is an archaeological significance to the region. It just isn't one that fits the hypothesis that Osmanagic has established. The archaeology of the area is of the Roman period and in genuine danger of being destroyed by the pseudoscientific actions of Osmanagic. While it was reported in June of 2007 that government funding for excavating the site was cut (Ljubić & Barić, 2007), Osmanagic's website (bosniapyramid.com) reported in August that "excavations were fully underway," but this is most likely on private lands using money fleeced from duped contributors.

Fraud and Deception?

There is also a hint of fraud or, at the very least, deception on the part of the Osmanagic team as they perpetuate their pseudoscientific claims. Alun Salt wrote about Grace Fegan (Salt, 2006), an Irish archaeologist whose name was initially listed as one of the professionals employed by the Osmanagic team. Unfortunately for Fegan, it appeared that Osmanagic not only drafted her name for his cause, he did so without informing her. Moreover, her email address link in the Osmanagic press release (according to Salt), wasn't hers, leaving the rational conclusion to be that there was someone willing to answer questions of her involvement by email on behalf of Osmanagic's team. There's also the matter of Dr. Ali Abdallah Barakat, the Egyptologist Osmanagic "consulted" with. In a letter to Mark Rose, the online editor of Archaeology Magazine, Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated (Hawass, 2006):

Mr. Barakat, the Egyptian geologist working with Mr. Osmanagic, knows nothing about Egyptian pyramids. He was not sent by the SCA, and we do not support or concur with his statements.

Other archaeologists, such as a specialist in Prehistory at the National Museum in Sarajevo named Zellika, have stated that Mr. Osmanagic is giving out false information. What can Mr. Osmanagic use to show the age of the "pyramid?" No archaeological materials have been found near the pyramid.

Ultimately Barakat's conclusions were that the site was not a man-made feature but it may be a hill that was subsequently shaped or modified by man. I don't think I've seen the Osmanagic PR machine point that out, but after spending 45 days at the site Barakat was quoted to say, "they are natural, completely natural," with regard to the sandstone blocks uncovered (Woodard, 2007).

Another possible (and probable) deception involves the rock with "inscriptions" that is claimed to be further evidence of a man-made pyramid. In an interview with Dr. Collette Dowell, Francesco Garufi quotes Dowell (Garufi, 2006) as saying:

This was the famous stone with the letter 'E' and other inscriptions on it. We were told by several scientists who first examined the tunnel with the stone slab, there were no inscriptions on it; they were added on at a later date.

One or two other pages at Circular Times, written by Dowell, report a similar story. I don't know who these "scientists who first examined" the tunnel are nor when they examined it –she does say that at least one was a geologist. But I do know that I've yet to see any qualitative analysis done on the alleged inscriptions by experts in epigraphy, rock art and petroglyphs. What is the status of the patina within the inscriptions as compared to that of other places in the same stone; or other stones within the same context; and so on.

The list of questions that a genuine scientist or archaeologist would have for Osmanagic's claims seems endless. Never are there details such as context and provenance. Never are there detailed analyses of phytoliths, pollens, carbonates, etc. Never are there site plans or stratagraphic sketches of the sites "excavated." Indeed, the very word "excavation" would only be proper at Visoko if used in the context of a construction site rather than an archaeological one since Osmanagic is using a backhoe to quickly shape the hill into his preconceived pyramid rather than small trowels, brushes and dental instruments to carefully and methodically remove the matrix in the slow, painstaking manner of real archaeology.

Archaeology vs. Pseudoarchaeology

Real archaeology begins with a research question and ends up wherever the evidence in the form of artifacts, features or the lack thereof takes it. Pseudoarchaeology, however, begins with a conclusion and only conducts that research which is guaranteed to support that conclusion. Indeed, most Pseudoarchaeologists do not excavate at all –Osmanagic, at first glance, would seem to be the exception. But as I said, he really isn't excavating in the archaeological sense.

Politics, Nationalism and Economy

Finally, it's worth noting that the Bosnian Pyramid debacle, which is still ongoing, appears to appeal more to nationalism and politics than it does to actual science. After all, Bosnia and Herzegovina is dealing with the double whammy of recovering from a war and rebuilding an economy. Not only are tourists desperately needed for a post-war economy in reform (the country's GDP dropped 75% in the 1990s), but the people are also in desperate need of cultural reasons to be proud. Critics of Osmanagic are quickly labeled by his followers as political detractors, or Serbians who just hate Croatians. Osmanagic is of Croatian descent and there's seems to be special disdain for Serbians who dare criticize Osmanagic and his followers.

The amount of information that exists on the Bosnian Pyramid debacle is enormous and could, perhaps, fill a book. There is much I'd like to have discussed such as the attempt to get UNESCO to visit and apply a World Heritage Site label to the region; the completely wrong claims about "geometric symmetry" and aligning "precisely with cardinal directions;" the local geology; the poor methodology of pseudoarchaeologists; and so on.

Perhaps I'll leave those for later, shorter posts.

Works Cited

Ahmetovic, S. (2007, September 20). Live in New York: Presentation on the "First European Pyramids". (The Archaeological Park: Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun, Performer) Florentine Room of the Radisson Hotel, New York, NY, USA.

Bai, T., Maerten, L., Gross, M., & Aydin, A. (2002). Orthogonal cross joints: do they imply a regional stress rotation. ournal of Structural Geology
, 24, 77-88.

Garufi, F. (2006). World's Largest Pyramid? or Hoax? (C. Dowell, Editor) Retrieved September 10, 2007, from Circular Times: http://www.robertschoch.net/Bosnia%20Melusina%20Editoriale%20Pyramid%20Robert%20Schoch%20Colette%20Dowell.htm

Hawass, Z. (2006, June 27). Personal Correspondance with Mark Rose. Retrieved September 9, 2007, from Archaeology Magazine: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/osmanagic/zahi_hawass.pdf

Ljubić, T., & Barić, I. (2007, June 11). Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Loses Funding. Javno .

Osmanagic, S. (2005). The World of the Maya. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.

Salt, A. (2006, May 29). Bosnian Pyramids: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Atlantis. Retrieved September 10, 2007, from History News Network: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/25850.html

Watt, N. (2006). Ancient Pyramids of Bosnia? Many are Believers. Nightline.

Woodard, C. (2007). The Great Pyramids of ... Bosnia? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (30), A12.

Vikings in Recent Archaeological News

2007-09-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

A Viking ship is apparently parked at a pub near Liverpool. The pub wasn't there when the ship was "parked," however, since it has been there for over 1,000 years. Its now sitting about 2 meters below ground and was discovered by a University of Nottingham archaeologist using ground-penetrating radar. And in Norway, a Viking burial mound was opened on Monday by archaeologists who were hoping to learn about the tomb's occupants who were laid to rest at least 1,173 years ago.

Ground penetrating radar creates three dimensional maps of subsurface features like pithouse floors, hearths, and Viking ships by sending radar pulses through a surface antenna which then reflects back to the surface antenna after encountering objects of a density higher than the surrounding soil. The three dimensional possibilities arise when the pulse travel time is analyzed and the results of multiple transects are organized in a grid.

The archaeologist that found the ship admits he hasn't any hard evidence that a Viking ship is actually there -he's basing the hypothesis on the GPR profile, and he would like to raise $5 million to excavate the site properly. The location is in Merseyside near Liverpool, but still some distance from the coast. The search for the ship began when the archaeologist obtained information that it was originally uncovered in 1938 after a previous pub was demolished.

The two women in Norway were originally excavated with different Viking ship in 1948 and their remains were reburied in aluminum caskets placed within stone sarcophagi. The idea was that future scientists might be able to exhume them once again to study their remains once technology advanced.

The mound that they were reburied in is the original mound that they were found in along with the Oseberg Viking Longboat, one of Norway's "greatest archaeological treasures." It was originally discovered in 1903 by Knut Rom, who dug into the burial mound on his farm, and excavated by Gotlander Gabriel Gustafson. This discovery led to Norway's prohibition of the export of antiquities since it was realized at the time of excavation that there really wasn't any law protecting cutural resources in the nation and the farmer could, if he chose to, sell the artifacts and the ship itself to anyone, including foreign collectors. The Oseberg Ship was a celebrity in its own right and the find created a sense of national pride -the realization that that national treasures and cultural resources had little protection under early 20th century Norwegian law created a stir. Luckily a wealthy Norwegian purchased the ship and donated it to the state. Soon after, legislation was passed to protect future cultural resources.

In Norway today, archaeology still seems to create a sense of national pride. According to various news sources, the event on Monday drew quite a crowd, upwards of 300 people, including school children. I wonder if an event like this would get media coverage and a similar turnout in the U.S.? The two women are estimated to be in their 60s and 30s, the eldest assumed to be a woman of power such as a queen. The younger may be a daughter, making her a princess, or a slave, buried with the matriarch for companionship and servitude in the afterlife. Modern DNA techniques may reveal the answer.

Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology provides a bit more information on the mound's dating (834 CE) and an alternative hypothesis to the burial of the women: the barrow was actually a male grave in which the two female bodies were unceremoniously deposited after being murdered. The male skeleton never found in the site? Removed by Viking period or later relic hunters, possibly even decendents of the man buried.

Interesting stuff.

The 7th Humanist Symposium

2007-09-02T09:22:00.001-07:00

… is up at at Bligbi. Go! Read! Enjoy with a hot cup of joe.

The next HS is at Elliptica three weeks from now so submit your entries here!

10 Million Year Old Ape Found in Ethiopia

2007-08-26T18:18:00.001-07:00

Not alive. I just wanted to clarify that first.

But the fossil remains of what is being dubbed Chororapithecus abyssinicus by the Ethiopian-Japanese team that discovered the ancient ape "represents the earliest recognised primate directly related to modern-day gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos."

Found were a single canine and eight molars which show that Chororapithecus was either an early ancestor to the gorilla or an independent branch of ape with the same adaptations. While he admits this is an exciting discovery, Peter Andrews, a paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum, was skeptical enough about characteristics of the teeth to indicate it may be hasty to name a new species ancestral to gorillas. Andrews noted that if it is, indeed, a new species, the ape-human split must be pushed back on the evolutionary timeline.

The point at which a humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor is generally held to be at around 7-8 million years ago.

"Chororapithecus indicates that a reconsideration of this assumption is needed," the researchers [who discovered Chororapithecus] said. "In fact, if the orang line was present in Africa prior (to the) first migration of Miocene (some 23-25 million years ago) apes from Africa to Eurasia, then the human-orang split could have easily have been as old as 20 million years ago."

More on this story can be found at this Reuters article: Researchers find prehistoric ape fossils.

Defining Psuedoskepticism

2007-08-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

One of the points about my blog that I’ve tried hard to adhere to is being skeptical of pseudo-archaeology¹ and even of other claims made in the name of science or medicine². To date, I have at least 37 posts which I’ve given the label “skeptical³” including Pseudo-skepticism and Pseudo-Journalism about Global Warming and Pseudoskepticism from the "Junkman.⁴” In these two posts, I use the term “pseudoskepticism” as I refer to individuals whom I perceived as pretending to be skeptical about the topic of global warming. Both of the pseudoskeptics featured in these posts were presenting biased and fallacious arguments regarding global warming as a means of meeting the needs of a separate agenda.

The first pseudoskeptic I discussed was a journalist who writes for a blog and syndicates a right-wing conservative column to print and online media. This writer presented a skeptical position on the then recent documentary by Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, but failed to provide any logical reason or critical analysis to inform his pretended skepticism. In searching for a way to describe his position and the illogical arguments he presented via email with me after I commented on his critical article, I ended up with the only term I could think of that best summarized this writer’s position: pseudoskepticism.

The second pseudoskeptic I wrote about was the “junk science” author, Steven Milloy, who writes articles and books that give the appearance of presenting a skeptical viewpoint also about global warming (among other topics ranging from cigarette smoking to pollution). Even Bob Park, author of Voodoo Science and the weekly newsletter What’s New characterizes Milloy as a pretender and a pseudoskeptic that actually seeks only to further the agendas of industries like that of tobacco and oil.

The interesting thing is, when I decided to use the term “pseudoskeptic” to describe these gentlemen and their less-than-genuine positions, I googled the word to see what had been already written about it, thinking I could use comparisons to other pseudoskeptics or see if others had been similarly critical of Milloy. I harbored no delusions that I’d just coined the term and assumed that it was the logical way to refer to a “fake skeptic,” someone who wants to be seen as skeptical but really doesn’t take the time to give fair evaluation to all data or is willing to revise their position on the things they are skeptical about with the introduction of actual evidence.

I’ve been a long time skeptic and avid reader of journals like Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic, and, more recently, Free Inquiry. I listen to podcasts like The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and Skepticality on a regular basis. I participate actively in various internet communities and blogs (often under a pseudonym) giving the skeptical voice to topics ranging from religion to ESP to UFOs to archaeology. I’ve a pretty good and fair understanding of what it means to be a skeptic. And, as a skeptic, I find the easiest way to argue a position that includes extraordinary claims of the supernatural, the paranormal, or some aspect of pseudoscience is to demand evidence to support the claim and to show counter evidence of why more parsimonious explanations are both more probable and plausible.

Like most bloggers, I like to look at my stats from time to time to see where readers are coming from and, today, I noticed that there was a hit from a Wikipedia Talk page. Specifically, Talk: Pseudoskepticism where I found a discussion that was far more informative than the actual Wikipedia entry for Pseudoskepticism. I had previously read this entry when I was writing the first global warming post above, but I hadn’t read the Talk page until today. The problem I had with the Wiki entry was that it seemed to favor the pejorative description of “pseudoskeptic” that gets tossed around by woo-woos and cranks that are being criticized by skeptics. Rather than admit that their claims are without merit, they accuse those who dare to be skeptical of not being “open-minded,” not “thinking out of the box,” or as being “pseudoskeptics.” Apparently, they’re good skeptics as long as they don’t question the woo-woo’s beliefs, but pseudoskeptical if they criticize the mystery-monger and significance-junkie.

The Wiki entry begins by quoting the late Marcello Truzzi, a professor of sociology and founding member of CSICOP (now CSI) who later fell into disfavor of the group due to his apparent bias to the pseudoscientific and paranormal. The quote by Truzzi and the characteristics of a pseudoskepticism listed are useful and Truzzi is attributed as the first to coin the term “pseudoskepticism.”

Still, it’s the Talk page that I found some of the more interesting discussions on pseudoskepticism. There is definitely a camp that favors pseudoscience and woo that seeks to slant the Wiki entry to refer to something akin to militant debunkers. But there is also discussion that favors the definition I’ve used in this blog: “fake-skeptics.” One of the discussion threads on this page is about how science should be “agnostic” and scientists shouldn’t have opinions until all data are in:

IMHO, that "neither disbelieve or believe it" thing is a myth used by Truzzi and others to define their own point of view (the neutral one) as the only one allowed in science. This trick allows them to use ad hominem arguments against CSICOP and others whose point of view they don't like, and I really wonder why skeptics let them do it. [...]I think that scientists should be allowed to believe whatever they want. If a scientist makes a mistake because of his bias, other scientists with other biases can correct him. That's what the scientific method is all about. But your model, where every scientist has to think in a certain restricted way, is a poor environment for the exchange of ideas because all scientists think the same. The diversity is missing. Your scientists are closer to robots than real people.

The discussion thread that linked to my “Junkman” article above was with regard to colloquial and “mechanistic, literal” usages of pseudoskepticism that varied from Truzzi’s own definition. My article was linked to by one editor and commented on by a second, though only as a point to show that there were uses of the term that may be beyond Truzzi’s. The responding editor rightly pointed out that my article only included the word pseudoskepticism in the title and not within the article itself. I left it up to the reader to infer what I meant in the title by “pseudoskeptic.” I must say that I agree with much of Truzzi’s definition, particularly the characteristics listed by the Wiki entry. However, I find some difficulty with how one might apply these characteristics to a critic in order to define them as pseudoskeptic or not. Does a single characteristic suffice? Must there be 6 out of 11 (as with diagnosing someone with ADHD)? Do some characteristics have more weight than others?

Here’s the list:

The tendency to deny, rather than doubt
Double standards in the application of criticism
The making of judgments without full inquiry
Tendency to discredit, rather than investigate
Use of ridicule or ad hominem attacks in lieu of arguments
Pejorative labeling of proponents as 'promoters', 'pseudoscientists' or practitioners of 'pathological science.'
Presenting insufficient evidence or proof
Assuming criticism requires no burden of proof
Making unsubstantiated counter-claims
Counter-claims based on plausibility rather than empirical evidence
Suggesting that unconvincing evidence is grounds for dismissing it

These could all be good habits for the skeptic to avoid, particularly when debating promoters and practitioners of pseudosciences like creationism, intelligent design, psychics, and Bosnian pyramidiots. But in that single sentence I violated the fifth and sixth of Truzzi’s characteristics. For the individual who is even slightly educated in biology or geology, would he then be a pseudoskeptic if he should criticize creationists without demonstrating proof of evolution? Would I be a pseudoskeptic if I remark that it’s far more plausible that the bright light in the sunset sky with a contrail is jet than it is an alien spacecraft leaving “chemtrails?” By Truzzi’s strict definition, I’m a pseudoskeptic if I say that a video of man bending a spoon he produced from his own pocket is unconvincing of his telekinetic powers.

Sorry Wikipedia guys. I like Truzzi’s characteristics... they’re good guidelines for how to avoid creating fallacious positions when debating mystery-mongers and significance-junkies, but the definition of pseudoskeptic is someone who is a fake skeptic. That someone pretends to be skeptical about an issue when he or she actually harbors credulous opinions or has a preconceived conclusion about a topic for which actual skeptics would be apt to criticize. QED.

Related Posts and Links:

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Forbidden Archaeology? The Nampa Image Hoax

2007-08-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

XIn a recent issue of Atlantis Rising, the ragazine that appeals to the significance-junkie, the mystery-monger, and skeptics like me who are fascinated with the first two, Michael Cremo’s latest column “Forbidden Archaeology” highlights a figurine of dubious origin. The article in question is “the mystery of the Nampa image,” Atlantis Rising, no. 64, July/August 2007.

According to Cremo, the figurine (dubbed the Nampa Image) was recovered by workers who were drilling a water-well in Nampa, Idaho in 1889. The figurine, about an inch and a half long and made of baked clay was reported to have been recovered by the sand pump from a depth of 300+ feet. Cremo’s account of the “artifact’s” discovery is both credulous and inconsistent. Cremo is critical of Michael Brass, who wrote in his book, The Antiquity of Man: Artifactual, Fossil and Gene Records Explored, that it would have been destroyed by the drilling equipment upon retrieval as it was brought up to the surface. Cremo's response to Brass is that a tube was used after drilling through the lava layer to pump out the sand but, previously, he mentions that the figurine was brought up with a “core sample.”

This is a small quibble to be sure, but it is relevant since if it were brought up in a core sample, the figurine would be stable and not bumped about. In the tube of sand pump, it would be subject to the laws of physics and knocked around at least enough to pulverize the fragile clay figurine. At the very least, the abrasive effect of the sand in the pump would have rounded it to the point of being unrecognizable to even the most gullible.

The crux of Cremo’s claim with the figurine is that since it was found in a geologic stratum that was of the Plio-Pleistocene, at a depth of 300 feet, the culture that created it must have been in the region about 2 million years ago. As usual, Cremo is credulous to the point of ignoring any parsimonious or realistic explanation, which makes him the utter laughing stock of real archaeology. Unfortunately, the lay-public, eager for stories of mystery and intrigue, get only a portion of the story when they read his perspective. Cremo says in the article, “scientists will go to great lengths to make up some story in order to explain it away,” and is critical of more parsimonious and possible explanations as “powers of the imagination!” and as “speculative tales.” The irony is deep.

What Cremo misses in his account of the “Nampa image,” the little, fragile clay figurine common to the local Native Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is the voices of reason with regard to the find. More likely, he was aware of them, but cherry-picked which criticisms he would be willing to be counter-critical of. He does make short work of one suggestion that the figurine may have found its way at the stratum naturally through a rock fissure or natural geological process. I agree, the explanation is far from realistic, not to mention the same problem of fragility is encountered as the clay figure makes its way to a depth of 300 feet through a rock crevice or fissure as yet undiscovered or exemplified elsewhere in the Glenn’s Ferry formation.

However, there were many criticisms of the object itself, which was heralded by one George Fredrick Wright, an amateur geologist that began as a Christian Darwinist then later turned to active fundamentalist (and was even an author of some of the essays called The Fundamentals, which started and defined this now obnoxious movement of Christianity). There’s an added irony that Cremo, an ancient-Earth Vedic creationist is using a young-Earth Christian creationist to make his point of an exaggerated antiquity of man. Cremo cites Wright’s book, Origin and Antiquity of Man, but makes no mention of Wrights contemporaries who were critical and nearly unanimously dismissive of his work. Indeed, actual geologists and anthropologists of the period remarked that Wright was pseudoscientific:

Dr. Wright's last example is the feeblest of all-the Nampa image, a "beautifully formed clay image of a female," said to have been brought up from a depth of 320 feet (!) in the holing of an artesian well, at Nampa, Idaho. It is sad to destroy illusions; but when this same image with its story was laid before a well known government geologist, and he at once recognized it as a clay toy manufactured by the neighboring Pocatello Indians, the person displaying it replied with engaging frankness, "Well, now, don't give me away!" (Brinton 1892).

And that “well known government geologist?” This was J. W. Powell, who wrote in Popular Science Monthly (1893):

In the fall of 1889 the writer visited Boise City, in Idaho. While stopping at a hotel some gentlemen called on him to show him a figurine which they said they had found in sinking an artesian well in the neighborhood at a depth, if I remember rightly, of more than three hundred feet. The figurine is a little image of a man or woman done in clay and baked. It is not more than an inch and a half in length, and is slender and delicate, more delicate than an ordinary clay pipestem, and altogether exceedingly fragile.

Hold the figurine at the height of your eye and let it fall on the hearth at your feet, and it would be shivered into fragments. It was claimed that this figurine had been brought up from the bottom of an artesian well while the men were working, or about the time that they were working at the well, and that as it came out it was discovered.

When this story was told the writer [Powell], he simply jested with those who claimed to have found it. He had known the Indians that live in the neighborhood, had seen their children play with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the little image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said the same. While stopping at the hotel different persons spoke about it, and it was always passed off as a jest; and various comments were made about it by various people, some of them claiming that it had given them much sport, and that a good many " tenderfeet" had looked at it and believed it to be genuine; and they seemed rather pleased that I had detected the hoax. When I returned to Washington I related the jest at a dinner table, and afterward it passed out of my mind. In reading Prof. Wright's second book I had many surprises, but none of them greater than when I discovered that this figurine had fallen into his hands, and that he had actually published it as evidence of the great antiquity of man in the valley of the Snake River.

Consider the circumstances. A fragile toy is buried in the sands and gravels and boulders of a torrential stream. Three hundred feet of materials are accumulated over it from the floods of thousands of years. Then volcanoes burst forth and pour floods of lava over all; and under more than three hundred feet of sands, gravels, clays, and volcanic rocks the fragile figurine remains for centuries, under such magical conditions that the very color of the burning is preserved. Then well-diggers, with a pump drill, hammer and abrade the rocks, and bore a six-inch hole down to this figurine without destroying it, and with a sand-pump bring it to the surface, to be caught by the well-digger; and Prof. Wright believes the story of the figurine, and places it on record in his book!

And Michael Cremo places it on record in his book! It’s a lengthy quote, but the full context of the account is important. Cremo also cited F.F. Jewett (1890) who described having done “experiments” on the clay that led him to the conclusions that it “must be of considerable age.” What experiments, specifically, aren’t mentioned. But he goes on to declare that “the accumulation of iron upon the grains of sand” can’t be accounted for “except by supposing to have been the result of slow decomposition of substances containing iron.” Perhaps this was the prevailing scientific assessment of the 19th century, but what, precisely, is Cremo’s excuse for failing to recognize that iron oxidation occurs on clay when intentionally fired this way. A process well-known to archaeology and should be understood even for a pseudo-archaeologist.

The “Nampa image” is a hoax. Pure and simple. It was presented at a time in which hoaxes were popular and people liked the notoriety. A contemporary of this little figurine is the Cardiff Giant, which was just being exposed for its fraudulent nature at around the time the worker in Nampa, ID claimed to find a modern clay doll in the sediments of a time when people simply didn’t live in North America, much less make fired clay dolls.

References

Brinton, D.G. (1892). Man and the Glacial Period, a book review. Science, 20 (508), 249.

Cremo, Michael (2007). The mystery of the Nampa image. Atlantis Rising, no. 64, July/Aug.

Jewett, F.F. (1890). Report to the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol 24, 448.

Powell, J.W. (1893). Are there evidences of man in the glacial gravels? Popular Science Monthly, vol. XLIII, 324

Four Stone Hearth #19

2007-07-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

The Four Stone Hearth is posted at Sherd Nerd! This is the 19th edition of the anthropology blog carnival and click the link to Sherd Nerd find a host of links to anthropology bloggers doing their thing in archaeology, cultural anthropology and physical anthropology. Bloggers this month include John Hawks, afarensis, Aardvarchaeology, Testimony of the Spade, and Abnormal Interests among many others.

For those unaware, a blog carnival is a parade and public celebration of posts, gathered together in the same genre for the ease of the reader. One purpose of the carnival is to allow both readers and writers of blogs to become acquainted with blogs they might not otherwise encounter.

If the Four Stone Hearth is something you're interested in submitting to in the future and you are willing to write post on your blog related to one of the four fields of anthropology (archaeology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, or linguistics), click the first link in this paragraph. If interested in hosting this carnival, feel free to click that link and you'll find the appropriate email address and instructions.

Blogging for Anthropology and Archaeology

2007-07-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

If asked, I would probably respond that blogging is something I do, first and foremost, for the sheer fun of it. My secondary motivations include gaining writing experience and notoriety however small they may be. I’m no PZ Myers or J-Walk, but he little feedback I get is meaningful and it motivates me when I know that the information I created on my blog is appreciated, either through direct comments, links to other blogs or regular hits from social bookmarking sites like Digg or del.icio.us.

But, like, perhaps, other bloggers who consider themselves to be in the science genre, I often evaluate myself: am I simply regurgitating news in my field or am I provoking thoughts into discussion and editorializing; and, can I generate original perspectives on fresh ideas in anthropology and archaeology?

I try to be some of all this, not wanting to get stuck in any one mode. Not that there aren’t some very good blogs that do well in any single slant. Anthony at Archaeoblog does a fantastic job at presenting archaeogical news to his audience –so much so that I find myself visiting his blog often just to find out what’s new. Alun Salt, formerly of Archaeoastronomy, now called Clioaudio used to present the Vidi: an irregular roundup of the past on the web, which linked to sites that dealt with archaeology and history in a carnivalesque format. And he did it with great style that was appreciated far and wide! John Hawks gives a fresh perspective on the field of paleoanthropology with lengthy and often well-sourced but always very informative essays on topics that are part of that field’s current events. I’ve yet to find the anthro/archaeo blogger that doesn’t consider his site to be well-respected and authoritative.

Each of these blogs presents information in the field of anthropology in very different ways. There are certainly other blogs that are equally informative, some of which can be found in my sidebar with names like Northstate Science, Afarensis, Aardvarchaeology, and Anthropology.net, each with talented bloggers that meld a combination of the above formats into their writings.

But it is the very act of writing a blog in the fields of anthropology that I’m curious about. Early blogs were records of individuals’ lives, weblogs that were updated in diary-like format (i.e. “July 18, 2007 – 5:30 am: I began the day with brushing my teeth; a short stack of pancakes and backed over the kid’s bike on the way to work...”). Today’s blogs range from fresh and investigative journalism to satire and parody to aggregations of other blogs and news items. What, then, is the best possible purpose of an anthropology blog? Should it be strictly academic? Should it focus on recent news in the fields of anthropology, sharing new journal articles and citations with others that might not have access to them?

If were active in an archaeological project, I would very likely have the desire to share its progress in weblog format, a diary of progress in an excavation or field survey. Unfortunately, however, I haven’t had the opportunity to get involved in a project as yet (work, school, family, etc.), but I’m hopeful that my up-coming graduate studies will change that. In the mean time, I’ve focused on providing commentary to the recent news in archaeology where I’m able to and writing on a few topics that I’ve had the opportunity to study in-depth. Another thing I try to do is cover pseudo-archaeology and skepticism from an archaeological perspective, of which I have a few topics in the works to post soon.

I’m interested in what the other anthropology bloggers think about what purpose, goal, or need is behind blogging for them. I think I recall Duane at Abnormal Interests mentioning in a post that it’s our responsibility to educate and provide references to academic information for those seeking knowledge – a noble and honorable cause that I’m easily behind.

I’m also interested in what blog readers, who don’t necessarily have a blog of their own, think about anthropology blogs and what they like about anthropology blogs –what keeps them coming back? What makes the reader bookmark or share a blog post with social bookmarking sites?

Sorry for the Technical Difficulties

2007-07-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

And for the decrease in posts. Between general summer busy-stuff and some minor technical difficulties, I've not been able to keep up. I recently had some issues with a couple of .css files that are key to the displaying of 3-columns on my blog, as some of you may have noticed. If you saw a single, large column instead of 3, then you saw what happens when the site that hosts the style-sheets has exceeded bandwidth.

Once I figured out what the issue was, I replaced the style-sheets on my own host and all is well. If you're using the 3-column Minima hack by Hoctro, please send me an email (cfeagans AT gmail DOT com) and I'll share with you the solution. Now... hopefully I can get back on track and get a submission to the next Four Stone Hearth!

Video: Dawkins vs. McGrath

2007-07-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

I reviewed Alister McGrath's book, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life over a year ago and have been waiting ever since for Dawkins and McGrath to square of and hash out their disagreements.

John Loftus at, Debunking Christianity, has posted a link to the Google Video of their recent debate. I'm in the middle of watching it now, but, at just over an hour in length, I'm finding it to be a fascinating and the comments following the post are interesting.

Richard Dawkins Interviews Alister McGrath [Debunking Christianity]

Review- Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life [Hot Cup of Joe]

The Four Stone Hearth #18 is up at Clioaudio!

2007-07-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

And Alun Salt has done a fantastic job! This looks like the biggest turnout yet.

So what are waiting for... click it. Read it.

Ancient Chinese Tombs Destroyed for Modern Consumerism

2007-07-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

That's right: IKEA is branching out to south China and ancient tombs that date as far back as 1800 years are bulldozed for modern home furnishings -Swedish style.

"The tops of some of the tombs were chopped off by bulldozers, disclosing some green bricks," it said, citing a witness. "The situation of another tomb was even more miserable, because it was dug from the centre by an excavator, leaving only part of the coffin hanging on the mud wall."

The tombs were described as being built of green bricks embroidered with ornate lotus patterns.

Though not well enforced, Chinese laws allow for the fines of up to $65,000 to be imposed upon those that destroy cultural resources such as this. No doubt the workers were oblivious to the ancient site and were proceeding with a government approved and popular construction project, so fines are probably not likely. Still, it's a shame there aren't better CRM practices in place.

A spokesman for IKEA was not immediately available for comment.

No shit.

Dilmun and Punt: Part III

2007-07-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

This is the third in a three part series on the subject of Dilmun and Punt: Two Mythical Origins for Two Early Civilizations. In this final segment, I wrap up with discussion of Dilmun and Punt as places of origin for their respective civilizations and offer a bibliography for students or those interested in researching the topic further. I'll also include links to the other two parts which I'll add above the folds and at the ends of each part for convenience:

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Discussion

Kramer (1944) concluded that Dilmun isn’t in Bahrain as the majority have suggested, but rather southwestern Iran, based primarily on the information in texts that describes Dilmun at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates. Cornwall (1952) cites at least two others that, likewise, agree that Dilmun is located in Iran, but presents evidence to the contrary in the form of two letters from Nippur that mention Dilmun as being reached by sea. Cornwall previously argued (1946) that the Assyrian use of the term for “in the midst of the sea” (in qabal tam-tim), which referred to islands such as Tyre, Arvad, and Cyprus provided evidence in favor of Bahrain as Dilmun. Another possible location that has had its favor with scholars is the eastern Arabian coast near Dhaharan and Howard-Carter (1987) describes archaeological finds which include steatite vessels with Mesopotamian motifs, un-worked blocks of steatite, lapis, copper ore and other tradable commodities as well as tumuli-tombs.

The tumuli-tombs are, as Lamberg-Karlovsky (1982) suggests, an enigma. Such a large cemetery population created in such a short period of time should have evidence of a large settlement center or centers surrounding it. Yet, as Lamberg-Karlovsky points out, the archaeological surveys of Bahrain do not support such an expectation. He draws a comparison between the Bahrain cemetery complex and that of other cemeteries of antiquity surveyed by modern archaeologists, such as Shahr-i Sokhata. This community spanned 350 acres, which was over twice that of Bahrain, but only had 20,000 burials (p. 46) to Bahrain’s 172,000 – 450,000, depending on if each tumulus contained a single body or an average of three (p. 48). Lamberg-Karlovsky refers to this as “a phenomenon in search of an explanation” and suggests that the island may have held significance in antiquity as a “ceremonial center of pilgrimage,” and, as Dilmun, was a place that interment would provide the eternal life and immortality that was promised Ziusudra. The people buried at the Bahrain complex were not of Bahrain but “from a large geographical area sharing only the fundamental belief in the manner of assuring an after-life.” Such a central place of pilgrimage then provided the basis for the establishment of a trade center (p. 49).

The similarities between Dilmun and Punt are many, but the evidence linking the two directly is thus far missing in the archaeological record. That ancient civilizations of Sumer and Egypt both record in their myths and histories far away lands of sacred and divine significance may be an expectation since both the Egyptians and the Sumerians emerged at a time when the climate was still undergoing changes. The switch from wet to arid conditions following the inundation of the Persian Gulf at around 15,000 BCE finally came at about 4,000 BCE when the sea stopped rising. Egypt, too, experienced similar conditions at around the same time, and early Egyptians eventually abandoned the Nabta Playa perhaps for the Nile Valley.

Both Dilmun and Punt may have begun as points of origins for the Sumerians and Egyptians, respectively. Both of these civilizations have origins that predate writing, so the memory of their ancestral homes must have been orally transmitted until they could be recorded as “the land of the gods” and the “land of the living” –the place “where the sun rises.” If such paradises existed, as two separate places or as one, they may very well have been along coasts or the basin of the Persian Gulf, long since inundated by rising sea levels. The pilgrimages and expeditions to the “lands of the gods” may have been the best attempts that these two societies could offer to reach a now submerged homeland they were forced to abandon several millennia before. Both Dilmun and Punt may have been trade centers (or a single center) that emerged as a result of pilgrimage and geologic circumstance which favored natural harbors and fresh water.

Bibliography and References

Aldred, C. (1987). The Egyptians. London: Thames and Hudson.
Bibby, G. (1969). Looking for Dilmun. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Breasted, J. H. (1906). Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. I, The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Breasted, J. H. (1906a). Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. II, The Eighteenth Dynasties. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Brewer, D. J., & Teeter, E. (1999). Egypt and the Egyptians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Caspers, E. C. D., & Govindankutty, A. (1978). R. Thapar's Dravidian Hypothesis for the Locations of Meluhha, Dilmun and Makan: A Critical Reconsideration. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 21(2), 113-145.
Cornwall, P. (1946). On the Location of Dilmun. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 103, 3-11.
Cornwall, P. (1952). Two Letters from Dilmun. Journal for Cuneiform Studies, 6(4), 137-145.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Books.
Fagan, B. M. (1994). In the Beginning: An Introduction to Archaeology, 8th ed.. New York: Harper Collins.
Gupta, A. K., Anderson, D. M., Pandey, D. N., & Singhvi, A. K. (2006, April). Adaptation and human migration and evidence of agriculture coincident with changes in the Indian summer monsoon during the Holocene. Current Science, 90(8), 1082-1090.
Harvey, S. P. (2003). Interpreting Punt: Geographic, Cultural and Artistic Landscapes. In D. O'Connor & S. Quirke (Eds.), Mysterious Lands: Encounters with Ancient Egypt (pp. 81-91). London: Institute of Archaeology, UCL.
Howard-Carter, T. (1981). The Tangible Evidence for the Earliest Dilmun. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 33(3/4), 210-223.
Howard-Carter, T. (1987). Dilmun: At Sea or Not at Sea?: A Review Article. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 39(1), 54-117.
Ingman, M., Kaessmann, H., Pääbo, S., & Gyllensten, U. (2000, 7 December). Mitochondrial genome variation and the origin of modern humans. Nature, 408, 708-713.
Kramer, S. N. (1944, Dec.). Dilmun, the Land of the Living. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 96, 18-28.
Kramer, S. N. (1947). Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living. Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 1(1), 3-46.
Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. (1982). Dilmun: Gateway to Immortality. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 41(1), 45-50.
Langdon, S. H. (1917). Sumerian Liturgical Texts. In The University Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section (Vol. 10 (2)). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, The University Museum.
Mark, S. (1997). From Egypt to Mesopotamia: A Study of Predynastic Trade Routes. London: Chatham Publishing.
Meeks, D. (2003). Locating Punt. In D. O'Connor & S. Quirke (Eds.), Mysterious Lands: Encounters with Ancient Egypt (pp. 53-80). London: Institute of Archaeology, UCL.
Naville, E. (1907). The Origin of Egyptian Civilisation. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 37, 201-214.
Price, T. D., Tiesler, V., & Burton, J. (2006). Early African diaspora in colonial Campeche, Mexico: Strontium Isotopic Evidence. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 130, 485-490.
Pritchard, J., ed. (1958). The Ancient Near East Volume I: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
PSD. (2006). Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project. Retrieved 30042007, from Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology: http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html.
Singer, D. A., Berger, V. I., & Moring, B. C. (2005). Porphyry Copper Deposits of the World: Database, Maps, and Preliminary Analysis (U.S. Geological Survey No. 02-268). http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1060: U.S. Geological Survey.
Smith, W. S. (1958). The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Thesiger, W. P. (1985). The Marsh Arabs. New York: Harper Collins.
Wendorf, F., & Schild, R. (1998). Nabta Playa and its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 17, 97-123.
Wicker, F. (1998). The Road to Punt. The Geographical Journal, 164(2), 155-167.
Woolley, C. L. (1928). The Sumerians. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Hatshepsut's Mummy Identified

2007-07-01T18:12:00.000-07:00

Several other bloggers and news outlets have already written on this, but in case you haven't seen the news, Hatsheptsut, the 5th pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, has been identified.

I first blogged about Hatshepsut here after visiting the Kimbell Museum of Art's exhibition. Her reign as pharaoh (ca. 1473 - 1458 BCE) began after the death of her husband, Thutmose II, who was also her half-brother. After her death, Thutmose III, the step-son of the obese Hatshepsut, son of Thutmose II's lesser wife (Hatshepsut was the Great Royal Wife) took the throne. After the death of his father, Thutmose III was too young and, perhaps, a bit oppressed by his (evil?) step-mother. Thutmose III concentrated on his military exploits, earning the title among later historians as the Napoleon of ancient Egypt. Meanwhile, his step-mother commissioned hundreds of magnificent buildings and monuments in both Upper an Lower Egypt such as Deir el-Bahr all the while consorting with her closest adviser and royal steward, Senemut (though this is a point frequently argued by Egyptologists).

Upon his return from military conquests after his step-mother died, Thutmose III began a systematic removal of her likeness and mention, trashing monuments and sculptures of her in the very quarries their raw materials were obtained.

Hatshepsut apparently died of cancer and diabetes and was very obese with "pendulous breasts" according to Zahi Hawass, the senior archaeologist of Egypt. The mummy identified as Hatshepsut was discovered in 1903 by Howard Carter, nearly two decades before discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, but it was only June of this year when a tooth, known to belong to Hatshepsut was exactly matched to the missing molar of one of the mummies. The fat one.

News articles:
Egyptian mummy found in 1903 is a former female pharaoh
CT Scan, DNA Tests Help ID Mummy as Hatshepsut

Blogs on the topic:
Intellectual Vanities
History Buff

Dilmun and Punt - Part II

2007-07-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

In my last part, I discussed the mentions of Dilmun and Punt in Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts and examined their mythical contexts. In this part, I'll discuss the physical considerations of the two mythical places in archaeological and geologic contexts.

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Archaeological Remains

The pottery found at Bahrain at around 3000-2900 BCE, the period known in Mesopotamia as the Jemdet Nasr, closely resembles that of Uruk, as do the bowls of steatite and chlorite. Oman also has buff-ware painted jars that closely resemble those of Mesopotamia at this time. Together, these correlations in pottery and ceramics are indicative of contact between Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula, and it is Bahrain and the eastern Arabian coast that have variously been suggested as sites of Dilmun. Ubaid-ware characteristics include motifs of marsh or riverine origin and include designs resembling nets, reed-matting and aquatic subjects which are painted on green-grey buff or red ware. During the period that marks the rise of the Ubaid culture, the marshlands of Sumer would have been teeming with fish, game, and wild plant-life, offering an environment in whose new inhabitants would not need to be pressured into food production strategies like agriculture. The Ubaid culture that is most known is at Eridu, but sites have been found as far south as Saudi Arabia (Bibby 1969). It stands to reason that the resources available would have attracted inhabitants; indeed, it does even today, when one considers the Marsh Arabs who dwell in elaborate and complex reed huts.

Various authors have placed Dilmun at Bahrain, but Howard-Carter (1981, p. 223) reminds that Mesopotamian artifacts before dating to before 2200 BCE aren’t present in the archaeological record on Bahrain and, instead, places Dilmun at Qurna, Iraq, which lies just under 75 km northwest of Basra where the Tigris and Euphrates converge. On Bahrain, Bibby (1969) excavated funerary sites called tumuli-tombs which consist of earthen mounds piled on top of graves. Other archaeologists both preceded and followed these excavations who also excavated tumuli, discovering over 172,000 in all. Lamberg-Karlovsky (1982) notes that if the tumuli only contained an average of two occupants, the total cemetery population would be 344,000, which is “an unparalleled cemetery population for the Near East. He goes on to cite literature that reports on surveys which reveal that while the tumuli date to as late as the third millennium, the time of Dilmun, there aren’t data to suggest a settlement of sufficient size to support a cemetery of even 172,000.

The earliest mention of Punt is on the Palermo Stone, which describes King Sahure’s expedition to Punt that retrieved myrrh, electrum and staves. Sahure was pharaoh in the 5th Dynasty, between 2498 – 2345 BCE and the monument, the largest fragment of which now resides in the Regional Museum of Archaeology in Palermo, Sicily, is also significant because it lists rules that both predate and precede Menes, accepted by some to be the first pharaoh of the First dynasty of Egypt.

Another mention of Punt that is, perhaps, the most descriptive is that of the Punt Reliefs at Deir el-Bahri. Breasted (1906a: 102) goes so far as to describe them as “the most interesting series of reliefs in Egypt,” but he is correct that they are almost the “only source of information on the land of Punt.” In addition to these inscriptions and the Palermo stone references, Breasted also lists the other references known to him through various texts (102-103) as:

1) a Fifth dynasty expedition by King Isesi, which brought back a “dancing dwarf;”
2) a Sixth dynasty attempt by Pepi II to send and expedition, which resulted in “sand-dwellers” killing the detachment sent to build a ship on the coast destined to Punt;
3) Pep II’s eventual success;
4) Chief Treasurer Henu’s Eleventh dynasty expedition for Senekhkere-Mentuhotep III;
5) Kentkhetwer’s Twelfth dynasty expedition for Amenemhet II; and
6) an expedition for Senwosret II.

But it was the Hatshepsut expedition in the Eighteenth dynasty that offers the most detail, while the above mentions are cursory and meager in their descriptions of their respective expeditions. The Hatshepsut inscriptions provided both texts and illustrations of the commodities the Egyptians obtained from “the Land of God,” which included gold, ebony, ivory, incense trees like myrrh, resin or gum, ostrich eggs, giraffes, and baboons. The illustrations depict the Puntite houses [fig. 3] as on huts on stilts and the Puntites themselves as brown skinned, rather than black as might be expected if Punt were at the Horn of Africa. Perhaps the most familiar image in the Deir el-Bahri inscriptions is that of the wife of the ruler of Punt. She is depicted as being obese, considered a revered quality among some African cultures since it marks her status as healthy and wealthy.

Geological Considerations

The Persian Gulf was completely dry at around 15,000 BCE according to Howard-Carter (1981, 1987) who cites at least three reports of detailed studies of the Gulf’s geology. The Tigris and Euphrates flowed separately and together to the Strait of Hormuz and emptied into the Gulf of Oman until the rising sea levels rose gradually from 14,000 to 8000 BCE forcing any riverine populations inhabiting the soon-to-be submerged Tigris and Euphrates to retreat to higher ground over time. According to Howard-Carter, the Gulf would have been three-quarters filled by 8000 BCE and completely inundated by 5500 BCE, the time of the Ubaid period.

Bahrain is known for its artisan springs in antiquity, which provided fresh water and, for an island in the Persian gulf may been a frequent stop for sea travelers. Indeed, the springs themselves may have provided fodder for the myths that included passages about Dilmun such as “her city drinks water of abundance” and “her wells of bitter water, behold they become wells of sweet water” from the myth of Enki and Ninhursag. Frequently mentioned in texts associated with Dilmun is the trade of copper and, indeed, copper has been discovered at sites proposed to be the location of Dilmun both on the eastern Arabian coast as well as Bahrain. Copper, however, isn’t found in deposits in either location, and the nearest deposits are located in Iran and the Indus Valley.

Copper was one of the commodities mentioned in the Hatshepsut inscriptions and of great value to Egyptian rulers building pyramids and monumental structures since copper instruments are needed to quarry and form the blocks used in their construction. Copper deposits are known in Egypt and the Sinai but are of limited value due to their size and quality. Wicker states “the only copper deposit known to be worked in ancient times is at Cayönii Tepsi in south-east Turkey near the headwater of the Tigris where the earliest exploitation dates from around 7000 BC and that the copper of Cyprus isn’t exploited until much later (1998, p. 159).” He goes on to suggest that Egypt could have obtained its copper from there before the Third dynasty, though he admits the prospect to be unlikely. Another possible source for copper, Wicker says, is in present-day Uganda both west and north of Lake Victoria and that no copper or gold deposits have ever been located in present-day Somalia, the country that dominates the Horn of Africa.

Copper is associated in trade expeditions to both Dilmun and Punt by Mesopotamians and Egyptians, but no copper is known to have been mined on the Arabian Peninsula. The copper deposits of present-day Uganda, west of Lake Victoria or in South Africa, are locations that are either inland or of considerable distance for either the Sumerians or the Egyptians. That Bahrain and Dhaharan traded in copper is evident in the archaeological record, so this metal must have come from other sources as yet unknown or at least as yet not connected to the Persian Gulf such as from the upper Indus Valley. But also important to the production of bronze was tin, with sources generally thought to be found in mountains of modern-day Iran and Afghanistan.

I looked for other mentions of copper in antiquity that might reveal what sources there were at the relevant periods of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations but found none that didn't require active trade networks for the two, though sources in the Persian gulf such as modern-day Oman are eventually used. I think its entirely probable that the need for copper helped drive the Dilmun and Punt legends since there are very real needs that are fulfilled.

In the last part of this series, I'll end with a brief discussion and list a bibliography for anyone wishing to look into this or related topics further.

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Bosnian Pyramid Loses Funds!

2007-06-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

Not a pyramid at all but rather a "natural formation," says the Bosnian Culture Minister, Gavrilo Grahovac. So they're pulling the plug on self-proclaimed, "amateur archaeologist," Semir Osmanagic, who, for a little over a year now, has claimed that the geologic formations as Visoko, Bosnia are pyramids built by people in antiquity.

If true, the "pyramids" would be the largest in the world. However, not a shred of viable evidence has been produced to support the claim, which seems to be just so much fantasy generated by myster-mongers and significance-junkies. Read some of the details and a link to the story below the guide.

I found the article in the "World" section of the Croatian online news site, Javno, the exact url is here.

And the Javno article was refreshingly critical of the Osmanagic claims. And, by "critical," I mean they gave a reasoned account of the situation compared with the mass-media attention of about a year ago.

The Culture Ministry found the "research" conducted by Osmanagic's team to be questionable and the collaborators of Osmanagic to lack the credibility needed to allow for continued funding of their "project." Also criticized by the Bosnian government, according to Javno, is the methods by which Osmanagic et al presented their findings, particularly the fact that they routinely kept their data from experts in relative fields.

The Bosnian Culture Ministry consulted experts including those in the fields of geology, mining, archaeology, and cultural preservation and arrived at the conclusion that Osmanagic's foundation was not acting in the best interest of Bosnian cultural preservation and that the foundation is in violation of archaeological regulations. The Ministry even concluded that the nature of Osmanagic's registration with the Bosnia-Herzegovina Justice Ministry may be suspect and should be "looked into."

According to Osmanagic, his reckless destruction of the site (which does have legitimate cultural resources of the Roman period as well as perhaps others) is justified due to the "positive image" he's created of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the world.

Personally, I'd have to disagree, since the image being created was potentially one of ridicule among serious academia. But this recent position of the Culture Ministry is one to be respected and it's good to see truth and reason win out against pseudoscience and woo. I don't know if the Ministry's protection can extend to lands that are on private property or controlled by local governments, but it is certainly having the effect of keeping Osmanagic's band of woo-woo's from destroying cultural resources on much of the hill. According to Osmanigic's woo-woo site, they are resuming "excavations" as of 28 June 2007 on local government controlled lands.

One can hardly blame local governments from trying to continue cashing in on Osmanagic's nonsense since it is drawing tourism to the region. And, to be honest, the current situation isn't much different than that of a typical cultural context in the United States, where private land owners are free to allow looters and idiots to ravage archaeological sites, plundering valuable pottery and lithic artifacts while completely ignoring the more culturally valuable contexts of these artifacts. I think, however, that many local governments are influenced by whether or not they receive federal funding, which may impact how they are required to preserve cultural and historical resources.

Meanwhile, Osmanagic and his foundation of woo are the continued laughing stock of the archaeological community -or, perhaps they would be if it weren't for the fact that they are endangering genuine cultural resources with their pseudoscientific endeavor.

Dilmun and Punt: Two Mythical Origins for Two Early Civilizations (Part I)

2007-06-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

Archaeology is about examining the material remains of the human past, often in hopes of learning something of the origins of civilizations in antiquity: where did they come from? why did they leave there? what motivated them to seek a new home? -these are but a few questions that archaeologists and cultural historians work with when looking at the earliest civilizations.

In this series, I'm going to examine two of the earliest civilizations of the Near East, both of which have fascinated me for some time. Specifically, I'll look at the Sumerian and Egyptian cultures and their legends of mystical places of origin: Dilmun and Punt. In this first post, I'll discuss the myths, legends and stories surrounding the two and I invite others to comment.

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Introduction

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evidence has demonstrated the human propensity to migrate beginning at around 30,000 to 45,000 years ago, coinciding with the artifactual evidence of cultural change. In regions like the Indus Valley, Central Europe and Mesoamerica migrations and population density were influenced by climate and catastrophe and demographic reorganization in response to these pressures resulted in various instances of successes in the form of the rise of complex civilization or failures in the form of societal collapse.

It follows, then, that populations of the Near East experienced cycles of diffusion and migration as they evolved into sedentary and complex societies. It may even follow that this diffusion and migration may have had some common points of origin following the peak of the Würm glaciation around 18,000-16,000 BCE as climate changed from dry to wet conditions and sea levels began to rise as the glaciers melted, potentially displacing coastal and riverine populations. Since these migrations would have occurred prior to the advent of writing, evidence would need to be looked for by tracing artifacts to points of origin or following motif patterns that can be traced from culture to culture. But both of these could also have explanations involving trade and diffusion between adjacent cultures. Another line of evidence that could be followed might be strontium isotope analysis of human remains, which can reveal geographic regions that an individual spent time in over his life. The number of bones and teeth available to analyze become exponentially decreased the further back in time one looks, however, due to preservation problems and lower population densities, and this type of analysis only looks at the origin and travels of the individual in his lifetime not migrational trends spanning generations.

Still another line of evidence that could be examined, albeit one that is more subjective and includes more induction than deduction, is the examination of early written texts since there is some indication that the earliest accounts of myths and stories have origins in oral traditions. Among the earliest literate societies is that of the Egyptian and the Sumerian. Both have legends, myths and stories that speak of distant lands that may have been the origin of their people; lands that are considered holy and sacred; and lands that are the subject of trade and considered in high regard. Those lands are Dilmun and Punt of Sumerian and Egyptian legends respectively.

Mythical References

The earliest mythical references to Dilmun are Sumerian and found in cuneiform texts known today by the titles: Enki and Ninhursag, Enki and the World Order, Enki and Nanna-Suen, Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living, and the Myth of Ziusudra.

In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag Dilmun is referred to as:

“the pure clean and bright land of the living, the garden of the Great Gods and Earthly paradise, located eastward in Eden, was the place where Ninhursag-Ki, the Earth Mother, Most Exalted Lady and Supreme Queen, could be found.”

The same story also refers to Dilmun as being, “blessed by Enki with everlasting agricultural and trade superiority, for through its waterways and quays, fruits and grains were sold and exchanged by the people of Dilmun and beyond” and as a “holy” place. In this myth, Enki created all the canals that irrigated the crops of the people as the “Sweet Waters god.”

In Enki and the World Order, Dilmun is mentioned alongside Magan and Meluhha as trading partners with boats from Dilmun being filled with wood, suggesting that Dilmun was a place of plentiful trees. The word “kur” is used before Dilmun, which has various meanings in Sumerian and Akkadian including land, country, hill and mountain. Dilmun is regularly mentioned in Sumerian mythology alongside Magan and Meluhha, which are referred to as south of Sumer.

In one of the tablets that reveals the Myth of Ziusudra, Dilmun is referred to as “the mountain of crossing, the mountain of Dilmun, the place where the sun rises.” And Kramer (1944) attributes the “land of the living” in Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living as being Dilmun, since it is also referred to in the poem as, “land of the cedars” and “as a land whose ‘creature’ is the sun-god Utu, which Kramer feels he has demonstrated to be references to Dilmun.

Punt is similarly referred to in Egyptian texts as “the Land of God” and as a place “to the East” where expeditions could be sent for specialty goods including gold, copper, myrrh, exotic animals, and staves or rods for spears since there were few good sources for these along the Nile. It was also called the “land of beginning” and the “country of first existence,” and Breasted (1906a, p. 117) notes that the ancient Egyptians may have viewed this as their ancestral homeland. Punt is mentioned in the Tale of a Shipwrecked Sailor, which describes a sailor marooned on a mystical island where he meets a serpent that identifies himself as “the Prince of Punt.” This prince helps the sailor on his way, returning the sailor and his new found riches to Egypt in a two-month boat journey.

Both Punt and Dilmun are referred to in their respective myths as holy places and being to the east. Both are places of trade and are revered as being ancestral homelands. Both are given mystical and Utopian status and spoken of in myth with respect. And both are considered to be the “land of the god(s).” Punt, unfortunately isn’t written of nearly to the degree that Dilmun is, but its allure is, perhaps, equally mysterious and appealing to those of both antiquity and modernity.

In the next part, which I'll post in a day or so, I'll discuss archaeological remains associated with Dilmun and Punt in Mesopotamian and Egyptian contexts. I'll also briefly describe the geologic considerations associated with each.

In the final part, I'll conclude with a discussion and a bibliography of the sources I used.

Part I: Mythical References
Part II: Archaeological and Geological Considerations
Part III: Discussion and Bibliography

Arctic Spring Came Early

2007-06-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

With Global Warming becoming less and less debated by even the staunchest denialists, continuing confirmation of the affects keep appearing in the media. Case in point is the recent news that the ice of northeast Greenland shows signs of melting about 2 weeks earlier than in the 1990s. [Arctic spring's 'rapid advance']

This news isn't coming from climatologists or pundits of global warming that the denialists call "alarmists," but rather biologists who have published their findings in the journal Current Biology.

Observation of 21 species - six plants, 12 arthropods and three birds - revealed that the organisms had brought forward their flowering, emergence or egg-laying in line with the earlier ice melt.

"We were particularly surprised to see the trends were so strong when considering that the entire summer is very short in the High Arctic - just three or four months from snowmelt to freeze-up," said co-author Toke Hoye, from the University of Aarhus.

The changes in the region are viewed by the researchers as both positive and negative, however. But the net result may be negative if a competitive release is achieved through the introduction of species from warmer latitudes.

"At first, this could be regarded as a positive result because it is extending the summer season, which is probably a factor in terms of organisms getting through their development.

"Over the long term, it is most likely to be the case that species from southern latitudes will be able to establish themselves (in the region) and increase competition for food."

The Last Foragers of Tanzania - A Farewell to the Hadza?

2007-06-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

Chris O'Brien at Northstate Science has a gut-wrenching post on the plight of the Hadza of northern Tanzania. Their very existence is threatened by wealth, ignorance, and a complete lack of compassion by the government that should be responsible stewards of the cultural diversity of its citizens.

Instead, the Tanzanian government is coming to an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to lease the land they live on as a private hunting ground for the UAE Royal family. This would make the Hadza trespassers on their own land, the land they've subsisted on successfully for thousands of years.

Chris provides references an MSNBC story that begins with "[o]ne of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world." The story goes on to quote Tanzanian officials who refer to the Hadza as "backward" and implied that they would benefit from being forced to "modernize." But the story is fair to the Hazabe in that it gives them their props:

While they have through 50,000 years survived the coming of agriculture, metal, guns, diseases, missionaries, poachers, anthropologists, students, gawking journalists, corrugated steel houses and encroaching pastoral tribes who often impersonate them for tourist money, the resilient Hadzabe, who still make fire with sticks, fear that the safari deal will be their undoing.

And:

The Hadzabe are believed to be the second-oldest people on Earth, and they still hunt and gather as a way of life, if occasionally before audiences of khaki-covered tourists, who flock to northern Tanzania by the thousands.

It's a shame that such a noble and successful culture is looked down upon by the "modern" world that views them as quaint or as a curiosity at best, as "backward" and as an in-the-way annoyance at worst. The fact that their success has outdone that of any modern culture is all but ignored.

I can't recommend Chris' post enough, Hadza Tribal Lands Being Confiscated By Arab Royal Family. He isn't just regurgitating the news like I am here, Chris is sharing his personal experiences having lived and worked among the Hazabe during the 1990s. Chris puts a personal touch on their plight, bringing individuals within the tribe to life as real people, not just a news story about a few people far, far away. Reading his post puts the Hazda closer to home and, while they may be on the other side of the globe, the neighbor of my neighbor must be mine as well.

What can we do?
Write. Pass the word.
Send emails to the UAE embassy as well as the Tanzanian embassy. Post on our blogs. If you don't have a blog, send links to the story and Chris' post to friends. And click on the link below to Digg the story by clicking underneath the yellow ranking to vote Chris' story up. If it gets digged enough, it'll rise to the top of the page and get noticed. Diggs snowball, they're slow at first, but the votes increase exponentially, so don't think your vote doesn't count if the votes are still low.

Digg Chris' Post here
Northstate Science
Afarensis I
Afarensis II
Anthropolgoy.net
/Anthropology.net II
The MSNBC.com story
Remote Central
Schmoo on the Run
Indigenous Peoples of Africa

Visit these links, read the posts, drop comments. Get the word out. I'll try to update this list with new links as I come across them. Please leave them in the comments below if you're so inclined!

Chris O'Brien at Antiquity!

2007-06-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

My online access to Antiquity has a 6 month lag and my library doesn't have the summer edition yet, but I have it on good authority that our friend and fellow blogger, Chris O'Brien of Northstate Science has been quoted by Martin Carver, editor of this premier journal of archaeology.

Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology, who reads Antiquity at the beach (*my* wife would sooner permit Maxim or Playboy, so kudos to Mrs. R.!) has posted a quote or two from Carver that mentions Chris' blog, Northstate Science, and his posts on creationism:

Here is Christopher O'Brien, a Forest Archaeologist in northern California, bravely setting out our stall : Just like other disciplines, he says, "archaeology is being used and abused by creationists of all stripes. It's time to start pointing out the falsehoods.

I'll leave the remainder to Martins Carver and Rundkvist -I just wanted to give a taste so that you would follow the links to these to great blogs, the kind I aspire to have HoJ rise to. And pick up a copy of Antiquity at your local library when it becomes available.

Here's my post at Aardvarchaeology:

It's always good for the blogosphere to have a journal cite a blog post, but it's GREAT that it was Chris' post at Northstate cited by Antiquity! I don't know about other bloggers, but I always have that nagging fear that what I'm doing amounts to just so much graffiti. So when I get an occasional word of praise or link from another blog, its motivational.

I couldn't begin to know what the feeling is like to have Antiquity quote me!

Well, done Chris!

Iceman Bled to Death on Glacier - Killed by Arrow

2007-06-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

At least that's the title I should have used on March 20, 2007 when I scooped the BBC, the LA Times, National Geographic and other major and minor media outlets.

My original post on the topic was at Anthropology.net, titled New Research on Ötzi, the Iceman, Cometh. From that post I discussed the study conducted on Ötzi's remains:

a projectile point that lacerated the left subclavian artery, and that the attempted removal of the arrow at the time of death may have caused Ötzi to bleed to death.

I also discussed a related study that used forensic analysis to determine where Ötzi had been in the last days of his life. Using the data from these two studies, I also reconstructed a speculative bit of fiction on the events that might have transpired in Ötzi's last days.

Go there. Read it. And when you're looking at the other sites around the net, or in print or video media and they bring up "the Iceman," tell everyone who broke the story first!

P.S. I'm kidding, by the way... I'm not so shallow that I need that sort of validation. I was actually shocked to find that I wrote on something before the rest of the media.

Anyway, here are some other mentions around in online media:

Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
People's Daily (China)
Times of India
National Geographic
BBC

ArtiFACTS: Recent News in Archaeology and Anthropology

2007-06-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here's what's new in archaeology for the previous week (below the fold):

2,100 year old melon
... with flesh still on the rind! In Japan, archaeologists recovered the melon from a layer of "wet ground" that impeded microorganisms that would have otherwise consumed the remains. This is probably the oldest known piece of melon. And to think I thought the cantaloupe remains I discovered in my refrigerator's bottom drawer were ancient.

Archaeologists in Malta are taken advantage of
Archaeologists were asked to survey Ramla Bay in Malta, assuming it was to assess the cultural resources in the region. They were told to evaluate existing archaeological remains that could be "enhanced for the future," and submitted a report that included a heritage trail known as the Roman Road. Unbeknown to the archaeologists, their report was attached to a development project and the developers are contradicting the archaeologists assessment that there exists a "Roman Road" in the development area and that there is a negative impact on the archaeological remains. According to the archaeologists:

Had we known that the report was going to be used as part of a Project Description Statement of a development permit, we would have carried out a more in-depth report on the impact the development would have on the archaeological remains and requested a copy of the development plans.

George Washington's House had Slave Passage
Not a passage to the "Underground Railroad," which didn't begin until around 40-50 years later, but a passage that allowed slaves to come and go between the main house and slave quarters without being seen by Washington's guests. The passage was found along with other archaeological remains at the site in Philadelphia, just down the street from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The importance of the find is that it provides physical evidence of the nation's slave history, which simply cannot -and should not- be ignored. It is still up in the air whether or not the National Park Service will include these artifacts and features in the new memorial that's being developed.

Iron Age Mickey Mouseketeers?
Excavations at Uppåkra in southern Sweden have uncovered over 20,000 Iron Age artifacts dating from around 900 CE, including a bronze brooch probably used as a clasp for a Viking woman's clothing and probably intended to represent a Lion King. Lund University archaeologist Jerry Rosengren said,

The find is from around 900 AD. It was probably a lion's head that originally came from France. It was however more than likely designed by somebody who had never actually seen a lion.

But as you can see from the image, the bronze clasp bears a striking resemblance to a certain cartoon mouse! And did I scoop a certain Swedish archaeologist who happens to have one of the best archaeology blogs? [Grin]

The Emergence of the Israelites in Canaan: Part II

2007-06-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

In Part I of this two part series, I discussed a few of the hypotheses that exist to explain the emergence of the Israelites in the Canaan highlands (there are others, but I mentioned three of the more prevalent ones); I also discussed, briefly, the Hyksos, which comes up from time to time in looking at the Israelite question as it relates to Egypt.

Another frequent topic when ancient Egypt is discussed regarding the Israelites is the Merneptah Stela. Read below the fold to continue the second part...

PART II

At around 1207 BCE, a stela was inscribed by Merneptah at Thebes, which mentions Israel.

The Princes are Prostate, saying ‘Peace!’ Not one raises his head among the Nine Bows. Lying broken is Tehenu; Hatti is pacified; plundered is Canaan of every evil. Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is gezer; Yanoam is made as that which does not exist. Israel is laid waste, his seed is not; Hurru is become a widow because of Egypt!

The stela, inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs, represents the first known historical mention of Israel as an entity. The sign for ysrir, or Israel, has a determinative that includes a throwing stick and a seated man and woman over three strokes, which signify foreign people. The determinatives for the other entities mentioned include the throwing stick and the sign for city/state/land, giving Israel in this stela its own, separate determinative and indicating that Israel was not a state, city or land, but, rather, a socio-ethic group living in Canaan at around 1207 BCE.

But at what point did this group, assuming it is the same group of people, dominate the highlands of Canaan and become known as the Israelites of the nation of Israel?

Looking back at the Biblical account of the Israelite conquest, Joshua’s campaign began with the city of Jericho, whose walls were felled after the Israelite army blew trumpets and shouted them down with the assistance of the Ark of the Covenant, carried into battle as a weapon employed against the Canaanites who were occupying the land promised to the Israelites by God. Once Jericho was conquered, the Israelites then moved on to other targets: Ai, Gibeon, Lachish, Hebron, Debir, Hazor, and others.

Even if the supernatural components are selected out of the story, it’s easy to see how scholars would be tempted to accept the Biblical stories of conquest as metaphorical and embellished accounts of actual events. But the archaeological evidence doesn’t appear to support the Biblical account. Most of the cities mentioned in the Biblical account were already abandoned settlements by the time Joshua’s campaign was supposed to have occurred. Jericho, Ai, Gibeon and others were apparently unoccupied by the Late Bronze Age. They each showed signs of occupation in the Middle Bronze Age as well as the Iron Age I (2200-1550 BCE and 1150-900 BCE, respectively), but were each unoccupied during the Late Bronze Age (1550-1150 BCE) when Joshua was supposed to have mounted his campaign. Economic collapse of urban settlements had already taken place in the Canaanite Highlands just as it had in other parts of the Mediterranean world.

There is also a lack of discontinuity in the archaeological record at the sites mentioned in the Biblical account. In other periods and other places, clear discontinuities are present when one culture invades and occupies another which include drastic changes in pottery styles, architecture, and destruction levels. The one discontinuity that is consistently noted, however, is the clear lack of pig bones in early Israelite settlements of the Iron Age I. Pig bones are recovered in the Highlands in previous periods as well as those sites East of the Jordan river and of the Philistines along the Mediterranean coast contemporaneous to Early Israelite settlements. This is indicative of a clear socio-ethnic identity for Israelites in the Iron I, but the question remains, where did they come from.

Finkelstein and Silberman (2001) describe the settlement patterns in the highlands of Canaan as being cyclic. The first wave of settlement occurred in the Early Bronze Age and consisted of about 100 sites which were abandoned in a settlement crisis more than a thousand years later during the end of the EBA. The crisis only lasted about 200 years or so and the new settlements at the beginning of the Middle Bronze age were double in number of the previous wave. A new settlement crisis occurred in the 16th century in the Late Bronze Age, leaving only a couple dozen settlements until the Iron Age I, when around 250 settlements emerged first with small rural communities that later developed into more complex cities with market centers and small, peripheral villages. The complexity in the highlands at this time coincided with the development of agricultural practices which made better use of the land, cultivating olives and grapes.

In the few settlements that remained during the crisis cycles, cattle bone numbers drop and the numbers of ovicaprids like sheep and goats increases, suggesting a switch to a more pastoralist lifestyle. Indeed, the early Israelite settlements resemble nomadic encampments of the 19th century where Bedouins created an oval encampment of tents with an open, central courtyard that contained their livestock. The Iron Age I phase at Izbet Sartah presents a plan of buildings in an oval formation with the same open, central courtyard. The number of rooms in the settlement is similar to the number of tents that were present in 19th century Bedouin encampments and similar oval settlements have been found in Iron I sites in the central highlands as well as the Negev and these oval settlements predate the pillar houses of later, more well-to-do Israelites. Even the earliest Israelite settlements were situated in near the desert fringe, affording opportunities to conduct both pastoralist as well as agriculturalist subsistence strategies, consistent with the finds of silos, sickle blades and grinding stones within the large oval courtyards.

It seems clear that the Israelites conquered their Canaanite ancestors not through miraculous, sun-stopping military campaigns and wide-scale genocide, but by overcoming the limitations that their Bronze Age ancestors had as Canaanite agriculturalists. In reestablishing settlements in a region abandoned for more flexible subsistence strategies of pastoralism, the Israelites created a new dawn of civilization in the highlands of Canaan. They created an ethnic identity by establishing a taboo on pork, which may have simply resulted from a taboo on raising pigs since they compete with humans for food. This simple taboo is the oldest archaeologically attested cultural practice in the region and may have led to the establishment of cultural boundaries which still affect the region today.

References

Finkelstein, I. (1996). Ethnicity and Origin of the Iron Age I Settlers in the Highlands of Canaan: Can the Real Israel Stand Up? Biblical Archaeologist, 59(4), 198-212.

Finkelstein, I., & Silberman, N. A. (2001). The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free.

Hasel, M. G. (1998). Israel in the Merneptah Stela. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 296, 45-61.

The Emergence of the Israelites: an Archaeological Perspective

2007-05-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I discussed the Exodus myth and the archaeological evidences (and lack thereof) associated with the period. I recall a comment on the post on another blog somewhere that noted my use of the phrase "[t]he same progenitor peoples of the modern day Israelites and Palestinians" with regard to the Canaanites. The commenter remarked how this was becoming more and more accepted and the reason is because of the work of archaeologists like Israel Finkelstein, who are objectively weighing the evidence and letting their conclusions arise after going where the evidence takes them.

Below the fold, I've presented a summary of some of their findings, which, as far as I can tell, haven't been successfully refuted by those that have an agenda rooted in Biblical mythology.

Several hypotheses exist to explain the emergence of the Israelites in Canaan, among them are:

1) The Biblical hypothesis: after their escape from Egypt and having wondered the desert, the Jewish people began a campaign of conquest led by Joshua at around 1230 – 1220 BCE.

2) The Peaceful Immigrant hypothesis: the suggestion that Israel conquered Canaan through gradual immigration into the region rather than abrupt and violent military conquest.

3) Peasant Revolt hypothesis: which provides an explanation that the Israelites emerged as peasants who overthrew their Canaanite masters through a religious revolution in which they developed a monotheistic religion that provided an egalitarian set of laws regarding social conduct, replacing the complex pantheon of Canaanite religious belief.

The Biblical account is very often the one taken at face-value and without question. Indeed, many archaeologists have proceeded in both the past and the present with the assumption that Israel was conquered by force as the Israelites took Canaan from its inhabitants. This conquest is preceded by the story of Exodus, in which the Israelites are chased out of Egypt as by the Pharaoh’s army as they escaped across the Red Sea and into the Sinai Peninsula. It is natural, perhaps, to associate this story with the Egyptian story of the Hyksos, since they, like the Israelites, are of Semitic origin and were “chased” out of Lower Egypt by the Pharaoh. From about 1668 - 1565 BCE, Canaanites occupied the Delta and ruled Lower Egypt. Manethos referred to them as heku-shoswet, and, Hellenized, it became "Hyksos," which means rulers of a foreign land. This later became a general Egyptian term for Asiatic foreigners.

The Hyksos had a distinctive Canaanite pottery and architecture, which is present in the archaeological record and, according to the Turin Papyrus, they ruled Lower Egypt for 108 years. One of the most prominent of their rulers was Apophis and their capital was Avaris, known today as the archaeological site Tell Daba'a.

Pharaoh Ahmose I (18th Dynasty) sacked Avaris and chased the Hyksos to southern Canaan to their fortress, Sharuhen near modern day Gaza. Ahmose laid siege to the fortress for three years before he stormed it. From that point, the Egyptians maintained tight control of the border between Eastern Egypt and Canaan. The Hyksos story, however, takes place 119 years before Exodus is alleged to have occurred, so it either isn’t the same group of people or the story survived as an echo of its original, degraded through time and embellished to retell the episode as a story of success rather than failure.

This is the first of Two parts (it ended up being too lengthy to toss out all at once) and, in the second/final part, I'll discuss the Merneptah Stele, the alleged military campaign of Joshua at Jericho, Ai, etc., and the archaeological evidences of settlement patterns in the Levant, particularly the highlands of Canaan.

Playing God? Life Created in the Laboratory

2007-05-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

Newsweek's Cover story is about abiogenesis and synthesis of self-replicating organisms. I just finished reading this article online [NewsWeek at MSNBC.Com] and noticed that PZ Myers has a post on it already. Before I read his, I thought I'd post a quick review of the article with a few quotes and encourage others to check it out.

The Newsweek article's author refers to biological researchers concerned with creating life synthetically as "SynBio practitioners," giving the field a near religious moniker. The article was informative but the slant seemed decidedly against science in this regard, going out of its way to point out the "dangers" and "immorality" of research in this field:

Despite the opposition, the researchers who work in the field, which is known as Synthetic Biology, have a disarming casualness about their work—almost as though they were building machines, rather than living things.

And,

Like most biologists, SynBio practitioners have a more materialist view of life. "Life is not magic," says Princeton's Ron Weiss, an electrical engineer who now concentrates on genetic programming of cells. He thinks older biologists like Kass have not kept up with advances in science. Of course, SynBio scientists haven't quite proven that a cell is a kind of biochemical machine, and religious biologists like Kass and Collins hang on tightly to this uncertainty. Proof will come when the first discrete, self-maintaining, self-replicating, stable organic creature—Life 2.0—is created from scratch in the lab.

And, of course, the very lead in for the magazine is the cover, which has "Playing God" in big, bold type. Then the subtitle of the article reads, "[a] new generation of scientific mavericks is not content to merely tinker with life's genetic code. They want to rewrite it from scratch."

It benefits a magazine like Newsweek, of course, to use lead-ins and call-outs that hook the reader by highlighting the controversial aspects. They'll already have the attention of those interested in the science behind the story, but such editorial strategies will ensure that those that question the research will read as well. So I really can't fault Newsweek much for playing both sides of the fence. Particularly when they include many positive aspects of the research as well:

A few projects are already giving us a glimpse of the power of this new field. The most extraordinary effort is to create a microbial organism that would produce a powerful antimalarial drug.

And,

Christopher Voigt, of UC San Francisco, and Christina Smolke, of Caltech, are in the early stages of designing microbes that would circulate through the human bloodstream, seeking out cancerous tumors anywhere in the body. The microbes might be equipped with a biodevice that detects the low oxygen levels characteristic of a tumor, another that invades the cancer cells, a third that generates a toxin to kill the cells and a fourth that hangs around afterward in case the cancer comes back.

And,

Venter and Church are eyeing an even bigger prize: a self-sustaining, highly efficient biological organism that converts sunlight directly into clean biofuel, with minimal environmental impact and zero net release of greenhouse gases.

So maybe those skeptical because of religious reasons will see what they came for: like minded scientists that dissent from the research (albeit a small minority). But, at the same time, maybe some will be swayed by the benefits and begin to question their dogmatic opposition.

Related Links:
Silver, Lee (2007) Life 2.0:
A new generation of scientific mavericks is not content to merely tinker with life's genetic code. They want to rewrite it from scratch. Newsweek, found on the web at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18882828/site/newsweek/

I Sailing a Raft of Reeds Across the Atlantic Experimental Archaeology?

2007-05-29T10:42:00.001-07:00

Not a chance. It's more like pseudo-experimental, pseudo-archaeology. But, either way, a German man plans to sail his Bolivian made raft across the Atlantic as "proof" that this is the way it was done throughout antiquity. More below the fold.

Forty year-old Dominique Gorlitz thinks that people crossed the Atlantic regularly at around 14,000 years ago based on the skimpiest of evidence. So he plans to sail a raft, most of which was made by Bolivian natives then shipped to the States, from Jersey City, NJ to the opposite shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The raft is being completed by 25 volunteers and did I mention he bases the voyage on evidence?

What evidence, you say? Did archaeologists find a detailed codex in an ancient tomb, which outlines voyages, raft designs, goods traded? Or was an intact raft found in an anaerobic peat bog or below the oxidation level of some deep lake?

Nope. None of this. Gorlitz bases his life threatening voyage on traces of cocaine and tobacco that are supposedly found in Egyptian tombs. And on a spurious cave drawing that is interpreted as Atlantic ocean currents. And the raft itself (pictured above) is designed after a 6,000 year-old northeastern African design. To paraphrase Kenneth Feder, author of Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, the evidence they're considering is really cool. But it doesn't demonstrate ancient rafting skills.

But at least Gorlitz and his volunteers are professional sailors and nautical geniuses, right?

Nope. He's a novice. An amateur. Indeed, he can't even swim, according to the linked article! But don't worry, because he's quoted in the article as saying, "It's like kung fu... The less you know, the better.'' Right.

Cocaine and tobacco traces in Egyptian tombs is something I heard/read once a few years ago, but I'm not up to speed on this. If nothing else, the Gorlitz story gave me a topic to pursue in a later post here at Hot Cup of Joe under the Forbidden Archaeology and Pseudoarchaeology labels. If anyone has information or sources for me to pursue on this, I'd be grateful. I think the topic came up at Hall of Ma'at a few years ago.

Related or Sourced Links:
http://www.1010wins.com/pages/510882.php?contentType=4&contentId=547876
image from: www.cruisingworld.com

Gilgamesh and Mesopotamian Mythology Part II

2007-05-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I discussed both the Old Babylonian and the Akkadian versions of the Gilgamesh Epic and some of their similarities and differences. I find the Akkadian acceptance and fascination of Sumerian gods and mythology to be fascinating itself. I often wonder if, perhaps, their fascination with the earlier Sumerian culture could be analogous to the fascination modern Americans have with Native American culture. Like the Akkadians, we assign many place-names based on Native words and we continue to have a special reverence for Native mythology and culture.

In this part, I'll quote two passages of the Flood Myth present in Gilgamesh which demonstrates the popularity and appeal of at least one aspect of the story that still resonates with people even today.

PART II

Non-Mesopotamian versions of the Flood diverge further. Berossos, who wrote the Greek history of Babylonia in the 3rd century BCE, has his ark land in Armenia rather than Dilmun or even Mt. Nisir. He uses the name Xisouthros instead of Ut-napishtim, indicating that he is familiar with the Ziusudra version, but the use of mountains might demonstrate an embellishment designed to show that no culture could escape the flood. Nisir is only 9,000 feet and further south, while the Armenian mountains are probably among the highest known to Berossos. It could very well be that the original intent of the story was to maintain the Dilmun connection in an inaccessible and secret land, since NIŞIRTU, the possible source of the NI SIR sign in line 140, means “inaccessible,” “secret” or “hidden.” The assumption that the sign referred to Nisir may have led to an embellishment of landing the boat on a mountain, further embellishing the significance of the Flood’s reach.

By the time the story has been adopted by Jewish authors in Genesis, many embellishments are added, such as significantly increasing the number of days of rain from six or seven to forty days and forty nights; changing the perspective to a monotheistic one; the inclusion of two of every animal; the size of the boat; and so on. Even the reason for the destruction of mankind is embellished, evolving from being noisy to being wicked. But the core framework of the Sumerian flood myth still remains:

Gligamesh XI, 145-54

When the seventh day arrived,
I sent forth and set free a dove.
The dove went forth but came back since no resting place was visible, she turned around.
Then I set forth a swallow
The swallow went forth but came back, since no resting place for it was visible, she turned around.
I then set free a raven. The raven went forth and, seeing that the waters had diminished, he eats, circles, caws, and turns not around.

Genesis 8:6-12

Then it came about at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made;
and he sent out a raven, and it flew here and there until the water was dried up from the earth.
Then he sent out a dove from him, to see if the water was abated from the face of the land,
but the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, so she returned to him into the ark, for the water was on the surface of all the earth. Then he put out his hand and took her, and brought her into the ark to himself.
So he waited yet another seven days; and again he sent out the dove from the ark.
The dove came to him toward evening, and behold, in her beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water was abated from the earth.
Then he waited yet another seven days, and sent out the dove; but she did not return to him again.

In addition to the similarities of the end of the survivor’s time at sea, other key elements remain, which include: deciding to send a flood to wipe out life on earth; selecting a worthy man to survive; building a boat; riding out the storm on the boat; offering a sacrifice on dry land at the end; and establishing a covenant between the gods and mankind. Ut-napishtim and his family achieve immortality and Noah is instructed to “be fruitful and multiply. Ishtar tells Ut-napishtim that she “shall remember these days and forget never,” and Enlil, seeing the error of his rage, takes Ut-napishtim and his wife by the hands, touches their foreheads and announces, “Hitherto Ut-napishtim and his wife shall be like unto us gods. Yahweh tells Noah, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.”

The natural appeal of Gilgamesh as an adventurous hero was likely a source of its popularity in pre-literate as well as post-literate Mesopotamia. Oral traditions may have out-weighed written ones in transmitting the story during the heights of Sumerian and Akkadian cultures, but the traces of the motif are present in cultures that are far removed from Mesopotamia in both space and time, testifying to the power of a good story to propagate itself in human culture, particularly when its themes of heroism, loss, survival, and friendship resonate so well with human nature.

References

Dalley, S. (1989). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kraeling, Emil G (1947) Xisouthros, Deucalion and the Flood Traditions. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 67 (3), 177-183.

PSD (2006) Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project. Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. Found on the Internet at: http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/index.html

Pritchard, J. B. (1958). The Ancient Near East, Volume 1: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Woolley, C. L. (1928). The Sumerians. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

The Gilgamesh Epic and its Relationship to other Mesopotamian Myths

2007-05-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story of heroism and adventure that still has an appeal to the reader today, suggesting that the human need for fictional identification with heroes and adventure is one that has possibly always existed. Keeping this in mind can help when the epic as a whole is examined and its parts dissected to reveal its origins. It can also benefit the reader of related Mesopotamian and Near Eastern Myths as motifs and themes find their way from one to another across time and space.

Part I

The standard version of the Gilgamesh Epic is comprised of written and oral stories and tales that originate from Sumer but were probably collected and redacted by one or more Akkadian scribes, perhaps Sin-leqe-unnini of the Kassite period whose name is known because he “signed” his work. But Sin-leqe-unnini didn’t invent the epic. Earlier Sumerian stories include Gilgamesh as the central character, such as Gilgamesh and the halub-tree, Gilgamesh and Huwawa, and The Descent of Inanna to the Underworld. In these and other stories, themes and events are drawn from to create the Akkadian epic where Gilgamesh, part god, part man, teams up with Enkidu who is created by the gods to provide a balancing companion to Gilgamesh. Throughout the epic, many themes are dealt with by Gilgamesh: friendship, honor, life, death, loss. But it is, perhaps, human mortality that becomes the central theme as Gilgamesh deals with the death of his friend and explores the concept of immortality with Siduri, the wine maker, in tablet ten and Ut-napishtim in tablets ten and eleven. To them both he asks, “Am I not like him [Enkidu]? Must I lie down too, never to rise, ever again?” And to both of them he says, “I was frightened. I am afraid of death.”

In the Old Babylonian version, it is Siduri where Gilgamesh’s journey ends rather than Ut-napishtim. As with Enkidu, who was humanized by a harlot, Gilgamesh is humanized by a woman (an ale-wife or wine-maker). The addition of the Ut-napishtim story, however, is significant and it imparts the significance of the flood event that is regarded in many Mesopotamian and Near Eastern stories as one that was initiated by gods to “cleanse” the land of wicked or just annoying humanity.

Other stories that included the subject of wide-scale flood, which displaces or wipes out humans that inhabit the world include the Myth of Ziusudra, Atrahasis, and Genesis, through which there are many similarities and distinctions. The similarities are interesting and useful to students of mythology and anthropology for obvious reasons, since the motifs can be traced through space and time giving evidence that these cultures had ties to each other. The distinctions are, likewise, useful but perhaps for less obvious reasons. Where the stories depart can show how cultures evolve, differ, or intentionally accept or reject the motifs of other, contemporaneous or preceding cultures.

In looking first at the similarities, the evolution of the flood myth can be examined. Ziusudra, from a Sumerian tablet dating to around 1600 BCE, provides a flood myth among the oldest in known literature. In it, the gods have decided to destroy mankind and one of the gods warns Ziusudra, Sumerian for “extra-wise,” which is the same meaning of the Akkadian name “Atrahasis.” Ziusudra escapes the flood, which lasts seven days and seven nights by boat, to the island of Dilmun, where he prostates himself before the gods.

The Atrahasis story, found on Akkadian tablets dating to about 1650 BCE, depicts the same hero in the same situation. Atrahasis is warned by Enki of the impending flood, speaking to him through a wall, and instructed to build a boat for him and his family to escape the flood which lasts seven days and seven nights.

The second Akkadian version, found in Gilgamesh, refers to the survivor as Ut-napishtim by name, which means “he found life,” though he is referred to once as Atrahasis in tablet ten, line 187 of the standard Babylonian version. Ut-napishtim weathers only six days and seven nights in the flood, however, and lands his boat on Mount Nisir (a.k.a. Nimush) rather than the island of Dilmun (perhaps Bahrain) or the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Dalley (1989) suggests at one point that the Ziusudra myth is “based on the relatively composition based on an Akkadian version of the story,” but acknowledges that the flood motif was one of Sumerian origin and was effectively incorporated into Atrahasis. The dating of the tablets themselves cannot date the individual stories and only reveal when they were scribed to clay for a given tablet. Oral traditions likely predate the cuneiform traditions and, thus, the flood motif may have existed long before the technology of writing. That the Akkadian culture is using Sumerian gods to tell a Sumerian story is telling, but examination of the differences might give further insight as to which story follows which.

Ziusudra reports that the boat lands on the island of Dilmun whereas Atrahasis has the landing at “the mouth of the rivers,” meaning the Tigris and Euphrates, which come together over 300 miles from Bahrain, often suggested as the island of Dilmun. But since Arab tradition holds that these two rivers flow beneath the sea only to emerge at the surface at Bahrain where they provide a “miraculous supply of sweet water,” it is still tenable that Bahrain is the intended location of Dilmun in the Atrahasis story. The Sumerian and Akaddian versions would seem to have a common progenitor, which is obviously Sumerian since the central figures are Sumerian as are the geographical details.

The Gilgamesh epic adopts the flood motif, with slight embellishments. The name, Ut-napishtim is contextually important since Gilgamesh is searching for immortality and it is the Flood survivor, Ziusudra (“extra-wise”) who finds it, thus living up to the new name, Ut-napishtim, which translates to “he found life” on at least two levels: surviving the deluge intended by the gods to destroy mankind; and granted immortality by the gods. The addition of the

The cuneiform sign for KUR [] in line 140 of Gilgamesh refers to "underworld; land, country; mountain(s); east; easterner; east wind" (PSD 2006). The sign for NI SIR [] is traditionally translated to mean the mountain, Nisir, which reaches 9,000 feet. But if KUR is referring to something other than “mountain,” such as land or country, then may have been derived from KUR NIŞIRTU, meaning “hidden land/country” or “secret land/country,” which is contextually consistent with the motif since the legend of Dilmun includes a Utopist perception of a place that is holy and removed from the profane. Dilmun is “pure,” “pristine” and “virginal” according to The Myth of Enki and Ninhursag.

I don't pretend to be an expert on either cuneiform or ancient Mesopotamian languages and spent more than a few collective hours looking over some of the scripts and translations involving Gilgamesh and other ancient texts. I wouldn't even consider myself a novice in the field and I defer willingly to any input others like Duane at Abnormal Interests might have to offer. The more I look at ancient cuneiform, however, the more I'm interested.

I'll post Part II in a day or so, where I'll look more closely at the flood myth in Gilgamesh and how it relates to other Mesopotamian texts, including the Noachian myth. I'll also include a short bibliography that I used for those interested in following up or finding additional sources.

New Egyptian Tomb Find May Be Best Preserved

2007-05-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Belgian archaeologists of the Leuven Catholic University discovered a tomb of Henu, a high-ranking estate manager and Egyptian courtier. The tomb dates to about 4,000 years ago and is located in the necropolis of Deir al-Barsha in Minya, Egypt.

Hieroglyphic texts on the sarcophagus of Henu's linen-wrapped mummy mention the gods Anubis and Osiris and the tomb included wooden models that depicted scenes of brickmaking, beermaking, cereal grinding, and one of a boat with 10 rowers.

The story as I found it was at ArtDaily.org, the "first art newspaper on the net."

However, after a little "internet excavation," I found the Deir al-Barsha project's website and their page on The Tomb of Henu, where I found this quote:

Intact tombs of the First Intermediate Period that are as rich as Henu’s burial have been found only rarely, the latest similar find dating back more than twenty years. Before that, a number of similar tombs, although of slightly later date, were discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The find is therefore most exceptional. Additionally all of the objects are in perfect condition which is remarkable since they are made in wood that was first plastered and then painted.

The authors of the Tomb website go on to point out that looting in antiquity was probably thwarted because of New Kingdom quarry debris covering this and other tombs in the area.

Photo Source: www.arts.kuleuven.be

Loch Ness to become World Heritage Site

2007-05-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

Nessie Fans take notice! The Loch Ness, about 37 km from Inverness, Scotland may be destined to become a World Heritage Site.

the UK's largest body of fresh water and one of the deepest at 754ft, which makes it a vital site for scientists, as well as monster hunters and tourists. Its largely undisturbed mud-beds are a source of important historical, geological and environmental data, giving clues to such phenomena as the formation of the Great Glen.

The application will need to be made to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, before it can be considered, listing it with 162 other sites like The Grand Canyon, the Galapogos Islands, and The Great Barrier Reef.

Loch Ness has some some significant peers to compare with should it be accepted by UNESCO.

Hot Cup of Joe's "Hot Cup"

2007-05-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

ScienceBlogger Dave at The World's Fair is asking SciBloggers about their mugs. I might not be his "SciBling" but with a blog title like mine, how could I resist?

The questions are:
1. Can you show us your coffee cup?
2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
3. Can you try to get others to comment on it?

Interestingly enough, the cup in my logo is one of mine. It's a clear glass mug with a gold NASA emblem on one side and the words "United States of America" embossed in the glass base. You can just make that out if you look close at the base, but the emblem is buried in shadow. That one isn't my favorite, however. I chose it because I thought it would look cool for the logo.

My favorite mug is shown to the right. Its one that I use daily and actually got up from my chair to refill while writing this sentence! I bought it at the Dallas World Aquarium and its my favorite not only because of the logo and colors, but the size and shape. It holds more coffee than most mugs and is taller -I think the style is called a meeting mug.

But does it reflect my personality? If I have a cabinet full of various coffee mugs, but I'm willing to go all the way out to my car to get this one, wash it (sometimes), and fill it rather than use of them, does that make me slightly obsessive compulsive? Or do I just prefer the size, capacity, and feel of my frog mug? I don't really have any interesting anecdotes I can share (other than a mild case of OCD), and not enough people land on my blog to hope for comments, but it's like I said. I couldn't pass up this meme with a blog tile like mine!

Colony Collapse Disorder... is it the bee rapture?

2007-05-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

Probably not. But honeybees everywhere are disappearing. They aren't dying in their hives. They're leaving and not returning, absconding the hive only to leave it with a queen and a small brood. I've recently listened to a few podcasts that discussed the matter with various experts in the field and read a few articles on the subject, some available on the Internet. Below the fold is a short discussion of CCD and some resources on the topic that I've found.

In the 1898 and again in both the 1960's and 1970's, bee colonies experienced what was known as "dwindling disease." But since the 1980's, problems for bee keepers have increased. Its become harder and harder to maintain bees than ever before as beekeepers struggle to fight parasites and malnutrition and, perhaps, just some traits that are being selected out accidentally as preferable traits have been selected for.

Mites have been a problem, particularly since the Varroa mites were unintentionally introduced from Asia in the 1980's. Varroa mites suck the blood of bees, weakening and shortening their lifespan. Infestations of Varroa aren't evident, however, since previous infestations leave dead bees in the hive and the bodies can be examined to reveal the mites.

From the 5/18/07 issue of Science:

For the last 20 years, the biggest issue for beekeepers has been the varroa mite, first noticed in the United States in 1987. Once infected, an untreated hive can be totally wiped out in a few months. "Varroa mites are public enemy number one for bees," says [Jeff] Pettis [,USDA scientist]. The mites have nearly eliminated feral colonies of honey bees, which used to pollinate many vegetable crops. Many farmers must now rent bees for pollination, which has contributed to the growth of large-scale beekeeping; since the late 1980s, the number of colonies has expanded by 25% to 2.5 million.

One spurious hypothesis involves cell phone towers. The proponents of this suggest that radiation from the towers and cell phones are affecting the bees and their navigation. But studies on the issue have not shown any connection between cell phone radiation and bees. The correlation is spurious and without supporting data. Moreover, many, if not most, of the bee colonies that have disappeared were in regions where there simply is no cell phone service.

So what's the big deal about bees anyway?

The honeybee is more than just a source of honey for sopapillas, marzipan, and fried chicken -it's essential to pollinating crops for human consumption. Bees pollinate billions of dollars worth of crops each year, including cucumbers, squash, almonds, apples, cherries, strawberries, melons, peanuts, cotton, soybean, and many, many more. Charles Heatherly, president of the N.C. State Beekeepers Association says bees pollinate "one-third of the food we eat.”

Again, from the 5/18/07 Science article:

Severe bee losses do appear to be a widespread problem (see map, above). Some 29% of 577 beekeepers across the country reported CCD and losses of up to 75% of their colonies in the last 16 months, according to a survey run by Bee Alert Technology in Missoula, Montana. Losses range from 35% to 100% of hives in each operation. Other countries are also having problems with rapid losses of wild and domesticated honey bees. In Europe, beekeepers from Spain to near the Arctic Circle are reporting deaths or disappearances of their insects, but the symptoms aren't exactly the same as in the United States.

Still, honey bee researcher Nicholas Calderone of Cornell University says it's not clear that these collapses are something other than normal losses. "We're getting a lot of reports of CCD that are not narrowly defined," says entomologist Robert Danka of the USDA bee lab in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Because of this, there have been some recent headlines and stories leading with a quote attributed to Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left."

This quote is completely unverified, however. According to Snopes.com [Einstein Bees], the first known source of the quote was in 1994 in Brussels when beekeepers staged a protest. No earlier source can be definitively attributed to Einstein, who was, of course, a physicist not an entomologist.

Researchers have removed combs from the hives and irradiated them without bees, which seems to encourage bees to return to the hives.

[USDA scientist Jeff] Pettis and his colleagues took combs from CCD-affected colonies in Florida and gamma-irradiated or fumigated some of them before inserting the combs into hives with mite-free bees imported from Australia. Six weeks later, the scientists counted the number of missing brood cells as a measure of colony health. Because the hives with the irradiated combs had fewer missing brood than ones receiving untreated combs had, Pettis suspects pathogens as a possible cause of CCD.

Migratory beekeeping is essential to pollinating crops in agriculture as well as keeping the hives alive, since the hive will be affected by periods of pesticide use on the crops, necessary to control destructive insects post-pollination. The practice also ensures that the hive can avoid harsh weather and that crops around the nation are pollinated. Almond crops in California, for instance, rely almost exclusively on bee pollination. Dry seasons in states that the bees winter mean fewer flowers; fewer flowers mean less nectar; less nectar means less produced honey and more reliance on artificial foods like sugar water. It may be that the bees are overly stressed and weakened by their moves and are being malnourished. But this doesn't explain losses of bees colonies that don't migrate.

It may be that there's a "perfect storm" of circumstances that is affecting the honeybee, if I can quote Karl Mogel of The Inoculated Mind (who guest-hosted with Kirstin and Justin on TWIS below). Bees are fed artificial food in the form of sugar water and pollen substitutes that are high in protein since the honey is being harvested and the crops themselves are low in pollen and don't produce enough pollen to allow the bees to create enough honey to get them through the winter. Also, the migration itself is stressful and may be affecting the bees. Other issues include insecticides that the bees may be exposed to prior to, during or after their moves, but this is also one of the reasons they're moved: to prevent exposure. And, what about the bee losses that are found in organic apiaries.

Is CCD caused by the verroa mite? Is it an as yet unknown pathogen? Is it poor nutrition? Could it be the stress of migration? Have pesticides finally started taking their toll on helpful insects as well as the destructive? Or is CCD a result of a combination of these, the "perfect storm" of circumstances that is causing the dying off of the bees?

Certainly it isn't a "bee rapture," but the disappearance of the bees is strange. Its a mystery since the bees abscond and don't return to die, leaving the queen and only a small brood behind. Other bees don't take over the hive nor do they raid the honey as is expected with known pathogens or with weakened colonies due to harsh winters.

But wouldn't it be the supreme irony if there was a God and it was the honeybee that was his "chosen" and not humanity?

Colony Collapse Disorder Discussions and Information

Podcasts
Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, episode #93 5/3/07
This Week in Science, 5/10/07
The Diane Rehm Show (NPR), 5/10/07
Podcasts at Penn State, 1/28/07

Websites
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Varroa mites infesting honey bee colonies
Great Plains Nature Center: Honeybees
WikiPedia: Colony Collapse Disorder
Colony Collapse Disorder Working Group - Mid-Atlantic Apiculture

PDF
The National Honey Report, 27(1) 2/12/07

Blogs
Bioblog - Labels:Bees
Celsias - Bee Colony Collapse Disorder - Where is it Heading?

Scientific Literature
Stokstad, Erik (18 May 2007) The Case of the Empty Hives. Science 316(5827), 970-972

Holden, Constance (20 October 2006) Report Warns of Looming Pollination Crisis in North America Science 314(5798), 397

The Archaeology of Exodus

2007-04-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

According to the Biblical account, Passover commemorates the Exodus of the Israelites who gained their freedom by escaping their enslavement by the Pharaoh of Egypt. For most Christians, this weekend is significant for Easter, which marks the death and resurrection of Jesus. I suppose I could write a whole blog post on just the pagan origins of Easter and the non-Christian aspects of celebrating spring festivals involving the goddess Eostre or Ishtar, but I'll abstain from anthropological discussion and stick to archaeology.

Passover and Easter coincide and are different holidays, but its the source of Passover that I'm interested in today. Passover and Seder, which follows, are fascinating and, as religious holidays go, among my favorite even though I'm neither Jewish nor a believer. Regardless of whether or not these holidays and their rituals are based in factual events, to me, is irrelevant to the fact that they provide a very valid and purposeful reason to bring family and close friends together. To me, this is rarely a bad thing.

Having said that, however, I've long been fascinated by the story that inspired Passover. A story that has been integral to Judeo-Christian mythology and often taken literally by fundamentalists. Moreover, its a story, alleged to have occurred nearly 4,000 years ago, that has probably contributed greatly to the current crises in the Middle East, specifically the Palestine/Israel conflict.

Below the fold is my discussion on Exodus and what can be said archaeologically about it, based mostly on the work of Finklestein and Silberman, cited below.

The Biblical Claim
The claim is, in a nutshell, this: 600,000 "children of Israel" escaped from Egypt where they were the slaves of the pharaoh. These Israelites were chased by the pharaoh's armies who were unable to catch them. The entire band of 600,000 former slaves "wandered" the desert, camping at various locations, encountering various peoples and kingdoms, and finally settled to form a new nation. All of this occurred, ostensibly, in the 15th century BCE. We "know" this because I Kings 6:1 tells us Solomon's temple was constructed in the 4th year of his rule, 480 years after Exodus. 966 BCE + 480 years = 1446 BCE.

Exodus 1:11 mentions two cities of Egypt: Pi-Ramesses and Pithom as forced labor projects of the Israelites. The first pharaoh named Ramesses is the son of Seti I and reigns in the year 1320 BCE, so even the 480 years of I Kings doesn't work. Pi-Ramesses was built in the Nile Delta during the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) and Egyptian records indicate Semites were used in its construction.

Who Were the Hyksos?
Often in discussions of Exodus and Israelites in Egypt, the Hyksos come into the picture. This is because the Hyksos were Semite in origin, specifically Canaanite. The same progenitor peoples of the modern day Israelites and Palestinians. The Nile Delta, a.k.a. Lower Egypt, was frequently inhabited by migrating peoples and nomads who sought to find refuge in the relatively stable delta ecology, particularly in times of drought and famine. From about 1668 - 1565 BCE, Canaanites occupied the Delta and ruled Lower Egypt. Manethos referred to the them as heku-shoswet, and, Hellenized, it became "Hyksos," which means rulers of a foreign land. This later became a general Egyptian term for Asiatic foreigners.

The Hyksos had a distinctive Canaanite pottery and architecture, which is present in the archaeological record and, according to the Turin Papyrus, they ruled Lower Egypt for 108 years. One of the most prominent of their rulers was Apophis and their capital was Avaris, known today as the archaeological site Tell Daba'a.

Pharaoh Ahmose I (18th Dynasty) sacked Avaris and chased the Hyksos to southern Canaan to their fortress, Sharuhen near modern day Gaza. Ahmose laid siege to the fortress for three years before he stormed it.

From that point, the Egyptians maintained tight control of the border between Eastern Egypt and Canaan.

For those that are quick to pick up on the similarities of the Hyksos and the Exodus tale, it's important to note that the dates also don't line up with the I Kings account and the difference is more than 130 years. Moreover, there is no "Ramesses" for whom a city can be named at this point. Though, the correlation is one to not be quickly dismissed.

What if the Exodus Story Were Concocted?
What if, indeed? Why concoct such a tale and how would we know it was either concocted or true. Believers in Christianity and Judaism assign varying degrees of trust in Old Testament mythology: some willing to accept it as myth at one extreme; others taking great umbrage to the use of the term "myth" at the other.

But if we hypothesize for a moment that the Exodus narrative (I'll stick to this term) is one that was invented by the authors of Genesis, then what might we expect to find to corroborate the hypothesis?

First, we might expect that narrative be limited to only what the authors knew. Assuming that they didn't have Iron Age archaeologists excavating sites, we can assume that their knowledge was limited to the geography and politics of their time.

Second, if the narrative is an invented one, we would fail to see corroboration in Egyptian texts of it.

Third, if, indeed, this is a narrative invented by a much later author or set of authors, we would not expect to find archaeological evidence that supports it.

Guess What?
The sites mentioned in Exodus are real.

The problem is this: the sites mentioned were sparsely populated by a few pastoralists or otherwise completely unoccupied during the alleged period that Exodus occurred in the Late Bronze Age (13th century BCE). A few were well-known and occupied much earlier and certainly much later than the Late Bronze Age, but during the Exodus period, nada. They were unoccupied at precisely the time they were reported to be by Exodus.

Not only that, but Egyptian texts don't mention "Israelites" at all. If 600,000 slaves escaped the pharaoh, they were so stealthy they slipped past all the border stations that were put into place following the Hyksos expulsion, snuck past each of the fortifications used to supply soldiers along the "Ways of Horus," the 250 km route between Egypt and Gaza. And they successfully eluded Egyptian soldiers that were already present in Canaan, which was controlled by Egypt from the 13th through the 7th centuries BCE. The only mention of "Israel" is on the Merneptah Stele where Merneptah (1213-1203 BCE) boasts that "Isrir lies in waste its seed no more." The lack of a country determinative in the hieroglyphs clearly indicates Merneptah was referring to a people not a country and the depiction of the Israelites on the stele was consistent with Canaanite hair style.

Addressing the third point above, regarding archaeological evidence, it must be recognized that there has been extensive work done in archaeology in the Levant, particularly in the Sinai desert where the "children of Israel" (all 600,000 of them) were said to "wander." Biblical stories are very much responsible for this archaeology as "biblical archaeologists," searched -and still search- for evidence that supports their beliefs.

600,000 Wandering Jews?
Let's put the number into perspective. Fresno and Mission Viejo, both in California have populations of 500,000. Bakersfield is only 250,000. Vancouver, Canada has a population of 600,000.

Not a single archaeological expedition, and there have been a great many, has discovered evidence of any substantial group of people subsisting off of the land in the Sinai desert or in or near any of the sites mentioned in Exodus. According to the biblical narrative, the equivalent of the population of Vancouver was moving around and camping in the desert for 40 years. Not only were they stealthy (not encountering the Egyptian armies who recorded even encounters with a few nomadic pastoralists tending their flocks); but they were frugal! Not a single pot sherd has been found!

Not a single campsite or site of occupation has been found with the exception of the well-documented coastal forts and stations of the Egyptian army for the period of Ramesses II or for any of his immediate predecessors or successors. There have been repeated archaeological excavations at the site of St. Catherine's Monastary in the Sinai, where Moses is supposed to have spoken to a burning bush, but the results have always been negative evidence. Not a single sherd or indication that the site was occupied in the Late Bronze Age. Modern archaeological techniques can trace the remains of hunter-gather and pastoral nomads all over the world, but cannot find a population the size of that of Vancouver in a barren desert! Indeed, the activity of a small population of pastoralists is present in the 3rd millennium (2000-3000) BCE, as well as in the Hellenistic and Byzantine periods. But the evidence is NON-EXISTENT for the Late Bronze Age.

Tell Arad
East of Beersheba there is the remains of a great Early Bronze Age city that spans about 25 acres. A "tell" is a mound of past human habitation that has since eroded from mud bricks to a pile of dirt, often built upon again and again over many generations. This tell also became an Iron Age fort, but there are no remains for the Late Bronze Age when Exodus is alleged to have happened.

This directly contradicts the biblical narrative since the king of Arad "who dwelt in the Negeb" attacked the Israelites who appealed for divine intervention to destroy the Canaanite cities (Num. 21:1-3). There's no evidence of Arad anywhere in the Beersheba valley (Negeb).

Tell Heshban
The wandering Jews supposedly did battle here with the Ammorite king, Sihon, who tried to block there passage (Num. 21:21-25). Excavations here reveal NO Bronze Age city. Not even a village.

Eddom and Ammon were alleged to be full-fledge states ruled by kings on the Transjordan plateau, yet the evidence shows that the plateau was sparsely inhabited by pastoralist populations in the Bronze Age. Not a single sedentary population is evident in the archaeological record.

Conclusion
Exodus was probably a story written by authors in the 7th century, or possibly as late as the 6th century, BCE. The place names mentioned above existed by the 7th century but not in the Bronze Age. Iron Age authors would have known of the many public works created by the Saite Dynasty in Egypt's 26th Dynasty, who employed the largest numbers of foreign settlers. A large community of immigrants from Judah was present from the 7th through the 6th centuries. Pithom, mentioned in Exodus 1:11, was built in the 7th century. Migdol, mentioned in Exodus 14:2, was built in the 7th century.

Exodus apparently did not happen in the period or in the manner in which it is portrayed in biblical mythology.

Useful References:

Beitak, M. (1996). Avaris the capital of the Hyksos: recent excavations of Tell el-Daba. London

Finkelstein, I. & Silberman, N.A. (2001). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and The Origin of its Sacred Texts. New York

Oren, E.D. (1987). The "Ways of Horus" in North Sinai. In Rainey, A.F. (editor), Egypt, Israel, Sinai: Archaeological and Historical Relationships in the Biblical Period. Tel-Aviv

Redford, D.B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton

Redford, D.B. (1987) An Egyptological perspective on the Exodus narrative. In: Rainey, A.F. (editor), Egypt, Israel, Sinai: Archaeological and Historical Relationships in the Biblical Period. Tel-Aviv

Redford, D.B. (1973). Studies in Relations between Palestine and Egypt during the First Millennium B. C.: II. The Twenty-Second Dynasty. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 93(1), pp. 3-17.

Blog Against Theocracy: Pastafarian Suspended From School

2007-04-05T22:31:00.000-07:00

Pastafarian, Bryan Killian, was suspended from school because of his religious attire in North Buncombe, North Carolina. Apparently the school warned him repeatedly to not wear the clothing to school, yet Killian persisted, remaining true to his faith. Read more below the fold.

Okay, for those that don't know (can there be anyone that doesn't?), Pastafarianism is the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Its adherents believe that the world was created by a touch from his Noodly Appendage and that it is the worldwide decline in the pirate population which has directly contributed to global warming.

Pastafarianism and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are a farce. No doubt about it. But I find the introduction of it to be hilariously problematic for the fundamentalist nutbars that demand pseudoscientific claims and religion be taught in science classes and that the fact of evolution be denigrated to something less than a hypothesis despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that supports it. If you are a fundamentalist, how can you truly deny the FSM? How can you criticize it without criticizing your own beliefs? Indeed, that is probably the very point that Bobby Henderson was making when he wrote to the Kansas School Board during their 'intelligent' design hearings. Henderson's open letter demanded that the FSM version of creation via Noodly Appendage be taught alongside ID and evolution or be sued.

The obvious criticism by the religious is that the FSM is concocted and not meant to be serious, but there's absolutely no more way to demonstrate this than there is the same criticism of Yahweh, Allah, Brahma, Elohim, Jesus, etc. In fact, I'll quote such a criticism that I recently encountered:

If a fool can concoct something and get attract a following in the name of religion it indicates that the understanding of religion has left the public sphere - just like if I could sell gold spray painted granite on the gold market it would indicate that the knowledge of what gold is has left the public sphere (even though people might say the word "gold" quite profusely)

My response was this: each of the religions of humanity may very well be nothing more than "golden spray." And their followers are only willing to scrape away the sprays of cults other than their own, whilst believing that their own cult is gold all the way through. To the believer, there is no reason to scrap at the surface to see if its just spray, since their doctrine tells them it isn't.

This is the beauty of the Pastafarian movement and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It exposes the religious for what they are as they go on about how its an "invented" religion and "obviously" not real.

The North Buncombe school that suspended Killian maintains that it was his pirate outfit which was the reason for the suspension, since it was disruptive. The very outfit that Killian stated was important for his religion and in appropriately representing his religion. I wonder if the school would be willing to extend its disruption policy to yarmulkes and kippas? Probably not. But what about a dishdasha or a hijab or even a burqa? What if a student wore a t-shirt with a graphic scene from the Passion of the Christ plastered on the front? Would school officials have the courage to be seen as insensitive to other cultures? Its easy enough to argue that there are public schools where Muslim girls wear abayas and hijabs every day without disruption. But, I assure you, there are public schools in Texas where such garb would be very disruptive if for the only reason that the students there have never seen the outfits before.

I don't think schools should be in the practice of banning religious garb they feel is disruptive. I do, however, think that there should be some limitations: hijabs are one thing, complete obscured faces and burkas are another. An Errol Flynn shirt and a tri-cornered hat are one thing, a sword and live parrot are another. But whether or not the FSM and Pastafarianism are both purely invented or not, Killians school may have opened a can of worms it might wish it hadn't.

The Blog Against Theocracy

2007-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Easter weekend, April 6-8, 2007, is the time. Your blog is the place. The Separation of Church and State is the topic. Thanks to beepbeepitsme, I found this planned blog swarm, which I'll participate in. I'm not sure what my meager contributions will be yet, but I hope the overall project is a huge success.

The link beepbeep gave me was to the Neural Gourmet's Blog with the best. Blog against theocracy, where he says

The idea is simple. Just post something related to, and in support of, the separation of church and state each of those three days. Something big, something small, artistic, musical, textual or otherwise. The topic is your choosing. Whether your thing is stem cell research, intelligent design/Creationism, abortion rights, etc., it's all good.

. But the whole thing appears to be organized mostly by Blue Gal. She discusses the blog swarm, its purpose, and why its needed at The Blog Against Theocracy Blog Swarm. Easter Weekend 2007:

The post will be against theocracy, in favor of our Constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. But there are a LOT of issues tied to this, as is pointed out in the First Freedom First website:

No religious discrimination.
PRO End-of-Life Care (no more Terri Schiavo travesties)
Reproductive health decisions made by individuals, not religious "majorities"
Democracy not Theocracy
Academic Integrity (like, a rock is as old as it is, not as old as the Bible says)
Sound Science (good bye so-called "intelligent" design)
Respect for ALL families (based on love, not sexual orientation. Hellooooo.)
And finally,
The right to worship, OR NOT.

So take your pick and write your post(s). Really, the wider variety of topics makes it all the more interesting.

Iranian Government With Panties in Wads over '300'

2007-03-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

The Iranian government is bitching to the United Nations about a movie. I kid you not. They want the U.N., specifically, UNESCO to take action against Warner Brother's and the film. A movie.

Iran Protests to U.N. Over '300'

Apparently, they're upset at being portrayed as warlike and barbaric. The nation that just put a nuclear symbol on the 50,000 rial banknote. They're concerned that Iranian culture is being insulted. Rather than engage in academic discourse on the factual inaccuracies concerning Warner Brother's portrayal of The Battle of Thermopylae, Iran wants the movie to go away. How is it possible to make Iran look any worse than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad already has with his Holocaust denials and even hosting a Holocaust denialist convention!

Iran's biggest circulation newspaper, Hamshahri, said 300 is "serving the policy of the US leadership" and predicted it will "prompt a wave of protest in the world... Iranians living in the U.S. and Europe will not be indifferent about this obvious insult." Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the movie was a US attempt to "humiliate" Iran in order to "compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers."

Iran has a very rich and proud cultural history. It's in the cradle of civilization for Pete's sake! But if they honestly think that Hollywood is a tool of the U.S. government, they know nothing of capitalism and a free market society. I'm sure every American soldier who sees the film will immediately identify with the 300 Spartans who fought off King Xerxes of Persia at the beginning of the 5th century BCE. As a former soldier, I can say with some authority that many of my former peers wouldn't even realize that Iran is in the land once known as Persia. And, for the ones that do, they're smart enough to realize that battles then have nothing to do with conflicts today!

ArtiFACTs: Recent News in Archaeology and Anthropology

2007-03-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a roundup of some recent news relevant to archaeology and anthropology. Click below the fold for more...

Circular formation found in Indiana
The earthen structure was discovered by GIS workers for Delaware County (Indiana) as they studied topographic information during plans to widen a highway. The description of the formation provided in the link above appears to be a GC-Form, where the central mound or platform is created by digging a ditch around the perimeter. At a diameter of 150 feet, it isn't quite the monument that one might find at the Liberty Earthworks (1700 ft in diameter), but significant enough that the highway project will be carefully scrutinized to ensure it doesn't impact a cultural resource.

Cambodia's Angkor may have been abandoned because of climate change
Not because of being sacked by the Thai army as originally thought. This news comes from Australian archaeologists who note that the Khmers of Angkor had a "meticulously organized water management system" designed to sustain their population of 750,000. The archaeologists believe the system broke down due to obstructions in structures that controlled it. Professor Fletcher, one of the archaeologists, suggests that the city was abandoned after climate changes brought on new monsoon patterns.

Israeli Archaeologists Discover Ancient Neighborhood
The IAA has said that the neighborhood, covering about 100 acres and included a network of streets, houses, and mikvah baths, was discovered as workers were constructing a railway. The site dates to the Second Temple era at around 70 CE. "In the digs, many stone tools and caches of coins were discovered, including a rare gold coin with the image of the Emperor Trajan," Antiquities Authority official Rahel Bar-Natan said.

Looted German Treasure in Russia via Der Spiegel
Priceless cultural treasures looted by Russia from Germany at the end of WWII are on display at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Der Spiegel has a photo gallery set up of ten or so items of jewelry and other items from the Merovingian era. They were stolen from a Nazi bunker in Berlin by Red Army soldiers in 1945. My personal favorite is the sword pictured in thumbnail (in accordance with Fair Use) to the right. Go there and see the full-size version.

Private Lancaster finally gets a funeral -93 years later!
His son was four when Private Lancaster was killed in action on November 10, 1914 when his unit, the Royal Lancashire Fusiliers 2nd Battalion, attacked German troops in the woodland near Ypres in Belgium. Two French amateur archaeologists found the remains and he was identified through his badly corroded dog tag found among his remains and other artifacts including ammo pouches, cap badge and scabbard.

Oldest Member of the Genus Homo: 160,000 years
The mandible of an 8 year old child was found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and dates to about 160,000 years ago. By examining the growth patterns of the teeth and the molar eruption, the scientists were able to add to the growing body of knowledge and data regarding early humans and the social, biological, and cultural processes in childhood development. It would seem that children of 160,000 years ago developed at about the same rate as modern children.

Happy Birthday PZ Myers!

2007-03-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

For those that don't know (as if there's anyone on the Internet that doesn't), PZ Myers is the man behind the blog Pharyngula. And he turns 50 years old in a few hours!

Happy Birthday!

A New Dating Technique: Water Diffusion in Manufactured Glass

2007-03-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Kambiz at Anthropology.net has invited me to start posting there and my first post is on the topic of water diffusion dating, based on a recent research article published in Archaeometry. I won't bother to go into a lot of detail here, since the full post is found at Anthropology.net.

I'm not abandoning Hot Cup of Joe by any means, just taking an opportunity to proliferate a little bit. I plan to post another Basics post here soon as well as another ArtiFACTS (my irregular roundup of current archaeological news). I'm working on another Stolen & Looted piece that will focus on a historical figure of the Israeli military as well as a couple posts highlighting some historical figures in archaeology and what they've contributed to the field.

New Anthro/Archaeo Blogs Added to the Blogroll

2007-03-03T21:05:00.000-08:00

Looking through my SiteMeter stats and the blogrolls of other folks, and through the submissions to past/present Four Stone Hearth issues, I've stumbled across a couple new Anthropology/Archaeology weblogs. Click below the fold to see who!

Fort'o Books - written by Robin, a 2nd semester senior at George Washington University, expecting to graduate in May (that makes two of us!). Her blog description is "because archaeology makes me happy and crazy all at once."

She has a couple of posts on the "Jesus Tomb" and some funny/light stuff. Go see. Add her to your blogroll!

Old Dirt - New Thoughts - Brian is a college professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. I think I found his site through the links from others as I was following the Walker Hill debate (the alleged 13,000 year old, pre-clovis stone tools). But Brian also has a very interesting and informative post, The Early Days of Radiocarbon Dating: an Insider's View.

Wanna Be an Anthropologist - Paul is an undergraduate anthropology major at Arizona State University. I found his blog through his 4SH submission (isn't it great how this carnival is bringing anthros together? Kudos, Kambiz!). Paul has some very interesting reading here, one of which is his 4SH submission. But he has a page dedicated to his original writing that's well laid out and has some interesting topics. I've yet to delve into them, but the weekend is young. One of these is titled The Tewa Origin Myth and cites Alfonso Ortiz (as if anyone could write about the Tewa and not). I remember trying to force myself to read that ethnography and completely not liking the process. :)

I think I'll do this for now on -write short reviews of the sites I add to my blogroll. I'll add the label "blogroll" so they can be found easily in the future.

Nice meeting you folks (Robin, Brian, and Paul)!

Four Stone Hearth Letters

2007-02-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

The Four Stone Hearth is a blog carnival that specializes in anthropology. Anthropology is the study of humankind, throughout all times and places. This discourse focuses primarily on four lines of research:

* socio-cultural anthropology
* bio-physical anthropology
* archaeology
* linguistic anthropology

Each one of these subfields represent a stone in our hearth, a blog carnival aims to publish content from all aspects of the blogosphere. Click "Read More" below to see this week's issue!

The Four Stone Hearth Tablets

Decades ago, archaeologists discovered in an ancient tell that has since been bulldozed to make way for a McDonalds (would you like fries and a Coke with your provenance?) four clay tablets of cuneiform script but in a language as yet undeciphered –until today!

The language is new and has been named Carnival and is spoken in various ancient lands, including FrStnHrth. All we have are the consonants, so by plugging in a soft e sound, we get FerStenHerth, a land that suffered the fate of others during the collapse of the Bronze Age and the attacks of the Sea Peoples. Below is a translation of these tablets.

Tablet 1: Archlgy

Alun's Letter
To Nefer-khepru-re, Great King, king of Egypt, thus speaks Alun Salt, Great King, king of Archaeoastronomy, your brother. I and my house, my horses and my chariots, my notables and my land, we are well. May well-being reign over my brother and his house, his horses and his cars, his notables and his land.

I present to you the problem of The Orientation of Roman Camps, to which I have treated the data as a binomial distribution. This debate about Roman Camps, which appears on the hallowed tablets of the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, is of great concern my brother. I vented my anger with my brother with the following words: Should my brother not know that I am ill? Why has he not supported my head? Why has he not worried and sent his messengers? These Romans will surely be the end of the Bronze Age!

A Letter From Tim Ruler of Remote Central to the King of Egypt
To Nibmuaria, King of Egypt, my brother, say: Thus says Tim, King of Remote Central, your brother. It is well with me. May it be well with you; with your household, your wives, your sons, your nobles, your warriors, your horses, your chariots, and throughout your land may it be very well… [23 more lines of well-wishes destroyed]…

Behold, one chariot, two horses, one male servant, one female servant, out of the booty from the land of Hatti I have sent you. And as a gift for my brother, the stone tools of a civilization in a far away land of a far away time [The cuneiform hyperlink is reconstructed from similar tablets]: Walker Hill a Pre-Clovis Site: MN Archaeologist Says No.

Fragment of a letter from Paul, King of Wannabe, to Akhenaten, King of Egypt
And now, as to the tablet you have sent me, why have you put the name of my brother above my name? And who is it who troubles the good relations between us? Has such behavior become custom? My brother, have you written to me thinking that we become allies? If you are my brother, why have you praised my name, when I am no better thought of than a cadaver? [...] But your name [...] I rub out [...] surely as the Toltec of a far away land rubbed out the Maya of Chitzen Itza!

A Letter From Martin Rundkvist Lord of Aardvarchaeology
To the king, my lord, my god, my Sun: Message of Abi-Milku, your servant. I fall at the feet of the king, my lord, 7 times and 7 times. I am the dirt under the sandals of the king, my lord. My lord is the Sun who comes forth over all lands day by day, according to the way (of being) the sun, his gracious father, who gives life by his sweet breath and returns with his north wind; who establishes the entire land in peace, by the power of his arm : ha-ap-si; who gives forth his cry in the sky like Baal, and all the land is frightened at his cry.
The servant herewith writes to his lord that he heard the gracious messenger of the kind who came to his servant, and the sweet breath that came forth from the mouth of the king, my lord, to his servant--his breath came back! The message carried is of the Oscarian Archaeology Journal On-Line!

Tablet 2: PHSCL ANTHRPLG

A Letter from Jeremy Bruno to Amenhotep III
To my lord, my king, my gods, my sun, this is said:
Jeremy, the dust of thy feet, at the feet of my lord, my king, my gods, my sun, seven times, and seven times more, I fall down. Behold, true to my lord, my king. I look on one side, and I look on the other side, and there is no light; but I look on my lord my king, and there is light. A brick may move away from under the coping, but I shall not move from under the feet of my master.
Let now my lord my king enquire about me of the AAAS Symposium: The Reduction of the Hominid Species.

Letter from blgtnjew, Prince of Hominin Dental Anthropology, to Akhenaton
To the Great One, thus speaks BLGTNJEW, at your feet do I fall.
You must know that Shipti-Ba'al and Zimrida are conspiring, and Shipti-Ba'al has said to Zimrida:
Many people seem to think that the bones and teeth of our ancestors as well as previous generations leave us with little information. In fact, that is not true. The bones and teeth of our ancestors, whether they are hundreds or millions of years old, can tell us a vast amount of information.

More on this revelation of dental conspiracy on another tablet still in my kiln [cuneiform hyperlink reconstructed], Basics: Dental Anthropology.

A Letter from Yann Klimentidis to Tiye
To Tiye, Lady of Egypt. Thus speaks Yann Klimentidis, King of Yann Klimentidis' Weblog. May everything be well with you. May everything go well for your house, your son, may everything be perfectly well for your soldiers and for everything belonging to you. Everything is well with me and I am keeping with my theme on the climatic conditions during the major stages of human evolution. Visit with me and hear my thoughts on Paleoclimate and Human Evolution.

A Letter from Greg Laden to Akhenaten
To the king, my Lord, thus speaks Greg Laden, [your] servant. [I have prostrated myself] seven times seven times at the feet of my Lord, the king. The city of [...] I have entered. May [the king] know that all the countries are at peace, (but) there is war against me and it is said by Mims We Shouldn’t Be Surprised That Chimps Hunt With Spears. With humble regard to Mims on Chimps: I agree and disagree. Thus, then, may the king take care of the troops of archers. May he send troops of archers against the Chimps who commit evil deeds against the king, my Lord.

A letter from Kambiz of Primatology.org
To the king, my lord, my god, my Sun: Message of Kambiz, your servant. I fall at the feet of the king, my lord, 7 times and 7 times. I am the dirt under the sandals of the king, my lord. My lord is the Sun who comes forth over all lands day by day, according to the way (of being) the sun, his gracious father, who gives life by his sweet breath and returns with his north wind; who establishes the entire land in peace, by the power of his arm : ha-ap-si; who gives forth his cry in the sky like Baal, and all the land is frightened at his cry.

The servant herewith writes to his lord that he heard the gracious messenger of the kind who has One more word on, and a video of, chimps hunting with spears. As you no doubt have heard from my king brothers, these Chimps threaten our cities as the Savanna Chimpanzees Hunt with Tools.
Is this breaking news: Chimps hunt using spears?

Letter from Kambiz of Anthropology.net
To the king, my lord, my god, my sun, the sun in the sky. Thus says Kambiz, the amelu of Anthropology.net, ruler of FerStenHerth, the dust of your two feet, the stable-man of your horse, the Sonny to your Bono: At the two feet of the king, my lord, the sun in the sky, seven times and seven times I prostrate myself both upon the belly and back. And to all that the king, my lord, has told me I have paid close attention. I am the king's servant and the dust of your two feet.

Let the king, my lord, be aware that my beef is not with what Yann and afarensis are reporting, but the people who are theorizing this all. Hold court with me and share A brief critique about the extinction of Neandertals due to climate change

Tablet 3: LNGSTCS

Letter from Corcaighist to FerStenHerth
To FerStenHerth, the ruler of Blogosphere say: Thus says the king: He sends this tablet to you, saying to you, Be on your guard; guard the place of the king where you are. Pay close attention to what he tells you so that the king does not find fault in you. Everything he tells you, pay careful attention and carefully carry it out. And be on guard! Be on guard! Do not be negligent.

Bealocwealm hafað fréone frecan forth onsended,
Giedd sculon singan gléomenn sorgiende,
On Meduselde pæt he ma no wære,
His dryhtne dyrest and mæga deorost.
Bealo...

Read the remainder of Éowyn's lament at [cuneiform hyperlink reconstructed] Bealocwealm hafað fréone frecan forth onsended.

A Letter from Katie, Princess of TEFL Logue, to Akhenaten
Let the king my Lord hear the word of his servant!
Zirdamyasha has withdrawn from Biryawaza. He was with Shuta, the servant of the king in the city of [.........] and I said nothing to him, but he deserted to me, and now Shuta has written to me: is Frananglais: A Compromise Language?!' But I did not consent to give him up. Behold, Accho is (as Egyptian) as Magdal in Egypt, but the king my lord has not heard that Shuta has turned against me. Now let the king my lord send his commissioner to fetch him.

Tablet 4: ETHNGRPHY

Letter from Robert Philen of Robert Philen's Blog

To the king, my Lord and my God and Sun, thus speaks Robert Philen, your servant, the dust under your feet. At the feet of the king, my Lord and my God and Sun, seven times and seven times I prostrate myself.

I have heard the words that the king wrote to me and who I am that the king lose his land through my fault? I am the servant of the king, and I have not rebelled and I have not sinned, and I do not retain my tribute, and I do not disregard the demands of his commissioner. They defame to me with ill will, but may the king, my Lord, not accuse me of revolting!

Moreover, my crime is, so they say, that I discovered Bertrand Russell's Chicken: Sign Experience and the Human Mind!

*********************************

I hope you enjoyed the creative license I took with this week's Four Stone Hearth. In case you didn't get it, I modeled the "letters" above after the Amarna letters, copying some of them verbatim and substituting names and websites. There are one or two mild gags hidden in the text here and there, but nothing spectacular. At least three of the links were sent to me by bloggers other-than-the-authors, specifically the links in the Linguistics and Ethnography sections.

My hope was to make this week's Four Stone Hearth fun and desirable for future iterations. There are a LOT OF ANTHRO BLOGGERS OUT THERE! Send your posts! Get some traffic! Find a sense of communitas (to invoke Victor Turner) and liminality!

The next Four Stone Hearth will be hosted at Mayacaves.org on March 14th.

Biblical Archeaology: Tomb of Jesus?

2007-02-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

James Cameron is to release a documentary that claims to reveal the discovery of the tomb of Jesus Christ. He claims the evidence is statistical analysis and DNA... showing the Messiah was buried next to his wife, Mary Magdalene and their son, Judah (the "Grandson of God?").

Before I read further in the article, my first thought was what were the comparators and controls?

Apparently, construction workers were erecting an apartment complex when they found the 2,000 year old ossuaries in a burial cave on the West Bank in East Talpiot back in 1980. 1980!? The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has been pressuring archaeologists to publish or be punished lately, and there are excavations from the 1980's that are just now finding their reports in publication, but, surely, such a discovery would have found academic publication far sooner than now!

The article linked above cites the IAA as noting that, of the 10 ossuaries found, 6 had the names Mary, Matthew, Jesua son of Joseph, Mary, Jofa, and Judah son of Jesua. All very common Jewish names unless I'm mistaken. The article goes on to paraphrase the filmmakers as saying that their find in no way implies that Jesus wasn't actually resurrected 3 days after being killed. They really didn't need to, since modern medical science informs us in this regard.

What the article doesn't tell us is what the comparators were in the statistical and DNA analyses James Cameron and his film crew used (or, ostensibly, outsourced to actual researchers). Presumably, one will need to pay $7.50 (not including popcorn and a drink) to find out.

Robert Park's list of the Warning Signs of Pseudoscience lists as #1 "the discoverer pitches his claim directly to the media." I think this fits. As time goes on, perhaps other warning signs will emerge: a powerful establishment (religion? "mainstream" archaeology?) will seek to suppress the claim; the scientific effect at the limits of detection (we'll have to wait for the statistical/DNA data sets to see); evidence is anecdotal (so far anyway); the discoverer worked in isolation (since 1980!?).

Or... maybe the data is genuine. I'm not holding my breath.

Development of farming compared and contrasted between two regions: the Tehuacan Valley in Mesoamerica and the Levant in the Near East

2007-02-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

Several hypotheses exist to explain the development of agriculture: Childe's oasis theory; Sauer's sedentary hypothesis; and Binford's marginal habitat hypothesis.

V.G. Childe's oasis theory proposed that major climate changes following the Pleistocene created "oases" of habitable regions, which forced humans into close proximity to plants and animals, causing them to develop familiarity with each other. This, Childe presumed, made it easier for humans to adapt plants or animals for their uses. One of the faults with this hypothesis is that it fails to explain why previous interglacial periods didn't result in domestication or why domestication occurred without "oases" of habitation.

Carl Sauer's sedentary hypothesis suggested that domestication began because of rich resources that freed people to experiment, giving rise to domestication. Luis Binford accepted this explanation, but argued that it wouldn't be reason enough to abandon hunting-gathering in favor of the more difficult and labor-intensive food production strategy. Binford's hypothesis of marginal habitat was, then, that demography became the driving force to make food production a favorable strategy.

Binford's hypothesis, in my opinion, is represented in both the Tehuacan Valley of Mesoamerica as well as the Levant of the Near East.

The microbands of 1 to 2 families in the Tehuacan Valley at around 10,000 - 7,000 years ago were hunter-gatherers, but, as populations increased, they found themselves increasingly circumscribed to the environment, which naturally gave rise to competition for resources resulting in conflicts and unifications as they found social solutions to their resource problems. At around 7,000 - 5,000 years ago, domesticates like avocado, chilis and squash were introduced to the Tehuacan Valley. Maize is introduced at the end of this period, but isn't an important part of the diet.

Between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago macrobands of up to 100 people emerged as did new domesticates of like the bottle gourd and crooked-neck squash. In addition, the mano and metate is introduced for grinding. Maize is used, but not as an important member of the diet. It was between 3,500 - 2,300 years ago that sites in the valley became the most sedentary and were occupied year round. It was also at this point that corn appeared as a clearly more important addition to the diet and with larger kernels that must have developed due to selective processes that affected the development of the species. Cotton is also being used and, perhaps, cultivated. River terraces are settled and permanent structures in the form of pit houses are used.

The Natufian culture of the Levant in the Near East also began as a hunter-gatherer society at around 13,000 - 12,800 years ago. Climatic improvements of this period were favorable to hunting and gathering food resources, but this also made it favorable for population increases. Foragers during this period were socially affected since nearly every eco-zone was occupied, pressuring them into semi-sedentary lifeways with reduced mobility. The wetter conditions made sedentism a favorable and practical lifeway. Early Natufians, often referred to as the earliest farmers, certainly cultivated wild wheat and barley, as evidenced by sickle blade analysis that revealed silica gloss on microliths from reaping grains. Their interactions with cereal grains and other plants likely led to cultivation as conditions became challenging with the Younger Dryas period of dryer, colder conditions that lasted from 12,900 – 11,500 years before present as higher elevations saw a brief but rapid return to glacial conditions. In the Levant, this caused rapid reduction in vegetation belts, forcing humans to seek new subsistence strategies.

Intentional cultivation was now the key to surviving as Late Natufians responded to the effects of the Younger Dryas, which likely caused unintentional modification to the plants as certain characters of the species were selected, specifically a tougher rachis that didn't allow the grain to easily disarticulate from the central stalk at maturity. Wheat became an important staple for the region, proving to be adaptable and able to provide necessary nutrients while affording the ability to be stored for consumption in times of famine. Sedentary lifeways were now necessary because of either the demographic problems associated with population densities or because of the need to manage and store crops. By the time farming was in full-swing in the Levant, villages of 300-500 individuals were present.

In both the Tehuacan and the Natufian cultures, demographic pressures provided the impetus for moving to sedentism and farming as macrobands and early chiefdoms of hundreds of individuals sought viable subsistence strategies. Competition for resources may have led to warfare as well as unification, but the result was people working toward common goals of cultivating plants and managing animals in established "homelands." With the Levantians, developing their staple crop of wheat was relatively rapid compared with the Mesoamericans who domesticated gourds, chilis, avocados and cotton before maize became an overwhelming important staple. In fact, maize was domesticated but remained a relatively unimportant crop for about 2,000 years before it was cultivated in significant quantities. Still, both cultures shared striking similarities in demographic pressures as their populations grew; the development of pit houses as they made the transition from mobile to sedentary; the use of grinding stones -mano and metate in Mesoamerica, and the quern in the Levant; the domestication of the dog; the development of pottery; the use of storage pits; and so on. One of the most significant differences was, perhaps, the introduction of the plow. This technology didn't find its way into Mesoamerica because of a lack of draft animals until equines were introduced by European invaders.

References:

Binford, Lewis R. (1968). "Post-Pleistocene Adaptations." In New Perspectives in Archaeology. Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford, eds. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, pp. 313-342.

Braidwood, Robert J. (1960). The Agricultural Revolution. Scientific American, vol. 203, pp. 130-48.

Harris, Gregory (2007). Red hot chili pepper research spices up historical record: Archaeologists trace domestication and dispersal of Capsicum species. Eureka Alert [15-Feb-2007].

Sauer, Carl, O (1952) Agricultural origins and dispersals. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

(FICTION) A Day in the Life of Aqhat -a Mesopotamian Farm Boy

2007-02-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

This is the first time I've posted any fiction here at Hot Cup of Joe, but I thought I'd share this short, short story. It's only a few paragraphs and lends itself well to a blog post. I was tasked once during a class to come up with a bit of creative writing that gave a sense of what it was like for someone living in a one of the periods that were studied. The class was on prehistoric societies and covered Australopithecines to just before writing and cities. My focus for the assignment was the early Levant and what life would have been like for an adolescent in a time when agriculture was beginning to take off as a method of food production. What would he have seen? What would he have done? I drew some inspiration from a real Mesopotamian story of Aqhat, and anyone who has read it in Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts, will recognize a few things.

Perhaps I'll continue writing about Arqhat someday...

Read the short story below the fold.

Sunrise in the valley of Shapsh, in the region that will one day become known as the Fertile Crescent, was always one to behold for Aqhat. As the first son of Danel the Rapha-man, it was Aqhat the Youth's responsibility to see to the affairs at hand. But those affairs could wait the few moments it took for Shapsh to bath the valley in golden light and early morning warmth. The plots of grain Aqhat's family and others grew in the valley gave the sun-goddess for whom it was named its divine beauty, especially at sunrise.
A goat from the flock tried to nibble at the flat bread in Aqhat's hand, pulling him back in from the divine scene before him and reminding him of his morning's task. When Paghat gave him the two loaves, she tucked one in his robes and the other in his hand, "for the goat" she said with a knowing smile. Aqhat's sister always seemed to know the future.
"Then it is yours!" Aqhat told the goat, laughing out loud. It was a fine morning and perhaps it would please Baal to show generosity to the goat. Aqhat gathered the rest of the flock and continued about his task of taking them to Ghazir at the village. Ghazir would then be charged to deliver the 5 goats to his master along with the sealed tokens. In exchange, Aqhat would receive one ass for his father's farm. In addition to farming wheat, they also raised goats and these five were hand-picked by Danel to go to Ghazir's master. Danel had many who were indebted to him and Danel was, himself, indebted to others. But because so many seemed to revere his father and seek his counsel on a great many things, Aqhat was sure more were indebt to Danel than he was to others. Aqhat chose, however, not to worry about such things and was happy to do his father's bidding as it gave reason to visit the village.
Entering the village, Aqhat saw women grinding wheat or barley in querns for flour to make morning bread. Aqhat met Ghazir near the potter's home at the village. It was here that most trading in the village was done and near the potter's oven was also a baker's since they shared the same wood for burning. The fire in the bread oven having already burnt offerings to first El then Baal, the baker was going about her task of plucking finished bread from the ashes and sticking replacements to the inside wall of the oven. Ghazir was busy chewing down the last bite of fresh bread when Aqhat spotted him.
Aqhat did not particularly like Ghazir nor did he trust him, but Danel was wise in giving his son the sealed tokens with the goats. Should Ghazir try to cheat his master by trading one of the goats before delivering them, Ghazir's master would know once the seal was broken and the tokens counted. At some point, a middle-man such as Ghazir must have made an enemy and delivered his goods not knowing that the tokens inside were too many since the custom now included representing each token on the outside of the clay ball which sealed them. This way, Ghazir would know that the five goat symbols on the ball's exterior would match the five tokens inside.
As Aqhat neared Ghazir, who still had crumbs of bread on his lips and in his beard, he held the ball and shook it so the tokens rattled.
"Where is my ass, Ghazir?"
"Aqhat the Youth! Come my friend, I'll take you to him."
Tied to a stake behind the potter's house on the edge of the village was, indeed, Aqhat's newly acquired ass. He traded Ghazir the ball of tokens and the stick he used to mildly threaten the goats for the rope securing the ass. "Keep a hold on this one and the rest will follow," he told Ghazir. "If you have any more of that bread, offer him a piece and he will follow you anywhere."
"Have you visited the skillful one that honors Khasis of late? He has a new bow that would be the envy of even Anath and he wants only nine sheqels of silver for it," Ghazir informed.
"Since I have not even a single sheqel of dung, the Warrior Goddess can have it. For now, I must take my ass home. May your journey be safe, Ghazir."
"And yours, Aqhat."
Out of the village and back to his father's home Aqhat led the ass, pausing only to allow it to drink from the water of the nearby brook. Looking back at the village, Aqhat wondered how many lived there now. Many of those that farmed the nearby lands had taken residence there and shared granaries and threshing floors as well as labor. Others who didn't even farm were able to prosper there such as the potter and the skillful one who made things with his hands like bows and darts. Even the women who made bread seemed to find that task filled their day. The village was full of people to talk with, learn from, share stories with and sing with at happy times. Traders passed through from the places where the black cutting stones grew in the mountains, telling tales of adventures that Aqhat dared only dream of in private. Perhaps some day, Danel would move his family to the village as his business dealings seem to require more and more trips there anyway. Such a day Aqhat surely looked forward to.
Aqhat turned from the village on the horizon and toward his family's farm and took his ass home.

Four Stone Hearth: Special Edition

2007-02-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

Boa's Blog was originally scheduled to host Four Stone Hearth today, but due to unforeseen circumstances, I'm going to substitute as host today.

Edit: As it happens, Boa's Blog did have the Four Stone Hearth up, so let me extend my apologies for overstepping. Kambiz and I were online last night and realized that there hadn't been any posts in a while at Boa's Blog and were worried after midnight that it might not get published, so we went with plan B. I'd like to point everyone to his blog for the 9th issue of Four Stone Hearth.

Archaeology

Viking Period Amber Gaming Pieces, by Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology.
Martin describes the finds from a boat grave excavation in Östergötland, a province in the south of Sweden. He's included photos of the spherical amber gaming pieces and a bit of discussion about the dating involved as well as how the game, hnefatafl, was probably played. Be sure to look through the comments, as there is a link by one of the commenters to a modern version of what the game may have looked like.

Apologetics Archaeology? Round Two. Christopher O'Brien has some very interesting remarks about Syro-Palestinian archeology and raises some valid question regarding agenda-driven research. There's been some back-and-forth among blogs that deal with so-called "Biblical Archaeology" with regard to biblical-minimalists versus biblical-"maximumists" and Chris discusses some of it here and links to sites elsewhere that continue the discussions.

Cahokia Mounds circa 1989 by afarensis. He includes a brief discussion and some photos of the Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, IL -just across the river from St. Louis (the Mississippi River, that is).

Cultural Anthropology and Ethnographic Studies

An Evolutionary View of Humans 1: Introduction. Greg Laden offers a first post in a series on the evolutionary perspective of human culture. In his own words, "an evolutionary view of what we are … what human beings are all about … is best framed in the context of a hunting and gathering way of life" Greg also has some interesting discussion going on in the comments section and has invited readers to suggest related topics for him to cover. As always, Greg's blog is a good read! Go there! Tell him I sent you.

Linguistics

African Lingua Francas, by Christopher Green at Chris's Linguistics Blog. Interesting insight and overview of the Lingua Franca of various regions in Africa that goes beyond the obvious languages of former colonial empires.

Physical Anthropology

Chimpanzee Archaeology - stone tools used by chimps from 4,300 years ago, presented by Primatology.org, a blog run by a group of volunteers interested in the research, preservation, and conservation of primates. They've posted a discussion about the recent news of prehistoric chimpanzee tools discovered in West Africa's Ivory Coast and dating to around 4,300 years ago. They've also included a second, related post: Video of nut cracking behavior of Chimpanzees, which you just have to see if you have any interest at all in primates.

Bones Of Contention Go Home, by Tim Jones at Remote Central. Tim posts a very interesting discussion of debate between Native Americans and archaeology with regard to repatriation of remains and artifacts to Native Tribes according to the the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, (NAGPRA). Not only is the discussion lively, but the links alone are worth the visit. Tell him I sent ya.

And the Valentine's Day Special Entry:

Mantua, Italy's Neolithic lovers locked in eternal embrace by Kambiz Kamrani. I'm sure everyone in the anthro/archaeo circles have seen this story by now, but Kambiz has a few good photos linked as well as some quotes from the original story. And if you haven't seen it... you're in for a treat. Is it just me, or do the two skeletons even create the shape of a heart?

The Rise of Sumerian Culture

2007-02-14T00:50:00.000-08:00

There are those that might argue that no other single culture had such a lasting impact on humanity as that of the Sumerian. This is a bold position, but one that I hope to support at least well enough to give you a new perspective on Mesopotamian and Near Eastern civilizations and, perhaps, modernity.

In this post, I’ll briefly discuss the invention of writing and the culture, people and economy of Sumeria, and then ponder the origin of the Sumerians.

One of the most remarkable advancements of civilization is writing. In Mesopotamia, writing has been generally assigned as a Sumerian innovation that occurred in three main stages.

Stage one: clay tokens and hollow clay balls called bulla. The tokens themselves represented commodities like animals or grain and the hollow ball, the bulla, was used as a security device. The advantage of this sort of representation is that a trader could trade a herd of goats through a middle man without worry that the middle man might short the sale, keeping a few goats for himself. The middle man knows that the clay ball contains the representative number of goats in the form of clay tokens..

Stage two: bullae with clay tokens, but the outside incised or impressed with numerals. The information on the inside (the tokens) was duplicated on the outside (the impressions). Recording it on the outside probably reassured the middleman that the traders aren’t shorting him, since the number inside and out should both match. Any discrepancy would reveal the guilty party

Stage three: tablets
3a: numeral tablets. The earliest tablets are referred to as proto-cuneiform since they include symbols that refer to numbers. In economic transactions like trade, the most important things to keep track of are numbers. Documents like this are essentially methods of keeping track of numbers: numbers of cattle; numbers of goats; volume of grains like barley; numbers of slaves; etc.
3b: tablets with signs. In Mesopotamia, the earliest script, of course, was cuneiform. Produced by a wedge-shaped stylus, the scribe wrote on clay tablets that stored the text, particularly after firing the clay, for centuries. Once signs get introduced, they begin an evolution to script. A symbol for “head” is a very obvious pictograph that resembles a head in 3100 BCE during the Uruk period. A hundred years later, the relationship can still be made out. By 2500 BCE, however, the Sumerian symbol for head is more abstract and less obvious, though the relationship can be seen when put into context. By adding the symbol for “bread,” the Sumerian word Gu₇ is produced, which means “to eat.”

Putting the advent of writing into perspective with regard to the Sumerian culture is important because of the many “firsts” this allowed the Sumerians to accomplish: the first novel, the first prescription, the first cosmogony, the first farmer’s almanac, the first law codes, and so on. Each of these found in clay tablets uncovered in excavations at sites like Ur, Eridu, and Uruk. It probably isn’t that other cultures didn’t think of these things or have stories, but until writing was invented, they hadn’t any way beyond oral tradition to effectively record them.

Sumerian writing had a profound effect on the rest of Mesopotamia as they engaged in trade to and from regions as far away as Egypt and Anatolia and perhaps even Afghanistan. Copper from Anatolia and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan found its way to Mesopotamia then on to Egypt where lapis was prized. But the Sumerians made good use of it as well.

The impact of Sumerian literature and writing on the ancient Near East is a lasting and profound one. Gilgamesh, clearly a Sumerian story, survived and was passed on to the Akkadians and the Babylonians, where most of the story as it is known today has survived. The story even resonates in Genesis where parts of the Noachian flood myth are nearly line-for-line correlates with Gilgamesh. Cuneiform script itself was adopted and used by cultures across Mesopotamia and Southern Anatolia as well as Egypt. Cuneiform was written in most languages of the day: Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Elamite included. And, even after Sumerian ceased being a spoken language, it continued to be an academic language for years much like Latin in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Sumerian People Culture and Economy.
Sumeria had two main centers, Eridu in the south and Nippur in the north, but it had 15 or so main and independent city-states including Eridu, Nippur, Mari, Agad, Ur, and Uruk. Each city-state had its own god or goddess. Eridu’s god was Enki and Uruk’s deity was the goddess Inanna (Ishtar).

The Sumerians adopted the agricultural practices of the region and many if not most of the words they used for agriculture, primitive industry, and local flora and fauna were Semitic or at least non-Sumerian. Words that related to law, politics, sophisticated metalworking and the like were all Sumerian. These distinctions give some clue as to what they brought with them and what was adopted upon arrival to the region. The Sumerians raised goats, pigs, sheep and cattle and grew typical Mesopotamian crops including wheat, barley, lentils, dates, etc., and they used donkeys as beasts of burden. Their agriculture depended heavily on irrigation and they made good use of the shaduf, a tool that allowed water to be lifted from one body and moved to another using a lever balanced on an upright frame. Such technology can lift 2,500 liters of water/day.

Because the region lacked minerals and trees, their architecture was primarily of mudbrick. Sumerians built intricate cities with streets, alleys, temples, and palaces as well as harbors and canals. Extravagant temples and palaces demonstrated that they had the ability to conscript intensive labor for public architecture as well as the wealth to make it happen. Immense ziggurats like that at Ur were constructed in dedication to their gods and aren’t generally believed to be actual places of worship or ceremony, at least not for the public. Indeed, many of the earliest cult centers were exclusive to elites and the public was kept away. The ziggurat may be a representation of mountains and the shrine at the top, if we are to believe Herodotus, was the place “on high” where the god resided. The ziggurat may even have influenced early Egyptian mastabas and the Genesis myth of the Tower of Babel may have been inspired by the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.

The origin of the Sumerian people.
The origin of the Sumerians is simply unknown. What is known is that they were non-Semitic. They didn’t originate from the region for which they are known. This presents some problems for archaeologists such as what were the pre-Sumerian cultures present in the region if the Sumerians are immigrants. And from where did the Sumerians originate. Linguistically speaking, Sumerian is an isolate. It has no known language family, making it even more difficult to pin down the origin of the culture.

One hypothesis is that the Sumerians were invaders at around the Ubaid or Uruk period, but this doesn’t follow since the archaeological record shows continuity from the early Ubaid through the Dynastic periods. Excavations at temple sites show occupation that is clearly Sumerian through lower levels where characteristically Sumerian features aren’t found. Identifiably Sumerian artifacts are found no earlier than the Jemdet Nasr period, but temples like the one at Eridu have levels that go back much further. The best evidence points to a type of acculturation occurring where a cultural exchange happened rather than an invasion.

But that still leaves the question of from where did the Sumerians come? One hypothesis that has fallen in and out of favor (mostly out as near as I can tell) is that the Sumerians arrived from the east via the Persian Gulf. Another is that they arrived from the north from mountainous regions. The latter might explain their affinity for “mountain-like” ziggurats as they attempted to recreate the conditions by which they worshipped in their homelands where shrines may have been constructed atop mountains. Their unique skills in metalworking might also offer a similar clue since ores for such trades would be more readily available in a mountainous homeland. Perhaps they are expatriates or refugees who fled the inundation of the Black Sea around 7150 years ago. This might even have provided an originating source of the flood myth prominent in the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh!

ArtiFACTS: Recent News in Archaeology and Anthropology

2007-02-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

Second Temple in Jerusalem in wrong spot!, Bulgarian archaeologists want higher wages, New Discovery of Old Sarcophagi in Egypt, and the 5,000 year-old embrace will go uninterrupted.

These are some interesting stories and their links and discussion is below the fold!

Second Temple is in the wrong spot? Proffessor Joseph Patrich of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology thinks so. He thinks that the temple, its courtyards, its gates, and so on, should be south and east of the current location. The reason Patrich thinks the actual temple location is different is because of data he used that was gathered in 1866 by Charles Wilson during a survey that mapped an underground cistern.

[O]ne can "reconstruct" the placement of the laver (a large basin) that was used by the priests for their ritual washing, with the water being drawn by a waterwheel mechanism from the cistern. After this purification, the priests ascended the nearby ramp to the sacrificial altar. By thus locating the laver, the water wheel, the ramp and the altar, one can then finally map, again in coordination with the Mishna, the alignment of the Temple itself and its gates and chambers.

Patrich stands by the assertion that his work isn't politically motivated in any way and that its purely academic, but with the tension that exists in the region and between the Palestinians and the Jews over what both consider to be a "holy site," any new information or archaeological innovation deserves to be carefully vetted.

Three Painted Wooden Sarcophagi Recovered at Saqqara.
Japanese archaeologists recently unearthed the three coffins which dated to the Middle Kingdom, nearly 5,000 years ago. Two of the sarcophagi were designed for a man called Sabak Hatab and a woman named Sint Ayt Ess and these are the oldest. The third belongs to a New Kingdom owner of the 18th Dynasty, ca. 1,500 BCE.

5,000 Year-Old Embrace Will not Be Disturbed
The much-linked to find of the "stone-age lovers" who were in time for Valentine's Day and emailed to every archaeologist and anthropologist with a computer will not have their embrace interrupted in the name of science.

Buried 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, researchers will scoop the whole site and remove it instead of removing it bone-by-bone. Lots of interesting facts surround the couple: they were buried the wrong way (north-south, instead of east-west like contemporaries), together instead of singly, heads intact instead of decapitated, etc. And lots of speculation exists about their demise.

I say the man died and his family buried the love of his life with him since they new he couldn't stand to be without her.

The Gall of Some People

2007-02-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

Up to 25% of all people have gallstones, according to Wikipedia. And, I can attest, they can cause pain. A recent lull in my posting here is due to having surgery on Thursday to remove my gallbladder.

It all started several months ago with a few mild episodes. What I thought was gas or indigestion turned out to be pain associated with the constriction of my gallbladder with stones in it. The gallbladder stores bile created by the liver and helps in digestion. Bile contains water, cholesterol, salts, fats, proteins and such and work to break down fat in the intestine as digestion occurs.

Stones form in the gallbladder for a few reasons and, among them, is too much cholesterol. The stones then reside in the bladder and cause discomfort or pain when the gallbladder contracts as it secretes bile into the pancreatic duct. Extreme pain can occur (as I can also attest!) when a stone is being passed through the cystic duct. Lucky for me, the stones didn't get any further than this. If one should have passed to the common or main bile duct, which is shared by the liver and gallbladder to secrete bile to the pancreas, then things could have been more complicated. Liver enzymes increase and bile flow is obstructed from the liver causing jaundice if the stones don't pass successfully to the intestine.

The pain. I've experienced extreme pain several times in my life. Once, I cut my finger to the bone while I was on a field exercise in the U.S. Army. I didn't have time to locate bandages so I wrapped my finger in duct tape and drove on with the mission. The pain was unbelievable but nothing compared with the pain I felt about two weeks ago at about 3:30 am. At 5:00 am, I finally drove to the hospital emergency room and checked myself in. By the time the doctor examined me and gave me morphine for the pain, I found a new appreciation for what pain means. If I had any state secrets, I would have talked. I would have made something up if the pain would stop! But the morphine was good.

I left the hospital (with my wife driving) and filled my prescription for Vicodin but never needed it. Per the doctor's advice, I avoided fatty foods. In fact, I maintained an almost "no fat" diet for the entire week before my operation, so as to not cause the gallbladder to restrict. I was not about to go through that pain again.

Now, with gallbladder gone, I can eat fatty foods again, but I think I'm done with them. When I was in the Army, I was in good shape and ate pretty well. It's only been in recent years that I've allowed myself to eat whatever. And working full-time and going to school almost full-time at age 40 makes it easy for me to skip opportunities for physical fitness. I don't run any more or visit the gym.

In just one week of avoiding fatty foods, I found myself on the last notch in my belt. The last notch in the good direction. If I stick to low-fat and get some exercise, who knows? Maybe I'll need to buy a new belt altogether. I'm not terribly overweight, but I've definitely been in better shape.

Now... where did I put those running shoes?

Kevin Trudeau: Pseudo-Advocate for the Consumer

2007-02-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

Kevin Trudeau has been a topic of concern since my very first post here at Hot Cup of Joe. I've received lots of e-mail and comments and Trudeau continues to be one of the most consistent search hits from places like Google. All this in spite of the fact that my blog is mostly an archaeology and anthropology blog, though I try to concern myself with skepticism from time-to-time.

That being said, I received a recent comment on Part 1 of my Natural Cures review that I wanted to put on the front page. Kevin Trudeau is a self-labeled "consumer advocate" and, as the anonymous commenter below points out, this is naught but a deception to make money. I've edited Anonymous' post for spelling and grammar, but the rest is his/her original words, which you can find in the comments linked above. Thank you, Anonymous, for sharing this with us, and read the rest below the fold:

Listen to all of you who swear by Kevin and his stories are lame there are so many people he has ripped off and continue to rip off I aught to know I worked for his company selling his books. I believed in him until I went into customer service and actually saw how the people that believed in him were treated by the company that does his distribution and shipping

I thought that if I got into the customer service part of the company I could actually help people and that is totally wrong his newsletter cost people a bunch of money all at once and the thing is that half of them never knew it until they had an over draft charge. Their way of dealing with the customers is to have us reps tell them that they will be receiving their refunds in approximately 60 days and you don't know how many time I had to calm customers down because they were ripped off and there was nothing I could do to help them.

He is the biggest scam artist ever. he prays on old people and poor people that are looking for some cure that his infomercials claim are in the book Yes, if you have a computer and the resources there is some good things in there, but most of it is garbage because I have looked it up on line myself because I refused to order his book which seeing as I worked there I could've gotten it for free. I didn't want it because it is useless.

Don't get scammed by the new book on weight loss. Please take my advice and don't bother especially if you have the CD because they are the same with just a hair of different info in them.

I am also going to find the web page for all the complaints against him and post an apology to all the customers I promised I would help because I was never allowed to call them back by company policy -I would've had to do it on my own time even though the supervisor tells us to tell them we will call back with info when received she never gets back to rep to do cb even when reminded she is not a bad person either just doing her job

Thank you, Anonymous, for coming forward with your story. Doubtless, there are many die-hard Trudeau followers (he really does have a cult following) that will label you a "heretic" and discount your story as that of a disgruntled employee, but you've characterized what I've been saying about Trudeau all along: he's a con man praying on the weak, needy and desperate. He's not a consumer "advocate" at all, but rather a leach, sucking money from them where he can with his fangs of deception. Trudeau successfully deceives the public into thinking that he's their advocate and that he's protecting them against the "establishment."

The reality is that Trudeau is exactly the problem he claims to be an advocate against: corporate theft of consumer capital with regard to health concerns.

Other Posts on Trudeau, the con-artist:
Review: Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures, Part 1
Review: Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures, Part 2
Yet Another Kevin Trudeau Con
The Pseudoscience of an "Infomercial" Conman

Stonehenge: settlement may have housed its builders

2007-01-30T10:29:00.000-08:00

Stonehenge is one of those classic sites one thinks of when archaeology is discussed. Now, archaeologists working at Durrington Walls on the Salisbury Plain about 2 miles from Stonehenge itself think they've located the settlement that the neolithic builders of the monument called home. With hundreds of residents, this settlement becomes the largest in Britain of its time 2,600 to 2,500 BCE. The houses excavated to date have the same layout as those at Skara Brae.

"In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards," said archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University. [...] "It is the richest - by that I mean the filthiest - site of this period known in Britain," Professor Parker Pearson told BBC News. "We've never seen such quantities of pottery and animal bone and flint."

Read More at:
Stonehenge Builders' Houses Found [bbc.co.uk]
Stonehenge Settlement Found: Builders' Homes, "Cult Houses" [nationalgeographic.com]

Archaeology and the Public: Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

2007-01-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

afarensis asks "where are the children?" in the context of where are they in the archaeological record. In another context, I can answer that they're at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, learning about science and archaeology. Look below the fold to get the full scoop.

A private, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Crow Canyon "is dedicated to understanding, teaching, and preserving the rich history of the ancestral Pueblo Indians (also called the Anasazi) who inhabited the canyons and mesas of the Mesa Verde region more than 700 years ago." The center is located near Cortez, Colorado and has on-campus education programs where students of all ages can participate in field and laboratory research as well as general education on topics of archaeology and science.

Vila Schwindt has a brief article in the Cortez Journal that describes the center and some of the curricula available as relayed to her by Lew Mathis, of the program's educators.

Crow Canyon's program starts with a general introduction to the chronology of cultures in the Southwest.

It's hands-on stuff where they're looking at artifacts and making comparisons between a collection from a certain period to a later period, and as the week progresses, it goes into greater detail.

The very first thing students do is meet the staff. Then they go with their educator and start either "Windows into the Past" for elementary students, or "Inquiries into the Past" for older and adult students.

Crow Canyon has courses for kids and educators alike designed to give kids an idea what archaeology might be like as a career through a three-week camp, and to give teachers a valuable experience in understanding the Pueblo Indian culture that they'll be able to share with their students.

In addition, Crow Canyon hosts a variety of summer camps for various age-groups, programs for school groups, day tours, and even domestic and international archaeology trips to destinations like Chaco Canyon and Eygpt!

I wish I would have discovered this place years ago! At least I have a good idea for a family vacation or future summer camp for my daughter once she's of age.

I'll be adding more "Archaeology and the Public" in the future, so keep an eye on that label in the side bar.

Basic Concepts: Pottery in the Archaeological Record

2007-01-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

I've read a few other science bloggers who are posting some basic concepts articles, clarifying specific topics in their fields of endeavor at a level designed to reach the lay person. It hasn't escaped me that a large portion of my visitors reach me through search engines and may be students or the generally interested who are looking for basic information. So I thought it might be useful for some visitors if I create a basic concepts post of my own and, depending on the number of hits it gets, I may continue the series. Of course, I'd be willing to accept any questions or suggestions for future topics and hope that each topic sparks questions and comments.

Why study pottery and ceramics in archaeology? Look below the fold and see...

There's a lot of it. Nearly every culture has used some form of fired clay at some point in time for purposes that range from food/water storage and cooking to writing and religious figurines.
It's extremely durable. Other materials used by humans are far less so: paper, leather textiles, etc. deteriorate more readily than durable materials such as metals (which do deteriorate), glass, stone, and ceramics. Of these four materials, stone and ceramics are the most valuable when looking at neolithic cultures since they predate metal and glass.
It gets ignored. Most pottery remains end up broken and all semblance of the original vessel or object is lost and, thus, of little interest to looters or casual collectors. When other items have long since been removed or plundered, broken pot sherds will remain for archaeologists to study.
Pottery is common. For a society that sues pottery, it is usually present in all social strata, giving a good overview of the day-to-day activities in a society.
Pots break. A lot. Because of this, people in antiquity had to replace them just as they do in modernity. A consistent industry of ceramics allows for changes and trends to develop which are present in the archaeological record and allow for seriation.

The Basic Recipe
At a minimum, pottery includes three ingredients: clay, a tempering agent, and water. The water and clay are mixed to form a paste and another substance is included to strengthen the mix and improve firing characteristics. Substances other than the original clay in the pot's material are referred to as inclusions, including the temper, but not all temper are inclusions. Temper generally refers to material that's intentionally put in the mix for a specific purpose -all other inclusions are accidental. Mineral from the clay source, sand, gravel, grass, insects, ash from firing, etc. can all find their way into the pot's mix.

Once the paste is created, the next step is to shape a pot. The most basic pottery is hand-formed -perhaps a small vessel pressed into a bowl shape. A more advanced form is made by coiling rolled out strips of clay into the final form, smoothing the interior and exterior as the potter gos along. Further advanced forms of pottery are thrown on a wheel, spinning the lump of clay while the potter shapes the vessel, thinning the wall and building up the vessel with a skilled and patient hand.

Once the basic shape of the pot is formed, the exterior can be treated before firing to give the pot a stylistic representation or functional form. Slips are very watery clay that's painted on the surface, often giving a different color that allows the potter to create a design. But slips are also functional in that they seal the pot, allowing the vessel to better hold liquids. Glazes can be added for much the same reason, but will create a glassy surface that is more watertight. This is achieved by adding substances like tin or lead. Other decorations can be added to the exterior of pottery through punctations, incisions, embossments, stampings, and burnishing. Pots can be very simple or extremely elegant.

The Finished Product
Once the basic form is created, the slip or glaze added and other decorations applied, the pot is ready to be fired. This could include the use of an enclosed oven with an open top or a pit where the fuel is stacked around the pottery. A potter was likely to create many pots to be fired, since there was always a risk of a pot exploding or cracking during the process. Broken bits of potter could be used to segment the kiln, protecting against fragments from neighboring pots that do explode. Also, the positioning of pots and fuel, and type of fuel used affected the oxygen levels in the kiln, which in turn affect the metallic oxides in slips and glazes, thus producing varied results in color and luster.

Summary
When examining the ceramic remains of a society, archaeologists are able to determine dates, levels of stratification, trade patterns, technological innovation, religious affiliations and beliefs, and so on. Analyzing form and function can lead archaeologists to discover things about economic activities in a given society and being able to distinguish between utilitarian and ceremonial functions can offer clues to the status of individuals in burials or residents of a home. Analyzing pottery styles can reveal the nature of restrictiveness a society had: standardized style can imply formal and rigid expectations from the society; less standardized and formal styles could imply fewer societal controls on the potters. Style can also reveal trade patterns and evidence of contact with other societies as trends and fads "catch on" as they are diffused from one society to another. Similarly, technical analyses of a pot's paste can provide evidence for trade patterns as a pot's paste is matched to clay deposits many miles away and

Definitions

Ceramics and Pottery - These two words often get used interchangeably, but "ceramics" can also include tiles, bricks, tablets, and the like - thought the term "pottery" isn't exclusive to just vessels and containers. All products constructed by people of clay can be considered "pottery," but products that are fired, baked or heated as a means of finishing the product -rendering it more durable- are considered ceramics.
Sherd - a broken piece of pottery in the archaeological record
Seriation - a relative dating method that places artifacts in chronological order by using form to show stylistic changes over time -the evolution of pottery, for instance.
Inclusion - material included in the clay mix that forms the final pot, either intentionally, as with tempering agents, or accidentally, as with sand or ash.
Temper - an inclusion that is intentionally added, usually to strengthen a pot or to improve firing characteristics.
kiln - an oven or pit used to fire, or heat, finished pots to a high temperature which strengthens the pot and vitrifies a slip or glaze.
slip - a coating of clay, usually of a different color, which can often give the appearance of a paint.
glaze - a coating melted onto the exterior of a pot that seals it, making it watertight, and creates a glassy surface.

The Perceived Threat of Linguistic Diversity

2007-01-26T21:56:00.000-08:00

In a recent discussion about culture and cultural diversity, of which I was more of a bystander than active participant, the topic moved to race, as so many of these kinds of discussions do. And it’s at this point in such discussions that I usually move on, but it wasn’t’ before one of the participants made the comment that he found the steady influx of immigrants to be a threat to his own culture, listing the ways: loss of his own culture’s physical features through interbreeding; loss of jobs to immigrant workers; the strain on the educational system; etc. The one concern that really stuck in my mind, even after I checked out of the discussion, was the threat to his culture’s language as the language of immigrants replaces or infuses his own.

Language is no doubt an integral part of culture. If you accept the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, as many linguists do, then you understand that language influences habitual thought through a kind of linguistic determinism (language determines the way we think). The extent to which language affects culture is debatable, but it’s clear that as languages both infuse and diffuse with cultures, changes in culture occur.

In my own community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, the influence of the Mexican culture is prominent and the affect of the Spanish language obvious. Most businesses and government offices have literature in both Spanish and English, and many businesses exist that cater only to Spanish-speakers. It certainly helps to understand at least a smattering of Spanish when conducting day-to-day business and greatly improves one’s chances of being hired if bilingual.

This linguistic diversity doesn’t come without a fair bit of resistance and rejection, however. Many of my neighbors are quick to associate cultural presence of Spanish-speakers to the problem of illegal immigration and, in some ways, this is a fair association. The population of illegal immigrants in North Texas is significant, but it isn’t clear to what extent the illegal population is a sub-set of the much larger, overall Hispanic immigrant culture here.

It is clear, however, that language can be a cultural divider as easily as it can a unifier. Shops in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods whose signage is only in Spanish generally cater to only Hispanic customers. The obverse isn’t true, of course, since one can visit any Wal-Mart or McDonalds and find Hispanic customers who speak little or no English. But rarely will the average white Texan shop at the local taqueria or Mexican market. A local chain of pizza restaurants, Pizza Patron, have recently fallen under heavy criticism and even threats simply for deciding to accept pesos from customers, giving dollars as change.

Part of the resistance to change in culture is reasonable: being around those whose language you don’t understand is naturally disconcerting; trying to conduct business with speakers of foreign languages is challenging; and obtaining or sharing an education can be difficult to say the least. But looking back on the concern mentioned in the first paragraph, the danger of losing one’s culture, particularly language, to immigrants seems largely unfounded. It is true that changes will occur in any culture that allows another to infuse with it, but it’s also true that the diffusing culture changes as well. In both directions change will occur –some good, some bad. But I truly wonder about the efforts that some in government are taking to see to it that English is the "official language" and I worry about those that think if they can control the language people speak, they can "preserve their culture." There are endangered languages in the world, but English isn’t one of them. Indeed, English is one of the languages that is fast wiping out many others.

In North America, only about 194 languages remain out of the hundreds that once existed. 73 of these are spoken only by adults over 50 and 49 spoken only by a scant few individuals. These figures are, at best, from the 1990’s, so they’re certainly much lower baring some sudden, massive revival where young people took the time to learn the languages of their elders. I heard it said once that Oklahoma was home to more dialects and languages than all of Europe. I don’t know if this is true or not, but the Native American population in the state is high. Interestingly enough, it’s also where a state-level Senator is pushing a bill to make English the official language. In her words:

The purpose of this bill is to establish a policy that unifies the state...“It unites us as a common people with diverse cultures. It unites us with a common language... English is the language of success. If you want to succeed in government, economy or school you have to be able to speak English,” Senator Kathleen Wilcoxson, R-Oklahoma City, said.

Instead of passing laws restricting languages, we should be focused more on teaching them. I have friends in Europe who I converse with on a regular basis whose first languages are German and Danish, yet their mastery of English rivals that of many Americans their age. In the United States, we appear to be slow to figure out what Europeans have long understood: speaking and writing in only one language is a limiting factor in economics, academia, and politics.

I'll leave this post with a quote from the Linguistic Society of America and its position on "English only," which is a measure that consistently rears its ugly head on both state and national levels:

The English language in America is not threatened. All evidence suggests that recent immigrants are overwhelmingly aware of the social and economic advantages of becoming proficient in English, and require no additional compulsion to learn the language.

American unity has never rested primarily on unity of language, but rather on common political and social ideals.

History shows that a common language cannot be imposed by force of law, and that attempts to do so usually create divisiveness and disunity. This has been the effect, for example, of the efforts of the English to impose the English language in Ireland, of Soviet efforts to impose the Russian language on non-Russian nationalities, and of Franco's efforts to impose Spanish on the Basques and Catalans.

It is to the economic and cultural advantage of the nation as a whole that its citizens should be proficient in more than one language, and to this end we should encourage both foreign language study for native English speakers, and programs that enable speakers with other linguistic backgrounds to maintain proficiency in those languages along with English.

You can find the source for the quote above in the links section below.

Related links:

Pizza Por Pesos
Pesos Lift Pizza Patrón's Profile
Bill would make English official state language
Caregivers help expand children’s language skills
What is an Endangered Language?
Resolution: English Only

Blog Critic reviews my friends at Scienceblogs

2007-01-22T00:23:00.000-08:00

Blog critic, ggwfung, an anonymous blogger and critic with his own blog, Ideas Man, has written an article at Blogcritics titled ScienceBlogs Network Reviewed - the A's. In it, he gives an apparent thumbs up for the only two anthropology blogs at Scienceblogs, but doesn't seem so enthused about three of my other favorites there. Indeed, I just realized that its the blogs that start with "A" at Scienceblogs that I like the most!

Aardvarchaeology, Martin Rundkvist's new blog (he's formerly of Salto Sobrius), gets a "well done" and is described by ggwfung as "crisp" and "clean" in style. And, according to the anonymous critic, should he be reduced to a single word for Martin's blog it would be "robust." I can't argue with him there -Martin does a good job.

ggwfung also liked afarensis, giving him a "seven out of ten" score and commenting favorably on afarensis' style and content. Perhaps ggwfung finds a natural appeal to bloggers that don't capitalize their nom de blog, or perhaps he has an affinity for anthropology/archaeology bloggers. Either way, he didn't pull the punches on the rest of the "A"'s.

Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock, one of my all-time favorite blogs, is accused of "spinning around in dizzy circles." His implication that Coturnix posts at a fantastic rate is fair, but I strongly disagree with his assessment that Coturnix's posts are "haphazard and trivial." If this *is* the case, then haphazard and trivial are what his readers want -his appears to be one of the more visited and commented blogs at Seed. 1200+ visits per day is not a figure to sneeze at. ggwfung gave Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science "a low rating" and, to Tara at Aetiology, he gave "[a]n ambivalent rating" (whatever that means). His criticisms of these women included their tendency to blog about their personal lives and to engage in chit-chat. Both Janet and Tara are fine bloggers and, while I seldom post at either, I visit them regularly. I enjoy reading about their personal lives and the lighter posts that are intermixed with scientific ones. And its clear that ggwfung didn't bother to click the tags of "Ethical Research", "Professional Ethics", "AIDS/HIV", or "Infectious Disease" at either of these fine blogs. For, if he had, he would have been presented with some of the very best writing available on blogs or other popular media in these subjects. And, being presented with such glaringly fine examples of what good science blogging is about, ggwfung would never have been able to write critiques that were so far off the mark and still be considered intellectually honest. Instead, it looks as though ggwfung, the "Ideas Man," visited the blogs of scientists-slash-parents in the post-holiday season and based his critiques from there.

Next time, look a little deeper, "Ideas Man."

Egyptology Online Karnak and Avaris

2007-01-18T13:38:00.000-08:00

The Near Eastern Studies department of Johns Hopkins University is scheduled to roll out an educational website on January 19, 2007 titled Hopkins in Egypt Today.

Also, Tell el-Dab^ca (a.k.a. Avaris) has its own homepage. Avaris was the capital of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The Hyksos were Canaanite immigrants and Manethos referred to the them as heku-shoswet, and, Hellenized, it became "Hyksos," which means rulers of a foreign land. This later became a general Egyptian term for Asiatic foreigners. Pharaoh Ahmose I (18th Dynasty) sacked Avaris and chased the Hyksos to southern Canaan to their fortress, Sharuhen near modern day Gaza. Ahmose laid siege to the fortress for three years before he stormed it.

Look below the fold for quotes and further discussion.

Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins
The goal of the site is:

to provide the viewer with the elements of archaeological work, including the progress of excavation. The daily results are crucial to an understanding of how field investigation takes place, since decisions must be made on the basis of ongoing work. The people involved in the work are also an essential feature and contribute profoundly to the final outcomes. The focus of our diary is thus often on the people and their activities.

Returning for her 12th season, Professor Betsy Bryan of Johns Hopkins will oversee archaeological work at the Temple of the Goddess Mut (pronounced "moot") at Karnak (in Luxor, Egypt).

Mut was the wife of the great national god of ancient Egypt, Amun, whose central temple at Karnak is the largest existing religious complex in the world. Mut had her own temple in the southern precinct of Karnak, and the main temple was linked to it by two different paved alleys flanked by rows of ram headed sphinxes. The god Amun's statue was brought to the Mut temple when rituals occurred commemorating the birth of a son to Amun and Mut. That son, Khonsu, a moon god, has his own temple at Karnak as well.

Avaris Online
The site appears to be run by Professor Manfred Bietak, the Professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna in Austria. He's also director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo (Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Kairo). It could be run by one or more of his grad students, however. I couldn't tell for sure.

While obviously still under development, there is already a great wealth of information for the student interested in the Hyksos period of Egypt (that would be me). Descriptions of the sites and the excavations as well as artifacts and features recovered are included as well as a detailed bibliography. Of course, if you plan to study or write on the Hyksos, a familiarity with German is a must! The site is in both English and German, but most of the references are from German language publications. Here's a short quote from the site:

After the conquest of Avaris by Ahmose c. 1530 BC the major part of the town was abandoned. The citadel, however, was destroyed and enormous storage facilities set up, among them numerous silos. On top of those remains traces of a camp with bonfires a, ovens and postholes of tents were encountered. Bodies probably of soldiers were buried without any offerings in pits. Also bodies of several horses were found in this stratum.

Go. Visit these sites. Get your learn on.
Hopkins in Egypt Today
Tell el-Dab^ca Homepage

Stolen & Looted: Convicted Smuggler and Looter Reveals Trade Secrets

2007-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Pietro Casasanta spent five decades robbing his country of priceless artifacts and cultural items which he sold on the open market. According to Signor Casasanta, however, his efforts should earn him a senator's seat instead of a jail cell.

Look below the fold to find out why.

The testimony that allowed Casasanta's description of the methods and extent to which he and his people plundered Roman villas and archaeological sites of their artifacts and art came during the trial of Getty curator (former) Marion True and art dealer (former) Robert Hecht, who are both charged with trafficking in stolen antiquities. Though he never met with or dealt with True and Hecht directly, Casasanta was providing the court with an overview of the way the illegal antiquities market worked in Italy. He claimed that his plunders saved art that would have been destroyed anyway in development projects and fancied himself just in his work:

I saved thousands of artifacts that would have been ground into cement. ... It's a shame that they don't make me a senator for life.

Apparently, much of the art he recovered was in the rubble being moved for construction of buildings and public works, but rather than share the treasure with the Italian public, he chose to profit from the finds. He even admitted to "excavations" of his own and the manner in which the loot was processed:

Casasanta told the court he would poke around construction sites and find treasures in piles of earth that had been dug up. But he also organized his own vast excavations – largely the ruins of ancient Roman countryside villas – working in daylight with two or three people using bulldozers over thousands of square yards.

He also explained how he and other looters would give their finds a clean record by selling them to themselves at international auction houses through dummy companies or straw men.

“This allowed me to legalize the piece and put a price on it,” he told the judges.

Its good to see the Italian and Greek governments working hard to get a handle on their national treasures. To paraphrase Colin Renfrew, it's the curators and dealers who are perhaps the most complicit since those that plunder antiquities of their nations wouldn't have a market without them. I think the on-going trial of True and Hecht (of the Hecht co. department stores chain) will be on the minds dealers and curators for years to come.

Source: Witness in Italy antiquities case reveals secrets of art looting
[signonsandiego.com]

Science Blogging Anthology Now in Print

2007-01-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006 has been published and is available for purchase and download at Lulu. For those of you that didn't know, Bora Zivkovic, whose nom de blog is Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock, put this anthology together and edited the submitted entries. I was proud to play a very small, bit part by being one of his fellow bloggers that voted on the entries. And the cover is beautiful! I suggested a couple of designs to Bora, but I must say that whoever designed this one did a far better job than anything I tried. I sure hope he/she got an "About the Cover" credit because it's well-deserved. I'll be buying my copy this week!

Zivkovic, Bora (2007). The Open Laboratory. The best writing on science blogs 2006. Chapel Hill, NC: Lulu. 336 pp.

Forbidden Archaeology? Some So-Called Out of Place Artifacts

2007-01-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

I visit various internet sites each week that range from the scientific to the down right kooky. I must confess that "Kooky" fascinates me. But even on the science sites that have active message boards, there are frequent mentions of so-called "out of place artifacts" (OOPA's?). Very often, these "artifacts" are used by someone to "prove" a conclusion they already have about the age of the planet or a greatly exaggerated antiquity of humanity. Ironically, I've observed that some of these artifacts can be simultaneously used by different proponents of contradictory claims to support both a "young Earth" and an ancient humanity (millions of years).

Below the fold, I'll discuss some of the "top ten out of place artifacts" as claimed by that infamous ragazine, Atlantis Rising (Jochmans 1995). The list is over 10 years old, but they are among the more commonly mentioned artifacts.

The Baghdad Battery
The very first item on the Atlantis Rising list is the infamous "Baghdad battery," a clay pot dating to around the 3rd century CE and found in Iraq. Often referred to as a "battery" by significance-junkies and mystery-mongers, it obviously isn't since there were no electrical devices present in the early first millennium for which a battery would be required. But, of course, this is exactly the sort of thing the significance-junkie looks for. Suddenly, an innocuous clay pot becomes part of a grand conspiracy to which archaeologists are willing accomplices in a cover up. Ignored are the more probable explanations for such jars, one of which includes that vessels of this type were for scroll or papyrus storage. They were typically 5 inches long and contained a rolled up copper sheet and an iron rod. The ends were capped with asphalt plugs, which would have interfered with the conduction of electricity.

They would, however, have been very efficient at hermetically sealing papyrus and, since each of the "batteries" found to date have were found open to the environment while in situ, any papyrus inside would have long since deteriorated, leaving a slightly acidic residue. Experiments testing the "battery" hypothesis yielded about 25mW from one of these tested as a possible galvanic cell. A penlight requires about 1100mW. Tests were conducted since a couple of electricity-related hypotheses exist regarding the purpose of these jars: a way for electroplating metals such as gold or elektrum; and for ritualistic use by some "magical" means by a sorcerer who used a weak acid in the vessel and attached it to metal statue. Touched by believers, they would then feel a tingle, verifying his "power." The former suggestion of electroplating has fallen out of favor, however, since gilding metal by fire using mercury is far more effective. Very little gilding was able to be procured from models of the "batteries" which only produced a very weak current.

"Electron Tubes" from Dendera, Egypt
Atlantis Rising lists this as their #2 OOPA and it's a relief of the Late Ptolemaic period's Temple of Hathor in Dendera, Egypt. Atlantis Rising describes the relief as depicting "cathode ray tubes," verified by no less than three electronics engineers or technicians! Somehow, we're to accept that the engineers and electricians aren't to succumb to their credulity or find undo significance in a graphic relief that has accompanying texts which state the "cathode ray tubes" to be on a solar bark, the barge used by Ra (the sun god) to traverse the sky. The "tubes" are symbols of fertility, specifically a lotus held by Horus with an emerging snake.

"Neanderthal" Skull with a "Bullet Hole"

Listed as its #8 OOPA, Atlantis Rising claims that a 38,000 year old Neanderthal skull, excavated in 1921 in present-day Zambia and residing in the Museum of Natural History in London is from victim of a rifle shot to the head. The Atlantis Rising article states the wound is a neat entry hole with "no radial split lines" and a shattered cranium opposite the hole as an exit wound. From the article:

If such a weapon was indeed fired at the man, then one of two conclusions can be made: either the specimen is not as old as it is claimed to be, and was shot by a European in recent centuries, or the remains are as old as claimed, and the marksman was ancient too.

Of course, its the latter conclusion that significance-junkies and mystery-mongers at Atlantis Rising arrive at, though I'm sure there are no shortage of young-earth creationists willing to buy into the former.

The article misses the mark on some basic information right off the bat. The skull, known to paleoanthropologists as the Kabwe skull and sometimes the "Broken Hill Man," is dated to between 125,000 and 300,000 years old, not 38,000. It was also found in a limestone cave, not 65 feet down in "lead rock," as Atlantis Rising suggests. I took particular issue, as I'm sure many readers familiar with hominid evolution did as well, with the claim of "Neanderthal" associated with a skull found in Zambia. Surely Neanderthals in Zambia is newsworthy by itself, never mind the "bullet" hole!

As it happens, the skull was originally dubbed Homo rhodesiensis by Arthur Smith Woodard, but is now commonly considered to be H. heidelbergensis or perhaps a close relative. But this isn't all Atlantis Rising got wrong: the parietal bone opposite the hole is not shattered at all. This appears to be a bit of exaggeration added to the skull's lore to satisfy the significance-junkies. After all, if someone is to be shot in the head with a rifle, one expects an exit wound. One also expects the shot to kill the individual. Interestingly enough, the hole on the Kabwe skull shows signs of healing, demonstrating beyond doubt that this guy wasn't dead from the wound. At least not initially. From the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution website:

The cranium shows evidence of disease and wounds that occurred in the lifetime of this individual. Ten of the upper teeth have cavities, and dental abscesses of the upper jaw are clearly visible in the upper photograph (above the right incisor/canine) and the middle photograph (above the first molar). Additionally, a partially healed wound is visible in the bottom two photographs, above and anterior of the hole for the ear. This wound measured roughly a quarter-inch across, and was made by either a piercing instrument or the tooth of a carnivore. Exactly which is unclear.

The other artifacts mentioned in the Atlantis Rising article included the Ashoka Pillar, the Antikythera "computer," Egyptian planes, South American jets, crystal skulls, Ica stones, and metal spheroids. Perhap I'll go into detail on these "artifacts" in future posts.

Obligatory but Genuine Thanks to the Canadian Museum of Civilization

2007-01-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Museum of Civilization has a website with educational resources on ancient civilizations. I poked around the site and can see how it might easily be of interest to grade school teachers or students seeking information on early and ancient civilizations.

I find myself owing a humble bit of thanks for linking to my Egyptian Chariots article on their page that discusses transportation in Ancient Egypt. I get several hits per day from that link and I hope the readers are getting some useful information. If ever anyone wondered why I bother to put citations in a blog post, this is one of those reasons. Hopefully some young (or perhaps old!) scholars have found use for them and were able to find these articles and texts in their local library for more detailed study.

Look beneath the fold for an interesting idea.

Because of this, and in a recent post at Afarensis, I'm thinking of starting a regular feature that highlights some basics of archaeology and anthropology. An "archaeology 101" post, if you will. Actually, I've been considering this for months and even have an unfinished post somewhere on pottery and ceramics in the archaeological record. I gather that the ScienceBlogs bloggers are discussing the idea putting together "basic concepts" type posts, and I look forward to seeing what Afarensis and, hopefully, Aardvarchaeology (the only anthropology blogs there) do. These guys constantly put out some great posts anyway, so if you haven't read them I urge you to go look.

I suggested at Afarensis that we might consider dedicating an issue of the Four Stone Hearth to "anthropology 101," where each carnival submission highlights a basic concept in archaeology, ethnography/cultural anth, bio-physical anth, or linguistics.

Anyway, I'd be interested in what both the anthro-bloggers and readers think of this sort of thing. Post a comment and let me know, especially if you've stumbled on Hot Cup of Joe for the first time :)

Stolen & Looted: Getty Curator on Bail and Italians to Ask Japan for Return of Antiquities

2007-01-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Marion True, already on trial in Italy for dealing in looted artifacts, posted bail of $19,000 US this past Wednesday. In December, the Getty returned a gold wreath and marble statue to Greece, just months after returning other artifacts including a tombstone and a marble relief (see my earlier post). And Italy is expected to request the return of antiquities from Japan, where 50 items smuggled out of Italy are alleged to reside in the Miho Museum.

Read more of these two developments below the fold.

Marion Being True?
Marion True, of course, maintains her innocence. She's critical of the Getty for returning the artifacts without making any attempt to explain the circumstances of their procurement. True is apparently insistent that the Getty was "fully aware of the risks" involved and that she initially tried to dissuade them from procuring the items but later, according to Greek prosecutors, advised the Getty's board to obtain them. Greek officials, however, aren't as interested in True as they are a Serbian middleman and Swiss-based antiquities dealer Christoph Leon.

Dōmo arigatō, Mr. Curato!
The Miho Museum, a private museum in Shiga, western Japan, may have a fresco and sculpture from ancient Rome that is in dispute and, according to a museum official, there are less than 50 artifacts from the Roman period. The Associated Press picked up this news form a Japanese news report in Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest daily newspaper, that indicated the Italian government plans to put together a catalog of 100 antiquities that have been smuggled or otherwise illicitly removed from the country. The report also indicated that the Italian government planned to "ask the Japanese Cultural Affairs Agency to cooperate in recovering them."

Pseudoskepticism from the "Junkman"

2007-01-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

Edit: Click here for a discussion and definition of Pseudoskepticism.

Every Friday, I look forward to the newest edition of the Bob Park email "What's New?" It isn't a full newsletter, and Bob usually doesn't go into a lot of detail. But in a few short paragraphs, he summarizes the top 4 or 5 silly things in government or academia that go against reason and critical thought. I highly recommend subscribing to his weekly What's New? email. Look below the fold to see what he has to say about Steve Milloy, the author of Junkscience Judo and frequent columnist for Faux News (did I write that out loud?).

THE JUNKMAN: EXXON USES MILLOY TO DOWNPLAY GLOBAL WARMING. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report on Wednesday describing Exxon Mobil's efforts to manipulate public opinion on Global Warming. In doing so the report further exposes the role of Steven J. Milloy, the notorious "Junkman" who wrote Junk Science Judo (CATO, 2001), and a column for Fox News. WN reported a year ago that Milloy, who masquerades as a fearless debunker of bad science, in real life works for oil and tobacco giants http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn020306.html .

Jim Lobe wrote an article that I found at the Inter Press Service News Agency titled, ExxonMobil Accused of Disinformation on Warming, in which he describes Milloy's affiliations and loyalties:

Steven Milloy, for example, whose Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (ASSC) was created by tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1993 to raise questions about the link between second-hand smoke and cancer, has served as a member of the Global Climate Science Team (GCST), which ExxonMobil helped create in 1998, and run the Free Enterprise Action Institute to which the company has contributed 130,000 dollars -- or almost two-thirds of the group's total expenses.

The article linked above is a fascinating read. It doesn't take a genius to see why a major oil company would be interested in misleading the public and, consequently, public policy about the environment. Any more than it is clear why tobacco companies want to mislead the public about cancer. What's fascinating is the guise of "skepticism" that is donned by those that are doing the misleading. Lets be clear: these are not true skeptics. They have conclusions to which they seek supporting data and reject data that is un-supportive. I don't know the extent to which human activity on the planet contributes to global warming, but it is abundantly apparent that misuse and careless handling of petroleum products is bad for the environment. It's also clear that petroleum by-products are not beneficial to the environment and reasonable to conclude they have a lasting impact on it.

Astronomical Pseudo-Science: A Skeptic's Resource List

2007-01-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered what science has to say about astrology? What the real scoop is on crop circles? What about that "face on Mars" that was such a big thing a few years ago? Or maybe you wanted to know if the astronomical connections claimed for such archaeological sites as the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza had any credibility.

To get started in any research endeavor, it helps to have a good bibliography. If you ever wanted to read up on skeptical opinions of any of the topics above (and more), you'll want to look below the fold.

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has a wonderful resource list. Indeed, if you're interested in astronomy, you might find their whole site fascinating. But the page I landed on that I didn't hesitate to bookmark was their Skeptic's Resource List, a bibliography that covers many pseudoscientific claims in the astronomical field.

As an example, I'll include a single entry (of many available) for each of the topics above:

Culver, Roger & Ianna, Philip Astrology: True or False. 1988, Prometheus Books. The best skeptical book about astrology, full of useful information.

Nickell, J. "Circular Reasoning" in Skeptical Inquirer, Sep/Oct. 2002, p. 17. A concise review, by a skeptical investigator. (On line at http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-09/crop-circles.html)

Sagan, Carl "The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars," Chapter 3 of his book, The Demon-Haunted World. 1995, Random House.

Krupp, E. "The Sphinx Blinks" in Sky & Telescope, mar. 2001, p. 86. Examines some astronomical connections suggested for the Sphinx and the Pyramids and finds them wanting. (See also, Sky & Telescope, Feb. 1997, p. 64.)

Stenger, V. "Quantum Quackery" in Skeptical Inquirer, Jan/Feb. 1997, p. 37. Quick summary of the arguments against quantum mechanics having "new age" implications for human powers. (On the web at http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/quantum-quackery.html)

Okay, I included one extra, but only because I happened across the Stenger citation and noticed the link. I've read that piece and recommend it to anyone who's getting tired of running into quantum-this and quantum-that used to explain every thing from God to consciousness to weight loss.

Each of the titles in the table of contents for the list has a list of both printed resources as well as websites to visit. Such a list is invaluable for teachers who undoubtedly encounter questions about such popular topics from their students as well as the skeptic looking for sources of information to dispel myths and pseudoscientific positions.

Astronomical Pseudo-Science: A Skeptic's Resource List (Version 3.0; August 2003)