Sunday November 15, 2009
On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, National Geographic's Expedition Week presents a new video documenting the underwater archaeology discovery of three imperial Japanese submarines, all scuttled by the American forces off Oahu in 1946.
CGI Image of the I-201 Fast Attack Japanese Imperial Navy Submarine. Photo credit: (c)Wild Life Productions
"Hunt for the Samurai Subs" is entertaining and educational, and contains lots of interviews with members of the Japanese and American navies, as well as 1946 footage from one of the American servicemen who watched some of the purposeful scuttlings of the unmanned ships.
This is the kind of stuff that I like to see from National Geographic, well-researched, with interviews from the people concerned and lots of context. Several CGI images of what the subs would have looked like help understand the technology, and the search techniques are explained and illustrated well.
Read my full review and see a couple of additional photographs in National Geographic Expedition Week 2009: Hunt for the Samurai Subs.
Thursday November 12, 2009
This year, like last year, National Geographic Channel plans to dedicate this coming week to airing new exploration videos. This year, like last year, they were kind enough to send them along to me to review. Four of the seven new videos are related to archaeology, and, like last year, I will provide a guide to the interested reader, including context and additional reading for those viewers who might want to research a little deeper.
Tsantsa Head in the Quito Amazonia Museum. Photo © Diverse Productions, Ltd
I wish, I really wish I could say that I liked the first video, Search for the Amazon Headhunters, which premieres on Sunday, November 15, 2009. Last year's Expedition Week had several really wonderful videos, based on scholarly research, and god knows there aren't anywhere near enough of those in the world. But Search for the Amazon Headhunters is just not up to what I've come to expect from National Geographic—which doesn't mean it isn't worth watching, just not for the reasons you might expect.
Here is the first installment of my reviews and context analysis for National Geographic Expedition Week 2009: Search for the Amazon Headhunters. I'll post reviews of the later videos as we get closer to their air dates. See what you think and feel free to argue with me!
Monday November 9, 2009
Today, a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed evidence from the Maya civilization site of Calakmul, a Late Classic period capital in Campeche state of Mexico, 30 km north of the Guatemala border.
Scene showing the serving and drinking of ul "maize-gruel." The hieroglyphic
caption aj ul "Maize-gruel Person" (AJ u-lu) appears at top left. Image courtesy PNAS
Calakmul is an important Maya capital, not the least because its importance was discovered so recently. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of occupation at Calakmul between the Middle Preclassic (~950-600 BC) to Late Classic (AD 600-850), with a heyday during the late Classic. Between 685-689, Calakmul was ruled by Yukom Yich'ak K'ak' or Jaguar Paw, the best known of the kings of Calakmul.
The discovery by archaeologist Ramon Carrasco Vargas and colleagues involves a complex of buildings just north of the better-known Central Plaza of Calakmul, where a series of murals were discovered illustrating domestic and artisanal activities of the Maya people. These drawings appear to be of job descriptions, rather than specific people, but they shed a great deal of light on the ordinary working people of the great capital city.
Of course, I've built a new photo essay to look at, including the available photos and drawings of the new murals and an introduction to the site itself.
Carrasco Vargas, Ramon, Veronica A. Vazquez Lopez, and Simon Martin 2009 Daily life of the ancient Maya recorded on murals at Calakmul, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
News Stories
Thursday November 5, 2009
To most of the world, the image of an archaeological dig comes from the movies. You remember: in the first Indiana Jones movie, there's an iconic moment when Indy is standing at the archaeological site in Tanis, peering through a theodolite, with hundreds of Nazi-paid workmen around him. He is alone, above the crowd—the only crew member he talks to in the whole movie is Sallah, his faithful foreman. The perfect, tanned, obsessed, isolated scholar.
Toutswemogala Hill, Botswana. Photo by James R. Denbow (c) 2007
The reality of modern archaeology is far more interesting, not to mention more complicated and dangerous. The modern archaeologist is engaged with the local community. She or he works hard to bring in the participation of locals, descendant communities and other stakeholders in the process.
But you don't often see that process described; and further, there are few records that describe how that sea-change from a profession practiced in isolation on the unprotesting dead to one conducted in and among living people occurred. For one thing, it's not easy, in any sense of the word, and the archaeologist doesn't always come out looking particularly heroic or even completely professional.
African Iron Age Site of Bosutswe, Botswana
Photo Credit: James R. Denbow (c) 2007
But, in "Finding Bosutswe", a brave, fascinating article recently published in the journal History in Africa, archaeologist James Denbow, his field assistant and PhD student Morongwa Mosothwane, and Nonofho Ndobochani, a Senior Curator at the National Museum of Botswana, reflect on Denbow's struggles with his own post-colonial fieldwork in the 1980s and 1990s, and how they all worked together on the African Iron Age sites of Bosutswe and Toutswemogala. The article is a collaboration among the three, with the voices of Batswanas Mosothwane and Ndobochani clear and distinct from Denbow's recollections of how he worked as part of the local community.
I was lucky enough to see an early draft of this article, and am truly pleased to see it published. More than anything else I've read, "Finding Bosutswe" really expresses the difficulties and joys of modern fieldwork, and how dangerous, hilarious and exciting working within a community, as opposed to above and apart from it, can be.
Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones.
Denbow, James, Morongwa Mosothwane, and Nonofho M. Ndobochani 2008 Finding Bosutswe: Archeological Encounters with the Past. History in Africa 35:145-190.
Note: If you don't have access to a university library, you might be able to buy a copy of this article through the African Studies Association, who publishes History in Africa.
