Recent Readings: Boats, Color Names, and Counting Time

To stay on top of archaeology, I read a lot, much more than I could ever report in this webpage. But just because I can't give everything the justice it deserves doesn't mean you can't benefit from my voracious appetite. Here's a selection of a few articles that crossed my desk recently.

Krech III, Shepard 2006 Bringing linear time back in. Ethnohistory 53(5):567-592.

Interesting article by Shephard Krech describes his search for evidence of the 'cyclical time' widely attributed to Native American tribes.

Lindsey, Delwin T. and Angela M. Brown 2006 Universality of color names. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(44):16608-16613.

This is a pretty cool article based on the World Color Survey, which is a cross-cultural comparison of color names. And, how nice is this? you can get free access to the entire article on the PNAS website.

Martinello, Christopher S. 2006 Tahitala's Revenge: Monumental Architecture and the Great Canoe, Lomipeau. Anthropological Forum 16(2):123-134.

Among the residents of the kingdom of Tonga, on the western fringe of Polynesia, is an oral history report of a very rare type of monumental architecture--the Great Lomipeau, a huge canoe. In this article from Anthropological Forum, Christopher Martinello recounts the legends.

Ward, Cheryl 2006 Boat-building and its social context in early Egypt: interpretations from the First Dynasty boat-grave cemetery at Abydos. Antiquity 80:118-129.

Cheryl Ward's article in Antiquity early this year reports technical data on the boats of ancient Egypt including the fourteen boats included in the First Dynasty Old Kingdom burial at Abydos. A discussion of wood working techniques and various boat building strategies make this a very interesting article.