Every year, that ridiculously unimportant journal, The Annals of Improbable Research (or AIR), awards Ig-Nobel prizes, in a ceremony held on the grounds of (where else?) Harvard University. This year, a couple of archaeologists won an Ig-Nobel. Congratulations, guys!
Keep this guy away from your excavation units.
Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Television / Getty Images
Keep this guy away from your excavation units.
Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Television / Getty Images
ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE
Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, for measuring how the course of history, or at least the contents of an archaeological dig site, can be scrambled by the actions of a live armadillo.
REFERENCE: "The Role of Armadillos in the Movement of Archaeological Materials: An Experimental Approach," Astolfo G. Mello Araujo and José Carlos Marcelino, Geoarchaeology, vol. 18, no. 4, April 2003, pp. 433-60.
Comments
Actually, armadillos can create tremendous havoc in an archaeological site. I first realized that when excavating at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo in southern Mexico back in 1966. They massively churn up the soil, creating all sorts of problems in understanding the stratigraphy. For example, we found a Remington shotgun shell casing under an Olmec stone monument that had not moved an inch in 3,000 years. It had fallen down from the surface in a rodent track. Today archaeologist call this “Bioturbation”. I call it a “Pain in the …”. Perhaps it does not happen on sites that Harvard archaeologists choose to excavate.
One solution is to eat all the armadillos you can find but that does not resolve the issue of damage done long ago by the ancestors of your meal.
I remember how mind blowing Barbara Bocek’s articles were on the damage done by prairie dogs.
http://archaeology.about.com/cs/quotes/qt/quote47.htm
Thank you, Kris!