The Nasca Civilization
Monday December 29, 2008
The Nasca civilization is one that fascinates a lot of us, and it's the latest addition to the Human History project, which has apparently has no ending point.
Nasca ... Read More
TAC: Saving Lijiang, China
Sunday December 28, 2008
This week's offering from The Archaeology Channel is a six-minute video on the efforts to preserve Lijiang, a 1000-year-old town in Yunnan province.
Saving the Last Living Ancient Town in ... Read More
Who is Colin Renfrew?
Saturday December 27, 2008
I do not know Colin Renfrew personally, but I am a long-time fan of the breath-taking breadth of his knowledge, study and writings. If you don't know Colin Renfrew but ... Read More
Other Vesuvian Eruptions -- Afragola
Friday December 26, 2008
One of my obsessions as a working archaeologist is neatly summed up by Kent Flannery: "Archeology is the only science in which we kill our informants". I never forgot as ... Read More
Wine History
Monday December 22, 2008
What is the history of wine?
Chinese Vineyards Photo Credit: Dominic Rivard
The earliest use of grapes to make an alcoholic beverage dates to about 9,000 years ago in China.
Generally when ... Read More
Winter Solstice at Stonehenge
Friday December 19, 2008
This is a seriously beautiful image of the 2006 winter solstice at the neolithic site of Stonehenge, and it reminds me that even the bleakest days on this planet of ... Read More
Figurines at Çatalhöyük
Tuesday December 16, 2008
There's an interesting paper in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal this year, a catalog of fired clay figurines from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. If you know a little ... Read More
Archaeology's Top Ten, er, Seventeen News Stories
Tuesday December 16, 2008
As is customary this time of year, Archaeology magazine has named its top ten news stories of the year; this year, editor Mark Rose came up with 17, because it ... Read More
Antikythera Mechanism Working Model
Sunday December 14, 2008
Michael Wright, one of several researchers working on the Antikythera Mechanism, has reconstructed a working model of the 2,200 year old mechanical eclipse tracker. New Scientist has the video.
Archimedes ... Read More
Winter Solstice 2008 at Newgrange
Saturday December 13, 2008
Mark your calendars—next weekend is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. After that, the days will be getting longer, although this year it certainly doesn't always seem possible that ... Read More
Second Life and Public Archaeology: Burning Çatalhöyük
Friday December 12, 2008
This week, I went to the event Burning Çatalhöyük, a guided tour to the Second Life reconstruction of the 9,000 year old Çatalhöyük Neolithic site in Turkey. It was not ... Read More
Tibetan Monastery on TAC
Thursday December 11, 2008
New 19 minute video this week at The Archaeology Channel on a modern nun's life in a Tibetan monastery.
Nun's Life
Climate Change on the Bering Land Bridge
Tuesday December 9, 2008
A newish pollen study on the Bering Land Bridge (BLB) hit my desk this week, published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. It suggests that the first people ... Read More
Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition
Monday December 8, 2008
I just discovered that the entire November 2008 issue of the Journal of Human Evolution is dedicated to discussions of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition. That's when the two kinds of ... Read More
Burning Çatalhöyük
Sunday December 7, 2008
On Wednesday, December 10, 2008, the University of California at Berkeley plans to burn the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, and we're all invited. Oh, they're not burning the ancient ruins ... Read More
Discovering Archaeology for Kids
Saturday December 6, 2008
I was poking around updating the Archaeology Fieldwork for 2009 when I ran across an interesting project from the University of Calgary. They're offering in-school programs, where the archaeologist comes ... Read More
Field Schools for 2009
Friday December 5, 2008
I'm in the process of updating the archaeology field school listings for next field season. People are starting to post dates, and I noticed that at least one is already ... Read More
Moss and the Iceman
Wednesday December 3, 2008
The mummy pulled from a melting glacier in the Alps in 1991 called Iceman (or Otzi, or Similaun Man, or Hauslabjoch Man, or even Frozen Fritz) has been intensively studied ... Read More
TAC: Saving Turkeys Treasures
Monday December 1, 2008
New video this week from The Archaeology Channel covers the Global Heritage Fund's efforts to save cultural aspects of Kars in the central Caucasus:
Saving Turkeys Treasures: Eastern Anatolia, Turkey