About Archaeology

Fieldwork in Focus: Tel Bet Yerah, Israel

2010-02-08T21:23:12Z

This week's archaeology Fieldwork in Focus comes from Eileen G. Ernenwein at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas, who is heading up joint investigations at Tel Bet Yerah, Israel through the Cotsen Institute.

Dramatically situated on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel, Tel Bet Yerah is the site of a large fortified Early Bronze Age town. Photo by Google Earth

The Cotsen Insitute of Archaeology at UCLA is now accepting applications for a new field school in archaeological geophysics, to be held this summer at Tel Bet Yerah, Israel. The program will take place over the course of five weeks beginning June 26, 2010. Students will learn the fundamentals of archaeo-geophysical methods, which allow us to "see" archaeological features buried beneath the ground surface. Hands-on instruction in survey planning, data collection, processing, and interpretation will be given in the context of the ongoing Tel Bet Yerah Research and Excavation Project.

A student collects Ground-penetrating Radar data with the GSSI SIR-3000 system
Photo Credit: © Jason Herrmann

Dramatically situated on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Israel, Tel Bet Yerah is the site of a large fortified Early Bronze Age town. In 2010 we will explore a large expanse of the site where virtually nothing is known about the subsurface, and image areas where monumental structures and waterworks may be located. This field school will be held in conjunction with the traditional Archaeological Field School at Tel Bet Yerah, who will benefit from the discoveries made with geophysics, and also help guide the excavations.

Magnetometry data is collected with a Bartington Grad601 Fluxgate gradiometer system at the UNESCO world heritage site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia
Photo © Eileen Ernenwein

The Tel Bet Yerah archaeo-geophysical project will be held between June 26 and July 29, 2010; the costs include housing at Ohalo Manor hostel, meals during the work week (Sunday-Thursday), and transportation from the Ben Gurion airport on the initial day of the fieldwork. College credit is available through the UCLA Field School Program.

Fieldwork in Focus: Tel Bet Yerah, Israel originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 21:23:12.

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Egyptian Artifacts at the Brooklyn Museum

2010-02-07T11:05:19Z

This spring, the Brooklyn Museum will hold an exhibition of Egyptian artifacts in the Charles Edwin Wilbour collection, taken from Egyptian tombs dated between Old Kingdom and the Roman period.

Roman Period Mummy Footcase. Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum

The museum passed along several images of the artifacts to be seen, and I took the occasion to assemble a photo essay of some of them, with a tad bit of context for our entertainment.

The Brooklyn Museum's exhibit To Live Forever will run between February 12 and May 2, 2010.

To Live Forever - Egyptian Artifacts at the Brooklyn Museum, a photo essay
To Live Forever, official website of the exhibition

Egyptian Artifacts at the Brooklyn Museum originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 11:05:19.

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What on Earth? Two Books from Bloomsbury

2010-02-02T22:29:35Z

When I was a little girl, my parents bought us an encyclopedia at the grocery store. You bought them one volume at a time, as I recall, they were bound in ersatz leather and they had a peculiar smell to them that I carry to this day. I spent a great deal of time as a child, huddled up in my room with a flashlight reading up on the world's great mysteries, one alphabet letter at at time.

Cover art from What on Earth Evolved - 100 Species that Changed the World
Photo Credit: (c) 2009 Bloomsbury USA

Since becoming an adult, and, of course, working as much as I do on the Internet, I sometimes wonder if today's kids don't lose out by not having a big book of knowledge lying around the house that they can just dip into. The Internet's great, but it is awash with distractions like computer games, MySpace, and Twitter.

Recently, Bloomsbury USA sent me two retro volumes, that make me hope that there still is an audience of kids--and their parents--who might love a tasty encyclopedic book like What on Earth Happened? and What on Earth Evolved?, both written by science writer Christopher Lloyd and engagingly illustrated by Andy Forshaw.

Cover art from What on Earth Happened?
Photo credit: (c) 2008 Bloomsbury USA

What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of the Planet, Life, and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day is a history of, well, everything, encapsulated in 400 jam-packed and colorful pages. What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World describes the top 100 species, from insects to dinosaurs, that Lloyd believes were the "most robust, enduring and environmentally beneficial creatures" on our planet. Big surprise: Humans are not #1.

Entertainingly written and illustrated, What on Earth Evolved and What on Earth Happened belong in the hands of as many middle schoolers as you know. Get a kid interested in science and ancient history today!

What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World (full book review)
What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of the Planet, Life, and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day (full book Review)
More Book Reviews

What on Earth? Two Books from Bloomsbury originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 22:29:35.

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Fieldwork in Focus: Owyhee River Valley, Oregon

2010-01-29T08:28:33Z

Washington State University's 2010 field season in the Owyhee River Canyon of southeastern Oregon is the seventh season for the project directed by Dr. William Andrefsky, Jr. Excavations at the Birch Creek site, a large pit house village will be held between May 24 and June 25, 2010. Field director Jennifer Ferris sent along this description of the upcoming session.

Owyhee River Canyon in Oregon. Photo by William Andrefsky, Jr.

The WSU Department of Anthropology's seventh annual archaeological field school will be held in conjunction with the Vale Oregon District, of the Bureau of Land Management. Led by Dr. William Andrefsky, Jr., the excavations are located in the beautiful Owyhee River Canyon approximately 60 kilometers from the Jordon Valley in southeastern Oregon. The focus of this year's effort is on the excavation of a prehistoric multicomponent site with a large pit house village. The class will emphasize both academic and practical instruction in developing basic skills in archaeological excavation, survey, mapping, photography, and field curation. Laboratory procedures and lectures on lithic analysis, faunal analysis, and paleo-environments will also be included as part of the program.

Interactive Map of the Silk Road

2010-01-27T20:56:30Z

As the first truly international trade network, the Silk Road was constructed as a series of trackways stretching out across the vast deserts and mountains and waterways of Asia.

Map drafted by Shizhao

Reaching out from the Han Dynasty of China, first explorers and then caravans connected Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the steppes of Siberia, the mountains of Eurasia and the western capitals of Rome and Alexander's Europe. It's breathtaking to think about.

I spent some time reading and researching and thinking about and trying to comprehend all the bits of the story of the Tapestry Trousers this last month. As I was working through it, I came to recognize how complex the study of the Silk Road is, and how it offers the unique opportunity of studying cultural change and cultural contact across most of the known world between ca 200 BC and 1500 AD.

The Interactive Map of the Silk Road only scratches the surface of the innumerable stories of the few tantalizing fragments left of the Silk Road. But it's a start.

Interactive Map of the Silk Road

Interactive Map of the Silk Road originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 20:56:30.

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Fieldwork in Focus: Berefet, Gambia

2010-01-25T06:57:31Z

Today's Fieldwork in Focus comes from Liza Gijanto of Syracuse University, who describes the upcoming excavations at Berefet, Gambia.

The St. Mary's College Department of Anthropology announces plans for its 2010 Gambia Field Study Program. This will be the College's eighth biennial field study program. The program began as a six-week study tour in 1996. It has grown steadily, and now brings together American and Gambian students, citizens and professionals to pursue collaborative research activities of mutual scholarly and community interest over a seven week period.

Sea wall at James Island Gambia. Photo by St. Mary's College Gambia Project

The Sampul Tapestry

2010-01-24T13:11:32Z

A pair of 2000-year-old trousers was reported in Antiquity this quarter; and you wouldn't think it, but the story of their construction is a fascinating one that illustrates the crossing of cultures in the 2nd century BC along the Silk Road between the Han Dynasty capital of Chang 'An and a west central Asia thoroughly changed by the exploits of Alexander the Great.

Head of a Greek-Macedonian Lancer on the Sampul Tapestry. Photo by Shizhao

In 1984, four mass graves were discovered in a cemetery near the village of Sampul, an oasis in the Tarim Basin of western China north of Tibet. In one of them was discovered a pair of ornamental trousers, cut from a tapestry that once hung in a princely residence of west central Asia. The story of the Tapestry Trousers of Sampul illustrates a complex combination of cultural imagery, and at the same time highlights the less-than-cordial aspects of cultural exchange along the Silk Road.

Read more about The Tapestry Trousers of Sampul
Wagner, Mayke, et al. 2009 The ornamental trousers from Sampula (Xinjiang, China): their origins and biography. Antiquity 83(322):1065-1075.

The Sampul Tapestry originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 13:11:32.

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The Human Spark: Brain Matters

2010-01-18T11:37:34Z

In "Brain Matters", the third and final episode of PBS's documentary The Human Spark, narrator and host Alan Alda has his brain scanned, and learns about recent research into the mechanical structures of the human brain. Such research has led scholars to believe that the range of capabilities that make us what we are today—including tool use of course, but also art, religion, science and society—are all tied inextricably to our ability to communicate, to acquire complex grammatical language to teach one another how to get along in the world.

Host and narrator Alan Alda poses in front of his brain scan at the University of Oregon. Photo Courtesy of WNET.ORG

My Job in Archaeology

2010-01-15T06:35:17Z

Today I'm announcing a new feature, which will allow people who work in the field of archaeology to talk about their jobs, explain why they love them and a bit about how they got involved in the field.

Luther Cressman at Fort Rock Cave, Oregon. Photo by John Atherton

The project is called My Job in Archaeology; and the first two contributions are from Alice, a CRM archaeologist who prefers to remain anonymous, and Susanne Grieve, an archaeological conservator at Eastern Carolina University.

My Job in Archaeology originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 06:35:17.

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Fieldwork in Focus: Cooper's Ferry, Idaho

2010-01-12T18:23:53Z

Today's Fieldwork in Focus comes from Loren Davis, field director at the Cooper's Ferry Site, an early Paleoindian site located on the Salmon River of Idaho, to be held during from June 21 to August 13, 2010.

The Cooper's Ferry site is located in the beautiful lower Salmon River canyon of western Idaho and contains some of the earliest evidence of humans in the Pacific Northwest. Previous work at the site, conducted by Davis in 1997, revealed a long record of repeated human occupation, beginning with a Western Stemmed Tradition/Paleoarchaic artifact assemblage associated with radiocarbon dates of 11,370 and 11,410 radiocarbon years ago (RYA). These dates are controversial and, if true, support current arguments that peoples bearing the Clovis tradition were not the first to settle the Far West.

The 2009 Cooper's Ferry field school crew at work. Photo Photo taken by Marcos Villasenor

In 2009, we began a multi-year excavation at the Cooper's Ferry site in order to build upon the exciting information collected in 1997 and will seek to address many archaeological questions related to the evolution of technology, economic patterns, and environmental conditions during the late Pleistocene to early Holocene period (ca. 12,000-8,000 RYA). Ultimately, these new excavations at Cooper's Ferry will hopefully contribute critical data to answer many questions about the first peoples of the Pacific Northwest and, by extension, the Americas.

The block excavation, as it appeared by the end of the 2009 field season.
Photo Credit: Photo taken by Loren Davis

As part of the 2010 excavations at Cooper's Ferry, Oregon State University's Department of Anthropology is offering an eight-week Archaeology Field School and is currently seeking applicants for a limited number of spaces on the expedition crew. Join us this coming summer to learn professional archaeological excavation, recordation, and field curation skills as we seek clues about the first peoples of Far Western North America. Students will also get an introduction to landscape and site-level approaches to geoarchaeological study--perspectives that are important in the search for and study of the First Americans.

View of the 2009 OSU excavations at the Cooper's Ferry site, lower Salmon River Canyon, Idaho. Photo taken by Marcos Villasenor

All participants must sign up for 12 credits of Archaeology Field School (ANTH 438) through Oregon State University, which is expected to cost about $1,800 in 2010. Current OSU students and non-OSU students are welcome to apply. In addition to tuition, students will be responsible for paying for their own food, laundry, and entertainment. Food costs vary, depending on the individual, but might be expected to cost $50-$75/week or more. A van will bring students from the OSU Corvallis campus to Idaho and back again. Students wishing to bring their own vehicles will be responsible for all associated costs. Visitors are welcomed during the 2010 field season.

For more information on how to apply, see the field school webpage or contact Dr. Loren Davis: loren.davis@oregonstate.edu

Cooper's Ferry Fieldschool, Oregon State University
More Fieldwork in Focus
Paleoindians
American Archaic

Fieldwork in Focus: Cooper's Ferry, Idaho originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 18:23:53.

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