About.com Archaeology

Finding Bosutswe: Modern Archaeology vs. Indiana Jones

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:33:27 +0000

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.

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.

Bosutswe, Botswana
Toutswemogala, Botswana
About.com Guide to the African Iron Age

Finding Bosutswe: Modern Archaeology vs. Indiana Jones originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 22:33:27.

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Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:53:55 +0000

Belgian anthropologist Claude L�vi-Strauss died on October 31, 2009, at the ripe old age of 100. His impact on anthropology (and archaeology as a subset of anthropology) was so earth-shattering that it's hard to remember what anthropology was like before him.

Claude Levi-Strauss, drawing by Pablo Secca

L�vi-Strauss was perhaps one of the earliest post-colonial researchers: to put it bluntly, he humanized people who were less "civilized" than the first world. It's hard to believe now, but before L�vi-Strauss, the standard explanation of the existence of modern hunter-gatherers was to consider them less than human, less intelligent, less "gifted" than those of us who turned our hands to agriculture and the lesser arts.

L�vi-Strauss' research could be said to have laid the groundwork for our modern understanding of the world, our (still fledgling) ability to look at alternative living methods as not a reflection of lesser intelligence, but of a pragmatic reaction to environmental conditions. L�vi-Strauss' structuralism pointed out that there are hard-wired components of our natures that are reflected in all of us, no matter where we were born, how much education we have or how we make our living. Although modern people are still chauvinistic as all get-out, we are less so for L�vi-Strauss' research and writings.

You can't say that L�vi-Strauss won't be missed—but his impact will continue to resonate for a long time in anthropology and the related sciences.

Here are some other attempts at explaining the importance of this truly astoundingly influential scholar:

The Influence of Claude L�vi-Strauss, Robert Mackay, New York Times
Famed Anthropologist Claude L�vi-Strauss Dies, Constance Holden, Science Now
Claude L�vi-Strauss Dies at 100 , New York Times
Remembering Claude L�vi-Strauss, Academic Giant of the Twentieth Century, The Atlantic Wire

Claude Levi-Strauss: Intellectual considered the father of modern anthropology whose work inspired structuralism, Independent

Selected Books of Levi-Strauss

And you'll notice that, every one of them is in print

Claude Levi-Strauss Dies at 100 originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 22:53:55.

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Beer and Archaeology

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:00:35 +0000

Now, don't get me wrong. Archaeologists do have a reputation for drinking an ocean of beer at the end of their working day, but that is besides the point. I recently heard about an inventive public archaeology venue, being carried out in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—surely one of the beer-making capitals of the world.

Making Beer the Medieval Way at Archeon. Photo by Hans Splinter

This year marks the second annual set of courses taught in Milwaukee called Ale through the Ages: The Anthropology and Archaeology of Brewing, a series of short courses on ancient beer brewing, bottling and tasting.

Ale through the Ages is taught by staff from Discovery Worlds museum located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. October's class brewed Rhineland Roggenbier, a tasty ale that predates the German purity law of 1516; November will see the brewing of Mayan chicha beer, an ancient recipe made with corn and cocoa; and December promises a taste of the sweet honeyed medieval Mead of Meath ale.

Yum! You can sign up for each class, and the November classes start on the 3rd, so belly on up to the bar!

Discovery World Programs: Ale through the Ages (scroll down a tad for the course description)
Ale through the Ages on Kevin Cullen's A Distant Mirror blog
The Origin of Wine, from an archaeological standpoint
The Herbal Wines of Ancient Egypt

Beer and Archaeology originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 06:00:35.

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Environmental Collapse of the Nasca

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:09:26 +0000

According to a little press release I received late last week, David Beresford-Jones from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge has been leading a team investigating the environmental impacts of agriculture on the Nasca civilization in Peru.

Ancient huarango in Usaca, the last old-growth forest fragment on the south coast of Peru. Researchers have found evidence that the Nasca cleared areas such as this to devastating effect. Photo by McDonald Institute

The Nasca, who are best known for the Nasca Lines, those mysterious gigantic geoglyphs of spiders and birds and geometric lines created in the Peruvian deserts, lived between about 1-750 AD, when their society collapsed into chaos. The recent study is said to show that the Nasca cleared the Ica Valley forest of huarango trees to make way for crops, including cotton and maize. Beresford-Jones' team reports that cutting down the huarango tree had an unintended effect on the arid landscape: that the deforestation damaged soil fertility and made the Nasca vulnerable to El Nino-style storms, and ultimately put an end to the Nasca society.

The report has been published in Latin American Antiquity, and I haven't seen it yet, so I'll just stop there and pass along some late-breaking news stories on the topic.

About.com's Guide to the Nazca Civilization
Nasca Lines

News Stories

Beresford-Jones' homepage at the McDonald Institute has a photo of a relict canal from the Nasca, which looks pretty grim
Deforestation killed Nascas - Cambridge study, The Australian
Nazcas' destruction of forests caused downfall, Telegraph

Environmental Collapse of the Nasca originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 20:09:26.

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Woolley at Ur

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:32:25 +0000

From 1922-1934, archaeologist C. Leonard Woolley excavated at the Sumerian city of Ur, an ancient tell located in what is today very southern Iraq, funded by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Plan of the "Great Death Pit," so called because it held the bodies of seventy-three retainers. Reprinted from Woolley's The Royal Cemetery, Ur Excavations, Vol. 2, published in 1934.

Five of those seasons were spent excavating what Woolley called the Royal Cemetery, including sixteen Royal Tombs, all dated to the early dynastic period of Mesopotamia, ~2500-2350 BC. The artifacts recovered there are some of the most amazing ever discovered, which I capitalized on for my photo essay last week on The Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery.

Woolley's excavations were remarkable even for their time, and the discoveries of Queen Puabi's tomb and the Great Pit of Death captured the imaginations of the general public, as much as they do today. In late October, 2009, the Penn Museum opened a new exhibit entitled "Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery", and their press kit included a handful of photos from Woolley excavations, worth another photo essay.

Read the new photo essay: Leonard Woolley at the Royal Cemetery of Ur

More on Ancient Ur and the Royal Cemetery

Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery
Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, photo essay
Ancient Ur, Iraq, glossary entry
Timeline and Description of Mesopotamia
C. Leonard Woolley

Woolley at Ur originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 15:32:25.

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The Indians of Iowa: A Book Review

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:40:17 +0000

Lance Foster is an academic and a member of the Ioway tribe, and beginning in 1996, he started an ambitious web project (now defunct) called Native Nations of Iowa.

The Indians of Iowa
Photo Credit: Lance Foster and the University of Iowa Press (c) 2009

The project assembled what histories there were available of the Native American groups who lived in the American midwestern state of Iowa between about 1500 until Euroamerican colonization pushed them out—not always successfully, in fact, since at least three have a visible presence in the state. The Indians of Iowa is a new book published in October 2009 by the University of Iowa Press, and it is an outgrowth of Foster's Native Nations project.

The Indians of Iowa combines Native American and Euro-American history, archaeology and Foster's unique brand of art to give the reader a tantalizing taste of the proto-historic period of the midwestern United States from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Rapid City, South Dakota. Focused on what is today the state of Iowa, the book summaries the histories of ten groups who lived in Iowa at some point, and provides many sidebars about how Native Americans of the midwest lived and continue to live.

Read the book review of The Indians of Iowa
Compare Prices of the book at PriceGrabber
The Indians of Iowa at the University of Iowa Press
Lance Foster's Home Page, University of Montana at Helena
Lance Foster's Art Blog
The Ioway at NativeWeb (remnant of the Native Nations of Iowa site)

The Indians of Iowa: A Book Review originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 09:40:17.

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Archaeology CryptoQuote 8

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:58:58 +0000

The effect of spending your life studying the ancient past changes people, in ways that are quite surprising. Today's cryptoquote nails the creation of the archaeological other very well indeed.

Bottle in Abandoned House Ruins, Austin, Texas. Photo by HeatedGroundPhotography

L PLK TRN RLG NKMB CNNYBA TUIR IRB

LZMRLBNCNEUMLC BQB TUCC KBJBZ GBB VXUIB

KNZPLCCQ. UI UG WNGGUDCB IN ZBHUKB IRB

GBKGB NH IUPB XKIUC LK NCA GRNB UK IRB

DXKMR EZLGG NZ L WUCB NH KUKBIBBKIR

MBKIXZQ DNIICBG UK LK LDLKANKBA PUKUKE

INTK INCCG UK NKB'G RBLA CUYB L RLCC

MCNMY. IRUG UG L WZUMB NKB WLQG HNZ

CBLZKUKE IN ZBLA IUPB HZNP GXZHLMBG

NIRBZ IRLK IRB UCCXGIZLIBA AULC.

CNZBK BUGBCBQ

Hint and the Answer

Hint: Q=Y

Solution

Archaeology CryptoQuote 8 originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 06:58:58.

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Archaeology and Halloween

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:53:32 +0000

Archaeology magazine this month has a special feature on the archaeology of Halloween, witches, witchcraft and all sorts of spooky topics. Lots of online content includes articles on Samhain, the witches of Cornwall, witchbottles, vampires, sacrifices, zombies and curses: Great fun. Don't miss this one!

Uncanny Archaeology

Archaeology and Halloween originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 19:53:32.

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Whatever Happened to Amelia Earhart? The Archaeological Evidence

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:14:37 +0000

Pioneer aviator Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in July of 1937, and people have been looking for her ever since. The new movie Amelia starring Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor, has sparked new general interest in Earhart, but several research teams have been actively seeking evidence of her crash landing for many many years. One of the major seekers is TIGHAR, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, who over the past two decades has discovered tantalizing clues from archaeological research on Nikumaroro, a tiny island in Kiribati.

Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan. Photo in TIGHAR Collection, courtesy Purdue University Library

Royal Cemetery at Ur: A Photo Essay

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:52:11 +0000

Today, the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology opens a new exhibit entitled Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery. Ur was a Mesopotamian city-state dated to the 4th millennium BC, and its Royal Cemetery contained some of the most astoundingly beautiful artifacts ever discovered. Penn Museum provided lots of great photos of the artifacts and some of C. Leonard Woolley's early 20th century excavation plans, so I've (naturally) used them to create photo essays in celebration of this event.

Head of a Lion, adornment from the Great Death Pit at the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Photo courtesy Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery, Penn Museum

The first photo essay, called Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, features some of the fabulous jewelry, cups and objects of art recovered from the Royal Cemetery, including Queen Puabi's tomb and the dismayingly-named "Great Pit of Death". Later this week I'll post another essay on Woolley's excavations.

The exhibit opens today at the U Penn Museum. It must be an amazing collection, so get there if you can.

Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, a photo essay
Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery, home page at the Penn Museum
The Ancient City of Ur, more on the site itself

Royal Cemetery at Ur: A Photo Essay originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 10:52:11.

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