About.com Archaeology

Vinland

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:40:24 +0000

Vinland is the name of the legendary place described in the Viking sagas that was said to have been founded by Leif Ericson on the North American continent. But its connection with the Viking archaeological site in Newfoundland called L'Anse aux Meadows is fraught with controversy. Canadian archaeologist Birgitta Linderoth Wallace has studied L'Anse aux Meadows for the past forty years, and has developed some interesting notions about that precise issue. Wallace's work, published primarily but not exclusively in the 2006 book Westward Vikings: The Saga of L'Anse aux Meadows, isn't often cited, but in my considered opinion, should be.

This woodcut showing Erik Bloodaxe's widow Gunnhild Gormsd�ttir inciting her sons to take possession of Norway is from Erik Bloodaxe's Saga, as it was published in Snorre Sturlassons's Heimskringla in 1235. Although Erik Bloodaxe's Saga isn't part of the Vinland sagas, it's one of numerous other Viking sagas. Image uploaded by Christian Krogh

During the first studies at L'Anse aux Meadows in the 1960s, the original excavators rather overdid their reliance on information provided in the Vinland sagas. The Vinland sagas are four manuscripts written in the 11th-13th centuries AD, which describe the adventurous ramblings of the Norse in Iceland, Greenland, and the North American continent. Relying on any historical record for archaeological evidence is dicey, even if the records are confirmed to be authentic manuscripts. The Vinland Sagas are not factual records. They're legends, written down decades or centuries after the described events, and as such they can't be trusted to contain "just the facts". That certainly wasn't the writers' intent: they intended to tell a good story, to glorify an ancestor, to keep the ancient legends alive, or some other intention now lost to the ages.

The early over-reliance on the Viking sagas as fact led later scholars to ditch the sagas as completely untrustworthy; some dismissed the discoverer Leif Ericson as a literary myth. But Wallace bravely cracked open the sagas again, and combining archaeological evidence and historical records has discovered some fairly interesting things, particularly about what Vinland might have meant and whether L'Anse aux Meadows can be tied to a specific place named in the Vinland Sagas.

Read More about Vinland

Wallace, Birgitta Linderoth. 2006. Westward Vikings: The Saga of L'Anse aux Meadows. St John's, Newfoundland: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador in association with Parks Canada.

Wallace, Birgitta Linderoth. 2003. L'Anse aux Meadows and Vinland: An Abandoned Experiment. Pp. 207-238 in Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic, edited by James H. Barrett. Brepols Publishers: Trunhout, Belgium.

Vinland originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 10:40:24.

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National Geographic Expedition Week: Bob Ballard at Gallipoli

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:02:26 +0000

I admit right up front that I haven't seen the video "Deep Secrets: The Ballard Gallipoli Expedition", because it wasn't made available to us journalist types prior to the program, which airs on the National Geographic channel Wednesday November 18th. All I know for sure is what is in the press kit.

AE2 Wreck from Underwater at Gallipoli, Turkey. Photo (c) ProsperoPTY Ltd/NGT/Screen Australia/Screen West, Inc.

However, by poking around on the Internet, I have discovered some information on the wreck illustrated in the photograph provided—it is the wreck of a Class E Australian submarine scuttled during the Battle of �anakkale, on April 30, 1915. HMAS (His Majesty's Australian Ship) AE2 was identified in 1998 by an Australian team led by Mark Spencer; perhaps one of the topics discussed include new discoveries about that. Anyway, see the Reader's Guide to Expedition Week 2009 for what I was able to come up with.

Bob Ballard at Gallipoli, including what resources I could find that relate to the story
Deep Secrets: The Ballard Gallipoli Expedition, from National Geographic

National Geographic Expedition Week: Bob Ballard at Gallipoli originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 22:02:26.

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NatGeo Expedition Week 2009: Hunt for the Samurai Subs

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:13:56 +0000

On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, National Geographic's Expedition Week presents a new video documenting the underwater archaeology discovery of three imperial Japanese submarines, all scuttled by the American forces off Oahu in 1946.

CGI Image of the I-201 Fast Attack Japanese Imperial Navy Submarine. Photo credit: (c)Wild Life Productions

"Hunt for the Samurai Subs" is entertaining and educational, and contains lots of interviews with members of the Japanese and American navies, as well as 1946 footage from one of the American servicemen who watched some of the purposeful scuttlings of the unmanned ships.

This is the kind of stuff that I like to see from National Geographic, well-researched, with interviews from the people concerned and lots of context. Several CGI images of what the subs would have looked like help understand the technology, and the search techniques are explained and illustrated well.

Read my full review and see a couple of additional photographs in National Geographic Expedition Week 2009: Hunt for the Samurai Subs.

Hunt for the Samurai Subs: A review and two more photographs
Hunt for the Samurai Subs on National Geographic Week
Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) on Samurai submarines

NatGeo Expedition Week 2009: Hunt for the Samurai Subs originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 09:13:56.

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NatGeo Expedition Week: Search for the Amazon Headhunters

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:05:50 +0000

This year, like last year, National Geographic Channel plans to dedicate this coming week to airing new exploration videos. This year, like last year, they were kind enough to send them along to me to review. Four of the seven new videos are related to archaeology, and, like last year, I will provide a guide to the interested reader, including context and additional reading for those viewers who might want to research a little deeper.

Tsantsa Head in the Quito Amazonia Museum. Photo � Diverse Productions, Ltd

I wish, I really wish I could say that I liked the first video, Search for the Amazon Headhunters, which premieres on Sunday, November 15, 2009. Last year's Expedition Week had several really wonderful videos, based on scholarly research, and god knows there aren't anywhere near enough of those in the world. But Search for the Amazon Headhunters is just not up to what I've come to expect from National Geographic—which doesn't mean it isn't worth watching, just not for the reasons you might expect.

Here is the first installment of my reviews and context analysis for National Geographic Expedition Week 2009: Search for the Amazon Headhunters. I'll post reviews of the later videos as we get closer to their air dates. See what you think and feel free to argue with me!

Search for the Amazon Headhunters, viewer's guide and review at About.com
National Geographic Expedition Week 2008, viewer's guide at About.com
National Geographic Expedition Week 2009, official home page
Piers Gibbon, official website

NatGeo Expedition Week: Search for the Amazon Headhunters originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 22:05:50.

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New Discoveries at Calakmul

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:17:11 +0000

Today, a new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed evidence from the Maya civilization site of Calakmul, a Late Classic period capital in Campeche state of Mexico, 30 km north of the Guatemala border.

Scene showing the serving and drinking of ul "maize-gruel." The hieroglyphic caption aj ul "Maize-gruel Person" (AJ u-lu) appears at top left. Image courtesy PNAS

Calakmul is an important Maya capital, not the least because its importance was discovered so recently. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of occupation at Calakmul between the Middle Preclassic (~950-600 BC) to Late Classic (AD 600-850), with a heyday during the late Classic. Between 685-689, Calakmul was ruled by Yukom Yich'ak K'ak' or Jaguar Paw, the best known of the kings of Calakmul.

The discovery by archaeologist Ramon Carrasco Vargas and colleagues involves a complex of buildings just north of the better-known Central Plaza of Calakmul, where a series of murals were discovered illustrating domestic and artisanal activities of the Maya people. These drawings appear to be of job descriptions, rather than specific people, but they shed a great deal of light on the ordinary working people of the great capital city.

Of course, I've built a new photo essay to look at, including the available photos and drawings of the new murals and an introduction to the site itself.

Carrasco Vargas, Ramon, Veronica A. Vazquez Lopez, and Simon Martin 2009 Daily life of the ancient Maya recorded on murals at Calakmul, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

News Stories

Maya Murals Give Rare View of Everyday Life, Live Science
How the Maya Lived, MSNBC

New Discoveries at Calakmul originally appeared on About.com Archaeology on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 21:17:11.

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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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