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The most popular Services mentioned in /r/Archaeology:
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The most popular reviews in /r/Archaeology:
This was fantastic and now I want to own this game.
Edit: https://smile.amazon.com/Wood-Expressions-The-Game-of/dp/B00005TNHO
The lady of Cao or Dama de Cao is the name given to a woman of Mochic culture discovered in 2006 by archaeologist Régulo Franco at the archaeological site El Brujo (Huaca Cao Viejo) which is about 45 km north of Trujillo, at the Liberty Department.
I'm having some difficulty discerning what's new here. So, for example, the promotion blurb on Eric Cline's 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed notes:
>In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes.
Geza Vermes has a translation of all the non biblical scrolls that is excellent, though it uses a lot of King James English (thou, thy, etc). Here it is on Amazon:
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English: Seventh Edition https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0141197315/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Np8MybJRDB3XP
It's a nifty little edition
Actually, you are not being picky at all. Your reply and knowledge is what has me addicted to Reddit. It's the fact that there is so much knowledge among Redditors which they are willing to share. My reason for posting the song was that it gives a more "immediate" connection to the ancient world than artifacts; similar to the reconstruction of ancient Greek [songs].(http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/what-ancient-greek-music-sounded-like.html), It gives us just a glimpse of "being there".
However, the historical and cultural context is also important. My area of "expertise" is ancient Greek history, especially the Mycenaean period. So, even though I have knowledge of the ancient Near East, whilst I would immediately note someone suggesting that 8th century BCE Greek is the same as 1st Century CE Latin, I didn't turn my mind to the distinction between Hurrian and Sumerian.
Both were present during the Pleistocene. Camels actually originated in North America.
Actually, no. It's a "suture", and it is a conective tissue that separates the bones of the cranium. It is a normal anatomic structure. You can learn more about them in this link: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lambdoid_suture
It's not based on a lot for sure, but if you look through the paper and find the page with this image he's partially basing on typical tomb layout plans of other tombs and notes the missing rooms that make it atypical. Also there is cracking in the doorways he's saying makes it apparent there are more voids.
Like I said, it's quite the leap, especially to say it's Nefertiti but it's not completely just a guess. It's close though.
>Is this true.
Yes.
>and if so, how does it work?
Most folks in this sub (including me) will tend to be a bit more helpful with examples and things of that nature after it's made apparent that you've done some preliminary research. Come back when you've done a little reading. And for finding references / sources, Google Scholar is your friend.
also in looking at it again one thing I didn't notice at first is it appears to have a perforated bore hole through it. Nephrite has a hardness of 6 – 6.5 This find seems very much "out of place"
Additional information about Nephrite-yielding Prehistoric Cultures.
What has occurred to me is, this could be an item from one of the people who participated in burying Gobekli Tepe.
At the top again, so I'll just repost: This "technique" is not only irresponsible, it's completely unnecessary: conservators have long been able to extract papyri from mummy cartonnage while still preserving the painting. No responsible institution would employ this method nowadays and it is unclear why they are doing it this way.
Here's a video showing how they soak mummy masks in warm water mixed with Palmolive soap, thereby disintegrating the mask.
A silver penny was one of the denominations of money during the Middle Ages. It wasn't decimalized like today's money is. From wikipedia:
>The accounting system of 4 farthings = 1 penny, 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound was adopted from that introduced by Charlemagne to the Frankish Empire (see French livre).
If you're asking where the word "penny" comes from, the world may never know.
Did you read either the article posted or the article you posted, or were you in such a hurry to reply with a "who cares?" that you failed to read anything but the title of either paper?
The paper you linked to (nice going, by the way, linking to a paywalled journal) describes related research, but explicitly only mentions colonizing populations of 5-10 people at a time.
What is new is that this research suggests that far more people than that arrived in the initial wave of colonization of Australia. The fact that it doesn't appear to have been a trickle, but that the initial arriving population was something like 1000 people, is indication of intentional migration.
Such evidence is hard to come by, and to find reasonably strong evidence of a large immigrant population to Australia 50,000 years ago is new, and is important. Given that we're still arguing about migrations just over the last 1000 years in eastern North America, not to mention further back, I'd say this constitutes an important piece of research.
While I have some issues with the use of radiocarbon dates to estimate populations (and I'm not alone in that - there are definite methodological difficulties to overcome; see papers at this link, for example), I think the research warrants reporting.
And it's certainly different from the link to "Science" that you posted.
EDIT: You're apparently a mid-level graduate student, I hope you read the literature in your study area more thoroughly than you skimmed these. If you want to have any hope of passing your quals, you'd better.
Not in this field myself, but try looking at these job listings: http://www.indeed.com/q-Archaeology-jobs.html
Also, make sure you actually talk to the people at these places, don't just shot gun your resume. Call in, ask a bit about the position, let them know you're interested and that you'll be submitting your application to them. Network. This means, talk to archeologists.
Another resource is your school: Ask professors you studied under. Your department should have their finger on the pulse of the job market to some degree. Your school should also have some sort of career development department or program that helps alumni. Your university has a vested interest in getting you a job so that they can tout their job placement rates.
One last word of caution: Don't stray away from doing free work. Making sure that you have an income comes first for sure, but know that there is a lot of legwork that you'll have to do on your own. Most industries and fields stick to their own; people compare notes and hire from workers that are tried and true. You need to convince people that you are tried and true enough to be hired. Try shadowing someone in your field, volunteering during your free time, helping professors with research, and attending conventions. Get someone to vouch for you, ideally someone who can give you the heads up on opportunities they hear about in return for helping them out.
I'm sharing with you the study of the gold conducted by Pernicka here. I've read a few things about the eneolithic cultures that inhabited modern day Bulgaria's territory so if you have a question about them feel free to ask. I'd be glad to help if I can.
I'd definitely recommend Madonna Moss's "Northwest Coast Archaeology as Deep History". It's fairly recent (2011), is an easy read, and would point you deeper into the literature. It's available as a paperback (despite what Amazon says) or as an e-book, the latter is only 10$ I think.
Also, The Midden, which is the newsletter of the Archaeological Society of BC has recently gone digital and open access. Link..
I've used a couple of different journals and methodologies over the past several years in the field and at home (lab, etc). In the field if somebody is providing either forms or individual notebooks that I'll have to turn in at the end of the dig, I'll use that for formal excavation notes. However, at the end of the day or every few days I'll take those notes and copy the 'highlights' into my personal journal that covers a broader context* and I will keep for my own personal records. For the personal journal I like to use the hardcover Sokkia transit or cross section field books (or equivalents from elan) - They have enough pages that I don't need to start new ones all the time and like the grid page layout so that draw my little diagrams. Plus, it satisfies my mild ocd that I can write on the spines to identify individual volumes on a shelf.
If I'm expected to provide my own notebook that I'll need to turn in, I've picked up some of these cheap ones which are a little small for my personal preference, but are cheap enough that I don't mind handing them in and/or giving them to students who don't know to bring their own.
*By this I mean it covers "other stuff" than the actual formal job I'm on - If I go check out a potential unrelated site in the evening, or decide to walk or kayak a drainage and check out the soils on a 4-day, but doesn't actually connect to the site we're on at the moment, those notes will go in here. Also, things you want to make sure you recall correctly but definitely do not go in notes anyone else will be looking at - "Jack and Jill both came out of Jill's tent this morning..." etc.
JFC.
https://amazon.com/America-Before-Earths-Lost-Civilization/dp/1250153735
Click the "LOOK INSIDE" button above the image.
Also here’s a book that people use to learn hieroglyphic for archeology and it has a chapter on how Christianity lead to the eradication of hieroglyphic with support from European Christianity:
this is the book you want to read if you're interested in the subject matter
​
Short answer: the Hopi are descended from the ancestral Puebloan cultures of the southwest. They lived as far west as the Moapa valley in Nevada and as eastward to central New Mexico and south towards Mexico and north to the San Juan forest. And their ancestors have been here a very long time. Where the Hopi live today (NE Arizona at the Hopi mesas) became a central place for living after 1300 CE where people from all those areas I just mentioned slowly migrated to the Hopi Mesas with many migrating over to the Rio grande. There are a lot of particulars, nevertheless, the Hopi don’t really dispute the archaeological record because as my Hopi friends have told me, I am bearing witness to the migration of their ancestors. And those migration stories are a fundamental component of Hopi traditions and ceremonies.
A GREAT read for this is Becoming Hopi It’s the best book available on the topic because it was written by Hopi representatives and archaeologists.
Be prepared for your body to absolutely ache after the first two days. Like what-I-didn’t-even-realise-there-was-a-muscle-here type ache.
If you have a pair of gardening gloves (waterproof ones if it’s going to rain) it is a god-send. Something like these, they’re rubber coated on the palm and fingers:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09M3GCZDF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_S8KVHY4DKRFY95Q3G13Z
Also, bring moisturising hand cream with you, you’re going to get lots of lovely calluses when trowelling, shoving dirt and wheel-borrowing away dirt onto the spoil heap. Hand cream will make your hands feel slightly nicer after all that at the end of the day.
The “Underground” series is a good place to start. From there there are a ton of other books about NS/ Maritime Archaeology to branch of into.
I have posted a critique in my Facebook page, but it is in Portuguese: https://www.facebook.com/criticaarqueologica/posts/572579146266819?pnref=story.
Just for you to know, the DNA evidence is from a different site and a different time, LOL. The original paper of the leading archaeologist Li Xiuzhen is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301709237_Marking_practices_and_the_making_of_the_Qin_Terracotta_Army
but I couldn't find any published paper in an academic journal about this specific subject of the Greek influence, so I guess we have to wait until the documentary is released on Oct 16.
Might be overdue for a good browser reset. You should only need 1 addon to block ads. If the ones you are using aren't doing that you need to find a working addon that blocks ads. Running more than one similar addon can cause conflicts with other addons and affect browser performance.
Privacy badger is more for script blocking. I've used all of them at one time or another but keep coming back to ad block plus because it works for me most of the time and when it doesn't i train it to block things it misses.
> Thanks again for the thoughtful response.
Seriously, thank you; it has been so hard to have a level-headed discussion on reddit lately that this exchange has been refreshing.
Unfortunately, I was aware of all the the 'debate' around the BBC short. The article you posted makes very good points and anything I may have not yet said above would be pretty paraphrasing what it says. I was too wary of dropping the 's' word myself because it could potentially open another can of worms but I don't think we can get around it, really. The only thing I could add is that we cannot ignore the real, even economic pressure many disciplines have been under to make themselves more STEM-like. Some scholars resist it, some scholars embrace it. Kristiansen himslef fell short of calling postprocessualism dead in a recent-ish article.
> Agreed. It will be interesting to see how the steppe model evolves over the coming years...
I personally look forward to it.
My coolest personal find was a 3/4 groove axe. Here's a photo:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=50893490&l=b2a82e1038&id=14820798
In general anything associated with the burial had us pretty excited. I've worked on burials before but never had seen anything like this one, it was pretty incredible.
Wow, /r/archaeology.....This "technique" is not only irresponsible, it's completely unnecessary: conservators have long been able to extract papyri from mummy cartonnage while still preserving the painting. No responsible institution would employ this method nowadays and it is unclear why they are doing it this way.
Here's a video showing how they soak mummy masks in warm water mixed with Palmolive soap, thereby disintegrating the mask.
One place to start might be <em>The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel</em>. It's organized into a number of topics, with chapters by both Israel Finkelstein and Ami Mazar on each one. It's almost a decade old now, and a bit of a dense read, but it's also not terribly expensive and presents fairly moderate views from both "sides" of the debate on quite a few topics, starting with the stories of the patriarchs and moving through the Iron II.
According to German newspaper Der Postillion, translated by DeepL:
For two decades, the so-called Nebra Sky Disk was considered to be the oldest known representation of the sky to date. Now scientists of the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle have discovered that the research was obviously wrong: The Bronze Age artefact therefore does not represent a starry sky, but an early historical pizza recipe.
"This is not only a historical sensation, but also a culinary one," explains Professor Herbert Krefle. "The disc, which is around 4000 years old, was probably used as a pattern in a kind of prehistoric pizzeria so that the baker could produce pizzas of consistent quality.
Microscopically small flour, tomato and cheese particles found on the sky disc were used to prove this.
What was previously thought to be the sun or the full moon is now a juicy slice of salami. The supposed stars are probably pieces of olives. The whole thing was refined by two chili peppers, which were misinterpreted so far as moon crescents. A further stripe at the edge also points to bacon.
In an unprecedented experiment, the scientists baked Nebra's pizza and found it delicious: "At first you think it's a bit unevenly filled," says Professor Krefle. "But when you eat them, you notice that everything is just right. No matter which side you start from. I'm just preparing pizza now."
This finally refutes the fact that pizza as we know it today was invented in 18th century Italy. Saxony-Anhalt is now probably the cradle of the world's most popular dough speciality. A name has also already been found: Instead of pizza, Nebra will soon be served in the nebras of the world.
;)
​
​
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Well, I couldn't find anything about the projectile point series in Connecticut (what projectile points came from what time period), but in the Southwest (AZ, NM, CO and West TX), that would be considered a Mid to Late Formative point, it's corner-notched, and would be from 1100 A.D. to about 1450 A.D. You can also go to bookstores and they have books on point types. Barnes and Noble has this book which might be more accurate for your area. You don't even have to buy it, just go in the store and browse.
I don't know about the UN ( this article gives a little insight https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/19/create-un-military-unit-to-protect-ancient-sites-from-isis-says-italy ), although my bets are also on such missions being presented as being too risky to soldiers' lives relative to the resources being protected, but this might help you understand what is being done http://uscbs.org/
I recommend looking up Laurie Rush, archaeologist, for more information on what is done to protect cultural heritage in warzones, and also the book Cultural Heritage in the Crosshairs. The book specifically talks about no strike lists, which is one of the more effective ways militaries currently protect sites from damage.
I am so sorry! I'm new here (if you couldn't tell) and I thought I had included a link to the picture when I posted it lol. It can be found here: http://tinypic.com/r/20gk56p/7
Thank you guys for letting me know. I hope this one works!
The tablet was lost during all the looting. (It was in the Iraq Museum.) The translations come from transcriptions in this book.
I was in kind of the same situation as you but I managed to carry out this experiment on cremation of infants and it was practically free (https://www.academia.edu/6410956/J%C3%A6ger_J._H._and_Johansen_V._L._2014_The_cremation_of_infants_small_children_an_archaeological_experiment_concerning_the_effects_of_fire_on_bone_weight).
The dead piglets I got for free from a farmer whom otherwise had to pay the government to have them destroyed and the firewood I got for free as well.
A great book! I prefer historiographies that are about a particular topic in archaeology, such as Dan Hick's great 'excavation' of the development of Material Culture Studies (The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect)
I found the article from Konrad Martin Heide mentioned if anyone wants to read it: https://www.academia.edu/2065314/_The_Domestication_of_the_Camel_Biological_Archaeological_and_Inscriptional_Evidence_from_Mesopotamia_Egypt_Israel_and_Arabia_and_Literary_Evidence_from_the_Hebrew_Bible_in_Ugarit_Forschungen_42_2010_Munster_Ugarit...
In my opinion the case for "Abraham lived in early 2nd millenium BC and had camels" isn't very convincing, it is full of ad-hoc hypothesi and has no explanation power other than that it can be brought together with a narrow interpretation of biblical literalists. On the other hand the argument from silence that the TAU-researchers made is pretty solid.
But to mention this:
>both refer to earlier depictions of men riding or leading camels, some that date to the early second millenium BC.
is just wrong. The article talks about depictions from Bactria/Pakistan/Turkmenistan.
Also this:
>Their study was quickly used to claim that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it describes
It is common knowledge that it was, you don't need to study camels for that.
Many thanks, bro. As I have gotten older and settled down, I have become more interested in First Americans and have been attempting to keep up (My ref-lib http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tippy24 & I have 5 more not on this list & 500+ smaller pubs from journals, etc.) From your advice, I would believe my best course of action would be get more field experience. Then see how well I like that... And relearn!
Yeah I was kinda oblivious at one point too, my mother bought me a book a while ago though called Stealing History by Roger Atwood which really made me realize how horrible it is, since then I get almosy unreasonably angry when I hear of archaeological theft, they're essentially destroying history by removing most things and making it impossible to determine the truth of our origins.
These days posts like this always get an upvote for making people more aware of it all. :)
> The Last Days of St Pierre, The Volcanic Disaster That Claimed Thirty Thousand Lives, by Ernest Zebrowski Jr, 2002.
Awesome! Thanks so much. Was easy to find on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-St-Pierre-Volcanic/dp/0813530415
I'll check it out, thanks again!
The very first one was the [Batavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(ship), which is one of the strangest and most morbidly fascinating shipwreck stories in history.
edit: Highly recommend the Peter Fitzsimmons book about the whole ordeal
For artefacts, this is the gold standard. Shading conventions are fairly standard and that covers them by artefact type, along with the actual drawing.
Minimally you will need a fine-pointed compass, archival pens (I use 005, 01 and 03, or .20, .25 and .35mm respectively), and an archival material to draw on. Depending on what you are drawing, other tools may also be necessary. It is also wise to do a draft in pencil before inking a final version, so it helps to do the final on something semi-transparent (e.g. Mylar drafting film) to allow you to trace through it.
The best book I've ever found is this one. It doesn't cover the entire continent, but it does explore a large area. Naturally though, it's out of print and very hard to come by.
The Cherts of Southern Ontario is good and widely cited account of the geology of cherts in Ontario and maps location were they can be sourced. The chert outcrops mapped by von Bitter were in many cases the locations where quarries were located. Bill Fox has also written extensively on cherts and chert quarrying in Ontario and the Northeast (One example).
Thanks for the reply! I just purchased 'An Introduction to Rock Art Research', looking forward to reading it. I'm very interested in 'Religion on the Rocks' and will get that when I can justify spending $65 on a book. What do you think of Lavan Martineau and The Rocks Begin to Speak? It's the only book I attempted to read about rock writing, and it felt a little far fetched as I was reading it.
As for the Grand Canyon, it was just something that had intrigued me but I have no means to actually investigate it myself, but it's a fun fantasy and would make a good book!
Lab work, paperwork, compiling reports, data analytics, and artifact conservation. Once you're above the technician level, you also do a lot of coordination and might end up in contact with tribal governments and that sort of thing.
As a field tech starting out, expect to be traveling at random without much warning for anywhere between a week to a month at a time. Actual time away from home is pretty much your entire summer, and more sporadic until the mid spring/mid fall. You'll likely get nothing whatever during late fall/winter/early spring. This is for commercial archaeology, but academic archaeology operates on roughly the same schedule.
Depends where you're at and what you're doing, but it's usually 50/50, maybe 60/40 lab/field.
Books really depend on what time period and culture you're interested in. For maritime, <em>Beneath the Seven Seas</em> by George F. Bass is a good first book. <em>Ships and Shipwrecks of the Americas</em> by George F. Bass is a good second book, as it's a bit more encyclopedic.
Marilyn Johnson's Lives in Ruins might answer some of those questions. It's a fairly recent book exploring the lives of some archaeologists--both academic and professional. She sat in a class I audited as a grad student for a semester because she was interviewing one of my professors. The book will give you an idea about what archaeologists end up doing for a career.
As everyone else has said, textbooks are not going to teach you the physical way of excavating anything. All it will do is describe to you the process and the thinking behind the process. For a thorough education in field methods, I always recommend participating in or volunteering on an actual excavation. It's the best way to determine whether archaeology or history is better for you (I have several friends who changed their major after not enjoying their first excavation).
Most universities offer a field school, a university sponsored excavation for the express purpose of introducing students into field methods and practice. The site I work at is the field school for a few universities, including Harvard.
Here is a link to the website, which includes a volunteer application, if you are interested in working in Israel.
I realize you may be more interested in digging in Britain. By all means, look up field schools there. It is by far the best way of learning methods, and you learn far more than you can learn in a book. You learn how it feels, how to determine what tool to use, how certain decisions are made about where to dig and how to dig, how the recording process works, etc.
If you feel the need to read a book anyway, I suggest Field Methods in Archaeology.
http://www.amazon.com/FIELD-METHODS-IN-ARCHAEOLOGY-SEVENTH/dp/1598744283
This was my first textbook I ever purchased, and I still have it, though I have not read it since that first semester. It was actually a textbook used for a field school, so I think it would cover most of the issues you want to know.