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Archaeology Magazine has published its annual list of the top ten finds of the year. It’s been discussed at Cosmic Log and About.com’s Archaeology site. There’s always controversy over a top anything list, or at least when someone’s put thought into it there is. The oddest comment I’ve seen on it is on About.com’s Ancient History site. According to one commentator, Homburg, the list – which includes the origins of whaling, a Portuguese Indiaman and American savages performing human sacrifices – is “politically correct”.

I tend to struggle with this kind of list because I can never remember what was found when, or when I read it. For instance I thought I read about the Palaeolithic shoes in 2007. Whenever shoe use was discovered, the palaeopathology which shows the existence of prehistoric footwear is adding flesh to the bones of the idea that humans were cognitively similar to us tens of thousands of years ago. I’m a bit wary of Jared Diamond’s term Great Leap Forward to describe the change in cognition because I’m not certain it was one event. It’s more likely to be feedback between a series of changes that radically altered human behaviour. Nonetheless there’s something very strange which happened in the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition.

There’s more could be said about the other finds. The discovery of oil painting in Bamiyan isn’t just nice art. It could tell us a lot about connections between east and west in late antiquity. The genetic data from North America is interesting in itself, but so is the methodology behind it. I’m terribly wary of a lot of genetic studies on migration in the old world. The study of the Beringia bottleneck is one of the few integrated studies I’ve seen.

The comment by Homburg says that “few of these sites are on a par with major finds of the greco-roman world.” This year I’d disagree. In fact if there is tokenism I’d say it was with the inclusion of the Colossi of Sagalassos. One of which was found in 2007. I’m sure there are better things to be found from the classical world, mainly because I think they’re probably finding them at Sagalassos. Archaeology has a nice site following the dig. I can see the colossi look sexy, but this year they’ve been excavating the Macellum (a bit like a Roman supermarket), the Potters’ Quarter, and the water network. I’ll admit it might not sound stunning, but put it together and you’ll have a huge amount of information about how a city works.

One find which has come to late to make it to the list is the discovery of a Roman battlefield in Germany. It’s in northern Germany and dates from the 3rd century AD, long after the loss of the legions of Varus in the Teutoburg Forest. This is around the same time as the Third Century Crisis so it could be hugely significant in rethinking how the military related to Imperial power. And as far as sexiness goes, it gets top marks. Amongst the finds are bolts from Roman Scorpions – as seen in ‘Gladiator‘.