Vidi: The Past

Jul 10, 2009 Alun The Past 8 Comments Vidi

This is a test of the new book­mark­ing script I’m work­ing on. It it works then it should col­lect links dur­ing the week and then com­pile them into one post on a Friday.

Rest­ing place of choice — Le Monde dip­lo­matique — Eng­lish edi­tion
Roger Gaess gives a tour of sights found at the dead centre of London.

Time Team Amer­ica: Fort Raleigh
K. Kris Hirst is eager to see more of Time Team Amer­ica. My fin­gers are crossed. Done well it could be a great series about the archae­olo­gical pro­cess, but there’s an awful lot of Brit­ish TV series which have been mutil­ated by Amer­ican television.

Fort Raleigh | Time Team Amer­ica | PBS
Here’s inform­a­tion from PBS about their pro­gramme on Fort Raleigh in North Car­o­lina. Read­ers from the east­ern side of the Atlantic might be inter­ested as it’s the earli­est Eng­lish colony in North America.

Abnor­mal Interests: Epi­graphy By The Num­bers
Duane Smith fol­lows up on the paper “Auto­matic Writer Iden­ti­fic­a­tion of Ancient Greek Inscrip­tions” with a dis­cus­sion of the method. I’m not sure if this is going to make epi­graph­ists more or less scary.

His­tory Blog Ori­gins of the Royal Color Purple
Why is the col­our purple for roy­alty? Char­lotte Gard­ner finds an answer that smells so bad that even the Romans couldn’t stand it.

Roman Times: Romans cap­ture most slots on 10 most extra­vag­ant emper­ors list
Mary Harrsch ques­tions whether it’s the Emper­ors or some­time their pub­lic images which got them on the list.

mental_floss Blog Sci­ence in the Field: Human Migra­tion in the Ancient South­w­est
An intro­duc­tion to the recent revival of the Chaco Meridian idea. I’d have to read the book to see how it dif­fers from ley-lines.

The Archae­ology of Mod­ern Prison Res­ist­ance Prison Pho­to­graphy
A pho­to­graphy pro­ject which has rel­ev­ance to con­tem­por­ary and his­tor­ical archae­olo­gists. The archae­ology of con­fine­ment was one of the ses­sions at WAC last year.

2009 Inter­act­ive Dig Johnson’s Island — Unlock­ing a Civil War Prison
Mean­while, Archae­ology Magazine has an ongo­ing excav­a­tion of an Amer­ican Civil War museum.

Got Medi­eval: What’s So Funny about Knights and Snails?
Every­one knows about George and the dragon, but how to you start train­ing to fight one? It’s pos­sible they star­ted with slightly easier opposition.

The His­tory Blog No Etruscans left in Tuscany?
There’s been a few stor­ies on this, but the His­tory Blog entry caught my eye. I’m scep­tical about this. I think DNA does have inform­a­tion about the past, but I’m wary of how genet­ics and his­tory are integ­rated. That’s another blog post I’ve been mean­ing to write for a year or more.

The Archae­ology of the Medi­ter­ranean World: The Vari­et­ies of Archae­olo­gical Exper­i­ence
Bill Cara­her blogs aboiut the dif­fer­ent ways of approach­ing an archae­olo­gical site. How do you put them all together?

Through the eye of the Geodi­meter Testi­mony of the spade
Mag­nus Reu­ter­dahl has news and some nice pho­tos from a pre­his­toric dig in Sweden.

Ohio Archae­ology Blog: Rare Guilty Pleas Are Obtained In South­w­est Arti­facts Sting
I’ve seen this lis­ted on sev­eral sites, but Bill Pick­ard adds a bit of com­ment­ary from his per­spect­ive in Ohio.

Digi­Past: Do You Really Want To Ques­tion Sylvia Allen’s Crazy Ari­zona Math?
Digi­Past gives archae­olo­gical news with atti­tude. In this case the atti­tude is “Huh?” as there’s a lot less archae­ology in Ari­zona than you might have thought.

A Geo­phys­ics View into Ham­line His­tory Old Dirt — New Thoughts
If you’re excited by Geofizz on Time Team Amer­ica, then you’ll love the radar res­ults on show here. New tech­no­logy is cut­ting down the amount of time spent dig­ging in the wrong place.

The His­tory Blog Libya’s ancient sites rav­aged by loot­ers
The open­ing up of Libya means that many major sites from the Roman Empire are now access­ible. Unfor­tu­nately there’s a healthy mar­ket for illeg­ally excav­ated material.

The­or­et­ical Struc­tural Archae­ology: Prim­it­ive Rituals
I could be the­at­ric­ally grumpy about this. Geoff Carter has a go at archae­olo­gists who talk about cos­mo­logy and ritual. If I can organ­ise my thoughts I’ll blog more about this. I dis­agree with some of what he says, I’m more smi­ley about eth­no­graphy. How­ever, ritual is a label, not an explan­a­tion. If you get miffed by archae­olo­gists simply say­ing some­thing is ‘ritual’ and act­ing as if that’s an answer you’ll like this.

Ancient Games: “Rome” movie to offer decent series wrapup
Mary Harrsch has what I hope is the second best news of the week.* Rome is to return as a film. Just don’t try and work out how old Pullo will be for the era it’s set in.
This is being typed the day before I get my latest set of can­cer results.

Mus­ings On Writ­ing — Gos­pel of Judas and Quar­rel­some Aca­dem­ics (What? NO … aca­dem­ics quar­rel­ing … ?!)
Min’s Mus­ings is a new blog (to me). This is a good exam­in­a­tion of what hap­pens when polit­ics muscles into your archaeology.

Undead Naked Archae­ology: Photo-Assault!
I could write a descrip­tion here, but with a title like that you’re going to click any­way aren’t you?

Pagans for Archae­ology: Arthur’s protest
I like Yvonne Aburrow’s blog­ging a lot. There’s plenty of intel­li­gent pagans, but Yvonne reli­ably hits a bal­ance between spir­itual belief and non-pagan soci­ety when she writes. Here she notes that not only is Arthur Pen­dragon mak­ing a claim on ancient bones, but he’s also lay­ing what pagans should believe. That’s sly polit­ics more often found with fun­da­ment­al­ists claim­ing the label ‘Christian’.

remote cent­ral: Bas­ketry Of The Present And Pre­his­tory — Video Short
Tim Jones shows that when you start ser­i­ously think­ing about it, bas­ketry reveals an awful lot about human cog­ni­tion. It also shows how all sorts of thought pro­cesses are enmeshed with each other.

The Grail Diary Elec­tric Archae­ology: Digital Media for Learn­ing and Research
Shawn Gra­ham reveals an essen­tial help to find­ing the Holy Grail. Yes, the one in the Indi­ana Jones film.

Mem­or­ab­ilia Ant­on­ina: Read­ers (if there are any left) for­give me, for I have sinned …
I’ve got the early scraps of a blog post (tied in with the tool for mak­ing these link posts) and Mem­or­ab­ilia Ant­on­ina’s passing was going to be some­thing to lament. Except it’s not dead yet. Some­times it’s nice to be wrong.

UNL | Tur­key Trip Blog | Charles W. Durham School of Archi­tec­tural Engin­eer­ing
Here’s another new blog to me. It’s a class tak­ing a trip to Tur­key from the Uni­ver­sity of Neb­raska, Lin­coln. As part of the trip they’re scan­ning some ancient sites.

An inter­est­ing turn Archae­ology at Sig­nal Hill, New­found­land, Canada
Why would you want to con­duct an archae­olo­gical dig when you already have the his­tor­ical records? Here’s an answer from another blog that’s new to me.

Latvian His­tory
This is a new Eng­lish lan­guage blog on the his­tory of the middle Baltic state. It cov­ers archae­ology as well as his­tory. It could be a very use­ful blog as while there’s good research com­ing out of the Baltic states, I can’t recall any other Baltic bloggers.

Dig­ging the Past in Laver­stock Across the Bourne
Wayne D. Mor­ris gives his impres­sions of see­ing his first archae­olo­gical dig at Across the Bourne.