Isn’t the Aventis Prize Wonderful?

Alun Science No Comments , , , ,

The Aventis Prize cel­eb­rates the best in sci­ence pub­lish­ing. I’ve only recently seen the short-list and it looks like my card and I will be off to Amazon again. The long-list is inter­est­ing too. I’ve read Gribben’s Deep Sim­pli­city, and life would be much more won­der­ful if sev­eral pseudo-mathematical archae­olo­gists had too. I also see Brian Fagan has a new one out. I sup­pose with him being so pro­lific that was always going to be a safe bet, and he’s a con­sist­ently good com­mu­nic­ator so that’s another book to add to the ‘to-read pile. Crit­ical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another by Philip Ball looks essen­tial too as it tackles col­lect­ive decision mak­ing, which has implic­a­tions for ‘agency’ in archaeology.

A couple of years ago I would have fol­lowed this up with a whine about how it’s a shame that archae­olo­gists can­not com­mu­nic­ate, but that’s thank­fully totally inac­cur­ate now. I have Steve Mithen’s After the Ice and that Cave of the Mind one by someone whose name I for­get on my to read pile. As for other books, while I don’t agree with all of Fran­cis Pryor’s Bri­tain BC, it is non­ethe­less an excel­lent bit of work. Mar­tin Jones’s Molecule Hunt is also fantastic.

Ancient African Skies

Alun Science, The Past No Comments , ,

When I get time™ I’d like to have a go at writ­ing a SETI paper from a clas­sical per­spect­ive. There’s a lot that can be said about bio­lo­gical and astro­nom­ical spec­u­la­tion in ancient Greece and the ancient authors weren’t averse to mix­ing the two. In the mean­time there’s an art­icle on the Bor­ana cal­en­dar at the SETI Insti­tute.

The Bor­ana cal­en­dar is inter­est­ing to me because it’s based to a large extent around the con­stel­la­tion Tri­an­gu­lum. The name Tri­an­gu­lum should pretty well sum up how dis­tinct­ive the con­stel­la­tion is. It’s an import­ant reminder that just because a star or a might seem import­ant to us, it wasn’t auto­mat­ic­ally import­ant to the ancients.

Greek & Roman Calendars by Robert Hannah

Alun Science, The Past 1 Comment , , , , , ,

I think it was D.R. Dicks in his book Early Greek Astro­nomy to Aris­totle who bemoaned the lack of books on Greek Astro­nomy. He looked back to the 1930s and Thomas Heath’s book on Greek Astro­nomy for an earlier work on the sub­ject. At the time when I was doing my BA I thought that was a bad thing. Now I sus­pect it’s not. Rather it shows that when clas­si­cists look at astro­nomy in the ancient world they keep an eye on how it inter­re­lated with soci­ety. The res­ult is excel­lent books like Rose­mary Wright’s Cos­mo­logy in Antiquity, Tam­syn Barton’s Ancient Astro­logy and now Robert Hannah’s Greek & Roman Cal­en­dars. I’ve just fin­ished my first skim of the book and I’m quite impressed.
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Notable Posts

Alun Life No Comments ,

I’ve recently fin­ished Dr. Tatania’s Sex Guide to All Cre­ation. It’s a inspir­ing book and some­thing I’ll write up about in due course. What I planned to do was use it to show that evol­u­tion isn’t simply great simply because cre­ation­ists are wrong. It’s a beau­ti­ful and eleg­ant concept and I think some of the issues Olivia Jud­son / Dr. Tatania raises explore this. It’ll be a little while before it appears (I load entries into this up to four days in advance — the Aventis Prize entry was delayed by me decid­ing to stick the AHDS notice up this morn­ing). How­ever, The proper rev­er­ence due those who have gone before by PZ Myers does the job much bet­ter. It’s a fant­astic essay which cap­tures some of the beauty of nature.

Athena at Rites Of Pas­sage has recently added posts on island archae­ology which add even more art­icles on my “to read” list. She also has a rant about the Guardian’s art­icle on cave-art being Stone Age Porn. “Have we whizzed back to the era of see­ing all sex as por­no­graphic? Does it mean that any time anyone’s at it, it’s an act of por­no­graphy?” she asks. To which the only answer I can give Woody Allen’s. Yes — if it’s done properly.

64 Baker Street has a cun­ning plan at the Bit­ter Boat to escape temp­ing hell and get a job in archae­ology. She’s going to omit her Master’s degree from her CV. I wish her luck. I like her blog. It reminds me of my own temp­ing experience.

…and I’ve finally worked out how these web car­ni­vals, like The Tangled Bank work. I couldn’t see why the entries didn’t appear on the Tangled Bank web­site. Orac’s take on issue XXV finally flipped the light switch. I’m a slow thinker, but I do get there eventually.

I got it Wrong

Alun Digital Academia No Comments ,

It’s slightly unnerv­ing that I can write on a log that I tell no-one about and still get read. Unfor­tu­nately the post that got noticed is incor­rect or at least might be. There is, in the UK, an Arts and Human­it­ies Arxiv. It’s called the Arts and Human­it­ies Data Ser­vice. If I under­stand it cor­rectly I can drop a PDF of an art­icle in there for £30, which is a small price to pay for self-archiving.

Whether or not I can as an indi­vidual deposit a pub­lished paper in there is some­thing I’m chas­ing up, but if I can then it makes sense to use it.

I stand by the bit about tech­no­pho­bia though. If I can deposit into the AHDS and my peers don’t then my work has a huge advant­age over theirs, even if theirs is bet­ter qual­ity. To be able to cite an art­icle you first have to be able to find it.

Ancient History, Archaeology and Hypertext Publishing

Alun Digital Academia, The Past No Comments , , , ,

Some back­ground. This was going to be an edit­or­ial / art­icle for TUP, so it will read a bit oddly. After four months I’d heard noth­ing from the edit­ors who’d said they’d handle it, and it was get­ting a bit out of date. This is ironic as the reason for set­ting up the journal was so I could get papers out quickly, but there you go. So it was going to be shelved.

Then the PGs in Archae­ology and Ancient His­tory got an email from the Fac­ulty of Arts at Leicester. They were spon­sor­ing an AHRB Eng­lish con­fer­ence on schol­arly pub­lish­ing, but were look­ing for papers from other depart­ments to make a con­tri­bu­tion for reas­ons I don’t fully under­stand. I’ve sub­mit­ted a pro­posal on the use of stand­ards in elec­tronic pub­lish­ing and plan to co-author with Clare Kelly-Blazeby (without whom I would have killed the idea of a PG journal long ago) using the miss­ing edit­or­ial as a seed.

Com­ments are wel­come, includ­ing “Isn’t this a bit dull?”, because I cer­tainly think it is. How­ever, I think there is stuff which could be use­fully built on, so feel free to men­tion what you’d like to see expan­ded upon too.

I men­tioned I was work­ing on launch­ing an inter­net journal to a friend at a party. “Oh, like the one at Shef­field?” she asked. I replied that the journal I was work­ing on was hop­ing to be slightly more inter­net based than that. The plan was to use inter­net tech­no­lo­gies to add value to the papers. “No, Sheffield’s journal does that. It’s on the web. It has those link things.” It is now eight years since Sheffield’s ground-breaking post­gradu­ate journal assemblage launched. The launch state­ment of the editor of Inter­net Archae­ology argues that the inter­net presents an excit­ing oppor­tun­ity for pub­lish­ing. Since then fur­ther post­gradu­ate journ­als have sprung up. New­castle and Durham have their Post­gradu­ate Forum, Not­ting­ham and Birm­ing­ham have Digres­sus. The inter­net also allows me to read Eras from Mon­ash Uni­ver­sity. Yet, much as I love these sites, I can­not help noti­cing that only Inter­net Archae­ology would suf­fer if the sites were avail­able in prin­ted form. After eight years is an inter­net journal really just a print-it-yourself paper journal?
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Fabricati Diem Pvnc

Alun Life No Comments ,

One for Clas­sics in Con­tem­por­ary Cul­ture I think. The Independent’s ABC magazine has an inter­view with Prof. Chris­topher Frayling [not online but see this instead], the noted film stud­ies buff. It men­tions his coat of arms replete with the motto, “Perge, Sce­lus, Mihi Diem Per­fi­cias” trans­lated by the Col­lege of Her­alds as “Pro­ceed, var­let, and let the day be rendered per­fect for my benefit”.

Isn’t arXiv Wonderful?

Alun Digital Academia, Life, Science 1 Comment , , ,

The Phys­i­cists and Math­em­aticians have a fant­astic resource called arXiv. It’s a effect­ively a cent­ral repos­it­ory for Phys­ics / Maths papers. What makes it truly won­der­ful is that it’s open access, so if I want to read a paper on the math­em­at­ic­als of social strat­i­fic­a­tion, I just click on the rel­ev­ant link and decide how I want to read it.

I’m par­tic­u­larly happy because I’ve found a paper on xenoar­chae­ology which the author doesn’t start by wear­ing his under­pants on his head. Both links are from this week’s New Sci­ent­ist.

Why can’t archae­olo­gists or ancient his­tor­i­ans do the same thing? It’s a bit of a puzzle.

My guess is that Arxiv exists because Phys­i­cists are likely to be able to scoop each other with their work. Also their work can abso­lutely be built upon for future work. Much Ancient His­tory and Archae­ology is art. It’s improved by wider read­ing, but I don’t need to have read the latest pomo the­ory to work on my own pro­jects. Fur­ther tech­no­pho­bia is an endear­ing char­ac­ter quirk in the Arts rather than a sign of aca­demic incompetence.

I don’t think it’s a long term prob­lem. Research­ers who are more inter­ested in spread­ing their ideas than sup­port­ing estab­lished struc­tures will have greater influ­ence on suc­cess­ive gen­er­a­tions and there will be a move to open access pub­lish­ing, because research­ers who ignore it will be ignored.

Extelligence

Alun Politics, Science No Comments , ,

Extel­li­gence is what intel­li­gence is intel­li­gent about.
Pratch­ett, Stew­art and Cohen – The Sci­ence of Discworld

What was it that made a city in Sicily “Greek” rather than “Nat­ive”? The clash between archae­ology and his­tory sug­gests that it wasn’t the archi­tec­ture or the mater­ial cul­ture of a city, it was the cit­izenry who gave a city its eth­ni­city. So this leads nicely to the ques­tion “Where do Greek cit­izens come from?” Greek adults pre­sum­ably, who in turn come from Greek chil­dren. Where do Greek chil­dren come from? Some people would take this as a cue to sit the ques­tioner down and explain that when a Greek Mummy and a Greek Daddy love each other very much…
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Thesis — Brief Overview 2005

Alun Science 4 Comments , ,

My thesis in about col­on­isa­tion and iden­tity in 1st Mil­len­nium BC Sicily. If you are an Archae­olo­gist then col­on­isa­tion was a simple pro­cess. The Greeks arrived from the eighth cen­tury and by the fifth every­one was Nat­ive or Phoen­i­cian on the island. All the nat­ives has become ‘Hel­len­ised’. This is a prob­lem if you’re an Ancient His­tor­ian. Ancient His­tory records an upris­ing by the nat­ive peoples against the Greeks in the middle of the fifth cen­tury BC. There must have been a defined nat­ive iden­tity, but so far archae­olo­gists haven’t the tools to find it.
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