Bookmarks for 16th of November through to 18th of November

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These are my links for 16th of Novem­ber through 18th of November:

  • The Aca­demic Journal Racket « In the Dark
    Tele­scoper explains how aca­demic pub­lish­ing works. The only thing that would improbe the post would be the theme from ‘The Naked Gun’ in the background.
  • A Case in Antiquit­ies for ‘Find­ers Keep­ers’ — NYTimes.com
    You can make argu­ments in favour of repat­ri­ation of antiquit­ies. You can make argue­ments against. Being on either side doesn’t make you inher­ently fool­ish. But when you write that the Brit­ish Army took the Rosetta Stone from the French and “returned it to the Brit­ish Museum” then some­thing has gone wrong. It’s prob­ably a case of moment­ary brain­fade rather than idiocy, but it mat­ters because the whole ques­tion of own­er­ship of the Rosetta Stone is about where it right­fully belongs. Using the word ‘returned’ builds in the assump­tion that all antiquit­ies are inher­ently British.
  • Notes & Quer­ies; Sledges — The­or­et­ical Struc­tural Archae­ology
    Geoff Carter con­cluded he didn’t have evid­ence for a stag­ger­ingly early cart shed in Poland. Could it have been a used to house a sledge? I’ve just real­ised I know abso­lutely noth­ing at all about the his­tory of sleds and sledges. Not only that, but I can’t recall much atten­tion being called to them in early pre­his­toric archae­ology other than when people want to talk about mov­ing mega­liths to Stone­henge. Yet Martha Murphy (guest blog­ging) shows there’s plenty of ques­tions to ask about neo­lithic transport.
  • Brit­ish bank turns to treas­ure hunt­ing via @johnabartram
    Avast me hearties! Robert Fraser & Part­ners be scourin’ the high seas in search of booty. They be fundin’ Odys­sey Mar­ine Explor­a­tion, Inc. ter search the Carib­bean fer Span­ish gold. Arrr!
  • CRM Prob­lem in Cad­boro Bay « North­w­est Coast Archae­ology
    More on the prob­lems of pre­serving her­it­age in BC. Ancient buri­als have been scooped out of the ground, <em>after</em> an archae­olo­gical assessment.

Bookmarks for 12th of November through to 14th of November

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These are my links for 12th of Novem­ber through 14th of November:

  • Is the new policy state­ment PPS 15 a threat to her­it­age? — Build­ing Design
    I’d love to have a pithy and insight­ful opin­ion on this, but first I’ll have to look up what PPS 15 says. it’s import­ant as PPG 15 and 16 have been the basis of pro­tec­tion of her­it­age in the UK for many years.
  • Pagans for Archae­ology: Why reburial won’t work
    It’s all very well me say­ing there are eth­ical reas­ons to be against reburial, but I still haven’t found the time to write them down yet. Now this post hits almost every point I was going to make, espe­cially the point about memory. This won’t stop me from writ­ing up my thoughts when I can find the time though.
  • Iden­tity : Gambler’s House
    Teo­filo talks about Chaco and Navajo iden­tity and dis­cov­ers neither is as simple as you might think.
  • 3rd-century build­ing fuels debate over lost coun­try … asahi.com(朝日新聞社)
    “The cent­ral axis of each build­ing forms a straight line. Each build­ing is believed to have faced the same dir­ec­tion. Such care­ful plan­ning for build­ings was com­mon for palaces and temples dur­ing the Asuka Period from the late sixth cen­tury to the early eighth cen­tury. But it had not been found at sites from the early third century. “

    This is why I need to find an intro­duct­ory book to early Japan­ese his­tory. There’s a huge amount of fas­cin­at­ing stuff there.

  • Shame­ful hypo­crisy threatens our ancient shared her­it­age
    “One of the most egre­gious hypo­cris­ies we enter­tain in Brit­ish Columbia is our cava­lier atti­tude toward the destruc­tion and dis­posal of indi­gen­ous cul­tural land­scapes, arti­facts and her­it­age sites. In any enlightened nation such import­ant his­tory would com­mand pro­tec­tion — here it earns indif­fer­ence and even contempt.”
  • Moai in Cap­tiv­ity — a gal­lery on Flickr
    A great idea for a gal­lery. There’s some­thing about the facial expres­sion that makes even fake Moai appealing.

Bookmarks for 31st of August through to 11th of November

Alun Life 1 Comment

These are my links for 31st of August through 11th of November:

Bookmarks for 3rd of August through to 23rd of August

Alun Life No Comments

These are my links for 3rd of August through 23rd of August:

Oh dear, this didn’t auto-post. Hope­fully the next one will.

Vidi: Various things seen

Alun Life No Comments

This is another 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 Sunday.

Many excluded from oppor­tun­ity to get tick­ets for Michael Jack­son memorial ser­vices — Crooked Tim­ber
An view of how mumble mumble mumble’s memorial high­lights the digital divide in America.

The Glamorgan-Gwent Archae­olo­gical Trust Ltd: GGAT pion­eer the use of new mobile phone tech­no­logy at Com­munity Excav­a­tion
The Glamorgan-Gwent Archae­olo­gical Trust have been intro­du­cing QR Codes at their pub­lic excav­a­tion. As cam­era phones and inter­net con­nec­tions become more mundane, these will become more common.

Con­cep­tual Trends and Cur­rent Top­ics
Here’s an inter­est­ing pub­lish­ing model com­bin­ing sales of a lim­ited num­ber of hard cop­ies with free PDF access. I’m not sure about this I think I prefer Print-On-Demand, but the lim­ited edi­tion nature of the pub­lic­a­tion could be a good mar­ket­ing ploy.

What Helps YOU Be a Bet­ter Writer?
Com­ment­at­ors leave their tips on what help you write.

A small example of how our eco­nomy went ter­ribly wrong — Philobib­lon
Now I thought feed­ing the birds was a good thing. Nat­alie Ben­nett on why you might want to rethink that.

Vidi: Sunday Thoughts

Alun Politics No Comments

This is another 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 Sunday.

Eugenie Scott Power­fully Makes the Case for Science-Religion Com­pat­ib­il­ity | The Inter­sec­tion | Dis­cover Magazine
This is an oddity. As far as I can tell Scott says that if Sci­ence and Reli­gion clash, you take the sci­entific explan­a­tion. It’s the God of the Gaps argu­ment. That would seem an pecu­liar use of the word com­pat­ible to me.

Svante Pbo on Reli­gion Afar­en­sis: Anthro­po­logy, Evol­u­tion, and Sci­ence
Afarenis asks an incis­ive ques­tion: “Why is it alwas phrased in terms of sci­ence fight­ing reli­gion as if sci­ence is the aggressor and reli­gion is the null hypothesis?”

normb­log: I’d have baked one
Norm on why crit­ics of reli­gion get it wrong when they cri­ti­cise belief. It’s about prac­tice. Which is based on belief. Umm… no that can’t be right. Also on how you can’t have your cake and eat it.

Vidi: The Past

Alun The Past No Comments

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.

Mike Pitts — Dig­ging Deeper
Mike Pitts, author of Henge­world, editor of Brit­ish Archae­ology and all-round archae­olo­gical whirl­wind is now blog­ging. His site is def­in­itely some­thing you’d want to add to your RSS reader.

Ancient boat reveals ship­build­ing skills of Java’s sea­farers | The Jakarta Post
This is deeply cool. The prob­lem with a lot of mar­ine archae­ology is that it’s either out at sea where it’s hard to find, or else it rots. The Yogyakarta Archae­ology Cen­ter has been work­ing on a largely intact boat found in Indone­sia dat­ing from the 6th or 7th century.

Dur­ango Her­ald News, Chim­ney Rock: Chaco or not?
(via David Meadow’s Explor­ator, the same per­son who runs Roge Clas­si­cism) There’s new exacava­tions at Chim­ney Rock. It’s an import­ant site in South­west­ern US archae­oastro­nomy, but is it tied to the Chaco culture?

Gov­ernor elim­in­ates Michigan Dept. of His­tory, Arts and Lib­rar­ies — Crain’s Detroit Busi­ness
It’s looks like Michigan will be feel­ing the effects of this reces­sion for a long while yet. There’s not just the loss of ser­vices in this cut. If there’s big sav­ings to be made, then there’ll be a big start-up cost if the depart­ment is revived when the eco­nomy can sup­port it.

Abnor­mal Interests: Have A Snake Prob­lem? Try Prayer
A trans­la­tion of a Baby­lo­nian text may have implic­a­tions for inter­pret­a­tion of the Bible.

AWOL — The Ancient World Online: Open Access Journal: Illinois Clas­sical Stud­ies
Illinois Clas­sical Stud­ies is now open with a mov­ing wall. It makes it an attra­cive journal to pub­lish in. I’d point at some art­icles but I haven’t had time to browse it this week.

Frog in a Well — The Japan His­tory Group Blog
Frog in a Well, which comes in three fla­vours, con­tin­ues to show that his­tory of east Asia is at an excit­ing place at the moment.

The Archae­ology of the Medi­ter­ranean World: Reflect­ing on Aca­demic Blog­ging at 500 Posts
“[T]he arrival of aca­demic blog­ging does provide a kind of stable, middle ground between the open sem­inar (or the half-baked con­fer­ence paper) and the journal art­icle.” I think aca­demic blogs as per­petual con­fer­ences would be an inter­est­ing model.

The his­tory in his­tor­ical archae­ology Cam­pus Archae­ology Pro­gram
Why his­tor­ical archae­olo­gists aren’t historians.

Pop Clas­sics: Carry On Cleo (dir. Ger­ald Thomas 1964)
The clas­sic, pos­sibly even defin­it­ive, screen treat­ment of Cleo­patra is examined at Pop Clas­sics. Brit­ish Clas­si­cists are a lot more intel­li­gible after see­ing this his­tor­ical epic.

Dear editor Mike Pitts — Dig­ging Deeper
Edit­ing a let­ters page for a magazine can be frustrating.

Past Pre­serv­ers: Do you want to appear on a major new TV show with Dr Zahi Hawass?
I con­sidered apply­ing for this a while back. I decided not to, because it would break my TV boy­cott, but it does look tempting.

Illi­cit Cul­tural Prop­erty: Francesco Rutelli on the Euphro­nios Krater
The krater has been repat­ri­ated, but is that a win for study­ing history?

Inter­view: Mark Parker-Pearson on The Stone­henge River­side Pro­ject Dis­cov­er­ies | Her­it­age Key
An inter­view with the Head Honcho of the Stone­henge River­side Pro­ject, Mike Parker Pear­son. Her­it­age Key is def­in­itely a site worth keep­ing an eye on.

Loot­ing mat­ters: Antiquit­ies from Iraq con­tinue to sur­face
There are some antiquit­ies deal­ers who are point­ing out the illi­cit mater­ial, but there’s still a lot appear­ing. Is it a prob­lem with unscru­pu­lous deal­ers, or is the prob­lem with hon­est people work­ing in a sys­tem­ic­ally flawed market?

Vidi: Science

Alun Science 2 Comments

This is a test of the new book­mark­ing script I’m work­ing on. This one does the sci­ence posts and should run on Tues­days around 7pm.

Cor­rel­a­tion, Caus­a­tion, and Coin­cid­ence One Astronomer’s Noise
Nicole tries to claim there’s a dif­fer­ence between cor­rel­a­tion and caus­a­tion in a bid to dodge the blame for the USA’s fail­ure to win the Con­fed­ra­tions Cup.

SNAIL’S TALES: Another well hid­den tree frog
Snail’s Tales is an inter­est­ing read, but you could just fol­low it for the photos.

the quacko­meter: What Next for the Brit­ish Chiro­practic Asso­ci­ation?
It looked like the Brit­ish Chiro­practic Asso­ci­ation would suc­cess­fully sue Simon Singh for defam­a­tion, des­pite their claims being non­sense. A recent art­icle in the BMJ now sug­gests it’s pos­sible their only hope of win­ning is by claim­ing to be a bunch of incom­pet­ent numbskulls.

Dis­ap­pear­ing The Sci­ence News | The Loom
Catch the news in Sci­ence before it dis­ap­pears! The Daily Telegraph’s attempt at writ­ing up a student’s research on rape as an enter­tain­ing piece has backfired.

Ask­ing for it — Bad Sci­ence
Related to the link above, here’s Ben Gol­dacre on how the news story in the Tele­graph was not about women ask­ing to be raped.

Times Higher Edu­ca­tion — NHS trust chief accuses Edin­burgh pro­fessor of speak­ing out of turn
Edin­burgh defends its aca­dem­ics right to be curi­ous. It should be nor­mal prac­tice, but that doesn’t stop it being laudable.

Epi­gen­et­ics: It’s All in the Pack­aging | New­s­week Sci­ence
(via BoraZ) A descrip­tion of epi­gen­et­ics, another strand of inher­it­ance which oper­ates along­side genet­ics. Bio­logy is not all in your DNA, which is going to com­plic­ate Star Trek plots massively.

Ashes crick­eters could be caught out by cli­mate change | guardian.co.uk
It’s not just shame­less time-wasting which is end­ing the golden age of cricket. Cli­mate change could lead to the Aus­trali­ans humi­li­at­ing Eng­land on a num­ber of sim­ilar pitches. It’s a dis­heart­en­ing pro­spect for those Eng­land fans who like to see their team humi­li­ated on a num­ber of pitches each with their own character.

A tale from the trenches of sci­ence journ­al­ism : Pharyn­gula
This makes a nice change from the sci­ence journ­al­ist = evil vil­lain trope that I’ve seen in a few places recently. It’s handy to know there’s frus­tra­tion on the journ­al­ists’ side too. It sug­gests coöper­a­tion would be more use­ful than conflict.

Advanced Fel­low­ships In the Dark
This is depress­ing. The STFC, the fun­ing body for UK astro­nomy, con­tinu­ing to cut down astro­nom­ical research in the UK to a more man­age­able level.

The Strange case of Epsi­lon Aurigae EIU Astro
Epsi­lon Aurigae would seem to be a very large star with a com­pan­ion. Things get really strange when you look at its light curve. It seems to get dim­mer for around two years at a time. That would sug­gest it’s being orbited by some­thing big­ger, but we can’t see it. It’s too dim to be a star, so what is it?

The first Earth­ling to jour­ney to Mars — Conan the Bac­terium | The Observer
Bac­teria have been shown to be viable after being left on the Moon, so it’s pos­sible ter­restrial bac­teria can travel to Mars. It’s even pos­sible that they have in the past, hitch­ing a lift on met­eor­ites. There’s also a tar­di­grade going. I’d be will­ing to bet a large amount of money that it will come back alive.

SNAIL’S TALES: Dar­win was a mala­co­lo­gist!
And if you don’t know what a mala­co­lo­gist is then you need to visit Snail’s Tales. The ‘mal’ always makes me think ‘bad’. But it’s not.

Galactic Inter­ac­tions: How much Dark Mat­ter do you hold in your hands?
Rob Knop is able to put a fig­ure on how much Dark Mat­ter is likely to be around you. It’s quite a small figure.

LookUP Wid­get | Astro­nomy Blog
Can you help test the LookUP wid­get? If not, then use it. It’s a nifty tool.

Vidi: Sunday Thoughts

Alun Politics No Comments

This is another 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 Sunday.

Mr Deity and the Vir­gin
Everyone’s favour­ite holy being is back for a new series on YouTube.

Abnor­mal Interests: I’m Not Sure What I Think About This
Duane Smith explains his con­cerns about the com­pat­ab­il­ity of sci­ence and reli­gion in a post which makes a refresh­ing change in the acco­mod­a­tion­ism debate. If you’re look­ing for a post shout­ing about what they think someone else has said, you’d be bet­ter off look­ing elsewhere.

Almost-live report: Daniel Den­nett at the Cam­bridge Darwin-and-faith bash Why Evol­u­tion Is True
Bah! My forth­com­ing post on theo­logy would look pres­ci­ent if it had come out last week. Now it’ll look like I’m pla­gi­ar­ising Den­nett. Non­ethe­less it’s a good write up of the ques­tion “What does Theo­logy bring to an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary study?”

Vidi: The Past

Alun The Past 8 Comments

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.

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