Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Give us money ARCHAEOLOGISTS ARE BENEFITING FROM LEGACY

Three historical projects will benefit from the generosity of a Cheltenham woman who died two years ago. Irene Bridgeman left £39,000 in her will to the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, which has set up a research fund in her memory.

The society has announced the recipients of the first Bridgeman Research Grants.

The winning projects include a study of the work of Bristol dealer and collector Alfred Selley, a photographic record of the Badminton mosaic and a computer reconstruction of the cellar at the Wortley Roman Villa near Wotton-under-Edge. The society has awarded £1,440 in total.

Irene Bridgeman was a member of BGAS for more than 30 years.


You know, if anyone out there has a substantial sum of money sitting around and are feeling rather poorly these days, let us remind you that ArchaeoBlog is a purely non-profit organization and could easily obtain the necessary paperwork required in case of a large donation. Barring that, we'll take it in tens and twenties.

We're not archaeologists. . .but we play them on TV TV archaeologists team up to back museum

STARS from the world of television archaeology yesterday backed a campaign to save one of Scotland's most important museums.

Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick in the comedy Blackadder and presents Time Team, the Channel 4 archaeology programme, said the closure of Kilmartin House Museum would be a massive loss to the country.

The museum is facing financial ruin and has failed to attract local authority funding.


Interactive excavation alert Revealing Ancient Bolivia

The prehistoric city of Tiwanaku is located on the southern shore of the famous Lake Titicaca along the border between Bolivia and Peru. During the heyday of this city was between A.D. 500 and 950, religious artifacts from the city spread across the southern Andes, but when the conquering Inka arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, the site had been mysteriously abandoned for half a millennium. Even after its abandonment, Tiwanaku continued to be an important religious site for the local people. It later became incorporated into Inka mythology as the birthplace of mankind as the Inka built their own structures alongside the ruins. Tiwanaku remains an integral locale in the religious lives of Andean people in the turbulent present of modern Bolivia. Although dozens of national and international projects began to unlock Tiwanaku's secrets during the last century, we are only recently beginning to piece together the puzzle behind the origin of this architectural marvel and the people who built it.

The University of Pennsylvania project started in 1995 on the monumental temple of Pumapunku, one of the finest examples of Precolumbian architecture. In the last few years, our project has grown to include the entire site (four square kilometers) with participation from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; University of Denver; MIT; and UMSA, the Bolivian university in the capital of La Paz. Our project not only focused on the impressive monumental remains; we also investigated the everyday lives of the site's inhabitants.


We here at ArchaeoBlog think this is a fine idea. However, the project must be chosen very carefully. After all, the general public probably would not be fascinated by entries such as "We continued excavating in 1220/1056 today. The last of the UPL was finally removed revealing two general areas of sediment content: one light tan sandy section taking up the northeast portion of the square, and another darker, almost black area that seems to have a good deal of charcoal flecking; this takes up the remainder. No mud bricks or brick fragments are visible in either area. A few sherds are visible in the tan sediment, and this will be designated as the dominant large clast, though this may change as more gets excavated. In terms of actual stratigraphic position. . . ."

More Roman stuff found in Britain (surprise, surprise) Roman 'industrial estate' found

Experts who unearthed the best preserved example in Wales of a medieval track, have now found what they believe is the equivalent of a Roman 'industrial estate.'

Amazingly they found the Roman relics underneath the same excavation site near Borth, where they made their original discovery of a 1,000 year old track.

The small team of archaeologists claim the discovery could date back to the second or third century AD.

This would make it at least 600 years older than the track which is thought to date back to 900 or 1020AD.


More on the actual Medieval track here.

And still more Roman junk in Britain Archaeologists begin dig on site

The archaeological excavation of an important Roman site begins in Swindon on Wednesday.

The work is taking place at Groundwell Ridge in the north of the town.

Previous digs have unearthed evidence of well-preserved Roman buildings, pottery and coins dating from the second to fourth Century AD.

This year's activities will focus on one of the buildings damaged when the site was discovered by construction workers in 1996.

The seven-week dig is funded by English Heritage.

Archaeologists say the site is of great historic importance.


Whole thing, don't bother clicking.

Britain, but not Roman ELGIN DIG DELIGHT OVER 14TH-CENTURY DISCOVERY

Archaeologists working at a construction site in Elgin have uncovered a perfectly-preserved 14th-century oak-built well.

The find has been described as "phenomenal", and is being hailed as a rare glimpse into life in mediaeval Elgin and Scotland.

The well was discovered last week, at the site of a planned Marks and Spencer food store on the west end of the High Street.

Charles Murray and his wife, Hilary, of Ellon-based Murray Archaeological Services, were yesterday fighting against time and a climbing water table to complete final excavations of the well.

They will then photograph and remove samples from the site, before burying it again to allow construction work to recommence.


Let's hope the dead cat and horse head were thrown in after its use life was done. Ugh. Good show for them covering it up again. Again we say, the safest place for artifacts is usually in the ground.

Lost civilization found in Pennsylvania Signs of 8,000-year-old culture found near Bedford

Workers doing a routine dig at an industrial park near the Bedford-Blair county border found tools and spearheads thousands of years old.

Melissa Diamanti, the senior principal investigator for Archaeological and Historical Consultants of Centre Hall, said the pieces uncovered so far are evidence that people lived in the area some 8,000 to 10,500 years ago.

The site is just off Interstate 99 and near Old Route 220 at the 80-acre Walter Business Park. The findings will delay a plan to straighten a road leading to Route 220. More digging will have to be done and will likely cost a couple hundred thousand dollars.


That's the whole thing. It may be subscriber-only as our proxy server dialog came up.

Ancient ecological disaster Water woes, not wars, ended Angkor's empire

After resisting Siamese invaders for years, Cambodia's greatest city and civilization -- temple-studded Angkor -- was dealt a death blow with its final sacking in 1431.

Or, so say the history books.

But an international research team now thinks its demise was set much earlier, by something that is the bane of many modern urban societies -- ecological failure and infrastructure breakdown.

"They created ecological problems for themselves and they either didn't see it until it was too late or they couldn't solve it even when they could see it," said Roland Fletcher, an archaeologist working on the Greater Angkor Project.


Rats! Rat DNA clues to sea migration

Scientists have used DNA from rats to trace migration patterns of the ancestors of today's Polynesians.

People are thought to have arrived in Polynesia, comprising the Pacific islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, by boat some 3,000 years ago.

Rat data suggests the journey was more complex than the popular "Express Train" theory, which proposes a rapid dispersal of people from South Asia.

Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Termites! Ants attack Xian's ancient art

White ants are threatening the ancient buildings in the 2,000-year-old city of Xian, Chinese media reports.

The subterranean termites love to munch on wood, the older the better, making Xian, with its wooden buildings dating back as far as 1,400 years, vulnerable.

Chen Zhongtang, director of Xian White Ants Prevention and Control Institute, said 18 old buildings were in danger

They include Beilin Museum, built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and the similarly ancient Dayan Pagoda.

The Beilin Museum is an old Confucian temple turned art museum. It houses the Forest of Steeles, a collection of more than 2300 ancient stone tablets.