Web site alert I Got this email from Robert Bigelow on some articles now on the web:
The following articles from The Ostracon of the Egyptian Study Society have just been published on the web. Go to http://www.EgyptStudy.org and click on "The Ostracon Archives"
Web site alert II And also this email from Nicole Hansen on a new glyphic web site:
I wanted to announce the launch of a new Egyptology Web site,
http://www.glyphdoctors.com. Currently the main hub of activity on the site is the online discussion forums about
ancient Egypt. These forums are modeled on the now defunct
Guardians.net discussion board, with a number of extra features.
In the near future, I will be offering online courses in
Middle Egyptian for the general public through the Web site.
These courses will cover the same material you would get in a
university class and will be conducted entirely online, using
Jim Allens new grammar. General information about the courses
is now available on the site. Beta testers will be sought in
the next few months for the course, after which it will be
opened up to the general public. If you subscribe to the site
news from the homepage you will be among the first to know
about this opportunity.
Also, at some point in the future I am interested in offering
courses taught by other Egyptologists through the site. If
anyone who is attending the ARCE meetings this weekend would
be interested in this opportunity, please try and catch me
there and we can talk. Otherwise, sign up for the site news on
the homepage and when I am looking for instructors, you will
get a notice by email.
I invite you all to come take a look at
http://www.glyphdoctors.com.
We definitely like the idea of an online course in glyphs, especially if there are true experts behind the scenes to answer questions. Just picking up a book and attempting to learn is difficult at best.
Fight! Fight! BLM, off-road group sparring
A San Juan County off-road group says it had permission from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to do trail-maintenance work on a 1,100-foot section of the historic Hole-in-the-Rock trail near Bluff in February.
Not so, says BLM Monticello Field Office Manager Sandra Meyers.
Now, Meyers and Mike Washburn, president of San Juan Public Entry and Access Rights Inc. (SPEAR), hope confusion over the incident in southeastern Utah will lead to better relationships between public-lands managers and ATV users.
Kinda light on the archaeology, but there you have it.
Burial-ground discovery hints at slavery
One of the sets of remains discovered by construction workers on Chestnut Street could give insight into whether slavery once existed in the city, experts say.
Scientists have found evidence of a leg infection on remains found under Chestnut Street in 2003, which the state archaeologist says adds to the probability the remains belonged to black slaves buried downtown.
While inconclusive, the sign of infection - found on the tibia bone of an adult man - suggests that the person had been in shackles at one time, according to state archaeologist Richard Boisvert.
Not exactly a slam dunk. . . . .
Remote sensing update High-tech to be used to unveil bronze culture in Jiangxi
High-tech will be used to further explore a 3,000-year-old bronze culture at Xingan County in east China's Jiangxi Province.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Archaeological Institute of Jiangxi Province will work together to carry out excavation on the ancient bronze culture with advanced archaeological remote sensing devices in China, according to local government.
In 1989, more than 470 pieces of bronzeware were unearthed froma grave dating back to the Shang Dynasty (16 B.C.-11 B.C.) at Xingan County in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.It proved that a developed bronze culture along the Yangtze coexisted with a bronze culture at the Yellow River.
What would a day be without news from Mehr? Achaemenid city discovered near Bushehr
The city of Temukan, an ancient city dating back to the Achaemenid era, has been discovered in the latest excavation at Borazjan in the southern Iranian province of Bushehr.
Archaeologists previously believed the historical site was part of Tavaj.
Or even two? Archaeologists to resume work at Paleolithic site in Lorestan
A joint Iranian and Belgian team of archaeologists plans to begin excavations at the ancient Yafteh Cave near Khorramabad in Lorestan Province in early May.
They will be resuming efforts to discover the remains of early inhabitants of the region with the cooperation of Belgium’s University of Liege and Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (CHTO).
Oxyrhynchus papyri update Infra-Red Brings Ancient Papyri to Light
A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail.
The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels.
A team at Oxford University is using the technology to bring back into view faded ink on thousands of papyrus scrolls salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the 19th century.
Not a whole lot more detail than earlier reports, but a bit more background.
We thought we'd heard of this technique before and we were right: it was used to make some of the dead sea scrolls more legible. See here for an old press release on it.
Update: A dissenting view on the importance/newsworthiness here.