Bogwitch

archaeology ↘↖

National Geographic: Byzantine Site in Israel Yields Church-Shaped Lantern In Israel, any turn of a spade can reveal surprising pieces of history. That occurred recently when a large winepress from about A.D. 500, the early Byzantine era, turned up southwest of Jerusalem near the spa town of Hamei Yoav. … In this same area, the archaeologists found a miniature model of a Byzantine church, about the size of a loaf of bread, indicating that the owner of the winepress was likely a Christian. The intact ceramic structure appears to be a religious lantern. Patterns cut into its roof and walls would have cast flickering crosses of light on the walls of a room. An oval opening in one end allowed an oil lamp to be placed inside.

National Geographic: Byzantine Site in Israel Yields Church-Shaped Lantern

In Israel, any turn of a spade can reveal surprising pieces of history.

That occurred recently when a large winepress from about A.D. 500, the early Byzantine era, turned up southwest of Jerusalem near the spa town of Hamei Yoav.

…

In this same area, the archaeologists found a miniature model of a Byzantine church, about the size of a loaf of bread, indicating that the owner of the winepress was likely a Christian. The intact ceramic structure appears to be a religious lantern. Patterns cut into its roof and walls would have cast flickering crosses of light on the walls of a room. An oval opening in one end allowed an oil lamp to be placed inside.

26 April 2013 • National Geographic archaeology church light lamp Israel art Christianity wine

derwiduhudar: Flint handaxe containing a fossil seashell, circa 300,000 years old. The fossil is far older than the actually tool, or even the flint, for that matter. What is clear is that the toolmaker made a conscious decision to create his tool around this central ornament for whatever aesthetic or religious reasons. (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) Image by Irisharchaeology.ie via The Celtic & Prehistoric Museum

derwiduhudar:

Flint handaxe containing a fossil seashell, circa 300,000 years old. The fossil is far older than the actually tool, or even the flint, for that matter. What is clear is that the toolmaker made a conscious decision to create his tool around this central ornament for whatever aesthetic or religious reasons. (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) Image by Irisharchaeology.ie via The Celtic & Prehistoric Museum

(via lostbeasts)

3 April 2013 • reblog: derwiduhudar • art archaeology paleontology history

colchrishadfield: The Nazca lines seem to show that the less we understand about history, the greater our propensity towards mythology. Yeah, this!

colchrishadfield:

The Nazca lines seem to show that the less we understand about history, the greater our propensity towards mythology.

Yeah, this!

2 April 2013 • reblog: colchrishadfield • archaeology landscape Peru Nazca lines

Forrest Fenn, Multimillionaire, Buries Treasure Worth Millions In Order To Encourage People To Go Outdoors

Three years ago, the 82-year-old multimillionaire hid a chest filled with gold coins, diamonds and emeralds, hoping to encourage people to explore trails and scenery instead of their TV screens.

…

His self-published memoir The Thrill Of The Chase includes a poem with nine clues he says will lead to a 40-pound chest containing the haul.

As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
From there it’s no place for the meek,
The end is drawing ever nigh;
There’ll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.
If you’ve been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answers I already know
I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold.

More details:

For more than a decade, he packed and repacked his treasure chest, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets. Pre-Columbian animal figures went in, along with prehistoric “mirrors” of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewelry with rubies and emeralds.

…

Three years ago, he lay two of his most beloved pieces of jewelry in the chest: a turquoise bracelet and a Tairona and Sinu Indian necklace adorned with exotic jewels. At the bottom of the chest, in an olive jar, he placed a detailed autobiography, printed so small a reader will need a magnifying glass. After that, he says, he carted the chest of loot, now weighing more than 40 pounds, into the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe and left it there.

…

And he is ambivalent about whether the chest is found soon, or even in his lifetime.

But “when a person finds that treasure chest, whether it’s tomorrow or 10,000 years from now and opens the lid, they are going to go into shock. It is such a sight.”

My response:
It belongs in a museum
Yet also:
Allons Y
Because:
WWNDD?
&
Shiny!

2 April 2013 • adventure mystery archaeology Nancy Drew Indiana Jones Doctor Who Firefly gold puzzle travel The Southwest poetry

ayjay: Philip Jenkins: “As an intact book from this era, the Faddan More Psalter is an amazing enough find in its own right. Even so, its story became even stranger in 2010, when archaeologists reported finding eighth century Egyptian papyrus in its cover. One remarks that ‘The cover could have had several lives before it ended up basically as a folder for the manuscript in the bog. … It could have traveled from a library somewhere in Egypt to the Holy Land or to Constantinople or Rome and then to Ireland.” (Archaeology + books) x Ireland = !!!

ayjay:

Philip Jenkins: “As an intact book from this era, the Faddan More Psalter is an amazing enough find in its own right. Even so, its story became even stranger in 2010, when archaeologists reported finding eighth century Egyptian papyrus in its cover. One remarks that ‘The cover could have had several lives before it ended up basically as a folder for the manuscript in the bog. … It could have traveled from a library somewhere in Egypt to the Holy Land or to Constantinople or Rome and then to Ireland.”

(Archaeology + books) x Ireland = !!!

23 February 2013 • reblog: ayjay • archaeology books book Ireland

Genghis Khan's tomb found?

A multidisciplinary research project uniting scientists in America with Mongolian scholars and archeologists has the first compelling evidence of the location of Khan’s burial site and the necropolis of the Mongol imperial family on a mountain range in a remote area in northwestern Mongolia.

…

“Everything lines up in a very compelling way,” says Albert Lin, National Geographic explorer and principal investigator of the project, in an exclusive interview with Newsweek.

…

As part of an unprecedented open-source project, thousands of online volunteers sifted through 85,000 high-resolution satellite images to identify any hidden structures or odd-seeming formations.

…

Lin, whose fascination with Gen­ghis Khan was sparked in 2005 during a personal trip to Mongolia to research his own heritage, felt fortunate to be the tech­ie scientist in this action adventure. “I was lucky. I’m a scientist and engineer who stumbled across this extraordinary 800-year-old mystery,” he says. “I felt that perhaps the rapid advancement of technologies might [open] up a new scientific chapter in a lost piece of world history.”

Lin partnered with the International Association for Mongol Studies and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Three years ago the expedition, supported by the University of California, San Diego, as well as the National Geographic Society, was granted permission to explore the mountain range, and the Valley 
of the Khans Project was born. Their 
approach, Lin is keen to emphasize, 
maintains the integrity of the ancestral burial grounds by using noninvasive tools [such as radar, magnetometers, and drones].

“Hopefully this opens a new chapter in the continued process of paying homage to our past through the pursuit of knowledge,” says Prof. Tsogt-Ochiryn Ishdorj, a principal investigator on the project.

Yay, I was totally one of those “thousands of online volunteers”! -

I was lucky enough to get to visit Mongolia in the summer of 2010.  It was amazing, I would go back in a heartbeat. And it’s one of my life goals to spend a summer or something as a grunt or whatever on an archaeological dig, so maybe in a few years…

24 January 2013 • Mongolia archaeology National Geographic memory travel adventure science

While everyone has been distracted by mystical messages hidden in an ancient calendar, we’ve neglected a different Mayan warning that’s actually very real. As environmental analyst Lester Brown reminds us in his new book, the Mayans precipitated their demise by undermining their food supply, specifically through activities that created catastrophic soil erosion. As Brown puts it, ‘they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable.’ He goes on to connect the dots to contemporary humankind, and—you guessed it—clearly shows that we’re headed down the same environmentally unsustainable path as the Mayans.

— Christian Williams, “The Mayan Warning We Should Heed.” (via utnereader)

(via intelligibledirigible)

19 December 2012 • reblog: utnereader • environment archaeology Mayans culture

robertogreco: Retroactive Archeology, DWFE I think about this a lot.

robertogreco:

Retroactive Archeology, DWFE

I think about this a lot.

15 September 2012 • reblog: robertogreco • archaeology

exbestfriend: inothernews: Okay, this is fucking awesome.  From the New York Times: Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago. This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel. Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants. Despite this unpromising background, the new claim is supported by a firm radiocarbon date. A similar avenue of inquiry into the deep past, the field of ancient DNA, was at first discredited after claims of retrieving dinosaur DNA proved erroneous, but with improved methods has produced spectacular results like the reconstitution of the Neanderthal genome. The new report is by a team led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino, near Moscow, and appears in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. “This is an amazing breakthrough,” said Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. “I have no doubt in my mind that this is a legitimate claim.” It was Dr. Zazula who showed that the apparently ancient lupine seeds found by the Yukon gold miner were in fact modern. Sounds like the Jurassic Park Plants Attack!!! movie is about to get greenlighted. Dear Science, Please don’t stop doing this crazy shit until I get to own a pet triceratops. And can you cross breed it so it is Labrador size? NO RAPTORS You guys, a thirty-thousand-year-old plant.  This is the stuff I get out of bed in the mornings hoping for.

exbestfriend:

inothernews:

Okay, this is fucking awesome.  From the New York Times:

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.

Seeds and certain cells can last a long term under the right conditions, but many claims of extreme longevity have failed on closer examination, and biologists are likely to greet this claim, too, with reserve until it can be independently confirmed. Tales of wheat grown from seeds in the tombs of the pharaohs have long been discredited. Lupines were germinated from seeds in a 10,000-year-old lemming burrow found by a gold miner in the Yukon. But the seeds, later dated by the radiocarbon method, turned out to be modern contaminants.

Despite this unpromising background, the new claim is supported by a firm radiocarbon date. A similar avenue of inquiry into the deep past, the field of ancient DNA, was at first discredited after claims of retrieving dinosaur DNA proved erroneous, but with improved methods has produced spectacular results like the reconstitution of the Neanderthal genome.

The new report is by a team led by Svetlana Yashina and David Gilichinsky of the Russian Academy of Sciences research center at Pushchino, near Moscow, and appears in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

“This is an amazing breakthrough,” said Grant Zazula of the Yukon Paleontology Program at Whitehorse in Yukon Territory, Canada. “I have no doubt in my mind that this is a legitimate claim.” It was Dr. Zazula who showed that the apparently ancient lupine seeds found by the Yukon gold miner were in fact modern.

Sounds like the Jurassic Park Plants Attack!!! movie is about to get greenlighted.

Dear Science,
Please don’t stop doing this crazy shit until I get to own a pet triceratops. And can you cross breed it so it is Labrador size?

NO RAPTORS

You guys, a thirty-thousand-year-old plant.  This is the stuff I get out of bed in the mornings hoping for.

21 February 2012 • reblog: inothernews • archaeology plants science paleobotany

writingprompts: 341 Yes, future archaeology, artefact speculation!  Archaeologists are really career digger/observer/imaginers.  Sometimes the stuff they come up with is hilarious.  Usually unidentified artefacts become ceremonial this, religious that.  While I’m not saying that human beings aren’t religious creatures, I am saying that the vast majority of objects we use on a day-to-day basis are just toothbrushes, belt buckles, cell phones, salt shakers, etc.  Same with buildings: grocery stores, banks, gas stations, coffee shops, etc. Read a cool article about it here.

writingprompts:

341

Yes, future archaeology, artefact speculation!  Archaeologists are really career digger/observer/imaginers.  Sometimes the stuff they come up with is hilarious.  Usually unidentified artefacts become ceremonial this, religious that.  While I’m not saying that human beings aren’t religious creatures, I am saying that the vast majority of objects we use on a day-to-day basis are just toothbrushes, belt buckles, cell phones, salt shakers, etc.  Same with buildings: grocery stores, banks, gas stations, coffee shops, etc.

Read a cool article about it here.

1 December 2011 • reblog: writingprompts • writing prompt education archaeology