Dig This Bird

Have just installed the newest version of wordpress (2.7)… The meta interface is just so so pretty. Makes me want to actually update this thing. I’m enjoying the world of typeset’s new love of the Cambria font. When I loaded Microsoft Word 2008 onto my new MacBook Pro I was delighted to see it’s the default font. Hopefully I will, once I finish writing my PhD proposal, but I make no promises.

And thinking of my macbook… anyone know where I can find plugins for GoogleEarth that work on a mac? Have no clue how to put coordinates into standard Google Earth and the only plugins I’ve found so far only work with Windows, and I have no urge to run a parallel.

Hope everyone who stops by this blog has been having a good new year so far.

I’ve been inspired from I source I thought I was reading for the sake of reading.

Starting reading Chris Tilley’s The Materiality of Stone last night.  I’ve always been of the overly pragmatic school that phenomenology is rubbish.  And I certainly still feel that way to some degree.

Yet.

Yet, yet, yet, there is something in the manner in which Chris Tilley discusses the way in which our minds experience things through using our body as a tool that has made me stop and reconsider things.  It’s not so far off to discuss looking at the world around us directionally when that is exactly how our bodies experience it- and not just in western thought, but cross-culturally.  We see things from the perspective of Up/Down, Left/Right, and Front/Back.  Even if we reject Cartesian Duality, we still experience everything from dual scenarios.  That isn’t to say, mind you, that the experiences themselves are limited to dual interpretation, but rather the initial sensory experience occurs within spaces defined by itself and its opposite.

Still unsure as to how on earth I can apply this to questions concerning travel in the Neolithic Central Mediterranean, but it’s kind of cool, nonetheless.

Was doing my daily blog rounds and thought I should direct you all to this post by Martin over at Aardvarchaeology.  Nothing big, but one of the best, briefest, most amusing rundowns of the history of archaeological theory since the 1960’s I’ve read in awhile.

Anyone who can refer to all the works written in response to Hodder, Tilley, and Shanks’ introduction of post-processual theory as “Reams of painful theoretical blitherings” is ok in my book.

No longer am I just the proud holder of a BA in archaeology, trudging away at a cruddy retail job trying to save money!  I am now the humbled holder of a BA in archaeology trudging away reading books upon books all day and making power point presentation after power point presentation as I work my way to become the holder of an MA in prehistory.  I’m about two weeks now into my program and have been in England for almost 4 weeks.  The weather has been surprising gorgeous (according to all the English) which has not helped my concentration.  The Graduate College, where I live, is also placed right next to the botanical gardens where I just spent the early part of my afternoon (as well as some wooded area where I managed to get lost).

So the inevitable has happened and I’ve left America again and have to come what I suppose I could call the Mother Country.

For a quick run down of what topics I’ve been chained to:
Rock Art.  Rock Art.  Rock Art.  I’ve never read so much David Whitely in my life.  I have two lovely books staring me down right now that I should work on: Theoretical Perspectives in Rock Art Research (ed. Knut Helskog) and Perceiving Rock Art: Social and Political Perspectives (ed. Knut Helskog and Bjornar Olsen).  I also have a critical review I need to write for my core module-not for any grade mind you.  Just to be sure I can actually write.  Lovely.
And just so I’m not totally slacking off, I give you the most recent cover article from Archaeology Magazine: The World’s First Temple, at the site of Gobekli Tepe in SE Turkey.

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Two years ago, the summer after my junior year of college, I trekked out to the middle of the Jezreel Valley to excavate at Tel Megiddo.  I had already participated in an excavation in Alexandria, VA as part of my graduation requirements as an archaeology major, so I didn’t go out of any academic requirement.  My undergraduate adviser at GW was (and is still) one of the directors of the excavation and asked me and many of my classmates to join him (almost 30 of us I believe).  Before the end of spring semester that year my adviser mentioned in class that he had scraped together some funding to hire a filmmaker and have the excavation documented.  A friend of mine in that class mentioned a mutual friend of ours to me after class, saying he would be perfect for this and we should call him.  Naturally, it was the end of the semester and neither of us ever did.

Apparently even my laziness wasn’t standing in the way of fate this time.

A few weeks later I sat on the National Mall watching most of my friends graduate.  The weather was beautiful but the sun was killer.  I stood up to applaud for the speakers (George H.W. and Barbara Bush) and turned around to pick up my cardigan to keep my shoulders from getting too burned.  I looked behind me and found Jesse Krinsky, the same friend that had been mentioned as the perfect candidate for filming the excavation.  We chatted and in less than 12 hours my advisor, Dr. Eric Cline, gave Jesse the okgo for the project and on June 9, 2006 I was in Newark airport with Jesse filming the first few minutes of his documentary, getting ready to get on our flight to Tel Aviv.

Tomorrow I will be hopping on a bus to head back to DC for the presentation of Jesse’s film “The Megiddo Expedition: The Untold Story of Life on a Dig” at the Smithsonian on September 16th.  I’m a little freaked out to know I will be seeing myself on screen, mucked up with a nice layer of dirt… though I did have that nice allergic reaction to sun and couldn’t go on the tel for a week due to hives… so I suppose it won’t be too much dirt.

For anyone who wants to check out Jesse’s film, along with here Dr. Cline lecture (which is something I suggest everyone do at one point in their life), you can buy tickets here.

Excavating Armageddon: Life on a Dig in Israel

With Documentary Film Premiere

Tues., Sept. 16, 6:45 to 8:30 p.m.

LOCATION

S. Dillon Ripley Center
1100 Jefferson Drive, SW
Metro: Smithsonian Mall Exit (Blue/Orange)

Or, if you prefer a less vulgar title, “Indiana Jones and the Defamation of Cultural Heritage.”

Yes, I saw it. I finally saw it. Just so you know, this post may contain SPOILERS. Yes, SPOILERS.

And, as a movie-goer, I had a blast. There were chase scenes, sword fights, explosions, magnetized gunpowder, the ubiquitous Indiana Jones mass of creepy crawly scenes (though sadly many were CGIed), and Monkeys. Oh my God, the Monkeys. And I have soft spots for Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf. And Marion Ravenwood is one of the great adventure movie female side-kicks… unlike that blonde chick from Temple of Doom. What was her name… Charlie? Sorry, I was too busy hoping she’d fall off a cliff to remember her name.

Moving on…

As a student of archaeology, I regretted not having my notebook and pen with me to note the absurdities. Besides from the fact that they’re speaking Mayan along the Amazon, the movie starts out in Area 51 (actually signed at Hangar 51 in the film). And Area 51 always means ONE thing: Aliens. Turns out this is where the government stores all the stuff it doesn’t know how to deal with, including the Ark of the Covenant. And I always thought it was in some hangar in Bethesda MD, possibly near Cheney’s undisclosed hideaway.

So, despite the rejection letter posted by McSweeney’s, Indy’s got tenure, a few years under the belt, a few military and government medals, and is now nosing around New World archaeology. The Commies get him to find for them alien remains he excavated that are now in Hangar 51 and are… highly magnetized? Plot, plot, Shia LeBeouf as angsty greaser, cool car/motorcycle chase around Yale/”Marshall College” campus/building/library, geeky archaeologist moment in library about V.G. Childe followed by telling his students they need to get out the library and into the field to be archaeologists as he leaves the building on a motorcycle, plot, PERU. Peru… hunting for Mayan (no, not Incan) remains… finding a crystal skull in the tomb of some conquistadors… a weird oblong skull. Here’s where we figure out that the crystal skulls we all know and love and very little to do with the crystal skulls of the movie. No. Now Indy’s back to treasure hunting. I don’t care if he’s following clues akin to his father’s diary and golden medallions… he’s following the path of conquistadors.

Once the Commies get him again the movie goes the way of Erich Von Daniken and his numerous books. The crystal skulls are, in fact, the actual skulls of extraterrestrials. Returning the skull to the body it belongs to, resting in El Dorado, powers up a flying saucer. Drawings of the gods are actually drawings of the space visitors who taught agriculture and irrigation to the Mayans (who were apparently along the Amazon… speaking the same Mayan they spoke when the conquistadors came). It was at this point I decided to sit through the credits to see if Erich von Daniken’s name popped up. It did not. 10$ says he’s going to claim theft of intellectual property against Spielberg before the end of the summer.

What all my convoluted drabble above about the movie leads to is my issue with Erich von Daniken and others like him (though I don’t believe he really believes in anything other than a profit). These theories that start with the assumption that the contemporary culture of whatever object or structure we are analyzing was not advanced/skilled enough to have created it is, for lack of a better word at midnight, racist.

I mentioned this to my mother tonight and she began citing respected scientists who believe we could be or could have been visited by lifeforms from other planets… fine, great. I don’t NOT believe there are other lifeforms in our infinitely large universe. I’m a fan of Carl Sagan. I’m not sure I buy the weather balloon of Roswell NM. But if you’re going to tell me that ancient civilizations- ancestors and fore-fathers of modern people- had to be TAUGHT to create wonders, then you better be prepared to show me who taught those teachers. Otherwise, go read your dogeared copy of G.F. Smith’s The Ancient Egyptians (1911). Diffusion theory is a vicious line of reasoning that ends in the argument for the intellectual superiority of one culture over another that I cannot agree with. It’s like the Europeans who came to America and saw the American Indian burial mounds and said ‘no, no, these are too advanced for the indigenous people of this area to have built. There must have been other people here, smarter people, “Mound Builders”, who built these.’ Well, guess what- remember those indigenous people you thought were too ‘primitive’, jackasses? Yeah, they were making them up to the 1500s. What this all boils down to is the defamation of indigenous heritage. If they figured it out on there own, so can we, and so can the next people.

And that’s what my beef with the new Indy film boils down to: my issue with diffusion theory.

Otherwise, I’d definitely see it again, if only to see Indy freak-out when Mutt handed him a giant rat snake to pull him out of the sand pit.

I’ll also refer you to this awesome asylum.com article I stumbled upon minutes after posting this entry.

Yet again I have failed to post in a timely manner.  I feel I have a decent excuse this time: I was working grad school apps, putting in my two weeks notice at work, and have had my wisdom teeth taken out.  I am actually still in bed from the wisdom teeth incident- my face is 2xs its originally size.  Not a pretty picture, and quite painful.

I went to graduation last weekend at my good old alma mater and got to tell my academic advisor and thesis advisor that I am (pretty much) officially heading to grad school in the fall!  I’ve been accepted to Durham and Cardiff, so I’ll be hopping the pond to continue my study of th Western Mediterranean Neolithic (like I was going to fin a program for that in the states…).  So if you’re wondering whose been hunting through your couch cushions for spare change… that would be me.

Being back in DC to see my younger archaeology buddies graduate was really fun.  My partner in crime was the student speaker, which didn’t surprise me at all since she’s the biggest work-a-holic I know.  The fun part there was sitting in the VIP section with her family and having her little brother drink all my water.

I’m noticing that this post isn’t making a lot of sense, and I’m blaming it on the pain killers.  So, I think I’m going to go back to bed and threaten death to anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to tell me what happens in the new Indiana Jones before I feel well enough to sit in a movie theater for 2 hours.

I blame archaeoblog for what you’re about to see:

The sad thing I have more…

Think you can do better? By all means, let me see, or bring it over to archaeoblog.

Apologies, apologies, apologies. I have no excuse besides from having an actual job and floating in a sea of ‘what-in-the-devil’s-name-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life’. In the last month-and-a-half I’ve been looking at M.A. programs in the UK but, true to my nature, I have yet to send e-mails to any of the departments inquiring about spaces, let alone actually complete and application.

So far out have I been that I only just stumbled across an article on scientists deciding that Otzi died from a blow to the head. Only took note since I was watching the Discovery Channel’s Egyptology Night and saw the good Dr. Hawass discuss blows to at least 3 different heads. I could mention a head that could use a blow, but not only would it be interpretted incorrectly, it would deprive me of infinite amusement everytime I turn on a program on Egyptology. In all seriousness, the good doctor has done some great things for Egyptian Antiquities.

Since I’m still in the NY Metro Area I should at some point do a review or at least make reference to the new Levy-White wing of the Metropolitan Museum. I’ve swung by there a few times since one of my sisters lives across the street, but I will hopefully take a day and go with my Classicist friend from college who took a way-too-early-in-the-morning Roman Art History class with me. I’ll give him a hard time about missing the Greek counterpart while I drag him through the Minoan/Cycladic room.

Ok, so time to catch up on the News:

• I must admit, I don’t recall yet hearing Stonehenge referred to as a “Neolithic Lourdes”. Perhaps a believable reason for lugging bluestones for 150 miles? As a rule I remain sceptical. My mother says I don’t believe anything. Mind you, this is after she waved Ahmed Osman’s “Jesus in the House of the Pharaohs” in my face and insisted I read it. Perhaps next time I need a good laugh, Mom.

• And I can’t quite get over the fact that the Discovery Channel website actually had the link to this story labelled as “Poop fossil”. Doesn’t tickle my fancy quite the was ‘archaeoporn’ does, but it’s definately an attention grabber. And if you’re curious what this actually links to– apparently this poop predates Clovis by about 1000 years. And we used to eat grass. I don’t remember that turning out so well for Foulon de Doue.

• And in a SECOND article on the Discovery Channel’s website that features the word “poop”, while some South African hunter-gatherers may have already been using early versions of the bow-and-arrow more than 61,000 years ago, Europeans weren’t using them until around 30,000 years ago, putting a damper on world-systems-theory. This based on the “out of Afria” emmigration (as they call it) around 50,000 years ago.

I think I need to start subscribing to some reputable sources and stop scouring the internet. At least you can access some of the AJA online.

And before I sign off, it’s worth mentioning that you should check out the illustrious Brian Fagan’s new book “The Great Warming: Climate change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.” Funnily enough, I discovered this new book when he was interviewed on, believe or not, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. What’s that? An archaeologist in pop-culture world? Yeah, I was amused. (And he even has a blog!)

Yes, yes, it has been awhile since I’ve posted.  I know.  Sorry.

That being said, a change is a-comin’.  New layout, new theme, new lotta things.  And I will finally post about all the archaeology articles I’ve had bookmarked and have thought about posting for the last month.

Things that I have done- notice the new link to the website ‘Bad Archaeology’.  A rundown of archaeological fallacies and things that make us want to tear out our hair and damn all post-modernists (at least that’s I want to do most of the time).

…ok, so mybe it’s ‘thing’ I’ve done, rather than ‘things’.

So somewhere between finding a job and figuring out how to fund grad school come january I will be overhauling this place.  Seriously.

And also coming- an amusing list of Do’s and Don’t’s for excavation volunteers.  Not by me.  My two excavations certainly do NOT qualify me to tell other people what to do (with the exception of AnimalPlanet, a girl in my area on an excavation in Israel last summer who didn’t believe she needed more than a pint of water a day while excavating in the Jezreel Valley).

So expect more posts, and most likely some subdomains dedicated to my pursuit of costume design and fashion.