Blog Profile / Archaeology Guide
| URL : | http://archaeology.about.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Archaeology | |
| Posts on Regator: | 233 | |
| Posts / Week: | 2.4 | |
| Archived Since: | July 11, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Pompeii Streets Photo Essay
Anyone who has been a reader of these pages for very long knows I have a thing about ancient roads. I can't really explain it, except to say that it interests me that in certain places, a public thoroughfare is built and rebuilt and rebuilt, but remains in the same geographical location for hundreds of years. Show More Summary
Secrets of the Dead: Caveman Cold Case
This week, PBS airs "Caveman Cold Case", the latest episode of the long-running series Secrets of the Dead, featuring archaeological evidence of survival cannibalism by Neanderthals some 49,000 years ago.... Read Full Post
Domesticating the Sago Palm
Chinese archaeologists have found evidence pushing back the domestication of the sago palm at least 3,500 years earlier than was thought. Sago Palm Garden, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia. Toksave Sago palms, like other tropical trees, are...Show More Summary
Damascus Steel and Nanotechnology
Arguably the best sword makers in world history were medieval Islamic blacksmiths, makers of the fearsome Damascus steel blades.
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Ceibal and the Mesoamerican E-Group
A recent paper in the journal Science describes investigations by Mayanist Takeshi Inomata and colleagues at Ceibal, a Maya capital site in Guatemala. Those excavations recently revealed the earliest known E-Group in the Maya lowlands, ca 1000 BC.... Read Full Post
Toba Super-Eruption and the Human Bottleneck
About 75,000 years ago, an immense volcanic eruption occurred in Mt. Toba on the island of Sumatra, in an explosion estimated between 10 and 360 times that of Mt. Pinatubo. Thick ash layers covered much of India and parts of Asia, and ash and aerosols were injected into the atmosphere, creating what must have been devastating environmental effects. Show More Summary
Pipestone
Pipestone refers to one of a whole slew of stone raw material types that are soft, fine-grained, and easily carved into a wide variety of shapes. Read Full Post
Roman Empire in the Netherlands
During the first century BC, the Batavi, a branch of ethnic Chatti and auxiliary troops to the Roman legion, left their homes on the east bank of the Rhine River, and moved northward to the Netherlands, which was at the time, according to the historian Tacitus, an uninhabited damp lowland. But the Netherlands was not uninhabited.... Read Full Post
Dendrochronology at Medieval Lübeck, Germany
Tree ring dating, often called dendrochronology, is a fascinating science that uses the growth rings of long-lived trees as a record of climatic change in a region. Tree ring analysis has been around a long time, and perhaps its best known use is to help scientists confirm and correct radiocarbon dates. But that's not all dendrochronology is good for.... Read Full Post
Cholula's Great Pyramid
The largest pyramid in the American continents, and one of the largest in the world, is that at Cholula, in central Mexico.
Model of the classic period (AD 750-950) phase of the great pyramid at Cholula. Cutaway shows earlier phases. Photo by Nicoletta Maestri... Read Full Post
Azuki Bean History
The latest domestication history to the About.com collection is the azuki bean, the tasty red bean so popular in Japanese cuisine. Azuki Beans. Photo by Richard West Although azuki beans were likely domesticated at least five thousand...Show More Summary
Ancient Foods and Food History
I've long been interested in how and when humans domesticated plants and animals, but a side interest of mine that occasionally surfaces is the history of ancient prepared foods. Home-made Garum; photo by Edsel Little... Read Full P...
Oldest Pottery's Purpose: Fish for Dinner
The latest information about the invention of ceramic containers is that the technology was developed in East Asia, probably Japan or the Yangtze valley of China perhaps 20,000 years ago. But what those vessels were used for has been something of a puzzle.... Read Full Post
Black Drink: Prehistoric Source of Caffeine
Black drink is a tea, made from toasted leaves of the American holly (Ilex vomitoria), and, according to the latest archaeological research, it was used by Native American groups in North America by at least 1,050 AD, and likely considerably earlier.... Read Full Post
Ancient Computer - NOVA Video on Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera Mechanism is a wildly improbable object, an astronomical computing tool (quite possibly) made by the engineer/mathematician Archimedes in the 3rd century BC, and found in a Roman shipwreck in 1900. And tonight on many American Public Broadcasting System stations, you can see the video describing the latest research yourself.... Read Full Post
Marine Isotope Stages - Or is it Oxygen Isotope Stages?
I must admit that this article comes out of my frustration about a piece of jargon that shows up in archaeological literature these days: the practice of referring to marine isotope stages (MIS) and/or oxygen isotope stages (OIS) to describe the date of particular site or event.... Read Full Post
Decoding Neanderthals - A Video Review
Decoding Neanderthals is a 2013 video from Public Broadcasting Services' NOVA program, and further proof, if you needed it, that PBS continues to provide us with terrific scientific videos, featuring recent results on topics in science-based, entertaining, hour-long presentations.... Read Full Post
Chichimec Capital of Tenayuca: Photo Essay
The Chichimec people migrated into the valley of Mexico in the 12th century AD, and built their capital city at Tenayuca, located a few kilometers north of Mexico City.
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28,000 Year Old Australian Cave Paintings: Photo Essay
In 2007, a rockshelter was rediscovered in southwestern Arnhem Land, Australia, by Ray Whear and Chris Morgan, members of the Jawoyn Association survey team. What they found there amazed them, as well it might: ancient cave paintings in an open-air rockshelter called Nawarla Gabarnmang.... Read Full Post
Book Review: Interpreting the English Village
The Shapwick Project was a ten-year-long landscape archaeology program set in Somerset county of southwest England, intensively studying the town of Shapwick and the surrounding fields: Interpreting the English Village is the public archaeology text reporting the findings, newly published this year.... Read Full Post