This is a test of the new bookmarking script I’m working on. This one does the science posts and should run on Tuesdays around 7pm.
Correlation, Causation, and Coincidence One Astronomer’s Noise
Nicole tries to claim there’s a difference between correlation and causation in a bid to dodge the blame for the USA’s failure to win the Confedrations Cup.
SNAIL’S TALES: Another well hidden tree frog
Snail’s Tales is an interesting read, but you could just follow it for the photos.
the quackometer: What Next for the British Chiropractic Association?
It looked like the British Chiropractic Association would successfully sue Simon Singh for defamation, despite their claims being nonsense. A recent article in the BMJ now suggests it’s possible their only hope of winning is by claiming to be a bunch of incompetent numbskulls.
Disappearing The Science News | The Loom
Catch the news in Science before it disappears! The Daily Telegraph’s attempt at writing up a student’s research on rape as an entertaining piece has backfired.
Asking for it – Bad Science
Related to the link above, here’s Ben Goldacre on how the news story in the Telegraph was not about women asking to be raped.
Times Higher Education – NHS trust chief accuses Edinburgh professor of speaking out of turn
Edinburgh defends its academics right to be curious. It should be normal practice, but that doesn’t stop it being laudable.
Epigenetics: It’s All in the Packaging | Newsweek Science
(via BoraZ) A description of epigenetics, another strand of inheritance which operates alongside genetics. Biology is not all in your DNA, which is going to complicate Star Trek plots massively.
Ashes cricketers could be caught out by climate change | guardian.co.uk
It’s not just shameless time-wasting which is ending the golden age of cricket. Climate change could lead to the Australians humiliating England on a number of similar pitches. It’s a disheartening prospect for those England fans who like to see their team humiliated on a number of pitches each with their own character.
A tale from the trenches of science journalism : Pharyngula
This makes a nice change from the science journalist = evil villain trope that I’ve seen in a few places recently. It’s handy to know there’s frustration on the journalists’ side too. It suggests cooperation would be more useful than conflict.
Advanced Fellowships In the Dark
This is depressing. The STFC, the funing body for UK astronomy, continuing to cut down astronomical research in the UK to a more manageable level.
The Strange case of Epsilon Aurigae EIU Astro
Epsilon Aurigae would seem to be a very large star with a companion. Things get really strange when you look at its light curve. It seems to get dimmer for around two years at a time. That would suggest it’s being orbited by something bigger, but we can’t see it. It’s too dim to be a star, so what is it?
The first Earthling to journey to Mars – Conan the Bacterium | The Observer
Bacteria have been shown to be viable after being left on the Moon, so it’s possible terrestrial bacteria can travel to Mars. It’s even possible that they have in the past, hitching a lift on meteorites. There’s also a tardigrade going. I’d be willing to bet a large amount of money that it will come back alive.
SNAIL’S TALES: Darwin was a malacologist!
And if you don’t know what a malacologist is then you need to visit Snail’s Tales. The ‘mal’ always makes me think ‘bad’. But it’s not.
Galactic Interactions: How much Dark Matter do you hold in your hands?
Rob Knop is able to put a figure on how much Dark Matter is likely to be around you. It’s quite a small figure.
LookUP Widget | Astronomy Blog
Can you help test the LookUP widget? If not, then use it. It’s a nifty tool.
Via the Cliopatria blog I’ve been reading Laura McKenna’s thoughts on changes in blogging in The Blogosphere 2.0. On the whole I think blogging has changed for the better, but there was an observation on the lack of linking which I thought was fair.
In the past I used to compile posts which were lists of links of what I’d been reading. This meant opening and editing drafts each time I wanted to make a note, which was a pain. I moved to storing bookmarks on del.icio.us (now delicious.com). This collated links with minimal formatting and posted them on a daily basis if there were five or more links to post. It works, but it’s ugly. I moved to ma.gnolia which allowed more formatting. It also offered the promise of being able to theme collations, so that the past-based links came out in one post, the science links in another and so on. Sadly this option was never enabled, and things got worse when ma.gnolia suffered an existence faliure, along with its backups earlier this year. It’s made linking more of an effort again.
What I’ve been doing is posting to Friendfeed or Twitter, but that’s an imperfect solution for me. If I link from here then in small way I help boost the Page Rank of the entry I’m linking to. That effect doesn’t really happen with other methods. So I’ve put together a Heath Robinson mix of JavaScript, PHP and MySQL to streamline my linking. I can’t publish the scripts here, as they’re terribly insecure but I’ll describe what’s going on and if you know basic PHP you should be able to conjure up something similar.
read more…
This is another test of the new bookmarking script I’m working on. It it works then it should collect links during the week and then compile them into one post on a Sunday.
Mr Deity and the Virgin
Everyone’s favourite holy being is back for a new series on YouTube.
Abnormal Interests: I’m Not Sure What I Think About This
Duane Smith explains his concerns about the compatability of science and religion in a post which makes a refreshing change in the accomodationism debate. If you’re looking for a post shouting about what they think someone else has said, you’d be better off looking elsewhere.
Almost-live report: Daniel Dennett at the Cambridge Darwin-and-faith bash Why Evolution Is True
Bah! My forthcoming post on theology would look prescient if it had come out last week. Now it’ll look like I’m plagiarising Dennett. Nonetheless it’s a good write up of the question “What does Theology bring to an interdisciplinary study?”
The Rules of When on Google Earth are as follows:
Q: What is When on Google Earth?
A: It’s a game for archaeologists, or anybody else willing to have a go!
Q: How do you play it?
A: Simple, you try to identify the site in the picture.
Q: Who wins?
A: The first person to correctly identify the site, including its major period of occupation, wins the game!
Q: What does the winner get?
A: The winner gets bragging rights and the chance to host the next When on Google Earth on his/her own blog!
If you want to see it in action here’s some recent sites WOGE 60, WOGE 61, WOGE 62, WOGE 63.
I won WOGE 64, by guessing that the site was the Great Circle of Newark, thought I typed BC instead of AD mainly because everything I’m working on BC. It’s a site so interesting I was tempted to choose the nearby octogon as my site. Instead I’ve chosen this one.
This is a test of the new bookmarking script I’m working on. It it works then it should collect links during the week and then compile them into one post on a Friday.
Resting place of choice – Le Monde diplomatique – English edition
Roger Gaess gives a tour of sights found at the dead centre of London.
Time Team America: Fort Raleigh
K. Kris Hirst is eager to see more of Time Team America. My fingers are crossed. Done well it could be a great series about the archaeological process, but there’s an awful lot of British TV series which have been mutilated by American television.
Fort Raleigh | Time Team America | PBS
Here’s information from PBS about their programme on Fort Raleigh in North Carolina. Readers from the eastern side of the Atlantic might be interested as it’s the earliest English colony in North America.
Abnormal Interests: Epigraphy By The Numbers
Duane Smith follows up on the paper “Automatic Writer Identification of Ancient Greek Inscriptions” with a discussion of the method. I’m not sure if this is going to make epigraphists more or less scary.
History Blog Origins of the Royal Color Purple
Why is the colour purple for royalty? Charlotte Gardner finds an answer that smells so bad that even the Romans couldn’t stand it.
Roman Times: Romans capture most slots on 10 most extravagant emperors list
Mary Harrsch questions whether it’s the Emperors or sometime their public images which got them on the list.
mental_floss Blog Science in the Field: Human Migration in the Ancient Southwest
An introduction to the recent revival of the Chaco Meridian idea. I’d have to read the book to see how it differs from ley-lines.
The Archaeology of Modern Prison Resistance Prison Photography
A photography project which has relevance to contemporary and historical archaeologists. The archaeology of confinement was one of the sessions at WAC last year.
2009 Interactive Dig Johnson’s Island – Unlocking a Civil War Prison
Meanwhile, Archaeology Magazine has an ongoing excavation of an American Civil War museum.
Got Medieval: What’s So Funny about Knights and Snails?
Everyone knows about George and the dragon, but how to you start training to fight one? It’s possible they started with slightly easier opposition.
The History Blog No Etruscans left in Tuscany?
There’s been a few stories on this, but the History Blog entry caught my eye. I’m sceptical about this. I think DNA does have information about the past, but I’m wary of how genetics and history are integrated. That’s another blog post I’ve been meaning to write for a year or more.
The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World: The Varieties of Archaeological Experience
Bill Caraher blogs aboiut the different ways of approaching an archaeological site. How do you put them all together?
Through the eye of the Geodimeter Testimony of the spade
Magnus Reuterdahl has news and some nice photos from a prehistoric dig in Sweden.
Ohio Archaeology Blog: Rare Guilty Pleas Are Obtained In Southwest Artifacts Sting
I’ve seen this listed on several sites, but Bill Pickard adds a bit of commentary from his perspective in Ohio.
DigiPast: Do You Really Want To Question Sylvia Allen’s Crazy Arizona Math?
DigiPast gives archaeological news with attitude. In this case the attitude is “Huh?” as there’s a lot less archaeology in Arizona than you might have thought.
A Geophysics View into Hamline History Old Dirt – New Thoughts
If you’re excited by Geofizz on Time Team America, then you’ll love the radar results on show here. New technology is cutting down the amount of time spent digging in the wrong place.
The History Blog Libya’s ancient sites ravaged by looters
The opening up of Libya means that many major sites from the Roman Empire are now accessible. Unfortunately there’s a healthy market for illegally excavated material.
Theoretical Structural Archaeology: Primitive Rituals
I could be theatrically grumpy about this. Geoff Carter has a go at archaeologists who talk about cosmology and ritual. If I can organise my thoughts I’ll blog more about this. I disagree with some of what he says, I’m more smiley about ethnography. However, ritual is a label, not an explanation. If you get miffed by archaeologists simply saying something is ‘ritual’ and acting as if that’s an answer you’ll like this.
Ancient Games: “Rome” movie to offer decent series wrapup
Mary Harrsch has what I hope is the second best news of the week.* Rome is to return as a film. Just don’t try and work out how old Pullo will be for the era it’s set in.
This is being typed the day before I get my latest set of cancer results.
Musings On Writing – Gospel of Judas and Quarrelsome Academics (What? NO … academics quarreling … ?!)
Min’s Musings is a new blog (to me). This is a good examination of what happens when politics muscles into your archaeology.
Undead Naked Archaeology: Photo-Assault!
I could write a description here, but with a title like that you’re going to click anyway aren’t you?
Pagans for Archaeology: Arthur’s protest
I like Yvonne Aburrow’s blogging a lot. There’s plenty of intelligent pagans, but Yvonne reliably hits a balance between spiritual belief and non-pagan society when she writes. Here she notes that not only is Arthur Pendragon making a claim on ancient bones, but he’s also laying what pagans should believe. That’s sly politics more often found with fundamentalists claiming the label ‘Christian’.
remote central: Basketry Of The Present And Prehistory – Video Short
Tim Jones shows that when you start seriously thinking about it, basketry reveals an awful lot about human cognition. It also shows how all sorts of thought processes are enmeshed with each other.
The Grail Diary Electric Archaeology: Digital Media for Learning and Research
Shawn Graham reveals an essential help to finding the Holy Grail. Yes, the one in the Indiana Jones film.
Memorabilia Antonina: Readers (if there are any left) forgive me, for I have sinned …
I’ve got the early scraps of a blog post (tied in with the tool for making these link posts) and Memorabilia Antonina’s passing was going to be something to lament. Except it’s not dead yet. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
UNL | Turkey Trip Blog | Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering
Here’s another new blog to me. It’s a class taking a trip to Turkey from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. As part of the trip they’re scanning some ancient sites.
An interesting turn Archaeology at Signal Hill, Newfoundland, Canada
Why would you want to conduct an archaeological dig when you already have the historical records? Here’s an answer from another blog that’s new to me.
Latvian History
This is a new English language blog on the history of the middle Baltic state. It covers archaeology as well as history. It could be a very useful blog as while there’s good research coming out of the Baltic states, I can’t recall any other Baltic bloggers.
Digging the Past in Laverstock Across the Bourne
Wayne D. Morris gives his impressions of seeing his first archaeological dig at Across the Bourne.
This is a test of the new bookmarking script I’m working on. This one does the science posts and should run on Tuesdays around 7pm.
Popularization Is Its Own Reward?
Chad Orzel asks what can be done to improve public outreach in academia. It might feed into what I’m thinking about the media in general for a post in the future.
Kentucky Space: 110th Carnival of Space – the Phobos-Grunt, Liberty and Pants-on-Fire edition
Kentucky Space gathers together Astronomy blogging from the past week.
In praise of partial explanation (and flowcharts) Neuroanthropology
This is well worth reading if you’re trying to fit a few ideas together. A flowchart isn’t a theory, but it can help clarify how things connect.
What Can Singing Mice Teach Us about Language?: Scientific American
Singing mice sound like a joke. However it could be relevant in understanding the evolution of language.
This is a test of the new bookmarking script I’m working on. It it works then it should collect links during the week and then compile them into one post on a Friday.
The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World: The Houses of Lakka Skoutara
Bill Caraher has plans and photos of houses he’s examined whilst out on fieldwork at Lakka Skoutara.
UNESCO World Heritage Site Monte Alb of Mexico in 3D CyArk
The hugely exciting CyArk project has been scanning Monte Alb, a Zapotec site in Mexico. If, like me, you lose track of which Mexican cultures are which, Monte Alb was founded after 500BC and abandoned after AD1000. That would put them around the same time as the Mayans, but before the Aztecs.
A Don’s Life by Mary Beard – Times Online – WBLG: Was Alexander the Great a Slav?
Mary Beard comments on the Miller letter that’s been doing the rounds. She’s not convinced it’s good history.
Macedonians, Slavs, and Greeks
N.S. Gill at About.com is also discussing the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians.
Got Medieval: Stonhenge Hidden in Windows 7 (from Americans, anyway)
Carl Pyrdum has found a secret Stonehenge in Windows 7. That must surely almost make up for the embarrasment of being outed as a user of Windows. 
human rights archaeology: cultural heritage and community: Goosed by UNICRI
A paper presented by the Director of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) bears a staggering resemblance to lots of other papers, books and blog posts written on crime and the antiquities trade recently. The extent of copying is astonishing.
Visit Western Sahara SAND AND DUST
There’s an opportunity to dig where no-one has dug before. I know all archaeology is supposed to be like that, but I did once spend two weeks digging a barn and finding nothing, till the local Museum admitted they’d lost the paperwork and umm… actually they remembered digging that. However, the Western Sahara is particularly undug and it looks like a great opportunity.
Abnormal Interests: It Looks Like I Joined the Wrong Club
Duane Smith explains why it’s not always a good idea to be an ancient historian if you want to keep up with ancient history.
Airminded – Web log beg: travel 2
Brett Holman want you to tell him where to go. In England and Wales, as he’ll be over for a short while.
John J. Dwyer’s Black Confederates
Another post from Civil War Memory on Black confederates. I’ve no ideological axe to grind on this. It would surprise me if there were many, if any, Black confederates – but then people do do surprising things. What dissuades me is that most of the arguments I’ve seen for Black confederates ignore what the reality of slavery was in the South. You have to smile at arguments like:
“They loved the South and were delighted to be identified with its cause, which they understood to be freedom. They viewed the North as a bully seeking to force its will on others who wished to live as they pleased.”
There’s a new edition of Four Stone Hearth live at Afarensis. He’s done a great job with it, and he’s found plenty that I’ve missed.
Also, while I’m pointing at things, Michael E Smith has a thoughtful post on agency and the problems that happen when archaeologists try talking about it. I’ve found often agent is a synonym of individual. Someone else I know suggested soul. It might sound woolly, but a lot of talk about agency is, because people don’t often define what sort of agency they’re talking about. Smith’s post shows another sort, from the political sciences, which clearly could be have applications in archaeology.
I’ve just found this video on the 2009 Conference on Archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest. The 2009 presentations look like they were really interesting. As a whole I find archaeoastronomy in the American southwest interesting because the methods used are often very different to Europe. We simply don’t have the ethnographic data for a lot of sites over here. However, the wealth of historical records from Classical Greece and Rome leads me to think there might be some useful tips I could pick up on method. I shall have to start saving my pennies and see if I can afford to go to the next one.
In the meantime there’s plenty of other interesting films to watch on John Sefick’s YouTube Channel.
It’s a common gripe that archaeologists don’t have much interest in public archaeology. I’m not convinced it’s true and it’s certainly not true of archaeoastronomy. People and the Sky is Anthony Aveni’s latest (original) book. He’s the most prolific of the popular archaeoastronomy authors, so it’s no surprise his prose is pretty well polished. I like this book, and if you don’t have any by him it’s well worth buying. If you’ve Stairways to the Stars, his earlier archaeoastronomy overview then I’m not so sure.
I’ve been thinking about whether the World Archaeoastronomy approach works. Anthony Aveni’s work would be an argument in its favour. While he’s best known for his work in Mesoamerica, he’s also done original research in the Mediterranean and the southwestern USA. One of the reasons he can do this without being trivial is that he’s interesting in how to relate astronomy to archaeology and vice versa. Wherever it is you’re studying in the world, there’s the problem of tying the global perspective of astronomy to archaeology, which is always local. People and the Sky could be said to be a collection of a dozen ways of trying to solve that problem.
The introduction starts by saying why the sky was important in the ancient world. It’s brief and rapidly turns into a paragraph on each chapter. Anyone who’s bought the book is presumably already sold on the idea that the sky was important, so brevity is not an issue. The opening chapter The Storyteller’s Sky introduces the role of the sky in ancient cosmologies. This section is heavily biased to the New World, with Mayans, Aztecs and the Navajo and the Babylonians from the Old World. The selection reflects Aveni’s expertise. The next chapter, Patterns in the Sky, opens with a personal anecdote, but the range of sources is much greater. Here Aveni’s world archaeoastronomy approach works to show the diversity of patterns seen in the night sky. As well as the Babylonians and Mayans, he also throws in many more cultures including the Egyptians, Barasana of the Amazon and the Incas. This last group is interesting because for them the patterns in the sky include spaces where the stars aren’t visible. In the Milky Way dark nebulae blot out stars, making distinctive silhouettes which the Inca recognised.
The Sailor’s Sky descibes one of my favourite artefacts, Polynesian stone canoes. They sound like something out of the Flintstones, but they’re better described as simulators. A novice naviagator would sit by the stones looking out at the horizon learning which stars rise over it. With this knowledge he’d be able to navigate across the vast distances of the Pacific ocean. There’s some discussion of Inuit navigation, but this is mainly a Polynesian chapter.
The Hunter’s Sky includes and handy guide on how to tell the time using the Plough, assuming there’s no clouds over it and you’ve forgotten your watch. This draws on Plains Indians, the G/wi of Botswana, the Mursi and Stonehenge. The inclusion of Stonehenge here is interesting. It’s a Neolithic monument, and that’s usually associated with farming. Aveni argues that Britons were semi-nomadic in this period. It’s plausible, archaeological evidence is suggesting there was plenty of movement in the landscape through to the Early Bronze Age, so seasonal use of megalithic sites would make sense.
It’s the next chapter that tackles the Farmer’s Sky. He opens by discussing Works and Days by Hesiod, which he dates to the ninth-century BC. That seems a bit early to me, I would have said it was written at a hundred years later. However, I would agree that the integration of astronomical and ecological imagery in the poem is important and points to an extensive knowledge of the sky. He uses the word ’systematic’ to describe the astronomy, but I’d be wary of saying there was a system as such. He moves on to Rujm el-Hiri, a site which I haven’t read much about after hearing it called “the Stonehenge of the Levant”. If I hear anything is called “the Stonehenge of anywhere that isn’t Stonehenge” then I become wary. Thankfully Aveni’s explanation isn’t an attempt to shoehorn a Stonehenge model onto a site, but I’ll have to read the relevant articles before I’m convinced of some of the claims. He also describes Indonesian rice farming using bamboo as a sighting tool, which was entirely new to me.
The later chapters move more towards ideology. The House, the Family and the Sky is about the organisation of domestic space, based on cosmological principles. The Navajo, Pawnee and the various tribes of the Orinoco make up much of this chapter but he also mentions the Batammaliba of Benin and Togo and Gilbert Islanders, before moving back the the Americas with the Inca. This may be one of the bigger growth areas in archaeoastronomy in the coming decades as it deals with the kind of things people do without thinking. This connects the sky with terrestrial order.
This is expanded on in The City and the Sky. The Mayan city of Teotihuacan makes an appearance, not surprisingly as Aveni has done a lot of work on pecked cross circles there. He’s also looked at the Etruscan basis for town planning, and this can be found here too. He also talks about another obvious example of celestial planning, Beijing, and the astronomical records of the Chin Shu dynasty (3rd century AD). This use of power leads neatly onto The Ruler’s Sky. The Powhatan attacks on Virginia led by Opechancanough add an interesting alternative viewpoint to the Mayan and Babylonian uses of astronomy and astrology elsewhere in the chapter. China and Babylon form the basis of the following chapter The Astrologer’s Sky, though there is also a discussion of Cheyenne shamanism and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention of India.
The Timekeeper’s Sky concentrates on just two cultures, the Romans and the Mayans. I don’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed about that. I find the Greek calendar cheerfully chaotic and worth looking at in its own right. On the other hand I’m willing to bet that if Aveni had done that, he would have come across some of the same curiosities I have. So while I’d say there’s a gap here, it’s not one I’m actually complaining about. To some extent this chapter covers similar material to the earlier hunting and farming chapters.
The final chapter of the book is The Western Sky. It’s a slightly different chapter to the others. It asks an obvious question. Given the existence of so many astronomies, why has one come to dominate science? This why question is re-visited in the Epilogue which Aveni uses to reiterate that for many people Astronomy had been something very different both in methods and aims to the modern science it is day.
As a whole, the book shows some of the limitations of a world archaeoastronomy approach. I didn’t see anything substanstial about India in the book. References to China were limited and there was nothing of Korea or Japan that I saw. To a large extent this reflects fault-lines in academia. A lot of far eastern material isn’t published in western languages. That’s not really true for India though. There’s some extremely good archaeology happening there and a large amount of historical material, including astrological texts. It works for textbooks introducing the subject, but I am wondering to what extent a World Archaeoastronomy approach can be used in research publications.
Compared with his other works, this is definitely at the shallow end but it’s not fair to dismiss it as shallow. Like the best introductory texts it leads on to other material. For instance I’ll be looking up more about Rujm el-Hiri now. If you’re looking to buy a book and you have Stairways to the Stars, then this is one to get out of the library. If you don’t have Stairways to the Stars, then this would be the better book to buy.
