Vidi

I’m not sure if this will be regular or not. Rogue Classicism does a brilliant job of rounding up Classical news, and the History Carnival and Carnivalesque watch the history blogs. There reason it’s here at all is I’ve been busy this week, so my links folder has been filling up with a lot of stories. It seems a bit more creative than a very long “Seen Elsewhere” post.

Travel

Exploring the Arctic Ocean: I’m green and it’s with envy rather than sympathetic sea-sickness. Greg and Kristan are in Nunavut looking at the history and archaeology. The Arctic isn’t a glamourous location for fieldwork, yet. I suspect it will be in coming years. It’s one of the places you can still be an explorer as well as an archaeologist.

The Entremont Oppidum: An oppidum is an Iron Age town. As Troels Myrup notes in Towards an Archaeology of Iconoclasm, it’s notorious for its severed head cult. As always with Troels’ posts there’s evocative photography to go with it, but to find out whether it’s of the oppidum or the heads you’ll have to visit his site.

Talking and Digging Near Linköping: Martin Rundkvist is away this week digging long barrows. In the old days it was all about whacking open the barrow and looking for the treasure. These days, it’s somewhat different.

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Ethics

Dickson Mounds: DaveC at Taking it Outside shows why a blog is different to a typical website. The entry on whether or not human remains should be displayed at an archaeological site is short, but it opens up quite a discussion.

A fragment of the Parthenon frieze has been returned to Greece. Elginism has a series of posts on the subject.

Meanwhile (via Mediterranean Archaeology) news comes that Greece will loan the British Museum frescoes from Knossos.

A Hercules Divided: Troels Myrup has photos of both halves of the Weary Hercules, which is quite an achievement given they’re separated by thousands of miles. How did one half of the statue leave Turkey and arrive in Boston?

Chinese communist rewrites it’s history textbooks: What would a communist history of China look like? Status of Chinese People finds that China history books are no longer big enough to cover all Chinese history and so some things get compressed, like the Communist revolution.

Topaz – monument to lack of civil rights: National history standards for high school U.S. history courses say kids should demonstrate knowledge about the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. But Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub discovers that in contemporary America the removal of civil rights as a war measure is being forgotten.

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Practical Archaeology Course 2006: Day One: Wessex Archaeology are keeping a blog of their archaeology course this year. Day one seems the best place to start but you can also browse Day Two and Day Three as well.

Cave colours pose a new tongue-twister: Archaeologists digging at the Twin Rivers site in Zambia have found ochre pigments of various colours, including red, yellow, brown, black and “sparkling purple”. The interesting thing is these are found at levels associated with Homo heidelbergensis, which dates from 300 kyr, long before the arrival of Homo Sapiens. Dr Lawrence Barham, director of the dig, has said this indicates the use of symbolic thought, which in turn implies the use of language. The evolution of language is a difficult subject. Steve Mithen has suggests that language derived from singing, which is plausible, though I’m not convinced by his reasoning. If you’d like to read more, Dr Barham ha a website about the project in Zambia.

Women and the Labor Movement: Stellans at Full-Figured Body Politic argues that the women’s movement started from the factory floor rather than Middle-class America.

CyArk 3D Heritage Archive is Up!! Eric Kanza at Digging Digitally reports on a new archive which is providing details on World Heritage sites to the public via a Creative Commons licence. I’d agree that it probably is worth the second exclamation mark.

H Paul Garland has a post on a Mercury statuette and an impressive array of links for people who want to find out more.

Another Celtic God Mask: What is a Celtic artefact doing in Scandinavia? Martin Rundkvist has evidence for extensive prehistoric trade.

Mystery of Va.’s First Slaves Is Unlocked 400 Years Later: Archaeology is providing information on the arrival of some of America’s first colonists. It seems some of the history of early slavery may be incorrect. (via ClioWeb)

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Arts

I, unreliable: Tony Keen comments on an article in the Guardian, and re-visits what the I might mean in I, Claudius.

In what must be the perfect stocking filler for Christmas, Afarensis spots a Lego Darwin, Neanderthal, Lucy and Catarrhine

More evidence of the forthcoming collapse of civilisation can be found at Adventures in Ethics and Science. “Roman numerals? They didn’t even try to teach us that in school!”

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Reviews

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart, a book of a modern recreation of a journey undertaken in the 13th century. Reviewed by *maura*.

Archaeological Fantasies edited by Garett G. Fagan, a volumn on pseudo-archaeology. Reviewed by Martin Rundkvist

Journal Watch: Recent Articles in Anthropology & Archaeology Journals, Carl Feagans at Hot Cup of Joe highlights some articles in recent or forthcoming journals, including a link to an article on a spiral that has disappeared from Castlerigg stone circle.

Friday Pot Blogging: This week Duane Smith takes a look at two jugs dating from the 8th to 6th century BC at Abnormal Interests.

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Other new (to me) Blogs

Archaeomaya is the Weblog of Dr. Ed Barnhart, Director of the Maya Exploration Center. Looks like it’ll be fascinating with excellent photos. I hope this counts as validation. 🙂

Nathan Bauman is the Seoul Hero, who will hopefully be coming to the UK to study classics. It’s another blog with fantastic imagery.

The Scoop on History-APUSH and more A site on US History and part of a class project by the looks of it.

SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog I’d guess this has been going since April, which makes it quite long in the tooth. It looks like there’s a lot to find if you have an interest in Southeast Asian archaeology and, as Noelbynature says, it is one of the frontier grounds in archaeology today.

Greek 306: Homer A group blog started late last month. It looks like a class working their way through Odyssey. Looks like yet another one to keep an eye on.

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I don’t know if this is a one-off or not yet. If I’m busy next week then I may put bookmarks all into another folder and compile them into one post at the weekend rather than post them in dribs and drabs through the week. Vidi is certainly a more stylish title for a post than Seen Elsewhere.