Flop Eared Jackal

2007-10-15T17:19:00.000+10:00

I haven't forgotten about Sherd Nerd, just busy and nothing to say. Departure date is a-nearing though so I may get inspiration. Anyhow, this is where I'm going.

nicked from Blackman, Aylward M, The rock tombs of Meir. Part 5

Four Stone Hearth 19

2007-07-18T06:00:00.000+10:00

Greetings, it is time for the 19th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival. The four stones in this hearth are archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, bio-physical anthropology and linguistic anthropology.

It's personally very cool for me to be doing it this go 'round. I'm just a wee part time student and this blog is basically just to keep my friends and family in the loop so I'm honoured to present the work of real life archaeologists and anthropologists.

Onwards.

Testimony of the Spade on the mysteries and wonders of rock carvings in Uppland.

Martin at Aardvarchaeology paints a typically evocative portrait of a Mesolithic landscape.

Anthropology.net pieces together the "parallel lives and deaths" of the Anasazi and Gallina people, which may have a lesson for us all:

it reminds us that we too, despite our supposed vastly superior civilisation, could one day go the same way - leaving the few fragments of a future society to sit and wonder where it all went so quickly and badly wrong for their own vanished ancestors.

The curse of the bad back is a staple of quacks and tabloid current affairs shows the world over, but serious scholars take a keen interest too. Afarensis casts a sc/keptical eye over a recent publication.

Speaking of afarensis. Hominin Dental Anthropology with a post on ... hominin dental anthropology. Specifically, "fossils that may prove to be a bridge to establishing a relationship between the earlier Australopithecus anamensis (and the later Australopithecus afarensis early human species." Jason analyses the associated photos and the insight into the work of an expert is fascinating.

Mallard Fillmore's Bathtub on the value of a good historical story. If there's one thing historians know it is that truth is stranger than fiction.

I like to think of Assyriology as Egyptology's evil twin brother. I say that with love. A cuneiform tablet possibly referring to the biblical Jeremiah created a wee fuss in the field recently. In the first paragraph of this Abnormal Interests post there are links to numerous discussions of it, as well as AI's Duane having a good bash at translation.

We're on a winter break from uni here so it's been a while since I wrestled with hieroglyphic grammar. The bruises have healed, the scars are barely visible and I almost have use of thumbs back. So, I'm mentally ready to dive back into ancient linguistics. This discussion of the subjunctive in early Indo-European at Paleoglot is a good place to start.

Open Objects has a couple of posts on the issue of museums using Facebook and related social networking sites the young folk are so fond of. Also popular on teh innertubes these days are podcasts and Anthroblog reminds us we have limited time to download some from the 2007 meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Digital Arts and Humanities has an online discussion about geospatial computing in archaeology.

John Hawks on political sensitivities involved in the Lucy exhibition in Houston and also the perennial issue of baby mammoth cloning. Complete with picture. A picture of a baby mammoth. How cool is that?

Anthropology is not just dead folk. Anthropologi.info on varying reactions to a new book on the modern Islamic world, Akbar Ahmed. And Marcus Griffin -- an anthropologist working with the US Army in Iraq -- on building rapport with "subjects."

Bad Archaeology on bad archaeological reporting, this time involving a lost Indian city. If it involves Graham Hancock you know it's gotta be pure class on the evidence front. Mmmmmm....woo-y goodness.

Hot Cup of Joe blogs about why he blogs:

I’m also interested in what blog readers, who don’t necessarily have a blog of their own, think about anthropology blogs and what they like about anthropology blogs

What do we link about anthropology blogs? We loves them.

Finally, some Egyptology! (Graham Hancock snark does not count) To update: they found Hatshepsut (apparently) and made a TV show about it. ArchaeoBlog's reaction. I'm disappointed to hear it wasn't hokey and melodramatic. If you can't rely on a Discovery channel show on Ancient Egypt to be that, what's the world coming to?

Latest photos from Bulgarian finds. They are turning up amazing stuff at a rate of knots over there.

Early Modern Notes on the difficulties of deciding whether two people with the same name in historical records are or are not, the same person.

Next 4SH is at Afarensis on August 1st. Submit away!

4SH

2007-07-05T11:01:00.000+10:00

The latest Four Stone Hearth carnival is up at Clioaudio.

I am hosting the next one on July 18th -- eek! Please email your submissions to flopearedmule@gmail.com

Inked

2007-07-01T18:05:00.000+10:00

Ignore the smudges, plz. You take the drawing, cover it with drafting film (high falutin' tracing paper) and trace it with pen. Then you stipple. And stipple. And stipple. And stipple. And stipple some more. And when you frack it up you scrape it off with a razor blade, which was quite cool. The top birdy sucks but the pot looks orright.

New Four Stone Hearth

2007-06-28T09:56:00.000+10:00

Bi-weekly Anthro/Archeo blogging carnival.

And a LOLCat for Egyptologists. Heh.

Update to Sherds

2007-06-28T07:31:00.000+10:00

Drawing sherds at Hierakonopolis, one of the big pre-Dynastic sites. This explains the process much better than I, except we weren't allowed to use the profile comb. Old skool, yo.

As a student, Hierakonpolis was my first experience of drawing sherds. It was one of the more frustrating experiences I have encountered as a student archaeologist.

HA! Preach it, brother.

Now with Real Sherds

2007-06-27T20:16:00.000+10:00

My blogging task for tonight was going to be casting an eye over the second episode of Mark "The Poo" Philippoussis' reality dating show Age of Love, which I am chronicalling for Sidelined. The first installment is here. But I keep getting a foolish WordPress error, lost everything I had done, watched last night's The Daily Show (the Cheney bit was hilarious -- watch here), caught up on some eBay feedback to leave and here I am. Still half a glass of red (Chateau Cheapest with a Screwtop) and forty minutes til bedtime.

In prep for Egypt I've been giving up my Sundays doing an archaeological drawing course. I've always liked drawing, am crap at it of course (utterly unlike certain artists of my acquaintance.) But I do think there are certain of these skills you can learn. Right, you have to be born Eric Clapton but anyone can learn the chords to Leaving on a Jet Plane and bash it out in the lounge room. The learning chords and strumming business is quite mechanical and can be acquired. So it is with archaeological drawing which is a technical process. Obviously it helps to have natural ability but the basic skills can come through practice. So the propaganda goes anyway.

So week one. We learnt to "set up" the drawing, which means getting the outline in exact proportion to the real thing. Then you do the detail. This involves 2mm graph paper, an array of set squares on stands (so you have your hands free), a honkload of rulers, vernier calipers, knitting needles, really friggin' expensive clutch pencils (with a sharpener that costs alone $12! Strike me pink, a sharpener that costs twelve dollars!), yellow tac, a hundred rubbers (note: erasers) and lots of squinting.

My first project was some kind of clay bird:
Apologies for it being wonky -- had awful trouble with the scanner and I don't dare try it again. As you can see most of the detail involves shading. The old representing-a-three-dimensional-object-in-two-dimensions trick. Knowing how to do that properly (I don't) is where practice and technique comes in too.

Anyway, birdy was OK for a first effort. Next was a wee Sekhmet-y figure (don't quote me) which was more challenging and thus, less successful

See the whatsit she's holding? It's supposed to match up in the plan (front on) and profile views but doesn't. Boo.

Last week we moved on to ... sherds! Which were the seventh ring of hell. On account of maths, we can work out from the angle of the curve of a pot sherd how big the pot was. It's like magic! A sherd is important in terms of the position it had in the overall pot, so you have to image it spatially in three dimensions ... then draw it in two. Spatial awareness! That's for boys! This is what I came up with. It doesn't look like much but it took me all day and maybe a nerd somewhere would find it vital, were it to be published. (Ha!)

On the right is a view of the sherd I had and on the right is the reconstruction from it of the rim. Sherds are hard.

This Sunday is our last class and is inking a drawing. Think I'll use birdy for that.

Carnivus

2007-06-13T07:27:00.000+10:00

Martin at Aardvarchaeology asked me to host a round of the Four Stone Hearth blog carnival, devoted to posts archaeological and anthropological. It's a good incentive to actually get some content up here before I do and I've always wanted to do a blog carnival. I thought about organising a country music one at Flop Eared Mule but its #454276 on the list of things I thought about doing with FEM that I never did. But, my chance is here.

Still, way to feel intimidated. Go to the website and check out some of the amazing archeo/anthro sites out there. I think Sherd Nerd and, say, Hominin Dental Anthropology will be filling different niches but its nice to be in the loop, somewhere.

Deets

2007-06-13T07:25:00.000+10:00

Well, the flights are pretty much booked. Leaving on the 10th of November and returning .... on the 4th of January. That's a bit of a change since I thought I'd be returning before Christmas. So this is roughly it:

12-13th November Travel by train (5 hours, south of Cairo) to Asiout and start the work.

20th December Main work on site finishes. Between now and 28th is my own time, to travel around. I was really prepared to not have any such free time to see the sights/sites. Noice!

28th--31st December Three days of photography at the site. The uni has a professional photographer they get every year to document everything. You have to have permission from the Egyptian Antiquities Council peeps to work a site, called a "concession." The concession for Meir is valid until 31st December so of course the prof wants to use it all. It's not necessary for me to be at the photography but he said it would be a useful experience. How can I pass it up? Even though it means missing Christmas (Amanda's liver and BMI Index: Woo hoo!)

2nd January Leave for Oz.

Gong Show

2007-06-13T07:17:00.000+10:00

Congrats to our Professor (and the director of the Meir dig I'm going to), Naguib Kanawati for his Queen's Birthday gold star.

Professor Naguib Kanawati is now a member of the Order of Australia for his services to the study of Egyptian archaeology.

He has made the department at Macquarie University one of the best in the world from humble beginnings 40 years ago.

"It means a great deal not only to myself but also to the whole team at Macquarie University," he said.

I hope it means we can all swan though Customs in his bemedalled wake.

For the Bored

2007-06-02T11:43:00.001+10:00

Have an exam Tuesday night. We've been translating one of the major Egyptian texts, The Story of Sinuhe.

Actually, Sinuhe is the bloke's name as first translated by Whomever The Hell but actually the more accurately rendering is "Sanehat." (Sa-nee-haht, literally "Son of the Sycamore") Some refer to it now by that name but generally Sinuhe (Sin-oo-way) still wins the day.

After three hours of hieroglyphic grammar of a tuesday night, I mentally refer to it an Insanehat. So thus it was the inspiration for my newest World of Warcraft character. So many nerd worlds colliding here it gives me a headache.

The Nile IS a River in Africa

2007-05-29T08:05:00.001+10:00

Herotodus said, "Egypt is a gift of the Nile." He talked a lot of nonsense of course but he got that one right. As satellite piccies dramatically show, where the river valley ends, the desert begins.

Because you can never have too many blogs to neglect, I've started this one to waffle about things Egypt and in particular my preparation to go to Egypt in November this year. Hee, sounds funny to say it. That won't happen in earnest for a few months I guess but I might need to vent about my hieroglyphs homework in the meantime.

For my dear bacteria-lovin' Cozzy, I also draw your attention to something else the Nile gives: bilharzia, also known as Schistosomiasis.

If untreated, the adult parasites, known as trematode worms, travel to the liver and grow to a centimeter in length. They then lay their eggs in blood vessels around the bladder or intestine, causing irritation that can result in internal bleeding, cancer and even death.

Happily, I am not much of a swimmer anyway.

nn hpr

2007-05-24T09:18:00.001+10:00

Nowt here yet.