MAGAdiots and Today's Archaeology Students

 

In a recent public appearance, US presidential candidate Donald Trump claims immigration policies are failing because in a certain Ohio town, he'd heard, immigrant families are kidnapping and killing their white neighbours' cats and dogs to eat them. A whole lot of his supporters are flocking to social media to "prove" that this really is happening all over the US, including this guy, reposting what an anonymous snooping neighbour reports:

BTW, many Bosnians are Muslims. But there is an issue here, apparently in US schools they don't teach people (or MAGA folk simply do not learn what was presented in class) the difference between carnivore and herbivore dentition. Duh.

But this is a more general issue, society is moving away from the countryside. Here just two decade or so ago, many kids even in the cities, would have a grandma that lives on a little homestead in the country with a cow and chickens who they'd visit or stayed with. Today this is less frequent. Many kids grow up in a concrete desert and the meat comes  pink and bloodless in little plastic pack (and if there were so much as a millimetres long fragment of the quill of a feather in the poultry, the customer would be back in the shop with a complaint about contamination). My son-in-law had never been up close to any livestock bigger than a hamster until I took the family megalith-gawping in the UK and  he was aghast to learn he was to walk in the same field with curious ("dangerous" as he saw it) cows. 

Teaching archaeology to students who have very little idea of how crops grow, what ploughing looks like, how livestock behaves, never met a farmer was an unnerving experience for me, a slightly different generation with different experiences, and brought up in the countryside to boot.  How will archaeology teachers cope in the future.

Oh, by the way, the spitroast was a sheep and the Bosnian guy's neighbour owes him a apology. 

 

 

Where the Antiquities Go?

Here's an interesting presentation in the degree of participation of various countries in the World economy...(I got it here). How does the movement of portable antiquities reflect this division of wealth? What other factors (legal, cultural etc.) affect this?

 

Impossible Granite Vases in Egypt: The Toshka Gap

The YouTube video "Impossible Granite Vases in Egypt: by The Toshka Gap" by "Night Scarab" is an informative ands sober look at the claims made by the YouTube pseudoarchaeologists about "lost ancient civilizations" with their supposed "lost technologies" based on these stone vessels, which are dated deepp into the pre-dynastic period. Criticisms have been made of attempts to measure items from the antiquities market and try to use this as "evidence" of a "lost advanced technology". Sometimes proponents of these models attempt to rescue the idea by citing excavated examples. One example has been YouTuber Ben van Kerkwyk from "Uncharted X" making a number of claims about a few well-made, supposedly ancient Egyptian vases from a burial site name Toshka. The video demonstrates pretty convincingly that what is quoted as "evidence" of this, too, it is a false claim. No stone vases were found by Wendorf in Toshka, nor is the photo most often used by the YouTubers from Toshka. This is part one of a short series.

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Posted on YouTube by Night Scarab 5/9/2024 (25,113 views)

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So many more of these glib claiims made by clickbait-farming YouTubers need fact-checking like this.

Kensington Rune Stone

Jahannah James (@jahannahjames 1.6 million followers) attempts to resurrect the "Kensington Rune Stone" often used in discussions of "Vikings in North America" - obviously totally oblivious to the rather extensive literature already explaining it. There is an informative answer from Fredrik Trusohamn at "digging up ancient aliens" (at the moment, rather fewer followers): https://diggingupancientaliens.com/episode-70-the-kensington-runestone.html. More people interested in sensationalist bullshit, than rather more down-to-earth presentations.

Darwin Award in Poland - Kaboom

              The scene of the avoidable tragedy            

Darwin Award contendeant in Poland, metal detectorists here too are not the sharpest knives in the drawer: "Kilkanaście wybuchów w stodole. Sąsiedzi wciąż nie mogą wrócić do swoich domów" TVP2

In the village of Ryczyca near Siedlce, a fire and a dozen or so explosions occurred in a barn where hazardous materials were stored [...]. There could have been one person inside [later confirmed one man was dead and he reportedly belonged to a local metal detecting group PMB]. 32 village residents were evacuated.[...] According to junior brigadier Paweł Kulicki, press officer of the Municipal Commandant of the State Fire Service in Siedlce, firewood, explosives from the Second World War, and LPG cylinders were stored there. - When the first units arrived, explosions could be heard. The wooden barn building was on fire - he says. Firefighters conducted the operation from a distance from the beginning. - Maintaining maximum safety rules, using natural elements that could protect us from fragmentation. There were at least a dozen explosions - explains Kulicki. The building burned down, the fire was brought under control. All that remains are ashes.

The neighbours have not returned to their homes as the firemen and sappers had not yet entered the area to take care of any remaining munitions. Already, the story and comment on the need to regulate the hobby on a Polish archaeology-centred Facebook page ("Detektoryści - fakty i mity/ Detectorists Facts and Myths") has received the first of what'll be a long series of abusive and threatening comments... Detectorists are a breed apart and the same all across Europe. . .

Since, for the reason highlighted above, the possession of such WW2 "souvenirs" is forbidden by law, this was a detectorist/collector flouting that law - and it seems the neighbours knew. And the police? 

Göbekli Tepe Excavator Loses his Cool Over Stratigraphy Comments I

One of the Excavators of Gobekli Tepe posted on Twitter notification that another interim report has appeared (Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich_ · Jul 25, 2023 Hot off the press, the first comprehensive paper on Building F and it’s pillar reliefs at Göbekli Tepe „Early Neolithic imagery in flux. A case study on the reliefs of Building F at Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey“ #Archaeology #GöbekliTepe https://journals.uni-lj.si/DocumentaPraehistorica/article/view/13604). [Special] Building F had most of the internal fill excavated out in 2006-8. Only the upper levels of its structure were exposed, the building has not been dissected to reach the pre-construction features and in that form, it is a discrete structure. So in the light of the fact that initially it was reportedly excavated using a three-layer notation, where (in a nutshell) "I" was modern layers, "II" was a spread of rectangular structures and "III" were sunken oval 'special buildings'. It is clear that instead of actual layers, these were building phases. It remains unclear how the stratigraphy was documented and the excavated material collected. This new report can be expected to contain such information. 

Sadly, like a lot of the publications concerning this key (and already controversial) site, the main focus was on the "things" excavated, in this case even the "ancient art". But the stratigraphy of the building was shown. But not very well, and in a rather disturbing form. On Twitter I asked about this: 

It's easy to publish the excavated "things", pillars are easy to document, but what we need is the "timely publication" of the stratigraphy. It seems to me one very oblique section through the complex 3D stratigraphic structure (where are the edges of layer [lower pit fill] "1"?) is less than satisfactory as a record of anything. Besides which, the disposition and nature of the structure's infill shown in the section drawing and the photo of the same section, simply do not match! The nature and position of the lower interface of "layer 7" for example. I do not see how these "layers" are defined, there is an unnumbered layer between "5" and "3" (!) What is shown as "layer 4" to the right of the pillar has two parts quite clearly differing in rubble content, that rubble being a spill extending into 2, surely.

To illustrate my point, I used this extract of the published photo of the trench's northern profile that I added a section of the photo of the same profile, adjusted for scale. It seems quite clear to me that there are significant differences, which is documentation, and which is decorative infilling? (because they cannot both be documentation of the stratigraphic sequence and a basis for understanding site formation processes and assemblage 'taphonomy'). 

There is also a problem publishing (in the absence of other information) just the one section that cuts obliquely across layers some of which will most likely have come into the sunken area of the building from behind the section, rather than merely one side of it.

Anyway  Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich_ did not answer the question, or refer me to any report that details the actual methods of excavation. He decides to go for insults:

Cutting off an image and telling me a layer is not numbered? Highly professional on your part. And, as you are an archaeologist, you surely know that an image in full sunlight does not show all colour differences/ that layers are also defined by differences in the sediments etc. 

Hmm, I think it is fairly clear (though I admit I did not explain it in detail- this was Twitter) that I have taken a PORTION of the published section to illustrate the point I was making. I chose the bit between the bench and the standing stone, as these provided fixed points against the disposition of the stones could be judged in both (besides which it is utterly unclear what happens at the left end of that section).

The layer that is not numbered is the layer that I said was not numbered. I assumed that "5" referred to the slumped part of the wall, and "6" the truncation of that same wall. It seems not: 

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 19m Eh? What and where is the number of the black layer on the right between the collapsing wall (5) and layer "3"? There is NOTHING "unprofessional" in questioning a publication, that is why we publish our results, no? Yes, if you actually read what I wrote, you will see that I am not referring merely to "colour" but precisely the density, disposition, actual shape and size of the rock fragments in the photo, versus the way the drawing depicts them. We could also look at the relationship between the lower interface of Layer 7 and the top of the pillar. But the main issue is that one oblique section obviously cannot be the only record of a complex 3D series of deposits.

I think we need less emphasis on the excavated "finds" and more on the context.

Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich_ · 15m 

5. 5 is the number of the layer. 

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 13m 

So what is the number of the wall? 

Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich_ · 10m 

Why does it need a number? 

O k***a... Excuse my Polish, That surprised me.

Paul Barford @PortantIssues Well, yeah. Heinrich Schliemann did not number them either, I was hoping things had come on a bit since then. How many stratigraphic units can we see in this photo? The DAI has dug out some of the soft bits, leaving selected hard bits. How many, what are their 'relationships? 3:54 PM · Sep 1, 2024

Picture in public domain of surfaces of what seems to have been excavated as "Layer II" and "Layer III":

Nobody on Twitter wanted to count. What actually is happening here? From this overview shot this looks like the excavation methods of G.P. Bushe Foxe at Wroxeter, where he dug down until he hit something hard, a wall stump or floor, which he left upstanding. I think we should be expecting here where the DAI is a guest in Turkey applying their best techniques, we should be seeing there something more like Graham Webster's work at Wroxeter at least, if not Philip Barker's.  No? Let us see what future publications show us. But please no more digging until they've published what they have and we can assess the effectiveness for post-excavation processing of the current excavation and recording methods. 

Göbekli Tepe Excavator Loses his Cool Over Stratigraphy Comments (II)

                    ,                  

 To my comment, perfectly valid in the circumstances of a site like this that has been excavated for so many years that " I think we need less emphasis on the excavated "finds" and more on the context", Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich replied

Thanks for trying to educate me about a site I worked at for 15 years based on one photo and one paper. Have a nice day.

[of course like many people observing this site and the controversy around it, I have read more than "one paper" on it, and I find the treatment of the excavation techniques and documentation of the stratigraphy woefully lacking in all of them, even the ones discussing the C14 dates] So I am afraid I replied:

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 19h No., the job of your excavation REPORT is to educate me and the general public (including the Turks whose heritage this is) on what you've found. It actually does not do that, it just shows (again) some pretty pillars.

Dr. Oliver Dietrich @odietrich_

In order for this to work, you would have to read it. And now, goodbye.
3:46 PM · Sep 1, 2024

·   The thing is, this is not "his" site, in his country. He is working a guest in a foreign country and should be accountable for the way he went about digging through the otherwise unthreatened stratification - not simply dismiss issues raised by a fellow archaeologist like this. Also it seems to me from this exchange that this sort of professional arrogance is not only exercised by some archaeological professionals when questioned by members of the wider public (like YouTuber Jimmy Corsetti et al who have previously complained about being treated dismissively), but seems far more endemic in our discipline. We need to come down from ivory towers and always be ready explain what we do, how and why. An excavator of Gobekli Tepe publishes a text about a portion of the site, but seems utterly unwilling to discuss the excavation, and seems miffed I do not want to talk instead about the "ancient art" he's written about - but there is enough of that kind of talk from antiquities collectors and dealers and the "looks like" brand of pseudo-archaeologists. Let us talk about archaeology, and that means talking about methods of data collection and stratigraphy. 

Pseudoarchaeology Disseminated: Antiquitist Speculation and a YouTube "Educator"

YouTube clickbait farmer Luke Caverns appeared on some other indoor-hat-wearing podcaster ( #juliandoreypodcast, 1.9K views 8 months ago ) with some junk about "Egyptian's Obsession of Pineal Gland". It's a bit like Demented-Trump-Speak.

[Luke Caverns: 0:05] I mean, it is 100% a fact that our pineal gland which people called like the seat of the Soul, which the Egyptians were well aware of -like you look at the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Horus, it is the same shape as the pineal gland... Have you ever seen this? No, yeah, yeah... So look up, look up the pineal gland, and "Eye of Ra" or "Eye of Horus" ("Horus" is uh spelt h- - o- r- u- s) and [sigh], uh, it's it's very thought... it's thought that.. um... this is done on purpose. You'll see, you'll see it's like uncanny connection between our the pineal gland in our mind (which is where they think that perhaps our soul comes from) [...] let's see, sure, yeah [...] um but on 0:54 the pineal gland there, there's certainly a similarity [...] but there's undoubtedly like some weird similarity there. 

Um, and we know that our modern food and our water is (sic) calcifying the pineal gland, like when when people get, like, when autopsies are performed, uh, especially on, like, G blastomas, which go, like, deep into the brain; cut the brain in half they can see that the pineal gland is calcified. My wife...[host]: Calcified?

[Caverns]: [searching for words] Yeah, yeah, so it's calcified, like it, um.... I don't know the... [waves hands] I'm not you know a medical doctor... but, um... Yeah, something.... something is happening to the pineal gland where it's... like... dying inside the brain, because it comes from water that we drink, cuz it's not happening in other, places in the world.

Uh, my wife she's in medical dental school right now and she [shrugs shoulders] cut a brain in half and saw that, um, so we know that ['accordion hands' gesture]  the water today is calcifying our pineal glands and you know there are theories out there and ['accordion hands' gesture] there's like scant (sic) evidence that that's the seat of the soul and the pineal gland might be our ([air quotes] quote unquote) "antenna" to something else that's out there and the water that we drink dulls down our connection, and has dulled down our connection for... you know, over a hundred years to that, and so people theorize that that could be our antenna. And certainly, it seems like uh the ancient Egyptians knew something significant about the pineal gland or knew that it was significant in some way. They, they had medical doctors; they knew about anatomy...." 

Wow. Definitely the same aimless unstructured self-aggrandising rambling as the senile Donald Trump. Calcified is a pretty common term for when something becomes permeated with calcium (usually) carbonate, like anyone's kettle if they live in a hard water area. It's how many fossils form. General knowledge Mr Caverns. 

                    Wadjet amulets, faience, Quora                              

So when you cut out the crap, Caverns ("has a degree in anthropology") says "the Egyptiand knew about anatomy" and (therefore) would have known about the pineal gland (though Caverns neglects to say under what name it appears in the medical papyri) and (he says - actually some dumbass antiquities collectors [mainly over in the US?] also claim this) the gland "looks like" the dangly bits of the wadjet symbol [that's what it is called, Mr Caverns]. "Therefore" the Ancient Egyptians were "obsessed" with the pineal gland.

That is, in Egyptological parlance, complete bollocks. The connection between the eye of Horus and the pineal gland is a modern speculation not supported by any evidence.

The pineal gland is a tiny, pinenut-shaped (hence the name) gland buried deep in the brain. It is as endocrine gland producing melatonin that has a role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle. The Egyptians did not in fact know much about the anatomy of the brain, in mummification, in order not to damage the shape of the head, if the brain was removed, it was scrambled with a metal tool and pulled and/or rinsed out in bits through the nose. This rather prevented them from getting much of an idea about its anatomy.

                      (Quora)                     

Both Horus and Re were represented inEgyptian iconography as a falcon. The wadjet represents the eye of the god Horus, it symbolized royal power, protection, and good health (the Eye of Re mentioned by Caverns was similar but also different). In mythology there was one legend of how Horus lost his eye while battling with Set and what subsequently happened to it. It takes the form of a stylized human eye, but usually incorporates am eyebrow, a dark line extending behind the rear corner of the eye, a cheek marking below the center or forward corner of the eye, and a line extending below and toward the rear of the eye that ends in a curl or spiral. It is very clear that the cheek marking resembles that found on lanner falcons (Falco biarmicus) 

   Prometheus tortured by the eagle          
  (black-figure kylix,560-550 BC)        
Wikipedia       

But it gets worse. Building on the idea that these Ancient Egyptians had some advanced technology and advanced knowledge, the speaker gets carried away in his search for "interesting titbits" of "information" that will get him invited back again.

And certainly [...] the ancient Egyptians [...], they, they had medical doctors; they knew about anatomy.... when they would torture people, you know, how.... you know, how, um.... when people get liver cancer they can cut off like 80% of the  liver and it'll grow back, did you know that?

[host]: [trying to look pensive] no! 

[Caverns]:  Yeah, so if you get cancer in your liver the reason people can beat it is because they can cut off like 80% of your liver ['accordion hands'] and it will regrow itself [...] it's the only organ in the  body that can do that.
The Egyptians knew that, so when they tortured people, over time they cut out [gleeful smile and scything movement with finger] they cut out half the liver and it grow back, and they cut it out again [gleeful smile and cutting gestures] it grew back and, they'd cut it out again.

[host, gleefully], Oh, ho ho ho ho ho! 

[Caverns]: Yeah, yeah [broad smile], so, um, and I think it can grow back in a year time I think [...]

While the liver does have this ability when conditions are right, there is zero evidence for the practice the young anthropologist confidently, and with such pleasure, states as a fact. I think he's getting confused with the myth of the Titan Prometheus. 

Large Scale Looting of Sudan's National Museum

Artur Obluski has just reported some terrible news. According to the latest reports, large scale looting of Sudan's National Museum in Khartoum is being confirmed. This museum has the world's most extensive and comprehensive Nubian collection, with artefacts spanning eons from the Palaeolithic era to the Islamic period. The collection of the Museum, built in 1971, covers a range of cultures, including the A-Group culture, C-Group culture, Kerma Culture, Middle Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom of Egypt, Napata, Meroë, X-Group culture and medieval Makuria, there are artefacts from prominent sites such as Meroe, Musawwarat es-Sufra, and Naqa. Looting and damage was reported in May 2023 and in June ( Geraldine Kendall Adams, 'Reports of cultural destruction and looting as fighting escalates in Sudan' Museums Journal 16 June 2023). Further looting was reported at the beginning of June 2024: Geoff Emberling, ' Conflict Looting of Sudan National Museum' Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project Blog (Michigan)

"The civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces militia (RSF) has been going on for over a year. The RSF have controlled most of Khartoum for most of the war, including the area of the Sudan National Museum. There have been rumors for many months that they have looted the museum to some as-yet-unknown degree– no museum staff has been able to go to the museum to inspect. But a very upsetting report in the New York Times today states that the museum has been looted, along with the nearby Khalifa House Museum (where objects related to the Sudanese uprising against British rule from 1881-98 were held).

Now it seems that access has been attained and the scale of the damage ascertained and the news is not good.

A Private Collection of Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels

                          US private antiquities collection                     
   

A recent Limitless You Tube channel segment by Matt Beall featured alt.history YouTuber Dan Richards, but the main interest for me was not him, but a fleeting view of the podcaster's personal collection of Egyptian stone vessels, a couple of items from which have previously been mentioned on this blog. These trophies are proudly spread out, inexplicably, on some bad taste patterned tablecloth with pink glitter (?) scattered around them. There are also some pottery vessels there too it seems. I had no idea that Mr Beall could have so many of these items. The two then discuss (of course, given the company present) the potential use of (tomographic scans of) these vessels as "evidence" of some mythical "lost ancient technology". In that context, it becomes just as relevant as before to ask what documentation there is of where these come from. For how many of the ones in this collection is there any decent documentation of collection history (and legal export), let alone where they were dug up and how secure that context was. Also I wonder what the government and people of Egypt and Sudan will think seeing this collection - in particular learning how many of them were acquired after 2011. Of course that's the ones that are not outright fakes... Some of them are rather smaller than they should be for the type and too oddly proportioned. I also noted a couple made of very similar looking stone, suggesting the products of a modern factory coming onto the market in the period of time this buyer was buying, rather than odd vessels from different ancient assemblages from different places and dates which would have given greater heterogenity.

 

I am not going to engage here with the other points made by Mr Richards.