You begin to interest me…vaguely
Being rather parochial, I never realized that the phrase “Norwegian handball star” existed, let alone described an actual person. Nor did I think I would learn this from a blog called Cooking with Archaeologists
and no, they are not an ingredient in someone’s soup, although it is, in part, a cookbook:
It’s about recipes, and digs, and communal living. Check it out, and find out how nice a Norwegian handball star can be: Cooking with Archaeologists
The National Science Foundation has just announced the winners of the 2015 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
The Fellowship provides three years of support for graduate study in science and engineering (this includes social sciences, such as economics and geography, as well as anthropology) at a university in the United States.
2,000 awards are offered, each of which includes tuition and a stipend of $32,000 per year (expected to be raised to $34,000 this year).
Of the 2,000 fellowships awarded, how many went to aspiring anthropologists? Just under 3%, or 57 fellowships. Among anthropology awardees, archaeologists won 11, or 19%, of the fellowships. 2,004 people achieved Honorable Mention (you don’t get a stipend or tuition remission with this honor, but hey, you can get access to supercomputers), and the stats are similar: 58 anthropology candidates, of which 17, or 29%, are archaeologists.
The list of graduate schools archaeology awardees and honorable mentions will be attending is diverse. Two awardees will be attending Syracuse University, but no other institution will have more than one awardee.
See the summary tables after the break for the breakdown by anthropology subdiscipline, graduate institution awardees will be attending, and the undergraduate school they are coming from.
It’s only been lost for a decade and a half, and it’s not actually all that deep in the woods, but the overgrown fairgrounds for this Virginia Renaissance Fair are starting to look a bit spooky.
For more discussion, see Destination Strange.
The New York Archaeological Council (NYAC) publishes a poster for Archaeology Season (formerly Archaeology Month) every year. In 2008, the Lamoka Lake site (and the Lamoka Life Group diorama from the New York State Museum) were featured. Check out the (never before seen?) photo of William Ritchie excavating at the site in 1962.
Maney Publishing is making all content from all their archaeology journals free to download for a limited time:
http://www.maneyonline.com/fa14/archaeo
Journals include Plains Anthropologist, Southeastern Archaeology, and more.
The deal ends 26 April 2015.
Just published in the new STAR: Science and Technology of Archaeological Research:
‘Brewster site zooarchaeology reinterpreted: understanding levels of animal exploitation and bone fat production at the Initial Middle Missouri type site’
By Landon P. Karr
Download at Maney Online http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/2054892315Y.0000000003
Abstract:
The Brewster site is a Native American village in Northwest Iowa that was likely occupied between AD 1100 and AD 1200. The villagers at the Brewster site hunted large mammals from the landscape surrounding their village, and practiced some of the earliest agriculture in the region. As a result, large numbers of bison bones are preserved archaeologically at the site. ~140 kg of bone, excavated in 1970, has been analyzed and reported in this article. When fractured and fragmented bones are found in the archaeological record, they are often associated with the exploitation of bone marrow and bone grease, two highly nutritious substances. This article reports on the relative importance of the bones and bone fragments at the Brewster site with regard to their use and utility as sources of bone fats. While there is some evidence to suggest that the bones were intentionally fractured and fragmented, the evidence suggests that the Brewster villagers frequently ignored the dietary potential of bone fats.
Data availability The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are contained within the paper.
Sorting going on of bones from the 1990 excavation at Lamoka Lake. These are white-tailed deer astragali, all from the plowzone/disturbed layer.
The first interesting find isn’t an animal bone. This argillite projectile point was mistakenly put in with the animal bones in the field. It’s unusual to find argillite tools at the Lamoka Lake site – most of the Lamoka points at the site are made from Onondaga chert. In the original excavations in the 1920s, however, William Ritchie did identify a single biface made from argillite which, he said, was identical to the argillite found in New Jersey.
LL.1990.93.1
This point is similar to Lackawaxen points found in the northeast, especially in Pennsylvania, that also date to the Late Archaic period. Compare it with these Lackawaxen points excavated from a CRM project in Philadelphia.
It’s been a while since we’ve written anything about the actual archaeology of the Lamoka Lake site, but that’s about to change. I’m starting the identification of a large assemblage of animal bones from the site that hasn’t been studied before. The first step is to get out the bone binders with photocopied and hand-drawn reference material. These are in need of some new binders.
The bone identification guides are also getting pulled out of the bookshelves. Yes, I know there are some duplicates.
That would be Two Shillelagh O’Sullivan sung by Bing Crosby and written by Perry Botkin and Preston Foster. Botkin was a session musician who played with, well, everybody, from Al Jolson to Roy Rogers to Spike Jones, and then was Bing’s music director for many years.
Preston Foster, born in New Jersey, was an actor on Broadway and in Hollywood (he had roles in Annie Oakley and The Informer, among many others). He also was a singer and songwriter. In 1952, he and Botkin wrote about the fantastical O’Sullivan, “This bronco-busting Irishman from the sod of Erin’s Isle” who didn’t need a six gun, because he always had his two shillelaghs (“the Tipperary rifle, you never have to reload it”).
Inspired, no doubt, by the tall tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, O’Sullivan could lick them both. In fact,
“He was so strong… He could put his right hand in his own left pocket, and hold himself out at arm’s length. ”
“No man could do that!”
“It’s O’Sullivan I’m talking about!”
“Oh, well he could.”
Listen to Bing sing about O’Sullivan here: