Category: Archaeology

Athens Archaeology: There’s an App

In the nineties, jobs in Greece’s state archeological service were often offered on a contract basis, and women tended to fill these nonpermanent positions, which came without benefits. Understaffed, poorly compensated, and facing ferocious pressure from landowners eager to start building, state archeologists usually went unrecognized, their reports often signed only by their supervisors.

Nick Romeo, the New Yorker

The Dipylon Society maps the ancient topography and cultural environment of Athens, Greece, using data accumulated over decades by contract archaeology projects in the city. Read The Hidden Archaeologists of Athens: By collecting long-forgotten archeological data, a new project reveals the researchers who toiled unrecognized in The New Yorker.

Source: Dipylon.org

Jeep History at Camp Holabird

In 1918, the U.S. Army created Camp Holabird in Baltimore, Maryland and in 1940, it was the site where a prototype four wheel drive reconnaissance vehicle – what later became the Jeep – was tested. The facility was shut down in 1973 and later turned into an industrial park.

As Legend magazine shows, Remnants of the part Camp Holabird played in the development of the famous Jeep still survive today. An earlier visit to Holabird in 2009 is at On the Trail of Jeep History, Part 3.

An early Jeep (Bantam BRC-40), probably at Holabird (H.Q.D – Holabird Quartermaster Depot. Source: Military Vehicle Photos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons/www.olive-drab.com

Sometimes, the Jazz Age becomes Archaeology

This artifact, likely a brooch, depicts a 1920s-era flapper, cloche hat and all. It was found at an archaeological site in Jersey City, New Jersey. This and the many other artifacts found during excavation of a series of former houses, most demolished by the 1930s, provide a glimpse of the middle class families who lived in Jersey City in the early twentieth century.

Reference:

Howson, Jean, and Leonard G. Bianchi

2014    Covert-Larch: Archaeology of a Jersey City Neighborhood: Data Recovery for the Route 1&9T (25) St. Paul’s Viaduct Replacement Project Jersey City, Hudson County, NJ, Volume 1. Cultural Resource Unit, The RBA Group, Inc.

Woolsey Park and an Abandoned Railbed

Perfect Spring day for walking the trails at Woolsey Park in Hopewell Township, New Jersey. Green up is well underway here. The total length of trails is only about two miles, but there are multiple crossings of Woolsey Brook, wetlands, uplands, and rows of tangled Bois d’Arc (better known as Osage Orange now).

Woolsey Brook.

The Osage Orange tree was only found in Texas and some surrounding states. Early French explorers called it Bois d’Arc because the Osage and other Native American tribes used its wood to make bows. By the 1800s, the tree (Maclura pomifera) was planted throughout the United States because it would quickly grow into thick, twisted, thorn-encrusted natural fences good for keeping livestock in (or out).

Osage Orange, or Bois d’Arc.

Woolsey Park also includes remnants of the short-lived shortline Mercer and Somerset Railroad (1874-1879) in the form of the earthen embankment that briefly carried the train tracks over Woolsey Brook. Just southwest of the park, Woolsey Brook joins Jacob’s Creek. The original M & R alignment is now Jacob’s Creek Road.

Woolsey Brook from the top of the old railroad embankment.
Lightning strikes?
Lots of Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) appearing.

Featured image: Osage Orange along the trail.

Study Cats in Italy; Ph.D. Required

Curious about cats? Completed your Ph.D? Competent in either aDNA or stable isotope analysis? Two postdoctoral positions are available at the Centre of Molecular Anthropology, University of Rome Tor Vergata to:

unravel how the increasing bond with humans across a wide spectrum of socio-cultural contexts, from prehistoric farming communities to the ancient Egyptian and Medieval societies, shaped the cat genome and nutritional behaviour while adapting to anthropized ecosystems. 

The two-year jobs pay about €2,500 a month. More details at:

FELIX – Palegenomics and Population Genomics of Ancient Cats

FELIX – Stable isotope analysis for the study of cat-human interactions in the past

Featured image: V. Sauvaget, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Archaeologist on the River Kwai

Cyler Conrad writes about Dutch archaeologist Hendrik Robert van Heekeren, who after being captured by the Japanese during World War II, managed to collect prehistoric artifacts while a prisoner-of-war forced to work on the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai in Thailand: An Archaeologist on the Railroad of Death.

van Heekeren was born in Java in 1902 and became interested in archaeology while working on a tobacco plantation.

Through financing his own research and fieldwork, van Heekeren significantly contributed to the study of ancient Indonesia prior to the outbreak of the war. But, like many of his Dutch compatriots, he was captured after the Japanese invaded Java in 1942. By February 1943, he was forced to work on the Railroad of Death.

Cyler Conrad, Sapiens, May 5, 2021

The New York Times also wrote about the bridge and the archaeologist in 1972: The Kwai Bridge: The Reel and the Real

Dr. van Heekeren was working among stones dredged up from the Kwai for use in the construction of the bridge’s foundation when his experienced eye picked out an object that he immediately recognized as a Stone Age artifact. From that day until the day he was freed, he continued to find, and hide from his captors, numerous other artifacts. When he returned to the Netherlands after the war, he wrote a book about his discoveries in Thailand’s Kanchanaburi Province

Alvin Smith, The New York Times, December 17, 1972

van Heekeren’ books include The Stone Age of Indonesia (1957) and The Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia (1958). He died in 1974.