From Fundatia Conservation CARPATHIA in Romania, a year of wild animals captured on a trail cam in the Făgăraș Mountains. Spoiler: there are bison. Also, the raccoon-like animal with a striped tail is probably a European wildcat.
Tag: Europe
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.
Archaeological Finds in WWI Trenches
Discovery in the Western Front Trenches has accounts from World War I soldiers of archaeological finds during wartime. Only a few stories are on the site so far. For an example of an archaeological excavation of an actual World War I trench system, see the Hill 80 Project.
The Name of the Sword
Glamdring, Andúril, Sting. Some weapons have names. Beowulf used the sword Hrunting, King Arthur had Excalibur, and of course the hammer of Thor is Mjölnir. In The Spirit of the Sword and Spear (Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(1):55-67), Mark Pearce references the named weapons of myth and history to argue that swords and spears can have individual identities, and thus, potentially, biographies. As he says, “I do not mean to argue that prehistoric weapons were regarded as equivalent to humans, but rather that they had some sort of spiritual persona…with its own specific agency, believed to have its own intention and volition. This might have been perceived as some sort of in-dwelling spirit.” (p. 55)
From these named weapons, he attempts to look farther back in time to ascertain whether swords and other weapons from the Iron Age of Europe also were assigned identities. There are, in fact, at least two Iron Age swords with names stamped onto their blades, although the names could belong to the sword, the owner, or the blacksmith.
More common are swords and spears that have faces (or geometric designs that could be interpreted as faces), which, Pearce argues, may also indicate that they were given an identity. He is aware that “It is dangerous to use analogies from myth to reconstruct prehistoric reality” (p. 64) and “it is certainly true that human beings have a tendency to interpret unstructured visual stimuli in meaningful ways” and “It might be easy to over-interpret stimuli that may seem to depict faces.” (p. 62)
Against these statements, he can muster only a weak defense: “But when looking at the spearheads and swords illustrated in this article, the faces are very striking… It is clearly impossible to demonstrate conclusively that faces are meant, but it does seem evident.” (p. 62)
It does not help that “in some cases the decoration tends towards the abstract and can be recognized as indicating a face only by reference to, and comparison with, the more figurative examples.” (p. 62)
Yet his main idea is intriguing. Perhaps a less descriptive and more analytical approach would produce stronger results.
The article is open access and available to download at the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
originally posted on Adequacy (2013)
Reference:
Pearce, Mark
2013 The Spirit of the Sword and Spear. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23(1):55–67.
Worked Bone Archaeology Book Published
The Worked Bone Research Group, part of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ) has just published the proceedings from the 10th Meeting of the WBRG, held in Belgrade in 2014. The book contains over 40 articles on worked bone from both prehistoric and historical archaeological sites.
The book, Close to the Bone, is edited by Selena Vitezovic and can be downloaded for free at the WBRG site.
Post-Medieval Archaeology 50th Anniversary Issue is Free Online
The special commemorative 50th-anniversary issue of the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology is available free online for a limited time via Taylor & Francis:
Table of Contents:
Editorial: ‘The greatest of these is charity’; 50 years of Post-Medieval Archaeology Alasdair Brooks
A short history of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology Harold Mytum
The medieval to early modern transition in a digital age: new developments relevant to the study of domestic buildings David H. Caldwell & Catriona Cooper
Globalization and the spread of capitalism: material resonances Audrey Horning & Eric Schweickart
Cities in the modern world
Peter Davies & Greig Parker
The archaeology of industry; people and places Marilyn Palmer & Hilary Orange
The post-medieval rural landscape: towards a landscape archaeology?
Jemma Bezant & Kevin Grant
The material culture of the modern world Mary C. Beaudry & Natascha Mehler
Standing buildings and built heritage
Adrian Green & James Dixon
Where the battle rages: war and conflict in Post-Medieval Archaeology Natasha N. Ferguson & Douglas Scott
The contemporary in post-medieval archaeology Laura McAtackney & Sefryn Penrose
The archaeology of post-medieval death and burial Layla Renshaw & Natasha Powers
Obituary: Lawrence Butler (1934 – 2014)
Harold Mytum
A Norwegian handball star helps inspire a blog about archaeology and cooking
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
