You begin to interest me…vaguely
From the Smithsonian Institution, here’s a passenger pigeon bone, specifically a left humerus (wing). the Smithsonian only identifies it as being from Bartow County, Georgia, but given the collector is attributed to “Lipps et al,” it is likely from Ladd’s Quarry. In the 1960s, Shorter College biology professor Emma Lewis Lipps excavated at this site and sent many fossils to the Smithsonian.
The New York State Museum has just published James W. Bradley’s new book, Onondaga and Empire; An Iroquoian People in an Imperial Era. The book is available to freely download from the museum. At over 800 pages, it is a truly massive work and focuses on the Onondaga Iroquois and their interactions with Europeans over a fifty-year time span (c. A.D. 1650-1701).
Link to download: Onondaga and Empire
Featured image: Figure 7.16. from Onondaga and Empire depicts shell pendants and effigy figures from Indian Hill.
A while ago, I posted about the New York Public Library’s Map Warper project, which is making thousands of historic maps easily available. Well, the Map Warper project is still going strong, and here’s another map from their collection, which shows three small towns around Lamoka Lake. Taken from the 1874 Atlas of Schuyler County, the map also lists many of the farmers and other businessmen in the area.
You can also see what Wayne, at the top of Waneta Lake (which was still called Little Lake in 1874) looked like in the 19th century at the NYPL.
Publisher Springer has temporarily made hundreds of textbooks available to download for free during the coronavirus pandemic. For archaeologists, there’s Diane Gifford-Gonzalez’s ~600 page zooarchaeology book. A sample of other free books is below, and you can find all the rest at Springer. Thanks to @jriveraprince for pointing this out on Twitter.
An Introduction to Zooarchaeology
An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914
ArcGIS for Environmental and Water Issues
Writing for Publication: Transitions and Tools that Support Scholars’ Success
Social Media Management: Technologies and Strategies for Creating Business Value
Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics
The Penn Libraries have assembled a list of academic publishers who are making educational resources more readily available for researchers and teachers who are dealing with teaching or working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access varies by publisher but includes textbooks and some articles. Annual Reviews, for example, is making all their articles freely available, while other publishers are expanding access to their current subscribers.
Thanks to ZOOARCH-L for publicizing this!
To celebrate the Smithsonian Institution’s formal announcement of its Open Access program, which makes almost 3 million digital images and 3-D models freely available, here’s one of Martha (a.k.a. USNM 223979), the last passenger pigeon. Viewed from this angle, she has a bit of an attitude.
There are two passenger pigeons at Horniman Museum in London. This one is in Birmingham. Even better, the Birmingham Museums have made the image freely available in their Digital Image Resource.
Several archaeology books from the backlist at the Cotsen Institute at UCLA are available for free download:
An Archaeologist’s Guide to Chert and Flint – Luedtke 1992
The South American Camelids: An Expanded and Corrected Edition – Bonavio 2009
Maya Zooarchaeology: New Directions in Method and Theory – Emery 2004
A Conservation Manual for the Field Archaeologist – Sease 1994
About 20 more titles on Greek, Mesoamerican, and California archaeology are available from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.
The Cleveland Museum of Art has just made over 30,000 images from their collections available for reuse under a creative commons zero license. Here’s a few examples of Medieval arms in their Armor Court.
In the 1930s, schoolchildren in Ireland set out to write down local folklore, history, and mythology, like the story of Crom Dubh. Ireland’s National Folklore Collection has now put a massive collection of these Irish folktales and oral history online.
Approximately 740,000 pages (288,000 pages in the pupils’ original exercise books; 451,000 pages in bound volumes) of folklore and local tradition were compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools in the Irish Free State between 1937 and 1939.
This collecting scheme was initiated by the Irish Folklore Commission, under the direction of Séamus Ó Duilearga and Séan Ó Súilleabháin … For the duration of the project, more than 50,000 schoolchildren from 5,000 schools in the 26 counties of the Irish Free State were enlisted to collect folklore in their home districts. This included oral history, topographical information, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, games and pastimes, trades and crafts. The children recorded this material from their parents, grandparents, and neighbours.
Read some of the stories (and admire the handwriting) at The Editors’ Picks, or search the entire Schools’ Collection.
