ariadiethyl:

I feel like I’m kind of bipolar those days. Maybe it will pass, or I will never let anthropology behind me, and be sick of it every last day of my life. 

Now, I know that I’m going to have a surgery for my right wrist. They say it’s a broken ligament or a dislodged meniscus, which is kind of strange because it’s usually caused by an accident, not the job you’re doing. Anyway, I’m pretty sure right now that i will not be able to excavate again one day. I’m going to miss that, actually I already miss that. I’m completely lost, I can’t choose my future. So I want to share with you the little monster that I didn’t finish because of this injury. Cute, right? :) 1-4 year old. 

thesherd:

It seems when the Romans conquered Gaul, cooperative elite continued to build wealth.  (via Gallic elite prospered from Roman occupation : Past Horizons Archaeology)

openaccessarchaeology:

Open Access Article- Archaeological research on Rapa Island, French Polynesia

http://epress.anu.edu.au/titles/terra-australis/taking-the-high-ground-terra-australis-37/pdf-download

anordinaryethnography:

This 8,000 year-old giraffe rock carving in DaBous, Niger is considered one of the finest petroglyphs in the world. The giraffe has a leash on its nose implying some level of taming the animals. It was found relatively recently on the top of a granite hill by local Touaregs and dates to the Kiffian era of 7,000 - 9,000 years ago.

puszcza:

Necklace of Tapir Teeth, Yanomamo culture, Venezuela

theunperfectperfection:

BLOG: www.voguishtrendz.tumblr.com 

MAIN SITE: www.voguishtrendz.bigcartel.com 

its-all-science:

Some call it chemistry, some call it lust, but the initial reaction when you meet someone you instantly fall for is known to by many. The reactions associated with this attraction include butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms and a racing heart - but why do we go after certain people,nd in some cases have certain ‘types’?

First we come to the famous Charles Darwin, who wrote about something called ‘sexual selection’. This theory basically means that the majority of the population prefer specific traits on people, so people with these traits mate and these genes are passed on throughout the generations. Essentially the theory suggests that humans like some traits more than others, and these are the traits that get passed on. 

Studies over time have suggested that Bilateral symmetry turns us on. This means faces look the same on both sides. The science behind this is that people with one side significantly different to the other tend to have had either genetic or physiological problems, and naturally as an evolutionary species we want to pass on the best possible genes to our children, so are attracted to those with the seemingly best genes. There are many super models who are famous for their bilateral symmetrical faces. 

Another point that as humans we tend to find attractive is a low waist to hip ratio, and this is because generally women and men with this are less susceptible to cancer, diabetes etc. Also, women with a low waist to hip ratio find it easier to give birth and actually get pregnant in the first place - always a good trait to have in a potential mating partner.

So they’re all round reasons as to why some people tend to get more action than others, but when we look at individual preferences, things get a bit more complicated. 

As humans, we release something called pheromones which are chemical signals released by the body. We are generally sexually attracted to those whose pheromones are genetically similar to our own. However, we also prefer mates with a different kind of immune system to our own, and this can be detected by our body through the pheromones. Although we may not consciously know whether the person across from us has similar pheromones or a different kind of immune system, the reaction our body sends out when it realises this are the things we feel when we see someone we begin to crush on. The body is attracted to those with a different kind of immune system as this will help their children fight off disease better and be a generally healthier person than both their parents. Evolution at it’s best.

Not only our pheromones  but psychologically we tend to be attracted to people who have similar interests, mainly because we get along better and enjoy spending time with them rather than having a real scientific explanation towards it. Although if your pheromones also complement each other, then I guess that’s just a bonus!

In general, and staying in accordance with evolution, men tend to be more attracted to younger women because of their higher chances of fertility, and women tend to be more attracted to older men because they have more ability to look after them and their family.

There’s also a lot of truth in opposites attract - we look for traits in other people that complement our own and will help our survival. For example, if you are terrible at cooking, you may feel more attracted to those who can cook really well, purely because it will be an advantage to you if you get together. 

So the science behind your crush is very complicated; and yet, after all the science has been explained, it’s still wise to remember that people don’t make rational decisions in love. So potentially, anything can happen. 

its-all-science:

When asleep, we go through 90 minute sleep-fazes. During the last part of these cycles, the brain goes through what’s called REM sleep - named after the rapid eye movement that occurs at this time. This is when we dream most vividly. If we wake up during REM sleep, we tend to remember what we’ve just dreamt about. REM sleep is the time the brain is most active, during ECG scans it was revealed that the brain functions exactly as it would whilst awake, the only difference being that the body is paralysed. We use this time in the cycle of sleep to dream about, not our desires or wishes, but the day that has just passed by. The brain picks out the most important aspects and plays around with them, trying to figure out ways to be a ‘better person’ because of it. It tries out different scenarios to work out if it’s something that could be done when awake - trying out the future to figure out the consequences before it actually happens when awake. So if you dreamt about an awkward encounter with your headteacher in a strip club, it doesn’t necessarily mean this is what you desire, it’s simply your brain trying out the scenario with no strings attached, so when you do wake up you can fully weigh out whether that’s a situation you’d want to be in. These dreams are very life like and can be very weird, putting you in situations you may not have even thought about, but it’s something the brain wonders if it would be possible and what would happen if you did it. 

Another benefit of dreaming during REM sleep is that is lets us experience emotions that when awake, we might not be so equip to handle. Feelings such as extreme anger or sadness can be felt during dreams; it’s a way for our brain to express our emotions without having to go through the trauma of it when awake. There are people who cannot experience REM sleep and many of these people have physiatric disorders. 

So dreaming is essentially a way for the brain to try out different and exciting scenarios without having to deal with the consequences of their actions. A relief perhaps for those of you who’d thought your dreams were your hidden desires, and had recently dreamt something very interesting indeed. 

precisofjade:

Scottish dig unearths ‘10,000-year-old home’ at Echline

science-junkie:

The first findings of the most detailed study yet by two British archaeologists into the Nazca Lines – enigmatic drawings created between 2,100 and 1,300 years ago in the Peruvian desert – have been published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity.

Dr Saunders and Professor Ruggles combined the experience and knowledge gained by walking the lines, studying the layers of superimposed designs, photographing the associated pottery and using satellite digital mapping into the most detailed such study to date.

They discovered a new design of labyrinthine complexity ‘hidden’ in the landscape.  Invisible in its entirety to the naked eye, the only way of knowing its existence is to walk its 4.4km length through disorienting direction changes which ended (or began) inside a spiral formation. 

They studied the integrity of many lines and figures, and suggest that after 1,500 years, the often well-preserved contours of these features argue against crowds of people and their animals walking along them to the ancient pilgrimage centre of Cahuachi in the nearby Nazca Valley. 

Dr Saunders said: “Meandering and well-worn trans-desert pathways served such functional purposes but they are quite different from the arrow-straight lines and geometric shapes which seem more likely to have had a spiritual and ritual purpose.  It may be, we suggest, that the real importance of some of these desert drawings was in their creation rather than any subsequent physical use.” 

Source images 1-2.
News from the University | Nazca lines

art-of-swords:

Captain Blackbeard’s Sword

Could this partly gilded hilt have held Blackbeard’s sword? There’s no way to know for sure, though it was found amid the North Carolina wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of the infamous 18th-century pirate.

Since 1997, archaeologists have been excavating the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The sword hilt—found in pieces but reassembled for this picture—is among their latest finds and was revealed to the public this month.

After running aground on a sandbar in 1718 near the town of Beaufort (map), the ship was abandoned but likely remained intact and partly above water for as long as a year before collapsing and disintegrating, according to archaeologist David Moore of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

“In any event,” David said, “the pirates would have had ample opportunity to take anything that they thought valuable.” The newfound hilt may have been left behind because it was unwanted, or it may have been inaccessible, according to Moore’s colleague Wendy Welsh, a conservator on the project.

Blackbeard’s brief career as a pirate lasted only about two years, but during that time he became one of  history’s most feared outlaws. Operating in the West Indies and off the coast of colonial America, he struck terror into the hearts of commercial ships’ captains and once held the entire city of Charleston, South Carolina, hostage.

Source: © 1996-2012 National Geographic Society

The Orpheus Mosaic, which was stolen from Şanlıurfa in 1998 and then moved to the Dallas Museum, was recently returned to Turkey. The mosaic was presented by Culture and Tourism Minister Günay at a press conference held at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums

December has arrived and perhaps, the end of the world! If you are reading this and feel the end is nigh, please forward a blank check to Elaine Murdy. All joking aside, with December comes the excitement of the holidays. For those familiar with my usual historical forays, this shouldn’t be too much of a deviation. I have decided to fight this winter chill that I feel sinking into my bones, with some groundbreaking Oregon archaeology. I am taking off my History Center cap and putting on my Indiana Jones Stetson. They are sort of the same in my mind.

Several years ago an amazing discovery was made about 220 miles southeast of Eugene, just outside a small town known as Paisley. In eight caves on the outskirts of Paisley some of the earliest evidence of human activity in the Americas was found. In the archaeological community this was the find of the century. I was attending Portland State University when Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon’s initial findings were published.

MEXICO CITY.- Underwater archaeologists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH – Conaculta), recently explored three spaces, all abundant with Mayan culture materials: two semidry caves in Campeche and a cenote [A water-filled limestone sink hole] in Yucatan. The cenote stands out since it contains particularly stylish ceramic that is calculated to have been elaborated about 2,300 years ago. This is unique in its type since it’s the only one that has been found in a cenote. To Helena Barba Meinecke, responsible for all the underwater archaeology of the Yucatan peninsula, the detailed registry of the caves and the cenote, as well as the archaeological elements found in them, confirm the speculation that these places were used for rituals in the pre Hispanic era. 

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=59414#.UMVQjIM8CSo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

Renowned archaeologist Lewis Larson used his expertise to promote the value of historic preservation. According to his nephew, Jeff Larson of Mannford, Okla., “Dr. Larson felt that archaeology, as a science and an art, should be strictly about who was here before us.”

An expert in Southeastern archaeology, Larson’s dedication to historic preservation spanned over 50 years. His body of work included excavation on St. Catherines Island, Pine Harbor, Sutherland Bluff and the Sapelo Shell Ring on the Georgia Coast. In 1954, he began work on the Etowah Indian Mound site in Cartersville, and his fieldwork on Mound C provided important artifacts and knowledge on prehistoric Native Americans who lived in Georgia.

thesherd:

Harbor that supplied ancient Rome with wheat discovered via sedimentary cores. (via First harbor of ancient Rome rediscovered)

“Archaeologists have unearthed the great ancient monuments of Ostia, but the location of the harbour which supplied Rome with wheat remained to be discovered. Thanks to sedimentary cores, this ” lost ” harbour has eventually been located northwest of the city of Ostia, on the left bank of the mouth of the Tiber. Stratigraphy has revealed that at its foundation, between the 4th and 2nd century BC, the basin was deeper than 6.5 m, the depth of a seaport.”

ancientpeoples:

Terracotta Camel

Roman Period, Egypt

c. 1st-3rd Century CE

A hollow terracotta camel, modelled in the round and standing on a low plain plinth. Details of the head-harness are indicated in relief, as are three girth straps, although the load, a domed bundle, is shown in paint. The right hind foot and part of the plinth are lost. Two-piece mould; striations (probably post-moulding but pre-firing) show hair on the neck. Micaceous brown Nile silt, painted over much of the surface with a white dressing, except for the spaces between the legs, which are black, together with the top edges of the plinth. All the applied coloration is probably post-firing, but not certainly so. The harness, on the head and neck, the eyes, the edges of the load, its strapping and girths are all picked out in black. Other strappings of the load are painted pink and yellow. Pink is also employed on the mouth, in a stripe round the animal’s throat, and in horizontal bands round its lower legs. Yellow paint is used on the plinth and between the two black harness-straps on the neck.

Source: British Museum

sexyrockstarchocolate:

• Center of American Archaeology, Due March 11,2013 , For female graduate students only, http://www.caa-archeology.org/InternshipsInternships.html (I’m not qualified for this)
• Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Due March 1,2013, http://www.crowcanyon.org/about/research_internships.asp (maybe)
• The SCA, I haven’t been able to sort through all the stuff but last time I checked there was no archaeology/anthropology stuff
• To be continued

thisoneandonlylife:

From reading the article, I get that evidence of a great flood, as documented by many ancient civilizations, may have occurred. Noah’s story was most definitely not the only flood myth around.

Evidence Suggests Noah’s Ark Flood Existed, Says Robert Ballard, Archaeologist Who Found Found Titanic.

Robert Ballard, one of the world’s most famous underwater explorers, has set his sights on proving the existence of one of the Bible’s most well known stories.

In an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour the archaeologist who discovered the Titanic discussed his findings from his search in Turkey for evidence of a civilization swept away by a monstrous ancient flood.

“We went in there to look for the flood,” Ballard said. “Not just a slow moving, advancing rise of sea level, but a really big flood that then stayed… The land that went under stayed under.”

Many have claimed to have discovered evidence of Noah’s Ark, the huge ship that Noah filled with two of each creature to repopulate the planet following God’s devastating flood. But in the 1990s, geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman gathered compelling evidence that showed a flood—if not an ark—may have occurred in the Middle East region about 7,500 years ago, PBS reports.

The theory, the Guardian reports, is that a rising Mediterranean Sea pushed a channel through what is now the Bosphorus, submerging the original shoreline of the Black Sea in a deluge flowing at about 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls and extending out for 100,000 square miles.

Ballard has been exploring this theory for more than a decade, National Geographic reports, first discovering evidence of a submerged ancient shoreline in 1999. At that point, Ballard was still not convinced this was a biblical flood, according to the Guardian. Last year, his team found a vessel and one of its crew members in the Black Sea, according to ABC.

Ballard is using advanced robotic technology to travel back nearly 12,000 years to a time when much of the Earth was covered in ice, ABC reports. If and when this ice started to melt, massive floods may have surged through parts of the globe, wreaking havoc on anything and anyone in its way.

With an impressive track record (besides the Titanic, Ballard also found the wreck of the battleship, Bismarck, and a U.S. fleet lost off Guadalcanal in the Pacific) and plenty of confidence, Ballard remains unfazed by critics. He plans on returning to Turkey next summer.

The story of Noah and his ark is a building block of Genesis, in the Old Testament. It is similar in some respects to the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, according to National Geographic, and the ancient Greeks, Romans and Native Americans all have their own variations on legendary flood stories.