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History of archaeology

Tales From The Trenches

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 admin

The history of archaeology is fascinating as much as for what it tells us about our shared past as for the stories of archaeology itself. It is full of false starts, the sublime, ridiculous and the downright terrible. Please enjoy this small selection of Tales from the Trenches.

mummy unwrapping parties

Tourism is not something new. From classical times (and likely earlier) the wealthy and powerful would brave the storms, shipwrecks, bad roads and even worse food to see the world around them.

In 1882, the British military occupation of Egypt sparked a new tourism trend. A souvenir industry popped up to address the demand for photographs, trinkets and of course mummies. The unrolling of Egyptian mummies became a popular spectacle in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In hospitals, theatres, homes and learned institutions Egyptian mummies were opened and examined in front of rapt audiences. The cost of purchasing an ancient mummy from Egypt was negligible for those who had the means to travel overseas. Surgeon Thomas Pettigrew is well known to have made a lot of money through ticketed unwrapping parties. The event would involve a lecture on Egyptian history and religion before Pettigrew would gradually remove the mummy’s case and wrappings, and any artefacts found within, which were passed around the group for inspection.

https://nelashley.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/margaret-murray.jpg

Archaeological Hoaxes

The temptation for fame or fortune in archaeology has led to many ‘finds’ being proven to be fakes. One of the most famous and well known was the 1912 Piltdown Man. Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, claimed to have found the missing link between man and apes. It wasn’t until 1952 that his discovery was proven to be a forgery that combined an orangutan jaw bone, chimpanzees teeth and medieval human skull.

It wasn’t just the quest for scientific legitimacy that drove fraudsters. Two brothers, Pio and Alfonso Riccardi created three iconic Etruscan statues between 1915 to 1918. They sold the three statues, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shortly after. Each work is about two metres tall. A sculptor named Alfredo Fioravanti, who helped the brothers, confessed to the scheme in the early 1960s.

A last instance of archaeological forgery came about just to win an argument. The Cardiff Giant was a ten-foot tall stone man discovered on a farm in Cardiff New York in 1869. Rather than being a petrified giant, it was carved at the behest of New Yorker George Hull to disprove that a race of giants once roamed the Earth, and the bible shouldn’t be taken literally.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Cardiff_giant_exhumed_1869.jpg

Accidental Discoveries

Archaeology is a highly scientific study; however, a lot of finds are sheer fluke. Sometimes these accidental finds are of little value, sometimes not.

In July 1799, a stone was found in the city of Rosetta (modern el Rashid) by French soldiers during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Napoleon’s forces were constructing fortifications when the large inscribed stone fragment was uncovered by officer Pierre François Xavier Bouchard. He immediately recognized the significance of the juxtaposed Greek and hieroglyphic scripts, predicting correctly that each script represented a translation of a single text. This guess was corroborated upon translating the Greek description of how the stela’s text was to be promulgated: This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred (hieroglyphic), native (Demotic), and Greek characters. Named after the city where it was discovered, the Rosetta Stone is currently at the centre of controversy regarding whether it should be repatriated back to Egypt.

In 1974, farmers drilling a well in Shaanxi, China discovered a subterranean chamber. Inside was a terracotta army of some 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers and horses. Alongside the terracotta army were richly adorned chariots of wood (now disintegrated) and bronze; iron farm implements; bronze and leather bridles; objects of silk, linen, jade and bone; and weapons such as bows and arrows, spears, and swords, cast from an unusual 13-element alloy. Since its discovery, over 2,000 warriors and horses have been excavated from three different burial pits with about 6,000 still buried underground.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/terra-cotta-soldiers-on-the-march-30942673/

Archaeologist getting it wrong

Newsflash, archaeologists sometimes get it wrong. One of the most famous case is Heinrich Schliemann excavating right through the layers he was searching for in his excavations at Hisarlik, the site of the city of Troy.

In 1922, Dr Henry Osborn was informed of a tooth discovered in the Upper Snake Creek beds of Nebraska along with other fossils typical of North America. The conclusion amongst Osborn and his colleagues was that the tooth had belonged to an anthropoid ape more closely related to humans than to other apes. Only a few months later, an article was published in Science announcing the discovery of a manlike ape in North America, Hesperopithecus. Further field work on the site revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. The tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.

Located in Sweden, Runamo is a dolerite dike covered in a series of strange, vertical lines. In the 12th century, the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus claimed that the lines were ancient runes. It wasn’t until 1833 that Icelandic runes expert Finn Magnussen, on behalf of the Royal Danish Academy, investigated the site. He concluded that the Runamo Runes were a poem that recorded the victory of the 7th century Harald Wartooth, against the Swedes. By 1844, after examination of the site by geologists and archaeologists, it was widely accepted that the runes were nothing more than natural cracks in the rock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runamo#/media/File:Worsaae’s_illustration.gif

The Wrong

Today archaeologists apply scientific methods to their excavations. More than this there is a certain amount of respect for the sites they excavate and the people these sites are important to. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. Michael Fourmont was a priest and scholar sent in 1728 by King Louis XV to search out surviving Byzantine manuscripts. Here is an extract from one of his letters regarding his work in Sparta. Enough said! Oh and he also forged most of his results.

For more than 30 days, 40 to 60 workers are, destroying the city of Sparta. I am still left with four towers to destroy. At the moment I am engaged with the destruction of the last ancient monuments of Sparta. You understand how happy I am. Mantinia, Stimfalia, Tegea, Nemea and Olympia are also worth annihilating. I have travelled extensively looking for ancient cities of this country and I have destroyed some of them. Among them are Trizina, Ermioni, Tiryns: half of the acropolis of Argos, Fliasia and Fenesia. For six weeks I have been busy with the total destruction of Sparta: destroying walls, temples and not leaving one stone on its place making the site unrecognisable in the future so that I can make it famous again. In this way I will give glory to my expeditions. Is that not something?

And the Cool

I wanted to give the last word to Nanni a 4th millennium BC merchant who was having a hard time with one of his suppliers. It seems that poor service and customer complaints are not anything new. At around 4000 years old, this Babylonian tablet records the earliest recorded customer complaint.

Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:

When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”

What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.

How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.

Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4368-cuneiform-letters

Top Three Cultural Heritage Trends for 2023

January 11, 2023January 11, 2023 admin
Source: https://www.cinecommunities.org/gamification/

How are we going to engage with cultural heritage in the upcoming year? Here are my picks for the top three trends in cultural heritage for 2023.

Gamification of heritage

Gamification is introducing game strategies and components into scenarios and situations that are not a game. It can help increase engagement with cultural heritage in a way that is fun and interactive.

One of the most successful examples of this in relation to history and heritage is the Questo app. Questo has developed role playing thematic games where participants can solve puzzles by discovering unknown places and their history. Established in 2017, Questo now operates in over 130 cities worldwide. As their website says, you can hunt for Jack the Ripper in London or while in Zurich partner up with Einstein to see his favourite parts of the city.

Another example is the BRENDA project. Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), this augmented reality game supports both virtual and actual exploration leading to learning of local culture, recipes, and actual food tasting in connection with real-life businesses in the city of Kilkis, Greece and surrounding region.

These are just two examples of how we can gamify our experience of cultural heritage. With new and improving technology, the gamification of cultural heritage will lead to exciting ways to engage with and experience our cultural heritage. This is a subject that continues to be the focus of academic research – Google Scholar throws up over 1400 results from 2022 alone.

AR/VR/MR

Rapidly changing technologies provide new ways to engage with cultural heritage. Here are some examples of how virtual reality is being used:

  • Teleport back 600 million years to see the formation of the Flinders Ranges.
  • Step into the middle of a Viking battle.
  • Visit some of the world’s most iconic cultural sites.
  • Check out a virtual underwater museum in Malta.
  • Augtraveler is an immersive AR app that can be used to explore the cultural heritage of India.
  • Improving visitor experiences at cultural institutions such as at the Musee des Plans-Reliefs.
  • Back-up Ukraine is an app that allows citizens to record war threatened cultural heritage in the Ukraine.

Whether it is finding ways to engage with, experience, visit or help preserve cultural heritage augmented and virtual reality technologies are only going to continue to grow in this field.

Heritage First Aid

Our cultural heritage faces many dangers, including war and natural disasters. 

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has specifically targeted cultural heritage sites. According to the Yale Climate Connection the world was hit by 29 Billion-dollar weather disasters in 2022.

Protecting, record and rehabilitate our cultural heritage will become a major trend in the upcoming year. ICCROM and the Prince Claus Fund have published an innovative handbook and toolkit on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis. Built on over a decade of field experience, this resource has been adopted worldwide to ensure that the protection and recovery of cultural heritage not be delayed, or separated from the humanitarian help provided during times of disaster.

The impact of climate change induced natural disasters in our lives is only going to increase. Knowing how we can preserve, protect and rehabilitate our cultural heritage is vital in reconstruction efforts. Tao Thomsen, the founder of Backup Ukraine, stated that the “fastest way to erase a people’s national identity is by destroying their national heritage”. This statement holds true, however, that destruction occurs.

Job Vacancy: Low Risk, High Return – BYO shovel. Are ready to join the Illicit Trade in Cultural Property?

December 5, 2022December 6, 2022 admin

Last year, there was a series on TV called Blood and Treasure. In it, a terrorist organisation was using the theft and subsequent sale of looted artefacts to fund their schemes.

Ignoring the comic-book side of this series, it touched on a genuine issue – the illicit trade in cultural property. How big is this trade? A 2020 article by the NETcher Social Platform for Cultural Heritage offers an estimate of $3 billion to $15 billion annually.

Not all sources agree the figures are this high, and while it is disputed as to whether this trade funds organised crime and terrorism, we cannot deny that there is an active trade in trafficking illicit cultural property.

According to INTERPOL figures, law enforcement agencies seized globally 854,742 cultural objects in 2020. Operation Pandora VI , which was finished up by Interpol in 2021, saw 52 arrests across 28 countries and the seizure of 9,408 looted artefacts.

Journalist Nada El Sawy co-wrote this telling piece on the trade in the middle east (the images of the Abu Sir Al Malaq site are sobering). For a more technical law-enforcement perspective, check out this report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Economic conditions, war, climate change, or greed may exacerbate trafficking of cultural property. The illegal looting of sites deprives peoples of their heritage and history. The scientific and archaeological study of these ancient sites is irremediably destroyed. In fact, we cannot truly understand the extent of this destruction because sites are being destroyed before science knows of their existence.

While I was researching for this post, a question came to mind – what is the difference between cultural property taken 12 months ago compared to that taken 100 years ago?

There are an entire class of cultural objects that have been taken from their countries of origin but are exempt from the laws that govern the trafficking of illicit cultural property. In fact, many institutions will point out it is illegal for them to return these artefacts. Although there are examples of cultural property being returned (such as the return of looted artefacts to Nigeria by the British Museum) there are many examples where it is not.

An exhibition of Aboriginal cultural objects at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is only on loan from international institutions for the next 2 years. Recently, there have been calls from the Egyptian people for the return of the famed Rosetta Stone. The British Museum cites a 1801 treaty and the fact that there are many replicas in Egypt as justification for why it should not be returned.

I can only speak from my personal experience with an Aboriginal colleague and watching her cry as she spoke of the work she was doing repatriating objects and remains to Aboriginal communities in NSW. It took that moment for me to comprehend how important cultural property can be to a group, a community, a country. Losing these objects, whether taken a day ago or a century ago, continues to impact the culture, history, identity, and soul of the affected people.

social enterprise world forum

Social Impact World Forum (SEWF) 2022: My Top Takeaways

December 5, 2022December 5, 2022 admin

In September I was lucky enough to attend the Social Enterprise World Forum held in Brisbane/Meeanjin. Did you know that in Australia there are over 12,000 social enterprises, they contribute $20 billion to the economy and employ 206,000 people? That’s almost as many people employed as the mining sector.

So, what is a social enterprise? Briefly put, a social enterprise is a business that seeks to make a fairer and more sustainable world. Rather than me just rehashing definitions, have a look at the Social Traders website for an excellent description.

The SEWF was an amazing experience with so many inspirational speakers and people to meet. Being my first foray into the world of social enterprise, I was trying to take as much in as I could. Although I am just a newbie in this field, I wanted to share some of my major takeaways.

Articulate the Problem

Knowing what you are trying to achieve is paramount and the first step in anything. You don’t have to be trying to fix the world, but your goal must be specific and clear. Writing broad strategies is okay, but a strategic document is nothing more than a method by which you solve the problem.

Collaboration is King

There are lots of people and groups out there doing amazing things. It is only by speaking with them we can understand how what they do can assist us and how we can assist them. The entire social enterprise ecosystem is based on collaboration, so we need to spread our net as wide as we can. Stephen Humphreys, CEO of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, was kind enough to spend some of his tome one evening speaking with me. The best piece of advice he gave me was don’t try to do it on your own.

The American Veterans Archaeological Recovery program promotes the well-being of disabled veterans by helping them transition to civilian life through field archaeology. Check out some of their amazing work.

Sharing Information

Expanding on collaboration is sharing of information and knowledge. If we hope to make viable and beneficial connections, we need to share the knowledge, lessons, and information we have.

Be Agile

Social enterprises tend to be agile and accept that things might fail. They come up with solutions, test them, refine, and reapply. Failure is part of the process. Being more agile and less afraid of failure can achieve better, longer-term outcomes.

Ultimately, we can all make a difference and whether you define your business as a social enterprise or not, I would beseech you to see how you can make that bit of difference through what you do.

My parting comment is I have become addicted to the Impact Boom podcast and am working my way through the 300+ episodes – just the perfect thing for long car trips.

Email: info@bcnheritage.com.au

Phone: 0413 124 032

 

 

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