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Good day, comrade. This is the blog. It comprises entries from LJ and Pseudocarp, as well as BC Vintage and it's own superspecial exclusive blog content. :O
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anime Archaeology audience participation awesome Berlin Colony comics commentary crack current events Deutsch email post ew work fail fannish things food games GANDAMUUU geeking out Gurren Lagann Hellen is a pervert Hourly Comics Day I am right and you are wrong I like books they are my friends IM lulz I require a new host body languages life linkage loot lulz memes 'n quizzes 'n things movies music picspam politics ponderings radio randomness rant religion school stuff the batcave travel tv ucl uni weather 日本語 All TagsIn addition to wars of conquest, highland Mexican city-states engaged in xochiyaoyotl (flowery wars), which consisted of carefully prearranged, 'friendly' battles between rival states. Soldiers were killed in these battles and prisoners taken, but military action was restricted to the battlefield and the overt political status of the participants was not altered, at least in the short run, by the outcome. The rationale for these contests was to capture prisoners for sacrifice to the gods. Flowery wars were said to be waged when not enough wars of conquest were occuring.
— Understanding Early Civilizations, B.G. Trigger
Can we just all agree at this point that the Aztecs/Mexica were the craziest dudes this side of the AD/BC divide? Other people invent sports when no wars are going on, but no, that just wasn't good enough for them; they missed that invigorating atmosphere of death and bloodshed too much.
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Tags:Archaeology; the batcave is broken
I fell asleep just as the children's programming was starting on Radio 7, which is around... 5 am? Wow, later than I thought. And I still woke up at 8:30, feeling perfectly awake. Idek.
I'm trying out a self-motivating tactic where you stop doing something when you're having fun and are still really motivated to keep going, so you'll be quicker to start the next day. It's working so far, but it's really hard! XD I can't stop in the middle of a math problem, it's just not right.
News bulletins:
The Evolution of Palaeolithic and Neolithic Societies in the Near East option at UCL isn't cancelled after all! ♥ You guys can't even believe how thrilled I am about this. It's the perfect module.
Oh, speaking of Archaeology stuff, look, an entire free volume of Human Biology! Which is not what it sounds like but actually (in this case) material form a Center for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity conference on demographics and dispersal and cultural evolution and incredibly sexy things like that. I've only read one article so far, though — I don't really like reading long PDFs on screens where I can't underline stuff and take notes in the margins, but whenever I've been at ACS to make use of their abundance in printer ink and paper the computers have been uncooperative.
I went to see Agora with my parents and Tim last week. It was good! Even better than I expected it to be! A lot deeper than your average period drama, with its depictions of religious conflict and doubt vs. certainty and so on. I really want to see it again to form a more detailed opinion (and because I just want to see it again), but it's only showing in the small cinema at Leicester Square, and the tickets are crazy expensive. Maybe I'll rent the DVD when it comes out.
I think the moral of the story was "science is totally hawt", but that might just have been me.
(You will also notice I am using an APPROPRIATE ASTRONOMY ICON.)
We put in an offer on a flat, but then we decided we couldn't really afford it after all so we had to take the offer back. Still lookin'.
Lastly, there's only 3 episodes of Durarara!! left now, and while I don't want it to end, I am so excited for the last few episodes. There is some kind of epic climax building. Seriously, you guys. Watch it. It's free! Legitimately!
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Tags:Archaeology; Durarararararararararararara; geeking out; life; movies; ucl; uni
I got an email from the Institute of Archaeology (IoA?) this week asking me to tell them what options I'd like to do with my MA, so they can gauge interest. Unfortunately these two, which I really wanted to take, aren't running next year, so I spent forever deciding which of the alternatives to pick. I ended up with these:
• The Near East from Later Prehistory to the End of the Iron Age
• The Archaeology of Early Egypt and Sudan, c.10,000 to 2500 BC
• Archaeology of Late Pleistocene and Holocene Hunter-Gatherers
And as second choices in case any of those are cancelled, The Mediterranean world in the Iron Age, Anthropological and Archaeological Genetics, and The Aegean from first farmers to Minoan states.
I wasn't sure whether I should put one of the Mediterranean ones in my preferred options list instead of the hunter-gatherers one, but in the end I went with hunter-gatherers because the professor co-ordinating it has the more interesting research interests. I think that's a legit reason.
Ffff guys, I am so excited.
Speaking of Archaeology, I've been reading about the MASS Project today. I heard about it vaguely just before I left Durham, but then I completely forgot about it until recently. It's a super-badass project that involves modelling prehistoric settlements to see how they interact with, affect, and react to their environments. I've not finished reading all the stuff on the website yet, but like I said, it sounds super badass.
In other news, my parents and I went to see Robin Hood yesterday, and it was... really, really lame.
They just kept piling on more and more story elements none of which congealed into any proper kind of plot. An element was introduced (all the prepubescent children have run off to live in the woods!) and then eventually "resolved" (crossdressing Cate Blanchett leads them into battle) with nothing in the middle to lead from one to the other. The story with the orphans the most extreme, but all of the plots were similarly half-arsed. Nothing flowed properly. It felt a bit like scenes from three different films cut together into one. And the action scenes were pretty uninspiring, too, unfortunately. I wouldn't recommend it.
It doesn't feel right somehow to make a post without a single picture or drawing in it, so here's an animated gif of a cat that I found on the internets:
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Tags:animated gifffffffs; Archaeology; linkage; movies; ucl; uni
Roman remains in York are ‘elite’ African woman (BBC)
Archaeologists have revealed the remains of what they say was a “high status” woman of African origin who lived in York during Roman times.
Academics say the discovery goes against the common assumption that all Africans in Roman Britain were low status male slaves
I admit that this article made me totally gleeful, because any archaeological proof of multiculturality in Britain makes up for the fact that I didn’t have the resources and detailed knowledge to write a scathing article about that “native British” thing. (By the way, the online comments on the Daily Mail article about this discovery are very amusing.)
It is surprising to me, though, how surprised everyone is by this. The Roman Empire was diverse, by our standards; I thought that was an accepted fact these days. I thought at first the “common assumption” the BBC article talks about must be the common, unthinking assumption of general, uninterested people who have never really looked at a map of the Roman Empire, had their last history lesson in primary school, and just remember some pictures form children’s books of white men in togas, but the same tone is everywhere. The Guardian article calls it “startling diversity”.
Well, I’ve not read much about the history or historiography of Roman Britain, so I maybe it really is startling. It could be that until now historians have, for good reasons or bad, really assumed Roman Britain wasn’t particularly diverse, as little sense as that makes to me on the face of it.
I really wish I could get my hands on the Antiquity article that all this is based on, to read the researchers’ thoughts on how surprising and new their findings are. Buuuut unfortunately I am an academic outcast and can’t. T_T How many months until I start at UCL now?
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Tags:Africa; Archaeology; current events; Europe; Great Britain; Roman Empire
Um, so much for updating once a week. It’s not been the best few weeks, productivity wise, but I am striking things off my to-do list like crazy today, so hopefully that’ll change.
Anyway, space! Remember how I started this blog with some rambling fantasies about Space Archaeology? (Apparently I wanted to write a dissertation that was basically speculative fiction? Idk. Still want to write that book, though.) Well, it’s “only” the Moon, but I still thought this was super cool:
California ‘protects’ Apollo 11 landing site on Moon (BBC)
California has named a new site a state historical resource – despite the fact that it is not on Earth, never mind in the US state.
The site where Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, the first US landing, is now included on the state’s register.
The unusual move by the California State Historical Resources Commission aims to protect more than 100 items left by US astronauts on the Moon.
They include tools, a flag, footprints, food bags and bags of human waste.
Mmm, poopbags. Serisouly, though, I think this is a good sign. The hope, I hear, is that the landing site will be declared a World Heritage Site eventually. Seems sort of self-evident, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine it not becoming one.
I don’t know why California, though. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the US as a unit to register it? Though I presume more than one group is allowed to claim something as having historical value. I hope. ¬_¬
Oh, and I have a new answer to give now, when my parents ask if there’s even anything left for Archaeologists to dig up. Obviously there is, but it hadn’t occured to me to say: “And we’re making new stuff all the time.”
This is also kicking off some odd thoughts for me about looking forwards and backwards at the same time; moving forwards in space exploration but preserving the debris of our milestones as we do. Though really, that’s what we always have done, barring the collapse or wilful destruction of a civilisation. It certainly brings into sharp focus the fact that history isn’t a foreign country were people wore silly clothes and talked in a weird way and did things that hardly matter to our lives these days. History is what happened yesterday, and it will be what we’re doing now. I’m not sure what I conclude from that yet; perhaps just that people should pay more attention.
I am a forward-looking person and a backward-looking person (and I enjoy the present, as well). Though I in no way think it’s irrelevant, I sometimes feel an odd conflict between my chosen profession and my interest in technology and the future and all of that cool stuff. I don’t think I should have to chose one or the other, though. I think I can be forward-looking and backward-looking. I mean, if you approach the future without bothering to learn from the past, you’re just going to make an arse out of yourself, aren’t you.
And as for Archaeology, if you acknowledge it has — or should have — an impact on the present (which I do), then it’ll also influence the future. Let’s just hope we do our job right.
Apparently I can’t post to this blog without going off on a philosophical ramble about what Archaeology means to me and/or the world in general. Well, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe one day I’ll even write something coherent on the subject before a new idea occurs to me.
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Tags:Archaeology; current events; ponderings; Space; Space Archaeology; the future; the Moon; usa
It might have come to your attention that this blog has been ever so slightly comatose of late. This has been going on for far too long and will not do any longer.
I graduated from Durham last summer, and life has largely been boring since then, in the little speck of Surrey I call my home. (Nothing is very exciting here, unless chain coffee-shops and Americans in 4-wheel drives excite you.) Luckily, I’m starting my MA at UCL this autumn. It looks like an amazing programme — I can’t wait!
Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that I really rather miss Archaeology. Reading about it, taling about it, and writing about it. And so I’ve decided to dust off this little blog and give it a Grand Revival and Relaunch. New name, new look, less faffing around, more cool Archaeology! That’s the plan, anyway. I’m hoping to write at least once a week about some cool archaeological thing that will, hopefully, be of interest to somebody.
I heard a few minutes of an episode from BBC 4’s A History of the World in 100 Objects series a few days ago, so I went onto iPlayer to listen to all the episodes so far. It’s a series of short radio epsiodes in which the Director of the British Museum retells human history through artefacts in the Museum.
(Through the infinite wisdow of the BBC, it’s also available as a podcast, so those outside the UK can listen to it, too.)
My favourite episode so far is the one about the 10 000 BC Swimming Reindeer. It’s a crazy beautiful piece, for one thing. I love the realism in it, and that they mention in the programme itself that prehistoric art has all manner of styles. There’s a sort of narrative that you get taught where the Ancient Egyptians didn’t know how to draw children, and then the Greeks invented perspective, and then we went through realism and came out the other end with impressionism and surrelaism &c &c. And I think it’s very silly. It’s that same old hangup people seem to have about prehistory. Either the ancients were wise and had all sorts of deep spiritual knowledge that we’ve lost, or they were stupid monkey-men and couldn’t do anything.
There’s some talk about religion and art, too. I’ve never studied that connection in depth, but I think it may be a bit simplistic to say art was always connected to religion to begin with, and now is completely separate.
In any case, the series is quite interesting and nicely presented, and I’m looking forward to it moving on to other time-periods and objects I’ve not heard about before. (Also, I’ve just listened to the last part in this section, and the next section is going to focus on “food and sex”. How can I not look forward to that?)
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Tags:Archaeology; Art; Blog; Media; prehistory; radio
"You know, my house is really old, too! It's 20 years old."
"Wow! Well, the things I dig up are a lot older than that. Some of them are a thousand years old."
"How old?"
"A thousand years."
"How old?"
"A thousand."
"That's not a number!"
They're the best.
I finally brought my laptop to a repair shop to have its overheating problem fixed, so I'm not gonna be online much in the next few days. If you require the thrill of my conversation, you can always hit me up on Google Talk, which I've got on my phone: breakfastspoon@therandomplanet.com
I'm listening to the A History of the World in 100 Objects programme on iPlayer at the moment. It's pretty neat. Good old Olduvai Gorge, amirite? And it's available as a podcast, so you can alllll listen to it, even if you're not in the UK. :D
My parents' mac's screen has some weird contrast settings going on; it's making my eyes hurt.
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Tags:Archaeology; lulz; radio; school
Everyone knows mummies are awesome. At least they should. If you’re not convinced, look at the cool medical things you can do with them:
Ancients ‘had heart disease too’
Hardening of the arteries has been found in Egyptian mummies – suggesting that the risk factors for heart disease may be ancient, researchers say.
Bringing us the exciting revelation that rich Egyptians only drew themselves pretty and thin, but actually overate all the time. It is pretty cool, you must admit. Here are these bodies of people from 3500 years ago, and we can see what diseases they had, and learn something useful.
I am amused that the BBC feels the need to inform us that the Egyptians weren’t hunter-gatherers, though. Hunter-gatherers are obviously building huge temple complexes and cities all over the place all the time, so I can totally see where the confusion could come from.
Also, “[Lady Raj] predated Moses by 300 years”? I mean, I’m neither an Egyptologist nor a Bible scholar, but have we decided that Moses was a real person now? I was under the impression the consensus was that the Exodus out of Egypt was pretty much made up, since the Egyptians never used much slave labour in building the Pyramids anyway… but hey, I could be wrong!
Mummies are great. They’re super-useful and informative, and I think they make history feel more personal. If you know what someone ate as their last meal and what valley they grew up in it makes the past a lot realer, less like a story you’re making up in your head about another world.
I’m a bit iffy on how they’re presented in museums sometimes, though. I visited the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology this summer, and had a look at their Ötzi exhibit (awesome!) and their mummy-themed special exhibition, and they had a South American mummy just sort of lying in an otherwise empty case, curled up in one corner, like it was cowering against our looks. It was a little creepy, and seemed quite disrespectful, context-less at best. Looking at dead bodies is always in danger of becoming voyeuristic, but there’s good and bad ways to do it. An actual human body of one actual individual from the past makes history seem more personal, but then I think you also have to treat those bodies accordingly.
In conclusion: mummies are awesome.
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Tags:Archaeology; current events; Egypt; medicine; Mummies; news
I went to London with Tim on Friday, mainly to get some revision material for the JLPT, since the revision course I'd signed up for was cancelled due to lack of interest. >_<
Read Real Japanese is a little bit above my level still, actually - lots of grammatical structures I've not come across before - but in a few months I can probably handle it.
I also watched a ridiculous documentary about Easter Island this weekend, with a full complement of stupid, notably: "'primitive' cultures are too dumb to invent stuff themselves", "aliens did it", and "Egypt is the source of all monumental architecture".
Before they mentioned aliens and I stopped paying as much serious attention, I got really irritated with some archaeologist they interviewed who was talking as if it's really weird and unusual and probably ~*mysterious*~ that people would want to build these huge apparently useless statues*. I know it was a documentary and they were trying to make it interesting, but that sort of attitude irritates me for so many reasons. Trying to smother genuinely interesting and intriguing things in pointless obfuscating mysticism, for one thing, and the suggestion that only "sophisticated" cultures are good enough to build monuments. And on a more basic level: Come on. Have you not ever looked around? Building big awesome impressive things is pretty much what we, humans, do here! I mean, by all means, be impressed that we manage it, I am constantly impressed and amazed by the crazy stuff we manage to do, but being surprised by the simple fact that we try is practically insulting.
... I may care too much about this sort of thing.
OH HEY, AND NOW I MUST BE OFF TO TEACH A SURPRISE GERMAN CLASS. Be back to explain later, if the 13-year olds don't eat me. O_O
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Tags:Archaeology; Deutsch; I am right and you are wrong; life; rant; school; 日本語
I posted this on my personal blog the other day, but since it’s Archaeology-related, I thought I might as well cross-post it. Including an awesome but unrelated picture and link! 8D
Speaking of Asia (well, I haven’t spoken of Asia yet, but I will below. I’m sure you can wrap your mind around the crazy time-travel.), one of the Masters students in Global Economy gave a presentation about markets in medieval China to-day. It was quite cool, if somewhat depressing that we were uber-lucky to have someone who could read books on medieval china and tell us what they said. It was only really basic stuff, as well. T_T
Practically an entire continent worth of archaeological knowledge is blocked to me because of language? Really? It all just makes me even more interested in that part of the world.
ANYWAY. CROSS-POSTIN’ TIME.
Yesterday, I realised that I had an unread email from myself in my “ideas” folder (presumably I’d left it unread to remind myself to look at it), and it reads, in its entirety:
“Early domestication in mid + far east. Trade?”
Thank you for the specifics and elaboration there, past!Hellen.
I think it was things I was reading about and wanted to research more in future. (I really wish there was some sort of module on Asia I could’ve taken. What, is the Far East not interesting enough for you, Durham? D:)
It’s funny how things work out, though. I’m interested in East Asia because it’s strange and exotic and I don’t know anything about it, but also because I happen to be learning Japanese. And I’m learning Japanese because in 2006 I picked up a Teach Yourself Japanese book from a used book shop in London. (And I did that because some of my friends were taking it in school and I’d seen it and thought the writing was cool.*)
(And then I met Tim and he got me into anime and now no-one will ever believe me when I tell them I’m not a weabo. T_T Anyways…)
But hey, why is squiggly moon-writing a bad cause of academic interest? What other reason should I have for being interested in the spread of East Asian domestication? I’ve always been in favour of curiosity and interest for their own sake. When I was on my dig in Portugal there was a girl there who said she was getting disillusioned and depressed with Archaeology because she couldn’t see the point in it all, in digging something up if it only resulted in destroying the thing we were studying, if there might be better techniques to do so in the future. And it made me think, but why do I need a purpose?
If you’re going to give Archaeology any sort of mission for the betterment of humanity, I would say it’s keeping the facts straight and stopping people using the past for their own political agendas (I am unsure about people like neo-pagans misrepresenting the past to justify holding festivals at Stonehenge. They’ve got it wrong, but they’re not hurting anyone, so perhaps I can give them some slack). I am really into that, but the main reason I’m studying archaeology and want to be an archaeologist is just that I want to know. I’m interested in the past and I want to know what happened, just for the knowledge’s own sake. And yeah, I could’ve gone into Biology or I could do languagey translation things and contribute to the greater good of humanity somehow, but I just happen to be passionately curious about this thing. What’s wrong with that?
*I’ve always been attracted to the written word**, and other systems of writing. When I was little I had some books from my grandmother written in Fraktur, and I loved them because I had to make an effort to decipher and read them. The Roman alphabet is just too easy and boring for me, apparently.
** (go go footnote withing a footnote power!) I also think best when I’m writing. I was emailing my tutor with a question about my dissertation I was stuck on the other day, and I answered it for myself while I was writing it out. We had a workshop in school once on different types of learning and such, and when they told me I had a literary intelligence, they sure weren’t kidding.
I think this post needs a completely unrelated picture and link to complete it.
So much win.
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Tags:Archaeology; Asia; ponderings