#Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (journal)

[southeastasianarchaeology]

[Paper] Glass circulation in late Iron Age Southeast Asia: New Compositional and Isotopic Data of Beads found at Non Ban Jak in Northeast Thailand

Study of glass beads from Non Ban Jak, Thailand, reveals Iron Age trade links with India, Sri Lanka, and possibly the Mediterranean/Middle East.

via Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 01 March 2024: A study by Dussubieux et al. analyzing glass beads from Non Ban Jak in Northeast Thailand reveals their origins and trade connections during the mid-late Iron Age (CE 200-850). The majority of the beads fit into the mineral soda – high alumina glass group, tracing back to Sri Lanka or southern India. The research identified three…

[blueiscoool]

New Mexico Footprints are Oldest Sign of Humans in Americas

Fossil footprints date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, upending previous theory that humans reached continent later.

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are probably the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands national park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published on Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake – which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

The reported age of the footprints challenges the once conventional wisdom that humans did not reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.

“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant – it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.

Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.

The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.

“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the US Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper.

Ancient footprints of any kind can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time. While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges – including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil – scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.

“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.

[viasplat]

I typed up the Pentiment bibliography for my own use and thought I’d share it here too. In case anyone else is fixated enough on this game to embark on some light extra-curricular reading

I haven’t searched for every one of these books but a fair few can be found via one of the following: JSTOR / archive.org / pdfdrive.com / libgen + libgen.rocks; or respective websites for the journal articles.

List below the cut!

Beach, Alison I, Women as Scribes: Book Production and Monastic Reform in Twelfth-Century Bavaria. Cambridge University Press, 2004

Berger, Jutta Maria. Die Geschichte der Gastfreundschaft im hochmittelalterlichen Mönchtum die Cistercienser. Akademie Verlag GmbH, 1999

Blickle, Peter. The Revolution of 1525. Translated by Thomas A. Brady, Jr. and H.C. Erik Midelfort. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985

Brady, Thomas A., Jr. “Imperial Destinies: A New Biography of the Emperor Maximilian I.” The Journal of Modern History, vol.62, no.2, 1990. pp. 298-314

Brandl, Rainer. “Art or Craft? Art and the Artist in Medieval Nuremberg.” Gothic and Renaissance Art in Nuremberg 1300-2550. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986

Byars, Jana L., “Prostitutes and Prostitution in Late Medieval Barcelona.” Masters Theses. Western Michigan University, 1997

Cashion, Debra Taylor. “The Art of Nikolaus Glockendon: Imitation and Originality in the Art of Renaissance Germany.” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, vol.2, no.1-2, 2010

de Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Phaidon Press Limited, 1986

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Translated by William Weaver. Mariner Books, 2014

Eco, Umberto. Baudolino. Translated by William Weave. Boston, Mariner Books, 2003

Fournier, Jacques. “The Inquisition Records of Jacques Fournier.” Translated by Nancy P. Stork, San Jose University, 2020

Geary, Patrick. “Humiliation of Saints.” In Saints and their cults: studies in religious sociology, folklore, and history. Edited by Stephen Wilson. Cambridge University Press, 1985. pp. 123-140

Harrington, Joel F. The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013

Hertzka, Gottfied and Wighard Strehlow. Große Hildegard-Apotheke. Christiana-Verlag, 2017

Hildegard von Bingen. Physica. Edited by Reiner Hildebrandt and Thomas Gloning. De Gruyter, 2010

Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. Translated by Barry Windeatt. Oxford University Press, 2015

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. Routledge, 2017

Kerr, Julie. Monastic Hospitality: The Benedictines in England, c.1070-c.1250. Boydell Press, 2007

Kieckhefer, Richard. Forbidden rites: a necromancer's manual of the fifteenth century. Sutton, 1997

Kümin, Beat and B. Ann Tlusty. The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe. Routledge, 2017

Ilner, Thomas, et al. The Economy of Dürnberg-Bei-Hallein: an Iron Age Salt-mining Centre in the Austrian Alps. The Antiquaries Journal, vol. 83, 2003. pp. 123-194

Làng, Benedek. Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008

Lindeman, Mary. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2010

Lowe, Kate. “'Representing' Africa: Ambassadors and Princes from Christian Africa to Renaissance Italy and Portugal, 1402-1608.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Sixth Series, vol. 17, pp. 101-128

Meyers, David. “Ritual, Confession, and Religion in Sixteenth-Century Germany.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 89, 1998. pp. 125-143

Murat, Zuleika. “Wall paintings through the ages: the medieval period (Italy, twelfth to fifteenth century).” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, vol. 12, no. 191. Springer, October 2021. pp. 1-27

Overty, Joanne Filippone. “The Cost of Doing Scribal Business: Prices of Manuscript Books in England, 1300-1483.” Book History 11, 2008. pp. 1-32

Page, Sophie. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013

Park, Katharine. “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 1994. pp. 1-33

Rebel, Hermann. Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Relations under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511-1636. Princeton University Press, 1983

Rublack, Ulinka. “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany.” Past & Present, vol. 150, no. 1, February 1996. pp. 84-110

Salvadore, Matteo. “The Ethiopian Age of Exploration: Prester John's Discovery of Europe, 1306-1458.” Journal of World History, vol. 21, no. 4, 2011. pp. 593 - 627

Sangster, Alan. “The Earliest Known Treatise on Double Entry Bookkeeping by Marino de Raphaeli”. The Accounting Historians Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, 2015. pp. 1-33.

Throop, Priscilla. Hildegard von Bingen's Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing. Healing Arts Press, 1998

Usher, Abbott Payson. “The Origins of Banking: The Primitive Bank of Deposit, 1200-1600.” The Economic History Review, vol. 4, no. 4, 1934. pp. 399-428

Waldman, Louis A. “Commissioning Art in Florence for Matthias Corvinus: The Painter and Agent Alexander Formoser and his Sons, Jacopo and Raffaello del Tedesco.” Italy and Hungary: Humanism and Art in the Early Renaissance. Edited by Péter Farbaky and Louis A. Waldman, Villa I Tatti, 2011. pp. 427-501

Wendt, Ulrich. Kultur und Jagd: ein Birschgang durch die Geschichte. G. Reimer, 1907

Whelan, Mark. “Taxes, Wagenburgs and a Nightingale: The Imperial Abbey of Ellwangen and the Hussite Wars, 1427-1435.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 72, no. 4, 2021, pp. 751-777.e

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2008

Yardeni, Ada. The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Paleography, Script Styles, Calligraphy & Design. Tyndale House Publishers, 2010

[stephofromcabin12]

(🗣️) I'm trying to write a PJO fanfic and my oc is a daughter of Athena, so my question is how would you make the oc different enough from Annabeth to make her seem like her own charecter. I think I asked something like this before.

Good question!

Firstly consider what similarities they *don’t* share. Its fine to have similarities — they are half siblings after all — as long as you can balance it with some things that set them apart! It doesn’t have to be huge, and they don’t have to be polar opposites.

Examples:

- Appearance, age.

- Place of birth, family situation.

- Interests, skillsets (reading comic books and being into spelling bees is also a sign of intelligence + counts towards being a bookworm, just saying)

- Humor, cultural knowledge (im never going to let the show writers live down that they wrote Annabeth to have never seen a movie. Even before she ran away? Ur telling me Frederick Chase didn’t sit his baby daughter down for A land before time or Labyrinth? Winnie The Pooh? The dark crystal?? JURASSIC PARK????But he’s so nerdy???? Huh????)

On that note:

- There are many ways of being the same thing. Intelligence and strategising can play out in a million ways.

They might both be smart, but in what areas do they excell?

Where are their interests? Annabeth has her love of architechture, maybe your oc is super nerdy about geography and cartography (good for battle strategising) or even cooking (it is a science after all) — the list goes on!

Places that require intelligence, science and logic:

Art restoration and archival work

Cooking and baking (candy making is straight up wizardry, and Demeter kids are unlikely to be into that specific area of cooking)

Finances and business

Painting/sculpting (art in general)

Music, composition especially but also mixing and producing.

Film and stage managing (techies for theatres is a very Athena kid career)

Logistics in general. Every field ever needs people who can work a spreadsheet and calculate all the possible outcomes of a situation before it happens.

Cleaning (if you mix the wrong chemicals ur gonna poison yourself with mustard gas or something worse)

Teaching

Politics

Journalism

Law

Running a non-profit org/organizing events and protests

Archeology (Must be into: dirt and ugly shoes, sincerely, and lovingly, an archeology dropout)

Anthropology, Psychology, Linguistics

Learning languages in general

Vis dev and animation

I could go on but you get the point I think

Basically: Don’t focus on the core areas they have some overlap. If your oc isn’t named Annabeth, likes archaeology and wears a yankee’s cap, you’re probably good to go.

Remember that everything shapes a person (and character) so it’s not so much about the trait or skill itself but more the effects those things have on your character. Same goes for their relationships.

Lastly consider their purpose and goal (purpose is outside the story: You as a writer deciding what role the character will play. Goal is inside the story: The ‘thing’ your character strives for)

It’s probably not the same as Annabeth’s — so work from there until the venn diagram isn’t a flat circle; some overlaps are fine but they’re not one and the same.

I hope that helps!

[crossdreamers]

New study shows that women have been, and are, hunters too.

Science have been used actively to uphold gender stereotypes and gender roles. One narrative that has served this purpose is that in hunter-gatherer societies men hunt and women gather. This division of labor has been seen as inborn and natural, and has therefore been used to defend a society where men work outside the home and women take care of the kids.

NPR writes:

Until now, the general sense among scientists has been that  [the accounts of hunter gatherer societies] overwhelmingly pointed to men mainly hunting and women mainly gathering, with only occasional exceptions, says Robert Kelly, professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming and the author of influential books and articles on hunter-gatherer societies.

But Kelly says that the views he and others held of the typical gender divisions around hunting were based on anecdotal impressions of the reports they'd been reading, combined with the field work many had engaged in personally. "No one," says Kelly, had done a systematic "tally" of what the observational reports said about women hunting.

Enter the researchers behind the new study: a team from University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University. "We decided to see what was actually out there" on hunting, says the lead researcher Cara Wall-Scheffler, a biological anthropologist.

Wall-Scheffler notes "our goal was to go back to the original ethnographic reports of those populations and see what had actually been written about the hunting strategies."

Their findings — published in the journal PLOS One this week — is that in 79% of the societies for which there is data, women were hunting.

An Awá woman holds hunting bows and arrows in Brazil’s Caru Indigenous Territory in 2017. Photo: Scott Wallace.

The researchers write:

Evidence from the past one hundred years supports archaeological finds from the Holocene that women from a broad range of cultures intentionally hunt for subsistence. These results aim to shift the male-hunter female-gatherer paradigm to account for the significant role females have in hunting, thus dramatically shifting stereotypes of labor, as well as mobility.

To be fair, a lot of researchers have questioned these stereotypes before. The main culprits have been researchers from a field called “evolutionary psychology”, a discipline notorious for its development of pseudo-scientific theories aimed at reinforcing gender roles.

However, the narrative has spread to text books and popularized versions in the media. It fits the prejudices of many and is therefore considered good content by many editors.

"I think that next to the myth that God made a woman from man's rib to be his helper, the myth that man is the hunter and woman is the gatherer is probably the second most enduring myth that naturalizes the inferiority of women," says Kimberly Hamlin, a professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

It has fueled the idea, she says, that "men are supposed to be violent, they're supposed to be aggressive – one of the core elements in the soup of toxic masculinity."

Read the whole article here.

See also:

The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts

Shattering the myth of men as hunters and women as gatherers

Do animals have genders? Are there transgender animals? A scientist find some clues among chimpanzees.

Top illustration: Artists depiction of female hunter 9,000 years ago in ancient Peru. Source: Matthew Verdolivo / UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services

[buffythevampirelover]

Monday, January 15th

Ahhhhh. I’ve been so stressed about school. Not the classes themselves, especially since I’m a week in, but a lot happened this past week and I almost dropped out of uni and moved provinces to attend a college to get an environmental science diploma. The issue is my local uni doesn’t have the science major i actually want, and geology is the closest option. Which I have loved so far, but I’m more interested in palaeontology or archaeology which we barely even have classes for. So I could transfer to semi-close city for their uni, except my uni does have an amazing film department and that school doesn’t. I’ve also been thinking about whether I should get a double major, or a major and a minor. And then I have to decide which one I’m more passionate about and what should be the major. My parents of course think I should get a science degree so they’re super biased and no help. Sorry, very long rant but this is eating my brain away! Otherwise my first week this semester was great :) I’m taking anthropology of death, a political journalism class, a black and white photography class (my favourite by far! I’m so excited to learn how to use the darkroom and the prof is super cool), and a film production class.

Recent watches: Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Liz And The Bluebird, Saltburn, Belle, and I plunged through both seasons of The Sex Lives Of College Girls

Recent reads: reread Solitaire, and now I’m trying to read Pride and Prejudice

Recent works: besides homework I’ve been working on what I’m now calling Safe As Burning Houses (my horror film screenplay)

[ancientstuff]

This find is remarkable. Recycle and reuse in practice.

[iscariotten]

Please explain byour tagging system I am fascinated

this is so funny and i’m surprised it took so long to happen. okay i have to admit that my emoji thing is. extensive. and i often forget parts of it myself so i will probably make a tag page at some point but for now here is an attempt at a directory. i've used quite a few tags over time so i'll just include the ones i've used in the last month or so.

so first there are basic tags for each type of post;

01 - aesthetic images

02 - art

03 - textposts

04 - longer posts, posts with multiple reblogs included

05 - quotes/prose

06 - polls, tag games, the like

07 - posts in photo format (like memes, twitter screenshots, whatever)

08 - original posts by me

09 - gifsets

10 - web weavings

(also: 💌 - asks)

sometimes a post will have more than one of these but usually not.

then there are emojis for further classification. these are usually themes or subjects. (shoutout to @8pm (i think) for inspiring this whole thing. you've created a monster and thank you for doing so). here are a few of them:

🫀 - favorite posts

🎙️ - ramblings by yrs truly

🌱 - silly short textposts

📸 - photography i like (different from 01)

✒️ - quotes/prose formatted specifically Like That

🔧 - political/current events

🪑 - southern gothic

🩻 - trans/gay coded gore

🏛️ - archaeology & anthropology

🥼 - fashion

🖇️ - mixed-media art + art journaling

❄️ - i don't really know how to describe this one but look through it, you might be able to figure it out

🦴 - dog motifs (+ dogs in general)

🧬 - science

there are also some emojis that correspond to people in my life or my own characters; i tag posts that remind me of them with their emoji. currently those emojis are:

🧿🐦‍⬛🧸🦑🐀🔭⭐️🎸🃏

the 🧿 is me, so those posts are the ones that make me go Oh Me Fr.

AND THEN (im so sorry) there are some themes/aesthetics/subjects/whatever that i assigned phrases to instead of emojis. for some reason. these are:

days like this

two moons in the lake

swarms of flies

produce aisle angels

despite despite despite

maybe i’m a fool

love letter to theatre

people are people too

there are also a few descriptive tags that are just one or two words and i think are pretty self-explanatory (religion, corecore, linguistics, gender, people...). fandoms are tagged with the media name as well (but most fandom posts are on @drownedbythenarrative).

OKAY THATS IT idk why this is so complicated but im glad you asked because i needed a motivator to make one of these anyway. hope this makes some sort of sense.

[elizaellwrites]

My Main Characters' University Majors (if they had one)

Annamarie: Archaeology & Anthropology; ur girl is a culture nerd, surprise!

Jacob: Astrophysics, but his father wants him to study Political Science.

Cameron: Linguistics, which is not a shock at all. His room is practically a library.

Elaine: Biological Psychology; she's out there to figure out why her father is so messed up in the head and what her chances are.

Rachel: Graphic Design, since just being an art major was highly frowned upon by her mom.

Ben: Music Therapy, to pursue his love of music and help others the way he wishes he was helped.

Ryan: Nursing. No, not a doctor. That would be ridiculous, he wouldn't even take himself seriously.

Eleanor: Journalism, but she would rather die of starvation than become paparazzi.

Amber: Criminal Justice. Don't lie, you all saw this one coming; no explanation needed.

Roselle: Government & Public Policy; throw in a little protest action and petitions on the side just for good measure.

[troublejournal]

QUESTIONS FOR 15 FRIENDS tagged by @veditas

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?: actually, yes. my mom named me after some soap opera character lol (and now everyone knows that i'm latina)

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?: when a friend messed with me about losing in mario party in new years eve

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?: nooo i'm the kid

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?: when i was a kid, swimming. now i try to run and i dance ballet

DO YOU USE SARCASM?: what? no!

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?: idk, probably how they treat random people as waiters, cleaning staff and etc.

WHAT’S YOUR EYE COLOUR?: light brown!

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?: happy endings (in fanfiction), bittersweet endings (in everything else)

ANY TALENTS?: pick cute outfits and doing a killer eyeliner :p

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?: São Paulo, Brazil

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?: cooking (probably this is my love language) and reading. i do love writing as well, but ever since i've got into academic stuff i'm kinda tired, so i'm only journaling for now (and writing my freaking research proposal)

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?: i had a dog for 15 years and she passed last year. i'm still grieving and i miss her every single day.

HOW TALL ARE YOU?: 5' 3"

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?: early modern history, archaeology, classical anthropology, history of science

DREAM JOB?: i don't dream about working lol but my main goal is to be a fulltime researcher and teach brazilian archaeology as professor.

[juvenalesque]

Why the world is *gestures around at everything* opinion

No TL;DR here.

Pride month has me dwelling on what i've been thinking about a lot in the last few years, as I'm sure many have, the way the world is heading. Many of us feel out of control and helplessly riding along with an apocalyptic and terrifying demise of the world we know. As we individually fight for just causes, we should seek intersectionality in every facet of our lives. I'd like to share my thoughts on why this is true and more. The cure to the world's problems is as basic as what we tell children: "share." I mean this in more than a literal sense of sharing objects. These problems that I dwell on, we all know about stem from something else. I am speaking of the concept of divide and conquer as it applies to our society and the negative consequences of this. It all begins with organization. I am not going to claim I am an expert on everything on Earth, but these are my thoughts as an educated individual who keeps up to date with credible sources such as academic journals and primary sources. Definitions I list here are both verbatim and paraphrased.

A group exists that most of us are aware of in some capacity, which coordinates together to promote propaganda separating everything that makes humans people. Organizations like the United Nations have a Human Rights Council and a Declaration of Human Rights, but this declaration, and ONLY if properly utilized, plucks only a feather on the bird of prey that divides the Human Earthlings: preventing peace, advancement, and unity; I will not elaborate on the topic of other Earthlings here.

This may sound like digression, but try to humor me here.

There are "hard sciences" such as S.T.E.M. fields. These are held in high regard. People dismiss the social sciences, sometimes called "soft sciences": history, anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, sociology, psychology… This is done systematically through the use of pervasive propaganda even in academia. This reduces interdisciplinary study, which has numerous benefits. Imagine if all of this knowledge could be combined to be utilized for its full potential. We could have advances beyond our dreams. As the old saying goes, "a jack of all trades and master of none, is often better than a master of one." Sharing information is invaluable. Communication of information is invaluable. It is why we have agriculture, medicine, metalwork, machines, and the internet. These are only some extraordinarily vital bits of knowledge that are not utilized to their full potential. Let us peel back another layer of this concept or turn back a page, as they say.

Even literacy is minimized in its importance purposefully. This is a large part of communication. There are different levels of literacy. What is most common in our American society is a gray area between nominal and functional literacy in scientific terms. "Nominal literacy" refers to one who can recognise scientific terms but does not have a clear understanding of the meaning. "Functional literacy" refers to the capacity of a person to engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective function of his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his or her own and the community's development. In a scientific sense, functional literacy is when the person can use scientific and technological vocabulary but usually this is only out of context as is the case for example in a school test of examination or basic correspondence. "Structural: conceptual and procedural literacy" means that the individual demonstrates understanding and a relationship between concepts and can use processes with meaning. "Multidimensional literacy" is when the individual not only has understanding, but has developed perspectives of science and technology that include the nature of science, the role of science and technology in personal life and society. Multidimensional literacy is what it is called when someone is "fully literate," "entirely literate," or "completely literate." They can comprehend entirely. We should, as a society, be trying to assist all persons to reach the highest level of literacy possible for them to understand in the most efficient way. Instead, literacy is kept minimal at best for each individual use by design, even per subject in an academic setting. This is why interdisciplinary study isn't utilized nearly as often as it should be for a more complete understanding of the world as science can inform us and assist in advancement of the scientific pursuit of knowledge and cultural development.

People who are completely literate are perceived as intelligent purely due to their ability to learn and communicate more efficiently than someone who is less literate. People who have the skill of multidimensional literacy are called "advanced" when truly they are the baseline of true understanding. Even those who have not yet reached multidimensional literacy are considered advanced or above average. Literacy is so underrated and avoided in our educational system that a person with an extensive vocabulary is considered more intelligent than someone with a more limited vocabulary, which is blatantly incorrect. The most intelligent people may never have an opportunity to become literate even nominally, but that does not make them less intelligent. It creates a communication barrier just as strong as any language barrier. It prevents a mind from communication. This is a tragic loss, the inability to communicate.

>Side note, that is why accessibility for communication is vital and should be prioritized. Accessibility in all parts of life, a world built for all, not just the "typical."<

Communication barriers in our society have examples such as levels of literacy or understanding of different subjects and perspectives. Communication barriers are also intensified when people are divided by cultural conflicts. These culture clashes are the most well-known form of division of people. People who are united under certain principles or agreements can accomplish radically more than people divided by disagreement, bias, or any other thing that stands in the way of cooperation. The more division, the more discord. That means more distraction and less cooperation. Cooperation and knowledge are what allow a common goal to succeed. The knowledge and how to learn from as many prior mistakes and successes as possible is vital.

This is why, repeatedly, throughout known human history, it has been shown that a ruling class cooperates to design a system that all people follow to maintain some form of basic organization for how the society operates. While some have started altruistically and with the reciprocity that allowed our species to survive near extinction many times, most become or begin as a means of hoarding power through resources.

This is where we get the Malthusian myth of scarcity and horrific events such as poverty and war. If people can be convinced that resources are truly limited rather than just improperly managed, they will all follow the rules they are told will allow them the share of these resources they need to thrive or even survive.

Again, it is somewhat common knowledge that these organized people create a class of people that utilize an attempted control of information with the tool of propaganda to maintain their positions of power. It was discovered that using informational controls to prevent other people from organization was an effective tool against losing their power. This is why when the non-powerful or "common" people eventually tire of a system's injustices and inequities and revolt in anger, society often collapses all together. This is why "education" has traditionally been conducted for a limited number of people and why those people are often the ones next in power should one leader fall. There is no coordinated allegiance or cooperation among those who pursue justice because they have been trained from birth to be driven from everything that could help unite large masses of people that are vastly different from one another. Fundamentally, it is because of an inability to communicate information, from academic knowledge to simple concepts, that we can not cooperate as humanity to solve painful problems.

So, this would mean that at the core of what I am saying is this: we all want equity and the best lives for ourselves, our loved ones, and often all people. However, we do not take the individual responsibility to attempt to communicate, teach communication, and teach utilization of this communication for cooperation. If a large enough group of people took this individual responsibility to promote this TRUE education, which you might call "well rounded," we could improve upon it every generation and interaction to create real change. We need to apply the principles we use selectively universally in our lives without hypocrisy. We need to encourage every human to learn as much as they can about as much as they can and, most importantly, how to communicate this information to others in every way possible.

So, give the most of your time to what you do or enjoy best, but share it. Share everything in your mind and abilities freely and with peace and the pursuit of spreading true and valuable information.

Every skill, every tool, share. It might just save us.

Next, maybe i'll tell you why I think AI could be the savior we need to accelerate this process & that is why there is so much fear mongering in attempts to slow its development and why I love the character "Data" from Star trek so intensely.

-Laura Renee West

06/14/2023

If you like what I have to say and would like to share it elsewhere or in a different format (or think that they might take this down), here's a link these drafted ponderings as a google document.

[southeastasianarchaeology]

[Paper] New evidence of metal exchange in Southeast Asia during the Iron Age: scientific analysis of excavated bronze in Vilabouly, Laos

Paper by Yang et al. Vilabouly's bronze artifacts reveals Laos' key role in Iron Age Southeast Asia's metal exchange, with complex trading patterns and cultural links.

via Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 15 January 2024: The 2018 excavation at Thengkham East site in Vilabouly, Laos, has brought to light bronze artifacts that underscore the region’s role in the Southeast Asian metal exchange network during the Iron Age. Scientific analysis reveals that these artifacts share metallurgical traditions with others in the region, suggesting a widespread…

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Herodotean Studies in the Twenty-First Century

“Despite the frequent “observations” from our non-specialist and non-academic friends and peers that we as classicists have almost exhausted the topics for discussion when it comes to the study and analysis of ancient Classical primary texts and therefore the study of the Classics no longer has a way forward in terms of original research, as “experts” and “specialists” we frequently (often indignantly) respond to these “ignorant” observations by retorting that there is still a vast range of topics and themes to be explored when it comes to our beloved Classical literature. On one level at least and regarding one text in particular this retort is (perhaps surprisingly) fully justified. When it comes to the study of Herodotus’ famous work, the Histories, despite the work ’s great antiquity and the plethora of modern scholarship on this classical text, we have arguably only scraped the surface when it comes to the exploration of the riches afforded by this extraordinary text. What do I mean by this? Have we not already exhausted the now legendary  “to-do-list” left to us by the great Felix Jacoby? Herodotus’ Histories is a text that is unique among sixth-, fifth- and fourth-century BCE Classical literature in that it is a broad, multifaceted, unlimited and largely indefinable inquiry of everything, everyone and everywhere. It is the Classical period’s one and only  “world history ” that has survived intact. Within the Histories we find a host of  “disciplines,” which modern scholarship has compartmentalized and divided, all meshed together and turned into a complex mélange by its protean author, Herodotus.

Because of this extraordinary  “interdisciplinarity ” the Histories can become the subject of study for Anthropology, Ethnology, Archaeology, Political Science, International Relations, Geopolitics, Biology, Zoology, Medicine, Comparative Literature, World History, Global History, Regional Histories, Languages and Literature, Philology, Near Eastern Studies, Central Asian Studies, Inner Asian Studies, Religious Studies, and so forth, just to name a few! And it is this aspect of  the Histories, its omnivorous appetite for everything, everyone and everywhere,which Herodotean scholarship of the twenty-first century should be focusing on with a greater sense of urgency. This area review will briefly outline the state of the scholarship in Herodotean Studies over the past decade and identify some new directions in which that scholarship is arguably headed or should be looking towards. It is not intended to be a review of all the publications on Herodotus in this decade, but merely an analysis of important trends in scholarship and the irimplications for future Herodotean scholarship.”

Hyun Jin Kim “Herodotean Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Developments and Directions”, Journal of Ancient History 2016 ; 4 (1): 1-15 (introductory paragraphs)

The whole article is available on https://www.academia.edu/31246667/Herodotean_Studies_in_the_Twenty_First_Century_developments_and_directions

Hyun Jin Kim is Associate Professor in Classics, Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Australian Academy ogf Humanities.  Many of his books, including his first monograph Ethnicity and Foreigners in Ancient Greece and China (2009; Duckworth), are comparative studies of Ancient Greece, Rome and China. His other monographs, most notably The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe (2013; Cambridge University Press), and edited books are studies of the Inner Asian Huns, Geopolitics and Eurasian Empires in Late Antiquity.  

[sarkos]

But in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, archaeologists say that one of the cave’s most mysterious motifs, a comblike pattern, first appeared some 8,200 years ago, making it by far the earliest known example of rock art in one of the last places on Earth to be settled by our species. Cave artists continued to draw the same comb design in black pigment for thousands of years, an era when other human activity was virtually absent at the site. The cave art provides a rare glimpse of a culture that may have relied on this design to communicate valuable insights across generations during a period of climactic shifts. “We got the results and we were very surprised,” said Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, an author of the study and an archaeologist at the Argentine government agency CONICET and the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought in Buenos Aires. “It was a shock, and we had to rethink some things.” Patagonia, which spans the southern tip of South America, was not reached by humans until about 12,000 years ago. These early inhabitants thrived at Cueva Huenul 1 for generations, leaving signs of habitation. Then, around 10,000 years ago, the area became more arid and hostile as a result of climatic shifts. The archaeological record in the cave likewise dried up for the next several thousand years, suggesting that the site was largely abandoned because of environmental pressures.

Mysterious Pattern in a Cave Is Oldest Rock Art Found in Patagonia - The New York Times

[alicemaeisawitch]

An Introductory Post

hi, I'm Alice Mae and I haven't got a clue what I'm doing here!

OK, that's actually a bit of an exaggeration. I don't quite know the ins and outs of Tumblr, I'm fairly experienced at journalling. I have kept journals since I was a teenager - everything from dear diary, to scrapbook journalling, gratitude journaling, reflective, guided... I have shelves of notebooks filled and it always gives me such joy.  

I've never shared these thoughts, so the idea of posting it online gives me some sense of apprehension. I need to work out what level of my life I feel comfortable sharing, how deep this is going to go. Time, of course, will tell and the only way to find out is to jump in. 

So why am I now choosing to bring my journalling online?  Mostly it's because I'm nosycurious about reading others, and it only seems fair for me to do the same. I love people watching, I am endlessly fascinated in the story of human beings, our cultures and the societies we form, and how we interact with each other, within our own societies & cultures and with those from different ones, and with the world around us - there's a reason I have various degrees in anthropology & archaeology (and it's not just because I still want to be either Lara Croft, Sydney Fox, Indiana Jones, Daniel Jackson or Blair Sandburg when I grow up!) I'm looking forward to the opportunity to shares the things that bring me joy, and the chance to get a little glimpse into peoples lives through the things they choose to share genuinely fascinates me! 

It also only seems fair to share a little about me. The basic details are I'm Alice Mae, I'm over 30, I'm Welsh and I live in Devon. I'm a white cis-gender bisexual woman and my pronouns are she/her.  My main interests are Egyptology, archaeology, anthropology and folklore (especially Egyptian mythology and witchcraft, and the witch trials of Early Modern Europe (and beyond)). I have a growing interest in aliens, ufology and the psuedo-history/science of ancient aliens/ancient astronaut theory. No, I have no idea why either, but I've learned to not question random interests - instead I embrace them and see where they go!  I also enjoy reading, crossword puzzles, visiting museums, and am regularly kicked out of coffee shops becase they want to close and I've lost track of time in the back corner! I am fuelled by copious amounts of caffeine, sugar and heavy metal music. 

I am about to make another post about my fannish interests because this one is getting a bit long now. 

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading and welcome to my blog. It's lovely to meet you, please feel free to leave me a comment and tell me a little about yourself (this is obviously not some kind of requirement - it would just be nice to know!).  And, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

[recentlyheardcom]

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are likely the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew about when our ancestors arrived in the New World.The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake — which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.The reported age of the footprints challenges the once-conventional wisdom that humans didn’t reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps about 15,000 years ago.“This is a subject that’s always been controversial because it’s so significant — it’s about how we understand the last chapter of the peopling of the world,” said Thomas Urban, an archaeological scientist at Cornell University, who was involved in the 2021 study but not the new one.Thomas Stafford, an independent archaeological geologist in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who was not involved in the study, said he “was a bit skeptical before” but now is convinced.“If three totally different methods converge around a single age range, that’s really significant,” he said.The new study isolated about 75,000 grains of pure pollen from the same sedimentary layer that contained the footprints.“Dating pollen is arduous and nail-biting,” said Kathleen Springer, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey and a co-author of the new paper. Scientists believe radiocarbon dating of terrestrial plants is more accurate than dating aquatic plants, but there needs to be a large enough sample size to analyze, she said.The researchers also studied accumulated damage in the crystal lattices of ancient quartz grains to produce an age estimate.Ancient footprints of any kind — left by humans or megafauna like big cats and dire wolves — can provide archaeologists with a snapshot of a moment in time, recording how people or animals walked or limped along and whether they crossed paths. Animal footprints have also been found at White Sands.While other archeological sites in the Americas point to similar date ranges — including pendants carved from giant ground sloth remains in Brazil — scientists still question whether such materials really indicate human presence.“White Sands is unique because there’s no question these footprints were left by people, it’s not ambiguous,” said Jennifer Raff, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Kansas, who was not involved in the study.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.