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Discovering the heart of prehistoric Galloway

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Aerial view of Iron Age round-houses © GUARD Archaeology LtdOver the last couple of years in advance of a new bypass road, GUARD Archaeology teams have discovered a range of prehistoric archaeology spanning 7000 years of activity

Fakes, Frauds and Hoaxes… Or are they?

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As a discipline, Archaeology has been faced with numerous hoaxes and fakes throughout the years. There is a certain amount of wild romanticism that surrounds our field- it is one […]

Editing Texts and Digital Libraries: 2 seminars in Leipzig

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Posted for Greta Franzini:

Next week the Humboldt Chair of Digital Humanities is hosting two seminars as part of its Digital Philology course:

1)Monday May 19th,3:15-4:45pm, University of Leipzig (Paulinum, room P801)
“Editing Texts in Context: Two Case Studies” by Prof. Neel D. Smith, College of the Holy Cross

2) Tuesday May 20th, 9:15-10:45am, University of Leipzig (Paulinum, room P801)
“digilibLT – a Digital Library of Late Latin Texts” by Prof. Maurizio Lana, Università del Piemonte Orientale (Italy)

For more information, please visit http://www.dh.uni-leipzig.de/wo/news-announcements/

Omens in the Ancient World

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ancientorigins: A belief in omens has its roots far back in our ancient past and has persisted...

CPAC Comments: Not Letting the Facts Get in the Way of a USeful Story

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Sayles addresses CPAC
It seems great minds think alike, or at least differently from the little minds.  Professor Nathan Elkins has written an interesting post on his numismatics blog ("Import Restrictions and Coins: Lobbying, Duplicity, and Ancient Egypt's Closed Currency System" May 14, 2014). He notes that while archaeologists consider ancient coins to be archaeological evidence as much as potsherds, buttons, flint scrapers, bone fragments and snail shells, coin collectors and, especially dealers, do not. They position themselves as numismatic exceptionalists. This is particularly apparent when attempts are made to bring transparency into the market - something the appaentgly fear (though try to hide it by pretending that in some mysterious way only they fully understand it's "impossible").  Various tactics are used by embattled coineys to defend their crumbling bulwarks.
The ancient coin dealer lobby, primarily the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild (ACCG), consistently makes an effort to dissuade CPAC from the protection of coins each time a request for an MOU is made.  Their arguments have been repeated recently since the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) has asked for public comment on a potential MOU with Egypt that would place limits on imports of cultural and archaeological items into the U.S. that lack documentation prior to the date of enactment of that potential MOU.
 Elkins then discusses the assertions made in that recent discussion and shows where they are false. Coins are not only archaeologically and culturally significant, but their removal from the archaeological record leads to destruction of archaeological evidence.I might add that tTheir denial is totally duplicious, because each and every one of them will simultaneously praise the "English system" where the PAS records precisely these kinds of finds because of the archaeological significance of the information each and every findspot holds. These coineys really are blinkered idiots, incapable of arguing consistently and seeing the wider picture. We are all aware of the cases of smuggling of Egyptian artefacts into the US which give the lie to the bold claims of dealers that the threat is an invented one.

What is particularly worthy of note is the discussion of one of the most common arguments used by the ACCG in this discussion. They allege that in the form in which it is wrtten, the wording of US law makes it impractical to protect the coins used in Ancient Egypt because allegedly "they circulated widely, and so one cannot say where a coin came from since dealers and suppliers do not record or track find spots".

In the public comments on the potential MOU with Egypt, it is remarkable that a number of coin dealers are asserting that coins ought not be protected because they widely circulated.  This is, of course, a strained argument to make in view of the fact that ancient Egypt famously had a closed currency system in both the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.  This does not mean that Egyptian coins are not found outside of Egypt - they are.  But the vast majority of Egyptian coins are found in Egypt.  One reason for Egypt's closed currency system may have been Egypt's need to retain silver since there were no silver resources in ancient Egypt; topography also isolated Egypt.  In fact, Egypt's closed currency system is perhaps the best-known instance of locally or regionally circulating coinage in the ancient world and it is widely discussed in both collector and scholarly literature.  
IAs Elkins comments, "coin circulation is a much more nuanced subject than the lobby acknowledges in its dealings with CPAC, the U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Customs".

A prime example of the way the coin dealers are trying to twist facts to suit their naysaying agenda is Sayles' own comments to the CPAC:
"Coins struck in Egypt during antiquity traveled widely then, and since then, as instruments of monetary exchange and of cultural interest."  
It is rather awkward for him that in his popular book (W. Sayles, Ancient Coin Collecting IV: Roman Provincial Coins and more precisely (Elkins points out) on page 89, Wayne Sayles writes about this closed system. So how can he pretend he does not know about it when addressing comments to CPAC concerning a potential MOU with Egypt 16 years later?

Another ACCG director Peter Tompa fancies himself as a numismatist too, and in his comments to the CPAC, he also stresses the same point, giving examples of coins of Egyptian type found outside of Egypt and also characterizes Egyptian coins as widely circulating. Elkins provides a necessary correction:
Both Sayles and Tompa overlook the fact that these foreign finds are exceptions, not the rule, and that the vast majority of Egyptian coins will be found in Egypt, which had a closed currency system in the Hellenistic and Roman periods
So, either Tompa and Sayles do not know this, or they are deliberately misleading the CPAC. The same goes for the more than 170 collectors who all made the same point because the dealers told them to in their comments to the CPAC. Fortunately, Elkins concludes, "the distinguished members of CPAC take account of the substance of comments and evidence presented to them during the period of public comment". So it is fortunate that among the comments are those of a proper numismatist (Professor Jane De Rose Evans, Temple University, Philadelphia PA) not some self-interested dealers and their parroting collector clients.




Digitisation's Most Wanted

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What are the most commonly accessed digitised items from heritage organisations? Even asking the question leads to further understanding about the current digitisation landscape.


Have you seen this Dog? Last spotted on the Flickr account of the National Library of Wales. Dog with a Pipe in Its Mouth, Taken by P. B. Abery, 1940s.
Last month, at a meeting at the National Library of Scotland, an interesting fact flew by me. The NLS has hundreds of thousands of digitised items online, so what do you think is the most popular, and most regularly accessed and/or downloaded? (it is difficult to make the distinction regarding accessed or downloaded on most sites.) Is it the original Robert Burns material? The last letter of Mary Queen of Scots? or any of the 86,000 maps held in this, one of the best map collections worldwide? No. It is "A grammar and dictionary of the Malay language : with a preliminary dissertation" by John Crawfurd, published in 1852. This is accessed by thousands of people every month - mostly from Malaysia, partly because it is featured on many product pages providing definitions of malaysian words - demonstrating the surprising reach and potential in digitising items and then making them freely available online, reaching out to a worldwide audience far beyond the geographical local of the library itself. Wonderful.

This left me pondering... what are the other most downloaded items at major institutions in the UK? So I sent out some feelers, and here are the results, demonstrating both the hidden complexity of the question, and the relationship of digitised heritage content to the current online audience landscape.

At Cambridge University Library, the most accessed collection overall is the Newton Papers, which was the first major digitised collection launched by the Library in 2010, and promoted widely. Within that, there is one particular notebook (which Newton acquired while he was an undergraduate at Trinity College and used from about 1661 to 1665 for his lecture notes) which is the most popular, featuring heavily in the initial promotion of the collection, and also in an In Our Time special series hosted my Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4.  But within that notebook there is one page that is accessed more than the others, with most of the traffic coming from Greece. Why? This page was picked up in the Greek press and pointed to on many websites, blogs, newspaper reports, and in social media as evidence that Newton knew Greek. The links that remain still direct thousands of users to view Newton's jottings from his Greek lessons at the front of the book, showing the fascinating relationship between publicity, social media, linkage, and an item which reflects national pride, to a worldwide audience.

The most downloaded items at Cambridge also reflect the rapidly changing mentions of items on social media: in April 2014, an item downloaded/accessed more than 6000 times was the Breviary of Marie de Saint Pol, which went live this month. Why the sudden notice? On the 3rd of April, one of the Cambridge colleges with thousands of followers posted a link to it on Facebook followed by the Cambridge Digital Library Facebook and Twitter feed on the 4th of April. Retweeted a few times, these few postings led to the thousands of views of the document, demonstrating the growing importance of using social media to tell people about newly mounted digitised content.

Over at Trinity College Library, the most accessed item from their digital collection in general is the Book of Kells,  which again was their first major digitised item, heavily promoted in the press, and attracting a level of viewing that is unique due to general tourism and cultural heritage interest. The second most accessed digitised item is the surprise: a book of Lute music by William Ballet, from the 17th Century. There is much discussion of this item, and links to it online, posted by online communities of lute players, and those who blog about lutes worldwide. Interest and demand in at item can therefore be encouraged if interested online communities hear about it, and share with their membership.

A similar tale about the importance of publicity and social media emerges from the British Museum. There are popular items about the Viking exhibition which are linked from their home page at the moment given the current exhibition, but since the 1st January 2014 til now, the most popular item accessed in the digital collection (no, wait, go on, guess.... Rosetta stone? Vindolanda Tablets? ...) is the Landscape Alphabet by Joseph Hulmandell (no? me neither). These were discovered and shared on social media by type enthusiasts on twitter  in mid February, and promoted by the cool-hunter the Laughing Squid who has almost half a million followers on twitter, which caused a sudden spike (I cant see the British Museum actually tweeting them out themselves on their timeline).  However, the initial swell of tens of thousands of hits has since dwindled to nothing, showing the fickleness of attention that comes with the social media stream. In 2013, the most single viewed item at the British Museum was... (go on, guess!)... a lead sling bullet, viewed 42,156 times in total. Why? It was picked up on reddit, due to the sarcastic inscription "some ancient sling bullets excavated from the city of Athens, Greece were inscribed with the word "ΔΕΞΑΙ" (dexai), which translates to "catch!"" which generated a lot of online LOLs ("Halt gentlemen. Do not yet partake of the feast before us, for I must capture the image of it with instagram whereupon I shalt bequeath it to my herald upon Facebook for all to see."here) and this encouraged  - and still encourages - visitors to the British Museum website: some forms of posting on social media generate the long tail of usage more than others.

Things start to get more complicated when various digital asset management systems (DAMS) come into place - often institutions have more than one database of digitised content, from different suppliers, with different licensing restrictions and requirements, and so ascertaining the most viewed single item is not a simple question. Organisations also post and share content in various different places. The National Library of Wales are looking through their DAMS to see which items are the most accessed, but immediately know that the most popular item they hold that has been posted to Flickr (with no known copyright restrictions, contributed to Flickr Commons) is the photograph at the top of this post, Dog with a Pipe in its Mouth, from the P. B. Abery Collection. Again, this is an image which has been mentioned regularly on blogs, social media, and internet chats, as well as being a featured image on the 2013 anniversary of Flickr Commons: the fact that it has no copyright restrictions encourages its reuse - and therefore traffic towards its host institution's site, if those users point back to it - online.

The libraries at Oxford University, including the Bodleian, have been digitising items for over twenty years, and so it is difficult to say what the most accessed or popular items are, due to the way the systems have been designed, implemented and integrated over the past two decades. Their most downloaded or accessed digitised book, scanned in collaboration with Google, is probably the "History of the Scott Monument, to which is prefixed a biographical sketch of Sir Walter Scott" by James Colston (published 1881) - a freely downloadable version is available from its library record (ignore the resellers offering printed versions generated from this for much cost on amazon and eBay!). As far as images are concerned, the most popular at Oxford are among those listed on Early Manuscripts at Oxford University, partly because many of them have been up continuously for twenty years (legacy data for the history of downloads of specific images are not available, indicating how difficult it is to access long term data about this. Server logs get very big very quickly and so are generally periodically discarded, and it is only recently that reporting facilities such as Google Analytics have allowed a quick and easy overview of the usage of websites). Currently popular digitisation projects at the University of Oxford Libraries are the Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project, and the recently launched digitized First Folio of Shakespeare's works, but there isn't sufficient data available from all the digital collections to be able to say one way or the other which is the one most popular project, never mind item. It was also pointed out, though, that you would probably struggle just as much (if not more so) to identify which has been the most requested book in the Bodleian's collections!

This trend of databases complicating the question continues at the British Library, where their digitisation outputs and projects are made available via multiple platforms and viewers, some managed by the British Library, and others by commercial partners, with some content available for free, other content via subscription, or paying a fee per image. These are only some of the most popular different sites: https://imagesonline.bl.uk, http://www.bl.uk/treasures/treasuresinfull.html, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/, https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/, http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/, http://gdc.gale.com/products/17th-and-18th-century-burney-collection-newspapers/ and the BL module on http://www.biblioboard.com/libraries.html. In addition, there are BL digitisation partnerships with other content providers, for example http://idp.bl.uk/ and http://eap.bl.uk/. Finding out the most accessed digitised item from within this is tricky (but not impossible - they tell me they are looking into it). The fact that they cannot say immediately demonstrates the complexity of running many large databases of digitised content.

These results, from very different institutions, invite discussions on shallow versus deep engagement with digital collections. Some examples of commonly accessed material are what we would think of as part of the Canon of Digitised Content: Shakespeare, Newton, Medieval Manuscripts. Some examples of commonly accessed material here can be taken as little more than clickbait - LOL! History! - or free reference material - its a free Malaysian Dictionary! Bonus! - but is getting people through the virtual door to digitised collections in this way, and through these items, such a bad thing? Come for the Dog with the pipe in its mouth! stay for the genealogy, then the discussions on palaeographic method! One can also argue that some of the discussion surrounding these objects are exactly what we are trying to encourage - many of the hundreds of comments posted on the Reddit item about the British Museum sling shot bullet, although hilarious, show consideration of what it would mean to be human in the time of Ancient Greece, and relate their societal response to ours. Isn't that the starting place (and in some cases, the ending place) of engagement with primary historical evidence? 

Asking to see Digitisation's most wanted opens up wider questions of public engagement, the impact of social networks on internet traffic to digitised collections (from highlights posted by the institution, to those identified and shared by others outside it, often quite unexpectedly), and the role of making images of primary historical sources open for others to discover, use and share. We also become aware of the complex and intertwined database systems which are in place in many large organisations undertaking digitisation and delivering digitised items to users, and the difficulties in reporting on individual items (be they physical or digital!) as a result. Digitisation's most wanted is also a rapidly moving target, dependent on publicity, and changing interest and focus over time: social media can encourage large swings and changes in popular items very quickly. The act of posing this question has led to an interesting discussion on how we think about use of digitised content, and how we can build up evidence about usage. (I'd also like to thank the organisations listed above for responding to my query so promptly!)

Have you, or any organisation you work with, been affected by the discussion in this blog post? Do you have any evidence you can contribute to the investigation? Your help is needed to catch digitisation's most wanted. Please do post your comments about your experiences below (comments are moderated so may take a few hours to appear), or email m dot terras at ucl.ac.uk for them to be integrated here. The internet is a place of busy traffic. Someone must have seen them...

Update 15/05/14: The British Library's Endangered Archives' most popular item is the St Helena Banns of Marriage, an item commonly pointed to on genealogy websites such as this and this.

One Off Journal Issues: Benefactoras y filántropas en las sociedades antiguas

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Occasionally issues of journals where one might not normally think to look produce thematic issues of interest. Availability online makes them much more discoverable. A case in point:
Revista Arenal» Números» Volumen 18, número 2

Benefactoras y filántropas en las sociedades antiguas.

Vol. 18, nº 2
Julio - Diciembre 2011

DOSSIER

Benefactoras y filántropas en las sociedades antiguas.
Coordinan: Cándida Martínez López y Dolores Mirón

ESTUDIOS

TEXTOS Y DOCUMENTOS

  • Marta del Moral Vargas: La definición de un proyecto de acción política: el reglamento de la Agrupación Femenina Socialista de Madrid (1910)

NOTICIAS

LIBROS RECIBIDOS

PERSONAS EXPERTAS


Other one off journals in AWOL are here, here, here, here, here, here,here

And see AWOL's Round-up on Women/Gender/Sexuality in the Ancient World 

Don’t blame religion for political conflicts, Mr Blair

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Colleagues at the University of Manchester kindly invited me to re-write an earlier post to be featured today on the Manchester Policy Blog. Those of you who read my earlier post, ‘Northern Lights‘, will be intrigued to see how the suggestions of a modern policy-focused editor have changed the tone of a somewhat whimsical ancient history professor. And note the rather different choice of title and illustration!

Image

Just because wars are justified by reference to religion doesn’t mean they are religious wars – organised religion can also bring people together to resolve conflicts, argues Prof Kate Cooper.

As an ancient historian, I am surprised by the easy causality which commentators think they find between ‘religious motives’ and modern social conflict. Take the latest remarks from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“At the root of the [Middle East] crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating…. It is in the Middle East that the future of Islam will be decided. By this I mean the future of its relationship with politics. This is controversial because the world of politics is uncomfortable talking about religion; because some will say that really the problems are not religious but political…”

Though the warnings about continued and escalating conflict in the Middle East are probably justified, the words Blair used may do as much harm as good. His view that Middle East conflicts are essentially religious reinforces traditional stereotyping and even bigotry. In short, he may be contributing to the very problem he claims to want to solve.

The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, for example, was not a movement based on religion, but on ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity. I have previously written about the attempt of Tunisian moderates to keep a ‘justice revolution’ from being appropriated by far-right religionists as a ‘religious’ revolution.

Social justice movements are often fragile and unstructured, depending on spontaneous outpourings of energy and goodwill. The publicity and excitement associated with political conflict can serve as fuel for religious organisations that have powerful communication networks and strong social structures. When such an organization claims a cause as its own, it introduces religious rhetoric to justify its involvement, harnessing the power of righteous indignation to reach new audiences and foster growth.

Even well-intentioned institutions and individuals can make matters worse by failing to condemn extremists who claim to act in the name of religion while pursuing dubious aims. But Western commentators can also make matters worse by accepting the claim that ‘religion is at the root of the problem’. So it’s important to consider carefully whether religion is central in a given situation – and if it isn’t, it’s important to say so.

The same holds true with violence. Religious narratives are often used to justify social conflict, but the justification for violence and the cause of violence are not necessarily the same thing.  The real root of the problem is often social, political, or economic – or all three.

Earlier this year I was with a group of colleagues on an evening when the Aurora Borealis was said to be visible, and we tried and failed to catch sight of the famous Northern Lights.

But the theme of looking for light remained as a motif in our conversations, since we had been brought together by a workshop sponsored by the Open University and the Research Council UK’s Global Uncertainties scheme, as part of John Wolffe’s ‘Religion, Martyrdom, and Global Uncertainties’ project. Our task was to gain a deeper understanding of the role played by religion in modern social conflict by comparing ‘flash-point’ cases in Europe and the Middle East.

Our group included scholars and religious leaders: members of the Christian and Muslim communities working for peace and reconciliation in Great Britain, Ireland and abroad.  There were also historians (myself included) who study the role of religious identity in fostering both conflict and reconciliation.

I found old friends – Anjum Anwar MBE, the elegantly veiled Dialogue Development Officer for Blackburn Cathedral, known for creating a forum for youth voices in Muslim and Christian communities, and workshop organiser and historian John Wolffe, author of important studies on the sources of conflict in Northern Ireland.

It was a privilege to meet remarkable people like Norman Hamilton OBE, a long-standing voice for reconciliation and former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and Jenny Taylor, the founder of Lapido Media Centre for Religious Literacy in World Affairs.

Our theme was ‘Religion and Security’, and so we considered how different religions – and different communities within the same religious tradition – understand both faith and conflict in different ways.

Most traditions have ideas about the importance of peace and reconciliation, and religious institutions can be a powerful force for good when they sponsor reconciliation initiatives, especially when those initiatives cultivate ecumenical partnerships.

One of the outstanding contributions to our workshop was from Gladys Ganiel, the author of Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland, who helped us to understand how ECONI (Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland) was able to support – and establish credibility with – ecumenical partners working from a Catholic faith commitment at a crucial stage of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Even as specialists, we had difficulty agreeing what we mean when we discuss ‘religion’. Do we mean beliefs? Possibly, but not necessarily. Some religions are low on ‘beliefs’, and some world-views that most people don’t think of as ‘religions’ have very strong beliefs – take atheism, for example!

So hard-and-fast conclusions were as elusive as the Northern Lights. Aside, that is, from the obvious one that religion is many things to many people – and that often when people believe they are talking about the same thing, they actually aren’t.

And we did discover how terribly charismatic religious leaders can be – never more so than when they are making an effort to understand someone else’s point of view.

In January, Blair published an essay in The Observer with the provocative title, Religious difference, not ideology, will fuel this century’s epic battles.

In response, I offer my own provocation: Religious differences will fuel this century’s epic efforts to achieve peace. Sadly, I can offer no more conclusive evidence for my prediction than has Blair for his – but it’s a possibility to bear in mind.



Jordan Plans Development for Arabah

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The area between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea is slated for major development on the eastern side as Jordan has announced a master plan for constructing dams, lakes, and tourist venues.

From The Jordan Times:

The JVA will create a new specialised unit that will supervise the implementation of the development projects in Wadi Araba, a 165-kilometre long and 9-25-kilometre-wide area between Southern Ghor and the Gulf of Aqaba, an official at the ministry told The Jordan Times.

In the statement, Nasser underscored that the development ventures will be implemented once funding is secured, highlighting that the projects seek to attract people to live in Wadi Araba and businessmen to invest in the area.

[…]

Meanwhile, the planned Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project, which will pass through Wadi Araba, is expected to have a major impact on the area’s development by attracting investment, the minister noted.

“Lakes will be created to establish tourist projects, chalets and entertainment centres, in addition to artificial sea-water lakes for fish farming.”

[…]

Wadi Araba is situated along Rift Valley-Red Sea route, which is the world’s second most-used flyway, with 37 types of migratory soaring birds that maintain flight by using rising air currents, travelling on the flyway annually, according to the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature.

The article gives more information about the planned dams, the agricultural development, and the migratory pathways. Jordan’s ability to attract tourism has proven poor in the past (compare Aqaba with the neighboring Eilat), but the popularity of Petra could help to boost interest in the Arabah in the winter months.

HT: Jack Sasson

Arabah and mountains of Edom from west, tb061604663

View from the Arabah road
Photo from the Jordan volume

This Day in Ancient History: idus maias

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idus maias

  • Festival of Jupiter
  • rites in honour of Mercury
  • rites in honour of Maia
  • the Argei are tossed into the Tiber from the Sublician Bridge ….
  • 251 — martyrdom of Isidore of Chios
  • 392 A.D. — death of the emperor Valentinian II

There Will Never Be Another

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I like this quote from the Doctor Who episode “The Rings of Akhaten.” It illustrates many things – that one can find meaning in telling the story of the universe in a scientifically-informed way, that discussion of natural processes does not have to lead to the conclusion that life is meaningless rather than incredibly precious. But whichever stories people tell, the meaning they take from them is created by humans.

I am sure most readers have seen this photo somewhere online by now:

As has been pointed out time and time again, there is nothing inherent in “religion,” nor even in most specific religions, that requires the negative view above, and most religions have been appealed to and utilized at some point to emphasize the inherent value of human beings. And as has been pointed out time and time again, there is nothing in science that inevitably produces the view attributed to “science” here.

Humans tell stories and make meaning. It is up to us to treat others as precious beyond price. Your worldview, if you are alive today, is shaped by both religion and science, whether you know it or admit it or not. And so within your very self you bring the two strands, and both the positive and negative stories one can use them to tell, together in a unique life.

Whether there will ever be another you depends on whether you think that the universe or multiverse is infinite. But that doesn’t matter. As you, the you that you are, please choose to value others, and to use the elements of your worldview to ascribe meaning and worth.

Others can do that, but no one else can do that as you. The stories you choose to tell, and the value you choose to place on others, can only be done by you.

 

Santa Maria Wreck Looted

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Reports are emerging that a team of underwater archaeologists headed by Barry Clifford have found remains which are looking increasingly likely to have been part of Christopher Columbus’ flagship the Santa Maria, wrecked off the coast of Haiti in 1492. The site was first surveyed in 2003 but:
when Clifford and his team returned to the site earlier this month, their intention was to definitively identify the cannon and other surface artefacts that had been photographed back in 2003. But tragically all the key visible diagnostic objects including the cannon had been looted by illicit raiders" (The Independent).
As David Knell points out in his discussion of this (Santa Maria found - but recently looted Wednesday, 14 May 2014 ):
If the artefacts are still around, they are likely to be in a hidden collection of bits and bobs somewhere, utterly decontextualised and unrecognised for what they really are. Worse still, the wreck has been deprived of objects that may have helped to definitively identify it. Yet "treasure hunters" are urged to carry on looting by one blogger on the warped premise that "It's your history too!".
This is going to be a pattern repeated increasingly frequently in archaeology in the future. In the UK , with the number of artefact hunters in Britain equipped with metal detectors steadily increasing on the watch of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and a static or falling number of accessible sites containing a (finite) number of collectables, many sites have already had the bulk of the diagnostic finds stripped from their surface. Many sites have already been "hammered" in tekkie-lingo (that means heavily damaged in archaeological terms). More and more are archaeologists going to find certain research questions cannot be addressed or answered because the evidence was hoiked and scattered unrecorded by unknown persons at unknown times. And do any of them think about that or care? It would seem few do.

 

Votive chickens: The Madonna delle Galline festival at Pagani | The Votives Project

"Responsible Detectingists" and the Fifty-Shifty Finds Contract

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It’s all a matter
of trust my friend,
Purely a matter of trust,

And I know you’ll agree
with me my friend,
That mutual trust is a must.

Unbelievable, Nigel Swift writes (see Update) that he'd just received another of those ubiquitous tekkie sock-puppet comment which suggests that since Heritage Action had been "banging this drum" about the treatment landowners get from artefact hunters repeatedly for years, he should now stop. His answer to this was straightforward: 
yesterday we reckon about 790 recordable artefacts were dug up but most of them weren’t reported to PAS (according to PAS’s statistics) and most of them weren’t shown to the owner (according to the wording of the Finds Agreements). The same happened on each of thousands of previous days and will apply on each of an unknown number of future days. So my attitude is simple. When detectorists cease to act in an uncivilised way I will immediately stop pointing out that they are doing so. That’s not unreasonable is it?
Indeed it is not. Not at all.  It is just a shame that only a few people seem to bother. In the world of "heritage" in Britain, most jobsworths shrug their shoulders and turn away. Over on a "responsible" metal detectorist's blog (Steve Broom, "Its a matter of trust...deal with it...!!! ")  the point made by Heritage Action has - without really examining the question, one suspects, been labelled “inaccurate”.
Trouble is, it’s not. Taking someone’s property home unseen and unchecked by them to Liverpool or Latvia on any pretext or none is plain wrong by any standard. And doing it on the basis that “trust” is essential” is pure nonsense when both a crook and a cad would use the same wording so the wording leaves him open to being swindled.  Some things are just wrong. 
Then we have the pathetic tekkie barstool pseudo-legal argument that, allegedly as "lost property", all non Treasure artefact finds belong only to the finder who since the original owner is untraceable, can do with them as he wishes.  Are farmers aware of this element of the current debate?

Getting through the ingrained attitudes of entitlement evidenced by both these recent insertions into the debate and which seem to infest the metal detecting world seems an enormous problem, which is probably why for seventeen barren years, the PAS has not lifted a finger to deal with it. Neither have (so-called) responsible detectorists.

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Roman camp in Thuringia redux | Bread & Circuses

Latin Proverbs and Fables Round-Up: May 14 | Bestiaria Latina Blog

Laudator Temporis Acti | Aristophanes

The Athenian Acropolis as a movie backdrop | Elginism

Conference in Rome: The Roman Courtesan. Archaeological reflections of a literary topos | Blogging Pompeii

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