This month, the History Channel's web site carried an article entitled "7 Things You May Not Know About Caligula".
Clearly, they couldn't decide on their intended readership, with items veering from Number 1, "Caligula wasn't his real name", to Number 4, "He may not have built his famous floating bridge, but he did launch pleasure barges in Lake Nemi" -- if you don't know his name [it was Gaius]
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Caligula: Cool, Calm, or Mad, Bad?
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Caesar’s Assassination Site Redux ~ “Excessive Interpretation”
Last week or so we mentioned the media flurry about the discovery of the purported site of Caesar’s assassination (Site of Caesar’s Assassination Found?) … those reports were generated by one of the archaeologists working at the Largo Argentina site (Antonio Monterroso) … now fellow archaeologist Marina Mattei is saying ‘not so fast …
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Berlusconi as Tiberius? Nero? Caligula?
Interesting opEd by Natalie Haynes in the Independent:
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Thoughts on the “Authority” of the Bible
There are many people who toss around phrases like “the authority of the Bible” without giving sufficient thought to what they are saying – much as we have seen politicians toss around the language of “God's will” with insufficient prior theological reflection. And so here are a few thoughts on the subject of “Biblical authority” which I hope will generate discussion.
1. The Bible is not inherently authoritative, any more than the Qur'an is, or the Code of Hammurabi, or any other text you might think of. These texts all exist in the world, but until people actually read them and grant them authority through an act of their own wills, the texts are merely there, powerless. The Enuma Elish was presumably once authoritative in some sense for someone – but now most people have never heard of it, and those who have grant it no authority. And so it is, as has always been the case, people who make these texts authoritative, not the other way around – whether one has in mind the status accorded to the contents by the church in assembling the canon, or the acceptance of that decision of the church by later individuals.
2. If you do not make the effort to understand the nuances of the languages in which the Bible was written, and the cultural background assumed by the Bible's authors and readers, then inevitably you will end up not reading the Bible, but instead reading your own concerns and culture into the Bible. There is no way to avoid that without a concerted effort, and even then it is not entirely avoidable. There are things in the Bible that we simply do not know how to translate, and others which, even though we can translate them, remain all but incomprehensible. And so keep in mind that, if you read in translation, you are delegating a certain amount of authority to the translators.
3. A text in human language cannot contain all the wisdom and insights of its human authors, to say nothing of divine wisdom and insight. And so the Bible should never be considered more authoritative than a human mind, should it?
4. Counterbalancing that last point, inasmuch as a collection of human minds is typically wiser than any one individual, any reading of the Bible that flattens its diversity of viewpoints reduces the wisdom embedded in it.
5. If you do not read the Bible, and understand the meaning of its words in their original context within the texts, and of the texts within their historical context, then you cannot say that the Bible is authoritative to you in any meaningful sense at all. But even if you do read the words, then as with any words, it is up to you to use them wisely. The Book of Proverbs warns that proverbs can be misused by fools. The same can be said about the Bible as a whole, and any part of it not limited to the proverbs.
6. The Bible only has as much authority as you grant it, and inevitably, there will be things in it to which you will not be willing to delegate authority. That is OK – more than OK, it is appropriate and normal. We see those who authored later parts of the Bible doing the same with respect to earlier parts of the Bible. Many mistakenly think that they can please God and get themselves off the hook by viewing the Bible as authoritative, deferring to others in an attempt to avoid responsibility and the potential blame that comes with it.
And so the truth is that the Bible has no authority other than what you give it, and since it contains diverse views and statements, there is no way to consistently grant all of it authority. And so it is your responsibility as a reader and interpreter of the Bible to take your own authority seriously and your own responsibility to be a wise and humane interpreter of these texts.
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GJW and the Failure of Early Christian Studies
ALIN SUCIU: Guest Post: Timothy Pettipiece – Jesus’ Wife and the Failure of Early Christian Studies.![]()
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The real interest of this fragment, assuming its authenticity, is to underscore the immense and ongoing diversity of opinions within the early church during the 2nd and 3rd centuries. This sophisticated analysis, which scholars of early Christianity have been building for over a century (and which is arguably more offensive to conservative Christian sensibilities than Jesus’ marriage), is simply not part of the general public’s imagination.Background on the Gospel of Jesus' Wife is here and links.
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FUN: Wives of the Pyramid builders
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Lost Tomb of Nebamun Found?
Kento Zenihiro (of cones fame) has reported rumours on Facebook that the lost Tomb of Nebamun has been rediscovered. The tomb (if found) has already been stripped of its reliefs: many are in the British Museum already. Nonetheless, re-finding the tomb would be welcome and might give better context to the BM reliefs.
I am just off out but will try to investigate later.
This article from News from the Valley of the Kings © Kate Phizackerley is offered on a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Licence 3.0 unless otherwise noted. Please visit the blog to join the discussion.
You may reproduce articles if this notice is included unaltered and there are no adverts on your page. Comments © individual authors may not be reproduced.
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New Open Access Article- ANOTHER EARLY VINČA SETTLEMENT FROM...
New Open Access Article- ANOTHER EARLY VINČA SETTLEMENT FROM TRANSYLVANIA
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Inter-relationships between 'world' components
In a previous post I calculated f3-statistics between my K=7 and K=12 ancestral components. The basic idea is to discover which component A can be seen as a mixture of two other components, B and C, in which case (assuming A does not have excessive drift), we expect a negative f3(A; B, C) statistic.
As part of my analysis of the world dataset, I calculated f3-statistics for each of the K=3 to K=12, that is, for some K, I tried to see if one of the K inferred components could be seen as a mixture of the remaining K-1. It turns out that no negative f3 statistics appeared at all, and this suggests that the components inferred by ADMIXTURE at each K tend to form an "orthogonal" set that are not mixtures of each other.
More generally, we can calculate f3 statistics where A, B, and C are components inferred from any of the K=3 to K=12 runs. There is a total of 75 such components, and hence 75*(74 choose 2) = 202,575 such f3 statistics. Since calculating these would take a while (and would become intractable as K increases further), I decided to calculate pairwise f3 statistics, i.e., statistics where A, B, and C are constrained to be from successive K, K+1 runs. The significant results can be seen in the spreadsheet.
It might be worthwhile to develop an automated way of using these statistics to guide us in the interpretation of ADMIXTURE components. But, they are useful, in any case, as a source of information.
For example, consider the following (the third column represents the mixed population):
Atlantic_Baltic_6/globe6_Z Near_East_6/globe6_Z European_5/globe5_Z -0.013911 0.000084 -166.457
This means that the European component at K=5 can be seen as a mix of the Atlantic_Baltic and Near_East components at K=6. So, this suggests that the European component can be seen as "secondary", the product of admixture. But:
European_5/globe5_Z Amerindian_5/globe5_Z Atlantic_Baltic_6/globe6_Z -0.003964 0.000175 -22.588
This indicates conversely that the Atlantic_Baltic at K=6 component can be seen as a mix of the European and Amerindian components at K=6.
It would be very interesting to use f-statistics to guide one in the choice of an "orthogonal" set of ancestral populations, or to summarize the relationships between them in tree or network form. One could potentially use my ADMIXTURE to TreeMix script to do something like this, although as K increases, there is a combinatorial explosion in the total number of components with a probable runtime slowdown/memory usage blowup which might render this approach unusable, at least for large K.![]()
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As part of my analysis of the world dataset, I calculated f3-statistics for each of the K=3 to K=12, that is, for some K, I tried to see if one of the K inferred components could be seen as a mixture of the remaining K-1. It turns out that no negative f3 statistics appeared at all, and this suggests that the components inferred by ADMIXTURE at each K tend to form an "orthogonal" set that are not mixtures of each other.
More generally, we can calculate f3 statistics where A, B, and C are components inferred from any of the K=3 to K=12 runs. There is a total of 75 such components, and hence 75*(74 choose 2) = 202,575 such f3 statistics. Since calculating these would take a while (and would become intractable as K increases further), I decided to calculate pairwise f3 statistics, i.e., statistics where A, B, and C are constrained to be from successive K, K+1 runs. The significant results can be seen in the spreadsheet.
It might be worthwhile to develop an automated way of using these statistics to guide us in the interpretation of ADMIXTURE components. But, they are useful, in any case, as a source of information.
For example, consider the following (the third column represents the mixed population):
Atlantic_Baltic_6/globe6_Z Near_East_6/globe6_Z European_5/globe5_Z -0.013911 0.000084 -166.457
This means that the European component at K=5 can be seen as a mix of the Atlantic_Baltic and Near_East components at K=6. So, this suggests that the European component can be seen as "secondary", the product of admixture. But:
European_5/globe5_Z Amerindian_5/globe5_Z Atlantic_Baltic_6/globe6_Z -0.003964 0.000175 -22.588
This indicates conversely that the Atlantic_Baltic at K=6 component can be seen as a mix of the European and Amerindian components at K=6.
It would be very interesting to use f-statistics to guide one in the choice of an "orthogonal" set of ancestral populations, or to summarize the relationships between them in tree or network form. One could potentially use my ADMIXTURE to TreeMix script to do something like this, although as K increases, there is a combinatorial explosion in the total number of components with a probable runtime slowdown/memory usage blowup which might render this approach unusable, at least for large K.
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Tumbleweed: Not Much Happening in CPRI
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Although their website claims 2012 has been "a busy year" for the Santa Fe based Cultural Property "Research Institute", their website in fact shows that - apart from cancelling some of the projects they had earlier announced they were engaged in - they've done very little recently. Very little of the promised "study of international policies to protect and preserve the world's antiquities, monuments, and archaeological sites" and absolutely nothing "to advance human knowledge for the benefit of all" as it says on the box.
Anyhow creating virtual research institutes seems to be very popular over in antiquity-land. There is now an "Ancient Numismatics Research Institute" a Missouri corporation, which claims it is:
a
Although their website claims 2012 has been "a busy year" for the Santa Fe based Cultural Property "Research Institute", their website in fact shows that - apart from cancelling some of the projects they had earlier announced they were engaged in - they've done very little recently. Very little of the promised "study of international policies to protect and preserve the world's antiquities, monuments, and archaeological sites" and absolutely nothing "to advance human knowledge for the benefit of all" as it says on the box.
Anyhow creating virtual research institutes seems to be very popular over in antiquity-land. There is now an "Ancient Numismatics Research Institute" a Missouri corporation, which claims it is:
organized for the purpose of conducting research on topics of interest to the numismatic community and offering educational and research opportunities to members of that community through in-house seminars, study groups, and guided research projects. The concept offers a range of activities heretofore unavailable to independent scholars and collectors of ancient coins.They are organizing seminars with groups of six to eight participants "working as a team in an interactive environment led by an experienced professional numismatist", in Gainesville, Miss, which just coincidentally happens to be where Wayne Sayles lives. This Institute is housed in an historic building at the corner of Harlin Dr and 4th street, just two blocks away from ACCG headquarters in Elm Street. This was "a former WPA Community Center built in 1935", so built quite early on in the 'Works Progress Administration' activities [WPA was a Depression era job-creation scheme operating 1935-1943]. It was promised that additional details of the seminars would be posted on the website as the Institute is developed. Mind you, it was set up over a year ago, so they are slow getting it off the ground. Nothing is said about the publication of the results of the coiney research, does the ANRI have a publication series planned? What about the origins of the material in its teaching collection, has it published its acquisition policy? I am not sure about housing ancient metal objects (or library materials) in a building without a damp course and such a high ground level on the west side.
a
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Long live the 28th October, 1940
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Open Access Journal: Past Imperfect
Past Imperfect
ISSN: 1192-1315
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ISSN: 1192-1315
Past Imperfect is the journal of the History and Classics Graduate Students' Association (HCGSA) at the University of Alberta. Edited by studens and funded by the HCGSA and the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, it is an annual publication. Articles appearing in Past Imperfect are abstracted in America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts.
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2001
Vol 9 (2001)
2001-20031999
Vol 8 (1999)
1999-20001998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies
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Battle at the Milvian Bridge
Constantine Statue at York
© N.S. Gill
On this day in A.D. 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine was victorious in battle for control of the Western Roman Empire against the Roman Emperor Maxentius. The battle is known as the Battle at the Milvian Bridge, a stone bridge across the Tiber River. Constantine is said to have had a vision the preceding night telling him that he would win under a certain sign that included the appearance of a cross set against the sun and certain words in Greek that translate into Latin as: in hoc signo vinces 'you will win under this sign.' This sign and the following victory are credited with convincing Constantine to convert to Christianity, which he did, but not immediately.
Read more about:
Battle at the Milvian Bridge originally appeared on About.com Ancient / Classical History on Sunday, October 28th, 2012 at 06:50:08.
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Potsherd with Tamil-Brahmi script found in Oman
Discovery has opened new chapter in understanding maritime trade of Indian Ocean countries, say historians…
A Tamil-Brahmi script inscribed on a potsherd, which was found at the Khor Rori area in Oman, has come to light now. The script reads “nantai kiran” and it can be dated to first century CE, that is, 1900 years before the present. The discovery in the ancient city of Sumhuram has opened a new chapter in understanding the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean countries, according to specialists in history.
It was by chance that the potsherd was sighted. Alexia Pavan, an Italian archaeologist, had displayed the potsherd during an international ceramic workshop on “The Indian Ocean Trade and the Archaeology of Technology at Pattanam in Kerala” held in September in Kochi. P.J. Cherian, Director, Kerala Council of Historical Research (KCHR), and Roberta Tomber of the British Museum, London, had jointly organised the workshop. Pottery from several Indian Ocean countries was on display during the workshop. K. Rajan, Professor, Department of History, Pondicherry University, D. Dayalan, Regional Director, Archaeological Survey of India, and V. Selvakumar, Head of the Department of Epigraphy and Archaeology, Tamil University, Thanjavur, spotted the potsherd displayed by Dr. Pavan.
Read more here: www.thehindu.com
See on Scoop.it – Archaeology News
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Kalkriese: The Museum with the Iron Mask
I had expected more of these over the past couple of weeks - I mentioned a month ago that Kalkriese was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the site of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. Celebrations seem slightly muted, as least in terms of press coverage.
A good piece, however, in the Osnabrücker Zeitung that uses the disovery of the famous cavalry mask as its hook:
Kaum eine Veröffentlichung zur Varusschlacht kommt ohne die Helmmaske aus, die ein römischer Reiter 9 nach Christus im mythenumrankten Gefecht verloren hatte. Das eiserne Gesicht ziert Bücher, Briefköpfe und eine Briefmarke. Sie ist das Markenzeichen von Museum und Park Kalkriese – ein Glücksfund in vielerlei Hinsicht. Eines ist das Visier nicht: Es ist nicht die Maske des Varus. Des Mannes, der als Oberbefehlshaber in Germanien die drei Legionen anführte, die von germanischen Stämmen unter der Führung des Cheruskers Arminius aufgerieben wurden, dessen Name, Niederlage und Tod für immer mit dem Gemetzel verbunden sind.
Full story here.
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Review of Levenson, The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible
H-JUDAIC BOOK REVIEW:![]()
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Alan T. Levenson. The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible: How Scholars in Germany, Israel, and America Transformed an Ancient Text.
Lanham Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. xiii + 247 pp. $49.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-1-4422-0516-1.
Reviewed by Alan Cooper (Jewish Theological Seminary)
Published on H-Judaic (October, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman
Whose Bible?
Alan T. Levenson introduces his book by suggesting that its scope
might be deemed "hubristic" and stating that it is "_not_ an original
piece of scholarship" (pp. 4, 5, his emphasis). One could say,
therefore, that the book is self-reviewing, but the overly modest
characterization does an injustice to a volume that is learned,
informative, insightful, often entertaining, and occasionally (but
constructively) annoying. The learning, culled from a wide array of
primary and secondary sources, is placed in the service of an effort
to "translate the findings of the academy for a wider audience"--an
effort that succeeds admirably (p. 5).
[...]
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Oldest Spanish human figurine found
During excavations in the Can Sadurni cave (Begues, Barcelona), members of the archaeological team discovered the torso of a human figurine made of clay. Its location within the carefully recorded stratigraphy of occupation makes it the oldest human figurine in the whole of the Iberian Peninsula at 6500 years old.
Decades of Excavation
Excavation within La cova de Can Sadurní. Image: University of Barcelona
The figurine, dates to a period of activity relating to the Neolithic. However, this is not the first exciting discovery that has been made in the cave. CIPAG researchers have been working for the past 34 years at this location and have found evidence of the production and consumption of beer.
These discoveries point to the cave of Can Sadurní being the location of important ritual events where celebrations brought together scattered groups in order to ensure their economic connections, ideological unity and marriages between different families.
Front and side view of L’encantat de Begues. Image: University of Barcelona
A rare find
The figurine is dated to the beginnings of the Middle Neolithic and although it consists only of a torso, neck and right arm it quite clearly represents a human figure. The preserved fragment is 8 cm height and given the proportions, would have originally stood 16-18cm high. If the figurine is observed with angled light two lines can be viewed; these etched carvings seem to represent elements of clothing and/or ornaments.
Normally the only element that allows the sex of these types of figures to be determined are the breasts. In the case of Begues discovery, the absence of female breasts makes it highly probable that it is a male figurine. This is particularly interesting as other later examples in the Iberian Peninsula and similar Mediterranean and European representations are more than the 80% female.
The arms have vertical holes through them which indicates that the figurine would originally have been suspended from a cord or a leather strap. The cord might have been used in order to hang the figurine on a person’s neck or from a peg inside the cave. The figurine’s neck is nearly all preserved and, as with many of these figurines, it seems the head may have been interchangeable, with a hole in the neck that could have taken a peg connected to a detached head.
Some examples of detached heads made of stone, terracotta or pottery have been found in sites of Neolithic Balkan and West Mediterranean cultures, in many cases the head was made of wood which explains why they have not been found in the cave.
Traditionally the inhabitants of the nearby town of Begues have been given the nickname Els Encantats (the Enchanted), and so the excavators gave a name to this tiny ritual idol; el Encantat de Begues.
Archaeologists at work in la Cova de Can Sadurní
Source: Universitat de Barcelona
More Information
- Excavación en la cueva de Can Sadurní ( Spanish )
- Cova de Can Sadurní (Begues – Baix Llobregat) (Spanish )
- Blasco, A; Edo, M; Villalba, M.J. (coord.) 2011, La cova de Can Sadurní i la prehistòria de Garraf, Actes de les Jornades Internacionals de Prehistòria “El Garraf, 30 anys d’investigació arqueològica”. Begues, 5 al 7 de desembre de 2008.
- Can Sadurní excavations belong to the project “La prehistòria al sud-est del Llobregat. De la costa al massís del Garraf-Ordal”, coordinated by the professor at the UB Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology, Josep Maria Fullola, and the prehistorian and archaeologist Manuel Edo, the CIPAG president. The excavations, led by the researchers Manuel Edo and Ferran Antolín, are supported by the Begues Town Council, the Culture Department at the Government of Catalonia and the Centre d’Estudis Beguetans, as well as by other organizations and local enterprises, such as the caves Montau of Sadurní, where the cave and Can Sadurní masia are located.
For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases
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FUN: Pyramid scheme 1
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Archaeology of Natural Disasters
As the American east coast waits anxiously for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall, it may make you feel a tad bit better knowing that human society has survived much worse.
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Findings dating back to 6,000 BCE unearthed in Armenia
The excavation of 37 monuments Armenia has been undertaken by the National Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia and the...
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