Melvadius

I must admit to having missed that one-line reference in the press release when I read it - thus my own confusion. It is totally from left field in comparison to the actual research which was carried out and indeed the rest of the press release. I agree that it does not appear to be supported in any way by the published findings. The research concentrated on analysis of mortality statistics and from the discussion and other explanatory text seems to have found these consistent with expectated profiles for infant mortality through natural deaths. What seems to be missing from the published data is any analysis of possible pre-mortem injuries which may have addressed the 'claimed' incidences of child sacrifice once and for all. I suppose it is a question which really needs to be put to the research team what evidence they found (if any) for 'human' as opposed to 'animal' sacrifice.

I don't see what is to be frustrated about in the article? On reading the full article, to me, it appears quite clear that from the researchers 'brief' they set out to 'prove' whether any of the various contentions about the Tophet being a graveyard full of child sacrifical victims was correct or not. In the discussion at the end of the article they clearly express the view that although there 'may occasionally' have been human sacrifices carried out in several cultures all around the Mediterannean in the period that it was not a regular occurance as far as humans were concerend. They did however note the high probability that 'some, if not all, of the cremated animal remains represent sacrificial offerings.' The full discussion follows:

I would rather turn that statement around to say that we should be careful that we do not blindly accept everything which comes from any historical source. Archaeologists are now working to redress the balance of centuries if not millenia of effectively unquestioning acceptance that a relatively limited subset of historical documents were 100% accurate. Now admittedly in some instances the archaeological evidence does more or less support such documents but not always for which reason the veracity of the ancient documents has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years rather than for any reasons of 'political correctness'. While absence of evidence is not ervidence of absence what we are seeing with this report is that even when it is being actively sought there is currently no physical evidence supporting the historic contention of an irregular let alone 'regular' Carthaginian/ Punic habit of child sacrifice. We now have two converging datasets from different parts of the Pheonecian/ Carthaginian/ Punic world which from sound statistical evidence both contradict what is increasingly looking like an ancient calumny. The childrens graveyards are increasingly being seen as simply that - somewhere to buty those who died at an early age. In comparison the indications are that in much of the Roman world children dying at that early an age would have had no special place to be buried - child burials within buildings are not uncommon. Looked at impartially if there were no written accounts even vaguely suggesting, let alone 'claiming', that the Carthaginians carried out such sacrifices from the archaeological evidence to date nobody would be ever have considered making such a suggestion. BTW Rather than referring to a 'putativce' sacrifice the earlier suggestion on this thread that one tombstone could be interpreted as a father 'sacrificing' a 'disabled' son for an 'able' son an alternative interpretation is that it was simply grieving father's appeal to the gods that having lost one son through natural causes he might soon have another. [Edit - I have just ran a search for the reference to the 'mute son being sacrificed' quoted above and as far as I could determine it seems to have its origin in an article in 'Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine, Volume 1, Number 2 - 'What Are/Is Christian Ethics?' by Jay E. Adams, S.T.M., PhD. My concern with this source is that despite there being numerous references to documentary evidence this particular 'quotation' is totally unreferenced in fact there isn't even any indication of what language it was supposed to have beeen written in. I would be interested if anyone could quote this particular inscriptions site/ publication reference number and which report it ands/or it's translation has been published in.]

The National Geographic has now also picked up this story under the tagline Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest

Recent research by the University of Pittsburg posted on Eureka Alert has provided further evidence which refutes the long standing contention that the Carthaginians regularly practiced child sacrifice. c/f my posting of [url="http://

Recent research by the University of Pittsburg posted on Eureka Alert (University of Pittsburg press release)has provided further evidence which refutes the long standing contention that the Carthaginians regularly practiced child sacrifice. c/f my earlier posting (4th January 2010) on the Carthaginian child "sacrifice" thread and the article reporting findings by Piero Bartoloni, Head of the Department of Phoenician-Punic Archaeology at Universita' di Sassari, Italy (reported in 2007) from excavations at Zama. The Eureka article is under the catchy title of The article reports that: The full article follows:

The New York Times report on possible evidence for early mariners reaching Crete based on the evidence of the shape of lithic (flint) tools found on the island. I am not totally convinced that putative 'ancient mariners' are the 'only' possible or 'most likely' explanation for this discovery. It has long been known that Crete and the other Mediterranean islands had several different waves of colonisation by fauna during the Pleistocene epoch - which ran from approximately 2.588 million to 12 000 years BP (before present). For instance a number of apparently distinct subspecies of dwarf elephants have been found on several of the Mediterranean islands but this is generally accepted as resulting from periods of low sea levels allowing access to these higher grounds rather than 'rafting' or 'long distance swimming' elephants. The dating of the tools, appears from the article, to still be undefined so in my view an alternative explanation could have had tool using humans colonising Crete during a period of low sea levels rather than sailing there by 'raft' when sea levels were higher as the article implicies is the 'only' explanation. Hopefully once the precise date range of the artefacts are known the researchers working with them will think to correlate this date range with sea level changes in the Mediterranean area which will provide a better indication of how likely (or unlikely) the current 'ancient mariner' theory is.

The Telegraph have an interesting report on the discovery of a Bronze Age shipwreck off the coast of Devon. I am not totally convinced by the suggestion in the report that the cargo was being imported into Britain as both copper and tin were mined in Britain in the period. However, I have seen examples of the type of geological information the metallurgists working on the ingots are liable to obtain so I am confident that they should be able to identify the geological strata the original minerals in the ingots came from and so confirm with a fair degree of certainty if the imports or exports. Basically they will compare the precise combination of elements and rare isotopes (which vary depending on their source) found in the ingots and make comparisons with known mining areas across Europe to determine the most likely origin.

I'm not sure 'watch' is the correct term for any sport although I do tend to catch a bit of the down hill events when they are on. In fact on that issue I definately would like to know how the 'Snow Leopard' from Ghana gets on. Even if he probably isn't a serious medal contender, as he has only been skiing for the last 5 or 6 years and done most of his training on dry slopes, he did find a qway to qualify for the Olympics and provide a first representation for his country at the Winter Games. I therefore would like him to achieve his aim of 'not coming last' - Go Snow Leopard, Go!

You haven't said where you are based so I have listed below some websites where you can find information from some of the established re-enactment groups I am aware of along with the position as far as I could determine about their scheduled events. N.B. This list is not exhaustive and there area lot of other groups out there (including Australian! more British, German, French, Dutch and American) that you will probably find links to on the relevant 'links' pages of each of these groups. In no particular order some of the groups who you may come across are: Ermine Street Guard

Science News report on recent research inot migration patterns which possibly impacts on the recent Future of Archaeology thread citing 12 archaeological 'predictions' for the next 10 years.

I suspect that to some extent the thundering silence to this topic up to now probably says it all. Yes I have suffered through various explanations of the previously and currently fashionable theories of archaeology and even browsed through some of the eplanatory text books but probably like most people I left each session of theorising feeling none the wiser and normally with an incipient if not actual headache. I know that some archaeologist live and breath such theorising but most probably are a lot happier in the bottom of a trench with a trowel or trying to understand at a less theoretical level what may have been happening on the site they are investigating from the finds at the site and its surrounding topography. Possibly it is truer to say that outside of the theoretical classroom it can boil down to archeology using theories but if it does it is without the 'capitalisation' of each of the 'isms'?

There are some interesting ideas in this article although within the archaeological community many of the 'predictions' will probably come as no great suprise. It has long been accepted that the common terminology Paleolithic, Neolithic, Iron Age etc mean different periods in different parts of the world e.g. in Europe you can hear references to the Copper Age which is normally simply lumped into the Bronze Age in Britain. My impression is that many of these predictions are really just another step in a continuim of changing ideas or else a plea for support of the particular authors favourite topic (Houdin and the pyramids,r Briers and mummies or even Beckensall and rock art). Developmentsd of technology as you say often but not exclusively revolve around adaptations of existing technology - the problem with any 'new technology' is it has to be calibrated against previous methodologies e.g. the different equipment used for remote sensing magnetometry, ground penetrating radar, resitivity do not produce the same type of results and changing the type of sensor used or the spacing of sensing heads can have massive impacts on what is produced. Archaeologists would often prefer to haev a range of different equipment available for use but it often comes down on how much it costs to hire/ own equipment, how long it takes ot run tests and how easy it is to interprete the results and that is before you consider the costs of some laboratory tests e.g.

I'm afraid the extract from the Wiki search results is possibly a bit misleading. From my reading of the article the main issue the various reports of the burning of "The Alexandrian Library" is that There is a lot of confusion as most, if not all, of the historical accounts are unclear as to precisely which library is being referred to in which account [usually the Royal Alexandrian Library has been assumed in later interpretations almost by default]. Although there is also a suggestion that a collection of books (rather than library] may have been lost during the fire attributed to Caesar's visit rather than a library as such while later spending cuts may have led to individual 'book' or map loses through 'wear and tear' due to documents not being recopied when required. As you pointed out however Wiki goes on to note:

No way I could ever attend, but how I would LOVE to. So hoping people respect the countryside as the article suggests and don't damage anything. The soldiers who built the wall could never have imagined such a thing happening so many years in the future. Or maybe they did. Research on the positioning of watchtowers and signal stations associated with the Wall (c/f Wooliscroft 'Roman Military Signalling) gives a strong indication that the soldiers were probably more concerned with light shows as an indication of which way to send reinforcement rather than as a tourist attraction

Personally I wouldn't have thought it needed 4 blackhawk helicoptors (or whatever they are) to shift a 17 foot tall statue of David. To mee the perspective also seems a bit off, in reality a single Chinnock might have done the job as well On the other hand it does seem an interesting attempt to generate more 'local' interest in their treasures. Personally I am not too sure that the 'problem' is a severe as the ads would seem to indicate. However something which anyone touring a major museum is always liable to note is the number of 'foreign' visitors they can see or hear around them irrespective of which country they are in or indeed how large a proportion of all visitors such foreigners really represent.

Science daily has published some further information on this discovery and mentions that: In case anyone may wish to consider attending this conference this year it is being held as a joint conference of the Roman Archaeology Conference IX along with the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference XX and is being held at University of Oxford, 25 March to 28 March 2010. The conference rotates between different Universities often but not always at joint venues; I attended a previous joint event a few years back and it is a good venue to hear presentations, on the TRACs side, on some of the latest theoretical work (often but not always by younger archaeologists doing their Masters Degree) while the RAC conference provides a series of more formal presentations which can include reports on recent major research projects such as this DNA research. Further details of the conference in cluding abstracts of papers due for presentation can be found here.

Ted, Let me add my thanks for the additional material which is as informative as it is generally interesting. This looks like a very worthwhile project which I hope you are successful with.

I'm not sure if I agree with the description of this tool in the opening line of the article as revealing 'The world's first Swiss Army knife'. Roman 'penknives' have long been known but if I remember correctly the Verulamium Museum at St Albans discovered and have had on display for several years now a similar 'multitool' with at least 2 or 3 different 'functions during excavations there. Admittedly I can't remember to which period it was dated or when it was found but if my memory serves me well the St Alban's multi-tool is made mainly of iron so has not survived as well as this latest partially silver tool seems to have done. It does however indicates that the latest find is not unique and if as seems probable other museums contain similar multi-functional tools puts some doubt as to which, if any, could be construed as the 'prototype' of the modern Swiss Army Knife.

Archaeologically there are (at least) three types of wheat which are commonly found on Roman sites the precise proportion of each at any one site vary depending upon a number of factors including how wet or dry the soil usually is (its one reason the Scots and Irish favoured oats and not just as animal feed), which part of the Empire you are looking at and to some extent which period. There is a suggestion that if the same location provides evidence for more than one variety being grown the Roman military authorities may have favoured one over the others with the 'less favoured' variety usually presumed to have been grown for personal consumption. The main ancient wheat varieties found are: Einkorn Emmer Spelt Its not an archaeological site but Shipton Mill has a good basic history of each of these varieties.

I woulld agree that there can be advantages to radio programming the current 'a History of the World in 100 objects' is a case in point even if each programme is only available on BBC iplayer in the UK for a week after it is broadcast. As far as the OU is concerned most of their course content is now sent out to students on DVD's or CDs so there is no longer a need for them to broadcast it late at night for home recording. They are however supporting continuing to support the production of a number of fact based programmes including documentaries throughout the year the 'Coast' series is a case in point. [N.B. my computer was acting up so I have now added in some appropriate links]

This story has now been picked up by 'Discovery' who in addition to their article also have quite a good picture gallery of the underground remains of the aqueduct and associated nymphaeum.

In Britain we have a number of historic sites which have had some elements recreated but the method used varies considerably. Vindolanda have constructed sections of both turf and stone defensive walls as well as representations of a small temple and domestic buildings - all have been positioned on parts of the site only after the areas concerned have been fully excavated. A number of reconstructions have been m ade along the wall including Arbeia again only after areasd have been excavated. In London because of its size and location - buried below the modern street level a section of the arena in open to visitors with elements recreated by 'holograms' and lines in the floor rather than full size reconstruction. The problem with any attempted reconstruction, as has already been indicated, is our (or the creators) conception of what the past looked and to varying degrees smelled or tasted like. Some 'Dark Rides' have been created and attempt to get over this aspect by wafting smells and sounds through an enclsoed area as visitors are transported on a ride through recreated buildings sometimes built on the location of archaeological finds (not Roman but c/f Yorvik experience). One major consideration is what if the 'reconstruction' gets it wrong and has destroyed the archaeology. You just have to consider Mussolini's numerous rebuilding of Roman remains in many cases putting the 'currently' fashionable interpretation of what 'should' have been there rather than sticking stricltly to what could be 'proved' by archaeology. Against this several times I have been involved in discussions on the merits or demerits of a particular archaeological interpretation where numerous caveats are raised by one party or another to one or other of the theories being discussed so there is no universal answer to when or if reconstructions should be attempted. Ultimately it comes down to costs involved, availability of the location, whether a suitable area can be created without the intrusion of 'modern' distractions (think of site lines across Rome for instance), how important arcaheologically (or otherwise) it is to keep a site in an unreconstructed state and the extent of benefit which may be derived from creating such an 'attraction'/ recreation.

The Independent reports on the discovery of a skeleton which significantly provides DNA evidence of an east-Asian origin in this individual's maternal line. The evidence cannot point to precisely where or even how many generation previously but is interesting for all that and finally provides concrete evidence of Sino-Roman contact which, although mentioned in literature and indicated by coin finds. It has been hard to 'prove' direct rather than indirect trade only contacts through the archaeological record up to now even if as seems probable, from the location and associated burial evidence the individual was a slave on the Imperial estate, it does provide the possibility of other individuals from further away than the near east having entered the Empire during its long history - some may even ahve had ambassadroial credentials as suggested by the article's title. Some key quotes from the full article follow: