Archaeopop: The Past in Popular Culture

Baconalia

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:20:00 +0000

Yes, they went there. Restaurant chain Denny's is channeling the spirit of Dionysus, filtered through the prurient enthusiasm of the American nerd, to bring you 'Baconalia'.

Oh look, you can get a commemorative plate.

From a purely philological point of view, I must point out that bacon was not used in Bacchic rites, nor is the pig one of Dionysus' animal companions (he was rolling with much cooler panthers and serpents). And while I enjoy bacon, I find many items on this menu repulsive:

Bacon milkshakes? Fish with bacon on top? Bacon sundaes?

Now, pretending to 'really love bacon' to show that your life is 'wacky' has been a thing for a little while now (I had my first, and last, bacon covered cupcake at this event in 2009). And its arrival at Dennys is a sure sign that it's almost over, or at least culturally irrelevant. But who in their right mind would choose Baconalia over Bacchanalia? Destroying one's body with disgusting food is no substitute for ecstatic, wine-fueled orgies with members of your secret society. Get your priorities straight, America!

Damn right.

Dirtying the waters: Archaeopop in Macao

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:31:00 +0000

A version of this article first appeared in Pork #10. Get it here.

Macao. This former Portuguese colony off the coast of China's Guangdong province is packed with baroque churches, old forts, and gritty 20th century apartment buildings dyed gray and black by the ever-present pall of air pollution. Since Portugal washed its hands of the place in 1999 the city has been transformed into Asia’s largest casino destination: the Cotai Strip, a giant landfill between two islands, was created about 5 years ago and now boasts the full complement of Vegas hotels (Venetian, Sands, MGM) along with some Asian chains like the Galaxy or the Waldo. Of course gambling on anything and everything is as Chinese as dragons or jade. The Macao Museum even has an exhibit about Macanese cricket fighting, which drew huge crowds of bettors to watch the celebrity insects fight to the death – some of the past champs are actually preserved in the museum!

Champion Macanese Fighting Crickets, 1960s

So gambling is not a new thing: but creating a whole new landscape lets the casino developers indulge their rich fantasy lives, which in Macao has a strong archaeopop flavor.

Entrance to the 'G.M. Casino', where Poseidon is your greeter.

Exhibit 1: the Greek Mythology Casino. Outside, a hideous pastel Poseidon lounges in a huge fountain with some wild-eyed pastel horses. Walking into the atrium, you find yourself staring up a staircase at a giant statue of Zeus, holding thunderbolts. The big guy is flanked by hideous stucco murals of centaurs getting sexy time with Lapith women, and bulbous naked hoplites with chariots going into battle. (Low quality, high relief.) Behind Zeus the kitsch ends, and you step into a elegant warren of VIP baccarat and blackjack tables with eye-bleeding minimum bets ranging from US$150-$2000.

Having some Starbucks with my homie Zeus.

The Greek Mythology atrium. The Chinese New Year Decorations kinda clash with the caryatids.

I wish I had something deep to say about how this casino relates to Chinese culture, but honestly I'm just kind of baffled by this place.

Centaurs get jiggy with Lapith women. There's about 40 meters of this.

Exhibit 2: the Venetian. You probably heard about the one in Vegas, this one is a copy of that, which is a loose interpretation of the real thing. It’s Venice reimagined as an indoor shopping mall. The stinky green water of the real Venetian canals is swapped out for a glowing sapphire blue liquid. You can take a gondola ride, but all the gondoliers are Chinese women.

The lighting and fake sky gives everything a creepy twilight feel, like it’s always about to get dark.

"Piazza San Marco" in the eerie permanent twilight

We ended up at the food court and I got some spicy soba noodles for my oncoming head cold, then went downstairs – under St. Mark’s square – to the giant gambling cavern. I had wanted to play some blackjack, but even here the minimum bets were US$40 and none of the dealers spoke English. I contented myself with losing some Hong Kong dollars on the slots and called it good.

The gates of 'Babylon', Macao Fisherman's Wharf

Exhibit 3: Fisherman’s Wharf. This is not a casino, rather a baffling free amusement park with miniature districts that look like Amsterdam, a Tibetan temple, the Colosseum, Babylon, and a Tang Dynasty fortress. There’s also an interactive volcano (it erupts!) and an incredibly non-PC paintball zone designed to look like an Iraqi village so you can play ‘Marines in Fallujah’.

Black Hawk down!!!!!

Real estate in Macao being insanely expensive, all these things are visually piled on top of each other in a totally loopy juxtaposition. The colosseum has a shopping mall inside – big surprise – and some kind of performance venue on the inside, but looked deserted.

Oh, and did I mention the new year’s decorations? Everything was tricked out in red to usher in the year of the snake. Zeus was flanked by giant strings of firecrackers, St. Mark’s square had a giant red gong, And the Largo do Senado - the old government center of the colony - was crammed with snake decorations.

The Largo do Senado dressed up for the new year

I was not sorry to leave Macao, between the terrible air pollution and the dirty feeling that flourescent lights and gambling leave on your skin. We had a 20th-floor hotel suite with a glorious view… of dirt barges and half-finished landfills.

That is to say, Macao is very ‘inauthentic’, but no one seems to care and I think that’s fine. The romantic old Macao of Portuguese churches, fighting crickets, and fireworks factories was inauthentic too – but in a way that made white European visitors feel comfortable. The focus on historical reconstruction IS part of a fascinating recent Chinese obsession with replicating European stuff. On the mainland there’s tons of new housing developments that try to look like little British towns. Somewhere in tropical Guangdong there’s now an exact copy of the Austrian alpine village of Halstatt, a World Heritage Site.

Austrian Halstatt vs Chinese Halstatt (Gizmodo)

The ‘European lifestyle’ in general is hot for aspiring Chinese plutocrats: China consumes 25% of the world’s luxury goods and there’s so many Italian stores (Balenciaga, Gucci, Pucci, Versace, Armani, Tumi, Ferragamo, etc.) that when I first went to Milan it reminded me of… Hong Kong. The historical stuff is largely an offshoot of this kind of richy-rich Europhilia. But on the other hand it’s not weird for rising powers to associate themselves with older civilizations. The Romans pretended to be Greeks, the British pretended to be Romans, the Americans pretended to be Greeks and Romans, and now the Chinese are pretending to be Americans pretending to be Europeans. These Chinese visions of Greece, Rome, Babylon, and Austria are filtered through Walt Disney’s ghost and the misdeeds of American real estate developers.

The results are pretty entertaining. But I’m disturbed for the Chinese. For the Americans to look elsewhere for history kind of makes sense: since we killed or drove out all the native inhabitants, it was easy to pretend that the whole country was a blank slate. The results of importing Greco-Roman civilization are still weird, though – there’s an exact replica of the Parthenon in Nashville! But given China’s badass 5000 year civilization it’s disturbing that they’re looking elsewhere for inspiration. It seems like a sign of decadence, as if the insane boom of the last 20 years has lost steam and is beginning to veer into unreality.

Egyptomania in Living Color, 1910s

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 03:49:00 +0000

From the collections of the George Eastman House on Flickr, some of the earliest color photographs ever taken. A glimpse at Egyptomaniacs of the 1910s. The autochrome process, developed by the Lumière brothers of cinema fame, was the earliest technique for making color photographs. The Eastman House flickr stream doesn't give the context for these, but aren't they great?

Woman in Egyptian costume, ca. 1915 (Flickr)

Woman posed as Sphinx, ca. 1910 (Flickr)

3D print your own airship trireme

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:11:00 +0000

Whoa, there's a lot of concepts stuffed into that title. But look at the awesomeness.

Artist and designer Arnold Martin produces templates for a variety of fanciful airship models (not functioning, sadly) that you can print out on a home 3D printer such as the MakerBot Replicator 2 (now only $2199). I didn't know I needed one of these, but I do now. Hopefully the prices will come down in 4-5 years, just in time for my kids to make their own Archaeopop-themed toys.

A trireme, BTW, is an ancient greek warship. I love this design but I must quibble slightly: to be a trireme there have to be three banks of oars! (tres = 3, remi = oars.) Otherwise it's just a monoreme. Here's an awesome bonus video of a full-size trireme reconstruction at sea, circa 1991:

Look at 'em sweat!

Hat tip to the inimitable Boing Boing.

Why does everyone hate David's penis?

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Not one but TWO stories this week about people objecting to the penis of Michelangelo's David. Personally, I always thought it was a little on the small size, and not that impressive. But consider these two stories from opposite sides of the globe:

Turkish politician Ramazan Düzen of the conservative 'Prosperity Party' visited Florence last week, Turkish Daily Akşam reports. He was disturbed by what he saw. His observations in brief: "There are idols surrounding the city! They're all uncircumcised! Da Vinci and Michelangelo were homosexuals!"

Ramazan Bey hates the penis... OR DOES HE??!?!?

Google translate does a champion job on this article, here's some excerpts:

Sculptures is surrounded by the city. Sculpture saying disgusting things I'm talking about. For example, there is one that I think will remain very mild word disgusting. This person is known as Michelangelo, Florence, in the heart of the Prophet David's mother drew a picture of a big uryan. As well as uncircumcised! Indeed, touched my blood...

a picture of a picture of a naked giant uncircumcised also inhuman in a way to mount an event occurs. See who you throw a somersault here to come together" he said. Yet another statue! Supposedly John the Baptist as a half-naked state. Jesus is baptized and poultry, as well as their female standing at the beginning of an angel. You can not finish telling the incredible nature is full of symbols and figures, the whole city is surrounded by idols...

And across the world in Japan, a small town is puzzling over the naked giant looming over their town park. More than the circumcision, it seems like it's the bare penis itself that's causing the bother. I'm just going to repost the article here and let you puzzle over what it all means... could these two things be CONNECTED?!??!

Japan town demands pants for Michelangelo's David

(AFP) – 2 days ago

TOKYO — A replica of Michelangelo's Renaissance sculpture David that was erected suddenly last summer is unnerving residents of a Japanese town, with some calling for the naked masterpiece to be given underpants.

Okuizumo town in western Shimane prefecture received five-metre (16-foot) replicas of David and of Greek treasure the Venus de Milo, as donations from a businessman who hails from the area.
The statues were put up in a large public park that also includes a full-size running track, a baseball stadium, tennis courts, a mountain bike course and a play area with apparatus for children.

Okuizumo is Perplexed by the Penis (AFP/Okuizumo Municipality)

"Some people have told the town's legislators that toddlers are afraid of the statues because they are so big and they appeared unexpectedly over the summer," town official Yoji Morinaga told AFP."They are statues of unclothed humans, and such pieces of art work are very rare in our area. Some people apparently said the statues might not be good for their children," he said.

While many locals have welcomed the new cultural additions to the mountainside town of fewer than 15,000 residents, some have asked for David to wear underwear to preserve his modesty, the Yomiuri Shimbun said.

"It is the first time we have had anything like this in our town. Perhaps people were perplexed," Morinaga said.

The relaxing Caracalla spa

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:25:00 +0000

Hot tip for the Archaeopop-minded traveller: the Caracalla Spa in Baden-Baden. Looks like quite a nice spot.

Why anyone would name their spa after Antoninus Caracalla (Emperor from AD 188-217) confuses me a little. Of course, he's known for sponsoring the construction of these enormous baths in Rome:

Beyond bathing, Caracalla (son of Septimius Severus) was known as "one of the most notorious and unpleasant of emperors": he had his brother and cousin killed, forcibly married his stepmother, devalued the currency, put perhaps 20,000 of his enemies to death and was assassinated by his own bodyguard. If you believe the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, during his reign "men were condemned to death for having urinated in places where there were statues or busts of the Emperor." One of the nicer things said about him is that "in spite of his cruelty, immorality, avarice and treachery Caracalla was a brave soldier."

Looks like a mean bugger, doesn't he?

One thing he esepecially was good at was killing Germans in the Agri Decumates, the area between the Danube and the Rhine that includes Baden-Baden. So there's your connection. (German self-hatred?) And I guess there are some actual Roman bath ruins nearby, so there's that also.

Nothing goes with incest and fratricide like bathrobes and a nice juice.

The Caracalla spa does get great reviews on TripAdvisor (4.5 stars!). Strangely, there are also Caracalla Spas in Dubai (offering an 'exotic frangipani body nourish wrap') and in Little Rock, Arkansas ('state of the art manicure and pedicure rooms').

Stalking Turkish Santa Claus

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 08:28:00 +0000

This article appears in PORK #9, out now from Goblinko. Read it all here!

We drove out of the scrub-covered hills into a valley covered in greenhouses and dust. Everything was warped and bent in the July Mediterranean heat: the giant tan mountains to our left, the huge azure sea to our right, the palm trees and the battered red trucks and the squat concrete housing blocks. A week of 100 degrees and 90% humidity changes your brain chemistry, but not enough to explain what we saw next: a giant statue of Santa Claus in the middle of the roundabout.

We were in Demre, a sprawling farm town on the Turkish coast, with houses sprinkled amid a forest of greenhouses filled with vegetables and fruit. Except for the pictures of Santa Claus hanging everywhere, the 3-story concrete apartment blocks and shabby storefronts with blingy neon signs could be anywhere in Anatolia. But this town is special: a long time ago, when the town was called Myra, a young man named Nicholas was was appointed bishop of its Christian congregation. As bishop, Nicholas was known for giving secret gifts, saving the town from famine, and even getting tax breaks from the Emperor. He died on December 6, around 350 AD – and the legend of Saint Nicholas was born.

In Demre we parked and walked over to St. Nicholas’ church. It was ‘under restoration’ and covered in scaffolding. Built in the 9th century, it was part-ruined inside, with some nice Byzantine mosaics. For hundreds of years, the faithful came here to visit the Saint, whose bones oozed a magical healing liquid. Today Nicholas’ tomb is empty. It was smashed wide open in the year 1087, when passing Italian sailors took advantage of a recent Turkish invasion to break into the church, steal Nicholas’ skull and long bones, and bring them back to Bari, where he is now the patron saint. (Fortunately, the bones kept secreting the magical ‘manna’ in their new location. You can buy some today if you’re ever in Bari.) Batting cleanup, some Venetian sailors stopped by during one of the crusades a dozen years later and took the rest of the bones (mostly the small stuff) back to Venice.

We emerged from the coolness of the church into a stew of heat and humidity. Three Russian women were clustered around a statue of the saint, kissing its toes and muttering prayers while they nodded catatonically. In the square outside, the air of contemplation evaporated under an onslaught of souvenir shops covered in gaudy Cyrillic lettering: St. Nicholas is one of Russia’s most popular saints, Russian tourists have recently bought up big chunks of the Turkish coast, and so gift shop owners in Demre speak Russian now.

Across from the gift shops, of course, was another statue: this time a 12-foot high bronze Santa Claus, in his full fur suit and surrounded by children. The weathered inscription on the base commemorates the “International Santa Claus Activities of 1997”, with participants from 27 countries. It hurt my brain a little bit, imagining a gaggle of Japanese, Kazakh, and Finnish children running around this dusty Turkish farm town doing ‘Santa Claus activities’. (What were they doing? Giving presents? Sliding down chimneys? Deciding who’s naughty or nice?)

Demre’s mayor, Süleyman Topcu, got into Santa in a big way about 10 years ago. The nearby coastline is gorgeous everywhere except Demre, so the northern European tourist hordes drove right through without stopping to spend their euros and rubles. (Demre does have some cool ancient cliff tombs, but those were nerds-only back then.) Topcu hit on Santa Claus as his town’s meal ticket. I imagine his internal dialogue was something like: “these tourists love Santa, and we have Santa’s motherfucking home town RIGHT HERE!!!” A few years later, the jolly fat man in the red fur suit stares down at you from lampposts and storefronts throughout the fierce Mediterranean summer. Even the city logo wasn’t spared.

Now keep in mind that Turks are Muslims (the drinking kind, but still), and have a pretty limited interest (like, none) in Christian holidays. This wasn’t going to get in the way of
Demre’s Santa boosters, however: the local Father Christmas foundation started a petition in 1997 to bring St. Nicholas’ bones back from Italy to their ‘rightful resting place.’ After all, Santa might have been from here, but having a (literal) piece of the guy would be much better marketing. The Turkish government did the locals one better in 2009. As part of its campaign to get some of Turkey’s more spectacular archaeological finds (like Priam’s treasure or the Pergamon Altar) back from the countries that looted them in the 19th century, the Minister of Culture demanded that Italy return the Saint’s bones to their original resting place. Archaeologist Professor Nevat Çevik said that everyone should respect St. Nick’s wishes: “he would have said ‘bury me in Bari’ if he wanted to… the remains should be back in his grave so that St. Nicholas can rest in peace.”

Of course, no law covers 900-year old cases of body snatching. The Turkish side also underestimates how crucial magical monastic mummies and saintly skeleton secretions are to Italian Catholicism. There is, in fact, a complete lack of mummies or skeletons on display in your typical mosque. So the repatriation request was always doomed to fail. But Demre has succeeded in roping in tourism: over 400,000 people visited the ‘Father Christmas ruins’ last year, and an endless parade of Russian girls in bikinis and heels mince around the once lonely cliff tombs striking dramatic poses. Local gift shop owners have become experts on sourcing St. Nicholas icons from Chinese factories, and are happy.

For our part, an hour in Demre was quite enough: we drove off into the heat haze, and quickly found some jungle ruins with a much better beach.

Apocalypse blah

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 16:27:00 +0000

I know, I know. It’s December 21, 2012, this is a blog about archaeology and popular culture, and I’m supposed to say something witty about how the world hasn’t ended yet. But to tell you the truth I’ve always been bored to death by the nonexistent ‘Mayan’ ‘Apocalypse’, because it’s so stupid. The Maya Calendar is just… a calendar. The world doesn’t end on the New Year, or Chinese New Year, or the Age of Aquarius, or the millenium. And, as far as I can tell, no one really believed the ‘apocalypse 2012’ thing anyway (unlike the Y2K hysteria).

I’ve heard second-hand that there’s a lot of hippy freaks running around the pyramids in the Yucatán this last week, and there's lots of amusing tidbits out there if you care to look:

A Mexican Indian seer who calls himself Ac Tah, and who has traveled around Mexico erecting small pyramids he calls "neurological circuits," said he holds high hopes for Dec. 21. "We are preparing ourselves to receive a huge magnetic field straight from the center of the galaxy," he said.

There's also some action at a pyramid in Serbia (!)

In Serbia, the place to be is the southeastern, pyramid-shaped Rtanj mountain, rumored to be spared when the rest of the world turns to rubble.

Local residents are cashing in, with hotels being booked out by visitors.

Darko, a 28-year-old designer visiting from Belgrade, told the AFP news agency: "I do not really believe that the end of the world is coming, but it is nice to be here in case something unusual happens."

The Huffington Post liveblog has much more like this:

Stay classy, New York Post

All this seems like a good way to fill up a slow news day (and a slow hotel season): the HuffPo has it right when they described it as a ‘worldwide frenzy of advertisers and new agers'. An unholy alliance if there ever was one.

The only people handling this thing with any dignity are actual Maya communities. Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú has declared that Maya communities will speak tomorrow with their take on the new calendrical era and what it means for humanity. Stay tuned. In the meantime enjoy those magnetic fields.

Berlusconi: the Mummy Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:14:00 +0000

"Return of the Mummy": French daily Libération's snide comment on Silvio Berlusconi's return to Italian politics (after announcing his retirement at least 1000000 times). Not that he will win, but maybe there'll be some undead bunga-bunga.

Stolen from Luca Pareschi's Facebook feed (Grazie, caro!)

Pharaoh Morsi

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 19:44:00 +0000

Revolutions always spawn great graffiti. Mohamed Morsi, Egyptian prime minister, was mocked as 'pharaoh' for his seizure of dictatorial emergency powers (now, apparently, cancelled - or maybe not?)
I love this stencil.

Via the Guardian

Here's a couple more caricatures in the same vein from around the webs:

This one is from the US Republican Party! Their newfound dislike of Egyptian dictators is charming, let's hope it keeps up.

And another from the Temple of Mut blog.

Hard truths about North Korea's unicorn lair

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:58:00 +0000

I SO wish (Gawker)

"North Korean archaeologists discover unicorn lair" is maybe the best lede ever. Yesterday this amazing press release from North Korea got splattered all over the interwebs:

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668). The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392).

The 'unicorn' in this case is a Kirin, a chimera-like beast common to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythologies. The Kirin is right up therein the power rankings with dragons and phoenixes, and has a very decent beer named after it.

Maltier than your average unicorn

Like everything in North Korea, bad translation + opaque political posturing = wackiness. But as Sixiang Wang notes at sci-fi blog IO9:

The English release poorly translated the name of a historical location, Kiringul, as "Unicorn Lair," a very evocative name for Westerners. But in Korean history, the name Kiringul has a rather different significance. Kiringul is one of the sites associated with King Tongmyŏng, the founder of Koguryŏ, an ancient Korean kingdom. The thrust of the North Korean government's announcement is that it claims to have discovered Kiringul, and thus to have proven that Pyongyang is the modern site of the ancient capital of Koguryŏ.

The mausoleum of Tyongmong (Japan Focus

Koguryo is one of these kingdoms, like Troy, Camelot, or Israel, that is kind of legendary, kind of historical, and also key to national identity. The kingdom left archaeological traces from Manchuria (in China) through the Korean peninsula and has been claimed by all three countries. There are over 10,000 Koguryo tombs, many with cool wall paintings. In 2002, South Korea and China traded accusations about the theft of two of these murals from a tomb in North Korea. China and North Korea competed to claim Koguryo on the World Heritage List first, giving UNESCO a giant headache which it solved by putting the Chinese and North Korean sites on the list at the same time in 2004. Adding to the complication, some people think the (long extinct) Koguryo language might have been related to Japanese. The political machinations remind me a little of the struggle over Philip of Macedon's tomb at Vergina (Greece), which has variously been claimed as Greek, Macedonian, Albanian, or Bulgarian heritage.

The Kiringul 'Unicorn Lair' (via IO9)

North Korea, mind you, has a history of weirdo nationalist archaeology (which also suits South Korean nationalists) and of associating its rulers with magical powers. The fact that the 'lair' happens to be in Pyongyang strengthens North Korea's claims to be the inheritor of Korean history, and as Wang speculates in that IO9 article, its claims that Kim Jong Un is the latest in a line of superhuman rulers.

Moon and Sun dieties from a Koguryo tomb (Japan Focus)

The hard truth about the unicorn lair: it's more politics than cheerful insanity. I wish it was the other way around.

Read MOAR:

No, the North Korean government did not claim it found evidence of unicorns [IO9]
The contested heritage of Koguryo [Japan Focus]
North Korean archaeology of convenience [Far Outliers]

Post scriptum: I love that a science fiction blog has the web's best coverage of an archaeology story. For more on the connections between the two, read: Archaeology is Science Fiction. And don't miss: more unicorn coverage on Archaeopop.

One Minute Meme: All Creative Work is Derivative

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 23:13:00 +0000

Nina Paley's One Minute Meme for Question Copyright:

The whole history of human culture evolves through copying, making tiny transformations (sometimes called "errors") with each replication. Copying is the engine of cultural progress. It is not "stealing." It is, in fact, quite beautiful, and leads to a cultural diversity that inspires awe.

This video's got me grinning ear-to ear. Music by Todd Michaelsen. Thanks to Patch Crowley, whose Survival of Antiquity tumblr is the ideal form of archaeopop sensibility.

The 'making of': Nina recruited a team to take go to the Met in New York "to find clear examples of visual language evolution". 900+ images and a lot of photoshop later, she had the images to make this video. Take a bow, Jesus!

Osiris-Themed Roller Coaster

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:36:00 +0000

"Fly Osiris", the new roller coaster at 'Parc Astérix' in France. The "new PHARAONIC attraction"! Whatever you want to say about the French, at least they like a little archaeology in their theme parks. Spotted in the Paris Metro. Bonus points for the ironic graffiti (Osiris = god of the dead)

Rise of the drones

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:43:00 +0000

The drone revolution reached archaeology this summer. Archaeologists from Vanderbilt University are using a backpack-sized styrofoam drone called Skate to map the early colonial Peruvian site of Mawchu Lllacta from the air.

The drone can carry 1080p HD video cameras, infrared sensors, cameras, or other instruments. You can program its flight path to cover a desired area, then let it go. As Prof. Steven Wernke explains in the above video, can gather data equivalent to 3 seasons of ground-based mapping in about 10 minutes. What do you do with it then? Make a 3D model of the site, identify new features, really, whatever you want.

The Aurora Flight Sciences Skate drone

Another drone in archaeological use is the Microdrones md4-200, which was fitted with a stereoscopic camera in order to reconstruct some Scythian burial mounds in Russia and record this pyramid in Querétaro, Mexico.

Aerial surveillance never had such a funky soundtack.

Now I tend to think of drones as sinister, immoral military technology, which they are. Aurora brags that the Skate puts "first-hand intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for pop-up and fleeting threats... in the hands of the individual warfighter". They illustrate this with a goofy promo video, which dramatically reenacts a US soldier using a Skate to track down a trailer-dwelling redneck. Unconstitutional as hell, but that's a feature, not a bug. The interest in these things goes all the way to the top: the attentive news reader will have noticed Barack Obama's nauseating personal involvement in murder by drone in a number of countries. Drones are bad news for civil liberties and the rule of law.

On the other hand, many commercial technologies, including the interwebs you're reading this on, originated as US military projects, then trickled down to any number of useful consumer technologies. GPS on your iPhone, high-quality satellite imagery (Google Maps), and many more fit in this box. And drone tech is getting dirt cheap, spawning whole communities of DIY drone enthusiasts. Apparently Bill Gates wants to deliver vaccines to places in Africa using drones. And for the price of an iPad (the cheapest one mind you), you can go to Amazon and buy yourself a drone that you can control with your iPhone via wifi. I hear protesters in certain countries are using them to monitor the police now. The best part is, in the US flying your own spy drone is still legal!

Anyway, from this point of view it's no surprise that archaeologists are taking up the technology. It makes me a little sad that all those pre-digital age site mapping skills I learned as a wee sprout are now transcended, but the alternative is so much better. Finding sites, mapping sites, monitoring conservation, maybe someday even doing geophysical survey - all these things can be done at high quality for extremely low cost compared to a few years ago. I predict this technology will be close to mandatory within a few years.

Hobbits run afoul of trademark

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 17:28:00 +0000

Kevin Stead/COSMOS

It seems the contemporary masters of Middle-Earth would rather not have hobbits in the fossil record. Reports the Guardian:

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Homo floresiensis, the three-foot-tall species of primitive human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, would come to be widely known as "hobbits". After all, like JRR Tolkien's creation, they were "a little people, about half our height". But a New Zealand scientist planning an event about the species has been banned from describing the ancient people as "hobbits" by the company which owns the film rights to The Hobbit.

Dr Brent Alloway, associate professor at Victoria University, is planning a free lecture next month at which two of the archaeologists involved in the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, Professor Mike Morwood and Thomas Sutikna, will speak about the species. The talk is planned to coincide with the premiere of The Hobbit film, and Alloway had planned to call the lecture "The Other Hobbit", as Homo floresiensis is commonly known.

But when he approached the Saul Zaentz Company/Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns certain rights in The Hobbit, he was told by their lawyer that "it is not possible for our client to allow generic use of the trade mark HOBBIT."

His first mistake was asking in the first place - I doubt these guys are patrolling the halls of academe for trademark infringement. Or then again, maybe they are. At any rate, the talk title was changed to "A newly discovered species of Little People – unravelling the legend behind Homo floresiensis." "Little people" still has a pleasantly Tolkeinian ring to it, I suppose.

The Tolkein Estate was uninvolved in this particular bit of mean-spiritedness.

Stone Age Zombies vs. Oldest Gay Caveman

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 23:16:00 +0000

Look, scientific proof of caveman zombies.

Every generation writes the past it wants to read. This week, my favorite greenwashing network has a seasonally-appropriate article on Stone Age zombies:

The zombie apocalypse may be much more than a plot device exploited by modern horror movies. In fact, fears about the walking dead may go back all the way to the Stone Age. Archaeologists working in Europe and the Middle East have recently unearthed evidence of a mysterious Stone Age "skull-smashing" culture, according to New Scientist. Human skulls buried underneath an ancient settlement in Syria were found detached from their bodies with their faces smashed in. Eerily, it appears that the skulls were exhumed and detached from their bodies several years after originally being buried. It was then that they were smashed in and reburied separate from their bodies.
According to Juan José Ibañez of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, the finding could suggest that these Stone Age "skull-smashers" believed the living were under some kind of threat from the dead. Perhaps they believed that the only way of protecting themselves was to smash in the corpses' faces, detach their heads and rebury them apart from their bodies.

But here's the creepy thing: many of the 10,000-year-old skulls appear to have been separated from their spines long after their bodies had already begun to decompose. Why would this skull-smashing ritual be performed so long after individuals had died? Did they only pose a threat to the living long after their original burial and death?

Who the heck knows? People do weird stuff with bodies. Sky burial? The Paris catacombs? Until recently in some parts of Greece people would exhume their relatives five years after death and wash their bones with wine. But did these ancient Syrians think the dead would come back in search of spicy brains? Notice that Ibañez (a colleague and a fine guy) doesn't make any such claim - it's the journos trying to make archaeology 'hip and relevant'. It's not the first such 'find': we also have ancient zombies at Hierakonpolis in Egypt, Cahokia in Illinois, Easter Island, and Ireland.

It reminds me a lot of the gay caveman story from last year:

Does he set off your gaydar?

The skeleton was found in a Prague suburb in the Czech Republic with its head pointing eastwards and surrounded by domestic jugs, rituals only previously seen in female graves. "From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova. "Far more likely is that he was a man with a different sexual orientation, homosexual or transsexual," she added.

The papers had too much fun with this one (headlines: "first gay caveman", "the oldest gay in the village", "caveman outed"), provoking rebukes from the excavators. As John Hawks noted, "to have a 'gay caveman,' you need a skeleton that is both gay and a caveman. And this ain't either!" Indeed, we're talking about the Bronze Age here, and 'non gender normative' is far from our concept of 'gay', (as Kristina Killgrove and Rosemary Joyce elegantly explain). In practice every culture has many ways to express gender, even in ours which sometimes pretends that there's just two kinds.

But ultimately these stories - like a lot of popular writing about the past - are about making our contemporary cultural obsessions seem normal by finding them in an excavation trench. The LGBT struggle for equal rights has been all over the news for a decade now (and winning). And with the proliferation of zombie-themed media in recent years you'd think there was a zombie community in the midst of some kind of recognition struggle too. I've been sloggin my way through AMC's zombie-themed soap opera (much too much family drama for my taste), and puzzling what's behind this increasingly crazy obsession. Why are the US Marines running actual zombie combat drills? Why does the CDC have a zombie preparedness page? I want to say it's a mélange of American fears: foreign hordes, terrorists, and the loss of our empire rolled up together. But I'm still scratching my head.

Regardless, keep your eye out for these archaeological headlines that seem a little too hip to be true: they're pointing to our own present cultural obsessions more than the past. With that in mind, let's look at the logical next step: Clive Barker directs 'Zombies vs. Gladiators'!!!

"My brief to myself on this project is to give the audience not only zombies they have never seen before but also a Rome they have never seen before"!

I'm so excited!

Autumn Lull

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:45:00 +0000

It was a quiet summer at Archaeopop and the trend is continuing into fall. I needed a break from the blog; I love it but it consumes a surprising amount of processing power. After three years, I'm also chafing a little bit at my own self-imposed limits with this blog - sometimes I just want to forget about archaeology and talk about other things. I occasionally daydream about leveraging the blog toward some kind of social media celebrity, but that way lies mental illness, divorce, and let's be honest, poverty. Privacy is the new celebrity anyway, right?

These musings are by way of saying I'm not sure yet what you'll be seeing here in the next few months. There's definitely a new PORK article coming soon (or just read it here), and I'm sitting on some academic articles, story ideas, and a pile of cool photos that I hope to share sooner or later.

And thanks for reading, it makes it all worthwhile.

Sums up the mood at Archaeopop. Spotted in Venice.

This is what 500 tipsy archaeologists look like

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Yep, pretty much like everyone else, but with much more obscure conversation starters. ("So you're working on the Norwegian Iron Age?"). I made it to the Old Student House in Helsinki for the opening party for the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting, after a few rounds with a Scotsman, an Englishman, and an honorary Welshman who lives in Bosnia. I know that sounds like the setup for a bad joke, but I'm not sure what the punchline is yet. The house band is packed with hipsters but they're playing reggae, Michael Jackson, and Elton John; or at least they were when I ducked out for a burger.

Helsinki is trippy, it's filled with blondes and people wearing parachute pants with giant decals all over them. Beer is very expensive.

Also, some people were giving papers today, including myself. More conference highlights later in the week/end.

Also, I'm back from vacation - so the blog will be too.

Etruscan Lands Toilet Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:43:00 +0000

That would be 'Etruscan Lands' toilet paper, provided to us in our hotel in Orvieto. A perfect way to make archaeology part of your everyday life.

The Etruscans were the most powerful and developed pre-Roman civilization of Italy. Orvieto was one of their centers, so the 'Etrusploitation' is pretty heavy around there. Then again, Orvieto has a ton of awesome Etruscan stuff, like the sweet necropolis at Crocifisso del Tufo!

Modern Mummification

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Raised on a steady diet of mail-order esoterica, weirdos need to go the extra mile to impress me. Here's one: the cult of modern mummifiers called Summum.


Cat Mummification in Progress (Wikimedia)

Founded in 1975 in Utah by Summum Bonum Amon Ra ('Corky Ra' to his friends), Summum is a cocktail of neoplatonism, early 20th century hermeticism, and the special revelations Corky Ra received from small blue extraterrestrials. A bunch of his lectures are online, some with great titles like 'Mummification, Kung Fu, and Ale'. It's pretty good stuff as far as new age groups go. They also sell special meditation wine that is aged inside a pyramid:

The sacramental nectars of Summum are just such natural condensers of charged elemental energies. Based upon an ancient pre-Egyptian formula, these soma nectars are produced in a large pyramid in Salt Lake City, Utah. Within the pyramid, they are left in a creative state for seventy-seven days, then aged from one to fifteen years. The nectars are called "publications" because they contain spiritual concepts and information.

This paragon of infographics helps us visualize the process. This is definitely the world's only pyramid that is also a bonded winery.

This is what I really mean when I tell my wife that I'm working on a 'publication' (summum.org)

This is all very entertaining, but what we're really here for is the mummification. The 'modern mummification' process (which they call 'mummification of transference') is different from the ancient Egyptian equivalent:

“The ancient Egyptians turned people into a dried-out object like beef jerky. But our wet process keeps the body fresh and supple,” said Ra. “When, after several months, we remove the bodies of animals that have been kept in my special preserving solution in a sealed tank, their owners are surprised to find their pets have soft fur, eyes that look normal and healthy and there is a total absence of rigor mortis.“ The body being mummified is taken from the preserving liquid vat, cleaned, covered in soft lanolin cream. It's then wrapped in 27 layers of gauze, the only similarity to a typical mummy. The body is then encased in resin (like the natural amber holding dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park) and then painted over and sealed in with a plastic paint. They are next covered in plaster used in broken bone casts and finally, if an animal, covered in gold leaf paint or any other color.

Finally, they are put into solid metal mummiform containers, like the one holding 'Rooster', a bull mastiff (shown here as the gold leaf was being applied). Once finished, you can put the mummy on display in your home, or wherever.

This public access TV video has some great images of the process:

More video from Nat Geo (with some truly goofy moments) and Discovery (who get Corky talking about the little blue extraterrestrials).

It seems like Summum's bread and butter is pet mummification; so far it seems only Corky himself (who died in 2008) has been given the full human treatment. (He and his mummiform rest inside the pyramid, presumably not far from the wine.) According to an interview in Edit International, almost 1500 people have paid up in advance to be mummified after death, including British tycoon Mohammed El-Fayed! According to Corky,

We are dealing with 167 of the rich and famous and their children, some of them movie stars who want their bodies to last as close to forever as possible. They have contracted with Summum to be perfectly preserved with their genetics and DNA to become the advanced beings of the future. We had to sign special agreements with their lawyers that their names would not be used.

One of the implications of 'modern mummification' - or so everyone hopes - is that it will preserve the body and DNA well enough for later revival and pave the way for immortality. It's an archaeopop twist on cryonics and other flavors of 70s futurism - supporting my contention that archaeology and science fiction are more or less the same thing in popular culture.

Corky Ra with a friend (source)

I find myself totally liking these people. They're new age but in no way sinister, and provide a bizarre but interesting service. They seem so All-American. Hopefully one day I can make it to the pyramid!

600-year-old underwear found in Austrian Castle

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 10:44:00 +0000

It sounds like a punchline to a very nerdy joke, but the science checks out: a cache of linen found in Lengburg Castle in East Tyrol is the 'missing link' in underwear history. Carbon-dated to about 600 years BP, the find was kept on the down low until it could be authenticated.

Physorg reports:

Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old... Although the linen garments were unearthed in 2008, they did not make news until now says Beatrix Nutz, the archaeologist responsible for the discovery. Researching the items and carbon dating them to make sure they were genuine took some time. "We didn't believe it ourselves," she said in a telephone call from the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. "From what we knew, there was no such thing as bra-like garments in the 15th century."

The university said the four bras were among more than 2,700 textile fragments — some linen, others linen combined with cotton — that were found intermixed with dirt, wood, straw and pieces of leather. "Four linen textiles resemble modern-time bras" with distinct cups and one in particular looks like today's version, it said, with "two broad shoulder straps and a possible back strap, not preserved but indicated by partially torn edges of the cups onto which it was attached." And the lingerie was not only functional. The bras were intricately decorated with lace and other ornamentation, the statement said, suggesting they were also meant to please a suitor. While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear

Lest the lads feel left out, also discovered was this sexy number, which is a pair of men's underwear:

"We didn't believe it ourselves," she said in a telephone call from the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. "From what we knew, there was no such thing as bra-like garments in the 15th century." The university said the four bras were among more than 2,700 textile fragments — some linen, others linen combined with cotton — that were found intermixed with dirt, wood, straw and pieces of leather. "Four linen textiles resemble modern-time bras" with distinct cups and one in particular looks like today's version, it said, with "two broad shoulder straps and a possible back strap, not preserved but indicated by partially torn edges of the cups onto which it was attached." And the lingerie was not only functional. The bras were intricately decorated with lace and other ornamentation, the statement said, suggesting they were also meant to please a suitor. While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-07-year-old-linen-bras-austrian-castle.html#jCp

Good for budgie-smuggling and not much else!

Modern Charioteers: Robot Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Last week we saw some sick modern motorcycle chariots. I wouldn't want you to think the chariot revival is only for manly biker men, so here's something for you Berkeley types:

A SOLAR POWERED CHARIOT DRAWN BY ROBOT OBAMA.

via Wackymobile

Drink it in.

This chariot previously came in George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger models. Designer Bob Schneeveis is a neurobiologist and longtime alternative energy designer. Watch his hysterical interview with the 'Hippie Gourmet' here (embedding disabled) to see robot George Bush in a gladiator outfit pulling two hippies in tie-dyed shirts and funny hats around Schneeveis' neighborhood.

Here's the chariot in action at Maker Faire SF 2011! (Sans Obama head)

The Modern Charioteer

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 10:00:00 +0000

In my usual morning reading about the global economic meltdown my mind was blown by this modern-day charioteer cruising on the interstate. He's driving this thing with reins. Note the NASCAR billboard!

via Art Car

Chariot racing was the main spectator sport of Greek and Roman civilization, complete with heroic riders, politicized racing factions and city-destroying sports riots. Our anonymous driver above isn't the only one to feel the magic. Youtube user Magician132 has video of his awesome motorcycle chariots in action at Sturgis. He sells these things!

Says Magician132:

I build three a year and the price range is around $100,000.00. It's worth every penny. You can have three or four people with you and carry a bunch. The best way I can describe riding on my chariot is as follows, especially doing about 70 MPH, that's when you really get this feeling that comes over you, picture yourself standing on a flying carpet as everything goes floating by, it's awesome. That's the feeling, nothing like it.

They were going to do an exhibition at Daytona Beach in 2008, with WCW wrestler Buff Bagwell as the celebrity spokesman! But the shipping company lost some crucial parts so it didn't happen. Bummer. This looks like a sickeningly awesome ride.

Because I'm a nerd, I have to point out that this idea was first explored back in the early days of motoring. Check out this German four-bike chariot from 1938.

via Silodrome

Archaeopop in PORK: Occupy the Anthropocene

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I've been doing an Archaeopop column for PORK, the Pacific Northwest's magazine of Rock n' Roll, Weirdo Art, and Bad Ideas. Issue #7 is out now, read it online here. This month, a meditation on Occupy, trash, and the anthropocene.

Yes I am jumping on this Occupy bandwagon, because it’s for real. As philosophy, it’s a serious upgrade of the hippy ‘be here now’: because it’s not just being, but OCCUPYING. Don’t be the navel-gazing wallflower, get in the pogo pit. Be French Canadian and go around banging on a pot. Whatever you do, live your life in full view.

Human history is filled with daring occupations, big and small. I was reading in Science magazine today about the first people to occupy the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. They showed up 9,000 years ago, as soon as the glaciers melted – even before plants started growing out there – and made lives for themselves. In fact, humans got everywhere in really ancient times with nothing but stone tools, and knowledge of the stars. Last issue I wrote about how maybe people came to ancient America from the east as well as the west. Even more impressive is the people that made it from Africa to Australia 50,000 years back, or the Polynesians and Melanesians who journeyed to the Pacific islands and even Madagascar. Those people weren’t just sitting around ‘being’, they were occupiers.

Now let me get to the other half of the title. The anthropocene is the geological age we live in right now. It means ‘new human age’. That’s right, we’ve changed the chemistry and geology of the earth enough to have a whole new age named after us. Like it or not, the world we live in is made by our own hands. We’ve been terraforming the planet for at least 50,000 years and even the deserts of Australia and rainforests of Brazil have the stamp of humanity on them. After thousands of years of thinking of nature as either our implacable enemy, or our utopian Eden, we have to come to terms with the fact that nature… is us.

Now a lot of people left and right are seriously invested in pretending that humans are just spectators in this world of ours. The fundies think that climate change can’t happen because it’s not in the magic book. Deep ecologists have the idea that the world is some kind of holy virgin being raped, so everyone should castrate themselves to make it stop. We live in a culture of propaganda and delusion, where driving a Prius saves trees and coal is clean. Occupying the Anthropocene is about cutting through this haze by naming and claiming all that we do as humans. If we think of the world as one big archaeological site – because it IS one – then we can use an archaeologist’s eye to understand what’s really happening. What do you find at a dig? Human acts and the traces they leave. It’s garbage, but it’s also treasure – because it tells us about things that really happened rather than what others want us to believe.

A vignette: Archaeologist Bill Rathje ran an excavation for 20 years in a Tucson landfill. Then he went and talked to the families whose trash they were digging up. Guess what? The truth was in the trash! People recycled less and threw away much more. They ate more junk food, drank more booze, and looked at more porno magazines than they admitted. But they weren’t lying, they just didn’t want to remember the truth. As Rathje said: "That what people have owned -- and thrown away -- can speak more eloquently, informatively, and truthfully about the lives they lead than they themselves ever may." (Rathje died in May at age 66. I think he’s a hero of the Anthropocene.)

You get it, don’t you? You know you’ve felt like garbage for a lot of your life. Maybe they literally threw you in a dumpster at some point. But listen – it’s good to be trash, because trash where the truth is. If you can see the people and things that have been discarded, you can lift the veils of propaganda about ‘how the world really is’. To do that, you need to become an archaeologist and learn to see patterns in a random stream of waste.

Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, once visited a British garbage dump and found the meaning of love. He said, “to recreate, if not beauty, than an aesthetic dimension in things like this – in trash itself – that is the true love of the world. Because what is love? Love is not idealization. Every true lover knows that if you really love a woman or a man you don't idealize him or her. Love means that you accept a person with all its failures, stupidities, ugly points, nonetheless the person is an absolute for you, everything that makes life worth living. You see perfection in imperfection itself. and that's how we should learn to love the world. A true ecologist loves all this.” [Points to huge pile of garbage.]

Our Anthropocene era is a hot mess, a glorious ruin, and it is sometimes dirty and ugly. But turning away in shame is a betrayal. We’re all hideous bags of mucus and blood, bacteria and crap, but we still love and are loved. In that spirit we have to Occupy the Anthropocene, jump in the mosh pit of the world, wade shamelessly into environmental degradation, get a bloody nose from the fumes, and write it a love note anyway. To kick a destructive habit you have to look the problem in the eye, challenge it to a fight, and keep punching until you win. It’s an alchemical process: Occupy, archaeology, and everything else worth doing takes base matter – ancient trash, hippies, whatever – and tries to transmute it something eternal. Lead into gold, garbage into history, and – we can hope – discontent into revolution.

Rihanna and the Sphinx

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 09:37:00 +0000

Rihanna sings "Where have you been" at the Hackney Music Festival last weekend.

I like the glowing pyramid behind the Sphinx. This is totally part of her Illuminati mind control conspiracy program. Between that and those stocking-shorts things she's wearing, I think I've become a minion.