Category Archives: Archaeology

Grave Dowsing?

What’s a water dowser do when his method is demonstrated time and again to be nonsense on stilts? Turn to dowsing for graves, I suppose. It wasn’t mentioned if the dowser who worked for Mississippi landowner about to lose a … Continue reading

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People. Fire. Climate.

“Humans and fire are interconnected all the way back to our beginnings,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, principal investigator on the grant and director of the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. Continue reading

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The Science Forum.org

http://thescienceforum.org and http://thescienceforum.net There once was an Internet forum called The Science Forum. Then our friend, who owned the software, database, and all the writings of our community decided to move on with his life and sell to more capable … Continue reading

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Lewis Binford has Passed

I rarely mention the passing of notable people on this blog. But I find that I have to make time and space for an archaeologist who’s been so influential on so many. Lewis Binford, 79, passed away at his home in Kirksville, … Continue reading

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Happy New Year

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2010: The Year in Pseudoarchaeology

Compared to previous years, 2010 wasn’t really a productive one for the pseudoarchaeologists. Very little has been said about the Bosnian Pyramid, and rightfully so since it wasn’t a pyramid. The James Ossuary went back to the toilet it came … Continue reading

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When does vandalism become an archaeological feature?

When it’s done in antiquity, of course. Below are some photos of a particular kind of vandalism commonly referred to as “pilgrim gouges.” I’ve noticed these peculiar scoops of stone in various photos of columns, ashlar blocks, monuments and so … Continue reading

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ET Impact Probably Didn’t Wipe Out Clovis

In a paper published in PNAS in 2007[1], Firestone and others suggested that there was evidence that shows that the Younger Dryas period in the Northern Hemisphere was interrupted by a barrage of extraterrestrial comets at about 12.9 ka. This … Continue reading

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A Romantic Adventure-Tale of Treasure and Archaeology

You know how you start googling for information on one thing but end up going down a completely different rabbit hole from the one you started on? This happened to me over the weekend and I found myself looking for … Continue reading

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4,000 year-old brain surgery?

An archaeologist from from Ankara University, Fikri Kulakolu, reports the discovery of a 4,000 year old skeletonwhich has evidence of “a successful brain operation” in which the patient survived. This sort of trephination isn’t unheard of in the ancient world, … Continue reading

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