Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Fresh autopsy of Egyptian mummy shows cause of death was TB not cancer

The mysterious death of an Egyptian woman, whose mummy became a public spectacle in Georgian Britain, has been solved by a team of researchers in London . . .

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Tutorial Week 3 Sept 28th – Oct 2nd CCI

The Neolithic Revolutiuon- Childe, Cauvin, Catal Höyük: Hodder’s Entanglement
47-51 84- 120

1. Define: subsistence, sedentary, predicated on, Levant, historiography, stratigraphy, Anatolia, naturalistic, schematic, figurative; [5] dialectic [2].
2. Explain the significance of Jarmo and Jericho (47-49). [4]
3. What are Mithen’s three features of the Mesolithic (lecture) and Cauvin's definition of 'neolithisation' (93). [5]
4. “Unless knowledge is defined as the endless accumulation of factual information, it is pointless to ask of prehistoric archaeology only that it confirms what we have already ‘known’ since the middle of the nineteenth century, or one is confusing science with ideology.” (89) Cauvin argues against a merely descriptive neolithic historiography and against the limitations of the “conception, founded on unverified ‘materialist’ premises concerning human nature . . . “ (89). Explain his argument. (86-90) [10]*
5. What have researchers under Hodder’s influence sought to achieve by means of ‘symbolic archaeology’? [2]
6. "What 'characterizes' a period is almost always prefigured in the period that precedes it. The cultural blossoming of the last hunter-gatherer cultures which would contribute to the Natufian culture was the product of this continuity." (Cauvin, 93). Describe the features of the Kebaran Culture.
7. Describe the cultural and economic features of the Natufian Peoples. (93-6) [6]
8. Explain the ‘new’ and ‘unique “ideology”’ found throughout the Near & Middle Eastern Neolithic? (97-102) [7]
9. Hodder’s interpretive strategy for understanding the material evidence at Catal Höyük is to speak of ‘four spheres of activity’. Explain these. (103-117) [12]
10. “To move the location of an oven may not seem like much, but in its entanglements such a change can have broad impact.” (Hodder, 116- 120) Explain, with examples, Hodder’s idea of ‘entanglement’. [16]

Historical Materialism: The class struggle in the Roman Republic

"Today we begin publication of an important new series by Alan Woods, which provides a Marxist explanation of the processes that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic. Here the method of historical materialism is used to shed light on an important turning-point in world history . . .

The whole of science is based on two basic assumptions: 1) that the world exists independently of ourselves and 2) that we are capable of understanding it. If science can explain the mechanisms that govern the social organisms of bees, ants and chimpanzees, why should it be impossible to explain the workings of human society and the forces that determine its development? Marxism rejects the view that history is a string of meaningless and incomprehensible events. Historical materialism asserts that the history of human society has its own laws, and that they can be analyzed and understood. The laws that govern social development were first laid bare by Karl Marx. In the famous introduction to The Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains the basis of historical materialism in the following terms:

 
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

With these words, the founder of scientific socialism once and for all disposed of all metaphysical, idealist and subjective explanation of human history . . ."

The Fakes of Hacilar, from Time magazine 1971

Few things anger archaeologists and art historians more than being taken in by fake antiquities. A recent series of laboratory tests gives them good reason to be furious. A team of British and European experts, using a new dating technique, has reported that 48 of 66 objects thought to be from Hacilar, a settlement that existed 7,000 years ago in southwestern Turkey, are forgeries . . .

Tutorial Week 2 Sept 21st- 25th CCI

Braudel & Lewis-Williams 52-83

1. Where does Palaeolithic art have its source, in Braudel’s opinion? [2]
2. How does L-W define “method”? [2]
3. Explain L-W’s ideas about discovery, theory and evidence. (61-2)[7]
4. Explain the terms ‘art mobilier’, ‘parietal’, ‘anthropomorphic’, ‘therianthropes’. [2]
5. List three ways in which ‘Neanderthal Man’ differed from Homo sapiens. Why does L-W think that anthroplogists transported back in time would be at a loss among Neanderthals but not so a few thousand years later in the Upper Palaeolithic? [5]
6. Why was ‘the very idea of Palaeolithic art deeply disturbing’ initially? [3]
7. What are some limitations of the theory of explanation of ‘art for art’s sake’? [5]
8. Briefly explain the ‘problem’ Reinach created and his and the Abbé Breuil’s Totemism and sympathetic magic hypothesis. [5]
9. What did Vico think the essence of being human is and what is meant by ‘humanity created itself’? [5]
10. Explain the terms langue and parole, and synchronic and diachronic. [4]
11. Define ‘infer’, ‘induce’, ‘deduce’, ‘binary opposition’. [4]
12. Explain the difference between ‘superstructure’ and ‘infrastructure’, why would a ruling class seek to ‘mystify the social relations of production? (76-8) [7]
13. How does Lévi-Strauss explain the role and function of myth? (78) [4]
14. How can Leroi-Gourhan’s mythogram be said to be a ‘clear version of Lévi-Strauss’ Structuralism’? [3]
15. What is the ‘epistemological principle’ on which L-W’s later chapters are posited? (81-2)[4]

Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found in Staffordshire

A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field - the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found . . .

Thursday, September 17, 2009

BBC Report 1999: First farmers discovered

A preview of Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler

The story of Moctezuma, last king of the Aztecs, is one of absolute power – and abject surrender. And now it is the subject of a haunting new exhibition at the British Museum.

The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara

Turkey stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. The lands within its borders and the surrounding Black Sea region have seen centuries of fascinating history and pre-history. Their legacy: knowledge and lessons of potentially vital importance for all our futures. The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) is internationally renowned for over 60 years’ work supporting, enabling and encouraging world-class research in Turkey and the Black Sea region in the fields of history, archaeology and related social sciences . . .

Çatalhöyük

This Web site is designed for those interested in the ongoing excavations at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Its aim is to provide information about the activities of the Project and of the different aspects of the research being conducted at Çatalhöyük.