Thursday 8 August 2013

First Exercise!

Option #1 (and the only one!)
Accidental finds in archaeology.
Yes, we've learned about satellite imagery and ground surveying, and yes, I have fallen in love with Google Earth, but either way, that kind of finding just screams BORING. In a way. Now, what about the world of the accidental? The dog that dug about a bone that just happened to be 2 million years old... wait a minute, I have Neanderthals in my back yard? Things like that. So, my little ADLS minions, go out and find a time when something that has been found accidentally and has had major (or no) historical and archaeological consequence because of it, then write it up, make a collage representing it, make a video, whatever, then post it to the blog. Or, have a look around your area and find something extremely important historically yourself, then pretend to the magazines that you were just going for a walk and just happened to have checked out that place on Google Earth before and you just happened to have a metal detector, shovel and toothbrush. Go, go, go! Do it at your own will and at your own pace, and I frankly don't care if it's submitted this time next year.

10 comments:

  1. I can think of two things straight off :

    1. The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran
    2. The Lascaux Cave Paintings

    Happy to put together some stuff on this if of any interest, might take be a while though !

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  2. I can think of two things straight off :

    1. The Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran
    2. The Lascaux Cave Paintings

    Happy to put together some stuff on this if of any interest, might take be a while though !

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  3. Go right ahead, but I think it would be best if you selected just one, so you could devote more time to it.

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  4. I remembered first the Lascaux caves, but as someone got that I had to thing of something, and there was a skeleton from the middle ages or so found in the basement of a house in Sweden a couple of years ago. I have to look more on it, and get some sources

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  5. There was a mastodon skeleton found in a Hyde Park, New York backyard (just down the road a piece from my house.) They were putting in a swimming pool! LOL

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  6. That's pretty awesome Annette! I think that is probably the last place I would expect such a find.

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  7. Sharing this famous story of the discovery of the Ajanta and Ellora caves in India.

    In 1819, army officer John Smith, who was invited on a hunting expedition by the Navab (ruler) of Hyderabad. During this expedition, inside the jungles he noticed the entrance to a cave accidentally. The cave was home to bats and birds and had a thick growth of bush around it. Captain Smith wrote his name in pencil on one of the walls. Still faintly visible, it records his name and the date - April 1819. The authorities were then informed and the magnificent caves in a horse shoe formation was revealed. See the beauty of the rock cut caves and temples here

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4ILp_l10uw

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  8. I could think of Otzi the Iceman who lived some 5,300 years ago, and who was found accidentally in Otztal Alps by the German tourists. All researches are done, so we know a lot about his life and death (and curse!!!). Latest news is research on his preserved blood cells. Here is the link on YouTube to "Otzi the Iceman" 1993 Horizon documentry on BBC 2.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/OetzitheIceman-glacier-199109a.jpg

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTKy0nkQnc
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC9GJY-Yls8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHEo_Zi4X-k
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDhDxlk2nO8

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  9. Roopa's story made me think of Mammoth Cave, which is a huge cave system (almost 400 miles of caves) located in Kentucky in the central United States. It was supposedly "discovered" by European settlers in 1797 who were chasing a wounded bear that took shelter in the cave, but there have been Native American burials and other artifacts found in the cave that indicated it has been in use for thousands of years.
    It is now a national park, which I have visited several times over the years and always find amazingly beautiful.

    http://www.nps.gov/maca/index.htm

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  10. Having just read this I was looking round the net to jog my mind and found this

    http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm

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