Archaeology news

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This week's Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets unit is on "what do you do with the stuff you find?"

One of the articles we are to read is about archaeologists testing their ideas about how something might have worked, by doing [whatever] themselves.  Kon-Tiki is an extreme instance.

The article includes a flute made from a swan bone. 

"Not long after the first figurative carvings appear in the archaeological record about 35,000 years ago, so do the first musical instruments."

(Digression -- I wish "they" would always be careful to say "the earliest known" rather than "the first"...................  End of Digression.)

At the end of the flute info, there is a url for a recording of someone playing a swan-bone flute.  The flute player really knows how to play that kind of flute.  The result is musical and appealing.  I can almost hear the camp-fire crackling, as someone else drums an accompaniment to the flute.....



I think that I have given you a link to the article which will show the whole article, but if you only see the section on flutes, look for a "view all," which will let you see info about Kon-Tiki, the first known noodles, a recreation of a Viking boat that was sailed by a crew of 63 men and women from Denmark to Dublin, Ireland, and several other interesting recreations.



Pondering my Coursera class experience, I think the things I learned in Model Thinking were as interesting as the things I'm learning in Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets, but, for me, the learning in DLS is much easier.  There's no math for me to struggle with.  Succeeding at Model Thinking was a personal triumph for me, because it was hard, but DLS is more fun (aside from grading other people's assignments, which I am really not enjoying).


Last week I happened across classes beginning soon at Coursera.  I have signed up for Maps and the Geo-Spatial Revolution, which begins as DLS is ending.  You might be amused by the teaser video for Maps -- I was.  He quotes what he terms "the immortal words" of some beauty contestant:  "Some people don't have any maps, and that's sad."  Sad, indeed.

It's also sad that there is some sort of group work, or peer review, or something, required for Official Completion of Required work.  I'm thinking I'm going to decline to participate in that aspect of the class...................

I love maps, and I love the newfangled things we can do with maps and geography, and I bet I'm going to like Maps (especially if I can actually get myself to NOT DO the parts that I think are icky, rather than doing them and wishing I weren't!).

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