Well, it’s 11:59 November 4th, 2008, Election Night in the US. Barack Obama has just been declared the 44th president within the last hour. And Live From New York It’s Four Stone Hearth…
That’s right, it’s time again for the anthropology blog carnival that brings together the best posts of of the last two weeks or so for your reading enjoyment. You can visit the official Four Stone Hearth Page where you will see future editions, such as Moneduloides on November 19th, or sign up to host in the future!
Without further ado, here’s the show.
I’ll start off with Remote Central, offering a post called Human Evolution on Trial – Indo-Europeans. Guest blogger Terry Toohill offers one part of a multi-post discussion on linguistics and archaeology as they relate to human diversification and migration:
In Part II we have looked in some detail at several geographic margins of the human distribution. Our examination of both the Polynesian and Indo-European ancestors of the New Zealand population showed that human migration, language replacement and gene flow has been virtually continuous for at least the last five to ten thousand years. This process has led to the patterns we see for the development of races and diversification into tribes, sometimes speaking different languages.
A similar topic can be found over at Anthropology.net, which has an article titled On The Genetic Similarities & Linguistic Diversity Of The People From The Bismarck Archipelago & Bougainville, Melanesia.
The earliest inhabitants of the area arrived around 40,000 years ago, but there was an additional migration into the region about 3,300 years ago. We know that primarily because of the linguistic diversity. The two major languages are Oceanic and Papuan.
Anthropology.net brings a second interesting article dealing with physical anthropology. Neanderthal Broad Noses Due to Lower Face Prognathism offers a discussion of the nature of Neanderthal nasal physiology.
All this may sound like adaptionist mumbo-jumbo, but researchers have observed these adaptations to cold climate in other animals. Compare the profiles of polar bears, walruses, and mammoths to cheetahs, antelopes, and giraffes, and you’ll see how some of this makes sense
Over at Archaeozoo, one finds the sort of in depth archaeological analysis the dite often presents. This time, the author digs into phytoliths and lithic use markings.
Both sites have a sequence of volcanic tephras with a well-developed soil in the upper horizon of each. The volcanic events have been dated by radiocarbon. The tephras have been sourced and cross correlated by macroscopic and geochemical techniques.
Archaeoastronomy returns from a bit of a hyatus in order to answer some readers’ questions, I might suggest not citing this page in your freshmen term papers
An Equinox is a small marsupial found in Australia. It’s four-legged, about twelve inches high off the ground and looks a bit like a cross between a horse and an ox, hence the name Equine Ox
Dr. Martin at Aardvarchaeology offers a more serious post, discussing his being labeled as a new archaeologist, and the actual differences between current types of archaeology
I’d like to say that I am neither a culture-historical, a New nor a post-processual archaeologist. I’m science friendly, I’m hostile to untestable speculation, and above all I’m hostile to jargon, such as that of the aesthetic disciplines in the humanities. But I fail to see any radical “paradigm shifts” in the history of my discipline, and I believe all interpretive determinism to be unscientific.
Jlowe, the archaeologist not the super mommy, writes at Where the Hell Am I. Currently, he is blogging on the Texas Archaeological Society Meeting.
So yeah, I got to drink a lot of beer, meet some new people and catch up with some old friends, and I learned stuff! I also found out that Lubbock is really boring and ate almost no vegetables all weekend.
There is a bit more of actual content and informattion in there too.
I love Catalhoyuk. I am not a neolithicist or really that intersted in prehistory, but the site is close to me because my friends dig there, and some of the outreach carried out under Hodder is very cool. Middle Savagery offers a look at some of the work that goes into this, with a brief post on some of the second life construction being carried out at Catalhoyuk.
I’m slowly getting better with the building tools in Second Life. The platform’s texture is actually from the wrong building, and the horns are “concrete” textured, but it’s a start. I have to make the features of the building before I can burn them, right?
Neuroanthropology offers up two articles this Four Stone Hearth. The first, looks at the use of the term “Anthropologies“, and its possible substitution for “cultures”
I really like this use of “anthropologies,” and the fact that it got past the copy editors at the Times must mean that they assume it has enough common meaning for people to grasp some general concept behind it.
Next up, an article discussing a film clip and multimodal redundancy
But why am I posting this clip on Neuroanthropology, I dare to pretend to hear you ask? It’s because of the multimodal redundancy of audio and visual signals that link socio-cultural history with neural processes through the ongoing construction of meaning from the musical sounds observed and dance moves heard. a ‘faite-totale’! (sp?)
One of my major areas of interst in archaeology is provenance of artifacts and sites and how we use them today. In Mexico, archaeologists are attemtping to bring legal recourse against concert organizers for staging an event in the site of Chichen Itza.
MERIDA, Yucatan — Placido Domingo’s concert at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza tonight is being billed as “the world’s greatest tenor at one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World,” a claim few lovers of opera or history would dispute.
But some Mexicans question whether the show should go on at all.
Finally, there have been a number of articles recently on the earliest occurences of archaeological remains of specific types. This is always a big issue in archaeology, because it’s a great way to be known among other things. I offer up links to some of the origional articles, so that you can be the judge of the validity of these claims.
The oldest dog:
An international team of scientists has just identified what they believe is the world’s first known dog, which was a large and toothy canine that lived 31,700 years ago and subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox and reindeer, according to a new study.
The earliest creation of fire:
The new study, published in a recent edition of Quaternary Science Reviews, mapped 12 archaeological layers at Gesher Benot Yaaqov in northern Israel.
The oldest “Hebrew” text:
The 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century B.C
Ok, so maybe I made it a bit obvious to see which I am a bit ambivulent about.
Remember, you too can have your articles in any edition of Four Stone Hearth. Just go to the site of the next host or Four Stone Hearth.
See you again in fourteen over at Moneduloides.
Filed under: Archaeology, Archaeoporn, Blog Carnivals, Peer Review | Tagged: Anthropology, Archaeology, Four Stone Hearth, Linguistic Anthropology, Physical Anthropology
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Hi, thanks for posting the Indo-European post at remote central, although I hasten to point out that it was actually written by guest blogger, Terry Toohill.
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A list of the various “oldest” things would be a quick insert into history and geography classes in high schools — somebody oughtta do it.
And don’t forget the “oldest animation” and “oldest musical instrument” (I have posts on both at my blog, and I welcome controversial discussion).
Four Stone Hearth is, as always, a delight. Thanks a lot.