The annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is in Orlando, Florida, this week, running from Wednesday through Sunday. I'm not giving a paper this time around (though I did just sign up to do a 3 minute lighting talk in the Digital Data Interest Group), but I'm looking forward to driving down and hearing about what others have been up to lately.

I'm also going to be asking around (and maybe, although I've never been very good at it, attempting to twist a few arms) to try to lock in some participants for a symposium I'm working on for the 2016 Southeastern Archaeology Conference (SEAC) meeting that will be held in Athens, Georgia, in October.  Here is the draft of an abstract I wrote this morning:

I'm hoping this will appeal to a range of scholars, especially those who like to work on multiple scales and address difficult questions.  Ideally, we can get a group of papers together that will be suitable for an edited volume. The first job, however, is seeing what kind of interest there is and who I can get commitments from.  Everything will have to be decided and submitted by the end of August. If you read this and you're interested, please let me know:  aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu.   

I've got several ideas for what I'll contribute to the session. Something related to Kirk is an obvious one, but I've also been spending more time thinking about the Early/Middle Archaic transition after reading Ken Sassaman's book.  I'm wondering if we can: (1) use multiple lines of evidence to identify an abandonment of the Southeast during the late Early Archaic; (2) generate some explanations for that abandonment; (3) understand how social structure would have affected (and been affected by) whatever the causes of an abandonment were and whatever processes were in operation.  And I'm also in the last stages of writing a new agent-based model that I'm going to use to try to attack the equifinality problem that hampers our ability to differentiate among group mobility, personal mobility, and exchange as mechanisms for the very-long-distance transport of stone artifacts.

As promised on Friday, here is a 3D model of the Italian eBay sword (Fake Hercules Sword #4) that includes the "front" surface of the blade. I had to simplify the model several times to get the file size beneath the maximum accepted by Sketchfab, but you can still clearly see the various casting anomalies in the blade that allowed sharp-eyed #Swordgate followers to identify the Italian eBay sword and the "Roman sword" from Nova Scotia as being produced from the same mold.

The default lighting on Sketchfab doesn't show the details well.  I recommend changing the rendering option to "Matcap" to highlight the surface details. And, of course, you can download the model for yourself if you like.

I wish everyone out there could have a close look at the "blade" of this sword. It is really thick, rough, and poorly crafted. When you hold it in your hand for yourself, you have to really put on blinders to ever be able to convince yourself that this "sword" was crafted as a special, magical gift from a Roman emperor. It simply wasn't - there is no way. And the fact that the blades of this sword and the Oak Island sword are the same means that this one isn't just a crude copy of that one - they're twins. I would bet you substantial money that the two swords compare well in almost every detail.

The idea that these are ancient Roman swords is just a joke. There is zero positive evidence for that idea and a heap of accumulated evidence against it. I've placed an open invitation on the Fake Hercules Sword group on Facebook if anyone (including Hutton Pulitzer) would like to come on and tell us why any/all of these Fake Hercules Swords are or are not ancient Roman artifacts. 

Remember when Pulitzer said the actual Italian eBay sword was "fake, cast iron, and whatever"?

Remember when Pulitzer said the photo of the Italian eBay sword was of an "original" sword that was in the Naples Museum? His followers continue to spout that nonsense to confuse the issue. The sword mailed to New Brunswick was the same one shown in the image on eBay. Any person with two eyes can see that.

​Remember when Pulitzer said the Oak Island sword had gold on it? It doesn't. It never did. He was looking at brass exposed by the fake patina being worn away.

Remember when Pulitzer said that Christa Brosseau's high zinc results were wrong and that he would release his own XRF data showing little to no zinc?  But that release of data never happened. Instead, he produced a 3 GB "report" trying to explain why Brosseau's results were consistent with ancient Roman brass. 

And what about that original in the Naples Museum?

And what about the "legend" talking about ten swords being made?

And what about the "magical powers"?

Who still believes this story about a "Roman sword from Nova Scotia"?  And why?  That's a serious question.

It is with a little sadness that I report that I have shipped both copper alloy Fake Hercules Swords (the California sword and the Italian eBay sword) that I've had in my possession back to the rightful owners. I think we can all agree that they served us all well in cracking #Swordgate, and I'm grateful to the owners for sending them to me and allowing me to hold onto them for so long.  While there is still a lot that can be learned from those swords, I obviously haven't been able to find much time to work with them since the semester started. So now the crappy Design Toscano sword is the only one in my office. It alone guards the interior of my Fake Hercules Sword filing cabinet drawer.

The last thing I did with the Italian eBay sword was compile a series of 3D scans of the front surface of the blade. I had to do it in five sections.  'm still processing that data, but will make it available on SketchFab when it's done. Ideally I would have been able to do the back of the blade also and produce a model of the full sword, but I can't realistically say when I would have had the time to follow through with all that. So I just did the front, which is the surface that revealed the common casting anomalies that really busted the "Roman sword" claim during the glorious January of Swordgate.

With the owner's permission, I took some small samples of the base metal of the California sword before sending it back. My plan has always been to try to get metal composition results comparable to the basic data reported by Christa Brosseau (i.e., the percentages of copper and zinc).  I don't have any expertise in metals analysis, so I am dependent upon outside advice and the abilities/capabilities of the equipment and operators available to me on campus. So I hope I've taken enough metal for the SEM and I hope I've collected the samples appropriately. I'll keep you posted on what I learn.

Bon voyage, California and Italian eBay swords. It was nice knowing you.