Andy White Anthropology
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The Construction of My Rooster Sculpture

12/27/2016

 
The rooster is done, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I think working at this scale (it's about the size of a real rooster) worked well for me because I was able to slow down on concentrate on details. I've found that when I make large things (such as the Tyrannosaurus) it's tough to spend a lot of time on small areas becauase (a) I'd never get done and (be) I just assume that the details would get lost anyway. Smaller things can fit inside the house, also, which means I don't have to design them to withstand weather. So maybe the success of the rooster is a sign that smaller scales work better for me.

​I learned a few new tricks with this one and wanted to take the time to show how I made it.
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The key pieces that got the rooster started came from one of these two lawnmowers. I found them both sitting on the curb in late September and wheeled them back to my house while walking the dog. I'm not sure what the technical name for the part is, but wheels on lawnmowers like these are attached to short axles that protrude from steel plates. A pair of those formed the belly and hip section of the rooster. 
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This photo shows the "rough" draft of the legs and body frame. The lower legs are made from round steel rods. To make the sculpture stable, I inserted the "standing" foot though a hole in the brake rotor and welded it all around. 

I started building the shape of the body/neck using bent pieces of from oven racks and a chromed shower caddy. The shape of the back of the neck and the top of the head is formed by a spoon. 

I used two pistons (from lawnmowers) in the interior of the body. I'm never sure how much of the interior will be visible, so I always build things inside. I don't think I've ever built something that was just a hollow shell.

I started fleshing out the upper legs by attaching some pieces cut from the rusted frame of an old school chair.

At this point, it became clear that the legs were disproportionately long. I was originally thinking I would make the rooster crowing, so I was still satisfied with the length of the neck.
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I don't like to buy materials, but in this case I knew I wanted to use butter knives for the wing feathers. I stopped at the Goodwill and bought about $5 worth (at 10 cents each) and also bought a thin steel broiler pan (75 cents) to use for feathers. I wasn't exactly sure which feathers would be which color, but I knew I wanted some of them to be shiny.
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This image shows the rooster after attaching the large feathers of the wings and the first layer of smaller wing feathers. The feathers in that second layer were cut from a rusty serving platter that I got from my mom's collection of odds and ends over the summer. The platter had a green/white/gray design, the faded and rusted colors of which I think made for a really nice effect. The next layer of wing feathers (visible in the next image) was made from the same serving platter with the undecorated side showing.

I've started on the feet in this image. The feathers on the upper part of the leg were made from small pieces cut from a highly rusted pieces of sheet metal.

It was at this point that I realized that the neck was, indeed, too long.


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This photo shows the rooster with the third layer of wing feathers and a shortened neck (I just chopped out a section, re-bent the frame pieces, and welded it back together). I started working on the head by attaching a pair of banged-up spoons.

My original idea was that the eyes would go in the concave areas that I hammered into the spoons. That would have placed the eyes in the wrong spot.  I realized that only after getting the head mocked up (below) but decided to keep the spoons where they were anyway, which worked out fine. Getting the eyes right and in the right spot is a challenge for me every time.
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The head mocked up with carboard. 
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My first attempt at a beak (using a cut and shaped piece of tubular steel) didn't work out at all. For my second attempt, I tried fabricating one from scratch. I got the outline of the hooked shape I wanted by bending some light steel rods and welding the ends together. I filled in the beak by welding in more bent rods. These pieces came from the same shower caddy that I picked up from the curb just a few weeks before.
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The beak in progress. One of the beauties of steel as a sculpture material is that you can both add and subtract it at any time. When you shape a rock, you can only take pieces away. When you paint, you generally add. When you create something from clay, you can add and subtract to a point, but after you fire a piece it's no longer morphable. Steel can be added and taken away at will. It's a very flexible medium.
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The upper beak in progress, being ground into shape.
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The upper and lower beak parts attached to the head. I realized almost immediately that they were too large. I eventually removed them, cut them, and tried to get them more to scale.  I think the beak ended up looking pretty good, but it's still a little on the large size for a rooster.
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Feathering of the neck in progress. I have no idea how many feathers I cut from that 75 cent broiler pan, but I ended up using the entire thing except for the rolled edges. I cut each of these feathers by hand with tin snips. I folded the end so that I would have an easier time welding them on. Even at the lowest setting on my welder (a Lincoln Electric 125 wire feed) I still had some difficulties burning though them. 

I really like the way the individual feathers curve and twist. Much of the curvature was created during the act of cutting the feathers. I used my hammer to tap the ends into place, trying to preserve a sense of texture and motion while somewhat "taming" the feathers.

This image still shows the over-sized beak.
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Working on the head.  This image shows the shortened beak. I used my welder to fill in the gaps around the beak, the spaces between the three spoons that make up the head, and the sheet metal that used for the sides of th upper neck.
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The head in complete "rough" form. I made the comb and the wattles from pieces of steel that I cut, hammered, and ground into shape. I originally chose the pieces for the color and the sentimental value (they are part of some appliance frame that I haulted out of a trash pile during a road trip to Hell's Bridge, Michigan, with my daughter). Once I got done, though, none of the original character is visible. I created the texture by letting my welder "chatter" across the surfaces.
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I used some of the same sheet metal that I used for the upper leg feathers to make sections for the body. I wanted to give the sense of both the presence of a surface and the existence of an interior. 
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This is the only picture I have of the tail feathers in progress. You can see one of th sickle feathers and several of the straight tail feathers on the ground at the bottom of the photo.

I made the large sickle feathers from the rim/edges of the lid to a chili pot. The other tail feathers were cut from the rest of the lid. I made the quills using metal rods from a yard umbrella that I found on the curb.  The lesser sickle feathers were cut from the same platter I used to make the wing feathers.

​I tried to add some color varation to the feathers by using my propane torch to apply heat.


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The main sickle feathers and large tail feathers attached.
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Nearly complete. At this point, I still hadn't finished the feathers on the back of the neck, cleaned up the head, and trimmed the feet (the middle toes are way too long).
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Done.
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Close up of the head.
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Close up of the foot.

And a Very Merry Swordgate to You!

12/26/2016

 
As we enter Year 2, Swordgate promises to be the gift that keeps on giving. I pulled these images out the Fake Hercules Swords archives so you could benefit from all the hard work we've been doing.  I lost track of who made some of these so I'm not going to bother to try to credit them. Enjoy the fruits of our important efforts!
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My Rooster Sculpture is Almost Done

12/21/2016

 
In my experience, the ingredients of the creative process include just as much frustration and disappointment as satisfaction. More often than not, the gulf between what I see in my head and what I am able to create puts a real damper on the "final" joy of finishing something. The mismatch makes it hard to tell when something is finished.  When does the making stop and the cringing start?

So it's a strange feeling when what I've done and what I set out to do are more-or-less the same thing. That's what happened with the rooster sculpture I've been working on. It's made mostly from local throwaway (a shower caddy, lawnmower parts, a rusty serving platter, a broiler pan, and about 80 cents worth of flatware from Goodwill). It's not quite done yet, but it's pretty close. This is the result of my last few days in the garage:
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And the "Bigfooter of the Year" Award Goes To . . . Man Who Claimed Alligator Leg was Bigfoot Arm

12/19/2016

 
I don't closely follow the goings-on in the world of Bigfoot. For the most part, I've written about Bigfoot claims when they intersect with the domains of archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution. There's a whole Bigfoot culture out there that I know little about. It's an interesting phenomenon, but there's only so much time in the day.

Last December, I wrote this post about the modern-day drama swirling around the claim that the arm of a Bigfoot (quickly revealed to be the articulated leg of an alligator) had been found in Florida.  I was interested in the story because the key ingredients of how it unfolded (including a climate of public interest, a lack of basic scientific acumen about the actual "evidence," profit motivations, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories) are all things that likely contibuted to the "giants" fad that rolled wave-like through late 1800's America. While the two are not the same thing, I see some potential parallels between finding giant skeletons back then and searching for Bigfoot today.

One part of the Bigfoot phenomenon that doesn't have a parallel in the world of 19th century giant skeletons, however, is the weird clan-based, trash-talking celebrity culture of self-poclaimed "Bigfooters." These guys (as far as I can tell, searching for Bigfoot is largely the domain of white males) compete for attention in just about every way possible except for producing actual physical evidence of Bigfoot. Given that we can't use the discovery of real evidence as an objective criterion for resolving all the mutually exclusive claims about who the best Bigfooters actually are, I was happy to learn that there are professional publications available for helping the layman sort the wheat from the chaff.  

And the 2016 award for Bigfooter of the Year goes to . . .  Stacy Brown, Jr.: the guy who mistook an alligator limb for a Bigfoot arm. 
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I don't have access to the complete article, so I don't know exactly what went into the decision to give such an honor to Brown. In the snippet I have, it appears important that Brown hikes around a lot. I guess as long as you're out getting exercise, it doesn't really matter so much that you apparently can't tell the difference between the anatomy of the hypothetical hominid you're hiking around looking for and the bones of a quadrupedal reptile. Mammals and reptiles have only been separate evolutionary lineages for about 300 million years. No biggee.

​Maybe Bigfooting awards are like paticipation ribbons now.  Hey -- good for you!  You tried!

What brought this important story to my attention was a posting in a Facebook group of some emails that appear to show Brown discussing how to keep the "Bigfoot arm" story in the news even though he knew it was a hoax. I have no way of knowing if those emails are legitimate or not, but you can read them here if you like.

Maybe we should start a year end tradition of awards for the archaeological "fringe." Help me brainstom categories and we'll get it done.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all the Bigfooters out there who didn't win an award this year. Keep up the good work!

A Short Student Interview of Jim Vieira

12/16/2016

 
My Forbidden Archaeology class wrapped up at the beginning of last week. Since going through the final projects and getting grades submitted, I've been occupied with prepping for my upcoming field school, finalizing a paper on the minimum size of demographically viable hunter-gatherer populations, and participating in a family-wide wave of coughing, aching, and vomiting. Good times. 

Some of the student projects were pretty interesting, and I plan to put some of them up on the course website eventually. After that I'll weave the website content into the Argumentative Archaeologist site. It might be a while before any of that gets done (don't expect anything before the holidays are over).

In the meantime, I wanted to post a link to a short video that two of the students produced of their interview of Jim Vieira.  I wrote a bit about Vieira's visit here. The students have possession of a lot more footage of Vieira in class, as well as he and discussing such compelling issues as "double rows of teeth." The students have told me that they'll still be working with that footage, and I hope that it happens (both are taking my field school, so I will be able to ask them about it weekly). 

Here is the video they submitted as part of their final project:

Swordgate Year One: 365 Days of Thimblerigging

12/16/2016

 
Yeah, that's right: I used my thesaurus.

It was one year ago today that J. Hutton Pulitzer's claim of a "100% confirmed Roman sword" first surfaced in an online newspaper article. The story arc over the last year has been fascinating to watch.  The original claim began to crumble almost immediately, as swords nearly identical to the claimed "ancient Roman" sword began surfacing. It quickly became apparent that these Hercules-hilted swords had been produced and sold as tourist souvenirs during recent times (i.e., sometime in the last two centuries). So much for that.
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Preparations underway for the Swordgate One Year Anniversary gala.
As more and more swords surfaced, we began to assemble data showing that the "Roman sword" from Nova Scotia was almost certainly not the earliest sword in a copy chain: it is smaller, less detailed, and lacks features found in swords such as the California sword. This is important, as detail is lost and size decreases (because molten metal shrinks as it cools) as new molds are produced from swords. Importantly, the "Roman sword" shares a set of anomalies on the blade (absent from the California sword) with several others. Taken together, this means the "Roman sword" could not have been the original, but is just one of many swords produced from a mold that post-dates the California sword. Independently, sophisticated metallurgical analysis showed the "Roman sword" to be a modern item and a close inspection noted numerous inconsistencies with Roman metalworking.

So that's case closed, right?

No. One of the hallmarks of pseudoscience is the unwillingness or inability to change one's conclusion when confronted with evidence to the contrary. We've seen that in spades over the past year.

Caught unprepared by the appearance of so many Hercules-hilted swords, Pultizer attempted to dismiss them as "recent replicas" that were somehow different from his "ancient Roman sword." He has continued to insist two things: (1) the replicas are copied from an original, authentic Roman sword that is curated at some museum in Naples; and (2) the replicas have a different metallic composition than the original swords. As I wrote earlier this month, keeping those two assertions alive has been the center of gravity of a shell game that's been going on for almost a year now.

Multiple times I have challenged supporters of the sword to provide evidence supporting either one of those assertions, and so far they have not. Read the comments on this post for an example of how the conversations go: I'm told over and over again that all that information is freely availabe, yet when I ask for some kind of source (because I haven't been able to find it), I'm told "do your own research."  

The best anyone has been able to do for the elusive XRF data that are purportedly in the "sword report" is page 52:
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Excerpt of page 52 of the so-called "sword report."
As far as I can tell, that's it: just a chart showing the atomic number and mass of ten elements. There is nothing quantitative here. The paragragh at the bottom implies that the "percentages of such metals can actually be tracked to the very mine operating in ancient times the Roman used to manufacture the Oak Island Roman sword." I have been unable to find the percentages (or anything about the methods/procedures used) anywhere else in this report.

The ommision of the percentages is key, since Pulitzer's initial reaction to the metallurgical data from St. Mary's University was one of shock about the high percentage of zinc. The high level of zinc was one of the main factors leading to the conclusion that the sword was modern. Pulitzer's current claim that zinc levels are high bcause of naturally occurring zinc in the ores that were used is completely inconsistent with his original claim (based on his own data) that there wasn't much zinc in the sword. This is why he won't provide his data/methods with percentages: they can't possibly be consistent with all of his statements and will therefore reveal that that he is playing a shell game.

After a full year of this nonsense, the energy over the "Roman sword" claim isn't what it was in those early days of Swordgate. That's all right and good. As far as I know, the real-time engagment with the ridiculous "Roman sword" claim was without precedent.  It was a group effort, and all of us that participated in this (and the small core of us that are still working on the problem of the actual origin and history of these swords) should be rightfully proud of what we've done and what we've accomplished. I'm looking foward to what Year Two will bring.

Spring Field School: Filled and Funded

12/13/2016

 
This is just a quick update on the spring archaeological field school I announced in November. I'm happy to report two things: (1) the class has filled up; and (2) I have received notice that my request for financial support from the Archaeological Research Trust (ART) has been granted. ART grant monies will support wages for a field assistant, wages for a lab worker to keep up with processing artifacts, samples, and paperwork as we produce it in the field, and  purchase of expendable field supplies and materials to stabilize the site.  Thank you, ART members and board: you won't be disappointed!

I'll write more about the field school as it moves forward. I'm considering including a small online writing requirement in the syllabus, as communicating with the public about archaeology is important both for the education of the students and for our discipline as a whole. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, enjoy this picture of the Broad River on a crisp fall day (taken last week during a visit to the site).
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Reality Check: Image of "Russian Megalithic Stone"

12/4/2016

 
This morning on one of the Facebook groups I follow I saw this image, labeled simply "Russia:"
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The discussion about the stone leap-frogged right over the authenticity issue, skipping straight to the part where we muse about the anti-gravity technologies that Ice Age civilizations must have had to move such an enormous rock.

The picture isn't real, of couse. It took less than 60 seconds of searching on my phone while having a cup of coffee to find that the stone shown in the image is actually a quarried block at the Inca site of Ollantaytambo, Peru. I found a nice picture of the block on this website. It's a big block of stone, sure, but nowhere near as large as the image that was manipulated to produce false "evidence" to use as clickbait. Ethnography and achaeology shows us that people in non-industrial societies all over the world were and are able to move rocks of this size using human power and ingenuity.
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I wonder when and if the world's respect for reality will re-emerge.

Swordgate: The Lie that Won't Die

12/1/2016

 
We're coming up on the first anniversary of Swordgate, the can of worms that was opened up on December 16, 2015, by the announcement of the "100% confirmed Roman sword" from Nova Scotia. There's all kinds of celebration planning going on over at the Fake Hercules Swords group on Facebook.  It should be a good time. 

While reasonable people quickly accepted the mounting evidence that the sword was bogus, there are still a few that keep hanging on to the dream. I've been involved in an ongoing discussion in the Ancient Origins group with someone who still insists that Hutton Pulitzer's XRF data are in his "sword report" and still insists that there is an original sword in the "Naples Museum." I've seen evidence of neither of those things, but have been told for the umpteenth time that I'm wrong. 

In case any of the purported XRF data ever do materialize, I want everyone to watch this short video again. This was posted by Pulitzer right after the St. Mary's University test results were aired on The Curse of Oak Island. In this video, he proclaims that his data were very different than those obtained by St. Mary's University (his results "do not show anywhere near that zinc"). 
Eventually, Pulitzer produced that mess of a "sword report" in a long-winded attempt to show that high-zinc brass could be Roman. No version of that report that I've seen contains the XRF data he talks about in the video. As I wrote at the time, the argument in the "sword report" is a sleight of hand to deflect from the issue that he has never released his own data: is the sword bronze or brass? is the metal low zinc or high zinc? Does he defend his own data, or is he interpreting the St. Mary's University results?

I don't think we'll ever see Pulitzer's XRF data because they can't be consistent with both storylines.

And the last I heard, he was claiming that the Italian eBay sword was actually a sword from the "Naples Museum." It's not, but thanks for playing.

​Prove me wrong on either count, please. 

    All views expressed in my blog posts are my own. The views of those that comment are their own. That's how it works.

    I reserve the right to take down comments that I deem to be defamatory or harassing. 

    Andy White

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