"Yes, definitely, submit your article, we will publish it."
At the end of yesterday's blog post about Ancient American and the non-sword article in the latest issue, I wondered aloud if the magazine would publish a piece by me about the swords. This morning I emailed Wayne May (publisher) to ask him that very question and got a speedy response: "Yes, definitely, submit your article, we will publish it." With some quick correspondence, I established that it should be no longer than about 2000-3000 words and that I would be allowed to publish my article on my own website 30 days after the issue is released. The deadline to make the September issue is August 1. I'm hoping to make that deadline even given everything that's going on -- I've already written who-in-the-hell-knows-how-many words about the swords, so it shouldn't be that tough. I'll keep you posted.
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I'll break the suspense and answer the question right away with a quote from page five of the latest issue: "The purpose of Ancient American is to describe the true prehistory of the American continent, regardless of presently fashionable belief systems, and provide a public forum for certified experts and non-professionals alike to freely express their views without fear or favor." My experience with Ancient American has been limited. My wife bought me an issue about a year and a half ago that had a cover story about a "giant skeleton" from New York (I wrote about it here), and I bought another issue last spring while I was trying to track down the story of the "oxhide ingot" from Michigan. I bought the latest issue (111) this morning because it has the "Roman sword" on the cover and an article titled "The Cursed Oak Island Artifacts" by J. Hutton Pulitzer. I skimmed through the article and didn't see anything about the sword. If you can't get enough of Pulitzer's sour grapes "tech-mogul-turned-explorer-turned-warrior-for-truth" puffery, then by all means you should spend your own $4.95 to read about the latitudes and longitudes of where he takes phone calls from important people who think he's awesome. Otherwise, save your money. As I flipped through the rest of the pdf, I couldn't help but wonder about the audience for this publication. The first "news" piece in this issue ("Traces Of A 9,000-Year-Old Lost Unknown Civilization Discovered in Lake Huron, Michigan") is a word-for-word reprinting of a piece that has been available free online at the Message To Eagle website since August of 2014. Well, it's not quite word-for-word, as the printed copy that was cut-and-pasted into the magazine includes one of the photo captions out-of-place in the text and the phrase "Lake Huron lost civilization" (presumably a page header) inserted into the narrative twice. My colleagues at Michigan who are doing this work may be surprised to learn that they're uncovering a "lost, unknown civilization" rather than the remains hunting blinds for driving caribou.
Reading on in this issue, you'll find a story about a rock from Michigan that was somehow determined by Wayne May (the publisher) to be an idol of a human head dating to the period 1000 BC - AD 400, Pulitzer's piece, an article about bison that was also reprinted straight from content that's freely accessible online, a review of the almost-forty-year-old Brad Steiger book Worlds Before Our Own by former Nazi Frank Joseph, a misleading article about the Kennewick Man controversy, some advertisements for books . . . finally there are a few pieces which may actually contain some content related to original scholarship. Since I paid my $4.95, I'll actually read through those and see if there's anything I'm interested in writing about. Ancient American has been in print since 1993. As far as I can tell, much of the content has been directed at promoting just about anything that fits within a hyper-diffusionist paradigm: everyone, everywhere, all the time. The great irony in how the magazine bills itself (quoted above) is that it's really impossible to both "describe the true prehistory" and allow all ideas equal weight "without fear or favor." Not all ideas about prehistory can be "true," of course, so how do you separate the credible from the non-credible within some kind of "safe space" where we all pledge not to think critically? You can't. An unwillingness to try to falsify anything means you have to accept everything and somehow fit it all into a narrative. When you're mired only on the induction side of the inductive-deductive process (trying to concoct a story to explain the "facts" that you've got in front you), you really run into a problem if you have no means or desire to winnow out good pieces of evidence from the garbage (see this post for an expanded discussion). So paint me a picture of the "true prehistory" of North America that incorporates everyone's bad ideas, misinterpretations, and fraudulent artifacts. I'd like to see that. The stated purpose of Ancient American makes me wonder if the magazine would be amenable to a Fake Hercules Sword article written by me? Or perhaps a point-counterpoint where Pulitzer and I can discuss the key issues around the sword(s). If you really want to get beyond "fashionable belief systems," you might want to try embracing the self-correcting nature of science. It tends to produce some pretty good results if you let it. And you may also want to invest in some additional proofreading. Swordgate afficionados will remember when, in the midst of the giant "Roman sword" bellyflop, J. Hutton Pulitzer removed or made inaccessible his websites for the books Solomon's Secret and Commodus's Secret (it was one of my top ten great moments in Swordgate history). Solomon's Secret had been available for pre-order (meaning you pay for the book but you don't get it right away) since at least November of 2014. The goal posts for publishing the book(s) have been moved back several times since then. The only website I can find for Solomon's Secret now is this Facebook page, which claims the book will be coming out this July: This is not the only time I've seen the "how do we get a refund" question posed but a customer who has run low on patience. All along, Pulitzer has promised that refund requests will be honored. This is a quote from the now-invisible Solomon's Secret website: "As far as orders, it is an automated process, and if you decide not to wait, it is an automated 100% guaranteed return process and, you can go back to order and cancel, and it will be process and then the one reserved for you, just becomes someone else’s gain." Another unsatisfied Solomon's Secret pre-order customer recently posted a complaint on the Ripoff Report website: "Pre-ordered Solomon's Secret book. Book has been postponed and postponed while the "author" self-publishes all sorts of other stuff. He won't respond or acknowledge inquires about status of book or refund." There is a single rebuttal to the complaint, filed by someone claiming to be Pulitzer: I cannot find any evidence that the sales of Solomon's Secret are being handled by Amazon. When I go to the "Commander Pulitzer" author page, I get a list of 345 treasure hunting books, the most recent of which were published in March of 2014. Solomon's Secret is nowhere to be found.
I'd love to see a copy of a receipt for ordering this book, if you've got one. Email it to me at aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu. You can remain anonymous if you like. Anyone want to gamble on whether not you'll get your copy of Solomon's Secret (and Commodus's Secret) in July? I know where I'd put my money. Thanks to Mike Morgan for posting the link to the Ripoff Report on the Fake Hercules Swords group on Facebook. With 2016 almost half over, it's fair to ask again about the status of the Ancient Artifact Preservation Society's promised report on the evidence for the ancient Roman occupation of Nova Scotia. The original Boston Standard story from December 2015 stated, after all, that the report "is scheduled to be published in full in early 2016." That "early 2016" timeline for publication was confirmed in an Ancient Origins article in January. I also remember being told we'd see the report in the "spring" or "early spring." but I don't have the energy to try to track down those statements. And it doesn't really matter: as the year nears the halfway mark and the formal beginning of summer approaches, the clock is running down on even the most generous publication timeline. My falsifiable hypothesis is that we will never actually see the promised report (fifteenth of Nevuary, anyone?). I think Pulitzer's timing for pumping the sword story in December of 2015 was driven by his desire to get as much attention as possible prior to the appearance of the item on The Curse of Oak Island in the following January. Ironically, the spotlight he placed on the sword brought to light new data that quickly and fatally undermined his ironclad guarantee that it was a "100 percent confirmed . . . smoking gun" artifact. Within days of the original Boston Standard story, it was obvious to any reasonable person that the "ancient Roman sword from Nova Scotia" was nothing of the sort. Never one to let facts get in the way of a good story, however, Pulitzer has stood by the sword for months and continues to do so. I can't help but think that the enthusiasm for releasing the full report has been significantly diminished, however. With hopes for release of the fabled "white paper" evaporating and the recent documentation of the thirteenth Fake Hercules Sword (and because my kids woke me up at 3:00 a.m. and I couldn't get back to sleep), it seems like a good time to take a look back at some great moments in Swordgate history. These are just a few of my favorites in roughly chronological order.
There were, of course, many other great moments in Swordgate both in terms of the overall story and the personal connections that I made (I didn't mention Peter Guezen's poster series, Killbuck's cartoons, the individuals who lent me their swords for analysis, Pulitzer's bizarre Periscope broadcasts, the great contributions of thinking and data from the readers of this blog, and the interactions I had with numerous people from Nova Scotia and elsewhere who have taken an active interest in the puzzle of the Fake Hercules Swords. I don't know when and if anything like this will happen again, but I won't bet against it. I'm sure there are others besides me who count the whole experience as a good one.
We all knew it would happen at some point, and finally our wait is over: the thirteenth Fake Hercules Sword has finally surfaced! What does that mean? No-one really knows. But with this ominous omen and summer gas prices expected to plummet, it's probably as good a time as any to load your mini-van with weapons, stock up on canned goods, and head for your bunker. News of Sword 13 (the Alejandro Sword) came to us via a comment by Alejandro on this blog post a few days ago while I was on vacation. Thankfully, alert citizen, Spanish speaker, and Friend of #Swordgate Pablo Raw followed up on Alejandro's comment and gathered information and photos about the sword. Thanks to both Pablo and Alejandro - I owe you both a beer (if you've been keeping score at home, you'll know that I now owe Pablo two beers). Here is a portion of Alejandro's account as he emailed it followed by Pablo's translation: "Ésta espada en concreto, me refiero a la famosa espada ceremonial, si bien no era más que una mera reproducción, tenía cierto encanto. La adquirió en un viaje a Italia, en concreto a la ciudad de Pompeya. No puedo precisar si salió de la sección de souvenirs del Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Nápoles, de un vendedor ambulante, o de la misma ciudad Pompeya; pero puedo asegurar que las palabras literales de este buen amigo cuando me la obsequió fueron: “Ya tienes una espada de Pompeya”. De lo que no hay duda alguna es de que esta espada fue adquirida en Italia. Todo esto sucedió hace unos 20 años aproximadamente, la fecha exacta no puedo recordarla, pero aseguro con certeza que llegó a mis manos allá por 1996. Desde entonces luce entre mi colección." "This specific sword, (I’m talking about the ceremonial sword), it was clearly a reproduction, but it had a certain charm to it. He got it on a trip to Italy, specifically in the city of Pompeii. I can’t tell if it came out of the souvenirs store of the National Archaeological Museum of Napoli, a street vendor, or just somewhere in the city of Pompeii, but I can tell that his literal words when he gave it to me where: “Now you own a sword from Pompeii”. There is no doubt that the sword was acquired in Italy. All this happened 20 years ago approximately, the exact date I can’t remember, but I can assure that I got it around 1996. Since then, it is part of my collection." Here are some photos of Sword 13: Sword 13 appears to be a copper alloy sword with a heavy artificial patina that has been worn from the high spots to expose the underlying brass (followers of this blog will remember how the self-proclaimed Commander of the world's best "professional treasure hunting" team misidentified the exposed brass on the Nova Scotia sword as gold). The Hercules figure preserves more detail than the cast iron Design Toscano swords, but appears crudely cast/finished with some prominent mold seams in the areas between the head and arms, some filled-in areas (e.g., to the left of the tail of Hercules' lion skin), and some pits that are not present on the Design Toscano sword (e.g., on the back of Hercules' head). As far as the blade goes, I don't see any of the anomalies used to the define the Type J swords (i.e., the Nova Scotia Sword, the Italian eBay Sword, the Florida Sword, and the France Sword). A side-by-side comparison of Sword 13 with the 3D model of the Italian eBay Sword suggests that the blade of Sword 13 is the shorter of the two. The blade of Sword 13 appears to be shaped like the the blade of the Design Toscano sword, but lacks some of the distinctive characteristics of the Design Toscano example that I have in my office. Where does Sword 13 fit in the grand scheme of Fake Hercules Swords? It looks to me at first glance as if it belongs pretty comfortably with what we're calling Type CS (which includes the Spain Sword, the Florida eBay Sword, and the Cvet Sword). These are copper alloy swords with blades that are shorter than those of the Type J sword and lack the casting anomalies used to define Type J. I have yet to examine any of the Type CS swords first-hand. We have a purchase date and location for the Alejandro sword (1996, Pompeii) that fits pretty nicely with the purchase date and location reported for the Cvet Sword (2004, Pompeii). (Although we never got a good photo of the Benjamin Sword, purchased in 2005 in Pompeii, I suspect it is also a Type CS based on the apparent blade length.) We know that the Type F swords (California and Sonja) were for sale in the 1970's. And we know the Design Toscano swords are still being made today. I think the most reasonable hypothesis is that the Type J swords were probably produced sometime between the 1970's and 1990's, with the Alejandro Swords and the other Type CS swords being a later generation. Maybe something like this: That's just a hypothesis, of course, but one that I think it's consistent with everything we now know. As I wrote back in January, we would expect the hilt dimensions of the Type CS swords to be intermediate between those of the the Type J swords and the Design Toscano swords if Type CS really does fall between the two in a generational copy chain. I think the photos that Alejandro sent are good enough to derive some measurements that I can compare to those I have from other swords. I'll try to do that soon and provide an updated database.
Thanks again, Alejandro and Pablo. Nice work!
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. Friday Digest: Fringe Utopia, Memory Leaks, the Sword, and an Open Invitation to "The Walking Dead"3/25/2016 I've been hard at work rolling a boulder up the Repast Simphony learning curve. Computer modeling is a basic element of my three-headed "Shovels, Collections, and Code" research agenda. The other two are on track: I'm planning future survey/excavations at a natural levee system that appears to contain buried Archaic components, and I've started my collections work with an ambitious data-gathering effort oriented toward understanding the Kirk Horizon. The computer modeling part of my work is an important part of building an interpretive framework that allows us to integrate the small-scale behaviors we can document at individual sites with the large-scale patterns we can describe through pan-regional collections work. More on that later. Call me crazy, but I find writing and debugging computer code to be relaxing. It can be frustrating, of course, when you can't figure out the source of some problem or error, but overall the process of building and tuning a model is engaging and strangely soothing. The parts make sense, represent something, and work together. And there are rewards for elegant design. It's fun. During my dissertation work I sometimes had the luxury of taking full days (not 9-to-5 days, but 24 hour days) to focus on uninterrupted programming. Those days are gone, but I still find myself enjoying the times when I can block out a few hours, close my door, and get into the code. The rest of the world doesn't stop, however. So I have a few things I wanted to briefly talk about today. Amazing Tales of a Fringe Utopia in Northeast Illinois A reader of this blog emailed me some links to material that, for all I know, is familiar ground to those who closely watch "fringe" theorists. I had never heard of E. P. Grondine's manuscript He Walked Among Us, however, so I presume that others also have not. The work (available in three parts here), details the history, philosophy, and inter-personal interactions of "fringe" figures (including David Hatcher Childress) in a small town in northeastern Illinois. Thus far I have only skimmed through parts of it (it will go on my summer reading list). Check it out and see what you think. I don't know E. P. Grondine and am not yet very familiar with his work. He has commented on this blog at least once. Plugging Memory Leaks I've succeeded in getting one of my models (ForagerNet3_Demography_V3) operational in Repast Simphony. Repast Simphony operates a little bit differently than Repast J (the platform that I used to write the model), so I had to learn something about those differences, write some new code, and re-configure some other sections of the code. Though I've still got some testing to do to make sure the model is behaving the same (i.e., it's doing the same thing it did before the conversion), everything seems to be working within the model itself. The issue I'm trying to solve now is getting the model to run in batch mode. Running a model in batch mode means that the computer performs a series of model runs (a "batch") automatically. One of the great benefits of computational modeling is that you can do systematic experiments and determine cause and effect. You can hold everything about the model constant except for the value of single parameter, for example, and see how changes in that parameter affect the outcomes. You can run the model as many times as you want -- tens, hundreds, or thousands -- to flesh out those cause-effect relationships. Running the model in batch mode automates that process. Ideally, I can start a batch running on Friday afternoon and return to my office on Monday morning with a large dataset ready to analyze. There is apparently a built in batch configuration in Repast Simphony, but for some reason I haven't yet been able to get to it in the software. Maybe I need to reinstall. For the time being, I've been using a simple little parameters file that just tells the software how many iterations of the model to perform and what random seed to use. The model runs for the first 40-50 runs before throwing an "Out of Memory" error and locking everything up. It seems to run slower and slower with each iteration, which suggests to me there is a memory leak somewhere in my code. The model creates a bunch of objects (people, households, social links between people) during each run. Each of those uses memory. At the end of each run, all the object associated with that run should be tossed out to free up all the memory for the next run (when the model resets and starts fresh). If some of the objects are "leaking through" and being retained in the memory, the progressive accumulation of those unused objects will eat more and more memory until there's none left. I'm pretty sure I've got the model tossing all the people, households, and links (the three agent classes) out, so it may have something to do with copies of the spatial world and/or what's called the "context." The structure of the "world" in Repast Simphony is different from that in Repast J, so I need to figure out how to make sure I'm getting rid of all the unused parts between each model run. That's my goal for today. Hopefully I can find and plug the memory leak and set my computer to work for me over the weekend. The "Sword Report" I still haven't been able to muster the combination of time and interest to read through J. Hutton Pulitzer's "sword report." What I know about the contents of the report I know from comments on Facebook pages (e.g., The Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame and Fake Hercules Swords), this blog post from last week, and Jason Colavito's post about the report. My two main impressions are these (please correct me if I'm wrong): The report contains no new information about the alleged "Roman sword from Nova Scotia." Pulitzer does not provide his XRF data that he claimed proved the sword was a "100% confirmed" Roman artifact. He spent months crowing about his XRF results, and, in fact, said he would release them "the next day" after Brosseau's results were aired on television. He has not done that. Why? Remember when he said the exposed brass on the sword was actually gold? Whatever happened to that claim? The report is an argument against Brosseau's interpretations, not her results. Pulitzer seems to have abandoned the argument that his XRF results are correct and Brosseau's results are wrong, and is arguing that the metals identified by Brosseau are consistent with those produced by Romans. He actually made this pivot some time ago (I wrote about it back in January). Sometime after Brosseau's results were aired, he decided that he had a better chance making a case for the antiquity of the sword based on Brosseau's results (which are well-explained and documented) than his own (let us never speak of those XRF results again?). Apparently, the "case" for the Roman antiquity of brass with 35% zinc is based on the same sleight-of-hand he tried in January (see this post) with the added puffery of 70+ pages lifted more-or-less directly from this online study by David Dungworth. Here is a direct quote from that study: "Forty percent of all Roman alloys had at least 5% zinc. The distribution of zinc in all Roman alloys is fairly flat between 5 and 25% (Figure 31). This apparently even spread of zinc contents is an over-simplification. Zinc content varies with time - high zinc alloys belonging to the early Roman period. In addition zinc is strongly correlated (inversely) with tin (see Figure 34). The alloy type classification discussed below (see Figure 35) defines brasses as those alloys with 15% or more zinc. The method of brass production at this time was the cementation method (Craddock 1978) which could yield brass with a maximum zinc content of c. 28%. The paucity of such alloys (those with more than 23% zinc) in all the samples analysed here is striking." Can anyone out there show me a single authentic Roman brass artifact with 35% zinc content? I'll wait. No matter how many times you assert that the sword is Roman, and no matter how long of a document you put together, evidence still matters. I still see no evidence that this is a Roman sword. I see continued monkey business, sleight of hand, and silliness. Can we move on to the next "smoking gun that will re-write history" now please? The sword is boring. An Invitation for The Walking Dead to Enjoy Springtime in South Carolina
The Walking Dead is my favorite television show. The program has had its ups and downs, but I think this season is pretty strong and I'm enjoying it. I'm a couple of episodes behind right now, so don't spoil it for me. This week, Disney and Marvel warned Georgia Governor Nathan Deal that they will stop filming in the state if he signs a so-called "religious liberty" bill that many say will legalize anti-gay discrimination (here's the story in The Washington Post). I applaud Disney and Marvel for their stance, and hope that AMC follows suit and moves the filming of The Walking Dead out of northern Georgia. Given what's going on in North Carolina right now, the logical choice is to put the show in South Carolina. There are signs this state is moving in the right direction (e.g., the removal of the Confederate flag last summer), and your business would be a nice encouragement. Having traveled up and down I-20 and 301 a few times now, I can tell you that you won't have any difficulty finding good locations for filming. You can enjoy the palmettos, azaleas, crepe myrtle, and Carolina wrens. We have some room at our house, so I can provide accommodations for at least two cast members (Glen and Maggie? Carol?). Just think it over. You don't have to answer now. If you can't make it here this spring the flowers will still be blooming all year round. And there are butterflies. I've seen some recent chatter about Hutton Pulitzer's much-anticipated "FREE - Oak Island Roman Sword Scientific Method Report" that we've been promised, but I have yet to actually see a copy. Apparently at least one version of the report was made available for download a couple of days ago but the document couldn't be opened. Has anyone been able to download and open the report? I signed up to get a copy of the sword report months ago but have yet to get an email about it. I'm curious as to what's in it, but that curiosity hasn't been strong enough to budge "look for sword report" from its position beneath about twenty other more important things on my to-do list. If anyone has successfully viewed the report or knows where I can get a copy please let me know. I'm going to skip the usual discussion of how I wish I had more time to write, and go straight to the summary of things I would've written about if I had more time. I'm limiting myself to one paragraph per topic. Abandonment of the Southeast During the Early Archaic I finally finished reading Ken Sassaman's (2010) The Eastern Archaic, Historicized (previous posts here and here). I had a nice email exchange with Sassaman. Reading his book has gotten me thinking about some new questions to ask of the Archaic record in the Eastern Woodlands. The suggestion that a large part of the Southeast (south of the Ohio River) was abandoned or very thinly populated/used during the later part of the Early Archaic, connected to the scenario of a population influx during the Middle Archaic, is something that can be evaluated empirically by (I think) assembling data that we've already got on hand. The northward retreat of Early Archaic populations that seems to be marked by the distribution of bifurcate points in South Carolina (see David Anderson's 1991 paper referenced in this post) prompted me to look into Early Archaic point chronology in Florida. Sassaman directed me to this very nice (2012) paper by Michael Faught and James Waggoner. Faught and Waggoner's discussion of multiple lines of data (radiocarbon, typological, and statigraphic sequences) relevant to evaluating the idea of Early/Middle Archaic population discontinuities in Florida could be used as a blueprint for state-by-state studies across the east. Eight Wheels of Death: Totally Worth Seven Dollars This post marks two firsts: my first mention of roller derby and my first movie review. The short film Eight Wheels of Death is a homegrown effort associated with the Bleeding Heartland Roller Derby in Bloomington, Indiana. I picked up a copy when I went to see my daughter skate last weekend (she's in the junior league Bloomington ThunderBirds). The movie is about what you'd expect, and that's going to be the extent of my review (here's the trailer).It was not the cinematography that made it worth $7 to me, but the fact that purchasing it supports roller derby. I was pretty impressed with the creativity, energy, and team-building that I saw both at my daughter's practice and at the actual event. I didn't see much of the adult league match (a hometown contest between the Farm Fatales and the Slaughter Scouts) because I got drafted for a shift in the concession stand, but I came away with both a lot of positive feelings and substantial curiosity about roller derby. As best I can tell, we're now in at least the fourth or fifth generation of popularity of roller derby. There's a really interesting history as to how this activity has changed over the decades as its popularity has cyclically risen and fallen. I'm not anywhere close to understanding it, but it's fascinating. And it's also got me pondering why and under what circumstances we sometimes (but not always) describe cultural/technological change as "generational." It seems like identifying "generations" is kind of a real-time way of temporal typologizing (imposing nominal categories on more-or-less continuous variation). We do it for fighter aircraft and roller derby, but not for basketball and cars. The Siege of Fort Motte and the Carolina Spring I spent Friday working with Steve Smith (Director of SCIAA) and two volunteers on a survey at Fort Motte, site of a Revolutionary War siege and battle. There is a lot of interesting historic period archaeology here, and going out with Steve was a nice opportunity to participate and learn something new. Steve and Jim Legg are using systematic metal detecting survey, among other things, to try to pin down where on the landscape various parts of the Fort Motte story unfolded. Yesterday we were working in the general area where some of the Patriot forces would have been camped during the siege. We found several good colonial-period artifacts (e.g., a musket ball, cast iron kettle fragments, and a brass finial probably from a flag or spontoon), I got some experience using a metal detector, and had a good time talking with the volunteers. I also saw the first dragonfly I've seen so far this year, and got to complain about the early March heat. It really is a different world down here as far as the weather. I'm going to need to hustle if I'm going to get any of my own fieldwork going before the spring explosion of plant growth makes things like long distance total station work impossible. Swordgate: Is the Fifteenth of Nevuary Finally Upon Us?
Various promises and hints about the release of the 200-page paper that will present the case for the "Roman sword from Nova Scotia" have yet to turn into anything tangible, and I've stopped paying attention. The last I heard (weeks ago), at that was left to prepare the document was completion of spell check. The "just around the corner" nonsense is boring. Somebody please wake me up if the paper ever materializes. |
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