Book Review - Chris Caple's "Objects: Reluctant Witnesses to the Past"

A little something I wrote for Museum Anthropology Review

Issue Table of Contents

Review

Google Streetview Archaeological Sites - Pompeii, Stonehenge, Amongst Others

Stonehenge

Pompeii

This isn't in the park at Teotihuacan, but you can see the major pyramids

Cahokia

Poverty Point

Moundville, AL

Map of London's Dead

The Museum of London and The Times Online have created a digital map of the 37,000 some burials that have been identified in London. Check it out, and note that the map is at the top of the article, and works as a Google Map does.

Stonehenge Altered in Roman Era?

The results are way too preliminary from ongoing excavations at Stonehenge, but there does seem to be some evidence that someone in Roman times modified the monument. Quoting Current Archaeology:

However the most surprising discoveries so far have been Roman. In a small pit
containing a small bluestone in the corner of the trench, itself cut into the
main socket of one of the uprights, they found a Roman coin. Even more alarming,
was the excavation of the large pit in the centre of the excavation, where right
near the bottom they found a very small piece of what was indubitably Roman
pottery. Was there a major reordering of the site in the Roman period? As
Geoffrey Wainwright said, their small trench looked like an urban excavation,
there were so many intercutting pits.

This could be some form of turbation or other taphonomic process. But it is certainly interesting.

Silver of the Iceni

Interesting piece on hybrid uses of material culture, the complexity of culture contact, and the always popular Boudica

http://www.archaeology.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1579&Itemid=26

Pagan Archaeological Treasure Trove in Cornwall

I've blogged before about ritual magic deposits. But if the interpretation is right, this one takes the cake.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3517036.ece

Divination "Game" and First Druid Grave?

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/11/druid-grave.html

The preservation on this thing sounds fairly incredible.

I would note the inherent notion that a proper Druid wouldn't be messing around with anything Roman. Many assumptions there about lack of contact across Europe in the centuries before the actual Roman conquest of Britain, about technology transfer and medicine, about concepts of purity and identity.

UPDATE: Images of the burial and artifacts

Magical Architecture Caches: Witch Bottles, Mummy Cats, and Abandoned Shoes

The discovery of a mummified cat in an early 19th-century Edinburgh building reminded me of one of the niftiest things in historical archaeology, magical deposits. Common caches hidden under floorboards or within walls include shoes, cats, or "witch bottles" specially prepared with pins and urine. These were magical charms in British culture, and still hold some power. As noted on Brian Hoggard's page on these charms and other folk magic, cats were often destroyed or otherwise noted by construction teams that discovered them. They can be creepy whether interpreted by the discoverer as an unfortunate accident or as an occult artifact, and in some cases are burned to cleanse the deposit and perhaps help the cat in the afterlife.

Update: First witch bottle still sealed (and presumably containing urine) found in Greenwich.

Update: Article from March 2008 has nice images and discussion

Update April 2009: Sealed shoes from Nova Scotia

Update June 2009: The sealed witch bottle has been analyzed

My Favorite Part of Archaeology - Dispelling Common Wisdom

More than anything, I enjoy when archaeology shows that what most of us think about the past is wrong. I don't mean just finding something new, though that is of course great. I mean going and finding the physical evidence of past alternatives to what we have normalized to be the status quo. Or finding direct contradictions to the historical record. Each of the following stories includes an element of this.

In New Kingdom Egypt, the heretic king Akhenaten was stricken from the historical record, as best as was possible. Yet his capitol city lies in ruins at Tell el-Amarna, with ample evidence for his new religion based on the Aten sun disk and the relationship between it and the royal family. Right there archaeology recovers an embarassing chapter in Egyptian history that the authorities attempted to coverup after his death. But in something of a reversal, a recent discovery at Saqqara suggests the new story is also not entirely true. Akhenaten may have shut down the temples to the old Egyptian gods, but Dutch archaeologists have found elites still being buried in the old way, honoring the old gods but using the new Amarna art style, at Saqqara during the Amarna period. Akhenaten's hegemony was not complete.

In New York City, a pipe inspector stumbled across subterranean passages immediately next to the basement of 740 Park Avenue, the richest apartment building in the city's history and home to titans of finance and capital. This wouldn't be such a big deal, except for persistant rumors long denied that John D. Rockefeller had an escape tunnel leading from the building to his private subway. The tunnel cannot be tied to Rockefeller, and a local historian suggests the Vanderbilts as possible patrons of the construction. But clearly the legends weren't as far-fetched as previously thought.

Across the ocean in Britain, a medieval monastery in Hereford turned up something of a surprise. Thirty years ago a skeleton was dug up and was believed to be one of the monks. But re-analysis suggests that the bones are probably those of a woman. Someone has some explaining to do.

Pagans Rising: The Stonehenge Settlement and Repatriation or, Who Controls the UK's Past?

The big archaeological news of the week has been the discovery of a large Neolithic residential site near Stonehenge, that most famous of all standing stone sites and emblem of British prehistory. This piece discusses the festival aspects, interpreted as seasonal, of the settlement and ceremonial architecture of a massive woodhenge at the site as well as nearby Stonehenge.

The article also notes the ties to modern pagans. Modern paganism is no small thing in the UK. The Catholic Cardinal of England and Wales states that Britain is no longer a Christian country, that it has gone pagan. Of course, he's lumping in all kinds of things he deems to be un-Christian or not of organized religion, and not just Pagan believers. Perhaps this is much ado about nothing, as three-quarters of Britons identified themselves as Christian in 2001, with Wiccans and other Pagans making up less than 0.1% of the country.

Despite these relatively small numbers, Pagans increasingly participate in the heritage of archaeological and sacred sites in the UK. The solstice celebrations at Stonehenge and other megalithic sites are the most famous. Last year some Catholic youths confronted Pagans during festivities in Glastonbury, throwing salt at them in a magical attempt to cleanse the town.

Meanwhile in Greece, a small group of Pagans have semi-legally (it seems, the coverage is not clear) started worshipping Zeus and the Classical Greek gods at ancient ruins in Athens. Greece is famous for the close ties between the church and the state, so this is no empty act.

Now, in a move echoing that of indigenous and minority people aross the planet, British Pagans are claiming the bones recovered from prehistoric sites as their ancestors and demanding repatriation from museums. The efforts have so far not been successful, in particular due to the great time depth between a modern claimant and the remains, without openly known ancestry traced between the modern and their claimed ancestors. This in turn echoes the issues around Kennewick Man, or as an alliance modern indigenous people have called him, the Ancient One. That case cannot be the same, due to the colonial aspect of the last five centuries and their legacy today. But all of this gets very complicated, quickly.

EDIT (Feb. 20, 2007): Stonehenge altar stone, long missing, may have been identified. Would modern pagans insist this piece is necessary for the proper use of Stonehenge, or do they stay where they are? Standard conservation practice is not to reverse later changes to architecture). How is the decision made?

EDIT (April 5. 2007): Craig Childs points out the issues involving Stonehenge and modern societies.

EDIT (April 7, 2007): An amulet from Suffolk may be similar to an amulet in a burial near Stonehenge. The Suffolk amulet dates to 1900 - 1700 BC, at which point Stonehenge would have been largely in its final form. The news article calls them "Stonehenge Amulets" but there is no particular reason for that to be the case.

EDIT (July 5, 2007): Pagans are protesting temporary modifications, for a television show, to Britain's famous Long Man geoglyph. Of course, the age and origin of the sculpture are still not certain, at least from an archaeological or mainstream historical perspective.