Monday 31 December 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!


Dear Friend,
Whether you're a world-renowned archaeologist, one who's hoping to be, or, like most, keen and happy to imbibe the past for its own sake, we here at world headquarters ['kay, it's just me] wish you a scintillating, surprising, satisfying new year. Unfortunately, the anthropologist in me wishes to acknowledge that the timing of such a greeting is problematic, and requires a historical perspective and the realization that one is bound up in one's own culture. Thus, my greeting must be regarded as being given in the spirit of renewal, and not necessarily anchored in some historically contingent time-keeping system.
     O' course, the precise moment to celebrate has been a moveable feast even the brief span of European history. Depending on when in the past couple of thousand years you lived, you might have celebrated the new year either on January 1st or at the vernal equinox, and either using the Julian or the Gregorian calendar. And, while by tradtion it's been January 1st for several centuries if you're English, when you celebrate tonight, try and remember that some people's years aren't quite finished yet, and some have already passed into the future.
     The now-almost universal celebration takes place in conjunction with the Gregorian calendar, and will occur at 00:00 UTC January 1, 2013. However, the Persian New Year, Nowruz [nouˈɾuːz], celebrating the solar year 1392 SH [unless you follow the Shah's calendar], will be celebrated at the upcoming vernal equinox, which takes place at 11:02 am Universal Time on March 20th, 2013. And, if your forbears used a lunar calendar, as is the case in China, you'll celebrate the advent of the year the snake on Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 16:21:00 UTC, 2013 of the Gregorian calendar [whether or not you follow a continuous numbering system based on the reign of the Yellow Emperor]. And, if you're Jewish, you've already celebrated the coming of the year 5773, at sunset on September 17, 2012 [strictly dependent on sunset in your time zone, I think].
     So, Happy New Year whoever you are, and wherever you are, and whenever you are.


SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Friday 21 December 2012

Merry Christmas To All!


I'm an atheist. But now and then I appreciate a good hero to keep my hope alive and my spirits up. So, I have no qualms about celebrating the allegory of Christemasse. If you're non-Christian, or a  secular humanist, wiccan or otherwise, I hope you'll accept my wish that you have a happy holiday season. And if, like me, you observe Christemasse, I hope you have a very merry one!
     I'll be back after Boxing Day, refreshed and invigorated. I hope to see you here.
     ~Rob


SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Takin' Care of Business


Tomorrow is the end of the world as I've known it for forty-plus years. A simple twist of fate has meant that I will have no visible means of support beginning on January 1 and continuing indefinitely. In preparation for my departure from the University of California Observatories I've been busier than the proverbial one-armed wallpaper hanger. For the past week and more I've arrived home in the evening with one thing on my mind--a glass of wine and sleep. Sorry. Two things on my mind--a glass of wine, seasonal songs and sleep. As this is beginning to sound too much like a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, I'll drop the meme.
     But I won't drop the euphoria that I'm feeling at the prospect of notworking. You can have your networking. All I've ever wanted was notworking. Don't worry. I'll keep working here. And I won't have the brutalizing office environment to drag me down. So, I'll return to the Subversive Archaeologist with renewed vigour after a brief holiday.
     And, wouldn't you know it? I just received word of this, which promises to be a real hoot.

"Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of hominin hands," by Michael H. Morgan and David R. Carrier, Journal of Experimental Biology 216, 236-244.
The authors have made the claim that fist-fighting might explain the evolution of the human hand. Or, do they say it's the other way around? I can hardly wait to have my say. Stay tuned!



SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Saturday 15 December 2012

It's Quiet.


Too quiet. At times like these I imagine the fraud police pounding on the door and advising me of my right to disavow any pretention of archaeological expertise. You know the feeling. Not enough preparation. Oblivious. Wrong-headed. Out of my depth. Ignorant. At best misguided. And it's times like these that I resort to soul food. I'm talkin' 'bout ethanol. Hooch. Booze. Grog. Tonight, it's the cheapest bang for my buck I could find in the local suds shop. If you can believe it, 1.75 L of 80% proof Vodka for US $9.99. Ain't no cheaper this side of the Elysian Fields. I'm still tryin' ta find something better than a Bloody Mary to mask the distinct vodka volatiles. I've tried Pepsi. Coke. Coke from Mexico made with real cane sugar [that's way better, all by itself!], orange juice [or, if you prefer, a Golden Screwdriver--the only thing screwed after a few too many is you, and the only gold is the pee], grapefruit juice [? You must be joking]. I've even tried those cats-and-dogs sleeping together, wrath o' god type fusion drinks, like lemon-honey cucumber and pear-avocado raspberry. Putrid.
    Tonight I'm almost euphoric [even before the ethanol!] because I have a total of 4.5 days of gainful employment before I'm even more gainfully quasi-retired! But there's not even 4 days of work left. Monday'll be a write-off because it's the annual holiday celebration of the University of California Observatories and Lick Observatory. I'll be bizzy all day wandering around making sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing and generally making a pest of myself. That leaves 3.5 days. The last half day will prolly be taken up saying good-bye to all and sundry. That leaves 3 days. I'll prolly be numb Tuesday morning 'cause of the party at the Parish Publick House in my honour after Monday's DRY holiday celebration [that's officially an oxymoron. No?]. That leaves 2.5 days. My co-workers will be standing in line waiting for me to whisper the magic incantations that they'll need after I'm gone, just to begin to try to do what I've been doing for them for 8+ years. I'll need all my patience those days.
     And then? Then it's Christmas. Prolly by myself 'cause my family was going to go to Costa Rica but that fell through. Then Abby asked her mum if they couldn't do something else. So. Alone I'll be. That's not a badness. Many of you know that I actually prefer alone-ness to together-ness when that means being around a bunch of people whose mere presence makes me fearful of making an ass of myself and have them let me know. Alone can be good. Besides, I'm never alone with my maintenance dose of ethanol!
     There'll prolly be little to complain about of an archaeological nature for the next few weeks. So I'll take this opportunity to wish you all a joyous holiday season and a better new year than the best one you can remember. That, for me, would probably be my first year [if it were possible to remember it!]. Nothin' to do but eat and poop. The only possibility of a better year would be one in which all you had to do was eat, poop, and screw. It's a little creepy to leave you with that thought. But, if you can come up with a better way of life, let me know. You'll get a Golden Marshalltown for your troubles.
     Whatever your faith, your philosophical persuasion, have a happy holiday time.
I'll be back soon.


SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Monday 10 December 2012

Ceci N'est Pas Une Barre de Savon: Apologies to René Magritte


Ceci n'est pas une barre de savon 
Behold the lowly bar of soap [albeit somewhat used]. In the past I've used similar objects to make fun of handaxes [here and here]. Although the tone of those essays was tongue-in-cheek, my purpose was serious: a used bar of soap is an excellent analogy to use when theorizing about the lithic reduction sequences that result in what's come to be known as 'the' Acheulean handaxe, and what's called the 'Levallois technique,' the two main aspects of which are the 'Levallois core' and the 'Levallois flake.'
     Some of you may lack an intimate knowledge of Middle Palaeolithic stone artifacts and the history of their interpretation. I must warn you. What I'm about to say will not be well received by Very Serious [Palaeolithic] Archaeologists. These objects have been heavily theorized, going back more than a century, and their 'reality' is a foregone conclusion in the disciplinary 'culture.' As such, my efforts are akin to pissing into the wind.
Me and my Level 4 Biohazard suit 

Never mind about that. Somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be me. Besides, I've taken a face-full so many times I'm ready for anything in my Level-4 Biohazard suit! Regardless, it does get tedious donning and doffing these togs every other day or so. [And guess what? They don't protect against hurt feelings or embarrassment. So, they're not perfect, 'specially when you consider the atmosphere of acrimony that sometimes prevails in  this binness.]
     Back to the matters at hand. By now you may have consulted my previous two outings on this issue. Today I'm hoping to break the argument down into its components so as to make a step-by-step case as to why a used bar of soap is a good analogy for the handaxe and the two genres of Levallois artifacts.
     First of all, let's talk about the functional underpinnings, beginning with a question [and don't get all bent outa shape. This isn't a 'Why did the chicken cross the road' joke!].
     "Why did the bipedal ape bang one piece of rock against another piece of rock with the result that a small, sharp-edged fragment was subtracted from the larger of the two blocks?" Was it to make the large block smaller? Not likely. Was it to prepare the large block for the removal of a second or third sharp-edged fragment? Hmmm. Let's think about that for a moment. It seems rather unlikely, given that this was just about the first time a bipedal ape left such a trace in the palaeontological record.
     Remember that we don't know much about the cognitive abilities of those first 'flintknappers.' All we can say for certain is that they would have been every bit as smart as the last common ancestor that we humans share with chimps. Best guess? A chimp-like brain. So, the cognitive abilities of those first 'flintknappers' were at best equivalent to those of present-day chimpanzees [unless we're to imagine that today's chimps have de-volved from a golden age of chimp cognition, which seems, again, unlikely].
     Do we think that the first 'flintknapper' banged one rock against another because it envisioned a useful sharp bit in the block of raw material and then struggled to work out a way to get it out? I'm gonna say that's also highly unlikely. [By so saying I might be accused of a certain bias against our early progenitors. However, I think it'd take one gigantic heap of special pleading to suggest that the first 'flake' was the result of forethought.] So, if not because of forethought, how do we explain that first act of rock against rock, and the removal of a sharp fragment. Here I'm jumping into the realm of speculation.
     I see a couple of possibilities. First, it could have been accidental, the result of a meaningless, nothing-better-to-do-at-the-moment banging together of two rocks with the unexpected effect that a small, sharp-edged fragment was detached from one of the two rocks. Second, it may have been a cognitive leap based on observation. In this scenario the first flake removal was an effort to replicate the result of two pieces of rock, in nature,  coming into contact with violent force such that a small, sharp fragment was detached. Not much to choose between there. Could go either way. What about that second possibility? How could that have occurred?
     I see at least a couple of ways that our bipedal hominid might have espied pieces of rock coming into contact in such a way that that first 'flintknapper' decided to take a *cough* crack at it. The first possibility is that it was, once again, a natural occurrence. Picture a cliff face from which, at random, fragments are naturally detached and fall to ground level with great force. At some point one block is going to come crashing down on another one resting on the surface and voila! The flake is born. The other possibility is that our incipient 'flintknapper' was out foraging one day with a fist-sized rock that was intended to be used as a missile in case it was surprised by a vicious predator [or to scatter a bunch of scavengers, or something equally as efficacious, in the palaeolithic sense]. Fast forward to the confrontation. Bipedal hominid flings rock at lion and misses, hitting cliff face or rock outcrop. Lion runs off. Our intrepid hominid goes to retrieve missile. It looks different now. There's a chunk missing. Hominid glances at ground. Spies flake. Picks up flake. 'Refits' flake. [Please, please, don't somebody use this scenario to argue for the presence of lithic analysts at 2.6 Ma!] Our better-than-chimp-brained bipedal ape puts two and two together and hominids lived happily ever after...
     So, our choices are 1) meaningless rock banging leads to lithic technology, or 2) observation of the results of rock banging leads to lithic technology. I think 2) is most likely. As for the event that brought about the observation, the possibilities are 1) naturally occurring fracturing, or 2) a rock used as a missile fractures when it impacts a larger rock mass. I think we must begin from this supposition, that our 'flintknapper' observed a natural phenomenon and put two and two together. This is the explanation that requires the least speculation. But, of course, it doesn't rule out the missile scenario.
     Just an aside, here. How did our savvy, soon-to-be 'flintknapper' know that a sharp rock could function as a cutting or scraping tool [which seems the most logical function for the arch flake and its progeny]? I reckon it's a no brainer. [Well, okay, it's a chimp brainer!] Ever bang your head on a sharp overhanging object, whether rock or other material? Hurts. There might be blood. Same with walking barefoot on sharp rocks. It probably didn't take an Oldowan Einstein to see the utility of sharp-edged rock fragments. So, it seems most likely that the first sharp stone flake removed intentionally from a block of raw material was used to cut or scrape something that couldn't be cut or scraped using fingernails or teeth. [It matters little to this discussion which of those two activities was primary in hominid evolution.] What matters is the result: one sharp fragment and one block of raw material from which it was removed.

     By now you're prolly wondering what any of this has to do with soap. I'm getting there. Be patient.
     If the entire archaeological record consisted of a sharp-edged fragment of rock--i.e. a flake--and the lump of raw material from which it was detached--i.e. a core--do you think archaeologists should ignore the flake and try to figger out what the lump might have been used for? Would that same archaeologist look at a used bar of soap and ignore the material that had been removed to wash somebody's hands? They might if they had no idea that any material had been removed in its creation. So, under such circumstances we could forgive the soap analysts if they focussed on the bar and not the lather, and dubbed the used bar a work of art or, well you can see what I'm up to. In the next chapter I'm going to argue that this is just what the earliest palaeolithic archaeologists did, and for much the same reason--at the very beginning the flakes--the lather, if you will, of a lump of rock--were very likely not in the picture.
     For now, I'll just foreshadow that next installment with an example from recent palaeoanthropology. Have a look at the illustration below. These are some of the oldest stone artifacts, from Kada Gona, Ethiopia, at around 2.65 Ma. These were reported in a 2000 Journal of Archaeological Science publication by Sileshi Semaw, "The World’s Oldest Stone Artefacts from Gona, Ethiopia: Their Implications for Understanding Stone Technology and Patterns of Human Evolution Between 2·6–1·5 Million Years Ago." The typological paradigm that's in play in these descriptions is a direct descendent of the first discoveries of Pleistocene stone artifacts in Europe, including those that were described from the very beginning as hand axes. The Kada Gona archaeologists are obviously reluctant to suggest that any of the objects shown are handaxes (although number 2 would be a good candidate for what the Qesem Cave and Kathu Pan 1 teams have described as a "handaxe roughout"--a pre-form, in other words). How number 2 escaped such a claim, and indeed, how the Kada Gona archaeologist missed his chance at claiming the earliest handaxe, is beyond the ability of this little brain of mine to understand. Unless, of course, said archaeologist had been brought up to think that handaxes weren't even invented until the Acheulean stone industry appeared, at about 1.5 Ma.

As you can see in the caption above, the archaeologist makes every effort to downplay the flakes, and to ascribe a meaningful function to the lumps from which the flakes were removed. Number 1 is a "unifacial chopper," while number 2 is inscrutably identified as a "discoid." Number 3 isn't just another unifacial chopper, it's a unifacial side chopper. [Explain that one!] Number 4 is a unifacial end chopper. Doesn't it look like 1 and 3? It does to me. But, then again, I'm not a lithic analyst. The fifth is a 'partial' discoid, presumably because it's not really discoidal at all. So it's an irregular discoid! Criminy! 6 and 7 are called the same thing as 3. UNBELIEVABLE! It's the flake, Stupid! [Recalling the Clinton campaign strategy: "It's the economy, Stupid!"] These so-called choppers prolly couldn't chop a pound of butter without smearing it all over Olduvai! Choppers, my ass. Are we to believe that these Ur-flintknappers, who had just learned to walk for gawd's sake, could possibly conceive of a chopper, or an axe? Good luck with that one.
     On the basis of the foregoing evidence courtesy of the Kada Gona archaeologist, I'm gonna guess that any lumps of stone with fewer than a half-dozen flake removals were simply not considered worthy of discussion [much less illustration in an august refereed journal]. But you and I know that they're there in the assemblage, disguised as 'mere' cores, and giving lie to this preposterous labelling of more heavily used lumps as 'choppers' and 'discoids.' What a load of crap. And I'm talkin' poop of pachydermical proportions.

I'm outa here.



SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Sunday 9 December 2012

The First Nerds? Oh, Please.


Seriously. The first nerds. From the Daily Mail online

How ancient Africans were the first nerds: Birth of technology traced back 70,000 years to the continent's southern tip
There is no news here. It's a puff piece on the publication of Christopher Henshilwood's "Late Pleistocene Techno-traditions in Southern Africa: A Review of the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, c. 75–59 ka"(Journal of World Prehistory 25:205-237, December 2012).
     As the title states this is a review, and a useful one, of claims for the earliest appearance of modern human behaviour, which stands as evidence for modern human cognitive abilities. I don't plan on disputing any of the material traces today. I'm satisfied that the South African archaeologists and their global collaborators can identify modern human behaviour. Of course, the BBC's recent series on our origins probably listened to those same archaeologists when constructing a view of the times around the time that modern humans arose in that part of the world. 
     I sincerely hope that the real modern humans didn't haft their spear points at an oblique angle to the shaft, as was the case in this scene from the BBC series. 'Course, if it were the case, it might explain why it took us about 30,000 years to get from there to Europe, and only a blink of an eye to get from Europe to Australia by at least 40,000 years ago.


Could this BE any cheesier?
I'll not bore you this time with my 'plaint about the dating of the southern African caves. I just wish they'd directly date one of those lovely bone points [if, that is, any useful constituents remain].
     I'm still working on hand[soap]axes. Stay tuned.



SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Thursday 6 December 2012

Why Should We Pay Any Attention to Him? He Can't Even Get a Letter to the Editor Published!


This is a sort of good news, bad news story. First, the good news. I've had another comment published in Science. Now the bad news. I submitted it as a Letter to the Editor. I'm beginning to get the feeling that they don't want criticism in their Letters, only value added kinds of comments. That's not [as we used to say] my thing. Ah, well.
     It's nothing you haven't seen before. It's just a succinct balloon-bursting of the dating in the Wilkins et al. paper on 500,000 year old spear points at Kathu Pan 1, South Africa. I don't know if it's behind a pay-wall. It's here, if you're interested. I've already written to them hoping they can clean up the glitchy quote marks around the first occurrence of 'spring vent' in the first paragraph.  

My 'other' moment in the sun.
     So, there you have it. Direct from the foremost exponent of destructive archaeological criticism.


SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's page), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

I Lied. No Hand(soap)axes today. Instead an English Lesson.


When I said I was gonna come back first with another hand(soap)axe post, I wasn't expecting to be treated to a bit of very kewl news from Scandinavia. It's particularly interesting to me because it implicitly belies the post-Medieval coziness between the English and the Germans, that the English royal family would rather you didn't pay too much attention to [e.g. the English royal family is a German royal family--their pre-WWI family name was Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha [anglicized to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha]. Before that they were the House of Hanover [i.e. also German]. WWI convinced them that it wasn't cool to have a fancy German last name if you were ruling a bunch of English who hadn't thought of themselves as German...EVER. [Likewise the French, but that's another and much longer story.]
     To my way of thinking it may well have been this intellectual, geopolitical, and family relationship of the English ruling class to that of the Germans that led to a major uh-oh in the standard story of the English language's history. It took a couple of non-English, non-German European linguists and language historians--one a Slavic language speaker; the other a Scandinavian--to point up what to me is a fascinating set of data that shakes the foundation of conventional wisdom. [I'm struggling to figger out why, exactly, I'm so drawn to this sort of research. Ideas?]
Source
     The standard story: Old English was a West Germanic language. Old English morphed into Middle English through the influence of the French who 'invaded' England in 1066 CE. [They weren't really invading; they were simply asserting their centuries-old claim to the English throne. Part of that long story I alluded to above.] That's it! West Germanic Old English becomes French-influenced Middle English and gradually changes into modern English. Easy-peasy. 'Cept, there are all these anomalies in the post-Old-English English language that just don't fit with the simple Western Germanic--Frenchified Western Germanic--English historical sequence. And that gives me something to blab about today.
      The headline reads
UiO linguist makes sensational claim: English is a Scandinavian language
UiO is the University of Oslo, Norway, and the article appears in the November 27 edition of Apollon, the UiO research magazine. The sub-heading reads
Contrary to popular belief, the British did not 'borrow' words and concepts from the Norwegian and Danish Vikings and their descendants. What we call English is actually a form of Scandinavian.  
Simple. Straightforward. And very likely spot on, if I'm not mistaken! The two smart people are Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo and Joseph Emmonds, visiting UiO professor from Palacký University in the Czech Republic.
England in 878 CE. Note the predominance of the Danelaw [Scandinavian] and the hold-out Anglo-Saxons.
(This map borrowed from the Travelanguist. Thanks!)
     Language change is a tricky study. But there are some fairly well accepted principles about how languages change due to outside influences [read colonizers]. In this case the interlopers were Danes. First, indigenous languages tend to borrow words from the invaders when those words express ideas that simply weren't important in occupied the homeland. In the case of English, it's clear that the language comprises a good number of words that are very un-Western Germanic. Here are [just] some examples.
anger, awe, bag, band, big, birth, both, bull, cake, call, cast, cosy, cross, die, dirt, dream, egg, fellow, flat, gain, get, gift, give, guess, guest, hug, husband, ill, kid, law, leg, lift, likely, link, loan, loose, low, mistake, odd, race, raise, root, rotten, same, seat, seem, sister, skill, skin, skirt, sky, steak, though, thrive, Thursday, tight, till, trust, ugly, want, weak, window, wing, wrong.
Pretty impressive, huh? Sure there are lots of Western Germanic words and [of course the accurséd French-based ones ;-)]. But Faarlund and Emmonds's radical revision involves much more than just a list of borrowed words. In fact, English displays a good number of grammatical parallels to the Scandinavian languages that just don't exist in the Western Germanic language group.
     The examples given in the UiO article are very persuasive.
"We can show that wherever English differs syntactically from the other Western Germanic languages - German, Dutch, Frisian – it has the same structure as the Scandinavian languages." Here are some examples:
Word order: In English and Scandinavian the object is placed after the verb:
English: I have read the book.
Scandinavian: Eg har lese boka. [I have read the book]
German and Dutch (and Old English) put the verb at the end.
Ich habe das Buch gelesen. [I have the book read]
English and Scandinavian can have a preposition at the end of the sentence.
This we have talked about.
Dette har vi snakka om. [This have we talked of]
English and Scandinavian can have a split infinitive, i.e. we can insert a word between the infinitive marker and the verb.
I promise to never do it again.
Eg lovar å ikkje gjera det igjen. [I aver to never do it again]: 
Group genitive [possessive].
The Queen of England’s hat.
Dronninga av Englands hatt. [You probably get the idea]
[Or the example I snuck in above: Faarlund and Emmonds's radical revision...]
  As the authors conclude,
 "All of this is impossible in German or Dutch, and these kinds of structures are very unlikely to change within a language. The only reasonable explanation then is that English is in fact a Scandinavian language, and a continuation of the Norwegian-Danish language which was used in England during the Middle Ages."
These observations are not in the least trivial. They go to the heart of the matter, and explain anomalies  that have previously been minimized or overlooked completely, perhaps, as mentioned above, because of a lack of reflexivity on the part of linguists who preferred to see themselves as Anglo-Saxon inheritors.
     As a final point, the article mentions that it's always confused people how present-day Norwegians seem better able to make the transition to English than either the Dutch or the Germans [and I won't even start on the French ;-)]. It's because English is constructed according to Scandinavian norms and not those of the Western Germanic languages from which German and Dutch derive.
     Pretty. Bloody. Kewl. No? And sort of archaeological [certainly anthropological]. See you next time!



SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's page), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Monday 3 December 2012

Guess What's Up Next...





SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's page), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Virtually Stunning: Monte Alban on the Cheap!


The ball court and the main "street" at Monte Albán (Thanks Google!)
Some time ago the world was invited to take a stroll around Tulu'um, the Post-Classic Maya stronghold on the Yucatan Peninsula's Honduras Gulf coast. For those of us without the resources to get to such places, Google Earth provided an unprecedented view through its Street View function, and the labour of Googlers pedalling around on tricycles. At the time they promised more to come.

     A couple of days ago I saw a piece on Diario Oaxaca that it was now possible to visit [IMHO] the world's ultimate "Acropolis" Monte Albán, in Mexico's Valley of Oaxaca. [For those who weren't aware, Google Earth is a cross-platform free application downloadable at Google.com.] 
     Go on! Take a spin. I know I was never gonna get as close as this. And I have to say that I wish I had these resources when I was still teaching the archaeology of the "Americas." I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this Google Earth tour of Monte Albán is every bit as riveting and visually informative as any walking tour could be, especially for undergraduates. Hell, it's good enough for anyone wanting to "see" the remains of an ancient civilization up close. And besides, you don't have to put on sunscreen, wear a hat, or carry around a big jug of water.
     And just in case you've forgotten where these places are, I've circled them on this groovy map.


"Borrowed" from the UC Irvine library (Source)

SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's page), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Sunday 2 December 2012

I tought I taw a unicown. I did! I did! I did tee a unicown! Doodness, dwacious, me!


From the Subversive Archaeologist's news ticker and London's Telegraph comes this too-good-to-be-true archaeological claim:
"North Korea 'archaeologists' report quite unbelievable discovery of unicorn lair"
This must surely be the archaeological find of the Common Era!

From the Telegraph November 30, 2012 (Photo: ALAMY)
According to the History Institute of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Academy of Social Sciences, an inscribed slab found in Pyongyang apparently alerted them to the singular importance of this site. The slab read, simply, "Unicorn Lair." This miraculous slab is believed to date to the Koryo Kingdom (918-1392), and in particular identifies the lair as belonging to King Tongmyong, whose temple still stands nearby in the North Korean city.
     This remarkable find finally puts the people's Korea on the geo-political-historical-evolutionary-democratic-anthropological map, squarely above the Republic of Korea, just like it has always been on maps! Indeed, for the better part of a century rumours have alluded to the illustrious Kim Dynasty's own unicorn stables, believed to be hidden cleverly in a vast underground paddock/stable complex in a tunnel straddling the 39th parallel, just inches (on the map) from Seoul, the capital of the ROK.
     Not only has this story underscored the perennial importance of the DPRK in the historiography of the Korean peninsula, but it also has direct implications on equid evolution. Unicorns, after all, are the only hoofed animal that romps around on a single hoof. It's long been thought that this was the genetic key to its having had just one horn. What most people don't know about the other equids [horses] is that, like Doberman pinchers and sheep, who have bits lopped off early in life for cosmetic purposes, horses too go through a similar process before they're allowed out of the maternity stall. Thus, rather than having had no horns analogous to that of the unicorn, for about the last fifty million years horses, too, have borne horns, one on either side of the head, just above the eyes.
     It is one of the sad realities of vertebrate taphonomy that nary a one of the standard version horse horn has ever been found palaeontologically. This has no doubt made more opaque the veil of misinformation and downright ignorance about true equid morphology.

An artist's rendering of what most of us will never see...the inferred appearance of an adult horse.
Again, the unicorn's anomalous hoof and horn morphology is unique in the equine world.
     Already a group of left-leaning American anthropological archaeologists are submitting funding proposals that will enable them to work with their North Korean colleagues in their sub-surface investigations of King Tongmyong's unicorn lair. We all await those results breathlessly. ;-)

Thanks for dropping by! If you like what you see, follow me on Google Friend Connect or Twitter, friend me on Facebook, check out my publications at Academia, or connect on Linkedin. You can also subscribe to receive new posts by email or RSS [scroll to the top and look on the left]. Oh, and you can always put me on your web page's blogroll! By the way, I get a small commission for anything you purchase from Amazon.com if you go there by clicking through from this site. 

Sunday 25 November 2012

Can We Talk? 'My ancestors, myself' by Jonathan Marks

Before I get started, please rid yourself of the expectation that I'm going after Jonathan Marks about his recent piece on Aeon, 'My ancestors, myself: Fossil genomics is opening new windows to the past. But the view through them isn't as clear as we like to think.' On the contrary. I fully agree with him...right up, that is, to the part where he characterizes the Neanderthals according to the same orthodox archaeological interpretations with which yours truly has a long-standing dispute. Jon can't be blamed for this. As a consumer of archaeological knowledge, he's more or less at the mercy of conventional wisdom. So, read on, s'il vous plait.

Illustration by Richard Wilkinson
Can we talk?
     A couple of days ago Jonathan Marks gave us much to ponder about our present understanding of Neanderthals, especially the recent genetic comparisons with modern humans. If I might be allowed to compress it into a sound-bite, Jon's* is an eloquent essay on the post-modern anthropological insight that, either when one is studying present-day humans, or our recent and fossil relatives, we need always to keep in mind the cultural 'baggage' that we bring to our investigations. In particular, he hopes to persuade us that biology, alone, is no measure of a fossil species. I couldn't agree more. I like to use the following example as a means of illustrating what's meant by this notion of one's 'stance,' 'background,' 'cultural baggage,' or however you want to put it. Ask yourself this question: 
What do you think lurks in the cultural and social background of neuroscientists who seek to find structures in the brains of males and females to 'explain' perceived differences in the behaviour of the sexes? Is it reasonable to suppose that these invesigators must have 'bought into' the idea that, e.g., 'girls' can't do math [but that boys can], or that 'boys' are inherently rambunctious [and girls are sugar and spice], or 'boys' are promiscuous [but 'girls' are chary]? 
I'll admit that unexamined presuppositions like these might not always be the reason for such scientific enquiries, but it would be an odd coincidence if they weren't. Jon Marks constructs his argument along these lines, to remind us that our background and experience will enter, more often than not unnoticed, into our deliberations on the ancestry of Homo sapiens, if we don't at least make an effort to examine our motives and beliefs from the outset.
     Jon makes a great number of very apt observations about the way the Neanderthals are treated in the popular imagination, and in the minds of anthropologists and geneticists. Drawing on recent revelations from genomics--that we share some of the same novel genes with the Neanderthals--he muses on what this might have meant about our relationship with them. Specifically, he asks whether or not the new, modern form of bipedal apes that appeared in Europe around 45 ka would have seen the congeneric Neanderthals as people like them. 
     And it is here that Jon and I diverge. Even though Jon's applying a set of thoroughly anthropological principles to a perennial question, I'm dismayed because his essay presents as 'fact' a picture of the Neanderthals that is, in aggregate, a mélange of what was, what might have been, what never was, and what could never have been. In other words, his 'take' on the Neanderthals may be informed by an unknown number of what one day could well turn out to have been archaeological myths. In that, Jon confidently represents the Neanderthals in a way that undermines his own argument.
     He thus applies a culturally constructed 'skin' on the anatomical and biological Neanderthal that draws on the orthodoxy of interpretation, without acknowledging that the 'skin' comprises what are at best provisional findings as to how they behaved and what they were capable of in comparison to modern humans. [I realize that my own 'take' on the Neanderthal archaeological record isn't mainstream, and most of my peers would dismiss my quarrel with the mainstream as unreasonable. Nevertheless, I have a legitimate dispute with archaeological orthodoxy, and thus my alternative interpretation of record leads me to be cautious, at a minimum, regarding the stories told about the inhabitants of Europe before the time of modern humans.] Jon introduces his Neanderthals in this way
Their bones show lots of evidence of healed fractures; their teeth are worn as if they were being used as tools; and their muscular development was strikingly asymmetrical. Whatever they did, it was rigorous, it was cultural and it was humane (at least, they took care of friends with broken arms better than chimpanzees do). They often buried their dead, but never sent any grave goods along with the deceased for the journey. They didn’t build anything, or at least anything lasting or recognisable. If they decorated themselves, or had any aesthetic sensibility at all, it was rudimentary at best. 
Jon is unequivocal in his conviction that the Neanderthals were 'cultural' and 'humane.' But how does he make such claims with such certainty?
Shanidar 1 Neanderthal humeri. Individual suffered a crushing
blow to the left temporal, probably leading to blindness and
abnormal development of the right side (shown at left). 
The distal fracture is healed. Researchers conclude that the individual
must have been nursed to have survived such injuries. (Souce: Smithsonian)

Sandhill crane humerus. Individual rescued after months of
flightlessness. X-ray shows a healed, overlapping fracture.
(Source: Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota)
In support of this he first mentions healed fractures. These tell him the stricken Neanderthal's friends and relatives must have taken care of him for a time after the injury. Jon's referring to the Shanidar 1 remains. This disappoints me, because, quite unreflexively, he is accepting, carte blanche, a thoroughly ethnocentric interpretation of the skeletal evidence--i.e. that to survive such injuries, this individual must have been nursed by relatives and companions. Dettwyler, in the early 90s, pointed out to us that, ethnographically there is a great deal of variability in the way the injured are treated, such that the conventional wisdom about Shanidar 1 is, at best, a sufficient, but not necessary explanation.   
     Besides, there are plenty of examples from the non-human world demonstrating that, even in the absence of palliative care, animals are capable of recovering from injuries that most of us would assume to have been mortal [just as those of Shanidar 1], either immediately, or over time because of reduced mobility and ability to acquire nourishment. You might have thought that a bird with a broken wing would surely perish. Not so. The X-ray at left illustrates a healing fracture of a bird's humerus. It belongs to a Sandhill crane. They inhabit wetlands, and are stealthy hunters. But their natural history includes plenty of flying about. The X-rayed crane apparently survived for months before the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota rescued it. Presumably it could have survived for many more. So, you see [I might be wagging my finger a bit just now], consumers of archaeological findings must be very careful--those inferences might simply be in error.   
     As for teeth worn from using them as tools, there is broad morphological similarity between the dental attrition visible in Neanderthals and many ethnographic human groups. However, no one, as far as I know, is able, unequivocally, to argue that the two are the result of identical processes.
     I think you can probably guess the eventual outcome of these comments on Jon's essay. But don't stop here! Immediately, Jon brings up another very tenuous claim about Neanderthals--that they buried their dead. [But, don't kid yourself. None of this can be treated as fact,  which you'd know if you've been paying attention. However, if you're coming fresh to this material, I could recommend a one or two articles that might make you think twice about the 'fact' of Neanderthal burial. Hell! It made Harold Dibble think twice, and he and his colleagues eventually found good evidence that in the case of an infant Neanderthal long believed to have been purposefully buried, the evidence is, at best, equivocal. And, some would have it, that in those cases, the argument for purposive, mindful behaviour, is *cough* gravely weakened.] I find it odd that he states they built nothing that lasted. Although I have to agree, the absence of such evidence is, you'll forgive me, not evidence of absence. They could have been building log cabins, for heaven's sake, which leave no post holes, and which surely would have decomposed over the millenia. Moreover, a number of archaeologists have treated their findings as evidence of structures--the mammoth bones at Moldova, for example, or the imprint of wood in travertine in the Abric Romani rock shelter. I find Jon's assertion here to be curious, to say the least. So be it.
     Next, he turns to a discussion of how present-day humans [that would be you and me] might have viewed the earliest moderns in Europe, as a way of illustrating his thesis that our cultural baggage gets in the way of a more inclusive 'take' on the Neanderthals. He suggests that those modern humans 
also led rigorous lives almost unimaginably different from your own. For most of their existence, they lived without writing or the wheel, without crops or tame animals, without metal, matches, or even fish-hooks. If you were transported into their world, you wouldn’t last five minutes without them to help and teach you. We have to realise that they were in fact not much like us at all. 
True enough. They may not have been very much like us. But neither are New Guinea highlanders. His point here is that regardless of the specifics of the difference, whether one is talking about Neanderthals or the first moderns in Europe, present-day humans like you and I would have experienced them both as exotic. However, this comparison cannot hold up against the archaeological record, nor that of the ethnographic. In contrast to the traces Neanderthals have left behind [for upwards of 250 kyr], throughout Europe and Asia from about 45 ka modern humans left behind an archaeological record that is readily recognizable to us. That record includes behaviours that in some cases persisted into the twentieth century in many parts of the world [and in remote places continues to this day]. Not so the Neanderthals.
     That same archaeological record shows us that the modern skeletal form of Homo, which emerged briefly from Africa nearly 100 ka, conducted itself in an identical manner to that of their Neanderthal contemporaries--i.e. unlike anything that modern humans have been capable of producing since about 45 ka. Compared to them, we would undoubtedly have recognized as human the first people like us in Europe, and in much the same way we have viewed ethnographic peoples--who're often very different from westerners. I don't think the same can be said for the Neanderthals without straining credulity. And so, when Jon writes 
there is no reason to think that people 100,000 years ago would have seen you and thought, ‘Hey, there goes another one of us forehead-and-chin guys’. More likely, they would have regarded you as at least as alien as a Neanderthal, based on the criteria we generally use for such assessments: what you’re wearing, how you’re groomed, whether you can communicate sensibly and can behave properly [emphasis mine]. 
Quite simply, there's no unequivocal evidence that either the modern form at 100 kyr ago, or the Neanderthals throughout almost 250 kyr ever 'thought' at all. Thinking, you see, may be unique to the modern humans that spread throughout the old world in the blink of an eye around 45 ka. Our experience of the world, beyond the instinctual, is little else but thought. On present understanding, we simply can't assume that those relations at 100 ka were capable of communicating 'sensibly' or behaving 'properly.' 
     Jon worries that our view of the Neanderthals is based purely on the physical differences between us. But, as I hope I've convinced you, physical differences are not the only yardstick that we use to classify or characterize the similarities and differences between the two. He is correct when he says
we tend to use cultural criteria to sort who belongs where. Do you really associate only with people whose head shapes resemble yours? Of course not; you associate with people who tend to speak like you, dress like you, and share your general interests. 
And, if I might add, people that look like you. Once again, we're being asked to accept the inference that Neanderthals spoke, dressed, and had anything like 'general interests.' They may well have not.
     Here is where Jon paints himself into a corner. He's trying to tell us that the way we see the Neanderthals is coloured by our preceptions, much in the way a bigot is disposed to treat another group as inferior or worse. Yet, he's asking us to accept that the Neanderthals are human, and for that reason we should be more reflexive and cut them some slack. As he puts it
we make sense of the Neanderthals by seeing them in distinctively cultural ways. We imagine that, because we scientists juxtapose ourselves against them anatomically, people in the Late Pleistocene must have done the same, although that goes against what we know of modern human behavior. 
As I've tried to point out in this blurt, in his acceptance of mainstream inferences about the Neanderthals, Jon is also 'seeing them in distinctly cultural ways,' equally unexamined, but different from those he's arguing against. His view of Neanderthals is every bit as culturally constructed as that of those he seeks to enlighten in this essay. 
     As I said at the outset, I have no quarrel with Jon. I hope it's clear that I've used his essay as a stepping-off point. Sure, I've found what I believe to be flaws in 'My ancestors, myself.' But those flaws simply convince me that Jon is an unwitting victim of what is a collection of archaeological myths of unknown proportions. 
     Well, I hope you've enjoyed this side-trip to the biological anthropological view of the Neanderthals. And I very much thank you for visiting us.
*I sincerely hope that using his given name's diminutive I'm not being presumptuous. He and I have a facebook acquaintance, but we have corresponded within that. So, here's hoping. I just don't feel right referring to him as 'the author,' or 'Marks.'


Thanks for dropping by! If you like what you see, follow me on Google Friend Connect or Twitter, friend me on Facebook, check out my publications at Academia, or connect on Linkedin. You can also subscribe to receive new posts by email or RSS [scroll to the top and look on the left]. Oh, and you can always put me on your web page's blogroll! By the way, I get a small commission for anything you purchase from Amazon.com if you go there by clicking through from this site. 

Saturday 24 November 2012

I'm Workin' On it!

Jonathan Marks published a brilliant essay the other day, called 'My ancestors, myself' alongside which was this  cartoon worthy of Whistler, himself. I'm hard at work putting a subversive archaeologist's spin on it. Bet you can't guess what that means...  
Illustration by Richard Wilkinson



Thanks for dropping by! If you like what you see, follow me on Google Friend Connect or Twitter, friend me on Facebook, check out my publications at Academia, or connect on Linkedin. You can also subscribe to receive new posts by email or RSS [scroll to the top and look on the left]. Oh, and you can always put me on your web page's blogroll! By the way, I get a small commission for anything you purchase from Amazon.com if you go there by clicking through from this site.