Ancient Places Research Articles

A Study of Moving Sand Dunes by Means of Satellite Images

In several regions of the world, the slow motion of sand dunes is becoming a challenge for human activities and a threat for the survival of ancient places or archaeological sites. It is then important a constant surveying of dunes and an estimate of their migration rate. Several methods exist for this purpose: among them we have the use of satellite images, often freely available on the World Wide Web, which are a convenient resource for the planning of future human settlements and activities. In particular, the Google Earth and its time series are a remarkable resource. Some examples of their use are here proposed.

Bundling the Day and Unraveling the Night

Bundling the Day and Unraveling the Night Margaret Noodin (bio) To mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Society of American Indians, a group of friends and scholars traveled from The Ohio State University to a golf course in nearby Newark. There, among the tended greens, they climbed to the center of Observatory Mound and gazed across the Octagon Earthworks built by the Hopewell people between 100 bc and 400 ad. What can be known when gathering in a place centuries old? How have the shadows shifted? What traces left by others are real and what traces of today can be left in places where the layers of time are so visible? We knew these mounds, like the ancestors of those gathered, were Indigenous, crafted by people who planted, sowed, traded, and traveled near the waterways of the Great Lakes. People who fashioned small figurines and built vast geometrically perfect shapes centered on the arc of the lunar cycle. They wore large earrings, mined copper, gathered meteors, and buried their dead carefully, with precision, in mounds of earth. The stories they carved in stone included bears and severed heads. It is difficult to know much more for certain. We also knew that our more immediate predecessors came from many Native nations and were not yet citizens of the United States. Yet, when they gathered on the mound they sang the song Martin Luther King wove into his Dream speech, the song sung at both of Barack Obama’s inaugural celebrations, a song many forget is based on the British national anthem . . . “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” It is easy to understand the force with which they must have sung, “My native country, thee . . . I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills.” But the poignant irony of this particular group singing “Land where my fathers died . . . Land of the pilgrims’ pride” provokes a sort of melancholy that [End Page 237] postcolonial theorists might today connect to historical trauma. The first American lyrics were proudly written in 1831, shortly after President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act setting in motion decades of removal, including the infamous Trail of Tears. Standing on the mounds in 2011, we knew the impact of the Reorganization Act, the cataclysmic ripple of the American Indian Movement, the importance of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the ongoing struggles to uphold the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. These laws came together here, these longitudes of practice and latitudes of purpose. Standing in a place that connected minds on earth with celestial time, I finally understood the theory of relativity. Space and time are related. Light and sound have speed. And perhaps the best way to stop time or cross time or step out of time altogether is to make sound. Not one of us moved one archeological spoon of earth, but we offered instead waves of sound across the day. We came to this ancient place and traded feelings with the unknown. Like those who came before us, we sang of the nations we wished most to represent. Many of us, already citizens of beautiful America, sang of our sovereign nations. Like those before us we stood in a space marked by the past and sang into the future. Jane Hafen sang a Hopi harvest song of gratitude she learned from her brother, John Rainer Jr. Alice Te Punga Somerville sang a Maori song from the other side of the world. LeAnne Howe sang a warrior’s song and pointed out that Choctaws were mound builders in the not too distant past. “I sing it quite a bit,” she said, “especially when I need strength to fight off something. I didn’t like the feeling of the invasion I had there: The men at work blowing away leaves, the grounds keepers’ keeping an eye on us, the rude men driving their golf carts over the mounds . . . just because they could.” Monique Mojica said hers was not a “traditional” cultural song but one she created for her play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way. She explained, “I chose it over other prayer songs I could have offered because in the...

Bronze- and Iron-Age Celtic-speakers: what don't we know, what can't we know, and what could we know? Language, genetics and archaeology in the twenty-first century

In 1998 the author published ‘Genetics, linguistics and prehistory: thinking big and thinking straight’, a critique of late twentieth-century attempts to synthesize the disciplines of genetics, linguistics and archaeology. This paper assesses subsequent progress, using examples from various parts of the world, including Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Frisia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Micronesia, Portugal, Spain and the Canary Islands. The growing importance of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome, rather than classical population genetics, is emphasized. The author argues that ancient DNA and early linguistic data should be used more. Languages mentioned include Aquitanian, Basque, Celtiberian, Etruscan, Finnish, Hungarian, Iberian, Lepontic, Lusitanian, Pictish, Raetic, ‘Tartessian’, Thracian and the Ladin dialect of the Italian Alps. Aspects of the ancient linguistic geography of Scotland and the Iberian peninsula are discussed, as is the difficulty of deciding the direction of spread of Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. The potential of ancient place and personal names is illustrated from Celtic.

Rectification of the ancient geographic coordinates in Ptolemy's Geographike Hyphegesis

Abstract. A multitude of the ancient places given by Ptolemy in his Geography (~150 AD) are so far unknown. One of the main problems of their identification are the errors of the given ancient coordinates. The different kinds of errors are illustrated by examples. A new geodetic-statistical analysis method is described, by which groups of places with homogeneous systematic errors and places with gross errors can be determined. Based on a transformation function describing the systematic errors, presumable modern coordinates of unknown places can be computed. That, in conjunction with further information, can make possible their identification. A test of the analysis method is carried out on a complex simulated example and shows its practicability. The analysis method has been applied within an interdisciplinary research project on Ptolemy's Geography. Further developments of the method are imaginable to make it accessible for related data diagnostics.

The Uncanny Unnamable in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World

AbstractIn The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing creates a character whose naming attempts to socialize the unsocializable. In the first novel, Harriet and David Lovatt raise four edenic children, until the birth of Ben, their atavistic son. Exiled, Ben reappears as the sequel’s title character, a monstrous throwback searching the globe for home. Among a multitude of biblical and traditional given names, a surname that requires the family to ‘love it,’ and a world of modern and ancient place names, Lessing’s onomastic choices underscore her themes of identity and belonging.

GAP: A NeoGeo Approach to Classical Resources

Google Ancient Places (GAP) is a Google Digital Humanities Award recipient that will mine the Google Books corpus for classical material that has a strong geographic and historical basis. GAP will allow scholars, students, and enthusiasts world-wide to query the Google Books corpus to ask for books related to a geographic location or to ask for the locations referred to in a classical text. The traditional difficulty of identifying place names will be overcome by using a combination of URI-based gazetteers and an identification algorithm that associates the linear clustering of places within narrative texts with the geographic clustering of locations in the real world.

Game Scene with Chu (Ancient Place Name) Art Characteristics Produced by 3D Technology

The game designer shall integrate the game scene design with national culture characteristics to produce games with more national connotations. By means of reading Hubei and Hunan building culture characteristics as well applying them for the template design, the author has produced game scenes rich in Hubei and Hunan culture characteristics. In addition to the above, the author also makes the designed game scene possess Hubei and Hunan culture foundation as well as unique Hubei and Hunan culture charming through application of 3D software. In a word, only the national game development is added with our own nationalized substances, can it be easily recognized and accepted; for only national makes international.

Proposal of an Information System for a Semi-automatic Virtual Reconstruction of Archeological Sites

In some business areas there is the need to use representations of places or buildings in order to provide visual informations. These representations are, mainly, reconstructions of scaled real models or virtual representations produced in a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tool. Recently, procedural modeling has been applied to generate buildings and cities in a short time and with a minimum user intervention. This methodology reveals to be a promising solution for a cost–effective alternative in models construction. One of the areas that can benefit from this kind of approach is archeology, for example to test archeological hypothesis. However, the existing solutions are not flexible enough to provide high detailed models containing building interiors and exteriors. This paper aims to present the global architecture and specification of an information system that supports the procedural modeling process, producing enhanced virtual representations of ancient places, including building facades and interiors, using the information available.

Ancient Sacred Places in Lithuania: Crossroads of Geography, Archaeology and Folklore

This article addresses the current stage of research on Lithuania’s ancient sacred places. Numerous examples and discussions prove that these are cases for cross-disciplinary investigation. Although they are different, all the geographical, archaeologi­cal, linguistic and folklore aspects are important, and urgently require careful consideration, both by analysis and synthesis. The article discusses the Lithuanian term senoji sventvietė (‘ancient sacred place’) and difficulties concerning the understand­ing of it. The division of sacred places into areas is presented from a geographical point of view; historical factors are men­tioned, as well. Attention is drawn to the local geographical features of sacred places, such as, for instance, their association with the points of the compass. The amount of archaeological stray finds with respect to sacred places is discussed. Finally, some important details are pointed out, while presenting research into place names and folklore associated with sacred places. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ab.v15i1.21

Landscapes of Origin in the Americas: Creation Narratives Linking Ancient Places and Present Communities

Landscapes of Origin in the Americas: Creation Narratives Linking Ancient Places and Present Communities

Winning Title to Land but Not to Its Past: The Toledo Maya and Sites of pre-Hispanic Heritage

AbstractThe struggle for indigenous rights to pre-Hispanic cultural heritage parallels the struggle for indigenous land rights in Belize. By Belizean law, material objects and sites of activity older than 100 years in age are the property of the state. Similarly, land inhabited by indigenous communities in southern Belize is held in trust by the government. In 2007 the community of Santa Cruz in southern Belize won customary land tenure over their lands for the first time from the Belizean government. This change in land ownership presents new challenges to the definition of ownership of ancient places in Maya territory. In particular, the transfer of land rights to the community has potential implications for the ownership and management of the local pre-Hispanic site of Uxbenká that may ultimately serve as a paradigm for the future relationship between Maya peoples and ancestral remains throughout the nation.

Centrality, ‘capitals’ and prehistoric cultures: a comparative study of late Bronze Age Crete and Cyprus

Early states functioned under entirely different circumstances from modern nation states, which politically and administratively require a capital city. The nature and extent of centralization in ancient societies is much harder to define. A comparative study of two similar geographical entities, such as islands, can shed light on the diverse and complex relationships between ancient polities and central places. Scholars have, at times, assigned capital cities to the Late Bronze Age island cultures of Crete and Cyprus – namely Knossos and Enkomi respectively. Differences in these cultures and settlements notwithstanding, this paper seeks to explore the multi-layered and diverse nature of past and present interpretations through a comparative approach. It is argued that we need to acknowledge the roles that recent politics and archaeological practices have had on previous and current narratives of the past. The often-troubled transformations undergone by modern nation states, and the expectation that such entities possess capitals, have coloured previous interpretations of the past more than is generally recognized. The categories constructed and models applied have guided our approaches but they have also imposed potentially anachronistic frameworks. This paper seeks further historical depth, and to better understand the complex and varied roles ancient central places had in their wider context.

New Faces from Ancient Places: Uncovering Peninsular Malaysia’s Hidden Lizard Diversity Part II: Skinks

New Faces from Ancient Places: Uncovering Peninsular Malaysia’s Hidden Lizard Diversity Part II: Skinks

ILISU BARAJI İNŞAAT SAHASINA RASTLAYAN DİCLE VADİSİNİN TUNÇ VE DEMİR ÇAĞLARI'NDAKİ YERLEŞİM SİSTEMLERİ VE KÜLTÜR TARİHİ

The field surveys carried out at the construction area of the Ilisu Dam, located on a small plain formed by the Tigris River between the Mardin Massive and the Eastern Taurus zone, revealed 65 ancient places used since the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (Okse vd 2006). Surface material dating to the 3rd-1st millennia BC is obtained from 15 sites. The surveyed area is 1600 ha in extend, situated on both banks of the river. The Early Bronze Age material is collected at three sites on the eastern bank - one large, one middle-sized and one small site close to each other. The sparseness of settlements is comparable with the contemporary settlements of the Upper Khabur and Upper Tigris regions. The material is composed by incised and painted Ninevite-V ware, orange ware, Dark Rimmed Orange Bowls and the Jezirah Grey Ware belonging to the Northern Mesopotamian culture dating to the 3rd millennium BC. One shard belonging to the Early Transcaucasian Ware points to the presence of the Northern Highland Culture during the last centuries of the millennium. The Middle Bronze Age material is found on two large and one middle-sized site on the western bank and one large and two middle-sized sites on the eastern bank, pointing to a dense settlement pattern of villages and hamlets/farmsteads, most probably based on rain-fed agriculture. The surface finds include the Monochrome Standard Ware, the Red Brown Wash Ware and the Khabur Painted Ware. Comparable settlement systems with similar ceramic assemblages determine the cultural parallelism of the region with the Upper Tigris and the Upper Khabur regions during the 19th-16th centuries BC. Late Bronze Age is represented by Mitannian and Middle Assyrian wares collected at one large and one small site on the eastern bank. This pattern points to a dramatic decrease in sedentary population within the surveyed region during the Mitannian and Middle Assyrian supremacy in the 15th-11th centuries BC. The hand-made Early Iron Age Pottery of Eastern Anatolia and the Upper Tigris region is collected on two large and two middle-sized sites on the western bank and on one large, two middle-sized and two small sized sites on the eastern bank. The frequency of sites and characteristics of material culture is comparable with the dense seasonal settlements of pastoralists in the Upper Tigris region as well as in Eastern Anatolia, so, the mobile pastoralists of the Northern Highlands seem to have lived also in the Mardin region during the weak period of the Assyrian Kingdom between the 11th-9th centuries BC. New Assyrian standard pottery is found on one large, two middle-sized and three small sites on the western bank and two large and six small sites on the eastern bank. This pattern points to a dense occupation determining a rural settlement hierarchy of farmsteads belonging to villages, similar to those established in Northern Jezirah during the 9th-6th centuries BC. The Late Iron Age is not represented by surface finds, since the material culture did not change so much in rural sites during the Late Babylonian and Persian Periods.

New Faces from Ancient Places: Uncovering Peninsular Malaysia's Hidden Lizard Diversity

New Faces from Ancient Places: Uncovering Peninsular Malaysia's Hidden Lizard Diversity

On Change of the Ancient Place Names and Its Merits

On Change of the Ancient Place Names and Its Merits

Lenguas y genes: aplicaciones a la prehistoria de la lengua vasca

This paper deals with recent hypotheses concerning the linguistic and genetic Prehistory of Europe, especially the prehistory of the Basque language, and centres on methodological considerations. The author evaluates the different ways in which genetic and linguistic information is passed on, and the difficulties which arise when matching both types of information. Special attention is paid to ancient place names as a source of data for reconstruction in linguistic prehistory, with a discussion of the methodological bases for «toponymic cognates». The paper ends by identifying the weaknesses and contradictions inherent in some of these hypotheses for the genetic and linguistic Prehistory of Europe and the Basque Country.

Criteria for the Assessment of the Modern Use of Ancient Theatres and Odea

ERATO is a research project entitled ‘Identification, Evaluation and Revival of the Acoustical Heritage of Ancient Theatres and Odea’ that was implemented within the Fifth Framework INCO‐MED Programme of the European Commission, under the thematic title ‘Preserving and Using Cultural Heritage’. The project was designed to identify virtual restoration and the revival of the acoustical and architectural heritage. The project also addressed the issue of establishing criteria for the assessment of the modern use of ancient theatres and odea. Ancient theatres are threatened by erosion through time and improper use. The desire to use ancient sites with theatres and odea for modern activities is very tempting for modern societies. In fact, reuse is currently used as a means of conservation as well as justification for the enormous costs that restoration and conservation entail. However, decision makers and those involved with conservation are generally more conservative and reluctant to encourage reuse. It is important to realise that we are dealing with man‐made space designed for dialogue between audience and actors and hence criteria should be developed to enhance consistent and conscious decisions aimed at the conservation of such spaces. Criteria should be sought that consider several parameters related to human comfort, besides architecture and acoustic qualities. This paper discusses and evaluates, in general, the criteria relating to the modern use of ancient theatres and odea through understanding their value, ancient and current use, kinds of contemporary use, causes of deterioration and threats, and their cultural significance, while reviewing the main issues related to the international charters on the use of ancient places of performance.

Les produits vendus au macellum

The macellum, created at Rome at the end of 3th century BC, a part of the public market specialised in selling food products. A single building brought together ancient places used for the fish market (forum piscarium) and dedicated to the sales of meats, fowl, and pork. During the late Republic and Early Empire, this specialisation is attested by texts with insistance on fish sale, while, during the Late Empire, this building became more dedicated to sales of meats and the slaughtering of animals. If inscriptions identifying the macella of Roman world don’t enlighten us as to their functions, the equipment allows to guess them : meat and fish needed tables, basins, and fountains ; worship dedicated to Mercury and Neptune are often present. As for archeozoological remains, they must be clearly associated with occupations’ levels before being used as arguments for identifying of these buildings.

Seeing Ancient Rhetoric, Easily at a Glance

ABSTRACT Though many sophists were interested in the nature and power of logos, there were strong reasons for them not to set up as teachers of the art of verbal manipulation. Whatever Aristophanes and Plato may imply, sophists would have been foolish to advertise a persuasive skill divorced from knowledge and moral authority. “Sophists without Rhetoric” Andrew Ford The aim of this chapter is to examine a particular rhetoric of socialization which has in the latter part of the twentieth century fallen from view despite its significance in Hellenic antiquity, that of Athenian law. “Legal Instruction in Classical Athens” Yun Lee Too This paper suggests a view of ancient Greek rhetoric that embraces multiple media and that emphasizes rhetorical interaction as a form of cultural reproduction through visual and spatial means, and it illustrates the importance of these elements with reference to the ancient Athenian assembly place, the Pnyx and the Greek concept of eusynoptos .