Tag: archaeology

Bookmarked Beneath modern Melbourne, a window opens into its ancient history (the Guardian)

Researchers are drilling into remnant billabongs across the city to document the landscape as it was under Aboriginal management

Along with Zach Hope’s article on buried Melbourne, Jack Banister’s discussion on Melbourne lush waterways provides a perspective of another world.

By analysing the sediment – from the traces of pollen, and layers of charcoal and organic matter, to the DNA of lost creatures and micro-organisms – with the local Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung elders and community, Fletcher will add to the collective knowledge of this secluded spot.

This touches on what Tim Flannery has described as a ‘temperate Kakadu‘.

Listened In Our Time – Tutankhamun – BBC Sounds from BBC

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun’s 3000 year old tomb and its impact on the understanding of ancient Egypt, both academic and popular. The riches, such as the death mask above, were spectacular and made the reputation of Howard Carter who led the excavation. And if the astonishing contents of the tomb were not enough, the drama of the find and the control of how it was reported led to a craze for ‘King Tut’ that has rarely subsided and has enthused and sometimes confused people around the world, seeking to understand the reality of Tutankhamun’s life and times.


With


Elizabeth Frood –
Associate Professor of Egyptology, Director of the Griffith Institute and Fellow of St Cross at the University of Oxford


Christina Riggs –
Professor of the History of Visual Culture at Durham University and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford


And


John Taylor –
Curator at the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum

Bookmarked The Dead Beneath London’s Streets by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie (Smithsonian)

Human remains dating back to the Roman Empire populate the grounds below the surface, representing a burden for developers but a boon for archaeologists

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie discusses an exhibition showcasing some of the archeological discoveries in London. This is not only an insight into the past, but also the way the past is kept and what stories are able to be told. Many discovers have been lost in time, either thrown in the rubbish or sureptiously added to private collections.

Marginalia

This history of London, punctuated by the ebb and flow of populations, means that the physical remains of countless Londoners sit just there, under the pavements. Heathrow Airport? Construction uncovered fragments of a Neolithic monument, bronze spearheads, a Roman lead font, an early Saxon settlement, and medieval coins, evidence of 9,000 years of near-continuous human habitation. Just feet from the MI6 building – the one blown up in Skyfall – archaeologists discovered the oldest structure in London: 6,000-year-old Mesolithic timber piles stuck deep in the Thames foreshore, the remains of a structure that once sat at the mouths of the Thames and the River Effra. In the basement of Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in the heart of the City, there’s a modern shrine honoring an ancient temple, the Roman Mithraeum, built in 240 A.D. next to the river Walbrook to honor the Roman god Mithras.

Parliament passed legislation the following year requiring developers to plan to manage a site’s history before obtaining permission; if a developer is unable to preserve finds in situ, which is preferred, there must be a plan to preserve them in record or offsite. But, crucially, developers are required to pay for everything, from the site assessments to the excavation itself

without the need to constantly reinvent this ancient city, archaeologists would never get the chance to see what (or who) is under those office blocks and terraced houses.