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04 - Archaeology - July August 2011 PDF
04 - Archaeology - July August 2011 PDF
04 - Archaeology - July August 2011 PDF
Urban Archaeology:
Reports from Beirut,
Assisi, and Pittsburgh
Glimpse Into a
Chinese
Song
Dynasty
Tomb
The Computer Chip
as Dig Site
Convict-Era Australia
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engl
ishl
ibr
ary
PLUS:
Back to Bamiyan, Geocaching,
Super Sonic Temple Complex
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JULY/AUGUST 2011
VOLUME 64, NUMBER 4
CONTENTS
features
24 Rebuilding Beirut
As the modern city rises, evidence
of its complex history and changing
fortunes is being uncovered
BY ANDREW LAWLER
30 Digging Into
Technology’s Past
“Digital archaeologists” excavate
the microprocessor that ushered in
the home computing revolution
BY NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN
44 Australia’s
Shackled Pioneers
A fresh look at the convict era—
when tens of thousands of exiled
criminals helped lay the foundation
of a modern nation
BY SAMIR S. PATEL
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111
11 From the Trenches
The destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan, an ancient
20 Reviews
Recasting the Rapanui of Easter Island
and animals’ role in shaping humanity
22 World Roundup
Captain Morgan’s cannons, Manhattan’s farmland
past, a 2,500-year-old preserved brain, medieval
68 Artifact
An early Irish Christian text survives
more than a thousand years in an Irish bog
4
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
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EDITOR’S LETTER
Contributing Editors
Roger Atwood, Paul Bahn, Bob Brier,
Andrew Curry, Blake Edgar, Brian Fagan,
David Freidel, Tom Gidwitz,
lous protocol with the open-air sites that one finds in the more remote areas of the world. Stephen H. Lekson, Jerald T. Milanich,
But how does archaeology proceed in a dynamic area such as a modern city? In this issue, Jennifer Pinkowski, Heather Pringle,
we have reports from three places—Beirut, Assisi, and Pittsburgh—where the environ- Angela M. H. Schuster, Neil Asher Silberman
ment in which archaeological discovery is being carried out is constantly changing. Correspondents
Contributing editor Andrew Lawler traveled to Lebanon this spring to bring us Athens: Yannis N. Stavrakakis
“Rebuilding Beirut” (page 24). The urbane and iconic city, with neighborhoods razed Bangkok: Karen Coates
Islamabad: Massoud Ansari
during civil strife in the 1990s, is indeed rebuilding, and archaeologists and developers Israel: Mati Milstein
are teaming up so that evidence of its Naples: Marco Merola
Paris: Bernadette Arnaud
millennia-long history can be pre- Rome: Roberto Bartoloni,
served as construction proceeds. Giovanni Lattanzi
Washington, D.C.: Sandra Scham
In “Letter From Pittsburgh” (page
53), freelance journalist Margaret Publisher
Shakespeare showcases an urban Peter Herdrich
archaeology success story. In the 1990s, Associate Publisher
Kevin Quinlan
during a building boom in the former Fulfillment Manager
6
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FROM THE PRESIDENT Archaeological
Institute of America
Located at Boston University
A Lasting Legacy
T his past March saw two events, one sad, the other celebratory, that marked the OFFICERS
end of an era that had begun in 2003 with the war in Iraq and the subsequent President
Elizabeth Bartman
looting of the National Museum in Baghdad. I am saddened to write of the death First Vice President
of Donny George, at the age of 60, on March 11. George was director of research for Andrew Moore
Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage at the time of the invasion. In the chaos Vice President for Education and Outreach
Mat Saunders
of war he tried valiantly to protect the priceless holdings of the museum from looters. Vice President for Professional Responsibilities
Despite his efforts, thousands of archaeological objects, made by the extraordinary Sebastian Heath
ancient cultures that had occupied Iraq over countless millennia, disappeared. The story, Vice President for Publications
John Younger
however, didn’t end there. And this is what we must celebrate. Ultimately, nearly half of
Vice President for Societies
the looted treasures were returned. Thomas Morton
In the war’s aftermath George oversaw a Treasurer
General Counsel
Mitchell Eitel, Esq,
Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP
8
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
of
The trustees, gala committee, and staff of the Archaeological Institute of America extend our deepest
appreciation to the following sponsors for their support of our 2011 gala, which honored George F.
Bass with the Bandelier Award for Service to Archaeology, and celebrated the sights, sounds, and flavors
of Ireland. Special thanks to our friends at Culture Ireland and Tourism Ireland for their generous
assistance. To plan your visit to Ireland, please visit www.discoverireland.com. To learn about an
exciting yearlong celebration of Irish arts and culture in America, of which AIA is a part, please visit
www.imagineireland.ie.
vk.com/englishlibrary
Archaeology Travel Adventures LETTERS
EXCEPTIONAL SCHOLARS
Here we publish several of the many cases, waiters were arrested between
September 11–17, 2011 letters we received in response to taking a diner’s order and serving
Chaco Canyon & the the World War II section in our it—replaced with another waiter so
last issue. Personal and evocative smoothly that diners didn’t notice. I
Jemez Pueblo World accounts continue to supply an ever- know this because my grandfather
Explore the legendary Chaco Canyon with broadening understanding of that last was a German immigrant, journalist,
preeminent archaeologist Dr. Gwinn Vivian and great conflict. and actor living on the West Coast.
Jemez Pueblo member/archaeologist Chris Toya. Without warning, the FBI knocked
October 2–8, 2011 Your magazine brings back fond on his door and arrested him. They
memories of my first and, sadly, only searched the house and confiscated
Backcountry Archaeology “dig” at Tel Ashdod in Israel in 1963. cameras, radios, and theater-prop
Exploring Slickhorn Canyon, Utah In your last issue, I was especially weaponry. Grandpa never spoke of
Discover spectacular archaeological sites taken with “World War II: Battles, his time in North Dakota behind a
with the experts who know southeastern Tactics, Home Front” (May/June). fence. As a child, I found his journal
Utah the best: archaeologists Jonathan Till You mentioned it briefly, and I would and showed it to my father. “We don’t
and Dr. Ricky Lightfoot.
like to emphasize that the excavation talk about that,” he said. It is a part of
of the “killing fields” of the war, espe- the hidden history of our nation.
cially ones containing the remains Debbie Butler
of Jews in Eastern Europe, has been Vashon, WA
taboo for many years, but this may
be changing. As a child of survivors Your article on physical remains from
,")&)!#&(.,
,)1(3)(
CST 2059347-50
10
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
LATE-BREAKING NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE WORLD OF ARCHAEOLOGY
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 11
FROM THE TRENCHES
12
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FROM THE TRENCHES
14
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
was essentially a series of resonance 500 miles away. Each
rooms connected by corridors that 10-inch shell hadad a
acted as sound transmission tubes. mouthpiece cut Sna
Snakes emerging
When one visits Chavín today, into one end and d from the nostrils
certain noises seem amplified yet an unexplained of this figure
difficult to pinpoint. “Any kind of V-shaped ma
may represent
m
mucus running
sound made down there—humming, notch cut in ou
out of the nose
talking, or even just footsteps— the outer lip. of someone
creates profound resonances,” says Some were w
who has inhaled
Miriam Kolar, a doctoral student so polished a psychedelic
with the CCRMA, who is studying by use that d
drug.
the site’s acoustics. the thick pink
While archaeologists cannot shells were
definitively say that Chavín’s tunnels worn through in n
were deliberately constructed to ng
places, suggesting
create particular acoustic effects, they decades or even
do have evidence that sounds were ndling.
centuries of handling.
being produced down there. In 2001, Significantly for the researchers, they gallery recorded the results.
20 decorated marine-shell trumpets are still playable. The researchers found that echoes
called pututus were found in one of In order to understand the effect in the galleries built extremely
Chavín’s galleries. “These were very these shell trumpets may have had rapidly and from many directions
important instruments,” says John on people listening to them, the simultaneously, making them
Rick, the Stanford anthropologist CCRMA team decided to analyze diffuse and hard to locate. Tones in
who has led the excavations since the acoustic properties of both the same frequency range as both
1995. They were made from a the shells and the labyrinth. In the human voices and the shell trumpets
tropical species of conch that had case of the shells, the researchers produced consistent resonances in
to have been brought from at least recorded the sound of each the alcoves, giving them an unusually
trumpet under carefully controlled rich sound, like singing in a tiled
conditions, using 10 microphones, shower.
including one inside the player’s Archaeologists have traditionally
mouth. With signal-processing been slow to accept evidence that
software they captured each shell’s ancient people manipulated their
acoustic signature in digital form. environments to create sound effects.
The researchers noted that the “Acoustics is a gray area for skeptics,”
instruments have a rich overtone Rick says. “I’ve been a skeptic all my
structure, giving them a full sound life. You can’t just wave your hand
like bells or human voices. They and say, ‘I hear something strange.’”
can produce noises ranging from a But the sound-making artifacts
wind whisper to an animal roar, and, and, possibly, the architectural
in the hands of an expert, they can features found at Chavín make it
sound louder than a chainsaw from “extraordinarily likely,” according
three feet away. to Rick, that some sort of sound
The next step was to take acoustic manipulation was going on,
measurements of Chavín’s tunnels. especially when combined with the
The work focused on three galleries, signs of ceremonial practices.
each made up of long corridors with
numerous right-angle turns and
side alcoves. There were hundreds
of yards of gallery spaces in all, each
generally between three and six feet
W hile measuring the site’s
acoustics is a start, inter-
preting the results brings
up many more questions. Were these
properties deliberate or a fluke of
wide and five to 10 feet high. Test
The tunnels beneath Chavín de Huántar
signals played on an iPod sounded construction? Did they exist when
may have been designed to enhance the through monitors set five feet high, the site was occupied, or did they
sound of voices or musical instruments roughly Chavín-era head height, and change over time? Moving a wall, or
such as this flute. dozens of receivers throughout each using wood beams to hold up a sag-
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 15
FROM THE TRENCHES
helped consolidate the priests’
power as a newly minted elite.
16
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
Early Americans Went Coastal
S tone tools found at three
sites in California’s Channel
Islands show that a group
of people adapted to coastal living
had moved into North America by
ers parts of Oregon, Nevada, Utah,
and California). In both places they
were used to hunt birds and aquatic
life as well as some medium- and
small-sized game.
about 12,200 years ago. Archaeolo- Erlandson believes the discovery
gists previously thought that the shows that the settlement of the
continent was inhabited only by Americas was more complicated
the big-game-hunting Clovis cul- than the old view that big-game
ture at that time. hunters came through an inland
A team of archaeologists led by ice-free corridor and then spread
Jon Erlandson of the University gradually to the sea. “It suggests that
of Oregon and Torben Rick of the people may have migrated down the
Smithsonian Institution uncov- coast, and taken left turns inland
ered stemmed as well as crescent- up the major river valleys,” he says.
shaped projectile points that are “It would have been a relatively easy
similar to tools found throughout transition from the coast to the inte-
the Great Basin (an area that cov- rior lakes.” —Zach Zorich
The Atacama Desert of northern Salazar of the University of Chile. what’s truly fascinating about the
Chile is mostly known as one of The town was settled between A.D. site is how its residents managed
the driest places on the planet 1000 and 1200 and inhabited until their scarce water supplies through
and for being home to several the Inca conquest in the sixteenth complex agro-hydraulic systems.
major astronomical observatories. century. Though it was ignored for These systems of stone canals,
It was also home to the Atacama decades, archaeological excavations dams, aqueducts, and rumimoqos
people, who established an are now showing how special the (holding ponds), which are
advanced pre-Columbian society site is, Salazar says. impeccably preserved, carried water
in the parched region. Intrepid from sources several miles away
desert adventurers can learn more The site Topain contains the and were necessary for the highly
about how they did it from the remains of more than 100 habitation complex society and agriculture.
largely unknown site of Topain, structures that seem to have included Another site nearby, Paniri, is
according to archaeologist Diego underground storage and burials. But thought to have the same kind of
agro-hydraulic system—possibly
even larger—though it has not yet
been studied. Salazar says this
work will start soon in collaboration
with the local Aquina people, who
consider the sites sacred.
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 17
FROM THE TRENCHES
18
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY •July/August 2011
o t
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space. Goodness, all I want to do is to be Monthly Minutes 50 100
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REVIEWS
BOOKS
20
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
ary and cultural shifts that made vides thorough, readable accounts of end of the book, however, her pro-
humans what we are today. current archaeological scholarship vocative thesis is not argued clearly
By eating the flesh of animals, an on animals and early human tool enough to be satisfying. Ultimately,
unusual strategy for a primate, our use, language, and art, and debates her account of who we are and how
ancestors were able to evolve massive, about domestication, with interesting we got this way still feels specula-
energy-hungry brains. Hunting big digressions such as recent findings tive, a compelling idea in need of
game encouraged our predecessors to that dogs may have first been tamed convincing proof.
disperse across the globe in search of more than 32,000 years ago. By the —Kat McGowan
prey, and honed cognitive skills such
as memory and attention. “Our ances-
tors came under selective pressure to
pay more attention to other animals JOURney into the heart of History
and gather more information about
them,” Shipman writes. The first tool- Since 1983, Far Horizons has been
making was also part of the animal EASTERN TURKEY
designing unique itineraries led With Dr. Angus Stewart
connection. Early tools were primarily by renowned scholars for small September 3 - 18, 2011
used to butcher and process meat, she groups of sophisticated travelers
points out. Next, language enabled who desire a deeper knowledge ARCHAEOLOGICAL
us to share information about animal of both past and living cultures. PUB CRAWL
habits. Early art—a proxy for lin- A Journey through
guistic and symbolic capabilities—is Scotland and England
With Dr. James Bruhn
almost entirely devoted to depictions September 17 - 29, 2011
of creatures, further evidence of ani-
mals’ significance in the human mind. THE MAYA
The Animal Connection is an Copán to Chichicastenango
absorbing read. Shipman is a good With Professor Matthew Looper
November 1 - 13, 2011
storyteller, capturing how relation-
ships between humans and animals EGYPT
can transform both species—even With Professor Bob Brier
in the simple act of teaching a dog November 5 - 19, 2011
to sit. “In that glorious instant when SOUTH INDIA
a human and an animal converse With Professor Sara Dickey
respectfully … something magical January 1 - 18, 2012
happens,” she writes. Shipman pro- NORTH INDIA
January 9 - 23, 2012
CAMBODIA & LAOS
With Dr. Damian Evans
January 5 - 21, 2012
FEATURED
JOURNEYS SUDAN
With Professor Bob Brier
TURKISH TREASURES January 21 - February 4, 2012
As guests at Ephesus, Hattusa, Troy
With Professor Garrett Fagan …and much more!
September 10 - 24, 2011 Belize • Jordan • Cyprus & Malta
Iran • China • Ethiopia • Silk Road
ESSENTIAL MONGOLIA Sicily • Costa Rica • Scotland • Bolivia
With Lauren L. Bonilla
September 14 - 29, 2011
CENTRAL MEXICO
With Dr. Khristaan Villela
November 5 - 12, 2011
1-800-552-4575 • www.farhorizons.com
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 21
WORLD ROUNDUP
NEW YORK: Despite its modern lack
of either greenery or open space,
downtown Manhattan was, as
recently as the 19th century, part
farmland. Construction workers
stumbled across a site from that
time—a wall and well that were once
part of the farm of Stephanus van
Cortlandt, the city’s first native-born
mayor, and his descendants. Among
other artifacts, archaeologists found WALES: In The Lord of the Rings,
a pipestem, pottery and stoneware, flaming hilltop beacons are used to
ARIZONA: Geocaching is a hobby in and a yellow ceramic bird’s head, all communicate between distant king-
which hikers leave small items or likely
ly from the doms. But they might not just be
bundles in out-of-the-way places 18thh century. fantasy. Iron Age hillforts could have
and then challenge others to find had a similar purpose 2,500 years
them using only GPS coordinates. A ago. To test it, a heritage group
geocacher in Prescott National organized the “Hillfort Glow
Forest found a much older cache, a Experiment,” getting 350 volunteers
thin-walled pot used by the Yavapai to communicate between 10 hillforts
between 600 and 100 years ago. with flares and flashlights (no Middle
Knowing the importance of archaeo- Earth pyres, though—it is fragile
logical context, he did what came habitat). In some cases, the glow
naturally—he marked the location connected hills 25 miles apart.
with his GPS and notified authorities
of the rare, fragile find.
22
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
By Samir S. Patel
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 23
T his city is one of those that must live and
relive, come what may,” wrote the nineteenth-
century French geographer Élisée Reclus.
“The conquerors pass on and the city is reborn
behind them.” Phoenician port, Roman beachhead, Byzan-
tine lawgiver, Ottoman backwater, and Paris of the Middle
East, Beirut has been an urban chameleon. In the past
century alone, it morphed from the center of Arab culture,
intrigue, and nightlife into a symbol of sectarian strife as a
15-year civil war laid waste to its boulevards and buildings.
“Beirut is a phenomenon, beguiling perhaps, but quite, quite
impossible,” concludes British writer Jan Morris.
Even as Beirut reinvents itself yet again—this time as a
skyscraper-studded center of finance—a new generation of
young Lebanese archaeologists is fighting to reclaim the city’s
complicated past before it is gone for good. In the rush to
build during the past decade, Roman ruins were bulldozed,
columns were crushed into cement, and piles of ancient
debris were relegated to the city dump. Now a small army of
some 50 excavators and hundreds of workers are attempting
to stay one step ahead of the luxury condos and office tow-
ers that threaten to wipe away what’s left of Beirut’s ancient
remains. No longer dependent on the foreign experts who
once dominated Lebanese archaeology, this group is forging
agreements with developers to conduct extensive rescue
excavations. “There has been a void, but now we are taking
responsibility for our own heritage,” says Assaad Seif, the
acting chief of Lebanon’s state department of archaeology.
24
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
spread across the region between the sixteenth and fourth Across Beirut, archaeologists are uncovering centuries
centuries b.c. of evidence clarifying the city’s long and complicated
history. In the Riad el Solh area downtown, the remains
But Beirut seems to have been a rather unimportant
of a massive 1st-century Å Roman wall that may once
town in that period. A modest Phoenician seawall dates to have been more than 20 feet wide are visible.
700 b.c., and invading Persians wrecked and then rebuilt
the town on a grid plan in the fourth century b.c. A small
cluster of 16 houses from that era was recently uncovered
when the nineteenth-century marketplace was demolished
and rebuilt. Even the fifth-century b.c. Greek traveler and
historian Herodotus overlooked Beirut, despite mention-
ing other cities, including Tyre and Sidon, in the area. Two
centuries later, these were important prizes for Alexander the
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 25
Great, whereas the chronicles of the general’s campaigns in In the Saifi area east of Martyr’s Square, archaeologist
the region in 332 b.c. do not even mention Beirut. Fadi Beayno watches as the first two layers of soil are
removed from a future construction site. All around the city,
It was the expansion of the Roman Empire in the first cen- archaeologists and developers are starting to cooperate to
tury b.c. that finally gave Beirut a chance to outshine its more record the city’s past while building for the future.
famous rivals. The city lacked a good harbor, but it did have a
bay that could shelter a large number of ships. In 31 b.c., the
Roman general Marc Antony’s fleet lay at anchor here, and from the Judean cities to the south, according to Josephus. The
his ally and lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, had coins historian adds that Jewish rebels were burned, forced to fight,
stamped in her likeness at a Beirut mint as well. But that or thrown to wild animals in the amphitheater following their
same year Octavian—soon to be the emperor Augustus— uprising, which led to Jerusalem’s destruction in a.d. 70.
defeated both at the Battle of Actium in Greece. The emperor With prosperity, the arts and intellectual life flourished.
then chose Beirut as a beachhead for Roman domination of By the third century a.d., Beirut was “the center for the teach-
the East. Unlike the larger and more established cities of Tyre ing of Roman law,” according to Gregory Thaumaturgus, a
or Sidon, Beirut proved friendly to the outsiders. The tough Christian writer of the time. Rome and the Byzantine capital
tribes living in the Lebanon Mountains had long plagued the of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) also had law schools,
city, and Beirut’s inhabitants welcomed two Roman legions but contemporary texts show that Beirut quickly became the
as protection. Augustus also settled Roman veterans here, place to go in the East to study law. Within a century, the
and turned Beirut into a colonia, or tax-free zone. chronicler Libanius praised the city as “mother of the laws.”
With the cooperation of the Judean king Herod Agrippa I, Unlike the famous ancient library of Alexandria in Egypt,
the emperor built forums, temples, a hippodrome, colonnades, which was mostly destroyed during the bitter fights between
roads, and aqueducts in what had once been a modest town. pagans and Christians, Beirut’s law school survived and
The first-century a.d. Jewish historian Josephus says Herod prospered, despite the church’s suspicion of non-biblical
had a magnificent amphitheater built where 1,400 gladia- learning. As the Roman Empire collapsed in the West, the
tors were pitted against one another in a single day. His son, Byzantine Empire emerged as its heir in the East during the
Herod Agrippa II, continued that patronage, inciting jealousy fifth century a.d. Beirut, strategically located between Con-
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stantinople and Alexandria, was the focal point of imperial
rule. The lawyers of Beirut proved well-equipped to interpret
imperial decrees and set codes of justice for the Byzantines.
When the emperor Justinian called for reform of the legal
T he many layers of Beirut’s occupation and
destruction make the city a rich and complex archae-
ological site, but in the rush to rebuild after the war,
archaeology was usually the loser. That started to change in
2005, when a new group of archaeologists led by Seif began
codes, he turned to Beirut’s scholars to oversee the revision.
The new code’s publication in a.d. 533 marked the heyday to agitate for change. They called for enforcement of exist-
of Beirut’s intellectual influence. But on a July day in a.d. 551, ing laws protecting ancient sites, tracked new construction
an earthquake registering an estimated 7.6 on the Richter projects, and negotiated agreements in which developers are
scale rocked the city, killing tens of thousands of people and obliged to pay for excavations, with the understanding that
toppling most of its monuments and buildings. The law the scholars will have time limits to complete their work.
school moved to hated rival Sidon. In the following centuries, Such contracts are common in many Western countries, but
Arab armies, Crusader knights, and Mamluk rulers captured had not been widely practiced in Lebanon.
Beirut in succession. The Ottomans absorbed the town into The scale of research now under way is unprecedented.
their empire in the eighteenth century. By then, Beirut was One site being excavated by Fadi Beayno covers three acres
the same sort of sleepy port town it had been before 31 in the heart of the old city. Here, in February 2011, work
b.c. Ottoman authorities later built the region’s quarantine began on the development called “The District,” touted on
facility there, requiring all ships in the area to halt in port to its website as “a city within a city,” which will contain a total
contain the spread of disease. The city eventually attracted of two dozen buildings, including condos, penthouses, and
Western missionaries and commercial interests, putting it on retail areas. The site is located inside the Hellenistic and
a course for a renewed era of prosperity. Universities sprang Roman city, but outside the smaller medieval town. As of
up, a publishing industry grew, and an improved port and now, only the construction materials from later Ottoman
new road to Damascus gave Beirut the opportunity for a dwellings have been recovered. Any smaller remains, such as
new start—until it was again destroyed, this time by civil those from Neolithic times, are likely to go unnoticed.
war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. Like other Lebanese excavators, Beayno was trained at a
local university, but he has also worked with foreign teams,
Anthropologist Freddie El Richani cleans a storage jar dating to
most of whom left by the late 1990s when the initial phase of
the 2nd century Å found in the Saifi area (below). Downtown, reconstruction of the downtown area was completed.“From
excavations are uncovering not only the city’s ancient Roman 1998 until 2005, there was a gap, there was no work,” he
history (top right), but also evidence for earlier periods, recalls. Today, he and his colleagues are slowly assembling a
especially in the area of the city wall (bottom right). mass of new data. “We are finally starting to understand the
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In the Jemmayzé area east of downtown
Beirut, archaeologists have uncovered a
large caldarium, the room of an ancient
Roman bathing complex where the hot
plunge was located. Water was heated by
circulating hot air under the floor around
small columns like those seen at right.
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Archaeologist Roula Reaidé cleans a Roman amphora in
preparation for sampling and analyzing the carbonized
material still inside.
www.archaeology.org
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n August , a group of eight design engineers left their jobs at the
semiconductor company Motorola to create a low-cost computer micro-
processor with a competing company, MOS Technology. Within a year, the
team built a tiny wafer of silicon and metal smaller than the size of a person’s
pinky fingernail called the MOS 6502. The new central processing unit
(CPU), which is essentially the brain of a computer, would revolutionize
its industry by enabling computers to come into the home. The 6502 was
inexpensive and easy to program—two features that ultimately helped it
sell tens of millions of units.
Those units (or minor variations of it) eventually found their way into several
classic computers, many of which were the first to appear in homes in both the U.S.
and the U.K. in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They could be found in Apple Is and
IIs, Commodore PETs and 64s, BBC Micros, Atari 2600s, and Nintendo Entertain-
ment Systems. The chip’s influence also enabled the mobile computing of today—the
British company ARM makes microprocessors inspired by the simple elegance of the
6502 for devices such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android smartphones.
Back in 1974, the original schematic for the 6502 was sketched out by hand on a
drafting board. (In contrast, today’s design methodology has hundreds of engineers
working on hundreds of computers creating archived digital files of their work when
collaborating on today’s microprocessors.) The creator of the 6502’s schematic doesn’t
by Nikhil Swaminathan
know where that document is today, and very little information on how the chip was
created survives. Further, in the more than 35 years since its design, the understand-
ing of how this remarkable chip performed its functions was lost.
“The 6502 is the last of that generation where processor manufacturing was a
work of art,” says Barry Silverman, a Toronto-based software consultant and part of
a three-person team that reverse-engineered the 6502 to determine how it worked
and to preserve it for posterity. “In artifact terms, you might have a lot of examples
of a particular piece of pottery, but the way it was created is gone. Even though it
hasn’t been that long, it’s quite rare to find someone who remembers exactly what
they did more than 30 years ago.”
The team behind the conservation of the 6502 was Silverman, his brother Brian,
who is president of a Montreal company that designs digital education experiences
for children, and Greg James, a graphics software engineer based in San Francisco. To
accomplish its task, the trio treated the chip almost as if it were a dig site. They “exca-
vated” the 4-by-3.5-millimeter chip, took high-resolution photographs of its layers,
and mapped its circuitry. Their historical preservation work culminated in a website
called Visual 6502 (www.visual6502.org), which hosts a simple simulation of the chip
at work, allowing visitors to understand how electrical signals flow through the chip
to accomplish the mathematical computations that drive a computer’s function.
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This detailed line
drawing of the MOS
Technology 6502
microprocessor is a
physical description
of all the connections
between the various
circuits on the chip.
The members of the Visual 6502 team refer to themselves as “digital archaeologists,” a term that Chris-
topher Witmore, an archaeologist at Texas Tech University agrees is accurate.“Even to say ‘excavation’ is
quite appropriate here because you have to dig down through the components, you have unpack it and
take it apart,” he explains. “So much of it is lost, meaning it’s wide open for archaeologists to engage.”
B ill Mensch refers to himself as a “tall, thin man,” a term that among the computer engi-
neering set refers to a person who understands how a microprocessor works from the silicon
level to the system level. Mensch was one of the primary designers of the 6502 and was part of
the cadre of former Motorola employees who defected to the Pennsylvania-based MOS Technology
in late summer 1974, led by Chuck Peddle, whose idea for a low-cost CPU was rejected by Motorola
top brass. In particular, Mensch was responsible for the design of the chip’s circuitry.
The CPU is essentially a maze of circuits mounted on a silicon wafer. Dotting the circuits are
transistors, junctions of wires that act as switches, which can open or close off a particular pathway.
The microprocessor reads an input from the particular program (anything from an operating system
to a game), performs transactions as required, and then writes its output to the computer’s memory.
Essentially, it’s the master of ceremonies, deciding what to focus on, making sure each step is followed,
and presenting various results—sending them to memory, a monitor, or a printer.
Mensch drew the entire layout of the chip on a single sheet of paper that he says was likely about
3.5-by-4-feet in size. Designers at companies such as Xerox created sprawling schematics of up to hun-
www.archaeology.org
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David X. Cohen has said that his fondness for the
chip came from programming video games on his
Apple II Plus in high school.
According to Mensch, through the mid-1980s,
beginning computer engineers learned the craft of
microprocessor design by studying the 6502. Today,
while chip designers may appreciate the simplicity
of the 6502, they design only discrete parts of the
CPUs. The era of the tall, thin man is over, says
Mensch.
A 1974 photo of the MOS Technology 6502 design team with a design
schematic. Bill Mensch is standing second from the left.
I n , while browsing a retro computer
parts website, Greg James saw two 6502s on
sale for $10 each. He bought them both. He’d
recently cleaned out his garage and stumbled upon
an Atari 2600 and an Apple II, two machines that
had “played a big part in my childhood.” He credits
dreds of pages with different sections of a chip on each. His the former with teaching him that computers were fun and
method, he says, guaranteed that the logic flow (specifically, the latter with introducing him to programming. When he
how steps of process control and arithmetic are performed realized that both ran on essentially the same chip—the
by the chip and then passed along) matched with the wiring Atari contains an MOS Technology 6507, a 6502 in differ-
of different transistors and circuits on the microprocessor. It’s ent plastic packaging—he started to research the micropro-
a “what you see is what you get” approach that means, despite cessor, eventually tracking down an incomplete schematic
the original diagram being lost, the excavation of the chip by that he thought he could improve on to determine how the
the Visual 6502 team would be able to clearly demonstrate chip worked.
how it functioned. “If anybody really studies Visual 6502 in To analyze and then preserve the 6502, James treated it
detail,” Mensch explains,“what they’ll find is that everything like the site of an excavation. First, he needed to expose the
was strategically located at its best position on the chip.” actual chip by removing its packaging of essentially “billiard-
When it debuted at the Western Electronic Show and ball plastic.” He eroded the casing by squirting it with very
Convention at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel, MOS Tech- hot, concentrated sulfuric acid. After cleaning the chip with
nology’s 6502 was four times faster and two to four times an ultrasonic cleaner—much like what’s used for dentures
smaller than competing chips offered by Motorola and Intel. or contact lenses—he could see its top layer.
It was also roughly a tenth of the cost, being sold for $25 a The 6502 has three basic layers. The bottom layer is a
piece out of “a big old Mason jar.” wafer of silicon known as the “substrate.” Above it is a thin
Soon, the 6502 would become ubiquitous. Apple Com- layer of polysilicon wires that form transistors and build
puter cofounder Stephen Wozniak was among those who circuits around the chip. The top layer is thick metal wiring
picked up a couple of chips. “I would credit Apple and primarily for supplying power. Its bulky structures obscure
Wozniak for popularizing the 6502,” says Mensch, adding the polysilicon’s complex maze of wiring. Wires in a single
that personal computing took off thanks to the Apple II’s layer can’t cross over one another, so connections can be made
expansion slots that allowed consumers to add memory or between layers to clear the cobweb of polysilicon and pack
install an extra floppy disk drive. Though Apple was among circuits closer together.
the first to incorporate the 6502, it wasn’t the best-selling After photographing the chip’s topmost layer, James
brand to use the chip. In the mid-1980s, casual computer removed the metal using phosphoric acid mixed with acetic
consumers favored the Commodore family of home com- acid and nitric acid heated to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Once
puters, which also ran on a version of the 6502. But the the metal was gone, he took another photograph. “That was
Nintendo Entertainment System outsold every other device the money photograph,” says James of the moment when,
that the 6502 appeared in, combined, moving close to 62 in a real-world excavation, archaeologists can observe a
million units. landscape of artifacts, like canals or foundations of homes.
The 6502’s profile extended to pop culture, where it James went one step further, removing the polysilicon layer
apparently powered two well-known fictional robots: with hydrofluoric acid, so that he could capture an image of
the Terminator and Bender from the animated series the bare substrate.
Futurama. In the 1984 film The Terminator, scenes shown Once he had all three photographs, he enlarged them to
from the perspective of the title character, played by Arnold thousands of times their actual size and aligned them, creat-
Schwarzenegger, include 6502 programming code on the left ing images of a complicated network akin to a dense map of
side of the screen. In a 1999 episode of Futurama, it’s revealed roadways. He then traced them, creating a complex network
that Bender’s brain is powered by a 6502. Executive producer of lines like the maps drawn by Google or Mapquest. The
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The 6502 (and its slight variants) were used may have been overwhelmed by what he
in systems such as (from top to bottom)
saw in 2015, but had his son from the future
the Commodore 64, Apple II, Nintendo
Entertainment System, and the Atari 2600 been suddenly transported back to 1985,
gaming console. he would have been just as befuddled when
placed in front of a Commodore.
“The only thing that comes close to rep-
vitual map includes the precise position and shape of each licating the rate of growth in the electronics
component in each layer of the chip, clearly identifying com- and computing fields is bacteria,” says Dag
ponents like metal wires, transistors, and vias (holes in layers Splicer, a senior curator at the Computer History Museum
that allow wires to pass through and connect two levels). in Mountain View, California. Indeed, since the release of
James sent these full circuit extraction drawings to Barry the 6502, which contained 3,500 transistors, the sophis-
and Brian Silverman. The brothers translated James’ circuit tication of microprocessors has advanced by many orders
model into an inventory of the 6502’s of magnitude. In 1965, Gordon Moore, the
components and connectivity (spelling out cofounder of Intel, predicted that the number of
which component is connected to which transistors that chip designers could stuff onto
other ones). This detailed list, called a a “single silicon chip” would double every year at
“netlist,” is essentially the 6502. least until 1975. His prediction was accurate far
The Silvermans then created a simple beyond that point. Intel’s current top-of-the-line
web-based simulation in which the virtual desktop computer microprocessor, the Intel Core
chip is turned on and allowed to run. A sig- i7, has more than 700 million transistors—right
nal sent to a single input of the virtual chip in the neighborhood of what Moore’s Law would
causes certain transistors to flip on and off, predict. “Modern chips have something like 10
which is shown in the simulation by chang- layers of metal all stacked up on each other,”
ing the transistor’s color. These switches James says, allowing for more transistors and
trigger other transistors to flip, causing a cas- more computing power.
cade as information steps through the chip. As these advances keep coming, the
Eventually, the switches settle and the signal devices of the present quickly become relics
dies out. Then a new signal starts and runs a of the past. “Digital media will not survive
different course. How each cascade proceeds by accident,” explains Witmore. “If you leave a 3.5-
demonstrates how different parts of the chip are connected inch floppy disk in a tomb next to a rolled-up papyrus, you
and the state the chip is left in after a cascade, each of which can unroll that papyrus and engage with it in a way that you
demonstrates how a different computation is done. can’t with a floppy, which requires you to bring other materi-
One Bay Area 6502 fan who saw the simulation obtained als to bear,” like a particular computer or knowledge of a chip
the netlist from the Visual 6502 team and fed the descrip- capable of reading the data on the disk.
tion into a “chameleon chip” called a field programmable While there is no formal protocol for preserving
gate array that consists of many transistors that can our digital technologies, the Visual
be programmed to connect in different ways. By 6502 team is expanding its work to
lending the chameleon the characteristics of a other chips, such as the Motorola 6800,
6502, he was able to hook it up to an old Atari which the 6502 undercut with its lower
2600 and run games. “That means that we price point. James has also excavated
don’t need actual 6502 chips to drive old and photographed the other two chips
hardware or to study how old hardware in his Atari 2600—one drove the
works,” explains James.“We’re not crippled graphics display and the other handled
by the fact that the original 6502 is no longer joystick inputs. One of the team’s future
being made.” projects is to preserve an entire Commodore
64 system, which means not only excavating its chips, but
www.archaeology.org
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I
n 1943, British archaeologist Bernard Fagg received a
visitor in the central Nigerian town of Jos, where he
had spent the previous few years gathering and clas-
sifying ancient artifacts found on a rugged plateau.
The visitor carried a terracotta head that, he said, had
been perched atop a scarecrow in a nearby yam field. Fagg
was intrigued. The piece resembled a terracotta monkey head
he had seen a few years earlier, and neither piece matched the
artifacts of any known ancient African civilization.
Fagg, a man of boundless curiosity and energy, traveled
across central Nigeria looking for similar artifacts. As he
recounted later, Fagg discovered local people had been
finding terracottas in odd places for years—buried under
a hockey field, perched on a rocky hilltop, protruding from
piles of gravel released by power-hoses in tin mining. He set
up shop in a whitewashed cottage that still stands outside
the village of Nok and soon gathered nearly 200 terracottas
through purchase, persuasion, and his own excavations. Soil
analysis from the spots where the artifacts were found dated
them to around 500 b.c. This seemed impossible since the
type of complex societies that would have produced such
works were not supposed to have existed in West Africa that
early. But when Fagg subjected plant matter found embedded
in the terracotta to the then-new technique of radiocarbon
dating, the dates ranged from 440 b.c. to a.d. 200. He later
dated the scarecrow head—now called the Jemaa Head after
the village where it was found—
to about 500 b.c. using a pro-
cess called thermoluminescence
which gauges the time since
baked clay was fired. Through a
combination of luck, legwork, and new dating techniques,
Fagg and his collaborators had apparently discovered a hith-
erto unknown civilization, which he named Nok.
One excavation site, near the village of Taruga, revealed
something else Fagg had not expected: iron furnaces. He
found 13 such furnaces, and terracotta figurines were in such
close association—inside the furnaces and around them—
that he postulated the terracottas were objects of worship to
aid blacksmithing and smelting. Carbon dating of charcoal
inside the furnaces revealed dates as far back as 280 b.c., giv- Unlocking the secrets of West
ing Nok the earliest dates for iron smelting in sub-Saharan Africa’s earliest known civilization
Africa up to that time. The high number of smelters and
quantity of terracottas suggested he had found evidence of by Roger Atwood
a dense, settled population.
Thus, in short order, Fagg had discovered some of the key
markers of an advanced civilization: refined art and orga-
nized worship, metal smelting, and sufficient population to
support these activities. But he knew such a society did not
appear in isolation. Fagg, now back at Oxford University in
England, wrote that Nok culture had almost certainly begun
earlier and survived longer than he had evidence for at the
time. “It was the product of a mature tradition,” he wrote,
“with the probability of a long antecedent history, of which
as yet, no trace has been found.”
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A fter years of doing little archaeological explo- A terracotta head created by the Nok culture, one of ancient
ration in the area, scholars are now returning to West Africa’s most advanced civilizations, emerges at a dig
site near Janjala, Nigeria.
the scrubby, hilly lands where Fagg worked and are
finding that, indeed, the Nok thrived for longer than he had
realized. They may have been the first complex civilization in of scientific exploration, the Nok became a victim of illegal
West Africa, existing from at least 900 b.c. to about a.d. 200. digging and international art dealers,” says Peter Breunig,
Their terracottas are now some of the most iconic ancient of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt,
objects from Africa. And they may be the first society in Germany. Looting tapered off after about 2005 because of
Africa south of the Sahara to smelt iron, although at least tighter export restrictions and a glut of fakes that frightened
half a dozen competitors for that title have surfaced since off collectors. Now, interest in Iron Age societies in Africa
Fagg first excavated a Nok furnace. is surging as archaeologists contemplate a wide-open field
Nigeria has a reputation for chaos, corruption, and expensive that could hold essential insights into how technologies—
visas that has kept archaeologists away and drastically slowed especially iron—spread across continents.
the pace of research. In 1959, anthropologist George Murdock Breunig and his colleague Nicole Rupp are leading a
quipped that for every ton of earth moved by archaeologists on team of German and Nigerian researchers, students, and
the Nile, a teaspoon is moved on the Niger. Scholarship has even former looters excavating sites over some 150 square
also been hampered by an almost 40-year campaign of looting miles in central Nigeria, about two hours’ drive north of the
at Nok sites fed by the growing appetite for African antiquities capital, Abuja. Their study area is but a microcosm of the
among collectors in the United States and Europe. Nok world, which covered more than 30,000 square miles,
“No one continued with the work of Bernard Fagg. Instead an area the size of Portugal.
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For more than 2,000 years since the start rt of the Nok necks aand waists. Another figure, which
period, Nigerians have been building stone house bases has a skull
s for a head and wears an amulet
like this one (above). The Nok were expert terracotta
aroun
around his neck, is shaking two instru-
craftsman and their human figurines are one of the
most distinctive artifacts they left behind
nd (right). men
ments resembling maracas. There is also a
figu
gure of a man with a wispy moustache,
mo
mouth open, as if in speech or song, and
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The triangular eyes and parted lips
of this Nok terracotta figurine aree
characteristic of an artistic style
e
that endured for millennia even
after the Nok culture disappeared.
This one may represent a deity, an
ancestor, or be a portrait.
rtrait.
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As a result of his research, Breunig has been able to iron-working technology autonomously, possibly starting
isolate a moment in time when iron and stone implements with the Nok. Iron technology, and whether it was imported
coexisted. Excavators regularly find iron tools only a short from across the Sahara or developed in West Africa, is cur-
distance from Nok stone axes, suggesting they were used in rently a red-hot topic in the scholarly community. Skeptics
the same communities, maybe even the same households. of autonomous development are accused of denigrating the
“When iron first develops, it might be too rare or too costly achievements of African technology, whereas believers are
to be wasted on axes or other things that you can make with accused of lacking hard evidence. “It has become a political
stone,” he says. “Our hypothesis is that iron tools replaced debate,” says Breunig. He will not commit to one side of
stone tools only after the technology was developed enough the argument over the other before he excavates more Nok
to deliver sufficient quantities of iron. The Nok is an almost smelters, which he plans to do with a French archaeometal-
perfect culture on which to test this assumption.” lurgist next year.
Breunig’s evidence has also reinforced a view held by One skeptic is Rüdiger Krause, a European Iron Age
most archaeologists that ancient West Africans moved from expert at Goethe University. “When people see that some-
stone tools directly to iron, without an intervening copper body else has better technology, it moves very fast. And iron
age. That’s a leap that few other parts of the world appear knives are much better than stone. You can sharpen them,”
to have made. With the exception of a site in Mauritania he says. “Mobility was very high in the ancient world. From
known as Grotte aux Chauves-souris, where, starting in the north coast of Africa to Nigeria is not a great distance
1968, French archaeologists found copper tools and furnaces for the movement of a new technology.”
dating from 800 to 200 b.c., and another in Niger called
Cuivre II, excavated by French archaeologists in the 1980s
and dating from slightly earlier, researchers have yet to find
evidence of copper smelting before iron smelting anywhere
in West Africa. Its transition from Stone Age to Iron Age
L ittle is understood about how Nok society
ended. Sometime after a.d. 200, the once-thriving
Nok population declined, as attested to by a sharp
drop in the volume of pottery and terracotta in soil layers
corresponding to those years. Overexploitation of natural
has puzzled researchers since Western European and North
African cultures moved into iron after first smelting copper resources and a heavy reliance on charcoal may have played
for a millennium or so (while others, such as those in Peru, a role, says Breunig.
made copper for centuries without ever developing iron).“In Even more puzzling is Nok’s legacy to later cultures. Art
the sense of a progression of technological periods, with few historians have long seen Nok as an isolated phenomenon,
exceptions, there was not a Copper Age between the Stone a splendid relic cut off from the sequence of African art
and Iron ages in West Africa,” says Tom Fenn, an expert on over the next two millennia. Later civilizations in southern
African metallurgy at the University of Arizona. Nigeria had advanced metalworking skills and a tradition of
Iron technology was probably brought across the Sahara naturalistic portraiture, and art historians are looking more
by travelers from North Africa, says Rod McIntosh, an closely at what they might owe to Nok. The most celebrated
African specialist at Yale University. But archaeologists are of these later cultures was Ife (pronounced EE-feh), whose
looking at the possibility that West Africans developed people in southwestern Nigeria turned bronze into stunning
portrait heads around a.d. 1300.
Archaeologist Peter Breunig visits the family of a team member near “We would need more research to establish a stylistic
the excavation site. continuum between Nok and Ife,” says Musa Hambolu,
research director at Nigeria’s National Commission for
Museums and Monuments in Abuja.“To do this would
require more detailed study of Nok sculptures because,
for now, the evidence is very fragmentary.”
Bernard Fagg wrestled with this question—where
did Nok culture come from, and where did it go?
He wrote about the “striking similarities of style and
subject matter” between Nok and Ife but acknowl-
edged there was no proof the people of Ife had ever
seen Nok terracottas. Now Breunig is trying to solve
that riddle. “In the space of 1,000 years, West Africa
moved from sedentary farming complexes like Nok
to great empires, [such as Ife and Benin],” he says.
“No society is completely isolated in time. That’s a
story we’re starting to tell.” ■
O
n September , , a strong earth- Martini, and Pietro Lorenzetti. (After five years and mil-
quake shook the central Italian town lions of dollars, the frescoes were restored to as close to their
of Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis. The original condition as possible.) But just half a mile from the
quake damaged dozens of medieval Basilica, untouched by the earthquake, lay other beautiful
buildings and shattered into tens of frescoes that once covered the walls of a first-century a.d.
thousands of pieces the frescoes that Roman villa.
covered the walls and ceiling of the Basilica of St. Francis. Four years after the earthquake, authorities began to sta-
These include thirteenth-century frescoes by the greatest bilize and modernize some of Assisi’s oldest structures. They
early Renaissance masters—Giotto, Cimabue, Simone decided that one of these buildings, the seventeenth-century
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The Romans often used architectural
motifs, images of mythical animals such
as griffins, and human faces in their fresco
painting, as seen in the house’s triclinium,
or dining room (above). The first room
of the house to be identified was the
peristyle (right), a colonnaded space that
usually had a garden at the center.
Palazzo Giampè, which houses the town’s court, would get (a colonnaded space with a central garden) of a very large
an elevator. This required engineers to dig deep down to house. “We had not ever expected a discovery of this kind,”
the building’s foundations. But work stopped almost imme- says Manca. “We were astounded.”
diately. Only 20 inches below the entrance, builders had For the next two years, Manca continued digging, even-
begun to find pieces of stucco of a kind that is often found tually uncovering the entire peristyle, a space of almost
decorating ancient Roman column capitals. “Right away we 300 square feet originally surrounded by brick and stucco
had to start a real excavation,” says Maria Laura Manca of columns. In 2002 the team uncovered another large space,
the Archaeological Superintendent’s office in Umbria, who perhaps an oecus (a type of large hallway), which had been
supervised the dig. Soon the archaeologists had uncovered hastily filled up with earth and abandoned in antiquity.
three 14- to 15-foot-tall columns that formed the peristyle Manca believes that a flood caused by the rupture of the
40
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(Above) A fresco that runs around the wainscot
of the cubiculum, or bedroom, shows two well-
dressed women (far left, far right) watching a
scene of an upper-class woman attended by her
(Below) The colorfully decorated walls
maid. A shirtless young man runs toward the
of the triclinium, or dining room, were
seated woman holding a lamp.
covered with vibrant frescoes mimicking
large panels of polychrome marble.
house’s two cisterns necessitated the space’s being sealed off ately thought that the master who painted them must have
between the first centuries b.c. and a.d. come from Rome,” says Manca.
Finally, in 2003, archaeologists discovered a third room. The excavations came to a stop a few months later when
Little by little, as they removed the earth filling the space, both time and money ran out. They would not start again
they began to uncover a large white frescoed wall, on which until 2006, when Manca decided to expand the project and
was painted a tripod and an architectural element with a grif- explore not only the area under the Palazzo Giampè, but
fin perched on top. Soon Manca began to understand that also under the adjacent building, which held the offices of the
the peristyle, oecus, and this room, probably the triclinium committee for the Calendimaggio, a popular town festival cel-
or dining room, belonged to an impressive house. “These ebrating Holy Week. Soon Manca’s decision paid off. Right
images were of such quality and so elegant, that I immedi- under the offices of the Calendimaggio the team discovered
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 41
a large room that had almost certainly been a cubiculum, or all have splendid pavements, but their walls only stand 20
bedroom, whose floor was covered with an impressive black to 25 inches high. This is an historic discovery,” she adds. In
and white geometric mosaic and whose walls were covered addition, although archaeologists knew that Assisi had been
with finely painted, vibrant frescoes of a type almost never a thriving Roman commercial town called Asisium since the
seen outside of Pompeii. third century b.c., very little has been found to tell the story
“We had quite a lot to study,” says Manca. “This house of the city’s ancient past.
is exceptional because both the walls and floors are so well Having finally completed the excavation of the villa this
preserved. There is nothing like this north of Rome. The year, Manca hopes to change this. Two thousand years ago,
House of the Surgeon in Rimini, the House of the Gardens north of Assisi’s medieval center, there was an area probably
in Brescia, and the House of the Stone Carpets in Ravenna filled with public and religious buildings, of which only the
42
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
The house’s owner, who, according to archaeologists, may
be depicted in this fresco from the cubiculum, would likely
have been a wealthy merchant. Roman Asisium (modern
Assisi), was a thriving commercial town and home to many
prosperous families.
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 43
Australia’s Shackled
T
A fresh look at the convict era— he posh new youth hostel in The
when tens of thousands of Rocks, Sydney’s oldest neighborhood, is
built on stilts. Below and around this back-
exiled criminals helped lay the packers’ haven is a tableau of everyday life
foundation of a modern nation from modern Australia’s first years, when
it was a penal colony and the most remote
branch of the British Empire. The foundations and other
by Samir S. Patel artifacts here were revealed during extensive archaeological
digs in 1994 that uncovered almost two full blocks between
Cumberland and Gloucester streets. Wayne Johnson, an
archaeologist with the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority,
beams with pride about the hostel, which was designed to
preserve in situ the remains of 48 houses and shops occupied
by convicts and ex-convicts. The hostel even collects an extra
dollar on each night’s stay for maintenance and preservation.
Similar public preservation of archaeological remains can be
seen at the Museum of Sydney (site of the First Government
House), the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (the ornate
early stables), and Hyde Park Barracks (once a major convict
depot, now a museum). The city really seems to embrace its
44
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
In Sydney’s oldest neighborhood, The Rocks,
archaeological remains from the convict era—when
Australia was a British penal colony—have been
preserved in situ beneath a modern hostel.
Pioneers
have emerged from digs around the country over the last few
decades. These stories are helping make sense of a complex
legacy, a source of both pride and shame.
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Several Australian archaeologists spoke
of the shock and indignation their grand-
mothers expressed when they were simply
asked whether there were convicts in the
N ew South Wales, on the south-
eastern coast of Australia, was the
continent’s first European colony
and a convict society for its first 50 years.
“Always was, always will be a criminal state,”
family. For years, the impulse was to wipe
out physical traces of the convict stain. As a says Gojak. “New South Wales convicts
result, according to Martin Gibbs, director were much more integrated into the fabric of
of the Australian archaeology program at society than in any other colony.” The early
the University of Sydney, “They were still convicts, in particular, had many freedoms,
quite gleefully destroying convict sites into as long as they showed up for work each day.
the 1980s and beyond.” The Rocks, with the densest concentration
But some survived. Historical archaeolo- of historical archaeology in the country—
gy emerged in response to calls for preserva- home to more than 30 digs—illustrates the
tion of Australia’s modern history and pro- entrepreneurial side of convict life in which
vided a way to understand early Australia’s former criminals, free of the social stric-
social dynamics, class identity, and resource tures of Britain, built their own homes and
distribution—by reexamining its founding surrounded themselves with the trappings
narrative and myths. During the 1970s, of civilized society. Rather than the jail or
heritage legislation created opportunities chain gang, the household was the convicts’
for study and reflection. “This provided a fundamental social unit during the early
much greater ability to consider the con- years of the colony.
vict past as part of national heritage,” says The Foreshore Authority maintains a
Denis Gojak, a heritage specialist with New warehouse in the neighborhood packed to
South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority. the rafters with archaeological material—
Since then, there have been scores of digs including three-quarters of a million arti-
on sites related to the convict period, but facts from the Cumberland/Gloucester
an ongoing challenge for the field is defin- streets site alone—that is helping explain
ing precisely what constitutes a convict site how convict and emancipated convict house-
or artifact. Convicts were often so fully holds were structured. While the culture
integrated into society that their material there often seems to resemble working-class
culture can be indistinguishable from that British society, it differs in interesting ways.
of free settlers or emancipated convicts. The material remains from the Cumber-
Outside of large penal institutions such as land/Gloucester streets site suggest a culture
Port Arthur and Fremantle Prison, chains, of aspiration, opportunity—and fine china.
shackles, and other obvious signs of convict “Fortunes were made among these convicts,”
presence are vanishingly rare. “Definitely a says Johnson. “They’re surrounding them-
question the field must come to terms with,” selves with material goods.” There is a large
says Casella, “is when does a ‘convict’ cease quantity of expensive Chinese porcelain
being a convict and just become an early tableware, and the people of the neighbor-
Australian settler?” hood ate well—lamb, oysters, fish, chicken,
Some of the larger, more obviously penal and bottled preserves from Britain (and,
sites, including Port Arthur and Fremantle notably, no kangaroo). It is a culture of fine
Prison, were recently accepted for UNES- clothes and coarse accents, a snapshot of the
CO World Heritage status. These institu- development of a middle class. “It’s not like
tional structures were more often places of there’s one pretty plate, there are thousands,”
processing or secondary punishment, and says Grace Karskens, a historian at the Uni-
not representative of the convict experience. versity of New South Wales who consulted
The material culture of convictism extends on the excavation. They even possessed col-
far beyond these buildings, encompassing lectible goods, such as the Roman coin and
everything from major public works built Michael Harrington, Thomas Egyptian figurine found at another site in
by convicts to camps they stayed in between Darragh, and Robert Cranston The Rocks. That’s not to say that all convicts
jobs to neighborhoods they established. were Irish rebels imprisoned in found success—many others died poor and
Western Australia at the end of
Ongoing archaeology in New South Wales, the convict era. They were among
alone, or were sent off to Norfolk Island or
Tasmania, and Western Australia illus- six who made a daring, successful Tasmania for secondary punishment.
trates the complex, distributed nature of escape aboard an American For all the modern tastes, however,
the convict world. whaler in 1876. Cribb’s buildings show that he was operat-
46
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
ing a slaughteryard in the middle of the neighborhood— agricultural savior, many sites have been excavated, including
archaeologists found his filet knife and loads of waste from convict huts. “What Parramatta really tells us about is the
butchery, tanning, and the manufacture of bone buttons and lives of emancipated convicts and how they changed their
glue. The sounds and smells would have been onerous. lives,” says Mary Casey of the archaeological firm Casey &
According to Karskens, it’s an odd juxtaposition of a mod- Lowe. In fact, New South Wales begins to resemble less an
ern commercial economy and a primitive, preindustrial social institutional landscape than a more traditional agricultural
organization, where work and home were one and the same. outpost, integral to the colony’s survival and eventual suc-
And while they ate off fine china, there was very little glass cess. One of the huts even belonged to a convict named
found at the site, suggesting they might have drunk from com- Samuel Larkin, an ancestor of former Australian prime
munal, passed glasses—a decidedly less refined practice. minister Kevin Rudd.
By the halfway point of his 14-year sentence, Cribb had
built a small business empire, including a pub, butcher shop,
farm, and row of four tenements. “He’s constantly on the
make,” says Johnson. He probably also dabbled in a prohib-
ited vice, alcohol, attested to by the small still found in his
T he next phase of transportation marked a bit
of a correction, away from freedom and back toward
punishment. From 1819 to 1821, British commis-
sioner J.T. Bigge conducted an inquiry to assess the Sydney
colony.“He was asked to find if it could be made a place of ter-
well. The houses and yards of The Rocks were more than
signs of some form of social progress, they were also a place ror,” says Karskens. He reported with some dismay the relative
to subvert the colony’s official economy. freedom under progressive governor Lachlan Macquarie and
Elsewhere in New South Wales, archaeological sites described The Rocks as a place of “debauchery and villainy.”
point to the distributed nature of convict remains, the Bigge’s report and a change in penal philosophy led to a more
integration of convicts into society, and the system’s early punitive, institutional approach in Australia. The freedom and
focus on colonization, occupation, and agriculture, rather abandon of The Rocks gave way to Hyde Park Barracks, road
than punishment. Karsken’s work on the Old Great North gangs, and more distant penal stations, including the growth
Road, a massive early convict project, shows that commu- and consolidation of a new penal colony in Van Diemen’s
nal work was the dominant pattern of life. In the modern Land. Known today as Tasmania, it is the large island that
township of Parramatta, the colony’s second settlement and hangs like a droplet of paint off the continent’s southeastern
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Two of the most dreaded sites of the convict era
were Port Arthur (left) and Sarah Island (below) in
Tasmania, which were operated as industrial gulags
for mining, timber, and ship-building. Today, both
are part of the convict-related tourism industry.
48
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
found at the site may have been a kind of prison currency perhaps the most imposing edifice of the convict era. And
(as were sexual favors). Surprisingly, the greatest concentra- they built it to last—Fremantle was an active prison (mostly
tion of illicit material, including alcohol bottles and tobacco for Aborigines after the convict era) until 1991. Now a muse-
pipes, was found in the solitary cells, suggesting that the most um, it has been home to dozens of excavations, including a
incorrigible inmates were among the leaders of this under- recent one of a convict-built cellar for the superintendent.
ground economy. “Female convicts sentenced to periods of The prison wards are being renovated, with each wing being
‘separate treatment’ enthusiastically maintained their access preserved to a different era of the prison’s history. And each
to diverting luxuries,” Casella writes. The part of the prison cell is like an excavation in itself. In one case, a collapsed
intended to be most punitive and harsh was apparently a hub ceiling revealed 150 years of human occupation—an inch of
of barter and smuggling. dandruff, torn-up letters, and the 1913 rules and regulations
Casella and Steele have most recently excavated solitary book. “It’s quite a dark place, when you think about it,” says
cells on Sarah Island—a prison among prisons, perhaps the Luke Donegan, interpretation manager of the museum, with
worst hellhole in a system that had many. Analysis has barely little trace of irony. “I tend to focus on the heritage aspects.”
begun, but they’ve already documented the later conversion Most convicts spent only the briefest time in Fremantle
of a solitary cell into a fireplace and bricks covered in convict Prison. With good behavior—sometimes within just days—
graffiti. There, convicts were exploited in a massive industrial the men were given a ticket-of-leave, a kind of parole that sent
complex for timber and ship-building. They provided the them off to a depot where they would be put to work on roads
labor, perhaps the only common theme between the despair of or could hire themselves out. Winter has been excavating the
Sarah Island and the last phase of convict transportation, the convict depot in the agricultural suburb of York.“There’s been
more liberal and labor-focused system of Western Australia. virtually no research into it in Western Australia,” he says.
“Before we can ask the really interesting questions, we have
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might have been not entirely unpleasant compared with 1870 state that 17 major bridges were built by convicts
the pain and deprivation of Van Diemen’s Land, especially between 1860 and 1870, along with an estimated 1,100 miles
when it was run by renowned prison reformer Sir Edmund of roads. Also, the convict depots they built were reused for
Du Cane. “We’ve found no evidence even of restraints here,” decades as much-needed administrative spaces, including
says Winter. “Nothing to indicate any form of punishment courthouses and schools, and convict labor established the
or violence.” primary industries of the area, mining and hardwood timber.
In the privy, Winter has found a wide selection of tobacco But evidence of the system hid itself over time, as reformed
pipes from Glasgow and London, suggesting that the convict convicts and their descendants turned away from the past.
period brought in outside goods, which had been severely The convict history is more recent in Western Australia, but
lacking in the colony. The finds from York also show that it’s also been so deeply buried as to be completely unknown
these ticket-of-leave men had access to alcohol and patent by Perth’s booming cosmopolitan population. However,
medicines. “The convicts were operating as part of a wider according to the University of Sydney’s Gibbs, “There can
commercial sphere,” says Winter. “They clearly had enough be no doubt that by 1869 the convicts had transformed the
money to buy these things.” The artifacts mark the beginning landscape of Western Australia.”
of a real economy for the colony, and each convict also came
with money—182 pounds per convict from the Crown.
Though there’s some disagreement on this point, many think
the colony would simply have collapsed had the convicts not
come. In fact, the colony entered an economic decline after
T hough there is a long, global history of exiling
“undesirables” to far-flung locales, Australia is unique.
Nowhere else was a remote prison outpost intended
to be self-sustaining. Nowhere else was convictism so inti-
mately tied with the colonial project. And nowhere else is con-
the end of transportation.
Evidence of convict work is still present in the Swan victism so central to a nation’s founding narrative.“This was a
Valley, breadbasket to Perth as Parramatta was to Sydney. huge, amazing social experiment,” says Grace Karskens.
The river made a proper farm-to-market economy difficult, Historical archaeology is in a position to help restore
so the first major convict projects were bridges and roads convictism to its central place in Australian history. However,
that provided farmers access to mills, and then bridges to integrating the archaeology of the convict systems around
open up the market town at Guildford. The original foot- the country to provide a coherent, comprehensive picture is
ings of one of the bridges, at Upper Swan, are still visible, difficult. There are too few experts and too many sites, and
says Shane Burke, an archaeologist at the University of most digs are conducted before development, so findings
Notre Dame in Fremantle. Burke grew up in the area and is sometimes aren’t widely published, distributed, or analyzed.
descended from both the Spice family, among the first free “It just doesn’t get the attention it should,” says Gibbs.
settlers, and the third convict to step off the Scindian, one “People don’t quite know how to put it in context.”
William Branson. According to a number of writers, for the last century,
The traditional view among the free settlers and their more or less, Australia has been concerned with finding a
descendants has been that the convicts didn’t actually do national identity. The convict period and the indignities
much. “This is patently rubbish,” says Winter. Reports from visited upon Aborigines are uncomfortable realities upon
which the nation is built. Studying the undoc-
Sean Winter (seated, right) from the University of Western Australia,
umented material culture of the period offers a
supervises the excavation of the convict depot at York in Western process by which to understand the historical
Australia. Convicts resided at such depots while they waited for work from forces, such as the changing penal philosophy,
the colony or local landowners. Their labor was the primary purpose they and the lives of the people, convict and free,
were brought to the region. white and black, who shaped it.
From the outlaw pride of New South Wales
to the macabre fascination with Tasmania
to the lingering denial in Western Australia,
convicts are being adopted as part of Austra-
lian identity after a period of willful amnesia.
According to Casella, every convict-built
structure, every convict artifact, every prison
that eventually housed Aborigines, is the
physical embodiment of what it means to be
Australian. The convict past, she writes, “has
evolved from cringing embarrassment to a
powerful source of postcolonial pride.” ■
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52
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • May/June 2011
LETTER FROM PITTSBURGH
by Margaret Shakespeare
www.archaeology.org
vk.com/englishlibrary 53
of the finest house on the highest ings, which date to 1815, hang in
point on the Allegheny River. The the PNC Park exhibit alongside
home was owned by General Wil- the kitchenware and tableware the
liam J. Robinson, Allegheny City’s couple once used.
first mayor. Outbuildings collapsed,
dumping household goods into what
was then the backyard of his estate
(now just inside PNC Park’s left-
field entrance). More than 160 years
P ittsburgh had long forgot-
ten or ignored much of the
evidence of its own quotid-
ian history and day-to-day middle
class domesticity, literally burying
later, Davis and Biondich would
find many of Robinson’s possessions and paving it over. The rapid growth
under an oak door with iron and of iron and steel manufacturing
leather hinges buried whole below and dozens of attendant industries
15 feet of earth. The door was about and businesses made it, by the late
five feet tall, two and a half feet wide, 1800s, the center of the industrial
and an inch thick. It was painted world. Pittsburgh became what
blue and might have been a kitchen English writer Anthony Trollope
door. “We had to slowly excavate described as “without exception...
that door—there were other arti- the blackest place I ever saw.” Rail-
facts around it,” Biondich says, add- road tracks lined every waterfront.
ing that, because it had not been People were sent in the other direc-
exposed to air for so long, they had tion, scampering up the city’s hills to
to conserve it immediately. Until he make their homes, neighborhood by
could fashion a makeshift tank from isolated neighborhood. “River’s edge
plywood to immerse it in a polyeth- was the most palpable dump site for
ylene glycol solution, Biondich kept a lot of the city’s history,” says Rob
the door damp by spraying it with a Stephany, executive director of the
mixture of water and alcohol, and he Urban Redevelopment Authority of
checked it every few days for mold. Pittsburgh, which has a mission to
General Robinson left his mark undo the present-day and persistent
on Pittsburgh by naming the so- undervaluation of riverfronts and to
called “Mexican War Streets,” which reconnect the city’s neighborhoods
are now part of a historic district with its famous three rivers. (The
within the North Side. Streets in Allegheny and Monongahela rivers
the area bear the names of the war’s combine in downtown Pittsburgh to
generals, such as future U.S. Presi- Yeager’s, Pittsburgh’s first department form the Ohio.) At the confluence
dent Zachary Taylor and soon-to-be store, sold hand-painted Kestner porcelain of the waterways, even footprints
Confederate General Stonewall dolls from Germany, among other children’s of early forts built in the 1750s,
toys, to the city’s emerging middle class.
Jackson, and of its battles, such as before the American Revolution—
Monterey and Palo Alto. Beneath Fort Duquesne, which was later
the door, Davis’ team found plenty the Robinsons owned pieces of destroyed and replaced by nearby
of evidence that Robinson had actu- Chinese Canton porcelain that also Fort Pitt—were hidden for many
ally cultivated his fascination with fit the motif. decades, overwhelmed by a vast
Mexican and Spanish culture over a “Finding the preserved back- army of factories and trains, belching
lifetime. “We found a Staffordshire yard of a famous individual may be and blasting fire and smoke non-
plate, part of a set of 21, that told unprecedented in Pittsburgh archae- stop. “Hell with the lid taken off,” as
the whole story of Don Quixote, ology,” Davis remarks. After her James Parton famously called it in an
copied from paintings,” she says. excavations, she tracked down Lela 1868 issue of The Atlantic Monthly,
Other pieces in the collection of Burgwin, the widow of one of Rob- an image that stuck and historically
blue-on-white English porcelain also inson’s descendants. “I did all this overshadowed nearly all else.
depicted Spanish-themed scenes, digging and learned so much about Davis did her first urban excava-
such as a landscape of Andalusia in Robinson and his wife, Mary Parker tion in 1982 at PPG Place, a com-
southern Spain. “I’d never found an Robinson,” Davis recalls. “And from plex of six reflective-glass-facade
entire collection in blue—or all in under her bed, Lela pulled out their buildings topped with spires, adja-
any one color,” she says, adding that portraits.” Copies of those paint- cent to Market Square just east of
54
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
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(continued from page 56) find at this particular site, however,
Center. She points out a copy of a was toys. “Evidence of children is
postcard with a picture of the North very difficult to find in an archaeo-
Side neighborhood. In it, Monu- logical context,” Davis says. After all,
ment Hill rises behind behemoth they don’t really own things such as
smoke-belching factories with a pots or jewelry. Here, though, is a
tattered navy of small rivercraft— collection that’s remarkable both for
makeshift houseboats—tied up all its unprecedented size and for what
along the Allegheny. “There was a it tells us about the finances of the
preconceived notion that houses in children’s parents. “Tiny German-
the midst of all this, especially next made bubble pipes, a miniature por-
to a tar factory, would have been a celain tea set for a dollhouse, a child’s
slum,” she says. plate with a raised alphabet rim to
Twenty-first-century progress— teach reading, a small mug with a
construction of Allegheny Station fairytale scene,” Davis says, catalog-
for the North Shore Connector (an ing the finds. “You wouldn’t have
extension of the light rail system bought these things if you were liv-
by the Port Authority of Allegheny ing paycheck to paycheck.” In addi- Archaeologists found much evidence of
County) set to open in 2012—led tion to the toys, the archaeologists middle-class life, such as these kerosene
Davis’ team to investigate the site. found severely worn scrub brushes, lamps, along with porcelain tableware
and a dollhouse tea set.
And, once again, the archaeologists toothbrushes, children’s lice combs,
uncovered an informative trove and many, many medicine bottles. In
of upper-middle-class lifestyle the very crucible of this filthiest of about the profession of one of the
possessions from the wells, privies, cities, parents had an obvious con- row house dwellers. Her team found
and large backyards (containing cern with hygiene and spared little several needles as well as dozens of
both gardens and buried cache expense to make sure their children miniature German-made porcelain
boxes) of five row houses that stood were clean and healthy. doll arms, legs, and heads that would
until 1932. Other items recovered from the have been sewn to a fabric torso. “I
From nearly 18,000 artifacts, town houses speak to their residents wondered if this wasn’t a doll-mak-
more than 45,000 ethnobotanical being decidedly middle class. “We er’s shop,” she explains. “The woman
specimens (seeds, nuts, and other have a kerosene table lamp—an was a widow, and this would have
plant remains), and deep dives into expensive piece—and decorative been one of the few ways she could
city directories and census records, ceramics with no n wear, have made money.”
Davis was able to identify indicating th
they just sat
350 individuals who lived
in these houses over a
65-year period. The great
cupb
in a cupboard,”
“
Davis. “For
a Brow
says
instance,
Brown Betty tea
pot is what a lady
wou
P opular among the local lore
of the Steel City is the legend
of Pittsburgh’s fourth, under-
ground river. I even hear about the
supposed lost waterway from a bus
would have held
up to show off driver who turns into an impromptu
her contrasting tour guide as he drives his route
unb
unblemished to Homestead, a historic steel mill
w
white hands.” site that today is the museum and
W
Wear pat- headquarters of Rivers of Steel, a
te
terns on National Heritage area. Turns out
th
these pieces the river is not simply apocryphal.
tell Davis that The Pennsylvania Canal, completed
these hou
houses, unlike in 1832, greatly eased transport
those thrown up quickly
qui near between the western and eastern
mills for low-rung w workers, had sides of the state until it was aban-
one particular all-im
all-important doned and filled in when railroads
Yaeger’s also sold
Pittsburgh’s ladies
middle-class status symbol: a superseded it.
ornate, tortoiseshell parlor. From the evidence
ev she Davis was on the lookout for the
combs (above), as well as assembled, Davis was w even canal during the initial survey of
shoes and wine. able to make an educ
educated guess the PNC Park site. She searched
60
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
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and many “people-to-people” events. different levels. “At the PNC Park
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folklore and archaeology. shovel came right down on Canal
Lock No. 1,” she recalls. “That was
like finding the Holy Grail,” says
August Carlino, president and
A most unique, luxurious
CEO of Rivers of Steel. Davis had
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All TURKEY TOURS WILL STAYAT BORA’S CAPPADOCIA CAVE SUITES! left was not anything that we could
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That April night at the ballgame,
I think about that lock being
SUBSCRIBER ALERT! directly under home plate, each
of the six times a Milwaukee
Have you received an urgent renewal notice from Brewer scores. The present-day
5 Star Subscriptions or Global Subscription Services Pirates may be hapless, but their
like this one that claimed it would automatically history—including the team’s
charge your bank account? participation in the first modern
World Series in 1903, which was
played at Exposition Stadium a
mere few hundred yards away—is
extraordinary. Beyond the field
lies a city—once decidedly part
of the Rust Belt—now dotted
with green-certified buildings.
“Topography saved us,” says Rob
Stephany. “Those hills that kept
neighborhoods separated also kept
them intact.” He adds that the city
has always had a diverse economy
and that is borne out by the
These notices are NOT from ARCHAEOLOGY magazine! archaeological record. “Pittsburgh,”
The companies sending these offers are NOT authorized agents or representatives he adds, “has a great history.” And as
of ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine or the Archaeological Institute of America. We have had the city moves on, it won’t lose the
many complaints from subscribers who have received these notices and are afraid
to contact the company. We have been in contact with both agents and they will not connection to its rich past. ■
process any orders for Archaeology. Please disregard the mailing. The publishers
of ARCHAEOLOGY and many other popular magazines are working together to stop Margaret Shakespeare is a writer
our subscribers from being harassed by these notices. For updated information
please go to www.archaeology.org/fraud.
who lives in New York City and on
the North Fork of Long Island.
62
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
vk.com/englishlibrary
“I love having this pendant
around my neck... wonderful...
This is a STEAL!”
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Get one IMMEDIATELY.”
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“Probably one of the nicest
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Well done, Stauer.”
— C.B. FROM MAINE
O
n April , , more than
300 friends and supporters of
the AIA gathered at Capitale
in New York City for the
Institute’s Spring Gala to honor
archaeologist George Bass and to cel-
ebrate the archaeological heritage of
Ireland.
Bass received the Bandelier Award
for Public Service to Archaeology
for his role in founding the field of
This year’s gala was hosted at Capitale
underwater archaeology, and for the (left), a majestic space designed by Stanford
tremendous contributions he has White. Renowned actor Gabriel Byrne (above)
made to the discipline through his served as Master of Ceremonies. Cocktails
research, publications, lectures, and and hor d’oeuvres (below) were followed by a
media appearances. In addition to this sumptuous Irish banquet.
outstanding legacy, Bass has ensured
the future of underwater archaeology
by establishing the Institute of Nauti-
cal Archaeology at Texas A&M Uni-
versity and in Bodrum, Turkey.
The Gala was cosponsored by
Culture Ireland and Tourism Ireland,
and the event’s decorative theme
and distinctive menu featured the
country’s rich archaeological heritage
and traditions. Irish Cultural Ambas-
sador and renowned actor Gabriel
Byrne, who began his career as an The program was capped off by a ened archaeological sites in Ireland.
archaeologist, served as the Master wonderful meal featuring traditional The success of the event was due in
of Ceremonies for the evening. A Irish ingredients prepared by world- large part to the efforts of the Gala’s
highlight of Byrne’s presentation was renowned chef and native Dubliner, co-chairs, Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
his rendition of what is thought to be Cathal Armstrong. and Julie Herzig Desnick. The gather-
the first poem ever written in Ireland, Underlying the celebratory spirit ing included honored guests such as
the “Song of Amergin,” which dates of the evening was the important the Consuls General of Ireland, Peru,
from the tenth century a.d. Byrne’s goal of raising the funds that allow and Turkey; the former U.S. Ambas-
moving reading of the poem, first the AIA to advance its mission and sador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy
in Gaelic, and then in English, was to continue its various programs and Smith; Joe Byrne of Tourism Ireland;
followed by an address from Patrick initiatives. The Gala is the Institute’s and Eugene Downes of Culture Ire-
Wallace, archaeologist and director largest fundraising event. Gross pro- land.
of the National Museum of Ireland. ceeds from this year’s event totaled The 2011 Gala also saw the return
Wallace’s presentation highlighted nearly $435,000. This total included of the AIA to Capitale, the venue of
many of Ireland’s great archaeological money raised specifically for the Site the Institute’s first gala in 2009. It
treasures and emphasized the incred- Preservation Program and to provide was, by all accounts, a wonderful and
ible preservation of these materials. preservation funds directly to threat- truly enjoyable evening.
vk.com/englishlibrary 65
Excavate, Educate, Advocate
T
he archaeological research
being conducted in the Yucatán
Peninsula has contributed
greatly to our knowledge of the
Maya groups that lived in the region.
But the area is also becoming
increasingly important to our
understanding of early human
occupation in the Americas.
Hoyo Negro, a site featured in the
May/June 2011 issue of Archaeol-
ogy, and believed to be the final rest-
■
National Archaeology
Day Announced
I
n October , the AIA will
organize and host National Archae-
ology Day—a celebration of archae-
ology, including the thrill of discovery
and the wonders of the past. On that
day (and throughout the month), the
AIA and our 108 local societies will
present archaeological programs for
people of all ages and interests. For
those who cannot personally attend
one of our programs, we are organiz-
T
he AIA unveiled its new Archaeological Heritage Map of Ireland ing virtual participation opportunities
on Google Earth. The map, created by the AIA in collaboration with as well. These events will help raise
Google Earth, highlights over 100 Irish heritage sites and is supple- public awareness of our global archae-
mented with a short movie that allows the viewer to “fly over” 22 of the ological heritage, and will serve to
sites. The map and the movie can be viewed at the AIA website (www. remind us all of the fragility of these
archaeological.org). A special thanks must go to our partners at Google irreplaceable resources.
Earth for making this possible!
66
vk.com/englishlibrary
$5&+$(2/2*,&$/,167,787(2)
$5&+$(2/2*,&$/,167,787( 2)
$
$0(5,&$ 72856)))&"'$%"$
0(5,&$72856)))&"'$%"$
#500$5
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-5 &$1-
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!- /#1'$=?" !(, **02(1$ "$!&!
Including: Greece, the Aeolian Islands, Sicily, Malta, Crete & Turkey
@ 8 8 ? < @ > : > : 6 ">8;?=>:@@<6 ( 0 1 2 # 5 1 - 2 / 0 - / &
- 3 ($ 4 (1 ( ,$/ / ( $0. '-1-0* $" 12 /$ / !(-0 , # 1- #-4, *- # !/-" '2/$0.*$ 0$3(0(1
44vk.com/englishlibrary
4 ( 1 - 2 /0 - /&
ARTIFACT
T
he faddan more psalter offers a tantalizing glimpse of the WHAT IS IT?
extraordinary efforts that early Christians in Ireland invested in illustrating Early Christian
their religious manuscripts. This manuscript was most likely handcrafted in illustrated manuscript
DATE
a monastery where Irish monks and missionaries combined copies of
a.d. 700–800
Biblical text with both traditional and nontraditional iconography.
MATERIAL
In very poor condition when first discovered in an Irish bog (bogs were often used
Tanned leather
to hide valuables during Viking raids), the tanned leather volume was immediately and vellum
taken away and stored at 39 degrees Fahrenheit for preservation. The condition of the DISCOVERED
manuscript’s pages, which are made of vellum (cured calfskin), July 2006, bog in
varies from full legibility to complete loss. County Tipperary,
Ireland
SIZE
Folio size
of approximately
12 x 10 inches
CURRENTLY LOCATED
National Museum
of Ireland, Dublin
68
vk.com/englishlibrary ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2011
Archaeological Tours
led by noted scholars
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Southern India (24 days) Ancient Treasures of Sudan (15 days)
Join Prof. Daniel White, U. of North Join Dr. Robert Bianchi, Egyptologist, as
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at Mamallapuram, the temples and palaces those in Egypt, the storied sites at Kerma and
of Trichy and Madurai, the Jain pilgrimage the Kushite holy mountain at Gebel Barkal.
center at Sravanabelagola and travel along Touring also includes the sites of Sesibi,
the backwaters of Kerala to Cochin. A Soleb, and Tombos, erected during the time
tour highlight will be the extraordinary of Egypt's Akhenaten and Tutankhamun and
Vijayanagara ruins at Hampi. the Khartoum National Museum.
2011-12 tours: Guatemala • Sri Lanka • Thailand & Singapore • South India • Burma In-Depth • North India...and more
Journey back in time with us. We’ve been taking curious travelers on fascinating historical study tours for the
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