I get a shock when I click on a blog and find that it is using exactly the same template as mine. I tend to forget that the design I'm using is ready made.
Today I went to an archaeology session at the Ashmolean in Oxford. We were able to handle flint tools made during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times in this country. One fitted my hand so exactly. Others were warm from being handled by the others as we passed them carefully around the big table to each other. I nearly dropped one flint at the beginning! The table had layers of soft plastic over it, but even so...
How timeless things are - the archaeologists can tell if a piece was chipped into shape by a left or right handed person. Most people doing the chipping were right-handed back then. They can also spot small pieces which were mistakes. They were chipped in not quite the right way and so a differently shaped piece popped off and was left on the ground.
The last part of my day was dealing with 2 eggs which were past the eat-by date. T and I have done things like burning a whole pack of matches in the garden to see what would happen. H and I haven't done this sort of thing yet. So, we went and egged the old stable wall in our back garden. H had such a good time. He flung the eggs with such force and we were both so happy at being vandals!
Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archaeology. Show all posts
Monday, 27 May 2013
Thursday, 22 December 2011
British Museum
I have a great book from the library on the workings of the British Museum in London.
The photos and personal essays by individual workers at the Museum are so varied and interesting.
I have learnt about the oldest board game in the world: the Royal Game of Ur. Apparently the board was found in Southern Iraq with pieces and dice in the 1920's. It dates back to 2600 BC.
Irving Finkel, curator of the Assyrian Collections, was rootling through the cupboards in the 1980's, found something interesting, read the cuneiform and realized that the text was related to the rules for a game. Not the rules themselves, it assumed you knew those, but comments on how to bet etc. It was replaced by backgammon in the Middle East, but seems to be still played in parts of India today.
Can you imagine the complexity of recreating Monopoly several thousand years in the future? or Cluedo? How to explain the hilarity of x did it in the Library with an Iron Bar?
The other thing which I am amazed by is that carbon dating (goes back 50,000 years) and identifying pollen are not the only methods for dating items. Voles' teeth are used too because the evolution of voles is relatively quick due to their short lifespan. Their teeth happen to display changes which can date a site. Beetles are evidence of a particular temperature range at that time and snails provide evidence too.
A site is over 350,000 years old if teeth from the European pine vole are present, because they disappeared from Britain at that point.
This is a BBC book. Why don't people make more of a fuss about how good their books are?
The photos and personal essays by individual workers at the Museum are so varied and interesting.
I have learnt about the oldest board game in the world: the Royal Game of Ur. Apparently the board was found in Southern Iraq with pieces and dice in the 1920's. It dates back to 2600 BC.
Irving Finkel, curator of the Assyrian Collections, was rootling through the cupboards in the 1980's, found something interesting, read the cuneiform and realized that the text was related to the rules for a game. Not the rules themselves, it assumed you knew those, but comments on how to bet etc. It was replaced by backgammon in the Middle East, but seems to be still played in parts of India today.
Can you imagine the complexity of recreating Monopoly several thousand years in the future? or Cluedo? How to explain the hilarity of x did it in the Library with an Iron Bar?
The other thing which I am amazed by is that carbon dating (goes back 50,000 years) and identifying pollen are not the only methods for dating items. Voles' teeth are used too because the evolution of voles is relatively quick due to their short lifespan. Their teeth happen to display changes which can date a site. Beetles are evidence of a particular temperature range at that time and snails provide evidence too.
A site is over 350,000 years old if teeth from the European pine vole are present, because they disappeared from Britain at that point.
This is a BBC book. Why don't people make more of a fuss about how good their books are?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
