Technology Archives - Page 27 of 33

Weekend Roundup

Gordon Franz has updated his article about Simcha’s nails, including statements from several authorities that deny that the nails came from the tomb of Caiaphas.

The excavators of Tel Burna have posted the report on the first archaeological season.

James Hoffmeier is lecturing on “The Exodus from Egypt in Light of Recent Archaeological and Geological Work in North Sinai” in Houston on May 21.

The Global Heritage Fund has created “its own spy agency, created to allow armchair archaeologists (as well as real ones), to watch for looting, disasters and other calamities at some of the most endangered sites of human history.”

This July, Thomas Davis will become Professor of Archaeology and Biblical Backgrounds at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Forth Worth, Texas. Davis is author of Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology. One clear result of the fall of biblical archaeology is that professors now have significantly different titles.

If you believed the recent report about dishonesty by the author of Three Cups of Tea, perhaps you were unaware that it was the work of 60 Minutes. These are the same folks who brought us the report exposing the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Tablet as forgeries. The heart of their case was the on-screen confession of an Egyptian artisan. Yet Hershel Shanks has investigated and determined that it was all a lie. And 60 Minutes knew it all along.

Tagged Egypt, Pseudo-Archaeology, Shephelah, Technology, Weekend Roundup

The Colors of Ancient Marble Statues

A free exhibition at Stanford University reveals the bright colors that once covered the ancient sculptures of Greece and Rome. From the Stanford Report:

With the silent attentiveness of a physician, Ivy Nguyen passes her hands over the recumbent white lady in the darkened lab. She cradles a handheld black light in her fingers.
Under the Stanford sophomore’s skillful watch in the Cantor Arts Center lab, long-dead colors on marble come alive after two millennia.
The results of Nguyen’s painstaking efforts are on display in “True Colors: Rediscovering Pigments on Greco-Roman Marble Sculpture” at the Cantor. The exhibition runs until Aug. 7. Admission is free.
Though we still think of ancient Greece and Rome in terms of white marble sparkling under a hot Mediterranean sun, the new exhibition shows at least one Greco-Roman lady as she was meant to be seen – in Technicolor. Not everyone may take to Stanford’s painted lady, but first impressions can change. “It’s very different – some have called it kind of garish,” admitted sophomore Nguyen, but she confesses that she’s gotten used to it.
We’ve always known that ancient statues were painted: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vase, circa 360-350 B.C., depicting a man painting a statue of Herakles. The most important evidence is on the statues themselves – traces of paint that time did not wash from the creases and crevices in porous marble.

The full story includes a photo and a video.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Greece, New Exhibits, Technology

X-ray Vision for Archaeologists: The “Multi-PAM” Tool

Being able to clearly see what lies underground would solve many headaches for archaeologists.

There is a certain level of guesswork that goes into planning a dig, and only after the available time, money, and manpower has been spent does it become clear whether or not it was worth the investment. However, a professor at Tel Aviv University has developed a new tool that potentially could offer some help in taking the guesswork out of deciding where to dig.

Reported recently in the journal Advances of Geosciences, Prof. Eppelbaum’s new tool gathers data from a number of sources — including radio transmitters used to communicate with nuclear submarines and detailed magnetic field observations — and applies an original algorithmic approach to the measurements to make sense of what lies below the earth’s surface at depths of up to several dozen yards. His tool can help people “see” meaningful objects, artefacts or civilizations — – and lay them out in a four-dimensional chart.

While methods exist for scanning sites of potential archaeological and geological importance, such tools produce significant background noise or inconclusive readings, Prof. Eppelbaum says. …

His tool can be used to evaluate the possible archaeological significance of any given area under scrutiny. Providing rapid results within days or even hours, the algorithm can “read” extensive data before any digging or exploration begins. Financially, technically and ecologically, this tool offers an optimal way to localize and classify ancient buried objects and estimate the potential of the further archaeological investigations, he says.

Prof. Eppelbaum’s solution is called the “multi-PAM,” which stands for “physical — archaeological models.” The tool first interprets what it “sees” by recognizing image targets; then the interpretation can be used to develop a four-dimensional model which can be presented to archaeologists hoping to explore a particular region.

Placed in a small unmanned airplane hovering several yards off the ground and scanning wide tracts of land along the earth’s surface, Prof. Eppelbaum says, the tool can reveal unexplored sites of historical and archaeological significance.

You can read the full post here. A shorter article can be found here.

According to one of the posts, this tool is already in use in some archaeological projects. Does anyone have any personal experience with one? Would you care to share your opinion?

Update:
The catalyst for this news event apparently was a post on the website of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University. This post looks back at the publication of a paper that Prof. Eppelbaum presented in April 2009. The paper is titled: “Archaeological geophysics in Israel: past, present and future.” This paper (along with several others on similar topics) was published in the open access journal called Advances in Geosciences (ADGEO) in 2010. The abstract of Eppelbaum’s paper and a link to download the article can be found here. A list of all the articles in that volume can be found here. For those who desire to learn more about modern techniques for non-intrusive archaeological investigation, this volume is a good place to start.

HT: Joseph I. Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Technology

Archaeology in Saudi Arabia with Google Earth

NewScientist reports on a recent article in the Journal of Archaeological Science:

Indiana Jones, put down your whip. To scour the globe for archaeological sites these days all you need is a desktop computer.
Almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia have been discovered from an office chair in Perth, Australia, thanks to high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth.
“I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia,” says David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia, Australia. “It’s not the easiest country to break into.”
Instead Kennedy scanned 1240 square kilometres in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth. From their birds-eye view he found 1977 potential archaeological sites, including 1082 “pendants” – ancient tear-drop shaped tombs made of stone.
According to Kennedy, aerial photography of Saudi Arabia is not made available to most archaeologists, and it’s difficult, if not impossible, to fly over the nation. “But, Google Earth can outflank them,” he says.

The story continues here.

HT: Agade

Tagged Technology

Archaeology in Israel Update

The Bible and Interpretation has the latest “Archaeology in Israel Update” by Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg. He reports on six stories from November and December 2010.

Non-Destructive Investigation by X-Ray: X-ray fluorescence spectrometry allows for non-destructive analysis of clay and other materials.

Aelia Capitolina, A Roman Bathing Pool in Jerusalem: Excavations revealed where soldiers of the Tenth Roman Legion free time.

Monastery of St. George in Wadi Qelt: A new access road has been completed.

Funding for Restoration of Historic Sites: Sixteen sites will receive additional government funding, including the Herodium.

Sudden Fierce Storm, Destruction and Recovery: The site with the most damage is Caesarea.

Early Homo Sapiens from Cave in Israel, 400,000 Years Ago? Ancient teeth were discovered near
biblical Aphek.

The full review is here.

Tagged Excavations, Technology

How to Date Pottery by Rehydroxylation

The method of rehydroxylation dating was first announced nearly two years ago, but this story in the Michigan Tech News may make the process more understandable than the earlier technical articles.

And it reveals some of the complexities.

If you are an archaeologist, determining when a pot was made is not just a matter of checking the bottom for a time stamp. Dating clay-based materials like ceramics recovered from archeological sites can be time consuming, not to mention complex and expensive.
Patrick Bowen, a senior majoring in materials science and engineering, is refining a new way of dating ceramic artifacts that could one day shave thousands of dollars off the cost of doing archaeological research.
Called rehydroxylation dating, the technique was recently developed by researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh. It takes advantage of ceramics’ predictable tendency to bond chemically with water over time.
“It’s simple,” says Bowen. First, dry the sample at 105 degrees Celcius. This removes any dampness that the ceramic might have absorbed.
Then, weigh the sample and put it in a furnace at 600 degrees Celsius. The chemically bonded water, in the form of hydroxyl groups (single atoms of hydrogen and oxygen bound together), forms water vapor and evaporates. “When you do that, you mimic what the sample was like when it was originally fired,” says Bowen.
Then weigh the sample again and leave it alone. Over the next several weeks, the ceramic will react with water in the air and gain weight. Plot the gain against a time constant, and the shape of the curve tells you the age of the ceramic. Theoretically.
But it ain’t necessarily so, Bowen discovered, working with his advisors, Jaroslaw Drelich, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, and Timothy Scarlett, an associate professor of archaeology and anthropology. “The dating process turns out to be more complicated than the literature suggests,” he says.

The story continues here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Technology