October 22, 2006, 11:07 PM CT

Geological Feature Key To Finding Tombs

A 42-year-old method for finding water, monitoring pollution and helping with tunneling may also be a way to locate and protect tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens and other burial sites in Egypt, as per Penn State researchers.

The idea that fracture traces could bare some connection to the rock cut tombs found in Egyptian valleys came to Katarin A. Parizek as she toured Egypt. K. Parizek, the daughter of Richard R. Parizek, professor of geology and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State, is a digital photographer, graphic designer and geologist. In 1992, on a Nile cruise to the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, she recognized the geological structures.

"A number of of the tombs were in zones of fracture concentration revealed by fracture traces and lineaments," says K. Parizek, an instructor in digital photography. "I knew that these fractures were what Dad used to find water or to plan dewatering projects."

Fracture traces are the above-ground indication of underlying zones of rock fracture concentrations. In 1964, Laurence H. Lattman and R. Parizek published a paper on fracture traces that indicated where increased weathering and permeability occurred and where people could drill wells more efficiently. These fracture traces can be between 5 and 40 feet wide, but average about 20 feet, and can be as long as a mile.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 22, 2006, 7:55 PM CT

Fossilized Liquid Assembly

From a butterfly's iridescent wing to a gecko's sticky foot, nature derives extraordinary properties from ordinary materials like wax and keratin. Its secret is hierarchical topology: macroscale structures assembled from microscale components of varying sizes. Borrowing a page from nature's playbook, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a novel platform for the self-assembly of experimental hierarchical surfaces in a fluid. Their work offers diverse industries a new way to generate and measure self-assembly at the nano-scale.

A butterfly's wings shimmer because light plays upon tiny rows of scales, like tiles on a Spanish roof. The gecko sticks to surfaces because its feet are patterned with microscopic hairs, each hair tipped with hundreds of even tinier projections. Beads of water roll off the lotus's leaf because its surface is streaked with microscopic peaks, each with a finer structure, that makes the surface "super hydrophobic." These enhanced properties-other possibilities include super adhesion and low friction-have attracted the attention of design engineers for applications from bioengineered tissues to photonic crystals to submarines that slice through water with minimal drag.

Creating these topologically complex, self-assembled surfaces for study has been a challenge. If the components are mixed on a surface, that substrate affects how they assemble; if mixed in a solvent and dried, the drying process similarly distorts the results. In a recent paper*, the NIST team detailed a much simpler and faster system they dubbed "fossilized liquid assembly" to create experimental models of hierarchical topologies in which the components are allowed to mix and assemble freely in a fluid, and then quickly "frozen" in place for study. The key is the use of solutions of water and a special monomer that polymerizes-links together-when exposed to ultraviolet light. Like an oil-water mixture, the fluid forms liquid interfaces that can be manipulated to create a desired hierarchical structure and then suddenly solidified with a burst of UV light.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 18, 2006, 8:49 PM CT

Anthropologist Challenges Ancient Child Skeleton

As per University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor Jeffrey Schwartz, author of the four-volume The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002-05), "the discovery of any largely complete skeleton of an ancient human relative would be unique. The fact that it is a child makes it even more exciting because of what its bones and teeth might reveal that an adult's cannot".

However, Schwartz said, there are questions about the species this specimen represents. He explained that the problem is that "Lucy" and this child specimen from Dikika have been placed in Australopithecus afarensis, which is not from Ethiopia but from Laetoli, a site in Tanzania thousands of kilometers to the south. But while other specimens from Laetoli are similar to this specimen, defined as A. afarensis, a recent study of virtually all the fossils from Lucy's region of Hadar by Schwartz and Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has revealed that none is similar in detail to the fossils from Laetoli.

"This means, of course, that no Hadar specimen is A. afarensis," said Schwartz, a fellow of the prestigious World Academy of Arts and Science.

Just as Donald Johanson, discoverer of the 3.2 million-year old Lucy, initially suggested, Schwartz and Tattersall found there is more than one kind of hominid represented in the Hadar material.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 18, 2006, 8:46 PM CT

Meet The Earliest Baby Girl Ever

3.3 million years ago, a three year old girl died in present day Ethiopia, in an area called Dikika. Though a baby, she is providing us with unique accounts of our past as a grand mother would! Her completeness, antiquity, and age at death combined make this find unprecedented in the history of paleoanthropology and open a number of new research avenues to investigate into the infancy of early human ancestors. The extraordinary discovery reported this week in the scientific journal Nature, was found in north-eastern Ethiopia, by a paleoanthropological research team led by Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Gera number of. The scientific significance of the new find is multifold, contributing substantially to our comprehension of the morphology, body plan, behavior, movement and developmental patterns of our early ancestors. After full cleaning and preparation of the fossil we will be able to reconstruct, for the first time, much of an entire body of a 3 year-old Australopithecus afarensis child, which will resolve a number of pending questions on early human evolution.

The new find represents a skeleton of the earliest and most complete juvenile human ancestor ever observed that lived 150,000 years before Lucy. She was only three years old when she died and belongs to Australopithecus afarensis (the Lucy species) and was found in an area called Dikika, in Ethiopia, by a paleoanthropological team, the DRP (Dikika Research Project) led by Dr. Zeresenay Alesmeged of the Max Planck Institute. The DRP is an international and multidisciplinary project including several scientists with diverse areas of expertise, and about 40 assistants conducting field research in Ethiopia every year. The first piece of the baby was found on 10, December, 2000, but recovering the partial skeleton mandatory intensive searching and sifting over four successive field seasons between 2000 and 2004.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 18, 2006, 8:35 PM CT

More Currency Than Gold On Columbus's Travels

The humble device that prevents shoelaces from fraying was deemed to be worth more than gold by the indigenous Cubans who traded with Columbus's fleet, a study led by UCL (University College London) archaeologists has discovered.

Reporting in next month's edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science, the scientists analysed burial material - such as beads and pendants - excavated from one of the largest burial sites in northeast Cuba. To their surprise very little gold was discovered, despite its relative abundance in the region. Instead, the most common artefacts were small metal tubes made of brass that were often threaded into necklaces.

While brass making was widespread in medieval and earlier Europe, no evidence exists of brass production in America by indigenous people in the Caribbean - known as Taíno - before the arrival of the Europeans. Using microstructural and chemical analysis, the scientists were able to prove the brass originated in Gera number of.

Columbus's 1492 Spanish fleet was the first European presence to arrive in Cuba and radiocarbon dating shows remains from the burial site at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba date from a few decades after the conquest. Columbus's diaries also mention the trade of lacetags.

A review of relevant literature and paintings from European sources revealed that the most likely origin of the tubes was not beads but strung together lacetags, or aglets, from European clothing. From the 15th century onwards, these were used to prevent the ends of laces from fraying, and to ease threading in the points for fastening clothes such as doublets and hose. Examples of such usage include a 1636 portrait of William Style of Langley (Tate Gallery, London), which depicts the use of aglets in his waist to secure his trousers through his jacket. Original lacetags excavated from across London that date back to the 13th century can also be found in the Museum of London's Archaeological Archive.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 10:27 PM CT

Remains Of St. Louis Founder's Home

Archaeologists believe they have found the Illinois home of the founder of St. Louis.

What had been believed to be a priest's residence near the French colonial village of New Chartres, in present-day southern Illinois, "appears instead to have been owned by a series of merchants during the mid-1700s, before it was sold to a young merchant from New Orleans Pierre Laclede, the founder of the city of St. Louis."

So says Robert Mazrim, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of the French Colonial Heritage Project. The project is sponsored by the Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Program and the Sangamo Archaeological Center. ITARP is a joint program of the university and the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Initially, the archaeological remains of a large 18th-century structure on the heritage project's Ghost Horse Site were thought to have possibly been those of a residence of a priest affiliated with Ste. Anne's Church.

"But several artifacts found in the cellar may have been part of Laclede's property and supplies, including Spanish majolica brought upriver from New Orleans, and a lead seal from a bale of men's stockings perhaps destined for a store in St. Louis."

Mazrim's recent examination of the features and artifacts from the site, which ITARP excavated on a small scale in 1998, "resulted in a reconsideration of Ghost Horse," Mazrim said.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 10:03 PM CT

Ice Age Climate-change And Ocean Salinity

Sudden decreases in temperature over Greenland and tropical rainfall patterns during the last Ice Age have been linked for the first time to rapid changes in the salinity of the north Atlantic Ocean, according to research published Oct. 5, 2006, in the journal Nature. The results provide further evidence that ocean circulation and chemistry respond to changes in climate.

Using chemical traces in fossil shells of microscopic planktonic life forms, called formanifera, in deep-sea sediment cores, scientists reconstructed a 45,000- to 60,000-year-old record of ocean temperature and salinity. They compared their results to the record of abrupt climate change recorded in ice cores from Greenland. They found the Atlantic got saltier during cold periods, and fresher during warm intervals.

"The freshening likely reflects shifts in rainfall patterns, mostly in the tropics," Howard Spero of the University of California at Davis said. "Suddenly, we're looking at a record that links moisture balance in the tropics to climate change. And the most striking thing is that a measurable transition is happening over decades".

Spero, who is currently on leave at the National Science Foundation's Marine Geology and Geophysics Program, worked with lead author Matthew Schmidt of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Maryline Vautravers of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to conduct the research.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

October 2, 2006, 9:58 PM CT

The Anthropology of Christianity

Anthropologists have almost no track record of studying Christianity, a religion they have generally treated as not exotic enough to be of interest. Now, a new paper by one of the leading scholars in the developing field of the anthropology of Christianity explores the deep theoretical biases that make Christians difficult for anthropologists to study. The article, forthcoming in Current Anthropology, focuses on the ways Christian ideas about time and belief differ from anthropological ones.

Joel Robbins (University of California, San Diego) argues that the study of anthropology relies on a basic theoretical assumption that is antithetical to Christian assumptions. "Anthropology," he writes, is "a science of continuity." Christianity, conversely, emphasizes decisive breaks and the temporal ruptures that allow people to make claims of beginning anew after conversion.

"Christian ideas of time and belief emphasize radical discontinuities both in people's experience (at conversion) and in world history (at Jesus' birth and at his second coming), while anthropologists have always stressed the continuity of cultural traditions through time," Robbins explains. "Christian converts tend to represent the process of becoming a Christian as one of radical change. One does not evolve into a convert".........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 2, 2006, 9:55 PM CT

Theater In Maya Political Organization

Magnificent stone sculptures of Classic Maya culture (AD 250-900) have long fascinated archaeologists and the general public alike. But what did the scenes depicted in these monuments mean in their society? In an article to appear in the October 2006 issue Current Anthropology, Takeshi Inomata (University of Arizona) argues that these images usually show acts of public performance conducted by rulers, revealing the prominent role which state theater played in Maya political organization.

Analyzing plazas where a number of stone monuments are placed, Inomata suggests that extensive gathering places were a crucial concern in Maya city planning. The spaces were designed to accommodate all of, or a substantial part of, the entire kingdom's population.

Wearing ostentatious feathered headdresses and elaborate costumes, Maya kings danced in these large plazas in front of a large audience. These mass spectacles were occasions in which the general populace shared the experience of witnessing rulers engaged in culturally charged ritual performances, explains Inomata. However, this also meant that rulers were under constant evaluation by their subjects.

"Large-scale theatrical events gave physical reality to a community and helped to ground unstable community identities in tangible forms through the use of symbolic acts and objects," Inomata writes. "The centrality of rulers in communal events suggests that the identities of a Maya community revolved around the images of supreme political leaders. Large gatherings also gave the elite an opportunity to impose their ideologies and cultural values on the rest of society through performances".........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

October 2, 2006, 9:33 PM CT

Species Identification Of Ancient Child Skeleton

As per University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor Jeffrey Schwartz, author of the four-volume The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002-05), "the discovery of any largely complete skeleton of an ancient human relative would be unique. The fact that it is a child makes it even more exciting because of what its bones and teeth might reveal that an adult's cannot".

However, Schwartz said, there are questions about the species this specimen represents. He explained that the problem is that "Lucy" and this child specimen from Dikika have been placed in Australopithecus afarensis, which is not from Ethiopia but from Laetoli, a site in Tanzania thousands of kilometers to the south. But while other specimens from Laetoli are similar to this specimen, defined as A. afarensis, a recent study of virtually all the fossils from Lucy's region of Hadar by Schwartz and Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, has revealed that none is similar in detail to the fossils from Laetoli.

"This means, of course, that no Hadar specimen is A. afarensis," said Schwartz, a fellow of the prestigious World Academy of Arts and Science.

Just as Donald Johanson, discoverer of the 3.2 million-year old Lucy, initially suggested, Schwartz and Tattersall found there is more than one kind of hominid represented in the Hadar material.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source