Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Archeology

  • “The Story of Us, Then”

    BBC Two is currently running a series of programmes on History. Last night kicked off with the first episode of a series called Ancient Worlds, fronted by historian and archaeologist Richard Miles. I thought it was very good. Here’s a Guardian article about Miles and the programme.

    I was struck by Miles’ statement in the programme that this was not a story of long-dead civilisations, but that this was “the story of us, then” – his point being that despite living 6,000 years ago, the people were recognisably just like us. He illustrated this by reading a letter (incised on a clay tablet) from a merchant’s wife to her husband, who was working away from home in a city. She was bemoaning the fact that he never sent her enough money to cover her expenses in running the house, and their neighbour had just had a new house built for his wife; why wouldn’t he do that for her?

    As I’ve mentioned before, our operating system is still at Homo sapiens version 1.0, despite our strides in technology, so Miles has a point, I believe.

    In watching the programme and listening to Miles, I was also reminded of the atmosphere of Samuel R. Delany’s Return to Nevèrÿon series of books. Tales that seem to be set in an ancient civilisation (or possibly in the far future, where much of technology has been once again lost), yet which deal with human themes immediately recognisable to us today. I must reread them again.

  • Compare and Contrast

    BBC Four had a couple of history programmes on tonight. First up was Terry Jones on the Celtic civilisation that existed in Europe around the time of Caesar. Then we had Dan Snow on How the Celts Saved Britain. Frankly, give me the lugubrious and slightly cynical Jones over the puppyish Snow any day. Jones’ programme was thought-provoking. Snow’s programme was almost complete and utter tripe.
     
    The most telling thing was that Jones stated the old saw about the fact that history is written by the victors (in his case, Caesar). Snow seemed blissfully unaware of this during his retelling of his version of history.

  • Winter Solstice At Newgrange

    Here’s a fascinating post about the tomb at Newgrange in Ireland, where the rays of the rising sun on the winter solstice strike inside the tomb chamber. There’s also a live webcast of the winter solstice at Newgrange in 2007. As typical for our modern civilisation, the people chosen to be in the chamber when the rising sun strikes inside the chamber were selected by lottery.

  • The Island Of Forgotten Diseases

    And, while we’re on the wonders that can be thrown up by the internet, let me just draw your attention to this entry from Geoff Manaugh over at BLDGBLOG: The Island of Forgotten Diseases. It’s like something out of J. G. Ballard… Wonderful and terrifying, both in the same heartbeat…

  • The Ramírez Codex

    BibliOdyssey has a wonderful entry on the Ramírez Codex. Gawd, I love the internet…

  • The Antikythera Mechanism – Part II

    Further to my mention of the Antikythera Mechanism, here’s a link to the article in Nature about it.

  • The Antikythera Mechanism

    Alun, over at his Archaeoastronomy blog, comments on the news that a team of scientists appear to have unravelled the workings and purpose of the Antikythera Mechanism. It’s a remarkable relic, and an interesting story.

  • The Bog Bodies

    There was an interesting programme on the BBC last night: Timewatch: The Bog Bodies. It followed the archeological research that followed the discovery of two bodies preserved in Irish peat bogs. As well as the scientists involved in dating the remains, the research team also had a forensic pathologist (shades of Silent Witness – she could have been the inspiration for Sam Ryan) who was able to establish the manner of death.
     
    It appears that, in common with other similar finds, the two individuals did not go quietly into that long good night – they appear to have been tortured and killed. During the programme, reference was made to Tacitus, the Roman historian, who described such killings in Germany. A page from his Germany was shown, and the text (in translation) was: "Traitors and deserters are hung upon trees: cowards, shirkers and sodomites are suffocated in mud under a hurdle". Delightful.
     
    Ned Kelly, of the Museum of Ireland, is of the opinion that these were ritual killings, "offerings to the gods of fertility by kings to ensure a successful reign". He claims that the bodies are found on the borders of royal land or tribal boundaries. Somehow, this doesn’t sound quite right to me. Surely sacrifices to ensure the fertility of land would be more likely to be made on some holy spot within the boundaries. Burying bodies outside of the land sounds to me more like a symbolic banishment of criminals or those who have been rejected by the society – the class described by Tacitus.