Jacques Cousteau Bio Part 1

From Wikipedia:
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, commonly known in English as Jacques Cousteau; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was also known as "le Commandant Cousteau" or "Captain Cousteau".

Early life
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.

In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).

On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the Calypso.

In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.

Early 1940s: Innovation of modern underwater diving The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, using a depth-pressure-proof camera case developed by mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks), in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan. When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.

Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds.

At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.

During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today.

According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur.

Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan. In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype aqua-lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.

Jacques Cousteau bio pt 3

1980–1990s
In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.

In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.

On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.

In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".

On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.

In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society.

From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.

In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online.

In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.

In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named "Cousteau" in the Fiji Islands.

On 11 January 1996, Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was re-floated and towed home to France.

Death
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral. He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a "rue du Commandant Cousteau", a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.

Honors
During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:
* Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur
* Grand-Croix de l'Ordre national du Mérite
* Croix de guerre 1939–1945
* Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite Maritime
* Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
* Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (26 January 1990)
* National Geographic Society's Special Gold Medal in 1961

Legacy
Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.

Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician." He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.

His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism", a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.

Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l'Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.

In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father's non-profit endeavours.

In 2007, the International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph "Cousteau Divers" Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau's Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver's watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces' sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.

Films

* The Silent World (1956) * World Without Sun (1964)
* Journey to the End of the World (1976)
* Cries from the Deep (1981) (Jacques Gagné, director)
* St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea (1982) (co-director)

Television series

* 1966–68 The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
* 1968–76 The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
* 1977–77 Oasis in Space
* 1977–81 Cousteau's Odyssey Series
* 1982–84 Cousteau's Amazon Series
* 1985–91 Cousteau's Rediscovery of the World I
* 1992–94 Cousteau's Rediscovery of the World II

Jacques Cousteau Bio part 2

Late 1940s: GERS and Élie Monnier
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film Épaves to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon.

A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung while attempting a new depth record with the GERS near Toulon.

In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier, with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).

Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.

The adventures of this period are told in the two books The Silent World (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and Plongées sans câble (1954, by Philippe Tailliez). 1950–1970s
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.

In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).

With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.

Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.

In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it.

Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.

Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.

A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style.

In 1970, he wrote the book The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea with Philippe, his son. In this book, Costeau described the oceanic whitetip shark as "the most dangerous of all sharks".

In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.

Three years after the volcano's last eruption, on 19 December 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso's second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.

In 1976, Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic. He also found the wreck of La Therese in Crete island

In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.

On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.

Discovery Core: Ocean One

Discovery Core: Ocean One is a new series. Posts will be made every Tuesday.

We will begin with the work of Jacques Cousteau.

Our texts for this course will be:

1. The Silent World (1953, with Frédéric Dumas) 2. Captain Cousteaus Underwater Treasury (1959, with James Dugan) 3. The Living Sea (1963, with James Dugan) 4. World Without Sun (1965) 5. The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1970–1975, 8-volumes, with Philippe Diole)

o The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea (1970)
o Diving for Sunken Treasure (1971)
o Life and Death in a Coral Sea (1971)
o The Whale: Mighty Monarch of the Sea (1972)
o Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)
o Three Adventures: Galápagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes (1973)
o Diving Companions: Sea Lion, Elephant Seal, Walrus (1974)
o Dolphins (1975)

6. The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau (1973–78, 21 volumes)

o Oasis in Space (vol 1)
o The Act of Life (vol 2)
o Quest for Food (vol 3)
o Window in the Sea (vol 4)
o The Art of Motion (vol 5)
o Attack and Defense (vol 6)
o Invisible Messages (vol 7)
o Instinct and Intelligence (vol 8)
o Pharaohs of the Sea (vol 9)
o Mammals in the Sea (vol 10)
o Provinces of the Sea (vol 11)
o Man Re-Enters Sea (vol 12)
o A Sea of Legends (vol 13)
o Adventure of Life (vol 14)
o Outer and Inner Space (vol 15)
o The Whitecaps (vol 16)
o Riches of the Sea (vol 17)
o Challenges of the Sea (vol 18)
o The Sea in Danger (vol 19)
o Guide to the Sea and Index (vol 20) o Calypso (1978, vol 21)

7. A Bill of Rights for Future Generations (1979)
8. Life at the Bottom of the World (1980)
9. The Cousteau United States Almanac of the Environment (1981, aka The Cousteau Almanac of the Environment: An Inventory of Life on a Water Planet)
10. Jacques Cousteau's Calypso (1983)
11. Marine Life of the Caribbean (1984, with James Cribb and Thomas H. Suchanek)
12. Jacques Cousteau's Amazon Journey (1984, with Mose Richards)
13. Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World (1985)
14. The Whale (1987, with Philippe Diole)
15. Jacques Cousteau: Whales (1988, with Yves Paccalet)
16. The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus (and Susan Schiefelbein, coauthor; Bloomsbury 2007]

Ocean One: June, 1943

The development of the Aqualung (SCUBA) greatly revolutionized underwater archaeology. This class, Ocean One, goes through all of the books of Jacques Cousteau and addresses his discoveries.

Jacques Cousteau's book, The Silent World, (first published in 1953) opens with this paragraph:

One morning in June, 1943, I went to the railway station at Bandol on the French Riviera and received a wooden case expressed from Paris. In it was a new and promising device, the result of years of struggle and dreams, an automatic compressed-air diving lung conceived by Emile Gagnan and myself.

I rushed it to Villa Barry where mu diving comrades, Philippe Tailliez and Frederic Dumas waited. No children ever opened a Christmas present with more excitement than ours when we unpacked the first "aqualung." If it worked, diving could be revoluionized.

First, some political histoyr. In June, 1943, what was the state of France?

Vichy France, Vichy Regime, Vichy Government, or simply Vichy are common terms used to describe the government of France which collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944, during the Second World War. It officially called itself the French State (État Français) and was headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, who proclaimed the government following the military defeat of France by Germany.

The Vichy regime maintained some legal authority in the northern zone of France (the Zone occupée), which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, but was most powerful in the unoccupied southern "free zone", where its administrative centre of Vichy was located. In November 1942 the southern zone was also occupied and fully subjected to German rule.

Pétain collaborated with the German occupying forces in exchange for an agreement to not divide France between the Axis Powers. Vichy authorities aided in the rounding-up of Jews and other "undesirables", and at times, Vichy French military forces actively opposed the Allies. Much of the French public initially supported the new government despite its pro-Nazi policies, seeing it as necessary to maintain a degree of French autonomy and territorial integrity.

The legitimacy of Vichy France and Pétain's leadership was constantly challenged by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle, who claimed to represent the legitimacy and continuity of the French government. Public opinion turned against the Vichy regime and the occupying German forces over time, and resistance to them grew within France. Following the Allied invasion of France in June 1944, de Gaulle proclaimed the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF).

Most of the Vichy regime's leaders were later put on trial by the GPRF, and a number of them were executed. Pétain was sentenced to death for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The Free French, led by De Gaulle, were based in North Africa.

What about the French Riviera in 1943?

The Côte d'Azur (Azure (blue)Coast), often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from the Italian border in the east to Saint Tropez, Hyères or Cassis in the west.

The French Riviera coastline covers 560 miles and consists of both sand and shingle beaches.

[WIkipedia doesn't say anything specifically about how the average French person lived, on the French Riviera, during this time, but does mention:

The Second World War
When Germany invaded France in June 1940, the remaining British colony was evacuated to Gibraltar and eventually to Britain. American Jewish groups helped some of the Jewish artists living in the south of France, such as Marc Chagall, to escape to the United States. In August 1942, 600 Jews from Nice were rounded up by French police and sent to Drancy, and eventually to death camps. In all about 5,000 French Jews from Nice perished during the war.

On August 15, 1944, American parachute troops landed near Fréjus, and a fleet landed 60,000 troops of the American Seventh Army and French First Army between Cavalaire and Agay, east of Saint-Raphaël. German resistance crumbled in days.

Saint-Tropez was badly damaged by German mines at the time of the liberation. The novelist Colette organized an effort to assure the town was rebuilt in its original style.

When the war ended, artists Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso returned to live and work.

Cousteau, a Navy man, was out of work after the Armistice of 1940, and did not join the Free French. However, as evidenced in the Wikipedia article below, he did do work for his country against the Nazis:

After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, using a depth-pressure-proof camera case developed by mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks), in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan. When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.

Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere)

Begin a notebook for Ocean One, if you have not already done so. It should be a loose-leaf notebook, so that you can take out and insert pages as needed.

Write each name below on its own sheet of paper. Keep track of their activities in chronological fashion as we go through This Silent World.

* Jacques Cousteau
* Simone Cousteau
* Emile Gagnan
* Philippe Tailliez
* Frederic Dumas

The cairns of Overlook: Rock structures may contain links to the ancients

From the Woodstock Times: The cairns of Overlook: Rock structures may contain links to the ancients
On the side of Overlook Mountain is an 80-foot-long serpentine stone wall that ends at a boulder with a triangular shape that Woodstocker Glenn Kreisberg finds suggestive of a snake’s head. A few hundred feet away, an almost identical — but crumbling — stone wall ends at a similar boulder, forming a mirror image, the two “snakes” arranged tail to tail.

Kreisberg and archeological researcher David Johnson believe the walls were built by Native Americans for spiritual purposes. They regard the site as sacred land and want it preserved, although it’s located on private property that is currently for sale.

The land sloping down from the serpentine walls is dotted with small cairns of meticulously stacked rocks, as well as six long, large piles of rock with retaining walls on the downhill sides. Mapping the locations of the walls and the large piles, Kreisberg came up with a pattern resembling the constellation Draco, believed to be reflected in ancient structures around the world, from Angkor Wat to the Ohio serpent mound.

Kreisberg, a radio frequency engineer, first came across the structures when he was asked to join a committee to study the siting of a cell tower in nearby California Quarry. Neighbors pointed out the rock formations, and Kreisberg became so fascinated by them that he joined the New England Antiquities Research Association, of which he is now vice president.

On a sunny Saturday, he surveyed the site with Johnson, a Dutchess County educator, photographer, and water consultant who has researched rock formations in Peru, Chile, and the southwestern U.S.

“We’ve found the same pattern here that we found in South America and in Anasazi sites in Arizona and New Mexico,” said Johnson, who has mapped underground aquifers in all three regions and found that mysterious structures made by human hands appear to mark the boundaries of subterranean watercourses.

“These structures relate to the three worlds of the Native Americans,” he explained. “The solar system and the constellations and planets are the gods above. The stones are part of the world we walk in. And the ancestors are associated with the underworld — their spirits travel through the earth along the water pathways.”

In addition, he said, water provided a means of communication between the people of this world and the ancestors, and the cairns and walls were probably settings for conducting rituals and honoring the dead.

A Tribal Preservation Officer of the Stockbridge Munsee band of Mohicans visited Overlook and said she thought the six large, rectangular cairns were burial sites. Kreisberg hopes to interest the tribe in studying the large cairns with underground radar technology, which would not detect bones but would reveal space or disturbance of soil underground.

At one of the smaller cairns, Kreisberg pointed out two rocks, one of white quartzite and another of reddish hematite, that were unlike all the other rocks in the assemblage, neatly stacked on a small boulder. “These kinds of non-local stones were used as offerings by the Native Americans,” he said, demonstrating how the reddish rock can slide in and out of a niche built into the side of the cairn.

I asked about books that claim the rock stacks of the Catskills are not ancient structures but were simply piled up by farmers wanting to clear the stones out of their fields.

“As a farmer, would you take so much care to build such a perfect structure?” observed Kreisberg. “Also, when you look at the deeds of the original patents for the land, they mention ancient stone monuments that were referenced to as boundary markers at the corners of lots. They were already here before the farmers arrived.”

The lines of Nasca
There are 46 small cairns on the mountainside. Johnson believes they correspond to aquifer boundaries, as do the two serpentine walls. His methods of determining the location of underground water include studies of the area’s geology and hydrology, determination of the locations and rates of flow of wells and springs, and one technology that is controversial in the field of archeology: dowsing.

“A lot of the scientific community hollers at me for doing it,” he said, swinging the two L-shaped metal dowsing rods he uses for finding underground water. “They say it doesn’t work. But it works for me.”

His study of the Nasca geoglyphs, geometric shapes etched onto the desert in the Nasca Valley of Peru and Chile, began when he was involved in a project to locate water sources in the region. Wells were successfully tapped based on his dowsing for water using the rods, which swing in response to passage over boundaries of underground watercourses. He knew about the Nasca lines, which had puzzled archeologists for decades.

“While mapping the aquifers and areas of higher permeability materials under the desert,” Johnson said. “I realized they had already been mapped by the lines of Nasca.”

Donald A. Proulx, Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, describes, on his website, his participation in Johnson’s research in South America from 1996 to 2003. Johnson taught social studies at Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie for 27 years until he retired to devote himself to the Nasca project. His unorthodox methods have been questioned by scientists, but he has convinced archeologists and geologists, with funding from the National Geographic Society, to help him try to verify his theories through rigorous research.

Proulx says the results of the studies were mixed. Whereas some of the geometric figures were shown to correspond to water-conducting faults and alluvial gravels, others did not. Johnson argued that some of the methodology failed to consider all the relevant factors.

Proulx notes that Johnson has been hired as a consultant by agencies in Peru and Chile and has “successfully located water sources that are now being used by local communities.” He also gives Johnson credit for “his tenacious research on the geoglyphs, wells…and other water sources in the Nasca drainage. The hydrological data he collected and the many new geoglyphs he discovered in the Nasca drainage are of great importance to the archaeological and geological communities.”

A connection to the land
On Overlook, said Johnson, his dowsing rods identified underground water flows that descend the mountain from the cliffs overlooking the serpentine walls and are almost precisely the width of the walls. As Kreisberg and I reached the boulder marking the head of one of the “snakes,” he reached down and picked up a half-consumed bundle of dried sage, commonly burned in rituals of Native American and other spiritual practices. Apparently someone else considers the site a sacred place.

“I have great respect for the Native American culture and belief system,” said Kreisberg. Although he was raised in the Jewish tradition, he finds his beliefs increasingly aligned with Native understandings. He recently edited an anthology, Lost Knowledge of the Ancients (Bear & Company, 2010), describing recent research and theories on the origins of civilization, technology, and consciousness. He is working on a book about the Overlook rock structures.

“I think this site is an important link to our past, a link we’re all missing today, a connection to the land,” he said. “The Native Americans’ relationship with the natural world was intimate and profound, in ways we are only beginning to understand today. The lessons we learn from that relationship may turn out to be what sustains us in the end, when science and technology fail to find the answers of what’s missing in our society.”

Kreisberg added that archaeologists tend to ignore the many Catskill stone monuments because the land has been substantially altered by later settlement, but he feels it’s important to study and protect the sites.

The structures are on a 37-acre parcel that was purchased years ago by his cousin and two other buyers who hunted on the land. When they decided to sell the property, efforts were made to convey it to the Open Space Institute or the Woodstock Land Conservancy, which have, in the past, acquired big chunks of Overlook Mountain to protect it from development. That deal apparently is not progressing, as the parcel is currently on the market, listed at $340,000.

In a statement, the Land Conservancy called the parcel “a valuable conservation asset to Woodstock and would make an excellent candidate for permanent protection. We applaud the landowner for preserving it over the past decades. Any dialogue we have with landowners regarding their wishes for the future of their land is kept confidential…”

Kreisberg is concerned that someone will buy the property and decide to build a home without regard to the cairns and walls that he considers precious and irreplaceable.

“People buying it should know that this is on the land,” said Kreisberg. “If they try to bulldoze it, there are many people who will get together to try to fight it. We may not succeed, but we’ll sure make things difficult.”

Hawaii: Field seminar takes walk through time (March 31)

From Hawaii 24/7: Field seminar takes walk through time (March 31)
On Saturday, March 31, the public is invited to take a walk through time and learn how Hawaiians living in the shadow of Pele adapted to life on a lava landscape.

From 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., archeologist Jadelyn Moniz Nakamura leads the field seminar “Kealakomowaena: Life on a Lava Landscape” in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

“See ancient trails, agricultural fields, lava rock walls, and house sites as we explore the challenges life presented to those living in this leeward ahupuaa of the Puna district,” Nakamura said.

“We will discuss the latest radiocarbon data for the area, what the pollen and charcoal records have revealed, and why this seemingly barren place was likely chosen as a spot to farm,” she added.

Kealakomowaena is an island of vegetation, or kipuka, spared by recent lava flows in the middle of the Kealakomo ahupuaa (land division). Hawaiians thrived in this coastal lowland area, growing sweet potatoes, harvesting fish, and drying salt.

Jadelyn Moniz Nakamura is the integrated resources manager/archeologist at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Born and raised in Hilo, Nakamura holds a B.A. in in History and Anthropology, an M.A. in Anthropology, and a PhD. in Archaeology, all from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Her research interests and specialties are pre-contact Hawaiian archeology, specializing in faunal and paleoenvironmental analysis.

This field seminar is rated moderate, with approximately 3 miles of hiking round-trip on rough terrain with lots of tripping hazards. Hikers should be in good condition, able to do without shade all day in a remote, rugged area.

This event is presented by the Hawaii Volcanoes Institute, a program of the Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, a non-profit organization.

Program cost is $45 for Friends members and $65 for non-members. Students (K-12 and college with valid student ID) are half-price. Non-members are welcome to join the Friends in order to get the member discount.

To register for “Kealakomowaena: Life on a Lava Landscape,” call 985-7373 or visit www.fhvnp.org

This program is funded in part by the County of Hawaii Department of Research and Development and the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Anyone who requires an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication or reasonable modification of policies and procedures to participate in this event should email institute@fhvnp.org or call 985-7373 as soon as possible, but no later than five days prior to the program start.

NY, NY: Relics of the city’s past uncovered on Fulton St.

From Downtown Express: Relics of the city’s past uncovered on Fulton St.
BY ALINE REYNOLDS | As the city rips apart Fulton Street and Peck Slip in the South Street Seaport to install new water mains, a team of archeologists has discovered a trove of hidden artifacts. While the relics are informing knowledge about the past, they’re also pressuring archeologists to crack larger puzzles concerning the neighborhood’s rich, complex history.

Most recently, on Mon., March 12, Chrysalis Archeology President Alyssa Loorya, the archeologist overseeing the Downtown excavation, uncovered a portion of an 18th-century stone wall in front of 40 Fulton St. that is believed to have belonged to the estate of either the Van Tienhovens or the Van Cortlandts, two wealthy Dutch merchant families who came to New Amsterdam in the 17th century. The finding is one of a slew of recent discoveries Loorya’s team has made since fall 2009, when the city Department of Design and Construction began the Fulton Street reconstruction project.

The wall is one of three walls and two wells the archeologists have found underneath Fulton Street that is suspected to have come from the same residential estate, according to Loorya.

Which estate the structures come from is still an unknown, however, since the archeologists have yet to determine the boundary line that once separated the two residential properties.

“It’s not common that you’d see so many different structures from a single property dating back to the 18th century all in this one area,” said Loorya of the findings. “We’re trying to overlay the maps [we’ve found] with the current map to see if we can nail down who is the actual property owner.”

Loorya broke off a small fragment of the wall, which has been reburied into the ground, for dating and other testing. The fragment will then be compared to structures that made up neighboring estates.

These analyses will offer the archeologists a better snapshot of the area’s geographical layout, Loorya noted.

“The interesting thing is, this is smack in the middle of Fulton Street [and therefore dates back to] the period when that part of Fulton Street was [part of private property],” said Loorya. “Once we begin to map everything, we’ll be able to piece together and extrapolate some of the dimensions of the properties — where the family placed its wells, where it had outbuildings, and where the wells and outbuildings may have been relative to the house and to the street line.”

Earlier this month, the crew uncovered artifacts in a muddy section of Peck Slip, which the archeologists began excavating last August. The discovery left them with more than 40 Ziploc bags full of broken pottery from the early-to-mid 19th century.

“When we started cleaning it off, we found a whole range of [dinner plates] with the same patterns in different colors,” said Loorya. “They were probably discarded items from a supply store.”

The archeologists also recently uncovered timber from landfills that make up the foundation of the modern-day Seaport. Using dendrochronology (otherwise known as tree ring dating), the team can not only find out the trees’ species but also build a more detailed timeline of the landfill’s formation.

The crews have also uncovered the foundation remains of a 19th-century print shop, several hundred ink bottles with ink still in them, a bone toothbrush, wooden water mains, and clusters of drinking goblets and serving platters.

And while Fulton Street and Peck Slip will be completed in 2013 and 2016, respectively, Loorya and her crew will make do with the artifacts already uncovered to help unlock the mysteries of the Seaport of the past.

Archeology Month Puts Focus On Petrified Forest’s Human History

From the Arizona Journal: Archeology Month Puts Focus On Petrified Forest’s Human History
As the last Ice Age was drawing to an end, the earliest local human inhabitants scientists know of were roaming northeastern Arizona, hunting mammoths and bison in the area now known as Petrified Forest Na-tional Park.

Evidence of these peoples who lived 13,000 years ago is still found here, and new discoveries continue to fill the gaps of understanding of how these ancient people once lived and moved across the high desert.

It is the stories of these people, and all of those who have ranged across this rugged landscape since, that are being explored during Arizona Archeology Month, and there are still opportunities for area residents and visitors to hear them.

Petrified Forest is hosting a number of events during the month of March to commemorate Arizona Ar-cheology Month and the wealth of knowledge that has emerged ever since researchers and scientists began studying the unique environs of the area.

Guided tours to areas not usually open to visitors, children’s hands-on activities and lectures are being used to share the understanding gleaned about the many different people who have inhabited this region for the past 13,000 years.

“The Petrified Forest, and this area in general, was a major crossroads, where people came through north-ern Arizona,” explains Park Archeologist Bill Reitze. “We’ve found potteries from Flagstaff, Show Low and New Mexico here, showing a lot of people moved through this area and traded among themselves.”

Archeologists over the years have been able to piece together a picture of an evolving habitation of the region. The end of the Ice Age nomads were hunter-gatherers who stalked large herd animals across large expanses of land.

“We don’t have the skeletons of the mammoths, but we have evidence of the technology–the spear points and other weapons they used to hunt these large creatures,” said Reitze.

The era of these early hunter-gatherers, termed Paleo People, lasted from 13,500 to 8000 B.C., when a transition occurred to the Archaic Culture, which lasted until 500 B.C.

Park scientists say by about 4000 B.C., the climate in the region had settled into a semblance of what is experienced today. The huge ranging beasts of the post-Ice Age were extinct, so the people who lived here had to expand their food sources. They began relying more on the plants in the region and smaller game ani-mals, such as rabbit and deer. The use of these food sources, Reitze says, set the stage for the beginning of the Basketmaker period.

As the name implies, people during the Basketmaker period became more sedentary, not roaming such broad expanses following large herds. The people of this time began focusing on growing their own food and building stone-lined pit houses. They began staying put and making baskets. As the era, which is dated from 500 B.C. to 650 A.D., progressed, the first potteries were developed.

“These people would dig shallow pits a foot or two deep, in the sandy soil and line the pits with sandstone slabs, then they would build the pit house of brush, wood and mud.

“They made the houses just large enough to get out of the weather and would dig storage pits outside, which they would line with clay and top with a special cap,” said Reitze.

It was during this time that the people learned to cultivate the land, growing corn, squash and eventually beans.

Over the years, pottery ware, bits of charred corn and bones of small animals have been discovered in the pit houses in the Petrified Forest, giving evidence of the change in lifestyle of these early people.

At the end of the Basketmaker period, Reitze said, the people began making ceramic pots.

“Some of the earliest ceramic pots in northern Arizona came from here,” he noted. The pots were basic, using clays from the river valley with perhaps some material coming from surround-ing badlands.

Coils of clay were layered upon one another and pinched together to seal them before firing.

“Early on, the pots were left plain, but later they began decorating them,” said Reitze.

“The technologies were saving them time,” said Reitze. “If you can store more of your food and keep the mice away, then you don’t have to spend as much time hunting and growing it. You have more time to deco-rate a pot.”

The Basketmaker period eventually gave way to the ages of the Pueblo People, which led eventually, some believe, to the Native American tribes of the area today.

“The Native American groups, our neighbors, all have different claims on how they’re related. There is certainly a lot of evidence that suggest the Native American groups are related to these earlier people,” said Reitze.

Some of that evidence, he says, includes the language, ceramics, oral histories and oral traditions, and how villages are set up.

Reitze is careful to point out that not everyone agrees that the lineage of ancient inhabitants can be traced directly to today’s Native American tribes.

During the periods of the Pueblo People, technologies continued to increase, farming and housing became more sophisticated, and larger communities were established. The potteries became more elaborate. Tools became finer, less crude.

The national park is replete with evidence of the progression toward established communities, and with relics of more recent pioneers and homesteaders, which are also an important part of the area’s history. All of the evidence of human history in the park provides useful understanding of the evolution of civilizations for today.

That understanding, Reitze says, is relevant to people today.

“This is the history of our country, this is our heritage. And it’s where we can see it,” said Reitze.

“It’s especially relevant in Arizona, where so many people are direct descendents of these early people. We have the opportunity to learn how people have dealt with changes in climate. What did people do when it got dry? When there was a good year? How did they live in villages? How did they deal with their neighbors? We still have to deal with our neighbors. What can we learn from them? A lot of archeology studies is striv-ing to understand day-to-day life,” said Reitze.

Continuing to gather an understanding of the peoples of this region is Reitze’s aim. He has been with the park for nine months, and anticipates continuing to focus on discovering more artifacts of the past and inter-preting them.

With the privately owned Hatch Ranch and Bureau of Land Management parcels the park recently ac-quired, which provide thousands of acres of fresh exploration, Reitze believes there are many more stories that will be unearthed at Petrified Forest National Park. For now, people can visit the Petrified Forest for the remainder of Arizona Archeology Month, and be-yond, to learn what has already been discovered. For a list of Archeology Month events, for children to adults, call (928) 524-9228 or visit http://www.nps.gov/pefo.

Lafayette woman excavates old outhouse to unearth unexpected treasures

From TimesCall.com: Lafayette woman excavates old outhouse to unearth unexpected treasures
LAFAYETTE -- While excavating her home's old outhouse pit, Rebecca Schwendler set down her trowel and picked up the phone after unearthing what looked like two human finger bones and the top of a human thigh bone.

Eight men and one woman from the Office of the Medical Examiner and the Lafayette Police Department stood in her Old Town Lafayette backyard a day later and sent the remains to Colorado State University for analysis.

"I thought 'Oh, my god. What if he's in my outhouse?'" Schwendler said, referring to a reputed unsolved murder in Lafayette in 1927, the year of the nearby Columbine Mine Massacre.

A union labor organizer for area coal miners lived in her house a couple of years later, and she wondered if somehow the outdoor privy on the northeast corner of her lot had become a secret stash for body parts related to revenge.

The CSU report identified the remains as pig bones.

But Schwendler, who holds a doctorate in anthropology with a concentration in archeology and works as a public lands advocate at the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Denver office, realized that the hole held other secrets.

"A lot of times, they threw things down the outhouse hole that they didn't want other people to see," she said of her systematic spring 2010 dig 6 feet down in the 4-foot by 4-foot area.

For instance, Schwendler, 40, recovered a glass syringe and patent medicine bottles sold over the counter at pharmacies, which often contained opiates or alcohol. Poker chips and hair dye sold as Mayor Walnut Oil bottled in Kansas City, Mo., also turned up.

To learn more from the 100-plus items in the collection, Schwendler on Tuesday gave three white banker boxes to Bonnie Clark, a University of Denver associate professor of anthropology. She and a small independent study class plan to analyze the materials this spring quarter and collaborate with Schwendler in filing a social history report with the state Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation and The Lafayette Miners Museum.

Clark said that it helps enormously that the artifacts come with context.

For instance, before tucking each one into individual Ziploc bags, Schwendler mapped each piece in a highly controlled, vertical and horizontal strata and categorized them in three eras: the Victorian era (1892-1900); the World War I era (1900-1918); and the post World War I era (1918 to the late 1940s or early 1950s, when the house underwent an indoor plumbing remodel).

"I am really interested that there is a complete teacup. Whole vessels sometimes get thrown away when they're associated with someone," Clark said. "Maybe it was the preacher's cup, and when he died, his wife couldn't bear to look at it."

The privy's record begins in 1892, when a furniture maker named Charles Keen bought the plot from Mary Miller -- the town founder who named it after her late husband, Lafayette Miller -- and built the house for his wife and baby daughter.

Calf foot bones found at this lowest level might have been used to make a nutritive, easy-to-digest gelatin soup either for that baby or the preacher who bought the house for his wife and three daughters in 1895 and died five years later from unknown causes, Schwendler said.

The Victorian level of the pit also yielded fragments of a soup tureen with hand-painted floral print and gold leaf on the rim and handles.

Maybe one of the preacher's daughters accidentally broke it and hid the shards in the privy, said Jeanne Robertson, a Denver resident and Schwendler relative who volunteered to help with the dig.

She held a flashlight while Schwendler worked in the hole and also spent hours shaking 1/8-inch mesh screens to retrieve tiny items found at the site.

Metal, wooden and mother-of-pearl buttons all say something about the people using the outhouse and likely wound up in the pit due to the partial disrobing that happens in such places, Schwendler said.

Finding such items came as a surprise and a relief to Robertson.

"I thought we were going to come up with some big turds, which would have made me very unhappy," she said, laughing. "It did kind of stink a little bit, but not like sewage. It was like something dank, though."

In the middle level, Schwendler and her volunteers found things likely discarded by William Richards, the Welsh coal miner who lived in the house the longest -- from 1907 to 1937 -- and for whom Schwendler named the home on the Lafayette Register of Historic Properties.

Besides finding two Edison bulbs, the earliest light bulbs made, and more cans for paint and potted meats at this level, she found personal effects. They include two white jars of cold cream -- one empty and another partially full -- along with a pipe stem that likely belonged to the Richards couple.

On a recent Saturday, while kneeling by the carefully organized boxes she packed to give to Clark, Schwendler reflected on her work.

She undertook it to see if the privy would yield any cultural deposits before she permanently capped it and converted the outbuilding over it into a chicken coop.

But Schwendler discouraged those without archeological expertise to take on such a project, a sentiment echoed by archeologists nationwide in response to the premier later this month of a Spike TV reality show on the subject called "American Diggers."

"It's not unlawful to dig on private property," she said. "And it's not like we want to shut people out of their own interests. But if it's done right, you learn a hundred times more than what you would otherwise."

No one would place inherent value on the other corroded and sometimes rotted stuff she found, such as a broken metal corset rib, a Model T radiator cap and brake rod and peach pits.

"But archeologists have a saying that what is important is not what you find, but what you find out," Schwendler said.

The items give her and historians clues about the class, health, hobbies, diet, occupation, gender and more of previous residents now mostly lost in time.

"I always wanted to live in an old house, and (the privy deposits) have made me even more connected to the people who lived here before," Schwendler said.

For more information on Lafayette history, visit cityoflafayette.com/Page.asp?NavID=316.

In Ancient Egypt, Canaan Revisited Without Israel

From Salem-News.com: In Ancient Egypt, Canaan Revisited Without Israel
Despite the scarcity of archeological finds that corroborate the veracity of the Hebrew bible’s narrative, modern archeology doesn’t deny the Israelites existed; rather it states they only existed quite differently. Israeli myth

(ALEXANDRIA, Egypt) - Did you know that Egypt is mentioned in the Holy Bible approximately 700 times (Egypt: 595 times, Egyptian(s): 120 times).

Obviously, Egypt must have played a vital role in the history of the Hebrews otherwise it wouldn’t have been such a recurring theme in the Jewish holy book.

Egypt was, and still is, the magnificent overture to the Israelites’ story. Take Egypt out and the whole structure of the Israelites’ tale would instantly fall.

The land of the Nile has been the theater for the Israelites’ epic stories of alleged enslavement, divine retaliation, wandering in the wilderness and finally a breath-taking and logic-defying exit.

But on the other hand, do you know how many times Israel or the Israelites were mentioned in the ancient Egyptian records? … Well, and according to history and the ancient Egyptian meticulous records – get ready for the surprise- once or … maybe none at all.

Now and before I take you on a little journey back in time, around 3000 years ago, I want you to contemplate on this paradoxical ratio 1:700, and try to answer this simple question; what if there was someone who, you were told, talked of you hundreds and hundreds of times, citing places and stories he said had shared with you, only you don’t know who he is or what the hell he is talking about … what do you call that person? … A liar! A deluded person! … or maybe someone who is trying to steal your thunder.

If that is your answer, then we’re having a common ground for my following argument. If not, then, hop on my time machine and let’s visit the ancient Egyptian empire at its zenith.

Once mentioned but never again
The only time Israel was mentioned in the ancient Egyptian texts, the most meticulous and coherent of the world’s ancient civilizations and which covered the chronicles of nearly 3000 years, was in Merneptah Stele, a black granite slab engraved with a description of the victories of king Merneptah- son of the great Ramses II- in a military campaign against the Meshwesh Libyans and their Sea People allies, but its final two lines, line 26 & 27, refer to a prior military campaign in Canaan in the Near East.

The stele which dates to about 1208 BC was discovered by renowned British archaeologist Flinders Petrie at Thebes in 1896.

The Inscription contains a hymn and a list of the Pharaoh’s military victories. A tribe, whom Merenptah had victoriously smitten”I.si.ri.ar?”Or as Petrie quickly suggested that it read: “Israel!” is on the list of conquests. The mention of Israel is very short; it simply says, “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more.”

However, a number of alternative readings for the text “I.si.ri.ar” have been suggested and debated. The most common alternative suggested is that of Jezreel (city) or the Jezreel Valley.

This was the first extra-biblical Egyptian source to mention the tribe of Israel and the last one for that matter.

Yes, maybe the tribe, not the kingdom, of Israel had been mentioned in King Merneptah Stele, but it was ascertained to be completely devastated and existed no more. Interestingly enough, the Israelites were depicted (with distinctive hieroglyphs) in the Egyptian stele as Bedouins/nomads who were always on the move and who never settled in one place/city- contrary to the Israelite story of invasion and settlement they have been raving about during long centuries of silent Egyptian records- the ancient Egyptian writing, Hieroglyphs, has been deciphered in 1822 by Jean Francois Champollion.

While the other defeated Egyptian enemies listed besides Israel in Merneptah stele such as Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam( cities to be inhabited later by pelset/philistines )were given the determinative for a city-state—”a throw stick plus three mountains designating a foreign country”—the hieroglyphs that refer to Israel instead employ the determinative sign used for foreign peoples: a throw stick plus a man and a woman over three vertical plural lines. This sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic tribes without a fixed city-state, thus implying that ysrỉꜣr “Israel” was the demonym for a seminomadic population who were always on the move at the time the stele was created.

Unlike the old school of biblical archeology, which grabbed the spade in one hand and the bible in the other, modern archeologists describe their approach as one which views the Bible as one of the important artifacts into which centuries of Near Eastern cultural accumulations [Egyptian, Phoenician and Sumerian] had been integrated and sometimes copycatted [but] not the unquestioned narrative framework every archaeological find has to fit into.

Despite the scarcity of archeological finds that corroborate the veracity of the Hebrew bible’s narrative, modern archeology doesn’t deny the Israelites existed; rather it states they only existed quite differently.

For example, current Egyptology and Archaeology deny that there was an Exodus. Instead, they say that this is a confused memory of the Expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt while stressing the fact that Hyksos had nothing to do with the Israelites.

Since relentless excavations of Canaan/Palestine by Israeli and western archeologists since the beginning of the twentieth century only widened the gap between the historical truth as academics know it and the tales of the Hebrew bible, I thought maybe we could look for the missing part somewhere else. And since more consistent and reliable documentation is needed, we should therefore try and look for the truth in Egypt.

See the original link for a very long article about this.

Washington State: EdCC, EvCC to hold archeology classes, digs at Japanese Gulch

From Mukiteo KOMO News: EdCC, EvCC to hold archeology classes, digs at Japanese Gulch
Edmonds Community College and Everett Community College are giving people a chance to participate in an archeological dig in the area.

The colleges will be doing the dig in Mukilteo's Japanese Gulch as part of a summer class. Instructors and students will be working at the site where Japanese workers at Mukilteo Lumber Mills lived in the early part of the 20th century. The site and numerous artifacts were found by crews installing a fish passage and working on restoring Japanese Gulch Creek.

The two colleges are partnering with the city of Mukilteo in the project, which will help create an archeology and anthropology field training program at the site. Students will be learning about human ecology and archeology in a classroom setting, then go to Japanese Gulch collect, clean, analyze and document artifacts found at the settlement location.

Instructors from both colleges are excited about the project.

“This is a unique, hands-on learning experience for students. We’re fortunate that our partnerships give us the resources to expand the reach of intensive service-learning projects and to bring this opportunity to more students,” said Dr. Thomas Murphy, founder of Edmonds Community College’s Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School, in a statement.

“When my colleague, Thomas Murphy, approached me about this project I knew it was something many EvCC students would leap to join. Students who want to become archaeologists and others fascinated with how archeology teaches us about ourselves have been excited to hear about this project ” said Cynthia Clarke, anthropology instructor at Everett Community College.

Students from both Edmonds and Everett will act as crew chiefs and peer mentors for the dig.

India: In dire straits

From PostNoon: In dire straits
Osmania University’s Ancient Indian Studies, Culture and Archeology is a choice pick for students aspiring for civil services. But the department lacks experts, labs and associated facilities.

Walk into the first floor of the OU Arts building and one will find an old dusty board which reads ‘Archaeological science department’ with rickety benches, a huge library hall with skeleton rows of books, wide corridors, old doors and ancient fans that creak. It surely gives one the feeling of travelling into the past.

Ancient Indian Studies, Culture and Archaeology was established as the Department of Religion and Culture in 1940 and it was subsequently bifurcated into Department of Indology and the Department of Islamic Studies in the year 1965.

The Department of Indology was later renamed and restructured as the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology.

Only 42 students pass out each year from the 72 year-old college. The reason behind this is the lack of funds resulting in limitations to expand teaching staff and student strength. Currently,the department has three courses; one MA course and two PG diploma courses. The intake for MA course is only 30 students and for the PG diplomas it is 12 students. Professors complain that they want to increase the intake of students but the financial crunch is restricting their growth.

“There are only five professors in the department. If the university provides us with more teaching staff we can take more students and guide several other PhD students. From our end we are trying to do our best but we need some support from the State and Central government,” says a senior professor Dr V Meena Kumari,

Currently,there are only eight PhD students in the department. In the 5th five-year plan, professors in the department put forth their demands for more funds to set up a museum, get better technology , recruit more teaching staff, introduce new courses and send students for field work but till date have not received any positive notification from the government.

“We want to send our students to excavation sites and give them practical exposure but we cannot as we lack the funds to send them. In fact, to improve the department our students themselves have donated some equipment,” quips Dr N R Giridhar, assistant professor.

Surprisingly, most students who pass out from this college which is listed amongst the top ten colleges in the country land up in government jobs rather than becoming archeologists.

“For most students this is a training ground for further studies. Our course is inter-connected to several other courses. Most of the students after their PG apply for IAS, IFS, civil services and other go­vernment related courses. The knowledge that they get about Indian culture and heritage is phenomenal and this helps them get a better score in competitive exam,” said Dr V Mee­na Kumari, senior professor.

Students on the other hand are not too happy with the teaching method and lectures. “We have outdated syllabus and teaching methods. None of the professors come regularly to college,” complains Suresh P, a PhD student.

Courses offered
PhD
Duration: 3 years
Seats: 10

MA
Duration: 2 years
Seats: 30

PG Diploma in Museology
Course period: 1 year
Seats: 12

PG Diploma in Archival Science & Manuscriptology
Course period: 1 year
Seats: 12

“There are only five professors in the department. If the university provides us with more teaching staff we can take more students and guide several other PhD students. - Meena Kumari, Senior Professor, O.U

Musqueam band thwarts Vancouver ground-breaking

From Vancouver Sun: Musqueam band thwarts Vancouver ground-breaking Protesters from the Musqueam Indian Band stopped construction workers from starting excavation of land they say is home to their ancient burial ground. Workers and property owner Gary Hackett were turned away when they showed up at 1338 Southwest Marine Dr. at 7:30 a.m. Monday. The land between the Metro Theatre and The Motel nightclub is being developed for a large condominium project. While high winds blew out the power to stores and traffic lights in south Vancouver, about 40 protesters held up signs and beat drums, while many drivers honked their horns in support. Musqueam spokesperson Aaron Wilson said the protest was necessary after talks with the developer broke down. Protesters vowed to stay until the development plan by Magnum Projects for “HQ concrete homes” is stopped. To help find a solution to the dispute, the B.C. government has scheduled meetings this week with the band, the city and the developer. “Our chief has been working directly with Mayor Gregor Robertson and city manager Penny Ballem,” Musqueam band manager Ken McGregor told the Courier. “They have been very sympathetic, but getting agreement with three levels of government is complex and doesn’t move as quickly as some developers might like. Everybody is in a bit of a legal box.” In 2006, Hackett received a heritage permit to start the B.C. government’s archaeological impact assessment on the property to prepare for development of six lots. In December 2008 the province sent the draft management plan to the Musqueam Band for comment but did not receive any response from the Musqueam until the current permit application was referred to it, said Brennan Clarke, spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. Then in December 2011, the province issued two permits to Lan-Pro Holdings (the developer) and Stantec (the archaeology consultant) to allow for development of the lots. “The Archaeology Branch is satisfied that the proposed site management plan balances the condition of the site (heavily disturbed) with the interests of the private land owner,” Clarke wrote in a ministry email to media. The Musqueam dispute the province’s claim. “Work was stopped in the area near where the intact remains were discovered,” Clarke added in the email. “The remains have not been removed. The site where the remains were found will not be disturbed until an archaeologist has completed intensive testing the vicinity to determine if there are additional remains in the area.” McGregor said the city told the band that once the provincial archeology permit is issued, the city doesn’t have the legal right to stand in the way of development. “Everybody seems to want to do the right thing but they say no one has the legal authority to do anything.” Unlike the land under the Fraser Arms Hotel, the Musqueam band does not officially own the land at 1338 Southwest Marine Dr., but still claims title to it. McGregor added that the protest is not being organized from the band office, although it endorses its members’ efforts. “Most people wouldn’t want their gravesites desecrated outside their churches. This site is older than the Egyptian pyramids,” he said. The developers and city staff could not be reached for comment by deadline.

Weapons Of The ‘Warwick’ Wreck

Pop quiz - where is Bermuda? From BerNews: Weapons Of The ‘Warwick’ Wreck
On October 20, 1619, en route to Jamestown, Virginia, the magazine ship “Warwick” belonging to Earl of Warwick Robert Rich [1587–1658] — reportedly used to fight off the Spanish Armada in 1588 — made a scheduled stop in Bermuda. After completing the first stretch of the voyage it had to re-provision, discharge some of the cargo and passengers, and load valuable products bound for England. “Warwick’s” arrival here was as an important event for the island. On that voyage, the ship was charged with delivering Captain Nathaniel Butler, the new Governor of the permanent Bermuda colony founded in 1612.

“Apart from delivering Butler, ‘Warwick’ was to carry supplies and settlers to the struggling colony at Jamestown and collect colonial products, mostly tobacco, from Bermuda and Virginia for return to England,” said marine archaeologists Piotr Bojakowski and Katie Custer.

“At the end of November, as ‘Warwick’ was preparing to depart for America, where the Jamestown settlers were no doubt eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ship and the supplies it carried, a hurricane struck. Although the crew had prepared the ‘Warwick’ as the storm approached, all the moorings suddenly gave way and the ferocious wind drove the ship right into the rocky cliffs of Castle Harbour.

“Due to a combination of a powerful north-westerly, shallow reefs, and the sharp limestone rocks surrounding Castle Harbour nothing could be done to save it. ‘Warwick’s’ hull, although sturdy, was no match against the elements; thus, its fate was sealed.”

Since 2008 archaeologists from Bermuda, the National Museum of Bermuda, Texas A&M University, the University of Southampton, and the Vasa Museum have dedicated their time, resources and expertise to excavating “Warwick’s” wreck.

And now Doug Inglis, assistant director of the “Warwick” Shipwreck Excavation, has concluded Robert Rich may have had more than merchant work in mind when he dispatched the ship to the New World.

Based on the team’s discovery of an impressive arsenal of weapons aboard the wreck, Mr. Inglis has concluded “the little vessel may have been armed for more than self defense.”

Writing on his blog Diving Archeology recently, Mr. Inglis said:” Sir Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was a major shareholder in the Bermuda Company. Although his stake in the joint-stock company was intended to be an important source of income, Sir Robert involved himself in privateering — legal piracy — on the side.

” … excavation of the shipwreck is revealing a number of exciting clues about the nature of the vessel. I have been part of an international team that has be working on the wreck since 2008.

“One thing that impressed us about the 2011 field season was the variety of ordinance we found aboard the ship. In addition to cannon balls, we found spiked shot, as well as bar shot and expanding bar shot — both designed to de-mast and disable other vessels. Was this offensive armament standard for merchantmen at the time, or was ‘Warwick’ prepared for more than just evasion?”

Before venturing into underwater archaeology, Mr. Inglis specialised in high-altitude archaeology — working in Rocky Mountain National Park and alpine regions of Colorado and Wyoming.

Aside from his work on the “Warwick” project, Mr. Inglis is an archaeological illustrator at Texas A&M’s New World lab. He is completing a Master’s thesis in Nautical Archaeology.

At the end of May he will be returning to Bermuda to join other archaeologists from the island and around the world to take part in the final season of the “Warwick” excavation.

W. VA: MU event to focus on Blair Mountain preservation fight

From Herald-Dispach: MU event to focus on Blair Mountain preservation fight
HUNTINGTON -- The Student Environmental Action Coalition is hosting a panel to discuss the historical significance of the Battle of Blair Mountain and current resistance to strip mining.

Titled "Rebels, Red Necks and the Right to Work!", the event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday, March 12, at the Marshall University Memorial Student Center in the Shawkey Dining Room on the second floor.

This event will likely cover social movement organizing, environmental racism and oppression, social justice, Appalachian history, anthropology and archeology.

Chris Green and Brandon Nida will open the discussion with a short presentation on the battle and the effort to unionize West Virginia coal mines. Members of the Blair community will discuss the current movement by Arch Coal to strip mine the land. A specialist in resistance tactics from Radical Actions for Mountain Peoples Survival will offer comment on the movement and compare to other community efforts to resist strip mining.

The Student Environmental Action Coalition has worked on Marshall's campus since 2008. The student group has advocated for recycling in every academic building, renewable energy sources on campus and more responsible consumption while raising awareness of environmental problems.

In 2009, a Green Fee was passed, and Sustainability Department was created to oversee Marshall's greening efforts. The department creates jobs for students on the recycle pick up crew and at the eco cycle bike loan program.

Learn more at www.marshall.edu/wpmu/seac.

Potteries museum draws up plans to bring past to life

From ThisisStaffordshire: Potteries museum draws up plans to bring past to life
Grand plans are being drawn up to turn the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery into a world-class facility fit for the 21st Century...

FANCY learning about the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia using an interactive map or discovering the roots of Stoke-on-Trent though an iPad?

How about learning more about the Staffordshire Hoard by having a play with a 3D touch table?

These are some of the ideas currently being explored as experts build their case for turning the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, in Hanley, into a modern, up-to-to-date and technologically savvy facility.

Museum bosses will next month ask city councillors for permission to proceed on a two stage application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HFL) to develop the galleries with a focus on the Staffordshire Hoard.

The majority of the displays, especially on the ground floor, have not been substantially re-imagined since the early 1980s.

Museum staff hope their vision will be paid for by applying for a number of different funding streams. They are tentatively estimating the cost to be about £5 million.

The proposal is to develop a HLF application which will bring in funding to re-display the galleries using modern display techniques and technologies. The focus will be put on the Staffordshire Hoard, ceramics and the story of Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area.

Keith Bloor, the city council's strategic manager for museums, said: "There are various stages of modernisation in the galleries, partly because we managed to get some funding to do bits of it.

"However, if we were to step back we'd see overall it's quite passé and that's because most of the galleries were developed 30 years ago.

"At that time the museum was modern but what I – and the staff here – would like to do is transform the galleries and therefore the museum into a 21st Century museum.

"That means making it more engaging so that somebody, whatever their learning style or background, will be able to connect with the displays.

"New technology will have a role but also visitors to the museum will have an input in helping to develop how it's going to look.

"In the past we might have sat down and done some market research and met designers behind closed doors. But we very much want to engage people earlier in the process to get their ideas to help shape the museum."

Mr Bloor singles out the ground floor as an area where substantial investment is needed.

There has been some developments in natural histories and archeology over the years but they've been small scale.

The Mk XVI Spitfire, designed by Butt Lane-born Reginald Mitchell, is in need of restoration which is why last month a campaign to raise £50,000 was launched to ensure that the work would take place.

Mr Bloor said: "It's the ground floor where the investment needs to be. If you go through it now you'll see it's very discipline orientated.

"Natural history, local history and archeology – those are the principal themes. You'll see most of the pottery up on the first floor and those are the products. There's very little about the people behind that story.

"What we want to see is the museum telling the story of Stoke-on-Trent and the surrounding area.

"It's not just about the history of objects, it's also about the history of people and their communities.

"You should be able to get a feel of where Stoke-on-Trent originated – the geology, the coal, the clay, why the pottery industry started in the area, how's man's influence has changed the environment and how we're trying to change the environment to make it more liveable in.

"Museums are not just about history and the past they're also about the 'now' and the future. And in those galleries you could pose the question – what is the future for Stoke-on-Trent?"

Even if, as anticipated, councillors approve plans to bid for HLF money next month the project to overhaul the museum will take years.

Mr Bloor explained the museum would be bidding for a variety of other grants and securing match funding.

He added: "In terms of when you'd expect to start see some of these ideas developing – you're looking at from 2014 onwards.

"We are applying to lots of different funding pots."

Last month the museum suffered a setback after an application to Arts Council England for £4.4 million to pay for school workshops, touring exhibitions and other "added value" schemes was rejected.

The blow also meant staff will have to look elsewhere to find funding to build a £500,000 exhibition area for the Staffordshire Hoard.

The museum costs the council £2.16 million a year to run. It had 202,634 visits in 2009/10, with 50,000 of the visits attributed to the city acquiring part of the Staffordshire Hoard for display. This compares with 138,000 visitors the previous year.

In the redevelopment of the museum, the Staffordshire Hoard will play a central role, becoming the 'jewel in the crown'.

"The Hoard is a very central part of the reshaping of the museum," said Mr Bloor. "If you look at it from an international perspective the collections that are the world class are ceramics and the Staffordshire Hoard.

"So for an international audience, the tourism and the spend that tourists bring with them is very important. There's a very high expectation that whatever we do with the Staffordshire Hoard has got to be top notch and that's what we've tasked ourselves with delivering.

"We want to make it so that when you come into the museum it's obvious that the Hoard is the centrepiece.

"And what's great about this museum is that there's other Anglo-Saxon material that's in the stores and we have other treasures that add context to the Hoard display.

"So what we will be doing in our new fourth gallery is to sell the story of Mercia.

"You can overcook on technology and we don't want to alienate people who don't like too much technology so it will be a careful balance.

"This is a world class museum but we want it to become a world leader."

Even pop stars want to see find that was more popular than the Terracotta Warriors...

Guam: Historic preservation officers meet

My brother lived in Guam for a while. According to him, a lot of Japanese tourists come to the island - so those sites associated with World War II have been sanitized - no Japanese atrocities allowed to be mentioned. From KUAM: Historic preservation officers meet
Guam - Several historic preservation officers from the neighboring islands met Monday morning for the thirty Second Micronesian Endowment for Historic Preservation Annual Meeting. According to Guam Historic Preservation Officer Lynda Aguon, the purpose of meeting is to assist the different islands in preserving historic sights and provide training assistance in order to pursue its missions. However funding has been a continuous challenge.

"We would like to have experts in areas such as coastal surveys, archeology, training our field technicians and our specialists in areas that deal with issues now not 20 years ago, we have to adapt to new ways and new methods and we would like to pursue other sources of funding," he said.

The group meanwhile discussed its landscape proposal study and how climate changes namely global warming has submerged several coastlines and has affected sights inland and cultural resources. The officers will be presenting their island's preservations program at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 33rd Annual Research Conference Tuesday morning at the University of Guam.

Artifacts recoveries on shipwreck just in time to mark anniversary of sinking

From The Bellingham Herald: Artifacts recoveries on shipwreck just in time to mark anniversary of sinking
KURE BEACH, N.C - KURE BEACH, N.C. - There are hundreds of shipwrecks along North Carolina's treacherous coast, and some, like those of the ironclad USS Monitor or the Blackbeard flagship Queen Anne's Revenge, are nothing short of famous.

But that of the hapless Civil War blockade runner Modern Greece, which sits just beyond the surf near Fort Fisher, is in many ways the most important of all.

The wreck, which was excavated 50 years ago, led to the creation of the state underwater archaeology unit that studies the other wrecks. It led to a state law to protect historic wreck sites from pilfering. It yielded such a large trove of artifacts that many have been used in experiments that advanced the tricky science of how to preserve historical treasures found underwater.

As the first of about 30 blockade runners sunk along the coast near Wilmington while trying to bring arms and vital commodities to the Confederate states, it has an iconic status in North Carolina and maritime history.

And this week - just in time for events marking the 150th anniversary of its sinking - thousands of artifacts from the Modern Greece were recovered from underwater.

For the second time.

A team of East Carolina University graduate students and University of North Carolina, Wilmington interns sponsored by the Friends of Fort Fisher waded into the muck of half-century-old storage tanks at the Department of Cultural Resources' Underwater Archaeology Branch facility on the grounds of the historic fort. Their job: pull out the artifacts, clean and catalog them and put them in indoor tanks where they could finally begin to receive modern preservation treatment.

"It was just the right time to do this," said Mark Wilde-Ramsing, deputy state archaeologist and head of Underwater Archaeology Branch. "There are a lot of reasons, but the bottom line is it would be a bit irresponsible to just leave it there. We don't even know what we have there."

In June, the state plans a seminar on the Modern Greece and blockade runners. It also will throw open the labs at Fort Fisher so the public can see the artifacts and what it takes to preserve them.

New signs on the beach and roadside pointing out the wreck site are planned, and a researcher working with the state is seeking a federal grant to perform a full survey of the 30 blockade-runner wrecks off Wilmington, as well as facilities on land to put it all in proper context.

And the archaeologists are planning a modest spring expedition to use the latest gear to examine the Modern Greece site and create a proper record of it.

Broadly, all the activity is aimed at bringing more attention to the local blockade runners, Wilde-Ramsing said. They represent the largest collection of wrecks in the world dating from an unusually interesting period in naval architecture, and they have a central place in Civil War history.

Many are likely to be deteriorating quickly, but the state doesn't have a full picture of their location and condition.

The creation of the state's underwater archaeology and conservation lab - which state officials think may have been the nation's first - began, in a sense, on June 27, 1862.

The Modern Greece, a 210-foot English ship loaded with hundreds of tons of rifles, gunpowder and other goods, was creeping along the coast, making for the Cape Fear River and Wilmington, when it was spotted in the murky light just before dawn by two Union blockade ships.

They gave chase, and the heavily-loaded ship ran aground, apparently while trying to get close enough to Fort Fisher for protection by the Confederate artillery there.

The passengers and crew escaped by lifeboat as both sides shelled the ship to keep the other from getting the valuable cargo.

According to historical accounts, some of the cargo was salvaged and brought ashore, though apparently part of a liquor shipment got no further than the Confederate soldiers on the beach.

Eventually, the sea claimed the rest.

Then, almost precisely 100 years later, in the spring of 1962, Navy divers stumbled on the wreck just off the beach while visiting the area essentially as tourists.

A violent storm had just cleared the thick bed of sand from the remains of the ship. The divers were startled to find much of the remaining cargo exposed, intact and all but begging to be pulled up.

State officials got wind of the find and asked the Navy to allow the divers to recover the cargo on behalf of the state.

By summer, 11 divers were working off a loaned Coast Guard barge anchored over the site. Eventually the divers retrieved 11,500 pieces of cargo and other artifacts from the ship.

The challenge was what to do with the artifacts after they were brought ashore.

The glitzy part of maritime archaeology is the discovery of wrecks or the lifting of flashy artifacts like cannons from the sea.

But there's seldom enough money to cover the cost of storage tanks and buildings and the years of labor in cleaning away corrosion and accumulation of marine life. The years of care it can take to carefully leach the salt out of a cannon doesn't make for the kind of exciting television coverage the cannon gets when it breaks the surface.

After the Modern Greece's cargo was brought up, some was treated and eventually sent to several museums and other places for display. But much was dumped first into temporary tanks on Navy property, then into tanks at Fort Fisher.

The tanks were initially covered by plywood, as there wasn't money for proper lids, said Leslie Bright, who was hired in 1964 as assistant at the lab and later ran it.

The plywood rotted away, and the water in the tanks filled with leaves from surrounding oaks, turning the water a swampy black.

In retrospect, Bright said, the rotting leaves may have been one of the best things that could have happened to the artifacts, as it leached the oxygen out of the water and slowed the deterioration.

Bright, who retired 13 years ago, dropped by this week to watch the students pull out the artifacts.

As he watched, he reminisced about having to learn how to preserve artifacts essentially from scratch, since there were few established techniques and every material has to be handled differently.

"No one was doing that sort of thing," he said. "We were trying anything our minds could come up with."

Also standing quietly nearby watching the students this week was Stan Register. Fifty years ago, he was 13 and working at a hotdog stand on the beach when the Navy divers showed up.

They were staying at a hotel across from the hotdog stand and one day invited him to come out on the barge and watch what they were doing. Register can remember seeing the outline of the wreck and the men working on it. He remembers the four buckets of bullets they let him take a few from, and the small cannon and the banded cases of rifles.

"I had no idea of the historical significance of what they were doing that day, said Register, who is now the chief of police on the Fort Fisher historic site and essentially guards the stuff he saw brought up that day. "I was just a kid then, so it was just more of an adventure than anything else."

Before the students arrived Monday for three days of work, most of the water was pumped out of the tanks, leaving a three-foot layer of mostly rotted leaves and muck to keep the artifacts wet.

It also kept the students wet.

Dave Buttaro, an ECU graduate student in maritime studies who was up to his knees in muck Tuesday handing artifact out to the other students, looked up at Nathan Henry, the assistant state archaeologist who oversees conservation.

"Man, you guys have left this alone so long that we're now engaged in habitat destruction," joked Buttaro.

The work was a kind of treasure hunt, with the students never quit knowing what they would pull up next.

There were British-made Enfield rifles that were a mainstay of the war on both sides, many of them fused together in bundles the shape of the boxes that had held them.

There was tableware. There were wicked-looking antler- and ebony-handled Bowie knives, some still in the remnants of scabbards. There were bayonets, cinderblock-sized stacks of tin sheets, ax heads and chisels.

The students processed the artifacts assembly-line style, hosing them off at a grilled table setup on sawhorses, then taking them to another table covered in white plastic where they were tagged and photographed and logged in a laptop.

Finally, the items were placed in tanks of clean water in a nearby building.

By Tuesday night, nearly everything was out of the last tank, and Henry, who had been down in the morass, decided it was time to call it a day.

"Well," he told the students, "I think you've got enough to keep you busy for awhile."

Maybe even another 50 years.

Taiwan, France sign 2nd undersea archaeological pact

From Focus Taiwan: Taiwan, France sign 2nd undersea archaeological pact
Taipei, March 6 (CNA) Taiwan and France signed Tuesday their second pact since 2007 to continue bilateral cooperation on underwater archaeological research, saying that the cooperation will focus on research, training and site preservation.

Representatives from Taiwan's Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) and the Department for Underwater and Undersea Archeological Research (DRASSM) under France's Ministry of Culture inked the four-year pact at a ceremony in Taipei.

Wang Shou-lai, an official of the CCA, said the pact will allow Taiwan to benefit from advanced French technology in underwater archeology and learn from its laws protecting underwater resources.

It will also allow Taiwan to send personnel to France to receive training and translate French undersea archeology publications to benefit local studies, he said.

Tsang Cheng-hwa, an archaeologist and researcher at Academia Sinica, said a team of more than 10 researchers is planning to explore the marine environment of Taiwan's Dongsha Atoll in the South China Sea from April through May.

He said historical documents show that at least 40 ships from countries such as Spain, Portugal, Japan and Sweden have sunk in the area and that his team could benefit from French resources in hunting for the wrecks.

"The French department (DRASSM) in Marseille has very advanced technology, underwater vehicles and diving equipment," said Tsang.

"If there is a need in the future, we hope to cooperate with the department in technological terms."

The ceremony also displayed various artifacts recovered from underwater sites around Taiwan since 2006 by Tsang's team and another research team from National Sun Yat-Sen University.

As of the end of 2011, the teams had found two sunken ships from China, one from Britain and five from Japan in the oceans around Taiwan.

They discovered numerous items of Yue ware from the Northern Song Dynasty at one research site, as well as animal fossils dating back 40,000 years at another.

"We hope to help Taiwan better preserve and maintain its underwater cultural heritage, whether sunken ships or airplanes," said Frederic Leroy, deputy director for archeological research at DRASSM.

In addition to preserving underwater sites, Leroy said DRASSM also hopes to help Taiwan in its underwater archeological research and in publishing and exhibiting artifacts it recovers from undersea sites.

DRASSM is a department under the French government that specializes in studying and managing underwater cultural heritage.

Since its establishment in 1966, it has helped identify more than 1,500 undersea archaeological sites in France and abroad.

Kansas: Thompson to speak March 11

From The Kansas.com: Thompson to speak March 11
NORTH NEWTON — Kauffman Museum on the Bethel College campus will host the second of three lectures celebrating two eminent archeologists who grew up in North Newton.

At 3:30 p.m. March 11, Raymond H. Thompson will speak as part of the museum’s periodic Sunday-Afternoon-at-the-Museum series. His topic is “Emil Haury: The Man and His Legacy.” The program is free and open to the public.

The lecture is in conjunction with the museum’s latest special exhibition, “In the fields of time: The impact of two Kansas boys on American archeology,” which opened Feb. 26.

Emil W. Haury (1904-92), nicknamed “the dean of Southwest archeology,” and Waldo R. Wedel (1908-96), “the father of Great Plains archeology,” both traced their interest in prehistory to boyhood experiences along Sand Creek in North Newton – experiences that led them to lifelong careers as professional archeologists with international reputations.

Thompson, director emeritus of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, said, “Emil Haury was bolstered by the values of his liberal Mennonite family, his small-town experience in Kansas and the solid education he received from Bethel College.

“Haury had a major impact on the lives of many young and aspiring archeologists,” Thompson said.

, “in addition to playing a leading role in the transformation of American archeology and in the development of national policy.”

Haury grew up as a Bethel campus kid. His father, Gustav A. Haury, was a founding faculty member of Bethel College and taught English and Latin. Emil spent two years at Bethel before transferring to the University of Arizona where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in archeology. After being awarded the Ph.D. in archeology from Harvard University, he began a lifelong career at the University of Arizona and the Arizona State Museum.

Prior to Thompson’s March 11 lecture, the Mud Creek Chapter of the Kansas Anthropological Association will host an artifact identification workshop. Visitors are invited to bring Native American artifacts or early historical items. Avocational and professional archeologists will be on hand to provide assistance in identification and dating and advice on cataloguing and collection maintenance. This is a free public service to improve knowledge of Kansas archeological heritage, so no appraisals or sales will be made.