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Blog, Page 7

Axes and ancient boat building skills

CMA masters students spent most of the long bank holiday weekend at Buckler’s Hard in the New Forest learning ancient boat and ship building skills. The backdrop of the River Beaulieu, the intermittent sunshine and occasional ice cream belie the serious labour (both physical and intellectual) involved in learning to work with adzes and axes. Using a range of replica tools students worked with chunks of oak to recreate boat building technologies from the Bronze Age to the Post Medieval period. Continue reading →

Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A postcard from Africa 4

Sadly this is my last postcard from Africa. We had a quiet weekend reading and discussing various plans for the future. Today (Monday 5th) on the other hand was a busy one. Pastory, James and I had a productive meeting this morning with colleagues and collaborators from the National Museum. @JamesColeArch with a Large LCT at the National Museum in Dar. This afternoon was another memorable one. Continue reading →

Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A postcard from Africa 3

Today (Thursday 1st May) is a national holiday in Tanzania so James and I had a more relaxed day visiting the galleries of the National Museum of Tanzania. The museum is an impressive place with really up to date galleries on human evolution and rock art. I took a lot of photos which will make their way into my lectures. The ethnographic collection also impressed me with the range and variety of material on display, reflecting Tanzania’s rich cultural heritage both past and present. Continue reading →

Update from Tanzania by Dr. John McNabb: A Postcard from Africa

Saturday was a really memorable day. We finally got to see the Isimila Acheulean site. I’d been reading about it for decades so I was very excited and James, who told me he had been literally dreaming about the place for years, was like a kid on Christmas Eve. It’s the rainy season at the moment and Tanzania is very green, particularly in the highlands. The mountains and kopjes are blanketed in forest and dense thorn bush. Continue reading →

Update from Tanzania by Dr John McNabb

A few months ago CAHO was invited to form a collaboration through Dr James Cole of the University of Brighton (James is a CAHO alumni) and Dr Pastory Bushozi of the University of Dar-es-Salaam. The project is to re-examine the famous Acheulean site of Isimila in Tanzania. Picture taken from Dr James Cole twitter feed (@JamesColeArch) So James and I flew out on the 23rd of April to meet Pastory and to plan our campaign at Isimila. Continue reading →

Scanning the Folkton Drums

I am currently working on a project looking at the art of portable Neolithic artefacts from Britain and Ireland. One of the remarkable findings so far is the degree to which markings on these artefacts have been erased and reworked. This is especially true of chalk artefacts. These processes of reworking provide important information about craft techniques, and the significance of art and imagery in this period of prehistory. Continue reading →

Modelling Complexity

A Fractal Flame Complexity has become a new paradigm in the hard sciences in the 90s and since then it has been slowly dripping into the social sciences and humanities. It works on the premises that many systems are complex in structure, i.e. their numerous individual parts interact with each other in a non-linear way producing phenomena which cannot be easily predicted solely on the basis of their characteristics. Continue reading →

New city wall discovered at Ostia

Newly discovered features at Ostia (Satellite imagery courtesy of Digital Globe Inc) Researchers from the universities of Southampton and Cambridge have discovered a new section of the boundary wall of the ancient Roman port of Ostia, proving the city was much larger than previously estimated. The team, led by Professor Simon Keay (Southampton) and Professor Martin Millet (Cambridge), has been conducting a survey of an area of land lying between Ostia and Portus. Continue reading →

Burying the Digital

Clay tablet (wikipedia) I am at Museums and the Web this week in Baltimore. I was sat next to @trinkermedia and we were talking enthusiastically about  the physical, tangible and the interactive digital (as usual). Over the last few years we have been digitising very large collections of cuneiform tablets and are mid way through developing an open source Reflectance Transformation Imaging web renderer that will allow interaction with these on mobile devices and desktops. Continue reading →