The best Archaeology posts?

Coturnix has posed an interesting puzzle. He wants to gather the best posts on science blogs and publish them as part of the Science Blogging Conference. He’s looking for a wide range of posts to showcase the diversity of science blogs, and he’s looking for some archaeology. What would you choose?

It’s made slightly difficult as the printed page and the weblog are different media and what works in one will not always translate to another. If we had a weblog of the best science blogging I’d unhesitatingly recommend Breaking the Forma Aedificii Gatesensis by Troels Myrup. It’s an example of what blogs do very well. It’s a short piece of writing on an offbeat, but very interesting subject with useful links to find out more. Would it work on the printed page with notes?

It’s also fun to go through the archives of blogs and pick up things you may have missed. I didn’t recall Carl Feagans reviewing Dawkins’ God. It’s a book I wanted to like as I’m not an unreserved fan of memes. Carl’s entry eviscerates McGrath’s attempt to argue for the necessity of God, but I think from Hot Cup of Joe I’d choose Book Review: Dancing Skeletons, an ethnography. It puts the book in the context of other research and it’s something I would normally read.

Salto Sobrius is hoard of treasures where you can dip into any month and find something. I say hoard as in the December 2005 page there’s a piece on a silver hoard in northern Norway. In January there’s a Wooden church found at Old Uppsala. February sees Viking Period horse gear revealed. However, I choose The Field-Archaeological Paradox from March because it answers a common question “Who pays for archaeology?” and shows how funding can dictate what is known without sinister motives to suppress research. And right now it’s perfectly safe to link to Salto Sobrius as he may be moving. You can link to Salto Sobrius as much as you like. No matter how often you link to Salto Sobrius he’ll lose all his Technorati ranking when he moves. I’ll be above him in the rankings for oooh… days. 😉

Duane Smith conveniently has a random post link on his site, Abnormal Interests. The first that came up was Where is Herbert Spencer When You Need Him? It’s good, and helpful to see someone familiar with Hebrew tackle creationist arguments, but there’s be no shortage of anti-creationist nominations. Why Does Writing Have The Shapes It Has? is a great read, but may have too long a quotation for printing in a book. I think I’ll nominate two parts of a three-part series. Do you remember the evidence for Goliath which hit the news around a year ago? A Goliath Ostracon? – Not Too Fast has update after update. This is a Good Thing in my opinion. It shows how bloggers can react to new information. The Goliath ‘lwt wlt Ostracon is an excellent follow-up. Here Duane expands on his reasons for doubting that the sherd does bear Goliath’s name, and links to the source so that you can decide for yourself. The third entry is More on the Tell es-Safi Potshard, but it’s short, photo-based and wouldn’t be catastrophic if it was dropped so that the other two entries got in.

Talking of updating, I visited the Neurophilospher’s blog to get an address for a post on Egyptian cosmetics. The most recent story is People are willing to commit virtual torture too which is a scary explanation of Milgram’s work on obedience to authority. There’s video in the post, but again the text is strong enough to survive losing that.

As for my own site, the major stories by visitor count this year for me have been on Steorn, the Antikythera Mechanism and that pyramid, though the most comprehensive pyramid post I’ve done only appears on Revise & Dissent. I was flattered that it was linked from Archaeology magazine’s site, but I’d rather highlight something positive than fuel that particular fire. Robert Benfer’s work at the Temple of the Fox is genuinely exciting and could have long term implications for modelling continuity of ideas in non-literate societies across millennia. If I could include comments, then Style Obscuring Content would be strong choice. I don’t know if that’s feasible – it would be a long entry – but I think the comments really add to the entry and show another feature of blogs in that the interactivity and the readers can make a post successful.

And to finish you’re more than welcome to add your own suggestions here, but I’d recommend visiting Coturnix’s site A Blog Around the Clock and adding your nominations (before Jan 3) on one of his posts discussingthe topic.

42/365 Late Night Reading photo (cc) Karin Elizabeth.