archaeology

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Shellbeach, in People buried at 'mega' stone tombs in Spain were defleshed and their bones fractured after death

Did they… fold them… like you would clean clothes to fit neatly?

Cypher, in Humanity’s oldest art is flaking away. Can scientists save it?

*not actually the oldest art

ForestOrca, in Closer look at the Menga dolmen shows it was one of the greatest engineering feats of the Neolithic
@ForestOrca@kbin.social avatar

The provenance of the stones in the Menga dolmen reveals one of the greatest engineering feats of the Neolithic - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47423-y

QuarterSwede, (edited ) in See the Outstandingly Ornate 4th Century Mosaic Floors Unearthed in an Ancient Turkish Villa
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

The last mosaic has the inscription:

VOTIS XXX MVLTIS ❧ XX BIS XX CVRANTE YACINTHO COMITE FABRICA AD SVMMVM PER DVCTA ES CVLMEN

Translation

For vows on the thirtieth anniversary of the rule of the emperor, and more (vows) for (another) twenty years, and twenty more years again. Under the care of Hyacinthos holding an office, building, to the highest summit, you were drawn.

Notes

Edit: I thought it was Constantine I, but it is more likely the emperor is Constantius II based on numismatic evidence. For comite, see L&S s.v. comes II.E.

Source: reddit.com/…/can_someone_help_with_the_translatio…Translated by u/lutetiensis

https://i.imgur.com/4sXiTfP.jpg

Diabolo96, in US accused of sending fake Roman mosaics back to Lebanon

I geuss the US response would be the usual we’re the big guys here, what you gonna do about it ? and fuck you.

They did it when the whole mass surveillance thing was unveiled so I don’t think some poor archeologists can do much about this, can they ? I even think that the US archeologists that were tasked to analyze the authenticity are more than likely forced to comply and lie or risk being fired

Ranvier, (edited )

I think you’ve misunderstood the article. What happened was a district attorney in the united states caught someone smuggling antiquities into the country. So the district attorney who caught them had everything sent back to the country of origin, exactly what they should do with smuggled antiquities. It turned out the guy was trafficking in mostly forgeries of pieces that are in other known locations and were never brought to the united states. The experts the district attorney used thought they were authentic. What on earth do you think the new york DA did wrong here? I guess they could hire better experts. But if they have what they think to be authentic artifacts that were smuggled out of countries, they did the right thing and sent them back to the country of origin. They’re saying this is just embarrassing for the DA because they billed this guy as a smuggler in their court case, but actually he’s a forger. I don’t see any reason for anyone to be outraged though, except maybe at the forger.

Dagwood222,

But the USA is always bad!! /s

Ranvier,

It was a loaded headline meant to trick people into clicking. If you just read the headline you’d think the United States government was stealing artifacts, forging them, and sending the forgeries back or something. Which has like nothing in common with the actual story in the article. Always pretty easy in the comments to tell who actually read the article and who made up an imaginary article in their head based on the headline.

Diabolo96,

I know titles are fake as shit. I read the post summary and the autotldr summary both didn’t contain anything explaining about any of what you said. Both actually renforce the idea that the antiques where sent as knowingly as fake.

Ranvier,

Those auto tldr summaries can be super random and misleading too regardless. The auto tldr summary doesn’t imply anything like this either. It’s just a section of the article with an expert making fun of whatever expert the DA hired who missed that it was a forgery and thought it was authentic. So it’s embarrassing because they told this country, he we recovered your priceless artifact and threw the guy in jail who smuggled it. And the country is like, oh well that’s nice but the artifact was never missing in the first place. If you want to comment on something at least read the article first, or you’ll just be spreading misleading clickbait headlines even more.

Diabolo96, (edited )

I reckon I made a mistake here. I usually read the article but since what feels like almost 1 of 3 of shared articles here are locked behind paywalls I don’t bother anymore.

jadero,

I sympathize. I’ve been caught out a couple of times by depending on autotldr as a substitute for reading the actual article. My own casual comparisons between autotldr and source articles suggest that autotldr is probably about 80% faithful to its source, on average.

I don’t know if it’s real or in my own mind, but it also seems to me that autotldr is faithful to the article inversely proportional to the quality of its source material. That is, the better and more complete the article, the more likely it is that autotldr trashes it.

Now that I’ve written it down, it strikes me that that may be an insurmountable problem. If we think of good articles as being “high information” and garbage articles as “low information”, summarizing will always be more likely to cause important “damage” the higher the information content. Thus, hitting 95% on a good article might trash it, while hitting 60% on a trash article is just fine. This might be especially true if you consider that the best articles might already be as compact as is reasonable.

Diabolo96,

Not only are good and compact articles few and far between. The problem is that nowadays, a lot of the article you click on will have a paywall so reading them is impossible ( unless using barley functioning services that claim to remove it) After a while, you expect the article to be paywalled and either move on or comment based on the provided info.

jadero,

That, too! I’ve taken to using any autotldr as a substitute for a “proper” title and author summary. If the autotldr looks like there might be based on something I find interesting, I’ll go read the article.

Diabolo96,

It only happened with me once in lemmy and it contained the same amount of info but in a wordier version. I usually read the autotldr bot summary and if it’s not there I check the article but even then there’s a 50/50 chance it’s locked.

acockworkorange,

The response at the end of the article is funny though. “No you” but in DA.

Diabolo96,

I gave an exemple above of why it’s actually plausible for the US to do so. Heck, if you want a real reason why " USA is always bad" just look at the map of USA backed coup.

Yes, I expect USA do such things.

Coelacanth, in Stunning Codex Documenting Aztec Culture Now Fully Digitized
@Coelacanth@feddit.nu avatar

This is absolutely fantastic. I wish more mesoamerican written works had survived the Spanish Inquisition, but having access to this in full is a treasure.

MisterNeon, (edited ) in Circular temple dedicated to Maya serpent deity discovered in Mexico
@MisterNeon@lemmy.world avatar

Why didn’t they just put Kukulcán in the title?

Regardless, the round style temple is fascinating. That means a similar shared tradition with Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl worship, where the construction of the temples emphasized airflow.

What I want to know is, does this mean this practice started in the area and is a development from earlier “Feathered Serpent” worship of “Olmecs” or a tradition from outside the region such as influence from Teotihuacan.

Etterra, in Skeleton with 4 prosthetic metal fingers unearthed from centuries-old grave in Germany

It got into my hand and it went bad - so I lopped it off at the wrist.

Francisco, (edited ) in Rare cross-shaped reliquary unearthed from medieval knight's home in Poland

according to Science in Poland.

A cross from the 15th century.

Was Poland not widely Christian by that time?

Kusimulkku, in 2,000-year-old decorated Roman sandal unearthed in Spain

Decorated? The war hero sandal!

yanyuan, in 2,000-year-old decorated Roman sandal unearthed in Spain

That thing looks surprisingly modern.

wjrii,
@wjrii@kbin.social avatar

A lot of the very few surviving samples do of course look really primitive, but at the high end, cobblers in the Roman world were not fuckin' around.

UC28327 here is a pretty ornate sole with a very modern shape.

The upper on this one must have been super nice when new.

Then, there's no reason to suppose that Marcus Aurelius' (and/or Hadrian's) sandals on their statues were idealized past the point of plausibility, though I'm sure once one government contracted statue with approved Imperial sandals gets made, there's a temptation to stick with the motif regardless of the current Emperor's footwear preferences.

cnnrduncan, in Archaeologists in Turkey Have Unearthed Human and Animal Sculptures That Are the Earliest Examples of Prehistoric Art | Artnet News

Anybody else a bit weirded out by the fact that some 1/4 of the article is spent talking about fringe religious beliefs rather than the actual awesome history of the site?

Malgas, in Earthquake reveals giant Aztec snakehead beneath Mexico City university

That headline reads like something that would be on a news broadcast in the background of a Ghostbusters movie.

Sertou, in Earthquake reveals giant Aztec snakehead beneath Mexico City university

This is a sign that we are in the end times.

mercury,

That is what they said in 2012

gibmiser, in More Than 10,000 Indigenous Earthworks Hidden in the Amazon Reveal Human Connections to the Forest Over Millennia

Earthworms hidden in the amazon? Only 10000 of them? Connections to humans?

Oh, derp.

DavidGarcia,
HotDogFingies,
@HotDogFingies@kbin.social avatar

And this guy.

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