Microburin’s Mesolithic Sites & Finds page has been updated with:
Dublin, Republic of Ireland | Late Mesolithic fish trap (6,500 years old) discovered at Victoria Quay.
“The wicker trap was discovered at the deepest point of the excavation near an attenuation tank and appears to be extremely well preserved. Up until now, only post-medieval material had been discovered on the site.”
♦ Spence
Image | Mesolithic fish trap, Nationalmuseet Danmark (Microburin)
Microburin’s UK Mesolithic Sites & Finds page has been updated with:
Maerdy Wind Farm, Rhondda Valley, Wales | 6,270 year old decorated timber “marker”, late Mesolithic or early Neolithic.
“The timber, which measures around 1.7m long, has an intricate pattern along one side and an oval motif at one end. It is believed to have been used as a tribal marker post indicating a tribal boundary, a hunting ground or a sacred site.”
The wood is now undergoing a conservation program of wax-glycol treatment at York Archaeological Trust labs where it is expected to stay until 2014.
Is it decorated timber, or natural (and insect) processes at work? Some skeptics are asking. Quote: “unless Maisie Taylor has blessed it….” | Keep watching!
♦ Spence
Microburin’s UK Mesolithic Sites & Finds page has been updated with:
Scotland | Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire | Excavations by Birmingham University at Warren Field (crop marks) found a series of 12 pits which appear to mimic the phases of the moon and track lunar months. Lots of media coverage! What do you make of it?
Review the BBC News article and access an academic article in Internet Archaeology (IA paywall fee of £7.50 for the article, BBC free) →
And a good video by Vince Gaffney today (15-Jul, free) »
♦ Spence
Updated | 6-Jun-2013 to add LSE blog link
Updated | 7-Jun-2013 to add “blogs as scholarly publication” link
For independent researchers, like myself, whether previously in academia and/or aspiring to be enrolled, or for community practitioners (I loath the term “amateur archaeologist“) or for members of the public where even access to public libraries is becoming an increasing luxury (if that library has access at all to academic journals, print or online)—open access is a friction point.
While governments, UK and Federal US included, are grappling with and legislating for open access to learned materials, funded by or as a part of publicly financed research, the incumbent publishing monopolies are lobbying to parry such initiatives based on “sustainable cost” doctrines, and their financial interests therein.
I can certainly vouch for the pain, being outside academia right now, that pay-wall “open access” causes. I subscribe to the few e-publishers and academic societies that I can afford—a gradually diminishing number since I don’t presently have a regular income stream. I am grateful, as a university alumnus, in having access to JSTOR, although in archaeology the titles which are freely accessible are far from comprehensive, especially for fields like Mesolithic archaeology—a discipline that also spans many specialisations in science and social science, the humanities, cultural heritage management (CRM) and derivative disciplines. I am even more grateful for the “green” and (very rare) “gold” open access vehicles that allow me either time-delayed or immediate access to scholarly material.
One thing is certain: I will likely be several steps behind those lucky enough to be within formal education or post-doc (yet paying excruciating tuition fees for the pleasure). Open exclusion is part of the reason. That feels neither fair nor productive—the public are an equal and obligatory participant, a partner in our shared heritage, moreso in the evolution and management of our shared environment, the collective owners of our cultural assets? The public are not a simple “consumer bucket” happy to receive amorphous outputs or media sound-bites. Exclusivity and access-by-means are surely forms of cynical discrimination unworthy of our societies, not least those that espouse a lifetime education and education-for-all ethos? Aren’t these educational aspirations also being subjugated to a market-driven “economic return” mandate, naive in its focus on immediacy and therefore myopic in leveraging the true meaning of past, place, presence, well-being and footfall for healthier (and less welfare-costly, more inclusive, more sustainable, more attractive) communities?
And yet, if I were to subscribe to the venerable Journal of Archaeological Science (publisher: Elsevier), by example, it would be beyond my budget (online access is a 5-user license). They are a respected and profuse publisher. If I were to pay-to-download every article they publish across monthly volumes in a given year, I would have to pay over $11,000 (obviously far more than the individual subscription, but it does illustrate my point around reasonable cost—many papers are only six or so pages). Something is amiss?
Any law of diminishing returns suggests a tipping-point between over-pricing in any given marketplace and realising income streams as a function of volume-based consumer viability—if not “popular” demand. I really don’t mind paying a few dollars/euros/pounds for a worthy, scholarly and life-changing article. I do, however, resent paying $31.50 per article or a mandate to cluster papers into discounted blocks that are still priced beyond my means.
These excellently written blogs go a long way to explaining both the terminology as well as the seemingly intractable issues that are not without tragedy. I highly recommend reading them. There are plenty more too.
» Sustainability at Any Price is not Sustainable: Open Access and Archaeology
By: Eric Kansa, UC Berkeley and OpenContext.org
» Academics and universities must continue to develop open access alternatives to break the monopoly of large publishers
By: Ann McKechin MP (LSE blog)
» Blogs as scholarly publication: “Taking a Chance: My Blog is a Publication”
By: Katy Meyers (2011) Bones Don’t Lie (blog), Michigan State University | The comments are also supportive and interesting
And now think about how YOU are and will be affected, how you will respond, what you will say, how you will canvass for a fairer outcome, what you will do.
Prof Julian D Richards (University of York) for posting it on Twitter today. York is also home of the Archaeological Data Service (ADS) who work continuously to digitise archaeological resources for the greater good. The authors of the ASOR blog need to be congratulated for a well-written and well-appraised status quo and portent for some difficult battles ahead.
♦ Microburin
Warning | If you don’t want to preview some of the exhibition, don’t click on the images.
Photographs by ◊microburin with kind permission of the Yorkshire Museum (quality subject to lighting conditions and excitement).
In an earlier post I wrote in anticipation of the After The Ice exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, York, England. Open until May 2014, the exhibition presents some of the outstanding Early Mesolithic artefacts that haven’t been on display in Yorkshire since the redesign of the Rotunda Museum, Scarborough—which now focuses on the outstanding palaeontology (fossil) collections. Other Star Carr artefacts and ecofacts, dating to between 9300 and 8400 BC, appear in the Museum of Archaeology in Cambridge (University) and (occasionally) at the British Museum—much more remains in stores.
Appreciating that not all readers will be able to make it to York to see the exhibition, and yet not wanting to be a “spoiler” for those that will, here’s a sneak peek at some of the display. Everybody will have their own individual sense of expectation, their own views and take-aways having seen the exhibits and, hopefully, reading the accompanying booklet. It’s a bit tricky to find in the museum bookshop so you may have to ask.
In an unusual clustering of Mesolithic events, Channel 4 (UK) broadcast a long-awaited Time Team Special—Britain’s Stone Age Tsunami—hosted by the inimitable Tony Robinson and featuring the excavations at Star Carr (and Prof Nicky Milner in a deckchair) as well as looking at the 6100 BC tsunami evidence from the Scottish east coast and at sea level rise attested by the submerged forests in the Severn estuary (Wales). The programme, with excellent CGI graphics, is available to watch online on 4OD until 28 June (47min, UK & Rep of Ireland only) | Watch it now »
I’m not sure whether it was a one-off or it will be a regular feature, but when I showed up on a misty (we call it fret—fine mizzle), damp weekday the team were experimenting with an acoustic installation on the lawns in front of the museum. Thanks to archaeologist Ben Elliot and sound artist Jon Hughes for explaining it. Standing at the centre of a 30m circle of high-definition speakers one could experience “sounds of the mesolithic”. It was extraordinary: flint knapping, wild fowl, a wild boar being hunted (not dissimilar to a January Sales rush) and more. We chatted about the absence of human voices, but the team are thinking about how best this might be incorporated. For example, what language would one use? Would a rhythmic “dance” or distant “babble” inject the people into the wildscape? I do hope they try something—this really adds a special dimension to the museum’s offering in a similar way to the Scandinavian banter at the Jorvik Viking museum.
Image credit (above): hans s | Foter | CC-BY-ND
Click on images to enlarge | opens new window
♦ Microburin
I came across these old pictures, showing their age a bit (and mine), from the excavations at Seamer Carr, not far from Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire.Located in the path of a whiffy landfill (or more accurately “floating on peat”) site, the open area excavation was part of a bigger environmental project to reveal the extent of post-glacial Lake Pickering (more properly Lake Flixton), on which Star Carr is but one of now many Early and Late Mesolithic activity areas. I like the later stuff most, and at least one microlith array is known (i.e. an arrowhead configuration).
I was a volunteer under-grad at Durham (1984-7) and when not digging on the North York Moors, East Yorkshire or Poland, recording Anglo-Saxon churches in Tynedale or cataloguing Roman Samian Ware in the Old Fulling Museum attic, I squelched at Seamer Carr and in a few 1x1s at Star Carr.
It rained every day except one. It was one of the coldest summers on record. A force 9 gale laid every tent to waste despite 4 foot stakes—I slept in dad’s car in year 2 and learnt a thing or two about shift gears. We shan’t talk about the Elsan loos, nor about blue not being my favourite colour anymore.
However, we all delighted in warm team spirit, hot tea, weekly showers, Helen Patterson’s wonderful cuisine, Schadla-Hall dry wit, Ed Cloutman’s auger, fine Yorkshire beer, and laughs at the expense of the last person to be submerged to the waist, or higher, in the sump pit—”soak away” would not be accurate. The lithics were fine (very few on the spoil heap), dead horses emerged (well, one) and a bit of antler at “the other place”. Great memories, dried out, like the peat.
♦ Microburin
microburin 