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Posted

There is a really very interesting series of videos by Phil Harding (from Time Team) showing the results of an excavation of Hougoumont Farm at Waterloo.

 

 

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Posted
2 hours ago, Mikel2 said:

decay and exposure to the elements is a big problem in Pompeii. I fear we are being very irresponsible.

It's a problem with pretty much any excavation site. Pompeii is the more prominent example because tourists trample all over the location and the city hasn't been put under a roof (how?), so we're seeing the effects in our lifetimes. But even if it may be a slower process, places like Machu Picchu degrade as well. Places without visitable ruins that just have shards of ceramics removed are, by definition, destroyed for investigation by future archaeologists with better equipment/methods.

Yes, archaeologists of the non-Indiana Jones kind will document their findings properly, but that's the thing with archives - they to tend to suffer from fires, anarchy, occasional bouts of iconoclasm among the populace, war, laziness and incompetence. Suppose the Romans had had archaeologists that worked just as meticulous as today's, we wouldn't know anything of their amazing findings because hardly anything of paper survived the last 2000 years.

Digs are, by definition, irreversible and destructive processes. But what's the alternative, a complete and world-wide archaeology moratorium for the next 500 years?

Posted

Supposedly some years ago they found a Library at Pompeii, where all the contents were carbonized by the pyroclastic surge from Vesuvius. What was bad for everyone else was good news for the Library, because they found they parchments could still be read, albeit with some very expensive scanning equipment.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/03/ancient-scrolls-charred-by-vesuvius-could-be-read-once-again

So the logic for future historical reference is, burn all the libraries. :)

Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Ssnake said:

It's a problem with pretty much any excavation site. Pompeii is the more prominent example because tourists trample all over the location and the city hasn't been put under a roof (how?), so we're seeing the effects in our lifetimes. But even if it may be a slower process, places like Machu Picchu degrade as well. Places without visitable ruins that just have shards of ceramics removed are, by definition, destroyed for investigation by future archaeologists with better equipment/methods.

Yes, archaeologists of the non-Indiana Jones kind will document their findings properly, but that's the thing with archives - they to tend to suffer from fires, anarchy, occasional bouts of iconoclasm among the populace, war, laziness and incompetence. Suppose the Romans had had archaeologists that worked just as meticulous as today's, we wouldn't know anything of their amazing findings because hardly anything of paper survived the last 2000 years.

Digs are, by definition, irreversible and destructive processes. But what's the alternative, a complete and world-wide archaeology moratorium for the next 500 years?

 

 I don't have an answer.  But it seems to me that with large sites are are kept in less than ideal conditions after excavating, we should exercise some restraint.

I'm making up these numbers -  If we have excavated 50% of Pompeii (well, Mussolini did :) ), is excavating the remaining 50% with our current technology going to double our knowledge of the city... Or should we save some so it can be examined with more advanced future technologies?

 

2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Supposedly some years ago they found a Library at Pompeii, where all the contents were carbonized by the pyroclastic surge from Vesuvius. What was bad for everyone else was good news for the Library, because they found they parchments could still be read, albeit with some very expensive scanning equipment.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/03/ancient-scrolls-charred-by-vesuvius-could-be-read-once-again

So the logic for future historical reference is, burn all the libraries. :)

 

  I watched a documentary on the Roman correspondence rescued from an ancient garbage heap near Hadrian's wall.  It was only readable using infrared photography, as the writing was invisible to the eye.  50 years ago, those decaying pieces of wood would have likely been discarded and lost forever, but now we can read about distant business deals, complaints about abusive employers, or dear friends being invited to birthday parties.


I'm sure archaeologists have argued about this since the first dig (maybe not Schliemann :) ) and will continue to argue for as long as there are archaeologists.

Edited by Mikel2
Posted

Yes, I saw that, its was on the Vindoland tablets. It was full of stuff like 'Dear Mum, cold and wet here, please send more socks'. Which suggests some elements of soldiering are eternal. :D

 

Posted

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9517389/Egypt-archeologists-unearth-110-ancient-tombs-Nile-Delta.html

Quote

 

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed 110 ancient tombs in the Nile Delta, containing the remains of adults and children dating back about 5,000 years.

The graves, also containing pottery and funerary equipment, were found at the Koum el-Khulgan archeological site in Dakahlia province, around 93 miles northeast of Cairo, the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said.

 

 

Posted
On 4/27/2021 at 5:31 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, I saw that, its was on the Vindoland tablets. It was full of stuff like 'Dear Mum, cold and wet here, please send more socks'. Which suggests some elements of soldiering are eternal. :D

 

Some elements of business are also eternal;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

 

Posted
Quote

The first study to use X-rays and CT scans to detect evidence of cancer among the skeletal remains of a pre-industrial population suggests that between 9-14% of adults in medieval Britain had the disease at the time of their death.

This puts cancer prevalence in a time before exposure to tumour-inducing chemicals from industry and tobacco at around ten times higher than previously thought, according to researchers.

Prior research into historic cancer rates using the archaeological record has been limited to examining the bone exterior for lesions. It suggested that cancer was rare, affecting less than 1% of the population.

A team led by the University of Cambridge have now coupled visual inspection with radiological imaging to analyse 143 skeletons from six medieval cemeteries in and around the city of Cambridge, UK, dating from the 6th to the 16th century.

The findings of the study are published today in the journal Cancer.

"The majority of cancers form in soft tissue organs long since degraded in medieval remains. Only some cancer spreads to bone, and of these only a few are visible on its surface, so we searched within the bone for signs of malignancy," said lead author Dr. Piers Mitchell, who conducted the research as part of the 'After the Plague' project.

"Modern research shows a third to a half of people with soft tissue cancers will find the tumour spreads to their bones. We combined this data with evidence of bone metastasis from our study to estimate cancer rates for medieval Britain."

CT scan of bone from a medieval skull showing metastasis hidden within (white arrow). Credit: Bram Mulder

"We think the total proportion of the medieval population that probably suffered with a cancer somewhere in their body was between nine and fourteen percent," said Mitchell, from Cambridge University's Department of Archaeology.

(...)

The remains of 96 men, 46 women, and an individual of unknown sex, had their vertebrae, femurs and pelvis inspected and then imaged using X-rays and CT scans. The team found signs of malignancy in the bones of five individuals—a minimum prevalence of 3.5%. These were mostly in the pelvis, although one middle-aged man had small lesions throughout his skeleton suggesting a form of blood cancer.

Research shows that CT scans detect bone metastases around 75% of the time, and only a third to half of cancer deaths involve spread to the bone, so the team projected that 9-14% of medieval Britons developed cancer.

However, they caution that the sample size is inevitably limited and diagnosing cancer in those lain dead for many centuries is somewhat challenging.

 

Article don't say their age at time of death.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-cancer-medieval-britain-ten-higher.html

Posted

Nice find.

 

Posted

So then, what's wrong with the British islands that medieval people there had a 10 times higher cancer rate than anywhere else in the world?

😁

Posted
1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

So then, what's wrong with the British islands that medieval people there had a 10 times higher cancer rate than anywhere else in the world?

😁

Skin mold.... 😉

Posted

Amusingly, low vitamin D levels are associated with increased risk of some cancers.

 

Posted
On 5/1/2021 at 4:41 PM, Ivanhoe said:

low vitamin D

D is quite like Schrödinger's cat: if they research it, it is dead, if they research something else, it is alive, and kicking into their research. It will be a huge breakthrough we learn how this thing really works.

Posted
3 hours ago, Adam Peter said:

D is quite like Schrödinger's cat: if they research it, it is dead, if they research something else, it is alive, and kicking into their research. It will be a huge breakthrough we learn how this thing really works.

Sadly, there's no Vitamin D Day, nor a colored ribbon or anything.

 

Posted

No profit in vitamin D.

Posted

The study is interesting, but they don't really have a comparable control group for modern times.

How many modern dead people who were not diagnosed with any form of cancer would show signs of it if they were similarly scanned? Cause of death or died with data on death certificates is not the same as the level of inspection afforded these historic skeletons. In the UK, I don't believe that post-mortems are routinely conducted for all deaths, only those for which the law has an interest, or which are unexpected for some reason.

Posted
3 hours ago, DB said:

The study is interesting, but they don't really have a comparable control group for modern times.

How many modern dead people who were not diagnosed with any form of cancer would show signs of it if they were similarly scanned? Cause of death or died with data on death certificates is not the same as the level of inspection afforded these historic skeletons. In the UK, I don't believe that post-mortems are routinely conducted for all deaths, only those for which the law has an interest, or which are unexpected for some reason.

Good point.

Posted

Like a Mandalorian helmet with two horns on it.

This is the way.

 

Posted
11 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Like a Mandalorian helmet with two horns on it.

This is the way.

 

That all happened "a long time ago" so maybe it is Mando.

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