#Archaeology31 #Change
Archaeology deals with process and change. Let's challenge the status quo by showing how the past challenges the idea of it's inevitability. That's as ridiculous as a single evolutionary path ending with a bearded white guy at it's end.
And finally - thank you to @kimbiddulph for setting up #Archaeology31 and to everyone who's liked, commented and shared the torc lunacy throughout January 😊.
If you want to know more, then have a look at http://www.bigbookoftorcs.com or do get in touch.
It's good to torc! 😉
#Archaeology31 #change
Final day in the torc themed #Archaeology31 and I thought I'd go with some things we'd like to see #change in the study of our particular niche bit of archaeology...
Thread.
#Archaeology31 #Protest
Unless we protest about..
▶️Inadequate & now politicised heritage laws
▶️Eroding protection for heritage under planning law.
▶️Inadequate funding for @HistoricEngland @EnglishHeritage
▶️Failed national transport policy.
Where will we be in 30yrs?
#Archaeology31 #protest
Now you're going to have to give me the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I've been thinking about torcs in the context of today's theme, 'protest' + I think there could be something in this, at Snettisham at least.
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(Images @britishmuseum)
#Archaeology31 #Theory
It's taken us five years and we're only just starting to see the bigger picture of Iron Age torcs - even now, one or two new torcs, or an unexpected discovery in one we haven't yet seen and the whole thing could go belly up.
So what do we know?
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#Archaeology31 #Friends
You make amazing life-long friends in archaeology. Family-level friends in archaeology. Do anything, drop anything friends in archaeology. Right now I'm really looking forward to being back in the field them the other side of this.
#Archaeology31 #friendship
All the lovely people we've met during our torc adventures - so many of which have become good friends - and, of course, my torc partner in crime! 😊
#Archaeology31 #storytelling
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago I started making torc things....
Well, in about 2015 actually, when @bodgit_bendit and I were talking
(?torcing) about how we could fund making a torc.....
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#Archaeology31 #Cultures
From Whiten et al. 1999. Chimpanzee Cultures.
Its a good reminder that populations, connections, transmission counts for so much more than ccs of grey matter.
I'd like this as a poster.
#Archaeology31 #culture
Culture is a loaded term + one which can land you in all sorts of trouble. In the case of the Iron Age of these islands, there's less identifiable cultures, but more a picture of regional variations on a general theme.
Torcs are a case in point.
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#Archaeology31 #Respect
Respect for our colleagues, for the communities we work with and for the records of the human past we preserve is what counts. Everything else is metrics.
#Archaeology31 #Respect
I have huge respect for the wonderful goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewellers, metalworkers and craftspeople who have spent time sharing their knowledge, experience and skill with us.
Here's just a few of them.... 😊
#Archaeology31 #Science interpreting the deep past requires great science colleagues. Here's some you could follow to make your feed multidisciplinary @NannonStevens @Boothicus @BeckyBriant @ArchaeologyLisa @tommyhigham @EnviroSuzi @arch_sedaDNA @m_law @PalaeoHan @BenjaminGearey
#Archaeology31 #science
OK. Here we go.
Science is great. It's wonderful. It's given us so many brilliant techniques and tools with which to explore and understand torcs.
But....science isn't everything.
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#Archaeology31 #Identity
Handaxes like this one from Boxgrove are a lens through which we can begin to approach identity in the deep past. We get glimpses of individual styles to regional cultures, but of course co-existing species identities were mediated too.
#Archaeology31 #Identity.
Tiny tooled lines, laid out in repeated patterns, which echo down the millenia and say 'this is me, this is my style....'
(Newark collar (left) and roundels (right) overlaid on Netherurd)
#Archaeology31 #Red
Is for Red Ochre. Used by Neanderthal people & other early humans from over 200,000 years ago. Widely used in Pleistocene art: hand prints, drawings, & to cover the dead. It's one thing dry, but mix with water or fat & it becomes viscerally alive & ominous.
#Archaeology31 #red
I'm going with reddish!! Well, pinkish really. 😂
Upping % copper in ternary gold alloy makes it pinkish, rather than yellowish, then add a touch more silver + it becomes more 'gold like'.
Were they going for specific colours? or covering up lack of gold?
#Archaeology31 #Reinterpret
Looking again at the Boxgrove Horse Butchery Site we found space in the artefact histories for far more people to be involved.
Initial interpretation: a small, task-specific 'hunting party'. Reinterpretation: A more diverse & extended social group.
#Archaeology31 #Gift
Yesterday I had zero inspiration for this, I had nothing to give. I settled with that early on in the day and it felt ok.
#Archaeology31 #Reinterpret
Sheet not cast.
Cast separately not cast-on.
Different production areas.
Same makers/finishers.
Wider production dates.
New methods of making.
Etc etc etc etc.....
I think we ticked quite a few reinterpretation boxes!! 😂
#Archaeology31 #Gift
Netherurd + Newark, found c.230 miles apart but made/finished by same person. Also, probable third sibling from Snettisham, Norfolk.
But how + why? Were they traded? Gifted? Exchanged? All simple terms for complex economic/social/political activity.
#Archaeology31 #Fashion
Two torcs, the Snettisham Grotesque and Great torcs, made possibly c.200 years apart.
Totally different visually and yet made in the same way...
... Is this changing fashion, but a continuity of making technology??
#Archaeology31 #discovery
To be honest, discovery is what we spend all our time doing. But then again that's archaeology really - finding things out.
But there are a few specific things we're looking into at the mo....
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#Archaeology31 Day 18. #Discovery
Has there ever been a more significant archaeological discovery that this single flint tool?
In 1859 it was observed in-situ by the stratigraphic Joseph Prestwich, and then published by him as proof of the antiquity of humanity.
#Archaeology31 #FolkloreThursday
I've been writing about why the Devil appears in so many place names. How the Devil transplant the older protagonists behind remarkable places, and how colonialism insidiously spread his name across the world. #TheDevilsLand
#Archaeology31 #FolkloreThursday
Hmmmm. Today's theme is a bit tricky.
Not only is it not Thursday (...or is it? It's 2021, so I have no idea!), but I also don't have any torc folklore.
So...
...I bring you #FibbingFolkloreNotThursday
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#Archaeology31
#Corner
As we must stay local for daily exercise it's a chance to find something new around yours. Maybe share some heritage from your lockdown walks, or maybe share the local contemporary signs of the pandemic for the @Viral_Archive
#Archaeology31 #corner
Welcome to Torc Corner - the little part of my house dedicated to all things torc!
