If you’re an Archaeologist/Anthropologist in any stage of your career, please join the I Dig It discord server! https://discord.gg/T7BPe36
This community of archaeologists and archaeology enthusiasts includes people from all corners of the world and many different sub fields of archaeology!
Here you can ask specific questions to the community about things like: fieldwork opportunities, undergrad/grad school, jobs on the market, conferences, as well as join in on Lectures and Conferences that are posted in the chats.
“Eduardo Díaz, acting deputy director of the American Latino museum, said 2022 was a "special year” for the gallery to open – it’s the 25th anniversary of the Latino Center’s founding, which was a Smithsonian initiative to better represent Latino Americans within its walls. But it wasn’t until December 2020 that Congress approved the creation of the American Latino museum, as well as an American Women’s History Museum. Advocates had been calling for Congress and the Smithsonian to establish the American Latino museum for years. An estimate of the cost had been presented via a presidential commission back in 2011.“
“Stevens adds, “We don’t know if the lake is ever going to rise this high again, with the climate changes and all that, so maybe there’s an opportunity here for the Navajo people”—an opportunity to take a good look at what was destroyed when the reservoir filled, and what can be saved now, as it empties.”
““The faces of the giants of Mont’e Prama have become so well-known and celebrated,” writes Mulas, ”that, for many, they have come to replace the nuraghi buildings themselves as the symbol of the island’s ancient past.””
Reclaiming Istanbul’s Lost and Neglected Urban Memory Through Art…
Istanbul born artist, Handan Borüteçene, who claims: “I am from both everywhere, and nowhere” gave voice to a heartbroken Istanbul at the Istanbul Archaeology Museums last year. In the foundation story, Dreams Are More Real Than Reality, for her exhibit I Remain Buried Within Myself, the artist questions the scattered memories of Istanbul and the neglect of these memories by the current residents of the city…
DREAMS ARE MORE REAL THAN REALITY
HANDAN BÖRÜTEÇENE
On that moonless, starless, night there was a knock at my door,
I answered.
I found nothing other than the voice of a woman:
“I,” said the voice buried in the dark of night,” am the flesh-specre of Istanbul”.
“I have come to you.
My soul is lost!
Not being known, not being seen, I shiver inside!
Remember how you said that ‘One cannot question the miracles of Gods and Poets’…
That is why I talk to you through the voice of the earliest known poet of our city, with the voice of Moero, the Byzantine poetess.
Call me Moero until my lost soul is found,
My heart is broken… It is shattered inside out, I am in places, every single piece of me is scattered elsewhere.
I am exhausted of constantly being scattered around.”
I said “Come in,” Moero.
“Come in.”
The voice entered inside… like the night… with the night…
“Throughout thousands of years,” she said, “so many questions regarding the
happenings in my city piled up inside of me.
This city is an endless breath in which the human heart has been incessantly beating for four hundred thousand years…
It is beyond me why my compatriots flee from the memory of this endless breath.
Whereas, the memory is like a rose which enriches us with its multi-foil petals.
If you forget the memory of the city you will turn into a single-leaved rose, into a rose that is alike anything but a rose, a rose that doesn’t even know that it is a rose…
Just as my current compatriots who don’t know who they are,
Only the thorns of that rose become fastened to your clothes, the thorns that hinder the journeys you wish to take!
This single-leaved rose detains you!
You become withheld!
When this city where we are born, live, and die is a multi-foil, fragrant and variegated rose; why do we insist on this single-petal, single-leaved blindness?
I remain buried within myself because of this insistence…
You know how in a poem our compatriot Agathias said:
‘There is a grave here, but no corpse inside.
There is a corpse here, but no grave outside.
This corpse is buried within itself.’
Well, it is as if he was born in our future and that’s how he came to write those lines,
We remain buried within ourselves with all our life experiences.
Our life experience with my twin sister Venice remains buried within herself too..
She is forgotten.
Whereas, the waters had tied me to my twin sister Venice the way a mother’s umbilical cord ties her to her baby.
We loved each other deeply; we came to be so alike…
We lived so many battles, we buried the hatchet plenty. Ours was a real relationship.
My twin sister Venice broke my heart in tow in 1204… She took away all my beauty; she took it with the waters that tied us together.
She took away the horse monument in my hippodrome, my pillars, icons, and the horse sculptures atop my pillars…
Ours turned out to be a relationship tied and untied by waters. What a shame!
O, every piece of my remains in another place.
I am disheveled.
The answers are concealed in you, I suspect.
Help me… in memory of that poem I wrote to thank Cleonymus for the beautiful sculptures he bestowed to the pinewood gardens of Istanbul.
I want to go everywhere, I want to see everything.
I want to be seen everywhere I see.
I want to unite my scattered pieces.
I want to see my horse sculptures in my hippodrome once again…
I want to tie that which the waters untied with the waters once more,
Render me visible.”
“Don’t fret” I replied to Moero… “Don’t fret any longer, I will sew a dress that will make you visible. Which color should your dress be, Moero?”
“Let it be a color that bears the green of the land, the blue of both the waters and the sky, and the purple of our city.
Like the feathers of a peacock.
A dress made of silk.
Let it look like the dress of Saint Eudokia.
Hers is embroidered with emeralds, pearls and rubies.
My heart is broken; I want neither the emeralds nor the pearls.
Embroider my body with broken pieces of terra cotta.
A piece of terra cotta from every period of my city… Up until the pieces of terra cotta date to your time…”
We sat together, five women, and sewed Moero’s dress by hand.
With golden thread we sewed together Moero’s broken heart,
Sitting around the table, we embroidered the dress ceremoniously,
As Moero waited for that moment in which she would become visible she quietly watched us with patience.
Her dress was complete.
The moment she had been waiting for had arrived.
We could now set out on our journey.
She first wanted to go to our twin sister, Venice.
We went there.
She saw everything and each place she had missed.
She paused and viewed it all in quiet elation.
She caressed them gently and silently.
At times she lay down on the mosaic-fitted floors,
She had a souvenir photograph taken with all of them.
Then, together we returned to our city, Istanbul,
Our journey was like a feast, a peculiar ceremony,
Moero smilingly viewed the hubbub of the city and the surprise of those who saw her.
“I can see and be seen,” she said, “How wonderful!”
As she walked on the mosaic floors of her palace she suddenly stopped.
She looked down at the floor, at the deer grazing under the tree, at the surrounding vineyards and the images of vine leaves that still looked very fresh.
She recalled her poem:
“Full of the juice of Dionysus, thou restest
under the roof of Aphrodite’s golden chamber;
no longer share the vine, thy mother, cast her lovely
branch around thee, and put forth above thy head her sweet leaves.”
Then she said, “I am no longer like the vine in my poem. I was able to cast my branch around and put the city above my head, my mother.”
You came and found me Moero.
I was born and I found you.
Now we have one last wish! May all that was untied by the waters be tied by the waters once more.
As details on the destruction of and damage to Iraq’s rich and diverse cultural heritage emerge, the United Nations cultural agency has appealed to the international community to help protect and revive the country’s archaeological, religious and cultural sites for future generations.
“This is a turning point for the Iraqi people and for the world’s understanding of the role of heritage for societies in conflict situations,” said the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova.
Speaking at the end of a two-day meeting of the International Coordination Conference on the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage in Liberated Areas of Iraq, Ms. Bokova added: “UNESCO is already mobilizing on the ground to support Iraq in protecting heritage and objects most at risk, and to fence off and guard sites.” Read more.
ISIS wants to erase the Middle East’s Christian history — and make a few bucks along the way
via PRI’s ‘The World’
“Physically ill,” is how Michael Peppard says he felt when he looked at the images of the destruction of St. Elijah’s.
“The tragedy that has been taking place among civilians in Syria and Iraq is paralleled now by what we’re seeing with the destruction of cultural heritage,” says Peppard, an associate professor in the department of theology at Fordham University.
Peppard is the author of “The World’s Oldest Church,” which is “an ambitious attempt to combine theology and art history to tell a new story about the oldest known house of Christian worship.” Read more on the book here.
This is the old church of Sant Andreu de Vila-Robau (Comarques Gironines, Catalonia). It was built in the 10th century, and its inside is (was?) covered in fresco paintings from the 12th century.
It’s deteriorating; but, like many other small villages, the city council doesn’t have the resources to take care of it and preserve it. In fact, the inhabitants of many rural areas like this one lack even basic infrastructure such as public transport to go to the near villages. The city council has asked the public administration for funding, but there isn’t enough for all the heritage sites in the country, so they haven’t received any. Meanwhile, without any treatment, the paintings keep deteriorating.
07.04.2021 // ⚜️ I finished my archival intensive on audio visual materials! I’ve always loved digging through archives, and I’m so excited for the future of digital preservation opening access on these materials.
Anyone have any favorite material they’ve worked on? Or just a favorite album?
Ms. Christina Calderòn from Patagonia (Chile), the last known Yagana speaker of Yahgan spoken by the native Yahgan Tribe recently passed away due to heart attack. Yahgan is now an extinct language.
However, her 11 yo great grand daughter Tamala recorded many Yahgan vocabularies that Christina taught her which are displayed in 6:47 time mark of this video! I have nothing, but pure respect and gratitude for her! Thank you, Tamala! Preserve the legacy of your Ukara-yakara [ウカラヤカラ]!
![Aubrey [Abroad]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/avatar_8a9e68eb3c8c_30.png){kind=avatar}
