(1) Dr. Mark Van Stone reads the Creation story on Quiriguá Stela C, the late Eighth Century monument in Guatemala which tells us the myth of the "Planting of the Three-Stone Hearth (of Creation)."  This creation myth has a connection with current fears that the world will end in 2012.  (2) The fountain Syntrivani, a central monument of Thessaloniki, Greece, was built in 1884 after the demolition of the eastern wall.  A personal gift of Sultan Abdul Hamid to its citizens and part of the city’s embellishment plan, it stands today as a reminder of times past.

(1) Magnetometer survey by Dr. Jarrod Burks in Ohio relocates part of the 1000 foot wide Shriver Circle, a now invisible Woodland Period (300 B.C. - A.D. 500) earthworks feature, suggesting that remote sensing can revolutionize our understanding of Ohio earthworks.  (2) Long before Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, Neolithic people in Malta built many impressive megalithic temples.  Then the temple builders vanished from the archaeological record.  Our ALI film team goes to Malta to explore the temples and their mysteries.

(1) In 1708, over 180,000 soldiers battled at Oudenaarde, Belgium, during the War of Spanish Succession.  Now archaeologists and lay volunteers use new technology to explore the battlefield.  (2) In the early 17th Century, a Spaniard in Peru jotted down some notes on the back of a letter.  Four hundred years later, archaeologists dug it up and found traces of a lost language.  (3) Dr. Mark Van Stone, Keynote Speaker for TAC Festival 2012, explains how Maya hieroglyphs are constructed by writing a modern name in ancient phonetic Mayan characters.

(1) In 1816, Andrew Jackson ordered the destruction of historic Fort Gadsden, on the Apalachicola River in the Florida Panhandle.  Hundreds died in a cataclysmic explosion.  This now is a historic site operated by the US Forest Service and open to the public.. (2) Residents abandoned the Greek village of Moussai in the 1960s.  Now the settlement is decaying.  This process of destruction, which archaeologists call “site formation,” shows how a living site becomes an archaeological site.

June 2011 - TAC Festival 2011 Results, London Olympics, Vandalism at Hidden Forest Cave

(1) The competitive results from the 2011 edition of The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival.  (2) London is hosting the 2012 summer Olympics, but people in London have differences of opinion about the alterations to their city, which is more than two thousand years old.  (3) Vandals tag the walls of a mountain cave, obscuring Native American rock art drawn on the walls many centuries ago.  Authorities are looking for the perpetrators.

Protecting archaeological and historical sites from project impacts in the United States is guided by the “Section 106 process.” A chief architect of this system, Dr. Tom King, is so convinced that the process no longer works that he has published a book called Our Unprotected Heritage: Whitewashing the Destruction of Our Cultural and Natural Environment. We interviewed Dr. King to find out what he believes is wrong with the U.S. heritage protection system and what can be done about it. Special production by Faith Haney on August 5, 2010, interview with Tom King at his home in Silver Springs, MD.

This inaugural installment of the Video News from TAC features a tour of Thailand's cultural heritage by ALI videographer, Teal Greyhavens. From Chiang Mai in the north to the islands around Koh Chang in the south, this tour features the Hmong, Yao and Akha hill tribes; spectacular Buddhist temples; bathing elephants; traditional food production and marketing; and the monuments of the capitol, Bangkok. Thailand is a country whose past and present coalesce in the lives of its people and the environment they have managed for many centuries.