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The Archaeology Channel Newsletter |  |
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Welcome to the Vol. 1, Issue 4, of The Archaeology Channel Newsletter!
I must sound like a broken record (for those who still remember vinyl platters!), but the growth of TAC is nothing short of phenomenal. By the end of June, midway through 2005 (already!), we had recorded traffic of almost 900,000 sessions, nearly 1.7 million page views, and over 8.5 million hits. On an annual basis, this is 250 percent of our 2004 traffic. And July is shaping up to be a new record month, with a projected 600,000 page views. No one should expect us to maintain such a growth rate, but we are demonstrating the power of our vision and the potential of our medium to share the human story with people everywhere. Our traffic numbers are giving us some leverage with underwriting prospects. In the last three months we have added some key underwriters, including Astronomical Adventures of Flagstaff, Arizona; the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art of Santa Ana, California; Explorations Inc., of Bonita Springs, Florida; Inka’s Empire Tours of New York, New York; and Mayatour of Pompano Beach, Florida. The USDA Forest Service has extended its underwriting support for a full year and we are courting quite an assortment of other prospects. Underwriting funds received this year through June totaled nearly $8000, almost double the total received for the whole year of 2004. On July 11, we added our 56th video (K’ante ‘el - Precious Forest), on July 19 our 57th video (Damming the Euphrates) and on July 26 our 58th video (WPA Archaeology: Legacy of an Era) to our growing content list. Some exciting new programming will go up soon, including both video and audio programs. We are seeking new content partnerships to complement our wonderful relationship with WindowsMedia.com, who now are featuring TAC content often on their main page. The stories to follow contain the exciting news of other developments. But to put this in perspective, consider this: what we are accomplishing has never been done before. With the help of our contributing members, underwriters and volunteers, without deep- pocketed investors, and through bootstrapping, persistence and hard work, we are reaching an audience of millions of people all over the globe through the medium of streaming media on the World Wide Web. We are on a fast ride through uncharted waters to an uncertain destination. To all of our supporters, thanks for climbing aboard. Many thanks again to Woodeene Koenig-Bricker for editing this newsletter.
Rick Pettigrew
Podcasting is all the rage these days. People everywhere carry around their little iPod boxes with earphones and listen to music or other audio while they go about their business. The audio is packaged in MP3 files that are downloaded from the Internet or copied from friends onto a computer and then transferred onto the iPod. And it’s not just music anymore. Apple’s iTunes Web site calls podcasting “The next generation of radio,” because lots of people use iPods not jut for music but for news, talk shows and other non-music audio. Because people share these files across the Internet, Podcasting is a great way to take advantage of word- of-mouth marketing. We produce audio every week with the Audio News from Archaeologica , and several people recommended that we try podcasting to widen our audience. So we did it! Now you can log on to the Audio News and find a Podcast link. When you go to the Podcast link, you have the option of listening to the MP3 file directly or downloading the file onto your computer and iPod for later listening. But we’ve gone even farther than that! We’ve now added our Podcast feed to iTunes.com, the leading podcast directory on the Web. Just go into their Podcast area and find our link in the Science category. In coming weeks and months, we’ll add Podcast links to our other audio programs expand our iTunes offerings and submit our feed to other podcast directories on the Web. Give it a try! Photo: Got Your iPod? Apple's iPod.
Our Membership Coordinator, Edip Akpinar, is working to create an interesting interactive environment for our Member in our Members Gateway area. This is the area open to Members via User Name and Password. (To go there, just click on “members” at the top of the TAC Home Page.) Based on Edip’s recommendations, we are considering three different options for this interactive area: 1: Building only a "FORUM" with extensive interaction between members. For example, Members could share their opinions and ideas about our videos, news reports, archaeological topics, and other subjects of interest. A forum page is very powerful for interactions, but it is not ideal for news and blogging. 2: Building a WEBLOG or BLOG, which is usually used for daily news and comments but it also allows members to interact under a different format. Interaction and discussions are not as powerful or direct as it is in a devoted forum, but blogs are great for posting news and comments. 3: Building a "PORTAL" or "GATEWAY" in which we can have forums, blogs, news, polls, live chat rooms, etc., all combined under the same umbrella. Help us choose! If you are a TAC Member, go to our Members Gateway right away, enter your User Name and Password, and take the poll that you will see there. We will take your opinions into account when we design the area. We’d like to do this as soon as possible, so don’t delay.
The 2006 edition of The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival is just six months away! That might be hard to believe, as we are still in the middle of the summer, but it’s true! Make sure your calendars are marked for February 7-11, 2006, and get prepared to come to Eugene, Oregon, USA, to witness the only competitive film festival in the Western Hemisphere featuring films on archaeology and indigenous peoples. We’ve made one big change to our earlier plans: citing circumstances beyond his control, Jean Clottes of France has withdrawn as our Festival speaker. But Brian Fagan, the world’s leading archaeological author, has agreed to step in and become our featured celebrity! We expect Brian to talk about the subject of his latest book, Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society, published by Oxford University Press this year. We are making arrangement with the Eugene Hilton to be our Festival hotel, so we encourage you to book with them. Special booking instructions soon will be posted on the Festival Web page as follows. To book a room and receive the Festival rate, call Hilton reservations at 800-937-6660 and mention “Archaeology Film Festival” or “TAC Film Festival.” The Festival rates are $89 for a single or double and $99 for a triple or quad. The Festival special rates apply to the nights of 6-12 February 2006 and maybe a little before and after that. To book online, go to the Eugene Hilton website and enter your desired dates in “Check Availability.” Click “Go.” On the next page (“Select Your Reservation Details”), enter the code “ARI” in “Group/convention code” and the discounted rates will show up when you click on “Continue.” Tickets will soon go on sale. We offer individual tickets for Tuesday through Friday (7-10 February) for $7 for each evening and Saturday (11 February) all-day tickets for $11 A package of tickets for all Festival dates will be just $30 Tickets will be free (yes, that’s right–gratis) for standard Individual Members of The Archaeology Channel (meaning those whose Membership contributions are $45 or more). Admission is also free for Festival volunteers and for children 12 years of age or younger. Advance ticket sales will be by reservation– we will not mail you the tickets but rather hold them for you at the door. To reserve tickets, please make your check out to “ALI” and mail to TAC Festival Tickets, P.O. Box 5302, Eugene, OR 97405, and specify your Festival attendance dates and the number of tickets needed for each date. We will post a ticket reservation form on the Festival Web page. Call us at 541-345-5538 if you want to pay by VISA or MasterCard. Film entries have been arriving from around the world. We are attracting the best films produced in our genre over the past several years, so the quality of the films we screen for the competition will be superb. Film producers are growing more familiar with our event, making it easier for us to attract the top films. And the fact that this is the only event of its kind on this side of the Atlantic Ocean helps us gain attention, too. For those of you who haven’t been to Eugene in February, expect daily high temperatures of 50 degrees F (10 degrees C), lows about 35 degrees F (2 degrees C), and the possibility of rain showers. This is the beginning of daffodil season in western Oregon, where winter is sometimes wet but always green. Snow in Eugene is very rare, but Festival time is the peak of the ski season in the Cascade Range, only 1-3 hours to the east, where the snow can get very deep and the runs are long. And Eugene is only 1 hour away from the Pacific Ocean beaches, where winter storms attract wave watchers, surfers and beachcombers. For more information about the area, go here.
In our last newsletter, we announced we had encoded our video, A Journey through Time: Archaeology at St. Johns, at a super-high bandwidth (700k) as an experiment to see how well it would work. We received only one response, but that one was very positive, indicating the video came across very well. But a sample of one doesn’t tell us a lot! So let’s try this again. As a second experiment, we have encoded K’ante ‘el – Precious Forest (which went up on TAC in July) at a bandwidth of 700 kbps, which is more than double the bandwidth of our normal broadband videos. Those of you with fast internet connections can try to view the video at this speed to find out how well it works. For those with T1 or other super-fast connections, this should be no problem. Those with dail-up connections should not even try. But those with cable and DSL connections may or may not have an enjoyable experience, depending on how fast your connection really is. Please tell us whether or not the video comes to you smoothly and without interruption and viewable at full screen. Give us your review by e-mailing rick@archaeologychannel.org. If enough people report that it works well, we might consider adding a super-broadband option to our TAC videos. Select your player (remember, you must already have it installed before it will play!) below to view the video in super-broadband. Photo: Sculpture recovered from Waka'
by Nancy Brown The Oregon Archaeological Society (OAS) was founded in 1951. Its membership includes several professional and amateur archaeologists, but is mostly made up of people interested in history and archaeology. Though most of its 325 members are from the Portland and SW Washington metropolitan area, there are members from all over Oregon and the US. The OAS is an all-volunteer organization, including the Board of Directors, production of a monthly newsletter, a program committee that finds excellent speakers for our monthly meetings, and several other important committees that make up the infrastructure of the organization. A recent member survey showed that favorite activities include the lectures at our monthly meetings and the opportunity to do field work. Our lectures cover the whole world of archaeology, and have included Klamath Indian rock art, information on an archaeological project in Mongolia, and archaeology in the Holy Land. Books on archaeology and OAS t-shirts are for sale at each meeting, and information on volunteer opportunities, field trips and other activities is also available. OAS members spend many hundreds of hours annually volunteering for government agencies such as the US Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management, to assist agency archaeologists with field work. Many members also take advantage of the USFS Passport in Time (PIT) program to gain additional experience in field work, and there are many local opportunities, such as the Fort Vancouver National Historical Site. Members of the OAS Stewardship Committee volunteer to help USFS employees monitor culturally sensitive sites on USFS land. Rock art is also a major interest for many members. OAS has helped sponsor major international rock art symposiums with world-renowned scientists, and there are opportunities for members to participate in Northwest rock art field work. Two other OAS activities should be mentioned. An annual six-week training course teaches over 125 people new to archaeology the basic procedures for field and laboratory methods. In addition, each year the OAS awards scholarships and grant funds through the Roy F. Jones Memorial Scholarship and the Malcolm and Louise Loring Grant. The OAS is an active organization, providing its members many opportunities for field trips, summer picnics, and other activities focusing on history and archaeology. See the OAS Web site for more information and a member application. Photo: OAS member Lyle Hubbard carefully excavates an ancient animal bone at Legion Park, Woodburn, OR.
By Edip Akpinar, Membership Coordinator The early story of my hometown, Antioch (current Antakya), has charmed me since I was a kid when my father accidentally found a Roman mosaic in our backyard. This essay is intended to be a very brief account of my hometown’s ancient history. The biblical “Antioch ad Orontes” was built in 300 BC at the northeastern corner of Mediterranean Sea between Mt. Silpius and banks of Orontes River by Seleucos I, a general of Alexander the Great, and was named after his father, Antiochus. Seleucos I built 16 Antiochs, 36 Seleucias (after his name), 12 Laodiceas (after his mom’s name) and 6 Apameas (after his wife’s name), hence his nickname, “The City Builder.” Orontes valley is an extension of the Rift Valley Fault that spans from sub-Saharan Africa along the Nile and Dead Sea in Palestine to mid-Anatolia, which was the busiest corridor of prehistoric human immigration from Africa to Europe and Asia. Accordingly, the Valley was continuously inhabited for thousands years before Antioch was built. The main inhabitants of this valley before Macedonians and Greeks were Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hittites. Antioch was the capital city of the Seleucid Kingdom from 300 BC until it was taken over by Romans in 64 BC. Its diverse population mainly consisted of Greeks, Macedonians, Mesopotamian Semites, and Jews. From its founding, Antioch had been a very prominent political, military and commercial center of the Hellenic and Roman worlds and it was renowned with a rich and diverse culture, Greek teaching and mosaic art. During the Roman period, it was rivaled only by Rome and Alexandria (Constantinople became capital later in AD 326). It was nicknamed as “Queen of the East” or “Athens of the East” or “Rome of the East” and its population exceeded half a million. St. Peter came to this City to preach and he built the first church here after Jerusalem in AD 34, which is still a pilgrimage place. The term “Christian” was first coined here and Antioch became headquarters for the great missionaries, like St. Paul and St. Barnabas. Later it became a very influential school and one of the five patriarchates of the Christian World. Although the city was destroyed several times by powerful earthquakes, it was rebuilt by Roman emperors until it fell into Persian hands in AD 540, marking the beginning of its demise. The Arabs took over the city in AD 636, but they chose Aleppo as their administrative center, a decision accelerating the decline of Antioch. In 1098, it was taken over by the 1st crusaders who built the Kingdom of Antioch, but the city was ransacked again by Mamluks in 1268 and later by Mongols. When the Ottomans took over Antioch in 1516, it was not a “city” anymore, but rather merely a small village, and so remained until the last century. Antioch’s star shone for 7-8 centuries, then faded away. Current Antakya is a small town with 150,000 inhabitants and it is the center of Turkey’s Hatay Province (deriving its name from the Hittite name “Hattina”). Interestingly, it still has a diverse population reflecting a rich history and ethnic and religious mix and an amazing gourmet cuisine. The harmony among its populations is frequently mentioned as a paragon of peace and tolerance in multi-religious, multiethnic and multilingual societies. In the 20th Century, a Princeton group, followed by a group from the Oriental Institute of Chicago as well as others, performed systematic excavations. However there is still a lot to be done here. Photo: Mosaics from Antioch
by Matt Piscitelli The joint Harvard-UPENN project at Tiwanaku, Bolivia, is an effort to learn more about the ancient pilgrimage center which dominated the Titicaca Basin from AD 550 to 1100. In an ongoing project involving the Bolivian Department of Archaeology, archaeologists are excavating all over the site to gather new information. My name is Matt Piscitelli, and I am currently a student in the Harvard University Archaeological Field School. The purpose of the field program is to teach budding archaeologists the principles of archaeological excavation and survey, while educating them in Andean archaeology. The field program also offers informative lectures and labs in such varied areas as faunal analysis and ceramics . I will be participating at the field school for five weeks. The Andean site of Tiwanaku was the focus of a prominent culture during the Middle Horizon. Tiwanaku was a pilgrimage site, so much of its religious ideology and symbology represents a major influence of the later Inca society. When the Incas would visit the site, they regarded it with such awe that they elevated it to a birthplace of the gods. The monumental core of Tiwanaku comprises the Akapana pyramid (a structure more resembling a mound at this time), a sunken temple with tenoned heads, and a large plaza called the Kalassaya with many monoliths and gateways, including the famous Gateway of the Sun. Though much work has been accomplished by the Bolivian government in the monumental core, we know very little about the people who inhabited the site and maintained its facilities. Where did they live? The Harvard Archaeological Field School hopes to find out. As a field student in the Harvard School I have experienced thus far the thrill of discovery and have eagerly sought to learn more about the people of Tiwanaku. We are currently excavating just outside the modern town proper, at a site called Muru ut Pata, or Mound of the Abandoned House. Upon first surveying the site, thousands of pot shards provided a glimpse into the totality of occupation possibly lying underneath. Before excavation, as is tradition, a local shaman first made offerings of alcohol and a dried llama fetus to the Earth Mother, Pachamama, for protection and good fortune. Following a rather lengthy ceremony and much drinking, we laid out a 2.5 m x 2.5 m area and began excavating, first leveling off the surface. Almost immediately, we came across a layer of ash about 10 cm below the surface, possibly the remains of a hearth. In terms of other finds, much of what has been screened has been bones, red and black decorated sherds, and some extremely rare lithics and flakes. The most exciting find, however, has been a kero, or drinking cup, nearly intact, and a possible wall discovered in a neighboring unit. These excavations are ongoing, and at this point we have only, quite literally, scratched the surface. By the end of the field season, we hope to have learned much about the people who inhabited the mystical site of Tiwanaku over 1000 years ago. I’ll tell you how it turned out in the next TAC Newsletter. Photo: The Gateway of the Sun, Tiwanaku
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