Motley Moose – Archive

Good morning to the herd.

As many of you know, blue jersey dad and I have been on the road doing archaeological field and lab work since the middle of May. We were in Hawai’i for a bit over three weeks working with the Native Hawaiian community and doing some archaeological survey of the Na Wai ‘Eha (the four waters) area. The regions has been the subject of long-term litigation over water rights, and recently a portion of the area has been preserved from development. In early historic times this would have been a rich agricultural region with irrigated taro patches, many of which were reserved for royalty. Here is a view of the coastline nearly:

While we were in Hawai’i. we learned that we had received a grant to do some archaeological work in the Middle East. We had three days at home after the Hawaiian project before we had to leave home again–just long enough to do our laundry, cut the grass, buy cat food, and pick up our Turkish research visas. We were able to combine the Turkish field work with a couple of conferences in Ukraine and Israel and an ongoing project in Armenia. We were gone for just over 6 weeks, and here was our itinerary:

JFK to Dnepropetrovsk (via Frankfort and Vienna); Dnepropetrovsk to Istanbul; Istanbul to Tel Aviv and back; Istanbul to Kayseri (Turkey) and back; Istanbul to Yerevan, Armenia (via Kiev); Yerevan to Dnepropetrovsk (via Moscow); and Dnepropetrovsk to JFK (via Vienna). We made it back in one piece.

Good morning, everyone. As some of you know, I just returned from 12 days in China. As an archaeologist who works in Europe, the Middle East, and the US, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to visit China. However, one of our Chinese colleagues volunteered to host the biennial meeting of the Worked Bone Research Group. The meeting was scheduled right after the annual archaeology meetings Honolulu, so several of us were able to travel from Hawaii to China. I managed to get a great airfare deal that took me from Newark to Honolulu to Beijing and back for only $1190. It was the trip of a lifetime, so I thought that I would share some of my pictures with you.

The WBRG conference was held in Zhengzhou, but we flew into Beijing and were able to spend a couple of days there before the conference. Here is a view of a temple that overlooks the Forbidden City:

And here is a view of the Forbidden City taken from the top of the temple:

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Last week blue jersey dad and I traveled to Leicester, UK to attend the annual meetings of the Society for Historical Archaeology. I was part of a panel on animals in the urban environment, and dad’s former boss and a colleague were presenting a paper on their work at Valley Forge. (Dad was co-director of a major excavation project at Valley Forge between 2000 and 2003).

While we were at the meetings, we had an opportunity to see some of the historic town of Leicester and to visit the Gladstone potteries museum. Leicester has been in the news recently since local archaeologists have discovered a skeleton that appears to the the remains of Richard III aka Crick-Back Dick.

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