You Never Know What You'll Find Digging in Dirt

It has been a busy couple of weeks in the historical dirt industry, aka "archaeology." Some of these newly announced discoveries offer startling new evidence that could upset several very traditional narratives (for instance, see my link last week to the Homo erectus discoveries in Central Asia), while others are just interesting and cool and provide further data for historians and other social scientists to pour over excitedly. Here's a brief round-up of those most interesting to me:

• "Fossil Ardi reveals the first steps of the human race": Researchers working in Ethiopia have announced a potential new candidate to replace "Lucy," the most famous Australopithecine fossil ever discovered, for the oldest human ancestor fossil. Dubbed "Ardi," this new species (Ardipithicus ramidus) dates to roughly 4.4 million years ago and provides evidence of the earliest human ancestor to walk upright on two legs found thus far.

• "Rome archaeologists find 'Nero's party piece' in dig": The Roman emperor Nero was a particularly strange fellow that historically has a reputation for his tyranny, his love of public performance (e.g. singing and 'fiddling'), and his extravagance. Well, Roman archaeologists, working on his grand palace -- the Domus Aurea -- have uncovered what they believe is his rotating dining room, a round room 50+ feet in diameter that supposedly rotated "night and day, in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies." I believe EPCOT used to have a restaurant that did that as well.
  

• "5,000-year-old Venus figure found in Çanakkale": File this one in the purely interesting column. An archaeological dig near Çanakkale, Turkey (which is close to the site of the ancient city of Troy), led by a German professor at the University of Tübingen, has uncovered a 5,000 year old Venus figurine, often used as a fertility symbol in the early Bronze Age and previous periods. Just think, students, you too could be digging up treasures like this; although I do not believe archaeologists carry whips anymore.

• "Dig along upper Hudson opens window to NY fort": Some times the opportunity for new archaeological discoveries comes from the "forward march of progress." Case in point, while dredging the Hudson River in upstate New York for PCB-contaminated sediment, environmental clean-up crews discovered timbers from the original Fort Edward, built by the British in the 18th century to project the southern approaches toward Albany from French attacks. This has given archaeologists a chance to learn more about "how military engineers built large fortifications in a wilderness where resources were few and soldiers were the only source of labor."

What sort of interesting discoveries have popped up on your radar this week?

Revising the Past

When teaching history, one of the key issues I hammer into my students in each course is the notion that nothing in history remains constant. History, of course, is not the past in any direct sense; rather it is the stories and narratives we humans come up with to understand, interpret, and explain what we think happened in the past. Ideally, this process involves testing ideas and theories against the remnants of past events (e.g. eyewitness accounts; annals; archaeological remains; personal artifacts, or what have you) or applying new kinds of theoretical approaches to said remnants. Sometimes this process is a bit more free-flowing, rife with speculation, assumptions, and, well, magic fairy dust (to put it more concretely, this is the tension between history as a science and history as art). Nevertheless, the point is that historians and the general public are always reshaping historical understanding, always finding new evidence, always interrogating sources in new ways. Revision is not some sort of alien process destroying the fabric of traditional understanding; it is a fundamental component of the historian's craft.

In the last few weeks, there was a news story that caught my eye, which in many respects punched home this point for me, particularly since we had just talked about this issue in a number of my classes this semester. First, according to a report in the Guardian, a group of paleontologists excavating in Georgia (in Central Asia, not the southern US) uncovered potential Homo erectus fossils dating back 1.8 million years ago. The existence of the fossils in that date range challenges the traditional view that these early Hominids developed in Africa only and then migrated out to the rest of Eurasia roughly 1 million years ago:

"The Dmanisi fossils are extremely important in showing us a very primitive stage in the evolution of Homo erectus," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. "They raise important questions about where that species originated."

While not definitive in any sense, this discovery contributes to the on-going revision of our historical understanding of early Hominid migration and the origins of humanity. And that is good...and normal. Welcome to history.

Suggested Links

For my HST 203 students, I've listed below a number of quality history group blogs on the internet, so that you can see more concrete examples of what I would like you to do with your blogs. Take some time to explore these excellent blogs as you think about what you want to do this semester.

The Edge of the American West

Wonders and Marvels

Cliopatria (At the History News Network)

Also, here is the link to the "Compendium of Public-Domain Image Links" on the web that I mentioned in class.