Top 10 Archaeology Finds

[lunarwolfik]

National Geographic's Top Ten Archaeology Finds of 2010.

Hightlights include: Secret Pharaoh Tunnels, Decrepit Titantic, and Moche Temple's of Doom of AWESOME, oh my!

Comments

[berangere]

I'm glad to see this comm is alive !
That's an interesting link, I wasn't aware of most of those facts. Diving everyday in my own little archaeological world, I think I miss a lot of the things that happen outside of my sphere of studies...

As far as I'm concerned, I'd say this year greatest discovery in Japanese archaeology may be the Odake cemetery.
http://berangere.dreamwidth.org/15005.html (in French, I would have post a link for a report in English, but I haven't found anything).
It represents a corpus of 71 bodies and bodies are rarely preserved in Japan's acidic soil. There are also dogs graves and a lot of wooden artifacts, including a dugout canoe.

Another important discovery was the one of a Proto-Jomon (first stage of the japanese ... peri-neolithic civilisation) site in the prefecture of Shiga, because those old sites are rare outside of the island of Kyushu.
http://berangere.dreamwidth.org/8745.html (in French)
http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=25135.0;wap2 (in English but only about the clay figurine discovered on the site).

And I think I would give the "site of the year award" to Gossakaito (a metal production site) because of their incredible communication campain : in the peak of summer, there was at least on article a week about their discoveries and experimentations, and often several articles a week !
http://berangere.dreamwidth.org/tag/site:+kaito

So, does anybody have special awards to give in his/her special field of study ? National Geographic is good, but "what is popular among the readers" does not always corresponds to "what really was great this year in the archaeological field".

[jeweledeyes]

This isn't exactly my special field, but Archaeology magazine did their own list of "The Top 10 Discoveries of 2010," which was completely different from NatGeo's list: http://www.archaeology.org/1101/topten/

The discoveries in Japan sound really interesting! My sister is a French major, if I can get her to do a translation for me, would you like me to post it here?

[berangere]

Well, I don't have time to crosspost all my entries in English, but since those two discoveries has been elected (by me) "major finds of the year", I thought I should at least do something for them.
So I translated the two articles in English, you can find the translation at the end of the text in French.

Thanks for the link about Archaeology magazine, this is an interesting list ! I would not have mixed paleoanthropological discoveries with archaeological ones, but since I am interested in both fields, it does not really bother me.

[jeweledeyes]

Thank you so much for the translation! Those are such interesting articles, I really appreciate it!

Archaeology definitely takes a "four fields" approach, so their content doesn't just stick strictly to "traditional" archaeology, but anything related to anthropology that involves physical remains/artifacts. Maybe not purist, but since my school also used the four fields approach, it's familiar to me :3

[lunarwolfik]

Yea, school really sucked up a lot of the time that I was planning to devote to archaeological awesomeness...

Those discoveries sound fantastically cool though! Wooden artifacts? That is a pretty great find! The pictures look interesting and makes me wish I'd paid more attention to French in highschool

"what is popular among the readers" does not always corresponds to "what really was great this year in the archaeological field".

That is very very true. Plus, they miss a lot of the less publicized archaeological things going on. All that minutia that archaeologists love but aren't exactly stellar reading to those not in the field.

[berangere]

The pictures look interesting and makes me wish I'd paid more attention to French in highschool
Well, you can now find an English version of those two articles at the end, under the French text. ;)