...It was a dark and stormy night...   No, wait. That is not right.    It was a dark, but not stormy night, around 4AM April 25th 1999 when R. Joe was in his office in Ozark Hall at the University of Arkansas avoiding writing a final paper for Sabo's Environmental Archaeology class. After doing some, errr, research on a site Ryan had told him about he realized he needed to find another outlet to waste time to give his brain proper time to digest the nuances of his class notes. Inspired by how well an extended family mailing list he had set up recently was doing and remembering the axiom "Archaeologists are kind of technically slow and lazy" R. Joe decided to set up a little mailing list to help people find jobs in CRM and Archaeology. With no-one to talk to R. Joe typed in, and erased, a number of list "name" ideas...

A well said statement from Cherokee Nation Principal Chief regarding the U.S. Department of the Treasury's decision to remove Andrew Jackson from the front of the $20 bill and replace him with abolitionist Harriet Tubman. "Andrew Jackson defied a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and forced the removal of our Cherokee ancestors from homelands we'd occupied in the Southeast for millennia. His actions as president resulted in a genocide of Native Americans and the death of about a quarter of our people. It remains the darkest period in the Cherokee Nation’s history. Jackson's legacy was never one to be celebrated, and his image on our currency is a constant reminder of his crimes against Natives. It's been an insult to our people and to our ancestors, thousands of whom died of starvation and exposure and now lie in unmarked graves along the Trail of Tears. This is a small but meaningful vindication for them, and for our...

Luxor, Egypt The Discovery Of The Century? I was unfortunately not able to attend the press conference today in Egypt, but Mamdouh Eldamaty, the Egyptian antiquities minister said it best about the results of the radar scans, “It could be the discovery of the century.” Eldamaty went on to describe the results of the work that Hirokatsu Watanabe, a Japanese Radar specialist conducted in November 2015. Watanabe was brought in after Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist, analyzed high-resolution images of King Tut's tomb that suggested there were straight lines in the wall that had been missed by previous researchers. These lines are suggestive of the architectural methods used when sealing a room, which indicated there could be rooms beyond King Tutankhamun's tomb chamber.  These lines, previously hidden by the color and the tombs stones' texture. Is it Nefertiti? Who knows? It could very well be a temporary chamber used during the rush construction project for Mamdouh Eldamaty, the...

Sorry for the delay! I never even officially opened up ShovelBums for entries for the 2016 Field Schools and there were already 150 when I finally got around to publishing them today! Please share this link to the field schools and suggest your prof advertise your field school on ShovelBums and reach the worlds largest targeted audience of students of Archaeology, Anthropology and related disciplines! http://shovelbums.net/l/2016-field-schools     http://shovelbums.net/l/2016-field-schools

Every archivist and anyone who has ever taken a digital image, filled out a spreadsheet, logged a GPS location has the same flickering fear in the back of their mind - "what happens if this data is wiped out?". I lay awake some night fretting about this on the global scale. We are at the dawn of an era of unprecedented access to knowledge, but as quick at the Royal Library of Alexandria became nothing but a memory of lost potential cultures prosper and fade throughout history. And if an event of a great of enough magnitude (pick your plausible collapse of modern iteration of civilization scenario and apply) occurs, so does such a vast epoch of potential knowledge.       in 2013 researchers at University of Southampton in the UK first announced that they had developed a potential prototype and over the last three years have refined the process to the point where they...

SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29. When originally launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and to this day she remains the largest to have sunk there. The Edmund Fitzgerald had taken on a load of taconite iron ore in Superior, Wisconsin on November 9th and was making was to Detroit, Michigan. The Fitz was caught in a fierce Lake Superior storm with near-hurricane force winds and 11m waves. Around 7:10pm on November 10th Captain McSorley's last message to the nearby freighter The Anderson said, "We are holding our own." A few minutes later, with no distress call her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered. Gordon Lightfoot's song: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.         Captain ERNEST M. MCSORLEY (September 29, 1912 – November 10,...

Thanks to the internet, the wisdom of Presidential candidate Ben Carson has been preserved and will heretofore save archaeologists, and egyptologists in particular, the hassle of having to wonder about what those crazy pyramids in Egypt were for.  As Carson told the 1998 graduating class of Andrews University: “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big (if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.” On the positve side Dr. Carson does clearly NOT give the aliens credit for building the pyramids! It is worth spending the 15 minutes watching the entire speech. One of my favorite lines is where he says this, but I think he is really...

#ColumbusDay #IndigenousPeoplesDay #October12th Bartolomé de las Casas, who served with Columbus but later became an advocate for Indigineous rights described how Columbus and his men treated these people in The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account: “They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house,” de Las Casas wrote. “They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the...

From Thursday October 1st to Wednesday October 7th any institution of higher learning may post an academic teaching position for free. From October 8th-31st any institution may pay a flat fee of $100 and post as many individual ads for positions open in their system. NOTE: This does not apply to any institution position that is a CRM position unless over 50% of that position is a teaching capacity.   Why ShovelBums? I thought that was for my undergrad archaeology students and Masters students in the summer?   Nope. Where do you think so many of you best and brightest ended up after they graduate? We all recognize that Archaeology and Anthropology are an academic pyramid scheme of sorts. Every year 100�⒠�s of institutions all around the world produce numerous exceptionally bright and well educated graduates who quickly learn that breaking into academia is a tough gig. So what happens to these former students? Yes...

  Nicholas Reeves  from the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona got to give  the interview quote ever archaeologist wants to give in their life:   “ To be honest, I feel numb,” Nicholas Reeves, the archaeologist who first proposed the existence of the hidden rooms, said in his Luxor hotel room, after inspecting the tomb. “This has been part of my life now on a daily basis for more than a year. ” " If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, " Reeves told the BBC. " But if I'm right, the prospects are frankly staggering. ”   So what is the fuss? Factum Arte, a Spanish group specializing in the replication of artistic works, conducted detailed scans of Tutankhamun’s tomb for a replica model. Nicholas examined the high resolution images and  saw fissures that he believes indicate the presence of two sealed doors in the tomb's north and west walls. With genetic evidence suggesting that Nefertiti...

  A big honkin' gate recently excavated in Israel by  Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel may very likely marks the entrance to Gath. The home of Goliath of David vs Goliath fame described in the bible. At it's time occupation it might have been the largest city in the region.  More from LiveScience :   

Rexdale Henry, 53, a member of the Choctaw tribe and a lifelong community activist was found dead in his cell on July 14th.  Rexdale, who coached stickball and was a candidate for the Choctaw Tribal Council from Bogue Chitto was arrested for failure to pay a fine. "Rexdale W. Henry, 53, long-time Native American civil-rights activist and beloved leader in his Choctaw community, was found dead in his cell in the Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Miss., sparking family and friends to seek an independent autopsy, reports Countercurrent News. Henry’s body was found at around 10:00 a.m. on the morning of July 14, about 30 minutes after he was last seen alive. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is allegedly investigating the case, but, knowing the history of Neshoba County, Henry’s supporters (justifiably) aren’t satisfied with just that... At a time when the nation is focused on the terrible circumstances of the brutal death of Sandra Bland, it is critical...

VIA NPR Marking Historic Moment, South Carolina Removes Confederate Flag  JULY 10, 2015  8:32 AM ET EYDER PERALTA Twitter Jaluladin Abdul-Hamib shouts "Take It Down" on the grounds of the South Carolina State House back in June. Win McNamee/Getty Images During an emotional ceremony and amid popular cheers, the Confederate battle flag was brought down from a 30-foot flagpole that sits on the grounds of the State House in Columbia, South Carolina. The ceremony was conducted by South Carolina State Troopers, who marched in formation in front of a cheering crowd of hundreds. Slowly, they cranked the flag down from the pole, rolled it up and marched out. The crowd chanted, "USA! USA! USA." The flag was first flown over the state's Capitol dome in 1961, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Civil War. But it was kept there as a protest against the Civil Rights movement. After calls from African Americans to remove it,...

Great news for anyone with Irish Catholic ancestors who is into genealogy. The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has announced today a website dedicated to presenting over 390,000 microfilm images dating from the 1740's to the 1880's covering 1,091 parishes throughout Ireland. These are primarily baptismal and marriage records and can be accessed at the Catholic Parish Registers at the NLI .  http://registers.nli.ie  

From Slate: Usually, when we say “American slavery” or the “American slave trade,” we mean the American colonies or, later, the United States. But as we discussed in Episode 2 of Slate’s History of American Slavery Academy, relative to the entire slave trade, North America was a bit player. From the trade’s beginning in the 16th century to its conclusion in the 19th, slave merchants brought the vast majority of enslaved Africans to two places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less than 4 percent of the total—came to North America. This was dwarfed by the 1.3 million brought to Spanish Central America, the 4 million brought to British, French, Dutch, and Danish holdings in the Caribbean, and the 4.8 million brought to Brazil...   Read more and watch the awesome two minute video :   

Fossilized human footprints believed to be of an adult male, adult female and a child and estimated to be more than 13,000 years old were discovered on Canada's Calvert Island, which is located on B.C.'s central coast and is accessible only by boat, float plane or archaeologists who are really looking to get away from civilization. Archeologist Duncan McLaren said there is evidence of a Remnants of an fire pit near the footprints and that radiocarbon dating indicates the charcoal materials are 13,200 years old.  Duncan is preparing to duplicate those tests to confirm the results. "We're very excited about it," Duncan said, to no-one's surprise. While there are earlier signs of footprints at Monte Verde in Chile, these are the earliest in North America. And lets be honest - if archaeologists can win a carbon dating peeing contest by simple numbers, we will narrow down the geographic area until we do! Regardless this is an...

Do you still use Film Photography in Archaeology? (update) Posted on   June 25, 2015   |   Leave a comment Five years ago I  posted a poll regarding digital vs film photography  in archaeology. I’m finally publishing a lot of my writing about photography (I know, I know!) and I’d like an update on this poll. If your browser is messing up the poll interface below you can go to this link to take the poll:  http://shovelbums.net/l/digital-or-film-colleen  

  Devil's Den Corpses at Devil's Den after the battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, 1863. Today, it is a tourist attraction.   ‘Photographers would come along with their wagons and set up on the battlefield. They'd drag bodies to different places and pose them. It was a very new medium, so everything was fair game.’  Angela Atkinson, ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park See and Read more at:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2015/jun/22/american-civil-war-photography-interactive      

Last time I talked to Vince Gaffney was at an SAA conference late at night hours before his flight when I gave him some Melatonin to try to fight the jet lag on his was back across the pond. Always an energetic bloke it is great to see him and his team continuing to push the boundaries of knowledge with their mad remote sensing skills. For fun you can watch  Ylvis sing Stonehenge! Vince is part of the collective team completing a four year investigation by Birmingham, Bradford, St. Andrews and Nottingham in the UK and  Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Austria and  the University of Ghent. into what lies beneath the greater Stonehenge’s landscape as far out as Durrington Walls. Their combined efforts have resulted in one of the most intense surveys of an  11.7 km^2 area ever conducted by archaeologists. The survey has resulted in the discovery of what is being called a "Super Henge"...