Many archaeological projects are only possible because of the hours and energy that volunteers contribute. The same is true for your SGA. Please think about what you can do to help the SGA.

Believe it or not a study of moose bones is illuminating about the incidence of osteoarthritis in humans. Bioarchaeologist Clark Spencer Larsen believes that moose data from Isle Royale in northern Michigan helps understand osteoarthritis rates in 16th-century native peoples from Georgia.

Archaeology is a sub-field of anthropology. So is linguistics. Just what is linguistics and how does it relate to anthropology? Why is language so important to anthropologists? And just how is language important to our human species? Do you agree with Roy Rappaport that: “Flexibility is central to adaptive processes, and the enormous flexibility of the human species rests, of course, largely upon a property universal to and unique to humanity, namely language”?

Are you familiar with the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial impact lead to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna in North America? This hypothesis has been raised in opposition to hypotheses that posit that Paleoindians and/or climate did in the megafauna. This story introduces the basic ideas of these arguments, and includes links so you can read the paper that introduced the impact idea, and one which scientifically tested that model. Then, you can login and tell us your opinion!

The University of Georgia Press has partnered with the Digital Library of Georgia to offer out-of-print history books free online. Take a look at the selection and read about Georgia’s past—for free!

In summer 2010 archaeologists began the field research for a three-year study of the lands around Stonehenge, on the Salisbury plain west-southwest of London. Almost immediately they made a game-changing find—the remains of another henge-like construction a mere one-thousand yards from Stonehenge itself! The full story has an artist’s reconstruction and satellite images of the new find.

Think about your favorite picnic foods, or the ones you’re most likely to see on plates at a family reunion. Chicken, green beans, cornbread…(are you getting hungry?)…. From around the globe, where are these foods native to? North America?

What is Atlanta’s Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum’s connection to the ancient site of Ur in Mesopotamia? What was Ur’s famous temple, the ziggurat, like nearly a century ago? Read the accounts of two men who traveled with an expedition to Egypt and the Middle East and visited that Babylonian/Sumerian city in 1920. How are their accounts similar and how do they differ?

In ancient times, humans lived their lives in the outdoors, although perhaps they spent some time in a cave or rockshelter. Now, the majority of people live in towns and cities. This process of urbanization has myriad implications for archaeologists. This Weekly Ponder considers the concept of the built environment.

The May 2010 issue of The SAA Archaeological Record, which is published by the Society for American Archaeology, includes several articles discussing how archaeologists deal with race. As the editors note, “The premise of this thematic volume is based on an ever-growing consensus in anthropology that the concept of race is best described as an expression of cultural ideology and not a biological reality” (page 3).

Consider visiting the Chief Vann house, built over two hundred years ago just west of Chatsworth. It was the first brick home in the Cherokee nation. The house overlooks James Vann’s land, called Spring Place Plantation, and what we now call the Old Federal Road. This route followed an earlier foot trail and lead from east-central Georgia to the northwest, eventually crossing into Tennessee. What advantages did Vann, a Cherokee leader and businessman, have that contributed to his wealth and influence?

Did you know this website hosts, on average, around three hundred pageviews per day? Did you know that visitors to our website have come from over 100 countries so far in 2010? Did you know that over eight percent of our visitors visit, on average, multiple times each month? Check out the full story for data on how our website’s use has grown since it was revamped in early 2009.

How “big” is this website? How has it “grown” over the last year? We could measure it in megabytes, but a simple page count makes more sense. Our page count statistics show steady growth, and thesga.org now can proudly boast some 630 pages (or “stories”)!

In a simple operation, you can use Google Earth software (free!) to overlay historic maps with the modern landscape. Here we demonstrate how informative this operation can be using the British Library’s online copy of a 1562 historic map by Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérrez. We just examine North America’s southern Atlantic coastline, including the Georgia bight.

Archaeologists use models in their work. These models are simplifications of reality—not well-dressed, beautiful people! Scientific models simplify reality, yet accomodate known data. Maps are models. Social scientists model human relationships and other behavioral situations. One well-known model is of cultural evolution sometimes called the band-tribe-chiefdom-state model. This model has four stages, and each stage is itself a model! Read the full story to explore this fascinating topic.

This story explores one particular hand tool that archaeologists frequently use: the shovel. Did you know that the field archaeologist in Georgia usually uses only two types of shovels? And that they are used for specific activities? And that they are usually sharpened so they cut the soil? Read all about it in the full story!

The archaeological remains near modern Coolidge, Arizona, now known as Casa Grande Ruins National Monument became the USA’s first archaeological reserve in 1892. The roof protecting the large three-story ruin known as Casa Grande was built in the 1930s. The ruin is constructed of locally available caliche. Read more about the architecture at this stunning site, and of the remains that spread beyond the limits of the preserved area.

Humans habitually categorize things they think about. This includes time, which we divide into segments such as pre- and post-war, the Mississippian period, etc. Several geologists argue that we should refer to the Epoch we’re living in now as the Anthropocene, to highlight the changes the world is undergoing that are introduced and exacerbated by human behavior.

Archaeologists do historical research. They don’t just dig in the soil, they dig into dusty book collections—and more! Read the full story and learn about primary and secondary document sources. Also learn about how to structure an archival research project.

World-traveler Ted Conover argues in his new book that roads are our most extensive human artifact on earth. Travel routes can persist for centuries. Judging by historic footpaths, Georgia’s prehistoric peoples tended to follow ridges, avoiding swamps and stream crossings. We know from the asssortment of artifacts found that ancient peoples traveled to places far away or traded with people who came from far away (like the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts, and deep in the continental interior). What do we know of those travel routes and footpaths? How, for example, did peoples of the Leake Site, in northwest Georgia, cross the terrain and interact with peoples of far-flung places where Swift Creek-style decorated ceramics have also been found?

Charles Hudson’s book The Southeastern Indians, originally published in 1976, remains a must-have book for the library of anyone seriously interested in Georgia’s past. This book, with its maps and black-and-white photographic plates, is an excellent place to learn about the native peoples who lived in Georgia. It remains available in paperback at a reasonable cost.

Across the Southeast, before Europeans arrived, Native Peoples prized the wood of a tree that inhabited only a small portion of the vast interior of the North American continent. The tree is commonly known as the osage orange. The fruit of this tree looks like a lumpy bright green to yellow-green softball. The tree is thorny, too. Read the full story to learn why North American archaeologists ponder this strange species.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has acquired a ubiquitous modern symbol: the @ symbol. Consider what makes a symbol a symbol and what symbols you are familiar with in the modern world, and what symbols you have seen in books or museum displays. Go to the full story for a lengthier discussion….

Rice was an extremely important commercial crop in antebellum coastal Georgia. Yet, today, there’s very little rice grown in that area. This Weekly Ponder briefly considers the economic history of rice-growing along the Southeastern Coast, and looks at modern rice-farming in the USA a bit, too.

Blue jeans, what do blue jeans have to do with radiocarbon dating? Click on the headline to go to the full story and discover the answer! In the process read about relative and absolute dating, calibration curves, and more! This wandering Ponder began with explaining the notation “cal BP,” which you may encounter in archaeological reporting.

Among the world’s major regions, ancient North America is not known for having many domesticated animals. In an article free online, Camilla F. Speller and her colleagues examined the DNA of modern and ancient turkeys and argue that there were at least two places were turkeys were domesticated: in Southern Mexico and a second time with Rio Grande/Eastern wild turkey populations. Read details in the full story.

Global Genetic History of Homo sapiens is the title of a new special issue of Current Biology, with eight papers available free online. This topic is also called archaeogenetics. There’s an introductory and a summary article, which bracket six articles that focus on human migration in specific geographic areas, including the New World.

This Weekly Ponder considers artifacts and context, defining and discussing how archaeologists use these terms and what that means for interpretation of artifacts—and sites. The Ponder goes on to consider the context of the Shroud of Turin, which will be on display in spring 2010, in Turin, Italy.

The Archaeological Conservancy owns Stallings Island, and has partnered with the Augusta Archaeological Society to monitor and help protect this significant site, which is difficult to access and protect. Unfortunately, looters have returned. We all lose when our hidden heritage is destroyed and thus important information is lost.

What is iron gall ink? Parchment is a common term, but what is that ink? Colonial-period documents were commonly written in iron gall ink. Georgia’s copy of the Declaration of Independence was. Even Bach and Da Vinci used it! Read more about this ink in the full story. Find out how many kinds of trees it takes to make the ink, too!

Historical archaeologists can use data from archival records, which are unavailable to archaeologists working with prehistoric data. How does that make a difference? This issue is examined using notes made by French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831 in a letter to his mother, which has only recently been published in English translation.

This story marks the first year of Weekly Ponder posts! Yes, it’s been a full year of 5am Friday postings of thought-provoking articles to this website. Indeed, the very first Weekly Ponder was posted on 26 January 2009.

Burke County State Court Judge Jerry Daniel in January handed down heavy fines on four east Georgia men who pled guilty to multiple counts related to looting a Late Archaic, Stallings culture shell midden site on the Ogeechee River in southern Burke County. The four men were apprehended on private land by Georgia Department of Natural Resources Ranger First Class Jeff Billips and Ranger First Class Grant Matherly in late September 2009.

Quick: what is the only installation built by the United States military during the settling of the interior of the continent to protect Indians from Indians (rather than settlers from Native Americans)?

Read the full story for one example of how archaeologists use indirect data to aid in generating a more complex and detailed understanding of the past. In this example, archaeologists from the University of Sheffield report on their successes using data on weeds to assist in their understanding of crop husbandry on a few archaeological sites in the Middle East.

In mid-December 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that the National Park Service is awarding $46.5 million in historic preservation grants to 59 states and U.S. territories. However, nine states will receive more than $1 million each, leaving just under $35 million for the other states and non-states. Georgia’s piece of this historic preservation pie? Read the full story for more details.

Published in spring 2009, Richard Wrangham’s book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books) argues that the ability to use fire for cooking foodstuffs allowed the changes that have made humans a distinct species. What do you think of this argument? Read more about the book and Wrangham’s hypothesis in the full story.

Greenspace projects involve lands set aside to remain undeveloped. In cities, publicly owned greenspace is often in parks. The central purpose of greenspace is to assure that some terrain remains protected from construction, paving, and other development. In short, it will remain “green.” Preservation of greenspace often means the preservation of archaeological sites. How does that happen?

Archaeologists, like specialists of all persuasions, employ jargon, or a specialized vocabulary. Sometimes the jargon clarifies matters, and sometimes it conveys a particular bias. Those not familiar with the jargon may not recognize the implied meaning inherent in certain terms. This story examines the phrase “Old Europe,” recently used to title an exhibit at New York University. [Photo by Marius Amarie and published by the New York Times here. Figure is referred to as 'Thinker' and came from Hamangia, Cernavodă, and dates to 5000-4600 B.C. Its curation number is 15906 at the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest.]

Archaeologist Scot Keith reports on the Leake site, which is west of Cartersville in Bartow County not far from the Etowah Mounds site, and partly within the right-of-way of Highways 61/113. The site has been named to the 2010 Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s Places in Peril listing, which will aid Keith and others to raise money to protect the remaining portions of this important Woodland and Mississippian site. The full story includes excellent aerial photographs.

SGA members are concerned about predictions of global increases in sea level because Georgia’s coast has many archaeological sites, including shell mounds and historic buildings, that are right at sea level or only a few feet above sea level. Therefore, changes in water levels will damage fragile archaeological resources. The full story examines some of the factors involved in generating a good model of the coming changes in sea level.

Read the full story for a discussion about what recent ecological reconstructions based on fossil pollen, charcoal and dung fungus spores tell us about the end of the Ice Age in interior North America.

Who owns antiquities that have been removed beyond the borders of the modern nation where they were found? This topic is explored in the full article.

On November 4th 2009, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation announced its list of Georgia’s top ten Places in Peril, which includes the Leake Archaeological Site, a rich Middle Woodland and Late Mississippian-period prehistoric settlement on the outskirts of Cartersville. Scot Keith, an archaeologist who lead recent excavations at the Leake Site, notes, “with help from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and numerous volunteers, we will be conducting many activities in the next year (and beyond) to foster public awareness of the site and its important place in history. This will include public education days at the site, community meetings, interviews, articles, partnerships and grants, research and fieldwork, and regular website updates.”

Recent data from a geophysical survey of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum, in Norfolk, England, directed by researchers from the University of Nottingham, reveals that this walled town was less densely settled than previously thought. Geophysical surveys do not disturb buried archaeological remains and can reveal important data, using less expensive and repeatable research methods.

The University of Georgia Libraries have a special section called the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which offers research materials in digital form online. This map, dated 1796, offers insights into the encroachment of Euroamericans into the interior of what is now Georgia, which was then held by Native American groups.

Do some research online and save fuel! Georgia’s Secretary of State’s website includes the Virtual Vault, which contains historical documents, records, maps, etc., dating back to 1733, as well as recent photographs.

Examination of the regions of the world shows that not all are similarly easy to traverse on foot or via waterways—and coastlines—as ancient peoples would. Yet, people exchanged goods and information via networks that spanned great distances. Compare the European and Southeastern North American regions with these concepts in mind.

Even a cursory examination of cross-cultural data indicates that around the globe, in many societies, peoples with many belief systems have built structures important to them on high places. In addition, the structures are often unusually tall when compared to residential buildings. Indeed, important buildings are often tall, large, or both. Why?

An important event in the history of the telephone happened on Jekyll Island. If you wander around the historic area south of the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, now the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, you will find a plexiglass box encompassing an old telephone. Do you know what this commemorates?

In Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Counterpoint, 1997) ethnobotanist and essayist Gary Paul Nabhan argues that modern peoples tend not to have opportunities for discovery in the natural world, and that this distance from our environment means we don’t grasp the complexity of the world and of ecology. Do you agree?

One thing we have to consider when reconstructing ruins of any sort, including historic and ancient buildings, is the period or date to make the reconstruction match.

Weekly Ponder considers this important issue.

An August 18th article published by onlineAthens.com, notes that construction workers on the crew renovating New College, one of the University of Georgia’s oldest buildings, have been recovering artifacts from beneath the building.

Zooarchaeological studies seek to determine, among other things, what species of creatures the people who lived at a particular archaeological site ate and used. How important were migratory waterfowl in the diet of prehistoric peoples living in what is now the state of Georgia?

The Blood Mountain shelter on the Appalachian Trail provokes thoughts about the network of prehistoric footpaths that criss-crossed Georgia.

Elberton’s famous subterranean granite deposit drew Italian stoneworkers in the early twentieth century, making Elberton’s demographics different from most rural Georgia communities today.

Archaeologists use and develop taxonomies, or systems for classifying artifacts, etc. That fewer people are proficient in taxonomic classification these days is alleged in a recent article. Read more about classification systems in general, and generalized categories, e.g., for bushes, trees, and vines, that are common in multiple cultures.

Your tax dollars support many governmental programs. One is archives of historic information. The Southeast Region Archives building is just south of Atlanta, in Jonesboro. Among the many resources there, I recently examined some pictures of farms that were bought by the US government and flooded to make TVA reservoirs that still make hydropower we use today.

Examine an image of the North American continent where north is not “up.” Paying attention to perspectives is important when analyzing geography, as well as when formulating research questions. You may find it most disconcerting when you look at the image and a cardinal direction is not “up.”

Blueberries are a tasty wild food native to North America. Prehistoric Native Americans enjoyed blueberries, including in a dried meat mixture called pemmican. This leads the Ponderer to consider about how people stored foodstuff “in the old days.”

Have you ever wondered what the paddles Native Americans made to stamp decorations on the outside of pottery looked like? W.H. Holmes included a plate illustrating three paddles made by Cherokees probably in the late nineteenth century in his report “Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States,” which was published in 1903. This report is downloadable from the Internet Archive.

Google offers free software that delivers satellite images to your computer (if you have a fairly fast broadband connection and video card). This powerful software allows you to “fly” over the landscape (and the ocean!), and even to overlay historic maps over the modern terrain. Google offers instructional videos to teach you how to use their software. We examine a Civil War map “draped” over modern downtown Atlanta.

Undisturbed archaeological sediments and remains include invisible chemical and physical clues to the past. Scientists studying ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland have analyzed the oxygen isotopes in small air bubbles contained in ice cores from ice that was formed thousands of years ago. They have found that the Earth underwent abrupt climate change between 14,700 and 14,500 years ago.

This week our federal government released a report on global climate change that says in part, “Likely future changes for the United States and surrounding coastal waters include more intense hurricanes with related increases in wind, rain, and storm surges (but not necessarily an increase in the number of these storms that make landfall), as well as drier conditions in the Southwest and Caribbean.” These changes will affect Georgia’s archaeological heritage.

Food preferences and language (e.g., terms, structure, named concepts) contribute to the idiosyncrasies of cultures of all kinds. Here’s a recipe for cornbread made using blue cornmeal rather than yellow.

Peoples with material culture common across the North American Southeast lived even farther north than the area around Criel Mound, in western West Virginia. Even if you’re most interested in Georgia’s archaeological past, you can best understand it in a regional context….

For decades, the University of Georgia had two archaeology laboratories in Baldwin Hall (Athens).

Archaeologists conducting excavations are always trying to determine whether objects and features dated to the same period, or whether they were separated in time. Superposition is a big word that refers to locating one thing atop another thing. Archaeological researchers discover superpositioned objects all the time. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine just when the superpositioning occurred—whether the two objects were abandoned more or less simultaneously, or whether they were left during events hundreds of years apart.

Humans are humans; we tend to like some of the same places on the landscape no matter who we are and when we are alive. This means that some of the same places were occupied over and over. What makes a location more—or less—attractive to human visitors or inhabitants?

In a data set, an outlier is a point or value that is far different from expectations. You don’t have to be a statistician to consider the impact of true outliers, especially in archaeological radiocarbon data sets, for example. This Weekly Ponder broaches the subject of outliers, as discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, Random House).

Dick Brunelle has revealed the answer to the challenge he posed to readers almost two months ago, since no one logged in and submitted the answer. He asked people who made a brick he saw in LaGrange with “LACLEDE KING” stamped on it. As a tease, he noted: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, than it is to covered bridges in Georgia. Ed. note: You must read the full story; it’s wonderful!

In the nineteenth century, banks around the USA commonly issued their own currency, like this five-dollar note from Ocmulgee Bank of Macon. Banking standards affect capitalization of projects and the economy in general. Read more about the Panic of 1857 by clicking [More].

What standards do curators use to decide to keep objects in their limited museum space? After all, space is limited, in museums just as in your closet. So, how do curators decide what to keep and what not to keep?

Archaeological laboratory methods for gluing broken pieces of pottery together is useful in everyday life.

This duck lives in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park, but it is not native to North America, although it is native to the New World. It’s a non-migratory species commonly called a Muscovy duck. Read more and decide if this Muscovy duck is an introduced species or an invasive species.

After archaeological sites and artifacts are abandoned, various natural processes begin to change them. Earthworms, for example, churn soil and affect archaeological deposits. The fancy word for this and other natural processes that affect archaeological materials after they are abandoned is bioturbation.

Do you have any idea what 10YR5/4 means? Read about it by clicking [More] below.

Identify the maker of a brick GAAS and SGA member Dick Brunelle found and photographed at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family plantation near LaGrange, and shown in the picture to the left.

Dick even gives two hints to make this puzzle easier….

Archaeology is a destructive science. Therefore, when archaeologists excavate, they look not only for artifacts, but for faint differences in the soil—variations in color and texture, for example—among other significant but barely perceptible evidence left behind.

Drip lines are one kind of faint evidence a careful excavator might find. This evidence may be data that is otherwise unavailable. Read more to learn about drip lines, what makes them, and what they might mean.

We are fortunate to have dictionaries of some of the languages of Native Americans Southeastern North America recorded in the early nineteenth century and even earlier, before much of that information was lost.

Consider downloading a digital copy of this 1915 volume A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language, available free from the Internet Archive.

The wooden building known as Gum Creek Courthouse is over a century old, and can be viewed in northern Newton County.

Manufacturer’s names on products like bricks allow us to reconstruct trade relationships across regions like Southeastern North America.

Look for signs attached to buildings, statues, and the like, that note when it was built. Essentially, their messages record a moment in time.

David Macaulay is an author and illustrator who has written many interesting books. One of my favorites is Motel of the Mysteries, published in 1979 by Houghton Mifflin (Boston). The book is now out of print, so I always look for a copy at yard sales and flea markets—and every once in a while I’m [...]