terça-feira, 19 de abril de 2011
SABORES DO MEDITERRÂNEO - ALIMENTAÇÃO E GASTRONOMIA MEDIEVAIS
Os livros e tratados de cozinha mais antigos são quase sempre o reflexo de grupos sociais aristocráticos, espelhando o seu refinado quotidiano. Ora o acto arqueológico descobre e sistematiza a informação daqueles que não sabem escrever, daqueles que nunca tiveram história. O simples artefacto de cozinha, a humilde panela enegrecida pelo fogo, é para nós preciosa para compreender os hábitos alimentares, a topografia cultural da cozinha que, afinal, é o espaço mais nobre da casa camponesa. Em tempos anteriores, e sobretudo em época islâmica, a alimentação era dominada por uma enorme variedade hortícola assente na
fava, no grão-de-bico, no tremoço, na ervilha e no chícharo, a que se foram acrescentando outras espécies introduzidas, a partir do século X, como o arroz, o trigo duro, o espinafre a beringela e a alcachofra.
Neste encontro pretendemos abordar, sob diferentes perspectivas, que abrangem desde a documentação literária e escrita aos vestígios arqueológicos, aspectos relacionados com a alimentação no Mediterrâneo, focando sobretudo o período islâmico e o seu extremo ocidental, tentando aprofundar tanto os seus precedentes como alguns fenómenos de continuidade na gastronomia actual. A apresentação de comunicações orais por convite será complementada com a exibição de posters, da iniciativa dos autores, sujeitos a avaliação prévia da comissão organizadora.
Early human fossils from South Africa could upend longheld view of human evolution
MINNEAPOLIS—It’s a great irony of paleoanthropology that for all the insights scientists have been able to glean from the fossil record about our early ancestors, the australopithecines (Lucy and her kin), they have precious little to document the origin of our own genus, Homo. They know that Homo descended from one of those australopithecine species and that over the course of that transition our ancestors evolved from chimp-size creatures with short legs and small brains into tall humans with long legs and large brains, among other hallmark traits. But the details of this evolutionary transformation—when the distinctive Homo characteristics arose and why—have remained elusive, because fossils of early Homo are rare and the ones that have turned up are generally too fragmentary to yield much information.To that end, last spring Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his colleagues announced their discovery of two partial human skeletons (pictured above) from that mysterious period that might well revolutionize researcher’s understanding of how our genus got its start. The specimens, which date to around 1.95 million years ago, were said to exhibit a mosaic of traits linking them to both Australopithecus and Homo, leading the team to propose that they represent a previously unknown species of human—Australopithecus sediba—that could be the direct ancestor of Homo. The interpretation was controversial. Some critics argued that the fossils do belong inAustralopithecus, but have no special relationship to Homo; others contended that they represent a dead-end branch of Homo, rather than ancestor of later species, including H. sapiens.
On April 12 at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society and on April 16 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Berger and his colleagues gave presentations on the results of their latest analyses of the A. sediba bones. The findings underscore the mosaic nature of the remains, and threaten to topple a leading model of human evolution.
Team member Kristian J. Carlson talked about the shape of A. sediba’s brain, as revealed by synchrotron scanning of the interior of the brain case. With an estimated cranial capacity of just 420 cubic centimeters, this species had about a third as much gray matter as we do. Indeed this tiny brain size—which lies in the lower end of theAustralopithecus range—figured significantly in the team’s decision to place the fossils in the genus Australopithecus rather than Homo. Yet despite the diminutive size of the brain, its frontal lobe appears to have had a much more humanlike organization than that of the australopithecines. Carlson noted that this surprising finding hints that frontal lobe reorganization and the overall increase in brain size that characterizes Homo may not have occurred simultaneously, as was thought.
The mixture of primitive and advanced traits is apparent throughout the skeleton. Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A&M University reported that the skull exhibits a suite of traits in common with australopithecines, particularly A. africanus. Yet it also shares a number of skull traits in common with Homo—more, in fact, than any other australopithecine does. “The combination of primitive and derived cranial and postcranial [below the neck] characteristics in sediba highlight its intermediate nature,” de Ruiter observed, reiterating the team’s earlier claim that A. sediba could be the ancestor of Homo. Berger enumerated other mosaic traits—including the apelike ribcage and long arms combined with the humanlike hand, with its short fingers and long thumb.
But it was the pelvis of A. sediba that yielded perhaps the most startling revelation at the meetings. Many researchers have argued that increasing brain size in the Homolineage was the driving factor in the evolution of the Homo pelvis from the australopithecine one, because in early Homo fossils a larger braincase accompanies the modified pelvis. According to a talk given by Berger on behalf of Steven Churchill of Duke University, however, A. sediba, with its tiny brain, has a pelvis that looks a lot like that of early Homo.
If ballooning brain size was not the driving factor in evolving a humanlike pelvis, then what was? “I would say it’s the shift from habitual bipedalism to more humanlike obligate bipedal locomotion,” Will Harcourt-Smith of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, an expert not involved in the analysis, told Scientific American. He thinks bipedalism probably evolved in two stages: in the first stage, represented by Lucy’s species, early humans still spent a fair amount of time climbing in the trees in addition to walking upright on the ground. In the second, they lost their climbing ability and became fully bipedal.
“It’s very reasonable to see [A. sediba] as the ancestor of Homo,” Harcourt-Smith remarked, noting that he was much more on the fence until he saw the pelvis. “Am I 100 percent convinced? No, but it’s persuasive.”
Image: skeletons courtesy of Science/AAAS
sexta-feira, 15 de abril de 2011
quarta-feira, 13 de abril de 2011
Descoberta tábua de cerâmica com escrita legível mais antiga da Europa
Michael Cosmopoulos (à esquerda) no local das escavações.
Uma tábua de cerâmica com mais de três mil anos, com o texto legível mais antigo da Europa, foi encontrada numa antiga lixeira, em Peloponeso, na Grécia, segundo anunciou Michael Cosmopoulos, arqueólogo da Universidade do Estado do Missouri-St. Louis (EUA). Trata-se de uma placa de argila, que se julga corresponder a um registo financeiro. Será publicado um artigo sobre a pedra na edição deste mês da«Proceedings of the Athens Archaeological Society».
O artefacto foi encontrado durante escavações – sob a supervisão da Escola de Arqueologia de Atenas, começaram em 2006 e já revelaram ruínas de uma enorme estrutura com grandes muralhas de entre 1550-1440 a.C. –, numa colina de Iklaina, uma pequena aldeia do departamento de Messene, 300 quilómetros a sudoeste de Atenas.
“Isto é um caso raro onde arqueologia vai ao encontro de textos antigos e mitos gregos”, segundo referiu ao «Past Horizons Archaeology News». Esta tabela de argila muda tudo aquilo que se sabia sobre as origens da alfabetização e a burocracia, durante a Idade do Bronze, na Europa do sul. O fragmento mede cinco centímetros por oito.
A inscrição corresponde a uma forma de escrita – Linear B – usada antes da existência da Grécia Antiga pelos Micénicos, um povo da Idade do Bronze que dominou grande parte do território grego 1.600 anos antes e Cristo, na época da Guerra de Tróia descrita na Ilíada de Homero.
Placa tem inscrição em Linear B.
A placa tem, de um lado, uma lista de nomes e números; no outro, uma verba relativa à confecção, segundo revelou o Cosmopoulos, que também é director doIklaina Archaeological Project, acrescentando que esta descoberta sugere que "a burocracia e a literacia foram desenvolvidas mais cedo do que se pensava".
Segundo o especialista, o sítio em que a placa de argila foi encontrada terá sido uma antiga lixeira do Peloponeso que foi atingida pelo fogo. Felizmente, a inscrição não se perdeu, uma vez que a argila terá cozido com as altas temperaturas do incêndio. O local foi destruído provavelmente no ano 1400 a.C, antes de ser invadido pelo reino de Pilos, cujo rei, Nestor, é mencionado na Ilíada.
Descoberto primeiro esqueleto de homossexual pré-histórico
Corpo estava disposto como sepultura feminina.
Descobriram o corpo de um homem – que remonta a 2900 ou 2500 anos a.C. –, na República Checa, cuja posição estava normalmente reservada às mulheres na cultura da cerâmica e, por isso, os investigadores acreditam tratar-se do primeiro homossexual ou transexual conhecido e que viveu durante a Idade do Cobre.
O esqueleto, encontrado num subúrbio de Praga, tinha a cabeça apontada para Este e estava rodeado de utensílios domésticos, um ritual que até aqui apenas era descoberta em sepulturas femininas.
Segundo a história da antropologia, "as pessoas deste período levavam este género de ritual funerário muito a sério e isso leva a crer que a posição em que foi encontrado seja dificilmente um erro”, referiu Kamila Remisova Venisova, coordenadora da equipa de arqueólogos que fez a descoberta, ao diário britânico «The Telegraph».
Neste tipo de cultura, os homens eram normalmente enterrados sobre o seu lado direito, com a cabeça virada para o Oeste, com ferramentas, armas, comida e bebidas e as mulheres, normalmente sobre o lado esquerdo, viradas para o Este e rodeada de jóias e objectos de uso doméstico.
Outra das hipóteses é a de que o indivíduo poderia ter sido um xamã ou alguém do ‘terceiro sexo’ (homo ou transexual). "Como o conjunto de objectos encontrados em redor do esqueleto não corroboravam a hipótese de que fosse um xamã, é mais provável que a segunda explicação seja a correcta”, sustentou ainda.
As escavações foram hoje abertas ao público e as visitas têm sido intensas. Os restos são de um membro da cultura da cerâmica cordada, que viveu no norte da Europa na Idade da Pedra, entre 2.500 AC e 2.900 AC.
In CiênciaHoje
Os Concheiros de Muge...
O NAP informa que já está disponível o vídeo relativo à exposição:
Nas Margens do Passado - Os Concheiros de Muge
Everyone Made Stone Tools: Exploring Methodology in Lithic Analysis
We would like to invite you to participate at an upcoming conference, Everyone Made Stone Tools: Exploring Methodology in Lithic Analysis. This conference emerged as part of a discussion carried out at the Northeast Graduate Archaeology Workshop (2010) at Brown University. The organizers, listed below are seeking researchers (faculty or graduate students) interested in discussing wider aspects of lithic technology.
This conference, hosted by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, will be held between the 14th-15th October of 2011 and will focus on creating a dialogue between archaeologists studying widely different temporal and geographic topics. The goal is to encourage novel applications of analytical methods, interdisciplinary collaborative research, and comparative approaches to technology and behavior. This will be a two-day conference at Brown University.
This conference is dedicated to discussing approaches to lithic analysis, concentrating on specific results that demonstrate how different techniques function as well as their potential for broader application in archaeological studies. In general we are interested in receiving submissions that deal with the following aspects of lithic analysis and technology:
·Methodology of analysis
·Experimental and replicative research
·Extraction and acquisition of raw materials
·Manufacture and production
·Issues of technology and techniques
·Gender and agency
·Other lithic technology including ground stone, gunflints, etc.
·Ethical concerns
If you are interested in presenting or submitting a poster, please respond (by indicating interest or abstract) to this letter by April 30th, 2011. We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please contact us at everyonemadestonetools@gmail.com.
Palaeolithic Research Centre
The Palaeolithic Research Centre (PARC) was established in the year 2010. PARC is an institution in which science and art are tightly interweaven. The common roots of this once indivisible unity extend far back into the past, when the first signs of abstract, symbolic thinking appeared in mankind. Today science and art share a common place in the concept of culture. Thus PARC is a cultural institution, which is concerned with the longest period of human history, the Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic. PARC is not limited to Slovenia, but cooperates with similar institutions all over the world. PARC organizes international expert meetings about new discoveries, ideas and theories within anthropology.
SPLASHCOS - Submerged Prehistory Archaeology and Landscape of the Continental Shelf
About SPLASHCOS
Excavation on Danish underwater
Mesolithic site
SPLASHCOS is a European research network that operates under the COST scheme (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).
COST Actions are intended to facilitate coordination of research activities and information gathering across national and disciplinary boundaries, and to stimulate new ideas and collaborations.
Funds are provided for meetings, workshops, training activities, and dissemination of results. During the course of the Action we expect to collate and publicise information on a variety of topics, and to develop ideas for new collaborative research programmes including new fieldwork investigations, but the COST scheme does not provide the funds for these programmes, which have to be sought from other European funding schemes, or national funding agencies.
The main objectives of SPLASHCOS are to promote research on the investigation, interpretation and management of the drowned landscapes and prehistoric archaeology of the European continental shelf, to create a structure for the development of new interdisciplinary and international research proposals, and to provide guidance to heritage professionals, government agencies, commercial organisations, policy makers and a wider public on the relevance of underwater research to a deeper understanding of European history, reconstructions of palaeoclimate and sea-level change, and the social relevance and likely future impact of these changes.
European continental shelf with maximum
extent in red of exposed land 20,000 years ago
The scope of SPLASHCOS extends to all European coastal waters, and in some cases beyond. The work of the Action is overseen by a Management Committee (MC), with two representatives from each participating country (currently 19 European States), which normally meets twice a year.
The detailed work is undertaken by four Working Groups (WG), comprising members of the MC, and additional members recruited for their particular scientific or geographical expertise. We are keen to hear from new members who think they have a useful contribution to make to the WGs, especially Early Stage Researchers (pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers within 8 years of their PhD). See the WG page for further details
Meetings and discussion forums are normally restricted to the Action membership, but workshops or conferences open to the wider community will be organised from time to time.
IKUWA 4
"managing the underwater cultural heritage"
September 29th - October 2nd 2011
ZADAR - CROATIA
About IKUWA
The first international congress for underwater archaeology (IKUWA 1) was held in February 1999 in Sassnitz on the island of Rügen on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Germany, with the theme "protection of cultural heritage under water". It received considerable support from the Raphael Programme of the European Union, in the context of reinforcing east-west cultural and educational ties, and was organised on the initiative of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Unterwasserarchäoloqie (DEGUWA) by 7 German and 5 non-German (Switzerland, UK, Greece, Netherlands and Poland) partner organizations.
The congress was a resounding success, with wide international participation. It had a series of chronological sessions and a series of thematic sessions on subjects such as conservation, recording and management. Particular importance was given to a round table on the protection of the European underwater cultural heritage, with particular reference to the UNESCO 2001 Convention. The participants were mainly from Europe, but also from India, Israel and the U.S.A.
It was agreed at Sassnitz to inaugurate an ambitious programme of congresses to build an international network of institutions dealing with underwater archaeology. This was achieved by the holding of IKUWA2 and IKUWA3. IKUWA2 was held in Zurich in October 2004. The organizing committee included German and British members. About 200 participants from 25 countries attended. The proceedings were published in 2006 as "Die Neue Sicht. Une nouvelle lnterprétation de I'histoire." The new view in the series Antiqua, vol.40. In the days preceding the congress a postgraduate training workshop was held, with 21 participants from 11 European countries.
IKUWA3 took place under the auspices of UNESCO's Director-General. It was held in University College London in July 2008, with the title "Beyond Boundaries" and was organized by the Nautical Archaeology Society and the Institute of Field Archaeologists. The Steering Committee included German and Swiss members. 260 participants from over 20 different countries presented 126 papers over the three days.
IKUWA3 was preceded by a professional development field school with participants from almost a dozen nations organized by NAS. One day before, UNESCO held a one-day intergovernmental conference in the British Academy on the 2001 Convention.
Preparations are now under way to hold IKUWA4 in October 2011 in Zadar, where the International Centre for Underwater Archaeology has been established under UNESCO's auspices. The theme of IKUWA4 is "Managing the underwater cultural heritage".
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