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at the brú na bóinne in county meath north of dublin were the highlight of the trip for me i ll do a more extended post at some point about these fascinating ancient sites but for now i ll just note that newgrange the most famous of them has a very famous winter solstice alignment in its central chamber the tours do go into the chamber but don t allow photography inside so for this post i ll have to content myself with a couple of exterior pictures it s very much worth visiting if you re ever in ireland though more than twenty years ago when the world was experiencing a sense of chaos much like it is today kieran healy wrote a very elegant blog post about newgrange which is where i first heard of it the theme of this time of year being a time of darkness and fear but also a time when the possibility of the light returning begins to shine through still speaks to me and gives me hope happy solstice posted in archaeoastronomy built environment elsewhere ideas research very far 6 comments mapping the arctic sky june 20 2025 by teofilo today is the summer solstice on which i like to do posts on archaeoastronomy i recently came across a very interesting article in the new york times about recent research on ethnoastronomy among the northern athabascan dene groups of interior alaska and northern canada by chris cannon of the center for cross cultural studies at the university of alaska fairbanks who has a new book out that looks very interesting the article is interesting not just for the research it describes but for the way it narrates cannon s process of learning from native elders in a traditional way in which knowledge is gradually imparted over time the main focus is on his relationship with a particular elder paul herbert of the gwich in community of fort yukon alaska the basic concept of the model of the night sky among the gwich in is that the vast majority of the night sky consists of a single constellation called yahdii or the the traveler various asterisms subordinate groups of stars within the constellation are known as body parts of yahdii he is conceived as essentially human in for but with a tail consisting of the big dipper past research generally conceived of yahdii as only referring to the big dipper itself but it s clear from cannon s research that the whole constellation is much larger and serves as a system of reference used for timekeeping navigation and other purposes yahdii s arms and legs sprawl across the sky and his hands and feet reach to or below the horizon cannon s research was initially presented in a 2014 paper he co authored with gary holton then of the alaska native language center at uaf now at the university of hawai i he didn t have quite as much knowledge of yahdii then as described in the times article but the basics of the whole sky constellation concept were there a key point this article makes is that while past anthropology had generally considered the northern dene to have little knowledge of or interest in the sky that idea is quite implausible given the dominating presence of the night sky in the long dark arctic winter instead it appears that past investigators were stymied in part by doing their own research in the spring and summer when the darkness of winter is replaced by the midnight sun and no stars are visible and in part by the fact that in many dene groups a lot of traditional knowledge has been lost unmentioned in this article but implicit in the times one is the additional possibility that past anthropologists had not developed the relationships and trust for knowledgeable elders to share this information even for cannon that trust was still building in 2014 as the acknowledgments to the paper cite the elders but not by name and note that they preferred to remain anonymous in subsequent papers some of them including herbert would be listed as co authors one interesting thread that the 2014 paper does emphasize is the widespread nature of the concept of yahdii in the northern dene world and perhaps beyond it identifies direct cognates for the term yahdii in 17 northern dene languages as well as a loanword into the more distantly related tlingit apparently from a pretty early stratum of the athabascan family although the footnote explaining this is not very clear additionally it finds that the concept of a whole sky constellation in the form of a person is present in other alaska athabascan languages under other names interestingly the division between the yahdii term itself and the others seems to correlate with a more basic division in the northern dene languages with gwich in and the other languages of eastern alaska patterning with those to the east and south in canada as opposed to the others further west in alaska ahtna dena ina koyukon etc further afield the whole sky constellation itself doesn t appear to be present in the well documented astronomy of the navajo of the southern branch of the athabascan family however the concept of dividing constellations into named body parts is used by the navajo which suggests that the underlying conceptual theme is likely quite old also while the authors of this paper only note this in a brief discussion of cross cultural comparisons there is apparently a zuni whole sky constellation in human form while the zuni are a pueblo people speaking an isolated language unrelated to the athabascan family they have had extensive contact with the southern athabascan navajo and apache indeed the spanish term apache is a loanword from zuni and it is conceivable that this could have included this distinctive astronomical concept which was later lost by the athabascans indeed the southern athabascans are notable for the focus of their astronomy on stars rather than the sun and moon which pueblo peoples tend to emphasize more could this be a remnant of their ancient past in the far northern forest with its long dark winters in any case this is fascinating stuff i ll keep reading through the papers and probably order the book happy solstice posted in archaeoastronomy elsewhere natural environment navajo connections research very far 2 comments madison buffalo jump february 2 2025 by teofilo i m currently in bozeman montana i came across some cheap airfares and i had never been to montana so i figured i d do a long weekend and check it out it s a nice town but of course with my interests i was particularly keen to check out the nearest archaeological site developed for visitation which is madison buffalo jump state park i went there yesterday and figured i d write up a post with some practical advice for visiting much as i did for la cieneguilla madison is a buffalo jump or pishkun a type of site consisting of a steep cliff toward which people would stampede bison herds to kill large numbers of them there are many of these on the northern plains and they were in use for the past few thousand years up until the plains peoples gained horses a few hundred years ago which revolutionized bison hunting and led to the end of the buffalo jumps over the course of the millennia in which they were used the buffalo jumps developed very deep bone beds that archaeologists can now excavate and date by both radiocarbon dating of the bones themselves and relative dating by the types of artifacts found nearby at many buffalo jumps including madison there was also a nearby site used as a campsite where additional processing of the bison occurred and these sites also provide artifacts and features such as stone tipi rings that can be used to learn about the people who used them madison buffalo jump is about 30 miles from bozeman and the drive takes about 45 minutes take i 90 west toward butte and get off at logan there is a sign for the park at the exit there are no services in logan so if you need gas or anything stop at manhattan the previous exit from the exit it s a 7 mile drive on a small winding road the last two miles of which are dirt this is an agricultural area today and there are active farms and ranches all the way up to the park boundary the park itself is unstaffed though it does have vault toilets and some interpretive signage it is day use only with no campground the day use fee is 8 free for montana residents which can be paid at the iron ranger at the entrance note that the envelopes only take cash or check so if like me you neglected to get change earlier and only have a 20 bill you may need to make a 12 donation to montana state parks i m sure they ll use it well there are several trails through the park which are roughly organized into three loops the shortest one goes to an interpretive viewpoint with a shelter and several interpretive panels clearly of fairly recent construction from here you get a good view of the cliff itself and the panels are very informative about the archaeology of the site the longer loop goes up onto the top of the cliff and includes the buffalo trail that was used in antiquity by both bison and people to access the land on top there is a rim trail that follows the ridge of the hills on the south side of the cliff there is a north ridge trail that follows an additional ridge to the north i didn t take this one the various trails aren t super clear on the ground especially in winter so pay close attention to the map at the entrance kiosk i did the first two loops the one to the interpretative viewpoint and the one to the top of the cliff in retrospect i would recommend only doing the first in winter unless you have serious winter hiking gear including boots with good traction i was just in street clothes with a down sweater jacket and some portions of the rim trail were quite steep and difficult to manage in regular shoes i think it would be fine to do this in summer but would still recommend good boots and probably hiking poles that said it was definitely a very interesting experience and i m glad i did it i m interested in checking out some of the other buffalo jumps in the region on subsequent trips finally bison ranching is a growing industry in montana today so if you re interested in tasting bison meat after seeing the old way of procuring it many restaurants in bozeman serve it gute laune a german restaurant above the rialto theater downtown has a bison bratwurst that i highly recommend i liked it so much i went back and had it again if you re surprised to see restaurant reviews here you shouldn t be anyway madison buffalo jump is highly recommended it s a simple park but pretty accessible and very interesting posted in archaeology elsewhere far fauna hunting natural environment research subsistence touring virtual tours leave a comment another solstice december 21 2024 by teofilo today is the winter solstice and the sixteenth anniversary of this blog i don t have much to say right now i m still working on my various projects but i m generally in the phase of reading and researching rather than writing i did want to mark the occasion though and show that while posting has slowed to a trickle this blog is still active happy solstice posted in ideas 4 comments virgin soil widowed land further thoughts on africa may 26 2024 by teofilo i m still reading up on africa as part of my project on epidemics and demography i ve clearly gotten into a very deep rabbit hole here it s been almost a year since my previous post on africa but i think it s been a productive one i initially started reading about africa as a point of comparison for my main focus which was and remains the impact of old world diseases on the populations of the americas i also looked at the pacific as another point of comparison and at some point i ll get to asia as well but as i ve been digging further into africa i ve come to realize that while it is an instructive parallel it s also an intrinsic component of the very same story and understanding its role is important in developing the full picture the key difference as i mentioned in my earlier post is that in africa colonialism was a failure whereas in the americas it was a spectacular success epidemiology had a major role in both of these developments in the americas the main dynamic was that indigenous societies underwent catastrophic demographic collapses as a result of the introduction of new pathogens from the eastern hemisphere to which they had no immunity and immigrants from that hemisphere both free and enslaved from both europe and africa either replaced the native populations entirely or merged with them into new societies of mixed ancestry in africa on the other hand the epidemiological environment was catastrophic for the newcomers rather than the natives and despite a concerted effort by several european countries colonialism ended up being a brief and highly unsuccessful experiment bookended by native control though in quite different forms on either end so why the difference the most obvious reason as is well known is that africa had long been part of the general disease pool of the eastern hemisphere old world along with europe and asia though for most of its history it was somewhat peripheral to the main paths of contact and infection the americas being largely though not entirely isolated from those paths for millennia had no exposure to most pathogens and suffered immensely when they were introduced this summary is accurate as far as it goes and identifying it was a major achievement of twentieth century scholarship that continues to be important to understanding the course of modern history but dig a little deeper and the story becomes a bit more complicated american populations weren t wiped out everywhere recent scholarship which i will discuss in a subsequent post drawing on more sophisticated understanding of epidemiology has shown that the story of pandemics sweeping rapidly across continents well in advance of direct european contact isn t really an accurate picture it was sustained contact with multiple old world pathogens that led to the really spectacular population collapses more remote areas were able to recover and even thrive and native populations have increased tremendously in the past 100 years almost everywhere in the western hemisphere now that modern medicine is relatively widely available furthermore introducing diseases across the atlantic in the early days of contact and colonization was actually pretty difficult the basic issue here is that most of the most virulent pathogens when introduced to the americas had by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries become endemic childhood diseases in europe endemic doesn t mean mild they killed lots and lots of people throughout this period but the vast majority of those people within europe were children who had no immunity the children who got these diseases and survived typically ended up with long lasting sometimes lifetime immunity as adults those who grew up to be the explorers sailors and soldiers who made initial contact with the new world were unlikely to be carrying any infectious pathogens on the...
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