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Pantagathus

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  1. Pantagathus
    ...and that bang was made by me hitting a wet, hard bathroom floor...
     
    Yep, Saturday I slipped in a hotel bathroom and hurt myself pretty bad; dislocated a shoulder (may have broken it, getting it x-rayed this afternoon), smashed my face & broke one of my teeth.
     
    The pain has not been fun. Can't get to the dentist just yet as mine is out recovering from surgery of his own.
     
    At least I was able to see my regular doctor yesterday and now have a decent prescription for the pain.
     
    Here's to hoping that 2007 is a considerable improvement on 2006...
  2. Pantagathus

    Almost There #2

    By Pantagathus,

    Ok, so I just had a brief hick-up as it is now discovered that the new owner and permit requestor is not Hanson Aggregates but a company named Buckhorn, LLC but that cloud has passed without event...
     
    Here is the a copy of the e-mail that the Archaeologist from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History sent to the South Carolina Department of Health-Mining:
     
    Marianna,
     
    I just received a couple of emails concerning a very important/significant sounding site that I believe may be within the permit area for the Lynches River Quarry Mine. I reviewed the permit application back in November, with a letter to you dated November 28, 2005, where I recommended survey of the property.
     
    I note that we have received a cultural resources survey report (1/12/06) from Brockington and Associates. In quickly looking at that report, they found no sites, but this information newly received indicates that there IS site within the tract. I urge you to work with the applicant and their consultant to use the information I am providing and revisit the area to try to locate this site. I imagine the informant would be happy to help in whatever way he can.
     
    See the rough site location on the map (link below). I will also forward another email thread to you that has a lot more information about the site, though the thread is somewhat hard to follow. Bottom line, though, is that this seems to be a Paleoindian site (amongst the earliest known inhabitants in North America) in an area that may have largely avoided disturbance. It could be a real jewel of a site. Please do what you can to follow up on this and make sure this project area is surveyed.
     
    Would you like for me to follow this with a formal letter, or will this suffice for now? I wanted to let eveyone know as soon as possible about this new information. Thanks very much and call if you have questions.
     
    Valerie Marcil
    Staff Archaeologist and Lowcountry Regional Representative
    South Carolina Department of Archives and History
    8301 Parklane Road
    Columbia, SC 29223
    Phone (803) 896-6173
    Fax (803) 896-6167
  3. Pantagathus

    Almost There...

    By Pantagathus,

    Here is a string of e-mails from the last 24 hours in regards to my archaeological crusade:
     
    #1: Sean:
     
    I have contacted a former student of mine, Chad Long, who now works for the SC SHPO. Being an insider and one who may feel some indebtedness, Chad will, hopefully, puruse your request!
     
    Let me know how it all pans out.
    Tom Whyte
     
    #2: Sean,
     
    Tom Whyte forwarded your email to him regarding an archaeological site in SC. Our office might be able to help. Please send me the general location of the site on a topographic map (try topozone.com or maptech.com) so that I can query our GIS for recorded sites.
     
    Thanks for your interest and concern.
     
    Chad C. Long
    Archaeologist/GIS Manager
    SC State Historic Preservation Office
    8301 Parklane Road
    Columbia, SC 29223
    Office: (803) 896-6181
    Fax: (803) 896-6167
    email: Long@scdah.state.sc.us
     
    #3: Hello to all,
    Chad forwarded all of your correspondence regarding this site to me since I review Chesterfield County. As it turns out I reviewed a permit for a mine in this area back in November and recommended a survey. AND, I just got a cultural resources report from that survey in last week. I have not formally reviewed it yet, but taking a quick look, I see that they identified no sites. SO, I have written both South Carolina Department of Health-Mining and the consultant that did the survey and requested a revisit to attempt to locate the site based on the information provided by Sean. I forwarded all the emails so I am hoping that Sean gets contacted to help relocate the site. The timing in this couldn't have been much better. Thanks very much to all. I hope we can relocate the site.
     
    Valerie Marcil
    Staff Archaeologist
    South Carolina Department of Archives and History
    8301 Parklane Road
    Columbia, SC 29223
    Phone (803) 896-6173
    Fax (803) 896-6167
     
    Needless to say I am overwhelmed by the tenacity of these professionals to assist me site unseen (no pun intended!)
  4. Pantagathus
    I really need to do an exhaustive study on this issue...
     
    http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/celtic/ekeltoi/vol...s/fig04_240.jpg
     
    As you can see, this image is from an academic source on the Celtiberians. The caption for the photo claims it to be Numatian from the 1st Century BC. Well, that may have been the location and strata where it finally laid, but that is Anatolin Greek Geometric if I've ever seen it. The 2 vulture motif goes back to days of Catal Huyuk...
     
    I really hate seeing these things not sorted out properly...
  5. Pantagathus

    Artifact Context...

    By Pantagathus,

    "Artifact Context" - This is an issue that has always nagged at me. However, while researching one of my current lines of investigation, the whole concept of artifact context and how it's used (and abused?) has begun to really bother me.
     
    This unease is by no means a mark of me joining the 'Orthodoxy Disparagers' club... however, in regards to common practices related to artifact context I really have to take issue.
     
    I've tried to find recent papers on the subject (because it's been a while since I went over this topic in college) but it's not widely discussed outside tightly established archaeological circles. My problems right now mainly boil down to these issues:
     
    1. Seeming lack of accounting (or failure to account) for human collector impulse when giving a date(range) to a given strata
     
    2. Limited efforts associated with segregating out possible out of context artifacts from a particular stratum
     
    3. Pre-Carbon14 timidity in dating artifacts much beyond the era of written record (what I call the Early 1st Millennia BC pile-up); the problem is exacerbated now that artifacts are truly out of context: in museums & private collections. Obviously, this leads to potentially corrupt dates being unverifiably orthodox in the mind of the community.
     
    4. Specialization barriers degrading the abilities of excavators to recognize out of context artifacts.
     
    5. Arbitrary rejection of Carbon 14 dates that fall outside expected ranges.
     
    I get so frustrated with these things, even with archaeologists and researchers that I highly respect. To give you a couple of examples of things I've come across lately:
     
    - In Barry Cunliffe's the Fantastic Voyage of Pytheas the Greek he discusses the offshore (near Cornwall) find of a sunken cargo of tin ingots. When the timber remains around the ingots were C-14 dated, they yielded a date that placed them in the late 5th Millennia BC (~4000 BC); He said the investigators were disappointed and dismissed the timbers as not belonging to a ship but remains of a Neolithic coastal forest...
     
    *Second*
     
    - In the photo gallery section of Lionel Casson's book Ships & Seamanship of the Ancient World there are a number of Greek
  7. Pantagathus
    Instead of the usual video on the screen behind the performer projecting what is on stage, Beck had an elaborate marionette stage recreation (even with their own working stage screen behind them).
     
    Every thing that occured on stage during the show was completely mimicked by the puppets, down to the smallest detail. Not least of which was when the band sat down for dinner on stage while Beck did a couple of acoustic songs...
     
    The whole thing was clever, artistic, awesome and entirely hilarious.
     
    What a great freakin show.
  8. Pantagathus
    As you all know I have been completely inactive from the UNRV community for roughly a year and a half. When I say completely inactive, I mean it in the most literal sense. I haven't even kept up with friends that I used to often talk to outside of the site. Specifically Tom Isabella aka 'Gaius Octavius'...
     
    He called a couple of times last year when I was completely indisposed and his messages were increasingly distraught in that he felt he had offended me and had lost my friendship. This of course was not the case but for a variety of now seemingly ridiculous reasons I never did return his calls and let him know.
     
    I got the note from his wife Jean in late August last year about his horrible trip to ICU where they drained a liter and a half of fluid out of his heart (caused by metastatic adeno-carcinoma) and the loss of his left leg to gangrene because his circulation had pretty much shut down there.
     
    I sent my regards to him then and knew that he had made it home (under hospice care) in early September last year but my own family was going through a very rough time then and I did not follow up with Jean about Tom
  9. Pantagathus

    Brassica

    By Pantagathus,

    As a few of you already know, I am an unashamed beer aficionado. My love for beer coupled with my love for ancient history and literature often motivates me to search for anecdotes within ancient sources that deal with the sublime beverage.
     
    Recently I came across something that I honestly admit, I did not know before. I have no doubt that Pertinax is well versed in this but apparently, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all highly esteemed cabbage as the number one remedy for hangovers.
     
    What is rather funny is that until quite recently, most
  11. Pantagathus
    Does our vainglorious Emperor not know that perception IS reality in most cases?
     
    It seems not, when the Pew Research poll indicated that quite a few Europeans think the US has become a dangerous loose cannon, he goes and tells them they are absurd.
     
    Way to go buddy! That's bound to make them rethink their ill conceived outlook! Popularity polls should start heading for 99% in a matter of days!
  13. Pantagathus
    In the Blue -vs- Red Thread, I treatised a mantra. The following is more specifically what I was refering to (written in the 2nd Century BC):
     
    "Thus the only hope still surviving unimpaired is in themselves, and to this they resort, making the state a democracy instead of an oligarchy and assuming the responsibility for the conduct of affairs.
     
    Then as long as some of those survive who experienced the evils of oligarchical dominion, they are well pleased with the present form of government, and set a high value on equality and freedom of speech.
     
    But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error.
     
    So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence.
     
    For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.
     
    Sound vaguely familiar?
  14. Pantagathus
    I am going to see Beck at the Tabernacle here in Atlanta tonight. :pimp:
     
    I just happened to be lucky enough to get a pre-sale invitation and was on the ball enough to buy tickets at 10:00:01 AM on the morning they went on sale & 00:00:05 seconds (or whatever) before they sold out.
     
    I am extremely pumped. I have only seen the funky little white man once; at Bumbershoot in Seattle in 1997. That was awesome & I have no doubt that this will be too. He is quite the entertainer.
  15. Pantagathus
    While in communion with Hermes Diaktoros during the recent consummation of a vow, I have come to learn from the blessed conductor that a recent soul under his charge was none other than our own esteemed Neapolitain: Don Tomasso! :stretcher:
     
    But alas! His poor wretched shade is stuck at the Plutoneum with no coin on his tongue! :nopity:
     
    I am gathering up my gear hoping Persephone sends welcome, and I will be off to retrieve the ill prepaired Da
  16. Pantagathus
    So, it has now been almost 24 hours that the Perseus-Tufts database has been corrupted and non-functional.
     
    I am like a diabetic without insulin, a manic-depressive without lithium, a colapsed lung patient without a respirator... You get the drift.
     
    I continue to promise myself that if I ever have enough cash laying around to become philanthropic; Perseus Tufts will get it.
  17. Pantagathus
    Yesterday I posted an image in the Gallery of an Paleo-Indian spear point I found in South Carolina in 1991. Unfortunately during the Holidays I have come to learn that a portion of the land where I found that and other artifacts is in grave danger...
     
    I will let this e-mail I just sent to the Director of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology explian:
     
    Dear Dr. Leader,
     
    I am writing to you and the SCIAA in general with an urgent plea for help.
     
    There is an endangered piece of land off US Highway 601, adjacent to the Lynches River on the border of Chesterfield and Lancaster Counties where I found Late Pleistocene artifacts almost 15 years ago. The land in question used to be part of a friend
  18. Pantagathus
    Amazingly enough, Dr. Leader replied yesterday afternoon after I had left my office:
     
    ** High Priority **
     
    Hi Sean,
     
    Please write me a formal letter outlining every bit of information you have concerning the archaeological resources on site. Make sure that you include the total number and forms of artifacts collected from the property. Photographs would not hurt. Understand that a single point out of context will not cut it. Please contact Dr. Whyte to write a letter of support for the protection of the property, as he has seen the artifacts, is familiar with the area and been in contact with you. Please make sure that all letters are clear and to the point. I will double check the site files and see what we may already have for the area. Mining operations fall within a form of sec. 106. I will be in contact with the SHPO to see what, if anything, is possible at this very late date.
     
    Please send me the formal letter USPS Priority with Signature Requested - send me an electronic copy soonest.
     
    All the best,
     
    Jon
     
    Dr. Jonathan Leader
    SC State Archaeologist
    SCIAA
    University of South Carolina
    1321 Pendleton Street
    Columbia, SC 29208
     
    P.S. If you know of any other sites, now would be a good time to make sure that they are part of the state record.
     
    This is going to be a serious uphill battle but exciting nonetheless!!! (I love his last comment even if it's slightly chastizing...)
  20. Pantagathus
    Recieved this from Dr. Whyte just now:
     
    Dear Sean:
     
    I would be happy to send a letter to Jon Leader. The pictures you sent are of artifacts dating (mostly) to the mid-Holocene (Middle Archaic, Morrow Mountain points). I must have seen others if I said Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene. What kind of landform is the site on? Has it been plowed? If so, do you think there may be preserved parts of the site below the plow zone? What is the estimated site size? These things may halp me argue the case for preservation.
     
    I applaud your concern for preserving the site! It makes me feel like my teaching has an occasional positive affect!
     
    Tom Whyte
     
    Interesting that I finally have a more specific 'style' nomenclature ("Morrow Mt Point") which I've been lacking. Due to that it's been hard to verify my memory until now. Whyte's expertice seems to have been honed in the last 13 years! Now I just have to get up to the land and get pictures!
  21. Pantagathus

    Moravian Sugar Cake

    By Pantagathus,

    So this past Saturday we had a baby shower for my sister and it was a wonderful occasion because we had all siblings together (me, my older brother & his family, & my 2 sisters); which won
  22. Pantagathus
    So the other weekend I (as well as some other folks) went up to Black Mountain, NC to visit my sister. We spent most of Saturday doing some Christmas shopping around the town shops.
     
    In one of the antique shops we went into, there was a little box of stuff on the front counter that I usually don't bother to look at in a store: 'Arrowheads'
     
    I have quite a few, but they have all been found by me or in a few cases my great uncle. I've never really felt driven to pick through a box and pay money for them. Lately however, I learned a lot more about differentiating styles from certain periods of prehistory; so, when I saw the box that day I was curious to look through it and see if I could find some really old points (>10,000 years old).
     
    For the most part I was pretty disappointed as almost all of the points were broken. However, I finally found one fragment that really caught my attention...
     
    It was made of a beautiful, translucent, green stone and comes across as more of a ceremonial piece than a functional one; as the tip was worked in a rounded manor instead of a point.
     
    I would say that it was what an archaeologist would consider an amulet or charmstone artifact. Furthermore, the reason it seems for the artifact not being whole has to do with evidence that an attempt was made to put a hole in it, probably for use in a necklace. Whether done by the original workman or in modern times I have no way of knowing.
     
    The main reason I was so fascinated with this artifact has to do with a tenuous connection to similar charmstones found in Near Eastern & Anatolian Mesolithic communities and Asian (Chinese) Neolithic ones... Apparently, small greenstone ax heads used as amulets are recognized as a sort of ancient sun worshipping talisman. In fact, I've read that in the Anatolian case it's connected to the pre-historic, Pelasgian Zeus.
     
    I was so overwhelmed by the piece that I didn't hesitate one bit to buy it. I can't really describe it but it really does exude a sort of power and I find myself unconsciously compelled to touch it and keep it close to me.
     
    It's really quite fascinating. I wish I could thank the ancient man who made it.

  24. Pantagathus
    The Mercurius mosaic had run it's course. Though I still really like my first avatar I used here; the Ulysses (Odysseus) cameo, I needed a change.
     
    That being said, I think I've found a keeper with my new one. Given the motif (which I hope all will recognize...) coupled with the meaning of my forum name I find its ironic humor quite appropriate.
     
    On a different note, I'm reading Lionel Casson's book Travel in the Ancient World currently and it is superb. I will submit a lengthy review to the site but I will say here that I think it should be in everyone's library who is interested in ancient history. It was first written in 1974 and is still perhaps the most diffinitive work on the subject.
     
    It's almost 2 book in one as he covers the ancient explorers quite thoroughly as well as general travel in the Bronze Age up to Late Roman period.
     
    On an even more different note, I pulled my thigh muscle really bad last week after it had just healed from 2 weeks ago. I've never had a pulled/torn muscle hurt that bad. I've been loopy on muscle relaxers since Friday and it still hurts; it is getting better though.
  25. Pantagathus

    Next Tuesday...

    By Pantagathus,

    Well the moment of truth is at hand. I'm meeting the Cultural Survey Consultant and the Chesterfield County Archaeologist at the site next Tuesday the 31st.
     
    But the consultant's professional pride seems to be on shaky ground, he & his client are a little prickly:
     
    Sean, we are arranging for a meeting up at the site on 31 January 2006, which is next Tuesday. Can you make it then? Would you be able to bring the artifacts along? Also, our client asks how you came to know that development was approaching? And, what are the names of your friend and his father, who owned the property when you first visited and found the site?
     
    In an earlier email, you mentioned wanting to return to the site to take more photos and further document the area. The present owners (our client) want to remind you that they now own this property, and request that you provide a written request to access the property.
     
    Andrew
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