You are browsing the archive for archaeology Archives - Magma Cum Laude.
9 May 2014
Edinburgh: Visiting Rosslyn Chapel
On my last day in Edinburgh, Dr. Caco and I took a bus ride south of the town to Roslin. Those of you who are Dan Brown fans might remember the last scenes of The Da Vinci Code movie, where the two heroes end their search for the Holy Grail ” at Rosslyn Chapel.
1 March 2014
“Is the volcano erupting yet?” (A quick Pompeii review)
So, you may have seen me mention on Twitter that I was planning on seeing Pompeii this week – and I did, properly fortified with some nice cider at a nearby pub beforehand. I’m not going to give you the full rundown of the science and history of the eruption, because David Bressan is already working on a series of excellent posts about that. Instead, I’m going to treat this as a quick-and-snarky guide to whether you want the movie to feature at your next “bad geology movie night”.
30 June 2012
Accretionary Wedge #47: Nostalgia for notetaking
Jennifer at Fuzzy Science is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge, and this time we’re talking about field notes. For me, this is a pretty nostalgic discussion, since I haven’t been out do to field work for my own research since 2010. I’ve been on field trips since then, certainly, but notetaking sometimes gets sidelined in favor of other trip activities when you’re not doing it for work or research. Also, my research right now involves a lot of time dealing with computer simulations, so I still take lab notes, but they’re not like recording a field experience.
5 July 2010
Bandelier National Monument
One of the neat things about Los Alamos is that Bandelier National Monument is only a few minutes away. The volcanic tuff at Bandelier erupted from the Valles caldera about 1.25 million years ago, but it’s not just a site of geologic interest; it’s also an archaeological site. Bandelier refers to Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, a Swiss-American archaeologist who conducted research into the history of the Pueblo people in the American …
25 November 2009
Flatirons ≠ pyramids, but they’re still cool
I’ve noticed a few stories recently about Sam Osmanagich, a Bosnian archaeology enthusiast who claims to have discovered several 12,000-year-old ‘pyramids’ in the Balkans. The whole ‘pyramid’ saga mainly concerns a case of mistaken identity – the pyramids are just hills – and Indiana-Jones-style archaeology (by which I mean not very methodical, scientific or objective) on Osmanagich’s part, and you can read more about it at the links below: National …
9 January 2009
Geology and the movies again…or “Why Disney’s Pocahontas Briefly Makes Me Want To Scream At The TV”
This is actually an older post I’ve been sitting on, but I wanted to get something posted this week, even if it’s not about current events. I love watching Disney movies, but occasionally the scientist gets in the way of the nostalgic enjoyment. I was reminded of this when “The Virginia Company” came up on my music player’s shuffle list. Pocahontas, which came out in 1995, is set in an …
1 January 2009
Go for the art, stay for the volcanoes
Happy New Year! Here’s to a successful, productive, safe, and above all fun new year. I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been added to a list of the 100 Best Blogs for Earth Science Scholars, which is quite an honor, and especially since I’m in such great company. Seems like a good way to start off the year to me! A few days ago I went to Washington DC to get …
9 June 2008
Geoarchaeology: Footprints in ash and the first people in North America
National Geographic News has published an article about the results of new dating methods used on footprints in volcanic ash in Mexico. The quarry where the footprints were discovered in 2003 is located in Mexico’s Valsequillo Basin (and near the Cerro Toluquilla volcano). The footprints were originally dated in 2005, when an international team of geoarchaeologists concluded that the footprints had been created more than 40,000 years ago. (Image from …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.