Technology Archives - Page 32 of 35

Restoring Israel’s Antiquities

Haaretz has an interesting story this weekend on the work of a ceramics restoration specialist in the Israel Antiquities Authority. Her job is to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Many years before the corruption allegations, something entirely different was uncovered at the Holyland project site in Jerusalem: traces of several ancient communities, including shards of two clay vessels. The piles of potsherds were delivered to the table of Elisheva Kamaisky, a ceramics restoration specialist for the Israel Antiquities Authority, who reconstructed the jugs in a gentle work of piecing together a complex jigsaw puzzle.
“I love the earliest periods because they didn’t use tools then. No two vessels are the same. I’m full of awe in front of their technical abilities. In the Roman period mass production starts, and then if you’ve seen one vessel you’ve seen them all,” she says. “The beautiful thing about ceramics is that the same techniques are used today. True, we have electric furnaces and control the heat better, but the basics are the same in the most ancient jug and the ceramics NASA uses to coat its spaceships.”
Kamaisky is one of the Antiquities Authority’s six-member restoration team who reconstruct objects and implements of the material culture in the country since human habitation began. They receive potsherds, threadbare cloths, metallic weapons, golden coins, delicate glassware and more. Unlike their colleagues in the rest of the world, Israeli law bars them from working with human remains.
Archaeologist Zvika Greenhut says restoration work is important “because it’s the only way you can see the entire picture. For example, in one dig I worked on in Motza we found a room full of pitcher shards. But only when we started piecing them together did we understand that the room couldn’t possibly hold all these vessels. There were two possibilities: Either they were all stored one inside each other, or there were shelves that held them but didn’t survive into our time. It was clearly a storeroom and this means something about that culture.”

The full story is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Restored Iron Age cooking pots, Eretz Israel Museum

Tagged Excavations, Technology

Determining the Origin of Ancient Letters

X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry can help researchers to determine where a letter was written. An analysis of the recently discovered cuneiform tablet from Jerusalem reveals that it was written on local clays. This supports the theory that Jerusalem in the 14th century BC was ruled by kings with an educated class of scribes. From the American Friends of Tel Aviv University:

But Prof. Goren’s process, based on x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, can go much further. Over the years, he has collected extensive data through physical “destructive” sampling of artefacts. By comparing this data to readouts produced by the XRF device, he’s built a table of results so that he can now scan a tablet — touching the surface of it gently with the machine — and immediately assess its clay type and the geographical origin of its minerals.
The tool, he says, can also be applied to coins, ancient plasters, and glass, and can be used on site or in a lab. He plans to make this information widely available to other archaeological researchers.
[…]
Its style suggests that it is a rough and contemporary tablet of the Amarna letters — letters written from officials throughout the Middle East to the Pharaohs in Egypt around 3,500 years ago, pre-biblical times. Using his device, Prof. Goren was able to determine that the letter is made from raw material typical to the Terra Rossa soils of the Central Hill Country around Jerusalem. This determination helped to confirm both the origin of the letter and possibly its sender.
“We believe this is a local product written by Jerusalem scribes, made of locally available soil. Found close to an acropolis, it is also likely that the letter fragment does in fact come from a king of Jerusalem,” the researchers reported, adding that it may well be an archival copy of a letter from King Abdi-Heba, a Jesubite king in Jerusalem, to the Pharaoh in nearby Egypt.

The full release is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Technology

Google Ancient Places

Google is funding a project that will allow you to find books based on time and location.

A University of Southampton researcher is part of a team which has just secured funding from Google to make the classics and other ancient texts easy to discover and access online.
Leif Isaksen at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is working together with Dr Elton Barker at The Open University and Dr Eric Kansa of the University of California-Berkeley on the Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus project, which is one of 12 projects worldwide to receive funding as part of a new Digital Humanities Research Programme funded by Google.
The GAP researchers will enable scholars and enthusiasts worldwide to search the Google Books corpus to find books related to a geographic location and within a particular time period. The results can then be visualised on GoogleMaps or in GoogleEarth.

The full article is here.

HT: Explorator

Tagged Resources, Technology

Computer Deciphers Ancient Language

From National Geographic:

A new computer program has quickly deciphered a written language last used in Biblical times—possibly opening the door to "resurrecting" ancient texts that are no longer understood, scientists announced last week. Created by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the program automatically translates written Ugaritic, which consists of dots and wedge-shaped stylus marks on clay tablets. The script was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria. […] "Traditionally, decipherment has been viewed as a sort of scholarly detective game, and computers weren’t thought to be of much use," study co-author and MIT computer science professor Regina Barzilay said in an email. "Our aim is to bring to bear the full power of modern machine learning and statistics to this problem." The next step should be to see whether the program can help crack the handful of ancient scripts that remain largely incomprehensible. Etruscan, for example, is a script that was used in northern and central Italy around 700 B.C. but was displaced by Latin by about A.D. 100. Few written examples of Etruscan survive, and the language has no known relations, so it continues to baffle archaeologists.

The full story is here and links to other stories can be found via Google. The academic paper on which these stories are based is available at the MIT website (pdf).

Tagged Technology

Weekend Roundup

The first excavation season at Tel Burna has concluded. They had a fantastic season, and they would be most grateful for some support. They’ll have aerial photos taken and posted on the blog next week.

Robert Cargill has written an insightful essay on the “Misuse of Archaeology for Evangelistic Purposes,” specifically with reference to the recent “discovery” of Noah’s Ark.

In his recent Asia Minor Report 9, Mark Wilson (Seven Churches Network) notes that the Black Sea Studies series has been made available online for free by the publisher. In particular, he points to volume 7 as providing useful background on the early Christian communities mentioned in 1 Peter 1:1.

Analysis of the Temple Scroll suggests that it was written at Qumran.

The Israeli army is keeping the ruins of the Samaritan temple closed to the public because they say it is too dangerous. The Samaritans are unhappy because of the entrance fees they could be charging.

The July/August issue of Biblical Archaeology Review is available, and the article on the destruction of Pompeii is online for free. I’m looking forward to reading the article on Jezreel.

The Magdala Center is the Catholic plan for a Galilee pilgrimage center, the “Notre Dame of the Galilee.” They plan to complete excavation of the on-site “synagogue” (see previous post) in one year and the rest of the city in three years.

If you’ve ever taken a series of photos with the intention of stitching them together to create a panorama, you might check out the free Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE).

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Italy, Shephelah, Technology, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Radar Imaging Reveals Hyksos Capital

The Hyksos controlled Egypt from roughly 1650 to 1550 BC and it was likely one of their rulers who was the pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” and put the Israelites in slavery (Exod 1:8). From Discovery News:

Radar imaging in Egypt’s Nile Delta has unveiled the outlines of a buried city that was the stronghold of foreign occupiers some 3,500 years ago, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Monday.
Discovered by a team of Austrian archaeologists in Tell el-Daba in the northeastern Nile Delta, the ruins belong to the southern suburban quarters of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos kings who formed Egypt’s 15th dynasty.
Known as the “rulers of foreign countries” (probably of Asiatic roots), the Hyksos infiltrated Egypt and came to dominate the Nile valley for over a century during the Second Intermediate Period (1664-1569 B.C.).
From their strategic capital, Avaris, these foreign rulers are credited with introducing horse-drawn chariots into Egypt and controlling the lucrative trade routes with the Near East and the Mediterranean world.

The full article is here.

HT: Ferrell Jenkins

Tagged Egypt, Technology