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EXPLORATOR
Watching the Web for News of the Ancient World
Volume 3, Issue 16-- August 20, 2000
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Editor's note: Depending on your mail software, some urls may wrap
(especially those from the Telegraph) which will require you to rebuild the
url at your end; if you get a 'file not found', check to see if the url
wrapped on you. Most urls should be active for at least eight hours from
the time of 'publicatio'.
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Editorial mea culpa I: in last week's edition, I appear to have forgotten to acknowledge numerous 'heads up' (something which, alas, I do far too often) and I apologize to all those I neglected to credit. Although I've deleted their original messages, in the hopes this won't happen again I'll begin each issue with an "acknowledgements" section.
Editorial mea culpa II: also in last week's edition (boy, I must have had a severe brain cramp), I noted that some "bigwig at Hewlett-Packard" was donating quite a large sum of cash to further the efforts of archaeologists working at Herculaneum. As numerous intrepid readers pointed out to me, that "bigwig" is actually David Packard, head of the Packard Humanities Institute and someone to whom the classics profession owes a great deal of gratitude for, among other things, the PHI Latin cdrom project.
Today's issue was produced while wearing suitable quantities of sackcloth and ashes:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Gratias vobis ago for the heads up to: Charles Jones, William Kerr, Michael Hendry, and Caroline Velzian (I hope I didn't leave anyone out!).
THE BIG NEWS
The big news of the week, although ironically one wouldn't know it from the sparse coverage it received, is that a now-deceased scholar appears to have provided a reasonable theory about the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great (and no, he didn't follow snakes to find it):
OLD WORLD NEWS
The discovery of a Neolithic settlement near Derry has garnered a bit of press attention:
Also on the prehistoric front is a somewhat strange article on the 'communist' proclivities of prehistoric humans:
The Times of London has an interesting item on the discovery of an Iron Age woman's remains (the Fox item is a duplicate):
The BBC reports on the reopening of Afghanistan's national museum:
The New York Times has an excellent article on ancient Sardis:
The Irish Times reports on the discovery of an early Christian burial ground, as well as several earlier remains near Laytown:
Xinhua has had numerous reports related to the excavation of a tomb outside Beijing this week. Here's plenty of coverage (this one is apparently being done 'live' on TV today as well):
The Times of London has an interesting item on how dendrochronology has added some important evidence as to why the Mary Rose sank:
Discovery.com has an item on a scholar's claim that Leonardo daVinci fathered a son out of wedlock:
NEW WORLD NEWS
A couple of newspapers have identical stories on how a number of community college students have discovered an important site near Puget Sound:
The Toledo Blade reports on an amateur archaeologist's discoveries in Sheridan Cave:
FoxNews has a report on excavations in Valley Forge National Park:
ANTIQUITIES THEFT IN THE NEWS
On the positive side of things are numerous reports relating to the interception of a large quantity of Israeli (mostly) artifacts destined for the black market (these articles are pretty much the same):
On the negative side of things is an article in Amida, on the large scale theft of artifacts from Iraq:
THE POLITICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY
The dig at Zippori is the focus of an article on the importance of archaeology to both Israeli and Palestinian politics (the following are duplicates of the same story):
Across a couple of ponds, it would appear that several important native American artifacts will not be returned to the peoples claiming them:
CLASSICISTS' CORNER
A couple of items on the 'matriculation' of the 'first online class' should be of interest to some:
The New York Times has a piece on the American English editor of the OED:
Perhaps big news for classicists is an AP wire report making the rounds in numerous newspapers on the Loeb Classical Library's decision to issue unexpurgated translations:
As might be expected in a day where 'gravitas' is being tossed around with incredible frequency, US election coverage has been making plenty of classical allusions (illusions?); here's a sampling:
And just to add some Canadian content, the current battle between Rogers and Quebecor over Videotron is bringing out some semi-classical commentary:
This one looks like it might be worth pursuing: it's a book review about someone who taught classics at Cambridge who apparently perpetuated some sort of "botanical fraud:
A report on preparations of a production of Julius Caesar should be of interest:
WEBSITES
Fans of Neolithic archaeology will be interested in a fairly new online magazine from Germany. Most of the articles are in German (although there is one English one), but all have English summaries:
FOLLOWUPS
Thracian Temple in Bulgaria (it's going to be reburied):
On a couple of occasions we have reported on the discovery of a large cache of Roman coins by a neophyte with a metal detector; it's now payday:
REGULAR FEATURES
CTCWeb's Words of the Week
<url:>
Radio Finland's Nuntii Latini
<url:>
English translation (probably delayed):
<url:>
EXPLORATOR IS ARCHIVED AT:
<url:>
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EXPLORATOR is a weekly newsletter (but posted every two-three days when
there's a lot going on) representing the fruits of the labours of 'media
research division' of The Atrium. Various on-line news and magazine sources
are scoured on a daily basis for news of the ancient world (broadly
construed: practically anything relating to archaeology or history prior to
about 1700 or so is fair game) and when a sufficient number of urls are
gathered (usually a minimum of three stories), they are delivered to your
mailbox free of charge! Those articles that don't expire, plus
supplementary links eventually find a home at:
Commentarium (news articles)
The Rostra (audio files)
A media archive of links of files that have previously appeared in
Commentarium or at the Rostra is currently under construction.
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