Field School Opportunity: Jersey, Channel Islands on Ice Age Island

Morning Ancient Diggers. I was contacted about a wonderful opportunity for those of you interested in digs pertaining to prehistory. The archaeological fieldschool in Jersey, Channel Islands is located at Les Varines, a Magdalenian settlement site approximately 15,000 years old. To date, the site has yielded over 5,000 stone artefacts, preserved animal bone, paved areas and, most exceptionally, engraved stones which have recently gained international media coverage and was featured in BBC2’s Digging for Britain.

© Jersey Heritage

This year the field school is available to students from external universities. They have five placements available for the 2016 season, and the deadline is right around the corner, May 25th.

Accommodation is camping but there are modern, clean, indoor WC/showering facilities, dining and socialising spaces. Meals are catered for by their project cook and pick up/ delivery to the airport is included. The total fee is $1,450* (excluding travel costs) covering two weeks of time.

If you are interested in joining the dig on Ice Age Island this summer, please send a brief email providing a bit of information about yourself, your relevant interest/experience and/or a CV to:

Dr Matt Pope (UCL Institute of Archaeology) email: m.pope@ucl.ac.uk.

In your email please specify whether you are interested in Field Season 1 (July 10 – July 23) or Field Season 2 (July 24th – August 6th) or whether you are able to do both.

The application deadline is June 25, 2016).

For more information or to sign up, visit the Project Page for La Mancha Prehistoric

Following Johns Hopkins Egyptologist Betsy Bryan at Mut Temple

Johns Hopkins Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her team of students, artists, conservators and photographers have returned to their investigation of Mut Temple, focusing their attention on the area south of the temple’s Sacred Lake. Bryan and her crew are resuming their excavation in Luxor, Egypt, and are sharing their work via “Hopkins in Egypt Today,” their popular digital diary offering a virtual window into day-to-day life on an archaeological dig. New posts will appear through the end of January at www.jhu.edu/egypttoday.

In January 2011 Dr. Betsy Bryan returned to the Temple of Mut precinct in Luxor, Egypt with nine Johns Hopkins students. For the past four years excavation has focused within the temple itself and around the perimeter of the sacred lake, called the Isheru. This year Dr. Bryan and her team returns to the area behind (south of) the lake where between 2002 and 2006 industrial areas for baking, brewing, faience and ceramic production, were discovered. The area behind the lake contains a large open area without standing buildings. At the far south where the mud brick temenos wall separated the precinct from the secular city of ancient Thebes an area was investigated in 2004-05. In 2005 Dr. Elaine Sullivan identified a 25th Dynasty storage building of mud brick in the vicinity. This year work continues to the east of this area, beginning where a slight rise in ground level exists. Likewise excavation squares are placed directly south of the industrial area excavated earlier.~Hopkins in Egypt Today

Edited from The JHU Gazette

Ngangas: Who Are They and What Are They Capable Of?

Upon reading "Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central African Republic", I was posed to very important questions. If you've never heard of this article, and I'm sure many of you have not, I'll clue you in to the author's background.

Dr. Arthur C Lehman has extensively researched the ngangas, who are traditional healers, acting as the source for Aka Pygmy hunters and their horticultural neighbors, the Ngando of Central African Republic. Lehman traces the mystical powers of the nganga and their ability to reduce tensions in villages, thereby punishing Ngando who have caused the hunters harm.