Author: Jackson

Anchor Update

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Back in October, members of The Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck Project raised a grapnel (seen in the foreground to the right) from the wreck of Blackbeard’s ship. I dropped an e-mail to the Project asking if data from an experiment measuring iron corrosion on another anchor influenced the decision to raise the grapnel now.

Wendy Welsh, QAR Conservator, kindly responded:

Actually the data from the in situ monitoring project did not influence our decision to raise the grapnel anchor.  The grapnel anchor was loose from the main ballast pile and to avoid further impacts from strong storm currents the decision was made to recover the anchor. A report about our week long field expedition will be posted on our home page soon.

Remember, kids: jacksonkuhl.com — your one-stop source for pirate archaeology news.

Photo from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources Rick Allen, Nautilus Productions.

Lights Go Out on Killer Comet Theory

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Remember that comet that struck Canada 12,900 years ago and killed the woolly mammoths? Yeah, the thing is, about that:

The proponents of the theory said that they had found evidence of a comet impact, including magnetic microspherules, in the earth overlying 10 Clovis-age archaeological sites across North America.

University of Wyoming archaeologist Ted Surovell and several colleagues attempted to repeat the study and came up with startlingly different results.

…

Using the same methods, Surovell and his co-researchers were “unable to find high concentrations of magnetic particles and spherules” – even at the two sites previously studied by the original researchers

As noted previously, the comet hypothesis, while generating hubbub on the Googletubes, never explained how the strike caused megafauna extinctions. We’re left where we’ve always been: at the end of the Pleistocene, when some large animals died off, others lived on, and we have little explanation why any of it happened.

Photo courtesy of Noel Munford of the Palmerston North Astronomical Society, New Zealand (via NASA).

Hoist the Anchor

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Marine archaeologists have raised a small anchor from the site believed to be the wreck of Blackbeard’s ship:

Archaeologists and conservators with the state Department of Cultural Resources say the grapnel was at risk of washing away after nearly 300 years in the sea and might not weather possible storms until next year, when a full-scale expedition is planned.

Since last fall, The Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck Project has been using another anchor, still in situ, to measure iron corrosion at the site and thereby draw an overall picture of the stability of the ship’s iron artifacts. Have to wonder if measurements from that experiment influenced the archaeologists’ decision to raise the grapnel now.

I can’t wait to read about what they find next season. Screw Ardi; for my money, this is the biggest thing to hit archaeology since Whydah was found.

Also: If you’re in or around Raleigh, don’t miss the Knights of the Black Flag exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History. Looks terrific.

Chabon on Lego: You’re Doing It Wrong!

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Thank goodness Michael Chabon is around to save us from the evil machinations of Lego:

In the world of Legos, what I did discover is that my kids were taking these beautiful, gorgeous, incredibly restrictive predetermined Legos Star Wars play sets — and yeah, they really wanted it to be put together just the way the box showed it. I don’t think it occurred to them you’d want to do anything else with it. But inevitably, over time, the things kind of crumble and get destroyed and fall apart and then, once they do, the kids take all those pieces, and they create these bizarre, freak hybrids — of pirates and Indians and Star Wars and Spider-Man. Lego-things all getting mashed up together into this post-modern Lego stew. They figure out a way, despite the best efforts of corporate retail marketing.

What a douche. Lego Group doesn’t care what you make with their product — they just want you to buy it. In fact, they expect their customers to whip together a “post-modern Lego stew.” If Lego’s goal was to ensure the toy being kept in stasis, the official Lego magazines wouldn’t contain alternate builds — that is, different designs you can fashion with the bricks in a particular set or by combining those from several sets. Their console games wouldn’t contain unlockable minifigure creators where you can mix characters from DC Comics and LucasFilm to assemble unique avatars. Hell, if their goal was fossilization, Lego wouldn’t even be in the business of making a construction system. They’d just sell a finished truck or Death Star and be done with it.

There’s no downside to Lego. If a child wants to build what’s on the box, then he’s learning to read manuals and follow instructions, a good skill to have if he ever wants to bake a cake or fix a car. If he wants to disregard the box and construct something on his own, then he’s exploring the same process involved in writing a novel or designing a piece of furniture. It’s impossible to go wrong.

Chabon looks at his kids and sees subversion of corporate hegemony, a reflection not of his children and their actions but rather of his own common political mindset that consumes the fruits of capitalism while complaining the whole time he’s been tricked or oppressed. The rest of us parents — including those of us who grew up with Lego — watch our children playing and see gears moving behind clear eyes.

Cost World

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An international expedition has discovered giant monitor lizards and 40 unidentified species of rats, bats, frogs, and fish tucked inside the crater of an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea. Photo essay of some of the critters here.

Just as interesting is the story of the expedition’s logistics. With the volcano situated deep in the rainforest 15 miles from the closest village, the explorers first had to drop some Adam Smith on the residents:

They also had to explain to local hunter-gatherers the concept of paying them to help establish a base camp near the village. Elders, trackers and boatmen were among 25 local people employed by the international team of 25 scientists and filmmakers, who also required a cook, a medic and a climbing expert to help them scale trees.

Concerned not to eat the village out of food, the scientists employed local people to plant sweet potatoes and a spinach-like crop in preparation for their expedition in January, reducing the amount of corned beef and rice flown in via helicopters, the only means of transport to the village.

I once heard an archaeologist say the reason more work wasn’t done at Meroë — the land of the Black Pharaohs — was racism. The real answer is cost and logistics. One of my frustrations with the portrayal of Egyptian archaeology on television is that camera crews only show the pyramids at Giza or the Valley of the Kings, never venturing into the oases or past the First Cataract of the Nile. To do so would involve leaving behind the convenience of Cairo and Luxor, which is another way of saying they’d have to spend more money. Now imagine scraping together the funds to delve into the deep deserts of Sudan without the profit motive of prime time behind you.

It’s telling that BBC camerafolks accompanied the Papua New Guinea expedition. Not that I begrudge them; if anything, universities should do away with their grant-writing seminars and instead school their field scientists in how to pitch TV execs. Maybe then we’d see more Meroë in the news.

Froggy photo by Ulla Lohmann for the BBC.