What have I been doing?

OK, so I spend six months in Oxford and I barely blog about it. Sorry folks, but I got a bit distracted by the real ales, beautiful countryside, and watching my kid become bilingual.

I did get a fair amount done, however, and most of my experiences ended up on Gadling. As you can see from this picture, I hiked the length of Hadrian's Wall. I started out the day after my 40th birthday as sort of a midlife crisis. I figured walking 84 miles across England would be a nice way of celebrating my imminent decrepitude. I wrote a whole series about it for Gadling.

I also visited Avebury, which got written up, along with a friend's photos, as my 101st post for Gadling. I've also ranted about Americans hiding behind the Canadian flag, studying at Oxford, medieval churches and lost villages, and Alien Big Cats. Plus a whole bunch more. So yeah, I've been busy on the blogosphere.

So what's coming up in the next month on Gadling? A tour of Jesse James sights in Missouri, and a weekend in St. Louis. What's coming up on this blog? More musings about life in Oxford and what it's like to divide your time between three different countries. Stay tuned.

Ichthyoelectroanalgesia!

A few weeks ago a fellow writer invited me to tag along to a talk at Oxford University Press about the Oxford English Dictionary, the most complete English dictionary in the world. One of the editors told us about how they put the dictionary together and all the work that goes into it. They have hundreds of readers around the world who scour through newspapers, magazines, and books looking for new words or new uses for old ones. An interesting detail was that the editors reject the majority of words people send in because they are too new, too rare, too regional, or just plain misused.

I gave them a word that probably will get rejected. Ichthyoelectroanalgesia! If you know your Classical languages, you know this means using an electric fish as a pain reliever. I came across the word in an archaeology article about old Roman and Parthian medical recipes, including one that involved pressing an area of your body that's giving you trouble against an electric fish. Apparently the low charge will relieve the pain. No, I haven't tried it.

This word stuck with me for a couple of years until I got swept up in the zine movement of the mid Nineties. Actually it started way before that, so I was hitting the second wave. Anyway, I produced my own zine dedicated to travel and archaeology and called it, you guessed it, Ichthyoelectroanalgesia. I only did four issues before I went on to other things, but I had a distribution of about two hundred and met lots of interesting people through the mail, including some I still correspond with.

I Googled my beloved word and found that two archives have copies of my zine. I've passed into zine history! One is for science fiction fanzines, which is strange since mine wasn't an sf zine, but I did trade with some sf fanzines so maybe that's where they got it from.

I'm also very proud I got to stump an editor at the OED with a word. :-)

New Pyramid Found in Egypt

It seems strange to say, but archaeologists have discovered a previously unknown pyramid in Egypt. Only the base has survived, standing to a height of five meters and completely covered by the desert sands of Saqqara, on the outskirts of Cairo. This brings the number of known pyramids in Egypt to 118.

It was probably the tomb of the mother of King Teti (ca. 2323-2291 BC) founder of the Sixth Dynasty. Women's pyramids were much smaller than the big pharoahs' pyramids we're used to seeing in pictures and on television. When I was in Egypt back in 1991 I crawled around in a couple. They'd crumbled enough that I could worm my way between the blocks and get into the interior.

After I got out of one an Egyptian said, "You shouldn't do that. There are scorpions in there."

Ooops. I guess Anubis didn't want me yet.

The BBC has a cool slideshow about it here.

African Religion Survived Among American Slaves

The Archaeology News feed, which you can see at the righthand column of this blog, had an interesting article recently about a 300 year-old African "spirit bundle" found in Maryland. The bundle of sand and clay contained bits of metal and a stone axe, and may be the earliest evidence of slaves preserving their West African religion after being brought to the New World. Bundles like it are still used in West Africa to ward off evil spirits.

The archaeology of slavery has only recently become an area of interest to American archaeologists (who are predominantly white) and hopefully this important find will lead to more digs. An excellent book on African survivals in African-American culture is Flash of the Spirit by Robert Farris Thompson. It's well worth a read.

Hiking a Roman Highway

I'm way late posting this, but a month ago a friend of mine named Shawn (known locally as Shawn Numero Dos) and I went hiking in the mountains north of Madrid. For one long stretch we followed an old Roman highway built by the Emperor Vespasian, who reined from 69 to 79 AD. We started at the town of Cercedilla, checking out the old Roman bridge pictured above. This thing is two thousand years old and still takes traffic it wasn't even designed to support! Judging from the architecture it looks like it was reinforced in the late Medieval or Renaissance period, but still. . .

Then it was on to the Roman highway. Much of it was repaved in the 16th century, but I'm sure some of these worn old stones are original. It was a thrill to be walking the same route the Romans did, seeing the same landscape and possibly stepping on the same stones.

It was a beautiful day but the heat of summer was already starting, so we were glad to get further up into the mountains. We went across a long exposed stretch and then descended into a nice lush forest. We'd left the Roman road by this time, but enjoyed the coolness of the forest.

Then we came across this little waterfall, and right next to it a stone that had naturally weathered into a perfect chair. In England these are called "Druid's Thrones" and some do, indeed, look like they've been altered to make them more comfortable. I don't think this one had been altered, but I could easily see some wandering holy man taking up residence next to this little stream, sitting on his natural throne and making prophecies to the local yokels. So of course, that's just what I did.
I predict I'll go back sometime. . .
If you want to go yourself, there are maps here and here.

Archaeology News at Grizzled Old Traveler

If you check out the right-hand column you'll see I've added a news feed from the excellent website Archaeology News. Although I haven't dug in the earth for almost a decade now, I still like to keep up with what's going on in the field. Most of the links from this news feed go to newspaper and magazine articles, so they're good for the layman as well as the former professional. I kind of feel bad that I no longer keep up with the academic journals, but there are only 24 hours in a day. I do dip into them occasionally, though.

Oh, and I've added a subscription feed to Grizzled Old Traveler, if you don't like to type in URLs! I did the same with my other blog, Midlist Writer.

An Aztec Death Whistle

Today on CNN, there's an amazing article about a guy who reproduces the sounds of ancient Aztec musical instruments, including a couple of skull whistles found in the bony clutches of a skeleton. There's a link from the article to the sounds of this whistle and several others. The death whistle is downright creepy, sounding like a screaming woman. Other whistles in the shapes of animals sound a lot like those animals. The frog whistle is spot on. The researcher, Roberto Velazquez, is a mechanical engineer. He makes a really good point when he says that archaeologists tend to look at ancient cultures like they were deaf and dumb. The ancient world was full of sounds and music, and these were as much a part of their daily lives as they are today. Cool article, and a cool line of research that's broadening our knowledge of the past.