The last part talks about a net used for executions... was their idea of a Public execution trapping someone in a net and beating them to death with a blunt mace?
British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
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Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#22Man, archeology is hard , but this one, with all the upside-down writing, is a bit of a face-palm. My favorite examples in archeology is the Chaco Canyon Cultures. If you are in the western US, have a 4 wheel drive car, and a free few days, I'd go no where else. Those people are an astonishing mystery. You know how with some places, going on the journey is kinda the point? Sometimes with archeology, that's kinda true…
After a decade of telling people about my favorite places around Portland (where I grew up) and watching them get absolutely destroyed by Instagram-tourists, I would highly advise against this sort of promotion of fragile amazing places.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#23Reminds me of the story of the Matisse painting that was hung upside-down.
https://news.masterworksfineart.com/2018/09/19/moma-hung-mat...
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#24A pretty embarrassing oversight! If the picture in this article is the mace, it's clear from the cuneiform that the 'object' would be upside down if it were in a vase orientation. Rarely ever do you start an impression from the left and trail off to the right.
There are a lot of wild writing styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#25This reminds me of a tour I was once on, by one of the resident archaeologists in the open-air museum in Biskupin, Poland. It's the site of an iron age fortified settlement and there is both ongoing archaeological excavation and a reconstruction of sections of the settlement for visitors. Anyway, the archaeologist showed me a shallow elongated oval wooden vessel with a slight depression in it, that had been on displa…
> any time researchers are uncertain of the purpose of an object they tend to ascribe a religious meaning to it https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir...
Unless they're biologists. Then it's for mating displays.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#26A pretty embarrassing oversight! If the picture in this article is the mace, it's clear from the cuneiform that the 'object' would be upside down if it were in a vase orientation. Rarely ever do you start an impression from the left and trail off to the right.
There are a lot of wild writing styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Out of curiosity, why is single-directional reading more efficient (is it?) the Boutstrophedon? The latter would seem, at first glance, more efficient by minimizing eye "seek" time.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#27The last part talks about a net used for executions... was their idea of a Public execution trapping someone in a net and beating them to death with a blunt mace?
There is an image from the Stele of the Vultures (https://www.thoughtco.com/oldest-peace-treaties-from-ancient...) of captives in a net. No idea if there is anything to the execution part.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of wild writing styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
Out of curiosity, why is single-directional reading more efficient (is it?) the Boutstrophedon? The latter would seem, at first glance, more efficient by minimizing eye "seek" time.
Skimming requires tracking line parity. Remember that spaces are a relatively modern concept—lines of text just sort of break in the middle of words & all sort of nonsense.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#29This reminds me of a tour I was once on, by one of the resident archaeologists in the open-air museum in Biskupin, Poland. It's the site of an iron age fortified settlement and there is both ongoing archaeological excavation and a reconstruction of sections of the settlement for visitors. Anyway, the archaeologist showed me a shallow elongated oval wooden vessel with a slight depression in it, that had been on displa…
David Macaulay's "Motel of the Mysteries" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108831.Motel_of_the_Myst...) satirizes this bias, with archeologists from 4022 inspecting a modern day motel room and uncovering the "holy" toilet. It's a gem.
Re: British Museum realises 'vase' is in fact an ancient mace-head upside down
#30This reminds me of a tour I was once on, by one of the resident archaeologists in the open-air museum in Biskupin, Poland. It's the site of an iron age fortified settlement and there is both ongoing archaeological excavation and a reconstruction of sections of the settlement for visitors. Anyway, the archaeologist showed me a shallow elongated oval wooden vessel with a slight depression in it, that had been on displa…
David Macaulay's "Motel of the Mysteries" ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108831.Motel_of_the_Myst... ) satirizes this bias, with archeologists from 4022 inspecting a modern day motel room and uncovering the "holy" toilet. It's a gem.
I've got to thank you for this suggestion. I read this maybe 20 years ago in middle school, the concept stuck with me ("everything is oriented to this big box in the largest room, clearly it's a holy space" - television) and spent years thinking about it and never able to figure out what book it was.