Archaeology et al.

Archaeology, anthropology, history, and all things related Primary interest is Ancient Near/Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

[victusinveritas]

It's almost like something happened in 2020-now that is causing these problems.

[tuckedinbugw]

Nothing like holding my love

[pspsappho]

& honestly there's no debate to be had the zendaya earrings are orders of magnitude worse than kim kardashian wearing that marilyn dress. yes that piece was a one of a kind unique textile made so specifically for marilyn monroe she had to be sewn into it. at the end of the day it was a ~70 year old usamerican cultural artefact being repurposed by an american for an american cultural event and everyone involved knows exactly where the dress came from + what happened to it + where it went afterwards. zendaya is wearing the looted (or forged) cultural heritage of a people her government is currently bombing & whose lives they have been deliberately making unliveable for decades to a movie premiere that has fuck all to do with iran. we don't know where those discs came from where they were found or by whom & we never will. AND the jeweller appears to have altered them substantially from their original condition. destroying a people's cultural heritage at the same time you destroy their country + their lives so you can look good on a red carpet One Time i want to fucking hurl

[uhhhhmanda]

Zendaya’s The Odyssey premiere earrings spark ethics row

The earrings, worn by Zendaya at The Odyssey press tour, are believed to be 2,000-3,000 years old and come at a time when the US is bombing

An archaeologist quoted in the article says "the point of these earrings is not to showcase legitimate ancient artistry, it is to fetishize the past, to be a commodity, stolen from the elite, circulated illegally, and immorally…this is about class signalling."

[darkcomedies]

evoking bertholt brecht’s “the way people cast a play!” quote as a spell against prescriptive, stereotypical, fatalistic typecasting

[darkcomedies]

idk what to tell you except go look at the fishwives

[gaslit-dipshits]

[appalachian-werewolf]

PoweredByWho — Who's Building Data Centers in Your Backyard?

Follow the money behind America's data center boom. Track 2,300+ projects, PAC spending, and the politicians who sign off on it.

[reasonsforhope]

Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.

You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out

[headspace-hotel]

IDK about other places, but a ton of cities in Kentucky have preemptively banned data centers from being built

This is really the one issue that unites people on all sides of the political spectrum.

[politijohn]

Source

Some good news

[thundergrace]

that's hot

[introvertathome]

The rest of the US is in a horror movie meanwhile NYC is getting sunshine and rainbows and free puppies

[chaotic-archaeologist]

I start studying archaeology (BA) in September. Do u have any erudite tips?

Hello, congratulations on starting your studies! I think most of the advice I have for you is about existing in a higher education environment rather than archaeology specific, with the possible exception of keeping your eye out for field schools.

The first and most important piece of advice I have is to communicate with your instructors. Speaking as an instructor, I am much happier to help you if 1) I already know who you are and the first time I am hearing from you is not when you need something, and 2) if you reach out for help before a due date passes or you get too deep in a hole. As long as your email is polite and professional, we are not going to be angry with you for asking for help.

Take advantage of what your school has to offer. Colleges and universities always have all sorts of events going on, and they can be fun, interesting, and good opportunities to meet people professionally and personally. Your school probably has a web page where they list events, and I recommend keeping an eye on it! This also goes for the health clinic and their free vaccinations and testings.

Time management is a learned skill. Start consciously developing it. High school is hyper structured whereas college is almost entirely free reign, and navigating this transition is one of the things I see students struggling with the most. Experiment with different strategies— setting calendar reminders, keeping a planner, turning off your phone, working in public— and figure out what works best for you.

Do not let academics be the only thing in your life. This may seem counterintuitive, but chances are, you're going to have a bad semester. When that happens, having other things that also bring you joy and bolster your self-worth will be incredibly important for your mental health. Likewise, it can be good to have friends in different circles. College friend groups occasionally implode and it can be very lonely if you have no one else.

Sleeping and eating well are so so so important. If you eat like shit and sleep like shit, you are going to feel like shit. This goes back to the fact that in an unstructured environment, it can be both easy and tempting to go off the rails. By all means, have a little fun and take the opportunities that are presented to you, but don't do so at the expense of your health.

I also have an #academic advice tag that has more posts about both college in general and archaeology specifically.

Go forth and prosper, -Reid

[audkitty]

Keep one day to yourself. This is your rest day. It’s for sleeping in, binging TV, going hiking, playing video games, or whatever else you do to relax. It is vital to carve out one day a week for yourself. Your homework can wait. Your reading can wait. Your health can’t.

[chaotic-archaeologist]

I'm Jewish, so Saturday (Shabbos) is my Me Day. But maybe your You Day depends on your schedule. Don't have classes on Wednesday? Congrats, that's your You Day. Maybe your You Day is actually one afternoon and the next morning. It's just gotta be 24 hours where you can Chill

[buckets-of-dirt]

There will be courses that are not required by your program that would nevertheless be a huge career asset to have taken. They might lead you to a specialization within your field or they might be an unwritten prerequisite for grad school. It is your job to find out what these are and take them.

Befriend upperclassmen and grad students in your department. Volunteer in your professors' labs. Learn from their mistakes wisdom. Ask them questions. They might have suggestions for which non-major courses to take, which prerequisites are technically optional, which field schools are worth applying to, any CRM companies in the area that hire summer students.

Do yourself a favour and buy a copy of Writing in Anthropology: A Brief Guide by Shan-Estelle Brown. It does a great job of breaking down and explaining the various types of writing you'll be expected to do for your anthropology courses. Do not assume your professors will tell you the difference between an annotated bibliography and a literature review (ask me how I know).

[batsandboba]

“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know

[were--ralph]

HE NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED

Theyre going to send a team after Mamdani this is highkey insane

[dancinbutterfly]

Who are “they”?

[were--ralph]

you completely missed the point but congrats on the cynicism. Anyways this is also not "just a tiktok"

It's on every social media platform, news outlets are reporting on it, its a big deal especially with The Orange in office who is besties with Netanyahu. Mamdani is also an immigrant to the US, and our own government supports Israel, the right especially and our current government does not like immigrants to begin with. The Orange is insane enough to call something like this Treason even though it isn't.

As a politician he's openly putting a target on his back.

[victusinveritas]

There's worse to come, folks. Strap in and stay strapped.

[thevonntrapp]

Fascists get months and these guys get decades....just incredible how far the USA has fallen.

[victusinveritas]

From PM Press on Instagram:

[1968bullittmustang]

Prairieland ICE protesters sentenced to decades in prison

Activists who didn't plan the protest and left when asked still received 50-year terms.

The Road to Prairieland

The crackdown on anti-ICE activists in Texas reflects a pattern of intensifying repression all around the country.

[victusinveritas]

[vaspider]

Just so we're connecting our dots together, Reed O'Connor is "that Rhode Island hospital should give me all its trans kids records and I pinky swear I won't just give them to the DOJ and I am commanding all the other judges that they don't have jurisdiction, only I do, despite the fact that none of what's happening is actually in my district," among a million other shitty things.

He is a horrible fucking human being and a terrible fucking judge.

[rabbitscreams]

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

[rabbitscreams]

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

[rabbitscreams]

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

[gay-milton-quotes]

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

[vforvalensa]

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

[triviallytrue]

Vancouver's new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous - Macleans.ca

In B.C., Indigenous nations are reclaiming power and wealth for their own citizens—no matter what the neighbours think

this is so funny

"but uh when we advocated for indigenous sovereignty we thought you guys were just going to make a big park or something"

"fuck you. ultradense housing that bypasses your stupid zoning rules"

[st-just]

Predictably, not everyone has been happy about it. Critics have included local planners, politicians and, especially, residents of Kitsilano Point, a rarified beachfront neighbourhood bordering the reserve. And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitksan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.” 

okay but literally.

[seren-starlight]

The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop : Planet Money

LIVE SHOW TOUR INFO HERE. New stories, live tapings, special guests, book signings and more. What would you build on a piece of land when al

Update on this story (the update really being that the towers are nearly complete and they start renting units this summer!)

[autie-j]

Remember when Xbox was going to basically ban used games for the xbox one, and Playstation made fun of them with that video titled "how to share games on Playstation" and it was just one guy handing another a game disk? And now Playstation is getting rid of physical disks entirely

[larken-the-skies]

It’s like they expect us to just forget their original marketing schemes in favor of more and more money grabs.

[i-suggest-piracy]

i have a suggestion

[fuckthisshit-ugh]

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

[velvetvexations]

Weird Fantasy (1950) #18 written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Joe Orlando, with editor Bill Gaines

[velvetvexations]

So he said it can't be a Black. So I said, "For God's sakes, Judge Murphy, that's the whole point of the Goddamn story!" So he said, "No, it can't be a Black". Bill just called him up and raised the roof, and finally they said, "Well, you gotta take the perspiration off". I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, "Fuck you", and he hung up.

Al Feldstein, Tales of Terror: The EC Companion

[iconuk01]

Just to add context for those not aware of the impact of this story.

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.

The black character was not a caricature, or comedy relief, he was a main character in his own right, a human who "simply" was black.

[assortedinsanities]

Ok, but this story is sadly revolutionary even now. That is not just a human who happens to be black, as far as every other character in this story is concerned this is the most important, maybe even the only human they ever see, who happens to be black.

As depressing as that is, but a black person just casually representing the entirety of humanity is a breathtakingly powerfull statement even today, a quarter of a century later.

[about-faces]

[anarchistmemedistro]

*a breathtakingly powerful statement even today, three quarters of a century later

[syssilvester-blog]

[vaspider]

I mean, yes, but the NYT is just a new refrain of a very, very old song. This idea that it's just "normal" for rural poor people (and in this mindset, all rural people are poor) to be unrepentant bigots is ... incredibly old.

Like, I grew up in rural PA, in the Poconos — it's a lot more built up now than it was when I grew up there, but even now it's like the stereotype of 'rural tourist area' — and then lived in Lancaster County for a while, and when I moved to Philly, this idea that everybody I knew at home was a stupid, bigoted hick was... pervasive. That was an ancient song when I first heard it decades ago.

I am literally begging people to read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America & stop being so casually classist that you're ignoring shit-tons of red flags.