Antiquity’s Winter Issue

Posted by Martin R on December 8, 2009
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The on-line version of Antiquity’s winter issue (#322) was published just the other day. Here are some highlights (links to abstracts, papers then hidden by a pay wall):

  • A pair of “ornamental trousers” found in an exceptionally well preserved 1st century BC grave in the Tarim basin in Xinjiang. These fancy pants were apparently made out of a pictorial wall hanging looted in the 2nd century from a Bactrian palace.

  • An Early Neolithic Linear Pottery ceremonial centre on the Middle Rhine in south-west Germany whose voluminous causewayed enclosure ditch is full of cannibalised human bones and imported pottery.
  • The bone isotopes of the Medieval bishops of Whithorn in Scotland are compared to those of commoners buried around the same cathedral, showing that the episcopal boners actually do differ significantly in their diet and geographical origin, as expected. A very good test of the methodology.

Martin Carver, Antiquity’s editor, also offers a podcast where he talks about the new issue’s contents.

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Comments

  1. #1 afarensis, FCD
    December 8, 2009

    Those last two sound really interesting, I’m skeptical of the cannibalism though.

  2. #2 murmel.jones
    December 8, 2009

    this cannibalism thing is highly contested, might be some form of secondary burial rite
    (more at: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/12/03/debate-over-evidence-of-mass-cannibalism.html)

  3. #3 SM
    December 9, 2009

    The Bactria article will be fun when I can download it in six months. Its a shame they still have a paywall to keep out the hoi polloi …

  4. #4 Martin R
    December 9, 2009

    Actually, I think the pay wall is there to allow the editorial office to keep the light on and pay the rent. Fornvännen is freely available on the web only because it is published by an affluent royal academy.

  5. #5 Akhôrahil
    December 9, 2009

    “episcopal boners” – now *that’s* Freudian!

  6. #6 Martin R
    December 9, 2009

    Oh man, I’m so way beyond Freudian that the interesting slips you should look for are the ones when I fail to produce innuendo at the slightest possibility.