@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

ArchaeoIain

@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social

Australian retired archaeologist, Emeritus Professor at University of New England, Armidale. Writing book on (mostly the evolution of) art. Published on bones, stones, language origins, art etc. Worked with Gamilaraay, Wangkamadla, Yulluna, Kalkadoon and Mitakoodi people.
We must have a politics which encourages equality and fights climate change. Poverty and environmental destruction are caused by human greed.

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Forest_Jungle_Collective, to random
@Forest_Jungle_Collective@archaeo.social avatar

& its always a treat to tick off a famous Romano-British Mosaic
In this case the instantly recognisable, if a little bizarre - cockerel headed man, Brading Roman Villa, IOW

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@Forest_Jungle_Collective is there a book that collects significant numbers of Roman mosaics. I have grown to love them over the last 5 years.

ArchaeoIain, to random
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

I have been warned by the Mastodon moderators that some of my posts will be marked sensitive. This was a direct result of a post which sought to show the direct consequences of book burning as has been reported in Gaza on this platform.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe thank you. It worries me that I might have done something inappropriate. But then it worries me that anyone anywhere can post pictures of the IDF committing what would be called atrocities if comitted by anyone else.

gratefulwolf, to random
@gratefulwolf@archaeo.social avatar

Historical Dimensions of Rock Art: Perspectives from ‘Peripheries’ [pdf 14pp] #RockArt #palaeolithic https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4FBB3AB56CE689607641EDF6895F69AA/S0959774324000179a.pdf/historical_dimensions_of_rock_art_perspectives_from_peripheries.pdf

ArchaeoIain, (edited )
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@gratefulwolf This looks very interesting.

mrundkvist, to books
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

This is why I drop books after 50 pages of not being good. From “Big Ideas, Little Pictures” by Jono Hey.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist very scary if you are writing a book (nearly finished)

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I am always mindful of the English blockbuster book about another country which reached some milestone of sales in that country at the same time as it was remaindered in England. So they invited the author to the country and made a cake to celebrate, in which they lovingly copied the remainder notice.

mrundkvist, to linguistics
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Sweetie, in which English village would you prefer to join your bumpstead to my steeple?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeple_Bumpstead

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I had an acquaintance once who lived in Helions Bumpstead, nearby. So what is a "Helions"?

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist of course. I must have overlooked its twin town "Shelionesses Bumpstead"

mrundkvist, to Archaeology
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

We think it's hard to understand Neolithic ceremonial sites. Well, good luck future colleagues in understanding the remains of 2020s installation art!

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist you are assuming that the city fathers will not have succeeded in eliminating all traces of it. (gender terms used advisedly)

mrundkvist, to academia
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

I once peer-reviewed a journal paper and asked for minor revisions, only to find that they had printed the manuscript completely unchanged except for the title. When I told the editors that they had wasted my time, they explained that this author, a woman of about 40, was extremely scary and would get super angry if they made any demands on her.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist so presumably it was not even peer review. You are not a woman and do not strike me as particularly scary. Ah well.

joeroe, (edited ) to Archaeology
@joeroe@archaeo.social avatar

Does anyone know of a paper or dataset that compiles the earliest known dates of agriculture in a given region? Globally, ideally, but I'd settle for a continent or two...

(I know there are several options for the European Neolithic, but beyond that?)

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe don't know if this helps
https://www.academia.edu/38947770/CalPal_HELP_Archaeological_Site_Mapping_Edition_2019_3_

mrundkvist, to Archaeology
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

When I was young I had a lot of disagreements with slightly older colleagues about what archaeological research should be like. I don't know who was right, but I do know that almost all of them have long since stopped publishing any research. 😁

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I am nearly finished writing my last piece of solo research

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist garden work and reading novels.

ClintBarton, to random
@ClintBarton@progressivecafe.social avatar

Louisiana Lawmakers Move to Criminalize Possession of Abortion Pills ...

Louisiana legislators are proposing an amendment to criminalize the possession of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly used abortion pills. This unexpected addition to a bill initially focused on criminalizing "coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud" has surprised abortion advocates and OB-GYNs in the state.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/louisiana-criminalize-possession-abortion-pills-1235013039/#?utm_source=onesignal

ArchaeoIain,
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@ClintBarton what proportion of those law makers are younger women?

mathowie, to random
@mathowie@xoxo.zone avatar

it’s so weird how some kids peacefully sitting with signs suddenly turned into a warzone after we called in overly funded militarized cops, gosh it’s so mysterious how that always happens

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mathowie what I do not understand is how all police forces in so many places have reacted in the same way to peaceful protests. I get that the protesters have something to get the world to witness, but I do not get why militarized police react the same way in so many places.

mrundkvist, to random
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Having listened to a documentary about Salman Rushdie, I feel moved to express what I believe is the majority position in Scandinavia. To whit, that all gods and devils are fictional characters, there is no afterlife, and you might as well pray to Bilbo Baggins.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I think I heard the same interview on NPR. "My books are full of magical things, but I do not believe in them"

mrundkvist, to random
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Anybody feel like gyring and gimbling? In the wabe?

ArchaeoIain, (edited )
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@mrundkvist was brillig, and the slithy tove was over there near the blow hole.

gratefulwolf, to random
@gratefulwolf@archaeo.social avatar

Finger Fluting in Prehistoric Caves: A Critical Analysis of the Evidence for Children, Sexing and Tracing of Individuals [pdf 21pp] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-024-09646-9

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@gratefulwolf this is a devastating critique of previous analyses of "finger flutings" in caves. Not surprised.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@gratefulwolf it is the process of science to make a suggestion on available evidence, and then query the basis of the evidence.

mrundkvist, to languagelearning
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

It's 2004. Someone gives you a non-OCR:ed scan of an article in Polish that is highly relevant to your work. It's effectively a set of photocopies. You don't know any Polish. What do you do?

It's 2024. Someone gave me a non-OCR:ed scan of an article in Polish that is highly relevant to my work. It's effectively a set of photocopies. I just screenshotted it one column at a time and pasted it into Google Translate, and now I'm reading it in my native .

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist in a version of your native language.

mrundkvist, to Archaeology
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Does my paper about Viking skull manipulation include the section header "Talking Heads"? Of course it does.

#archaeology #vikings #rock

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist but have you got that in the headline?

joeroe, to random
@joeroe@archaeo.social avatar

Really interesting point from Pickering & Kgotleng (https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2024/17473) – is the preprint model right for all fields?

> [P]osting unreviewed research on a preprint server is not new or controversial [...] But palaeoanthropology is not a field that needs urgent research and rapid breakthroughs. Given the huge and wide public interest in human evolution and our origins, this research field benefits from much slower, measured, and careful research.

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@joeroe that is so true. I have always wondered about it and thought that preprints were unnecessary for us. As I write my last thing, I cannot imagine a world in which people need to have advance sight of it before publication.

generalising, to ChatGPT
@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org avatar

I have a preprint out estimating how many scholarly papers are written using chatGPT etc? I estimate upwards of 60k articles (>1% of global output) published in 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16887

How can we identify this? Simple: there are certain words that LLMs love, and they suddenly start showing up a lot last year. Twice as many papers call something "intricate", big rises for "commendable" and "meticulous".

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@generalising but if LLMs derive their models from papers that are already published, how can there be massive increases in such words? I like the idea, but this sounds strange.

mrundkvist, to linguistics
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

Yes, #language changes constantly. No, you can't use this fact to argue that the particular errors you make when writing are OK and everybody will write that way 20 years from now.

#writing

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist "less" and "fewer" is one sort of difference that seems to be disappearing. And then there are spelling differences where the noun has "-ce" and the verb"-se" in some brands of English. It came as a revelation to me that the preferred American ending "-or" is the original English English spelling, but it was the English who changed to "-our" for some reason--probably so they could get annoyed about Americans.

mrundkvist, to random
@mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

It drives me absolutely nuts... When people end every single sentence in a paragraph with three periods... Or even four periods.... Or bizarrely with a row of colons ::::: Makes me want to shake them by the shoulders and shout GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF YOU LANGUID INDECISIVE STONER...

ArchaeoIain,
@ArchaeoIain@archaeo.social avatar

@mrundkvist I confess I have taken to using the ... ellipsis. It really helps in the current political situation where there are things better left unsaid for fear of hatred meted out by ...

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