Looking for an Excavation to Volunteer at?

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If you are looking for somewhere to excavate, FindADig is for you. There are many archaeological digs in Europe and the Middle East that are looking for volunteers here.


Biblical Archaeology Society | findadig.com

The Biblical Archaeology Society publishes an excellent magazine as well as having the latest information on the "tomb of Jesus" controversy. They also have a number of free ebooks when you subscribe to their free newsletter.

Biblical Archaeology Society

The Sextant is an online community for those interested in underwater archaeology and maritime history. It has a news blog, forums and information. Membership is free.

The Sextant | The Online Community of Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology

Allcoins - A Numismatic Search Engine and Directory

Allcoins is a coin search engine and directory. Numismatics is the proper name for coin collecting. Since Allcoins does not sell or buy coins, they can list all the different sites without bias.

It is an excellent resource for finding information on all types of coins and includes paper money as well. You can find ancient coins, US and UK coins and even links to coin shows and museums.

(This is a sponsored post, but I really recommend it!)



Allcoins.org - The Numismatic Search Engine and Numismatic Directory for Numismatic Information

Historical Archaeology Field School in Falmouth, Jamaica

The Falmouth Field School in Historical Archaeology, Falmouth, Jamaica
University of Virginia Anthropology 382 and the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
May 23 - June 15, 2007

The Falmouth Field School in Historical Archaeology (ANTH 382) is a
three-week, three-credit program in historical archaeology based in
Falmouth, Jamaica. The field school is offered through the University of
Virginia' s International Studies Office.

Students enrolled in The Falmouth Field School in Historical Archaeology (ANTH 382) will conduct archaeological field work at the Stewart Castle slave village, a mid-to-late 18th-century site that has not previously been tested archaeologically. Objectives for the season include a site-wide shovel test pit survey designed to identify temporal and spatial variation within the village. In addition to the survey, several excavation units will be opened to further explore areas discovered during the survey. Students will learn methods for designing archaeological surveys and technologies to record their results, specifically drawing archaeological plans and stratigraphic sections. Each afternoon students will participate in laboratory activities such as artifact washing and identification.

Several evenings a week are dedicated to lectures and discussions. Course readings and lectures will introduce students to archaeological survey and excavation methods, key concepts in the study of 18th-century material culture, and will provide a background in the social history of slavery in the Caribbean. Discussions will focus on the ways in which archaeological data can prompt and address unanswered historical questions related to the evolution of slave societies throughout the Atlantic World.

Students will have the opportunity to participate in optional field excursions on the two weekends to historic sites across the island, including New Seville, Good Hope Estate, Colbeck Castle, and Spanishtown.

This field school is held in conjunction with The Falmouth Field School in Historic Preservation (ARH 555). Students enrolled in ANTH 382 will spend one day a week learning historic preservation techniques with architectural history students from The Falmouth Field School in Historic Preservation (ARH 555).

The Falmouth Field Schools in Historical Archaeology and Historic Preservation will include lectures and field studies with Matthew Webster, Director of Architectural Restoration at Kenmore Plantation, Edward Chappell, Director of Architectural Research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Fraser Neiman, Director of Archaeology at Monticello. Guest lecturers will also include historians and archaeologists affiliated with the University of West Indies, Mona, and the Jamaica National Heritage Trust. In Falmouth, the field school is supported by the local efforts of Falmouth Heritage Renewal, a non-profit preservation organization with over a decade of experience in historic preservation in Falmouth.

Room and Board Arrangements:
Students will be housed in a newly renovated two-story stone building in the heart of downtown Falmouth, Jamaica. Built in the early nineteenth-century as a Masonic lodge, the building served for much of its life as a Baptist manse. The building has a large workshop on the first floor and a number of dormitory-style sleeping quarters on the
upper floor. Students should be advised that these accommodations assume multiple students per room in bunk beds with shared bathrooms. Although fans will be provided, these rooms are not air-conditioned. Students will be provided with three meals a day, a breakfast, a packed lunch, and a hot supper. Food will be Jamaican-style and all diets can be accommodated. The building's location allows easy access to local markets and stores where snacks and supplies can be purchased.

Costs:
Cost per student, which includes tuition, room, and board, is $3100 (in-state) and $3,255 (out-of-state) per student. Room and board are included in the total cost of the field school.

Contact Information:
This field school is one component of the larger archaeological research program, the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (www.daacs.org).

Please contact Jillian Galle (jgalle@monticello.org, 434-984-9873) for more information. Please also see www.studyabroad.virginia.edu (Go to "> Find a Program> "> and search under "> Jamaica> " ) or www.daacs.org.

Application Information:
Applications are due March 15, 2007. Students may apply online at www.studyabroad.virginia.edu (Go to "> Find a Program> "> and search
under "> Jamaica> " ).

The ACUA is an organization for underwater archaeology. The site is an excellent place to begin looking for information and education resources on the subject.

Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology

This is an excellent site to make hotel, air, and car rental reservations. You can make the reservations either online or by phone.

It also has a destination guide, and a section devoted to vacation rentals (like condos).

Unlike other reservation sites, Hotel Reservations does not charge a service fee, and covers bed & breakfasts as well as hotels. The hotel results include photos of the properties,

I recommend this site when you are making reservations for archaeological conferences, or when planning a trip to archaeological sites anywhere in the world.

This is a sponsored listing, but I used the site to make our reservations for SHA.

Hotel Reservations

Sunwatch is the home to an 800 year old Indian village near Dayton, Ohio. The site has been recontructed and you can tour it.

SunWatch Home Page - Ancient Indian Village - Dayton Ohio

Museum of Anatolian Civilization offers fun to kids

From the Turkish Daily News:

Turkish Daily News, Turkey
Sunday, September 24, 2006

Museum offers archeology fun (including for children)

by BARI? Alt?nta?

The best of what all the diverse civilizations of Anatolia left behind is
now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, an embodiment of
diversity, the hallmark of Anatolia. Its artifacts, however, are more than
mere witnesses to lost civilizations. Many are endowed with compelling
sculptural force and decorative beauty, making the museum as much a
collection of great art as of archaeology

ANKARA - Turkish Daily News - Over its long and varied history, one thing
remained constant in Anatolia: invasions. Throughout the years everyone
from migrants to conquerors, adventurers and traders tried to make it
their own, or at the least gain passage through its territories. It has
been traversed by perhaps a greater variety of peoples and cultures than
any comparable part of the world. Home to vast towns built by the Hittites
and their successors the Phrygians -- the people of King Midas -- Anatolia
is the site of what is generally said to be the earliest settlement known
in history, Çatal Höyük. The Greeks, Persians and Alexander and his
Macedonians as well as the Seleucids and the Byzantines settled in
Anatolia after the Phrygians.

The best of what all these civilizations left behind is now in the Museum
of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, an embodiment of diversity, the
hallmark of Anatolia. Its artifacts, however, are more than mere witnesses
to lost civilizations. Many are endowed with compelling sculptural force
and decorative beauty, making the museum as much a collection of great art
as of archaeology.

The museum is made up of two Ottoman buildings, a caravansary (inn for
travelers) and a bedesten (bazaar), both built in the 15th century but now
housing artifacts from the Hittites, Urartians, Assyrian Colonies,
Phrygians, Greeks and Romans.

Exhibits displaying findings from Paleolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic,
Early Bronze, Assyrian Colonies, Hittite, Phrygian, Urartian and later
periods, right up until the modern day, can be seen in the museum. They
feature flint hand-axes from the Paleolithic age, a statuette of the
Mother Goddess -- representing fertility, often depicted as a corpulent
woman -- vessels, cooking pots, cosmetic utensils, boxes, items of
personal adornment, sickles, frescos painted on walls, spear and
arrow-heads and many other articles made by the people of the early
civilizations settled in Anatolia.

The museum is home to a variety of artifacts and artwork from the Hittite
Empire including a statue of King Tarhunza and reliefs depicting different
aspects of Hittite life as well as those from the Urartians, Lydians,
Assyrians, Phrygians and later civilizations such as the Romans.

1997 European Museum of the Year:

In addition to being the proud winner of the 1997 European Museum of the
Year Award from the European Museums Union of the European Council, the
museum also carries out cultural activities, including scientific
conferences, concerts and even festivals for children.

"I don't think there's another museum that is as productive as a
university in publications," says Museum Director Hikmet Denizli. Indeed,
the museum attaches great importance to publications. Books on research
conducted in the museum are published in seven languages every year.

With a computer network set up recently, information about the museum has
been digitalized and is expected to be made available on the Internet by
the end of this year.

For the last 50 years the museum has carried out many archaeological
excavations in Anatolia, and many researchers have made a name for
themselves by way of the museum.

Future projects

Visited by over 400,000 people annually, the museum has ambitious
projects. Categorized as the "national museum" of Turkey, the museum's
finances were recently handed to the Ministry of Culture, an opportunity
that allowed the museum to "think big," according to Denizli, who says the
museum now has a chance to find funding for grand projects that it would
not be able to dream of before.

The museum is close to realizing a long-held dream of expansion. "The
problem of financing has been solved," says Denizli, after a law
stipulating that 10 percent of property tax is to be allocated to the
nation's cultural assets. According to Denizli, both local and national
administrators in Turkey are becoming increasingly aware of the importance
of protecting historical and cultural artifacts. The museum is set to
start two major projects, excavations at the Phrygian Valley and at Hac?
Tu?rul, in cooperation with Japanese archeologists.

Denizli thinks Turkish museum administrators have failed to make viewing
historical and art objects interesting for either children or adults. "For
example, we have the pottery that King Midas ate from. We could hold a
food festival, we have recipes from the Phrygians," he enthused, while
acknowledging the challenge such ideas presented.

As parents and administrators' awareness increases, museum visits have
also seen a rise, he observed. "A museum should meet all its visitors'
requirements: Food, drinking, music, internet, places to rest and even
medical facilities," he said.

Denizli's museum certainly differs from the dry and dusty archeological
scene in Turkey that he complains about.

An unforgettable learning experience:

Kids can now be archeologists for the day, thanks to an archeology
workshop created at the museum where children can participate in a number
of fun educational activities. These include building their own models of
the objects in the museum; pressing coins the way the Lydians did and
learning about the barter system used before money was invented; solving a
puzzle by matching a given pattern with the correct civilization; make
jewelry similar to the artifacts of personal adornment worn by different
civilizations of the museum; write their own name in hieroglyphs on
tablets; work to restore new findings of excavations; as well as drawing
pictures and digging like true experts.

Under a new project, the museum has brought students from some schools to
excavate objects previously buried by museum staff in a designated
excavation ground in the museum's yard. After being told about how
archeological digs are carried out, every child is given a unique
responsibility as part of the excavation team and digs to reveal pieces of
history.

The workshop also offers aid for visually impaired children, such as
actual Hittite lions that can be touched and felt.

The museum has organized four children's festivals this year, some held
at the Roman Baths, which included games and competitions.

Another entertaining activity carried out by the museum in cooperation
with some schools is theatrical performances held in ancient settings.
"That is a lot of fun for us too," says Denizli. "In order to get
everything right, you double-check the specifics of, say, the clothing of
a certain civilization and refresh your own knowledge and the students
learn at light speed that way."

The museum's experience has shown that children learn better when they
are told about a limited subject, instead of listening to an expert drone
on about a long period or various subjects. Drawing on this fact, the
museum now has conferences for children allocated to a single topic only,
such as jewelry or Hittite tablets. To cement the learning -- and add to
the fun -- after every conference they get to do what they learned about,
just like the ancient people of the subject.

Cooking a la Neolithic:

Soon children will have the opportunity to learn to make bread the
Neolithic way. Unfinished buildings in the museum's yard will be turned
into Neolithic homes with roof-entrances, like those found in Çatal Höyük.
In addition to learning to make bread the way the people did in the Stone
Age, children will also be able to make clay items on potter's wheels, all
while actually inside the houses.

This is from a series of books on being people from the past. The web book shows what the life of a gladiator was like, If you mouse over the pictures, a surprise is there. Great fun for kids and adults!

You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator!