Time Sifters Archaeology Society Newsletter April 2021

APRIL-2021 PRESERVATION  EDUCATION  RESEARCH  INSPIRE Dear Member: We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Cornelia Futor Memorial Student Paper Competition. We had five very good papers this year and the judges had a difficult time deciding the best. This is a good thing and proves that archaeology/anthropology is thriving. Please join us on April 21 for their lectures. If you haven’t been to our website, www.timesifters.org, or our YouTube channel, please check them out for the latest society information and other interesting stuff from the world of Archaeology. Thank you for being a Time Sifters member. Darwin “Smitty” Smith, President [email protected] 2021 Cornelia Futor Memorial Student Paper Winners Time Sifters is pleased to present the winners of this year’s Cornelia Futor Memorial Student Paper Competition. These graduate students will present via ZOOM at our April meeting. Their presentations will be recorded and posted on both our YouTube site and our web page. First Place Winner Hellenistic statues which were made by the Fonderia Chiurazzi in Madeleine Kraft the early 20th Century. John University of South Florida Ringling purchased the statues “Virtualization of the Chiurazzi in 1936 and they are currently Sculpture Collection at the John and on display at the museum. In Mable Ringling Museum of Art” the Fall of 2020, the IDEx at the USF, in coordination with Madeleine Kraft is a first Photo: Ringling Museum of Art year Masters student in the the Ringling Museum, began History Dept. at the University The John and Mable the process of digitizing of South Florida (USF) in Tampa. Ringling Museum of Art in these statutes using digital Her focus of study is in Ancient Sarasota contains a variety of photogrammetry. The History with special interest in works of art of historic and project aims to document the late Roman Empire, Roman archaeological value. The the collection and to Sicily and Digital Humanities. collections span diverse periods of make accessible these Madeleine has had the pleasure of time. Of particular interest, statues to those who may working with the USF’s Institute of the Ringling Museum owns have interest in them. Digital Exploration (IDEx) several copies of Roman and This also allows those un- during her graduate studies at able to travel the oppor- USF. After finishing her Masters tunity to view these incredible degree, she is looking to pursue a statutes in a 3D environment. PhD in History at USF special- The final models will be izing in Digital Humanities in disseminated to a global public order to continue to use digital via digital collections platforms methods to increase access to and can aid in future research cultural heritage knowledge. endeavors for the scholars seeking to better understand these works.

Second Place Winner and Chiesazza di Ficarolo, located near the ancient Roman Anastasia Temkina capital of Ravenna and dating University of South Florida 4th-7th century CE. The Early “The Early Medieval Transition: Diet Medieval period was a time of Reconstruction, Mobility, and Culture Contact change, political instability, in the Ravenna Countryside, Northern Italy migration and invasion of the “barbarian” tribes, and diet was Anastasia Temkina is a professor, teach future students 2nd year Applied Anthropology about bioarcheology and its not unaffected. It is hypothe- Master’s student at the applications and continue sized that a new staple USF, focusing on bioarche- dietary and Plague research. crop, millet, was introduced ology and stable isotope and that pork consumption analysis. She is currently This research project had increased. In this study, working on her thesis that evaluates the effects of increased human bone samples from investigates dietary change mobility and culture contact these sites were used for related to migration and culture on dietary practices of people stable isotope analyses of contact in Northern Italy during buried at two northern Italian bone apatite and collagen to the Early Medieval period. In sites, Chiunsano di Ficarolo reconstruct the diet of the Fall 2021, after graduating individuals who lived during from her MA, she plans to begin this transitional period. Through her PhD. program with a new dietary analysis, this research research project involving the asks how local and migrant study of the Bubonic Plaque populations interacted with in Medieval Italy. Her ultimate each other, examines potential goal is to become an Anthropology power struggles, and explores if there was hybridization or segregation of cultural practices. Honorable Mentions McKenna Douglass Kristen Vogel Crystal Wright University of South Florida University of South Florida University of South Florida “More Than a Little Pot: “An African Women’s “An Edgefield Ceramic Minoan Ceramics in the Empowerment: Listening Assemblage from the Lost Eastern Mediterranean” to Ghana’s Matriarchs” Town of St. Joseph, FL” Instructions for real time viewing: Register in advance for this meeting: Go to the Time Sifters website, www.timesifters.org and click on the registration url. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Notes from a Time Sifter The Invention of Writing By Evelyn Mangie, Time Sifters Board Member The invention of writing was Photos: British Museum. Wikipedia. ability to keep records because crucial to the development of wealth, social stratification, and civilization (cities). The small trade were dependent on it. egalitarian Neolithic villages that began to develop ca.12000 BCE Historians long believed that the functioned without a physical first writing system was cuneiform, record-keeping system but the developed in Mesopotamia by the need for written recording grew people of the Sumerian cities when some of those small villages (Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Larsa, Isin, grew into towns and cities. When Adab, Kullah, Lagash, Nippur, they did that, they also developed and Kish) in the southern Tigris- characteristics that are different Euphrates valley in what is now from village life. Historians identify Iraq. However, new information those characteristics that define a now indicates that an earlier city as having an organized central writing system may have been government, large public buildings, developed by the people of specialized labor, symbolic art, the Vinča culture, (aka Turdaș the ability to produce a surplus, culture or Turdaș-Vinča culture) and a way to keep records in South-eastern Europe that (writing). This happened dates to ca. 5,500-4,500 BCE, a independently all over the world, thousand years before the Sumerians though at different times. Historians invented their writing system. believe it happened first in That would change what historians Mesopotamia sometime after have accepted for the time of the 4000 BCE, slightly later development of cities and writing. in the Nile Valley, in the Indus Valley ca. The evidence for believ- 2500 BCE, in China ing that the birth of ca.1500 BCE, and in Cen- cities was first done in tral America ca.1200 BCE. Mesopotamia was Cities continued to develop because European in other areas of the scholars believed that world as trade stretched the Bible was authentic father away, until cities history, and because became universal. some of the characteristics of civilization were still Not every agricultural visible to 19th century his- village became a city, torians. but those that grew very large were forced into The Ziggurats of the new ways to live that Sumerian cities remain included the characteristics because they were made mentioned above. The of clay bricks that large population required survived in the arid the development of a climate of southern Iraq. stratified leader class These monumental that formed a central buildings drew 19th government. Monumental century archaeologists architecture gave legitimacy to to find the other leaders and art gave rise to symbolic characteristics of cities, expression. Specialized labor like planned streets, expressive freed some from farming to allow art, writing, and so forth. None the development of innovative of those were obvious anywhere technology. Producing a surplus in Europe until 1908 when a created an accumulation of large Neolithic settlement was wealth that necessitated the ability to found in the village of Vinča in keep records to mark ownership and the southern Danube valley in for trade of the surplus. The most what is known today as the Bal- critical of the characteristics is the kans (Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Continued on page 4 ...

Continued from page 3 ... Sumerians did. It is difficult to who needed to keep track of the change long-standing ideas, so agricultural wealth of the city-states. Writing ... the debate continues but there is no doubt that the Vinča cities Romania). The ancient remains there were not visible because the Photos: Ancient Pages, British Museum, Wikipedia. buildings were made of mud-covered were stratified societies that wood that had rotted away in the conducted trade which needed a damp European climate, unlike record-keeping system. Archaeology the baked clay of the buildings in will eventually reveal the evidence. the dry climate of southern Mesopotamia. Because of WWI, Agriculture required expertise excavation of the Vinča culture and detailed recordkeeping, two did not begin until 1918 and they elements that led directly to the dug until 1934. During that time, invention of writing, historians archaeologists found several similar say. It was born out of economic cities of the same culture, all large necessity and was a tool of the urban towns with streets lined theocratic (priestly) ruling elite with multiple-story houses of several rooms where residents lived and produced sophisticated goods. They had stratified social structures with sophisticated economic and religious systems and created beautiful ceramic vessels and images decorated with symbolic marks. They used the wheel, produced pottery, wove cloth, processed leather, and were skilled metallurgists. That created a surplus that was traded with neighboring cities in a prosperous trade network. It is likely that they invented some kind of record-keeping system. Excavation was interrupted by WWII but resumed afterwards and in 1961, archaeologists found possible fortification features and, most interesting, three small clay tablets (the Tărtăria tablets) bearing symbols that appear to be a Vinča writing system that dates to ca. 5300 BCE. Disputes immediately began; some claimed forgery, some insisted dating was impossible, some called the markings “scribbles”, denying that the Vinča people could have invented a writing system a thousand years before the Board of Officers: Lifetime: $350 Pay online at: Directors Darwin \"Smitty\" Smith, President Individual: $25 WWW.TimeSifters.org Sherry Svekis, Vice President Family: $35 Or mail checks to: Mary S. Maisel, Secretary Student: $10 Time Sifters, Inc. Laura Harrison, Treasurer Supporting $50 PO Box 5283 Karen Jensen, Membership Sarasota, FL. 34277 Marion Almy Jean Louise Lammie Evelyn Mangie Don Nelson Copyright © 2021 Time SiftersArchaeology Society,Inc., All rights reserved.