As always, our apologies for any inconvenience from cross-posting
this.
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Program Announcement for The Archaeology Channel
Program development at The Archaeology Channel, our
public-education
streaming-media website (www.archaeologychannel.org), is
proceeding at a
pretty rapid pace for a purely volunteer and nonprofit
organization
(Archaeological Legacy Institute). In fact, developments are
occurring so
fast that we have had very little time to prepare promotional
messages such
as this. Here I would like to inform you of two new program
elements: a new
video produced in France and an audio interview focusing on new
research at
Caral, now known to be the earliest city in the New World.
Our latest video is Tools, Techniques and Tablets: Retracing
Ancient
Agricultural Heritage, produced by Patricia Anderson of the CNRS,
Valbonne,
France, is a joint production of the Early Agricultural Remnants
and
Agricultural Heritage (EARTH) network; the Cepam, CNRS, France;
and the CELAT
group of the Université Laval, Quebec, Canada. This video is
about an
archaeological detective story that began with the discovery of
stone blades
at Bronze Age sites in Syria and elsewhere in the Fertile
Crescent and led to
a remarkable conclusion: the threshing sledge, once thought to be
only
several hundred years old, was in full use 5,000 years ago and
probably much
earlier. The film shows how archaeological remains, experimental
research
and analysis of cuneiform documents together pointed to this
conclusion.
Knowledge of this ancient instrument promotes understanding of an
ecologically balanced agricultural system, quite a contrast to
the
technologically advanced but possibly unsustainable food
production practices
commonplace today.
Continuing our Audio Interviews series is a conversation with Dr.
Ruth Shady
of the University of San Marcos, Lima, Peru, titled Caral: Oldest
City in the
New World. Publication of a new series of radiocarbon ages from
Caral this
year in Science by Dr. Shady and her colleagues has demonstrated
that
construction of this remarkably large urban complex in a coastal
Peruvian
valley began nearly 1000 years earlier (around 2600 B.C.) than
the oldest
previously known New World city. Caral now appears to be the
prototype for
the urban design practiced by successive Andean civilizations
over four
millennia. Our audio interview with Dr. Shady, in both English
and Spanish,
combined on this TAC website page with text, maps, photographs,
key Web
links, and the Science reference, summarizes the current state of
knowledge
about Caral and the development of Andean civilization and
provides a
starting point for further research by our visitors.
We encourage you to sample these and other streaming media
programs on TAC.
If you feel that this project is a worthy endeavor, please
participate in the
membership and underwriting programs described on our website at
www.archaeologychannel.org. Your help will allow us to continue
and enhance
this nonprofit public-education service. We also welcome content
partners to
team with us as we reach out to the world community.
Richard M. (Rick) Pettigrew, Ph.D., RPA
President and Executive Director
Archaeological Legacy Institute
www.archaeologychannel.org
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