Friends and colleagues: In the latest installment of the Video News from TAC, we present the story of an Eighth Century Mayan king as related on an ancient monument, experimental archaeology on re-creating classic Athenian coins, and begin our preview series of film clips from the upcoming ninth installment of The Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival.  See these stories in the March 2012 edition of this monthly half-hour show, available now on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The Archaeology Channel (http://www.archaeologychannel.org) as well as on cable TV in cities across the US.
 
Launched in October 2010, the Video News from TAC is designed for both online streaming and cable TV distribution.  Since that launch, we have presented 40 stories on topics in seven US states, 17 other countries, and two heavenly bodies (the Earth and the Moon).  Subjects covered so far in the series are quite diverse, such as a tour of Thailand’s cultural heritage; preserving the first Moon base; the indigenous people of Taiwan; a joint Hopi Tribe-USDA Forest Service effort to save ancient rock art panels; recording cultural heritage on the Thames River in London; ongoing excavations at a long-inhabited site in Jordan; the Terracotta Army exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the disappearing hutong neighborhoods of Beijing; a Native American man rediscovering an ancient craft; the recovery of a prehistoric dugout canoe in Florida; a discourse on the Mexican Day of the Dead; excavations in the Grand Canyon, on the Polynesian island of Tubuai, and in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain; the extensive underground world of Alexandria, Egypt; a 300-year-old European battlefield; a lost language in Peru; how to write Mayan hieroglyphs; a magnetometer survey of vanished Ohio earthworks; a stunning look at Malta’s megalithic temples that were old before the Egyptians built the pyramids; a direct reading of the Mayan creation story from a stone monument; and excavations in the Chinese district of an abandoned Nevada mining town.  Video News program details can be found at http://www.archaeologychannel.org/VideoNews.html.  The growing list of cable TV stations carrying the show is posted at http://www.archaeologychannel.org/VideoNewscabletv.htm.
 
This and other programs are available on TAC for your use and enjoyment.  We urge you to support this public service by participating in our Membership (http://www.archaeologychannel.org/member.html) and Underwriting (http://www.archaeologychannel.org/sponsor.shtml) programs.  Only with your help can we continue and enhance our nonprofit public-education and visitor-supported programming.  We also welcome new content partners as we reach out to the world community.
 
Please forward this message to others who may be interested.
 
Richard M. Pettigrew, Ph.D., RPA
President and Executive Director
Archaeological Legacy Institute
http://www.archaeologychannel.org