passim in passing

Reposted! original, with photo here .  Maeve Leakey. Photo: Bob Cambell, Turkana Basin Institute, all rights reserved. Dr. Maeve Leakey (b.1942 - ) Many, many years ago -- about 150, actually-- a group of men with rather fantastic facial hair founded what would become the cornerstone of the American scientific establishment, the National Academy of Sciences.   Signed into existence by President Abraham Lincoln , the Academy served to further scientific research, addressing the pressing issues of the day, like how to make compasses work on your fancy new Ironclad steamboats. On the 150th anniversery of the foundation of the NAS, President Barack Obama arrived to  reiterate the importance  of the body, and science.  The very next day, on April 30th, 2013, the Academy announced its newly elected members, one of the highest accolades possible and limited to American citizens. However, the Academy does recognise exceptional contributions to science from those born elsewhere

Repost from http:/trowelblazers.tumblr.com Kathleen Kenyon. Image from: Reynolds, A. 2011. From the Archives.  Archaeology International  13:112-118, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.1321 The legend of Kathleen Kenyon looms large over archaeology; she is remembered not only as an influential woman trowel-wielder but as pioneer in her field. As a figure of legend, the cut of her vowels (glass!) and coats (mink!) build a towering image of a certain kind of mid-century woman: entitled, empowered, and as sturdy as the famous stepped towers she discovered underlying the foundations of biblical Jericho. Kathleen Kenyon is a woman who left a permanent mark on the discipline (not to mention poor old Jericho), and that cannot all be attributed to her birth in the Director's house of the British Museum. Her accomplishments are legion: first female president of the Oxford Archaeological Society, excavator of Jericho and Jerusalem, creator of the Wheeler-Kenyon archaeological method

Good morning. Possibly, good afternoon. This post is actually not so much a me-post as it is a meme-post; I'd like to introduce you to the collective amazingness that is the new  trowelblazers.tumblr.com/  . What's that? A midlands plastering company? No! It's ladies. Ladies with trowels. Or, possibly, ladies directing workmen with trowels. source: Illustration by John Kenney, from L. du Garde Peach (1961).  Stone Age Man In Britain. A Ladybird Book.  Wills & Hepworth Ltd., Loughborough. Reproduced from website. It's a celebration, brief, chipper and ever-so-slightly irreverent, of some of the pioneering women in the trowel-wielding fields: palaeontology, geology, and of course, archaeology. This is a labour of love by a dedicated team ( you'll know them as @toriherridge @lemoustier and @suzie_birch  - me you had better have figured out already) who are compiling a fantastic tumblr of some of the forgotten female heroes of our respective discipline

Heads up to @matthewpope , who wrote this post on the recent #druiddebate launched by the BBC in response to a letter from King Arthur Uther Pendragon insisting that the display of human remains at the Alexander Keiler Museum in Avebury is unethical. I personally think his point that there is some seriously slippery slope between identifying 'indigenous' heritage and nationalist narratives is pretty critical, but of course there is a whole wealth of thought on that subject (go google 'Nationalism in Archaeology' and get back to me in a few years). Anyhow, this got me thinking about the why this story has popped back up after the furore of  the reburial requests circa 2006-8, and why archaeologists seem to not have quite squeezed the last lessons out of the original English Heritage consultation on the reburial request, despite the existence of thoughtful reflections like Mike Pitt's open access  PIA article . I don't claim to know quite what those lessons

So... as much storify as I can put together of an afternoon :) [ View the story "the strange saga of #spaceape" on Storify ]

oh HAI. Did you get here from the internet? Did you perhaps see the phrase 'aquatic ape' in one of the many fine news sources that cover advances in science and other randomly cool stuff--maybe this piece in the guardian? Did you, by some strange conjunction of arcane google-fu and a lifelong interest in mermaids, learn about the aquatic ape theory through this fascinating piece in the daily mail? Really, it is fascinating; you get to look at this picture if you read it: No? I guess that means that I get to be the one to tell you about the Aquatic Ape Theory. For which I apologise in advance, but not very sincerely. Not long ago, let's say, in 1960, a very interesting man called Sir Alister Hardy addressed the conference of the British SubAqua Club at Brighton on the theme ' Aquatic Man: Past, Present and Future .'  Hardy was a marine biologist with a strong interest in the evolution of man, and seems to have been frequently preoccupied by religion; his

So, in advance of a more in-depth reflection on my participation in the 7th Quadrennial World Archaeological Congress at the Dead Sea, Jordan , I've pulled together a little storify and bits and pieces of things and projects that seemed pretty fun but were perhaps not obviously related to teeth, the neolithic, or my immediate interests... Starting, of course, with an awesome trip to Petra which is pretty much all over my instagram account  but highlights are: bored donkey tout dude checking his texts while waiting for tourists;  and this, the first view you get of the famous Treasury building coming down the Siq approach. Conference wise, my favourite quote has to be from the rather vigorous keynote given by Prince El Hassan bin Talal, in his thundering Harrow accent, where he referred to the people of the middle east as 'hell's firewood'. Harsh. And of course, no conference is complete without a ridiculous Indy reference, here's mine (spotted by @lornaricha