Discussion of ``Statistical analysis of an archeological find'' by Andrey Feuerverger [arXiv:0804.0079]

xv.574 hal.;ill.;25 c

Galactic Archeology is about exploring the Milky Way as a galaxy by, mainly, using its (old) stars as tracers of past events and thus figure out the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. I will briefly outline some of the key scientific aspects of Galactic Archeology and then discuss the associated instrumentations. Gaia will forever change the way we approach this subject. However, Gaia on its own is not enough. Ground-based complementary spectroscopy is necessary to obtain full phase-space information and elemental abundances for stars fainter than the top few percent of the bright part of the Gaia catalogue. I will review the requirement on instrumentation for Gaia follow-up that Galactic Archeology sets. In particular, I will discuss the requirements on radial velocity and elemental abundance determination, including a brief look at potential pit-falls in the abundance analysis (e.g., NLTE, atomic diffusion). This contribution also provides a non-exhaustive comparison of the various current and future spectrographs for Galactic Archeology. Finally, I will discuss the needs for astrophysical calibrations for the surveys and inter-survey calibrations.

Forensic Archeology is the application of techniques and principles of archeology in the pursuit of examining a crime or incident with legal interest. A wide range of analytical studies are employed in examining archeological remains. X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy remains to be one of the most used techniques for rapid examination of trace evidence typically found on an archeological crime scene. Studies of interest generally include finding trace elements from various sources, samples, and different environmental conditions and distinguishing whether a skeletal remains under examination is human, animal, or marine species. The present study has been designed to focus on the application of XRF in archeological and anthropological evidences such as the examination of human skeletal and dental remains, determination of species, examination of soil, ceramics, paintings, coins, and so on. The advantage of XRF as derived from the reported literature is that it is a non‐destructive technique making it ideal for forensic analysis and in situ examination. The study also discusses the factors affecting forensic investigations of archeological evidences and the limitations of XRF.

Currently, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) technologies are becoming more and more widely used in various fields of human activity, including archeology. The aim of this article is to analyze the possibilities of using VR and AR technologies in broadly understood activities related to underwater archeology. This work is a review and presents current applications of VR and AR in underwater archeology based on case studies. This paper presents the development of VR and AR technologies, including in the field of underwater archaeology, and generally describes the process of creating VR and AR applications for underwater archeology purposes, with particular emphasis on data collection methods. Then, the areas of application of these technologies in underwater archeology and related areas were generally presented and the barriers to their use were discussed. The most important part of the work is a discussion of the use of VR and AR in underwater archeology based on the selected case studies. The article ends with a summary of the current state and a discussion of the possibilities of developing virtual technologies in the applications of underwater archeology.

This chapter outlines ways Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida is a unique feature film, such as its cinematography and use of diegetic sound that differentiate it from contemporary films. It points out how Ida is a rare film in the Holocaust genre as it never mentions Nazi concentration camps or the Jewish ghettos that were created by the Nazis in large cities in Poland. It also analyses the unique storyline that may seem implausible to audiences that a girl could grow up in a convent without any knowledge that her family is Jewish. The chapter discusses how Ida was compared to documentary films, which is one of the most significant aspects of its reception as a film. It mentions Pawlikowski, who emphasized that it is only in art that filmmakers have the luxury of being true-to-life, despite his earlier success as a documentary filmmaker.

Brain evolution is a key topic in evolutionary anthropology. Unfortunately, in this sense the fossil record can usually support limited anatomical and behavioral inferences. Nonetheless, information from fossil species is, in any case, particularly valuable, because it represents the only direct proof of cerebral and behavioral changes throughout the human phylogeny. Recently, archeology and psychology have been integrated in the field of cognitive archeology, which aims to interpret current cognitive models according to the evidence we have on extinct human species. In this article, such evidence is reviewed in order to consider whether and to what extent the archeological record can supply information regarding changes of the attentional system in different taxa of the human genus. In particular, behavioral correlates associated with the fronto-parietal system and working memory are employed to consider recent changes in our species, Homo sapiens, and a mismatch between attentional and visuospatial ability is hypothesized. These two functional systems support present-moment awareness and mind-wandering, respectively, and their evolutionary unbalance can explain a structural sensitivity to psychological distress in our species.

In the summer of 2020, International Relations (IR) scholars rushed to respond to the national and global irruptions of support for Black Lives Matter. But the relationship of ‘domestic’ racism in the United States to foreign policy and IR is long standing in the field, and non-marginal at that: in 1960, Hans Morgenthau provided a clear analysis of such connections in light of Brown vs. Board of Education. The ‘post’ in postcolonial acts as an intellectual provocation: in the aftermath of an event, how might we rethink received traditions of inquiry that prove ill equipped to explain and evaluate the event itself? The explanatory value of the ‘post’ lies in both exposing the disciplinary conventions of absence and retrieving obfuscated presences that provide alternative modes of inquiry. Picking up on Morgenthau’s lost intervention, I provide a contribution to what might be called post-Black Lives Matter (BLM) IR. I weave an intellectual archeology of the long-standing intimacy of republicanism and imperialism via the racialized concept of the ‘frontier’. I bring together the arguments and narratives of four authors who are progenitors of and/or mainstream scholars in the field: William Francis Allen, Frederick Jackson Turner, Morgenthau, and Merze Tate. I claim that this archeology of the ‘frontier’ might help us to grapple responsibly and incisively with IR post-BLM. Républicanisme et impérialisme à la frontière : une archéologie des relations internationales post-Black Lives Matter

4MOST is a new wide-field, high-multiplex spectroscopic survey facility for the VISTA telescope of ESO. Starting in 2022, 4MOST will deploy more than 2400 fibres in a 4.1 square degree field-of-view using a positioner based on the tilting spine principle. In this ontribution we give an outline of the major science goals we wish to achieve with 4MOST in the area of Galactic Archeology. The 4MOST Galactic Archeology surveys have been designed to address long-standing and far-reaching problems in Galactic science. They are focused on our major themes: 1) Near-field cosmology tests, 2) Chemo-dynamical characterisation of the major Milky Way stellar components, 3) The Galactic Halo and beyond, and 4) Discovery and characterisation of extremely metal-poor stars. In addition to a top-level description of the Galactic surveys we provide information about how the community will be able to join 4MOST via a call for Public Spectroscopic Surveys that ESO will launch.

2019 ж. 26–27 сәуір аралығында ҚР Орталық музейдің қабырғасында өткен «Ұлы даланың жеті қыры және Еуразия археологиясы мен этнологиясының өзекті мәселелері» атты тақырыппен «XI Оразбаев оқулары» өтті. Конференция Әл- Фараби атындағы Қазақ ұлттық университеті, Қазақстан Республикасы Мемлекеттік Орталық музейі және Таңбалы қорық музейімен ұйымдастырылды. Конференцияда қала қонақтарынан бөлек Нұр-Сұлтаннан келген жастарда болды. Баяндамалар қызықты әрі тартысты өтті.Әбдіманап Медеуұлы Оразбаев тарих ғылымдарының кандидаты, қазақ археологы, Солтүстік, Шығыс және Орталық Қазақстанның қола дәуірінің ескерткіштерін зерттеуші маман. Ә.М. Оразбаевты Қазақстан археологиясының негізін қалаушы ғалымдардың бірі ретінде тану тарих ғылымы үшін үлкен қызығушылық тудырары сөзсіз. Қола және ерте темір дәуірлерін зерттеуші кез келген ғалым Оразбаевтың тұжырымдарға толы еңбектерін қарастырмай кетпейтіні анық.

Воспоминания посвящены светлой памяти Якова Абрамовича Шера, ушедшего из жизни 17 апреля 2019 г. Творчество Я.А. Шера многогранно и охватывает такие направления науки, как изучение древнего искусства – палеолитического, наскального, статуарного; разработка теории археологической науки; внедрение статистических исследований в археологию и информационных технологий в музейное дело; преподавательская деятельность. Я.А. Шер внес существенный вклад в развитие кемеровской научной школы по изучению первобытного искусства, тесно связанной с подготовкой специалистов для казахстанской науки. Автор воспоминаний подчеркивает, что написанная более полувека назад книга Я.А. Шера «Каменные изваяния Семиречья», не потеряла своей актуальности до настоящего времени. Без этой публикации не обходится ни одна работа, посвященная изучению статуарного искусства азиатских степей. Я.А. Шер останется в памяти как исследователь, целиком посвятивший себя науке.

Rejoinder of ``Statistical analysis of an archeological find'' [arXiv:0804.0079]

We present the first near all-sky yield of oscillating red giants from the prime mission data of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). We apply machine learning toward long-cadence TESS photometry from the first data release by the MIT Quick-look Pipeline to automatically detect the presence of red giant oscillations in frequency power spectra. The detected targets are conservatively vetted to produce a total of 158,505 oscillating red giants, which is an order of magnitude increase over the yield from Kepler and K2 and a lower limit to the possible yield of oscillating giants across TESS’s nominal mission. For each detected target, we report effective temperatures and radii derived from colors and Gaia parallaxes, as well as estimates of their frequency at maximum oscillation power. Using our measurements, we present the first near all-sky Gaia-asteroseismology mass map, which shows global structures consistent with the expected stellar populations of our Galaxy. To demonstrate the strong potential of TESS asteroseismology for Galactic archeology even with only one month of observations, we identify 354 new candidates for oscillating giants in the Galactic halo, display the vertical mass gradient of the Milky Way disk, and visualize correlations of stellar masses with kinematic phase-space substructures, velocity dispersions, and α-abundances.

These are excerpts from the closing talk at the "XIIth Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum", which took place last Summer in Thessaloniki --an excellent place to enjoy an interest in archeology. A more complete personal view of the early days of QCD and the rest of the Standard Model is given in [1]. Here I discuss a few of the points which --to my judgement-- illustrate well the QCD evolution (in time), both from a scientific and a sociological point of view.

ABSTRACT Experimentation has always played an important role in archeology, in particular to create reference collections for use-wear studies. Different types of experiments can answer different questions; all types should therefore be combined to obtain a holistic view. In controlled experiments, some factors are tested, while the other factors are kept constant to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Yet, controlled experiments have been conducted with variable degrees of control. Although they seem decoupled from archeological applications, mechanized experiments and the robust causal relationships they measure are critical to answer archeological questions like understanding the processes of use-wear formation. Here we introduce the concept behind using the SMARTTESTER®, a modular material tester, and we present four different setups (linear, rotary, percussion and oscillating) and their potential archeological applications. Such experiments will contribute to our understanding of causality in human tool use.

Archeological Roman lead (Pb) is known to be a suitable material for shielding experimental apparata in rare event searches. In the past years the intrinsic radiopurity of this material was investigated using different technologies. In this work we applied the latest advancements in cryogenic techniques to study the bulk radiopurity of a 1 cm$^{3}$ sample of archeological Roman Pb. We report the lowest ever measured limit on $^{210}$Pb content in Roman Pb, with a concentration lower than 715 $μ$Bq/kg. Furthermore, we also studied $^{238}$U and $^{232}$Th impurity concentrations. Our values concur with independent measurements reported in literature.

Discussion of ``Statistical analysis of an archeological find'' by Andrey Feuerverger [arXiv:0804.0079]