@benni@FlintDibble@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist That's a hard one, every day brings its lot of exciting new knowledge, esp. here in #Okinawa where the field is so young that everything is turned almost up side down every 4 months or so... The surveys at Sakitari Cave bring new revolutionary info each time (presence of people at a time we did not have proof of that before, presence of tools for a period we did not have any tool before, ceram popping out of layers older and older...).
@benni@FlintDibble@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist As for my best find... I found a stone tool when I was a child, it got on display at the city office in a showcase in the entrance hall ! Maybe it's still there ! And just the other day ! We re-opened a test pit that had been surveyed last year by the board of education and first (mechanical) shovel scoop in the backfill earth we got one of the most beautiful stone adzes I ever saw in #Okinawa !
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist I do think indeed that any piece looted by our colonialist ancestors should be returned to the countries they belong to. I suppose there are a lot of political problems that I am not aware of, but I don't really care. I suppose the Louvre or the British Museum would feel a little bit empty, but hasn't the time come to grow museum collections on willing mutual loan ?
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist I mean we have thousands of really nice pieces of national antiquities sleeping in museum backyards that we could lend to any museum in the world and we could receive in exchange other pieces of antiquities that sleep in their backyards as well. I'm not a museum curator though so I'm not sure how things really could work.
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist I do think indeed that any piece looted by our colonialist ancestors should be returned to the countries they belong to. I suppose there are a lot of political problems that I am not aware of, but I don't really care. I suppose the Louvre or the British Museum would feel a little bit empty, but hasn't the time come to grow museum collections on willing mutual loan ?
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist I mean we have thousands of really nice pieces of national antiquities sleeping in museum backyards that we could lend to any museum in the world and we could receive in exchange other pieces of antiquities that sleep in their backyards as well. I'm not a museum curator though so I'm not sure how things really could work.
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist Concerning the second question, who hires us, there is a great lot of answers to that question. The answer also greatly varies according to the country. In France, indeed, archaeologists do work for universities, but most of them are employed by the #INRAP a national institute in charge of archaeological surveys and research in the whole country (and unfortunately not present in the Fediverse).
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist There are also private companies in addition to this national institute, for instance Archaeodunum @Archeodunum has an account here. Municipalities, prefectures, regions, any administrative unit with a cultural office can hire archaeologists as well.
In Japan where I work, most archaeologists are hired by private companies that do the archaeological surveys at the request of the municipalities or prefectures.
@Nodami@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist There are a few archaeologists also employed by the Boards of Education of each municipality or prefecture, essentially supervising the work of the private companies. A even fewer are employed by universities, but to be honnest, programmed excavations by universities are really really few here (not sure for the rest of Japan).
@Nodami@archaeodons i really hope other fediverse archaeologists will step in and tell you how it works in their part of the world, making #AskAnArchaeologist Day a success !
@berangere444@archaeodons Hi! I would like to take advantage of the #askanarchaeologist day. I would like to know why most of the museum visual interpretations of #IceAge people are still portraying white males? How do you react to this kind of parallel reality? Also, do you have any reading recommendation to learn about how whites are normalized in the #prehistory? Thanks!
@Gonzalo@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist Well, I personally have left Europe for too long to know exactly how museums behave nowadays, but I do remember some headlines in the recent years about museums having changed their visuals to fit DNA analyses for hair, eye colour and skin tones.
@Gonzalo@archaeodons#AskAnArchaeologist As far as Okinawa is concerned, things are changing too and the reconstruction of the appearance of the "Minatogawa Man" has been changed recently to fit the fact that he was genetically closer to populations of Southeast Asia rather than mainland Asia (China). Both the reconstructions are on display at the Prefectural Museum, with explanation that science is constantly in progress.
I have long wondered about the body shapes of prehistoric finds like the #Venus of #Willendorf. From today's perspective, I would assume that there were actually no obese people in the #IceAge. But since the figures are very close to life, there must have been really fat people at that time. Surely others have also thought about it. What are some thoughts about this? How can it be that Ice Age people knew obese body shapes so well?