My favorite propagandist

Maju is busy conjuring-up white devils, again:

"Late Indus Valley Civilization was overcome by violence

"The Late Indus Valley Civilization (Cemetery H cultural layer, usually attributed to the Indoeuropean invasions) was, unlike in previous periods, quite violent, new evidence highlights. 

"The evidence from the bones also highlights the arrival of many non-local men, who apparently married local women."

Sadly for our aspiring propagandist, and rather humorously for the rest of us, the cited article posted to the National Geographic website -- "Surprising Discoveries From the Indus Civilization" -- makes no such claim.

What Maju seems to have done is take the two separate studies on which the article is based and conflated their findings into a conclusion that serves his peculiar form of bigotry.  The first study -- "A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur" -- found, somewhat surprisingly, that a Harappan cemetery contained the remains of males that were not originally from that ancient city, yet they were buried in association with obviously local women. The second study -- "A peaceful realm? Trauma and social differentiation at Harappa" -- examined the incidence of violence through time at Harappa and found that, not only did it increase, but by the time of the "Late Harappan Transitional phase", 1900-1700 BCE, the rate of violent head trauma was the highest recorded in prehistoric South Asia.

As can be seen from the quote, above, Maju juxtaposes these two findings to support his forgone conclusion -- "Late Indus Valley Civilization overcome by violence" -- and does so playing his usual childish games with chronology. "Late Indus Valley" and "Cemetery H" are sometimes used synonymously to denote the terminal era of the IVC but the actual Cemetery H, at Harappa, dates from around 1700 BCE, after the Late Harappan Transitional phase, the one that witnessed such a high incidence of violence. Maju's statement about the "arrival of many non-local males" seems to suggest that they might have been the perpetrators of that violence but, as the National Geographic article clearly states, the cemetery in which these males were found was used from "roughly 2550 to 2030" BCE, squarely within what is often called the "Mature Harappan" era, the high point in that civilization's illustrious history. The males to which he slyly attributes this increase in violence flourished at least a hundred years before the period in which violence reached its maximum and at least three-hundred years before Cemetery H.

As an agregator of the work of others, I suppose Maju performs a reasonably valuable service but, given such shameless dishonesty as this, his commentaries and interpretations are worse than useless.

Mound

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I have been cataloging sites of potential archaeological interest in Afghanistan and now I see them everywhere I look. This one is near Dzhumabazar, Uzbekistan, southeast of Samarkand. I have no idea what it is or from when it might date, but the mound itself seems fairly extensive, with what may be another site a kilometer or two to the northeast and perhaps several smaller structures scattered about.

The combination of circular and rectangular enclosures, here, remind me of a smaller version of Old Merv, in Turkmenistan.

The problem with Swat

Maju is hoping that the Swat culture will validate his faith in Kurganism and, to be honest, I actually wish it was true.

If that culture was in fact intrusive, and if it did derive from the BMAC, and if indeed those people brought an Indo-European language through the Khyber pass, then I should be thrilled. Among other things, it would offer a credible explanation for proto-Tocharian, one in better agreement with modern archeology. But that is a lot of "ifs".

What we know from the archaeological record is that, if anyone invaded anyone, it was the Harappans 'invading' the BMAC, when some centuries before Swat they established a trading colony at Shortugai, on the Amu Darya. From then on, the two were presumably in contact and foreign trade or cultural influence along an apparent trade route should not surprise us. After the Harappan collapse, sites peripheral to the Indus homeland seem to have generally went their separate ways as the influence of the centralized culture waned. We should therefore rather expect Gandhara to be drawn toward the Afghan sphere and if someone wishes to call that an, "Indo-Aryan Invasion", then I might not even object too strenuously.

But that still leaves the question of what language, or indeed languages, the BMAC spoke. There is no clear answer to that so far and, since they don't appear to have left a written language behind, we may never know. Reports that Bactrian Margiana spoke Indo-Iranian rest upon the claims of V I Sarianidi and those claims do not withstand scrutiny.

Assuming that the BMAC did in fact speak an Indo-European language, at least for the sake of argument, then it is difficult to see how the Kurgan hypothesis can be comfortably sustained. If Bactrian Margiana was Indo-European, then archeology suggests that agricultural tribes in Afghanistan, on the Iranian plateau, in southern Turkmenistan, and in western Tajikistan, may also have spoken Indo-European languages in the late fourth millennium BCE. I don't have a problem with that, since in my ignorance I have no problem with a language riding the Neolithic wave through the oases of Central Asia. But how can this be squared with the claim that proto-Indo-European arose and spread with a horse-and-wheel culture from south-west Russia?

Michael E Smith, on ideology and scholarship:

"When we allow personal ideological bias to rule our scholarly work, we limit the value of our research to answer real questions and to contribute to broader social and scientific debates. If you have an ideological axe to grind, either leave scholarship and go into politics, or else find ways to achieve a level of scholarly objectivity in your research and writing."

 Via John Hawks.

A screwy thing from the Paleolithic

My old pal Maju is indulging his fantasies, again, wanking furiously over some Paleolithic whatsit that some other romantic believes was a screw-threaded stopper for a water skin.

Looking at the drawing of this thing, the threads do look plausible, even if their shape seems odd for the alleged purpose. The width of the helical groove is nearly constant throughout, as is both the angle the groove makes relative to the long axis and the taper of the piece as a whole. It is indeed a remarkable piece of workmanship, especially at such an improbable date.

But the photograph of this artifact -- shown by Maju, but not by Don -- tells a much different story. Here we see that in reality the groove does not wind its way so smoothly and evenly at all. It is difficult to say how deep it is from the image but it is not nearly so wide as in the drawing. What once seemed a plausible example of a threaded plug does not seem so plausible at all. In fact, it looks like the groove on what I should take to be the grip, at the top of the piece in the photograph, seems far more precisely executed than the groove that supposedly does all the work!

I suppose it's possible that someday they will find an iceman melting out of a glacier, somewhere, with one of these things slung across his withered shoulder, just as Don and Maju imagine. On that blessed day I shall happily eat my words. In the mean time, I am guessing this might have been an Old Stone Age version of a tapered reamer, perhaps. Maybe they enlarged holes in hides with it?

¿Quién diablo sabe?

However much fun it might be to play these sorts of guessing games, it is difficult to see how they can be more than amusements, at best. They certainly are not science and do little if anything to advance our understanding. Worse, they encourage the substitution of plausible story telling for empiricism, a pernicious evil already rampant in too many quarters. When we should be looking at all the data and asking, what is this telling us? we instead argue over who tells the most plausible story. It is a waste of time and worse.

When history and anthropology may be so easily twisted to such nefarious socio-political ends, strict adherence to rigorous standards and sound methodologies becomes more than just good practice. Such standards become our moral obligation.

Pesto

My beloved is downstairs making pesto. We bought a little goat cheese and fresh pita bread, yesterday, so looks like we shall be having pesto ‘pizzas’ for dinner this evening, with capers and sliced Roma tomatoes picked fresh from the vines out front.
I think it is difficult to imagine a more tasty time of year. We were late getting our tomatoes in the ground this year. I no longer recall why, but I do not think we have suffered for it.

Friday night at Vic's

Where Carolina grew up, there was an abundance of fresh seafood and the tastes of those early years left her with a life-long love of fish and shellfish of most every kind. A favorite these days are mussels and when she found out that Stephen Greenblatt, down at Vic's Family Restaurant, serves them up steamed on his menu each night she just had to try them.

We have been in a Vic's sort of mood, recently, and if you have tasted his food it is easy to see why. Last Tuesday, we decided on take-out rather than a trip to the grocery store and went to Vic's for steak and cheese subs, two of their “Usuals”. Last night was seafood night for us, so with justifiably high expectations, and appetites to match, we set out for a little more than our usual fish on Friday and were not disappointed.
I just love these coat hooks and this shot turned out better than I expected, if I do say so myself, especially considering the low-light conditions and a glass of their eminently drinkable house chardonnay. Much of the original Art Deco interior seems to be intact at Vic's, too, and I find these little details enchanting. It is a style that survived in many places, when I was a child, but seems to have been largely renovated into oblivion in the decades since.

As you can see, we were lucky and were seated in a booth soon after our arrival, something I thought miraculous in a popular restaurant on Friday at six o'clock. When we walked in the door, there was such a crowd that I honestly expected to wait much longer than we did.

Everything was wonderful, from our very generous salads to our entrees. C ordered her mussels, with saffron and wine, and I had the shrimp-and-scallop “Broiled Combo”. My choice was everything I expected, perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned, with thick slices of lemon swimming in the rich broth of all that shellfish. I filched one of Carolina's mussels – soon followed by one or two more, just to be sure – and am quite certain that, if I have had better, I have clean forgotten it. As much as I love shrimp and scallops, I almost regretted my choice.

What really and pleasantly shocked me, though, was Stephen's spaghetti. A side of spaghetti is not supposed to be exciting, but Vic's marinara is a culinary treat. The flavor is straight from the garden to the fire to your table, with no stops in between, and would be a very pleasant surprise in any restaurant, and not just a family pizza place in downtown Clifton Forge.

Carolina took the first and last photos. I have no idea to whom that pink beauty belongs, but finding it parked there, just in front of Vic's, yesterday, was a delightful end to a delightful dining experience.