Thursday, February 28, 2008

Greg 'Gerg' Gilbert

It is with deep sadness that I report that Greg "Gerg" Gilbert, former student, former employee, and friend, has died of an apparent heart attack.
As a first year student, he immediately showed brilliant ability in all things Computer and Network. He worked hard, understood things apparently instantaneously and with ease, and with laughter that came easily, disarmed the stressful moments inherent in any IT Support situation. Several times I came in to the office in the morning to find Gerg asleep on the floor of one of the IT cubicles, having worked on some project through the night until his eyelids would no longer stay open. His passion led him to become a regular contributer to the open-source community, becoming the maintainer of numerous modules for Linux-based handhelds and the debian Linux distribution. His focus on IT led him to leave Westmont and work at Brooks with Greg Lawler, who was able to put his talents to use full-time in development and support there. Greg Lawler has written a blog entry at http://www.zinkwazi.com/wp/2008/02/28/greg-gerg-gilbert/ honoring Gerg.

Gerg was gentle, humble, affable, and always eager to help. Even after leaving Westmont, he would chip in on solving some of our most vexing problems, and always with a smile, a laugh, a nod that indicated that this was more fun than work for him. All who knew him will grieve his passing.

Peace to the soul of Greg Gilbert.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

On the impact of mobile technology

This essay was written in response to a request from the Horizon, Westmont's student newspaper.

Aptly classified as ‘disruptive technology’, the small devices that have become ubiquitous over the last decade have great potential. Their advocates see them helping us live fuller, more efficient lives by connecting us with others, coordinating our schedules, entertaining us, and providing us access to a plethora of information. And in many ways cell phones, iPods and the like deliver on the promise. Despite the awkward interfaces typical of their adolescent state of development, they allow us to schedule appointments, text message our friends, watch the last Grey’s Anatomy, listen to our favorite mix of music, catch up on a technology seminar via podcast, get directions to a new restaurant on the road, and expect that our friends will immediately receive and respond to our IM invitation to meet there. All of this connection comes in a handy, lightweight and stylish device easily slipped into a pocket and always connected to a reliable network. In a spirit of unbridled consumer optimism, we look forward to the next iPhone, Wii or talking GPS. Life is good, or so it seems.

But not all is sweetness and light in the land of the instantly-connected.

These technologies are classified ‘disruptive’ for good reason.

Apart from the chaos into which they can plunge the data infrastructure supporting them, they disrupt our established patterns of communication, changing how, what and when we communicate, and more importantly, disrupting the image and reality of who we are.

The need for instantaneity and the limitations of typing on a two-square inch keyboard can override concerns for careful thought, meaningful message and word-craftsmanship. What we communicate via text messages tends to be inane or pointless. And this lack of care often spills over into our other writing. Even more disturbing, we tend to treat the IM or cell phone as more important than the people we’re with. Between classes we text or call our BFFs or helicopter-parents instead of discussing the content of the previous class; we pay scant attention to a lecture while jotting a note on the wall of our Facebook friends; we pride ourselves on ability to dual-task, not noticing that we’re doing both tasks poorly.

Our expectations of others also become skewed: we expect instantaneous response, we judge people if they are slow to respond, we become accustomed to short, choppy and disjointed interaction, and tune out extended discourse.

Our shortened attention span may be related to the effect of the barrage of IM and email messages on our brains: I recently read research that high volumes of email have the same deleterious effect on memory as smoking marijuana, but (tellingly) I can’t remember where. But I’m pretty sure it’s true: maybe my BFFs will IM me a URL. In addition, because instant communication allows almost unlimited spontaneity, we get out of the habit of planning in advance, and simply by virtue of being out of practice, become less adept at doing so.

What should our response be to these disruptive technologies? Reject them in favor of a pastoral, Luddite existence? Uncritically embrace them? Clearly these extremes are inappropriate: our world has changed, and our call to ‘be in the world, but not of the world’ requires critical engagement with technology as well as ideas. We should instead sift the wheat from the chaff: use technology wisely to increase your efficiency and for entertainment, but not at the expense of relationships with the people around you. With apologies to Timothy Leary, “Turn off, Tune out, Drop in”: Turn off your devices, tune out the distractions, and drop in on your neighbors, building life-long friendships.

A tough semester

Why have there been no posts on Zeitahdata: the blog since July 22 2007?
I am sure there are multitudes out there in cyberspace wondering this very thing.

Well, my mom had a saying: "If you can't say anything good, don't say anything at all."
Of course as a young whippersnapper, I'd retort that what she really meant is
"If you can't say anything well, don't say anything at all," but I digress.

Having had an extremely difficult semester, fraught with huge computer server problems, an external review of the IT department, dozens of large, crucial projects to put together and a fairly well developed depression, there was no time during the last half year when I felt I could say anything good, much less say it well.

But things are better: the review resulted in the college looking more realistically at budget, staffing and performance expectations, some of those large projects are in process and will show fruit soon, I've been playing soccer more or less regularly, and things as a whole are looking up.

The next post will be on a topic unrelated to the Zeitah dig: some thoughts on mobile technology, which I wrote in response to a request by the editors of the college's student newspaper.

But this post, believe it or not, actually has something to do with Zeitah. I have been informed by Ron that future plans for Zeitah will involve alternating years of study season, dig season, study season, dig season... and that during the study seasons my services will not be required.

I have mixed feelings about this. If you have read previous blogs, you know that I derive a great deal of pleasure from all that I have been able to learn and to accomplish as part of the Zeitah excavation team. However, this last season was undeniably utterly exhausting. I wish Ron and whomever will participate in the study season all of the very best, and I look forward to the 2009 season being much more positive than the 2007.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Thoughts from Heathrow

It's 4:30 a.m., GMT, and a cast of thousands grumbles or sleeps its way through the night. Having spent the last 3 hours sleeping uncomfortably on an unpadded bench not well suited for a recumbent form, I am empathetic with those who continue to try to sleep.

I'm on my way back home. How did this happen, since the last time I slept overnight at Heathrow I vowed never to repeat the performance? Well, a series of unfortunate events conspired against my resolve.

The triggering event was a large storm that moved over Britain and on across the continent. This storm brought with it torrential rains, including a ½ hour gully washer that flooded all runways at Heathrow. As a result, flight operations at Heathrow were shut down completely for 3 hours. As a result of this 3 hour delay, all the planes that had not departed stayed in their bays. This gave no room for any incoming planes once flight operations resumed. Flights from overseas were allowed to land after the worst of the flooding had subsided, but they were stranded in queues on the tarmac.

Our flight arrived at 9 p.m., only ½ hour late, but it was 10:30 before the plane came to a final stop, and a half hour after that that busses arrived to transport us to the Terminal. At midnight, the serpentine queue that led to British customs had dwindled and I finally passed through. It was better in the queue, where I struck up a conversation with a woman and her son from Los Angeles. Another half hour retrieving luggage from amidst the hundreds of pieces of baggage, and I was ready to stake out a spot for sleeping. What impudent optimism! Yes, I am able to find a bench with a free seat, surrounded by a Dutch couple on one side and a large group of oriental people on the other (Korean? I can't tell the difference in the various oriental languages.) The Dutch couple appear to be able to drift off to sleep, but my other neighbors are happily chattering away, a cold draft chilled me whenever the nearby outside door was opened, and I seemed unable to squirm into a comfortable position between the seat, my daypack, laptop bag and the small suitcase.

About 3 a.m., I admit defeat, and move to the next floor up, taking the opportunity to change out of short sleeve shirt and cargo shorts into long sleeve shirt and pants. I curl up on the floor of an airport pub, and get a few winks in before waking up briefly, starting the above paragraph, and then lapsing back into oblivion. Sleep deprivation from the previous 6 weeks hits with a vengeance, and I fall asleep while in mid-sentence.

6 a.m., and I am startled awake by the announcement made by the manager of the pub in which I'm sleeping that the pub opens in ½ hour and everyone needs to get up and out. The dozen or so people who have taken refuge here join me in bleary-eyed exile, stumbling toward washrooms to freshen up. By 7 a.m. I am queueing up for American Airlines' check-in. I have joined half of the free world in this queue - by 7:30 we have barely moved ¼ of the distance to the counter. But as more employees stream in, the line starts going faster, and by 8:30, I'm through the line and on my way to the security check.

I pick up a copy of the last Harry Potter, and start reading it in line for security, get told that I need to drop out of the line until just two hours prior to my flight, get back in line at 9:30, spend the next 2 hours reading H.P. and glancing up at the departure information monitor every 3 minutes to find out which gate the flight departs from. 15 minutes before scheduled departure, gate 13 shows up on the monitor. With only the briefest reflection on how appropriate the flight number is, I go through yet another security and passport check, and our flight leaves at 12:40, only an hour behind schedule. Almost immediately, I fall asleep, and wake up somewhere over the Atlantic near Iceland, watch a movie , fall asleep, read H.P., fall asleep …

Jeanne picks me up at LAX , and two and a half hours later, I'm surrounded by my family, home at last.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Officially done for the year!

Well, it's over for now.
A gazillion backups have been done to CD, thumb drive, and two separate computers;
All the computer stuff I'm not bringing home has been packed up for storage. My suitcase is filled to the brim so that I worry a bit about the zippers popping open, and I'm just about ready to shut down the computers, which is my final task before going off to the airport.

Ron, Connie and Madeleine Tappy left this morning, Erin and I will hitch a ride with Ronen to Tel Aviv today at noon, Sherry goes back home this afternoon. I'm feeling pretty much sleep-deprived, and I hope I will be able to get sufficient sleep on the flights home.

The blogging this season has been what Barbara would call 'miserable miniscule scraps', and I hope to make it up by doing some reflection about the experience later.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The final numbers are in:

We have now passed the 'All Pottery Entered' milestone, and I have the final numbers:








ItemQuantity
Loci227
Buckets573
Guphas7299
MC Readings894
Pottery Readings5447
Pottery Sherds72178




Comparing with last year's numbers,
    • MC Readings are up 89%,
  • Pottery Readings are up 153%, and
  • Total Pottery Sherds are up 269%

Zeitah data milestone

When proceeding through the dig season, I am aware of many notable milestones:
  1. First day of 'real excavation' (as opposed to cleaning off weeds from the off-season)
  2. First Pottery Reading Sheets entered into the database
  3. First Material Culture log entries entered into the database
  4. First report created of the bucket readings
  5. The "end of third week" doldrums
  6. Delivering the Lecture on Archaeological Computing
  7. Last day of excavation
  8. Last day the volunteers are with us
  9. All Material Culture logs entered
  10. All Locus Sheets scanned and entered
  11. All Registered Pottery Drawings scanned and associated
  12. All Registered Pottery Sheets scanned and entered
  13. Final Bucket reports distributed
  14. Final MC reports distributed
  15. All Pottery Reading Sheets entered
  16. Pottery percentage reports created
  17. Final report on computing submitted
  18. Final Backups
  19. Packing up
We are now at milestone 14. This is actually a pretty good place to be now: I figure we're one day ahead of my previous years' schedule, mainly due to the help of Joanna, Madeleine, Helen and Jessie. We have 40 Pottery Reading Sheets left to enter, 21 Registered pottery descriptions (3 pages each), and then a bunch of scanning (about 15 Top Plans and a Section Drawing, and the final Locus and Bucket summary sheets for each of the remaining 4 squares.)

I will need to do some data analysis and generating the factual portion of my report (spreadsheets, databases, etc) and then think about recommendations for next year for my verbal report.

Back to work - hoping to pass milestone 15 shortly!

John

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Friday, July 06, 2007

Busy, but happy

Well, I don't really have time to blog any of my thoughts, but here's a spreadsheet that illustrates that I and my team of data entry people have been busy:




































































































































Year 1999 2000 2001 2004 2005 2007*
# of Squares 8 6 7 4 3 5
Square meters 648 486 567 324 243 405
Loci 254 183 306 209 265 216
Buckets 840 530 906 548 317 538
Guphas 22725 9111 15574 9612 3441 5240
MC readings 1151 590 1407 754 472 761
Pottery readings 4910 4381 4663 2885 2149 3671
Pottery sherds 50261 38167 44939 36109 19563 45723
Photo (Mb) 151 141 417 742 556 995
Top Plans 160 120 140 80 60 100







Per 100 sq. m





Loci 39 38 54 65 109 53
Buckets 130 109 160 169 130 133
Guphas 35071875 2747 2967 1416 1294
MC readings 178 121 248 233 194 188
Pottery readings 758 901 822 890 884 906
Pottery sherds 7756 7853 7926 11145 8051 11290







Sunday, July 01, 2007

Kibbutz impressions

Today I had these impressions about the Kibbutz and the excavation:

Cloudy, cool morning;
Clear blue sky afternoon;
Soft, gentle evening;
Full moon and planets vying for attention.

concrete tiles, 10cm on a side, on the floor of the room;
buildings built with such random orientation one wonders if a compass has found its way here;

cooing of mourning doves throughout the day, a virtual cacophany of calls in the early morning;
blue, cool water in the pool contrasting with the heat of the day;
playing basketball in the pool;

the crunch of white gravel under the feet as I jog around the kibbutz permiter;
the ironic strains of 'A Man of Sorrows' from Handel's Messiah drifting up from the Pizza barn as I jog past;
Dolly Parton remixed with a Techno beat at the Friday party;
Bob Dylan turned Israeli rasping out his best hits in Hebrew;

Little dogs, big dogs, cute dogs, ugly dogs, dogs that yap, dogs that yawn in the hot shade;
New paint, peeling paint, paint that begins to fade;

Schnitzel at noon, schnitzel at night - I couldn't eat another bite;
Dining hall food - workaday stuff; Guest house food - not so bad; Bistro food - how does he do that in that tiny kitchen?
If it's Saturday, it must be Bistro.

Afternoon naps, late night parties, cards at the tables outside after Shabbat meal;
Conversations with friends, taking a ribbing for my cushy job, unintentional segregation, bonding.
Intellectuals debating textual criticism, guys sharpening knives and drinking beer while watching NASCAR;

Snoring roommates; waking up before dawn;
The 3rd week depression; frayed nerves snap, friends growl;

Questions about pottery, unintelligible writing,
'The Routine': backups, entering Loci, Buckets, Pottery lines and Material Culture lines.
The yearly discussion with either Barbara or Sherry about classification schemata.

The two paths to the dining hall: shortest and most shade;
Scooters, bikes, 3-wheeled 'chariots', golf carts, tractors, strange small cars, the vans;

IMing and emailing and blogging to keep in touch;
It never really seems real, much
as I may try.

Half-done with the season - knowing the tsunami still awaits.

Note to the reader: This post is intentionally unedited and stream of consciousness. To make sense of it would be a contradition in terms. It was written at the beginning of the last half of the season, which should be sufficient to explain it.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Nova is coming

On Monday, a film crew from the public television program Nova will be coming to film the Tel, in preparation for an upcoming segment on the abecedary.

As one might imagine, this is cause for more than a small amount of consternation, as square supervisors must set aside ambitions for more excavation and instead sweep their squares in preparation for the filming. Everything must be perfect, of course - even the Baulk Tags - labels which are nailed into the earth layers exposed at the edges of each square (the baulk) to indicate the Locus number they are associated with. Traditionally done with permanent marker on a piece of 2"x3" manila card stock, the dig director has decided that a more professional approach needs to be taken. So, each morning he calls me up from the field with a list of locus numbers, which I dutifully transcribe into 'Word Art' in Microsoft Word. The height, width, centering, and boldness of each must be 'just so', and then printed out on adhesive labels bought for the purpose.

We will all be relieved when the TV cameras go away and we can get back to the mundane business of archaeology.

Busy life = no blogging

One of the first things to go when the pace of life gets hectic is the blog.

Both reading and writing blogs are lower priorities than the important things of daily life: data entry, data analysis, running backups, saving the world from massive destruction, and the like.

I had an interesting discussion with Lauren and Erin over lunch the other day about why anyone in their right mind would blog at all. Both are intelligent, highly motivated university professors, with several peer-reviewed publications to their name and they had comments like these:

"Why would I want to have people I don't know able to read my private thoughts? If I write in my journal, it's for me only, not for others."

"I already have enough trouble controlling the image people have of me - to have my words from a blog used against me is a thought to horrendous to contemplate."

"As an academic, I have trained myself to do all my writing as if it were going to be picked apart by a thesis defense committee, and I simply don't have enough energy to create such entries."

"I don't get why one would allow one's self to be driven by the appetite of the reader."

It makes me think about why I blog, why I had an email list for people who want to know about my thoughts about Zeitah in years past, and why I have an email list for people interested in progress in the rebuild of my Aeronca airplane .

Is it egotism? Pride gone wild? Self-centered individualism?

Truly - does anyone really care what I think about Carbon 14 dating, or what arcane method I was able to devise to print pot sherd outlines, or that I got to fly while in England on my way over?

Indeed, other than my family and a few close friends, I suspect the interest level is pretty low. But I continue to blog. I guess I just don't care that much if people don't care about my blog. I mean, it's nice if they like it, but my self-image doesn't hinge on adulation for a well-crafted blog entry.

I realized that today is a momentous day: it is the half-way point between my arrival in Israel and departure for home. Perhaps this is the reason for the navel-gazing: I'm half-way through the dig, and my vaunted hopes for data entry and analysis have gone unfulfilled. It's the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

More about life at Kibbutz Galon




Kibbutz Galon has an interesting mix of people: the original kibbutzniks from Poland who established Galon in the mid 40's, their children, their grandchildren, immigrant workers, guest house guests (ranging from secular to highly religious, local to international origin, young to old), and renters who may have no other affiliation with the kibbutz.

Galon's main sources of income appear to be farming (dairy cows, melons, and grain), the Guest House (that would include us) and 'taxes' on members. Originally a collective run on communal/communist principles, over the years commitment to these ideals has been eroded, kibbutz members have become more interested in material comforts, and a certain amount of capitalism has emerged. This has given rise to a significant population of renters and to the Guest House. Combined, these now subsidize the needs of the kibbutz, which is seeing its members age and reduce. (see the article in my last post for details).

Capitalism, in the form of a competing eatery, (
Mike's Bistro,) is not welcomed with open arms, but is tolerated because of the income it produces.

But one thing all agree on: the love for their children and desire to pass their values on to them.



From the whimsical creative playground equipment to the practice of having children play in the area next to the adults as they enjoy their conversation, coffee and cake after the Friday evening meal - it's clear that they love their children and desire a better life for them than they have experienced.

In this we are all alike.

Madeleine Tappy, a remarkable 11 year old girl, drew a map (top plan) which was her impression of the kibbutz. I insert it below for your enjoyment.

May all parents celebrate the promise of youth, enourage our children to work to attain that promise, and transform our natural fear of separation into creativity as we seek positive ways to form healthy familial bonds that don't lead to bondage!

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Kibbutz Galon in the news

In the June 15th Jerusalem Post 'UpFront Magazine', there is an article about Kibbutz Galon, complete with pictures. Although they mention an archaeology team sponsored by Mormons and not our team, the rest of the article appears to be accurate and informative. Happy reading!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Digging at Zeitah


It's not often, actually, that the computer guy at an excavation ventures forth from his air-conditioned lair into the harsh reality of the field, but that rare event happened Friday, and is likely to happen again on Monday.

How did this happen?

I ran out of things to do. Seriously! Oh, I could do a bit more filtering through the database, looking for anomalies, or I could have prepared an esoteric report or two, but until data comes flowing from the field, I was having some serious thumb-twiddling time.

So I woke up at 4:30 and piled into the van in the dark with all the square supervisors and their assistants. By 5:20, we had the tools out and were ready to start excavating. I was assigned a couple tasks I was unlikely to botch: pulling back weeds, removing old sandbags and sweeping the slope near the steps clear of loose dirt.

Erin, the square supervisor for whom I was working, commented that it's one of the great ironies of archaeology that a bunch of obsessive-compulsive people are gathered together and told to go clean dirt. Which I did, with a vengeance.

The only things really challenging about sweeping the slope are how to do so without rolling down the hill (it's about a 45 degree slope), and how to do it without killing your back, as you stoop over and sweep with a small hand-brush.

Excavating the old sandbags was more difficult than it might seem. The sandbags have deteriorated over the last 2 years, so the fabric is almost all rotted away, and where it isn't gone, it doesn't have enough strength to pull the contents away with it. So you have to use trowel, brush and dust pan to carefully brush away the dirt with which the sand bags were filled until you reach the bottom of the sand bag, at which point, the fabric can be pulled up.

Why excavate sandbags? Because they were put on top of and next to important or fragile sections of the excavation at the end of the previous season (in 2005) to protect them from the elements and from people who could destroy the site if it weren't protected. The dirt in the sand bags has mixed with water and essentially become a very low quality mud-brick, adding to the challenge of removing them.

By 8:30, when breakfast was called, it had started getting hot, and I heard data calling me from my room: "Oh John! Please come and enter me into the database!"

So, somewhat reluctantly, I left the field and went back to my duties as high-priest of data, grating out in my best Schwarzenegger imitation, "I'll be bock!"

Here are more pictures from the 2005 dig season or from this season.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Feeling a little Tipsy

No, it's not as you might assume from the title: your fearless blogger hasn't fallen off the wagon - in fact he's always been a tee-totaller. Hm. Since the only strong liquid a teetotaller drinks is tea, shouldn't that be tea-totaller? But I digress.

Let's see. Where was I? Oh- Tipsy! As in the Tipsy Trainer, a very rare pre-war English airplane of which there are now 4 flying examples.


While in London on my way to Israel, I was honored to have been given a flight in this little gem by its present owner (or caretaker, as he thinks of himself), Steve Slater. Only 29 Tipsy Trainers were manufactured, and of them, only 4 are currently airworthy.

Our flight over the English countryside near Bicester Airfield was wonderfully nostalgic and gorgeous. The airplane is somewhat sensitive to the controls, especially in pitch, but appears to love to fly just as much as I loved flying in it.

Many thanks, Steve!

More pictures can be found at Flying the Tipsy Trainer

You want What???!??

One of the joys of being director of archaeological computing on a small dig is the regular occurrence of moments like the one that happened yesterday. Our ceramics expert made a simple request: "Could you please print out a copy of each of the drawings of the registered pottery we've scanned so far? Oh, and it needs to be reduced 1:5. And they really should be labeled by the registry name. Oh, and I really need it by breakfast at 7:30."
Seems simple enough. But it isn't. For one thing, there are almost 400 images to print out.
Another thing: these images are of varying sizes, ranging from 453 pixels wide by 340 pixels tall to about 3000 pixels wide and 5000 pixels tall. And it really wouldn't do to blast through 400 pages of paper, considering that
  • we're low on toner
  • we only have about 450 sheets of blank paper on hand
  • many of the images would print out only to 2 or 3 inches square
What's an geek to do? Most people would say, "just select all the pictures from an explorer window, select 'print', and off you go!" But if you do that (or use PhotoAlbum or similar graphical user interfaces to photographs) you can't guarantee the proper scaling of the resulting printout. Of course, I immediately thought to myself, "If only I had a Linux distribution handy!" But no, this excavation is all Windows based, and although I could use ubuntu, I actually need the computers for other Windows tasks. I could use the VMWare image of Linux I have available on the dig's main computer, but it would indubitably run too slow for this number-crunching task. Maybe I could get Windows to act more like Linux, and allow me to do some shell scripting, a little awk here, a grep there, sed, vi ... and of course, ImageMagick.

Now, if you've not heard of ImageMagick, you've missed out on one of the treats of a geek's life.
ImageMagick (or IM, as it's known to aficionados) is a wonderful Swiss Army knife of tools you can apply to a graphical image to transform it in various and sundry ways. Any software that comes with a command 'mogrify' rates way high on the geek-must-have scale. I have used IM in the past to splice images together in a 'montage', and this sounded like just the tool for this job.


So how do I go about turning a Windows computer into something at least mostly useable under the command line? Install cygwin unix command equivalents, Gimp, ImageMagick, and Vim, the improved VI editor.


Then, write a series of batch files that transform the data... which I will include below for the enjoyment of those who know what I'm talking about and in order to impress those who don't. :)

Run each batch file in successive order, then use Gimp to change the resolution and print the results. Easy shmeasy!

So, now that I've written the scripts, I am about ready to run them, which I estimate will take 8 hours of solid computing time. [ Update: Turns out it only took 2 hours, and another hour to print out.]

Happy Mogrifying!

John

Example input drawing :


Example output file (made smaller for this blog):


Assumptions:

- All operations unless otherwise noted take place in

My Documents\Zeitah\pics\Registered Item Drawings\test

- Originals are one level above and are named P1.jpg through Pxxxxx.jpg

- Original scans are at 150 dpi

- We want to maximize the number of images printed per page

Procedure:

  1. At the command line (start|run|cmd) and run the command c:\unixutils.bat, which will add the path to Cygnus to your command path.
  2. cd “My Documents\Zeitah\pics\Registered Item Drawings”
  3. Create test if it doesn’t already exist:

a. mkdir test

  1. Create a list of file names and their sizes

a. identify P*.jpg | sort –n +2 | sed "s/x/ /" | sed "s/\[.*\]//" >test\identify.txt

5. cd test

  1. Sort names of files into various file sizes (1classify.bat)

a. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 1200 && $4 <= 800 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >fivebyfive.txt

b. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1200 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 1500 && $4 <= 1000 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >fourbyfour.txt

c. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1500 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 2000 && $4 <= 1300 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >threebythree.txt

d. awk "{ if ( $3 > 2000 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 3000 && $4 < 2000 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >twobytwo.txt

    1. awk "{ if ( $3 > 3000) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >onebyone.txt
  1. create commands to extend the files into consistent widths: (2mkextent.bat)

a. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 1200x800 /" >fiveextent.bat

b. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 1500x1000 /" >fourextent.bat

c. sed threeextent.bat

    1. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 3000x2000 /" >twoextent.bat
  1. Extend the canvas sizes (3doextent.bat)
  2. Create montage commands (4mkmontage.bat)

a. fmt –250 fivebyfive.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage5.jpg" >domontage5.bat

    1. fmt –160 fourbyfour.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage4.jpg" >domontage4.bat
    2. fmt –90 threebythree.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage3.jpg" >domontage3.bat
    3. fmt –40 twobytwo.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage2.jpg" >domontage2.bat
    4. sed domontage1.bat
  1. Run montage commands (5domontage.bat)

a. call domontage5.bat

b. call domontage4.bat

c. call domontage3.bat

d. call domontage2.bat

    1. call domontage1.bat
  1. Open each montage file in gimp.
  2. Change the page setup for maximum printing area
  3. Change the density from 72 to 600 (for 1:4) or 750 (for 1:5)
  4. Print the resulting pages.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Dating the past, part two

Where were we? Oh yes, hanging on a cliff, trying to get a date.

Getting a direct date requires having something made out of carbon-based materials. Pottery isn't carbon-based, nor are any of the metal or stone objects we excavate. However, wood, seeds and pits are, so a burned beam in a destruction layer or wheat that has been charred in some conflagration in the past represents an ideal opportunity for dating.

The method is called 'Carbon 14 Dating', or sometimes just 'Carbon Dating.'

14 doesn't represent the 14th method they tried to use carbon to date things, but the atomic weight of the particular isotope of carbon that is used in the process.

Let me explain. Carbon is an essential part of life on earth: we eat carbohydrates (carbon plus hydrogen), exhale carbon dioxide gas, drive cars powered by hydrocarbon-based fuels. Most of our body consists of a combination of water and carbon-based compounds. In fact, these compounds are so tied to living creatures (organisms) that they are called 'organic compounds.'

Where does this carbon come from? Plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it with the help of energy from the sun to carbohydrates in a process called photosynthesis. Animals then eat the plants or other animals that have eaten plants, and the carbohydrates become a part of them. When they die, they are slowly decomposed back into more simple compounds, ultimately to carbon dioxide or solid carbon in the form of charcoal.

So far, so good? OK, now here's the deal. "Carbon" isn't just this pure element, at least as it's found in nature. "Carbon" is a mixture of 3 things - Carbon 12, 13 and 14 (denoted C12, C13, C14). These are called 'isotopes' of Carbon. They have the same number of protons as every carbon has (6), but have either 6, 7, or 8 neutrons, making them weigh 12, 13 or 14 atomic mass units.

As it turns out, there is 98.89% C12, 1.11% C13 and 0.00000000001% C14 in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. How did the C14 get there? It was created high in the stratosphere, where high energy Beta particles slam into Nitrogen (which normally has 8 neutrons and 7 protons), stripping away one proton, leaving 6 protons and 8 neutrons, which, as we noted above, is C14.

C14 is not a stable isotope: that is, it will slowly turn itself back into Nitrogen by emitting a beta particle and gaining a proton. Think of it as the reverse of how C14 was created. We call this a 'radioactive' isotope, and those Geiger counters that we see in old movies looking for radioactivity are measuring the emitted beta particles.

Each gram of naturally occurring carbon (say from a recently charred charcoal briquette) emits 15 beta particles per minute. Over time the number of particle emissions falls, and every 5730 years (plus or minus 40 years), there are half the number of beta emissions per gram- 7.5/min for something 5730 years old, 3.75/min for 11460 years old, and so on. By about 50,000 years, the count rate is so low that it's indistinguishable from the background noise of random beta particles.

Another way to measure C14 is by putting it in a mass spectrometer. This is a device which strips away an electron from carbon in the sample, then accelerates it electromagnetically through a large magnet and toward a series of detectors. Because of inertia, the isotopes that are 'heavier' aren't turned off course as much by the magnet, so a detector at the spot where C14 curves, and another detector at the spot where C12 curves can count the number of atoms at each spot. This gives a direct measurement of the ratio between C12 and C14. This is a much more sensitive test, and allows C14 to be used to date back to 100,000 years ago, with as little as 1 milligram sample size.

"But," the observant reader asks, "doesn't this assume that the rate of decay and the ratios of C14 to C12 in the atmosphere remain constant? What about variation in cosmic ray activity?"

I'm so glad you asked! We happen to have a handy calibration device available. It's called "Tree Rings!" The carbon in the inside of trees can be analyzed for C14, and shows the general trend you would expect for C14 decay, with some variation. Analysis of multiple trees has given a correction factor for each year back to about 10,000 years ago, or the beginning of the Neolithic period. (No, we don't 10,000 year old trees we cut down to do this - talk about old-growth forests! - it's done by analyzing older and older wood that has overlaps in the ring patterns of wet year, dry year that act like a fingerprint for each tree.)

Note that this depends on good collection of samples: one cough or the oil from fingers from an incompetent excavator may throw off the analysis by centuries.

For the Iron Age (1200-586 BC, about 3000 years ago), the accuracy is about an 80 year range, when corrected.

All told, although the C14 dating gives ballpark numbers, it comes at a fairly significant cost, and with such a wide date range, it is not used often for dating the layers. Ceramics analysis remains the tool of choice for that task.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Fine Art of Dating

An interested reader writes, “I’m curious: how do you tell how old the things you’re excavating really are?” (OK, truth be known, my interested readers seem to keep their questions to themselves, but I think if they were inclined to ask questions, that would be a good one to ask, so I’ll ask and answer it for them!)

Dating is always somewhat problematic. Ask any high schooler. But dating in an archaeological sense involves correlating as many different approaches as you have available. The first stop is the library. What happened in this neck of the woods according to recorded history? Of course, this recorded history can be (and often is) somewhat inaccurate, having been recorded by people with different agendas, perspectives, and observational skills. Nonetheless, some basics can be gleaned, along with a good deal of specific information. One may argue about the causes and benefits, but it’s pretty clear from historical record that the English Colonies in America rebelled against the English Crown in 1776 or thereabouts, and established an independent nation. Likewise, there are a large number of rebellions, wars, incursions, and destructions of cities that dot the landscape of the history of the Shephelah. These destructive events, while not so nice for the residents at the time, are a boon to archaeologists, because they tend to be associated with large amounts of evidence of occupation, and because they may be linked to one of these historical events, giving a fixed date for that layer. And the building practices of the ancients in the middle east work to our advantage: they would build the next city on top of the old, with the result that over the millennia, a layered cake of dirt 80 or more feet high has been built up, waiting for the archaeologist’s trowel to discover its secrets.

There are many problems with depending on recorded history as a complete source of information on a site, so we turn to other sources of information which are much more direct, although one step away from a direct measurement of dates. These sources of information are the stratigraphy and ceramics analysis. We’ll call these ‘layers & pots.’

Like rings of a tree, the layers of occupational debris laid down by the occupants of the city are, as a general rule, older as you dig deeper. Note that I say ‘as a general rule’, because these layers are sometimes disturbed by pits, tunnels and the like, which can put younger material below older material, but with care, these anomalies can be detected, and identification of the chronological relationship of these layers (a stratigraphy) can be developed.

Sometimes the change in stratigraphy is pronounced and widespread (often as a result of a major destruction), leading the archaeologist to pronounce a different ‘phase’ of occupation. These phases are usually labeled with Roman Numerals, starting with the most recent, and they refer to these phases like family friends: Lachish IV, Megiddo VII, and now… Zeitah III.

But I have begged the question of how the archaeologist knows that the change in stratigraphy is pronounced and widespread. This is done by the analysis of pottery.

Ceramic material is wonderful stuff. Used for well over 7500 years, clay has been formed into many useful shapes, from fine dinner china to rough pots for holding plants outside one’s house. Pottery was the Tupperware™ of the ancients. Fairly easy to manufacture, a ceramic vessel will outlive its creator, and the more finely crafted pieces often increase with value as they age. They can be made to be porous or nonporous, may be decorated before or after firing, and as general purpose or as specific as one desires. Pottery’s most wonderful attribute, though, is that it is impervious to fire. Having already been fired, a little baking in a burning city may discolor it, but all but the most intense fires leave it unscathed.

Pottery’s second attribute that is helpful to archaeologists is that it was made individually by artisans (i.e. not mass produced), and the styles, colors, shapes and techniques these artisans used changed slowly over the years. Just as an automobile aficionado can trace the lineage of a modern Ford back to the Model T, and give dates of manufacture just by looking at its shape, a good ceramicist can do the same with pottery. By correlating the pottery styles, shapes, color & texture of clay, hardness of firing, and so on with pottery from phases from other sites where the dating has been established fairly well, these pottery sherds have become a very accurate indicator of age.

Because there are fairly widespread regional changes in the character of occupation, dates are not given in terms of years, but in terms of ‘ages’. You’re familiar with the terms ‘Stone Age’, ‘Bronze Age’, ‘Iron Age’ and so forth. Roughly speaking, these ages refer to the material tools would generally be made from: flint, copper alloys, iron. Different areas of the world used these materials at different times, so that the Bronze Age in Europe is different than the Bronze Age in the Levant (the Middle East). Here is a chart of the time periods at our site:

Date Range

Period

1,0000,000-8,300 BCE

Paleolithic

8,300-5,500 BCE

Neolithic

4,500-3,500 BCE

Chalcolithic

3,500-1,200 BCE

Bronze

3,000-2,000 BCE

Early Bronze

2,000-1,550 BCE

Middle Bronze

1,550-1,200 BCE

Late Bronze

1,200-586 BCE

Iron

1,200-1,000 BCE

Iron I

1,000-586 BCE

Iron II

586-332 BCE

Persian

332-37 BCE

Hellenistic

37 BCE-500 CE

Roman

500-638 CE

Byzantine

650-Present

Islamic

650-950 CE

Early Islamic

650-750 CE

Umayyad

750-950 CE

Abbasid

950-1525 CE

Middle Islamic

950-1175 CE

Fatimid

1075-1275 CE

Crusader

1170-1291 CE

Ayyubid/Mamluk

1291-1516 CE

Mamluk

1525-Present

Late Islamic

1517-1925 CE

Ottoman

1517-1800 CE

Early Ottoman

1800-1925 CE

Late Ottoman

1917-Present

Modern

A good ceramicist (Barbara Johnson and Gabi Barkay are among the best in the world) is able to categorize a sherd to within one of these time periods within a few seconds examination, and sometimes they can place the date of manufacture to a 100 or even 10 year range, depending on the sherd. For instance, a particular form of storage jar was made for only 2 or 3 years just prior to 586 BC in Judah, and given a special seal on the handle that read, “Lamelech,” or roughly, “to the king.” Rims and handles are particularly identifiable, and are usually called ‘diagnostic.’

Most of the work on the excavation revolves around the identification of these sherds: each day buckets of pottery are washed, dried, analyzed, recorded and the readings are entered into the computer, and I generate reports telling the earliest, latest, predominant and overall pottery dates for each bucket. The square supervisors use those reports in their analysis of their square.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, to have a more direct way of measuring dates? Would I have brought it up if there weren’t? I’ll talk about that in the next journal entry.

(In the ‘biz’, that’s called a cliff-hanger)

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Whitewater Rafting on the Youghiogheny

Yup, that's me, front left, concentrating fiercely on making sure our raft doesn't flip over in the Class IV rapids at Dimple Rock, Youghiogheny River, near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania. I went there with two of my three brothers, a nephew, Mark's brother-in-law and another friend of his. We had a blast. Perfect weather, great rapids, cool water. Very relaxing and exhiliarating, all at once.

From left to right, Grant Rodkey, Yours Truly, Mark Rodkey (obscured behind my head), Mike Kamm (mouth open...), Marky Rodkey (Mark's son) and Rick Thurman (Mark's brother-in-law). Posted by Picasa