SEAArch – The Southeast Asian Archaeology Newsblog

Just a quick link to Colleen’s poll at Middle Savagery, where she’s taking a poll from archaeological professionals on whether people still use film photography for archaeology (or you could go directly to the poll here).

The poll got me thinking about the amount of photography I’ve had to do for my research. At the current count, I have taken 7,892 pictures which works out to be about 219 rolls of film (35mm x 36 exposures); with a redundancy factor of about 3 (as in I take 3 pictures of every shot I take), that’s about 2,630 images or 73 rolls of 35mm film. Viva la digital!

It’s not often you hear archaeology news from Laos, no thanks in part because of the language barrier. But interested readers might be pleased to read about the ongoing work by the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project team, where Amy Ellsworth, Digital Media Developer of the University of Pennsylvania Museum is blogging about the excavations at Tham An Mah. (Thanks to Dr Joyce White from the University of Pennsylvania for the link.)

The Peking Man (homo erectus, same as the Java Man) made the news last week for being older than previously thought – but what happened to his bones? This and more in this week’s Rojak.

photo credit: ideonexus

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Rojak turns 50! Not that it has been 50 weeks since I first started this since I’ve missed quite a few weeks due to travels or sheer forgetfulness -it’s more like one and a half years. This week, we feature quite a few stories from Southeast Asia like the Cambodian dinosaur found on the walls of Ta Prohm (first featured in an earlier rojak) as well as several related to the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday.

photo credit: neys

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Ethnoarchaeologists might find this site useful, perhaps? The Center for Ethnic Studies and Development at Chiang Mai University has a website with a database of downloadable articles about ethnic populations in Southeast Asia. While there is a distinct Thai focus in the site, about 40% of the 12,000 articles are in English. An e-museum also features video clips of some local ethnic cultures. (from New Mandala)

Center for Ethnic Studies and Development

Speaking of websites, the Cham Museum of Da Nang Province was also recently launched their own website last week. Da Nang is some 30 km away from Hoi An, and the 90-year-old museum is home to a large repository of stone, terracotta and bronze statuary from Cham sies like My Son and Tra Kieu.

Cham Sculpture Museum’s website unveiled
Vietnam Net Bridge, 21 January 2009
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I got an email from Dougald O’Reilly of Heritage Watch last week about their revamped website which you should check out here. Heritage Watch is a Cambodian-based NGO aimed at the preservation of Southeast Asia’s heritage and do a lot of good grassroots level work particularly with sustainable tourist models in Angkor.