It seems that my post on LibreOffice is never going to happen, with so many great projects floating around the web. This time it is a musical reconstruction of how Homer’s Odyssey might have sound when sung in the late 8th century BCE. Just that.
Some time ago I wrote a couple of lines on the oldest preserved Greek melody, the brief but beautiful epitaph of Seikilos. In that text I mentioned the difficulties of reconstructing ancient music, and the unconscious mistake we make when we do not realise that music was not only everywhere but that, actually, in many of the literary works we have preserved today music played a central rôle that we are missing completely.
It is for this reason that a initiative like this from Georg Danek of the University of Vienna and Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is so fascinating. They have developed in the last years a technique for singing Homeric epic based on how similar poems were sung in other epic traditions, and adjusted, of course, to the metrics preserved on Greek lyrics.
Mentres preparaba outra entrada sobre software libre e arqueoloxía decidín coller algo de tempo e presentarvos outro proxecto fantástico: o Lechaion Harbour Project. O mellor dos proxectos que non só son fantásticos senón que tamén adican mito esforzo, e moi necesario, á divulgación pública é que non necesitas traballar moito na túa bitácora. ¿Pra que, se xa nos proporcionan un material incrible e videos e fotos moi informativos? E por iso que só inclúo un breve texto e comentarios sobre os videos que teñen subido na rede. Pero non bos preocupedes, porque ó final desta entrada podedes atopar tódalas ligazóns que coñezo ós seus materiais.
Os arqueólogos Konstantina Vafeiadou e Matej Školc retiran unha columna.
While preparing another entry on freeware and archaeology I decided to take some time off and present you with another awesome research project: the Lechaion Harbour Project. The great thing about projects that are not only fantastic but that also devote a great, and very necessary, effort on public outreach is that you do not need to work a lot for your entry blog. Why should you, if they provide us all with incredible and very informative videos and pictures?! It is for this reason that I will include but a brief text and comments on what to look for on the videos they have uploaded. But no worries, because at the end of this post you could find all the links I know to their resources.
Archaeologists Konstantina Vafeiadou and Matej Školc remove a column.
Se algunha vez tendes visto unha foto miña nalgún perfil dixital teredes pensado: – Ben, xa o pillo. Viu Indiana Jones de cativo e quixo ser arqueólogo. Hai unha grande polémica ao redor destes filmes arqueolóxicos e do peplum, e como a disciplina e o pasado móstranse neles. Os críticos teñen razón nalgúns casos, pero eu tendo a adoptar unha posición máis neutral. Un traballo de ficción é simplemente iso, ficción. Pode ser mellor ou peor, pero se non engana o espectador pretendendo ser un documental, eu non vexo o problema. Creo que estes filmes poden incluso xogar un papel importante no acrecentamento do interese polas sociedades do pasado. Este é un debate longo e complicado, e non pretendo poder arranxalo eiquí completamente. Só quero presentar algúns dos mellores filmes que creo representan o mellor desta tradición cinematográfica, e que ben poden ser entretidos, ficción, pero tamén unha boa forma de acercarse ó pasado.
If you have ever seen a picture of me on a digital profile you would have thought: OK, I got it. He watched Indiana Jones and wanted to be an archaeologist. There is always a strong polemic about these archaeology/peplum films, and how the field and the past are portrayed in them. Critics are right sometimes, but I tend to adopt a more neutral position. A work of fiction is just that, fiction. It can be better or worse, but if it does not cheat the viewer pretending to be a documentary, I do not see what the problem is. They can even play an important role in increasing the social interest in past societies. This is a long and complicated debate and I do not intent to give here a full solution. I just want t present you with some films that I believe represent the best of this tradition about “adventures in ancient times”, and that because of these characteristics can be entertaining, fictional but also a good way of approaching the past.
ArchaeoStuff 