Roman port "discoveries" in Libya

By way of rogueclassicism I found out about a brief notice from ANSA entitled "Scoperti due antichi porti romani in Libia". A slightly longer piece in La Repubblica repeats the "hitherto unknown" assertion. Sicilia Informazioni provides a longer and clearer report on the same information under the title "Ritrovato un porto romano sulle coste della Libia".

I found the piece a bit odd, since it claimed the "discovery" of a Roman port at Hamama in Libya (kml) that "might be" the Phykous (Greek: Φυκοῦς) mentioned by Strabo (17.3.20) and Ptolemy (4.4.5; Latin: Phycus) ... and yet the Barrington Atlas (and after it, Pleiades) have no hesitation in placing Phykous at that very spot. If there were some significant doubt about the siting of a named, attested place, we would have expected the Atlas to indicate such.

A little digging reveals that this inconsistency is probably an accident of editing in the media reports of recent archaeological work. The press release that seems to be behind these stories is posted on the website of the Soprintendenza del Mare, Regione Siciliana (one of the partners in the expedition). This report acknowledges that the site of Phykous (mod. Hamama) has been well-known for some decades, but notes that it have never previously been subjected to systematic survey. Indeed, BAtlas cites G.D.B. Jones and J.H. Little, “Coastal settlement in Cyrenaica,” JRS 61 (1971) 64‑79 for Phykous (via JSTOR, for those with access), where the identification with Hamama is represented as secure.

The press release goes on to communicate some interesting and hitherto unknown things (with illustrations):

• The expedition team (just returned) conducted a surface walk of the site, 3D laser mapping and total station survey; the site walk recovered 500 artifacts, which have been cataloged for subsequent analysis.
• Major structures identified include: a possible lighthouse foundation [previously noted by Jones and Little, p. 74], a large rectangular building, a possible theater, numerous rock-cut tombs and quarry sites, as well as a large "control structure" on the summit and two rock-cut caves in the hillside (one possibly used as a church, the other as a synagogue). [Jones and Little had noted "the remains of low walls extend[ing] over an area of c. 24 hectares" (p. 74).]
  
• Surf and wind limited the team's ability to conduct an underwater survey, but they did tentatively identify the remains of a long harbor mole, faced with rectangular blocks and filled with rubble.
• Analysis of pottery and masonry may indicate a foundation date as early as the 4th century BC (attic pottery), with the most frequent and intensive use occurring in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. [Jones and Little had noted "pottery ranging from black-glazed ware to Byzantine coarse wares, indicating an occupation from the fourth century B.C. to the sixth century A.D." (p. 74).]
  
• Further west, toward Benghazi (ancient Berenice), the team conducted a limited search at modern El-Ougla (I can't locate this place). Although wind and surf inhibited their work, they identified the heavy foundation of a probable tower as well as two circular tanks possibly used for producing garum. Surface materials are reported to be consistent with occupation and activity during the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.

In addition to David Meadows at RC, thanks are due to my employer (NYU) for purchasing a JSTOR subscription that includes JRS, to Patromoniosos.it for posting the text of the press release (a link to the original would have been helpful) and to Brian Turner (UNC-CH) for the Strabo and Ptolemy references (part of his work on enhancing BAtlas content for forthcoming addition to Pleiades). And then of course there's Google's search, without which I wouldn't have been able to hunt down the original.

Seeing the Green for the Green

It looks like Lee was just as surprised as I was about this whole Green Huntsville thing.

Was bedeutet das "Green"?

I'm really unclear on exactly how it is that "regular mowing along Memorial Parkway" makes Huntsville more "green". Are we talking about neatness, or environmental responsibility? The latest newspaper reporting seems to confuse the two (or maybe it's the self-congratulatory civic leaders they're interviewing).

Now, planting trees, land preservation, picking up litter, preserves/parks, and curbside recycling are all reasonable indicia of green-ness. The work of Forever Wild, the Nature Conservancy and the Huntsville Land Trust is truly laudable. And we shouldn't forget the city's trail/greenway efforts.

But someone needs to tell the mayor that mowing has a big carbon-and-air-quality footprint. Moreover, many would dispute the assertion that we have "good public transportation". There's no bus or train feeders from rapidly-growing suburbia. The core shuttle-bus service is underused and under-promoted. No HOV lanes. Bad traffic snarl on almost every in-and-out-bound route during peak times (so lots of idling). No significant promotion of car pooling that I can see.

And let's not even talk about the monster sprawl out in the county (e.g., drive Maysville Road between Maysville and Buckhorn sometime and tell me where those cotton fields and pastures are going, and where the inhabitants of those new houses are going to have to drive their SUVs in order to work, to eat, to shop). We can't call Huntsville "green" and ignore the massive changes going on in the hinterland just because it's a different jurisdiction -- it's all one big environmental system.

And there still has been no responsible grappling with water issues, despite the drought and good reporting in the Huntsville Times and on Alabama Public Television, as well as Lee Roop's wakeup calls ... not to mention the widely publicized specter of electrical shortfalls this summer if the TVA can't cool all its reactors.

Blunt Instrument Trauma (or why you haven't heard from me lately)

Rant advisory

Rob Frieden wants us to "blame blogspot" for his email not getting to his wife (her company's spam filtering solution deems any message containing any blogspot url to be spam and bounces it).

I've been having similar problems sending legitimate professional email to colleagues at various universities (these emails contained citations of various entries on this here blog; bounces included Harvard and the University of California Santa Barbara among others). Some of them at least employ a bounce message that explains why:

Spamhaus is the culprit.

Newsflash for Spamhaus and filter writers everywhere:

• Link spam is an evil-bad problem.
  
• Dropping a nuke in the baby's bathwater is not the schoolhouse solution.

Maybe I should bill Spamhaus (or those institutions using its black list) for the time I've spent troubleshooting this. Maybe you should too.

Update: this has been going on for a while:

• Spam resource: blogger listed (9 July 2007)
  
• Skeptacles: blogger domain blocked (8 July 2007)
  

And, most interesting of all, the comment stream on Storm Hits Blogger Network (slashdot, 30 August 2007) ... search in page for "spamhaus" ... where we find arguments to the effect that my reaction above fails to capture the full complexities of the situation.

Take the Digital Humanities Tool Developer's Survey

Susan Schriebman and Ann Hanlon have put together a survey that aims to redress the current lack of a "concerted effort to gather information about the perceived value of tool development, not only as a scholarly activity, but in relation to the tenure and promotion process, as well as for the advancement of the field of digital humanities itself."

This must be the meme of the month, as Bill Turkel just this week unveiled plans to co-author with Alan MacEachern a "book to teach practicing historians how to use programming to augment their ability to do research online."

Anyway, I'd encourage everybody who's ever built a digital tool for a humanities function (or who is thinking about it) to take the survey and pester Bill to finish the book.

Social War, Anyone?

So, there were plenty of folks (classicists and otherwise) throwing around ancient history as persuasive (or disssuasive) rhetoric in the run-up to the current land war in Asia. I'll offer only the example of Elaine Fantham.

Question: Why aren't we seeing the Roman Social War brought into the current argument about immigration in this country?

Don't like the Wikipedia article linked above? I've had no role in its content whatsoever. Send me a link to something else online, free and open, and I'll link it. Or -- better yet -- just pitch in to improve the article.

Duck and cover?

Am I asleep, or shouldn't I have heard about this first from the Huntsville Times (links mine):

Huntsville will outfit an abandoned mine capable of holding 20,000 people. Other residents will be housed in college dorms, churches, libraries and research halls. City planners hope they can develop enough shelter space to house 300,000 people; enough space to provide every person in Huntsville and the surrounding county a safe refuge.

Maybe Lee can find out what it's all about.