CONSERVING THE PAST THROUGH PLAY: EDUCATIONAL GAMING AND ANTI-LOOTING OUTREACH IN CAMBODIA

According to Heritage Watch, a collaborative NGO based in Cambodia which is active in archaeological salvage work, village outreach and education, the looting of archaeological sites in Cambodia has now reached “epic proportions.” Although increased security and tourism provide protection to the famous historic-period monuments of the Khmer Empire, the sites and vestiges of Cambodia’s prehistoric past, especially Bronze Age and Iron Age (c. 3500-1500 BP) burial mounds located in northeastern provinces, are increasingly under threat. Perceived economic incentive and coercion of local villagers by duplicitous “middle-men” seeking inflated profits from the international black market begin the antiquities trade. The overall lack of awareness of the significance of these sites amongst both locals and foreign visitors, and the lack of appreciation of the importance of accurate archaeological excavations for understanding the past, keep the trade active. However, in recent years many new laws, projects, and outreach campaigns have begun to be implemented; most of which showing initial promise. Nevertheless, the fight against looting in Cambodia remains an uphill battle, and the active creation and implementation of projects which take full advantage of current technologies are still required. This paper will describe one such project: the ongoing design and construction of an educational computer game called Looter! Available in both Khmer and English, the game brings together 2D and 3D art and animation, upto- date archaeological knowledge, and easily accessible game play formats. Through introductory and interstitial animated “cut-scenes” to set the premise, and two levels of game play, the player will not only begin to understand what is known about Cambodia’s late prehistory but will also comprehend the damage that looting does to all involved, and conversely, the benefits to be gained from scientifically sound excavation. The paper will discuss the game so far, its context, background and planned applications

Fleshing Out the Bones: Studying the Human Remains Trade with Tensorflow and Inception

There is an active trade in human remains facilitated by social media sites. In this paper we ask: can machine learning detect visual signals in photographs indicating that the human remains depicted are for sale? Do such signals even exist? This paper describes an experiment in using Tensorflow and the Google Inception-v3 model against a corpus of publicly available photographs collected from Instagram. Previous examination of the associated metadata for these photos detected patterns in the connectivity and rhetoric surrounding this ‘bone trade’, including several instances where ‘for sale’ seemed to be implied, though not explicitly stated. The present study looks for signals in the visual rhetoric of the images as detected by the computer and how these signals may intersect with the other data present

The Insta-Dead: The rhetoric of the human remains trade on Instagram

There is a thriving trade, and collector community, around human remains that is facilitated by posts on new social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Etsy, and, until recently, eBay. In this article, we examine several thousand Instagram posts and perform some initial text analysis on the language and rhetoric of these posts to understand something about the function of this community, what they value and how they trade, buy, and sell, human remains. Our results indicate a well-connected network of collectors and dealers both specialist and generalist, with a surprisingly wide-reaching impact on the 'enthusiasts' who, through their rhetoric, support the activities of this collecting community, in the face of legal and ethical issues generated by its existence

CONSERVING THE PAST THROUGH PLAY: EDUCATIONAL GAMING AND ANTI-LOOTING OUTREACH IN CAMBODIA

According to Heritage Watch, a collaborative NGO based in Cambodia which is active in archaeological salvage work, village outreach and education, the looting of archaeological sites in Cambodia has now reached “epic proportions.” Although increased security and tourism provide protection to the famous historic-period monuments of the Khmer Empire, the sites and vestiges of Cambodia’s prehistoric past, especially Bronze Age and Iron Age (c. 3500-1500 BP) burial mounds located in northeastern provinces, are increasingly under threat. Perceived economic incentive and coercion of local villagers by duplicitous “middle-men” seeking inflated profits from the international black market begin the antiquities trade. The overall lack of awareness of the significance of these sites amongst both locals and foreign visitors, and the lack of appreciation of the importance of accurate archaeological excavations for understanding the past, keep the trade active. However, in recent years many new laws, projects, and outreach campaigns have begun to be implemented; most of which showing initial promise. Nevertheless, the fight against looting in Cambodia remains an uphill battle, and the active creation and implementation of projects which take full advantage of current technologies are still required. This paper will describe one such project: the ongoing design and construction of an educational computer game called Looter! Available in both Khmer and English, the game brings together 2D and 3D art and animation, upto- date archaeological knowledge, and easily accessible game play formats. Through introductory and interstitial animated “cut-scenes” to set the premise, and two levels of game play, the player will not only begin to understand what is known about Cambodia’s late prehistory but will also comprehend the damage that looting does to all involved, and conversely, the benefits to be gained from scientifically sound excavation. The paper will discuss the game so far, its context, background and planned applications

THE ĐA BÚT PERIOD IN NORTHERN VIETNAM: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This paper presents an overview of the pre-agricultural, ceramic producing, Neolithic Đa Bút culture in its archaeological, bioarchaeological and environmental contexts. Drawing on numerous examples from the ‘grey literature,’ often published solely in Vietnamese, we review the diversity of known sites and the faunal, floral, material cultural, mortuary and osteological evidence they provide regarding the structure, life histories and foodways of Đa Bút communities. We conclude with a discussion of possible future research directions that would improve what is known about the inhabitants of lowland northern Vietnam during this period, should appropriate new sites be discovered

Community and Kinship during the Transition to Agriculture in Northern Vietnam

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Health and the Experience of Childhood in Late Neolithic Vietnam

The article aims to examine aspects of mortuary behavior in late Neolithic/early Bronze Age (Phung Nguyen phase) populations represented at the site of Man Bac in Viet Nam, specifically how mortuary behavior illuminates the role of children, and adult attitudes toward children. In addition, the authors discuss biological characteristics of the human sample, focusing particularly on the child burials, in order to explore aspects of childhood palaeohealth. The methodology includes combining various measures of health-including palaeodemography (childhood mortality), analysis of oral health (Early Childhood Caries or ECC), and analysis of physiological health (Cribra Orbitalia and LEH)-with studies of culturally defined mortuary practices to suggest that, while children clearly had significant health deficiencies and many suffered early deaths, their treatment in mortuary rites shows significant economic value and social esteem placed on children. KEYWORDS: Viet Nam, Neolithic, childhood, health, mortuary behavior, palaeodemography, bioarchaeology

Identity and community structure in Neolithic Man Bac, Northern Vietnam

FUNDING This research was supported by JSPS fund 16H02527 and Australian Research Council grant DP0774079. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have been involved in the excavation and post-excavation work associated with Man Bac over the years. Here we wish to pay special thanks to Nguyen Kim Dung (then of the Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi) who co-directed the excavations in 2004/5 and 2007. The following were involved in either one or several ways between 2004/5 and 2007 (facilitation of land access, excavation, post-excavation analysis, and ublication): Nguyen Hann Khang and Nguyen Cao Tan (Ninh Binh Provincial Museum, Vietnam), the landowner of Man Bac Nguyen Van Sai, the Chung Village community, Peter Bellwood and Lorna Tilley (Australian National University), Nguyen Giang Hai (former Director, Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi), Nguyen Kim Thuy, Nguyen An Tuan, Vu The Long, Tran Thi Thuy Ha, Bui Thu Phuong, Ha Manh Thang, Nguyen Ngoc Quy, Vo Thanh Huong, Nguyen Chi Tan, Nguyen Thi Mai Huong (Institute of Archaeology, Hanoi), Mariko Yamagata (Okayama Science University, Japan), Ken-ichi Shidoda (National Museum of Nature and Science, Japan), Yukio Dodo (formerly of Tohoku University, Japan), Takeji Toizumi (Meiji University, Japan), Junmei Sawada (Nigata University of Health and Welfare, Japan), Mark Lipson (Harvard Medical School, USA), Anna Willis (James Cook University, Australia). Many thanks to Jeff Oliver for reading and commenting on an earlier draft.Peer reviewedPostprin

Open science in archaeology

No abstract available