Ancient Faience Bead: 'Egyptian Blue' at Ur

[@ono1381]

The flip-flop is clear proof of an ancient Aussie barbecue on the site of Ur. 😆

[@mrcmoes]

Ceremonial dress from the old mates of the past.

[@onometre]

Hi ono I'm ono

[@fedoramaster6035]

They call them thongs haha

[@lugal_pcz]

Another excellent video, Brad! For viewers who are wondering about what actual fieldwork is like, I had the privilege of working with Dr. Hafford this past season at Ur, and what he presents here is a spot-on example of how it went. We obsess over context and materials and how and why people in the past did what they did. We lose sleep trying to figure out what things like that flip flop strap are. (The most exciting suggestion we thought up was a necklace for a cult statue…until one one of the team members came up with the right answer.) Most importantly, though, it's a collaborative effort with lively discussions amongst a group of people, each with their own opinions and insights, all trying to understand and interpret the results of our work. In this age of ancient aliens and grand theories built out of thin air, just know that real archaeologists (like Brad!) sweat the details and aren't afraid of trying out some wrong answers as we search for the right ones.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

It's definitely a team effort! I made a lot of the videos wandering around talking to a camera on Fridays, the only day of the week when we weren't digging and when many of us were off visiting other archaeological sites. But the Ur expedition could not have functioned without the many experts, like Paul, who were there with me!

[@Emilia-os2vw]

Haha, the flip flop twist! So much context for such a tinny piece, wonderful!

[@ClayDress]

It's so cool to see the places I learn about in class out and exposed with you standing there in the ancient city.

[@fredraney]

This video was amazing, and can't wait to see more content from Ur. It would be lovely to see shorts of some of the excavations just to see the processes that go into safely searching an area like this. It would be nice to see accurate depictions of it rather than just scenes like from Indiana Jones. However much I may love that series and character.

[@Evilbob]

Thank you for explaining the process of creating the bead 😊. How much of a concern is modern material contaminating dig sites? Especially when returning to already dug trenches?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

It is a concern, and is one reason why the uppermost level of any dig is always suspect. We have to be careful when evaluating the surface layer and write in our notes when we can tell that we are in secure ancient contexts. When returning to previous trenches, we hope to have good information on the depth at which the former archaeologist stopped. Today we mark where we stopped with landscaping fabric before filling back in, and it's also common to throw a few small coins with the current date atop the fabric.

[@fredraney]

@@artifactuallyspeaking this reply is amazing

[@logo2462]

Awesome to see these early crafts

[@phonotical]

Thank you for a well thought out and explained video

[@clemhollingsworth9885]

Ah, those jokester bedouin, leaving their cast-off flip flops lying around and salting the trenches with faience beads! 😊 Thanks for this upload!

[@Finvaara]

Super neat! Both the discussion of the technology and the discussion of the 2nd discovered piece and it's true origin were very interesting to me, I enjoyed those the most.

[@hannahbrown2728]

Wake up babe! A new Artifactually Speaking just dropped!! Thanks for giving us a better view at the end of the whole trench. It doesnt matter if its one bead or 2500 of them, ancient jewelry is always just fascinating.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

I agree! Ancient jewelry is amazing, and the fact that we have always wanted to adorn ourselves is pretty interesting in itself.

[@hannahbrown2728]

Gosh Im giddy just thinking of all the different ways we have and continue to do that. From relative "extremes" like manipulating parts of ones body, down to tattoos and facepaints or make up. We're truly fortunate to know anything that we do now about any ancient groups fashion!

[@drakonis39g55]

Cool video thanks for posting!

[@willow6931]

I know I should be used to it by now, but it always amazes me to think that we really have the privilege to look at and touch something another human made 4000 years ago. If you do see my comment, which I know is somewhat unlikely, I'm curious to know if your excavations at Ur seasonal and if it is possible to get involved in some way. I love your videos and can't wait to see more information about your excavations at Ur if there are any more!

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Excavations are typically once a year (depending on available funding), but of course we were interrupted by the pandemic and have only just begun again. Infrastructure in Iraq is improving all the time but it can still be a difficult place to work, so onsite we tend to be limited to specialists. I'm not even allowed to take undergraduates right now, only graduates in archaeology and professional archaeologists or other specialists in remote sensing, bones, soil, etc. So, if you're a specialist we might need you. Even so, however, our next few seasons are most likely to involve historic preservation rather than much excavation. If you're not a specialist, I still think you should be able to experience ancient sites, which is why I think managed archaeological tourism is not a bad thing and why I want to help with preserving Ur for all to see. Getting involved in actual excavation is a little more difficult, but there are sites that take volunteers. These tend to be in countries with solid infrastructure and on large scale projects that have big budgets for administration. I believe there are digs like that in Israel and a few other countries. Thanks for watching my videos, there are more on the way!

[@neva_nyx]

Try contacting the nearest university to you. They often have something you might be able to help with as a volunteer.

[@jackdaniel4446]

Thanks for another interesting video! Looking forward to the next one

[@kalrandom7387]

Thank you for the information. If I may make a suggestion on your videos increase the size of your captions and leaving up there a little bit longer, I mean it was no trouble to rewatch the video a couple of times but glance away for a second and come back to see it disappearing.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm still trying to figure the right balance in trying to provide additional information/clarification while not covering too much of the screen for too long. I'll keep working on it. Thanks for watching!

[@RadeticDaniel]

@@artifactuallyspeaking personal suggestion from Virtual Reality and Mobile Games development is to leave it for 3 seconds for small texts of up to 5 words. As for text size, we had viewing tests on a smartphone and 40" TV. Distance to screen changes naturally as we try to get the whole image in sight simultaneously and after a while it becomes somewhat intuitive what size to aim for before testing. Congratulations on the great job communicating science and reviving a bit of ancient history =)

[@marcoblauwe]

Thank you, much appreciated 👍

[@kc3718]

wonderful, thank you.

[@wurrow]

Very interesting, thank you for showing us the places and things that we haven't seen

[@robryan9841]

Fascinating 👍

[@ElectricalInsanity]

I always wonder what the original owner of artifacts like this would think of our fascination with them. Was the object something precious and sentimental to them, or just something that they liked and didn't give much more mind to than that?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

I wonder that too. It's impossible to get into the mind of the person who owned it, but it's fun to imagine what they may have thought. Putting in effort to make things like this must mean that they appreciated them and saw value in them. Even poorly made imitations show us that people valued adornment and probably wanted the nicer ones but couldn't get hold of them. And if we find things buried with a person themselves, we can probably figure that those things were prized by the person in life.

[@WildBearFoot]

I'm trying to make some of this but my resources are limited, I know I need to do more research, I'm trying to find more information about the alkali salts they used and substitutions, etc.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

I'm afraid I don't know much about the actual chemistry or the specific types they used. I think there are some chemical analyses published, but I'm not sure where.

[@balaclavabob001]

I wonder if the copper/ limestone mix is the result of sharpening copper tools used for other things rather than forming the ceramics? Seems like chucking a handfull of grinding dust into a batch just to see what happens is likely . I guess it's dependant on whether they used limestone sharpening stones.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

I think that's possible. We do find grooved stones that we tend to call 'arrow sharpeners' though they could have been used for sharpening knives as well.

[@balaclavabob001]

@@artifactuallyspeaking Interesting. Thanks for the reply .

[@bmxriderforlife1234]

Do you have any opinions or research on the djedefre sphinx theory? Just curious cause I love ancient Egyptian history.

[@srofv7805]

Interesting...more, please?

[@JamesKroen]

I recently watched a video about the 'Scorpion King'. They found a couple of clay tablets which had a scorpion and a big rosette on it. Could it be possible that the Scorpion King was actually from Sumer? Not Egyptian. To my knowledge, Pharaohs did not adorn their walls & pottery with rosettes, but the Mesopotamia Kings did.

[@somethingedgy2185]

👍

[@simulationescape5467]

Researching the matierals and symbols in the Levant and the continent of aafrika brought me here.

[@BottomBunkArt]

It is a pretty bead.

[@richardvanasse9287]

👍🏻👍🏻

[@eskiltheeskil851]

DIG

[@فهدمحمدسعيد-م1و]

Truly would hope you add instagram to your social media that would be great add