Catching up

July 03, 2008

Back from my travels (I crossed Switzerland's deep valleys and England's green countryside to report on King Tut ) I've now moved again to the virtual world of Second Life (SL).

More than a month has passed since Archaeorama opened its doors in SL. I must say that the first results are very encouraging.

Many have visited the place, several have signed up the Archaeorama group, and great reviews have begun to appear on the Internet.

Moreover, Archaeorama is represented with a booth at the Second Life 5th Birthday celebration, and has been even mentioned in the Sixth World Archaeological Congress, which is still running in Dublin, Ireland.

On Monday, archaeologist Shawn Graham presented an interesting paper: "Archaeology in, and archaeology of, Second life."

The talk basically focused on SL for archaeology: according to Dr. Graham, it's "a place to ‘do’ archaeology, a place for archaeological VR, and a place for archaeological teaching and outreach."

Here is the 13 minute video which accompanied Graham's paper -- towards the end, Canadensis Yellowjacket, Graham's avatar, ventures into Archaeorama' Secret Chamber.

I must admit that I'm really proud of Archaeorama's 3D debut. My plans for the future? I'd like to open another interactive soon, and I'd like to create more interaction between this blog and its 3D extension.

I'm going to explore new sites in SL, dig deep to find great projects to report on in this blog, and create archaeology related machinima productions.

It's going to be a busy, busy summer.

Florence's Crazy Football Game

June 24, 2008

World champion Italy has just being kicked out of the European Soccer Championships, but there was no time for crying here in Florence.

Today, on the feast day of its patron, St. John the Baptist, Florence stopped for another football competition -- played with a medieval touch.

Steeped in almost 500 years of history, the Calcio Storico (Historic Football) is Florence's answer to the more famous Palio horse race of Siena.

The tournament runs with four teams -- the Blues, the Greens, the Whites, and the Reds -- each representing one district of the city.

At the end of the championship game, the winning team gets the grand prize -- a live cow. This year the cow went to the Reds of Santa Maria Novella. The Whites, my team, did not even get to play the final game!

Don't get it wrong: this is not just a folklore show for tourists, it's a part of Florence's history. Indeed, the most famous match dates back to 1530, when the Florentines played in spite of a siege against the city by the troops of the emperor Charles V.

Chronicles of that time report that a group of musicians, sitting on the roof of the Church of Santa Croce, showed indifference to gun shots and played on in the face of danger.

No doubt that pride and combativeness are part of this game -- this is not the show for those who flinch at the sight of blood. It's 50 minutes of strangling, biting, fighting, and running after a ball.

The Calcio Storico is still played in Piazza Santa Croce, which is covered in sand and divided in the centre by a white line. Here, 27 players in medieval costumes face each other in a game that is a mixture of Greco-Roman wrestling, rugby and soccer.

The ball, thrown over the opposing team's net or touched by the defending team over its own corner, gives a half point in favour of the adversary. At the same time, the ball thrown into the opposing team's net scores a point.

Every match is a lively event marked by 54 wild players using every possible trick to win.

It's necessary to be strong but a good sense of humor is needed too. During the tussle, the medieval trousers -- noble, but rather encumbering -- often get torn off, requiring the player to make an embarrassing bow to the crowds as he stops to retrieve them.

To get a feeling about this crazy game, just watch this video excerpt from YouTube:

Searching for Cleopatra

April 25, 2008

The weekend is coming up and it's time for some entertainment-like features.

In this spirit, I'm proposing "Cleopatra: Solve the puzzle", an interactive created at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

The game is simple: you have to search for one of the earliest portraits of the Egyptian queen. The portrait has been broken into twelve fragments and hidden. Obviously, your task is to find the pieces and put them back together.

Indeed, no other interactive could have been more topical: Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt’s superior council for antiquities, announced yesterday at a media conference in Cairo that excavation will begin in November to unearth the 2,000 year old tomb of the Egyptian queen.

Hawass has long suspected that Cleopatra is buried with her Roman lover Mark Antony at a temple 30km from Alexandra called Tabusiris Magna. So far, access to the tomb has been hindered as the temple is under water, the Italian agency Adnkronos International reported.

Egyptian archaeologists plan to solve the problem by draining the site, so they can begin excavation in November.

Meanwhile, here is the interactive. Just click on the picture to launch it.