Every now and then you are working on your computer. You type this and that. You right click here. Your right click there. Anyway, whilst composing my previous post regarding aerial archaeology I discovered a neat little Safari browser trick quite by accident.

I control clicked on the title bar of the Safari browser and it listed the parent directories for the currently viewed web page. This can be useful when thoroughly exploring sites and saves one from deleting sub-directories one by one in the browser address bar. I tried the same trick using Firefox yet the same result was not achieved.

One of the topics covered during the Preliminary Ancient History course in Year 11 is the work of the archaeologist. A subset of that is aerial archaeology. The combination of flight and photography has provided archaeologists and historians with a valuable tool. How valuable?

Aerial photography allows the archaeologist to view entire sites and also to recognise features that may not be clearly visible at ground level. Soil marks, crop marks and shadow marks are visible via the technique. Buried structures and slight, yet regular, undulations in the land can be revealed. As a result structures that have been ‘lost’ or forgotten over time reveal themselves to the researcher.

Aerial archaeology
Remote Sensing and Archaeology Project
Aerial photo analysis and survey – GIS and Remote Sensing for Archaeology: Burgundy, France
UK Aerial Archaeology
Classics and Ancient History – Aerial archaeology in Jordan Project - Archive Page – Flickr Sets
Aerial Archaeology Flickr Group
WIkipedia – Aerial Archaeology
Wikimedia Commons – Aerial Archaeology Photography Category

Soil marks
Learning Archaeology: Pre-Ex: Aerial Photography: Parch Marks and Soil Marks

Crop Marks
Learning Archaeology: Pre-Ex: Aerial Photography: Crop Marks

Photograph acknowledgement. The picture above is ©Copyright Civertan Grafikai Stúdió (Civertan Bt.), 1997-2006.; http://www.civertan.hu/. It is released under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 and older).

Additional archaeology links can be found on this page on my main site.

Politicians, politicians….

Leadership and power. The two go hand in hand yet both are different. Quite different.

Leadership can inspire. Power on its own cannot.

Power can cause change. Power can do good. Power can do bad. Power can corrupt.

People sometimes find themselves in a position of leadership yet they fail to grasp the meaning of the tern ‘leadership’. They exercise power yet they do not exercise leadership. They do not inspire. Those that follow do not do so by choice. They do not follow due to inspiration.

Those in a position of leadership must rise up beyond the self and consider the community. Leadership must inspire.

It is the difference between a politician and a statesman. Politicians merely attempt to exercise power. Statesmen lead. Not too sure if any of Australia’s crop of politicians in Canberra could be considered statesmen. As for those New South Wales, well, what can I say?

Photo credit: Leadership. http://www.flickr.com/people/pedrosimoes7/

As you may know Shao Ping and I have recently been traveling through China, visiting friends in the main. We traveled to Xiamen, Fuzou, Shanghai and the surrounding areas. We were also able to visit the incredible Tulou [土樓] of Fujian Province. They are protected UNESCO heritage sites. The word tulou means earthen building or earth building.

The first three photographs in this post feature interior shots of a Fujian Tulou. They were built by the Hakka people as a defensive, fortified structure. My wife in Shao Ping is Hakka. The tulou are usually inhabited by a related clan group. The families live out their lives within the circular tulou. Some of these tulou are rectangular in shape, others are oval.

The photograph below shows an exterior shot of the same tulou as well as an adjacent building. Life reverberates in and around these interesting buildings. There are people washing clothes, having a smoke, playing with children and cooking lunch.

Pictured below is the Tianluokeng tulou cluster [田螺坑土楼群]. This remarkable grouping of buildings is located in Fujian province, Zhangzhou City, Nanjing County, Shuyang Township in southern China. This cluster consists of a square earth building at the center of a quincunx, surrounded by four round earth buildings. Actually one of the round buildings is oval. You can explore its location here. Unfortunately tourism has overwhelmed this particular cluster has been overwhelmed by the impact of tourism. There are many stalls selling souvenirs and other trinkets.

The photograph below gives an indication of the earthen characteristics of the structures. They are quite beautiful. If you ever visit the tulou of Fujian province see if you can visit one or more of the structures that are not on the main tourist beat. Luckily we were able to do so.

Pictured below is one of the oldest tulou in China. It is the Yuchanglou tulou [裕昌樓 ]. It was construted in 1308 during the Yuan dynasty by the Liu family clan. It is one of the oldest tulou in China. The outer ring of this tulou is 36 metres in diameter and it consists of five stories. There are 50 rooms on each floor.

As the Wikipedia entry for this tulou indicates, “each of the 25 kitchens on the ground floor at the back half of the circle has a private water well beside its stove. This is the only tulou in all Fujian with such convenient water supply”.

There is an interesting web site, based in Taiwan across the straits, that graphically sets out the tulou of Fujian province. The site is titled 福建省旅遊局 : 世界文化遺產_福建永定土樓、南靖土樓、華安土樓.

Shao Ping and I took the MRT to Danshui [淡水] in Taiwan today to check out the local sights and to take a few photographs. As we walked along the shoreline we came across a collection of photographers capturing the sunset and also members of the public looking at the sun using special solar filters.

There was a partial eclipse of the sun taking place! It was actually an annular eclipse in other countries of the region. I was elated to discover this and thought why not try to capture the event myself.

We were located on the eastern shore of the Tam Shui River (aka Danshui River) at Danshui looking west across towards an area known as Bali (not the Indonesian island of course). You can explore a Google map to gain an idea of the region and its geography.

We had no idea that the eclipse was to take place and it was a fluke that we were at Danshui on that day and at that time. As sunset approached I set up to capture the event with my Canon camera. I was not that well equipped. I rested the camera on a brick fence, used manual focus, the “Sunset” preset and the timer so as not to disturb the camera as it captured the image. You can observe details of the moon’s track across the sun and an animation of the partial eclipse courtesy of http://www.eclipse.org.uk/.

As sunset approached the sun seemingly accelerated towards the horizon. There was a scurry of shutters opening and closing plus a bevy of photographers changing lenses, adding filters and adjusting their position.

It was a memorable moment for both Shao Ping and I and the event really made the day rather special. Hope you like the photographs.