Word: archaeologist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...being an "extraordinarily narrow specialist," anyone who is familiar with either Professor Stager's work or the program of the Harvard NELC Department (from which Professor Stager received his A.B. and Ph.D.) would know that this statement is utterly preposterous. Professor Stager is an accomplished archaeologist, historian and biblical scholar with numerous years of experience in education and excavation. In short, the personal attacks upon Professor Stager have been unfounded, inappropriate and indicative of The Crimson's Knee-jerk response to actions of the Harvard administration...
...department with which the museum is associated, the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, is more than just archaeology. There are lodged almost all the University's faculty involved in Arab, Jewish, Turkic and Persian history and culture. I can see why an archaeologist fixed on the ancient world might feel alien from exhibits like "Danzig 1939: Treasures from a Destroyed Community," which reopened the museum, or from "The Jewish Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe," created to celebrate the University's 350th anniversary in 1986. The same might be said for "Palms and Pomegranates: The Costumes of Saudi Arabia...
According to legend, the Mesopotamians blamed their woes on Sargon's grandson, whose hubris had supposedly angered the gods. But the American and French researchers, led by Yale archaeologist Harvey Weiss, offer a more scientific, if no less surprising, explanation. They believe the drought was part of a major shift in weather patterns that affected the climate in many different areas of the globe 4,000 years ago. From Egypt to the Aegean to India, rainfall diminished and temperatures dropped. "This is opposite to what you might expect from global warming," explains George Kukla, senior research scientist at the Lamont...
Water shortages might have played a role in the collapse as well: University of Cincinnati archaeologist Vernon Scarborough has found evidence of sophisticated reservoir systems in Tikal and other landlocked Maya cities (some of the settlements newly discovered this week also have reservoirs). Since those cities depended on stored rainfall during the four dry months of the year, they would have been extremely vulnerable to a prolonged drought...
...environmental messages. "The Maya were overpopulated and they overexploited their environment and millions of them died," says Culbert bluntly. "That knowledge isn't going to solve the modern world situation, but it's silly to ignore it and say it has nothing to do with us." National Geographic archaeologist George Stuart agrees. The most important message, he says, is "not to cut down the rain forest." But others are not so sure. Says Stephen Houston, a hieroglyphics expert from Vanderbilt University: "I think we should be careful of finding too many lessons in the Maya. They were a different society...