The title of this post is a phrase in Latin that means “Thus does the glory of the world pass by”—so fleeting are our worldly creations. It was the first response of a colleague of mine when we saw the construction site pictured below, because this is not just any construction site. What you’re looking [...]
Leaving Ge’ermu at dawn, we resumed our journey westward, accompanied on the road only by towering trucks maneuvering themselves slowly toward mining operations on the Chaidamu (Qaidam) salt flats; there were barely any passenger vehicles. At some point, we crossed one of the major salt lakes, Chaerhan salt lake, on a 32 km land bridge [...]
The next morning, we left Dulan and made a detour to a nearby village, Reshui 熱水, where there is a large Tang Dynasty (7th - 10th centuries) cemetery. The main tombs are situated on top of a mound of roughly 80 m high. Because of the altitude (3300 m), it was difficult to make it all [...]
The hills outside Xining were dressed in a velvety moss-green, a stark contrast to the landscape in Gansu. We headed for Qinghai Lake, the largest saline lake (also the largest lake) in China, which was to be the highlight of our drive on day four. At 3200 m, the sun was deceivingly mild in the [...]
Netherlands, Crete, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Iraq, Turkey, India, Mexico, France—this summer break, 20 University of Pennsylvania students (six undergraduate and 14 graduate students) will be doing research in 13 countries around the world, funded in part by competitive Penn Museum summer field research grants. The projects, supported by Penn and Penn Museum [...]
The other night, we went out for a walk and I ate my first Iraqi ice cream. My name is Lara Fabian, and I’m a graduate student at Penn studying archaeology. Because of the generous support of the Penn Museum, I am working during the first part of this summer in Iraqi Kurdistan on an [...]
As we continued driving west, it became noticeably more hilly, the altitude had increased to 1500m. At Hongsibao 紅寺堡, Ningxia Hui (Chinese Muslim) Autonomous Region, we got on the Jingzang Highway 京藏高速 that runs from Beijing to Tibet. It took only a few hours to travel cross Ningxia and soon we found ourselves in Gansu [...]
Bright and early at six in the morning, we began our journey west. The first quest was to travel beyond the Fourth Ring Road by 7am to avoid traffic fines (a policy implemented by the government to ease congestion in the inner city). We headed southwest toward Baoding 保定, and after driving for nearly an [...]
The hazy morning sun, the wide intersections flanked by colossal buildings accommodating commuters on various forms of conveyance, and the hustle and bustle of a morning market are scenes characteristic of the center of Beijing. What strikes me as a distinct difference from the previous times I had been here is how refreshingly balmy it [...]
This month we had a week-long visit from archaeo-metallurgists from the Deutches Bergbau-Museum, the University of Franfurt am Main, and the University of Toulouse, Le Mirail. They brought with them some impressive equipment for spot analysis of many metal objects from Ur and will do more in-depth studies of the results back in their home [...]
