Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Art of Counting

The Art of Counting (Amy Calvert)

If you haven't found the Art of Counting blog yet you are missing some good posts. Amy has targeted some important points and includes photographs to support her comments.

One of her series of posts is called Tacky Tourists and hits the nail on the head so well concerning the way some tourists behave in Egypt. See, for example, The Fondler, a single photograph which is an alarming shot of a tourist stroking one of the Hatshepsut temple frescoes. My own experience of tourists in Luxor and elsewhere has been equally staggering at times - my personal all time "is this really happening?" moment came when a German tourist in Siwa was found with a geology hammer in the act of digging fossils out of one of the columns of the Temple of Amun. One of the aspects of tourism that she highlights in her Tacky Tourist series is the habit of female western tourists of going around half dressed in an Islamic country, something that has bothered me in visits to Luxor for a very long time - there has to be a balance between enjoying the benefits of tourisms and showing respect for the country visited.

She is also working to make Factor Analysis and other statistical methods digestible to the archaeologist, and other interested people.

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