The Archaeology Channel

Acropolis, The

Location: Greece

Length: 12 min.

Play with Windows Media Player: 300k or 700k

The Acropolis of Athens has been a special place to people there for thousands of years. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it is a special place in our time for people everywhere. On its top and flanks rest monuments to some of the most significant events and personages in the history of the Western world. For good reason, it is one of the most photographed and visited places on the planet. This video explores the history of the Acropolis, from Neolithic times through the Classical Period to the present.

Copyright 1991 by Educational Video Network

Written and photographed by Kenneth and Marjorie Russell

Narrated by Thomas F. Soare, Ph.D.

Adena People: Moundbuilders of Kentucky, The

Location: Kentucky

Length: 6 min

The ancient Adena Culture of Kentucky and surrounding states is renowned for its massive burial mounds and exquisite art works. But the lives of Adena people are shrouded in mystery because only three habitation sites have been found. Where did they live? Apparently, modern farming has destroyed most of their archaeological traces. In this video, Dr. Berle Clay examines the search for rare Adena settlements, which could tell archaeologists much abut the lifeways of American Indians who lived in Kentucky over 2000 years ago.

Copyright 2000 by The Kentucky Heritage Council

A production of Voyageur Media Group, Inc.

Web links:

Aegean, The

Location: Turkey

Length: 7 min.

This documentary highlights the Aegean coastal region of Anatolia in today’s southwestern Turkey. Densely settled in Classical times, this region featured some of the most important cities in the ancient world of the eastern Mediterranean. Among these are Ephesus, famous for the Library of Celsus and the Temple of Hadrian; Pergamon, a very large city whose library rivaled that of Alexandria; Miletus, one of the oldest ancient cities of the region; and Helicarnassus, with its Mausoleum,one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Produced in 2004 by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Web links:

• Ephesus (Wikipedia)
• Halicarnassus (Bodrum) (Livius.org)
• Izmir (All About Turkey)
• Miletus (Sacred Destinations)
• Pergamon (Wikipedia)
• Priene (Wikipedia)
• Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism
  
  
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Akha Way, The

Location: Thailand

Length: 25 min.

The Akha Way is like a road leading back to the past where the ancestors dwell and forward into an uncertain future. For a millennium, the Akha have inhabited the hills of Southeast Asia. The Akha Way, or Akhazaunh, is their code of life. This documentary describes their origins and culture. Watch a shaman healing ceremony; a funeral with the ritual sacrifice of a water buffalo; the reading of a pig's liver after a new house is built. Now the Akha Way is endangered by forced migration, Christianization,money, and drugs.

Produced by Yellow Cat Productions and Sharon Hainsfurther

Amphora of Eleusis, The

Location: Greece

Length: 4 min.

The story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, told in the Iliad of Homer, has fascinated people of all ages for millennia. A funerary proto-Attic amphora from 650 B.C., found at Eleusis, just west of Athens, Greece, and now housed at the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis, tells the story in pictures. This video playfully combines the amphora's images with a traditional folk song from the Greek island of Crete to retell the story and capture the wonder of a child hearing it for the first time.

A film by Eleni Stoumbou

Ancient Fires at Cliff Palace Pond

Location: Kentucky

Length: 11 min

Play with Windows Media Player: 300k or 700k

This video documents how two sciences, archaeology and paleoecology, came together in a research project that confirmed archaeologists' ideas about the changing land use patterns of the First Americans along the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Archaeologist Cecil Ison takes viewers to a spectacular site on the Daniel Boone National Forest where soil core studies show how American Indians used fire to manage the environment for over 3,000 years. This understanding of ancient practices will help guide forest management for the future.

Produced: Voyageur Media Group, Inc.
Copyright 2000 by The Kentucky Heritage Council

Ancient Greece: Pots Tell the Story

Location: Greece

Length: 12 min

This film tells the story of ancient Greece in an engaging manner through hand-drawn images taken from ceramic vessels. Animator Karen Aqua and composer Ken Field worked during January 2003 with ninety sixth-grade students to make this animated film and soundtrack about ancient Greek mythology, sports, and culture. The students researched the topics and created the artwork and animation as well as the musical performances and sound effects. The result is a whimsical and kid-friendly overview of the ancient Greeks.

Produced by Karen Aqua and Ken Field in collaboration with Treasure Mountain Middle School, Park City, Utah

Ancient Hydraulis, The

Location: Greece

Length: 9.5 min

In 1992 Greek archaeologists recovered a fragmentary hydraulis from the 1st Century B.C. at the Greek city of Dion. Based on this example and documentary evidence, the European Cultural Centre of Delphi finished reconstructing the instrument in 1999. The first keyboard musical instrument and the ancestor of the modern church organ, the hydraulis was invented by Ctesibius of Alexandria in the 3rd Century B.C. This video tells the story of the ancient hydraulis and its modern reconstruction and includes a performance of this remarkable instrument.

Produced by the European Cultural Centre of Delphi

Ancient Mound Builders: The Marksville State Historic Site

Location: Louisiana

Length: 15 min

Two thousand years ago, people in central Louisiana developed a complex culture represented today by a group of earthworks and mounds protected today at the site of Marksville. The Marksville culture, a southeastern variant of the Hopewell culture centered in Ohio and Illinois, embraced elaborate mortuary rituals, constructed conical burial mounds and other earthworks, and had complex trade networks and decorative pottery. This video describes the Marksville site and the remarkable prehistoric American society that built it.

Copyright 2000 by Louisiana Educational Television Authority and Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism

A production of Office of State Parks; State of Louisiana, Office of the Lieutenant Governor; Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism; and Louisiana Public Broadcasting

Web links:

Anglo-American Project in Pompeii, The

Location: Italy

Length: 8 min.

Pompeii is well known for its rich archaeological record sealed by volcanic deposits in A.D. 79. But what was the history of the city and its inhabitants before this date? The Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (AAPP), sponsored by the University of Bradford in England, is answering this question through scholarly research and at the same time is training future archaeologists and historians in the latest scientific field techniques. This video introduces the viewer to Pompeii and the goals of the AAPP and describes the field excavation of 2002.

A video by Arthur & Jennifer Stephens

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