“Hunting Mountain Picassos” and “Sub Rosa: Tyntesfield” are the next episodes in the video news-magazine series Strata: Portraits of Humanity, produced by AntiquityNOW’s partner, Archaeological Legacy Institute.
People have been chronicling their existence in pictorial designs for millennia. “Hunting the Mountain Picassos” captures the unique art of Basque shepherds over the last century who have created arborglyphs—pictures carved into the barks of aspen trees in Nevada. For more than half-a-century, Jean and Phillip Earl of Reno, Nevada, have used clues from old maps, letters and books to hunt for and document these remarkable pictures. In “Sub Rosa: Tyntesfield,” UK archaeology student Rebecca Kellawan journeys to uncover the use of a crumbling, abandoned US World War II base located on the grounds of a beautiful Victorian estate. What is uncovered leads to even more intriguing questions of racial and national tensions in the era and recasts the look of patriotism. Continue reading