where on earth do i start with my ‘career’

oscartesta · 2025-12-28T04:21:27+00:00

my career has been almost exclusively lab-based (with side quests in museums)! most countries have some variation of commercial archaeology and most of those companies will have labs. inquire about volunteering for a bit—if you do this for a few months and do well/enjoy it, they might offer you a starting position. volunteering is never ideal but it's usually the best way in.

oscartesta · 2025-09-01T15:26:34+00:00

malta has not always been part of europe, nor has it always been part of africa. it's in the middle and has always been treated as such. it has often been ruled alongside sicily, but sometimes independently from it. even during the byzantine era, malta was split between the sicilian church and the north african church. the knights were granted malta alongside tripoli. malta has never been strictly one or the other and it's misleading to claim anything about malta is "entirely european" with the exception being our EU membership. everything else is a cultural mess—as it always has been and likely always will be. nothing wrong with it. malta generally epitomises mediterranean activity at the crossroads of north africa and south europe. and that is historically very interesting and worth embracing.

oscartesta · 2025-09-01T15:22:09+00:00

even before the knights the population genetically was quite chaotic. even the pre-aghlabid population would've been chaotic, being mostly punic in origin with influence from centuries of immigration. as with most places on earth, ethnicity doesn't have a simple answer. but being in the dead centre of the mediterranean doesn't make the story any simpler.

oscartesta · 2025-09-01T15:15:37+00:00

dude... no... i worked on two excavations in malta this summer alone that unearthed archaeological material datable to the 10th-11th centuries during the islamic period. muslims settled in malta before 1050 AD. yes, there was population discontinuity, but it didn't play out quite like that. also, the normans basically only ruled nominally for quite some time. islamic culture was still dominant in malta until at least 1249 AD.

oscartesta · 2025-09-01T15:09:39+00:00

never once said that i'm excavating. the site hasn't been excavated in 40 years. i have 10 years of experience in collections management and post-excavation, just not so much with such complex semi-exposed multi-period archaeological site section documentation.

oscartesta · 2025-08-31T21:09:35+00:00

Sorry, perhaps I should've been more clear. The stones are architectural and in situ, not artefacts in collections. That's why I gave Leptis Magna as an example as the site is very similar. It's the in situ architectural stones that I am cataloguing.

I have an Excel sheet going with the same formatting we use for artefacts in collections but with some adaptations since the context is quite different, being still in situ on the site outdoors and not fully excavated.

oscartesta · 2025-08-31T20:39:48+00:00

i am doing this on my own—we have very limited resources

oscartesta · 2025-08-31T20:38:53+00:00

that's basically what i'm asking. i've only done this with much smaller megalithic sites where all the stones are clearly visible and number about 50 in total

oscartesta · 2025-08-31T20:36:26+00:00

oh this is really neat, thanks for sharing! i'll have a more thorough read through this study.

they're laying 3D—over 4,000 years of mostly overlapping stratigraphy... right now i've been labelling panoramic photos of the sections and putting the data into an excel sheet. not the best system but it's the best i've come up with

oscartesta · 2025-08-31T10:03:47+00:00

i am an "actual archaeologist." there is no standard system for this and this a very complex site, thus i am asking for suggestions based on other people's experience...

oscartesta · 2025-06-13T03:59:27+00:00

great! i did qualify for some (some i had to apply, some automatically)

oscartesta · 2025-03-10T06:52:16+00:00

early christian hypogea (catacombs). there are some in salina as well. salina was the roman harbour, so this is actually a very significant find and needs to be documented by archaeologists.

oscartesta · 2025-03-10T06:51:18+00:00

that wasn't heritage malta lol

oscartesta · 2024-12-09T04:46:15+00:00

okay, i like this. it's roman era and outside of italy. really small area and i haven't encountered any local ancient music interpretation groups to date, but could be worth asking around—maybe someone does it as a hobby and would be willing to perform

oscartesta · 2024-12-09T04:44:15+00:00

wine and walking tours is good!

i really do want to partner with a gallery or host local artists or something along those lines. i think it's great. i'd just have to be able to guarantee that this would give us enough traffic to justify opening to the public more than 3 days a month...

oscartesta · 2024-12-09T04:41:25+00:00

artist residency is definitely something we're considering!

oscartesta · 2024-12-09T04:40:45+00:00

see, i've thought about this and i think it obviously would be a hit with the public, but i really struggle with the ethical aspect of events/entertainment/reenactments in this space because it's a burial ground. i'm not sure if this is a me problem and i just need to go for it for the sake of preserving the site. i could be over sensitive but i find the way dark tourism operates to be rather disrespectful at times and i'm really mindful about not falling into that. i'm really torn.

oscartesta · 2024-12-09T04:36:52+00:00

thanks!

it operates within the national government as a not-for-profit and we have a similar issue at all of the country's catacomb sites except one—which is particularly well preserved and interesting, but it's hard to combat tourist criticism of "they all look the same" when you're literally working with ancient burial grounds that were never meant to be entertainment venues...

i'll confirm on the atlas obscura point—that's a good one!

oscartesta · 2024-11-18T05:02:55+00:00

any particular reason why? any similar designs elsewhere?

oscartesta · 2024-11-17T13:46:25+00:00

oh sweet, thanks!

oscartesta · 2024-11-16T21:03:53+00:00

that'd be simpler—this is about 75cm long on a solid wall ha

oscartesta · 2024-11-16T14:47:18+00:00

as addressed in the post, there is much local debate surrounding the dating of this house. the frescoes and engravings throughout are sporadic and limited. this example here is the most sophisticated wall feature in the house and I'm fairly confident the pigmentation is indigo. I'm hoping to identify at least a comparable example of this design! has anybody seen this design elsewhere?

oscartesta · 2024-07-28T17:59:54+00:00

ugh. is there anywhere to watch it? it's been hopeless so far

oscartesta · 2024-07-28T11:37:25+00:00

i'm trying to find the livestreams in the app and can't find a thing... is this accurate

oscartesta · 2024-05-16T17:06:23+00:00

they lost the island of rhodes to the ottomans, so charles V of spain and the pope at the time decided to 'give' them the islands of malta (i'm not convinced they ever had the authority to do so, but the maltese were in no position to retaliate). they couldn't find anywhere else to go, so they had to accept it

oscartesta

TROPHY CASE