Behold Nanocthulhu lovecrafti

Matthew Buffington of the Smithsonian has published the description of a new genus and species of wasp, named Nanocthulhu lovecrafti, a name partially inspired by the shape of the mandibles. You can see pictures of it, and an explanation for the name, at this entry at WaspWeb (a site whose existence disturbs me somewhat).

Houdini, Lovecraft, and Cthulhu

I've written a bit on the Houdini-Lovecraft-Cthulhu connection for this week's Cthulhu Cthursday over at Ectoplasmosis.

Head on over there for thrills, chills, killer robots, monstrous beasts, bizarre prophecies, lovely showgirls, and all the madness you can possibly want.

I will try to update some more *ahem* scholarly exhibits in the Museum. But for now, check out the playbill over at Ectomo.

Why Cthulhu Isn't On That Gravestone: A Sympathetic Response to io9

Here at Miskatonic Museum, we curate and display objects and cases where the real world parallels or at least calls to mind the works of H. P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos. So we were amused when io9's Jess Nevins recently pointed out a tombstone from Duxbury, Massachusetts that to his eye resembled one of the common icons for Cthulhu. This is very much up our alley, and is comparable with our most famous piece, the Moche Headdress, possibly from La Mina, Peru, which may provide additional insight into the Cthulhu Cult.

But as with our Red Rain of Kerala exhibit, examined through the lens of "The Colour Out of Space," we do try to also educate our visitors regarding more mainstream interpretations of these objects. In the case of the Duxbury Stone, there seemed to be more that might be said in this regard.

One of the comments on the io9 article, by greenivygrey, notes that the border is a gourd and floral design, and points to similar iconography on a 1695 tombstone. Another example, from 1697 was photographed by jlbriggs in Newport, Rhode Island. This design is also known as "fig and pumpkin" and in these examples this is more obvious than on the Duxbury Stone (which includes the figs, but not the pumpkin). Another example from 1705 Ipswich can be seen here. PrimaryResearch has a visual glossary of colonial-era headstone elements which you can view. If you are a student of these designs, please feel free to add further information or corrections in the comments.

You may notice that all of these examples cluster together. This brings us to the Death's Head design on the Duxbury Stone, and the work of archaeologist James Deetz. James Deetz was a pioneering historical archaeologist, author of, amongst other works the book In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Deetz's most famous work may be his seriation, conducted with Edwin S. Dethlefsen, of New England headstone iconography. You can read the article here. This seriation did not directly address border designs such as the fig and pumpkin, but is a classic case study on seriation of material culture. The article tracks the waxing and waning in popularity of three basic headstone designs, and then goes into detail into the specifics of the evolution of these designs, and how demographics, settlement pattern, religious beliefs, and economics affected this evolution. This article has led to other projects, including those utilizing the study to educate children in history and how to conduct research, such as Dean Eastman's "Tiptoeing Through the Tombstones" which has another illustration of the fig and pumpkin motif.


Seriation is a technique developed over a century ago that is in many ways the backbone of everyday archaeological chronology (anchored in time with absolute dating techniques such as radiocarbon). The style of material objects generally changes through time, and in most cases, it changes in a relatively predictable and common sense way. Elements of style or whole styles are innovated or introduced, they become popular and widespread, and then they drop off as another new fad or trend emerges. The sequence of these changes can be compiled and used to date when an object was probably made. We do this all the time, recognizing that a car or a pair of pants or a building is from a particular decade or century based on other examples we know from that time. We know that Mad Men takes place in the early 1960s not from seeing a calendar, but from the clothes, and we recognize the show's advance through time as the clothes change. And when we see something we believe to be out of place, even if it is not, we find it jarring, as in the recent meme of finding "time travelers" in old photos or video clips.

Deetz and Dethlefsen seriated these grave markers not just to study them in particular, but as a larger test of seriation. The article was published in 1967, an era when explicit testing of the rigor of archaeological methods had reached a fever pitch in what historians of archaeological theory call "The New Archaeology" or processual archaeology, contrasting it with "culture historical" archaeology that had preceded it. The headstones are dated, and some of the carvers are known from the historical record. It was an ideal case to determine whether seriation, regularly applied to prehistoric artifact populations, actually worked like everyone thought it did. Below is a video of archaeologist Dave Wheelock carving an 18th century style headstone for the late Deetz.



This headstone may feature pumpkins and figs rather than Cthulhu, but I suspect HPL would have appreciated what has been learned about these tombstones in the intervening decades. He wrote extensively about changes of style and elements of architecture, both in his letters and in some travelogues, unpublished during his lifetime with an antiquarian bent (most famously his purposely archaic "Quebeck" study). He wrote about small bits of old Dutch material culture in New England, liked the idea of a museum of folkways, and went on in an amateur fashion about regional English-language dialects in America.

Just as a side note on the io9 article, while Innsmouth does indeed have some elements of Ipswich and Gloucester in it as Mr. Nevins notes, much of it was openly based on Newburyport. Like Arkham, which is a mix of Salem and Providence (especially Brown University), it has several components.

Political Geography of the Permian - A Culture History of the Cthulhu Mythos

Jordan179 has made a tentative reconstruction of Earth's past political geography, based on the Kadath murals, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, testimony of channeled time travelers, and other fragmentary evidence of the deep past surviving to the present. He has correlated geological evidence for the position of the continents (noting Lovecraft's use of continental drift, at the time a disputed and largely rejected fringe hypothesis that would become the dominant geological paradigm a generation later).

I find the positioning of R'lyeh somewhat odd, placing it what would become central and northeastern Asia, but the scope of the future continent is still unknown so any suggestion at this point is tentative. And it keeps in the commendable spirit of many chroniclers of Earth's hidden history, with two sources rarely agreeing. And then there is the issue of the Cthulhi/Xothians and water, which has been discussed extensively elsewhere. I think there is a methodological issue in presenting this as somewhat static, collapsing vast amounts of time (the map is labeled as varying through time, but considering the huge amounts of time involved ...). But then, the source material also stretches empires over tens of millions of years, or longer, so this isn't out of character with the evidence.

But overall, an interesting approach to a problem typically handled textually. It reminds me of the culture history maps from archaeology's early professional days, when large blobs and arrows would translate artifacts, postmolds, and art styles into nation-like units to build histories before history. V. Gordon Childe, one of the most influential of culture historians, was publishing his reconstructions of Eurasian prehistory precisely at the time Lovecraft was writing the stories that most directly under gird this map. I find it quite fitting.

The Call of Cthulhu in Under 2 Minutes

Self-guided audio tour headsets are available at the front desk.

The Moche Octopoid Headdress - A Representation of Cthulhu?

Exhibit RLY003 - Moche gold octopoid hybrid headdress, possibly from La Mina, Jequetpeque Valley* In 1988, looters robbed a rich tomb at La Mina in the Jequetepeque Valley of north coastal Peru. This tomb was left by members of the Moche archaeological culture, a series of sites and artifacts participating in shared material culture, and especially an expressive iconography and art style for most of the first millennium AD. Tomb looting is rampant in Andean archaeology as it is elsewhere, but this is exacerbated in the case of the Moche because of the excellent preservation (much of coastal Peru is quite dry, and organic materials are found at many sites) and because Moche metallurgists were skilled in working gold, a substance that drives the most primal dreams of treasure hunters. In 2006, a gold Moche headdress was recovered in London, believed to derive from the La Mina tomb and looting. Police worked with an international art dealer to locate and take possession of the headdress, valued at possibly almost one million pounds (over 1.5 million $US). As of 2006, British authorities were working to return the object, described by some as the Moche Mona Lisa, to Peru. The headdress has been described as a sea god or goddess, an octopoid creature with a human/feline mixed face. Most Moche depictions of octopods portray the suckers with lines of dots or circles. In this case the triangles on the tentacles are more like those attached in Moche painting to the frill of an iguana or along the sides of a snake, perhaps suggesting a scaly surface, thought they are also found on fish fins, such as in the depiction below. The ends of the tentacles suggest mouths, similar to serpents often found protruding from figures in Moche artwork. Anthropomorphizing animals and objects was common in Moche art, as was combining elements of different creatures. Likewise, marine subjects were common in Moche art, dominating many scenes in the corpus of fine-line painted pots that make up the most important databank we have for elite Moche intellectual and religious concepts. Much of the background information here is found in Christopher Donnan and Donna McLelland's 1999 book Moche Fineline Painting: Its Evolution and Its Artists. Intriguingly, a marine hybrid creature more commonly depicted than the octopus is one Donnan and McLelland label 'The Demon Fish." Resemblances to stories of mermaids or fish humanoids elsewhere in the Pacific or off the coast of Massachusetts are plain.

Demon Fish, from Donnan and McLelland 1999:

The Demon Fish is one of many anthropomorphized marine creatures, carrying a tumi metal knife for ritual combat, throat slitting, blood drinking and decapitation for trophy heads. This mythologized activity in Moche artwork is reflected in a number of archaeological discoveries. Probably the most infamous example is the Huaca de la Luna (a huaca is a general Andean term for prehispanic ritual sites) at the Moche type site, where multiple sacrifice or execution events left behind individuals in positions suggesting they were bound, and showing not just cut throats, but horrific wounds across the body. Bioanthropologist John Verano has suggested that the placement of cut marks on bones, when compared with other Moche artwork, suggests that some bodies were defleshed but not dismembered, and were hung in a fashion not unlike windchimes. Comparison can be made with Inspector Legrasse's early 20th century report on the Cthulhu Cult in Louisiana, and their hanging of bodies for some undescribed creature that the adherents told police would attend their ceremonies. Perhaps there is some parallel in the Decapitator, the name given to a supernatural figure that appears in Moche artwork associated with these rituals. This entity often had arachnid elements
What are we to make of this headdress? It is gold or a gold alloy, depicting a bizarre sea creature. Compare with Robert Olmstead's description of a tiara in the possession of the Newburyport Historical Society when he visited Massachusetts in 1927, as described in the narrative "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," by Howard P. Lovecraft

"It was tall in front, and with a very large and curiously irregular periphery, as if designed for a head of almost freakishly elliptical outline. The material seemed to be predominantly gold, though a weird lighter lustrousness hinted at some strange alloy with an equally beautiful and scarcely identifiable metal. Its condition was almost perfect, and one could have spent hours in studying the striking and puzzlingly untraditional designs - some simply geometrical, and some plainly marine - chased or moulded in high relief on its surface with a craftsmanship of incredible skill and grace."

That object was a prime example of Marsh Gold, a scattered series of eccentric jewelry pieces turning up in New England between the mid-19th century and the 1930s. The artist or workshop is unknown, but local folklore associates the pieces with the Marsh gold refinery in Innsmouth, Massachusetts, shuttered in 1927 after a federal investigation into alcohol bootlegging. Stories have swirled around the gold for decades suggesting it came from a pirate hoard found by Captain Obed Marsh during his trade expeditions in the 19th century Pacific. Prehispanic artifacts have been recovered from sunken Spanish ships, and such shipments were the prime target of pirates. If the Marsh Gold objects could be demonstrated as having ties to Andean art traditions, perhaps Marsh did indeed find some pirate loot left over from the days of the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas. In light of the octopod-human-feline gold headdress, its similarities to the Marsh Gold, and prominent elements of supernatural anthropomorphic "Demon Fish" in Moche art, perhaps the geographical context should be examined. 

The above map displays several items of significant interest. The rough location where the headdress was believed to have been looted is noted on the South American mainland. To the southwest, we can see the rough location of the biologically emptiest spot in the ocean, waters exceedingly clear because they are more devoid of life than other areas of the open oceans, as discussed in a previous exhibit. South of this area we find the triangulated position of "The Bloop," an acoustic phenomenon to be discussed in a future exhibit, and the rough location of the mystery island, called R'lyeh by some, described in the Johansen Diary. These locations roughly outline the area suggested by theosophist James Churchward for the southeastern tip of sunken Mu, but as Lovecraft noted,

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survival in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism.

*note: while the information about the Moche is accurate, discussion of the Marsh Gold, Innsmouth, Inspector Legrasse and his investigations of the Cthulhu Cult are for edutainment purposes only

Cthulhu Guest Appearance on The Venture Brothers

Another announcement-type post

That's right. They've already referenced the Necronomicon visually/conceptually but not by name, but this takes that up a notch.

Airs on the Cartoon Network/Adult Swim at Midnight EST Sunday December 6, and then will be available on Adult Swim after that

http://video.adultswim.com/promos/ve...etter-man.html

Cthulhu December at Tor.com

Not an exhibit, just a head's up.

Everyday this month, Tor.com is showcasing all things Cthuluvian.

The Earthquake that Uplifted R'lyeh

Exhibit RLY002 - The Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake

February 28, 1925 saw one of the strongest earthquakes in Canadian history. Dubbed the Charlevoix-Kamouraska earthquake (nice overview from Natural Resources Canada, source of the Le Soleil image above), it was centered in the St. Lawrence River Valley.

Wikicommons

Damage was not severe, but was nonetheless notable, and the event caused considerable unease in a region not accustomed to earthquakes. Images and description of some of the damage.

Wikicommons

It caused minimal damage in Providence, less so in New York where Lovecraft was living at the time. This event was the inspiration for the South Pacific earthquake of the same date in "The Call of Cthulhu," which pushes the peaks of R'lyeh above the waters of the Pacific, allowing Cthulhu's dreams to menace sensitive human minds across the globe. Aftershocks of the Canadian quake in fact continued frequently throughout this period, largely ceasing on the day the crew of the Emma do battle with the cultists of the Alert, and one day before they land upon R'lyeh itself, and in turn the continent sinks back under the waves.

We can imagine Lovecraft, the amateur astronomer, reading about the quake later that year in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Now, this doesn't add up to having any effect on the other side of the planet, but it is the thought that counts.

The BIOSOPE Marine Survey and the Barren Zone

Exhibit RLY001 - The BIOSOPE Marine Survey.

A four-month biological survey of the south Pacific identified and mapped in 2007 the most lifeless waters on Earth (though the area is rich in dissolved carbon, near Rapanui. The map above is a rough approximation of the area, more detailed maps can be found in media reports (here and here) and on the project website which features much more data on the anomaly.

As the map above depicts, this is a part of the Pacific with other suggestive hints, ranging from the monoliths and undeciphered records of Rapanui to the Bloop (more on that in the future) and the 1925 records of an element of R'lyeh, that perhaps there is more to this oceanic area hostile to earthly life.