Archaeology's topics - tribe.net

Old Europe show at NYU

2009-12-02T02:35:38Z

NYT article on a show of artifacts from the Lower Danube Vally c. 5000 - 3500 BCE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01arch.html?_r=1&8dpc

My heavens, that looks fabulous. It makes me sad to be on the wrong coast .... But I suppose a trip out to NYC for something like this might be worthwhile.

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

An Age of Gold-Discovering Angle Land

2009-10-07T17:22:12Z

I don't know if this story reached the States but there was a recent discovery lots of Anglo-Saxon artefacts in Staffordshire, right in the heart of Mercia, one of the most important-and elusive-of the seven kingdoms that once made up the heptarchy.

This may very well turn out to be one of the most significant archaeological finds ever made in England, at least the equal to the discoveries made at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk seventy years ago, which cast some light into the English ‘Dark Age’. It was made by one Terry Herbert using a second-hand metal detector he bought for £2.50 ($5.00) from a car boot sale, a discovery that would have made even Indiana Jones envy!

These wonderful artefacts, some six hundred and fifty items so far, many in gold and in silver, decorated with the most beautiful Saxon filigree, dates to the period between the late seventh to the early eighth centuries AD, a period of change and transition, a period when the old paganism was giving way to the advance of Christianity. Without exaggeration it has been likened to the discovery of a new Book of Kells or a Lindisfarne Gospel. Dr Kevin Lehy, an advisor to the Portable Antiquities scheme, said that the items represent the pinnacle of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship;

"Gold was more valuable at that time than it is now. So gold went to the best craftsmen. This was the best they could do. Cutting these garnets is incredibly difficult. They can’t be cleaved. They have to be sawn, then polished. They even set them on gold foil so that they sparkle when the foil catches the light. "

The hoard itself seems to be a collection of war trophies, buried for unknown reasons and never recovered. They’re a great many sword hilts, confirming a passage in Beowulf that these were taken from dead enemies as tokens of victory in battle.

Possibly the most important thing is the location of the find, right in the midst of what once was the Kingdom of Mercia. This is bound to reveal as much about this place once ruled over by Penda, the last of England’s pagan kings, as Sutton Hoo did about the Kingdom of East Anglia. More than that it might tell us some more about the way in which Christianity was received and perceived by what were essentially warrior states.

For me question has to be why and in what manner did an essentially pacifist cult make progress among such blood-thirsty peoples, not just in England but across the rest of pagan Europe. The answer surely has to be in the mode of presentation, in the way the early missionaries depicted Christ; less a New Testament Prince of Peace; more an Old Testament God of Battles. The clue here is one gold strip, possibly a cross fragment, inscribed in Latin by a passage from the Book of Numbers or Psalm 67, taken from the Vulgate, the Bible used by the Saxons;

"Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face"

So it would seem from this that the Saxon kings adopted Christianity for the political advantages it offered in much the same way that it was adopted earlier by the Roman Emperor Constantine. More precise dating is likely to reveal even deeper levels of interpretation.

The richness of the material, the weight of gold discovered, also says much more about the Anglo-Saxon states, about their wealth and their sophistication. The notion of a ‘Dark Age’ was always a myth; never more so in the light of the Staffordshire finds. It makes me proud to be a Saxon. :-)

posted in Archaeology - 4 replies

Rock Art 2009: San Diego, Nov

2009-09-27T03:21:13Z

34th Annual Rock Art Symposium
Saturday, November 7, 2009

The fascinating study of rock art is the subject of the annual Rock Art Symposium held on the first Saturday of November every year. This year, ROCK ART 2009, the 34th annual Symposium, will meet on Saturday, November 7. This day-long event offers participants the opportunity to share in the results of rock art research around the globe, presented in slide-illustrated lectures. Registration is $40 for students and Museum members, $50 for general admission, including a commemorative ceramic mug. The Rock Art 2009 pre-registration form is available now for downloading (PDF format). This year's Symposium will be held at the Otto Center at the San Diego Zoo on Park Blvd. in San Diego's Balboa Park. Seating is limited, so register early.

http://www.museumofman.org/html/rock_art_2009.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

great article on Gobekli Tepe

2009-08-06T19:44:33Z

When this starts to make it into the history books it's going to change everything we thought we knew about the evolution of culture in the Neolithic. What a find!

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

BBC News: Dutch return head of Ghana king...

2009-07-23T22:27:44Z

Dutch officials have handed back to Ghana the head of a king who was executed by colonists in the 1830s.

Tribal elders led a ceremony in The Hague to hand over the head of Badu Bonsu II, stored in formaldehyde in a Dutch museum for 170 years.

The king, who was leader of the Ahanta group, is believed to have been decapitated in retaliation for the killing of two Dutch emissaries.

Some believe the king would not be at rest unless his head was returned.

Several Ghanaian traditional leaders - including a descendant of the king - held an emotional ritual during the handover at the Dutch foreign ministry.

AFP news agency reported that they poured alcohol on the floor of the conference room while invoking the chief's spirit.

"It is because of the injustice meted out to our people that our great king, who was fighting for his people, was murdered," said Nana Kwekwe Darko III, who led the ceremony.

The Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement that King Bonsu had killed two Dutch officials in 1838 and was "handed over by his own nation" to colonialists.

'Hunted in the afterlife'

Arthur Japin, a Dutch author who researched King Bonsu, says the head was brought to the Netherlands, possibly by mistake, shortly after the king was killed.

A Dutch general had been asked to bring back "heads" from Ghana to be studied by a famous phrenologist - a scientist who believes the character of a person can be determined by the shape of the skull.

"He probably meant just some drawings of different types of people but the general took this literally and he took the head and put it in formaldehyde and put it on the ship," Mr Japin told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

During the voyage home the general died, and he too was preserved in formaldehyde.

On the expedition's return, King Bonsu's head was given to the Leiden University Medical Centre, where it has been ever since.

After hearing of the head's location in 2008, Ghana filed a request for its return, saying if it remained unburied, the king would be incomplete and therefore "hunted in the afterlife".

The traditional leaders are due to return to Ghana with the head on Friday.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8165497.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

seeknig book recommendations

2009-07-19T02:11:51Z

Hi folks,

I don't know much about prehistory and would like to rectify that. I'm looking for a strong survey of paleolithic and/or neolithic history and archeology, with particular emphasis on culture (cave paintings, pottery and crafts, evidence of religious customs, etc). In my cursory research it looks to me like the Aurignacian culture might be a good emphasis.

I don't have a background in archaeology or history but I'm a fast learner and very comfortable with academic literature, even specialized technical literature. Can anyone recommend some places where I might get started?

While I'm at it I'm also looking for work on the development of agriculture and the rise of the city in the Fertile Crescent ....

Many thanks,
Barnaby

posted in Archaeology - 3 replies

Cave record of Britain's pioneers

2009-07-17T19:04:43Z

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age.

New radiocarbon dates on bones from Gough's Cave show people were living there some 14,700 years ago.

The results confirm the site's great antiquity and suggest human hunters re-colonised Britain at a time of rapid climate warming.

From 24,000 years ago, an ice sheet extended over much of Britain.

Beyond that ice sheet, in southern Britain and much of northern France, the environment resembled a polar desert. Evidence suggests these inhospitable conditions kept people out of north-west Europe for more than 9,000 years.

But human groups were able to retreat to ice-free areas (refugia) in southern France, Iberia and elsewhere. After the Ice Age peaked, humans bounced back, expanding from southern refugia to re-colonise northern Europe.

Gough's Cave is situated in the Cheddar Gorge, a deep canyon on the southern edge of Somerset's Mendip Hills.

Dates re-visited

Interest in the site was stimulated by the discovery in 1903 of "Cheddar Man", the complete skeleton of a male individual dating to about 9,000 years ago (after calibration this comes to about 10,000 calendar years).

In the 1980s, excavations uncovered accumulations of human and animal bones and artefacts that appeared to be much older even than Cheddar Man. The discoveries caused a sensation when it was realised many human remains bore a pattern of cut marks compatible with cannibalism.

However, researchers were perplexed by the radiocarbon dating results. Although the remains seemed to represent a single occupation level in the sediments, the remains appeared to be a thousand years different in age.

"We had these apparently cannibalised human bones and artefacts and animal remains with signs of butchery. They all looked like they should be part of a consistent population pattern," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum.

"Even some re-fits of bones which seemed to be from the same individual were giving different ages."

Since those tests were carried out, there have been significant advances in radiocarbon dating technology, particularly to reduce contamination in the samples. This allows more accurate dating of archaeological materials.

When the bones were sent to be re-tested at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, the remains fell into a much narrower age range, converging on 14,700 years ago.

The latest results were a much better fit with the archaeological findings. Members of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project now think the bones from Gough's Cave could have accumulated over just two or three human generations.

The possible evidence of cannibalism at Gough's Cave led to lurid newspaper headlines at the time of the excavations, with some seizing on the fact that a number of the modified bones belonged to children.

"There are large numbers of cut marks on them and they are almost entirely smashed. And that smashing looks remarkably like the patterns of breakage you get on the animal bones in the cave - which we have assumed to be for bone marrow extraction," co-author Roger Jacobi told BBC News.

But Dr Jacobi said this was not the only possible interpretation: "Another might be that the people were dying away from the cave," he posited.

"Other people are then making the human bones small and compact enough to bring them back to the cave where they are deposited. They cut off the flesh and smashed the long bones to make them more portable."

The new dates correspond precisely to a period of very rapid climate warming which could have occurred over as little as three years: "[The occupation] really is right on the cusp of this warming which we can see in Greenland ice cores," Professor Stringer told BBC News.

"Europe starts to defrost and the animals move; the humans are right there with them."

Horse hunting

They appear to have been hunting horses: "One of the puzzles from the previous radiocarbon dating was that some of the evidence for human occupation seemed to be divorced from the evidence for horse butchery," said Chris Stringer.

"Now they are right there together, so these people were probably following herds of horses across Doggerland (an ancient landmass once linking Britain to the rest of Europe) because of a large river system in the bed of the English Channel which was blocking the way from France."

Professor Stringer believes humans expanding out of southern France may have circumvented this river system by taking a detour into Belgium or the Netherlands, moving into eastern Britain across land that is now submerged under the North Sea.

However, after the warm period which attracted people back to Britain for the first time in nearly 10,000 years, the climate and environment changed again.

Birch forests expanded, which created a less attractive habitat for horses. In turn, the signal of human presence largely disappears from caves and becomes weaker and more scattered across the landscape.

Then north-west Europe plunged into the "short, sharp shock" of the Younger Dryas, a cold climate period which seems to extinguish the signal of human occupation altogether.

Cheddar Man, who lived in the cave 10,000 years ago, appears to belong to an entirely new population which arrived from the continent after conditions once again improved, said Professor Stringer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8151524.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Google Earth revives ancient Rome ...

2009-07-06T07:35:44Z

Google has added a new twist to its popular 3D map tool, Google Earth, offering millions of users the chance to visit a virtual ancient Rome.

Google has reconstructed the sprawling city - inhabited by more than one million people as long ago as AD320.

Users can zoom around the map to visit the Forum of Julius Caesar, stand in the centre of the Colosseum or swoop over the Basilica.

Researchers behind the project say it adds to five centuries of knowledge.

"This is another step in creating a virtual time machine," said Bernard Frischer of Virginia University, which worked with Google on the Roman reconstruction.

"The project is a continuation of five centuries of research by scholars, architects and artists since the Renaissance, who have attempted to restore the ruins of the ancient city with words, maps and images," he said.

Also involved was Past Perfect Productions, which reconstructs archaeological and historical sites through virtual reality.

Joel Myers, the firm's chief executive, said: "Cultural heritage, although based in the past, lives in the present, as it forms our identity.

"It is therefore our responsibility to ensure its conservation, to nourish it and make it accessible, with the objective of promoting global understanding. Ancient Rome in 3D is a major step towards this goal," he added.

"Ideal allies"

Ancient Rome is the first historical city to be added to Google Earth. Google's blog said the model contains more than 6,700 buildings, with more than 250 place marks linking to key sites in a variety of languages.

"Whether you are a student taking your first ancient history class, a historian who spends your life researching ancient civilisations, or just a history buff, access to this 3D model in Google Earth will help everyone learn more about ancient Rome," said Bruce Polderman, Google Earth 3D production manager.

Within ancient Rome there are some 200 buildings scholars know a lot about - classified as Class 1 -which Google says have been rendered as faithfully as possible.

The 3D models are based on a physical model of the city called the Plastico di Roma Antica.

The model was created by archaeologists and model-makers between 1933 to 1974 and housed in a special gallery in Rome's Museum of Roman Civilisation.

The new map was unveiled at an event in the Italian capital, and the modern day Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, offered the project fulsome praise.

"It's an incredible opportunity to share the stunning greatness of ancient Rome, a perfect example of how the new technologies can be ideal allies of our history, archaeology and cultural identity," Mr Alemanno said.

More than 400 million people have downloaded Google Earth since it was launched in June 2005.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7725560.stm

Published: 2008/11/12 20:48:48 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

GREAT BASIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY and TOPAZ MUSEUM

2009-06-16T03:23:18Z

Greetings ALL; I am Roger Anderson, Curator for and of the Great Basin Historical Society and Museum located in Delta, Utah.
The Museum grew out of interest created by local history programs of the Great Basin Historical Society. The Society was formed during the fall and winter of 1987-88 to tell the unique story of the West Millard County area. The Great Basin Museum is currently working with the City of Delta, the Topaz Museum and the local chapter of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers to build a new facility that will house all three Museums and a city conference center.
Earliest settlements were the towns of Oasis and Deseret in 1860, Oak City in 1868 and Leamington in 1871. By 1876 Hiunkley was settled, Lynndyl in 1904, and Delta in 1907 with the coming of the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad. There are many examples of pioneer architecture in the area.
Development of the irrigation system and water storage played a key role in West Millard County history. Agriculture has been a prime factor in the economy with vast irrigated fields.
The Great Basin Museum in Delta features exhibits of Millard County's history including geological specimens, fossils, atifacts of early human occupation, early settlers, an excellent archive of photographs, writings and documents about the area.

An exibit of the WWII Topaz Relocation Center is housed at the Museum. The camp held 8,500 internees, mostly from the San Francisco Bay area, from 1942-1946. An original building and other artifacts from the campsite are exhibited at the museum.
A wide variety of attractions await visitors to the West Millard area. Rockhounding in the West Desert brings tourists from all over the World. Come share the experience of finding your own trilobites, fossils, geodes, gems and ores. Exibits of these are on display at the Museum.

The Great Basin Museum is open at 10 AM to 4 PM Mon-Sat and has always had an OPEN WITHOUT CHARGE policy. Open Memorial day, July 4th, Winter Hours may vary. Private and Guided Tours at any other time can be arranged. The Great Basin Historical Society and Museum was incorporated as a nonprofit 501-c-3 organization in June 1988.

Friends and those seeking knowledge are encouraged to respond,
Until then, Regards,

R.D.Anderson - Curator
Great Basin Historical Society and Museum

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

30 Year Old Seen For The First Time in 3,000 Years

2009-02-14T21:08:04Z

The beautiful singer was about 30 years old when the world forgot about her. But now we know what she looks like for the first time in nearly 3,000 years.

The mummy known as Meresamun was entombed nearly 3,000 years ago.

It's all thanks to one of the most sophisticated CT scanners in the world. Without even cracking open the Egyptian casket, you can now see the smallest details of the woman's features. Her skin, muscles and bones are intact.

"Her eyes are set far apart, and she has a very full mouth and high cheek bones. You know, I think I could recognize this individual if I saw her in life," said Michael Vannier, a radiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Egyptologist Emily Teeter recruited Vannier to help her get a look at the mummy no one had seen. Teeter is a researcher at the Oriental Institute, a small museum on the University of Chicago campus where the mysterious mummy was first brought in 1920.

Researchers had long wanted to know more about the looks of the mummy locked in the coffin. But opening the coffin was not an option.

"It's impossible to open it without destroying it," Teeter said.

"A major concern of archeology is preserving evidence intact, and so CT technology is ideal for studying a coffin and mummy like Meresamun," she said. "It's so astounding with the advances of CT technology -- that with this newest generation of scanner, we can learn so much more about her life, her health and the way she was mummified."

Teeter had looked at the mummy's coffin nearly every day over the past 19 years. Through this project, she said, she now looks at the mummy "as an individual instead of just an artifact."

Today, the mummy is the museum's star, the highlight of a new exhibit. She's undergone a high-tech unwrapping in breathtaking detail on film clips produced by Vannier, using a CT scanner normally used for patients who are still alive.

"The first patient we scanned was this mummy," Vannier said. Watch a mummy's face revealed »

He's taken about 100,000 images. The images border the beautiful and the creepy: an up-close look at someone who died hundreds of years ago. CT scans have been used on mummies before, but they rarely generated such an amazing set of data, Vannier said.

"Many of the mummies had been taken out of their casket for scanning. In this particular case, this casket's never been opened," he said. "So everything we're seeing there has never been seen before -- at least not in 2,800 years."

The mummy was discovered in Luxor, Egypt, and sold to the Oriental Institute in 1920.

Teeter said the coffin, painted and carved to look like the figure of a beautiful woman, is an archeological marvel. She said singers who served in Egyptian temples were traditionally young, beautiful women from high-ranking families.

Hieroglyphs on the front of the coffin tell researchers more about the mummy's life. The woman's name was Meresamun, which means "Amun Loves Her," and she was a singer in the temple of the Egyptian god Amun.

Teeter also said the Oriental Institute's exhibit highlights the fact that Meresamun was not just another pretty face.

"She was a working woman. She had her job at the temple, and she'd come home," she said.

Meresamun's multitasking lifestyle, she said, makes "connections between modern day and ancient life."

Teeter believes that Meresamun would be pleased that modern medical science has given her new fame.

"One of the ideas in ancient Egypt is to live forever and be remembered by people. She has her wish," Teeter said.

The only thing that remains a mystery is how she died. Vannier said there are no signs of trauma to the body, and his only theory is that she died of some kind of infectious disease.

He's most surprised by how perfect her teeth are, suggesting that she didn't follow our modern-day high-sugar diet. She didn't have a single cavity.

"I think the thing that we learned that was very surprising, at least to me, was the fact that our dental disease is obviously related to our diet," he said. "She obviously had no refined sugars. A lot of the things that they ate were grain and more fresh materials."

He said what they've learned is astonishing. "We had some expectations, but they've all been so far exceeded. We're really not sure where the limit of all of this is."

www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02...ml#cnnSTCText

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Earliest Chemical Warfare Felled Roman Fort

2009-02-01T12:41:46Z

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Jan. 30, 2009 -- A cramped tunnel beneath a Middle Eastern fort might have produced the oldest evidence of chemical warfare, according to a CSI-style review of archival records.

Presented at the recent meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, the review focused on the dramatic remains of 20 Roman soldiers unearthed in the 1930s in the city of Dura-Europos, Syria.

Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Euphrates River, the Roman fort at Dura was the site of a violent siege by the powerful Persian Empire around 256 A.D.

No historical record of the battle exists, but archaeological remains have helped piece together the action.

The Persians used a range of siege techniques to enter the city. These included laying mines in tunnels underneath the walls to breach them. Intending to hold their ground at all costs, Roman defenders responded with counter-mines.

In the 1930s, archaeologists unearthed dramatic evidence of the fight: In one of the tunnels, a pile of bodies, still completely fitted with their weapons and armor, testified the horrors of the battle.

At the time, the researchers believed that the trapped Roman soldiers had died after the tunnel collapsed.

The reality was more gruesome, according to Simon James of the University of Leicester in England.

Mixing archival records and extensive fieldwork at the site, James was able to reconstruct the coldest of cold-case crime scenes, and came to the conclusion that the Roman soldiers had been deliberately stacked atop one another at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians.

"They used their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it," James said.

A question, however, remained: How did the Roman soldiers die? Killing almost two dozen fully armed men in a space less than 6 feet high and 36 feet long would have required "superhuman combat powers, or something more insidious," James concluded.

He noticed that previous reports described telltale mineral residues and yellow sulfur crystals in the tunnel.

"These provided the vital clue. When ignited, such materials give off dense clouds of choking gases," James said.

According to James, the Persians, who had heard the Romans tunneling, "prepared a nasty surprise." They placed fire pits strategically throughout the tunnel, and when the Romans broke through, the Persians gassed them by adding sulfur crystals and bitumen to the fire. This filled the tunnel with toxic sulfur dioxide gas.

James' "crime scene" also included the skeleton of a Persian soldier, lying alone.

"Probably, he is the man who set the fire. He lingered too long to ensure it was alight, and was himself overcome by fumes from the bitumen and sulfur he used to start the blaze," James told Discovery News.

According to Adrienne Mayor, a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Department of Classics and History of Science, most of the reconstruction of the underground battle mentioned in James' study "were already revealed by major excavations in 1920 to 1937 by teams from France and Yale University, and after 1986 by French-Syrian teams."

Mayor described the skirmish in the tunnel and the presence of burnt residue in her 2003 book "Greek Fire, Poison, Arrows and Scorpion Bombs."

"But James adds vivid new details, based on his careful analysis of the evidence. His real breakthrough is the remarkable fact that the Persian deliberately created a chemical weapon," Mayor told Discovery News.

The Persians failed to bring the walls down but somehow broke into the city. It was the end for Dura: Defenders and inhabitants were slaughtered or deported to Persia.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/30/earliest-chemical-warfare.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Takshshila - The oldest vedic university

2009-01-24T12:05:16Z

More than 2700 years back a huge university existed in that ancient India where over 10,500 students from all across the world came for higher studies.

Students from all across the world used to come to attain specialization in over 64 different fields of study like vedas, grammar, philosophy, ayurveda, agriculture, surgery, politics, archery, warfare, astronomy, commerce, futurology, music, dance, etc. There were even curious subjects like the art of discovering hidden treasure, decrypting encrypted messages, etc

Takshashila, the place where this university existed, is now in Pakistan, and gets its name from Taksha, who was the son of Bharatha. Taksha ruled over the kingdom of Taksha Khanda which even extended beyond modern day Uzbekistan, and Tashkent -the present day Uzbek capital also gets its name from Taksha/Takshashila. Click here to see a collection of modern photographs of Takshashila.

Students were admitted to this university at the age of 16 after they had completed their basic education in their local institutions. Every single graduate who passed out of this university would become a well sought after scholar all across the subcontinent!

Admission into this university was purely based on merit. The students would opt for electives and then would do indepth study and research into their field of choice.

Some of the students who graduated out of the Takshashila university included the great political master Chanakya (also called Kautilya/Vishnugupta who not only authored the world’s finest work till today on political duties, statecraft, economic policies, state intelligence systems, administrative skills and military strategy, called the Artha Shastra which consists of 15 books, but who also guided Chandragupta Maurya as a mentor who founded the Great Mauryan Empire, and also served as the prime minister of the Mauryan Empire!)

Panini was another great product of this university. He was an expert in language and grammar and authored one of the greatest works on grammar ever written called Ashtadhyayi. Ashtadhyayi means eight chapters and is more complicated and at the same time highly technical and specific defining the features and rules of Sanskrit grammar.

Another great student from Takshashila university was Vishnu Sharma, the author of the great book that teaches the art of political science in the form of simple beautiful stories called the Pancha Tantra (meaning the five techniques). It is said that Vishnu Sharma wrote these stories in order to convert three dumb princes of a king into able political administrators within a span of six months!

Charaka, the famous ancient Indian ayurvedic physician was a product of Takshashila university. He originally authored the Charaka Samhita (simplifying an even older ayurvedic work called the Agnivesha Samhita) which along with Sushrutha Samhita, Ashtanga Sangraha and Ashtanga Hrudayam forms the root of modern Ayurveda. Charaka said, A physician who fails to enter the body of a patient with the lamp of knowledge and understanding can never treat diseases.

Jivak was another genius who came out of the Takshashila university. He was a doctor and an expert in pulse reading (understanding the health status of the body by just listening to the person’s pulse!). He studied Ayurveda in Takshashila University for seven years. His areas of specialization was Panchakarma, Marma and Surgery.

Jivak was the personal physician of Buddha and also cured the Nadi Vran of Buddha! He also worked with the great classic beauty Amrapali and ensured that she retained her youthful countenance and performed many amazing operations on her using only Marma points and surgical procedures! He also invented a cure for Filariasis. There are over 15000 handwritten manuscripts of Jivak’s expertise passed on by generations to their children and are still preserved in India even today.

Pictures from Takshshila http://bruning.xs4all.nl/~umayr/taxila/
Wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takshashila

posted in Archaeology - 3 replies

Huge Iron Age haul of coins found

2009-01-22T20:32:50Z

One of the UK's largest hauls of Iron Age gold coins, which would have been worth in today's money up to £1m, has been found in Suffolk.

The 824 so-called staters were found in a broken pottery jar buried in a field near Wickham Market by a local man using a metal detector.

Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said the coins dated from 40BC to AD15.

They are thought to have been minted by predecessors of Iceni Queen Boudicca.

Ms Plouviez said their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and £1m, but they were likely to be worth less than that now.

Wealthy tribes

"It's a good, exciting find. It gives us a lot of new information about the late Iron Age, and particularly East Anglia in the late Iron Age.

"The discovery is important because it highlights the probable political, economic and religious importance of an area.

"It certainly suggests there was a significant settlement nearby. As far as we understand, it was occupied by wealthy tribes or subtribes," she said.

Ms Plouviez said the find was the largest collection of Iron Age gold coins found in Britain since 1849, when a farm worker unearthed between 800 and 2,000 gold staters in a field near Milton Keynes.

Secret excavations

She said secret excavations had been carried out on the latest find in Suffolk after a man reported it to the council's archaeological service in October.

The staters, which each weigh about 5g, will now be valued ahead of a treasure trove inquest.

"We don't know how much they will be worth but it will be less than they were at the time," said Ms Plouviez.

"After the treasure trove inquest, they will be offered to museums at their current value."

She said the exact location of the find would not be made public but added "thorough" searches of the area had not uncovered any further artefacts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/7835228.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

German battlefield yields Roman surprises

2009-01-05T22:31:41Z

HANOVER, Germany (CNN) -- Archaeologists have found more than 600 relics from a huge battle between a Roman army and Barbarians in the third century, long after historians believed Rome had given up control of northern Germany.

Researchers say the evidence suggests the tribesmen lured the Romans into forest.

"We have to write our history books new, because what we thought was that the activities of the Romans ended at nine or 10 (years) after Christ," said Lutz Stratmann, science minister for the German state of Lower Saxony. "Now we know that it must be 200 or 250 after that."

For weeks, archeologist Petra Loenne and her team have been searching this area with metal detectors, pulling hundreds of ancient Roman weapons out of the ground. They paint a picture of a highly organized, technologically superior Roman army beset by Germanic tribes in a forest about 80 km (50 miles) south of the modern city of Hanover.

The hillside battlefield was discovered by relic-hunters illegally searching for souvenirs of more recent wars near the town of Kalefeld-Oldenrode. One of them brought some of the items he found to Loenne, who works for the local government.

The artifacts are so well preserved that the scientists can already retrace some of the battle lines.

"We believe the Germans ambushed the Romans here, but the legions quickly fired back with catapults and archers -- and then it came to a massive man-on-man onslaught," Loenne said.

The items unearthed so far include an axe, still sharp after nearly 1,800 years; horseshoes; shovels; spearheads; and dozens of arrowheads for a Scorpio, a cross between a catapult and a crossbow -- the ancient equivalent of artillery.

"With a very high speed, on a very long distance -- about 300 meters -- you can hit targets precisely," said Henning Hassman, of Hanover's archeological institute.

Researchers say the evidence suggests the tribesmen lured the Romans into the forest to keep them from making full use of those long-range weapons and draw them into hand-to-hand combat, outside of the formations the imperial troops had mastered. However, they believe the Romans ultimately prevailed.

Other relics include coins depicting the late second-century Roman emperor Commodus, depicted in the Oscar-winning Hollywood epic "Gladiator" -- a film that opens with a scene of battle against a barbarian horde that scientists say appears to be largely accurate. And Loenne said her team may have only begun to scratch the surface of the forest.

"We hope we might find fortifications and if we are lucky, maybe even battlefield graveyards," she said.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/01/05/germany.battlefield/index.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Satellites unearthing ancient Egyptian ruins

2008-12-31T01:22:50Z

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space.

The enclosure wall of the Great Aten temple in Egypt, as seen from the QuickBird satellite.

1 of 2 "Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."

Images from space have been around for decades. Yet only in the past decade or so has the resolution of images from commercial satellites sharpened enough to be of much use to archaeologists. Today, scientists can use them to locate ruins -- some no bigger than a small living room -- in some of the most remote and forbidding places on the planet.

In this field, Parcak is a pioneer. Her work in Egypt has yielded hundreds of finds in regions of the Middle Egypt and the eastern Nile River Delta.

Parcak conducted surveys and expeditions in the eastern Nile Delta and Middle Egypt in 2003 and 2004 that confirmed 132 sites that were initially suggested by satellite images. Eighty-three of those sites had never been visited or recorded.

In the past two years, she has found hundreds more, she said, leading her to amend an earlier conclusion that Egyptologists have found only the tip of the iceberg.

"My estimate of 1/100th of 1 percent of all sites found is on the high side," Parcak said.

These discoveries are of no small significance to the Egyptian government, which has devoted itself anew to protecting archaeological sites from plunder and encroachment.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities has restricted excavation in the most sensitive areas along the Nile -- from the Great Pyramids at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo to the carvings of Ramses II in the remote south.

Antiquities officials hope the move will encourage more surveys in the eastern Nile Delta in northern Egypt, Parcak said, where encroaching development in the burgeoning nation of 82 million poses the greatest threat to the sites.

Old and modern methods

Parcak's process weds modern tools with old-fashioned grunt work.

The archaeologist studies satellite images stored on a NASA database and plugs in global positioning coordinates for suspected sites, then tramps out to see them. Telltale signs such as raised elevations and pot shards can confirm the images.

As a result, the big picture comes into view.

"We can see patterns in settlements that correspond to the [historical] texts," Parcak said, "such as if foreign invasions affected the occupation of ancient sites.

"We can see where the Romans built over what the Egyptians had built, and where the Coptic Christians built over what the Romans had built.

"It's an incredible continuity of occupation and reuse."

The flooding and meanders of the Nile over the millennia dictated where and how ancient Egyptians lived, and the profusion of new data has built a more precise picture of how that worked.

"Surveys give us information about broader ancient settlement patterns, such as patterns of city growth and collapse over time, that excavations do not," said Parcak, author of a forthcoming book titled "Satellite Remote Sensing and Archaeology."

The vagaries of climate in the region make satellite technology advantageous, too.

"Certain plants that may indicate sites grow during certain times of the year," Parcak said, "while sites may only appear during a wet or dry season. This is different everywhere in the world."

Archaeologists working in much more verdant climates, such as Cambodia and Guatemala, also have used the technology to divine locations of undiscovered ruins.

They have been able to see similarities between the vegetation at known sites and suspected sites that showed up in fine infrared and ultraviolet images covering wide areas of forbidding terrain.

"For the work I do [in Egypt], I need wet season images as wet soil does a better job at detecting sites with the satellite imagery data I use," Parcak said. "I can pick the exact months I need with the NASA satellite datasets."

Benefits of a bird's-eye view

Remote subsurface sensing has been used in archaeology in one form or another for years, though the term "remote" doesn't necessarily imply great distance. Typically, a surveyor has wheeled a sensing device over a marked-out area to determine what lies below.

The sensing devices employ any of an array of technologies, such as Ground Penetrating Radar. They bounce signals off objects below the surface and translate the data into images that a scientist's trained eye can decipher.

Multispectral imaging encompasses technologies that "see" what the human eye can't, such as infrared and ultraviolet radiation. Scientists have used it for years to study the Earth's surface for a variety of purposes. Until resolution of these images improved, though, the only way to produce a sharp image was to be relatively close to the ground.

For those lugging unwieldy gear across jungle and desert, an effective bird's-eye view can change the world. It lets them leave behind the days and days of meticulous "prospecting" and get results from airplane-mounted sensors or, later on, a flyover by an advanced satellite.

One of the most advanced is called QuickBird, which has been in orbit since 2001 and can provide high-resolution images of 11-mile-wide swaths. The satellite can collect nearly 29 million square miles of imagery data in a year, according to DigitalGlobe, which developed and operates QuickBird.

The company, based in Longmont, Colorado, is working on an upgrade. WorldView-2, to be launched in 2009, will offer sharper resolution of visual and multispectral images than QuickBird, according to the company's Web site.

In the end, though, a tool is only as useful as its wielder.

"Most of the advances have come through processing on the ground by end users such as Dr. Parcak," said DigitalGlobe spokesman Chuck Herring.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/23/satellites.archaeology.egypt/index.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered

2008-12-24T08:00:55Z

SAQQARA, Egypt – A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered at Saqqara indicate that the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo is even larger than previously thought, Egypt's top archaeologist said Monday. The rock-cut tombs were built for high officials — one responsible for the quarries used to build the nearby pyramids and another for a woman in charge of procuring entertainers for the pharaohs.

"We announce today a major, important discovery at Saqqara, the discovery of two new tombs dating back to 4,300 years ago," said Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters around the site Monday. "The discovery of the two tombs are the beginning of a big, large cemetery."

The discovery indicates that there is even more to the vast necropolis of Saqqara, located 12 miles south of the capital, Cairo, he added.

In the past, excavations have focused on just one side of the two nearby pyramids — the Step Pyramid of King Djoser and that of Unas, the last king of the 5th Dynasty. The area where the two tombs were found, to the southwest, has been largely untouched.

"This means the royal cemetery is bigger than we thought," said Saleh Suleiman, the archaeologist responsible for the excavation of the two tombs.

Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said excavations will continue and further finds should shed light on the 5th and 6th dynasties of the Old Kingdom, which ruled over 4,000 years ago.

One of the tombs, about a yard wide and 2.75 yards long, has a description above the entrance about the man, Yaamat, for whom it was built. The second tomb is twice the size and includes inscriptions and an image of a seated woman.

Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology in Bristol, England, who was not involved in the dig, said that while the tombs themselves aren't especially significant, the possibility of a much larger cemetery is.

"It shows that the blank areas of the maps of Saqqara aren't really empty at all. It's just that archaeologists haven't got round to digging them," he said.

Excavations have been going on at Saqqara for about 150 years, uncovering a vast necropolis of pyramids, tombs and funerary complexes mostly from the Old Kingdom, but including sites as recent as the Roman era.

But despite the years of excavation, new finds are constantly being made. In November, Hawass announced the discovery of a new pyramid at Saqqara, the 118th in Egypt, and the 12th to be found just in Saqqara.

According to Hawass, only 30 percent of Egypt's monuments have been uncovered, with the rest still under the sand.

Hawass also said that a bust of Pharoah Amenhotep III that has been outside the country for about 15 years was returned to the Egypt on Sunday after a lengthy legal battle with an antiquities dealer in Britain.

Hawass said Egypt and the dealer were eventually able to resolve the question of the bust's ownership out of court without Egypt paying the dealer any money.

Egypt has been actively trying to recover artifacts stolen or looted over the years. The bust is one of about 5,000 pieces retrieved by Egypt since 2002. Hawass said he also expects the return of four statues from Sweden in the next two weeks.

The bust is one of the great statues of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, who ruled for almost 40 years during the 14th century B.C. and who is considered one of the most important rulers of ancient Egypt, said Hawass.

Amenhotep was the father of Akhenaten, who attempted to make Egypt worship a single god, the sun, making him one of the first known proponents of monotheism.

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Pool at Bethesda

2008-12-14T19:31:08Z

After the destruction of Judea in 135 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Asclepius/Serapis on the same site where the pool at Bethesda had been. His new construction at that time consisted of 5 porches for each of Asclepius' 5 daughters.

Does anyone have archaeological sources for this?

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Ancient Chariot Found in Bulgaria

2008-11-22T19:27:37Z

Archaeologists have unearthed an elaborately decorated 1,800-year-old chariot sheathed in bronze at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Friday. "The lavishly ornamented four-wheel chariot dates back to the end of the second century A.D.," Veselin Ignatov said in a telephone interview from the site, near the southeastern village of Karanovo.

But he said archaeologists were struggling to keep up with looters, who often ransack ancient sites before the experts can get to them.

The bronze-plated wooden chariot is decorated with scenes from Thracian mythology, including figures of a jumping panther and the carving of a mythological animal with the body of a panther and the tail of a dolphin, Ignatov said.

He said the chariot, with wheels measuring 1.2 meters (four feet) across, was found during excavations in a funerary mound that archaeologists believe was the grave of a wealthy Thracian aristocrat, as he was buried along with his belongings.

The team also unearthed well-preserved wooden and leather objects, some of which the archaeologists believe were horse harnesses. The remains of horses were uncovered nearby.

In August, excavations at another ancient Thracian tomb in the same region revealed another four-wheel chariot. Daniela Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had said at the time that it was the first time a completely preserved chariot had been found in Bulgaria. She said previous excavations had only unearthed single parts of chariots -- often because ancient sites had been looted.

Some 10,000 Thracian mounds -- part of them covering monumental stone tombs -- are scattered across the country.

Ignatov said up to 90 percent of the tombs in the region have been completely or partially destroyed by treasure hunters who smuggle the most precious objects abroad.

"The money is badly needed because we are in an uneven race with looters who are often better equipped than our teams," he said.

First mentioned in Homer's "Iliad" as allies of Troy, the Thracians were an Indo-European nomadic people who settled in the central Balkans around 5,000 years ago. They were conquered by Rome in the 1st century, and were assimilated by invading Slav peoples in the 6th century. They had no written language, and so left no records.

Fierce warriors and horse-breeders, the Thracians were also skilled goldsmiths. They established a powerful kingdom in the 5th century B.C. Its capital was thought to be Seutopolis, whose ancient ruins lie under a large artificial lake near Shipka, in an area dubbed "the Bulgarian Valley of Kings" for its many rich tombs.

He said the country's Culture Ministry granted euro 10,000 ($12,500) for the excavation.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/21/chariot-bulgaria.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Portal to Maya Underworld Found in Mexico?

2008-10-23T22:38:27Z

A labyrinth filled with stone temples and pyramids in 14 caves—some underwater—have been uncovered on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, archaeologists announced last week.

The discovery has experts wondering whether Maya legend inspired the construction of the underground complex—or vice versa.

According to Maya myth, the souls of the dead had to follow a dog with night vision on a horrific and watery path and endure myriad challenges before they could rest in the afterlife.

In one of the recently found caves, researchers discovered a nearly 300-foot (90-meter) concrete road that ends at a column standing in front of a body of water.

"We have this pattern now of finding temples close to the water—or under the water, in this most recent case," said Guillermo de Anda, lead investigator at the research sites.

"These were probably made as part of a very elaborate ritual," de Anda said. "Everything is related to death, life, and human sacrifice."

Stretching south from southern Mexico, through Guatemala, and into northern Belize, the Maya culture had its heyday from about A.D. 250 to 900, when the civilization mysteriously collapsed.

Myth and Reality

Archaeologists excavating the temples and pyramids in the village of Tahtzibichen, in Mérida, the capital of Yucatán state, said the oldest item they found was a 1,900-year-old vessel. Other uncovered earthenware and sculptures dated to A.D. 750 to 850.

"There are stones, huge columns, and sculptures of priests in the caves," said de Anda, whose team has been working on the Yucatán Peninsula for six months.

"There are also human remains and ceramics," he said.

Researchers said the ancient legend—described in part in the sacred book Popul Vuh—tells of a tortuous journey through oozing blood, bats, and spiders, that souls had to make in order to reach Xibalba, the underworld.

"Caves are natural portals to other realms, which could have inspired the Mayan myth. They are related to darkness, to fright, and to monsters," de Anda said, adding that this does not contradict the theory that the myth inspired the temples.

William Saturno, a Maya expert at Boston University, believes the maze of temples was built after the story.

"I'm sure the myths came first, and the caves reaffirmed the broad time-and-space myths of the Mayans," he said.

Underworld Entrances

Saturno said the discovery of the temples underwater indicates the significant effort the Maya put into creating these portals.

In addition to plunging deep into the forest to reach the cave openings, Maya builders would have had to hold their breath and dive underwater to build some of the shrines and pyramids.

Other Maya underworld entrances have been discovered in jungles and aboveground caves in northern Guatemala Belize.

"They believed in a reality with many layers," Saturno said of the Maya. "The portal between life and where the dead go was important to them."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080822-maya-maze.html?source=email_wn_20080829&email=wn

posted in Archaeology - 4 replies

New Atlas to Reveal Landscape and Undiscovered Archeological Sites in 3-D

2008-10-01T07:00:13Z

New methods developed at the University of Arkansas will make decades-old satellite imagery readily available to archeologists and others who need to know what a landscape looked like before the spread of cities and agriculture. For the first time, archeologists can see three-dimensional views of the landscape of the Middle East from 40 years ago.

With a $338,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and an award from the American Council of Learned Societies, Jesse Casana and Jackson Cothren will develop an archeological atlas of the Middle East that can easily be used with contemporary mapping applications to pinpoint locations.

In the current issue of Antiquity, Casana, an archeologist who focuses on the Middle East, and Cothren, a geoscientist specializing in geomatics, have published an account of the methods and examples of their work. Geomatics is the art, science and technologies related to the management of geographically referenced information including such areas as geographic information systems, remote sensing, cartography and surveying.

Using declassified images from a government satellite program called CORONA, the researchers are working with high-resolution digital scans distributed by the U.S. Geological Survey of film that was shot between 1967 and 1972. CORONA images from the final years of the program were taken with two cameras simultaneously.

“Our relatively straightforward methods produce robust results that offer powerful new perspectives on individual sites, larger archeological features and the landscapes in which they are situated,” the researchers wrote.

Because Cothren and Casana correct the images so precisely, it is possible to use 3-D glasses for a particularly vivid view of features on the landscape.

What’s more, they wrote, “The ease with which these methods can be applied and the low cost of doing so opens the possibility for the application of these techniques across large regions and in areas with little or no modern ground control.”

Looking at the ground from above can be a powerful way of finding archeological sites and identifying ancient roads, fields and canals, but until now, there were drawbacks to using modern satellite images. For one, while contemporary satellite images are of good quality, over the past 40 years in the Middle East in particular, expanding cities and agriculture have destroyed or obscured much of the archeological record. Casana estimates that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unrecorded sites under reservoirs or beneath cities.

“The sites just appear much more clearly on the old imagery,” Casana said. “You can look at this beautiful new imagery, but if a site is at the bottom of a reservoir, you’re really not going to see it. This old imagery is an irreplaceable resource for archeologists because it preserves a picture of things that were visible 40 years ago.”

Another drawback has been the distortion present in the old imagery. The original images were shot using a panoramic camera that produces a bowtie-shaped distortion that is not easily corrected and prevents the imagery from being used to accurately map sites or other features.

By modifying a mathematical model developed at The Ohio State University, Cothren developed an algorithm to correct the bowtie distortion so that each pixel now has a latitude and longitude associated with it, information that can be loaded into a GPS device. The corrected images are accurate to within about 10 meters. Once corrected, the imagery will be accessible to researchers through an online atlas that will coordinate with contemporary map applications such as GoogleEarth, layering the old over the new.

“The idea behind this project was to take an incredible resource that everyone wants – but in its current format is virtually impossible to use – and to make it easily accessible,” Casana said. “It’s amazing for archeology in the Middle East. You can take your GPS, go directly to a site that is visible on the image, and map it accurately.”

Casana will give the imagery a work out next year. He will use the imagery to locate and map archeological sites on his field project in western Syria. In a place that has been occupied as long as the Middle East, there will be many sites from many eras.

“There will be hundreds of sites within that area,” Casana said. “The big sites, like Roman ruins or castles, we already know about. But most of the sites, the smaller ones, have never even been discovered.”

Cothren estimates that there are several hundred gigabytes of CORONA data to work with, and it will all be corrected for both spatial and topographic distortions. According to Casana, the goal is to make “a perfect map” that presents accurate locations and heights within 10 meters for sites and features such as roads and canals. The resulting atlas will be available on a server hosted by the University of Arkansas’ Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST).

“Our hope is that it becomes a central resource for archeologists and others, like geographers, for looking at the growth of towns and cities or the movement of rivers or changes in agricultural strategies,” Casana said.

Casana is an assistant professor of anthropology and Cothren is an assistant professor of geography and researcher with CAST. CAST and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas provided additional funding for the research.

Their article, titled “Stereo Analysis, DEM Extraction and Orthorectification of CORONA Satellite Imagery: Archaeological Applications From the Near East,” appeared in the September issue of Antiquity.

Provided by University of Arkansas

http://www.physorg.com/news142012612.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Experts 'solve' mystery of Stonehenge

2008-09-23T09:12:43Z

LONDON, England (AP) -- Two British archeologists declared Monday that they have uncovered the core reason behind the construction of one of the world's best known and least understood landmarks.

The stone circle at Stonehenge has stood for thousands of years -- and bred endless debate over whether it was a temple for ancient sun-worshippers, a sacred burial site, or even a kind of massive prehistoric astronomical calculator.

Professors Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill argued their own explanation for the mysterious monument: Stonehenge, they said, was a kind of primeval Lourdes, drawing prehistoric pilgrims from around Europe.

"We found several reasons to believe that the stones were built as part of a belief in a healing process," Wainwright told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.

Wainwright and Darvill, the first to excavate the site in more than 40 years, said the key to their theory was Stonehenge's double circle of bluestones -- a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite -- which lie at the center of the monument.

Dragged or floated on rafts from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, he said the bluestones were prized for their healing properties -- as evidenced by the small mountain of flakes the scientists uncovered during their dig.

Pieces ended up buried in tombs across the area, a testament to people's fascination with the rocks, Wainwright said.

The proof was not only in the stones -- but also in the bones. Skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill said.

The evidence, they said, pointed to a kind of shrine where people from across the Europe would go to seek healing. But they cautioned that that did not rule out alternative theories for Stonehenge's uses.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," Darvill said. "Just as Lourdes, for example, is still a religious center."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/09/22/uk.stonehenge.healing.ap/index.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Mysterious Neolithic People Made Optical Art

2008-09-22T23:19:55Z

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Sept. 22, 2008 -- An egalitarian Neolithic Eden filled with unique, geometric art flourished some 7,000 years ago in Eastern Europe, according to hundreds of artifacts on display at the Vatican.

Running until the end of October at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, the exhibition, "Cucuteni-Trypillia: A Great Civilization of Old Europe," introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe's first civilization.

Little is known about these people -- even their name is wrapped in mystery.

Archaeologists have named them "Cucuteni-Trypillians" after the villages of Cucuteni, near Lasi, Romania and Trypillia, near Kiev, Ukraine, where the first discoveries of this ancient civilization were made more than 100 years ago.

The excavated treasures -- fired clay statuettes and op art-like pottery dating from 5000 to 3000 B.C. -- immediately posed a riddle to archaeologists.

"We do not know the meaning of those painted symbols, and what is the significance of those zoomorphic and anthropomorphic statuettes. Everything seems to be wrapped in mystery.

"Most of all, we do not know how these people treated their dead. Despite recent extensive excavations, no cemetery has ever been found," Lacramioara Stratulat, director of the Moldova National Museum Complex of Iasi, told reporters at a news conference recently at the Vatican.

Before their culture mysteriously faded, the Cucuteni-Trypillians had organized into large settlements. Predating the Sumerians and Egyptian settlements, these were basically proto-cities with buildings often arranged in concentric circles.

They extended over 350,000 square kilometers (135,000 square miles) in what is now Romania, Ukraine and Moldova.

The Neolithic buildings often featured walls and ceilings decorated with drawings painted in black and red. Inside, the houses were filled with pottery and statuettes whose quasi-modern design has become the Cucuteni-Trypillians's most identifiable trademark.

This unique artistic production, dominated by repeating lines, circles and spirals, amazingly echoes modern op art, also known as optical art, which is a genre of visual that makes use of geometric shapes and optical illusions. The unusual art offers the best glimpse into this mysterious civilization.

None of the enigmatic statuettes seem fearsome or fearful. The rare male statuettes have faces often covered by masks, while the abundant female statuettes are gracious and mask-free, with tattooed bodies and long feet.

There are no chained slaves or sacrificial figures -- a sign of a rather egalitarian culture, according to historians.

The pottery's obsessive spiral and circle patterns could also help explain another strange feature of this culture.

"We do not know why, but all of the 4,000 Cucuteni-Trypillians settlements were intentionally burned," said Sergiy Krolevets, director of the National History and Culture Museum of the Republic of Moldova.

One explanation is that the Cucuteni might have seen the world as cyclical -- a concept they might have expressed in the circles they painted on their pottery.

According to this hypothesis, every some 60-80 years they would sacrifice whole cities by intentionally burning thousands of their houses. Then they would move to create another settlement.

Whatever the reason behind it, the practice required an extremely well coordinated, centrally organized society.

"Getting to know more about this civilization is very important to us...We are proud to have brought the world's greatest Neolithic culture," said Romeo Dumitrescu, president of the Cucuteni pentru Mileniul III foundation in Bucharest.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/22/cucuteni-neolithic-art.html

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Body of woman recovered in Poland dates back to 6,500 years

2008-09-12T15:05:16Z

Warsaw (Poland), September 3 (ANI): The remains of a 30-year-old woman, which date back to 6,500 years, have been found at an archeological excavation in Pinczow, in the Swietokrzyska region, in southern Poland.

According to the director of the dig, Przemyslaw Duleba, from the Institute of Archeology at the University of Warsaw, this is the oldest discovery every to be found in this region.

The skeleton of the young woman is perfectly preserved and laid on her left side in an embryonic position, he said.

Duleba said that this skeleton provides evidence as to the funereal rites of the people that lived on this land in that era.

These people were the first agrarians to settle in this area, and they originally are from the Danube River region of Europe.

This archeological dig has been open for eight years and archaeologists have found bone fragments, metal bits, and ceramic pieces among other things.

Last month, another dig in the region turned up dinosaur fossils that have proved to be a predecessor to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. (ANI)

www.thaindian.com/newsportal

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Ancient Cemetery Found; Brings "Green Sahara" to Life

2008-08-17T21:30:39Z

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic News
August 14, 2008

Dinosaur hunters have stumbled across the largest and oldest Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara desert.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno and his team were scouring the rocks between harsh dunefields in northern Niger for dinosaur bones in 2000 when they stumbled across the graveyard, on the shores of a long-gone lake.

The scientists eventually uncovered 200 burials of two vastly different cultures that span five thousand years—the first time such a site has been found at a single site.

Called Gobero, the area is a uniquely preserved record of human habitation and burials from the Kiffian (7700 to 6200 B.C.) and the Tenerian (5200 to 2500 B.C.) cultures, says a new study led by Sereno of the University of Chicago.

The "watershed" find also offers a new window into how these tribes lived and buried their dead during the extreme Holocene period, when a grassy Sahara dried up in the world's largest desert.

Coming across such a site "sends a tingle up your spine," said Sereno, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

"You're not looking at [dinosaurs], you're looking at your own species."

One of the most striking discoveries was what the research team calls the "Stone Age Embrace": A woman, possibly a mother, and two children laid to rest holding hands, arms outstretched toward each other, on a bed of flowers.

Sereno and colleagues have also made several dinosaur discoveries in the region, including the bizarre cow-like dino Nigersaurus and the bus-size SuperCroc.

Green Desert

A wobble in Earth's orbit—along with other environmental factors that occurred about 12,000 years ago—brought intense monsoons to the Sahara, greening the desert and attracting a wave of human inhabitants, according to Sereno and colleagues.

Scientists already knew that the hunter-gatherer Kiffian occupied the region during a temperate phase. Between 6200 and 5200 B.C., one of the most severe climatic fluxes in that period's history desiccated the land and forced people out, the authors say. Soon afterward a second group arrived, the Tenerian.

But evidence of such population shifts rested largely on tool artifacts, with few human skeletons to analyze—until now. Radiocarbon dating of the bones has provided an "outstanding record" of the ancient Saharans, Sereno said.

"We have the Green Sahara written in those sand dunes, and the people who lived in it," he added.

Skeleton Clues

The team discovered that the older group, the Kiffian, were buried with harpoon points and bone fishhooks, along with 6-foot (1.8-meter) Nile perch skeletons.

The presence of the fish bones and tools suggested the lake water was deeper around 7000 B.C., though probably no more than ten feet deep (three meters), Sereno said. The bones of catfish and tilapia in Tenerian burials suggest the lake was shallower later in the Holocene.

A ridge on a male Kiffian thighbone also told bioarchaeologist Chris Stojanowski of Arizona State University that the people—who ranged from six feet two inches (185 centimeters) to six feet eight inches (203 centimeters) tall—had huge leg muscles, likely from a high-protein diet and strenuous lifestyle.

The Tenerian thighbone, on the other hand, had a smaller ridge, indicating a smaller build. To adapt to an arid climate, Tenerians had a more diverse palate, including clams, fish, and savanna animals, the study says.

Stefan Krõpelin, of the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne, finds the site impressive.

But he points out that it is a single location situated in a unique landscape at the foot of the Aïr Mountains, and shouldn't be linked to broader ancient climatic changes in the Sahara.

"Reasons behind an interruption in local human occupation of the region may have been related to a variety of socioeconomic or cultural changes, and not necessarily to general climatic deterioration throughout the Sahara," he said.

Krõpelin doubts there will be much support for the theory of a thousand-year break in rainfall throughout the entire Sahara around 6200 to 5200 B.C.

But Sereno said that the general climate record, bolstered by lake-core samples and solid animal and pollen evidence, points to this "arid interruption" period that separates the Kiffian and Tenerian.

The new study appears today in the journal PLoS One.

Stone Age Embrace

Grave goods, such as bones or tusks from wild animals—including warthogs, crocodiles, and hippos, many of which roam southern Africa today—ceramics, and ivory and shell ornaments were also found, shedding light on funerary rituals.

Perhaps most incredible was the 2006 discovery the Stone Age Embrace—a Tenerian woman facing the remains of two young children, their arms posed and hands interlaced. Pollen remnants from underneath the skeletons shows the dead had been laid on a bed of flowers. "This is a landmark burial—there's nothing like it in prehistory," Sereno said.

Though the site has provided a wealth of insights into the little-studied cultures, mysteries still persist, Sereno says.

Most puzzling is how the Tenerian dug new graves alongside the Kiffian dead without disturbing them—an "absolutely remarkable" feat, Sereno said.

The graves were also, for the most part, not clustered according to tribe—suggesting that the graves may have been marked, Arizona State's Stojanowski said.

But it's obvious why the two cultures likely buried their dead at Gobero: It was the "Daytona Beach of the Holocene," Sereno said.

"It was a strip of obviously desirable real estate that stuck out into the lake"—an ideal place to spot fish and incoming animals, he said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080814-sereno-sahara-missions_2.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Church from underwater city found

2008-08-03T17:26:39Z

A medieval church which tumbled from an eroding cliff into the sea has been rediscovered by marine archaeologists.

They believe the ruins they have found are St John's church, the biggest in Dunwich - the lost city of "Atlantis" off the coast of Suffolk.

Dunwich was once a thriving metropolis before being swallowed up by the North Sea more than five centuries ago.

Experts are using the latest acoustic imaging technology to uncover clues about the lost city in the North Sea.

Stuart Bacon, director of Suffolk Underwater Studies, said: "We've found the ruins of a medieval church called St John's, which was the biggest in Dunwich.

"I've been looking for it for about 35 years so it's very exciting."

Searching for years

Mr Bacon, working alongside a team from the University of Southampton, led by Professor David Sear, said the 13th Century church tumbled down the cliffs in about 1540.

"Over the years, I've had hundreds of divers accompany me to look for it.

"We knew roughly where it was but have never been able to uncover it until now," he said.

Mr Bacon said the team had been hindered by thick layers of silt, up to two metres deep, covering the debris.

"It's like doing a survey from the air when there has been a thick covering of snow - only the tallest structures stick out," he said.

"We've got a lot more work to do to analyse the data we've collected before we can say what else is down there."

Thriving city

Dunwich was founded by Felix, a bishop sent by the Pope to convert the pagan Angles, Saxons and Jutes who had colonised Suffolk in the 7th Century.

It grew into a prosperous trading port and thriving city but was prone to the North Sea drift which eroded the cliffs.

By 1086, just 20 years after the Norman conquest, Dunwich was a thriving town of 3,000 people.

It had six parish churches with at least two other chapels.

It has now virtually disappeared and all that remains are a graveyard and a few old houses in the present village of Dunwich, which continues to be under threat from the sea.

Acoustic imaging identifies different densities of material on the sea bed and this helps experts to spot rocks which may be from buildings. This is how the ruins were first spotted and excavation has revealed the church.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7441759.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Early Irrigation Farming In Ancient Yemen Traced

2008-07-21T06:59:12Z

by Staff Writers
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Jul 21, 2008
In the remote desert highlands of southern Yemen, a team of archaeologists have discovered new evidence of ancient transitions from hunting and herding to irrigation agriculture 5,200 years ago.
As part of a larger program of archaeological research, Michael Harrower from the University of Toronto and The Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) team explored the Wadi Sana watershed documenting 174 ancient irrigation structures, modeled topography and hydrology, and interviewed contemporary camel and goat herders and irrigation farmers.

"Agriculture in Yemen appeared relatively late in comparison with other areas of the Middle East, where farming first developed near the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago," says author Michael Harrower, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto.

"It's clear early farmers in Yemen faced unique environmental and social opportunities and challenges. Our findings show farming in southern Yemen required runoff diversion technologies that were adapted to harness monsoon (summer) runoff from the rugged terrain along with new understandings of social landscapes and rights to scarce water resources."

The researchers used computer Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to determine that ancient forager-herders developed expert knowledge of hydrology and targeted particular small watersheds and landforms for irrigation.

Studies of contemporary land and water rights, including principles enshrined in Islamic law, suggest their origins lie at the very beginnings of water management as tribal principles of water equity intertwined with changing ideologies and culture.

These and other discoveries in southern Arabia have recently helped document the diversity of transitions from foraging to agriculture that in Yemen later gave rise to powerful ancient cities and states with advanced irrigation technologies that transformed deserts into lush, bountiful oases.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Archaeologists_Trace_Early_Irrigation_Farming_In_Ancient_Yemen_999.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Iron Age bodies at park-and-ride

2008-07-16T14:49:20Z

A team of archaeologists in Leicestershire has uncovered several ancient bodies at the site of a new park-and-ride development.

Excavations are continuing in Enderby after what are thought to be four skeletons from the Iron Age - dating from before 43AD - were discovered.

The team from the University of Leicester said there were probably more bodies buried at the site.

A further four-week excavation in now under way.

'Elusive burials'

Peter Liddle, keeper of archaeology at Leicestershire County Council, said the find was exciting.

"This is a very nice addition to what we know about the Iron Age in Leicester," he said.

"We seem to have a track way that runs across the landscape and buried next to that track way are a series of bodies.

"It's nice as Iron Age roads and tracks are not that common. Iron Age burial is elusive - you don't see a lot of dead Iron Age people, you can't generally find them."

Archaeologists have also found some animal bones, domestic rubbish and some early Roman pottery.

The excavation is not expected to hold up the park-and-ride development as time for excavation has been built into the original schedule.

The Iron Age in Britain took place between about 750BC and about AD40.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7499585.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Ancient Peruvian tomb unearthed

2008-07-06T18:16:01Z

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient tomb in northern Peru that could throw light on the pre-Columbian Moche Indian culture.

The tomb in Ucupe, 670km (416 miles) from the capital Lima, contained well-preserved human remains along with jewellery and ceramics.

The finds suggested the tomb related to nobility, experts said.

The Moche Indians thrived from 100-800 AD and were famed for their ceramics, architecture and irrigation.

The northern coast has been a treasure trove for stunning archaeological discoveries for the last few decades, the BBC's Dan Collyns reports from Peru.

The dry desert climate of the region has helped to preserve these relics of the Moche civilisation.

Archaeologists said the tomb's body, found inside a wooden sarcophagus, was wearing a gold-coloured funeral mask and was surrounded by copper crowns, earrings, nose pieces and ear flaps

More remains, of a young man and animals such as llamas, were found nearby.

Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, whose son Bruno was the dig co-director, told AP news agency: "Some elements like sceptres and crowns of gold are those that identify people of the highest hierarchical level."

Archaeologists believe the tomb may be linked to the other world-renowned Moche ruins in the area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7491827.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Italy declares Pompeii emergency

2008-07-06T10:54:05Z

The ancient city of Pompeii has fallen into such disrepair that the Italian government has declared a "state of emergency" in a bid to save the ruins.

Ministers intend to appoint a special commissioner to oversee the site, and have earmarked extra funding for it.

According to analysts, the ruins have suffered from lack of investment, mismanagement, litter and looting.

Pompeii was buried by a volcanic eruption in AD79 and was not rediscovered until the 18th Century.

The volcanic debris preserved many of the city's buildings, frescos, silverware, mosaics and other artefacts.

But experts complain that the relics are now in danger.

"Every year at least 150 sq m (1,600 sq ft) of fresco and plasterwork are lost for lack of maintenance," Antonio Irlando, a regional councillor responsible for artistic heritage, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"The same goes for stones: at least 3,000 pieces every year end up disintegrating," he said.

The ruins are one of Italy's biggest tourist attractions, and the newly-elected government has decided to act.
"To call the situation intolerable doesn't go far enough," Reuters quoted Culture Minister Sandro Bondi as saying.

The "state of emergency" will last for a year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7490735.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Aztec 'Whistles of Death'

2008-07-01T01:57:34Z

Aztec 'Whistles of Death:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/30/pre-columbiansounds.ap/index.html

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Pumice As A Time Witness

2008-06-28T15:03:10Z

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2008) — A chemist of Vienna University of Technology demonstrates how chemical fingerprints of volcanic eruptions and numerous pumice lump finds from archaeological excavations illustrate relations between individual advanced civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to his tests and to the provenancing of the respective pumice samples to partially far-reaching volcanic eruptions, it became possible to redefine a piece of cultural history from the second millenium B.C.

During the Bronze Age, between the years 3000 and 1000 B.C., the Mediterranean was already intensely populated. Each individual culture, whether it may be the Egyptian one, the Syrian one, or the Minoan culture from Santorini, has in most cases its own well-researched, chronological history. However, the connection between these individual cultures and locations is often missing for the most part because more often than not, there is no correspondence or similar exchange that has taken place, has been preserved, or is comprehensible. It is so much more difficult to synchronize the individual cultures among themselves.

An international research program of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) called “SCIEM2000” is now opening new perspectives in this field. A research team of the Atomic Institute of the Austrian Universities under the leadership of Professor Max Bichler is engaged in identifying volcanic rocks from archaeological excavations. Georg Steinhauser, Project Assistant and Chemist at the Department of Radiation Physical Analysis and Radiochemistry of the Atomic Institute says: “Pumice is a foamy volcanic rock. Today, we know the rock that is floating on water mainly as a cosmetic remedy for instance for sole callus.”

Pumice was also often used in ancient times as an abrasive and is repeatedly found in archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean Sea. Since volcanoes are not found everywhere, however, intense commercial activities related to this product were unleashed. “In Egypt, pumice was found in ancient workshops. In some of the excavations, there was even rock that still presented the right abrasion traces.

They were used to polish sculptures, constructions, bronze objects, and so forth. Chemical tests enable us to trace back from which volcanoes the samples came,” explains Georg Steinhauser.

Pumice in particular, just like the fine-grained volcano ashes, has a specific chemical composition, a characteristic “cocktail” on trace elements. Based on this, the researchers can generate a chemical fingerprint and can compare it to the data base the way it is done in criminology. Hence, pumices out of the Mediterranean volcanic centres as well as from archaeologically relevant pumice finds are being analysed. If the fingerprint of the find matches that of a rock type in the data base, then the origin can be undoubtedly determined.

So there is the immediate assumption that the Egyptians have surely ordered pumice from Greece. The researchers were able to determine these commercial relations by means of the instrumental neutron-activation analysis (INAA) by which the pumice samples in the research reactor are being irradiated with neutrons and subsequently measured with a gamma spectrometer.

This way, the chemical fingerprint is generated with 25 characteristic main and trace elements. “We were able to discover that pumice as a commodity (presumably seaborne) covered distances of up to 2,000 km in the Mediterranean Sea. The eruption of the volcanic island Santorini, about 1,600 B.C., represents a particular time indicator. It was so powerful, that the entire Minoan culture was obliterated. When we find today this layer of ashes respectively pumice in various archaeological excavations, this offers immediately a time marker and enables us to synchronize different cultures. This also enables us to determine which rulers were in power in different locations at a certain time,” states Steinhauser.

When a pumice lump from Santorini is found in an excavation, we can at least say that the Santorini volcano must have already erupted, and the time of the eruption corresponds consequently to the maximum age of the excavation discovery place.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adapted from materials provided by Vienna University of Technology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080624124308.htm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Maritime 'treasure trove' raised

2008-06-14T14:06:51Z

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

A treasure trove of artefacts is being recovered from what experts describe as one of the most important maritime discoveries since the Mary Rose.

The late 16th Century shipwreck hails from a pivotal point in England's military history.

The raised haul includes a 2m-long (7ft) cannon, which will give archaeologists an insight into Elizabeth I's naval might.

The wreck, discovered 30 years ago, is situated off the coast of Alderney.

Dr Mensun Bound, excavation leader and marine archaeologist from Oxford University, said: "This boat is really grade A in terms of archaeology - it is hard to find anything that really compares with it."

The excavation of the Elizabethan warship is being filmed for the BBC's Timewatch series.

Recovering the cannon was a delicate operation; divers had to navigate through reef-strewn waters where strong currents prevailed.

Dr Bound said: "At first the weather was not too kind and we missed out on the window for the first attempt, but then the sea went down and the skies opened up, and everything was suddenly going our way.

"There were a few tense moments, but overall it went really well.

"The cannon is in perfect condition - nothing has broken - it has an intact hand grenade, part of its carriage system is in place, there is the barrel of a gun or a sword on one side.

"We cannot wait to get a closer look at it once it has been cleaned up.

"Archaeologically and historically, this is an important day."

The team hopes to raise another cannon in the coming days.

As well as the cannon, the team has also recovered many more objects, including a musket, a soldier's breastplate and an intact navigational calendar.

These join a large collection of artefacts - including another cannon - raised from another dive in the early 1990s.

Pivotal point

Experts believe the Alderney warship and its contents will help shed light on a key point of England's naval history. The boat is thought to have sunk in 1592, possibly after an encounter with one of the area's many reefs.

Just four years earlier, Elizabeth's navy had defeated the Spanish Armada and was embarking on expeditions that would exert its maritime and territorial domination around the world.

Dr Bound said: "The wreck illuminates a time when England was fighting for its very survival - the world was at war, the Catholic south was fighting the Protestant north."

At the same time, he added, the navy was undergoing a technological revolution.

He said: "Henry VIII's Mary Rose dates to 1545 and is an old-style ship. It had all sorts of guns, of different types, different shapes, different calibres, different ages, different styles."

But just 47 years later, the Alderney warship looked very different - and by looking at artefacts such as the raised cannons the team hopes to discover just how advanced the navy really was.

"We hope they will demonstrate that this ship was carrying our first uniform, co-ordinated weapons system," Dr Bound explained.

"We think that here we have a standardised weapons system here; the guns are all the same type, the same materials, the same technology, the same calibre.

"It is a different type of navy, its a more professional navy. We have here the beginnings of broadside naval warfare."

The cannons and other arms, such as muskets and guns, will now be brought up the Thames to the Tower of London. There they will be examined and then flown to York for conservation.

The BBC Timewatch team will then follow the archaeologists as they rebuild and test the weapons, putting them through detailed ballistic tests to determine their precision and power.

Text and video reports on the Alderney wreck are published at the BBC Timewatch website. A BBC Two documentary will be broadcast in later in the year and will detail the findings of the investigation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7446423.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Jordan cave may be oldest church

2008-06-10T20:43:11Z

By Matt McGrath
BBC science correspondent

Archaeologists in Rihab, Jordan, say they have discovered a cave that could be the world's oldest Christian church.

Dating to the period AD33-70, the underground chapel would have served as both a place of worship and a home.

It is claimed that it was originally used by a group of 70 persecuted Christians who fled from Jerusalem.

These early Christians lived and practised their faith in secrecy until the Romans embraced Christianity several hundred years later.

'Beautiful things'

Rihab is in Northern Jordan. The cave is beneath the ancient church of St Georgeous, itself one of the oldest known places of worship in the world.

According to Dr Abdul Qader Al-Hassan, the director of the Rihab Centre for Archaeological studies, the cave site shows clear evidence of early Christian rituals that predate the church.

Dr Al-Hassan says that steps lead down into the chapel which is approximately 12m long and seven metres wide.

There is a circular area of worship with stone seats separated from living quarters. This circular element, called an apse, is important says Dr Al-Hassan because there is only one other example of a cave with a similar feature, which was also used for Christian worship.

Dr Al-Hassan said: "We found beautiful things. I found the cemetery of this church; we found pottery shards and lamps with the inscription 'Georgeous'".

In the cave there is also a tunnel that leads to a cistern which supplied water to the dwellers. An inscription in the floor of the church above refers to the "70 beloved by God and the divine" whom the archaeologist believes were refugees from religious persecution in Jerusalem.

Dr Al-Hassan says that excavation of the tunnel and the cistern may yield yet more evidence about the lives of these early Christians.

"From the tunnel to the cistern is very important. We want to clean it and make an excavation inside it. We found a very old inscription beside it and coins also, and crosses made from iron."

Other experts say they are cautious about the claim. They want to examine the artefacts and see clear dating evidence. The earliest confirmed examples of churches date from the third century, they say.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7446812.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Egyptian Pharoah's 'Missing' Pyramid Found

2008-06-06T10:40:49Z

Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press

June 5, 2008 -- Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the "missing pyramid" of a pharaoh and a ceremonial procession road where high priests carried mummified remains of sacred bulls, Egypt's antiquities chief said Thursday.

Zahi Hawass said the pyramid -- of which only the base remains -- is believed to be that of King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years more than 4,000 years ago.

In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned Menkauhor's pyramid among his finds at Saqqara, calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because its top was missing, Hawass said.

But the desert sands covered Lepsius' discovery, and no archaeologist since was able to find it.

"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, south of Cairo.

Only the pyramid's base -- or the superstructure as archaeologists call it -- was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half by Hawass' team.

The base was in a 15 foot-deep pit dug out by workers, with heaps of huge rocks marking its entrance and walls. A burial chamber also was discovered.

Hawass said the style of the pyramid and of a gray granite sarcophagus lid found in the burial chamber indicates the pyramid was from the Fifth Dynasty, a period that began in 2,465 B.C. and ended in 2,325 B.C.

The period spanned approximately 140 years of the Old Kingdom. That would put it about two centuries after the completion of the Great Pyramid of Giza, believed to have been finished in 2,500 B.C.

Archaeologists have not found a cartouche -- a pharoah's name in hieroglyphs -- of the pyramid's owner. But Hawass said that, based on the estimated dating of the pyramid, he was convinced it belonged to Menkauhor.

The second discovery Hawass announced Thursday was a part of a ceremonial procession road, dating back to the Ptolemaic period, which ran for about 300 years before 30 B.C.

It runs alongside Menkauhor's pyramid, leading from a mummification chamber toward the Saqqara Serapium, a network of underground tombs where sacred bulls were interred, discovered by French archaeologist August Mariette in 1850.

A high priest would carry the mummified bulls' remains down the road -- the only human allegedly allowed to walk on it -- to the chambers where the bulls would be placed in sarcophagi in the Serapium, about a third of a mile away, he said.

Ancient Egyptians considered Apis Bulls to be earthy incarnations of the city god of Memphis and connected with fertility and the sun-cult.

A bull would be chosen for its deep black coloring and would be required to have a single white mark between the horns. Selected by priests and honored until death, it was mummified and buried in the Serapium's underground galleries.

The sprawling archaeological site at Saqqara is most famous for the Step Pyramid of King Djoser -- the oldest of Egypt's over 100 pyramids, built in the 27th century B.C.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/05/pyramid-egypt.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

The Space Archaeologists

2008-06-01T19:58:14Z

What does the past look like from 200 miles up? A new generation of archaeologists has found that the history of civilization may look far clearer from the top of the atmosphere than it does from the bottom of a dig...
Chech it out @ http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-05/space-archaeologists

posted in Archaeology - 7 replies

Remember Silbury Hill Excavation?

2008-06-01T02:42:44Z

Not much in the news about the re-opening of the sacred mound...e'xcpt this-
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2279497,00.html
Wha? Final Secret my arse!

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Archaeologist Uses Satellite Imagery To Explore Ancient Mexico

2008-05-14T09:32:37Z

ScienceDaily (May 14, 2008) — Satellite imagery obtained from NASA will help archeologist Bill Middleton peer into the ancient Mexican past. In a novel archeological application, multi- and hyperspectral data will help build the most accurate and most detailed landscape map that exists of the southern state of Oaxaca, where the Zapotec people formed the first state-level and urban society in Mexico.

“If you ask someone off the street about Mexican archeology, they’ll say Aztec, Maya. Sometimes they’ll also say Inca, which is the wrong continent, but you’ll almost never hear anyone talk about the Zapotecs,” says Middleton, acting chair of the Department of Material Culture Sciences and professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rochester Institute of Technology. “They had the first writing system, the first state society, the first cities. And they controlled a fairly large territory at their Zenith—250 B.C. to 750 A.D.”

The process of state formation varied across the Zapotec realm. Sometimes it involved conquest, and other times it was more economically driven. Archeologists like Middleton are interested in different aspects of society that emerged in the process, such as social stratification and the development and intensification of agriculture and economic specialization.

Middleton’s study will explore how the Oaxacan economy and environment changed as the Zapotec state grew and then collapsed into smaller city-states. Funding from NASA and National Geographic will also help Middleton build a picture of how climate and vegetation patterns have changed over time.

“For the past 4,000 years, human activities have been a factor in environmental change,” Middleton says. “And there are some parts of Mesoamerica that we have pretty good evidence that the environment we see today is the catastrophic result of ancient agricultural practices.” Middleton will focus on two sites in the Chichicapam Valley located in between two of the major arms of the central valleys of Zapotec. The National Geographic-funded portion of the study began last summer when he documented important archeological sites and selected candidates for excavation.

Imagery from Earth Observing 1 and Landsat satellites obtained over three years will help Middleton identify the natural resources found at archeological sites. He will work with colleagues John Kerekes and David Messinger along with graduate student Justin Kwon in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science to analyze the large amounts of data taken at different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Their own research uses similar techniques to analyze urban landscapes, and inspired Middleton to apply the technology to archeological landscapes.

“We are excited to be collaborating with Bill in this application of remote sensing technology to archaeological study,” says Kerekes. “This project shows a true strength of RIT with an environment that allows physical scientists and engineers like us to easily work together with a social scientist like Bill.”

Adds Messinger: “Applications of remote sensing have long been a motivating factor for our technology work in the field of remote sensing, and the chance to work closely with an end-user here at RIT is a fantastic opportunity for our students and faculty. By learning more about how the technology can help in this application, we will be in a much better position to guide our future sensor development and algorithmic research.”

The technology works by differentiating materials on the ground on the basis of reflected light. Objects that look the same in visible light may have very different reflective properties when sampled across the spectrum.

“When you put the data back together as a picture you begin to see things you couldn’t see before, and you can make distinctions that to your eyes look the same,” Middleton says.

Satellite imagery covering more than 30,000 square kilometers will help Middleton identify different plant species, environments and ecosystems, and acres of arable land or mineral resources surrounding particular sites.

“We can start looking at the relationship between ancient cities and ancient human settlements in a way that no one has really been able to do before,” Middleton says.

The new landscape map will also show how development has changed the region since the first survey conducted 30 years ago.

“We will be able to compare the then-and-now images and be able to make a very good assessment of what we have lost in the past several decades as a result of development,” Middleton says.

Another aspect of the NASA-funded project will focus on environmental change. This part of the study, done in conjunction with colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder will analyze plant microfossils in sediment samples collected from a variety of locations, including areas where streams expose sediment layers 10,000 years old.

“Roughly 10,000 years ago, Oaxaca was wetter than it is today,” Middleton says. “Today it’s classified as semi-arid, and the dominant vegetation in the valley is thorn-scrub forest. Ten thousand years ago, it was a grassland and there were horses there.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080513112348.htm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Maya Queen's Tomb Yields "Amazing" Fabrics- New & Unprecedented!

2008-05-01T15:43:21Z

Ancient Maya Tomb Yields "Amazing" Fabrics
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
April 25, 2008
From;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080425-maya-fabric.html

Fabric fragments excavated from the tomb of an ancient Maya queen rival modern textiles in their complexity and quality, scientists say.

The tomb was discovered in the Maya city of Copán in Honduras by a team led by archaeologist Robert Sharer of the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers believe the queen, whose name is not known, was buried in the fifth century A.D.

Some of the fabrics found within her tomb have thread counts of over 80 weft yarns per inch, said Margaret Ordonez, a textile expert at the University of Rhode Island who studied the cloth.

"This is in the range of the clothing that we wear," she said. "This is a higher thread count than your jeans."

Some of the fragments contained as many as 25 layers of fabric, stacked atop one another and fused together over time.

"What's surprising is the fragments still exist," Ordonez said.

"We're talking about a humid climate, and to have fragments of fabric exist in the tomb for that long is just amazing."

Archaeologists suspect that the tomb was opened after the queen's death to allow worshipers to perform rituals and make offerings of fabric and other items.

"It was fairly common that there was a ritual conducted, especially for royalty," Sharer, the archaeologist, said.

How Did the Maya Weave?

The fabrics were made of various plant materials, including cotton, grasses, leaves, and tree bark.

Continued on Next Page >>

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Egypt's Pyramids Packed With Seashells

2008-05-01T03:02:59Z

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

April 25, 2008 -- Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.

The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the buildings were erected.

"The observed random emplacement and strictly homogenous distribution of the fossil shells within the whole rock is in harmony with their initial in situ setting in a fluidal sea bottom environment," wrote Ioannis Liritzis and his colleagues from the University of the Aegean and the University of Athens.

The researchers analyzed the mineralogy, as well as the chemical makeup and structure, of small material samples chiseled from the Sphinx Temple, the Osirion Shaft, the Valley Temple, Cheops, Khefren, Osirion at Abydos, the Temple of Seti I at Abydos and Qasr el-Sagha at Fayum.

X-ray diffraction and radioactivity measurements, which can penetrate solid materials to help illuminate their composition, were carried out on the samples.

The analysis determined the primary building materials were "pinky" granites, black and white granites, sandstones and various types of limestones. The latter was found to contain "numerous shell fossils of nummulites gen." At Cheops alone, "(they constituted) a proportion of up to 40 percent of the whole building stone rock."

The findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Nummulites, meaning "little coins," are simple marine organisms. Shells of those that lived during the Eocene period around 55.8 to 33.9 million years ago are most commonly found in Egyptian limestone. Fossils for the organisms have also been unearthed at other sites, such as in Turkey and throughout the Mediterranean.

When horizontally bisected, a nummulite appears as a perfect spiral. Since they were common in ancient Egypt, it's believed the shells were actually used as coins, perhaps explaining their name.

Fossils for ancient relatives to sand dollars, starfish and sea urchins were also detected in the Egyptian limestone.

Liritzis and his team argue that since the fossils are largely undamaged and are distributed in a random manner within the stone, in accordance with their typical distribution at sea floors, the large building stones used to construct the monuments must have been carved out of natural stone instead of cast in molds.

To further their argument, the scientists say the X-ray patterns detected no presence of lime, which would be expected along with natron, a salt found in early cast materials. They also point out that no references about molds, buckets or other casting tools exist in early Egyptian paintings, sculptures or texts.

Joseph Davidovits, professor and director of France's Geopolymer Institute, formulated the theory that natural limestone was cast like concrete to build the pyramids of Egypt.

Davidovits told Discovery News that Liritzis and his team "should have taken into account the scientific analysis" conducted by himself and other researchers before backing the carved-not-cast theory.

Robert Temple, co-director of the Project for Historical Dating and a visiting research fellow at universities in America, Egypt and Greece, has also studied Egypt's monuments. He agrees with Davidovits about the casting.

"There is no evidence known that suggests the ancient Egyptians had cranes," he said. "Without cranes, it is difficult to imagine how they could have lifted giant stones, some as heavy as 200 tons."

Temple, however, agrees, "Egyptian pyramid blocks of limestone tend to contain fossil shells and nummulites, often huge quantities of them, many of them intact, and many of them of surprisingly large size."

He added, "Frankly, not many people pay attention to the shells, which I have always thought was a shame. 'Seashells in the Desert'-- a good story."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/04/25/pyramids-fossils-egypt.html

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Plague killed Roman grave bodies

2008-04-30T09:47:25Z

A study into a mass Roman grave excavated in Gloucester appears to show the people were victims of a plague.

The remains of around 91 individuals, uncovered in 2005, are part of Wooton cemetery which was the burial ground for the fortress at nearby Kingsholm.

The bodies appear to have been thrown in haphazardly during the second half of the 2nd Century.

Oxford Archaeologists who analysed the remains say they are the victims of an epidemic, perhaps the Antonine Plague.

This outbreak of smallpox swept across the Roman Empire between AD 165 and 189.

"The skeletons of adult males, females, and children were lying in a very haphazard fashion, their bones completely entangled, reflecting the fact that they had been dumped, unceremoniously in a hurried manner," said Louise Loe, Head of Burial Archaeology.

Inscribed tombstones

"When we studied the skeletons we were looking for evidence, such as trauma, that would explain why they had been buried in such a way.

"In fact, very little trauma was found on the skeletons.....this led us to conclude that the individuals were the victims of an epidemic that did not discriminate against age or sex," she said.

"Plague kills quickly and tends not to leave marks on bone. Therefore it is not surprising that evidence for disease was not found on the skeletons."

Future DNA tests will be carried out on the skeletons in the hope of confirming this.

Also unearthed on the site on London Road were two first century sculptured and inscribed tombstones which helped the team make a direct connection between documentary evidence and the archaeological record of the site.

One tombstone was for a 14-year-old slave, the other for Lucius Octavius Martialis, son of Lucius, of the Pollian voting tribe from Eporedia, soldier of the Twentieth Legion.

The legion was stationed at Gloucester until the late 1st Century with soldiers from Sporedia, modern Ivrea north of Turin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/7374836.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

BBCNEWS: Human line 'nearly split in two'

2008-04-29T23:20:46Z

Human line 'nearly split in two'

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

Ancient humans started down the path of evolving into two separate species before merging back into a single population, a genetic study suggests.

The genetic split in Africa resulted in distinct populations that lived in isolation for as much as 100,000 years, the scientists say.

This could have been caused by arid conditions driving a wedge between humans in eastern and southern Africa.

Details have been published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

It would be the longest period for which modern human populations have been isolated from one another.

But other scientists said it was still too early to reconstruct a meaningful picture of humankind's early history in Africa. They argue that other scenarios could also account for the data.

At the time of the split - some 150,000 years ago - our species, Homo sapiens , was still confined to the African continent.

We don't know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time
Dr Spencer Wells, Genographic Project

The results have come from the Genographic Project, a major effort to track human migrations through DNA.

The latest conclusions are based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA in present-day African populations. This type of DNA is the genetic material stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells.

It is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.

"We don't know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time," said Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.

"They came back together again during the Late Stone Age - driven by population expansion."

Family tree

Although present-day people carry a signature of the ancient split in their DNA, today's Africans are part of a single population.

The researchers compiled a "family tree" of different mitochondrial DNA groupings found in Africa.

A major split occurred near the root of the tree as early as 150,000 years ago.

On one side of this divide are the mitochondrial lineages now found predominantly in East and West Africa, and all maternal lineages found outside Africa.

On the other side of the divide are lineages predominantly found in the Khoi and San (Khoisan) hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa.

Many African populations today harbour a mixture of both.

Although there is very deep divergence in the mitochondrial lineages, that can be different from inferring when the populations diverged from one another
Dr Sarah Tishkoff, University of Pennsylvania

The scientists say the most likely scenario is that two populations went their separate ways early in our evolutionary history.

This gave rise to separate human communities localised to eastern and southern Africa that evolved in isolation for between 50,000 and 100,000 years.

This divergence could have been related to climate change: recent studies of ancient climate data suggest that eastern Africa went through a series of massive droughts between 135,000-90,000 years ago.

Lead author Doron Behar, from the Rambam Medical Center in Israel commented: "It is possible the harsh environment and changing climate made populations migrate to other places in order to have a better chance of survival.

"Some of them found places where they could and - perhaps - some didn't. More than that we cannot say."

Back together

Dr Wells told BBC News: "Once this population reached southern Africa, it was cut off from the eastern African population by these drought events which were on the route between them."

Modern humans are often presumed to have originated in East Africa and then spread out to populate other areas. But the data could equally support an origin in southern Africa followed by a migration to East and West Africa.

The genetic data show that populations came back together as a single, pan-African population about 40,000 years ago.

This renewed contact appears to coincide with the development of more advanced stone tool technology and may have been helped by more favourable environmental conditions.

"[The mixing] was two-way to a certain extent, but the majority of mitochondrial lineages seem to have come from north-eastern Africa down to the south," said Spencer Wells.

But other scientists said different scenarios could explain the data.

Dr Sarah Tishkoff, an expert on African population genetics from the University of Pennsylvania, said the Khoisan might once have carried many more of the presumed "East African" lineages but that these could have been lost over time.

"Although there is very deep divergence in the mitochondrial lineages, that can be different from inferring when the populations diverged from one another and there can be many demographic scenarios to account for it," she told BBC News.

She added: "As a general rule of thumb, when mitochondrial genetic lineages split, it will usually precede the population split. It can often be difficult to infer from one to the other."

The University of Pennsylvania researcher stressed it was not possible to pinpoint where in Africa the populations had once lived - complicating the process of reconstructing scenarios from genetic data.

The Genographic Project's findings are also consistent with the idea - held for some years now - that modern humans had a close brush with extinction in the evolutionary past.

The number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the Late Stone Age.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7358868.stm

Published: 2008/04/24 17:32:42 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

China's Terracotta Army Covered in Egg

2008-04-21T02:08:45Z

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

April 18, 2008 -- China's terracotta army, a collection of 7,000 soldier and horse figures in the mausoleum of the country's first emperor, was entirely covered with beaten egg when it was constructed, according to German and Italian chemists who have analyzed samples from several of the figurines.

According to the research team, the egg served as a binder for colorful paints, which went over a layer of lacquer.

Co-author Catharina Blaensdorf, a scientist at the Technical University of Munich in Germay, explained to Discovery News that "egg paint is normally very stable, and not soluble in water...This makes [it] less sensitive to humidity and moisture."

Egg proteins would have also ensured the adhesion of the paint to the lacquer, while also giving the paint thickness and texture, added Blaensdorf's colleague Ilaria Bonaduce, of the University of Pisa in Italy.

For the study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, the researchers took samples from warrior figurine faces, kneeling archers, swans and paint fragments found on the ground inside the 210 B.C. mausoleum. They chemically separated the flakes to isolate the ingredients, and then inserted them into a machine that determined their composition.

The researchers thought animal glue might have served as a binder, but all of the data pointed to egg instead. The pigments, they found, were bone white, lead white, cerussite (which sparkles), quartz, cinnabar, malachite, charcoal black, copper salts, Chinese purple and azurite.

Bright hues were important "because color was precious and a colorful army was the best, and an emperor could demand the best," said Blaensdorf.

The sturdy terracotta and thick, eggy paint add to the conclusion that the army was also built to last.

The mausoleum was even booby-trapped, "Home Alone"-style, with rigged crossbows to stop would-be thieves.

Eighty master potters left their signatures on the terracotta figures. These names show some individuals came from the imperial court, while other artists appear to have been respected local craftsmen. Some official names overlap with those found on sewage pipes and floor tiles found in other locations, "so it seems there was an office for making pottery (within) the imperial court," said Blaensdorf.

Erika Ribechini, a scientist in the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry at the University of Pisa, who did not work on the project, said the new findings "are very well presented."

"Even though the terracotta army is very famous," she said, not much is known about it. Ribechini also said the egg discovery "is particularly fascinating in terms of its historical significance, because roughly in the same period, in the Roman Empire and in ancient Greece, the artists used to utilize egg as a binder in creating mural and stone paintings."

The research is likely to help art restorers to repair and preserve the terracotta army.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/04/18/terracotta-army-egg.html

posted in Archaeology - 4 replies

Skull returns to final rest place

2008-04-11T15:10:03Z

A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996.

Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made.

The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s.

It was stored at Sheffield University for carbon-dating and recently returned to the cave, which has now been sealed.

There are other human remains in the cave which date back to the Bronze Age - more than 1,000 years before Roman Britain. Animal remains, including horses and dogs, have also been excavated.

Cave burials from this period are rare so this site is considered an archaeological treasure trove.

Experts believe the cave could have been a tomb, but that some of the deaths may have been through sacrificial ceremonies.

Tom Lord, research fellow at Lancaster University, has studied ancient bones in caves for more than 20 years and believes there is more to be unearthed in the cave.

Mr Lord calls the cave an "ancient time capsule" because of the many different remains inside. He believes the cave was considered a sacred place for centuries because of its supposed entrance to the underworld.

He also referred to the cave as an "ancient crime scene" because it may have been the scene of forced sacrifices.

Ancient bodies have also been discovered in what are thought to be sacrificial caves in East Yorkshire.

The skulls excavated from East Yorkshire show the bodies suffered blows to the head, and were therefore sacrificed by force.

Unfortunately the recently-returned skull is only a partial skull and there are not enough remains to determine how the Roman woman died.

One theory is that she may have been a high-born figure from the local area who voluntarily sacrificed herself, believing she would enter the underworld.

Other factors could, however, point to the woman wanting to escape Roman hardship.

The skull has been laid to rest under a shelf in the cave where it is hoped it will remain undisturbed.

Mr Lord said that if archaeologists chose to reinvestigate the cave in the future, much more could be unravelled.

For now though, the cave has been shut, disguised with earth and rock and sealed completely.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7341110.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Swedes find Viking-era Arab coins

2008-04-05T04:54:48Z

Swedish archaeologists have discovered a rare hoard of Viking-age silver Arab coins near Stockholm's Arlanda airport.

About 470 coins were found on 1 April at an early Iron Age burial site. They date from the 7th to 9th Century, when Viking traders travelled widely.

There has been no similar find in that part of Sweden since the 1880s.

Most of the coins were minted in Baghdad and Damascus, but some came from Persia and North Africa, said archaeologist Karin Beckman-Thoor.

The team from the Swedish National Heritage Board had just started removing a stone cairn at the site "when we suddenly found one coin and couldn't understand why it was there", she told the BBC News website.

"We continued digging and found more coins and realised it was a Viking-age hoard." The coins were left there in about AD850, she said.

Such Viking hoards usually come from Gotland - a large Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, she explained.

"No Viking was buried at this site - the grave is older. Maybe the Vikings thought the hoard would be protected by ancestors," Ms Beckman-Thoor added. Vikings had settled in a village nearby.

The Vikings travelled widely in their longships in the Baltic region and Russia from the late 8th to the 11th Century. They are known to have travelled as far as North Africa and Constantinople (now Istanbul).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7330540.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Necklace is 'oldest in Americas'

2008-04-02T18:14:34Z

By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News

A necklace found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is the oldest known gold object made in the Americas, archaeologists say.

Radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area.

The researchers say it appears to have been fashioned from gold nuggets.

The discovery suggests that the use of gold jewellery to signify status began before the appearance of more complex societies in the Andes, they report.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), they say the artefact is the earliest worked gold found not only in the Andes, but the Americas as well.

Study leader Dr Mark Aldenderfer of the department of anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said it demonstrated an emerging social role for gold beyond simple decoration.

He told BBC News: "The gold reflects a universal tendency for human beings to strive for prestige and status.

"The gold reflects that process in people living in a simple society which is in the process of becoming more complex."

Status symbol

The necklace was found alongside the jawbone of an adult skull in a burial pit next to primitive pithouses at Jiskairumoko, a hamlet that was settled from 3,300 to 1,500 BC.

The researchers believe it had been worn by an adult, probably an elderly woman.

Marks on the necklace suggest that gold nuggets had been flattened with a stone hammer and then carefully bent or hammered around a hard cylindrical object to create a tubular shape.

The gold would have signalled the prestige of its wearer, "not at all different to today," said Dr Aldenderfer.

"This reflects a lot more than just a lovely object," he added. "This is a major piece of how people lived their lives and how they competed for status in the past."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7323351.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Excavation starts at Stonehenge

2008-03-31T14:40:19Z

The first excavation inside the ring at Stonehenge in more than four decades gets under way on Monday.

The two-week dig will try to establish, once and for all, some precise dating for the creation of the monument.

It is also targeting the significance of the smaller bluestones that stand inside the giant sarsen pillars.

Researchers believe these rocks, brought all the way from Wales, hold the secret to the real purpose of Stonehenge as a place of healing.

The excavation at the 4,500-year-old UK landmark is being funded by the BBC. The work will be filmed for a special Timewatch programme to be broadcast in the autumn.

'Magical stones'

The researchers leading the project are two of the UK's leading Stonehenge experts - Professor Tim Darvill, of the University of Bournemouth, and Professor Geoff Wainwright, of the Society of Antiquaries.

They are convinced that the dominating feature on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire was akin to a "Neolithic Lourdes" - a place where people went on a pilgrimage to get cured.

Some of the evidence supporting this theory comes from the dead, they say.

A significant proportion of the newly discovered Neolithic remains show clear signs of skeletal trauma. Some had undergone operations to the skull, or had walked with a limp, or had broken bones.

Modern techniques have established that many of these people had clearly travelled huge distances to get to south-west England, suggesting they were seeking supernatural help for their ills.

But Darvill and Wainwright have also traced the bluestones - the stones in the centre of Stonehenge - to the exact spot they came from in the Preseli hills, 250km away in the far west of Wales.

Neolithic inscriptions found at this location indicate the ancient people there believed the stones to be magical and for the local waters to have healing properties.

'Scientific proof'

Darvill and Wainwright hope the dig will demonstrate such beliefs also lay behind the creation of Stonehenge, by showing that the make-up of the original floor of the sacred circle at the monument is dominated by bluestone chippings that were purposely placed there.

The dig will also provide a more precise dating of the Double Bluestone Circle, the first stone circle that was erected at Stonehenge.

The original setting for this circle is no longer visible. The bluestones seen by visitors today are later re-erections.

Archaeologists tried to date the first circle in the 1990s and estimated that it was put up at around 2,550BC; but a more precise dating has not been possible.

Principally, this is because materials removed in earlier excavations were poorly recorded and cannot be attributed with any certainty to specific features and deposits.

The 3.5m by 2.5m trench that will be excavated in the new effort will aim to retrieve fragments of the original bluestone pillars that can be properly dated.

Genuine chance

The BBC-funded excavation goes ahead with the full support of English Heritage, which manages the site for the nation.

"Theories about Stonehenge are cheap; proof is precious," commented BBC Timewatch editor, John Farren.

"I'm delighted that Timewatch, the BBC's flagship history programme, is able to offer the possibility for some hard scientific proof to further our knowledge of the dating of Stonehenge and to bolster this remarkable new theory.

"It's taken us 18 months' hard work to get all the elements for the dig in place."

Professor Wainwright added: "This small excavation of a bluestone is the culmination of six years of research which Tim and I have conducted in the Preseli Hills of North Pembrokeshire and which has shed new light on the eternal question as to why Stonehenge was built.

"The excavation will date the arrival of the bluestones following their 250km journey from Preseli to Salisbury Plain and contribute to our definition of the society which undertook such an ambitious project. We will be able to say not only why but when the first stone monument was built."

Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, commented: "Very occasionally, we have the opportunity to find out something new archeologically - we are at that moment now.

"We believe that this dig has a chance of genuinely unlocking part of the mystery of Stonehenge."

(BBC Timewatch will follow the progress of the Stonehenge dig over the course of the next two weeks. Catch daily text and video reports on the programme's website. ( A http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/stonehenge/ )BBC Two documentary will be broadcast in the autumn and will detail the findings of the investigation )

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7322134.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Ancient Seahenge 'returns home'

2008-03-27T00:29:30Z

A timber circle dating back 4,000 years which was found in the sea off the Norfolk coast is to return to the county in a permanent display.
Seahenge, with 55 oak posts and a central upturned stump dating from the Bronze Age, was found emerging from a beach at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1998.

Timbers were studied at the Bronze Age Centre, Peterborough, then preserved at the Mary Rose Trust, Portsmouth.

Next month Seahenge will go on display at the Lynn Museum in King's Lynn.

After Seahenge was excavated, 3D laser scanning revealed the earliest metal tool marks on wood ever discovered in Britain.

'Remains mysterious'

Archaeologists at the Bronze Age Centre, believe between 50 and 80 people may have helped build the circle, possibly to mark the death of an important individual.

Seahenge became exposed at low tides after the peat dune covering it was swept away by winter storms.

The site's excavation was initially halted by protests by a group of about 12 Druids and environmental campaigners who said the sea had cared for the site for 4,000 years and would continue to do so.

But researchers said the exposed wood was deteriorating fast.

Funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Norfolk County Council has been provided for the Seahenge Gallery project at the Lynn Museum which will house the timber, displayed in its original formation.

The central stump, which is still being treated, will join the gallery at a later date.

John Gretton, of Norfolk County Council, said: "The discovery of Seahenge in the summer of 1998 captured the imagination of the public and archaeologists alike.

"Whilst the research done on the timbers has led to some historians drawing conclusions, the original function of Seahenge remains mysterious, and I hope that visitors will flock to the newly restored Lynn Museum to speculate on the ancient meaning behind the timbers - which we were able to rescue for all time from further damage."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7312429.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Spain dig yields ancient European

2008-03-26T20:12:04Z

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have discovered the oldest human remains in western Europe.

A jawbone and teeth discovered at the famous Atapuerca site in northern Spain have been dated between 1.1 and 1.2 million years old.

The finds provide further evidence for the great antiquity of human occupation on the continent, the researchers write in the journal Nature.

Scientists also found stone tools and animal bones with tell-tale cut marks from butchering by humans.

The discovery comprises part of a human's lower jawbone. The remains of seven teeth were found still in place; an isolated tooth, belonging to the same individual, was also unearthed.

Its small size suggests it could have belonged to a female.

The find was made in the Sierra de Atapuerca, a region of gently rolling hills near the Spanish city of Burgos which contain a complex of ancient limestone caves.

These caves have yielded abundant, well-preserved evidence of ancient occupation by humans and have been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The new remains were unearthed at the archaeological site of Sima del Elefante, which lies just a few hundred metres from two other locations which have yielded remains of early Europeans.

"It is the oldest human fossil yet found in Western Europe," said co-author Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, director of Spain's National Research Centre on Human Evolution (CENIEH) in Burgos.

Ancient migration

Dr Bermudez de Castro told BBC News that the latest find had anatomical features linking it to earlier hominins (modern humans, their ancestors and relatives since divergence from apes) discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia - at the gates of Europe.

The Georgian hominins lived some 1.7 million years ago and represent an early expansion of humans outside Africa.

The researchers therefore suggest that Western Europe was settled by a population of hominins coming from the east.

Once these early people had "won the West" they evolved into a distinct species - Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man", say the scientists.

The scientists now plan to investigate whether Pioneer Man might have been ancestral to Neanderthals and to even our own species Homo sapiens.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said that until more material was discovered from Atapuerca, he was cautious about assigning the new specimen to the species Homo antecessor.

But he added: "However the specimen is classified, when combined with the emerging archaeological evidence, it suggests that southern Europe began to be colonised from western Asia not long after humans had emerged from Africa - something which many of us would have doubted even five years ago."

The Spanish researchers used three different techniques to date the new fossils: palaeomagnetism, cosmogenic nuclide dating and biostratigraphy.

Dr Bermudez de Castro said they represented the most accurately dated evidence of human occupation in Europe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7313005.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Tower of London's royal lions 'from Africa'

2008-03-26T04:11:36Z

Tower of London's Barbary lions
Two lion skulls found during excavations at the Tower of London originated in north-west Africa, genetic research suggests.
The big cats, which were kept by royals during medieval times, have the same genetic make-up as the north African Barbary lion, a DNA study shows.

Experts believe the animals were gifts to English monarchs in the 13th and 14th centuries.

At the time, the Barbary lion roamed across much of Africa.

The two well-preserved lion skulls were recovered during excavations of the moat at the Tower of London in 1937. They have been radiocarbon dated to AD 1280-1385 and AD 1420-1480.

Researchers at the University of Oxford extracted DNA from the skulls, and found that it matched that of the north African Barbary lion.

Comparison with the skulls of Asiatic and north African Barbary lions kept in museums in the UK and Europe gave further evidence of the link.

Dr Richard Sabin, Curator of Mammals at London's Natural History Museum, said the results were the first genetic evidence to clearly confirm that lions found during excavations at the Tower of London originated in north Africa.

He said: "Although we have one of the best mammal collections in the world here at the Natural History Museum, few physical remains survive of the Royal Menagerie.

"Direct animal trade between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa was not developed until the 18th Century, so our results provide new insights into the patterns of historic animal trafficking."

In historical times, the lion was found across Africa, the Middle East and India.

Dr Nobuyuki Yamaguchi of the Wildlife Conservation Unit at the University of Oxford said the growth of civilisations along the Egyptian Nile and Sinai Peninsula almost 4,000 years ago stopped gene flow, thereby isolating lion populations. The lion survived in the wild in western north Africa until about 100 years ago.

Dr Yamaguchi said: "Western north Africa was the nearest region to Europe to sustain lion populations until the early twentieth century, making it an obvious and practical source for mediaeval merchants.

"Apart from a tiny population in north-west India, lions had been practically exterminated outside sub-Saharan Africa by the turn of the 20th Century."

The Royal Menagerie was a collection of lions, leopards, bears and other exotic animals that were probably gifts to English monarchs.

It was established in the 12th and 13th Centuries by King John, in Woodstock near Oxford, and was later moved to the Tower of London. It was finally closed in 1835, on the orders of the Duke of Wellington.

The remaining animals were moved to the Zoological Society's Gardens in Regent's Park, now known as London Zoo.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7311134.stm

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

So you want to work in...Archaeology

2008-03-25T02:13:01Z

From: Careers advice > Graduate @
http://jobsadvice.guardian.co.uk/graduate/story/0,,2227770,00.html

So you want to work in ...
Archaeology

Programmes like Time Team have made us think a little more about what could lie beneath our feet.
After studying for an undergraduate degree in archaeology, you should have an idea of the level of patience and persistence required to work, quite literally on occasions, in this field.

Jobs are varied and wages will depend on which area of work you opt for. For example, salaries for excavation diggers can be as low as £14,000 at first, and based on short-term contracts. But what price discovering a piece of pottery that dates back centuries?

Our experts unearth some advice.

An employer says ...

Don Henson, head of education and outreach, Council for British Archaeology britarch.ac.uk

There is now a high visibility of archaeology in the media, which has had a positive impact. Whether that will make people want to become archaeologists, we'll have to see. People going to university have one eye on the fees they have to pay, so they are perhaps looking at jobs with good salaries.

There are four or five main streams. You've got fieldwork excavations, mostly organised through charitable institutions or limited companies, which bid for work. They employ a lot of archaeologists.

Then there are those who work either for a national organisation or in local government caring for the historical environment. Very often these jobs are more stable, but there are less of them.

Some people stay on in university doing research and teaching. Another stream is museum work, looking after finds or putting them on display to the public. You could also become an independent consultant, advising building construction companies on any archaeological problems they may face or analysing finds for big field units.

If all you've done is watch Indiana Jones, you will be very disappointed with the profession. Time Team gives a much more realistic idea of what's involved. But it's very rare to be disappointed, most people go into it with their eyes open.

A university says ...

Dr Mark Horton, head of education, department of archaeology and anthropology, University of Bristol bristol.ac.uk

There's a popular misconception about archaeology. Obviously there are a lot of people out there digging up fields in the freezing cold, but nowadays the bulk of archaeological work is lab-based. For every day spent on site you spend about four in the lab.

There are very few degree programmes like archaeology, which spans the sciences and humanities. It is an incredibly demanding subject, with the breadth of skills needed and the range of material. At Bristol we teach everything from human evolution to the industrial revolution. We deal with the whole history of humankind.

The number of people wanting to study archaeology is tiny. More people apply to do history at Bristol than apply to read archaeology at undergraduate level in the whole of the UK. Future salaries might be a reason, but that doesn't stop people working in the media. I think it's also the fact that there are incompetent careers teachers who say, "Why don't you do a safe subject?"

About half of our final-year students are planning to stay in archaeology. You have to be passionate about it. I just think it's absolutely fascinating. Touching artefacts, telling stories based on evidence that you have discovered, and knowing that if you had not discovered it, no one would have.

A graduate says ...

Jacqueline Wilson, PhD candidate, University of Bristol

Although I was born in Manchester, I grew up in the country outside a small town in southern Ireland and spent summers roaming across fields, rivers and ditches with my dog. Even at a young age I knew that the lumps and bumps I found in these fields were the archaeological evidence of past communities long since gone.

I am now in year three of my PhD and my research is exploring the links between the Roman world and Ireland.

The undergraduate degree is really the first step and it is as much about facilitating transferable skills for people as it is about archaeology itself. You will graduate with a degree that will open doors for you across a broad range of occupations. If, however, you want to work as a field archaeologist then a good, specialised master's in landscape archaeology gives you the next level of training.

I am very fortunate to be fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for my doctoral research and I am working with the greatest bunch of academics, staff and students you could imagine. I can't stress how important it is to have this type of support, as doctoral research can be a lonely occupation without it.

My worst experience so far has been struggling to get out of a trench where the soil had turned to thick mush in the rain. As I am a bit short and was laughing so much I couldn't physically lift my legs out, I had to be pulled out before I sank completely. But that's archaeology for you and to be honest, it is an experience not to be missed.

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Archaeologists Unveil Finds in Rome Digs

2008-03-10T01:59:35Z

A sixth-century copper factory, medieval kitchens still stocked with pots and pans, and remains of Renaissance palaces are among the finds unveiled Friday by archaeologists digging up Rome in preparation for a new subway line. Archaeologists have been probing the depths of the Eternal City at 38 digs, many of which are near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares.

Over the last nine months, remains - including Roman taverns and 16th-century palace foundations - have turned up at the central Piazza Venezia and near the ancient Forum where works are paving the way for one of the 30 stations of Rome's third subway line.

"The medieval and Renaissance finds that were brought to light in Piazza Venezia are extremely important for their rarity," said archaeologist Mirella Serlorenzi, who is working on the site.

Serlorenzi said that among the most significant discoveries in a ninth-century kitchen were three pots that were used to heat sauce. Only two others had been found previously in Italy.

The copper factory "factory" was used to work on copper alloys, and it consisted of small ovens, traces of which can be seen. Small copper ingots were found and are being analyzed.

The archaeological investigations are needed only for stairwells and air ducts, as the 15 miles of stations and tunnels will be dug at a depth of 80 to 100 feet - below the level of any past human habitation, experts said.

However, most of the digs still have to reach the earth strata that date back to Roman times, where plenty of surprises may be waiting. That may create problems between planners and conservationists, officials said.

"It is impossible that there will not be situations of conflict. We know that in some cases the conflict will create a removal of ancient ruins," Rome's archaeological superintendent Angelo Bottini told The Associated Press.

Under Italy's strict conservation laws, it will be up to Bottini's office for Rome to decide whether a find will be removed, destroyed or encased within the subway's structures.

Countless public and private works have been scrapped over the years in Rome and across Italy, and it is not uncommon for developers to fail to report a find and plow through ancient treasures.

Rome's 2.8 million inhabitants can rely on just two subway lines, which only skirt the center and leave it clogged with traffic and tourists.

Plans for a third line that would serve the history-rich heart of Rome have been put off for decades amid funding shortages and fears that a wealth of discoveries would halt work.

The $4.6-billion project is due for completion in 2015, but parts of the line are scheduled to open in 2011, with high-tech automatic trains to transport 24,000 passengers per hour.

http://www.physorg.com/news124169829.html

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

House of Augustus opens to public

2008-03-09T16:53:52Z

By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Rome

Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists searching for the ruined house of Augustus found a tiny clue buried deep in 2,000 years' worth of rubble overlooking the Forum in Rome.
The single fragment of painted plaster, discovered in masonry-filled rooms, led the experts to unearth a series of exquisite frescoes commissioned by the man who would later become Rome's first emperor.

On Sunday following decades of painstaking restoration, the frescoes in vivid shades of blue, red and ochre went on public show for the first time since they were painted in about 30BC.

One large room boasts a theatrical theme, its walls painted to resemble a stage with narrow side-doors.

High on the wall a comic mask peers through a small window.

Other trompe l'oeil designs include an elegant garden vista, yellow columns and even a meticulously sketched blackbird.

Builders' names preserved

The Rome authorities have spent nearly 2m euros preserving the four Augustus rooms - thought to comprise a dining-room, bedroom, an expansive reception hall at ground-level and a small study on the first floor.

Experts say the frescoes are among the most splendid surviving examples of Roman wall paintings, on a par with those found in the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Archaeologists believe they may have been painted by an Egyptian.

In the large entrance hall, graffiti on one wall is believed to have been left by the builders, who seem to have sketched out geometric designs, possibly for mosaic floors, and left their names.

In 31BC Augustus - or Octavian, as he was then known - had triumphed over the combined forces of Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.

The victory brought Egypt, and with it immense wealth, into the empire.

But if the frescoes on the walls are exquisite, their surroundings, though impressive, with vaulted ceilings, are less than palatial.

The Roman historian Suetonius described how Augustus lived in a modest house on the Palatine before he assumed supreme power and built a sprawling imperial complex higher up the hill.

Painstaking reconstruction

The great-nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, he took the name Augustus on becoming sole ruler in 27BC after the civil wars that followed Julius Caesar's assassination.

His rise ended the Roman Republic and marked the beginning of the Roman Empire. He died in AD14.

Some of his interior decoration was found intact when the Italian archaeologist Professor Gianfilippo Carettoni finally broke through to the rooms in the early 1970s.

Other frescoes had to be pieced together from fragments found by a team led by Irene Jacopi, the archaeologist in charge of the Palatine Hill.

The art is so delicate that no more than five visitors at a time will be able to enter the rooms. Nevertheless, they are expected to attract large crowds.

Recent archaeological work in Rome has boosted tourism by as much as 40%, according to the city authorities.

The Palatine Hill has been giving up new finds for years, although much of the site is off limits to visitors and under threat of subsidence.

Future revelations

The minister of culture, Francesco Rutelli, said that 12m euros had been set aside to help protect the extensive ruins.

Mr Rutelli, who is standing for election as mayor of Rome next month, described the opening of the Augustus rooms as an "extraordinary event, the fruit of decades of work".

"Ancient history is here," he said. "Every day you have a new discovery. It's incredible - in the very heart of the city, in the middle of the traffic and ordinary life."

In November last year archaeologists located a grotto deep beneath Augustus's imperial palace that may have been the shrine where ancient Romans worshipped Romulus, the founder of the city according to legend.

Next year archaeologists hope to open to the public Augustus's mausoleum - once a monument in white travertine marble that is now an overgrown ruin.

From Monday entry to the Roman Forum will no longer be free. Instead, visitors must pay 11 euros ($16; £8) for a combined ticket that will give entry to the Forum, the Palatine Hill and the nearby Colosseum.

Officials say the proceeds will fund increased security and restoration work around Rome. "There are exciting new finds every month," said Mr Rutelli, "and we need this money to preserve these treasures for future generations".

Article + pictures: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7286305.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

'Ned Kelly's burial site' found

2008-03-09T10:25:25Z

Scientists in Australia believe they have found the grave of 19th Century outlaw and national icon Ned Kelly.
His remains are thought to be among those of executed prisoners found on the site of an abandoned prison in the southern city of Melbourne.

Kelly was a bank robber who was hanged in 1880 for murdering three policemen.

After evading arrest for several years, he used home-made armour in a final shoot-out with police; his exploits have been the subject of several films.

The scene of his last stand has also been designated a national heritage site.

Kelly's story divides modern Australians, says the BBC's Phil Mercer in Sydney. Some see him as a folk hero, who fought the colonial British establishment, others simply as a violent criminal.

Either way, the Irish convict's son's daring bank robberies and escapes made him a legend.

Guns blazing

After two years on the run, police finally caught up with Kelly and his gang.

The outlaw made his own armour by beating plough blades into shape and walked towards police with guns blazing. He was shot 20 times but survived.

He was hanged for his crimes in 1880 and buried in a mass grave at the old Melbourne Gaol, but the whereabouts of his body has remained a mystery.

His remains, and those of others, were thought to have been reburied half a century later at Pentridge prison in Melbourne.

Archaeologists say they have now found the remains of 32 bodies in coffins in various states of decomposition. The bodies will now be subject to forensic tests.

"We believe we have conclusively found the burial site, but that is very different from finding the remains," Jeremy Smith, senior archaeologist with Heritage Victoria, told Reuters.

"If the remains exist, then we will have found them."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7285907.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Innovative Archaeological Survey Reveals Unknown Aspects Of China's Past

2008-03-09T03:20:50Z

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — Imagine future archaeologists trying to understand Illinois, California or New York based on a few excavations in each of those states. They might excavate small areas in city centers, since those sites would probably be the first ruins they would come across. Meanwhile, the archaeologists they might fail to notice or study farms, suburbs, shopping malls, canals and airports.

Although still relatively unknown to the general public, an archaeological method that is being practiced at several locations around the world helps scientists overcome such bias toward large, readily noticeable sites. The method is called a regional settlement pattern survey. It involves walking systematically over a large landscape to find traces of archaeological sites on the surface of the ground. This field procedure can yield a holistic, integrated view of how settlement has shifted in a region over the course of history.

For the past 13 years, archaeologists from The Field Museum and Shandong University have used this method to develop a multifarious overview of an important but understudied region along the northeastern coast of The People's Republic of China. By the time the project is completed, the archaeologists expect to have walked systematically over 1,500 square kilometers around the coastal city of Rizhao in Shandong Province.

"Most people understand traditional archaeological excavation from TV shows, but the regional survey method is not well known," said Dr. Anne Underhill, Field Museum China specialist and American project director and lead author of research about the Shandong survey to be published in the March 2008 Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. "The team has walked over every kind of terrain possible, including farms and orchards, towns and forested hills."

The Shandong University-Field Museum project in southeastern Shandong Province (including both survey and excavation, and involving four Shandong University professors) is one of the longest running collaborations of any kind between Chinese and American scientists. In the early 1990s, the Chinese government decided to allow foreigners to collaborate in fieldwork with Chinese professionals for the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The team decided to focus on investigating key changes in settlement and regional organization during the late prehistoric, Longshan period, c. 2600-1900 B.C.

"Scientific archaeology was introduced into China during the 1920s, and during the 1980s, investigations about the rise of civilization increased," said Dr. Hui Fang, Professor of Archaeology at the Center for East Asian Archaeology Studies at Shandong University and co-author of the research. "Then in the 1990s, abundant results from archaeological fieldwork made it possible to adopt new approaches such as the theory and method of settlement pattern studies to interpret the process of the beginning of civilization in areas such as Shandong province."

Expertise with the survey method has been provided by two Field Museum scientists and co-authors of the research, Dr. Gary Feinman, Curator of Mesoamerican Anthropology, and Linda Nicholas, Adjunct Curator of Anthropology. They surveyed extensively for archaeological sites in Oaxaca, Mexico, before joining the Shandong survey team.

"When we began the project in China, systematic regional surveys had already proven to be an empirical key for understanding and evaluating the rise of and changes in early civilizations in highland Mexico, the Andean region, and the Near East," Feinman said. "Since then, two prominent scholars have called the advent of settlement pattern studies across the world the most important breakthrough in archaeology during the second half of the 20th century."

The method is very effective, Nicholas said. "We discover and map many ancient sites on a daily basis. Because so few of these sites will ever be excavated, the survey maps become the only permanent record of most ancient settlements in a region."

Over the years and centuries, human activity (such as plowing and construction) and natural processes (such as erosion) bring many ancient artifacts to the surface of the ground. Survey crews look for such evidence by walking in the late fall or early winter when crops have been harvested, increasing the visibility of objects. Crew members, who are spaced out evenly, learn to identify the characteristics (color, paste, style, etc.) of pottery sherds that indicate particular time periods.

"The large-scale organization of culture can only be understood by revealing the overall layout of settlements in a region and comparing their sizes," Underhill said. "Then one can begin to analyze other aspects of regional organization such as population density, distances between sites, and distances to water sources, all of which can reveal information about economics, trade, interactions, and other factors."

Southeastern Shandong Province poorly understood

China has an extraordinarily rich record of archaeological remains, from the Paleolithic period to the historic dynasties. Given the vast number of sites throughout Shandong Province, southeastern Shandong had not been a focus of research for quite some time prior to this research project.

Previous excavations in 1936 and test excavations during the early 1980s uncovered elegant, black pottery and jade items over a large area, suggesting that the Longshan period site of Liangchengzhen was some kind of regional center during the Longshan (c. 2600-1900 BC).

The systematic, regional survey has been able to identify other Longshan sites in the area and objectively determine that Liangchengzhen was indeed a large center as early investigators hypothesized. It also revealed another large center in the south, Yaowangcheng, that may have been a rival.

The survey also suggests that the agricultural colonization of the region occurred primarily during the later half of the Neolithic period. This was rapidly followed by the development of a four-tiered settlement hierarchy with two primary centers during the Early Longshan. The archaeologists conclude that the region was not merely a marginal backwater throughout its history in comparison to areas in the central Yellow River valley where known early states developed, as some scholars believe.

"Regional survey data are one key to understanding and comparing the rise of early Chinese civilization, both from one part of China to another as well as with other global regions," Feinman said.

The broad-based results of the regional settlement pattern survey clearly illustrate that there were diverse pathways to social complexity in northern China.

"Our collaborative project has been very successful," Fang said. "In comparison with 13 years ago, we now know much more about the process of the rise of complex society in the southeastern Shandong area."

Adapted from materials provided by Field Museum, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303113353.htm

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Dig uncovers Iron Age waterhole

2008-03-07T21:26:45Z

Archaeologists have found what they describe as a remarkable Iron Age waterhole on the site of an extension to York University.
The waterhole complete with a preserved wickerwork lining was revealed during excavations in Heslington village.

The structure also contains fragments of wood giving clues to the landscape of the time, about 2,500 years ago.

The university's archaeology department plans more digs at the site, which also contains an important Roman building.

The university plans to open the site to local archaeological community groups as well as allowing students access to a live dig.

'Fantastic opportunity'

Steve Roskams, of the Department of Archaeology, said: "Exciting archaeological discoveries very often follow hot on the heels of planned commercial developments. That's what has happened here.

"It's a fantastic opportunity to learn more about what our local landscape was like thousands of years ago, and we intend to make the most of it."

Initial analysis suggests that the only evidence of high-status Roman architecture dates from quite late in the Roman period.

"If this is confirmed," said Mr Roskams, "it could indicate that York was essentially little more than a military enclave during the early part of the Roman occupation, only developing into the full-scale imperial settlement of Eboracum centuries later."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7283859.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Reburial for Anglo Saxon remains

2008-03-07T21:03:40Z

About 3,000 skeletons are to be reburied in an Anglo-Saxon ceremony at a North Lincolnshire church where they were discovered almost 30 years ago.
The ancient language will be used by the Reverend David Rowett at St Peters Church in Barton-upon-Humber to mark the return of the historic bones.

Unearthed between 1978 and 1984, the bones have been used by English Heritage to research diseases.

They are one of the largest collections found on a single site in England.

King Canute

The collection, housed in a specially built bone repository called an ossuary to protect the remains, was re-dedicated to the ground on Monday ahead of the ceremony.

A spokesman for English Heritage said the service on Friday evening would be spoken in Anglo Saxon, as a mark of respect.

The research was done in partnership with the Church of England, which allowed the church to be reopened for the first time since 1972 for people to view the bones.

The oldest skeleton, of a man aged about 50-years-old, is thought to date back to the reign of King Canute (1016-1035) and has been restored to its original oak coffin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/7283445.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

China finds 10,000 year old skull

2008-01-30T01:03:43Z

AFP/Yahoo News @:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080123/sc_afp/chinaarchaeologyscience_080123131946;_ylt=AsAWmK1FsApO.P09ukONRo3POrgF

BEIJING (AFP) - An almost complete human skull dating back 80,000 to 100,000 years has been unearthed in central China, state media reported Wednesday.

The skull, consisting of 16 pieces, was dug up last month after two years of excavation at a site in Xuchang in Henan province, the China Daily said.

The pieces were fossilised because they were buried near the mouth of a spring whose water had a high calcium content, the report said.

The People's Daily newspaper said the skull was expected to provide "direct evidence" concerning the origins of human beings in east Asia, as very few human fossils dating back to about 100,000 years ago had ever been found outside Africa.

The China Daily said that the skull, with protruding bones over the eye sockets and a small forehead, was "the greatest discovery in China after the Peking Man and Upper Cave Man skulls were found in Beijing early last century".

However, experts contacted by AFP said the importance of the discovery appeared to be over-stated in the reports.

"It is far from the greatest judging from points such as the completeness, the time, and the significance of problems it can explain," said Wu Xinzhi, a professor and academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"So far, it just can prove that there were human beings living in Henan about 80,000 to 100,000 years ago and the shape of their heads was roughly what the skull shows."

Besides the skull, more than 30,000 animal fossils and stone and bone artifacts were found over the past two years in an area of 260 square metres (2,800 square feet), the report said.

The oldest human fossil found in China so far was a tooth unearthed in 1965 in Yuanmou county in the southwestern province of Yunnan that dated back 1.7 million years, said Wu.

*Editors Note: 1.7 Million Years; thats a long time...
Who fills in the gap between the so called "Lucy" and the first universally agreed upon "first" civilization, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia?
and why is the first civilization on mankind-a pretty important role in history- a word that registers in my Mac's dictionary?
Crossing the red line here...

posted in Archaeology - 28 replies

anyone into the s.american stuff?

2008-01-22T21:25:53Z

like tiahuanico for instance

posted in Archaeology - 5 replies

Bodies point to Alaska's past

2008-01-01T13:53:07Z

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Alaska

The Nuvuk site is a snowmobile ride away from modern-day Barrow
It is not the type of a call that an archaeologist receives every day.

There are bodies, the voice on the end of the line told Anne Jensen; we don't know who they were, or why they are here.

"People started noticing stuff eroding out of the bluff," she recalls, "and I got called out, along with the police, the real estate people and so on.

"It was very clearly an archaeological burial. And the bluff was collapsing quickly, so we just got the contents out."

The bluff lies virtually at the end of the Americas, on a narrow, hooked spit projecting northwards from Barrow. It marks the join of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, and is prey to the temperamental vagaries of both.

Now known as Point Barrow, the settlement on it was Nuvuk for at least 1,000 years, a spot presumably chosen because of its proximity to the migration path of bowhead whales which would become the cultural and nutritional centre of Nuvuk life.

These bodies, these bones, clearly came from no crime scene. The police could leave, and Dr Jensen's team could get to work on a find more closely related to its own interests. It has been working every summer since.

Disappearing land

When I visit in late May, the spit itself is virtually invisible beneath the blanket of ice which carpets land and sea alike.

Led by Laura Taylor, we speed out on to the ice on snowmobiles, bodies swathed in heavy-duty parkas and feet wrapped in "bunny boots" which include a layer of air to insulate the delicate extremities.

We traverse cracks created as the sea-borne ice rides up and down on the tide. We pass a couple of umiaq, traditional sealskin whaling boats left out on the ice, and every so often a scientific instrument or two, testimony to the extraordinary richness of Barrow's research tapestry.

After perhaps 20 minutes we disembark at the point, the site of ancient Nuvuk. The higher level of ice is a clue that we are on land, and grey-brown late Spring melt mush materialises beneath our feet as we walk, to prove the case.

Here, at the edge, is Anne Jensen's bluff, where bodies began appearing a decade ago. Or at least, here is where it is now; then it was 100 metres or further from the sea.

"We've had a lot of changing in currents over the past decade or so," explains Dr Taylor, "and with the changing currents and increased storm activity in the fall especially, it's undercutting the gravels and the point is literally washing out into the ocean."

And as the point washes out, so do the bodies. What used to be an accreting spit - one building up - has become an eroding spit as the coastal ebbs and flows have changed their seasonal patterns, perhaps at the behest of global climate change.

"It's eroding at about 20m per year; we only have an eight-week field season, and we need to cover at least 300m of shore," she says.

"So it's salvage archaeology - we have to beat the erosion."

Tunnels into history

The team uncovers about 20 complete burials each year. The methodology now involves digging exploration holes every few metres in a lattice pattern - "Swiss-cheesing", as Laura Taylor calls it - and excavating the newly identified burial sites.

Most of the bodies were interred in a rough framework made of wood or whale bones, with a piece of driftwood on top; some were also wrapped in animal skin or fur.

Artefacts have also surfaced, making suggestions about how people lived in Nuvuk. Here, a body holds an ulu, a traditional knife used for taking blubber from whale carcasses; there, a grave gives up weights from a bolus which would have been used to hunt birds.

There is armour made from whale baleen. Many of the graves also contain flat stones, which presumably have some kind of ceremonial purpose.

Researchers can also call on human memory and lore, because Nuvuk retained human inhabitants until about 60 years ago.

And although the houses have gone, Ukpeagvik, in the middle of what is now Barrow, has been an important site for studying remains of dwellings from the same period and culture; dwellings of impressive complexity built with subterranean cold-traps, entrance tunnels supported by whale mandibles, and insulation by sod.

Arctic origins

But what period and culture does Nuvuk represent?

Clearly it was complex enough 1,000 years ago to support whaling, an activity which needs great co-ordination within the community. Crews must organise hunting, villagers must turn out for a swift butchering, meat must be stored, seals caught to make umiaq, and trading enacted to bring in caribou meat and driftwood.

"I think these are very early Thule people," opines Anne Jensen.

"One of the big questions is where did the Thule come from? The culture was first described in the eastern Arctic, and it's clearly the ancestor of the modern Inupiat and Inuit cultures; but where did it develop?"

The Thule period succeeded earlier Arctic cultures such as the Birnirk and Punuk. And Dr Jensen now believes she may be sitting on or close to the very first Thule settlement.

"My idea is it started somewhere in northern Alaska, perhaps in a major whaling area; and it doesn't seem to stop, moving from place to place looking for whales."

A community organised for whaling, she believes, would have had an edge over competing cultures. The social hierarchy and regular experiences of mass mobilisation would have made for organised defence and perhaps attack too, while a diet rich in whalemeat meant better nutrition.

Laura Taylor believes you can draw a direct line between the Thule culture and the modern Inupiat, the traditional residents of Barrow and many settlements around. And the line, she says, is drawn in whalemeat.

"Whaling is the keystone; it's what everything in the culture is organised around," she says.

"It is the defining element of what makes Thule Thule, and in modern times, what makes Inupiat Inupiat."

Cool runners

When the first bodies washed out of the sea-battered bluff a decade ago, interest was high, but funding to excavate and examine stubbornly low.

That has changed; and since 2005, the researchers have received grants from Echo, a US federal programme aiming to give high school students a regular taste of real science.

The students spend several weeks digging alongside researchers, which given the shortness of the digging season and the necessity of getting the bodies out fast would be described as a dawn-to-dusk job, if the north Alaskan summer had dawns or dusks rather than 24-hour sunlight.

Some, such as Ben Frantz II, come back for more.

"I thought it would be pretty cool to see how my ancestors lived," the fresh-faced 19-year-old Inupiat tells me.

"Originally it was just a job; but as it turned out we started working on weekends and it was kind of fun, so I decided to stay for a while."

Now employed as a research assistant, his main task is to catalogue artefacts - arrowheads, harpoon shafts, scrapers, tools, and sled runners.

So much has been recovered that he is still working on artefacts unearthed in 2005. But, he says, it has been a worthwhile experience.

"It's changed my view of my own culture. I used to think that my ancestors were really smart, but I never knew they achieved so much."

As the Point Barrow bluff erodes, the rescue mission will presumably continue. Bodies will be snatched from the ocean's grasp each short summer, examined and catalogued before a new internment in the safer soils of modern Barrow.

Each body is a fragment of the town's past, a reminder of the long history of whale-centred culture which binds the threads of a millennium. They are treasures which neither the Barrow community nor its modern scientific boarders are minded to let wash away.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6902858.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Glauberg - La Tène

2007-12-04T16:16:58Z

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/Glauberg.html

A mystical hill....

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/glaubergsite.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glauberg

The first time I visited the site, the excavations were still being discussed....behind closed doors..... the public had not been notified.

http://www.glauberg.de/

http://www.fuerstensitze.de/1120_F%c3%bcrstensitz%20Glauberg.html?var=/dna_media/Glauberg04412dd2d4bd459.jpg&out=html&tmpl=bildansicht

http://www.frankfurtlounge.de/Mystery_of_the_Celts.htm

I was lucky enough to catch the Schirn Museum (Frankfurt) exhibition. Breathtaking ! And now, I see the hills of Hesse in a different light. The strange lines and forms one can see in the fields .....proof that even more exists. A lack of funding and a lack of archeologists will (hopefully) keep most of it where it is for a long time. Looting is the last thing we need. I'll see what else I can come up with along this line. Surprisingly, there's not a lot of info about Glauberg available on the web. Have any of you ever heard of it, at all ?

posted in Archaeology - 13 replies

The Cave of Romulus and Remus: Lupercale discovered

2007-11-23T17:29:05Z

This is so cool if confirmed. It will be exciting to also what hi tech archeology at work and observe how many remote exploration methods are used. Has anyone noticed a real upsurge of late with significant finds of antiquities?

Some is the result of years of effort finally yielding fruition but I wonder how much is also do to new approaches like the use of Google Earth to study sites remotely by more interested parties?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/sc_nm/italy_archaeology_cave_dc_4

Romulus and Remus cave may have been found: experts

By Silvia Aloisi Tue Nov 20, 12:19 PM ET

ROME (Reuters) - Italian archaeologists believe they have found the cave where, according to legend, a she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome.

An underground cavity decorated with seashells, colored marble mosaics and pumice stones was discovered near the ruins of the palace of Emperor Augustus on the Palatine hill.

Experts say they are "reasonably certain" it is the long-lost place of worship sacred to ancient Romans and known as Lupercale, from the Latin word for wolf.

"This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome, one of the most well-known in the world, the legendary cave where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus," Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli told a news conference on Tuesday.

The cave was found 16 meters (52 feet) underground in a previously unexplored area during restoration work on the palace of Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

Archaeologists investigating Renaissance descriptions of the sanctuary used a camera probe and the images suggest the vault, which has a white eagle at the centre, is well-preserved.

"You can imagine our amazement, we almost screamed," said Giorgio Croci, head of the archaeological team working on the restoration of the Palatine hill overlooking the Roman forum.

According to the myth, Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god Mars, were abandoned in a cradle by the banks of the river Tiber where a wolf found them and fed them with her milk.

The brothers are said to have founded Rome at the site on April 21, 753 B.C. and ended up fighting over who should be in charge. Romulus killed Remus and became the first king of Rome.

SACRED SITE

Archaeologists said the location of the cave reinforced their belief that it was the Lupercale.

"It is clear that Augustus... wanted his residence to be built in a place which was sacred for the city of Rome," said Croci. The emperor restored the sanctuary and probably connected it to his own palace, he said.

Finding out more about the cave without damaging it or the foundations of the surrounding ruins will not be easy. More than two-thirds of the cavity, which is about 8 meters high and 7 meters wide, is filled with debris and earth after part of it collapsed, and it is not clear where the entrance is.

"We have to investigate with extreme caution... This is a precious thing which is certainly more than 2,000 years old," said Croci.

Andrea Carandini, an archaeologist specializing in ancient Rome, said he was stunned by the find and called it "one of the most significant discoveries ever made."

The pagan cult of the Lupercale, which involved men whipping women around the Palatine in a fertility rite, continued until the fifth century, when Pope Gelasius I banned it.

Long accused of neglecting its ancient treasures, the Italian government is spending 12 million euros ($17.7 million) to restore the Palatine ruins. After being closed for decades due to the risk of collapse, Augustus's palace will reopen to the public in February 2008.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Michael Winfrey)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_eu/birth_of_rome_1;_ylt=Aj21V.pBW53dSajJi5EACIQiANEA

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

pre-paleo

2007-11-12T13:53:06Z

i'm a new member of this tribe. i'm an amateur indian artifact hunter. i've been reading a lot about the ice age peoples of pennsylvania, but every book i find, the latest is 2002. are there any more recent books that i can sink my teeth into? it doesn't have to be about pennsylvania, but that would be a bonus.
also, i need to know about radio carbon dating...where can i get it done?
thanks..
po

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Nov 14: Lecture at Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, CA

2007-11-07T16:44:59Z

Dr. Alan Gold will be discussing "Archaeology of the Southern Sierra" at 7pm at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, CA.

I'm interested in going, and would enjoy the company if anyone here wants to carpool from Los Angeles. Drop me a note if you do.

For more info: http://www.maturango.org/#Lectures

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Pisa is famous for its leaning tower, but archeologists there are now uncovering an amazing fleet of ancient ships, some complete with crew and cargo.

2007-11-04T19:44:42Z

"The San Rossore train station on the edge of Pisa, Italy, is a lonely stop. Tourists who visit this city to see its famous leaning tower generally use the central station across town. But San Rossore is about to be recognized as one of the country's most significant archeological digs. For nearly a decade archeologists have been working near and under the tracks to unearth what is nothing short of a maritime Pompeii.

So far the excavation has turned up 39 ancient shipwrecks buried under nine centuries of silt, which preserved extraordinary artifacts. The copper nails and ancient wood are still intact, and in many cases cargo is still sealed in the original terra cotta amphorae, the jars used for shipment in the ancient world. They have also found a cask of the ancient Roman fish condiment known as garum and many mariners' skeletons—one crushed under the weight of a capsized ship. One ship carried scores of pork shoulder hams; another carried a live lion, likely en route from Africa to the gladiator fights in Rome.

What's most dramatic about the discovery of this maritime graveyard is that the ships date from different centuries both before and after the advent of the Christian era, meaning the shipwrecks did not happen simultaneously but over time in the same area. Researchers say that starting around the 6th century B.C. the cargo docks of the port of Pisa were accessed by a canal that made a loop connecting the harbor to the open sea. Every hundred years or so over the course of nearly a thousand years, tsunamilike waves violently flooded the waterway and capsized and buried ships, their cargo and their passengers and crew, alongside uprooted trees and even tiny birds and animals. The 39 shipwrecks, of which 16 have been age-dated and partially or fully excavated so far, date from around the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Random artifacts, for which the archeologists have not yet found ships, date back even further. "The ships represent life in motion," says Elena Rossi, an archeologist who has worked on the site since it was first discovered. "Some may have foundered, others sunk in storms, and others went to the bottom in a flood."

The shipwrecks represent a significant piece of a puzzle that archeologists and anthropologists have struggled to understand for centuries. Studying the oldest boats' contents and the way those ships were built, archeologists now better understand just who the Romans and Etruscans traded with and how they lived and utilized the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the oldest ships belonged to the Greeks and the Phoenicians, which implies that the mysterious and little-understood Etruscans were in fact active traders. One ship carried amphorae sealed with sand from both Spain and from the volcanic regions of Campania in Italy, giving scientists vital clues to where these ships traveled."

....read more at http://www.newsweek.com/id/67475?&GT1=10547

posted in Archaeology - 5 replies

Tomo-Kahni - carpool from LA?

2007-10-30T04:22:37Z

I'm interested in taking the tour of the protected Kawaiisu village site, Tomo-Kahni, in the Tehachapi mountains north of Los Angeles. But I'd hate to drive all that way by myself, so I'm looking for others who may be interested in visiting there to see if maybe we can carpool.

If it seems like a good time to you drop me a note and let's see if we can get something going. My car seats four comfortably, so if you have friends into this sort of thing bring 'em along.

More info: http://www.bakersfield.org/tkpark/tours.htm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

First material evidence that ancient voyagers made an 8,000-kilometre round trip from the South Pacific to Hawaii AND back again.

2007-10-03T15:04:15Z

The discovery of an adze fashioned from Hawaiian basalt on a Tuamotu atoll in French Polynesia provides the first material evidence that ancient voyagers made an 8,000-kilometre round trip from the South Pacific to Hawaii and back again.

More than 2,000 years ago, seafarers from Samoa and Tonga ventured eastward to settle on more remote archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean, including the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands, colonizing most of these places by 900 AD. Eventually, the travellers set foot on Hawaii.

Scientists have long thought that these journeys must have been accidental or one-time events, but recent research has hinted that these peoples were capable of greater feats of navigation than previously suspected. Despite this, there has been debate about how much travel and trade took place among these remote islands in eastern Polynesia during the early years of their colonization; did those settlers who made it to Hawaii ever travel back again?

Hawaiian oral histories point to voyages to and from Tahiti, but in the absence of evidence these feats have remained the stuff of legends.

Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler at the University of Queensland, Australia realized that one way to test this possibility was to trace the origins of 19 adzes — axe-like tools made from stone that were used for carving canoes and other wooden objects — that had been recovered from coral atolls in the Tuamotus in the late 1930s.
Because the adzes are fashioned from basalt — an igneous rock — they must have been transported from one of the many volcanic island chains in the region, possibly even Hawaii. Because the Tuamotus rose from the sea only after 1200 AD, the adzes provide a record of travel from after that time.

Collerson, a geochemist who studies mantle processes, knew that basalts from different types of islands have a distinctive signature in their trace elements and isotope chemistries. So the team took centimetre-wide chunks from the adzes and compared them to a database they had compiled from sites throughout the Pacific.

Although the Society Islands would have been the nearest source for basalt, the team identified adzes from the Marquesas, Pitcairn, and the Austral islands, indicating extensive travel in the region. One adze had been fashioned from hawaiite, specifically from the island of Kaho'olawe. Collerson says that "the only other possible location on the planet where it could have come from is one of the islands in the middle of the Atlantic" — an extremely unlikely prospect. They checked their result twice over two years before finally submitting their paper to Science, where it appears this week...

Collerson and Weisler's study adds to a growing consensus among scientists about the impressive navigational capacities of ancient Polynesians. "They've really shown how wide a spread or distribution this trading network really had," says Patrick Kirch, an archaeologist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The clincher, of course, is the one from Hawaii."

Earlier this year, another group reported on the presence of Polynesian chicken bones in Chile, confirming that these voyagers made it as far as the New World sometime between 700 and 1390 AD.

The adze finding is also welcome evidence to Geoffrey Irwin, an anthropologist at the University of Auckland, who became a major proponent of the theory that Polynesians systematically colonized the Pacific after following the settlement route himself in a sailboat. He points out that a group of anthropologists have also made the 1-month voyage from Tahiti to Hawaii navigating via celestial clues alone2.

The tip of Hawaii's Kaho'olawe Island is today known as Lae o Kealaikahiki, which means 'cape or headland on the way to Tahiti'. Collerson suggests that rock from this cape in particular may have been taken as a memento by travellers commemorating their long and arduous journey.

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead

2007-09-15T14:54:45Z

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Sept. 14, 2007 — The ancient Egyptians were not the only ones to mummify their dead, according to a study in this month's Antiquity Journal that claims prehistoric Scottish people created mummies too.

The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions.

Initial evidence for Scottish mummies was announced in 2005, when archaeologists unearthed three preserved bodies — an adult female, an adult male and an infant — buried underneath two Bronze Age roundhouses in South Uist, Hebrides, at a site called Cladh Hallan. The bodies date to between 1300 and 1500 B.C.

"Distinctive microscopic and chemical changes in the bones showed that the bodies had not been placed in the ground immediately after death, but had been subject to conditions that may have enhanced their preservation," said Andrew Chamberlain, who worked on both the 2005 and the more recent investigations.

Chamberlain, a University of Sheffield archaeologist, told Discovery News that the new evidence relates to the female mummy's knee.
Analysis of her remains, led by researcher Christie Cox, shows her knee was broken off prior to burial but long after her death. The scientists found the knee buried at another part of the site.

The knee "adds to the evidence for manipulation of the body parts long after death," Chamberlain said, adding that the bones were dry before they were snapped apart.

Microscopic and chemical analysis also determined the bodies were subject to an acidic environment that enhanced preservation.

That finding, and the arrangement of the bones, suggests the dead individuals were first wrapped tightly and then immersed into a peat bog. The scientists believe the bodies were then removed and carefully buried under the roundhouses, where individuals resided.

Bodies preserved in peat bogs have been found throughout Britain. With oxygen blocked, the bodies basically ferment in what has been described as a "slow cooking process" that causes them to tan and then darken.

Arranged stones marked the graves, which surprisingly were located right inside the entrance to the house. This would be like homeowners today having small cemeteries in the entry halls of their homes.

"The floor above the burials was kept clear of debris from craft activities, cooking, etc. so it seems that the occupants of the house were aware of the presence of the bodies buried under the floor," Chamberlain said.

He believes that in Bronze Age Britain a transition occurred from "previous collective burial rites to a new burial rite in which individuals were placed under houses or within their own burial mounds."

University of Reading archaeologist Richard Bradley points out Cladh Hallan is important, since it preserves all elements of prehistoric life, including death. He said researchers in Britain usually encounter "fractured pieces of the past" but the site tells a "whole story" since it is a place "where people lived, and also where they buried their ancestors."

Historic Scotland, a government agency, funded the research.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/14/mummifiedscots_arc.html?category=archaeology

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Jews' Roman 'escape route' found...

2007-09-10T20:07:51Z

Archaeologists in Jerusalem say they have found an underground drainage channel that was used by Jews to escape from the Romans in 70 AD.
The channel was buried under the rubble of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by Roman conquerors in the Siege of Jerusalem.

Scores of people are thought to have sheltered and lived in the tunnel until they were able to flee the city.

Several parts of the tunnel have been preserved intact.

Refuge

The tunnel is believed to have been Jerusalem's main drainage channel at the time of the Roman conquest, stretching beneath the city and eventually reaching the Dead Sea, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

"The channel... is covered with heavy stone slabs that are actually the paving stones of the street.

"In some places the channel reaches a height of about three metres and is one metre wide, so that it is possible to walk in it comfortably," the statement said.

Eli Shukron of the Antiquities Authority said: "It was a place where people hid and fled to from burning, destroyed Jerusalem."

Mr Shukron said excavators looking for Jerusalem's main road from the time of the Second Temple happened to find a small drainage channel. That led them to the larger tunnel beneath the road.

Pottery shards and coins from the end of the Second Temple period were also discovered inside the tunnel.

About 100 metres of tunnel has been excavated so far, stretching north from the Shiloah Pool at the Old City's southern end to about 10 metres west of the Western Wall (the so-called Wailing Wall), which is all that is left of the Second Temple.

Archaeologists think the tunnel leads to the Kidron River, which empties into the Dead Sea.

The destruction of the Second Temple is still mourned annually on the Jewish fast Tisha B'Av.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6986869.stm

Published: 2007/09/10 11:34:10 GMT

© BBC MMVII

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Viking ship 'buried beneath pub'

2007-09-10T12:48:43Z

A 1,000-year-old Viking longship is thought to have been discovered under a pub car park on Merseyside.
The vessel is believed to lie beneath 6ft to 10ft (2m to 3m) of clay by the Railway Inn in Meols, Wirral, where Vikings are known to have settled.

Experts believe the ship could be one of Britain's most significant archaeological finds.

Professor Stephen Harding, of the University of Nottingham, is now seeking funds to pay for an excavation.

The Viking expert used ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment to pinpoint the ship's whereabouts.

He believes the vessel could be carefully removed and exhibited in a museum.

Professor Harding said: "The next stage is the big one. Using the GPR technique only cost £450, but we have to think carefully about what to do next.

"Although we still don't know what sort of vessel it is, it's very old for sure and its Nordic clinker design, position and location suggests it may be a transport vessel from the Viking settlement period if not long afterwards.

"Scandinavian influence persisted here through the centuries.

"It is speculation at the moment, but at least we now know exactly where to look to find out. How it got there is also hard to say.

"It is some distance from the present coastline and probably the old one too.

"It might have got to its present position after flooding and sinking into an old marsh."

The ship was first uncovered in 1938 when the Railway Inn was being knocked down and rebuilt further from the road, the site of the old pub being made into a car park.

Workers were advised by the foreman to cover the ship over again so as not to delay construction.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/6986986.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

3,000-year-old beehives unearthed in Israel

2007-09-06T15:50:54Z

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/05/ancient.honey.ap/index.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

ART CONTEST!!!...HERE ON TRIBE

2007-09-03T21:45:57Z

I have recenlty started 3 new art tribes
In order to boost participation in these tribes, we are hosting 3 separate art contests

This week only .............starting Mon 9-03...ending mon 9-10

To enter............. just submit as many pictures as you want into our photo gallery
(we would be honnered)
Begain the title of your photo with AC(For Art Contest)
Example: if you photo is called " The Rose" title it ....AC " The Rose"

ALL VISUAL FORMS OF ART ARE EXCEPTABLE:\
Paintings, Digital, Photography, annimated gifs.....ect.

To vote (you can vote more than once or even vote for yourself) leave a comment in an AC photo that you think deserves recommendation

Next monday I will view the photo's and anounce the winners in all of my 11 tribes and provide links to the your photo's

1st prize.... (in each tribe) will be featured as the main photo for at least 1 month

2nd and 3rd prize photo's will recieve honerable mention and I will anounce the winners in all of my 11 tribes and provide links to the you photo's

!!! So please come and enjoy a fun opportunity to recieve constructive critisism of your expression!!!!!
If this goes well we will host a new contest monthly...Thank you

AMAZING ART

http://tribes.tribe.net/29104d87-26ac-4a27-a01c-ac24e71ecf8a?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B29104d87-26ac-4a27-a01c-ac24e71ecf8a

Folk Art and Pop Art ( Folk- N- POP )

http://tribes.tribe.net/95d03c97-1166-4b76-88ea-d1b3ae450e28

Religious and Spiritual Art (Apparitions

http://tribes.tribe.net/eb5f7908-cda1-40f9-9648-e8b00b84292f?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Beb5f7908-cda1-40f9-9648-e8b00b84292f%5D

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Egypt footprint 'could be oldest'

2007-08-31T14:45:47Z

Archaeologists in Egypt say they have discovered what might be the oldest human footprint ever found.
The outline was found imprinted in mud, which has since turned to stone, at Siwa oasis in the western desert.

"This could go back about two million years," antiquities council chief Zahi Hawass was quoted by Reuters as saying. However Khaled Saad, director of pre-history at the council, said it could be older still, and pre-date Ethiopia's 3m-year-old skeleton, Lucy.

Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia, is an extinct Australopithecus afarensis hominid estimated to be 3.2 million years old.

Scientists are now conducting carbon dating tests on plants in the mud where the footprint is in order to pinpoint its precise age.

"It could be the most important discovery in Egypt," Mr Hawass said.

Until now the earliest evidence of human activity found in Egypt, most famous for the era of the pharaohs, dates from about 200,000 years ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6956902.stm

posted in Archaeology - 4 replies

New Tribe....Religious and Spiritual Art (Apparitions

2007-08-27T03:33:25Z

Apparitions, Holly relics, Inspired artists, Anomalies, ETC.
http://tribes.tribe.net/eb5f7908-cda1-40f9-9648-e8b00b84292f#
Most of the threads in this tribe will be presented in the photo gallery as supported evedence
So don't forget to turn off you topics only option..and and view all

Religion has been the most inspiring theme for artest's throughout the ages
Featured here will be statues, paintings, scupltures,scetches, ETC.

!!!!!!!!All religions welcome!!!!!!!!
(Even those who seek only a skeptical view....Even you can serve as a control ..and disclaimer)

Let’s bring enlightened art visions here and create a database that we can all share and be proud of
Photo’s photo's photos

Your own Art is also Welcome and encouraged here

FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY
http://tribes.tribe.net/b9b544af-89e5-4aa7-8dec-c917f83c3bd7?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Bb9b544af-89e5-4aa7-8dec-c917f83c3bd7%5D
Religious and Spiritual Art (Apparitions

http://tribes.tribe.net/eb5f7908-cda1-40f9-9648-e8b00b84292f?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Beb5f7908-cda1-40f9-9648-e8b00b84292f%5D

Famous Quotes and Short Stories tribe
http://tribes.tribe.net/8644c865-e362-4b4d-917e-a8ca42c4fd9d?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B8644c865-e362-4b4d-917e-a8ca42c4fd9d%5D

BIRDMAN - tribe.net:

http://tribes.tribe.net/25a1f4a7-b777-4adf-8c62-1f418aaf0d64?current=tribeallposts&set=y#tabs

Subliminal Messages and Propaganda - tribe.net:
http://tribes.tribe.net/e388baea-51eb-417f-9390-06fe37f92e41

PROPHETS and VISSIONARIES... WE ARE... - tribe.net:
http://tribes.tribe.net/bac54dd7-c43a-45c5-a716-6d241843a31f

The Prophecy of Magog - tribe.net:
http://tribes.tribe.net/d64e82b0-72ef-4c72-b5e7-299383c1d4e0

WARTIME
http://tribes.tribe.net/542c9b86-93b1-4b12-bc96-a754f89c5e8e?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B542c9b86-93b1-4b12-bc96-a754f89c5e8e%5D

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Fight to save Olympic birthplace

2007-08-26T20:33:16Z

Forest fires are burning inside ancient Olympia, birthplace of the Olympics, but firefighters have kept the site safe, Greek officials say.
Flames licked the edges of the original Olympic stadium and scorched the yard of the museum, home to one of Greece's greatest archaeological collections.

Fires have ravaged large parts of Greece, affecting the Peloponnese, areas around Athens and Evia island.

On Sunday five bodies were found on Evia, bringing the death toll to 56.

Five fire trucks are protecting the archaeological museum, which houses sculptures from the Temple of Zeus and artefacts from the ancient Olympics, and anti-fire systems have been switched on, according to the secretary general of the culture ministry, Christos Zahopoulos.

A new fire protection and sprinkler system was installed at the Unesco World Heritage site for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

See map of affected areas
Culture Minister George Voulgarakis has arrived in Olympia to oversee the emergency effort.

"We don't know exactly how much damage there is in the Olympia area, but the important thing is that the museum is as it was and the archaeological site will not have any problem," he told Associated Press news agency as he visited the area.

A fire brigade spokesman said that six planes, two helicopters, 15 fire engines and 45 firemen had participated in the effort to protect the site.

However, villages and woodlands in the surrounding area were not so fortunate. The BBC's Malcolm Brabrant in the nearby village of Pelopi says that village after village succumbed to the flames and people began to flee for their lives.

At one stage, the flames were racing at more than a mile every few minutes, our correspondent said.

One local villager, speaking to Greek television by telephone, told of the battle to save homes:

"We have no water, we are at God's mercy," they said. "Please tell someone we are putting out the fire with our own hands, we have no help. The village will disappear from the map."

Angela Katsiki, a resident of the village of Kolliri, near to Olympia, told the BBC that she was devastated about the damage the fire had caused to the surrounding area.

"Horrified, absolutely... sad, really really sad. This is the worse I've seen - I've seen other fires here, but this is the worse. It's completely destroyed the area."

Sun obscured

The rapidly advancing fires caught many people unawares. Those who left the decision to flee too late were caught in their houses, cars, or as they stumbled through olive groves.

On Sunday, officials announced that five more people had been killed by fires in Evia, an island north of the capital Athens.

Towns on the island of Evia were being evacuated on Sunday, with ferries carrying people to the mainland near Athens.

"The fire is racing towards the town," a resident of the island town of Aliveri told Greek TV.

"We are leaving or else we will burn to death. There is no one to help us," he said.

Meanwhile Athens itself was shrouded in smoke that obscured the sun as several fires threatened the city's outskirts.

Houses and industrial buildings in the suburbs of Keratea and Kalyvia were destroyed.

"This is complete hell," said Kalyvia mayor Petros Filippou.

"The front is 30km (19 miles) long and has now reached the first houses. That's it."

At least 39 people were reported to have been killed in the worst affected region, around the town of Zaharo in the western Peloponnese, by a fire that broke out on Friday and quickly spread. Another four bodies were discovered in the central Peloponnese region of Arcadia.

International effort

The Greek PM has implied that many fires were started deliberately.

In a nationally televised address, Costas Karamanlis said: "So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence.

"The state will do everything it can to find those responsible and punish them."

A 65-year-old man has been charged with arson and murder relating to a fire which killed six people in Areopolis, in the far south of Greece.

Two youths were also detained on suspicion of arson in the northern city of Kavala.

Mr Karamanlis has declared a nationwide state of emergency and said the country had to "mobilise all means and forces to face this disaster".

"Fires are burning in more than half the country," fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said.

"This is definitely an unprecedented disaster for Greece."

Emergency workers and fire-fighting planes from other European Union countries have joined the battle against the fires, and more help is expected from countries outside the bloc.

"Thirty-one planes and helicopters from various European countries and from Israel will be sent. We also have an offer of assistance from the American and Russian governments with whom I communicated yesterday evening," Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Dora Bakoyannis said.

OLYMPIA
An ancient Greek religious site dating back 10 centuries before Christ
Home of the ancient Olympics, first held in 8th Century BC
Was location of giant ivory and gold Statue of Zeus, one of seven wonders of the world
Olympics continued until banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I in 394 AD
Place where Olympic flame is still lit

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6964345.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Ancient forest found in Hungary

2007-08-15T03:17:40Z

An ancient forest of cypress trees, estimated to be eight million years old, has been discovered in Hungary.
Archaeologists found the 16 preserved trunks in an open cast coal mine in the north-eastern city of Bukkabrany.

The specimens were preserved intact while most of the forest turned to coal thanks to a casing of sand, which was perhaps the result of a sandstorm.

It is hoped the trees may offer experts a valuable insight into Earth's climate eight million years ago.

The massive trunks are of a species known as swamp cypresses, which grew for 200-300 years.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest says the wood of the trees is still brown in photographs taken by the archaeologists, giving the impression that it has only just been split.

The stumps, 2-3m (10ft) in diameter and 6m (19ft) high, stand uncovered on the lowest level of the mine.

However, now that the protective material around them has been stripped there is a danger that the trunks could turn to dust before the scientists' eyes.

Urgent measures are being taken to preserve them after an attempt to move one of the trunks failed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6942733.stm

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Giant statue of Hadrian unearthed

2007-08-10T10:22:53Z

Parts of a huge, exquisitely carved statue of the Roman Emperor Hadrian have been found at an archaeological site in south-central Turkey.
The original statue would have stood 4m-5m in height, experts estimate.

His achievements include the massive wall built across the width of northern Britain which bears his name.

Ruling Rome from AD117 to AD138; he was known as a great military administrator and is one of the so-called "five good emperors".

So far, the excavators have unearthed the head, foot and part of a leg.

But they are hopeful other parts of the statue may be uncovered in coming weeks.

The foot is 80cm (31.5 ins) long, the leg - from just above the knee to the ankle - is nearly 70cm (27ins) long. The head, which is almost intact save for its broken nose, also measures 70cm (27 ins).

'Beautiful depiction'

The pieces of this giant monument to Hadrian were found about 5m below ground, among the buried ruins of a bath house on the site Sagalassos, an ancient mountaintop town in southern Turkey.

The statue dates to the early part of Hadrian's reign. The elaborate decoration on the sandal suggest he was depicted in military garb.

The discovery was made by archaeologists from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who have been investigating the site since 1990.

Marc Waelkens, director of the excavation, said this was one of the "most beautiful depictions" of the emperor ever found.

Born in AD76 into a well-to-do family in Italica, near modern Seville, Spain, Hadrian presided over a period of relative peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire. He erected permanent fortifications along the empire's borders in order to consolidate Roman power.

The northernmost extent of this frontier is still standing: Hadrian's Wall runs across the width of northern Britain, from Wallsend to the Solway Firth. It was built to repel attacks by Caledonian tribes.

Imperial cult

The bath house in which the statue was found was destroyed by a major earthquake sometime between the late sixth and early seventh centuries AD.

The statue was originally created in pieces, which were then slotted into place to create an imposing monument to the emperor.

It is these constituent parts that are now lying on the floor of the wrecked bath house: when the building collapsed, the statue fell apart along its joins.

In the last few days, the team has also discovered marble toes with dowel holes to fix it to a long dress belonging to another huge statue which may be of Hadrian's wife Sabina.

The inhabitants of Sagalassos had special affection for Hadrian. He officially recognised it as the "first city" of the Roman province of Pisidia and made it the centre for an official cult in the region which worshipped the emperor.

These administrative changes attracted thousands of visitors during imperial festivals, boosted trade and, in turn, prosperity.

"As a kind of thanks to the emperor, there were private and public monuments to Hadrian erected throughout the city," Marc Waelkens told the BBC News website.

A sanctuary, or temple, to Hadrian was built in the southern part of Sagalassos.

And in a monumental fountain next to the bath house, archaeologists have found part of a gilded bronze statue of the emperor, paid for by one of Sagalassos' most prominent families.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6939024.stm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Fight on to save Stone Age Atlantis

2007-08-09T17:21:08Z

By Eleanor Williams
BBC News, Hampshire

A race against time is under way to try to save a Stone Age settlement found buried at the bottom of the sea in the Solent.

Eight thousand years ago the area would have been dry land, a valley and woodland criss-crossed by rivers.

A swamped prehistoric forest was identified off the northern Isle of Wight coast in the 1980s, but Bouldnor Cliff's buried Stone Age village was only found - by chance - a few years ago.

Divers taking part in a routine survey spotted a lobster cleaning out its burrow on the seabed and to their surprise the animal was throwing out dozens of pieces of worked flint.

Maritime archaeologists from the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology have carried out a number of underwater excavations at the 8,000-year-old site.

For the first time they are bringing up sections of the Mesolithic village from the seabed and going through the sediments.

But they have to work fast, as the site is literally being washed away by tidal currents, which eat away at the submerged cliff at a rate of 12in (30cm) a year.

Garry Momber, director of the charity - which is supported by English Heritage - said the project is unique and helps to shed light on a time in British history which very little is known about.

He said: "This is the only site of its kind in Britain and is extremely important to our understanding of our Stone Age ancestors from the lesser-known Mesolithic period.

"It reveals a time before the English Channel existed when Europe and Britain were linked.

"The people who lived on this site could have walked over to Calais without too much trouble."

The Isle of Wight was then the highest point of a chalk ridge stretching out along the south coast with valleys on either sides.

After the ice cap - which had covered most of northern Europe - melted, the sea levels started to rise and the settlement was swamped and buried under the sea.

In the process, silt formed on top and preserved both tools, such as flint knives and scrapers, as well as charcoal, worked pieces of wood, nuts and other organic material, which would have disappeared on land.

"It's called the Stone Age because, on land, we find stones from this period but under water a whole lot more survives," Mr Momber said.

"I believe these people were far more sophisticated than we give them credit for."

Among the discoveries are wooden poles and structures believed to have been used to build houses and canoes.

"The reason so little is known about the lives of the Mesolithic people, is because most of the sites where they settled are now on the seabed," Mr Momber added.

"The whole of the North Sea could be covered in sites like this one.

"If we want to understand the Mesolithic people - how they went from hunter-gatherers to farming - we need to look under the water."

In 2004, the team carried out another excavation on a less intact site 300yds (275m) away.

This showed signs of having been by a river and Mr Momber believes the two sites were linked.

He said it was likely the larger one was where the people lived and the other where they went to catch fish.

However, there is still a lot more work to be done until it is known what Bouldnor Cliff looked like and how the site was used.

To put it in perspective, Mr Momber compared the find to one of the more "modern" historic finds in the Solent.

"The Mary Rose is only about 500 years old - this was well before that, well before the pyramids, which are 3,000 years old and way before Stonehenge was built, which was only 5,000 years ago," he said.

Mr Momber added they hoped to secure more funding so they could continue their work before the artefacts were lost forever, as the Bouldnor Cliff area was being washed away fast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/6928293.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Pagans object to Long Man filming.

2007-07-26T16:34:54Z

PAGANS are angry that the Long Man of Wilmington has been given breasts and pigtails.
On Monday the ancient Sussex landmark was transformed when 80 women laid down on the hill and transformed it into the Long Woman of Wilmington.

The stunt was for an ITV programme presented by fashion consultants Trinny and Susannah.

Pagans from across the region travelled to the site to protest.

Druid Greg Draven said: 'Imagine if people put breasts and a wig on an image of Mohammed - the uproar it would cause!'

An official ITV statement read: 'ITV have sought and gained the relevant permission from the Sussex Archaeological Society for the purpose of filming around the public area of The Long Man of Wilmington.'

A spokesman for The Sussex Archaeological Society wanted to put the public's mind at rest.

She said: 'Our professional staff judged that the activities involved in filming this sequence, essentially walking and lying down on the monument, will not damage the archaeology underneath.

'Thousands of scheduled ancient monuments are walked on every year, not least Stonehenge at the recent solstice.'
http://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news?articleid=2997769&CommentPage=1&CommentPageLength=10comments

- My comment on this:
Besides people honor this as a holy site, it is an archeological site. How the archeological sociaty could ever give permission in the first place is a mystery to me. ( must be lots of money involved)
Coming up with a weak excuse about Stonehenge..well for starters StoneHenge is not build on a muddy slope that has to deal with delecate situation like soil erosion. And second I do not agree either that so many people should walk all over Stonehenge.

These people know it is a sacret site to lots of people. Stay way from that. If they want to make a statement, then make a replica and alter that.
How this action is going to "encourage women to dress for their body shape and not their size"." I can't understand.
The only thing this is going to encourage is people walking all over historical sites.

posted in Archaeology - 8 replies

New member/archeology nut/jeweler introduction & question.

2007-07-25T05:43:24Z

Hello, my name is Kerry Drew, and I am quite fascinated by my studies in Archeology and History.

An active member of SCA back in the late 60's, I have been a history buff since I was 8 or 9 and I am especially interested in the Scythians, Celts, Mayans, Greeks, Thracians, and Ancient Egyptian cultures, as well as the Jomonm Yayoi and Kofun periods in Japan, but nothing of ancient historical significance fails to interest me.

I am a highly skilled jeweler, and metalsmith, with over 30 years experience, who offers his services to the general public, but particularly to those who prize fine craftsmanship in antiquities, and ancient style jewelry.

In order to support myself and pay for my collecting hobby, I sell hand-crafted jewelry, and high quality fine art reproductions on Ebay, as well as directly to the public. Custom jewelry commissions are welcomed!

Currently, I have several items available which any true lover of ancient art and antiquities might wish to see, and very possibly own!

Here is one notable example, an auction item which is ending very soon, of special interest to Viking buffs:

http://tinyurl.com/2shefe

I am deeply interested in any opinions Tribe members might have about the iconograpy and symbolism of this wonderful Viking piece!

I am offering LaTene/Celtic, Viking, Egyptian, Roman, and other fine items of authentic historical jewelry.

Please patronize your fellow tribe members, and myself in particular!

http://stores.ebay.com/HYPERBOREAN-GIFTS

(Help keep a well meaning jeweler, and artisan on the straight and narrow!)

In addition, I specialize in the careful treatment of antiquities, while reproducing them, so that the designs can be worn and appreciated on a regular basis, with no risk to rare and fragile antiquities.

Should you have a ring, seal, scarab, buckle, amulet or other item of any material, which you would like to reproduce, in silver, gold or bronze, please let me know.

References are available by request.

Thanks for your kind attention!

Sincerely,

Kerry Drew @}:^)>c

Richmond California, USA

kerryika@gmail.com

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Looking for a good read

2007-07-21T12:52:12Z

I was looking for something fiction to read, and being the amature "couch potato" archaeologist I am, thought i'd ask some of you "real" archeologists if you have any suggestions of fiction books that bring arch to life for you.

or are at least more than "kinda" accurate. ;-)

Thanks in advance.

k

posted in Archaeology - 8 replies

Mystery of the Subterranean Chambers of NY

2007-07-20T11:40:25Z

Here's an article from Crystalinks-
Also found at=
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/nyregion/14mystery.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

It started with an ever-expanding sinkhole at the entrance of the Mystic Pointe condominiums here and led to an excavation this spring that revealed an underground complex of brick chambers with vaulted ceilings.

Now the subterranean structure, believed to date to the mid-19th century, is a mystery just begging to be solved. Is it as pedestrian as a root cellar? Or as storied as a stop on the Underground Railroad? Does it stretch beyond the cluster of at least nine known rooms to connect to tunnels elsewhere?

An ad-hoc group of residents, local historians and archaeologists in this Westchester County suburb is racing to figure it out before road repairs that could lead to the destruction of the rooms, which sit under a wooded area that had been part of a Victorian estate and once was owned by a Catholic church.

“The issue has become a major problem for the condominium as a whole,” said Anne Marie Leone, a Mystic Pointe resident who writes the “Then and Now” feature in The Rivertowns Enterprise and has lately spent much of her free time trying to solve the mystery. “There’s a group of people like me who say, ‘It’s history, let’s save it.’ There are others who say, ‘This is a real danger on our property and let’s get it off before something major happens.’ ”

Those concerned with saving the structure have been consulting historians, tracing ownership of the property and scrutinizing the bricks used in the construction, in the hope of finding out more about its past.

Ms. Leone, for example, has spent many an evening since the discovery this spring poring over maps and doing research about former owners. But while she can tell you all about Orlando B. Potter, who bought the property as a summer residence about 1870, and a fair amount about bricks found there, she has yet to find anything that even makes note of the structures.

Lucille Lewis Johnson, an archaeologist and professor of anthropology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, said that when she recently viewed the site, she found a network of about 12 rooms, some running north-south, others east-west. The common thinking is that the rooms were some kind of storage facility, but the size of the structure and the craftsmanship of the brickwork indicate that it might have been more than that.

The rooms are larger and higher — with ceilings estimated to be as high as 15 feet — than would be common in a typical root cellar. Several of the doorways have metal fixtures on the outside, an indication that there were once doors there, and it appears that there was more than one entrance to the network.

The top of the structure is vented in several places, and historians say the construction is similar to that of wine cellars found at nearby Croton Point Park. Experts have ruled out that the hidden rooms were built as part of the Underground Railroad, but there is much speculation that escaped slaves might have stopped there. So far, there has been nothing to suggest any connection to Sing Sing prison, a mile away.

Adding to the intrigue are reports that there are other brick archways in parts of the overgrown woods near the structure, just off Route 9, Old Albany Post Road, as well as reports of a similar archway a quarter-mile to the west, near the Hudson River.

While word of the underground chambers was news to condo owners, it turned out a fair number of the village’s residents had been going in and out of them for decades. Among them is Carl Oechsner, 71, a history teacher in the Ossining schools for 38 years and a member of the local Friends of History, Croton, who used to take small groups to visit.

Mr. Oechsner said that a former student, now a police lieutenant, recalled playing there as a child and being told that the rooms stretched all the way to the Metro-North Railroad tracks, which run along the river, and about a small dock where food and cattle could be unloaded and moved through the rooms.

“The reason we want to know about these is not only architectural,” he said. “It could also give us information on the lifestyle and the way people lived.”

A chain-link fence was put up Thursday to keep people out of the area where the structures were found, and metal plates have been placed over the collapsing portion of the roadway, which is just outside the entrances to the condo complex and St. Augustine Catholic Church and School.

Gay Marglin, a condominium board member who has been inside the rooms, said there were two options for solving the road problem. The less expensive, estimated at about $50,000, would mean breaking the structure open, partly taking the walls down, and then filling the area in. The more expensive route, likely costing $200,000, would be to secure all the openings — including numerous vents — and then build a retaining wall to support the roadway. “Unless somebody comes along to save the day for the structure, I think we will have to go with the less expensive option,” Ms. Marglin said.

The mayor of Ossining, William R. Hanauer, said that he would like for the village to play a role in protecting the property, but that there have not been any substantial discussions with the condominium representatives about what that might be.

Susan Dublin, a member of the Westchester County Historic Preservation Advisory Committee, offered her perspective. “If we’re interested in the historic buildings at Croton Point, we should be interested in saving this,” she said. “It’s part of the historic landscape of the 19th century, and it is a unique structure. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Gladiators' graveyard discovered

2007-07-19T14:52:00Z

By Monika Kupper and Huw Jones
BBC Timewatch

Scientists believe they have for the first time identified an ancient graveyard for gladiators.

Analysis of their bones and injuries has given new insight into how they lived, fought and died.

The remains were found at Ephesus in Turkey, a major city of the Roman world, BBC Timewatch reports.

Gladiators were the sporting heroes of the ancient world. Archaeological records show them celebrated in everything from mosaics to graffiti.

Motifs of gladiators are found on nearly a third of all oil lamps from Roman archaeological digs throughout the Empire.

But how much did they risk every time they stepped into the arena? Did they have much chance of getting out alive?

The discovery of what is claimed to be the first scientifically authenticated gladiator graveyard has given researchers the opportunity to find out.

'Strict rules'

The Ephesus graves containing thousands of bones were found along with three gravestones, clearly depicting gladiators.

Two pathologists at the Medical University of Vienna - Professor Karl Grossschmidt and Professor Fabian Kanz - have spent much of the past five years painstakingly cataloguing and forensically analysing every single bone for age, injury and cause of death.

They found at least 67 individuals, nearly all aged 20 to 30. One striking bit of evidence is that many have healed wounds.

To Kanz and Grossschmidt, this suggests they were prized individuals getting good and expensive medical treatment. One body even shows signs of a surgical amputation.

And the lack of multiple wounds found on the bones, according to the pathologists, suggests that they had not been involved in chaotic mass brawls. Instead, it points to organised duels under strict rules of combat, probably with referees monitoring the bouts.

But there was also evidence of mortal wounds. Written records tell us that if the defeated gladiator had not shown enough skill or even cowardice, the cry of "iugula" (lance him through) would be heard throughout the arena, demanding he be killed.

Final blow

The condemned gladiator would be expected to die "like a man" remaining motionless to receive the mortal blow.

The pathologists discovered various unhealed wounds on bones that showed how these executions could have taken place. And these are consistent with depictions on reliefs from the time showing a kneeling man having a sword rammed through down his throat into the heart. A very quick way to die.

Tell-tale nicks in the vertebrae or other bones suggest at least some of the bodies suffered this fate.

A number of skulls were also found to have sets of up to three holes at odd intervals, consistent with a blow from a three-pronged weapon such as a trident.

"The bone injuries - those on the skulls for example - are not everyday ones, they are very, very unusual, and particularly the injuries inflicted by a trident, are a particular indication that a typical gladiator's weapon was used," says pathologist Professor Karl Grossschmidt.

But not all head injuries found were trident wounds. A number of the skulls showed rectangular holes that could not have been made by any of the known gladiator weapons. Instead, they suggest the use of a heavy hammer.

"One possible explanation, which is supported by a number of archaeologists, is that there must have been an assistant in the arena who basically gave the gladiator the coup de grace," says Professor Kanz.

"I assume that they must have been very severely injured gladiators, ones who had fought outstandingly and so had not been condemned to death by the public or by the organiser of the match, but who had no chance of surviving because of their injuries. It was basically the final blow, in order to release them."

'Comfortable' retirement

The work of the Viennese pathologists has been independently reviewed for the BBC's Timewatch programme by Dr Charlotte Roberts of Durham University, a leading physical anthropologist.

"I've looked at quite a few hundred Roman skeletons. I've seen examples of head injuries, healed and unhealed. I've seen evidence of decapitations," she says.

"But this (new find) is extremely significant; there's nothing been found in the world at all like it. They've really dispelled quite a lot of myths about gladiators and how they fought."

If a gladiator survived three years of fighting in the arena, he would win his freedom. Those who did often became teachers in the gladiator school. And one of the skeletons found at Ephesus appears to be that of a retired fighter.

He was of mature age and because he was much older than the others. The scientists were able to reconstruct nearly his entire body. His head showed apparent signs of healed wounds from previous fights and none of them would have proved fatal.

"He lived quite a normal Roman lifespan," says Professor Kanz. "And I think most probably he died of natural causes."

Historical records suggest a gladiator's chance of survival was slim, with some estimates as low as a one in three chance of dying each time he fought. But it appears one of the Ephesus gladiators at least survived the odds and had a chance to enjoy his retirement from the arena.

Timewatch: Gladiator Graveyard is on BBC Two at 2100 BST on Friday 11 May

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6614479.stm

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Viking treasure hoard uncovered

2007-07-19T12:53:33Z

The most important Viking treasure find in Britain for 150 years has been unearthed by a father and son while metal detecting in Yorkshire.
David and Andrew Whelan uncovered the hoard, which dates back to the 9th Century, in Harrogate in January.

The pair kept their find intact and it was transferred to the British Museum to be examined by experts, who declared it of global significance.

It was declared as a treasure at a court hearing in Harrogate on Thursday.

Looted from monastery

North Yorkshire coroner Geoff Fell said: "Treasure cases are always interesting, but this is one of the most exciting cases that I have ever had to rule on.

"I'm delighted that such an important Viking hoard has been discovered in North Yorkshire. We are extremely proud of our Viking heritage in this area."

The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe, the British Museum said.

The hoard contains 617 silver coins and 65 other objects, including a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel, made in what is now France in the first half of the 9th Century.

It was apparently intended for use in church services and was probably looted from a monastery by Vikings, or given to them in tribute.

Buried for safety

Most of the smaller objects were extremely well preserved as they had been hidden inside the vessel, which was protected by a lead container.

The British Museum said the coins included several new or rare types which provide valuable new information about the history of England in the early 10th Century, as well as Yorkshire's wider cultural contacts in the period.

It was probably buried for safety by a wealthy Viking leader during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in AD 927.

A spokeswoman for the museum said: "The size and quality of the hoard is remarkable, making it the most important find of its type in Britain for over 150 years."

The find will now be valued for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport by the Independent Treasure Valuation Committee.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/6906107.stm

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

tooth dating to 1.2 million years found in Spain

2007-07-08T17:31:05Z

pretty cool!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6256356.stm

posted in Archaeology - 3 replies

Gumby does Mayan History

2007-06-26T22:28:31Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojrFO8eRFDM

Interesting perspective .... uh.....

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

3rd-Century Man Preserved in Salt

2007-06-23T15:59:00Z

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

June 22, 2007 — During the Roman Empire period, just after the fall of Parthia, a salt mine worker from northwestern Iran lost his life following a catastrophic rock collapse. Approximately 1,800 years later, the man's body — preserved in salt — was discovered in the very spot where he died, according to recent Iranian news service accounts and to a report issued by the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.
Since salt prevents bacterial growth and acts as a drying agent, the unfortunate accident victim became a rare natural mummy. He is the sixth "salt man" to be found at the Chehr Abad mine in Zanjan province.

Removal of the body from its salty environs could damage it, so archaeologists hope to keep the mummy on site for now.

Hassan Fazeli Nashli, director of Iran's Archaeology Research Center, explained that he and his colleagues still face "a lot of problems for preserving the other five ones" that have been unearthed over the past 14 years.

He added, "They are enough for conducting future archaeological studies."

The latest discovery was not planned. Heavy rains revealed the mummified body that had been buried in nearly 8 inches of dirt within one corner of a trench in the mine.

In addition to the six bodies, researchers have also recovered leather shoes, a leather bag, a terra cotta lamp and two steer horns from the mine. The horns probably once held oil the workers might have burnt to generate light.

Johan Reinhard, a senior research fellow at The Mountain Institute in West Virginia, led a Peru expedition that recovered the "ice maiden," a 15th century Inca mummy of a 12-14 year old girl whose body literally was frozen in time.

Reinhard told Discovery News that salt, ice, water immersion and bogs all can produce natural mummies. In the case of bogs, the mixture of acidic water, cold temperature and a lack of oxygen within sphagnum may lead to the preservation. Bog bodies have been found at places in Northern Europe, Great Britain and Ireland.
Freezing, however, surpasses all of the other processes, according to Reinhard.

"Naturally frozen mummies are more valuable than the Hope diamond," he said. "They are rare and they never stop giving information."

CAT scans, DNA analysis, blood work and more are possible, since the body is comparable to a cryogenically stored individual.

"The person's DNA is near perfect, as though he or she had just died," Reinhard said.

Such information can reveal data about ancient diets, the individual's health before death, and what plants existed in the person's environment. Reinhard said a single swath of preserved frozen cloth yielded the remains of 17 plant species.

For now, the recently discovered salt man remains in his mine tomb, while the ice maiden is still frozen in a temperature-controlled box at the Museum of the Universidad Católica de Santa María of Arequipa in Peru. Countless future generations, however, may benefit from these bodies that nature preserved.

Reinhard predicts, "In 10, or perhaps 10,000, years from now, scientists will still be gathering information from them."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/22/saltman_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070622110000

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply

Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food

2007-06-19T16:27:42Z

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

June 18, 2007 — Just as a U.S. Presidential state dinner does not reflect how most Americans eat and socialize, researchers think the formal, decadent image of wining and dining in ancient Rome mostly just applied to the elite.

According to archaeologist Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester, the majority of the population consumed food "on the run."

Allison excavated an entire neighborhood block in Pompeii, a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Historians often extend findings from Pompeii to other parts of Italy, particularly Rome, given the city's proximity to the Roman Empire's center.

"In many parts of the western world today, a popular belief exists that family members should sit down and dine together and, if they don't, this may represent a breakdown of the family structure, but that idea did not originate in ancient Rome," she told Discovery News.

Her claims are based both on what she did not find during the excavation, and what she did.

Allison noticed an unusual lack of tableware and formal dining or kitchen areas within the Pompeii homes. Instead she found isolated plates here and there, such as in sleeping quarters.

"Similar to how children today bring a plate of food to their rooms before watching TV or playing on the computer, my guess is that Roman youths would tote food to certain areas where they possibly engaged in other activities," she said, adding that kids might also have dined with slaves in nanny or caretaker roles.

What she did find in the homes were multiple mini barbecue-type fire boxes, suggesting that "BBQ or fondue-style dining" often took place.

Allison outlines her findings in the new Oxford University Press book, "The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii Volume III."

Stephen Dyson, one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Rome, is a professor of classics at the University of Buffalo who formerly served as the president of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Dyson told Discovery News that the new book "was meticulously researched" and that his own work in Pompeii and Rome supports Allison's conclusions.

He said, "We've also found numerous fast food restaurants in Pompeii and other parts of ancient Rome."

Dyson likened these places to a cross between "Burger King and a British pub or a Spanish tapas bar." Open to the street, each had a large counter with a receptacle in the middle from which food or drink would have been served.

"Most Romans lived in apartments or rather confined spaces, and there is not much evidence for stoves and other cooking equipment in them," he said.

Dyson thinks "fast food" restaurants became popular because they were plentiful, the same way modern New Yorkers often eat out due to the panoply of affordable choices. Additionally, many of Rome's and Pompeii's residents, who worked as artisans, shopkeepers, weavers and such, made enough money to support these places.

Grabbing food to go, either in a house or on the street, also seems to match the energy and flexibility of the Italian mindset.

Dyson said, "Italy's vibrant street and bar scenes today, along with the often multipurpose design of homes with bedsteads stacked in a corner, or kitchenettes in surprising places, reflect the wonderful, slightly chaotic, aspects of early Roman life."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/18/pompeiifood_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070618153030

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Ancient Graves Suggest Human Sacrifice

2007-06-19T13:32:49Z

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

June 18, 2007 — Physically disabled people may have been ritually sacrificed by European hunter-gatherer tribes as early as 24,000 years ago, according to an investigation into burials from the Upper Paleolithic period.
Well known in large, stratified ancient societies, ritual human sacrifice have never been apparent in the archaeological data of Upper Paleolithic Europe (about 26,000 to 8,000 B.C.).

But, according to lead study author Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa in Italy, several of these burials suggest that human sacrifices may have been an important ritual activity in this period.

"Our findings show that the Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers developed a complex system of beliefs, symbols and rituals that are unknown in small groups of modern foragers," Formicola told Discovery News.

Analysis of the European record revealed an "intriguing high frequency of multiple burials."

Commonly attributed to simultaneous death due to natural disaster or disease, the multiple graves show a composition by age and sex and include severely deformed individuals, indicating that the burials may have been selective.

The researcher focused his investigation on three previously discovered sites in Russia, the Czech Republic and Italy. None of the remains buried at the three burials show signs of a violent death or sacrificial killing.

Nevertheless, the three graves share intriguing similarities: they all feature rich funerary decorations and include the remains of physically disabled people.

"The Sunghir double burial in Russia is probably the most spectacular and elaborate funerary example. A boy and a girl were placed head to head in a long, narrow, shallow grave. They were covered with red ochre and ornamented with extraordinarily rich and unique grave goods," Formicola wrote in the June issue of Current Anthropology.

The skeleton of the girl showed abnormal thigh bones that were bowed and shortened — most likely the result of a congenital disease linked to a diabetic condition of the mother.

The grave goods included about 5,000 perforated ivory beads which had probably been sown into caps and clothing.
"Each ivory bead would have required the work of a specialist and would have taken more than a hour to make. This implies that the grave goods were ready when the two children died, raising the question of whether this ceremony was foreseen long in advance," Formicola said.

Another elaborately decorated, multiple burial was found at Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, Czech Republic. It contained the remains of three individuals, their age ranging from 16 to 25 years.

One was a teenager — thought to have been female — whose skeleton showed evidence of severe deformity, likely the result of a rare genetic disorder.

The teenager was lying between two adolescent males, with the hands of one male placed on her ochre-covered pelvic region.

The third burial, at Romito Cave in Calabria in southern Italy, featured the skeleton of an adolescent male dwarf, buried resting on the chest of an adult female. The bodies lay beneath a large stone with a beautiful engraving of a bull.

"These findings point to the possibility that human sacrifices were part of the ritual activity of these populations. Disabled may have been feared, hated or revered . . . we do not know whether this adolescent received special burial treatment in spite of being a dwarf or precisely because he was a dwarf," Formicola said.

Anthropologist David Frayer of the University of Kansas agrees that Upper Paleolithic multiple burials may point to ritual human sacrifices.

"There is no evidence – such as unhealed head wounds or flint projectiles — that any of the individuals in the Upper Paleolithic graves were sacrificed. However, it is also unlikely that multiple, simultaneous deaths were all accidental in the Upper Paleolithic," Frayer told Discovery News.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/18/sacrifice_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070618090000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Ancient Astronaut Alliance

2007-06-13T15:21:51Z

Brand new site...check it out!
http://ancientastronautalliance.ning.com/

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Polynesians -- And Their Chickens -- Arrived in Americas Before Columbus

2007-06-10T23:39:37Z

National Geographic News
June 4, 2007
The greatest testament we have today to the sailing abilities of the ancient Polynesians may be found in a few ancient chicken bones, a new study reveals.

The bones, which scientists recently dug up from a site on the central coast of Chile, offer a startling conclusion: Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas by probably a century or more, arriving at the latest in the early 1400s.

This means Polynesians not only colonized nearly every island in the South Pacific—making journeys over thousands of miles—but they also made the long hop all the way to the Americas.

The study may put an end to a raging debate about how chickens were introduced to the New World, the authors suggest.

Ancient DNA

The key finding emerged from ancient DNA extracted from one of the chicken bones.

"Being that these are the only pre-Columbian chicken bones that are known, they are very valuable," said lead author Alice Storey of the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

With that in mind, the team started with just one bone, which they broke apart to extract the remaining DNA.

They compared this chicken's DNA with the DNA of ancient chickens from archaeological sites across Polynesia and Southeast Asia.

(See a map of the region.)

The results show that the chicken was from Polynesian stock, since it had genetic mutations not seen in chickens brought to the Americas by the Europeans.

posted in Archaeology - 12 replies

Archaeologists Reconstruct Life In The Bronze Age At Site Of Southern Spain

2007-06-09T15:53:27Z

Science Daily — Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the Universidad de Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step to determine how life was in the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.

Since 1974, archaeologists from Granada, directed by professors Trinidad Nájera Colino and Fernando Molina González, have been working on the site of the Motilla del Azuer, in the municipal area of Daimiel (province of Ciudad Real), in search of the necessary information to reconstruct the day by day in this thrilling and unknown historical period.

The sites, known as “motillas”, represent one of the most peculiar types of prehistoric settlements in the Iberian Peninsula. They occupied the region of La Mancha in the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500 BC, and they are artificial mounds, 4 to 10 m high, a result of the destruction of a stone fortification of central plan with several concentric walled lines. Its distribution in the plain of La Mancha, with equidistanes of 4 to 5 kilometres, affects river meadows and low areas where the existence of pools was quite frequent until recent dates.

Although they were already known since the end of the 19th century, the motillas were erroneously considered to be burial mounds until the middle of the seventies, when the start of the research work on the Motilla del Azuer carried out by the Universidad de Granada and sponsored by the Department of Culture of Castile La Mancha showed that it was a fortification, surrounded by a small settlement and a necropolis. It has been the first site of this kind to be excavated in a scientific and systematic way.

Technical characteristics

The mound of the fortification which has been recovered has a diameter of about 50 metres, and is composed of a tower, two walled enclosures and a large courtyard. The central core is composed of a tower of masonry of square plan, with 7 metres high east and west fronts and an interior accessible through ramps inlaid in narrow corridors, which confer a particular nature to the place.

The researchers of the UGR explain that settlement of the Azuer contains the oldest well found in the Iberian Peninsula. The inside of this type of walled enclosures protected basic resources such as water, collected from the phreatic stratum through the well, and was also used to store and process cereals on a large scale, to keep the livestock occasionally and to product pottery and other home-made products, whose remains have also been found.

The site of the Motilla del Azuer has been possible thanks to the close collaboration between the Council of Communities of Castile la Mancha and the Public Service of Employment of Castile La Mancha (SEPECAM), who have financed the works, and the Universidad de Granada, thanks to the archaeologists of the GEPRAN, who have also had the support of the Town Council of Daimiel (Ciudad Real).

During the next excavation campaign, the Centre for Continuous Education of the Universidad de Granada will celebrate the second edition of the course ”Excavation Methodology and Techniques in the Archaeological Site of Motilla del Azuer”, offered from the 4th to the 22nd of September.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Universidad de Granada.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070605121009.htm

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Iron Age Mickey Mouse

2007-06-08T23:02:26Z

Swedish archaeologists have uncovered signs of a Viking precursor to Mickey Mouse. Among the objects found during excavations at Uppåkra in southern Sweden is an iron age figure bearing a strong resemblance to the classic cartoon character.

But archaeologist Jerry Rosenberg from Lund University is confident that the bronze brooch - used as a clasp to fasten women's clothing - was in fact intended to represent a Lion King rather than a mere mouse.

More:
http://www.thelocal.se/7544/

-can you imagine it...Mickey Mouse inspired looking items being historically accurate..hahah.

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Two radio pieces on antiquities trade and looting

2007-06-08T18:37:26Z

A good two-part story on antiquities looting and trading was on the radio program "Morning Edition" recently. Archived programs are here (click "Listen" on the pages for the audio):

1. "Tomb Raiders Threaten Mayan City's History"
National Public Radio "Morning Edition", May 28, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10416454

2. "Cooling U.S. Market Sends Tomb Raiders Abroad"
National Public Radio "Morning Edition", May 29, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10457558

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Archaeological Experiment Requires a Sail Back in Time

2007-06-08T13:41:44Z

source: http://www.cruisingworld.com/article.jsp?ID=52180&typeID=393&catID=559

Archaeological Experiment Requires a Sail Back in Time

Most people give Christopher Columbus credit for discovering the New World, but one archaeologist is out to prove that people not only crossed the North Atlantic from Europe to North America, but also sailed back to Europe as early as 6000 B.C.

As part of his thesis project to get his doctorate from the University of Bonn, Dominique Görlitz will set sail in July from New Jersey on the reed boat, Abora III, and he hopes to make landfall first in Spain and then in North Africa. He estimates that the trip will take about two months.

Though based on ancient drawings, Abora III will be equipped with modern navigation equipment. "We're not crazy enough to sail across the open ocean without any navigational equipment," Görlitz said. The boat will have a galley, which is situated in the middle of the ship, and two "basket cabins" will provide sleeping accommodations for his crew of nine. There are no heads on board, but Görlitz seems unconcerned about that minor inconvenience. "We have the biggest bathroom in the world right off the side of the boat," he said.

Görlitz gathered his diverse crew from magazine and television ads and on the Internet. He describes them as ordinary people from five different nations. There's a doctor, a teacher, a student, and a 69-year-old man along for the ride. Görlitz was much more concerned with the potential crew's personality than with their sailing experience. "They must have humor," he said.

Görlitz and his crew are in New Jersey busily rigging Abora III for her journey across the sea. Prior to launching, there will be test-sails on the Hudson River. The sight of this 40-foot vessel, built out of 12 tons of bundled reeds, might even make jaded New Yorkers do a double take. A sister ship, Abora II, is currently on display in New York City at the Circle Lines Terminal at 42nd Street and 12th Avenue. It arrived May 18, on a container ship from Germany.

Görlitz is out to disprove the theory that it would have been impossible in prehistoric times to sail across the North Atlantic and back due to heavy seas, sudden wind changes, and strong storms. Experts say that prehistoric boats would have been unable to sail against the predominant winds, a necessary component in successfully sailing the North Atlantic from west to east.

Görlitz has collected evidence that native plants—some used to make early medicine—and food was traded between North America and northwest Spain, which in turn, was imported into Africa. The plants and food had to get transported to each continent somehow, and Görlitz is convinced this occurred by boat.

He used stone drawings—estimated to date from 6000 to 4000 B.C.—that were found in upper Egypt to determine lines and have the reed boats constructed in Bolivia. In the depictions, the boats are drawn with conspicuous lines on the bow and stern that Görlitz surmised were keelboards. The keelboards are aligned along the centerline, and on the bow, they're far enough in front of the mast to allow the boat to sail into the wind. Görlitz says that Abora III can sail 70 degrees off the wind.

If the Abora III mission succeeds, Görlitz will be instrumental in rewriting history, which will be a sweet payoff for a project that's been 16 years in the making. Or as Görlitz puts it, "I've been working on this for half my life."

http://www.abora3.de/english/index_e.html

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Discovery of oldest human decorations -thought to be 82,000 years old

2007-06-06T00:48:14Z

Source- www.Crystalinks.com

The shell beads. Credit: Ian Cartwright, Institute of Archaeology.

Archaeologists have discovered shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old – making them the oldest dated human decorations.

These finds of handmade beads, in a limestone cave in Morocco, suggest that humans were fashioning purely symbolic objects in Africa 40,000 years before they did it in Europe. A paper on the discovery is published in this month’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The discovery of beads at the Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, in Eastern Morocco was made by an international team of archaeologists from the UK, Morocco, France and Germany, led by Oxford University’s Institute of Archaeology.

Twelve Nassarius shells were perforated in their centres, and showed signs of being suspended or hung. They also appeared to have been covered in red ochre, like other less well-dated African beads. These symbolic, decorative objects are considered early signs of modern human behaviour and mark shifts in human development. Similar beads have been found at sites from Algeria, Israel, and South Africa, which probably date back to about the same time or slightly after the finds from Taforalt.

Lead author Professor Nick Barton, Director of Oxford’s Institute of Archaeology, said: ‘ Bead making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange, or by long-distance social networks.

‘A major question in evolutionary studies today is “how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern?”. The appearance of ornaments such as these may be linked to a growing sense of self-awareness and identity among humans, and cultural innovations must have played a large role in human development.’

Preliminary work by the team has also shown that these Nassarius shells are not isolated occurrences, but are present at various other sites in Morocco. The researchers are waiting for the dating results for these, but they may turn out to be even older than the discovery at Taforalt.

Source: University of Oxford

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Bridging London's lost centuries

2007-06-05T18:34:50Z

By Trevor Timpson
BBC News

Two very different finds, dug up close to each other by Trafalgar Square, shine new light on the greatest puzzle of London archaeology - the "silent" centuries after Roman rule.
That the skeleton of "London's Last Roman" - or anything ancient and unknown - can be discovered in 2006 in Trafalgar Square is remarkable.

But when it comes to yielding secrets, the square's church, St Martin-in-the-Fields, has a long record.

When the present church was being built in the 18th Century a body was found in a reused Roman stone coffin. And in the 13th Century the authorities had to step in after treasure hunters ransacked the then church in search of "a gold hoard".

So in 2006 it was assumed that the man in a limestone coffin - dug up in the space between Victorian burial vaults and the church's boundary - was also a later burial in a reused Roman sarcophagus. His head had been lost, probably in the 19th century.

Then the result of the radio carbon dating came back from the lab in Florida to which a small bone had been sent. With 70% certainty, it said, the Last Roman had died some time between 390 and 430 AD.

To enthusiasts, the midpoint stood out - 410, the year that the hard-pressed Roman empire abandoned all claims to Britain. It was not a later burial at all.

Suddenly, says Francis Grew, senior curator at the Museum of London, there was "huge interest" in the find.

"We can say with some confidence that this is the latest scientifically dated burial from Roman London," he says.

Just metres away from where the coffin was discovered was something else which, if dug up in the garden, would probably be thrown away - a squashed, grey pot, hand-moulded, not made on a wheel, and with a crude decoration of lines and punch-marks.

"I assembled all the finds, laid out on a table for the first time," says Mr Grew, "and I got specialists from different fields and said: 'Tell me what you think of all this'."

He expected the Anglo-Saxon experts to show interest in the later Saxon jewellery found on the site.

Instead they went straight for the pot lying in fragments - grey and nondescript but massively important.

A type of pottery used by the earliest Saxon immigrants from northern Germany, it is dated to about 500AD - the earliest near-complete Saxon pot to have been discovered in central London.

200-year gap

This made the St Martin's dig hugely significant, shining a new light on the mystery of London's lost centuries.

Plenty happened in London in the 450 years following the end of Roman rule in 410. It became the seat of an English bishopric. Bede in the 730s called it "a mart of many nations".

So why could archaeologists find almost no evidence that London was inhabited at that time?

It was not until the 1980s that they realised they had been looking in the wrong place.

The Anglo-Saxon London, Lundenwic, was not on the site of Roman London - what is now the City - but in the West End, around Aldwych, the Strand and Trafalgar Square. Then objects and traces of buildings which had already been found in these places began to make sense.

But still there was a 200-year gap. Even Lundenwic remains could not be dated to before the seventh century.

Now, with the latest Roman burial and the earliest Saxon pot found within metres of each other, the gap has narrowed to just 90 years - and set everyone thinking about what it means for the transition from Roman to English London and the significance of the St Martin's site.

The site was surely a prominent place in ancient times - raised up above the Thames with views back to the ancient walls of Londinium and down towards what is now Whitehall and Westminster. Its reputation as a place where treasure could be found was still notorious in the 13th Century.

But what did it mean to the two sets of people - the ones who buried the "last Roman" and the ones who owned the grey pot - who are now almost in sight of each other in the archaeological record?

Moving

One thing Mr Grew is sure of is that enough remained of the cemetery in which the Last Roman lay and other graves now lost, to make it clear that this was a very special place.

"Anyone coming there in 500 would have been aware of the notable remains - perhaps a brick mausoleum crumbling away," he says. A Roman brick-kiln has also been found nearby.

And if there was a religious, sacred site, could it have been Christian? When the Last Roman died, Christianity had been officially favoured in the Roman Empire for decades - yet there are few Christian remains from Roman Britain and no identifiable churches in Roman London.

For the vicar of St Martin's, Nicholas Holtam, the discovery of the burial of the Last Roman is a moving experience.

The man was a contemporary of St Martin himself, Nicholas Holtam points out. And he believes there are signs that it may well have been a Christian burial.

It raises the possibility that St Martin's (first recorded in the 13th Century) has been a sacred site for much longer than we previously thought, he says.

He recognises that the evidence must be looked at scientifically, but adds: "I'd love it to be proved that this was a Christian site dating back to 410."

The Last Roman and the pot are both in The Missing Link display at the Museum of London until 8 August.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6700149.stm

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

Dry Fla. Lake Yields Artifacts

2007-06-05T15:18:35Z

Matt Sedensky, Associated Press

June 5, 2007 — A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida's largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats — and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again.

Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found.

Palm Beach County Archaeologist Chris Davenport said scores of bone fragments ranging from only a few inches to 8 inches long have been spotted in Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental U.S., behind Lake Michigan.

The lake is at its lowest level since record keeping began in 1932, at about 8.96 feet deep on Monday. That's about 4 to 5 feet below normal, exposing many areas for the first time in years.

"Right now, it's just a rush to identify things before they go back under water," said Chris Davenport, the archaeologist for Palm Beach County.

More than 17 sites have been identified in Palm Beach County's part of the lake in the last three months. They are scattered over miles of terrain. The drought has bared a rim around the lake up to a mile and a half wide at some points.

"It looks like it's part of one of the American Indian settlements that were there — people that were intentionally interred at some point," said State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler.

The state has alerted the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of the bones, but no decision has been made on their fate. No studies have been done on the human remains, but Wheeler

Further examination will be necessary to more accurately pinpoint the bones' age, though he noted they show extensive wear, he said.

An examination of the style of pottery found in the lake bed might do more to tell of the tribes who lived in the area than the bones themselves, because the human remains are so fragmented, Davenport said. No complete skeletons, skulls or other large fragments have been found.

However, the boats uncovered are relatively intact. They include a steam-powered dredge believed to have been used to dig a canal; the remnants of a steam ship scattered across a mile and a half; a wooden, motorized canoe; an early 1900s fishing boat with a large one-cylinder engine; and a fifth boat so badly decayed its purpose has yet to be determined.

Wheeler said one of the vessels is 50 to 60 feet long.

Archaeologists have left most of the discoveries where they were found, though an anchor, bottles, tools and some pottery have been excavated from the huge lake.

It's probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience to examine the dry lake bed, Davenport said. But with thieves also interested his discoveries, he is yearning for the lake to rise again.

"I'm hoping that the rains come back," he said. "Once it's covered, it's protected."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/05/floridalake_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070605093030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

posted in Archaeology - 0 replies

Mystery of Great Pyramid 'solved'

2007-06-05T03:03:32Z

A French architect claims to have solved the mystery of how Egypt's Great Pyramid was built.
Jean-Pierre Houdin said the 4,500-year-old pyramid, just outside Cairo, was built using an inner ramp to lift the massive stones into place.

Other theories contend that the three million stones - each 2.5 tons - were pushed into place using external ramps.

Mr Houdin studied the problem for eight years and used a computer model to illustrate how he thought it was done.

"This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works," said Mr Houdin as he unveiled his theory with a 3D computer simulation.

He believes workers used an outer ramp to build the first 43 metres (47 yards) then constructed an inner ramp to carry stones to the apex of the 137m pyramid.

The pyramid was built to house the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops.

The Grand Gallery inside the pyramid, another source of mystery for Egyptologists, housed a giant counter-weight used to hoist five 60 ton granite beams into position above the King's Chamber.

"This goes against both main existing theories," Egyptologist Bob Brier told Reuters news agency after Mr Houdin explained his hypothesis.

"I've been teaching them myself for 20 years but deep down I know they're wrong."

Mr Houdin said that an outer ramp all the way to the top of the pyramid would have blocked sight lines and left little room to work, while a long, frontal ramp would have used up too much stone.

Further confusing matters, there is little evidence left of external ramps at the site of the Great Pyramid.

Mr Houdin said the pyramid could have been built by 4,000 people using his technique instead of 100,000, as postulated by other theorists.

The architect is now assembling a team to verify his theory on site using radars and other non-invasive means.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6514155.stm

posted in Archaeology - 6 replies

Erosion

2007-06-04T08:25:28Z

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=840532007

"KEY coastal sites which tell the story of Scotland's ancient past are in danger of being washed away, experts warned yesterday.

Archaeologists said that historic treasures could be lost forever unless action is taken now.

The most endangered sites include Viking and Iron Age remains in Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides - where rare dry-stone brochs and Viking houses are threatened by global warming, rising sea levels, storms and erosion. "

- So, what to do? Protecting all those sites from erosion is not possible. I think they just have to hire more archeologists to document everything.
Because how can you ever prioritise? Is an iron age settlement more or less important then a 15thC castle?

posted in Archaeology - 2 replies

2,100-Year-Old Melon Found

2007-06-02T21:37:53Z

Kozo Mizoguchi, Associated Press

June 1, 2007 — Archaeologists digging in western Japan have excavated what they believe to be the oldest remains of a melon ever found, an official said Friday.

Based on a radiocarbon analysis, researchers estimate the half-rounded piece of fruit to be about 2,100 years old, said Shuji Yamazaki, a local official in the city of Moriyama.

The remains are believed to be the oldest of a melon that still has flesh on the rind, Yamazaki said. Previously, the oldest such find was believed to be remains found in China that date back to the fourth century A.D., according to local media reports.

The melon might have been so well-preserved because it was in a vacuum-packed state in a wet layer below the ground, an environment hostile to microorganisms that might otherwise have broken down the remains, Yamazaki said.

Melon seeds have been often found in archaeological digs around the country, but researchers rarely find the remains of melon flesh, Yamazaki said.
Moriyama is about 205 miles southwest of Tokyo.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/06/01/melon_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070601150000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

posted in Archaeology - 1 reply