Mapping the elephant ivory trade: New evidence revealed

Archaeologists from the University of York have conducted pioneering analysis on historic ivory, revealing where East African elephants roamed and where they were hunted in the 19th century.

Eastern Africa has been a major source of elephant ivory for millennia, with a sharp increase in trade witnessed during the 19thcentury fuelled by escalating demand from Europe and North America.

Desirable objects such as cutlery-handles, piano keys and billiard balls drove the extension of global trade networks and the industrialisation of the ivory-working industry. However, little was previously known about the precise origins of the hunted elephants and the trade-routes of primary suppliers at the time.

Conducting isotope analysis on historic East African ivory and skeletal remains, providing information about an elephant's diet and therefore likely habitat, scientists were able to determine the origin of previously un-localised ivory and map elephant geography in the region.

They found that ivory samples traded after 1890 match values of elephants living in forested interior regions of East Africa.

This supports previous evidence suggesting that an increase in hunting resulted in the eradication of elephants from along the coast of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania by the mid-19thcentury, driving trade inland.

Dr Ashley Coutu, lead researcher on the study and a Marie Curie Outgoing Global Fellow between York's Department of Archaeology and the University of Cape Town, South Africa, said: "Our results shed light on the significant historic ecological and socio-economic impact of the ivory trade, in addition to informing contemporary elephant conservation strategies.

"Today, elephants live in national parks and game reserves in these same landscapes, but are more restricted in terms of their movement than they would have been in the 19th century. Our database provides information on the historical ecology of these animals before there were regulations on their protection. By understanding elephant movement in the past, our research could potentially provide data to improve wildlife corridors for the movement of elephants between national parks and game reserves, which can often cause human-elephant conflict in these regions."

Professor Matthew Collins, Founder of BioArCh at York's Department of Archaeology and co-author of the paper, added: "Our findings help us to understand the interactions between humans and elephants during a time when there was an exponential demand for ivory from this region of Africa.

"Isotope and DNA analysis is often used to track the source of illegal ivory today. Our database of isotope values for both modern and historic East African elephants will add to the body of growing data to help us understand and track elephant populations on the African continent."
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Reference:

Science Daily. Past Horizons. 2016. “Mapping the elephant ivory trade: New evidence revealed”. Science Daily. Posted: October 19, 2016. Available online: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161019150915.htm

Anglo-Saxon plank-lined graves and tree-trunk coffins excavated

Archaeologists from MOLA have uncovered an important Anglo-Saxon cemetery in an excavation funded by Historic England in advance of a conservation and fishing lake and flood defence system at Wensum View in Norfolk. The waterlogged conditions of the river valley led to the remarkable preservation of burials that are extremely rare in the archaeological record, including plank-lined graves and tree-trunk coffins dating from the 7th-9th century AD.

Archaeologists have revealed evidence that this may have been the final resting place for a community of early Christians, including a timber structure thought to be a church or chapel, of which there are few examples from this period. The wooden grave markers, east-west alignment of the coffins and the evident lack of grave goods all support the Christian origins of the cemetery.

Anglo-Saxon coffins seldom survive because wood decays over time. Evidence to date has largely consisted staining in the ground from decayed wood.

Hollowed out oak tree logs

The 81 dug-out coffins discovered comprise oak trees split in two length-ways and hollowed out. This type of coffin is first seen in Europe in the Early Bronze Age and reappears in the early medieval period. From Britain they are mentioned in antiquarian records from the late 19th century, but this is the first time they have been properly excavated and recorded by modern archaeologists. The burials, in hollowed out logs, were positioned in the lower half and the upper half rested on top to form a lid. Although they are not decorative, it would have taken considerable effort to hollow a single coffin, an estimated four man days. The fact that evidence for similar burial rites is also found in earlier cemeteries may signify the blending of pagan and Christian traditions.

Plank lined graves

The six plank-lined graves found  are very rare in in this country and are believed to be the earliest known examples from Britain. The graves were cut into the ground, lined with expertly hewn timber planks, the body placed inside and planks positioned on top to form a cover. The relationship between the two burial types is not fully understood, but may denote an evolution in burial practices. Tree-ring dating is being undertaken to date the timber.

Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: “These rare and exceptionally well-preserved graves are a significant discovery which will advance our understanding of Middle-Saxon religious beliefs and rural communities. This cemetery has been revealed because under the current system, archaeological surveys are required before work on a sensitive site starts. This site has immense potential for revealing the story of the community who once lived there.”

James Fairclough, archaeologist from MOLA, said: “The combination of acidic sand and alkaline water created the perfect conditions for the skeletons and wooden graves to survive, revealing remarkable details of Christian Anglo-Saxon burial practices.”

Gary Boyce, Land Owner of Wensum View, said: “It’s really exciting to have such a rare and important heritage site on my land. We set out to create a lake to maximise conservation and biodiversity, to alleviate flooding in the river valley and create a new spot for anglers to fish, and along the way have revealed the hidden secrets of the area’s past.”

Matthew Champion, the local archaeologist who made the initial discoveries at the site, said: “This discovery is going to significantly add to our understanding of just how the settlement patterns in the river valley developed over time, and is a fantastic example of what can be achieved by working closely with landowners.”

Tim Pestell, Curator at Norwich Castle Museum, where the finds from the dig will be kept said: “The site was in use in the heyday of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia and positioned next to a strategic river crossing. As with much of East Anglia at this early date, we have no documentary sources that relate to this site and so it is archaeological finds like this that are crucial in helping us to understand the development of the kingdom.

“This find is a dramatic example of how new evidence is helping to refine our knowledge of this fascinating period when Christianity and the Church were still developing on the ground. Detailed analysis of the cemetery provides the hope of better understanding the actual people living according to this new religion.”

The discovery is shedding light on a previously unknown religious site and early Christian rural community. Continued research and scientific testing, in the form of ancient DNA, stable isotope and dental calculus analysis, will help to develop biographies for the people buried. Archaeologists hope to be able to say more about where these people came from, whether they were related, and what their diet and health were like, once research is complete.
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Reference:

Past Horizons. 2016. “Anglo-Saxon plank-lined graves and tree-trunk coffins excavated”. Past Horizons. Posted: November 16, 2016. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/11/2016/anglo-saxon-plank-lined-graves-and-tree-trunk-coffins-excavated

Ancient skeleton covered in cannabis shroud unearthed in China

A team of archaeologists led by Hongen Jiang with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences working in the Turpan Basin in a northwestern part of China has unearthed the skeleton of a man who died between 2,500 and 2,800 years ago and was covered with a cannabis shroud when he was buried. In their paper published in the journal Economic Botany, the team describes how they were continuing work on exploring an ancient cemetery looking for clues about early cannabis use and happened upon the unusual find.

Humans have a long history of using cannabis for a variety of purposes—as hemp, it has been used to make rope and clothes; its seeds have been consumed to gain nutrition from the oils they contain, but perhaps most notoriously, the plant has been burned or eaten to gain a feeling of euphoria. In this new find, it appears the plant may have been used as part of a burial ritual.

The skeleton has been identified as once belonging to a Caucasian man approximately 35 years old at the time of his death. Those that had buried him had placed a willow pillow under his head and had then placed a shroud of (13) cannabis plants over his chest reaching from below his pelvis at one end to the side of his face on the other. The skeleton lay in one of the 240 graves in the area known as the Jiayi cemetery. The people that lived in the area at the time were part of a Kingdom from 3,000 and 2,000 years ago known as the Subeixi. Prior research has shown the people lived there because it was an oasis in the desert, one that had become an important place for travelers to rest during their trek along the Silk Road.

The researchers note that other examples of cannabis use have been found in the other nearby graves, but not as shrouds—mainly they were simply seeds or just leaves tossed into a grave site before burial. They point out that their find is the first to have full cannabis plants and the first time it has ever been seen used as a shroud. They believe the inclusion of whole plants suggests that the plants were grown locally—also the ripeness of the heads suggested they had been harvested and buried in the latter part of the summer. And because the heads were covered in glandular trichomes, which contain THC, the active ingredient in such plants, they believe that it was normally used as a psychoactive drug.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2017. “Ancient skeleton covered in cannabis shroud unearthed in China”. Phys.org. Posted: October 6, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-ancient-skeleton-cannabis-shroud-unearthed.html

Archaeologist discovers a new style of Viking combat

Sunlight bounces off the sword blade as an archaeologist clad in chain mail smashes it down upon his opponent’s shield. It strikes with a loud thud, but a swift tilt of the shield quickly defects the blow. The opponent is safe, for now.

Playing through many more variations of such combat scenarios has helped combat archaeologist Rolf Warming, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, to “rediscover” Viking fighting techniques.

Wearing 12 kilos of armour, Warming allowed himself to be attacked by a professional martial arts instructor to figure out how the Vikings used their shields to fend off attacks.

“It turns out that the Vikings may have used their shields much more actively than previously thought,” says Warming, who has been studying shield construction and Viking fighting techniques as part of his master’s thesis on the martial practices of the Viking Age.

It is the first time that Viking fighting techniques have been scientifically tested using sharp swords and realistic shields, he says. Archaeologist took a sword to the head

Warming’s methods were pretty brutal, but caused some initial nervousness.

“It was fun but I was also a little nervous because we had to really hit hard, with both force and intent, for it to be realistic,” says Warming.

During the experiment, Warming took a hit on the head. Fortunately he was wearing a helmet and the event only served to strengthen his theory.

“It happened when I was was using the shield in a passive way. This illustrates the futility of passive shield use and suggests that they didn’t use the shield in that way,” says Warming.

Warming produced a Viking shield known as a “round shield” for the experiment. The design was based on various archaeological discoveries throughout Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

The shield is approximately one metre in diameter and made of pine planks, covered in treated pig leather, and trimmed in ox rawhide. On top of that, it has a whole lot of battle scars.

“The deep cut here on the edge is from when I used the shield as passive protection. The shield clearly worked better when I used it more actively,” he says.

This observation led to one of the main conclusions of Warming’s thesis: the Vikings may have used their shields to actively fend off blows. Otherwise, they would have quickly broken, he says.

Warming does not suggest that there was one single fighting style used by all Vikings. But this active technique was probably an important aspect of their fighting repertoire, he says. Functioned almost as a weapon itself

Active shield use means that the Vikings probably not only hid behind the shield, but also used it actively to parry and strike their opponent.

Warming tested seven different shield-sword scenarios. He switched shield positions from a crooked angle and a right angle, and switched between different variations of active and passive postures. Afterwards, he analysed the shields to see which technique worked best.

“When I actively moved forward with the shield at both angles, it seemed almost like a weapon, because you could both avoid the battle and also deliver forceful blows to the enemy with the shield edge,” he says.

No blood was shed during the experiment, but certain blows may well have been fatal if it had been a real Viking battle.

Need to review current knowledge of Viking combat

Along with the experimental shield tests, Warming also studied the literature on Viking combat techniques and analysed remains of past shields collected from sites around what was then the Danish territory.

Based on this, Warming concluded that Vikings had used their round shields almost as actively as their swords in combat.

It is a strong and well-founded conclusion, says archaeologist Henriette Lyngstrøm, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who supervised Warming’s project. She is “incredibly impressed” with his work.

“We’ve never seen the Viking round shields as something that they used actively in battle. But based on Rolf’s studies, we can now say how the Vikings used them and no longer base it on assumptions,” she says. Mysterious shield damage can now be explained

The results are in line with previous research, and the findings are undoubtedly important for other archaeologists, says Lyngstrøm.

“It solves a problem for us archaeologists in connection with investigations of shields,” she says.

For the most part, only the shield boss remains, that is, the metal dome that sits in the middle of the shield. And they often have some nicks and damage that archaeologists have not been able to explain previously.

“But knowing that shields have been used actively to ward off blows, it suddenly makes sense,” says Lyngstrøm. Results are consistent with experience

Archaeologist Anne-Christine Larsen is interested in the new results. Larsen is the chief investigator at the Trelleborg Viking castle, part of the National Museum of Denmark.

She and her colleagues have often discussed Viking fighting styles and techniques, and often have to make some assumptions about it.

“Many of the warriors in Trelleborg’s fighting groups and in our annual re-enactment of a Viking battle use their shields actively. So it’s fantastic to finally have some scientific evidence that matches these observations,” says Larsen.

Controlled experimental archaeology

The conclusions are particularly robust, because they include real data from an actual test of the shield, says Larsen.

“It’s not enough to just write about it, you need to actually test these hypotheses in practice. This is what he’s done and it’s led to some really interesting results that we can certainly use at Trelleborg,” she says.

Lyngstrøm is also a big fan of this kind of experimental archaeology.

“He’s combined the best of two worlds by putting himself in the actual situation and being beaten with swords. That’s what experimental archaeology is all about,” says Lyngstrøm. Next stage: experiment with axes and arrows

Warming is not yet done with the violent world of experimental Viking battle techniques.

He now plans to expand the shield experiment and find out exactly how much this piece of weaponry could withstand during a battle.

“I hope to get funding to conduct similar studies, but with axes and arrows,” he says.
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Reference:

Kusnitzoff, Johanne Uhrenholt. 2017. “Archaeologist discovers a new style of Viking combat”. Science Nordic. Posted: October 30, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/archaeologist-discovers-new-style-viking-combat

Bronze Age city discovered in Northern Iraq

Archaeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen have uncovered a large Bronze Age city not far from the town of Dohuk in northern Iraq. The excavation work has demonstrated that the settlement, which is now home to the small Kurdish village of Bassetki in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, was established in about 3000 BC and was able to flourish for more than 1200 years. The archaeologists also discovered settlement layers dating from the Akkadian Empire period (2340-2200 BC), which is regarded as the first world empire in human history.

Scientists headed by Professor Peter Pfälzner from the University of Tübingen and Dr. Hasan Qasim from the Directorate of Antiquities in Dohuk conducted the excavation work in Bassetki between August and October 2016. As a result, they were able to preempt the construction work on a highway on this land.

The former significance of the settlement can be seen from the finds discovered during the excavation work. The city already had a wall running around the upper part of the town from approx. 2700 BC onwards in order to protect its residents from invaders. Large stone structures were erected there in about 1800 BC. The researchers also found fragments of Assyrian cuneiform tablets dating from about 1300 BC, which suggested the existence of a temple dedicated to the Mesopotamian weather god Adad on this site. There was a lower town about one kilometre long outside the city centre. Using geomagnetic resistance measurements, the archaeologists discovered indications of an extensive road network, various residential districts, grand houses and a kind of palatial building dating from the Bronze Age. The residents buried their dead at a cemetery outside the city.

The settlement was connected to the neighbouring regions of Mesopotamia and Anatolia via an overland roadway dating from about 1800 BC.

Bassetki was only known to the general public in the past because of the “Bassetki statue,” which was discovered there by chance in 1975. This is a fragment of a bronze figure of the Akkadian god-king Naram-Sin (about 2250 BC). The discovery was stolen from the National Museum in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2003, but was later rediscovered by US soldiers. Up until now, researchers were unable to explain the location of the find. The archaeologists have now been able to substantiate their assumption that an important outpost of Akkadian culture may have been located there.

Although the excavation site is only 45 kilometres from territory controlled by the IS, it was possible to conduct the archeological work without any disturbances. “The protection of our employees is always our top priority. Despite the geographical proximity to IS, there’s a great deal of security and stability in the Kurdish autonomous areas in Iraq,” said Professor Peter Pfälzner, Director of the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at the IANES of the University of Tübingen. The research team consisting of 30 people lived in the city of Dohuk, which is only 60 kilometres north of Mosul, during the excavation work.

In another project being handled by the “ResourceCultures” collaborative research centre (SFB 1070), Pfälzner’s team has been completing an archaeological inspection of territory in the complete area surrounding Bassetki as far as the Turkish and Syrian borders since 2013 – and 300 previously unknown sites have been discovered. The excavations and the research work in the region are due to be continued during the summer of 2017. “The area around Bassetki is proving to be an unexpectedly rich cultural region, which was located at the crossroads of communication ways between the Mesopotamian, Syrian and Anatolian cultures during the Bronze Age. We’re therefore planning to establish a long-term archaeological research project in the region in conjunction with our Kurdish colleagues,” says Pfälzner. The excavation work is being funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
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Reference:

Past Horizons. 2016. “Bronze Age city discovered in Northern Iraq”. Past Horizons. Posted: November 4, 2016. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/11/2016/bronze-age-city-discovered-in-northern-iraq

NYC launches archaeological repository and digital archive

Nearly 1 million antiquities including ceramics, a bayonet, perfume and medicine bottles—even a 200-year-old douche device—have been unearthed at construction sites in New York City, artifacts that help shed light on local history and the people who once lived there.

Excavated from 31 sites across the city's five boroughs, the objects—frequently in fragments—had been stored for decades at 14 locations across the city—until now.

On Wednesday, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission unveiled a climate-controlled repository where all the specimens are housed under one roof. It also launched an online database of the archaeological finds that have been cataloged and photographed in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York.

The 1,400-square-foot archaeological repository in the basement of an office tower in midtown Manhattan is lined with shelves containing more than 1,500 antiquities-filled boxes and about two dozen objects on view. The collection will be open only by appointment to researchers, scholars and anyone interested.

"They run the gamut," said Commission Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan. "There are artifacts that go back thousands of years or you have more recent finds from the late 19th and early 20th century."

The artifacts range from a hunter's spear point used to kill animals from 8,000 years ago, excavated in College Point, Queens, to an early 20th century toy teacup discovered in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan.

What makes the repository particularly fascinating is that it contains objects New Yorkers used in their daily life, said Srinivasan.

"These artifacts tell us about what people did at that time, what kinds of objects they used. They tell you about their lifestyles, about their eating habits and occupations," she said. They show "New York was extremely diverse."

The project to move the objects to a central location started in 2014, when the city first announced the creation of an archaeological repository named The Nan A. Rothschild Research Center in 2014. It's named after an urban archaeologist and professor of anthropology at Columbia University who has directed several New York City excavations.

The archaeological collections started in 1979 after the city's environmental review law went into effect, requiring any development to consider the impact on archaeology.

Among other objects in the repository are 19-century marbles, hand-rolled from clay or made from stone, found in City Hall Park, which then housed barracks, prisons and almshouses. There are "health and beauty" items from the 1800s found near the Van Cortlandt Manor in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, likely discarded when the property was being transformed into a city park in 1889. There are cold cream jars, a "hair invigorator" bottle and medicine bottles that contained high levels of opiates in an era of no regulatory oversight.

Among the more unusual finds is a device made of cow bone that women used for douches. It was unearthed near City Hall. Dog bones were found in College Point, Queens, in the 1930s. Researchers determined the canine was buried by Native Americans more than 1,000 years ago, suggesting that dogs were considered not only for hunting but also as afterlife companions.

All the objects have been studied by archaeologists, said Amanda Sutphin, the commission's director of archaeology. "Understanding how we've evolved and how some of our issues are the same is really fascinating," she said. "It can offer lessons for today and tomorrow."
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “NYC launches archaeological repository and digital archive”. Phys.org. Posted: October 5, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-nyc-archaeological-repository-digital-archive.html

What colour did the Vikings paint their houses?

Did Vikings paint their houses white or red? Which colours were popular, and when?

These questions were the focus of a furious debate among researchers during a seminar entitled “Colourful Vikings” hosted by the Centre for Historical-Archaelogical Research and Communication in Denmark (as also known as Sagnlandet Lejre).

Archaeologists at Sagnlandet Lejre are currently reconstructing a full sized royal Viking hall.

When finished, it will measure 60 metres long, be slightly oval shaped, and built from planks of oak. But exactly what colours the original hall was painted with, remains a mystery.

Eighteenth century preservationist repainted Viking objects

Archaeologists have found a range of wooden Viking objects that have retained some colour, and preserve some evidence of the fashions of the day. But even so, we cannot be completely sure about the exact colours used, says Mads Christensen, a chemist from the National Museum of Denmark.

He refers to objects found in the tomb of Gorm the Old, one of Denmark’s earliest kings, in west Denmark.

“Various wooden objects found in Gorm the Old’s tomb in Jelling were probably painted with white, red, green, black, and yellow. They’re dated to around 960 CE,” says Christensen.

The colours of these 1,000-year-old pieces of timber are no longer visible, but Christensen was able to chemically extract traces of pigment from the wood. But he still cannot tell how intense the original colours might have been.

“We can determine that the colours were there, but we can’t tell how intense they were,” he says.

On top of this, the objects were likely repainted with a protective layer by a well-meaning conservationist in the eighteenth century, which somewhat muddles the results.
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Reference:

Kusnitzoff, Johanne Uhrenholt. 2016. “What colour did the Vikings paint their houses?”. Science Nordic. Posted: October 16, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/what-colour-did-vikings-paint-their-houses

Proteins allow archaeologists to look further back in time

A group of scientists have developed a new method to sequence 3.8-million-year-old proteins. The new method, known as proteomics, makes it possible to analyse samples that are up to 40 million years old.

And with the right material, they could even analyse samples that date back to the age of the dinosaurs, says lead-author Matthew Collins, an archaeologist at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

“It’s the most exciting study I’ve ever published,” says Collins.

Prehistoric people loved eggshells

Collins analysed eggshells from famous archaeological sites, including Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa and Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

Prehistoric people used the shells to create art and to transport water. The shells are particularly suitable for this type of analysis as they are thick, durable, and survive under a range of environmental conditions.

“We’ve known for many years that proteins provide more clues to the past, but when we looked at the breakdown of proteins in eggshells, it gave us unexpected results in comparison with other fossil material, and until now we didn’t really know why,” says Collins.

Colleague: Excellent and ground-breaking study

Professor Mike Richards, an archaeologist from Simon Fraser University in Canada is impressed by the new results, which are published in the scientific journal eLife.

“It’s an excellent, ground-breaking study,” he writes in an email to ScienceNordic. “It shows that the proteins can survive in extremely old samples and at the same time they give a very plausible explanation of how it’s possible.”

“This will be a study that everyone else cites when they use the same method to extract and sequence old proteins,” writes Richards.

Protein and DNA go hand in hand

Proteins do not contain the same information as DNA. So the new method cannot replace DNA in archaeological research. It does, however, offer a useful complementary technique and allows scientists to look further back in time than is possible with DNA alone, says Collins.

Richards agree. Proteins are much more stable over time and so they have great potential to provide phylogenetic information in samples where DNA analysis is not possible.

“Protein sequences are not as informative as DNA sequences and can only give us limited information, but they are still very important. And this is a really exciting new method,” writes Richards.

A key to the past

Collins is clearly excited by the new method, which has been 21 years in the making.

“It allows us to speculate on the factors that are necessary for proteins to survive. Protein decay was delayed in the system that we studied, as water only had access to the surface of the protein. But we might find insanely old proteins in, for example, a system with absolutely no water,” he says.

We can learn a lot about human development in mammalian evolution and potentially go as far back as the dinosaurs.

“We recently published a study on Neanderthals, where there was no DNA material so we only had proteins. I think it’s already revolutionising research,” says Collins.
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Reference:

Persson, Charlotte Price. 2016. “Proteins allow archaeologists to look further back in time”. Science Nordic. Posted: October 13, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/proteins-allow-archaeologists-look-further-back-time

New method reveals the secrets of bog bodies

Protein analyses on Denmark’s large collection of bog bodies gives archaeologists deeper insights into Iron Age culture and society.

Archaeologists have learned a lot about the lives of Iron Age Europeans from the mummified remains preserved in bogs--including how they dressed.

But not even the best-preserved bog can withstand the ravages of time. And archaeologists could not identify the exact origin of fibres from hair, wool, or skin in such old, degraded garments.

But this is all about to change, thanks to a new method, which analyses proteins in the fibres to determine exactly what type of animal they came from.

“With proteins, we could make a completely accurate species identification in 11 out of 12 samples and show that species identification that was carried out by microscopy on half of the samples was incorrect,” says lead-author Luise Brandt, who completed the research during her Ph.D. at the University of Copenhagen, but is now based at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The new technique can for the first time help archaeologists to differentiate between goats or sheeps wool, for example, which would otherwise be difficult to do when studying hairs that had spent 2000 years in a bog, says Brandt.

Skins provides insight into Iron Age culture

Karin Frei, from the National Museum, Denmark, sees great potential in the new method, which should help archaeologists to learn more about how the prehistoric societies produced clothing from animals.

Frei was not involved in the new research, but she has also studied wool garments preserved in peat bogs.

“The method is very exciting because it allows us to clarify several archaeological issues, which have often been difficult to study with any certainty. This new method allows us to form a much more accurate picture,” says Frei.

According to Brandt, her method should help to identify how people selected the material from which to make their clothes, which may give an insight into the resources available at the time in that society.

"It’s important to know what kind of material you have chosen for what [purpose], and there were various skins that were particularly useful for different functions. It tells us whether they kept or hunted the animals at that time, and beyond the practical aspects, the choice of material also reflects their tastes, or a desire to send a certain signal through what they wore,” says Brandt.

For example, clothes are typically an indicator of a person’s position in society.

Hair breaks down in acidic bog environment

Even 2,000 years ago, Iron Age people in Northern Europe cared about what their clothes were made of and how they were made.

Archaeological findings have revealed, that people had a deep knowledge of the different animal skins and their characteristics, which influenced the cuts and appearance of the materials they used.

But there was a lot of confusion about which type of animal skins were actually used.

In 2011, Brandt tried to extract DNA from various materials found on bog bodies in Denmark. But she hit a dead end.

The DNA was too degraded to work out what type of material the clothes were made out of. So she switched her attention to proteins.

“I found out that proteins are preserved, ten times longer than DNA,” says Brandt.

The protein analyses showed that the composition of amino acids--the building blocks of proteins--in the various material changes according to animal species. They can therefore act as a fingerprint for the type of animal that the material came from.

Cloaks sewn with great care

Brandt analysed 12 samples from ten cloaks and a tunic from the Danish National Museum’s collection of leather suits that were preserved at a number of archaeological sites in Jutland, West Denmark. All of the garments are around 2000 years old.

She successfully identified the animal species in 11 out of 12 samples. Two samples came from cattle, three from goat, and six from sheep. The twelfth sample is from either a sheep or a goat, but this test was inconclusive as the protein that distinguishes between sheep and goat was not preserved.

The results suggest that Iron Age garments were made exclusively from the skins of domesticated animals, and not wild animals as popular mythology often suggests.

Tunic made from a young calf

More sensational is the discovery that that one of the garments, a tunic buried in Møgel bog in Jutland, west Denmark, was made from calf leather. It contained a protein found in blood—haemoglobin.

This particular type of haemoglobin is only produced during the last months of pregnancy and in the first three months after birth in the young calves, after which it is replaced by another type of haemoglobin.

“This extraordinary result told us that it was not only made from leather from a cow, but on top of that, it came from a calf,” says Brandt.

This discovery, along with the ability to extract proteins from 2000 year-old animal skin, gives archaeologists a greater understanding of Iron Age textile production.

Perhaps leather was just as important as meat

Brandt speculates that the skins may even have been just as important as the meat to local Iron Age people of the time.

“I think that the smoking gun was the haemoglobin. We can see that they went to great lengths to make the garments and choose the right skin,” says Brandt.

“But now we can see that they used calfskin for the tunic, which could suggest that the skin was a really important part of why they slaughtered young animals and that it was an important product,” says Bradt.

Livestock in the Iron Age were well-developed, but our perception is usually that they were bred primarily for food. But the new results suggest that the animals served a larger purpose.

Frei agrees.

“This is very important for how we view these Iron Age people and the society that they lived in,” says Frei.

“Because they chose calfskin, which is softer and more flexible than skin from older animals, we immediately get the feeling that these people didn’t just wear anything. It suggests a society that made clear decisions about what they found to be comfortable to wear, which is also what we do today,” she says.
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Reference:

Persson, Charlotte Price. 2016. “New method reveals the secrets of bog bodies”. Science Nordic. Posted: August 12, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/new-method-reveals-secrets-bog-bodies

Canadian anthropologist in a tight squeeze

In order to do her exciting excavation of fossils in South Africa’s Rising Star cave complex, Marina Elliottmust squeeze into some very narrow passages. Researchers have already uncovered am astounding 1,800 fragments of bones and teeth from 15 individuals of Homo naledi, somehow related to our own species.

A cranial capacity the size of a large orange

Although they share many features with us, they are also very different, says Elliott: “They are quite a bit smaller than modern humans and they had a very, very tiny head. They had a cranial capacity about a third the size of a modern human, so about the size of a large orange.

“And the body below this little head is quite slim, very long limbs, quite a short trunk, but a real combination of features that we haven’t seen in any other early hominid species.”

A ‘treasure trove’ of fossils

The site is highly significant as a “veritable treasure trove” of material that is not encased in hard rock, but preserved in relatively soft material which means it can be relatively easily unearthed, relatively intact.

Cousins or more?

Beyond that, Elliott says finding these 15 individuals of all ages may change our understanding of human evolution. “We don’t know yet whether Homo naledi is on the human line or just a distant cousin, but what it does tell us is that the picture that we’ve been painting for many years is a bit more complicated than we thought at first.”

Marina Elliott got her PhD in biological anthropology at Simon Fraser University in western Canada. She was named one of the National Geographic Society’s 2016 Emerging Explorers. She is now South Africa’s Witwatersrand University. Results of her work were published in the current edition of theJournal of Human Evolution.
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Reference:

Desjardins, Lynn. 2016. “Canadian anthropologist in a tight squeeze”. Radio Canada International Net. Posted: August 5, 2016. Available online: http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/08/05/canadian-marina-elliott-homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-fossils/

This female skeleton has been discovered at an ancient burial ground on the site of the Queen's Hillsborough Castle residence in Northern Ireland

These are the remains of a well-preserved adult female found in an ancient burial ground at Hillsborough Castle, the Queen’s residence in Northern Ireland where archaeologists believe the cemetery could have been connected to a medieval church which once stood there.

Her skeleton could be 1,000 years old. She was unearthed by volunteers during the first day of digging at the castle, built during the 1780s on grounds now thought to have been used long before medieval times.

Slate roof tiles, nails and mortar discoveries could also be signs of a settlement in Hillsborough before the Georgian village that exists today.

Rosanagh Fuller, of Historic Royal Palaces, says the finds - made with the help of more than 300 local volunteers - are “extremely exciting”. Further analysis is expected to reveal more about a previously unknown part of the castle’s story.
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Reference:

Culture24 Reporter. 2016. “This female skeleton has been discovered at an ancient burial ground on the site of the Queen's Hillsborough Castle residence in Northern Ireland”. Culture24. Posted: August 4, 2016. Available online: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art559811-hillsborough-castle-northern-ireland-county-down

Sensational grave find in Cypriote Bronze Age city

An archaeological expedition from the University of Gothenburg has discovered one of the richest graves from the Late Bronze Age ever found on the island of Cyprus. The grave and its offering pit, located adjacent the Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke, contained many fantastic gold objects such as a diadem, pearls, earrings and Egyptian scarabs, as well as more than 100 richly ornamented ceramic vessels. The objects, which originate from several adjacent cultures, confirm the central role of Cyprus in long-distance trade.

Hala Sultan Tekke, a Bronze Age city from 1600-1150 BC that covered an area of up to 50 hectares, had far-reaching trade connections that included Sweden. Peter Fischer, professor of Cypriote archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, has led the excavations performed by the Swedish Cyprus expedition for seven seasons since 2010.

'The excavations in May and June this year were the most successful to date. We discovered an older city quarter from around 1250 BC and outside the city we found an incredibly rich grave, one of the richest in Cyprus from this period, and an offering pit next to it. The fact that we have discovered a burial site from the Late Bronze Age is quite sensational, since those who died around this time were usually buried within the settlement,' says Fischer.

The area where the grave was found is exposed to erosion caused by farming. Prior to the excavation, a so-called geophysical survey was performed using radar equipment able to identify what is in the ground down to a depth of two metres. The surveying revealed almost 100 underground 'pits', some of which turned out to be wells, some offering pits and - as this year - a grave.

'Wells are usually one metre in diameter, but this structure was 4 x 3 metres. The grave seems to be a family tomb for eight children ages 5-10 years and nine adults, of whom the oldest was about 40 years old. The life expectancy was much shorter back then than it is today,' says Fischer.

The archaeologists found over 100 ceramic vessels and several gold finds, including a diadem, beads, earrings and Egyptian scarabs (picture 1), in the grave and the offering pit. The finds also include gemstones and five cylinder seals, some produced locally and some from Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as a bronze dagger.

The archaeologists assign the greatest importance to the more than 140 complete ceramic vessels, most of which were decorated with spectacular illustrations of for example people sitting in a chariot drawn by two horses and a woman wearing a beautiful dress (picture 2). There were also vases decorated with religious symbols and animal illustrations of for example fish. Many of the vessels were imported mainly from Greece and Crete but also from Anatolia, or the equivalence of present-day Turkey.

'The pottery carries a lot of archaeological information. There were for example high-class Mycenaean imports, meaning pottery from Greece, dated to 1500-1300 BC. The motif of the woman, possibly a goddess, is Minoan, which means it is from Crete, but the vase was manufactured in Greece. Back in those days, Crete was becoming a Greek "colony",' says Fischer.

According to Fischer, the painting of the woman's dress is highly advanced and shows how wealthy women dressed around this time. The motif can also be found on frescos for example in the Palace of Knossos in Heraklion, Crete. Other finds are from Egypt. Two of the stone scarabs are gold-mounted and one features hieroglyphs spelling 'men-kheper-re' next to an illustration of a pharaoh. This has given the archaeologists a unique opportunity to tie the roughly 3 500-year-old find to a historic person. The inscription refers to Egypt's most powerful pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC), during whose reign Egypt peaked in size and influence as he conquered both Syria and parts of Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq.

'We also found evidence in the city of large-scale manufacturing and purple-dying of textiles. These products were used in the trade with the high cultures in Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Crete and Greece, which explains the rich imported finds.

What is most interesting about the finds is the dating: they are from 1500/1400 BC, but the researchers have still only found the burial site but not the city from this period.

'It must have been a rich city judging from the grave we found this year. But it is most likely located closer to the burial site in an area that still has not been explored,' says Fischer.

This year's excavation period is over and until next year's on-site work begins, the researchers have some intense processing of finds to look forward to.

'In spring 2017 we'll continue our uncovering of parts of the city and the burial site. As the integrity of both areas is threatened by agricultural activities, there is a need for quick action to secure our shared cultural heritage before it is destroyed forever,' says Fischer.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “Sensational grave find in Cypriote Bronze Age city”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 10, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/uog-sgf081016.php

Archaeologists have uncovered a massive palace at the legendary birthplace of King Arthur

British archaeologists have reported the discovery of massive walls that appear to be part of a Dark Ages palace complex that existed around the same time and place as King Arthur’s birthplace in the famous legend of Camelot.

The walls, located in the English village of Tintagel in southwest Cornwall, enclose a number of buildings that would have formed the royal centre of theKingdom of Dumnonia in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, experts suggest.

The dozen or so buried buildings discovered inside the 1-metre-thick (3-foot) masonry walls contained hundreds of fine glass fragments from medieval France and pottery shards from Late-Roman amphorae and Phocaean red-slip ware, thought to have carried wine from modern-day Turkey and olive oil from northern Africa.

The exotic origins of these artefacts suggest that whoever was living inside this building complex would have likely been very wealthy, and probably royalty. 

"It isn't just a trading centre to move olive oil around, they're actually indulging in it, they're feasting here," one of the team, Winn Scutt from English Heritage,told BBC News.

So the elite probably lived here, but why do people think it could be King Arthur?

Well, first thing’s first: the legend of King Arthur is exactly that - a legend. Despite the fact that the mythological figure has been wildly popular for centuries, no one’s actually been able to prove he existed.

But what makes Arthur so intriguing is the way we can tie certain historical places and events to him. If we look at the original source of the Arthur legend, the author points to a fortress at the same site as the recently unearthed palace complex as being Arthur's birthplace.

"Geoffrey of Monmouth, a 12th century Welsh cleric, recorded one of the first detailed written accounts of King Arthur's life in his Historia Regum Britanniae(History of the Kings of Britain), likely taken from earlier oral traditions. 

In Geoffrey's account, completed around 1136, King Arthur was conceived in the 5th century in a fortress at Tintagel that had fallen into ruin by Geoffrey's time. The ruins of a castle that was completed about a century after Geoffrey lived still stand near the dig site where the Dark Ages buildings were discovered."

Geoffrey’s account is also the origin of famous details of Arthur’s life, including his friendship with the wizard Merlin, and when he pulled a sword from a stone.

To make things even more interesting, a slate engraved with "Artognou", Latin for the English name Arthnou, was uncovered at the site back in 1998.

The myth of King Arthur states that during the 5th or 6th century, he managed to unite the Britons so they could fight off the invading Anglo-Saxons and bring about the peaceful age of Camelot.

Historians generally agree that these events did actually happen, but whether or not a king named Arthur orchestrated them has yet to be proven. Although the legend states that he won some 12 battles against the Anglo-Saxons, his name does not appear anywhere in the only surviving contemporary history of the invasion.

As Bennett explains, "Skeptics will ... point to the fact that Geoffrey was writing some 600 years after King Arthur's alleged death, suggesting that the myth of Arthur was likely patched together from the lives of many historical rulers."

The excavation of Tintagel, upon which still stands a medieval castle that was built almost 100 years after the recently uncovered fortress, will continue, and the results of the excavation will be published in the coming years.Maybe we'll find something concrete to tie it to the Arthur, but until then, the legend remains a legend.
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Reference:

Science Alert. 2016. “Archaeologists have uncovered a massive palace at the legendary birthplace of King Arthur”. Science Alert. Posted: Available online: http://www.sciencealert.com/archaeologists-have-uncovered-a-massive-palace-at-the-legendary-birthplace-of-king-arthur

Tracking down the first chefs

A study led by Antonio J. Romero at the UPV/EHU's Department of Geography, History and Archaeology and published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports has shown that human bites on bones have distinctive features allowing them to be differentiated from bites made by other animals, and that cooking the meat in advance influences the appearance of these marks. This study provides valuable conclusions for analyzing food remains found on sites.

Archaeological sites speak about the everyday lives of people in other times. Yet knowing how to interpret this reality is not straightforward. We know that Palaeolithic societies lived on hunting and gathering, but the bones found in prehistoric settlements are not always food remnants of the societies that lived there—or at least not exclusively. Many Paleolithic people were nomads and were constantly on the move across their territory. Thus, other predators such as hyenas or wolves, which survived on food remains left by humans, would be a common occurrence. Carnivores could even have sheltered in caves abandoned by Prehistoric peoples, raised their offspring, and left behind the remnants of the animals they caught and ate, leaving teeth marks on bones.

So it is very difficult to identify, for example, a roasted shoulder of mouflon eaten several thousand years ago from a few bone fragments remaining today. To be able to identify cases like this one, a novel way is to analyse the marks that humans make on bones when eating meat today.

In this respect, the researcher at the UPV/EHU's Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology of the Faculty of Arts Antonio J. Romero has led a study in which 90 lamb bones —phalanges, radii and scapulae— were examined and the meat of which was consumed by 10 volunteers using only hands and teeth. To control the variables resulting from the processing of the food beforehand, a third of the sample was eaten raw, another third roasted and the rest boiled.

What did they eat and how?

The results, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, show that over half of the bones bore the marks of human bites, teeth marks as well as fractures caused by chewing. These marks, analysed under a binocular magnifying glass, have a set of characteristics (size and morphology) that allows them to be differentiated from those produced by other animals. Furthermore, as Romero explained, "although the men produced more marks than the women, according to these data, it is not possible as yet to differentiate between them." On the other hand, cooking the meat beforehand affects the appearance of marks: "the teeth marks tend to appear more regularly in the roasted or boiled specimens," says Romero, "while the damage on the tips, edges and crushing tends to be more usual in the bones eaten raw."

"There are similar studies that have explored in depth the damage caused by animals on bones when feeding, but not dealing with the marks that we humans leave behind," he says. Studies of this type have a clear application in the analysis of archaeological remains, in particular for historical eras. So in each case, a whole set of characteristics is studied, such as the location of the damage left on the bones, its morphology and dimensions, which is not always easy to apply to the archaeological record, but "together with other prints of human activity that are more reliable, such as the marks of stone knives, etc., it is possible to complete the interpretation," he insisted. This research constitutes a real breakthrough in the possibility of finding out what kinds of meat foods hominids consumed and in what circumstances (whether or not they cooked the meat before they ate it). "It allows us to find out more about human beings in the past and the origin of our modern behaviour, about the way we process foods (cooking them or not) and about our way of eating," he concluded.
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Reference:

2016. “Tracking down the first chefs”. Phys.org. Posted: August 3, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-tracking-chefs.html

Population boom preceded early farming

University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.

"Domesticated plants and animals are part of our everyday lives, so much so that we take them for granted," says Brian Codding, senior author of the study published online August 2 by the British journal Royal Society Open Science. "But they represent a very unique thing in human history. They allowed for large numbers of people to live in one place. That ultimately set the stage for the emergence of civilization."

Graduate student Elic Weitzel, the study's first author, adds: "For most of human history, people lived off wild foods - whatever they could hunt or gather. It's only relatively recently that people made this switch to a very different method of acquiring their food. It's important to understand why that transition happened."

The study dealt not with a full-fledged agricultural economy, but with the earlier step of domestication, when early people in eastern North America first started growing plants they had harvested in the wild, namely, squash, sunflower, marshelder and a chenopod named pitseed goosefoot, a pseudocereal grain closely related to quinoa.

Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology, says at least 11 plant domestication events have been identified in world history, starting with wheat about 11,500 years ago in the Middle East. The eastern North American plant domestication event, which began around 5,000 years ago, was the ninth of those 11 events and came after a population boom 6,900 to 5,200 years ago, he adds.

For many years, two competing theories have sought to explain the cause of plant domestication in eastern North America: First, population growth and resulting food scarcity prompted people to grow foods on which they already foraged. Second, a theory called "niche construction" or "ecosystem engineering" that basically says intentional experimentation and management during times of plenty - and not immediate necessity - led people to manage and manipulate wild plants to increase their food supply.

"We argue that human populations significantly increased prior to plant domestication in eastern North America, suggesting that people are driven to domestication when populations outstrip the supply of wild foods," Weitzel says.

"The transition to domesticating food allowed human populations to increase drastically around the world and made our modern way of life possible," he adds. "People start living near the fields. Whenever you've got sedentary communities, they start to expand. Villages expand into cities. Once you have that, you have all sorts of social changes. We really don't see state-level society until domestication occurs."

When early North Americans first domesticated crops

The region of eastern North America covered by the study includes most of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

"This is the region where these plant foods were domesticated from their wild variants," Weitzel says. "Everywhere else in North America, crops were imported from elsewhere," particularly Mexico and Central America.

Four indigenous plant species constitute what scientists call the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which people began to domesticate about 5,000 years ago.

Previous research shows specific domestication dates were 5,025 years ago for squash at an archaeological site named Phillips Spring in Missouri, 4,840 years ago for sunflower seeds domesticated at Hayes in Tennessee, 4,400 years ago for marshelder at the Napoleon Hollow site in Illinois, and 3,800 years ago for pitseed goosefoot found in large quantities at Riverton, Illinois, along with squash, sunflower and marshelder.

Three more recent sites also have been found to contain evidence of domestication of all four species: Kentucky's Cloudsplitter and Newt Kindigenash rockshelters, dated to 3,700 and 3,640 years ago, respectively, and the 3,400-year-old Marble Bluff site in Arkansas.

Sunflower and squash - including acorn and green and yellow summer squashes - remain important crops today, while marshelder and pitseed goosefoot are not (although the related quinoa is popular).

Deducing population swings from radiocarbon dates

"It's really difficult to arrive at measures of prehistoric populations. So archaeologists have struggled for a long time coming up with some way of quantifying population levels when we don't have historical records," Weitzel says.

"People have looked at the number of sites through time, the number of artifacts through time and some of the best work has looked at the effects of population growth," such as in the switch from a diet of tortoises to rabbits as population grew in the eastern Mediterranean during the past 50,000 years, he adds.

Codding says that in the past decade, archaeologists have expanded the use of radiocarbon-dates for artifacts to reconstruct prehistoric population histories. Weitzel says radiocarbon dates in the new study came from artifacts such as charcoal, nutshells and animal bones - all recorded in a database maintained by Canadian scientists.

The University of Utah anthropologists used these "summed radiocarbon dates" for 3,750 dated artifacts from eastern North America during the past 15,000 years.

"The assumption is that if you had more people, they left more stuff around that could be dated," Weitzel says. "So if you have more people, you conceivably should have more radiocarbon dates."

"We plotted the dates through time," namely, the number of radiocarbon dates from artifacts in every 100-year period for the past 15,000 years, he adds.

The analysis indicated six periods of significant population increase or decrease during that time, including one during which population nearly doubled in eastern North America starting about 6,900 years ago and continuing apace until 5,200 years ago - not long before plant domestication began, Codding says.

Codding notes that even though plant domestication meant "these people were producing food to feed themselves and their families, they're still hunting and foraging," eating turtles, fish, water fowl and deer, among other animals.

The other theory

Weitzel says the concept of niche construction is that people were harvesting wild plants, and "were able to get more food from certain plants." By manipulating the environment - such as transplanting wild plants or setting fires to create areas favorable for growth of wild food plants - they began "experimenting with these plants to see if they could grow them to be bigger or easier to collect and consume," he adds. "That kind of experimentation then leads to domestication."

Codding says: "The idea is that when times are good and people have plenty of food then they will experiment with plants. We say that doesn't provide an explanation for plant domestication in eastern North America." He believes the behavioral ecology explanation: increasing population and-or decreasing wild food resources led to plant domestication.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “Population boom preceded early farming”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 2, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/uou-pbp072816.php

Cave discoveries shed new light on Native and European religious encounters in the Americas

A project led by archaeologists from the British Museum and the University of Leicester has discovered remarkable evidence which shows how the first generations of Europeans to arrive in the Americas engaged with indigenous peoples and their spiritual beliefs deep inside the caves of a remote Caribbean island.

Recent fieldwork by a collaborative Anglo-Puerto Rican* team has uncovered new evidence in the Caribbean of an early religious dialogue between Europeans and Native Americans.

A large collection of early colonial inscriptions and commentaries written by named individuals within a cave system of pre-existing indigenous spiritual iconography provides dramatic new insights into the tone and personal context of this momentous time of encounter.

In a paper, published in Antiquity, researchers have provided new understandings about the formation of emergent cultural identities in the Caribbean that challenge historic accounts of indigenous extinction.

The island of Mona, on a key Atlantic route from Europe to the Americas, was at the heart of sixteenth-century Spanish colonial projects and was recorded by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in AD 1494.

Communities on the island were exposed to the earliest waves of European impact during a critical period of transformation and the forging of new identities.

A team of researchers led by Dr Jago Cooper (British Museum) and Dr Alice Samson (University of Leicester) has been studying the island - which is one of the most cavernous regions, per square kilometre, in the world.

The team, which has just completed its 2016 season, includes students from Puerto Rico and the UK carrying out dissertations in Climate Science, Archaeology, and History.

Since 2013, exploration and survey of around 70 cave systems--part of an interdisciplinary study of past human activity on Mona Island--has revealed that Mona's caves include the greatest diversity of preserved indigenous iconography in the Caribbean, with thousands of motifs recorded in darkzone chambers far from cave entrances.

In the astonishing cave discussed in this paper more than 30 historic inscriptions include named individuals, phrases in Latin and Spanish, dates and Christian symbols that occur within a series of connecting chambers all within the area of indigenous iconography.

This account of spiritual encounters provides a rare, personalised insight into intercultural religious dynamics in the early Americas.

Dr Alice Samson from the University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History said: "Increasing use of interdisciplinary approaches and archaeometric analyses have provided new understandings of colonial processes that are more nuanced than mere oppression, domination and, in the case of the Caribbean, indigenous extinction.

"This not only provides a counterpoint to official metropolitan histories, but also tracks the beginnings of new religious engagements and transforming cultural identities in the Americas."

Dr Jago Cooper from the British Museum added: "This research reveals a new perspective on the personal encounter between indigenous populations and the first generations of Europeans in the Americas.

"This is a unique site that helps us to understand the origins of cultural identity in the Americas, the start of a process that continues right up to the modern day."
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “Cave discoveries shed new light on Native and European religious encounters in the Americas”. EurekAlert. Posted: July 19, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/uol-cds071816.php

7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot

Long-Lost Cultures

The ancient Egyptians had their pyramids, the Greeks, their sculptures and temples. And everybody knows about the Maya and their famous calendar.

But other ancient peoples get short shrift in world history. Here are a handful of long-lost cultures that don't get the name recognition they deserve.

The Silla

The Silla Kingdom was one of the longest-standing royal dynasties ever. It ruled most of the Korean Peninsula between 57 B.C. and  A.D. 935, but left few burials behind for archaeologists to study.

One recent Silla discovery gave researchers a little insight, however. The intact bones of a woman who lived to be in her late 30s was found in 2013 near the historic capital of the Silla (Gyeongju). An analysis of the woman's bones revealed that she was likely a vegetarian who ate a diet heavy in rice, potatoes or wheat. She also had an elongated skull.

Silla was founded by the monarch Bak Hyeokgeose. Legend held that he was hatched from a mysterious egg in the forest and married a queen born from the ribs of a dragon. Over time, the Silla culture developed into a centralized, hierarchical society with a wealthy aristocratic class. Though human remains from the Silla people are rare, archaeologists have unearthed a variety of luxurious goods made by this culture, from a gold-and-garnet dagger to a cast-iron Buddha to jade jewelry, among other examples held at the Gyeongju National Museum in South Korea.

The Indus

The Indus is the largest-known ancient urban culture, with the people's land stretching from the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan to the Arabian Sea and the Ganges in India. The Indus civilization persisted for thousands of years, emerging around 3300 B.C. and declining by about 1600 B.C.

The Indus, also known as the Harappans, developed sewage and drainage systems for their cities, built impressive walls and granaries, and produced artifacts like pottery and glazed beads. They even had dental care: Scientistsfound 11 drilled molars from adults who lived between 7,500 to 9,000 years ago in the Indus Valley, according to a study published in 2006 in the journal Nature. A 2012 study suggested that climatic change weakened monsoonal rains and dried up much of the Harappan territory, forcing the civilization togradually disband and migrate to wetter climes. 

The Sanxingdui

The Sanxingdui were a Bronze Age culture that thrived in what is now China's Sichuan Province. A farmer first discovered artifacts from the Sanxingdui in 1929; excavations in the area in 1986 revealed complex jade carvings and bronze sculptures 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall.

But who were the Sanxingdui? Despite the evidence of the culture's artistic abilities, no one really knows. They were prolific makers of painted bronze-and-gold-foil masks that some archaeologists believe may have represented gods or ancestors, according to the Sanxingdui Museum in China. The Sanxingdui site shows evidence of abandonment about 2,800 or 3,000 years ago, and another ancient city, Jinsha, discovered nearby, shows evidence that maybe the Sanxingdui moved there. In 2014, researchers at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union argued that at around this time, a major earthquake and landslide redirected the Minjiang River, which would have cut Sanxingdui off from water and forced a relocation.

The Nok

The mysterious and little-known Nok culture lasted from around 1000 B.C. to A.D. 300 in what is today northern Nigeria. Evidence of the Nok was discovered by chance during a tin-mining operation in 1943, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Miners uncovered a terra-cotta head, hinting at a rich sculptural tradition. Since then, other elaborate terra-cotta sculptures have emerged, including depictions of people wearing elaborate jewelry and carrying batons and flails — symbols of authority also seen in ancient Egyptian art, according to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Other sculptures show people with diseases such as elephantiasis, the Met said.

Contributing to the mystery surrounding the Nok, the artifacts have often been removed from their context without archaeological analysis. In 2012, the United States returned a cache of Nok figurines to Nigeria after they were stolen from Nigeria's national museum and smuggled into the U.S.

The Etruscans

The Etruscans had a thriving society in northern Italy from about 700 B.C. to about 500 B.C., when they began to be absorbed by the Roman Republic. They developed a unique written language and left behind luxurious family tombs, including one belonging to a prince that was first excavated in 2013.

Etruscan society was a theocracy, and their artifacts suggest that religious ritual was a part of daily life. The oldest depiction of childbirth in Western art — a goddess squatting to give birth — was found at the Etruscan sanctuary of Poggio Colla. At the same site, archaeologists found a 4-foot by 2-foot (1.2 by 0.6 meters) sandstone slab containing rare engravings in the Etruscanlanguage. Few examples of written Etruscan survive. Another Etruscan site, Poggio Civitate, was a square complex surrounding a courtyard. It was the largest building in the Mediterranean at its time, said archaeologists who have excavated more than 25,000 artifacts from the site.

The Land of Punt

Some cultures are known mostly through the records of other cultures. That's the case with the mysterious land of Punt, a kingdom somewhere in Africa that traded with the ancient Egyptians. The two kingdoms were exchanging goods from at least the 26th century B.C., during the reign of the pharaoh Khufu (the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza).

Strangely, no one really knows where Punt was located. The Egyptians left plenty of descriptions of the goods they got from Punt (gold, ebony, myrrh) and the seafaring expeditions they sent to the lost kingdom. However, the Egyptians are frustratingly mum on where all these voyages were headed. Scholars have suggested that Punt may have been in Arabia, or on the Horn of Africa, or maybe down the Nile River at the border of modern-day South Sudan and Ethiopia. 

The Bell-Beaker Culture

You know a culture is obscure when archaeologists name it based on its artifacts alone. The Bell-Beaker culture made pottery vessels shaped like upside-down bells. The makers of these distinctive drinking cups lived across Europe between about 2800 B.C. and 1800 B.C. They also left behind copper artifacts and graves, including a cemetery of 154 graves located in the modern-day Czech Republic.

The Bell-Beakers were also responsible for some of the construction at Stonehenge, researchers have found: These people likely arranged the site's small bluestones, which originated in Wales. 
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Reference:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2016. “7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot”. Live Science. Posted: July 18, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/55430-bizarre-ancient-cultures.html

A lesson in archaeology at the Dena’ina culture camp of Kijik

On the north shore of Lake Clark, there’s a place called Kijik. It’s the historic homeland of the Dena’ina Athabascans of the area, and also the site of a culture camp where youth and elders from the village of Nondalton came together last week. Dozens of abandoned homes dot the area.

“A little pushdown, flick out, and then you wanna keep going down the wall,” said Randy Tedor.

Tedor kneels in front of a 50-centimeter square of dirt. The bushy-bearded archeologist is showing a group of kids how to carefully excavate the quadrant.

“Excavation is an art,” he tells them, deftly pulling layers of soil loose.”

11-year-old Cordelle Balluta-Trefon puts down a metal detector he’s been playing with and gets to work in the dirt with a dustpan and a trowel.

After a while, Balluta-Trefon puts down the trowel and hands something to Tedor. It’s a tiny red speck.

“Good eye, man! I can’t believe you saw that” Tedor said laughing. “A little baby bead.”

That little bead, Tedor explained, is a huge clue. This type of glass bead was only manufactured in Europe after a certain date, so it helps archaeologists like Tedor figure out how old the site is. They think this house was occupied between 1840 and the 1880s.

As he explores more into the site, Balluta-Trefon said he’s getting a picture in his head, visualizing what it might have looked like when people lived here

“I don’t see people, but I just see a house. There’s a fire pit, there’s a storage room, a bedroom, that’s the front door over there,” Balluta-Trefon mused. “I’m still kinda putting the picture together.”

This curiosity is exactly what Tedor is trying to inspire; he wants the kids to wonder how people lived back then, maybe to realize that the people living on this land were, in many ways, just like us.

But like many old village sites in Alaska, this land, and its people have a troubled history.

Fur hunters and explorers from Russia started plundering Lake Clark’s Dena’ina villages in the late 1790s. Next came the Russian Orthodox missionaries, who by the 1830s were traveling around regularly to baptize and hold services in villages.

And of course, with this new contact came new diseases. Around 1900, measles and flu epidemics devastated the population at Kijik. The survivors moved down the lake to what is now the village of Nondalton, seeking better access to salmon runs and trading posts.

They left Kijik behind, along with a lakeshore full of graves and sad memories.

“They’re estimating up to 200 graves here,” said Karen Evanoff, a Dena’ina Athabascan cultural anthropologist with Lake Clark National Park. For five years she’s been working with the Nondalton Tribal Council and researchers to identify and mark the graves.

The work culminated in a blessing ceremony last summer.

“Close to a hundred people were here, and we combined the traditional way of spirituality and blessing with the Russian Orthodox way, so it was a huge celebration,” Evanoff said. “This is a healing place.”

There’s still controversy over the land at Kijik; parts of it are now owned by a Native allotment and a homesteader, who built structures on and around the church and grave sites. The Kijik Corporation has managed to buy a few acres back, and Evanoff said they hope to regain more of the land the people consider sacred.

“That’s part of the vision,” she said, “to clear this of the cabins and have some plaques here to identify who’s buried.” Holding the culture camp here is another part of that healing process. Evanoff planned the camp along with Michelle Ravenmoon of Pope-Vanoy on Lake Iliamna

“Of course, we want the kids to have a lot of fun and enjoy themselves and grow their self-confidence and pride,” Ravenmoon said. “But we also wanted to make sure they learn their history and their identity, where they come from, who they are.”

Each activity – from wood carving to caribou hide-tanning to language classes – is meant to help kids understand their Dena’ina culture.

“We’ve been very unsuccessful as Native people sending them out, preparing them for this outside world,” Ravenmoon said. “We give them computers, and we teach them (the) history of the United States, but we’ve taught them so little about who they are where they come from. I think it’s important for kids to know their history.”

A piece of that history lies in the ground at the archeological site, waiting for the kids to get their hands on it.

Up until recently, the archaeological site was known to scientists as “house pit XLC-098.” But Michelle and Karen were happy to share that the site is now being officially renamed: “Quk Taz’Un,” the same name as the culture camp. It means “the sun is rising,” hopefully on a brighter future for the Dena’ina Athabascans of Lake Clark.
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Reference:

Colton, Hannah. 2016. “A lesson in archaeology at the Dena’ina culture camp of Kijik”. Ktoo. Posted: July 10, 2016. Available online: http://www.ktoo.org/2016/07/10/lesson-archaeology-denaina-culture-camp-kijik/

Philly's Poo: Old Toilets Reveal Early America's Secret History

A treasure trove of artifacts tossed down the loo is revealing the secret life of pre-Revolutionary America.

The nearly 300-year-old privies, which were uncovered in the heart of Philadelphia, have yielded more than 82,000 artifacts that span nearly three centuries, from the city's pre-Revolutionary roots to the modern day. Among the historic treasures were a ceramic punchbowl that provides a snapshot of Revolutionary America, shattered glasses from a back-alley tavern and the foundation of the city's first skyscraper, which was erected in 1850.

"We can tell the whole story of Philadelphia," said Rebecca Yamin, the lead archaeologist on the project. 

Accidental find

The team uncovered the toilets before the construction of a new building for the Museum of the American Revolution, which will be just steps away from Independence Hall in Center City, Philadelphia. Because the site lies atop 26 historic land parcels, archaeologists expected to find historic artifacts, Yamin said.

While surveying, they discovered several privies on the old property (essentially brick-lined vault toilets). To excavate them, the archaeologists had to go deep into the toilet shafts, spraying water into piles of excrement to break it up.

"It doesn't smell like fresh human waste, thank goodness, but it does have a characteristic smell," Yamin told Live Science.

Though the team expected to find interesting artifacts, they were unprepared for the sheer volume of detritus they uncovered, Yamin said. Because there was no municipal trash service for much of the time the toilets were in use, people didn't just do their business in the privies; they also threw their refuse there.

As a result, the new finds represent an unfiltered, hidden view of city life.

"The wonderful thing about doing this kind of archaeology is that we're going where nobody thought we would be going," Yamin told Live Science. "The people who were throwing this out in their privy certainly didn't think we would come around and dig it up."

A walk through history

Amazingly, three centuries' worth of pee and poo creates a sticky, gooey coating that actually acts as a fantastic preservative for artifacts. The finds create a historic timeline for the city.

Some of the earliest artifacts are pieces of waste from the privies of ancient tanneries, which were among the first industries in the city. The team also uncovered fragments of broken pottery and cups from an illegal back-alley tavern that was run by a woman during Revolutionary times.

"You can really feel the people drinking and talking politics and arguing," Yamin said.

One of the most exciting finds was a shattered Delft punchbowl with the words "Success to the Tryphena" emblazoned on it. The Tryphena was a merchant ship that regularly sailed to Liverpool, England. At one point, the Tryphena carried petitions from merchants hoping to repeal the Stamp Act, which required colonists to pay a tax on every scrap of paper.

Privies behind an area called Carter's Alley produced typeface going back to the 1760s  that came from several print shops. Several decades later, the city's newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, got its start in that same alley.

Later, the site was home to the Jayne Building, the city's first skyscraper, which sold over-the-counter medicines like deworming medicines. Researchers also uncovered myriad shells that were likely used by a button factory on the premises from just before World War I until World War II.
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Reference:

Ghose, Tia. 2016. “Philly's Poo: Old Toilets Reveal Early America's Secret History”. Live Science. Posted: July 6, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/55301-toilets-from-old-philadelphia.html

An ancient shrine that could contain Buddha's skull has been found in China

Archaeologists have uncovered what they think could be a skull bone of Buddha inside a 1,000-year-old model Buddhist shrine, located in an underground crypt in Nanjing, China.

Inside the crypt, which lies beneath the ruins of an ancient Buddhist temple, researchers found the ornate, 1.2-metre-tall (4-foot) model shrine made of sandalwood, silver, and gold, and decorated with crystal, glass, agate, and lapis lazuli beads. Inside was a tiny gold casket containing a fragment of skull bone.

Just to give you an idea of how special this single bone fragment is, whomever buried it encased it in a tiny golden casket adorned with images of lotus patterns, phoenix birds, and sword-wielding gods. 

The golden casket was found inside a larger silver casket, decorated withapsaras - female cloud and water spirits - playing musical instruments. Both caskets were placed inside the model shrine, or stupa, which is a hemispherical structure containing relics or remains of Buddhist monks or nuns, used as a place of meditation.

The shine was hidden inside an iron box, which was enclosed in a large stone casket in the crypt below a once-renowned Grand Bao'en Temple, so clearly a lot of work was put into keeping this single piece of bone safe. (You can see pics of everything below.)

So how likely is it that the fragment actually belonged to Buddha, orSiddhartha Gautama, as he was also known? 

The fragment of parietal bone - which forms the side and top of the cranium - was found alongside the remains of Buddhist saints, contained inside three crystal bottles and a silver box.

It was also accompanied by inscriptions describing when the chest was made, and also attributing the bone to to Buddha, written by a man named Deming, whose qualifications have been translated as, "Master of Perfect Enlightenment, Abbot of Chengtian Monastery [and] the Holder of the Purple Robe."

According to the inscriptions, the chest and its various parts were constructed during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong, around 997 to 1022 AD, and they were originally housed in the Grand Bao’en Temple, until it was destroyed during a series of wars. They were then relocated to the underground crypt on 21 July 1011 AD, Deming says.

"Deming praised the emperor for rebuilding the temple and burying the Buddha's remains, wishing the emperor a long life, loyal ministers, and numerous grandchildren," Owen Jarus from Live Science reports.

"May the Heir Apparent and the imperial princes be blessed and prosperous with 10,000 offspring; may Civil and Military Ministers of the Court be loyal and patriotic; may the three armed forces and citizens enjoy a happy and peaceful time," this part of the inscription reads.

Deming’s inscriptions also recount how the Emperor agreed to rebuild the temple and have the Buddha's parietal bone, and the remains of other saints, buried in an underground crypt, which is where they’ve now been found.

"Engraved on the outside of the model are several images of the Buddha, along with scenes depicting stories from the Buddha's life, from his birth to the point when he reached 'parinirvana', a death from which the Buddha wasn't reborn - something that freed him from a cycle of death and rebirth, according to the Buddhist religion," says Jarus.

At this stage, it's still all circumstantial evidence, so experts aren't ready to say for sure that this the the skull bone of Siddhartha Gautama, but it's a pretty incredible find regardless.

Strangely enough, the find was actually uncovered back in 2008 by a teamarchaeologists from Nanjing Municipal Institute of Archaeology, and was put on display in Hong Kong in 2012, before being housed permanently in Qixia Temple, a Buddhist temple on Qixia Hill in Nanjing. It's only now coming to the attention of the western media with the publication of an English report of the find in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.
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Reference:

Crew, Bec. 2016. “An ancient shrine that could contain Buddha's skull has been found in China”. Science Alert. Posted: July 4, 2016. Available online: http://www.sciencealert.com/an-ancient-shrine-that-could-contain-buddha-s-skull-has-been-found-in-chinese-crypt