Archaeology
- phys.org Layers of carbonate provide insight into the world of the ancient Romans
Archaeologists face a major challenge when they intend to acquire information about buildings or facilities of which only ruins remain. This was a particular challenge for the remnants of the Roman water mills in Barbegal in Southern France, dating back to the 2nd century CE.
- phys.org Digital public archaeology: Excavating data from digs done decades ago and connecting with today's communities
The ancestors of Alaska Native people began using local copper sources to craft intricate tools roughly 1,000 years ago. Over one-third of all copper objects archaeologists have found in this region were excavated at a single spot, named the Gulkana Site.
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The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Created by Our Species : ScienceAlert
www.sciencealert.com The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn't Created by Our SpeciesPaleontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior.
- phys.org The beginnings of fashion: Paleolithic eyed needles and the evolution of dress
A team of researchers led by an archaeologist at the University of Sydney are the first to suggest that eyed needles were a new technological innovation used to adorn clothing for social and cultural purposes, marking the major shift from clothes as protection to clothes as an expression of identity...
A team of researchers led by an archaeologist at the University of Sydney are the first to suggest that eyed needles were a new technological innovation used to adorn clothing for social and cultural purposes, marking the major shift from clothes as protection to clothes as an expression of identity.
"Eyed needle tools are an important development in prehistory because they document a transition in the function of clothing from utilitarian to social purposes," says Dr. Ian Gilligan, Honorary Associate in the discipline of Archaeology at the University of Sydney.
From stone tools that prepared animal skins for humans to use as thermal insulation, to the advent of bone awls and eyed needles to create fitted and adorned garments, why did we start to dress to express ourselves and to impress others?
- www.theguardian.com Fossil of Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome hints at early humans’ compassion
Skull anatomy shows the boy or girl would have been severely disabled, yet survived until the age of six
- abcnews.go.com Fossilized skull of Neanderthal child with Down syndrome reveals communal caregiving among species
Fossils from the skull of a Neanderthal child that likely had Down syndrome shed light into the communal caregiving that likely aided in the child's survival.
- arstechnica.com We now have even more evidence against the “ecocide” theory of Easter Island
AI analysis of satellite imagery data is a new method for estimating population size.
Jared Diamond = lol
- phys.org Gravesite in France offers evidence of steppe migrant integration with Late Neolithic Europeans
A team of geneticists and archaeologists affiliated with multiple institutions in France has uncovered skeletons in an ancient gravesite not far from Paris that show evidence of steppe migrant integration with Late Neolithic Europeans. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
A team of geneticists and archaeologists affiliated with multiple institutions in France has uncovered skeletons in an ancient gravesite not far from Paris that show evidence of steppe migrant integration with Late Neolithic Europeans. The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
Prior research has shown that there was a slow migration of herding people from what is now Russia and Ukraine to Europe thousands of years ago. During the migrations, many of the migrants (who were mostly male) produced children with the local farmers they encountered.
In this new study, the research team reports evidence of such reproduction in remains found in an open grave in the Champagne region of France. Skeletons in the grave showed evidence of a native European woman who had produced a child with a steppe migrant.
- phys.org Change threatening coastal Native American sites cut from NC bill
A controversial bill that would have allowed developers to build on archaeological sites in some environmentally sensitive coastal areas was overhauled on June 19.
A controversial bill that would have allowed developers to build on archaeological sites in some environmentally sensitive coastal areas was overhauled on June 19.
Language that would have allowed builders to disturb archaeological resources in the course of development in the coastal Areas of Environmental Concern was removed from House Bill 385 entirely. After being introduced earlier this month, that original proposal met widespread opposition from Native Americans in North Carolina and the state's Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
- www.livescience.com 2,500-year-old slate containing drawings of battle scenes and paleo-alphabet discovered in Spain
Archaeologists discovered the stone tablet at a Tartessian site in southwestern Spain.
- theconversation.com Digital public archaeology: Excavating data from digs done decades ago and connecting with today’s communities
Archaeologists preserve records of their excavations, but many are never analyzed. Digital archaeology is making these records more accessible and analyzing the data in new ways.
The ancestors of Alaska Native people began using local copper sources to craft intricate tools roughly 1,000 years ago. Over one-third of all copper objects archaeologists have found in this region were excavated at a single spot, named the Gulkana Site.
This is the site I’ve studied for the past four years as a Ph.D. student at Purdue University. In spite of its importance, the Gulkana Site is not well known.
To my knowledge, it isn’t mentioned in any museums. Locals, including Alaska Native Ahtna people, who descend from the site’s original inhabitants, might recognize the name, but they don’t know much about what happened there. Even among archaeologists, little information is available about it – just a few reports and passing mentions in a handful of publications.
However, the Gulkana Site was first identified and excavated nearly 50 years ago. What gives?
Archaeology has a data management problem, and it is not unique to the Gulkana Site. U.S. federal regulations and disciplinary standards require archaeologists to preserve records of their excavations, but many of these records have never been analyzed. Archaeologists refer to this problem as the “legacy data backlog.”
As an example of this backlog, the Gulkana Site tells a story not only about Ahtna history and copperworking innovation, but also about the ongoing value of archaeological data to researchers and the public alike.
- www.nature.com Ancient genomes reveal insights into ritual life at Chichén Itzá - Nature
We present genome-wide data from 64 subadults interred in Chichén Itzá around ad 500–900 that gives insight into burial rituals, and shows that their genomic legacy is still present and has adapted to immune challenges post-1492.
- www.workingclassicists.com The Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline
Classical statues in the profile? Racism and misogyny in the feed? Tallulah Trezevant looks at the alt-Right and Classics...
- phys.org Glass beads indicate Indigenous Americans shaped early transatlantic trade
Archaeologists have analyzed the chemical makeup of glass beads from across the Great Lakes region of North America, revealing the extent of Indigenous influence on transatlantic exchange networks during the 17th century AD.
Archaeologists have analyzed the chemical makeup of glass beads from across the Great Lakes region of North America, revealing the extent of Indigenous influence on transatlantic exchange networks during the 17th century AD.
Glass beads were a key component of trade between Europeans and Indigenous Americans during early interactions between the two continents. One of the key actors in these networks was the Wendat Confederacy, which was based in southern Ontario until around 1650, when some Wendat people moved into the Western Great Lakes region.
Beads are a key symbol of European colonization, as they were produced in Europe but had a lasting impact on Indigenous Americans, with beadwork continuing to be integral to many Indigenous cultures to this day.
As such, it was thought that trans-Atlantic bead exchange networks must have been driven by European colonization. The first Europeans colonized the Western Great Lakes region around 1670.
- theconversation.com Records of Pompeii’s survivors have been found – and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives
The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one of annihilation; it also includes the people who managed to escape the city.
- arstechnica.com Ancient Egyptian skull shows evidence of cancer, surgical treatment
“An extraordinary new perspective in our understanding of the history of medicine.”
- www.smithsonianmag.com How a Trove of Whaling Logbooks Will Help Scientists Understand Our Changing Climate
Researchers are examining more than 4,200 New England documents to turn descriptions of the wind into data
- phys.org Body of a woman discovered among remains of 25 warrior monks of the Order of Calatrava in Guadalajara
A research project led by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and the Max Planck Institute has studied the remains of 25 individuals buried between the 12th and 15th centuries in the castle at Zorita de los Canes, Guadalajara. After exhuming the remains from the castle's cemetery, the research te...
A research project led by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and the Max Planck Institute has studied the remains of 25 individuals buried between the 12th and 15th centuries in the castle at Zorita de los Canes, Guadalajara. After exhuming the remains from the castle's cemetery, the research team was able to determine the diet, lifestyle and causes of death of the warrior monks, who were members of the Order of Calatrava.
The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, have determined that 23 of the individuals died in battle and that the knights of the order followed a diet typical of medieval high society, with a considerable intake of animal protein and marine fish, in an area far from the coast. Unexpectedly, Carme Rissech, a researcher at the URV, identified the remains of a woman among the warrior monks.
- arstechnica.com Bizarre armor from Mycenaean Greece turns out to have been effective
People suspected the Dendra armor was ceremonial, but new tests show its utility.
- archaeologybulletin.org Histories of Labor in Archaeology - Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
The Bulletin of the History of Archaeology (BHA) was inaugurated over 20 years ago as a forum to exchange research, information on on-going projects, and resources devoted to a growing interest in the histories of archaeology. As this interest has grown, BHA has become global in reach, and has taken...
- www.livescience.com World's 1st carved horse: The 35,000-year-old ivory figurine from Vogelherd cave
Carved out of ivory, the figurine was created during the Upper Paleolithic.
Considered the oldest known horse sculpture made by anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), this horse-shaped figurine is carved out of mammoth ivory. The palm-sized artifact measures roughly 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) high and 1.9 inches (4.8 cm) long and includes details such as a carved mouth, nostrils, eyes and mane. Although the ivory horse's head is complete, all four of its legs have been broken off. Archaeologists think the sculpture depicts a stallion, according to the Bradshaw Foundation, which asks, "Is this a stallion trying to impress a mare or a horse arching and kicking backwards against a predator?"
- phys.org Researchers succeed for first time in accurately dating a 7,000-year-old prehistoric settlement using cosmic rays
Researchers at the University of Bern have for the first time been able to pin down a prehistoric settlement of early farmers in northern Greece dating back more than 7,000 years to the year.
- www.theguardian.com Hobbyist archaeologists identify thousands of ancient sites in England
Exclusive: Bronze age remains and Roman roads among 12,802 sites discovered using latest technology
- www.bbc.co.uk British Museum gems for sale on eBay - how a theft was exposed
The two clues that helped a Danish gem collector with a photographic memory crack open the case.
- www.livescience.com 50,000-year-old Neanderthal bones harbor oldest-known human viruses
A new analysis of two skeletons suggests that three modern human viruses infected Neanderthals around 50,000 years ago.
Neanderthals who lived 50,000 years ago were infected with three viruses that still affect modern humans today, researchers have discovered.
These traces of ancient viruses are the oldest remnants of human viruses ever discovered, New Scientist reported. They are around 20,000 years older than the previous record-holder for the most ancient human virus ever found: a common-cold virus uncovered inside a pair of 31,000-year-old baby teeth in Siberia.
Scientists found the ancient viruses after sifting through DNA sequences drawn from the skeletons of two male Neanderthals originally found in the Chagyrskaya cave, located in the Altai mountains in Russia. Several sequences appeared to be viral in origin, so the team compared them to modern viruses known to cause lifelong infections. They ruled out the possibility that the viruses came from modern humans who handled the skeletons or by predators that fed on them by looking at specific signatures in the viral DNA that differed between the ancient and modern samples.
In this way, they showed that our closest, now-extinct relatives could be infected with three common, modern human viruses: a type of adenovirus, a herpesvirus and a papillomavirus.
- phys.org The first lithic study of level VI-B at the Mumba site in Tanzania reveals Middle Stone Age industry
Irene Solano Megías, a predoctoral researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has just published the first techno-typological study of the most ancient lithic industry of level VI-B at the Mumba rockshelter in the journal African Archa...
Irene Solano MegĂas, a predoctoral researcher at the Centro Nacional de InvestigaciĂłn sobre la EvoluciĂłn Humana (CENIEH), has just published the first techno-typological study of the most ancient lithic industry of level VI-B at the Mumba rockshelter in the journal African Archaeological Review. This site lies in the Lake Eyasi region in Tanzania, and the study has enabled better understanding of the activity of human groups in this region.
This is one of the most important sites in northern Tanzania from the period known as the Middle Stone Age (MSA). It was excavated in the 1930s and level VI-B was excavated between 1977 and 1981, but no data had been published until now.
According to the new study, the level VI-B lithic assemblage at Mumba is the result of settlement by groups of Homo sapiens present in the Lake Eyasi region between 109,000 and 131,000 years ago.
- phys.org Legacy of Indigenous stewardship of camas dates back more than 3,500 years, study finds
An Oregon State University study has found evidence that Indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest were intentionally harvesting edible camas bulbs at optimal stages of the plant's maturation as far back as 3,500 years ago.
An Oregon State University study has found evidence that Indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest were intentionally harvesting edible camas bulbs at optimal stages of the plant's maturation as far back as 3,500 years ago.
The findings contribute to the growing body of research around Traditional Ecological Knowledge and practices, demonstrating the care and specificity with which Indigenous groups have been stewarding and cultivating natural resources for millennia. The work is published in The Holocene journal.
Camas is an ecological and cultural keystone, meaning it is a species on which many other organisms depend and that it features prominently within many cultural practices.
"If you think about salmon as being a charismatic species that people are very familiar with, camas is kind of the plant equivalent," said Molly Carney, an assistant professor of anthropology in OSU's College of Liberal Arts and lead author on the study. "It is one of those species that really holds up greater ecosystems, a fundamental species which everything is related to."
- www.theguardian.com Scientists find buried branch of the Nile that may have carried pyramids’ stones
Discovery of the branch, which ran alongside 31 pyramids, could solve mystery of blocks’ transportation
- arkeonews.net A long-lost branch of the Nile helped in building Egypt’s pyramids – Scientists Say
The Giza Pyramids are one of the world’s most iconic cultural landscapes, and they have fascinated humans for thousands of...
- www.livescience.com 130,000-year-old Neanderthal-carved bear bone is symbolic art, study argues
The carved bear bone is one of the earliest human-made artifacts with "symbolic culture" unearthed in Europe.
A nearly 130,000-year-old bear bone was deliberately marked with cuts and might be one of the oldest art pieces in Eurasia crafted by the Neanderthals, researchers say.
The roughly cylindrical bone, which is about 4 inches long (10.6 centimeters), is adorned with 17 irregularly spaced parallel cuts. A right-handed person most likely crafted the piece, probably in one sitting, a new study finds.
The carved bone is the oldest known symbolic art made by Neanderthals in Europe north of the Carpathian Mountains. It gives scientists a glimpse into the behavior, cognition and culture of modern humans' long-dead cousins, who lived in Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they disappeared.
- www.bbc.co.uk Ogham stone unearthed in Coventry garden excites archaeologists
Experts are attempting to translate the Ogham script, which could date back as far as the 4th Century.
- phys.org Study reveals the dietary practices of the agropastoral communities of the northeast Iberian Peninsula
Raquel Hernando, a Juan de la Cierva researcher associated with the European project TIED2TEETH, at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a paper published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, in which the teeth of...
Raquel Hernando, a Juan de la Cierva researcher associated with the European project TIED2TEETH, at the Centro Nacional de InvestigaciĂłn sobre la EvoluciĂłn Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a paper published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, in which the teeth of 84 adult individuals found at eight sites in the northeast Iberian Peninsula were analyzed to offer new perspectives on the diet of these populations in recent prehistory.
This study shows that the mixed diet of the agropastoral groups of this period, which covers from the Middle Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, was made up of cereals with regular intake of meat or dairy products, though each group had its own dietary specialization.
- www.earth.com 476,000-year-old ancient woodworking discovery rewrites early human history
Ancient woodworkings found in Zambia suggest early humans built complex structures and were more settled than previously thought
- www.livescience.com 1,900-year-old Roman legionary fortress unearthed next to UK cathedral
Ongoing excavations have revealed Roman ruins that were once part of a legionary fortress.
- www.livescience.com 3,500-year-old 'rest house' used by ancient Egyptian army discovered in Sinai desert
A 3,500-year-old rest house in the Sinai desert may have been used by an Egyptian pharaoh.
- www.bbc.com Roman snail dye found in UK for the first time
Experts say the pigment was worth more than gold and used to dye the clothes of imperial figures.
A rare dye made from snails for the robes of the Roman elite almost 2,000 years ago has been unearthed at a cricket club.
The chunk of Tyrian purple, roughly the size of a ping pong ball, was dug up at Carlisle Cricket Club as part of ongoing yearly excavations.
A Roman bathhouse was discovered at the site in 2017 and in the last three years 2,000 items including pottery, weapons, coins and semi-precious stones have been found.
- phys.org Archaeology team discovers a 7,000-year-old settlement in Serbia
Together with cooperation partners from the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad (Serbia), the National Museum Zrenjanin and the National Museum Pančevo, a team from the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence has discovered a previously unknown Late Neolithic settlement near the Tamiš River in Northeast Serbia.