http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11348-south-africa-horn-medicine Fri, 07 Apr 2023 12:34:39 -0700 Joomla! - RSS Template - Archaeology Magazine en-gb http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11357-atw-england http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11357-atw-england <![CDATA[ENGLAND: When an Iron Age (ca. 750 B.C.–A.D. 43) bone comb was found during road construction in Bar Hill near Cambridge, it was considered a rare discovery. Closer inspection, however, revealed just how unusual the object is. Researchers determined that the comb was made from a piece of human skull. It showed no signs of use, but a hole had been drilled into its middle, suggesting that it was likely worn around the neck as an amulet.]]> Around the World Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:33:49 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11356-atw-chile http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11356-atw-chile <![CDATA[CHILE: A new moai was found at the bottom of a dry lake bed in the Rano Raraku volcanic crater on Easter Island. The iconic sculptures were carved between 1,000 and 500 years ago and represent the ancestors of the island’s Rapanui people. Measuring just 5 feet tall, the new figure is relatively small compared to others on the island, which average 13 feet in height and weigh around 14 tons each. The majority of Easter Island’s 1,000 moai were carved out of Rano Raraku’s soft volcanic tuff.]]> Around the World Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:33:13 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11355-atw-pennsylvania http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11355-atw-pennsylvania <![CDATA[PENNSYLVANIA: A U.S. Army ordnance disposal team was summoned to Gettysburg when a 160-year-old live artillery shell was uncovered during archaeological work. The 7-inch-long unexploded round was found 2 feet below the surface near a rocky outcrop known as Little Round Top. During the Civil War’s bloody Battle of Gettysburg, Little Round Top was held by Union troops. It witnessed intense fighting during a Confederate assault on July 2, 1863, that resulted in as many as 1,700 casualties.]]> Around the World Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:31:43 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11354-atw-washington http://www.archaeology.org/feed/510-issue/2305/world/11354-atw-washington <![CDATA[WASHINGTON: Researchers determined that a mastodon living in the Pacific Northwest 13,900 years ago was wounded when it was struck by a spear. The elephant-like animal’s remains were first discovered 45 years ago at the Manis Mastodon site on the Olympic Peninsula. Recent CT scanning and 3-D software analysis revealed that tiny bone fragments embedded in its rib were pieces of a projectile fashioned from the leg bone of another mastodon. This represents the oldest known bone spearpoint in the Americas and the earliest evidence of mastodon hunting.]]> Around the World Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:30:54 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11353-utah-basketmaker-beetle-ornament http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11353-utah-basketmaker-beetle-ornament <![CDATA[Different people value different things. The same goes for cultures at large. The things people value and how they choose to display their wealth depends on a great number of factors: geography, history, personal preference, religious beliefs, and mythology, to name just a few. And while the term “wealth” may evoke images of shining gold and silver, glittering gems, and piles of currency, something that may not have any value to people of one culture may be precious to another. It is often at times of momentous change that notions of value can provide the greatest insight into a culture’s belief system. Recently, archaeologist Michael Terlep, who works in Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest, and colleagues from Northern Arizona University (NAU) have explored how members of the Basketmaker II culture in the American Southwest displayed their wealth and power as they were undergoing the dramatic shift from hunting and gathering to farming. They fashioned an unusual form of jewelry: necklaces made from insect exoskeletons.   The Basketmaker II people lived across the Colorado Plateau, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500. These seminomadic people farmed maize and gourds during the summer and hunted wild game during the winter. They are perhaps best known for their skill in producing ornate woven items such as mats, aprons, sandals, bags—and the painted baskets that give them their name. These objects do not appear to have been owned only by particularly powerful individuals or families, but rather were evenly spread throughout the community. While such a pattern of distributing wealth is typical of hunter-gatherers, it is unusual in a society that has adopted farming.   Across the world, as predominantly egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups began to adopt faming and embrace more sedentary lifestyles, archaeologists often see evidence of increased social hierarchy—which is to say that society was gradually divided into people at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom, with the people at the top having more power and wealth than everyone else. At sites such as Cahokia in Illinois, for example, the Mississippian culture (ca. A.D. 900–1700) had a ranked society in which chiefs and an elite class oversaw workers and lower-class families.   Scholars hotly debate the exact processes by which people in different cultures developed status and power, but a widely accepted theory sees the accumulation of surplus goods as a possible driver. As certain individuals acquired more goods than others and became powerful in a community, they were able to distinguish themselves further by accumulating even more personal property such as opulent homes, art, and jewelry. While archaeologists have occasionally found artifacts such as stone pendants and beads in Basketmaker II houses, pointing to the production of some prestige items, they are exceptionally rare. This has led some to suggest that Basketmaker II people adopted agriculture without experiencing the expected increase in social hierarchy. “Archaeologists wondered for a long time if these people somehow managed to work around issues of wealth and status as they transitioned into agriculture,” says Terlep. As it turns out, the evidence that this was not the case was there all along, just not in the form researchers were expecting. There were no precious stones such as turquoise, commonly used later in the culture’s history, to signify status distinctions among the Basketmaker II people. Instead, they occasionally displayed their higher positions by fashioning necklaces from the iridescent legs of the green June beetle.   Terlep has focused his research on two examples of beetle adornments he found in a storage repository at Edge of the Cedars State Park in Utah. One, a fragment of fiber with 16 insect legs, was discovered by NAU archaeologists at a level in Boomerang Shelter in southern Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument that dates to the Basketmaker II period. Although only a portion of the artifact was recovered during excavation, its shape and materials indicate that it was likely part of a necklace or bracelet. The second is a complete necklace fashioned of more than 200 beetle legs that likely came from Atlatl Cave, just 20 miles from Boomerang Shelter, which Terlep radiocarbon dated to the Basketmaker II period.   Each of these beetle necklaces would have required more than 100 insects and taken considerable time and effort to produce. An artisan would have had to painstakingly remove insect femurs just a fifth of an inch long and puncture holes in them so they could be strung onto an extremely fine cord, likely made of yucca, measuring just a twenty-fifth of an inch thick. Because green June beetles have not historically been found in the region surrounding Atlatl Cave and Boomerang Shelter, it’s possible that the Basketmaker II people would have needed to travel or trade to acquire them. “These adornments were very costly to produce and likely signaled that the wearer was a person of status,” says Terlep. “Because insects in southwestern Native American cultures hold significance within creation mythology and storytelling, it’s probable that these necklaces had symbolic meaning, too.”   Terlep hopes that his research will encourage archaeologists to look for unconventional or unexpected evidence of social organization when investigating new Basketmaker II sites. As he continues his studies, Terlep plans to work alongside Native American collaborators in the area to build a stronger base of information that will draw upon traditional knowledge to help recognize and understand objects such as the beetle adornments. “Our ideas about wealth may have led us to overlook some items like insects in Basketmaker sites,” Terlep says. “Coordinating with local tribes will help reveal information and stories that were clouded by a Western bias.”]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:29:47 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11352-norway-earliest-runestone http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11352-norway-earliest-runestone <![CDATA[Lying in the path of a road construction project near Svingerud farm in southeastern Norway was a cremation pit that contained what at first seemed to be an utterly ordinary mud-smeared chunk of sandstone. When archaeologists cleaned the stone and it had dried, a series of shallow runic inscriptions became visible. The grave has been radiocarbon dated to between A.D. 25 and 250, making the artifact the oldest known runestone. Some of the inscriptions are in the 24-character Elder Futhark writing system, which was used until around A.D. 700, when it was replaced by the 16-character Younger Futhark system that was used during the Viking Age (A.D. 800–1050). Many of the inscriptions are a mixture of scribbles, says Kristel Zilmer of the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. One may be a woman’s name, Idiberug. However, Zilmer says that many of the inscriptions don’t make sense and some may just be decorative.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:28:56 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11351-germany-bronze-age-well http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11351-germany-bronze-age-well <![CDATA[People living in southern Germany around 3,500 years ago appear to have grown so concerned about dwindling water supplies that they deposited valuables in a well in an attempt to end the drought. Archaeologists working in advance of construction in the town of Germering found dozens of items at the bottom of the well, including 26 robe pins, needles, a bangle bracelet, two metal spirals, four amber beads, and a wooden ladle. There were also more than 70 finely crafted and decorated clay vessels of a type usually only found in Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800–1200 B.C.) graves, a single button that was likely already hundreds of years old when it was put in the well, and an animal tooth wrapped in bronze wire, possibly as a ritual practice. “We think this was a sacrificial deposit, maybe to the gods,” says Jochen Haberstroh, an archaeologist with the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection.   Archaeologists have discovered around 70 wells dating from the Bronze Age through the Early Middle Ages in an excavation area covering 17 acres, though none of the other wells were found to contain a similar concentration of valuable objects. This well is also 16.5 feet deep, several feet deeper than others in the area, suggesting that it was dug at a time when groundwater had dropped significantly due to drought.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:28:10 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11350-iraq-paleolithic-cuisine http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11350-iraq-paleolithic-cuisine <![CDATA[Burned vegetable remains from Franchthi Cave in Greece and Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq are revealing that Middle and Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers cooked plants many thousands of years before the advent of agriculture. A team including archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu of the University of Liverpool found that people in the two caves used food preparation techniques that were remarkably similar, despite the 60,000 years separating them; Shanidar Cave was occupied by Neanderthals between 75,000 and 70,000 years ago, while Franchthi Cave was used from 11,700 to 11,400 years ago. The researchers employed reflected light and scanning electron microscopes to identify the species of carbonized plants. They found that the remains in both caves included oat and barley seeds as well as peas, pistachios, almonds, and wild mustard. Several of these plants would have had to be soaked in water and crushed to remove toxins before they could be eaten. In some cases, different plants were combined into a single dish. Many of the plants would have had a bitter taste, and wild mustard has a particularly sharp flavor. According to Kabukcu, these people weren’t just gathering foods with the most calories. “They go out and seek specific flavors and eat the things that they like,” she says.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:27:29 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11349-teotihuacan-maya-monkey-burial http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11349-teotihuacan-maya-monkey-burial <![CDATA[Around A.D. 275, an unlikely emissary arrived in the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan. A group of Maya brought a spider monkey as an exotic gift to help establish a formal relationship with the city’s rulers. The sacrificed monkey’s remains were part of an offering cache uncovered by archaeologist Nawa Sugiyama of the University of California, Riverside, in the Plaza of the Columns, an elite neighborhood of Teotihuacan. The cache also included the remains of a golden eagle, as well as greenstone figurines and obsidian blades. Examination of the monkey’s bones showed that it was five to eight years old when it died. Isotope analysis of the bones indicated that it lived in captivity for the last two years of its life, based on the type of foods it ate. Sugiyama believes that the monkey symbolized the type of relationship the Maya hoped to have with the rulers of Teotihuacan. Monkeys were important figures in Maya cosmology, she says, noting that they were associated with traits such as artisanship, intellectual knowledge, and writing, as distinct from brute force or power.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:26:40 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11348-south-africa-horn-medicine http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11348-south-africa-horn-medicine <![CDATA[The chance discovery of a cow horn container in a rock shelter in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province has provided scholars with the recipe for a pharmaceutical compound formulated around 500 years ago. The cow horn, which has been radiocarbon dated to between 1461 and 1630, was found covered with a leather lid and wrapped in leaves and grass. A team led by University of Johannesburg archaeologist Justin Bradfield analyzed residues from the container. They concluded that the residues contained high concentrations of the chemical compounds mono-methyl inositol and lupeol, both of which are used to control blood sugar and cholesterol levels, lower fevers and soothe inflammation, and treat infection. The team determined that three local plants could have been the source of the chemicals. Bradfield says the container is the earliest evidence from southern Africa of people combining two or more plants for the purposes of medicinal treatment. “We know that for tens of thousands of years people have understood the medicinal and toxicological properties of plants,” he says. “But until now we haven’t had tangible evidence that they were combining extracts from several plants to create a medicinal recipe.”]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:26:01 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11347-israel-silk-road-depot http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11347-israel-silk-road-depot <![CDATA[At a site on the edge of southern Israel’s Arava Desert, archaeologists have unearthed a trash heap packed with an unprecedented quantity of discarded merchandise of the sort that was once traded along the medieval Silk Road. The site, called Nahal Omer, was a way station a day’s walk west of the city of Petra, in present-day Jordan. In two dig seasons there, University of Haifa archaeologist Guy Bar-Oz and his team have excavated cotton and silk fabric and other organic remains such as papyrus fragments and cotton ear swabs that came from India and China. To the team’s surprise, the textiles were radiocarbon dated to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D.—at least 300 years after the Roman-era route had largely fallen into disuse. This was a time of growing globalization and renewed trade spurred by the rise of Islam. Bar-Oz believes this midden sat along a previously unknown segment of the Silk Road that might have given Greek-speaking Christians and newly arrived Arabic-speaking Muslim peoples access to sumptuous goods.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:23:32 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11346-france-notre-dame-coffin http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11346-france-notre-dame-coffin <![CDATA[While digging beneath the transept of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, archaeologists from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) recovered two lead sarcophagi. The first was sealed within a masonry tomb in a privileged position at the threshold of the cathedral’s choir. An epitaph identifies the deceased as Antoine de la Porte, a cleric who paid for renovations to the choir and died in 1710 at the age of 83. Three bronze medals depicting de la Porte were found atop the coffin. De la Porte’s polished teeth and slender bones indicate a life of leisure befitting someone of his position. Furthermore, explains biological paleoanthropologist Eric Crubézy of the University of Toulouse III–Paul Sabatier, he has lesions on a big toe that appear to be characteristic of gout. “Because gout is associated with rich food and excessive alcohol consumption,” Crubézy says, “it has been considered a disease of elites.”   The other coffin, which dates to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, was found west of the transept. “The coffin’s contours sharply follow the shape of the head, shoulders, and hips, which seems to suggest that it was adapted to the deceased’s body,” says INRAP archaeologist Christophe Besnier. The unidentified man died around the age of 30 of chronic tuberculous meningitis. His hip socket shows he rode horses starting in early childhood, and the treatment of his remains further signals his elevated status. “He was embalmed, his thorax opened, and the top of his skull sawed off,” Crubézy says. “Opening the skull and thorax is found only in subjects of the high nobility.”   To read more about excavations in Notre Dame, go to "Exploring Notre Dame's Hidden Past."  ]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:22:41 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11345-germany-neolithic-mass-grave http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11345-germany-neolithic-mass-grave <![CDATA[A team of archaeologists from Kiel University and the Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences unearthed an unusual mass grave at the Neolithic site of Vráble in Slovakia. Vráble was inhabited from about 5250 to 4950 B.C. by people belonging to what scholars call the Linear Pottery culture. At its peak, the site consisted of three neighboring settlements of around 80 houses in all, making it especially large for the time. The team discovered 37 skeletons missing their skulls in a ditch surrounding one of the villages. Mass graves have been found in ditches at other Linear Pottery sites, but none excavated thus far have contained decapitated bodies. Evidence of large-scale massacres at other mass graves suggests the Linear Pottery people entered a period of crisis around 5100 B.C. The headless burials at Vráble may have been part of a response to this upheaval. “The ritual depositions could be some kind of social coping mechanism of a magical or religious nature that people performed to get back control in a time when things seemed to be falling apart,” says archaeologist Martin Furholt. Excavation and dating of other settlements in the area show that they were being abandoned around the time the headless bodies were buried. Meanwhile, the population at Vráble was growing, perhaps a result of newcomers seeking security in an increasingly unstable world.]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:19:33 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11344-greece-odeon-discovered http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11344-greece-odeon-discovered <![CDATA[An excavation team led by archaeologist Katerina Janakakis of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania has uncovered ruins of an odeon, or roofed theatrical building, in the ancient city of Lissos on the southwest coast of Crete. Thus far, the team has unearthed 14 rows of seats, two vaulted side chambers, and part of the stage, all constructed from local limestone. The odeon was built in the first century A.D., when Lissos was a prosperous Roman city. The settlement was heavily damaged, likely during a devastating earthquake in A.D. 365 that leveled other cities in the eastern Mediterranean. Although odeons typically hosted musical performances and poetry competitions, Janakakis believes this particular building might also have served as a gathering place for government authorities. “Lissos was a small, provincial city,” she says, “so it’s a rather logical assumption that the odeon might have had a double use, judging by its form and location in the center of the city.”]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:18:39 -0700 http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11343-greece-poseidon-sanctuary http://www.archaeology.org/feed/509-issue/2305/digs/11343-greece-poseidon-sanctuary <![CDATA[In his encyclopedic Geography, the first-century A.D. Greek historian Strabo mentions an important sanctuary dedicated to the sea god Poseidon that was situated in the hilly region of Triphylia along the west coast of Greece’s Peloponnese. Its exact location has long eluded scholars, but now a team of researchers led by Birgitta Eder of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, in cooperation with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Elis, believe they have finally discovered possible traces of the sanctuary. At the site of Kleidi-Samikon, the team unearthed stone foundations of a temple measuring at least 90 feet long, as well as a fragment of a large marble water basin of a kind found in sanctuaries throughout Greece. Eder explains that the structure’s layout and the terracotta roof tiles used to fill in the space between its walls suggest that it was built in the sixth century B.C. “This was a major monumental building with two interior rooms and probably a front and back hall,” she says. “It would have been a prominent site and a central meeting point for the regional cities of Triphylia.”]]> Digs & Discoveries Fri, 07 Apr 2023 15:17:50 -0700