Caitlin O’Grady hopes to crack a mystery that has puzzled archaeologists and potters for more than 100 years.
It surrounds small pieces of broken Hopi pottery, some of which are now in O’Grady’s lab in the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) department at The University of Arizona.
O’Grady, an MSE Ph.D. student, recently sat at her lab bench and turned one of these potsherds over in her hands. “These ceramics are beautiful and incredibly well made,” she said. “The artists who made them were amazingly skilled and able to very precisely manipulate the materials and technology. It’s remarkable. I wish I had their skills.”
The Hopi artists created what archaeologists call Jeddito ware between about 1200 and 1650 A.D., O’Grady explained. The potsherds that she’s studying are a subset of Jeddito called Sikyatki Polychrome. They’re named for a site that early archaeologists excavated on Northern Arizona’s Hopi reservation, where a large number of complete and broken pots were found.
Not much new in the way of archaeological techniques being used (XRD, SEM, etc.) but it will be a long detailed process of figuring out how they made these things.
Ceramics and bones found in Celtic settlement
A Celtic settlement believed to be nearly 3 000 years old has been discovered near Roman tombs in northern Switzerland, archeologists said on Thursday.
The hamlet near Frick, in Argau district, dated from about 900 BC, the district's archeological department said.
Excavations revealed stone foundations for the Celtic tribespeople's wooden dwellings, ceramics, animal bones and charred grain.
Archeologists also found Roman tombs nearby dating from about 100 AD which contained glass containers, bronze ornaments, ceramics and other objects.
The researchers believe the Roman tombs belonged to a single family.
That's the whole thing.
Homo hobbitus update Small brain did not stop Hobbit having big ideas
A fossil of a diminutive human nicknamed "the Hobbit" does indeed represent a previously unrecognised species of early Man, according to a new technique that suggests it was a cultured little fellow.
Sceptics had argued that the Hobbit, discovered in Indonesia and first announced last year, could have been an individual who suffered from microcephalya, a disorder that limits brain growth.
. . .
Yesterday Nathan Jeffery of the University of Liverpool described a new way to study the imprint left by the brain on the inside of fossilised skulls.
Guts: Dr Jeffery has revealed a simple yet effective measure of the endocranial cavity which gives a proportion of frontal and cerebellar parts of the brain and appears to reflect the rudimentary cultural advances between species.
"The proportion for H. floresiensis (168 per cent) falls within the range for Homo erectus (165 -171 per cent) and is approximately 20 percentage points greater than that for the chimps," he said. "As expected the mean proportion for modern humans is much higher than the rest at 205 per cent."
We may have seen some scans of this in the past few days, that is, some images of the shape and size of H.h., H.s., and some chimps. The images themselves seem to make a pretty good case that these aren't just microcephalics.
Caught! Attempt to smuggle pharaoh's statue foiled
Egyptian police have foiled an attempt to smuggle an ancient statue of Pharaoh Ramses II out of Egypt for sale to a foreign museum or private collector.
Security sources said Thursday that thieves found the granite statue in the region of Giza near Cairo in the area of the big pyramids and did not report it to the authorities.
Police were tipped off about the discovery, however, and policemen posing as art merchants convinced the thieves to sell them the statue for 4 million Egyptian pounds ($695,000).
The thieves, who planned to break the statue into several pieces to facilitate smuggling it out of the country, showed the disguised policemen to the place where they had been hiding it.
Ramses II, one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, ruled ancient Egypt for 67 years between 1213 and 1279 B.C., and his statues are found in several parts of the country.
That's the whole thing.
Israel to leave 6th century mosaic in Gaza
Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday that following "the noise made in the media" about the possibility of the removal of a 6th century Byzantine mosaic from Gaza, Dr. Yitzhak Magen, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority's archaeology in the Palestinian Territories, decided "to leave it as it is."
"I really hope the Palestinians will know how to preserve it," said Dror.
Again???? Antiquities go missing from Egyptian museum
The disappearance of three items from the Egyptian Museum has prompted investigations that may be taken over by the General Prosecutor, according to press reports on Monday.
The three artefacts dating back to 2649-2150 BC were found missing September 7 - five months after being lent to the museum for an exhibition, the state-owned daily al-Ahram reported.
The items were never put on display, but kept under guard the museum's basement along with thousands of others.
We owe it all to rutabagas The roots of civilization trace back to ... roots
About five to seven million years ago, when the lineage of humans and chimpanzees split, edible root plants similar to rutabagas and turnips may have been one of the reasons. According to research by anthropologists Greg Laden of the University of Minnesota and Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, the presence of fleshy underground storage organs like roots and tubers must have sustained our ancestors who left the rain forest to colonize the savannah. They have published their research in the October issue of the Journal of Human Evolution.
"You can think of roots as a kind of 'conveyor belt' ... they were somewhat available in the forest, but abundant on the savannah," said Laden. "Once roots were 'discovered,' chimp-like creatures would not only be able to survive on the savannah, but may well have been compelled to extend their range into more and more open habitats."
We think it was all due to the kohlrabi, but that's just us.
Major excavation for Roman relic
North East experts are to investigate reports that a mosaic from Roman times is buried 15ft underground opposite the site of a former Sunderland brewery.
Archaeologists are now hoping to search for the ancient relic on the Vaux brewery site before it is redeveloped.
If they find the mosaic, it would confirm long-held suspicions by some local historians that there used to be a Roman settlement in the city.
The brewery closed in 1999 and will not be redeveloped until digs are complete.
Knotty problem Is this a message from the Incas?
Scholars call it the "Inca Paradox": how could the Incas run their vast, vibrant and complex empire for hundreds of years without going to the trouble of inventing writing?
Khipu
Now the first Inca word - a place name - may have been uncovered by two experts studying enigmatic mops of knotted strings, called "khipu" or "quipu" (pronounced "kee-poo"), used by the Inca culture in South America for around 500 years.
We linked to something similar some time ago.