Dartmoor Shrouds its Secrets

When I was sixteen I first discovered archaeology on a family holiday to Dartmoor (moorland area in Devon, U.K.) - and that one holiday lead me to do a degree in prehistory. Archaeology has been an obsession ever since. It is always rather nice, therefore, to see the results of the latest archaeological investigation in the Dartmoor area.

Through a thin shroud of mist seeping from low-lying cloud, the shadowy forms of hree huge ghostly standing stones stare across the wide bog in Drizzle Combe, one of the more remote parts of Dartmoor, a vast national park in Devon in southwest England.

As the fog slowly crept down the valley, it was not hard to see why Dartmoor was the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tale of horror, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and also why 200 years ago it was chosen for the location of one of England's grimmest prisons, which at one time held the country's worst offenders.

This solitary place is encircled by softly rounded hills littered with boulders of granite and bearing the outlines of ancient field systems and hut-circles (remains of prehistoric stone dwellings). It is easy to imagine that nothing much had changed since Bronze Age settlers abandoned the place more than 3,000 years ago. Dartmoor's granite base is covered by moorland of dried grasses and bracken, sodden bog land, and boulder-strewn tors, or peaks. It's also the repository of the largest number of prehistoric ceremonial remains in northwest Europe.

Here are more than 1,500 stone cairns, (burial places), the remains of more than 5,000 Bronze Age huts, more than 75 stone rows, numerous standing stones known as megaliths and stone circles. Most, with the help of an Ordnance Survey map, can be reached on foot within a few hours from villages on the fringes of the moor.

Drizzle Combe is one of Dartmoor's most important prehistoric sites, and we were determined to get close to those stones. A quick glance at the map showed we were not far from Evil Combe, Deadman's Bottom and Grim's Grave. Skirting these daunting-sounding places, we followed the course of the tumbling Plym River, scrambling along its banks lined with the spoil heaps from tin-mining operations that studded the area as far back as the 12th century.

'Lost' towns shed light on Ethiopia's Islamic heritage

The discovery of three old Muslim towns in Ethiopia has put a question mark on the history of a nation which prides itself on its overwhelmingly Christian heritage dating back to Biblical times.

The first known civilisation in Ethiopia was that of the mighty Aksumite kingdom which was established in 1000 BC in the country's north. Its best known figure was the Queen of Sheba who is said to have borne King Solomon a son named Menelik, who became the first emperor of Ethiopia and the founder of its ancient Christian dynasty which only ended when Emperor Haile Selassie was toppled in 1974.

But the discovery last year of three Muslim medieval towns by French experts and archaeologists has finally helped scholars locate a legendary Islamic kingdom which flourished between the 10th and 16th centuries."It is a surprising discovery because we generally say that Islam came to Ethiopia late and had a marginal role," said
Yonas Beyene, head of paleontology at Ethiopia's culture ministry.

The article goes on to describe the towns Nora, Asbari and Masal which are located 1300 metres above sea level on a rocky outcrop. They were organized on a grid layout, with domestic buildings, mosques facing mecca, and cemeteries. Nearby agricultural features (terracing and irrigation) also survive, as do some Arabic inscriptions.

The Shetland Times reports that excavations are complete at Sandwick on Unst (Britain's northernmost island, off the coast of Scotland). The site dates to the Iron Age, and was in danger of falling into the sea. It was excavated by a group of amateur archaeologists, trained by professionals, as part of the government-run Adopt-A-Monument initiative.

The site consists of several small cells, with upstanding stone walls and paved floors. Thick layers of midden, full of limpet and whelk shells, animal bone and pot sherds, built up in and around the cells. In the middle of one was a stone and clay hearth, with large pot sherds set into the clay. Another hearth was later built on top, also of stone and clay, against a large upright slab. Behind it was a mound of ash and pot sherds that had been swept out of the hearth.

The team have found more than a thousand sherds of pottery, as well as a soapstone tuyère (for holding a bellows during metalworking), part of a shale bracelet, stone tools and two painted pebbles.

. . .

In 2005, a burial was found cut through the windblown sand that had covered the building after it was abandoned. The skeleton had been buried with a polished stone disc and a tiny, intricate object made of copper alloy and bone rings.

The BBC website reports that the Unst project is one of a number of sites that have been taken under the protection of local community groups, in the Adopt-A-Monument initiative which hopes to promote the restoration and survival of a number of Scottish sites. A number of examples are cited, as well as Unst, including a stone circle trail:

The archaeological section of Perthshire Society for Natural Science are to expand a stone circle trail which they created as an Adopt-a-Monument project in the 1990s. The current trail consists of the circle of Bandirran, Colen and Loanhead and will soon feature a further two sites still to be announced.

Writing on the Wall

Tony's approach to archaeological reporting is fairly liberal, so I'm hoping not to be throttled for this fascinating piece when he comes back. I figure if something as eminent as Archaeology Magazine can feature it, then Tony won't reject it - and having read his blog for years, I think he might aprove:

Fifteen years is barely the scrape of a trowel to many archaeologists. But in another context, 1992 was ages ago. In that remote time, a 20-year-old computer programmer named Cassidy Curtis commuted by bus down Haight Street in San Francisco past Psycho City, a wall known for its long history of wild, colorful graffiti. Curtis saw the wall, next to a nondescript parking lot, change from day to day and started to think about recording how it evolved as layers of paint accumulated. He didn't act on the impulse and moved away for a few years, but when he returned to San Francisco to work as an animator for Dreamworks in 1999, he saw other constantly mutating graffiti walls on his train commute and thought, "Dammit, I'm going to do it this time."

The result is the Graffiti Archaeology Project (http://www.grafarc.org/), a slick, clever, Flash-based website that lets visitors explore massive murals, zoom in, and overlay more recent works on older ones like layers of painted acetate. His regularly updated project records graffiti walls in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

. . .

The walls he records abound with colorful, active art that doubles as ongoing social commentary. Despite the name of the project, Curtis admits he is no archaeologist, but he has created a structured record that evokes archaeology and questions how we will define the field tomorrow.

Do have a look at the full article - it makes for a fascinating read, and the photographs of the changing contexts are rivetting.

For more details of online and print contents of the June/July issue of Archaeology magazine, see their web page at:
http://www.archaeology.org/0707/

Conversation: The Nuclear Option

An interview on Archaeology Magazine with chemist Matthias Rossbach of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) examines the surprising role of the agency in archaeology:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is using nuclear technology to provide new information about artifacts in countries rich in archaeological objects but poor in resources to study them. Chemist Matthias Rossbach has led a project that uses Nuclear Analytical Techniques (NATs) to measure the elemental composition of ceramic, stone, and metal artifacts.

Peruvian Agency Sues Mexican Telecom

A Peruvian government agency said Friday it has filed a lawsuit against a Mexican telephone company for allegedly damaging part of a large pre-Incan cemetery while laying fiber-optic cable.

Telefonos de Mexico SA, or Telmex, damaged 720 square feet of the Paracas culture's site - including the funeral wraps of 2,000-year-old mummies, according to local officials.

Alfredo Gonzalez, director of the National Institute of Culture in the department of Ica, where the desert burial site is located, told The Associated Press that the agency is seeking monetary compensation or another arrangement, such as public works for the archaeological area, from Telmex.

Telmex officials in Lima were not immediately available for comment. The company had been given permission by the institute to lay the cable in the area, but no further details about the work was available.

The Paracas culture, dating to between 600 and 100 B.C., thrived on Peru's southern coast and is known for its intricate and colorful wool weavings. Two years ago in the same area, archeologists attributed about 50 giant figures etched in the ground - including those of humans and animals, including birds, monkeys, and felines - to the Paracas. The designs predate Peru's famed Nazca lines.

Repatriation of artefacts is an increasingly hot topic for museums world-wide.

At the moment Egypt is campaigning to regain posession of artefacts which were taken from the country illegally, and anyone following the trials and tribulations of Italy's actions against a number of U.S. museums will be fully up to date with the latest issues.

In the news this week are two returnees: an ancient Greek male marble torso is probably going to be returned by Switzerland to Greece (reported by Reuters, with photo), and a number of stolen artefacts have been returned to Peru (reported by the Miami Herald, with photo).

In the meantime, Egypt's attempts to secure the Nefertiti bust on loan from Germany are becoming increasingly acrimonious, as detailed by Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities on the Al Ahram Weekly website. Other items requested on loan include the Rosetta Stone, currently housed in the British Museum, London (U.K.).

I've just noticed that Tony occasionally offers coverage of the latest and most significant Palaeontological discoveries, which means that I have been letting him down by failing to offer coverage of the latest dinosaur discovery.

While Xinhuanet offers some details about the prehistoric avian, the National Geographic website has a decorative artist's interpretation of how it might have appeared. Here's an extract from the Xinhuanet summary:

Chinese archaeologists have discovered a the remains of gigantic bird-like dinosaur in the Gobi Desert in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which could overturn theories that dinosaurs became generally smaller as they evolved into birds.

The animal, named gigantoraptor erlianensis, is believed to have been about eight meters in length, weighed 1,400 kg, and stood up to five meters high. Chinese archaeologists said that despite its enormous size, gigantoraptor erlianensis belonged to the oviraptorosauria, a group of smaller, feathered animals. In light of its size, the researchers performed two different tests to confirm that it belonged to the oviraptorosaur family. "The analyses strongly supported the oviraptorosaur affinity of gigantoraptor erlianensis and suggested this new dinosaur was in an intermediate position in oviraptorosaurian evolution," Xu Xing, a researcher with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleon anthropology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chinese archaeologists believe gigantoraptor erlianensis was an anomaly in the evolution of dinosaurs to birds and its discovery complicates the evolutionary pattern. Xu said they had no direct evidence that gigantoraptor erlianensis was feathered like its close relatives, but based on its close relationship to other feathered species such as caudipteryx and protarchaeopteryx, gigantoraptor erlianensis probably had feathers on its arms and tail at least.

The most interesting bits of news from the world of Egyptology over the last couple of days are as follows.

Very sadly, Professor Peter Ucko, a long-time director of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL died during Thursday night at home. I have written an informal and ridiculously brief note about his career and contribution to archaeology on my blog. I will update my site again when someone has published details that does him far more justice.

If you are interested in the identification of mummies, and of Royal personages in particular, then you might be interested in the news, announced by Zahi Hawass of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, that DNA testing might be used to identify whether or not the mummy of Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, has actually been located.

A detailed book review by Stephen Gregory of David Wengrow's book The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, c.10,000 to 2,650 BC has appeared in the newly issued online journal Rosetta.

Finally, the threat to the unique prehistoric rock art found near Qurta, and reported recently in Antiquity, has been highlighted in an article on the Al Ahram Weekly website.

A sadly brief bulletin on the Sofia Echo website covers the story of the discovery of a new labyrinth:

The archaeological expedition Strandzha discovered a labyrinth, similar to the famous labyrinth on the island of Crete. The discovery was made near the village of Golyam Derven, close to the Bulgarian-Turkish border.

Archaeologists also found a skeleton of a ruler in the labyrinth, BGNES news agency reported.

Among the finds in the labyrinth were abundantly ornamented ceramics artifacts with unknown so far elements and bird figures.

This is the second unique discovery that the archaeologists made within a week. A few days ago, they found stone ornament, resembling double axe at the entrance of a
tomb. The ornament changed historians' ideas on the establishment of Thracian state in the region.

Unfortunately, that's the entire story! Hopefully more will be forthcoming soon.

An article on the Archaeology Magazine website (Volume 60 Number 4, July/August 2007) entitled Insider: Profiteers on the High Seas, by Heather Pringle, offers a fascinating insight into the world of underwater archaeology. She begins with a description of the 1865 sinking of the U.S. steamship Republic and its rediscovery, 140 years later by shipwreck salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., who then went on to claim salvage rights:

Under maritime law, salvage companies are permitted to keep the ships they find in international waters, provided no one else claims jurisdiction over the vessels. So Odyssey staked a claim to Republic in a U.S. federal court, obtaining legal ownership. Then, with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), the firm raised more than 51,000 gold and silver coins from the site, as well as thousands of other artifacts, including hair-remedy bottles, mustard jars, children's slates, and ink wells. To help finance its operations, Odyssey began selling many of these finds to eager collectors, earning millions in revenues. Impressed, Fortune Small Business magazine put the firm on its cover with the headline: "Treasure Inc.: How an Entrepreneur Went Hunting for Sunken Gold—and Found a $20 Million-a-Year Business."

If a private corporation had targeted such an important site on land in the United States and hawked many of its artifacts, heritage activists would have been up in arms, asking hard questions about the commercial exploitation of the country's cultural history. But there was no public protest over the fate of Republic, and very little criticism in the press. Moreover, this was not an unusual state of affairs—treasure hunters often sell off shipwreck artifacts with scarcely a whisper of opposition. As a journalist who has been writing about archaeology for 25 years, I find this disturbing. Why isn't there more of a hue and cry against nautical treasure hunting? Why does this industry seem to operate so freely? In search of answers, I began closely examining the problem a year ago. I found, to my dismay, that we have created a bizarre double standard for terrestrial and marine sites, turning a blind eye to the fate of the world's shipwrecks. In much of the world's oceans, treasure hunting is a perfectly legal enterprise.

She goes on to explore the daunting issues facing underwater archaeology, via some hair raising facts and figures, and then looks at some of the possible solutions, in this well-researched and very articulate article.

A shipwreck laden with Ming porcelein has been found in China, and illustrates some of the points made in the Archaeology Magazine article (see above) about problems facing underater archaeology:

Chinese archaeologists have found an ancient sunken ship in the South China Sea laden with Ming Dynasty porcelain, the Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

Divers used satellite navigation equipment to find the vessel, dubbed South China sea II, which is about 17 to 18 meters (yards) long and lying at a depth of 20 meters."A preliminary study of the sunken ship shows it may have sunk 400 years ago after striking a reef," archaeologist Dr Wei Jun was quoted as saying.

The ship came to light when local police got wind of illegal salvage operations going on off the coast of Guangdong province. "On May 25, police learnt that some fishermen had been recovering ancient porcelain objects from the sea," Xinhua said.

Police confiscated 21 pieces of porcelain from a fishing boat whose owner claimed that divers he had hired for deep-sea fishing had recovered the porcelain by accident. On May 26, another 117 pieces of porcelain were confiscated from two fishing boats carrying out illegal salvage work. "Police stepped up monitoring of the area and warned local people not to loot the cultural relics. On June 1, two local residents handed over 124 porcelain items to police."

The sunken ship was found just a few days after China began salvage operations at another wreck site dating back to the days of the Song emperors, who ruled between AD 960 and 1279.

The world's first isolation hospital gives up its gruesome secrets

On average the Venetians who lived during the glory days of the Republic were rather small, just five feet five inches in height; they were well nourished, and if they lacked sugar and fat the result was excellent teeth with no cavities.

These are among the first findings of a group of archaeologists exploring a treasure trove of Venetian history that has been locked away and forgotten for centuries: the graves of Lazzaretto, an island in the Venetian lagoon whichbecame the world's first isolation hospital.

Following an outbreak of the plague in 1348, the Doge and his advisers put their minds to thinking up a way to prevent a recurrence. The upshot, at the beginning of the 15th century, was the world's first isolation hospital occupying the entire small island.

In 1630 the hospital was dissolved and the island taken over by a military garrison; later it was used to hold stray dogs. In the 1960s it was abandoned altogether.

Now it has become the subject of intensive study. Backed by Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the quango directing the building of the underwater gates designed to protect Venice from flooding, the archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,500 skeletons of Lazzaretto patients.

A new book, Wetland Archaeology and Environments: Regional Issues, Global Perspectives , is reviewed by Robert Van de Noort (University of Exeter), himself an expert on wetland archaeology, on the Prehistoric Society website (submitted June 2007). It is quite a detailed review, so here's just a short extract:

Wetland Archaeology and Environments. Regional Issues, Global Perspectives is a collection of 23 papers on wetlands from around the world, and based on a conference under the same name in 2000. It includes a number of regional archaeologies of wetlands from nearly every continent (including several from the UK, alongside contributions from Russia, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia, north America and central Africa) alongside a number of more general (eg, on wetland science by Mike Corfield) and methodological papers (eg, on interpreting molluscan assemblages by Paul Davies, non-marine ostracods by Huw Griffiths and diatoms by Jane Reed). In their introduction and reflection, the editors present the case for the archaeological study of wetlands with, on the one hand, the better-than-usual preservation encountered in these anoxic environments and, on the other, the world-wide threat to many wetlands as their drainage and exploitation continues apace. All papers in this volume, to varying degrees, present examples of high quality preservation (eg, the Tumbeagh Bog Body by Nora Bermingham and most papers incorporate palaeoecological data in their results), whilst four papers consider aspects of the threats to wetlands (notably In-situ preservation by Malcolm Lillie).

The most interesting paper, at least for archaeologists working in wetlands, is Francis Pryor’s ‘Beware the Glutinous Ghetto’. In this short paper, Pryor effectively argues against a Wetland Archaeology as a distinct (sub-) discipline in archaeology. Somewhat surprisingly (and unfortunately), the editors do not comment on this evocative challenge put to them by Pryor in either their introduction or reflection. However, the arguments in this paper can not go unchallenged, so I’ll pick up the challenge here.

Wetland Archaeology and Environments. Regional Issues, Global Perspectives Edited By M. Lillie & S. Ellis Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2006, 336pp, 127 b&w illus, 13 tabs, pb ISBN 1842171542 (£19.95)

Acropolis, Chichen Itza lead New 7 Wonders contest

I don't know if anyone is following the New 7 Wonders competition at the moment. As I specialize in delivering Egyptology-based news, and as the Egyptian government has thrown all the toys about involving the Giza pyramids in the competition, I simply cannot wait until the thing closes. But for those of you with less jaded palettes, here's the latest on the competition voting:

The Acropolis in Athens and Mexico's Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza are among the leaders in a competition, ending in one month, to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World, the organizers said on Thursday.

. . .

Some 50 million people have voted so far in the competition designed to produce a 21st century list of the world's greatest man-made heritage sites, but Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the result is wide open. The winning list will be announced in Lisbon on July 7.

Many countries are carrying out special events to encourage people to vote for their sites, Viering said. "There are some really creative, phenomenal things going on in the last four weeks that will influence the final result." These include an Indian singer dedicating a song to the Taj Mahal and Brazil's soccer team urging Brazilians to vote for Christ Redeemer, the statue that adorns Rio de Janeiro's skyline.

The most popular 10 sites so far include both the Taj Mahal and Christ Redeemer, along with the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Peru's Machu Picchu, Petra in Jordan, and the statues of Easter Island.

In 1991 the perfectly preserved remains of a man were found in ice in the South Tyrol. He was found to date to around 3300BC and was given the name Ötzi. He has been the subject of research studies and TV programmes ever since, but only recently has his cause of death been confirmed by analysis of CT scans. This brief article on the EurekAlert website gives the bare facts:

Analysis of the CT images showed a lesion of the dorsal wall of the left subclavian artery, the artery underneath the clavicle, caused by an earlier, already-detected arrowhead that remains in the back. In addition, a large haematoma could be visualized in the surrounding tissue. By incorporating historic as well as modern data on the survivalship of such a severe lesion, the scientists concluded that the Iceman died within a short time due to this lesion.
“Such obvious proof of a vascular lesion in a body of this historic age is unique, and it helped to determine the cause of this extraordinary death without a destructive autopsy. We look forward to further investigating the circumstances surrounding the Iceman’s sudden death,” explains Dr. Dr. Rühli.

In other words, it has been determined that he died from a lesion to an artery near his neck, caused by an arrowhead that was still embedded in his body when he was found.

For a digestible overview of the discovery of Otzi and the subsequent research into his life and death, see the summary on the BBC website from 2002.

And that puts me firmly on the spot.

Thanks Tony, for the glorious build up - no pressure there then! It is thoroughly intimidating to be left in charge of someone else's blog for even a short period, and I hope that I can live up to Tony's standards of charm, wit, and unbiased reporting. Oh okay, I'll just stick to the unbiased reporting.

I've had a look through the archive to address questions of the "does Tony cover Neanderthal issues?" type, and I've looked at all of the recent posts in the hope that I don't duplicate any earlier stories - apologies if I make any mistakes. So here goes!

It's a thoroughly gory start to my guest-role, with mass child sacrifice from Toltec Mexico alleviated somewhat by the peculiarity of a 19th century weapon turning up in a living whale and the unsurprising but welcome assessment that Neanderthals were not thugs, but innovators. Enjoy!

Cheers
Andie

The discovery of a Roman training manual, found in Turkey, inscribed in marble, and dating back some 2000 years, provides an insight into incentives offered for Roman athletes to behave themselves. The Romans clearly didn't believe in the soft and fluffy approach to personnel management:

The manual recommends a flogging to get them to perform better. And the same went if they drank too much mead or behaved disgracefully with the local maidens.

The marble tablet was found in 2003 in the town of Alexandria Troas in Turkey, and deciphered only recently by academics at the University of Muenster in Germany. Applied to professional football players today, the whip would undoubtedly replace the half-time talk as the favoured discipline of choice.

The 1.8-metre-high, 90-centimetre-wide tablet was inscribed with the name of Hadrian, the emperor who built a wall in northern England. He sought to get the best out of his athletes.

The tablet, according to research leader Professor Elmar Schwertheim, also listed entry fees to games such as discus and javelin throwing.

Hmmmmm - modern sports professionals beware, lest your bosses are tempted to follow the Roman example.

The news that a nineteenth century tool has been retrieved from a live whale is strange, but apparently true:

A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.

The bomb lance fragment, lodged a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time, Bockstoce said.

Mass child sacrifice from a Toltec tomb in Mexico is the theme of this National Geographic article. The story has apparently been covered elswhere, but this brings all the threads together quite nicely.

The skeletons of two dozen children killed in an ancient mass sacrifice have been found in a tomb at a construction site in Mexico. The find reveals new details about the ancient Toltec civilization and adds to an ongoing debate over ritualistic killing in historic Mesoamerica.

. . .

The chamber contained 24 skeletons of children believed to have been sacrificed between A.D. 950 and 1150, according to Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

All but one of the children were between 5 to 15 years of age, and they were likely killed as an offering to the Toltec rain god Tlaloc, Gamboa said. The Toltec, a pre-Aztec civilization that thrived from the 10th to 12th centuries, had not been previously thought to have sacrificed children.

But the ritualistic placement of the skeletons, cut marks on bones, and the presence of a figurine of Tlaloc led Gamboa to conclude the children had been sacrificed to bring rain.

The article carries over two pages, and is accompanied by photographs (nothing gory) and a map showing the location of the site.

You'll probably get more Egyptology stuff from me than you would from Tony, but I'll restrict the news items I copy here to the main highlights.

Today's main stories from Egypt are that rock art in the Qurta area of Egypt has been dated by researchers to 15,000bp (Late Palaeolithic - the page contains a set of photos of some of the images under discussion), and that the Johns Hopkins Dig Diary has been reactivated with details of the excavations at the Hall of Drunkenness at the Temple of Mut in Karnak.

Neanderthal innovation is the subject of a New Scientist article this week (issue 2608 of New Scientist magazine, 13 June 2007, page 12), which reports on research by Terry Hopkinson recently published in Antiquity (Antiquity, vol 81, p 294).

NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to.

This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago.

Terry Hopkinson of the University of Leicester, UK, has now challenged this view, showing that Neanderthals were far from behaviourally static. They incorporated different forms of tool construction into a single technique, and learned to cope with the ecological challenges posed by habitats in eastern Europe.

Hopkinson concludes

With this evidence of innovation it becomes difficult to exclude Neanderthals from the concept of humanity

There's an eclectic mix of papers presented in Antiquity this month, with everything from evidence of early wild rice cultivation in China to a look at warfare in the Linearbankeramik of central and western Germany. Have a look at the current issue's web page for the full contents and abstracts.

Researchers seek DNA link to Lost Colony

DNA tests will be used to help solve the mystery of the vanished colony of Roanoke Island, which was home to more than 100 colonists who arrived there in 1587, but who vanished sometime between August of that year and 1590, when their governor returned to the island from a trip to England:

Using genealogy, deeds and historical narratives, researchers have compiled 168 surnames that could be connected to settlers in what is considered the first attempt by the English to colonize the New World. The team will try to trace the roots of individuals related to the colonists, to the area's 16th century American Indians or to both.

Fred Willard, director of the Lost Colony center, said some colonists may have migrated inland to what are now East Lake, Chocowinity and Gum Neck. Researchers plan to use cheek swabs taken from possible ancestors to test the paternal and maternal DNA lines.

While DNA will not make any immediate connections beyond living relatives, the samples can provide clues to an individual's country of origin and other shared family
traits.

And that about does it for me

Yes, as of now I have quit blogging.







For about two weeks. On vacation to the epicenter of American culture, Wisconsin. I shall hopefully return with various photos of both archaeological and geological interest. There really is some neat geology around there, and not just of the glacial sort. Archaeology, not so much. But I may take a trip down to Aztalan and a local mini-museum has a collection of artifacts, though mostly just bunches of random arreyheads and such from all over the temporal and spatial continuum.

In the interim, I have bribed cajoled roped blackmailed kindly asked Andie of Egyptology News to fill in. Hopefully, you will not find me too tiresome in comparison upon my return. I have instructed Andie to not use too many big words so that I can maintain my status as one o' them thar interllecshuls. Shes reel good, she knows all about them phay-rohs and stuff.

And she's kinda cute, too, so feel free to hit on her.

Mycenaean tombs found

Greek archaeologists have uncovered four intact tombs about 30 centuries old and Roman baths from a later period in the south-west of the country, the local media reported on Monday.

The four tombs date from the Mycenaean period (1450 BC to 1050 BC) and are reported to contain many objects such as toys, ceramics and figurines.

The find was made near Olympia in the Peloponnese region in an area which had been excavated in the 1960s and the end of the 1990s.

More on European human sacrifice

Jamestown update Glimpse into lifestyles

Bolstered by the students of the Jamestown Rediscovery summer field school, archaeologists opened up three new excavation squares inside James Fort this past week, revealing a rich new vein of artifacts that includes hundreds of brick fragments from what appears to be an early 17th-century structure. Several recent finds from the northeast corner of the stronghold also may provide new clues about the pioneering settlement as a result of follow-up work by curators and conservators in the project's lab.

One of the best inventions of all time The Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker:



What a marvel! I've had one for approximately 5,431+120 C14 years and probably run an Olympic sized swimming pool of water through it. And it just keeps working. Had to replace the pitcher once because the handle broke, but otherwise, it's a superb appliance, if you like iced tea. And I do. I drink it practically every morning, winter or summer (probably that southern 1/2 of my genome). And only Luzianne tea mind you, because it's the only stuff I've found that doesn't turn all cloudy. Back when we used to vacation with my dad's kin in Alabama nearly every summer, we'd get served Luzianne all the time so it brings back good memories as well.

I won't say it's the best design in the world. At least the older versions have a nasty tendency to leak water when in operation. The unit itself doesn't leak, but it's got a funny way of getting the water from the heating unit into the pitcher that lends itself to water not hitting the pitcher. So a towel is always needed. Still, the sucker just keeps going and going. Probably a very simple, bullet-proof design.

Having said all this, I can probably expect it to conk out any day now. . . .

Two Boooo's for the History Channel

I watched two programs, ostensibly regarding science and archaeology, the past couple of nights, both involving their "Decoding the Past" series. Which, up until these two, had been pretty good. Unfortunately, they went the cheap route for these. They contained some good science, but then went off the rails and into goofball territory.

The first was Doomsday 2012: The End of Days which was about the Maya calendar and how the end of the Long Count comes on Dec 21, 2012. They did a pretty good job of explaining how the Maya developed their calendars and how they worked, but then went into the usual tripe about how various bad things happening in recent history can be somehow, someway, sorta kinda, if-you-want-to-really-see-it predicted by their calendar. Funny how these things only tend to predict doom and gloom; you never see anyone predicting periods of peace and prosperity. At any rate, it was a boondoggle, as usual for these sorts of things.

The other one was Earth's Black Hole . Again, they seemed to get the science right, but then had to go "In Search Of. . ." and blather about whether a black hole was sitting inside the Earth somewhere and maybe, just maybe, this could explain all of the mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. This seemed to be the primary theory of some Dr. (of what, we're not told) who is described only as a "Theoretician".

So if anyone at THC is reading this: If you can't think of any good material, just end the show.

BTW, I probably shouldn't diss "In Search Of. . ." too much, since it was my favorite show way back when. They did a show on the Great Global Cooling as it was back then, the usual other panoply of mysterious things (Loch Ness, Bigfoot) and some other stuff like Amelia Earhart. I ate that stuff up. Chris Carter (X-Files) once addressed a skeptic society meeting and argued in front of what was ostensibly a hostile audience that, even though his shows trumped up just about every conspiracy theory as true, it still served as a catalyst for science since people would get interested by the science fiction and maybe end up pursuing real science eventually. There's something to this I guess. Well, no, there is something to this. Most scientists you talk to were initiated into it by science fiction. Whether "documentaries" like all of the above serve the same purpose is probably the debatable point.

Exploding mammoths update New Theory on Old Debate: Comet Killed the Mammoth

For decades, scientists have debated whether the giant, elephant-like beasts were driven to extinction by the arrival of overzealous human hunters or by global warming at the end of the Pleistocene era, the last great Ice Age. Some say it was a combination of the two.

Recently, a group of more than two dozen scientists offered a new explanation. They have found signs that a comet -- or multiple fragments of one -- exploded over Canada about 12,900 years ago with the force equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons. That unleashed, they said, a tremendous shock wave that destroyed much of what was in its path and ignited wildfires across North America.

It also mentions other research indicating that there were two groups of mammoth, one that went extinct 50k years ago, and the ones that continued on until the Holocene. They argue that this would not be the cause -- sort of, because they argue that without it, there would still be mammoths -- but one of several:

"Our theory is that if this event had not happened, that mammoths would still most likely -- not certainly, but most likely -- be wandering around North America now," said Allen West, a retired geophysicist who is a leader of the research team. "Almost certainly, humans hunting animals can have a major effect on populations. It seems like there was, in a sense, a perfect storm going on -- of overkill, the comet, climate change, possibly disease. I don't think this theory negates any of the other theories. It's just one more of a mix of things that were absolutely lethal to these animals."

So why'd they go extinct in Europe, too?

At any rate, some of the abstracts are up at the AGU web site, though it requires some searching.

Car blogging I Hate My Classic Car

My wife and I ditched our dull late-model sedans a few years ago. We adopted a 1963 Studebaker Avanti as our only car, driven once or twice a week from our downtown San Francisco home. I blame the Avanti's seductive powers for our infatuation. It looks futuristic even today—Jude Law drove one in the space-age fantasy film Gattaca—and the car is loaded with luxury options. . .As many a passerby reminded us, they don't make 'em like that anymore. But several years with this rolling museum piece has taught me the truth: Even the best old cars sucked.

The automobile in question:


I have some sympathy, as regular readers know. An old car isn't really transportation, it's a long-term project that provides transportation. Much of what he says is true. Get into one of those older ones and it feels like you're driving an old truck. They're noisy. The steering is squishy. They rattle a lot. You feel totally exposed without bucket seats and shoulder straps (though you do have acres of steel between you and any errant object). I suspect Mr. Boutin more or less went in expecting an experience similar to what he had been driving and when it didn't measure up, blamed the car. There's some justification to blame the car, mind you; I think Detroit (and Kenosha) had quality problems long before the 1970s. But, you know, if you expect an Acheulean hand axe to perform like a chain saw, you're bound to be disappointed.

Maintenance seems to be his biggest problem. Once a car hits 10, things will start going. Since most people don't keep their cars much longer than that, they're not used to having to constantly fix stuff. On top of that, modern cars are far more reliable than they were then. Still, with something as complex as an automobile, everything's not going to go at once. The brakes will need work, then the transmission, then the steering, then another part of the brakes, then the engine, blah blah blah. It's just something to live with.

He might have needed far more work on the thing than basic maintenance though. He probably would have done well to have a complete engine rebuild, which is probably preferable to putting a whole new engine in it for something of that vintage (I did that to mine, but my original engine kinda sucked anyway).

I think it's entirely reasonable to have an old car as a daily driver since, you know, I do. You can keep them maintained to be reliable, but it will take more time and money than a modern car. And a really good mechanic. And you need to know at least something about the mechanics to know what needs to be done when.

There's remods*, of course, which is sort of what I did. Generally I don't like that concept, though obviously I partially went along that route myself with the new engine and exhaust. Most of the fun of having an old car is. . . .having an old car. It's experiencing what people experienced back when the car was new, or what you experienced back when the car was new. You don't really want to get your whole life stuck in the '60s or '70s or whatever, but it's fun to get behind the wheel and be taken back to those times. And it's preserving a bit of history. But it costs.

* Remod: Restoration-modification. A lot of the car shows on TV do this. They'll take a classic car, and upgrade most of the crucial parts -- steering, suspension, engine, etc. -- with modern parts so it performs like a modern car.

Computer archaeology keeps retiree digging

Duane Wadsworth finds meaning in the Elmat crystal puller.

The semiconductor industry artifact was one of the first machines to make high-purity silicon back in the 1960s, when computers were the size of rooms and their central processing units were just starting to be replaced by the small chips that gave birth to today's electronics industry.

. . .

For seven years, the retired semiconductor materials salesman has been collecting industry memorabilia so that the origins of computing can be preserved for future generations. He had visions of a semiconductor museum, but that never took off.

Eh, it's kind of boring actually. Why did I link to it then? Because I care.

From columns to Colosseum, ancient Rome relives in digital simulation

Rome's monuments may be crowded with tourists, crippled by time and damaged by pollution, but the glory days of this ancient imperial city are alive and well — inside a computer.

Experts from around the world on Monday unveiled what they called the largest and most complete simulation of a historic city, which digitally recreates Rome as it appeared at the peak of its power.

When in virtual Rome, visitors will be able to do even more than ancient Romans did: They can crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, filled with lion cages and primitive elevators, and fly up for a detailed look at bas-reliefs and inscriptions placed atop triumphal arches.

There are some sample videos at the site.

Hopefully not another Young Indiana Jones A boy archaeologist as the next Harry Potter?

The publisher who discovered the Harry Potter books 11 years ago claimed yesterday that stories of a boy archaeologist may follow the boy wizard as the must read for children after the final volume by J K Rowling is published next month.

Two unknown authors have amassed advances of more than £500,000 for their debut book. Tunnels is a fantasy adventure book that Barry Cunningham, who snapped up J K Rowling's first book in 1996, believes will be the next major children's success story.

Tunnels, the story of a "boy archaeologist, merciless villains, a lost world and a journey to the centre of the earth", will be published on July 2.

Obviously, we won't be seeing them bravely measuring sherd diameters. . . .

Antiquities Market update

Scrutiny of the bounty

Though the ship was privately owned by Britons, it carried a load of treasure fresh from Spain's American mines. The doubloons' original courier, a Spanish treasure ship, had arrived at the Azores islands aflame. Spanish authorities put out the fires and hired the 700-ton Royal to complete the trip, not unusual when the lines of public and private, nationality and allegiance, crossed in far different ways than today.

. . .

Now, the Merchant Royal might return from the sea, complete with its silver, gold, jewels and 36 bronze cannon.

And with recovery will come questions. Who owns treasure from a different time, a different world? Spain, the country that mined the gold and silver? England, the country whose ship transported it? The descendants of the slaves who dug it out of mines in the bowels of the Earth? The captain whose ship and personal fortune sunk? Or is it finder's keepers?

Funny headline (FINALLY a good archaeological pun), but interesting read. I believe international law (such as it is) has held that it's finder's keepers when the wreck is in international waters. Doubtful that will change anytime soon because, as the article notes, things can get very complicated very quickly.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND EARLY EXECUTIVE TOILET IN SHEFFIELD WORKS

The Victorians were great inventors, and their progress in the field of sewage disposal was not one of their least achievements. Thomas Crapper is famed for popularising the flush lavatory in the 19th century, but not many examples of his early ‘work’ survive.

So archaeologists from the University of Sheffield got quite excited when they found a toilet dating back around 150 years in an old cutlery and grinding works, believing it to be an original Crapper.

Further research revealed that the design of this particular Bramah pan closet toilet was a little more unusual, not a Crapper, but definitely a high class throne that would have been used by the company directors.

I'm just going to leave that one sit there (as it were).

UCSD archaeologist's 1997 discoveries from ancient trade route will be exhibited

Professor Thomas Levy swung his leg over a donkey on a high desert plateau in Jordan in 1997. Ten days and about 95 miles later, the UC San Diego archaeologist had retraced an ancient metal mining trade route into Israel.

Now a chronicle of that expedition will be on display at the San Diego Museum of Man starting Sunday.

Called “Journey to the Copper Age,” the exhibit is intended to complement the Dead Sea Scrolls presentation at the San Diego Natural History Museum this summer.

Aha. It's an exhibit of both ancient stuff and pictures of and objects produced by the expedition.

The significance of kitchens for ancient Egyptians

There are diverse aspects to the ancient Egyptian civilization that many of us are fascinated by: the building of pyramids, the tombs that store mummies or hoards of gold, as well as the captivating paintings on the walls.

But few of us direct our attention to the ancient Egyptians’ cuisine and their kitchens.

The issue would have remained sidelined, even despite of the fact that the walls in temples and tombs are replete with images showing the Pharaohs’ meals as well as the poultry and animals that made up part of their dishes. But when a tour guide’s interest in the matter drove her to study it, ancient Egyptian cuisine started to surface, attracting more attention to a topic once overshadowed.

Earth is best trustee for Sixth Salt Man: expert

Archaeological Research Center of Iran (ARCI) Director Mohammad-Hassan Fazeli Nashli is opposed to the idea of unearthing the “salt man” recently discovered in the Chehrabad Salt Mine due to the dearth of equipment necessary for protection of the remains.

“Except for some rescue excavations, a question is the main reason for an archaeological excavation. Otherwise, the earth is the best trustee for ancient artifacts because there is no guarantee for their proper protection,” he told the Persian service of CHN on Sunday.

The salt man was discovered by chance when the remains were partially uncovered by a rivulet created by rainfall in early June. It is the sixth salt man to be discovered in the Chehrabad Salt Mine, which is located in the Hamzehlu region near Zanjan.

Probably the best course of action, provided you can secure the site.

Get out the vote! Acropolis, Chichen Itza lead New 7 Wonders contest

The Acropolis in Athens and Mexico's Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza are among the leaders in a competition, ending in one month, to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World, the organizers said on Thursday.

The winners will be chosen through a global online and phone vote, organizers of the New 7 Wonders of the World (www.new7wonders.com) competition said, a far cry from the methods used by the Greeks who chose the original Seven Wonders more than 2,000 years ago.

Some 50 million people have voted so far in the competition designed to produce a 21st century list of the world's greatest man-made heritage sites, but Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the result is wide open.

Not that I've voted. Just off the top of my head, I would throw in the pyramids (Giza), the Great Wall, the Channel Tunnel

Archaeologists Reconstruct Life In The Bronze Age At Site Of Southern Spain

Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the Universidad de Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step to determine how life was in the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.

Since 1974, archaeologists from Granada, directed by professors Trinidad Nájera Colino and Fernando Molina González, have been working on the site of the Motilla del Azuer, in the municipal area of Daimiel (province of Ciudad Real), in search of the necessary information to reconstruct the day by day in this thrilling and unknown historical period.

The sites, known as “motillas”, represent one of the most peculiar types of prehistoric settlements in the Iberian Peninsula. They occupied the region of La Mancha in the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500 BC, and they are artificial mounds, 4 to 10 m high, a result of the destruction of a stone fortification of central plan with several concentric walled lines. Its distribution in the plain of La Mancha, with equidistanes of 4 to 5 kilometres, affects river meadows and low areas where the existence of pools was quite frequent until recent dates.

What that has to do with dental news, I have no idea.

I mean, apart from the fact that the ancient inhabitants probably all possessed teeth at some point.

Archaeology and the Evil Empire Microsoft says 'archaeology' changes the way it develops products

Microsoft Corp. will deliver the final installment of hundreds of pounds of documentation of its products to U.S. regulators next month, a result of seemingly never-ending disputes over the company's business practices.

. . .

The issue of documenting protocols is at the heart of troubles among Microsoft, regulators and embittered rivals dating back to the 1990s -- when the company was solidifying its command of the market for operating systems or software that manages the applications in a computer.

Craig Shank, general manager of Microsoft's competition law compliance group, said the documentation task has been so complex it has required "archaeology," or digging up ex-employees. Those include retirees and at least one former Microsoft engineer who had since moved on to work for a "partner" company, carrying away vital knowledge, Shank said.

Microsoft making it difficult for competitors? I really can't believe that.

And now for some Mickey Mouse archaeology Archaeologists discover Iron Age Mickey Mouse

Archaeologists discover Iron Age Mickey MouseSwedish archaeologists have uncovered signs of a Viking precursor to Mickey Mouse. Among the objects found during excavations at Uppåkra in southern Sweden is an iron age figure bearing a strong resemblance to the classic cartoon character.

But archaeologist Jerry Rosengren from Lund University is confident that the bronze brooch - used as a clasp to fasten women's clothing - was in fact intended to represent a Lion King rather than a mere mouse.

"The find is from around 900 AD. It was probably a lion's head that originally came from France. It was however more than likely designed by somebody who had never actually seen a lion.

Ha!

Archaeologist digs for truth on burial ground

Archaeologists will conduct a small exploratory dig in the Vernon Center area within the next two weeks to determine if the site of a planned subdivision lays on an ancient American Indian burial ground.


State Archaeologist Nicholas F. Bellantoni walked the 27-acre site just off Trout Stream Drive on Thursday with town officials and Glastonbury developer Jose D. Correia, who has an application before the Planning and Zoning Commission to build a nine-lot subdivision there.

"There are no written documents, simply oral tradition, but when you look at it environmentally, you can see there is a potential there" for Indian graves, Bellantoni said.

Archaeologists find slave passageway at George Washington house

Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington's presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.

The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington's guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.


“As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery,” said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. “That's the contrast, that's the contradiction, that's the hypocrisy. But that's also the truth.”

Please note:

As I am apparently the only person in the Union who did not watch the series finale of The Sopranos last night, I shall not comment upon it. Other than to say I won't comment upon it. Which may end up being circular. But I don't care.

I have noticed that there seems to be two minds of how to pronounce it though: So-prah-nos or So-preh-nos. Tomayto, tomahto, probably. The former seem to be the more artsy fartsy.

Current book

F Anyone's I, I'm reading The Rise and Fall of Culture History by R. Lee Lyman, Michael J. O'Brien, and Robert C. Dunnell. Dunnell, of course, was one of my profs in grad school and the ideas in this book are mainly ones he's developed over the years. I actually talked to him about it the book once, and he seemed to think some of it was wrong, but at this late date, I can't remember the specifics. I've come across a few odds and ends that I think are probably not exactly what Dunnell had argued so far, but nothing spectacular.

At any rate, it's probably not a book the average non-archaeologist would find terribly exciting, but if you want to slog through it, it's quite rewarding. I've probably posted on this before, but the "New Archaeology" of the 1960s was largely placed in opposition to the "old archaeology" embodied by Culture History, which was regarded as atheoretical and unscientific. It's arguably true that it was, in a way, atheoretical, but in many ways it was also far more empirically-based than much that went after it. The ultimate test of any chronology was an empirical one: whether the distributions of types formed the monotonic curves specified by the methodology of seriation. They didn't have a specific scientific theory to explain why, by their methods implied that they had a well-formed intuitive sense of what was behind the distributions.

But all that, in fact, is not the point of this post. They devoted only a short section to a certain issue, but it's one I've been interested in for a long time, but never got around to really researching: The amount and kind of interaction between Americanist archaeologists and Egytpologists. I first started wondering about this since I learned that Petrie's Sequence Dating scheme seems not to have had any impact at all on the development of seriation in the U.S. Petrie's work was a full 17 years before the first true seriation by Kroeber in 1916 (give or take a couple of years). I have a few tickles in my memory that some here were aware of what Petrie had been doing, but I've not come across any references that indicate American-style seriation really owed anything to Petrie at all. I have similar fuzzy memories regarding whether Sequence Dating really was a true seriation either (this site seems to equate the two).

Once I finish this book, I am bound and determined to check some of the appropriate references therein. In the meantime, feel free to comment.

Sad news

It is with great sadness that we here at ArchaeoBlog report on the untimely death of one of the great inventors of our time. A true giant among us who gave us perhaps the most significant food item of the last century:


No, not him:

Pamela Low; kin's treat inspired creation of Cap'n Crunch flavor

Long before Cap'n Crunch's sugary yellow barrels floated in cereal bowls across the land, Pamela Low got a hint of what was to come while visiting her grandparents.

"Grandma would make this concoction with rice and the sauce that she had; it was a combination of brown sugar and butter," Ms. Low's brother William of Westerville, Ohio, said with a chuckle. "It tasted good, obviously. They'd put it over the rice and eat it as a kind of a treat on Sundays."

Three decades later, Ms. Low drew on the memory of her grandmother's delicacy to create the taste that made Cap'n Crunch a popular breakfast cereal. She died of a lung ailment Friday in New London Hospital, not far from her home on the shore of Messer Pond in New Hampshire. Ms. Low was 79 and had worked in Boston for more than 30 years at the Arthur D. Little consulting firm.

Great stuff, that. Though to be honest and open, I preferred Qwisp. Kind of a friendly rivalry in the ArchaeoBlog household back then. I had Qwisp, my brother had Cap'n Crunch, and my sister had Crunchberries. We diverged similarly in other areas of breakfast comestibles: I favored Count Chocula, my brother Frankenberry, and my sister Booberry. Or maybe they were the other way around.
I was the only one who adopted Freakies as my own, though. I had a thing for their theme song:
We are the Freakies, We are the Freakies
And this is our Freakies Tree
We never miss a meal
'Cuz we love our cere-eeeel

At the time I didn't know it was a preexisting song (though at the moment the original escapes me).

I probably liked Qwisp because of the little alien mascot. Was he a martian? Did he have a name? A few years ago they kind of revived Qwisp and were selling it in a local chain of stores. Of course I got a couple boxes and chowed down. Didn't seem as sweet as Cap'n Crunch. I admit I was a bit disappointed in one of Qwisp's toy offerings. It was supposed to be a really neat FLYING SAUCER which I dutifully saved boxtops for. When it finally arrived it was just some dumb little rubber clamshell-type thing that looked like a flying saucer, and it contained a parachute. So alll you did was throw it in the air and it opened up and floated back to earth. I'd probably like one now, as I could drop it off of all the high places I wasn't allowed to go when I was a kid. Either that or launch it off a model rocket. (Yes, I was into those, too)

So anyway, here's to ya, Ms. Low. You brought many a happy morning to us.

More on the Polynesian chickens from Archaeology.org.

CSI: Zurich

Mystery of 5,000 year old glacier mummy solved

An Italian-Swiss research team, including Dr. Frank Rühli of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland proved the cause of death of the Iceman (“Ötzi,” 3300 BC) by modern X-ray-based technology. A lesion of a close-to-the-shoulder artery has been found thanks to a CT scan or multislice computed tomography, finally clarifying the world-famous glacier mummy’s cause of death. This scientific work appeared online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, published by Elsevier and will be covered in the German and US issues of National Geographic magazine in July.

. . .

Analysis of the CT images showed a lesion of the dorsal wall of the left subclavian artery, the artery underneath the clavicle, caused by an earlier, already-detected arrowhead that remains in the back. In addition, a large haematoma could be visualized in the surrounding tissue. By incorporating historic as well as modern data on the survival ship of such a severe lesion, the scientists concluded that the Iceman died within a short time due to this lesion.

“Such obvious proof of a vascular lesion in a body of this historic age is unique, and it helped to determine the cause of this extraordinary death without a destructive autopsy. We look forward to further investigating the circumstances surrounding the Iceman’s sudden death,” explains Dr. Dr. Rühli.

There was some question of how long he had had the arrow in his back and whether he died directly of that wound or perhaps of exposure later on, though I don't think anyone thought he died a long time after that anyway.

Decapitated Man Found in Peru Tomb With Ceramic "Replacement" Head

A headless skeleton found in a Peruvian tomb is adding new wrinkles to the debate over human sacrifice in the ancient Andes.

The decapitated body was found in the Nasca region, named for the ancient civilization that thrived in southern Peru from A.D. 1 to 750.

Known for producing "Nasca lines" in the earth that depict giant figures, the culture is also noted among archaeologists for practicing human sacrifice and displaying modified human heads called trophy heads.

But experts have been divided over whether the heads were taken from enemies in war or from locals offered up for ritual sacrifice.

In 2004 Christina Conlee, an archaeologist at Texas State University, found a rare headless skeleton in a tomb sitting cross-legged with a ceramic "head jar" placed to the left of the body.

I tend to favor this hypothesis:

"One alternative explanation is that this might simply have been someone who had been killed and decapitated in a raid and whose body subsequently was recovered by relatives who gave it a proper burial, with a ceramic vessel replacing his lost head," [John Verano] said.

WHy not include the head with the body if you yourselves have cut it off? We found something sort of similar at Kom el-Hisn (Egypt) where a headless body had a jar placed where the head should have been (though admittedly, the association between the two wasn't reported as slam-dunk direct).

Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus

Popular history, and a familiar rhyme about Christopher Columbus, holds that Europeans made contact with the Americas in 1492, with some arguing that the explorer and his crew were the first outsiders to reach the New World.

But chicken bones recently unearthed on the coast of Chile—dating prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of America and resembling the DNA of a fowl species native to Polynesia—may challenge that notion, researchers say.

“Chickens could not have gotten to South America on their own—they had to be taken by humans,” said anthropologist Lisa Matisoo-Smith from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Polynesians made contact with the west coast of South America as much as a century before any Spanish conquistadors, her findings imply.

Initially, I'm a bit suspicious of the dates, but haven't read the paper.

Update: Well, Terry Hunt just sent me a copy of the paper. I perused it and don't see anything terribly hinky about it (not that I would expect to, mind you). But we'll have to wait a bit for experts in the area to critique it.

Update II: Terry Hunt, one of the co-authors, emails:

Skepticism is a good thing. It makes science work as well as it does. When the research began and the results of DNA and radiocarbon dating emerged, I too was skeptical. Heyerdahl and other kooky writers made us all predisposed to reject claims for American-Polynesian interactions. Among this skepticism, we have always had to account for the sweet potato (a plant of certain American origin) found (and dated to ca. 1000 years ago) in the heart of Polynesia.

Now we have two replicated DNA sequences (separate labs) and a radiocarbon date directly on the chicken bone showing solid evidence for the Polynesian origin and the prehistoric age. I~Rm convinced (as my co-authorship on the paper would indicate), as are many other skeptics from the region.

The data seem pretty solid, but. . . .still curious why they would paddle halfway around the world just to drop off some chickens and pick up a few sweet potatoes. . . .

Tyrannosaurus Rex Turns Out To Have Been a Slowpoke

T. rex was no slacker. But the popular image of a nimble predator turning on a dime and chasing down prey with lightning speed is fiction, new computer models show.

The terrifying tyrannosaur was actually a slowpoke.

Previous studies have looked at the movements of birds, the direct descendents of dinosaurs, and fossilized footprints to judge how Tyrannosaurus rex would have moved.

To get a better estimate of the giant's movement, the new study modeled a typical complete T. rex skeleton, which probably weighed between about 13,000 and 17,000 pounds, and estimated its center of mass and the inertia, or resistance to movement, that it would have had when the animal turned or pivoted.

Just goes to show, a computer model is a hypothesis to be tested, not an explanation in and of itself.

The Primal Roots of Red Hair Revealed

Primatologists know humans, apes and monkeys can see red, but have quarreled over what initially locked the adaptation into place. Did it first help primates find meals, or was the ability to see a red-headed, red-skinned mate from a mile away the first benefit of full-color vision?

A new study shows that apes first evolved color vision to help them forage food, after which nature made red the sexiest color around and spiked apes’ evolutionary tree with red hair and skin. The findings are detailed in this week’s issue of the American Naturalist.

André Fernandez, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio University and co-author of the paper, explained that neuroscientists have already found animals are highly attracted to brilliant colors. “So, it is reasonable for primates with trichromatic color vision to respond more when they see bright colors” like red, he said.

Bigfoot update Endangered Species Protection Sought for Bigfoot

Recently, Mike Lake, a Canadian member of parliament from Edmonton, Alberta, agreed to introduce a petition that called for Bigfoot to be protected under the Canadian version of the endangered species act.

Lake presented to the House of Commons a petition that stated, “The debate over (Bigfoot’s) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing. Therefore, the petitioners request the House of Commons to establish immediate, comprehensive legislation to affect immediate protection of Bigfoot.”

Really, I checked the link twice, it's for real!

The man behind the petition was a Bigfoot enthusiast named Todd Standing, who claims to have definitive proof of Bigfoot but is withholding it until protection for the alleged animals is in place. “When I get species protection for them nationwide, I will make my findings public and I will take this out of the realm of mythology. Bigfoot is real,” Standing said.

Well, isn't that convenient.

I predict it will be as convincing as the new Loch Ness monster video.





I.e., not very.

Remote sensing update A few emails over the EEF lists have highlighted some satellite work by Sarah Parcak:

Ancient Egyptian City Spotted From Space

Satellites hovering above Egypt have zoomed in on a 1,600-year-old metropolis, archaeologists say.

Images captured from space pinpoint telltale signs of previous habitation in the swatch of land 200 miles south of Cairo, which digging recently confirmed as an ancient settlement dating from about 400 A.D.

The find is part of a larger project aiming to map as much of ancient Egypt's archaeological sites, or "tells," as possible before they are destroyed or covered by modern development.

"It is the biggest site discovered so far," said project leader Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Based on the coins and pottery we found, it appears to be a massive regional center that traded with Greece, Turkey and Libya."

Abstract to the academic paper is here. A few other links to satellite work here.

UPDATE: Also see this on Google Earth.

Archaeologist shares Popham Colony discovery insights

For most of the 300 years following the brief 1607 English settlement on the Kennebec River, there was no firm evidence of the Popham Colony's whereabouts.

Documentation related to the English explorers sent to colonize the New World offered a paper trail ensuring the Popham Colony's existence — notably, the other half of King James I's two-part empirical gesture in 1607 was the more widely remembered founders of the Jamestown Colony.

But right up until 1997, only theories remained about the often overlooked local sister settlement to Jamestown, Va.

Archaeologists on standby to find bodies at Duffy's Cut

Prof William Watson is the head of the Duffy's Cut Project in the US along with his brother Frank.

A professor of history at Immaculata College in Pennsylvania, he is the author of 'The Ghosts of Duffy's Cut', and has a team or researchers and archaeologists on standby to start the search in Duffy's Cut this summer - provided he can raise the $20,000 needed to pay for the specialist search equipment.

"I'm a historian by trade," explained Prof. Watson, and it just so happens that the place where I teach, Immaculata University, is approximately a mile from the site of Duffy's Cut.

I read the whole thing twice and can't figure out what Duffy's Cut is or why there should be bodies there.

Archaeologist Forms Group to Address Issues Raised by Clovis Point Find

The archaeologist at the Malibu location where an auth­enti­ca­ted Clovis cultural era spear point was found in 2005 has an­nounced the formation of a group to try to protect the site that could date back 11,000 years, as well as raise public consciousness about the need for ways to address conflicts over site access with private property owners.
Dr. Gary Stickel said the first aim of the organization, called Friends of Farpoint, is to “immediately save the Farpoint site for its proper preservation and conservation.”
To this end, the archaeologist said the group seeks to “foster a National Park Service connection to the site.” Stickel said he has met with officials of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and discussed the possibility of a future Farpoint exhibit, as well as enlisted support from the NPS and other public agencies for the site’s protection.

Towering timepiece

An architect, a historian, a physicist, a classicist and an astronomer dig a hole in the middle of campus - what comes next?

Construction of a temporary obelisk, designed to replicate a Roman solarium constructed by Augustus Caesar in 10 B.C., is underway on the Memorial Quad Lawn north of the Knight Library. Passersby might have noticed the large hole.

Facilities Services will bolt a steel upright beam to the foundation for structural support Friday and, after city inspections, a plywood skin will finish the pillar.

Bronze Age cemetery find on Barra

A bronze Age cemetery has been uncovered on the Hebridian island of Barra.

The find was made during a mass excavation by Channel 4's Time Team. More than 50 archaeologists and a television crew descended on the island, population 1000, last month for the three-day dig at the Allasdale sand dunes.

The team uncovered 4000-year-old burial kists, some containing perfectly preserved skeletons. A stone wheel house, two Iron Age round houses and whale, seal and sheep bones were also among the discoveries.

The site was found after storms moved sand dunes, exposing the relics. Tony Robinson, Time Team presenter, thought the circles of stones looked like remnants of bonfires until they turned out to be stone kists.

That's the whole thing.

Archaeological surveys ensure prehistoric artifacts are preserved

Jean Dowiasch lives to find prehistoric artifacts.

But when she does, she often becomes the bearer of bad news.

Dowiasch is an archaeologist with Mississippi Archaeology. Last week she surveyed a tree line and a cornfield in Turtle Township.

All she found were two golf balls and a rusty cultivator blade.

It's actually a pretty good description of regular old survey archaeology.

Digging into history: Archaeologist discovers pot that may be 2,500 years old

The pot might have been underground for most of 2,500 years when they found it.

And that raw fact is significant for Stephen Wagner, the principal investigator of the team of archaeologists who uncovered the artifact at Fort McCoy on May 17.

But as an archaeologist, he’s interested in much more.

“We appreciate the beauty of the really nice stuff, but everything we dig up has some value in interpretation,” Wagner said. “It’s the context that makes it interesting. It’s all about context.”

Cold, hard reality sets in. . .but he likes it Working With Fish Bones

Archaeology and zooarchaeology in particular, teaches one about patience and accuracy. The process from digging to analysis has many intermediate steps: identification of the faunal remains, notes on taphonomy (cutmarks, burning, signs of gnawing are critical for later studies), cataloguing, measuring, and entering the observations in a database. The work is methodical, and every step is a puzzle piece that finds its place so that we can gain a better view in the economy and lifeways of the early settlers of Iceland.

The work in Iceland led me to change my major from accounting to archaeology and gave me a fire in the belly and excitement about studying and researching that I had never experienced before. I was hooked on archaeological faunal material, and fish were it, but the choice of a regional focus was still open. When I heard that there was a new project, this time in the Caribbean, my interest was piqued: Could this be it?

Pretty good article.

82,000 year old jewellery found

Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world.

The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco.

Institute director Prof Nick Barton said: "Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks.

Low Lake Okeechobee water uncovers ancient site

The lake kept its secret as long as the rain fell.

The remains rested in the soft, black muck for hundreds of years -- buried beneath the water of Lake Okeechobee.

But the drought tore open the ancient grave, and a local man happened upon it. The bodies have been discovered.

But the mystery is just beginning.

A search for the lost city

Mark Lehner, director of the Giza Plateau Mapping Project (GPMP), realised that the excavation of the vast ancient settlement site at Giza offered him "an opportunity to give back to Egypt something in return for all the years I have enjoyed excavating here." He envisioned running a rigorous training programme for Egyptian inspectors to guide them in the basics of standard archaeological practice around the world, and today, all over the country, selected SCA inspectors are being trained in the standard practices that are now used for stratigraphic excavation and recording in Britain, France, other European countries, and the United States.

Read the entire article. Lehner isn't actually starting this field school, it's been going on for some time, and yours truly was an instructor on it in 1996 and co-director in 2003 (both at Mit Rahina). It's really a great program.

Background: An Egyptian inspector from the SCA is required to be on-site with any foreign project. Generally, these inspectors have the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in archaeology or Egyptology (actually, maybe only the latter). In the past, they were largely enablers, or in some cases, disenablers. I don't mean that as a rip on them generally, or even specifically, since many times the foreigners could create friction which could be returned in kind. Suffice it to say that many times the relationship between foreigner and inspector was far more adversarial than cooperative. Part of this had to do with the training and professional expertise of the inspectors (who in the past were often bureaucrats interested more in protecting their own resources than in helping foreigners), and part had to do with the way archaeology in Egypt had been run: get in, dig up lots of good artifacts, and get it (and the artifacts) out.

Credit Hawass with changing both of these.

Back to point: Actual training in archaeological excavation has generally been lacking locally, either because of lack of resources or because the discipline there concentrates more on philology than hard-core archaeology. Hence, a need for inspectors to learn field techniques. There are a lot of reasons for this. First, since they'll have a far better understanding of what the foreigners are doing, they'll be less suspicious (and they do have need to be on occasion). Second, they will simply have to carry on their own excavations eventually in some capacity. They need to be able to assess existing remains when they are threatened, they will need to conduct mitigation excavations when they can't be saved, and they'll eventually want to do their own research. So you really can't get around excavating. Last, it breeds a LOT of good will among the foreigners and the locals, and personal relationships are extremely important there.

Who built the pyramids?

In archaeology, times have changed. Where at one time professionals in the discipline were primarily philologists, historians, artists and epigraphers who, in their search for material remains of the ancient Egyptian civilisation, dug and destroyed layers of archaeology, things are different today. The search is for information rather than museum-worthy objects. Multiple layers of complex stratigraphy are being scientifically excavated and analysed -- everything from pottery shards to sealings of mud, from a fish-hook to human to animal remains. Such evidence, in addition to the discovery of long galleries which might have been barracks for a rotating labour force from the countryside, and a village-like town that possibly housed permanent workers and their families, paints a picture of the pyramid-builders which boggles the imagination.

It's a good article summarizing the revision of ideas about the builders of the pyramids (Lehner) and highlighting the way archaeology has become more prominent in some aspects of Egyptology.

Bronze Age finds at A38 bypass

Bronze Age pottery and tools have been unearthed by archaeologists working on the site of a new bypass in Cornwall.

AC Archaeologists are carrying out excavations before the main work starts on the A38 Dobwalls bypass.

Workers discovered flint tools and waste flakes. Fragments of pottery dating back 4,000 years were also found under a mound of stones.

Theatre dig unearths medieval hospital

Archaeologists have been drafted in to investigate Shrewsbury’s theatre site for a second time after council architects uncovered what is believed to be a medieval chapel and hospital.

Following the discovery of the medieval St George’s Bridge in Frankwell last March, experts were again called in after council staff stumbled across stone walls which could date back more than 850 years.

Local historian David Trumper described the find as “very exciting” and said he believed the structure could be the site of a medieval chapel and hospital which was dedicated to England’s patron saint, St George.

Laser finds huge dyke SPACE AGE LASERS REVEAL OFFA'S DYKE MISSING LINK

It has remained hidden for centuries but space-age technology has stripped away layers of history to discover what excited archaeologists believe could be a missing section of Offa's Dyke.

Aerial laser technology, which allows the experts to see what is hidden below the trees and the undergrowth, has discovered a long strip of earthworks in the Forest of Dean.

And archaeologists believe they may have finally found a missing 250-metre stretch of the Dyke built by King Offa between 757 to 796 AD to keep the English and the Welsh apart. Now they are planning a major study to check out if the findings taken from the air match those on the ground.

Amazing Maps Made by Founder of 1st U.S. Settlement

Maybe Pocahontas had a thing for men with superior mapping skills.

Captain John Smith, the famous founder of America's first settlement, at Jamestown, Virginia, traced the Chesapeake Bay river system with remarkable precision from his primitive sailboat, geographers have discovered.

Using a sophisticated "remapping" system that merges old maps with the modern lay of the land, the team from Maryland's Salisbury University found that Smith's 1608 exploratory charting of the Chesapeake was well ahead of its time considering the tools he had to work with.