The Forgotten Dead

Beneath the neatly-shorn lawns of a quiet residential neighborhood lies a forgotten mystery. Children ride their bikes and homeowners dig in their gardens without a thought to the abandoned burial ground, neglected for over a century, that lies just below. Life goes on as normal – that is, until one of the burials is disturbed…

It’s a plot that’s been replayed hundreds of times in horror movies, comic books and trash archaeology novels. But in Deadwood, it’s not fiction. For the residents of the city’s Presidential District, the not-entirely-abandoned tombs under their homes are a fact of life. While there’s usually little reason to think about the old cemetery, its forgotten residents occasionally make an appearance.

That’s what happened on the morning of April 2. A construction crew, working at the behest of the city, was excavating with a backhoe on the corner of Jackson and Taylor Streets, where they were rebuilding an aging retaining wall. As the shovel dug through the earth, the crew noticed something unusual. Upon further examination, it became clear that they had discovered several bones – including parts of a human skull.

Greece: Archaeologists find thousands of clay offerings at ancient fertility shrine

Archaeologists in central Greece have discovered thousands of miniature clay pots and statuettes in the ruins of an ancient sanctuary possibly dedicated to the Three Graces, officials said on Wednesday.

In volume, it is one of the richest finds in recent years.

Excavations near Orchomenos, 130 kilometers northwest of Athens, revealed sparse remains of retaining walls from a small rural shrine, a Culture Ministry statement said.

Did they resort to eating dead colonists?

George Percy, one of Jamestown's early leaders, provided in about 1625 what is probably the best-known and most gruesome account. He described a "worlde of miseries" that included hunger-crazed colonists digging up the dead and one man who killed, "salted" and carved up his wife for food.

This story was repeated, and luridly embellished, over the years. "Whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonado'd (barbecued), I know not," the colony's famous Capt. John Smith wrote in his version of events about the same time. "Such a dish as powdered wife, I never heard of."

Percy reported that he had the unnamed murderer hanged by his thumbs to extract a confession and then had him executed for the "crewell and unhumane" act.

But archaeologists have been wary of the Jamestown cannibalism reports.

It notes no actual archaeological evidence of cannibalism.

Protesters call King Tut exhibit racist

A traveling exhibition on King Tutankhamun drew about 50 protesters who denounced the popular display as racist.

Molefi Asante, a professor of African-American studies at Temple University, led the demonstration Sunday outside the Franklin Institute, claiming the exhibit has no mention of Africa and that it suggests that the ancient Egyptian king was white.

Asante, who is also president of the Association of Kemetic Nubian Heritage, specifically pointed to a representation of Tut that "looks more like Boy George than the boy king."

A spokeswoman for the Franklin Institute said images of Tut vary throughout the museum. In response to the protest, the museum will hold a symposium this summer at which scholars and experts will discuss forensic evidence relating to King Tut.

Similar protests have been held in other U.S. cities where the exhibit has appeared.

That's the whole thing.

I had about a dozen smart-ass comments, but discretion forbids me from actually typing them.







Okay, maybe I did type some, but I erased them before posting.
(HT Greg at TPW)

Late-Pleistocene impact update Did a comet hit the Great Lakes region and fragment human populations 12,900 years ago?

Multi-institutional 26-member team of researchers propose a startling new theory: that an extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animal genera across North America almost 13,000 years ago.

Driving the theory is a carbon-rich layer of soil that has been found, but not definitively explained, at some 50 Clovis-age sites in North America that date to the onset of a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas Event. The sites include several on the Channel Island off California where University of Oregon archaeologists Douglas J. Kennett and Jon M. Erlandson have conducted research.

The theory is being discussed publicly, for the first time, today in a news conference at the 2007 Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union being held this week in Acapulco, Mexico.

No negatives introduced in this article.

Women's role in history inaccurately reflected by archaeological record

A button I purchased at an archaeological site that my wife and I visited on our honeymoon says, "Love is fleeting, stone tools are forever."

["True love an sometimes fade, but money stays green forever." -- Cary Grant]

In nearly every hunting-and-gathering society studied by anthropologists, there is a fairly strict division of labor between the sexes: men hunt and women gather. If this were true for ancient groups, then the archaeological record would be dominated by the hunting activities of men. The gathering activities of women, on the other hand, would be nearly invisible.

University of Wyoming archaeologist Nicole Waguespack, in the December 2005 issue of the journal American Anthropologist, acknowledges the problem but argues that it's not as simple as it seems.

I actually read the title and thought "Great, another post-modern feminist interpretation" but it's pretty good.

Ancient Maya Tomb Found: Upright Skeleton, Unusual Location

Archaeologists working in Honduras have discovered an entombed human skeleton of an elite member of the ancient Maya Empire that may help unravel some longstanding mysteries of the vanished culture.

The remains, seated in an upright position in an unusual tomb and flanked by shells, pottery, vessels, and jade adornments, suggest a surprisingly diverse culture and complex political system in the influential Maya city of Copán around A.D. 650.

. . .

he remains belong to a 50-year-old man with various illnesses. He had poor use of his left arm, poor arterial flow through his upper spinal cord, and a chronic infection of the skull known as mastoiditis, according to a bioarchaeological analysis by Katherine Miller of Arizona State University.

Okay, that's just weird.

Chinese writing '8,000 years old'

Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.

State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.

They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.

Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.

Slavery archaeology update Cemetery for Civil War-Era Freed Blacks Rededicated

Living in crowded, unsanitary conditions, many of the freed blacks were disproportionately affected when illnesses swept through the area. "They had extremely poor housing after the Civil War," said Gadeken, a student at West Springfield High School, as she stood on the burial grounds, once forgotten and abandoned. "They had no property. They were free. What were they freed into? Nothing."

A road construction project and research by historians led to the cemetery's discovery.

Alexandria city officials and others gathered at the site Saturday to rededicate the cemetery. The beats of the African Heritage Drummers provided the backdrop for a ceremony that included the pouring of libations and singing of traditional spirituals by the City of Alexandria Choir. Alexandria poet laureate Mary McElveen read a poem written for the occasion. The luminarias were individually decorated by people in the community, including schoolchildren and others who attended community workshops.

Non-archaeological post Mars Rover Spirit Unearths Surprise Evidence of Wetter Past

A patch of Martian soil analyzed by NASA's rover Spirit is so rich in silica that it may provide some of the strongest evidence yet that ancient Mars was much wetter than it is now. The processes that could have produced such a concentrated deposit of silica require the presence of water.

Members of the rover science team heard from a colleague during a recent teleconference that the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, a chemical analyzer at the end of Spirit's arm, had measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica for this soil.

"You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the Mars rovers' science instruments. "This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there."

This whole rover project is probably the grandest story to come out of NASA in years, maybe decades. Whenever something goes wrong, it's on the front page for days. But here we have a couple of rovers whose initial mission was supposed to last 3 months, and here it is over three years later and they're still cranking out data -- and you rarely hear about it. This is mostly due to good design, but they have also had some incredible luck. Ferinstance, the solar panels were expected to get a coating of dust and eventually become inoperable, but for whatever reason, dust buildup has turned out not to be a problem.

If you find the book Rovin Mars by Squyers, it's an excellent read. And you'll be amazed at how big and complex these rovers really are.

Howell to speak on the archaeology of music

In the visually motivated field of archaeology, inroads into musical anthropology are turning some heads and honing new senses of the past.

Mark Howell, director of Winterville Mounds Park and Museum near Greenville, is coming to Natchez to present a program on ethnic music findings that are making ripples in the archaeology world.

The program, 6:30 p.m. on May 31 at Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, will focus on Howell’s discoveries in Maya music found during research in Guatemala.

This bit caught my eye: “To be honest, we don’t really know what Gregorian chants sounded like. Probably the ones you hear today are not rhythmically correct,” Howell said. My first thought was "Rhythm? They have rhythm?" and my second thought was something along the lines of "Oh my God, what if they rapped them???"

But interesting. We really don't know what some of that old music is supposed to sound like. Are there any Maya paintings showing musicians, as in Egypt?

Bosnian (non)pyramids update Bosnian archaeologists 'dig in' to struggle with looters

Archaeologist Snjezana Vasilj was busy digging through piles of paper last year when a self-styled Bosnian explorer made global headlines after discovering "Europe's first pyramids."

A year on, Vasilj's fortunes turned around when her battle with the forms that go with Bosnian bureaucracy paid off and she secured the research grant needed to continue her own treasure hunt.

Vasilj and her small team of volunteers used the $9,400 in funding to help make an extraordinary discovery at the Hutovo Blato marshlands in southern Bosnia.

The archaeologist said she cried when divers she could only afford to pay in "sandwiches" surfaced from a small lake in the nature reserve to confirm what lay on the bottom - Illyrian ships dating back some 2,200 years.

It's actually a good article not really about the (non)pyramids, and a sad one at that.

Putting the "Arrrrr. . ." in Archaeology A PIRATE WITH A PH.D.

We don't know what's more delightful, that a shipwrecked 19th century Maine clipper is making one of its periodic reappearances from the sand in which it's been interred along the San Francisco coast for more than a century, or that the incident has allowed a maritime archaeologist who's studying the wreck to engage in the most wonderful flights of 19th century-sounding language.

"She could have sunk deep or she could have been burned," said James Delgado, executive director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, sounding either like a good scholar, or folk singer Gordon Lightfoot. "But because ... she buried herself, we have an exciting and tangible reminder of ships long past and the days of wooden sail."

Do people really talk this way? If they spend their days romancing the 19th century, we guess.

Lost civilization ditches. . . .found Discovery of Iron Age ditches adds to history of the Castle

SOME of the earliest Iron Age defences at Edinburgh Castle have been unearthed during excavation work for the attraction's new visitor centre.

Archaeologists discovered two huge, 2000-year-old ditches underneath the Castle Esplanade, which would once have protected the ancient hill fort on the site.

A team of experts drilled a series of small bore holes through the Castle's car park and analysed soil samples from many metres below the ground.

Remains of mystery man, an Iowa pioneer, laid to rest

The skeletal remains of a 19th-century pioneer discovered one year ago today returned to rest Thursday in an empty corner of a Dallas County cemetery.

A local developer and funeral director buried the remnants of bone, clothing and casket at the Booneville Cemetery, less than six miles from their original location in West Des Moines.

Burying the remains in a child's casket capped an investigation that offered hints about the life of a man who lived around the time of Iowa's birth in the 1840s.

Roman burial grounds found under road

"We knew from archaeological excavations along the line of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, that there was a Roman enclosure on the route, but previous discoveries had simply suggested a rural farmstead.

"At first we found very little, but at the bottom of a pit we came across the metal handles of a wooden board, and later a set of 23 glass counters and two bone dice, suggesting that we had found a gaming board.

"These finds are rare, and mostly occur in graves, so we carefully took down the other half of the pit, and sure enough, it was full of grave offerings. These include the skeletal remains of half a pig, presumably offered as food for the afterlife."

Indian village study shows multiple sites in county

Two years ago Beaman was tapped by Wilson County officials to find Toisnot Village, what was commonly thought to be a large reserve of Tuscarora Indians during the colonial days of North Carolina. Beaman's search is an updated attempt at tracing known Tuscarora villages through eastern North Carolina.

In the late 1990s, two East Carolina University archaeologists embarked on a two-year study of Tuscarora communities in eastern North Carolina. The archaeologists examined sites in Pitt, Lenoir, Wayne and Greene counties, however their time limit ran out before the duo could search in Wilson County.

"Historically people have looked for one site called Toisnot Village," Beaman told the Wilson County Historical Society Thursday afternoon. "Sometimes when we're looking for one thing, we discover something we didn't expect."

Archaeologists sift through ashes to uncover plantation's past

Archaeologists digging inside the towering ruins of historic Rosewell Plantation have discovered a provocative assortment of artifacts hidden within the charred debris of the fire that gutted the structure in 1916.

Working in the northwest corner of the exposed basement, the scientists have probed through a jumbled deposit of fallen bricks, burned floor joists and twisted metal roofing that measures as much as 7 feet deep. The dig has uncovered the remains of at least three different stoves and an old metal bedstead--all of which came crashing through the floors of the three-story structure when the interior collapsed in the blaze.

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Pueblo opens dig to public

The stock image of archaeology, that of a learned professional using a small trowel and paint brush to methodically uncover artifacts, seems at odds with this fact: The great unwashed masses are invited to a working archaeological site near Flagstaff where they may dig away.

The Elden Pueblo site is believed to have been home of hundreds of Sinagua people about 800 years ago. Today, the ruins sit just north of the Flagstaff Mall and butt up against a state highway.

A few times a year, the public is invited to help dig up artifacts at the site in the Coconino National Forest. Free public field days are scheduled for Sunday, June 24, July 28 and Aug. 18.

Kind of neat, although it doesn't seem like they'd find much of anything, digging for an hour or so.

Breaking news: Intact tomb found in Egypt The Tomb of Henu, ca. 2050 BC

A team from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) directed by professor Harco Willems has discovered a completely intact tomb dating to about 2050 BC at the site of Dayr al-Barsha in Middle Egypt. The burial was located in a rock cut shaft in the tomb of Uky in a vast necropolis on the southern hill of Dayr al-Barsha. This area has been under investigation since 2005 by Marleen De Meyer, who carried out the excavation of the tomb.

The tomb of Uky consists of two consecutive rooms,of which the shafts in the entrance chamber had already been excavated in 2005-2006. This year the two shafts in the rear chamber were the object of research. The fill of one of these shafts, a square one in the rear of the chamber, soon turned out to be entirely different than that of robbed shafts. It consisted of almost sterile limestone debris that formed the original backfill of a shaft after a burial had taken place in ancient times. Already on the second day a small hole emerged in the north wall of the shaft, and through it an entirely intact burial chamber could be seen. Even though the burial took place over four thousand years ago, the colours on the painted objects were very fresh, and no dust even covered them.

Late First Intermediate or very early Middle Kingdom. Lots of good photos of the contents at that link. It's not a big glourious chock-full-o-treasure tomb, but interesting.