Eclipses in Ancient China Spurred Science, Beheadings?

The Olympics aren't the only epic event occurring in China next month. A total solar eclipse, the first since 2006, will turn day to night on Friday, the first of August.

The eclipse will also be visible in parts of northern Canada, Greenland, Siberia, and Mongolia.

Many Chinese will celebrate the celestial event with parties and viewing festivities—but it wasn't always so.

Mummy update

First indication for embalming in Roman Greece

A Swiss-Greek research team co-lead by Dr. Frank Rühli from the Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, found indication for embalming in Roman Greek times. By means of physico-chemical and histological methods, it was possible to show that various resins, oils and spices were used during embalming of a ca. 55 year old female in Northern Greece. This is the first ever multidisciplinary-based indication for artificial mummification in Greece at 300 AD.

The remains of a ca. 55-year old female (ca. 300 AD, most likely of high-social status; actual location: Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece) shows the preservation of various soft-tissues, hair and part of a gold-embroidered silk cloth. This unique find allows multidisciplinary research on these tissues. In addition to macroscopic and anthropological analyses, electron microscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry examinations were also performed. These showed the presence of various embalming substances including myrrh, fats and resins, but could not demonstrate clearly a conservatory influence of the surrounding lead coffin from Roman period.

Bones mystery

CREMATED bones thought to date from around 3,500BC to 2,000BC have been unearthed by archaeologists during a dig near Lough Fea.
A team of four archaeologists came across a mound of stones, known as a cairn which often points to a burial site, at the Creagh Concrete plant near Blackwater Bridge.

The find was unearthed when workers from Creagh Concrete were extracting gravel earlier this week. An archaeologist is always present on site when work of this nature is being carried out.

A Fake Ancient Disc?

The hundred-year-old mystery of a famous ancient artifact, according to one art history scholar, might be summed up with a single word: hubris.

In the current issue of Minerva, an art and archaeology journal, Jerome M. Eisenberg calls the famous Phaistos Disc, thought to be a story or sacred text of unknown but ancient origin, a fraud. The flat, circular clay disc is about six inches in diameter, and its purpose and stamped pictographic script have been the subject of scholarly debate over the last century.

The comments are mostly uninteresting.

Discovering How Greeks Computed in 100 B.C.

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the first analog computer, was recovered more than a century ago in the wreckage of a ship that sank off the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. Earlier research showed that the device was probably built between 140 and 100 B.C.

Only now, applying high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography, have experts been able to decipher inscriptions and reconstruct functions of the bronze gears on the mechanism. The latest research has revealed details of dials on the instrument’s back side, including the names of all 12 months of an ancient calendar.

Neat because it's actual data.

Large Roman settlement unearthed by builders

A HUGE early Roman settlement unearthed in Cirencester is the most significant historical discovery ever made in the town, archaeologists said this week.

The encampment which covers several hectares, dates back to the late-Iron Age in the 1st century ad, and was likely to have been occupied by the first Roman settlers in Cirencester.

Alongside the exciting discovery at the Kingshill development on the A417, Oxford Archaeologists unearthed a Bronze Age burial mound dating back to 2,000 bc containing a skeleton.

Archaeologists pleased with accomplishments of visit

While there was no “spectacular” shipwrecks discovered on their inaugural exploration of waters off L’Anse aux Meadows, underwater archaeologists are raving about the potential for marine cultural resources.

John Moore, a member of the team, described the results of the nine-day preliminary exploration as accomplishments rather than findings. The team spoke to local fisherman and residents about the known history of the marine environment on the Northern Peninsula and learned the logistics of the area in terms of navigation and hazards.

“For us, it is kind of a big deal,” Moore told The Western Star Tuesday via cellphone from Rocky Harbour. “It doesn’t sound like much, but to us it is.”

Not apparently expecting to find any Norse remains.

Archaeologists Find Forgotten Graveyard

Archaeologists uncovered four Colonial period graves and the remains of a fence that bounded the cemetery during a two week study of historic Port Tobacco. At least one of the graves is that of a child.

Volunteers from across Maryland, as well as from New York and New Jersey, participated in the excavation of four sites that had been identified during an archaeological survey of the Colonial town site last fall. Project sponsors included the Society for the Restoration of Port Tobacco, Charles County's departments of Planning and Economic Development, the Maryland Historical Trust, and the Archeological Society of Maryland.

Archaeologists to investigate town

ARCHAEOLOGISTS and volunteers are set to dig in Ledbury gardens in the search for clues regarding the town’s medieval history.

Local volunteers with the Victoria County History project have been busy measuring street frontages this summer in a bid to discover more about the Ledbury’s development in the Middle Ages.

The idea is that more recent buildings were probably built on a earlier medieval foundations.

Online paper alert Prehistory vs. Archaeology: Terms of Engagement

David Clarke wrote that ‘A modern empirical discipline ought to be able to aim at more rewarding results than the maintenance of … a steady flow of counterfeit history books’ (Clarke 1978, p. 1), and it seemed very clear to him that ‘archaeology is archaeology is archaeology’. When done analytically, it could contribute to an interpretive picture that might be a source for writing prehistory, or even history, but it was—or should be—disciplinarily distinct. More recently, Richard Bradley, decrying a ‘loss of nerve’ among archaeologists, has insisted that we must ‘aspire to write human history’ (1993, p. 131). And, outlining the emerging theory of ‘materiality’, I have described artefacts as ‘social things that yet survive’, and therefore entities with a potential for ‘eroding Clarke’s politely drawn but never wholly convincing distinction between archaeology as a study of artifacts and prehistory as a form of history made possible by it’ (Taylor 2008, p. 315). I will return to this later, but note that, at least from outside our discipline(s), descriptions of what we do, and its preferred terminologies, may be confusing. Are they actually confused?

Haven't read it yet but it's an academic thing, so perhaps too dry for the average reader (or even a lot of professional readers). Reminds me of some of the issues Dunnell tackled in Systematics in Prehistory. Matter of act, he has this to say:

Prehistory has been defined many times and in various ways, this fact itself contributing in no small measure to the vagueness surrounding the meaning. Universal acceptance has not been accorded any definition, at least in part because all the definitions are more or less substantive, tied to a given area or problem. (p.114)

He notes that Spaulding defined 'prehistory' in 1953 as what prehistorians do and nothing more. I guess we're bound to have this discussion every 30 years or so. "What is it we're doing again?"

'Chicken and Chips' Theory of Pacific Migration

A new study of DNA from ancient and modern chickens has shed light on the controversy about the extent of pre-historic Polynesian contact with the Americas.

The study questions recent claims that chickens were first introduced into South America by Polynesians, before the arrival of Spanish chickens in the 15th century following Christopher Columbus.

It is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (July 28) by an international research group, including scientists from the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD).

Hmmmmm. That conflicts with this work from last year. Apart from the DNA evidence you still have the remains dated prior to contact. That dating regimen will no doubt have to be reexamined.

Ancient grave found on Bognor new homes site

Land soon to become a new housing estate has yielded an unexpected treasure – a 2,000- year-old skeleton, believed to be that of a prince, a warrior or a priest.

Planning permission has been granted for more than 600 houses in open fields at North Bersted near Bognor.

But before the work could go ahead, an archaeological survey had to be carried out on the site to check if there was anything of historical interest under the topsoil.

What the team from the Thames Valley Archaeological Services found was beyond their wildest dreams.

Also this: “The burial and its grave goods seems to have been placed in a large coffin or casket bound by iron hoops with an iron framed structure placed on top.”

I've never heard of that sort of structure before either.

Many hands painted Lascaux caves

One thing that strikes the visitor is the exuberance of the compositions, with hundreds of animals, including bison, horses and deer, parading along the walls and ceilings, often overlapping. A big problem in sorting out possible groupings of animals, and possible motives for painting them, has been the issue of contemporaneity — what was painted when?

A recent study by scientists at the Louvre’s research and conservation laboratories has suggested one avenue of approach, by studying the chemical structure of pigments from the cave walls and ancient antlers from Palaeolithic sites. The presence of minuscule antler fragments in the paints may enable animal figures composed at the same time, using the same batch of paint, to be isolated and then studied apart from neighbouring depictions.

Ruins may be Viking hunting outpost in Greenland

Ruins recently discovered on Greenland may mark the Vikings' most northerly year-round hunting outpost on the icy island, a researcher said on Monday.

Knut Espen Solberg, leader of 'The Melting Arctic' project mapping changes in the north, said the remains uncovered in past weeks in west Greenland may also be new evidence that the climate was less chilly about 1,000 years ago than it is today.

'We found something that most likely was a dock, made of rocks, for big ships up to 20-30 metres (60-90 ft) long,' he told Reuters by satellite phone from a yacht off Greenland. He said further study and carbon dating were needed to pinpoint the site's age.

Artist's conception of what the Vikings may have looked like:

Past stalls future development in Lebanon; cost to remove artifacts in 6 figures

Fred and Bonnie Paskvan want the world to know they are not against archaeology.

But they are against being required to pay for it, especially when the estimated minimum cost of clearing their land of buried artifacts from a 1,000-year-old Mississippian village is at least $100,000 and may be several times that.

The cost sunk a deal they were trying to make with a home builder they had hoped would buy a tract of land purchased years ago as an investment.

That's rather unfortunate.

Flint hints at existence of Palaeolithic man in Ireland

Dr Farina Sternke has identified it as a classic Levallois-type flake from the rejuvenation of a flint core; such flakes are characteristic of stone-tool industries made by archaic humans of the pre-Neanderthal era, as technology moved towards making multiple flakes from one core and then trimming them into a variety of different tool types.

The date assigned of between 240,000 and 180,000 years matches a similar flake discovered by the late Professor Frank Mitchell near Drogheda, Co Louth, 40 years ago, which has until now been the only uncontested Palaeolithic tool from Ireland.

SDSU Archaeology Team Unearthing Long-Buried Whaley House Artifacts

San Diego State University - SDSU anthropology professor Seth Mallios and his team of students are spending their summer in a way only they would enjoy - inside a long-buried well at what’s been called the most haunted house in the United States.

With the support of the County of San Diego and Save Our Heritage Organisation, Mallios is excavating the site of a long-buried cistern and nearby privy, or outhouse, on the property of the historic Whaley House in Old Town San Diego. SDSU’s South Coastal Information Center and students from SDSU’s Department of Anthropology field school are assisting with the dig.

At least one mammoth tooth found in Portage County

An archaeologist is looking into the discovery of mammoth teeth in Portage County.

The director of the Central Wisconsin Archaeology Center, Dr. Ray Reser, says a couple months ago a man brought him the tooth he claimed to have dug up a year ago at a Plover quarry.

He told Reser he and others were digging in sand when they hit what appeared to be the lower part of a jaw.

Given how far down the tooth was and the sediment it was found in, Reser says it could be anywhere from 20,000 to 120,000 years old.

Digging deep to reveal the human cost of war

But Pollard, director of the university's Centre for Battlefield Archaeology, which he co-founded in 2006, has always kicked against the stereotype of the military historian as the schoolboy who never grew up. He is concerned about what he regards as archaeology's failure to give due attention to war and conflict, particularly the human experience of it. "When I was at university, it would have been very unfashionable to profess an interest in military history," he says. "You had to vote for Maggie Thatcher and play war games, which is plainly not the point. I think in archaeology there has been a tendency to look at the past through rose-tinted spectacles and ignore the fact there's always been conflict in human society."

That conviction has made him a world authority in the new discipline of battlefield archaeology. For him, establishing which army was positioned where is not the attraction. "There are those who are content to sit down and measure musket balls, but I'm more interested in the human experience of warfare," he says. "At times, archaeology is the closest thing you get to a time machine. When you're handling stuff for the first time in 250 years and you think this bullet may have marked someone's last moments on this earth', it's a very visceral experience."

It's certainly becoming more accepted. I remember a few years ago when I first linked to a couple of stories on battlefield archy, I thought it was restricted to relic hunters and reenactment buffs.

Archaeologist combs through Utah abandoned town

A New York anthropologist is combing through an old townsite in Utah's Skull Valley looking for clues to what life was like in the abandoned town.

Benjamin Pykles, a professor at the State University of New York, is conducting the first archaeological survey of Iosepa (pronounced yo-see-pa) , a mostly Polynesian community that survived 28 years.