Ancient brewery discovered on mountaintop in Peru
Archaeologists working in southern Peru found an ancient brewery more than 1,000 years old. Remains of the brewing facility were uncovered on Cerro Baúl, a mountaintop city over 8,000 feet above sea level, which was home to elite members of the Wari Empire from AD 600-1000.
Predating the Inca Empire by at least four centuries, this Wari brewery was used to make chicha, a fermented beverage similar to beer that played an important role in ritual feasting and drinking during Peru's first empire. Ancient Peruvians made chicha with local grains and fruit, which is quite different from today's commercial beers typically made with barley and hops.
"We believe this important find may be the oldest large-scale brewery ever found in the Andes," said Patrick Ryan Williams, PhD, Assistant Curator of Anthropology at The Field Museum.
Fight! Fight! Countries battle over artefacts
An Aboriginal group has prevented native Australian artefacts from returning to the UK museums from which they were loaned. BBC News Online looks at other disputed treasures and the growing calls to have them repatriated.
In 1810, a total of 56 sculpted friezes, depicting gods, men and monsters, were removed from the Parthenon in Athens by British ambassador Lord Elgin.
They were brought to Britain and housed in the British Museum where they have remained.
Repeated calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles to their homeland have fallen on deaf ears, with the British Museum adamant they should remain in a place where they can be seen by international visitors.
The 'Pompeii Principle' for real. No, really. What Lies Beneath in Pompeii (Registration required. GO to BugMeNot.com and get a username and password)
For Pompeii's 2 million yearly visitors, the overwhelming attraction is the captivating view of daily life in the Roman Empire evoked by the city's temples, taverns, houses and public baths, and by its ever-popular brothels with their erotic frescoes.
Note: Thieves frequently raid the sites. During the past 30 years, more than 600 items, from frescoes to bricks, have been pilfered from Pompeii. One of the worst thefts occurred in 1977, when someone hacked 14 frescoes from a villa known as the House of the Gladiators. And in January, thieves cut two frescoes from the House of the Chaste Lovers. (Pompeii houses are usually named after prominent paintings, sculptures or other artifacts.)
Kinda makes you wonder why anything else ought to be dug up and put on display.
Iron Age 'nerve centre' uncovered on hill
EXCAVATIONS at a large hill fort in East Lothian have uncovered what archaeologists believe to be one of the nerve centres of Iron Age Scotland.
The new findings at Traprain Law, near Haddington, include the first coal jewellery workshop unearthed in Scotland as well as hundreds of artefacts giving new insight into life in the 700BC-AD43 era.
Experts who have been working on the site for several weeks are now able to paint a picture of a densely populated hilltop town which was home to leaders of local tribes, following the discovery of multiple ramparts, Roman pottery, gaming pieces, tools and beads.
At the centre of the archaeological site, which is one of the most important in Scotland, a medieval building, first uncovered by a fire in 1996, has now been fully excavated by the 20-strong team of archaeologists, also showing the area was occupied hundreds of years later.
Really, "St. Mungo" is just killing us here.
But, as we so often do here at ArchaeoBlog, a silly off-the-cuff joke brings up something interesting (and boring and pedantic, but that's our idiom anyhow). There is an interesting paleoanthropological connection to 'Mungo', though not to St. Mungo, Mungo Jerry, or any other Mungo you may have heard of. The peopling of Australia is perhaps on par with the peopling of the New World (N and S America) as far as Big Archaeological Problems go. In some ways, it's even more important since it seems to be more difficult to get people from Asia to Australia over a lot of open ocean than just skipping across the Bering Land Bridge.
Within this context is some skeletal material recovered from Lake Mungo in New South Wales. The importance of these skeletons lies in their early date and apparent burial practices, especially Lake Mungo 3 (see this page for several PDF copies of original papers). This seems to be a really good site all around, with a lot of good information, references, and links to original source articles.