Peru archaeologists find 4,000-year-old painting

A 4,000-year-old cave painting has been discovered in a northern temple in Peru, an archaeologist said Sunday.

The painting depicting a deer caught in nets marks the beginning of high culture in South America and suggests that there were earlier hunting cultures, said Walter Alvahe, the director of Sipan Royal Tombs Museum, who lead the excavation work.

The painting was found on the wall of a temple close to the Lord of Sipian tomb, on a hill in the Ventarron area of Chiclayo, the capital of Lambayque province, 780 km from Peru's capital Lima.

UPDATE: More here.

Egypt to restrict visits to Tutankhamun tomb

Egypt will limit the number of visitors to the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun to 400 a day from December 1 and close it from May 2008 for restoration work on the wall paintings, the government said on Sunday.

A statement from the Supreme Antiquities Council said the aim was to preserve the tomb, but it gave no details.

The face of the boy pharaoh went on display in the antechamber of the tomb last week when his mummified body was moved from his stone sarcophagus to a sealed Plexiglas case.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the container is sealed, how can external moisture affect it?

Field school on Easter Island This from Terry Hunt:

This coming summer (2008) we will again offer a University of Hawai`i
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD SCHOOL ON EASTER ISLAND (Rapa Nui), 2-25 June,
2008. For details, please visit our updated web pages:

http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/projects/rapanui/index.html

The field school is open to undergraduate (ANTH 381) and graduate
students (ANTH 668). Students will participate in survey, mapping,
excavation, geophysical survey, museum/laboratory analyses, and
training Native Rapanui high school students and community members on
the island.

Applications should be made through the U.H. Study Abroad program.
The application DEADLINE is 17 February 2008.

Walker "site" update Walker archeological dig unearths more finds

This summer, the LLHS crew has been back, joined at times by Sue and Steve Mulholland, archaeologists with the Duluth Archaeology Center; David Mather, National Register Archaeologist with the State Historic Preservation Office; and Dr. Howard Hobbs with the Minnesota Geological Survey.

All this year’s excavations have been on land owned by WACC; previous digs were on adjacent land owned by the city of Walker; but LLHS was unable to get permission to continue digging there. Living Water Church also owns property adjacent to the dig sites.

There's a photo of the supposed artifact at that link.

Neanderthal update Stone Age feminism?

The Neanderthal extinction some 30,000 years ago remains one of the great riddles of evolution, with rival theories blaming everything from genocide committed by "real" humans to prehistoric climate change.

But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers.

Not much to this particular bit except on the second page:

The University of Arizona's Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner, use archeological evidence to argue that Neanderthal females - unlike Homo sapien women of the Upper Paleolithic period - joined men in hunts at a time when stabbing giant beasts with a sharpish stone affixed to a stick represented the cutting edge of technology.

That's courageous, but probably bad practice for a population that never numbered much more than 10,000 individuals. The loss of a few males to a flailing hoof or slashing antler is no big deal, in the long run. But losing females of child-bearing age could bring doom to a hard-pressed species.

Which still isn't much. Division of labor is notoriously difficult to get at archaeologically (even though many think just by making a nice analogy you're done) so it will be interesting to see what they used.

UPDATE: Hawks has an extended entry on the red hair and FOXP2 stuff.

Blogging update Back from China. Too dead tired to post. Will resume tomorrow (Monday). Out.

New search for Aztec King's tomb

A team of archaeologists has begun exploring a site in the heart of the Mexican capital that might lead to the first discovery of a tomb of an Aztec king, according to Spanish news agency EFE.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a communique that a 12-tonne monolith dedicated to Tlaltecuhtli, the Aztec earth goddess, was removed from the site Tuesday.

Scientists hope to uncover the tomb of King Ahuizotl, who reigned from 1486-1502.

The monolith and the possible tomb were found a year ago in the area known as Las Ajaracas, a spot where the new official residence of the Mexico City mayor is being built.

Upon detecting the archaeological remains, the government donated the land to INAH to explore.

Red-headed Neanderthals were like us, and now they're gone

The idea of Neanderthals with red hair and freckles is just plain charming. But it's also scary because it underscores the fact that Neanderthals were so much like us, and now they're gone.

Ever since their fossils were first discovered in 1829 (and later called "Neanderthal Man" by William King, who was part Irish, by the way), these hominids have been relegated to the status of cave men and women. Neanderthals were shorter and more muscular than the other humans living at the same time, had bigger noses and projecting brow ridges, and no chins. Not a pretty picture.

But these ancient fellow Europeans were also culturally sophisticated. They buried their dead, built shelters, made tools, used fire and hunted. The may have had language (DNA sequencing has also revealed they carried the FOXP2 gene which is linked to language ability). And they had brains 100 cubic centimeters larger than people today.

And so why have these interesting people been relegated to second-class citizen status?

Because they threaten us.

Neanderthals are chronologically the closest, and the most familiar, example that we have of our kind disappearing off the face of the Earth, and that means we can go too.

Remains of Rum distillery discovered in Bristol, Rhode Island (U.S.)

Archaeologists digging at the site of a future condominium complex on Thames Street have discovered the remains of a rum distillery that likely played a role in Bristol's portion of the infamous Triangle Trade in the early 19th century.

Digging several feet below street grade in a vacant lot just north of Gillary's Tavern, researchers over the past five weeks have found approximately 17 molasses fermentation vats and the remains of a brick still base that would have helped fuel the distilling operation. Now, the state is working with developer James Roiter to come up with a plan to document the site before development begins.

. . . .

Bristol's close ties to the slave trade have long been known, and historians have also known for years that at least five rum distilling operations flourished in Bristol during the years the trade was active, the mid-1700s through the early 1800s.

Pompeii - a prototype ground zero

Shelley Hales is a lecturer in Art and Visual Culture, in the Department of Classics and Ancient History. Dry stuff, you might imagine. On the contrary, Hales is currently researching the enormous impact Pompeii has had on popular culture since its rediscovery in 1748.

. . . .

In order to further explore modern reactions to the remains of Pompeii, Hales devised the Casts Project, a national competition for school children, in which students were shown images of the body casts and asked: Does Pompeii matter today? Can we have any connection with the victims of Vesuvius? How should we treat their remains? Should we encourage sentimental connection or look on as objective, scientific observers? As an illustration of Pompeii’s enduring appeal, she was inundated with over 200 entries, including stories, poems, essays, models, paintings, casts, plays, songs and broadcasts. The winning entries will be displayed at a conference Hales is holding later this year.

Called Ruins and Reconstructions: Pompeii in the Popular Imagination, the conference brings together academics and policy-makers with artists who have made use of the theme of Pompeii, such as the novelists Robert Harris and Lindsey Davis, and the artist Victor Burgin.

Ironically, whilst the recent surge of popular interest in Pompeii has seen the city find a wider audience than ever before, the site itself has reached a critical state of decay, and the key players are seriously considering drastic action, including closing large parts of the site to the public and possibly even reburying it. Through the conference Hales is hoping to show the policy-makers of this World Heritage Site how Pompeii continues to be a major source of inspiration to western imaginations, and that it represents far more than just an expensive ruin.

Biblical bad girl was a powerful ancient figure

Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."

Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty. Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings characteristic of royal objects.

"The lion-sphinx with female head and female Isis-Hathor crown, which is unique, this clearly points to a queen," said Marjo Korpel, an Old Testament scholar at the University of Utrecht who conducted the research.

The above story is accompanied by a large photograph of the seal under discussion.

Blogging update
Greetings from China! Minor post with little content. Still here for another couple of days. Conferencing is done so the next couple days is touristy stuff. So far I've seen the Great Wall, the Lama temple, Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. Today is the museum of Chinese history. Oh yeah, and I found the Peking Man remains under a bush outside the hotel here. *yawn*

Most of the sights so far haven't been that old, with the temples and what not being mostly Ming-Qing Dynasties. The museum supposedly has a lot of the older paleontology fossils and older cultural stuff. Hopefully, I'll get a lot of photos of that stuff while there.

Beijing's not bad. Much cleaner and less noisy than Cairo, but more polluted. I'm not sure of the geography in detail but the city seems to be sitting in a basin with mountains to the west which looks like it makes temperature inversions likely and thus trapping all of the pollutants in, ergo, smog, and lots of it. It cleared out magnificently yesterday and today seems clear as well. Food. . . .eh. We stopped at a local placed on the way back from the Wall which was excellent, but we went to a banquet at the Great Hall of the People (very swank) but I didn't like much of that. Haven't had Peking duck yet, which is supposedly the local thing to eat when here.

A colleague flies out today to see the terracotta army, but I'm staying put. I think I am catching a cold, too. Dang it. Weather's been great, low 60s and sunny. I hope this is just thre dry weather and lack of sleep last night. . . . .

Will post more probably Sunday or Monday.

Coastal geology tracks prehistoric people

For many students, a research project means a weekend in the library sifting through dusty textbooks. For Denise Brushett, it means a week on a ship digging up 2,000-year-old sea floor samples off the coast of eastern Newfoundland.

It’s this seafaring experience that landed the MUN geography master’s student a spot on the Russian cruise ship Akademik Ioffe, where she worked alongside different kinds of scientists from all over the world, trying to figure out if and how climate change affected the lives of Newfoundland’s prehistoric people.

The Iceman cometh amid debate over how he went

For 10 years Angelika Fleckinger has had an intimate relationship with a most unusual man.

Her partner? Otzi - the world famous Iceman whose mummified body was found in an alpine glacier on the border of Italy and Austria in 1991.

Fleckinger is the director of the Italian museum built in 1998 to house Otzi, who is 2000 years older than Tutankhamen. She has written three books about him. While other scientists might know more about their own specific areas of research, Fleckinger says, "I may be the person who is closest to the Iceman."

To her, Otzi is neither anonymous nor a scientific freak, but a human being with personality. "Sometimes I think it is so strange. He died 5000 years ago, yet this person, this Iceman, has become an important part of my life."

More than 240,000 visitors a year travel to Bolzano to see Otzi's mummy in a special refrigerated chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. But Fleckinger is in Sydney to launch Iceman - The Story of Otzi, which opens at the Australian National Maritime Museum tomorrow.

Next Kennewick Man will need protection

The court decision to allow scientists to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man has aided humankind's quest for knowledge.

Unfortunately, it also spawned a congressional effort to change federal law to keep science from learning anything about the next Kennewick Man.

U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings is trying to thwart the move with proposed legislation of his own. Good for him.

With so many unanswered questions about man's future, we've never had a greater need to understand our past.

The Kennewick Man ruling, upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004, went against Northwest Indian tribes, which hoped the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act would prevent scientific examination of the skeleton.

The court ruled Congress had intended NAGPRA to apply to remains only if a significant relationship could be shown to present-day tribes.

That's an appropriate interpretation of the law, one that protects the interests of science and still respects Indian culture.

Good riddance to archaeologists robbing the graves where the grandparents of contemporary Indians were buried.

And thank goodness for efforts to get human remains and cultural artifacts back to their original tribes.

But the Indians' claim to the 9,300-year-old Kennewick Man is based on the belief that no one other than tribal ancestors could have been in the Columbia Basin back then.

That can't be proved and may not be true.

Legacy of the New Seven Wonders: The Battle of Chichen Itza

I wish that this had come as a big surprise, but of course it hasn't. More bashing of the head on the nearest brick wall:

Since being named as one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, the Mayan temple has been the focus of an ownership dispute between a local family and those who want it to be returned to the people. David Usborne reports from Yucatán

Even before the sun has begun to heat the pale stones of the Temple of Kukulkan pyramid and the adjacent Great Ball Court, the daily invasion of the Chichen Itza, the archeological jewel in the heart of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula that – 1,000 years ago – was one of the largest city-states of the Mayan world, has begun.

They traipse in not via the visitors' entrance but via litter-strewn paths through the surrounding woods. By the time the actual tourists arrive, either from their rooms in the few nearby hotels or on day-trip buses from the beaches of Cancun two hours away, this first human onslaught will be complete. They are the hundreds of vendors who every day erect their stalls all across the site, hoping to scrape a living selling so-called handicrafts which, in fact, are mostly kitsch souvenirs made in China.

Even the barely aware visitor will sense that all is not quite as it should be at Chichen Itza. Its 100 acres can, on some days, feel like a seething bazaar of hawkers and child beggars. Serenity is elusive as you try to conjure in your mind the magnificence of what once stood here, or appreciate the ancient skills involved in placing the temple in direct correlation to the rays of the sun during the spring and autumn equinoxes, or in erecting the El Caracol Observatory to track the movement of the stars. The problem is partly one simply of Chichen Itza struggling to cope with its newfound fame.

China tries farmers for fighting over fossils

Seven farmers from central China face trial for fighting officials who tried to take control of a lucrative lode of dinosaur fossils, state media reported on Wednesday.

The seven were accused of mobilizing residents of Shaping Village in Henan province to trash a police vehicle and fight officials after authorities tried to seize the fossils, the official China court news Web site reported.

After the big dinosaur bones were discovered in March 2006, the government told the farmers to hand over any rare and valuable fossils they had already hidden away.

Archaeologists find major pre-Columbian site

U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have found the best-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Caribbean, which could shed light on virtually every aspect of Indian life in the region, from sacred rituals to eating habits.

The archaeologists believe the site in southern Puerto Rico may have belonged to the Taino or pre-Taino people that inhabited the island before European colonization, although other tribes are a possibility. It contains stones etched with ancient petroglyphs that form a large plaza measuring some 130 feet by 160 feet, which could have been used for ball games or ceremonial rites, said Aida Belen Rivera, director of the Puerto Rican Historic Conservation office.

The petroglyphs include the carving of a human figure with masculine features and frog legs.

The story is accompanied by a photograph of the petroglyphs

Italy regains looted artefacts

Italian authorities claimed another victory in their campaign against the illegal antiquities market Tuesday, unveiling eight Etruscan or Roman artifacts they say were looted from the country and returned by a New York art dealer.

The ancient treasures, including a Roman statue, bronze figurines, and exquisitely painted vases, were worth more than half a million dollars and were bought at auctions by New York dealer Jerome Eisenberg, Italian officials said.

Eisenberg was not aware that the pieces were stolen from Italian museums during the 1970s or illegally dug up, said Gen. Giovanni Nistri, who heads the art squad of the Carabinieri paramilitary police.

Collapse of the northeastern turret of the Jahangir’s Quadrangle at the Lahore Fort

Yet another example of neglect:

Traffic, rain and poor repair have resulted in the collapse of the northeastern turret of the Jahangir’s Quadrangle at the Lahore Fort, said a Punjab Archaeology Department (PAD) report.

The turret had collapsed on September 24. The collapse had started a blame game between the PAD and the Federal Archaeology Department (FAD). Both departments had blamed each other of negligence in the repair of the turret. The FAD had handed over the control of the Lahore Fort to the PAD in 2004.

A report compiled by three officials of the PAD has recommended a complete documentation of the inaccessible areas of the Lahore Fort.

Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites wins Preservation Merit Award

At the annual meeting of the Ohio Historical Society and the Ohio Association of Historical Societies & Museums, held Sept. 29 in Columbus, the Ohio Historic Preservation Office presented the University of Cincinnati's Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites with a Preservation Merit Award for 2007.

At its fall meeting Nov. 3, the Ohio Archaeological Council, Ohio's association of professional archaeologists, presented John Hancock, co-founder of the reconstruction center, with its Board of Directors Award.

These awards recognize the remarkable achievements of the center in creating computerized renderings of ancient sites that either have been obliterated over the centuries or are difficult to appreciate because of their imposing scale.

Hancock is a professor of architectural history and associate dean of research at the University of Cincinnati. He directs the reconstruction center's EarthWorks project, which focuses on the monumental earthen architecture of the Adena and Hopewell cultures.

The detailed and accurate digital re-creations of Ohio's earthworks that he and his team have developed allow the public, as well as archaeologists, to experience these sites as part of the landscape. This makes them effective tools for both education and research.

Prisoners or slaves? New row over wreck's bones

For a decade the curious case of the Rapparee Cove bones has caused diplomatic tension and fierce academic argument.

Found during an archaeological dig on the rocky coast of north Devon, the discovery of the remains seemed to confirm that a boatload of slaves was shipwrecked off the British coast and the survivors possibly sold on.

Ten years on, a row over the bones has reignited with one historian criticising a former colleague for not publishing the results of tests on the remains and a notable black campaigner claiming that the dearth of information on the bones showed a lack of respect for the black people who died on board the ship.

Cultic City and Fortress unearthed in Western Turkey

New excavations conducted by the University of Tübingen (Germany) and the Onsekiz Mart University of Çanakkale (Turkey) at the site of Sirkeli Höyük near Adana (southern Turkey) have revealed the remains of a massive bastion fortification dating to the Hittite Imperial Period (ca. 1300 BC). Sirkeli Höyük, one of the largest settlement mounds in Cilicia during the Bronze- and Iron Ages, was already known to archaeologists and historians because of two Hittite rock reliefs located at the site.

The better preserved rock relief of the two shows the Hittite King Muwatalli II (ca. 1290–1272 BC), opponent of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the famous Battle of Qadesh in Syria and is thus the oldest Hittite rock relief known so far.

On the upside of the rock, just above the reliefs, various shallow pits or basins are found which apparently are to be connected with the reliefs and were used for libations in the course of cultic activities.

These pits were part of a larger cultic installation which also included a building to the west of the rock reliefs. This ensemble is thought to be a cultic installation for the Hittite King.

Archaeologists dig Jiroft for more inscriptions

A team of archaeologists led by Yusef Majidzadeh returned to Jiroft yesterday in order to renew digs of the 5000-year-old site in the hope of finding further artifacts bearing inscriptions.

The team was accompanied for this excavation season by several French and Italian archaeologists along with a number of Iranian students.

During the past five phases of excavation Majidzadeh’s previous team had discovered four brick inscriptions which they unearthed in one of the present-day villager’s homes. Majidzadeh hopes to find another collection of brick inscriptions at the site.

Located next to the Halil-Rud River in the southern Iranian province of Kerman, Jiroft came into the spotlight nearly six years ago when reports surfaced of extensive illegal excavations being carried out by local people who went on to plunder priceless historical items.

Pakistan's heritage at risk - is it too late to close the door?

Mark Rose has updated the Archaeology Magazine Online Features section with an article which consideres what can be done, if anything, to save Pakistan's heritage from further damage. This article most usefully puts the situation into its political context and goes on to consider what the results of the political upheavels have been:

The turmoil in Pakistan, especially the situation in Swat, has scholars concerned about the safety of the country's artistic and archaeological heritage. Relatively peaceful until recently, Swat was a tourist resort with spectacular mountain scenery. It also has a rich cultural heritage, especially Ghandaran art and Buddhist monuments. Adriana Proser, John H. Foster Curator of Traditional Asian Art, at the Asia Society in New York explains, "This area of what is today northern Pakistan was along a major route of the Silk Road. Gandhara was one of the major sites of the Kushan period (first through third centuries). The art of the Gandhara area is extremely important because it shows the impact of Hellenistic and Roman influence ushered in through the conquests of Alexander the Great. The stylistic impact of Gandharan Buddhist art traveled vast space and time, reaching places as far away China, Korea, and Japan. The Gandhara region became part of the Sasanian Empire (224-642), which preceded Islamic rule in Persia, and consequently the arts of the region also influenced artistic developments in the Middle East."

The consequences of prolonged political infighting in Pakistan, leaving Taliban-like militants unchecked may have dire consequences for this heritage. On Monday, October 8, dynamite was used to obliterate the face of a of 23-foot-high seventh-century seated Buddha carved into a rock face near the village of Jehanabad in the Swat Valley. The attack on the Buddha, according to police chief Mohammad Iqbal in an AFP story, "appears to be the work of the local militants who condemn these relics as being un-Islamic. It looks more like a symbolic attack to embarrass the government internationally."

See the above page for the full story, which makes for grim reading.

What did Peruvian mummies eat?

Research undertaken by Trent University assistant anthropology professor Jocelyn Williams into the diets of recently unearthed mummies has revealed fascinating insights into the lives of the ancient Inca of Peru.

An ancient cemetery containing the remains of 500-year old mummies was discovered underneath the coastal town of Tupac Amaru, located near Lima, Peru. Due to the extreme dryness of this coastal desert, the people buried there were exceptionally well preserved and many still retained their skin, hair, fingernails, eyelashes, and even tattoos.

Prof. Williams sampled different tissues from the mummies, such as bone, skin, hair, nail, tendon and muscle to test for chemical signatures left behind by the various foods consumed by these people.

Egyptology Update

There is an absolute spaghetti of items concerning Egypt in the press at the moment, particularly in the UK, partly because of the unveiling of the mummified remains of Tutankhamun in his tomb at Luxor, but partly because of the impending visit to London of the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs exhibtion. I am doing my best to filter them sensibly over on my own blog, but there is nothing of great earth-shaking note emerging publicly from Egypt at the moment. If you want more details about the main events, the following may be of interest

If you are interested in Egyptology and travel in Egypt you shouldn't miss the Times Online: Egypt Travel Special, which links to a large number of excellent articles written by some well known writers. All of the articles concern Egypt, whether it is about visiting the lesser known pyramids or tackling a visit to the Cairo Egyptian Museum in a day.

Philip Hensher's article in the Irish Independent asks the question Where is the dignity in the display of this corpse? He considers whether or not the matter of respect and dignity should be taken into account when putting individuals like Tutankhamun on display for the benefit of the curiosity of onlookers.

There's a spine-chilling look at rubbish left by foreign tourists in the beautiful and unique White Desert of Egypt, near the oasis of Farafra, where three tons of trash has recently been collected.

Last week a CT scan was carried out on an anonymous adult mummy from the Royal Ontario Museum collection and is described on the above page. Three previous mummy scans are also described on the above page, including two infants and the female musician Djedmaatesankh who was based at the Temple of Amun at Luxor.

The Archaeology Magazine website has been updated with an article entitled Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis by Renée Friedman, and more helpfully subtitled Weighing the evidence for and dating of Solanum virus outbreaks in early Egypt.

And if you're not pulling your hair out about being able to read little else about Egyptology which doesn't have the name of Tutankhamun involved, you might be interested to know that according to the Egypt State Information Service, the Tutankhamun exhibition is being opened next week by Susanne Mubarak. The exhibition has already sold 132,000 tickets.

Finally, hundreds of unpublished photographs taken by Lord Carnarvon during the discovery and excavations of the tomb of Tutankhamun have been discovered at Highclere Castle during research for a book. Unfortunately, only one of these photos that appears to have been released so far, which is the one on the above page.

Stonehenge's huge support settlement

Yesterday's BBC Radio 4's programme Secrets of Stonehenge (U.K.) has provided an update about the state of knowledge about the broader human landscape associated with Stonehenge in Wessex.

Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe.

Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far.

But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work.

"What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehenge builders was," says Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.

Allowing four per house, he estimates there could have been room for more than 2,000 people.

See the above page for the full story.

Medievel church goes traveling in Germany

A thirteenth century Romanesque-style church has been moved to a new location seven miles away from its original location, to make way for a new coal mining operation in western Germany. This page shows a video report on the movement of the small church. the video is shown on the National Geographic website.

Mapping our Genes

If you are interested in the application of DNA testing to improving our understanding of human biology and relationships (a possible direction for the future analysis of mummies in Egypt and elsewhere), then this article is worth the very brief fiddle of signing up to free access. There are only a few fields to complete. Here's an extract to give you a reasonable flavour of whether or not it is worth your effort:

Many experts say the gene detection industry is undergoing a technological revolution similar to what Intel co-founder Gordon Moore foresaw more than three decades ago when he correctly predicted that the number of computer-chip transistors would double every two years.

It took 13 years and cost about $450 million using a fleet of genetic analysis equipment to finish the first-ever complete detailing of the human genome in 2003, said Geoff Spencer, of the National Institutes of Health.

But with just one of the latest machines - which are far faster, use fewer chemicals and require fewer people to operate - the same task could be done in weeks for about $5 million, he said. And in the near future, experts predict, that cost will drop into the thousands of dollars. . . . .

Until recently, trying to understand human biology was like the fabled blind men groping an elephant. Scientists had a rudimentary understanding of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the double helix-shaped molecule that holds each living thing's genetic coding. And they knew how to do relatively simple genetic comparisons, for everything from identifying people who commit heinous crimes to resolving paternity issues in child-support disputes.

One novel version of that basic sort of matching is being done by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities in collaboration with the Discovery Channel to identify the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most famous female pharaoh. With Applied's instruments, the team is comparing the DNA from two mummies known to be Hatshepsut's maternal grandmother and father with that of two female mummies suspected to be Hatshepsut.

But much more is possible now thanks to technological innovations in genetic mapping.

See the above page for the complete article.

London and the transatlantic slave trade

On 10 November 2007, Museum in Docklands will open the only permanent gallery in London to examine the city’s involvement in transatlantic slavery and its legacy on the capital.

Marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 by Britain, the new gallery is part of a series of events and projects planned by the Museum for 2007 and 2008.

. . . .

The new gallery, called London, Sugar & Slavery, will reveal how London’s involvement in slavery has shaped the capital since the 17th century, and will challenge what people think they know about the transatlantic slave trade. It will debunk the myth that London was a minor player in the trade by showing that it funded much of the city’s industrial and financial success. From Jamaica Road to the Bank of England, from the merchant houses of Blackheath to the nation’s art collections, profits from this most lucrative trade shaped the metropolis.

London, Sugar & Slavery will show it was not just a few evangelical parliamentarians who abolished the transatlantic slave trade, but a widespread grass roots movement that included people freed from enslavement who wrote about their experiences, thousands of ordinary citizens who lobbied collectively and women who campaigned with their purses by boycotting sugar that had been produced by enslaved Africans.

The above page also lists related exhibitions which will support the main display over the coming year.

The home page of the Museum in Docklands can be found at:
http://www.museumindocklands.org.uk/english/

Part of ancient wall in Rome collapses

A 20-foot section of Rome's ancient Aurelian Wall collapsed near the capital's central train station after days of heavy rain, a conservation official said Friday.

The wall, part of a 16th-century restoration, crumbled into a pile of bricks Thursday evening after water infiltrated the section, said Paola Virgili, an official in charge of the wall's restoration. No one was reported hurt.

The Aurelian Wall — named after the third century emperor who built it to defend the city against the first barbarian onslaughts — surrounds Rome with more than 11 miles of fortifications, towers and gates.

Experts had previously determined that the entire wall section in the area, a 1,100-foot stretch in the north of the capital, was in danger of collapsing and they had planned to start restoring it Monday.

Book review: Mysteries of the Snake Goddess

In Mysteries of the Snake Goddess, subtitled Art, Desire and The Forging of History, scholar and assistant curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum Kenneth Lapatin, sets out to trace the origins and prove or disprove the authenticity of the one of the world’s most recognizable antiquities -- called alternatively the Boston Goddess or the Minoan Snake Goddess. Hailed as the apotheosis of Minoan art, the Boston Goddess has a place of honor at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and has fascinated people since her arrival in Boston in 1914. Made of ivory and gold, she looks surprisingly modern with eyes set to the natural depth and stands bare breasted with a snake in each hand. The statuette did much to increase interest in the Minoan culture being unearthed on Crete and more specifically, at Knossos, by Sir Arthur Evans, a famous archaeologist.

The introduction expands into a complete review of the book which commends the research but finds the tone somewhat slow. See the above for the entire review.

The face of Tutankhamun goes on display in his tomb

More than 3,000 years after his death, King Tutankhamun went on display to the public yesterday in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, a slightly bucktoothed boy who died aged 19.

King Tut’s mummified face – which has been seen only by about 50 people since the British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb exactly 85 years ago – was revealed to the world in a climate-controlled glass display case in an antechamber of his own tomb in the valley near Luxor, where generations of Egyptian pharaohs were buried.

“Everyone is dreaming of what he looks like. The face of Tutankhamun is different from any king in the Cairo museum. With his beautiful buck teeth, the tourists will see a little bit of the smile from the face of the golden boy,” said Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s leading expert on the famous boy King.

Dr Hawass expects a huge influx of tourists to see the mummy, to be displayed in the tomb indefinitely. Only the face can be seen, with the body wrapped in linen.

Accompanied by two photographs.

Also on The Telegraph Online, by Michael Oakey from Sussex Egyptology Society (I never miss an opportunity to give them a good plug!):

Tutankhamun's startled-looking empty eye-sockets seemed to ask, "What's going on?" as he was lifted from his stone sarcophagus into the glare of television lights yesterday. He, and we, may well wonder.

In pictures: King Tut's face revealed Tutankhamun's face shown for first time Better preservation is the headline reason why the mummy of the boy pharaoh has been transferred a few feet to a sealed, climate-controlled case within his cramped subterranean tomb; but there is a wider significance.

Odyssey Marine in dispute with Spain over sunken treasure

The legal grappling between deep-sea explorers and the Spanish government over an estimated $500 million in sunken treasure could drag on for another year or more, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

A case management report filed in federal court indicated that Odyssey Marine Exploration, based in Tampa, and attorneys for the Spanish government agree on little beyond their ability to be ready for a trial sometime after Oct. 1, 2008.

Spain has filed claims to the vast treasure of Colonial-era silver and gold coins and other artifacts that Odyssey salvaged from an undisclosed shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean this year.

Spain contends it is entitled to the treasure if it or the ship belonged to Spain, or if the treasure was removed from Spain's territorial waters.

Odyssey, citing security concerns, has said publicly only that the wreck was situated in international waters, but an export document filed with the court last month indicated the treasure was found about 200 miles west of Gibraltar, a British territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula.

An attorney for Spain has asked a judge to order Odyssey to disclose the exact location and identity of the shipwreck, which the company has code-named "Black Swan."

Odyssey were being put under the microscope last time I updated Tony's blog and there were some excellent summary articles on the Archaeology Magazine website about the problems with heritage management and ownership in maritime/underwater archaeology. Heather Pringle's overview, Profiteers on the High Seas, is excellent for anyone wanting to find out more.

New finds ignite controversy over ape and human evolution

Fifty years ago, British anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark explained in a lecture why evolutionary scientists argue so vehemently about how ancient apelike and humanlike creatures eventually gave way to modern humans. "Every fossil relic which appears to throw light on connecting links in man's ancestry always has, and always will, arouse controversy," he stated, "and it is right that this should be so, for it is very true that the sparks of controversy often illuminate the way to truth."

. . . .

Teeth sometimes tell contested evolutionary tales. That adage applies to a new analysis of hominid teeth conducted by researchers who have found 400,000-year-old skeletons of Neandertal ancestors in Spain and the 1.77-million-year-old remains of an early Homo species in central Asia (SN: 9/22/07, p. 179). The scientists suspect that, perhaps 2 million to 3 million years ago, Asian hominids began to move west, exerting a huge impact on the evolution of Neandertals and other Homo species in western Asia and Europe.

That suggestion contrasts with the traditional view that hominids left Africa around 1.8 million years ago and evolved into species such as Neandertals after reaching Europe and other locales. Asian hominids of the time evolved separately and eventually died out, according to this perspective.

A team led by Maria Martinón-Torres of the National Center of Human Evolution Studies in Burgos, Spain, has examined 51 anatomical traits on more than 5,000 hominid teeth. Fossils came from African australopithecines and from African, Asian, and European Homo species, including H. sapiens.

See the above for the full article on the Science News Online website

Rare state seals from first Bulgarian Empire unearthed

Archaeologists have made a sensational finding on Saturday, dated back to the first Bulgarian Empire (years 681-1018) in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Pliska.

The team of archaeologists found state seals, which belonged to the rulers Simeon and Petar.

The interesting thing is that the seals were found in the base of one of the wooden fortified walls, quite far from the Tzar palace.

The archaeologists unearthed the findings, while they were having excavations at a chain of living and public buildings. The scientists were very surprised when, among the tools, the bone and medal jewelry and pots they found also archbishop and ruler's insignia.

"Our most precious findings are the two lead seals of the two Bulgarian Rulers. One of them has no inscription on it, which by that time was identified with Tzar Simeon at the time when he was not officially proclaimed a tzar. The other seal belonged to his son Petar I and his wife Maria-Irina," archaeologist Pavel Georgiev said.

Archaeologists also unearthed a trench behind the wooden fortified walls, which shows that the Bulgarian military strategists were very well acquainted with the fortification techniques used by the emperors of the Roman Empire.

Sumerian tablet in private ownership authenticated

Ron Veenker has verified that a Sumerian tablet in private ownership is the real thing.

Veenker said a wealthy donor bought the tablet from a dealer in New York City around 1901. In all, the donor bought a collection of 400 artifacts for Haverford College near Philadelphia. In 1962, the collection was transferred to the Oriental Institute in Chicago with an inventory list, Veenker said.

"Best I can make out," he said, "14 did not make the trip."

Veenker believes the artifact in Buie's possession is one of the missing 14.

The rest of the collection is stored at the institute.

Veenker explained that a bureaucrat, who probably worked in a Sumerian temple or government warehouse, recorded the information on the tablet. The inscription is a list of transactions.

Building of Iraqi police barracks threatens world heritage site

On the odd occasion that I have updated Tony's blog I have been seriously saddened by the number of times I find myself reporting on the careless or deliberate destruction of national and world heritage sites. Here's another one - the Samarra Archaeological City is now under threat.

The construction of a large police barracks close to the Great Mosque of Samarra and its famed spiral minaret is imperilling another of Iraq's precious historical sites, Unesco and senior archaeologists have warned.

Work on the building and a training centre for 1,500 Iraqi policemen is continuing in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, despite the addition this summer of the ninth-century remains of the capital of the Abbasid dynasty to Unesco's list of endangered world heritage sites.

There are fears that the police compound will prove an irresistible target for insurgents, and that the construction and operation of the barracks will damage the Samarra Archaeological City, one of the country's largest and most valuable historical areas, the Art Newspaper reported in its November issue.

See the above page for more.

"Sea monsters" actually about forensic archaeology

Not all science is truth, and that’s the belief of the science community itself rather than the thought of skeptics. Some science is the formulation of theory, put forth for confirmation or refinement. Archaeological information about pre-historic life creates a puzzle for archaeologists and biologists to piece together, and the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center movie “Sea Monsters” is actually more about forensic archaeology than the pre-historic fish and reptiles.

At one time places such as Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas were covered with water. Whether that was due to the Biblical 40-day flood or to a former ocean which was erased when two tectonic plates met to create the Rocky Mountains is irrelevant; what is important is that there are fossils in the American Midwest and elsewhere which prove the existence of marine life. “Sea Monsters” combines archaeological finds with the projected activities of the creatures who now exist in fossil form.

After Battle, Barnard Professor given tenure

I haven't been following this story but I understand from Kat that Tony has, and has been posting on the subject, so I've posted this extract from the above page without really knowing what it's all about - I hope that it makes sense in the overall thread of stories on the subject.

A Barnard College professor who argues in her scholarly work that archeological evidence has been manipulated to justify the existence of a modern Jewish state has been granted tenure following a heated battle, a source at the college said last night..

Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor at Barnard since 2002, is the author of "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," published in 2001.

In the book, Ms. Abu El-Haj, who is a Palestinian Arab, writes that Israeli archaeologists use their research to further an origin myth about the homeland of the Jewish people.

Stolen Stone Age artefacts returned to Greece from Germany

A stolen collection of about 100 artifacts dating from more than 8,000 years ago - including what may be very early human portraits - has been returned from Germany to Greece, officials said Tuesday.

The Neolithic-era artifacts were stolen by armed burglars from a private collection in Larissa, central Greece, in 1985 and seized by the German police in Munich a year later. The case remained virtually forgotten until a Munich court ruled in August that the finds should be returned to Greece.

"These works are exceptional examples" of the Neolithic culture, Culture Minister Michalis Liapis said. "We are very happy to get them back, as we consider antiquities theft a global scourge."

The 94 stone and pottery works - statuettes, tools and tiny vases - mostly date between 6500 and 5300 B.C. and come from the central Thessaly region, where Greece's most important Neolithic settlements have been excavated.

Monuments on National Heritage List destroyed in Iran

The destruction of one of the biggest historical sites in the Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari province by the Islamic Republic Ministry of Road and Transportation was reported by the Persian service of ISNA on Monday, October 22.

"Overnight %60 of the architectural and archeological remains of Pol-Borideh in Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari province is being destroyed to construct a road. The ancient site was registered on the National Heritage List", said Aliasghar Noruzi, an archeologist with provincial CHTO.

He stated: "The Ministry of Road and Transportation acted irresponsibly, and ignored all the previous warnings of the Chahar-Mahal Bakhtiari Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation, prior to launching the new Khuzestan Highway project."

According to Noruzi, the ancient site was a settlement next to an ancient route known as Arjan-Lordegan-Esphahan, which was in use during a number of historical periods. In addition there were a number of architectural remains dated back to 1000 BCE as well as pre-history which have already been identified in the area.

Photographs accompany the above article.

Islamic monumental complexes restored in Cairo

The Khayrbek and Umm Al-Sultan Shaaban monumental complexes, two of the finest examples of Islamic mediaeval architecture in the Darb Al-Ahmar district of Cairo, have been restored. Nevine El-Aref was at the opening ceremony.

Traffic was barred from Bab Al-Wazir Street in the Darb Al-Ahmar district last Friday night as journalists and TV crews joined government officials at the Khayrbek complex to await the arrival of Prince Karim Aga Khan and Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who would announce the inauguration of the Khayrbek and Umm Al-Sultan Shaaban complexes after five years of restoration.

Local residents wearing customary traditional dress stood on their balconies overlooking the street to watch, while children in the alley clapped happily and sang folk songs.

The Khayrbek complex was named after the first of Egypt's Ottoman governors, Emir Khayrbek, and was built in stages during the Mameluke and Ottoman periods. It contains five monuments: the Alin Aq Palace, the Khayrbek Mosque and Mausoleum, the Janim Al-Hamzawi sabil (water fountain) and the two Ottoman houses belonging to Ibrahim Mustafazan.

The neighbouring Umm Al-Sultan Shaaban monument, which was built by the Mameluke Sultan Shaaban for his mother Khwand Baaraka in 1368, comprises a mosque, two madrassas (religious schools), a kuttab for children (Quranic school), two mausoleums, a sabil and a water trough for animals.

Strange burial positions reveal infomation about Pacific island life

Analysis of strange burial positions and skeletons’ teeth has given clues about earliest Pacific Island society, according to new research.

The research team, led by Durham University, United Kingdom, analysed skeletons’ teeth from seventeen excavated skeletons who were found in some unusual burial positions at the earliest ancient cemetery in the Pacific. The scientists identified a small group of immigrants, mostly buried with the head to the south, and one with three heads on his chest.

The results from the team’s analysis strongly suggest that some had migrated from distant coastal locations, potentially as far away as Southeast Asia. The new discovery gives further insight into the colonists of the Pacific islands.

The scientists from Durham, Otago and Australian National universities, whose paper is published in American Antiquity, analysed the strontium, carbon and oxygen isotope signatures of the teeth giving the researchers vital information about their geological origin, their diet and likely source of their drinking water.

New book: Excavations at Kilise Tepe, 1994-98

If you have some cash to burn orders are being taken at Oxbow for Excavations at Kilise Tepe, 1994-98: From Bronze Age to Byzantine in Western Cilicia edited by Nicholas Postgate and David Thomas. Oxbow summarize the book as follows.

These two volumes report on five season's excavation and four millennia of occupation at Kilise Tepe, from the Early Bronze Age through the rise and fall of the Hittite Empire and into the Byzantine era when the mound was crowned by a substantial church. The site takes its importance from its position guarding the Göksu Valley, one of the two main routes from the interior of Anatolia to the Mediterranean opposite Cyprus, so that it gives a record of relations between the interior and the seaboard. Of particular interest are the sequence from the Hittite Empire through the end of the Bronze Age and into the classical world, and the Byzantine levels associated with the church. The multi-authored report gives a full account of the stratigraphy and architecture, the ceramics and other artefacts, and various environmental studies.

Prices and ordering details etc can be found at the above page.

Bam citadel under emergency restoration

An Iranian-Italian archaeological team has started an emergency operation to restore one of the damaged bastions of Bam Citadel.

The Italian archaeologists will also prepare the final restoration plan of the bastion which will be submitted in a month and is to begin as soon as the plan is approved by Iranian officials.

Two thousand year old Bam Citadel (Arg-e-Bam) was constructed during the Parthian dynasty (248 BCE-224 CE) and it is considered to be one of the biggest mud brick complexes in the world, which was severely damaged in the devastating earthquake of December 23rd, 2003.

There are photographs of the citadel before and after the earthquake.

Dendro dating the eastern Mediterranean's past

Cornell archaeologists are rewriting history with the help of tree rings from 900-year-old trees, wood found on ancient buildings and through analysis of the isotopes (especially radiocarbon dating) and chemistry they can find in that wood.

By collecting thousands of years worth of overlapping tree rings, with each ring representing a tree's annual growth, the researchers have created long-term records in the eastern Mediterranean that allow them to precisely date such seminal milestones in history as when Hammurabi, "the law-giver," reigned, when the massive Santorini volcanic eruption occurred, and the timelines of the Bronze and Iron ages, as well as many more recent events.

Sturt Manning, director of the Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology at Cornell, summarized his work for Cornell council members and trustees, Oct. 19 in Statler Hall. Dendrochronology is the science of comparing growth patterns in tree trunks to date past events or climate changes. Cornell's dendrochronology laboratory now holds more than 40,000 tree-ring samples, including many from the eastern Mediterranean.

Macabre practices in Kaldus cemetery, Poland

Human remains with traces of anti-vampire practices have been found by archaeologists headed by Prof. Wojciech Chudziak from the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń in the early medieval cemetery in Kałdus, south-west of Chełmno. The researchers emphasised that this proves that medieval people lived in a world full of irrational fears.

One of the most interesting finds is a grave with the bodies of a man and a woman. It dates back to the 11th century, that is to a time, when Christianity was slowly developing in Poland.

"Both the man and the woman were brutally decapitated before they were buried - their heads were chopped off and later placed in an extraordinary position for Christian eschatology" - anthropologist Dr Tomasz Kozłowski from the Anthropology Department from the Faculty of Ecology and Environmental Protection at the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń explained.

Since the 1990s, the researcher has been running intense research on the people buried in Kałdus cemetery.

Failing to respect prehistoric treasures in Israel

The scene was straight out of an archaeologist's nightmare. Along the Jordan River, archaeological remains lay in heaps with no chance of ever being dated. The story behind hundreds of stone tools and animal bones was lost, along with whatever mystery slumbered beneath the soil.

Eight years later Dr. Naama Goren-Inbar, an archaeologist at The Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, is still angry about what happened.

In 1999 Goren-Inbar was excavating a site in Northern Israel called Gesher Benot Yaakov, when workers from the Kinneret Drainage Authority intervened. The crew was under orders to widen the river without affecting the excavations. In the end they dug up sections they were not supposed to touch and carted off archaeological material in lorries, rendering it scientifically useless.

Goren-Inbar blames the loss on the person who gave the orders but also says the event reflects a severe lack of awareness regarding prehistory in Israel.

Archaeology in Arizona - more field archaeologists needed

Todd Bostwick, Phoenix's municipal archaeologist, recommends that property owners and developers call in the archaeology experts from the very beginning, before either selling the land or going for rezoning.

"You don't want to wait for the city to tell you what you need to do when you're well into the design," Bostwick said.

Throughout the Valley, a major archaeological concern remains in excavating Native American burial grounds and to return them to their tribes.

The Hohokam Indians, prehistoric people who lived in what now is south-central Arizona to Mexico, are the ancestors of today's Pima and Tohono O'odham.

Rice, who also is a professor emeritus from Arizona State University, said that "Indian sites can literally be under your feet." His firm found a farmstead and two canals when it did archaeological work for new dorms at Arizona State University.

Burial sites are protected by law and must be excavated and returned to the tribes, but other finds, which can include villages, farmsteads or pieces of pottery, belong to the landowner.

Tracking the evolution of language and speech

In 1973 theodosius dobzhansky wrote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This dictum applies equally well to human language and speech, which have an evolutionary history that has yet to be fully discovered. Unfortunately, apart from their sometimes fossilized bones and archaeological traces of their behavior, nothing remains of our distant ancestors. Yet the mark of our evolution may be discerned in our modern bodies, brains, and even our vocal tracts.

Evidence from seemingly unrelated disciplines suggests that the specialized anatomy and neural mechanisms that confer fully human speech, language, and cognitive ability reached their present state sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. The appearance of these attributes relatively late in our evolution—well after our species originated about 200,000 years ago—has important implications for how we think about ourselves, our ancestors, and our collateral relatives (including the Neanderthals who evolved separately from our common ancestor starting about 500,000 years ago). In fact, the appearance of modern human bodies well before the appearance of what we consider to be modern human behavior — our higher mental processes such as complex thought, language, and symbolic behavior—suggests that there was something about our early modern ancestors that allowed them to develop into our more recent, fully modern selves. That building block may have been something as simple as speech, the vocal transmission of information at a very fast rate.

Artificial Intelligence interaction in artefact identification

Archaeological experts from the United States and Canada recently were on the Idaho State University campus to learn how artificial intelligence could aid in artifact identification.

Experts in the nationally recognized ISU National Information Assurance Training and Education Center (NIATEC) enabled researchers from different academic disciplines to design and implement applications for an artificial intelligence classification system. The system is called SIGGI, a nickname for Sigmoid Archaeological Automated Classification System. It mimics the ways humans think, comprehending large numbers of variables that in human minds would require time-consuming analysis.

With SIGGI programmed and operational, archaeologists working in the field could photograph unearthed objects like arrowheads or spear tips, send the pictures to SIGGI and receive an accurate classification report in only a few seconds.

For more about SIGGI see the dedicated Object Classification website. It has a Flash animation to introduce you to the programme - a talking arrowhead, which personally I find more than a little irritating, and that maybe because I used to develop software for a living, but could equally be be due to the fact that last night's visit to the opera was such a dissapointment. Was it really necessary to set the entire first act of Poppea on and around a diving board and to clothe half of the cast in bright pink cellophane? I digress. In spite of talking to you as though you are three years old Siggi-the-talking-arrowhead actually does quite a thorough, if long-winded, job of explaining how the programme works. The "Use Siggi" link refused to do anything at all in Firefox but work fine in Explorer. The link launches a web-based interface with the following introductory text:

The SIGGI – AACS project is a prototype of an expert system for the identification of archaeological materials. To test the validity of the concept, projectile points were selected as the initial type of object to identify. To generate classifications SIGGI, the computerized agent, utilizes an artificial neural network that has been trained to identify projectile point types from three distinct regional typologies:

• Columbia Plateau
• Upper Snake River Basin
• Northwest Plains

Almost as important as the actual identification of the archaeological materials is the user interface developed for the interactions between the computer and the user. A set of interfaces have been designed for varying levels of users ranging from the general public to dedicated research professionals.

More about this and related projects can be found at the Informatics Research Institute website.

Greek Cargo ID'd from DNA

For the first time, researchers have identified DNA from inside ceramic containers in an ancient shipwreck on the seafloor, making it possible to determine what the ship's cargo was even though there was no visible trace of it.

The findings, by a team from MIT, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Lund University in Sweden, are being reported in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archeological Science.

By scraping samples from inside two of the containers, called amphoras, the researchers were able to obtain DNA sequences that identified the contents of one as olive oil and oregano. The other probably contained wine, and the researchers are conducting further analyses to confirm this.

Brendan Foley, a lecturer in MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS) and a researcher at WHOI, and Maria Hansson, a biologist at WHOI and at Lund University in Sweden, found the DNA evidence in the remains of a 2,400-year-old shipwreck that lies 70 meters deep near the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean Sea.

Red Lady of Paviland may be 4000 years older than previously thought

The Red Lady of Paviland has always been a little coy about her age - but it appears she may be 4,000 years older than previously thought.

Scientists say more accurate tests date the earliest human burial found in the UK to just over 29,000 years ago.

When discovered in a cave on Gower in the 1820s the bones were thought to be around 18,000 years old, but were later redated to between 25,000 and 26,000.

Researchers said it casts a new light on human presence in western Europe.

The team from Oxford University and the British Museum said new dating techniques provided more accurate results.

The skeleton of the Red Lady - actually a young male - was discovered at Goat's Hole Cave at Paviland on Gower in 1823 by William Buckland, then a geology professor at Oxford University.

Space particles to x-ray hidden pyramids

Imagine getting to the bottom -- literally -- of a mystery buried for thousands of years by taking an X-ray of the ground.

Thanks to the revival of a 30-year-old technique, a team of physicists and archaeologists is doing something like that to learn about hidden Mayan temples. But rather than using X-rays, they're exploiting tiny, Earth-penetrating particles created by cosmic rays that stream in from space.

Physicist Roy Schwitters and his colleagues at the University of Texas, Austin, hope to find chambers hidden in underground temples built by the Mayans at a site dating to A.D. 250-900 in Belize. Many of the mounds there remain largely unstudied for fear of disturbing their fragile walls or the relics inside.

The hope is to target future excavations directly to the chambers, where the researchers would be more likely to find the sophisticated vestiges of Mayan life. The vibrant pre-Columbian culture remains veiled in mystery.

3000 year old mummy scanned

Secrets that had been kept under wraps for nearly 3,000 years were unravelled in seconds when an Egyptian mummy underwent a CT scan at a London hospital.

The mummy slowly entered the state-of-the-art scanner at Victoria Hospital Monday night.

About a dozen researchers from different fields watched the mummy's skeletal image emerge on a computer screen. The image is shown at right.

"That's a nice spine. It's in pretty good shape," said Gayle Gibson of the Royal Ontario Museum.

The scan showed the mummy was four-foot-nine. The average height for women in 950 BC, when the mummy is believed to have died, was just under five feet, Gibson said.

Men were, on average, about five-foot-three.

The mummy lived at a "hard time" when there were invasions, changing dynasties and droughts, she said.

The mummy's gender will be determined during the next few months, said Andrew Nelson, a University of Western Ontario anthropologist.

The brain wasn't removed through its nostrils -- as it was often done in the mummification process -- but the organs were removed, typical of that time, he said.

See the above page for the full story.

Searching for the sanctuary of Artemis Artemysia

Near Amarynthos (Euboea, Greece), a joint excavation by the Swiss School and the 11th Greek Ephorate brought to light the foundations of a large building, possibly belonging to the renowned sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia.

In September, a team of Swiss and Greek archaeologists led by Denis Knoepfler and Amalia Karapaschalidou discovered the massive foundation of an edifice that could belong to the most renowned -yet still unlocated- sanctuary on the island of Euboea, dedicated to Artemis Amarysia.

Deep trenches opened at the foot of the Paleoekklisies hill, near modern Amarynthos (10 kilometres east of Eretria), unearthed a foundation composed of two courses of large tuff blocks. Excavated on a length of 6 meters, the line of the wall extends in the neighbouring fields, making impossible at this stage to ascertain the exact shape and function of the building to which it belonged. Hundreds of crushed fragments of marble were also recovered; they once belonged to the elevation of the buidling, whose marble parts were later used for lime production. This is confirmed by the discovery of an old limekiln just a few meters from the foundation. The preliminary study of the stratigraphy and the pottery suggests that the first course of blocks was laid in the second half of the fourth century BC; the second course belongs to a later phase, dated to the second century BC.

The foundation cuts a large wall from the Late Geometric period (around 700 BC), excavated at a depth of 3 meters from the surface.

Archaeologist presents Maya topic at Lyon

Dr. Gloria Everson, Lyon College’s associate professor of anthropology, has “spent many months living in tents in the rainforest” with Dr. Norman Hammond. And on Friday, she introduced her colleague, friend and teacher to a capacity audience.

Hammond, professor and chairman of the department of archaeology at Boston University, presented his program, “Exploring La Milpa: A Classic Maya City in Belize,” in the Derby Center at Lyon.

His work in the long lost Mayan city is part of an archaeological project funded by the National Geographic Society and Boston University. British archaeologist Sir Eric Thompson discovered La Milpa in 1938.

Hammond’s research interests include pre-Columbian archaeology, comparative archaeology and history of archaeology. His work deals with the emergence and decline of complex societies, exchange and the history of archaeology.

See the above page for the full story.

Updates to Tony's blog

Kat Newkirk and I have teamed up to update Tony's blog in his absence in China (lucky thing - the nearest I'm going to get to China in the next few years is the Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum). This basically means that Kat does all the hard work finding the news items, and I get to press the "publish" button. We're not Tony, but we'll do our best :-)
Andie