Stonehenge mystery hinges on unusual stones

Stonehenge's legends have been many. Some have said the devil bought the stones from a woman in Ireland; another story suggests they were placed on the plain by the fabled wizard Merlin; others have claimed that aliens built the monument and left it as a place for worship, or that Druids built it as a temple for sacrificial ceremonies.

"You could put 10 archaeologists in a room and you'd get at least 11 theories," said Dr. Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology, a firm involved in the excavation, which was approved by English Heritage, which manages Stonehenge.

"I think the one thing everybody would agree on is that Stonehenge is a temple, which is easy to lose sight of in the kind of to-ing and fro-ing of ideas."

Good sentiment.

Spade gang hoping to unearth Kelly relics at Glenrowan

ARCHAEOLOGISTS will start a major month-long dig today on the site of Ned Kelly's doomed siege at Glenrowan.

Heritage Victoria is overseeing the project involving six professional archaeologists, a conservator and 40 student volunteers.

They hope to map out the site and find relics of the Glenrowan Inn, which police burnt down on June 28, 1880, in a bid to flush out the Kelly Gang — Ned, his brother Dan, Joe Byrne and Steve Hart — after it had kept 60 locals hostage.

Budding archeaologists aren't hunting a Dr. Jones lifestyle

The world’s most famous archaeologist does little genuine archaeology.

“We don’t carry guns or whips. There’s no running from boulders. We might run from some indigenous people,” said ISU senior Ben Orcutt, “but archaeology is a science.

“I do have a nice hat like that, though,” he added.

Yes, I have one, too. I just wear it in the rain (or snow) though. I tried once in Egypt but the darn thing was too hot. A hard hat works much better.

Blogging update Back at it. Been dealing with a minor car accident (NOT my Mustang) and getting that wretched paper finalized. Posting will resume as soon as. . . .well, as soon as I quit typing this and start posting. . . .

Recent-ish archaeology "Everybody you see in that picture is probably dead. Except one."

I like the harsh content of old photographs. There's often a truth to them that all the careful curating of our soppy era cannot obfuscate. Things are as they are, not as some wish they might have been. Lovers stare without smiles. The hands charred by hard work and harsh soil are seen sharp. The child in the coffin is dead. What you see is what they had. What you see is what we've lost.

Neat little article. I know the museum. I went to it once, but it obviously didn't make such a big impression on me since I haven't ever been back. (Via Insty)

Hawks has an extended discussion of the 70k "bottleneck" paper from a while back.

Neanderthal update Neanderthals were separate species, says new human family tree

A new, simplified family tree of humanity, published on Sunday, has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published by the journal Nature declares.

The method, invented by evolutionary analysts in Argentina, marks a break with the conventional technique by which anthropologists chart the twists and turns of the human odyssey.

45-Foot Ancient Canoe Stuck In The Muck Of Weedon Island

Stuck somewhere in the muck of Weedon Island is a significant piece of history.

A 45-foot canoe, buried for more than a thousand years and used by a long-dead culture of Native Americans, worked its way to the surface, and now authorities are trying to figure out how best to preserve it.
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The vessel is carved out of a single pine tree, and archaeologists say it was used to paddle over the open waters of the bay — unlike the other ancient canoes uncovered in Florida over the years, which were used to ply the calmer waters of lakes and rivers.

More on those Hunduran textiles here.

Archaeological treasures being 'left exposed in open-air sites'

The Roads Authority says it expects to spend €300m on archaeological digs over the life span of Transport 21.

"It's like a conveyor belt at the moment, it won't stop. The museum is even telling archaeologists not to give them any more material," said the Fine Gael Deputy.

"We have a wealth of knowledge lying in an undocumented heap exposed to the elements or buried in an Indiana Jones-like crypt in. It really is appalling. People are on their hands and knees picking material out of sites and then it's being dumped in a heap."

Our Celtic roots lie in Spain and Portugal

THE Welsh have more in common with sun-kissed glamour pusses like actress Penelope Cruz and footballer Christiano Ronaldo than pale- faced Germans like Helmet Kohl, according to an academic.

Professor John Koch suggests the Welsh can trace their ancestry back to Portugal and Spain, debunking the century-old received wisdom that our forebears came from Iron Age Germany and Austria.

His radical work on Celtic origins flatly contradicts the writing of Sir John Rhys, who in the late 19th century established the idea that we originally came from central Europe.

Indiana Jones update

Well, the big marketing push has started:

Full image here.

There's a special Indiana Jones Adventure Spoon in the Frosted Flakes but I haven't opened them yet. Actually, I haven't opened either one yet. I'll probably leave the Indiana Jones cereal closed thus making it extremely valuable in 20 years (along with my box of Flutie Flakes) (yeah, right). The box also advertises special Indiana Jones Pop-Tarts which I will also have to purchase. I'll eat those, though.

More to come, surely.

The Androgynous Pharaoh? Akhenaten had feminine physique

Akhenaten wasn't the most manly pharaoh, even though he fathered at least a half-dozen children. In fact, his form was quite feminine, which has puzzled experts for years. And he was a bit of an egghead.

Dr. Irwin Braverman, a Yale University physician who analyzed images of Akhenaten, has a new theory on why. He'll be presenting his findings at an annual conference Friday at the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the ailments and deaths of historic figures.

The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh's body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Braverman believes. And Akhenaten's head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.

At first I thought it was just another Marfan's idea, but he's pushing gynecomastia. Apparently, not a new idea either as I found an older (1980) paper on it here.

Non-archaeology post The Flash is back. ?

Okay, admittedly, I didn't even know that he was gone. Despite the fact that he was my favorite superhero when I was a kid, I didn't read the comics after the mid-70s or so. So, what, 23 years ago. . .1985. Yeah, I was a hopeless drunk by then, so no comic books.

They made a short-lived but very stylish TV series on him in the late '80s though, I believe.

Tse-whit-zen artifacts languish in storage

No one questions the discoveries — artifacts from a 2,700-year-old Native American village excavated from the Port Angeles waterfront amid great public interest — should be exhibited, analyzed and celebrated.

But the 900 boxes of artifacts — such things as spindle whorls carved from whale vertebrae, along with animal bones and shell fragments — remain hung up in a bureaucratic no man's land. Questions about who owns and controls access to the collection are still in dispute.

And there's also another all-too-familiar problem when the government gets involved: The money to study the collection evaporated.

My first thought was that someone ought to be applying for an NSF grant to look at the stuff and sure enough, someone is.

A not yet stale cliche Archaeologists still sifting through the sands of time

Even though the Hohokam site known as Honey Bee Village in Oro Valley already has provided rich data, archaeologists say more surprises may be in store.
"There is so much we still do not know about the Hohokam," said Henry Wallace, a senior research archaeologist at Desert Archaeology Inc. whose work on the site goes back to the mid-1980s.
"Most of the really interesting stuff will come out of the analysis," Wallace said.

Several artifact photos (good quality, too).

Sorta kinda archaeology DNA confirms IDs of czar's children, ending mystery

For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.

Some said the delicate 13-year-old had somehow survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.

Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria.

This little story has fascinated me for a while. I have no idea why, I'm not really a Russia buff or anything.

Concrete pyramid update Pyramids packed with fossil shells

Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops pyramid at Giza, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, according to a new study.

Most of the fossils are intact and preserved in the monument walls, giving clues to how the monuments were built.

The authors suggest the stones that make up the Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos monuments must have been carved out of natural stone as they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4000 years ago, when the buildings were erected.

Well, there's this whopper: "There is no evidence known that suggests the ancient Egyptians had cranes," he says. "Without cranes, it is difficult to imagine how they could have lifted giant stones, some as heavy as 200 tonnes."

Continental rift

Most scientists accept that humanity originally evolved in Africa. About 2m years ago, our predecessors Homo erectus - tall, tool-making, small-skulled apemen - emerged from the continent and began spreading around the Old World. But what came next is hotly disputed.

Not much new there, just a short summary.

Cave woman is laid to rest after 1,900 years

THE remains of a woman have been laid to rest in a hidden location in the Yorkshire Dales – about 1,900 years after she died.
She was returned in a special ceremony to the mysterious limestone cave where she was discovered by two Yorkshire divers more than a decade ago.

Phillip Murphy, an academic at Leeds University, and his friend Andrew Goddard found the woman's skull by chance during a diving mission at the cave, dubbed the Wolf Den, in 1997.