Archaeology

LAHAINA, MAUI—Time Magazine reports that Kimberly Flook of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation and her colleagues estimate that at least four museums and thousands of artifacts have been lost in the recent wildfires. Among the objects believed to be lost is an original flag of the Hawaiian kingdom, last flown on August 12, 1898, when it was replaced with the American flag. Hawaiian feather work, furniture, photographs, and objects made of kapa, a fabric made of fibers from trees and shrubs, are also likely to be gone. The destroyed or damaged museums include the Wo Hing Museum & Cookhouse, a social hall for Chinese immigrants who built tunnels and irrigations systems; the Baldwin Home, which was the oldest standing residence on the island; and the Old Lahaina prison, which dates to the whaling era of the mid-nineteenth century. “We’ve lost physical pieces of history,” Flook said. “We have not lost our history, our culture. And we won’t."

Finding at Civita Giuliana villa throws light on lowly status of slaves in ancient world

Archaeologists have discovered a small bedroom in a Roman villa near Pompeii that was almost certainly used by slaves, throwing light on their lowly status in the ancient world, Italy’s culture ministry said on Sunday.

The room was found at the Civita Giuliana villa, some 600 metres (2,000ft) north of the walls of Pompeii, which was wiped out by a volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.

What ancient site features the earliest city gate? In Israel, at least, that would be the Early Bronze Age site of Tel Erani. During a salvage excavation of the site by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), archaeologists discovered the impressive stone gateway built into the city’s mudbrick fortification wall. Dating to around 3300 BCE, Tel Erani’s city gate is now the oldest ever found in Israel, making it several hundred years older than the gate from Tel Arad, another Early Bronze Age city. But why did Erani’s residents need the gate in the first place?

English archaeologists have announced the discovery of the remains of a teenage girl buried in the Early Middle Ages. The circumstances of her burial were very unusual, suggesting she may have led a tragic life.

In ninth-century Cambridgeshire, as a community prepared to abandon their settlement, they took down the elaborate entrance gate and replaced it with a grave. In it were the remains of a young woman, aged just 15, buried face down in a pit and perhaps with her ankles bound together. This unusual grave gives us insight into a rare Early Medieval burial practice, and perhaps even contemporary attitudes towards those within the community who were considered different.

Some of the daily activities of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who built monuments including the Pantheon during his more than two-decade reign, have been revealed after the discovery of fragments of marble slabs in Ostia Antica, an archaeological park close to Rome that was once the city’s harbour.

The details were inscribed on fasti ostienses, a type of calendar chronicling events involving emperors and other officials in ancient Rome which were drafted by the pontifex Volcani, the highest local religious authority.

One of the two newly recovered fragments, which experts say matches perfectly with another previously found at the site, dates to AD128, during the reign of Hadrian. The inscription refers to events that took place that year, including 10 January, when Hadrian received the title pater patriae, or father of his country, and his wife, Sabina, that of Augusta. According to the inscription, Hadrian celebrated the occasion by offering a congiar dedit, or donation of money, to the people.

Another date, 11 April of the same year, refers to Hadrian’s trip to Africa before he returned to Rome between July and August. Before a subsequent trip to Athens, he consecrated (the inscription reads “consecravit”) a building in Rome that experts believe could be either the Pantheon or the Temple of Venus and Roma, possibly on 11 August. This would have marked his 11th anniversary as emperor.

The fragments were found in the forum of Porta Marina, a large rectangular building where fasti ostienses were carved into columns, during recent excavations at Ostia Antica that involved teams of archaeologists from the University of Catania and Polytechnic University of Bari.

Alessandro D’Alessio, the director of the archaeological park, said the “extraordinary discovery” sheds more light on the activities of Hadrian, including the buildings he constructed in Rome, while helping to better understand the story of ancient Ostia.

Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s culture minister, said the excavations, which have also revealed extensive sections of a mosaic floor that will eventually be open to the public, gave additional insight into life in Ostia and Rome.

Fragments of fasti ostienses were first discovered at the site in 1940 and 1941 and then again between 1969 and 1972, including one that joins the recently rediscovered fragment. The combined slab chronicles the AD126-128 period. Some of the calendar fragments, which range between AD49 and AD175, are on display at the Vatican Museums.

A team of researchers have found a shared penchant for sewing reflective shell beads onto clothing and other items across three Indonesian islands that dates back to at least 12,000 years ago.

The team, led by the Australian National University's Professor Sue O'Connor with Griffith University's Associate Professor Michelle Langley, used advanced microscopic analysis to investigate Nautilus shell beads from Makpan Cave on the Indonesian island of Alor, and that the trends in style were shared with at least two other islands.

Striking similarities between the beads of Alor, Timor, and Kisar indicate that there was a shared affinity for sewing the reflective beads onto clothing or other items, therefore, the team deduced that there must have been shared ornament traditions across the sea in the region from the Terminal Pleistocene (late Ice Age) around 12,000 years ago.

Recent DNA evidence has shown how people on different Indonesian islands were genetically related, but until now it wasn't known how culturally similar the populations were.

To answer this question, the Griffith and ANU teams analyzed the beads from Makpan and found that not only were they incredibly consistent in their method of production, but also similar to beads previously found on the islands of Timor and Kisar.

"The time and skill required to create the tiny shiny beads in the numbers found archaeologically must have been extensive, suggesting that the beads were an important part of the Makpan community's repertoire of adornment," said Associate Professor Langley, lead author of the article published in Antiquity. It is titled "Sequins from the sea: Nautilus shell bead technology at Makpan, Alor Island, Indonesia."

There was also an intensification in fishing technology during this period with shell fishhooks appearing at associated sites, as well as exotic obsidian and artifacts appearing in the assemblages.

The similarity between the beads and fishhooks from different islands coupled with the skill and effort required to produce them implies that the practice was a tradition shared between islands, indicating frequent interaction across the sea.

Furthermore, the team who excavated at Makpan found thousands of shells in the food waste.

"What is interesting," said ANU's Dr. Shimona Kealy, "is that Nautilus shells, which were used to make the beads, are almost entirely absent from this discard pile of ancient shellfish feasts, indicating that Nautilus was not collected for food but specifically for crafting."

Professor Sue O'Connor recalls, "When we were excavating at Makpan Cave in Alor we were amazed at how many shell beads we were finding, and how we just kept on finding them even into the lowest levels of the excavation. In view of the great depth of the excavation we thought that there was a high likelihood that the oldest beads would be in Pleistocene-aged deposits."

Importantly, this means that Makpan's occupants were collecting Nautilus purely for the purpose of making beads. This presents a society that was secure enough to invest effort into harvesting and processing resources for aesthetic uses without any obvious practical benefit.

All of these factors combine to create "an image of an inter-island 'community of practice' with shared values and worldviews" said Associate Professor Langley.

"It is likely that the populations of these islands shared a distinctive culture, exchanging style, goods, technology and genes across the sea."

The Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) and non-profit Silentworld Foundation have continued ongoing archaeological investigation of the wreck of South Australian, with recent research from a combined team of experts published in the journal Historical Archaeology.

The South Australian is South Australia's oldest known European shipwreck. The English barque, wrecked in in 1837 in Encounter Bay near modern-day Victor Harbor, has drawn keen interest since its discovery in 2018. The wreck site project team includes members of the ANMM, Silentworld Foundation, South Australian Maritime Museum, South Australia's Department for Environment and Water, Flinders University, and MaP fund.

Originally a postal packet called Marquess of Salisbury, which delivered mail between England and far-flung outposts of the British Empire from 1820, the vessel later operated as a British naval packet, named HMP Swallow, before being procured by the South Australian Company, which re-named the ship South Australian.

The ship was designed to carry a huge amount of sail on a relatively small hull for maximum speed. While it transported approximately 80 immigrants to the new colony, its primary function was as a "cutting-in" vessel, or flensing platform, where blubber was removed from harpooned whales as part of the shore-based whaling industry at Encounter Bay.

While loaded with whale oil and readying for departure to Hobart, South Australian was caught in a south easterly gale and wrecked on 8 December 1837. There were no fatalities, and the ship ultimately broke up and was forgotten until the 1990s, when it was the subject of two unsuccessful shipwreck surveys conducted by the South Australian government.

Data collected during these expeditions and archival information helped the research team to establish a new search area that led to South Australian's discovery in April 2018. Remnants of the ship exposed above the seabed included timber framing and hull planking, copper keel bolts, and fragments of glass and pottery.

COVID-19 travel restrictions interrupted further visits to South Australian for two years, but in 2022 maritime archaeologists from the ANMM and an archaeological conservator from the Silentworld Foundation, accompanied by volunteers, returned to continue work at the site.

Photogrammetric 3D recording was carried out in conjunction with site mapping. The team also conducted a comprehensive conservation assessment to determine the wreck site's level of preservation and suggest strategies for its continued protection.

Ongoing work at the site has included comprehensive documentation of exposed hull components and targeted recovery of at-risk diagnostic artifacts. A small selection of objects was also mapped in place and recovered. The items include a gun flint, decorated ceramic fragments, ship's fasteners, glass bottles and a whetstone used to sharpen tools. All are currently undergoing conservation.

Dr. James Hunter, ANMM's Curator of Naval Heritage and Archaeology, and an Associate Lecturer of Archaeology at Flinders University, concluded in the article recently published in Historical Archaeology:

"South Australian's historical and archaeological significance cannot be overstated. As South Australia's oldest recorded European shipwreck, and one of its earliest immigration vessels, it has the potential to enhance our understanding of the state's initial colonization and occupation—including the establishment of extractive mercantile activities, such as shore-based whaling and interactions between European colonists and Aboriginal people.

"Similarly, the site's distinction as one of only two (former) 19th-century British sailing-packet shipwrecks to undergo archaeological scrutiny brings an international dimension to its significance. While a sizable percentage of South Australian's surviving fabric remains buried, recent seabed changes are uncovering the site at an alarming rate. This has reinforced the need for additional investigation and inquiry and underscores the urgency with which site stabilization efforts should be adopted and enacted."

While weather and water visibility impeded efforts to complete the 3D photogrammetric survey of South Australian in late 2022, imagery from this and prior surveys has since been used to generate a digital 3D model of most of the site. This in turn will form the basis of a virtual reality experience currently under development at Germany's University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern. South Australian is also the subject of a graphic novel based on research and archival sources, including the original logbook, which will bring its story to vivid life for new audiences.

The team's work continues, and they aim to conduct further archaeological investigation of South Australian and finish the photogrammetric survey during the latter half of 2023.

AGRIGENTUM, SICILY—According to a statement released by the Sicilian Region Institutional Portal, an excavation led by archaeologist Maria Concetta Parello at House VII b in Sicily’s Valley of the Temples has uncovered a votive deposit containing at least 60 terracotta figurines, oil lamps, small vases, bronze fragments, and bones. The deposit was found above a destruction layer attributed to the burning of the Greek city in 406 B.C. by the Carthaginians. Parello and her colleagues will try to determine if the objects were left by residents who returned to their ruined city.

TOKTAMYS, KAZAKHSTAN—The Miami Herald reports that a 4,000-year-old stone structure has been unearthed in northern Kazakhstan’s Kyrykungir monumental complex. “The steppe pyramid is built with great precision,” said Ulan Umitkaliyev of Eurasian National University. “It is a very sophisticated complex structure with several circles in the middle.” A large black stone with a flattened side sits at the end of each exterior wall, he added, while the walls are decorated with images of horses and other animals. Horse bones have also been found nearby, suggesting that the building may have been linked to a horse cult, Umitkaliyev explained. Pottery, gold earrings, and other jewelry have also been uncovered at the site.

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA—According to a statement released by the Florida Museum of Natural History, analysis of DNA samples taken from cattle remains unearthed in Spanish settlements in the Caribbean and Mexico indicates that cattle may have been imported from Africa in the early seventeenth century, some 100 years earlier than previously thought. Research team leader Nicolas Delsol said that the Spanish transported cattle from Europe in the early sixteenth century, and, indeed, the DNA analysis determined that cattle in Puerto Real, Hispaniola, are closely related to modern European cattle. Six of the cattle bones unearthed in Mexico carried DNA sequences that are common in African cattle, but are also found in modern European breeds. “There are cattle in Spain similar to those in Africa due to centuries-long exchanges across the Strait of Gibraltar,” Delsol explained. But a sample of mitochondrial DNA from a late seventeenth-century cattle tooth found in Mexico contained a genetic signature rarely found outside of Africa. Delsol and his colleagues think this animal may have descended from cattle that were transported from West Africa directly to the Americas with enslaved peoples. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Scientific Reports.

Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the "Pearl of the Balkans", scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe's earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind a fortress of defensive spikes.

In February 2022, the journal Scientific Reports published a paper with the claim that a comet exploded over what is now Cincinnati around 1,500 years ago, raining fire over the area and destroying villages and farm fields, supposedly resulting in the rapid decline of the ancient Indigenous Hopewell culture.

Did ancient Greek literature influence the writing of Luke’s Gospel? Image: Public Domain.

What works of Greek literature influenced Luke—the author of the New Testament books of Luke and Acts—when he was writing?

Luke and Acts should be seen as a single two-part work, two volumes of a historical monograph.1 This is shown by many features in both volumes, including chronological synchronisms and the preface in Luke 1:1–4. According to that preface, Luke wrote these books to Theophilus, a person of high status deserving the title of “noble” and probably his patron.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/325091

A small, picturesque, island in the French territory of New Caledonia hides a mystery that continues to defy rational explanation. More than 400 grass-covered mounds, averaging two or three meters in height, dot the Isle of Pines. At first glance, these “tumuli,” as they are termed by scholars, look unremarkable. But a handful of excavations in 1959-60 revealed what lies hidden inside them - mysteries that still confound archaeologists and historians, who as recently as 2015 termed them “a kind of archaeological nightmare.”

Nothing resembling these structures has been discovered anywhere else, except a small number on the main island of the country. Every attempt so far by archaeologists and historians to explain why they were built, and by whom, has failed - spectacularly - and the current mainstream theory only works if we ignore what the excavations have uncovered.

The first puzzle is that inside each rounded mound of iron gravel and soil sits a large and very heavy cube of solid, high-quality, concrete. These blocks average 2 - 2.5 meters (6-8 feet) high. Carbon dating of snail shells attached to the outside of the concrete suggest it was made as far back as 10,000-12,000 years ago - many millennia before concrete was first manufactured anywhere in the world.

Concrete technology in the South Pacific was actually unknown until the European arrival just two centuries ago. Not only that, this dating is thousands of years before any humans arrived in these islands. But there is more.

A smooth, circular, shaft about 30 cm (1 foot) wide runs vertically down the center of each concrete block. Directly below the shaft, below ground, sits a large cone or top-shaped object made of iron, pointing down about 2 meters (6 feet) long. Rings of iron nuggets surround this object and also the core itself. The purpose of this metal object remains an enigma

The first proper excavation took place in 1959, when locals on the Isle of Pines used one of the tumuli as a source of iron gravel for road repairs. This activity stopped, however, when the workers unexpectedly encountered its large concrete core that proved immune even to dynamite.

French archaeologist Luc Chevalier hurried to investigate and then made the first - and most complete to date - excavation of a tumulus. This study was the first time the mysterious artifacts inside these structures were revealed and it provided samples for testing.

However, just as the large cone-shaped metal object was exposed, the sides of the site threatened to collapse and the excavation ended as the team scrambled to safety. Perplexed by what the dig had revealed, Chevalier continued his research back in Noumea. He later investigated several tumuli on the mainland, which had also been destroyed or damaged, but did not resume the excavation on the Isle of Pines. Chevalier published his findings and a long list of unresolved questions in 1963. His original report (in French) can be readily accessed online .

Before this took place, however, researchers and writers had begun speculating that this huge building project on a remote, isolated, island might represent the work of an unknown advanced civilization long ago, perhaps visiting from Japan or Asia, or a mythical kingdom such as Mu, Lemuria, or Atlantis. Even a visiting extraterrestrial civilization was proposed as a possibility.

One of the more insightful conclusions came in a 1949 paper by the French geologist Jacques Avias. Without being more specific, he proposed a series of ancient arrivals in the southern Pacific, predating the Melanesians, concluding “…at least the following hypothesis can be put forward: a civilization …preceded the present Kanak civilization…this civilization had a Neolithic industry more advanced than the indigenous people.”

It was not long before conservative thinking replaced such exotic ideas with more acceptable, down-to-earth, possibilities. The most enduring of them was that the mounds were actually made by long extinct giant megapode birds, to hatch their eggs in. It was suggested that the birds kicked up the soil until it formed a mound where eggs could be laid, warmed by decaying vegetation placed by the birds in the hole. Initially, the concrete core was explained away as the wholly natural action of microorganisms, tiny globules of calcite in the soil somehow binding rocks and debris together.

Subsequently, a refinement of the theory proposed that the megapodes tidily excreted into the hole in the top of the mound, the feces becoming the heating agent for the eggs. Over time, the bird droppings are presumed to have fossilized and become the “cement” found today. Although chemical analysis established early on that the concrete core had none of the elements found in guano, many scholars and historians uncritically accepted this fiction as it did not challenge the accepted dates for human arrivals in the islands of New Caledonia.

The avian theory was dealt a fatal blow in March 2016 with publication of a paper by a group led by an Australian-based paleozoologist, Trevor H. Worthy. After noting the obvious implications of the complete absence of any shell fragments in or near the tumuli, the paper reported that skeletal remains of the megapodes established rather conclusively that the birds were not, in fact, physically equipped for any type of mound building and particularly not mounds on the scale found in New Caledonia.

Instead, in their paper Worthy and his team made their own proposal to explain the tumuli’s origins, suggesting that some “interplay between vegetation and erosion” somehow combined to erode the soil into the shapes we see today. It was a rather short-lived idea.

The following year, in 2017, leading French archaeologist, Louis Lagarde, based in Noumea, published a landmark paper, “Were those mysterious mounds really for the birds?” that convincingly brought down the final curtain on the megapode theory. This, of course, was a tremendous step forward; by arguing that the tumuli were made by people, not by birds or curious weather, Lagarde seemed to open the door to more sensible explanations. Such did not prove to be the case.

Despite this promising development and the admission that no bones, human or otherwise, have ever been found inside these mounds, Lagarde then claimed that the tumuli were, after all, merely burial mounds constructed by the local population over the last 2,000 or so years. He explained the lack of bones by proposing that over the centuries soil acidity and some undefined “exposure to the elements” had corroded them completely away.

Most stunningly, despite his own well documented personal field experience and first-hand knowledge to the contrary, he went on to claim that the tumuli contain no archaeological materials! With that single statement, the concrete cores, the rings of iron nodules carefully placed around them, the perfectly circular shafts in the center of the cores, and the large metal cone-shaped object beneath it were all dismissed.

Questions Going Beyond the Mainstream

By now, the reader has probably noticed that all the mainstream “explanations” have had one thing in common: to make their case they have had to ignore what is actually inside the tumuli. This latest theory has had to do the same. Surely it will have future historians and scientists scratching their heads about the state of 21st century archaeology, in the South Pacific at least.

And there, so far as consensus thinking is concerned, the matter rests. But the questions raised by French archaeologist Louis Chevalier after making that first excavation still seek answers:

Who were the builders? Where did their ability to make high-quality concrete come from at a time when this technology was unknown? Where did they go?

What possible motivation or purpose could cause people to invest so much effort to erect more than 400 of these structures [each averaging a volume of 500 cubic meters]?

Why did such a massive effort leave no other traces - no tools, bones, charcoal, pottery, or other cultural artifacts - either within the tumulus or around it?

Why did they not use this concrete-making ability to construct other works - their houses and other important buildings, their burials, and their sacred places?

Finally, why was the ability to manufacture such a useful material as concrete not exported to other islands? Why was it not passed down to later people? Indeed, why did this ability not arise elsewhere in the region?

Revealing the Construction Sequence

Full answers to these questions remain to be found, but the author’s investigations in New Caledonia since 2017 have already made some things clear. This has included having new chemical analysis in Australia of the coral-based concrete. The latest technology available has confirmed the results reported in the pioneering studies.

Close examinations of the tumulus excavated by Chevalier revealed features that his team had missed. This allowed a minimal construction sequence to be hypothesized, requiring at least 9 distinct stages to produce a single tumulus and an enormous amount of concrete to form the core. Of course, all this had to be repeated hundreds of times to create the structures we see today.

The nine stages required, at a minimum, to erect each tumulus based on what excavation has already revealed. (Author provided)

The nine stages required, at a minimum, to erect each tumulus based on what excavation has already revealed. (Author provided)
Parts of the Mystery at the Isle of Pines are Solved

Simple engineering logic tells us what the purpose was for all this effort - the tumuli were built to stabilize - to an exceptionally high degree - some type of pylon or pillar in their shafts , but we do not yet know the purpose for the pylon itself. What did it support? Why did it have to be so rigid? And, as none remain today, what happened to the hundreds of pylons?

Other pieces of the puzzle falling into place include the fact that nothing to date suggests that the tumuli construction took place over an extended period where we would expect to see improvements, improvisations, or the development of different styles. Everything suggests a one-time concentrated effort.

Only two of the Paita tumuli on the main island preserve any trace - surplus raw material - of the construction process and, just possibly, of a stage of early experimentation with local materials. If so, we can speculate that the silica-based process may have been abandoned in favor of the iron resources readily available on the Isle of Pines.

A tantalizing new question has also risen: the Isle of Pines is dominated by the “Iron Plateau,” so named for the abundance of iron in the form of gravel and nuggets; could this have anything to do with why the tumuli builders chose to build there? Is this a hint that some type of advanced technology was involved?

Determining all this is now the challenge going forward. Ascertaining the function of the cone-shaped metal object beneath the shaft may offer the most promising line of future investigation. More work is obviously needed to resolve the mystery, but it will require people able to accept archaeological realities and who have open minds, not merely gate-keepers for outdated concepts.

As a new pipeline cuts its way through the Balkans, archaeologists in Albania are grabbing every opportunity to expose the country’s history—from the Neolithic to the present.

In modern Albania, the mélange of historical cultures is packed so densely they often seem to collide. The national E852 highway follows the same bank of the Shkumbin River as an ancient highway, the Via Egnatia, which was first traveled by Roman soldiers around 200 B.C. The road was modernized and maintained for centuries thereafter, and it became the main thoroughfare between Constantinople and the Adriatic, facilitating communication and trade between Rome and the eastern lands of the empire. Today, luxury Mercedes swerve between transcontinental bicyclists taking in the lush Mediterranean landscape and donkey carts hauling towering piles of forage. The route winds gently past medieval Ottoman Turkish bridges and white obelisks from the Communist era immortalizing partisan battles fought during World War II. Scrappy tobacco fields and mounds of hay and cornstalks line the route, planted and stacked by hand, much as they have been for centuries.

This primary ancient east-west artery of the Balkan Peninsula parallels, just to the south, another major European infrastructure project, one being built today: the Trans Adriatic Pipeline. The project, known as TAP, is laying 545 miles of pipe through northern Greece and Albania and under the Adriatic Sea, connecting existing Italian and Turkish pipelines to deliver Caspian gas to Europe by 2020. Perhaps counterintuitively, the massive construction project looks set to give an enormous boost to the study and preservation of Albania’s cultural heritage. During the Cold War, the hard-line Stalinist regime kept the country one of the world’s most isolated, and now this Maryland-sized country of three million is one of Europe’s poorest.

TAP’s resources are enormous by local standards—and could turn out to be the single greatest injection of money and know-how for archaeological exploration ever seen in Albania. The overall budget for TAP is $5.3 billion and about a quarter of the pipeline’s total length will sit in Albania. Lorenc Bejko, a prehistorian by trade who is the head of the archaeology department at Tirana University and a senior cultural heritage adviser for TAP in Albania, estimates that ordinarily the annual spending by all Albanian institutions combined on archaeological fieldwork doesn’t surpass $100,000. According to the project agreement, all management of the impact on Albania’s cultural heritage—including construction monitoring, excavation, preservation, development of management plans, scientific analysis, and even scientific publications—is controlled by Albanian government institutions and paid for by TAP. These activities are worth millions of dollars.

The odd geographical focus of the intensive TAP-funded archaeological work—a lateral route across the country 133 miles long, 124 feet wide, and typically a foot deep—coincides with the so-called right-of-way zone where the pipe will be buried. A rich variety of unrelated and unexpected ancient sites is being uncovered there: Neolithic settlements from Europe’s earliest farmers, along with Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman sites. Turan, a site used for almost 2,000 years, yielded one of the oldest known cemeteries in Albania, dating back to 700 B.C. Ottoman cemeteries have also been found. And a picturesque hilltop settlement near the village of Peshtan, inhabited from the early Byzantine to the late Ottoman periods, has a cobbled street connecting a Turkish bath, a sixth-century Christian church, and several substantial houses with views of the valley below.

Archeologists and palaeontologists say legislation needed to protect major finds championed by David Attenborough

Leading British archaeologists and palaeontologists are warning that one of the nation’s most significant palaeolithic sites is under threat because there is not enough legislation to protect it.

They are calling for changes to the law amid fears that crucial evidence at a site in the Cotswolds could be lost to the UK for ever.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1032214

Leading British archaeologists and palaeontologists are warning that one of the nation’s most significant palaeolithic sites is under threat because there is not enough legislation to protect it.

They are calling for changes to the law amid fears that crucial evidence at a site in the Cotswolds could be lost to the UK for ever.

It was there that ice-age mammoths in an extraordinary state of preservation were discovered, sparking excitement in 2021 from Sir David Attenborough and other experts.

The extensive remains of at least one juvenile, two young adult and six fully grown adult mammoths that roamed 200,000 years ago were unearthed at Cerney Wick, near Swindon, along with tools used by Neanderthals, who probably hunted these enormous beasts.

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Sources within the archaeological community told the Observer that their understanding was that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) may be linked to the latest developments, perhaps hoping to acquire further mammoth remains and Jurassic fossils for the new Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. The UAE has been acquiring exhibits, reportedly buying a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton for $31.8m in 2022.

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A drone photograph taken last Sunday suggests that the waterlogged quarry has been drained in advance of what some archaeologists fear will be a rushed search for finds.

According to a statement released by the University of Connecticut, anthropological geneticist Raquel E. Fleskes and her colleagues analyzed the genomes of the 11 people whose remains were found at Avery’s Rest, a tobacco farm in Delaware owned by John Avery and his family from about 1675 to 1725. The study suggests that two of the men and one of the children were of African descent. One of these men was connected to West Africa, while the other man and child, who were father and son, had mixed backgrounds from west and central Africa. The remaining five men, two women, and child, who were of northwestern European descent, were related to each other. These individuals included a grandmother, mother, and infant son. “Avery’s Rest is notable because the European individuals and African individuals were buried in the same burial ground separated by only 15 to 20 feet,” Fleskes explained. John Avery had ties to Barbados, so he may have brought enslaved individuals with him from the Caribbean to Delaware. These two men of African descent may even be those who were listed among Avery’s property when he died in 1682, she added. Fleskes will next attempt to identify the 11 people and their descendants.

BARCELONA, SPAIN—According to a Science News report, more than 2,500 stone and shell beads, two amber beads, a double-holed stone pendant, and a mother-of-pearl ring have been recovered from a child’s grave at Ba’ja, a farming village in what is now southern Jordan that was occupied between 7400 and 6800 B.C. Archaeologist Hala Alarashi of the Spanish National Research Council and her colleagues have reconstructed a necklace from these artifacts based upon their positions in the grave, and microscopic analysis of the wear on the beads’ openings: the beads were found on the child’s upper body; the pendant was positioned behind the neck; and the mother-of-pearl ring was positioned on the chest. Perforations in the ring suggest it held strings or cords for seven rows of beads that connected to the pendant. “This imposing necklace was made to be buried with a child who had important social status,” Alarashi said. “We don’t know why this particular child was special.”

STIRLING, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that a man digging a pool in his backyard in central Scotland unearthed the skeletal remains of a dolphin estimated to date back to 8,000 years ago, when the area was covered by an inland sea. “Our earliest ancestors would have been walking the shoreline every day for food such as seaweed and shellfish and if a seal, a whale, or a dolphin washed up it would be carved into almost immediately,” said archaeologist Murray Cook, who excavated the bones. A tool made from a piece of antler was found near the dolphin remains, suggesting that hunter-gatherers had hacked into the carcass. Cook and his team have not yet found the tip of the antler, which he thinks had been discarded. Andrew Kitchener of National Museum Scotland added that the dolphin may have been female, based on its size, and its teeth are worn, suggesting that it may have been older at the time of death. The bones will be radiocarbon dated.

Is your pet part of the family? That's nothing new. Archaeological evidence exists to suggest that the vikings held their own animals in high—even intimate—regard, taking them with them on voyages. Earlier this year, scientific evidence found for the first time that—as early as the ninth century—vikings brought horses, dogs and other animals with them across the North Sea.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Grace Erny’s very recent article from the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, “Statistical Approaches to Small Site Diversity: New Insights from Cretan Legacy Survey Data.” It represents yet another significant contribution to the study of intensive pedestrian survey data and to the potential of reasonably well-published legacy “data.”

Erny’s article looks at the result of seven intensive surveys in Crete and compares the rural sites dating to the Geometric to Hellenistic period documented by these surveys. Her arguments are complex, nuanced, and quantitative. She argues, among other things, that the over 300 small sites documented by these survey on Crete demonstrate considerable variation in artifact diversity even when controlling for variables that might impact site formation and variation in documentation practices. For example, Erny demonstrates that diversity seems to be independent of site size. At the same time, she notes that from larger samples (i.e. total number of artifacts) we should expect greater diversity of artifacts and that this relationship is logarithmic. In other words, diversity should plateau as sample size increases. While Erny admits that she does not know the total number of artifacts recovered from any of the sites that she studies, she plausibly argues that larger sites seem likely to have produced more artifacts (especially since increased artifact density is a factor for defining sites on these projects). This allows her to observe that diversity appears independent of site size.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note that many years ago, David Pettegrew, Dimitri Nakassis, and I made a similar argument, albeit in a less elegant way. We suggested that especially diverse assemblages of artifacts from units with low visibility [and correspondingly low artifact densities and small assemblages] may well reward greater attention [in part to compensate for the small sample size produced by inadequate surface visibility]. Erny notes that by limiting her sample to sites, this controls to some extent for the vagaries of both post-depositional processes [i.e.. the sample of visible sites on the surface represents a subset of all the sites in a region that remain discoverable] and recovery practices [i.e. since the study is based on sites qua sites, we needn’t get lost in the murky realm of site definition].)

This suggests that hierarchical interpretations of rural sites which assume most of these small sites represented primary production in the countryside. Instead, Erny’s argument, which is grounded on the survey data itself, indicates that rural sites likely served a wide range of functions or reductive categories like “primary production” or “habitation” or “farmsteads” are inadequate to capture the diversity of activities in the countryside. This tends to support recent observations made by projects like the Roman Peasant Project which excavated 8 rural sites and discovered that only one them appeared to be a farmstead.

More significantly, it offers a valuable reminder that our view of the countryside is as detailed as it is incomplete. The landscape hinted at by Enry’s analysis may well reflect a significant degree of change over time, functional dynamism, and perhaps nibbling along the edges some of the challenges for systematic documentation of rural sites whose size make them particularly susceptible to various formation processes.

As another aside, it is especially refreshing to see a new wave of analysis of “rurality” built on data collection from intensive survey. At some point in the last 20 years, handwringing over matters of methodology seemed to distract archaeologists from the potential of intensive survey data to contribute to broader historical (and archaeological debates) about the character of the Greek countryside. Erny shows that by using legacy data from the vast number of surveys completed over the last forty years that it is possible to find new ways of thinking about the Greek landscape. This is a very welcome development, indeed!

Excavations in the choir area at Exeter Cathedral led by cathedral archaeologist John Allan have uncovered foundations of a Christian high altar dated to the early twelfth century, according to a BBC News report. Several burials found in the area are thought to belong to bishops of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Two empty tombs are thought to belong to bishops Robert Warelwast, who was a Norman cleric, and William Brewers, who participated in the Sixth Crusade (1228–1229). Their remains are known to have been moved in 1320. A deep backfilled area behind the altar may be an eleventh-century Norman crypt, dating to the period when the cathedral was founded, Allan explained.

An article published on July 31 in Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals that Luzio, the oldest human skeleton found in São Paulo state (Brazil), was a descendant of the ancestral population that settled the Americas at least 16,000 years ago and gave rise to all present-day Indigenous peoples, such as the Tupi.