QuoteReplyTopic: Archaeology news updates Posted: 29-May-2012 at 02:07
This would make one biiig bowl of soup!
"...An altar and a stela estimated to date from as early as 800 B.C. were
found at the Chalcatzingo archaeological site in the central state of
Morelos, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, or
INAH, said.The altar is rectangular and covered with engravings representing rainA few meters (yards) away from the altar was an unfinished stela standing 1.7 meters (5 feet 6 inches) tall.
The
pieces are thought to have been made between 800 and 500 B.C., about
the same age as another altar and a relief depicting three cats that
archaeologists from INAH's Morelos Center found at Chalcatzingo less
than a year ago.The latest discoveries came during excavations of
a residential area that appears to date from the Late Classical period
of the Olmec culture, A.D. 700-900, archaeologist Carolina Meza said.She
said the difference in age between the new pieces and their
surroundings can be explained by an Olmec practice of repurposing and -
in some cases - decommissioning architectonic elements.
The altar
and stela from the Preclassical period would have been buried inside
buildings to strip them of their original significance in Olmec rites,
she said.
"...Bulgarian archaeologists have found a church dating back to the late Antiquity period, which is located near the village of Sarafovo, on the Black Sea coast.
The site, which is close to the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas, has been excavated by the team of Prof. Dr. Lyudmil Vagalinski, who is the Director of the National Archaeology Institute and Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, since the start of May 2012.
"We can safely say that we have found a small church. Initial
evidence allows us to date it back to the 4th-6th century AD," Prof.
Vagalinski explained as cited by Darik Radio.The excavations at Sarafovo (a village also known for
hosting a military airfield) began after over the winter the sea waves
uncovered parts of a Roman structures – a residential building with a
sewage system, whose existence has been suspected by Bulgarian archaeologists since the 1970s.
At the end of February 2012, the Bulgarian government allocated BGN 120 000 for the excavations near Sarafovo.Initially, the Bulgarian archaeologists supposed they might uncover a Roman town on the coast of the Black Sea, with a port at the entrance of local mineral baths – located at a town known as Aquae Calidae (located on the territory of two quarters in today's city of Burgas).
The latest excavations, however, have rejected the hypothesis of the archaeologists of the existence of a new Roman-era port town near Aquae Calidae, and have only confirmed the existence on the spot of a small ancient church instead.
The excavations in Sarafovo will continue by mid-June; the archaeologists believe that saintly relics might have been built inside the foundations of the church they found; back in 2012, another Bulgarian archaeologist, Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov, found relics of St. John the Baptist in an ancient church on the St. Ivan Island near Sozopol.The archaeologists and the Burgas Municipality plan to construct a facility protecting the ancient site in Sarafovo from the corrosive influence of the waves and wind, especially strong during the winter...." http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=139750
"It is the first time in many years that such a well-preserved tomb has been unearthed, " said Muhammad Ibrahim.
The tomb dates from ancient Egypt's First Intermediate period
(2181-2055 BC) and is an unusual find, as very little archaeological
evidence survives from this period.
Ritual objects made from alabaster copper, terracotta and other
materials were found in the tomb, located in the Deir al-Barsha
archaeological area, in al-Minya province, 245 kilometres south of
Cairo...."
"...Forty ancient sites discovered in Iraq NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Teams of Iraqi archaeologists have discovered 40
ancient sites in the country's south from the Sumerian, Akkadian and
Babylonian periods, an Iraqi antiquities official said on Monday.
"Teams,
which have been working since 2010, were able to discover 40
archaeological sites belonging to the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian
periods," Amer al-Zaidi, the head of the antiquities inspectorate in Dhi
Qar province told AFP.
The sites, which have not yet been fully
explored, are located in Al-Shatra, Al-Diwaya, Al-Rifai, Al-Nasr and
Al-Fajr areas north of Dhi Qar capital Nasiriyah, which lies 305
kilometres (190 miles) south of Baghdad.The new discoveries bring
the number of archaeological sites in the province to 1,240, the most
of any province in Iraq, he said.
Iraq has a wealth of ancient
sites, but both excavation of sites and tourism to those that have
already been excavated has been curbed by violence that tore across the
country following the 2003 US-led invasion.While violence has
decreased significantly from its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain
common, killing 126 people in April, according to Iraqi government
figures...."
A ministry statement says the wreckage was found in an area
where a Greek-Italian gas pipeline is to be located, the Associated
Press reports.A Greek oceanographic vessel using side-scan radar
and robot submarines took footage of scattered pottery, ballast stones
and what could be remains of the wooden ships, the AP reports.The team also raised samples of pottery and marble artifacts...."
O-oh....classes existed from the Neolithic...ole Marx wouldn't like that! "...THE idea of the “haves” and the “have-nots” may seem like a largely
modern concept – but in reality social inequality dates back to the
Stone Age, archaeologists have discovered.By analysing 300 human skeletons from
the early Neolithic era, scientists from three British universities
have discovered that social inequality began more than 7,000 years ago.
It
is the earliest evidence yet found of members of society having unequal
access to land and possessions, and suggests that the concept of
inherited wealth started with Neolithic man.And they also found
that, for Stone Age women, it was the norm to leave their families and
move in with the families of their new husbands – a social structure
known as patrilocality.The archaeologists, from the universities
of Bristol, Cardiff and Oxford, discovered that farmers buried with
tools had access to better land than those buried without.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120530133624.htm "...ScienceDaily (May 30, 2012) — Researchers at
the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) have discovered the remains
of newborn twin girls in the archaeological site of Olèrdola in
Barcelona. They date back to between the middle of the 4th century B.C.
to the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. The findings are the first bone
remains of twins to be recorded in the Iberian Peninsula.
The remains were found in the archaeological site of Sant Miquel
d'Olèrdola in Catalonia and it is expected that they belong to two girls
between 38 and 40 weeks of gestation who were buried at the same time
in the same grave with their legs entwined.
According to the study, "none of the bone remains show pathological
evidence of the cause of death but it could have been a consequence of
difficult pregnancy or childbirth. Lack of sufficient hygiene could have
lead to infant and maternal mortality in Prehistoric times."
In order to test this finding, scientists used forensic anthropology
methods, first determining the age and sex. "The specialist carrying out
such assessment was 'blind'. In other words, she was not told at any
time that both individuals were found next to each other or that they
could be twins."..."
It is becoming clearer that dramatic external changes formed the
basis of present-day Norwegian culture and one of the most important of
these occurred around 4,400 years ago.
Christopher
Prescott, a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo, with a
flint dagger from the late Neolithic. These flint daggers were important
status items associated with the introduction of agriculture to Norway.
(Photo: Asle Rønning)
We can see how groups communicated over large distances and traded
everything from ideas and languages to combs and spouses. Radical social
changes occurred within just a few years but to see where this begins, “We have to go back to ca. 2400 BC,” says Christopher Prescott, of the University of Oslo..
Agriculture had already spread its way through Europe and taken root
in Norway, but the hunter-gatherers in the far north did not immediately
join this development. They maintained much of their own culture and
lived side by side with early farmers as well as with certain groups
belonging to the so-called battle axe culture for nearly a thousand years.
Then in a single generation, societies across the country radically
altered with an increase in farming, characteristic long-houses and new
technology use – including metals.
They switched from their original language to an Indo-European
tongue, organised society in completely new ways and discarded whatever
religious beliefs they had, to adopt an Indo-European mythology, which
evolved into the Norse mythology which included Odin and Thor...."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-06/02/c_131626935.htm "...
SHIJIAZHUANG, June 2 (Xinhua) -- Archaeologists have discovered six
kilns that date back to the Sui Dynasty (581-618) and Tang Dynasty
(618-907) in the city of Xingtai in north China's Hebei province.
Excavation work has revealed the tops of three of the kilns, which
were discovered in Neiqiu county, according to Wang Huimin, an
archaeologist from the Cultural Relics Institute of Hebei.
Wang said tools and large amounts of glazed china were also found near the kilns.Many ancient kilns and related relics have been discovered in the county since the early 1950s.
Kiln technology first emerged in China during the late South-North
Dynasty (420-581), with usage peaking during the Tang Dynasty. The fine
white china produced in the kilns was kept in royal palaces and exported
to more than 10 countries and regions...."
Welcome to Animation Domination, Stone Age style. By about 30,000 years ago, Europeans were using cartoon-like techniques to give observers the impression that lions and other wild beasts were charging across cave walls, two French investigators find.
Ancient artists created graphic stories in caves and illusions of moving animals on rotating bone disks, say archaeologist Marc Azéma of the University of Toulouse–Le Mirail in France and Florent Rivère, an independent artist based in Foix, France.
“Stone Age artists intended to give life to their images,” Azéma says. “The majority of cave drawings show animals in action.”
Flickering torches passed over painted scenes would have heightened onlookers’ sense of seeing live-action stories, the researchers suggest in the June Antiquity.
Azéma and Rivère summarize their 20 years of research on Stone Age animation techniques, much of it previously published in French, in the new paper. They also describe for the first time examples of animation at two French caves, Chauvet and La Baume Latrone.
“Movement and action are indeed represented in cave art in different manners,” remarks archaeologist Jean Clottes, a rock-art specialist who now serves as honorary conservator general of heritage for the French Ministry of Culture. Clottes led a 1998 investigation of Chauvet’s 30,000-year-old cave paintings.
A 10-meter-long Chauvet painting represents a hunting story, Azéma proposes. The story begins by showing several lions, ears back and heads lowered, stalking prey. Mammoths and other animals appear nearby. In a second section of the painting, a pride of 16 lions, some drawn smaller than the rest to appear farther away, lunge toward fleeing bison.
Stone Age artists meant to depict animal movement in such scenes, Azéma says. An eight-legged bison at Chauvet, for example, resulted from superimposing two images of the creature in different stances to create the appearance of running.
In France, 53 figures in 12 caves superimpose two or more images to represent running, head tossing and tail shaking. At the famous Lascaux Cave, 20 painted animals display multiple heads, legs or tails.
A carving on an animal bone from another Stone Age cave in France depicts three freeze-frame images of a running lion, another way to represent motion.
Ancient Europeans also invented a kind of animation toy, the researchers suggest. Sites in France and Spain have yielded stone and bone disks, typically with center holes, showing opposing images of sitting and standing animals.
In experiments conducted since 2007, Rivère has reproduced these engraved disks and looped strands of animal tendon through the center holes. By twisting these strands, the disks rotate back and forth rapidly enough to make animals appear to be sitting down and standing up.
That’s the principle behind the thaumatrope, a device invented (or perhaps reinvented) in 1825. Two strings attached to the ends of a disk or card with an image on each side — say, a vase opposite a bouquet of flowers — were twirled between the fingers, so that the rotating pictures appeared to combine into a single image, such as flowers in a vase.
Thaumatropes are considered precursors of movie cameras and animation.
The figures at the White Shaman rock shelter seem to depict a journey through the spirit world
Carolyn Boydguides her pickup down a cliffside trail overlooking Dead Mans Pass, a limestone canyon cut deep into the backcountry of southwest Texas. A ring of black vultures circles overhead. Boyd slows the truck and scans the canyon for what has drawn their interest. On top of a boulder, splayed out like a ritual sacrifice, is a half-eaten goat carcass. “Mountain lion,” she says.
The region known as the Lower Pecos is an arid 21,000-square-mile expanse of southwest Texas and northern Mexico surrounding the confluence of the Pecos River and the Rio Grande. The land is barbed with cacti, teeming with rattlesnakes, and riven with impassable canyons. But more than 4,000 years ago, these barrens were home to a flourishing culture of hunter-gatherers, creators of some of the world’s most complex and beautiful prehistoric rock art. The literal meaning of those paintings had been dismissed as an unsolvable mystery—until recently.
Boyd parks at the bottom of the canyon. In her early fifties, with high cheekbones and dark hair pulled back under a hat, she is both elegant and hardy, like a pioneer woman from a classic Western. She sets a brisk pace up the side of the canyon. Her destination is Delicado Shelter, one of some 300 shallow caves in the region known for paintings of human figures, deer, canines, felines, birds, rabbits, snakes, and other desert animals. Boyd, an archaeologist and director of SHUMLA (Studying Human Use of Materials, Land, and Art), an education and research center in Comstock, Texas, will spend the afternoon scouring the shelter for insight into the ancient residents and their spiritual world.
Through decades of dogged work, Boyd has also developed a system to understand this enigmatic art. Working like a detective, she discovered a symbolic code that reveals narratives in the paintings, which she believes can be read, almost like an ancient language. Just as finding the Rosetta stone in Egypt enabled linguists to decipher ancient hieroglyphs, these paintings help unlock the secrets of a majestic religious system that blanketed Mesoamerica nearly four millennia before the arrival of Columbus. Boyd has discovered that myths and rituals similar to those written in the rocks have survived in the Huichol, a modern tribe now living in the mountains of western Mexico, and in other cultures throughout Mexico and the American Southwest.....
A dig on the site of a new housing
development near Oban has uncovered what are believed to be some of
Scotland’s earliest cold storage larders in six Bronze Age roundhouses. A
team led by Dr Clare Ellis, from Argyll Archaeology, claim the
roundhouses at Dunstaffnage are the first in Scotland to have ring
ditches inside the structure. These may have been used as cellars to
cool food – a precursor to the refrigerator.They also have vents
leading into the central hearths which would have allowed the occupants
to regulate their heating, while outside are the remnants of what could
be a very simple form of sauna.
But Ellis said the most
significant find was the internal ring ditches. “This is a new design,
not recognised or seen before in Scotland. The general consensus until
now was that ring ditches occur outside the roof supports of
roundhouses, but still within the roundhouse structure, and were
erosional features where animals were kept. But these are inside the
roof support area and the theory is that they are low cellars that would
have had wooden floors over them. We think they are an early form of
larder storage system.
“In the Iron Age they had banana-shaped
cellars and this would appear to be the precursor to that. They are on
the north-east side, the coolest side of the house [away from the sea].
It’s like an early form of refrigeration, where they would keep cheeses,
milk, dried meat, salted fish and grain.”..."
This is what happens when you don't floss - several thousand years later someone is measuring your dental deposits for your full mortification in front of the new generations
"...Many ancient human teeth, including specimens tens of
thousands of years old, still hold onto tiny pieces of food -- and even
bacteria. Anthropologists are studying the tartar attached to ancient
human teeth to learn more about the plants people ate and the pathogens
they carried long ago.
Tartar, also known as dental calculus, is a hard substance
that toothpaste ads promise to obliterate and dentists scrape away. It
builds up on human teeth after dental plaque
solidifies. A dentist might scrape away 30 milligrams of a patient's
calculus each visit. Sets of teeth from hundreds or thousands of years
ago might have up to 20 times that much, a mass roughly equal to a small
paperclip.
Scientists are only beginning to explore the variety of materials
caught in calculus, which preserves organic materials that are often
fleetingly preserved in other settings. This allows scientists to
address questions that are very difficult to answer using established
archaeological methods.
"There are so many time periods in human history where we have
theories about what they ate but we really have no idea," said Amanda
Henry, a physical anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany.
Seeds and grains often degrade slowly and animal bones typically last even longer. But finding direct evidence of vegetable consumption is more difficult. Vegetables such as cabbage and carrots were important foods in medieval Europe,
but evidence to confirm their consumption is hard to come by.
Reconstructing the full diet for people living in earlier periods is
even more difficult.
"We know very little about the vegetable and salad portion of the
diet," said Christina Warinner, an archaeological geneticist at
University of Zurich's Centre for Evolutionary Medicine, in Switzerland.
"[Studying calculus] could potentially be an entirely new way of
approaching that."
Small Fossils, Big Information
Calculus contains pollen grains and microscopic fossilized plant
pieces called phytoliths, in addition to starch grains and even
bacteria. Fragments of bacterial DNA found in calculus can help identify
specific pathogens that were once present in the mouths of ancient
people.
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed two skeletons from the Middle Ages pierced through the chest with iron rods to keep them from turning into vampires, the head of the history museum said. "These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century," said national history museum chief Bozhidar Dimitrov after the recent find in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.
According to pagan beliefs, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried. People believed the rod would also pin them down in their graves to prevent them from leaving at midnight and terrorising the living, the historian explained. The practice was common, Dimitrov added, saying some 100 similar burials had already been found in Bulgaria.
Giant insects that ruled prehistoric skies for millions of years may
have met their end due to the evolution of predatory birds, researchers
say.
Gigantic insects once dominated the Earth. About 300 million years
ago, during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods, the
largest flying insects known, the predatory dragonfly-like
griffinflies, had wingspans of up to 28 inches, about the same as the
modern wood duck.
The leading theory of how flying insects reached such stupendous
sizes has to do with past periods of high oxygen concentrations in the
atmosphere, reaching up to some 50 percent richer than today. All this
extra oxygen is thought to have supported the energy-hungry metabolisms
of flying insects, helping them grow to titanic maximum sizes.
Ancient Jugs Hold the Secret to Practical Mathematics in Biblical Times
Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs.
Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. Because we're used to the metric system, which defines units of volume based on the cube, modern archaeologists believed that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs, says Prof. Itzhak Benenson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geography.
Now an interdisciplinary collaboration between Prof. Benensonand Prof. Israel Finkelstein of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures has revealed that, far from relying on approximations, merchants would have had precise measurements of their wares -- and therefore known exactly what to charge their clients.
The researchers discovered that the ancients devised convenient mathematical systems in order to determine the volume of each jug. They theorize that the original owners and users of the jugs measured their contents through a system that linked units of length to units of volume, possibly by using a string to measure the circumference of the spherical container to determine the precise quantity of liquid within.......
A LEADING marine archaeologist has described as “absolutely incredible” some of the initial exotic findings on a shipwreck recently discovered off the west Cork coast.
South sea coconuts and Iberian pottery have so far been recovered by Julianna O’Donoghue and her underwater archaeology team from the wreck, which may have been a pirate ship dating from the late 16th or 17th century.
The uncharted vessel was located last month during archaeological monitoring of dredging for the Schull waste water treatment plant. The monitoring is requested by the National Monuments Service underwater archaeology unit as a condition of planning and foreshore licensing.
This precaution has already led to the location of other previously unrecorded craft, such as the Gormanston logboat in Co Meath, and wrecks in Duncannon, Co Waterford, on the river Boyne in Co Louth, and Inishbofin off the Galway coast. An exclusion zone was placed around the site in Schull and dredging work was suspended while Ms O’Donoghue assessed the wreck, with the co-operation of Cork County Council.
Her team retrieved many ship’s timbers, barrel staves, Iberian pottery and several of the coconuts, which may have been part of a cargo or part of crew victuals.
Ms O’Donoghue told The Irish Times that very little was known of the ship’s origins: it could have dated from the 1588 Spanish Armada period; it could have been a trader that was blown off course; or it could have been a pirate ship.
The west Cork harbour of Baltimore was raided by Algerian pirates who carried off prisoners in 1631. “The shipwreck is absolutely incredible,” she said. “I am astounded by the recovery of such exotic finds which may be the earliest appearance of coconuts in Ireland.”
As the wreck is over 100 years old, it is protected under the National Monuments Act and a licence is required to dive on it.
LONDON – Archaeologists say they have
discovered the remains of an Elizabethan theater where some of William
Shakespeare's plays were first performed.
Experts from the Museum
of London have uncovered a yard and gallery walls from the Curtain
Theatre in Shoreditch, just east of London's business district.
The
Curtain opened in 1577 and was home to Shakespeare's company, the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, until the Globe Theatre was built across the river
two years later.
OSKALOOSA, Iowa – An Iowa family has
discovered parts of a mammoth skeleton in their backyard and, with the
help of archeologists, they hope to dig up the rest.
ABC 5
reports a man named John and his sons were digging in their backyard two
years ago when they found what appeared to be an enormous bone buried
in the dirt.
"I got down on my hands and knees on the bank and I
could see a marrow line around the edge of this and I said boys, that's a
bone, that's a really big bone," John told ABC 5.
The family
kept the discovery to themselves for two years, but then decided to
enlist experts for help extracting the rest of the mammoth skeleton.
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