By   Tue, Feb 28, 2012

In a major new exhibition opening in May in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, scientists will take the public through the facts behind the recent hoopla about the end of the world predicted to take place in December, 2012, and how it originated with the ancient Maya calendar system and the Maya civilization. 

The "end of the world" excitement was highlighted by a series of various media splashes about claims that the ancient Maya predicted a cataclysmic event at the end of their calendar, purportedly ending on December 23, 2012. The predictions run the gamut between those that believe that a celestial alignment will bring a series of devastating natural disasters, to those that say that the event will bring enlightenment and a new age of peace. As December 2012 draws closer, new predictions are emerging. But some scholars and scientists hope to be able to dispel the myths and present the facts through a visual public presentation of the mechanisms and culture that underly the Maya calendar system, including recent major discoveries at the ancient Maya center of Copán in Honduras, Central America. It takes place beginning May 5, 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania's world-renowned Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 

More than the mysteries of the Maya calendar, the exhibition is expected to bring to public light some of the remarkable achievements of the Maya people who once inhabited this ancient settlement, a city that thrived and dominated a region in present-day Honduras during the Maya Classic period between c. 426 and c. 800 AD. 

Says Dr. Loa Traxler, the exhibition curator, the event "offers visitors a rare opportunity to view spectacular examples of Classic Maya art—some of which have never before been seen outside Honduras—and delve into the Maya people’s extraordinary, layered, and shifting concepts about time. MAYA 2012: Lords of Time (the exhibition title) uncovers a history and culture far richer and more surprising than commonly supposed.”

Dr. Traxler, Mellon Associate Deputy Director of the Penn Museum and co-author of The Ancient Maya, (Sixth Edition, 2006), is an archaeologist who excavated at the site of Copán with the Penn Museum's Early Copán Acropolis Program (1989 through 2003). Simon Martin, Associate Curator of the Museum’s American Section and a leading Maya epigrapher, is co-curator of the exhibition. 

"The exhibition invites the visitor to explore the ancient Maya’s complex, interlocking calendar systems, which were based on an advanced understanding of astronomy and the night sky", reports exhibition planners. "Their most elaborate system, the Long Count, encompasses trillions of years, and one of its important cycles comes to a close on December 23, 2012 (some scholars say December 21, 2012). This is the origin of the Maya 2012 “end of the world” phenomenon."

What is more, the exhibition draws upon the vast accumulation of knowledge that archaeologists, glyph experts and other scholars have acquired over time through excavation and study. The artifacts tell the story, affording scholars and the visiting public the opportunity to experience a range of interactive activities and view sculptures and full-sized replicas of major monuments, including artifacts that were recently excavated by Penn Museum archaeologists at the site of Copán.

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One of the objects that can be seen at the Maya 2012: Lord's of Time exhibition is this carved tripod vessel and lid.  Among the objects on the Hunal Tomb's floor at Copán, it originally came from a workshop in the central Peten lowlands, most likely Tikal. This ceramic vessel bearing some pigment, circa 437 CE, is an excellent example of a regional style sometimes found in burials at Copán. (8.5” diameter x 9.5” tall) Photo courtesy: Kenneth Garrett.

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The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia of the Republic of Honduras, and will be viewable through January 13, 2013.

For more information about the exhibition, individuals can go to www.penn.museum/maya2012.

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This article was written and edited by Popular Archaeology staff based on information provided by the Penn Museum. More about the recent discoveries at Copán will be presented in a feature article published in the March issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Cover Photo, Top Left:  The Margarita Panel, a grand, modeled-stucco building panel, measures almost 9 feet high by 12 feet wide. Discovered by a Penn Museum excavation team in the 1990s, it features the emblematic name of Copan's royal founder, K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo'. The king's name is shown as two entwined birds: a quetzal bird (k'uk') and scarlet macaw (mo'), with crest elements that spell the initial part of the name yax meaning 'first' or 'green.' Carved around 450 CE it is in remarkable condition, buried deep within the Copan Acropolis. The MAYA 2012 exhibition at the Penn Museum features a replica of this monumental piece in its full-color splendor. Photo courtesy: Early Copan Acropolis Project, Penn Museum.

By   Sun, Feb 26, 2012

Scientists have been able to reconstruct abnormal climate patterns that occurred during the 9th and 10th centuries in Iraq by examining and analyzing ancient manuscripts written by Islamic writers during the Islamic Golden Age. 

The research, conducted by a team of scientists led by Dr Fernando Domínguez-Castro and published in Weather, examined writings of scholars, historians and diarists in Iraq between 816-1009 AD for evidence of unusual weather patterns.

"Climate information recovered from these ancient sources mainly refers to extreme events which impacted wider society such as droughts and floods," said Domínguez-Castro. "However, they also document conditions which were rarely experienced in ancient Baghdad such as hailstorms, the freezing of rivers or even cases of snow." 

The manuscripts documented an increase of cold weather occurrences in the first half of the 10th century, including a sharp drop in temperatures during July 920 AD and three incidents of snowfall in 908, 944 and 1007. The only other record of snow occurred in modern Baghdad in 2008. 

"These signs of a sudden cold period confirm suggestions of a temperature drop during the tenth century, immediately before the Medieval Warm Period," said Domínguez-Castro. "We believe the drop in July 920 AD may have been linked to a great volcanic eruption but more work would be necessary to confirm this idea."

Scientists believe that reconstructing climates from the past provides a valuable historical and contextual comparison for understanding modern weather events and climate change. By collecting data from such natural sources as tree rings, coral and ice cores, researchers have been able to glean clues to weather patterns and climate changes of the past. But this study has provided an example of how historical, political and religious documents of the past can contribute, in a significant way, to this kind of research.

"Ancient Arabic documentary sources are a very useful tool for finding eye witness descriptions which support the theories made by climate models," added Domínguez-Castro. "The ability to reconstruct past climates provides us with useful historical context for understanding our own climate. We hope this potential will encourage Arabic historians and climatologists to work together to increase the climate data rescued from across the Islamic world."

The details of the study are published in the journal, Weather:  F. Dominguez-Castro, J. M. Vaquero, M. Marin, M. C. Gallego, R. Garcia-Herrera, “How useful could Arabic documentary sources be for reconstructing past climate,” Weather, Wiley-Blackwell, DOI: 10.1002/wea.835

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Climate diagram of Baghdad, Iraq. Wikimedia Commons  

By   Thu, Feb 23, 2012

Along with runaway slash-and-burn agriculture and mismanagement of resources, climate change has long been suggested by scientists as a cause for the mysterious 200-year decline of the Maya civilization. The suspect was drought, but there has been no solid data to explain the timing and gravity of any such drought period(s). Now, new research has produced results that give us some specifics about how this could have happened.   

According to a study led by Martín Medina-Elizalde of the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico and Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton in the UK, the decline of the Classic Maya civilization was concurrent with an approximate 25 to 40 percent reduction in annual rainfall. The researchers determined this by combining highly detailed records and data taken from three lakes and one stalagmite. They found that precipitation in the region decreased episodically for periods as long as a decade at a time by up to 40 percent. Moreover, they suggest that it was due to fewer and weaker summer storms in that part of the world. Although 40 percent is considered significant, it is not considered extreme. However, the difference could explain how the balance between rates of evaporation and rainfall could disrupt and deplete critical water supplies or reservoirs needed to sustain certain levels of human occupation.

Says Professor Rohling:  "Summer was the main season for cultivation and replenishment of Mayan freshwater storage systems and there are no rivers in the Yucatan lowlands. Societal disruptions and abandonment of cities are likely consequences of critical water shortages, especially because there seems to have been a rapid repetition of multi-year droughts."

The researchers further warn that the ancient Maya drought model reconstructed for this study also has implications for the future. They note that, although there are differences, the climate projections for this same region for the near future are very similar. "......The warning is clear," says Professor Medina-Elizalde.  "What seems like a minor reduction in water availability may lead to important, long-lasting problems. This problem is not unique to the Yucatan Peninsula, but applies to all regions in similar settings where evaporation is high. Today, we have the benefit of awareness, and we should act accordingly."

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Stalagmite climate archive growing on top of an archaeological archive (Mayan pottery) in a northwest Yucatán Peninsula cave. [Image © Science/AAAS]

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Maya pottery and a stalagmite in a Yucatán Peninsula cave. Photo credit: Professor Medina-Elizalde  

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The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK. The detailed research paper appears in the 24 February 2012 issue of Science, published by the AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Temple in the Kingdom of Tikal, one of the most prominent of the Classic Period. [Image © Science/AAAS]

By Dan McLerran   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

There are archaeology field schools and research activities being conducted all over the world. Many excavations are conducted during the summer months; however, some are ongoing throughout the year, and some are being conducted even during the winter months in parts of the world where the climate is favorable. Here are the best listings online with links to detailed information about archaeological digs and field school opportunities for 2011.  Click on each listing to link to the website:

1.  Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin

2.  Archaeology Digs 2011 (About.com)

3.  Past Horizons

4.  Earthwatch Expeditions

5.  Biblical Archaeology Society

6.  Archaeologyfieldwork.com

7.  Passport in Time

8.  ShovelBums

By Joanie Meharry and Shaharzad Akbar   Sun, Nov 13, 2011

At the ancient Buddhist monastery of Mes Aynak I was introduced to Omar Sultan, the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture. It was a sweltering summer day and I had just returned from a walk along the adjacent wall and citadel. The hillside had recently been de-mined and was now being excavated by a team of national and international archeologists. Sultan was sitting regally in a chair at the base of the monastery, receiving updates from team members about the ongoing rescue excavation. The site was scheduled to be destroyed in the next few years in order to make way for copper mining in the valley; an important multi-million dollar investment for the country. A trained archeologist himself, Sultan motioned for me to sit next to him as he began to recount a journey he had made to survey the same site several decades earlier; a time long before the artifacts were looted, landmines were planted, and the site was threatened by mineral extraction.

He had left Afghanistan during the civil unrest in the late-1970s but returned in 2002 to take up his post at the ministry. Reputed to be one of the most active watchdogs of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, I wanted to sit with him again to record his experiences, thoughts on the current projects at the ministry, and insights into the present and future of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage.

A couple of months later we met again at his office in the Ministry of Information and Culture. Books were strewn about his office and maps of archeological sites were piled high on a table in the corner. This time I was accompanied by a film crew and my colleague Shaharzad Akbar, who was going to conduct the interview in Sultan’s native tongue of Dari, so little was lost in translation. What follows is a translation of that interview.

- Joanie Meharry

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SA: Can we start by hearing about your education background? Where did you study and how did you get interested in cultural heritage issues?

OS: I went to Greece in 1969 for the first time. I studied archeology and history of art and philosophy. After finishing the four year period, I worked on the Hellenistic period in Afghanistan and its impact on the country, and I wrote my dissertation on this topic. I have always been interested in culture and art. I liked it since childhood. I liked music. I also liked history a lot. And as you know, Afghanistan is a very rich country when it comes to culture heritage. These interests motivated me and I studied in this field.

SA: After finishing your education, did you return directly to Afghanistan?

OS: Yes. After finishing my studies I returned to Afghanistan. In 1976-1978, unfortunately, the Saur coup happened. After that, I returned to Greece. From there, I traveled to other countries. Then, in 2002, I was invited to return here by the government of the Islamic Republic and Dr. Sayeed Makhdum Rahin, who was Minister of Information and Culture then and is also now. In 2005, I returned to Kabul permanently. I have been the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture since then.

SA: Did you maintain your relationship with cultural heritage in Afghanistan when you were outside Afghanistan? How?

OS: Yes. I taught voluntarily. I also worked. I taught in USA, at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I also had contacts with UNESCO in my workplace, and I was in touch with my friends here in Afghanistan. Basically, I never lost interest in Afghanistan. I did some work on cultural heritage and culture and the art of Afghanistan.

SA: In which period do you think Afghanistan’s cultural heritage suffered most?

OS: Well, it was during the destructive wars that occurred in Afghanistan. I think it started in the ’80-’90 decades. As you know, when I returned in 2002, the museum had no roof, window, or ceiling. This was really saddening to me. Because I had studied in Greece, the Minister of Culture in Greece in 2002 had been one of my classmates. I had a trip to Greece and they sent almost $750,000 with their representative for the museum you see now. Of course, other countries also got interested then and the museum was reconstructed, and is now a matter of pride for Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s National Museum was amongst the richest in terms of its possession of artifacts/pieces. But unfortunately, some of these pieces were looted during the civil wars. We are fortunate to have signed the 1972 convention with UNESCO, which allowed for some of the pieces, from 11,000 to 14,000, to return to their original home.

SA: You have constantly been in Afghanistan since 2002?

OS: Yes, since 2002. I came in the month of February based on the invitation of the Government of Afghanistan at the time. From then on until 2005, I was the cultural adviser to the Ministry of Information and Culture. I would go out (of Afghanistan) occasionally and then return. I moved here permanently in 2005.

We have some achievements: in museums particularly, in archeology, in preservation of historical sites, music, theatre, film… I think more work has been done in other areas as well. But to the extent it should be done, to realize my own wishes, we haven’t done that much. I am telling you this myself. But we have been 90% successful in our work.

SA: During the current year, with which other important projects have you been engaged?

OS: We have urban development projects, sorry, development/expansion of the ministry. But buildings and such are not really related to my work. Currently, we work mostly in Ghazni and in Mes Aynak; these are the two projects we are working on. The work that needed three or four years to be done is already done by our archeologists. They finished it in eight months. Our accomplishments in Ghazni: we have fixed ten historical buildings/sites. We are hopeful to fix 32 historical buildings by 2013. The work is ongoing. Our work is going on intensely in the Mes Aynak excavations as well. It is going really well, very successfully.

The news-making remains of the Buddhist monastery of Mes Aynak.  Recovery of the finds at this site is a national cultural priority for Afghanistan. Photo by Joanie Meharry.

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An archaeologist points out one of the major finds at Mes Aynak. Photo by Joanie Meharry.

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The perimeter of Mes Aynak. Photo by Joanie Meharry. 

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SA: To what extent is insecurity a problem for cultural heritage and how does it contribute to smuggling (of cultural heritage pieces)?

OS: Well, these things are really important. Insecurity. I am hopeful. If you and I think there is a tomorrow, there is certainly hope. There are many problems. The issue of smuggling of cultural heritage is a huge problem. We have taken some steps regarding this. In 2003, 012 legion (a military unit), or the legion for preservation of historical or archeological sites was initiated. There are 500 people in it. We are hopeful for and we want 2,000 soldiers in 3-4 years. We have requested 500 more soldiers this year and we hope that will be accepted.

The smuggling has been to some extent curtailed, but not 100%. I can never claim that. We have programs that will, for example, raise awareness among Afghan nationals about their cultural heritage. In the museum, they have done something so that children come; young people from the university come, so they are interested.  Almost 300-350 people come every day.

I personally think that we have lost our national identity or cultural identity in the past 30 years. This is what I think. I don’t say this because I am a culture and cultural heritage person and am interested in it. But I think if this nation is to be reunited, it is through culture. Because, as you see, if you tell every Afghan about their museum or historical pieces or historical sites, they are united. Then why not work through this? And I think, of course this will be a long path. Creating a culture is hard work. It is not like constructing a building in 3 or 4 years. If we do not have the culture to live in those buildings, our work is cut out for us. In this area, as I said, we are raising awareness of the nation, so that the nation says no (to looting). These cultural artifacts, this cultural heritage is mine. But you can’t do anything (preserve the cultural heritage) by force. Guns and cannons are not the way. We must form an understanding with them (nation). Look at the little children. If you teach them or if they go to a museum, the children have an impact on their parents. The parents have 3-4 other friends. In this way, slowly, the impact increases.

For example, we should have museums in important provinces. We have 10 now. We have to increase this because in Afghanistan, Kabul does not represent the whole of Afghanistan. If the museum is there (in the provinces), and there is some work done there, the nation there, the people there in that province, become very happy. They feel they have a part as well. (They will say) I am an Afghan as well. Bringing everything from the outside to the National Museum won’t do. They can’t all fit. So I have this hope that one day we will be able to return the artifacts from other parts of Afghanistan to their museums.

SA: How is the people’s cooperation with the preservation of cultural heritage sites doing? Herat could be an example.

OS: Herat is good. Some cooperation from people has been initiated. In raising awareness among people, you also raise people’s interest slowly.  We say that you can’t make sounds with one hand (music with one hand), right? Two thoughts are better than one, and three is even better. There should be a team to get work done. There should be cooperation.

The National Museum is being rebuilt, a new museum with help from the USA, World Bank, and a few other countries. This in itself is work that will stay for Afghanistan. It is about culture, building culture. Anyone who sees this (the museum) says god bless them that they constructed such a museum. No one will say this is something bad or they did something bad, regarding this. They won’t say they had other interests and such things.

Also, in the Ministry of Information and Culture last year and this year, we want to hold seven seminars. Of course, the most important one for me is about children’s literature and children’s theatre. Of course, another area that I need to tell you about is the local music of Afghanistan. If we don’t do this work, slowly these things will disappear: the authentic culture of Afghanistan and the music that we have.  Today, there is a CD or a recording, if not, if God forbid a Ustad dies, nothing is left after her/him. We try to record these things with good supporters and friends of Afghanistan. There are NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that work, for example, Aga Khan or Turquoise Mountain.  All these things need to be recorded. We need to develop a database. Similarly for satire, for example, there should be a seminar about this. These are things that if we slowly don’t make an effort about, they will be lost. For example, we had a seminar, “Herat in crossroads of history”. We have another that we will hold called “Paktia in crossroads of history”. 

SA:  You talked about the future. What do you think about the situation in the future, particularly after 2014? Are you optimistic?

OS: I am hopeful that things will improve day by day. As I said earlier, we all live in hope for tomorrow, right? If there is tomorrow, but no hope, then, it is not livable, one shouldn’t live. God is gracious. I am hopeful. I think you just need to give the children time.  By 2012, it will be 12 years and then 4 more years (is needed). Once they are educated, I am hopeful that Afghanistan will be a very different country.

SA: What do you think of some of the discussions that have recently come up?  For example, the interaction of cultural heritage and development. Mes Aynak is a prominent example. What are your thoughts on that?

OS: Indeed, Mes Aynak is a prominent example. We worked on an understanding with the Ministry of Mines. Both these things are very important. From one perspective, it is national income. From another perspective, there is cultural heritage. The cultural heritage should not be destroyed and the work on mines which generates national income should not stop. We needed to work with them simultaneously. We considered the priorities of this Chinese company and the Ministry of Mines. And we are hopeful to finish them, with help from the Ministry of Mines. I have no problems with them. They understand…that these things should not be destroyed. We understand this too, and we have a law that we abide by. The law says we should also preserve national income. We should do something so that none of the benefits are lost.

SA: So they (China Metallurgical Group and Ministry of Mines) allow you to visit and monitor?

OS: Yes. We have ongoing excavations there. Please come there and look at what we do. What our young people have done, our archeologists. I am proud of each one of them.

SA: Do we have enough Afghan archeologists?

OS: We do. In the Department of Archeology, there are 23, 24 people, and I hope the numbers will increase this year.

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This interview is part of a series, ‘Untold Stories: the Oral Histories of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage’, funded by a Hollings Center for International Dialogue Grant. The series will be available on video, made in collaboration with Kabul at Work, and available on their website at: http://www.kabulatwork.tv/

Cover Photo, Top Left: Omar Sultan, Deputy Minister of Information and Culture.  Photo by Jake Simkin.

By Thomas Guderjan and Colleen Hanratty   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

The Maya site of Blue Creek in northwestern Belize has been the focus of annual excavations and other investigations since 1992. This effort has produced a massive and important database for understanding the ancient Maya and for broader purposes in the field of archaeology. Most archaeological projects in Middle America are either focused on monumental architecture in the central area of an ancient city or deal with relatively small investigations of the settlement zone surrounding the central precinct of the site. This is generally a function of the limitations on time and funds available for fieldwork and data collection. By contrast, Blue Creek is an exceptional situation as the site has been the focus of on-going, multi-institutional, multi-national and multi-disciplinary research…and will continue to be so well into the future. 

Location of Blue Creek in Northwestern Belize

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Blue Creek is a medium sized Maya center that was occupied from approximately 600BC until approximately AD 1000. Spatially, the “greater” Blue Creek area covers approximately 150 square kilometers. At first appearance, Blue Creek’ central precinct is unexceptional: surrounding its main plaza are 15 meter tall public buildings…but not large by Maya standards. However, just under the surface of Blue Creek, there are surprises to be found.

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Blue Creek Site Core and Residential Zones

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Blue Creek Central Precinct

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By the end of the Late Preclassic period (AD 150-250) and through the Early Classic period (AD 250-600), Blue Creek became a wealthy polity. To the Maya and to scholars who study the Maya, this means “jade".  Jade, or more properly, jadeite and nephrite, were the most precious stones in the Maya world. The largest caches of jade in the Maya world come from one of the largest cities (Tikal and Calakmul), a city near the source (Copan), and a palace of one of the most powerful royal families (Cancuen). However, it was perplexing to discover that the Maya world’s 5^th largest cache of jade came from the medium sized city of Blue Creek.

Deeper investigations revealed that Blue Creek’s wealth derived from two equally important factors. The first is the presence of some of the richest and most extensive agricultural soils in Central America. The Blue Creek community covered approximately 150 square kilometers and more than half was used for agriculture. We have found several kinds of agricultural systems at Blue Creek, ranging in size and importance from small, household kitchen gardens to very large scale production systems such as large scale upland non-irrigated farming and lowland drained field farming. Blue Creek could and did produce far more agricultural products than needed by its population.

The central precinct of Blue Creek straddles a 100 meter escarpment that divides the low coastal plain from the karstic hills of the uplands. Above and west of the escarpment, the terrain is a mixture of eroded limestone hills separated by large expanses of clayey soils that today are prized by modern large-scale farmers.  These “bajos” and “bajitos” range in size from 1 to 40 square kilometers. Moreover, below the escarpment are equally rich soils, but these were subject to seasonal inundation that could easily lead to complete crop losses. To prevent this, the Blue Creek Maya dug hundreds of kilometers of ditches to drain these fields. Our ongoing studies of these fields indicate that they were dug in the Early Classic period and maintained until the abandonment of Blue Creek in the Terminal Classic period. We also know that a wide variety of crops for food and other purposes were grown. For instance, there is considerable pollen and phytolith evidence for cultivation of fruit trees, including breadnut (Brosimum alicastrum), craboo or cha (Byrsonima species), caimito, agya, or sebul (Chrysophyllum species), chicle macho, chiquibul or chicle (Manilkara species), cacao (Theobroma cacao) or mountain cacao (T. bicolor), and avocado (Persia). At least one species of Marantaceae, probably platanillo (Pleiostachya pruinosa) or wild banana (Stromanthe hjalmarssonii), was also cultivated. Additionally, maize (Zea mays) and sweet potato (Ipomoea) pollen have been recovered.

Beyond Blue Creek’s ability to grow food and other agricultural products, the second factor for its economic success was its extraordinary access to other markets due to trade. Archaeologists have known for many years that Maya coastal trade in elite reinforcing exotic goods was active throughout the Classic period. We now believe that Maya trade canoes filled with food and other commodities virtually circumnavigated the Yucatan Peninsula and penetrated into the interior via rivers. Blue Creek is located at the terminus of the Rio Hondo, the northern-most river draining into the Caribbean Sea. Canoes filled with goods could reach the Caribbean in only three days. Then, goods could be loaded onto larger and deeper seagoing canoes bound for cities in the north that had less agricultural potential and higher risk of crop failure due to weather. Equally important, canoes coming from the Caribbean into the interior would have to stop at Blue Creek to off-load goods. From Blue Creek, these goods would be taken overland into the Petén sites such as Tikal and Uaxactun. Thus, Blue Creek’s economic success was also made possible because it was situated at a critical location on the trade network. Blue Creek’s gateway setting also facilitated the distribution of its own agricultural products. MRP has found a dock and related facilities at Blue Creek and similar features have also been found downstream at the site of Nohmul.

Sequence of Events at Blue Creek during the Classic Period

A distinct order had established itself at Blue Creek during the Early Classic period and was legitimized by the presence of innovative and symbolically charged forms of architecture. During the Early Classic, Plaza A was surrounded by ritual and multifunctional structures on three sides — leaving an open view of the agricultural fields and settlements off the escarpment to the east. Structure 1, the earliest documented columnated superstructure in the Southern Lowlands, dominates this plaza. In addition, a ballcourt was built on a separate platform immediately north of Plaza A.

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Plan View of Blue Creek Site Core during the Early Classic

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In the Early Classic, Plaza B is dominated by the royal palace and is flanked to the north and south by temple pyramids. The most notable is Structure 9, a typical Peten style temple with a single room superstructure positioned atop a steeply inclined substructure with a central staircase and stair-side outsets. In the Early Classic, the facade of Structure 9’s outset near its summit was adorned with a five paneled, medium relief stucco frieze depicting a set of ahau images. This popul na—an ascension house for rulership---was not only the geographical center of the site but also served as its axis mundi.

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Structure 9 Masks

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Blue Creek’s sociopolitical structure changed significantly during the sixth century. A massive caching event occurred at approximately A D 550 at Structure 4 on Plaza A. In preparation of the ritual, a large part of the penultimate stage of Structure 4 was removed and a masonry-lined shaft was constructed. Numerous caches were placed around this shaft, including more than 100 vessels. Within the shaft itself, the artifacts recovered included nearly 9 pounds of worked jades (the fifth largest cache of jade recovered in Meoamerica), shells, and a chert eccentric. The shaft was capped with a massive limestone banner stone and an uncarved stelae. After this event, the flow of jade and other imported items into Blue Creek decreases dramatically.

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Jade Cache Event

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The Late Classic political reorganization is reflected in the construction activities within the site core. In the early part of the Late Classic Structure 9 was razed and reoriented. This new phase of construction reoriented the structure 180 degrees and covered the Early Classic stucco frieze. Across the Main Plaza, the columnated superstructure of Structure 1 was razed and a flat superstructural platform was built to accommodate the tomb of an important member of the Blue Creek community. During this same period, Structures 2 and 3 were constructed, enclosing the eastern portion of Plaza A.

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Structure 9 in the Late Classic

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The Structure 19 Courtyard - the residence of one of Blue Creek’s most powerful elite families--was also expanded during the Late Classic. During the Early Classic, access to the courtyard was easily obtained from Plaza B by a direct and open route. However, after a series of Late Classic structural additions and alterations, access became quite tortuous and convoluted, requiring one to navigate a number of passageways and rooms before one could enter either courtyard. In its final Late Classic form, the complex consists of a low platform upon which are at least fourteen interconnected rooms and passageways surrounding two very private courtyards.

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Palaces in the Late Classic

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Dramatically unlike the Structure 19 Courtyard, the Structure 13 Courtyard was not originally constructed as an elite residential group. Instead, its original, Early Classic function was as an open, public, triadic group. At the beginning of the Early Classic the group was composed of two temples: Structure 13 on the north side and Structure 12 on the east side. Later during the Early Classic, the plaza platform was expanded laterally to the west and Structure 10 was added to the complex. At the end of the Late Classic, Structures 12 and 14 were added. As a result, the plaza was transformed from sacred space to a secular, residential space.  

During the Late Classic period significant population growth is noted at Blue Creek. In addition to the expansion of the elite residences within the site core, it was during the Late Classic period that 85% of the construction activities occurred within Kin Tan—a series of 9 elite residences directly west of the site core. Such residential expansions, both above and below the escarpment, occurred in proximity to high quality agricultural lands. One notable exception is U Xulil Beh. This low status residential group was constructed solely in the Late Classic in a marginal agricultural setting with poor agricultural potential. It is likely that existing communities already held power over the more productive lands forcing the inhabitants of U Xulil Beh to occupy these less productive agricultural fields.

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Residential Areas and Ditched Fields of Blue Creek

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The amount of land under cultivation peaked during the Late Classic. The large ditched agricultural systems below the escarpment had been in place for several hundred years. However, growing platforms were built at the base of the escarpment near the ditched fields to expand the amount of productive land. West and above the escarpment, the bajos separating residential components had also been cultivated for generations. In the Late Classic, however, terracing and cross-drainage features were built to expand the amount of arable land. Despite the high energetic effort placed into the construction of these features, they expanded Blue Creek’s agricultural potential by less than five percent. The amount of arable land within Blue Creek—at least 40% of the site’s total 150 square km area- was more than adequate for subsistence agriculture—even for this growing population. However, recent research has revealed that one factor that may have contributed to the need for expansion was that significant productivity was being lost to soil erosion and the quality of the soils was declining.

By the Terminal Classic, Blue Creek’s political structure had been dramatically and negatively transformed. Construction activities within the site core and adjacent residential areas, such as Kin Tan, had come to an abrupt halt. Ultimately, the Terminal Classic is marked by the abandonment and termination of sacred structures – both within the site core and within its most elite residences.

In the central precinct, large quantities of broken ceramics and other portable goods were deposited on the front of a shrine associated with Structure 3. This represents the final cultural event within the site core and the central precinct was subsequently abandoned.

During this same period, large deposits of broken ceramics and broken portable objects such as manos, metates, obsidian blades, and bifaces were deposited against the baseline of buildings within the Structure 13 Courtyard. In addition, smaller terminal deposits have been recovered from the Structure 19 Courtyard. Again, these deposits mark the final cultural event within these palace complexes and these groups too were subsequently abandoned.

Also during the Terminal Classic, large amounts of broken ceramics and portable goods were deposited against the baselines of buildings within Kín Tan. Within the Structure 37 Plazuela, dense deposits were recovered from the baseline of 3 of the group’s 7 structures – including this group’s sacred ancestral shrine – Structure 34. The artifacts recovered included over 22,000 sherds – weighing 393 kilograms. Intermixed with these broken vessels were 203 special finds – such as broken bifaces, manos, metates, obsidian blades, and figurines.

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Kin Tan Plan View

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Within the Structure 47 Courtyard, a large deposit was also recovered from its centrally placed ancestral shrine—Structure 50. All told over 15,000 sherds weighing 349 kilograms were recovered from the northwest corner of the shrine. Intermixed with these broken vessels were 28 special finds – such as broken bifaces, manos, metates, obsidian blades, and beads. In addition, a deposit was recovered from the J14 Courtyard and shares the same characteristics of the other residential deposits. As within Blue Creek’s central precinct and palace complexes -these deposits mark the final cultural event within Kin Tan and the residential group was subsequently abandoned.

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Special Deposit from Structure 50

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While construction activities within the site core and adjacent elite residences comes to a halt at the end of the Late Classic and are terminated and abandoned during the Terminal Classic, there are some small-scale construction activities approximately 3.5 kms northwest of the central precinct in the residential group known as Rosita.

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Plan View of Rosita

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Rosita consists of at least twenty structures built from Late Preclassic to the Classic. In one group, a residential room was razed during the Terminal Classic and replaced with a Yucatecan style shrine. However, this was a makeshift construction that involved stripping the masonry façade from the major building in the group. At approximately the same time, a set of rooms was added to the summit of Structure 6. Two Daylight Orange: Darknight Variety vessels were cached beneath the floor of this superstructure. In addition, a third Terminal Classic Daylight Orange cache was recovered in a bench in the nearby Structure 9. These caching events mark the final cultural event within this group. Soon thereafter, Rosita was abandoned as well.

Despite extensive testing throughout the settlement zone of Blue Creek over the past 20 years, we only have minor evidence of Postclassic occupation. Ceramics recovered from the surface of Structure U-5, at the base of the escarpment, and from the Rempel Group on the bank of the Rio Bravo, indicate that a small residual population still occupied the area (Figure 13: Postclassic at Blue Creek). These people may have exploited remnant orchards that would have survived with minimal human intervention in the nearby ditched field systems. However, evidence from the Birds of Paradise Fields indicate that by 1100 AD even this small residual population had abandoned the area and the ditched fields that had been maintained for generations had in-filled.

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Postclassic at Blue Creek

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How You Can Participate at Blue Creek

The Maya Research Program (MRP) is a U.S.-based non-profit organization (501c3) that sponsors archaeological and ethnographic research in Middle America. Each summer since 1992, MRP has sponsored archaeological fieldwork at the ancient Maya site of Blue Creek in northwestern Belize and ethnographic research in the village of Yaxunah, Mexico. The Blue Creek Archaeological Project is an annual excavation that incorporates cost-sharing volunteers and students. In 2012, MRP continues to offer students and volunteers opportunities to participate in one of the major research efforts in Maya archaeology. The Blue Creek project is open to student and non-student participants, regardless of experience. Participants will receive training in both excavation and laboratory techniques and receive a “crash course” on the Maya and archaeological methodology. The Blue Creek field school is certified by the Register of Professional Archaeologists. 

If you are interested joining the team in 2012 (or beyond), we offer four two-week sessions in each summer. We invite students and volunteers to participate in the Maya Research Program’s 21st year of our Blue Creek Archaeological Project in Belize.

2011 Students and Volunteers and Explorer’s Club Flag Expedition

2012 Field Season Dates:

Session 1: Monday May 28 - Sunday June 10;
Session 2: Monday June 11 - Sunday June 24 ;
Session 3: Monday July 2 - Sunday July 15;
Session 4: Monday July 16 - Sunday July 29

If you have any questions or would like additional information please contact the Maya Research Program:

www.mayaresearchprogram.org
1910 East Southeast Loop 323 #296
Tyler, Texas 75701
817-831-9011
mrpinquiries@gmail.com

By Shanna Diederichs and Shirley Powell   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

For years, many Southwestern archaeologists working in the central Mesa Verde (Colorado) region of North America, including those at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, have concentrated their research on the late thirteenth century A.D.—the end of ancestral Pueblo occupation in the area. This focus is understandable: learning about the abrupt depopulation of this region of North America can add to our knowledge of the complex interactions between humans and their environment. Unfortunately, however, this focus on the late thirteenth century has resulted in an unclear understanding of how Pueblo society formed here in the first place.

Long before the iconic cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park were built, early Pueblo people were establishing a foothold throughout the Mesa Verde region. The time was the Basketmaker III period, which archaeologists date from about A.D. 500 to 750. It is clear that the period was a pivotal time in Pueblo history, with large population growth and the introduction of pottery, the bow and arrow, and cultivated beans. But many questions remained unanswered. Where did the population of the Mesa Verde region come from? How many people settled in the region and what role did population growth play in the formation of their society? How did they create communities? What was their impact on the environment?

This year, Crow Canyon embarked on a new research project, the Basketmaker Communities Project, at a site which may hold answers to these questions. Called the Dillard site, it is a ceremonial center dating from the 7th century A.D. and is located just a few miles from the Center’s campus in southwestern Colorado.

The Dillard site includes a "great kiva" (a room used by Pueblo Indians for ceremonies or other public events) measuring 10 meters in diameter and 1 meter deep, and at least several smaller structures called "pithouses" (a dwelling dug into the ground). Test excavations revealed the kiva to be one of the oldest public buildings in the Mesa Verde region. The site was first recorded during a survey in 1991 by Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants (WCAC) preliminary to the construction of a private residential community. That survey also revealed evidence of more than 120 other pithouses surrounding the core Dillard site, making the Dillard site and surrounding area one of the largest clusters of remains from this time period.

This year, during the first season at the Dillard site, Crow Canyon archaeologists were joined by more than a thousand students participating in school group programs, 73 teens taking part in camps, nearly 100 adults engaging in archaeology programs, and four higher education students serving as interns.

Excavations revealed some surprising finds and a wealth of data. Shanna Diederichs, supervisory archaeologist for the project, said: “This has been a fantastic year. Not only does the discovery of numerous habitation structures at the Dillard site suggest that we may have an early village on our hands, but this discovery would not have been possible without the help of so many great folks attending our research programs.”

The 2011 Field Season

Evidence of Masonry at the Great Kiva

At the great kiva, Crow Canyon archaeologists uncovered evidence of stone-and-mortar masonry that seems to have formed the upper wall of this large structure. This masonry now appears as a jumble of large unshaped sandstone rocks in a pinkish beige clay. The discovery is truly surprising because wet-laid, stacked masonry construction is almost unheard of in ancestral Pueblo sites until approximately A.D. 850, or 200 years later than the Dillard site. It’s a little premature to think about rewriting the textbooks, but suffice to say, we’re very excited about this find! 

By the end of the field season, this masonry was exposed across the entire northwest quadrant of the great kiva (see map below for locations of all structures). This is a huge accomplishment, given the size of the structure. Another portion of this same collapsed wall was exposed in a 1-meter-wide trench at the southern end of the great kiva. Excavation in the trench exposed up to six courses of stone that had fallen into nearly the center of the structure, 4 meters away. Some of the stones are about 80 centimeters wide and would have required the effort of more than one person to carry them to the site. We are currently mapping each individual stone and recording its angle of repose.

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Life In and Around a Pithouse

Much progress was also made in Structure 205, a burned pithouse. Excavators reached the floor in this structure in very small exploratory test pits; otherwise, both the antechamber and main chamber of this pithouse were excavated to just 10 centimeters above the floor.

In this structure, Crow Canyon archaeologists and program participants excavated through layers of collapsed roof and wall material consisting of a combination of dense, caliche-streaked clay, charcoal fragments, and a few shaped stones. Interestingly, four pieces of animal bone awls were recovered from this material, suggesting that awls may have been stashed in the rafters of the pithouse when it was abandoned. To ascertain when the structure was built, we hope to collect burned timbers from the collapsed roof for tree-ring dating.

Excavations in areas surrounding this pithouse are beginning to help us understand the kinds of activities that were conducted outside of pithouses. A dense concentration of more than 200 gray ware sherds (some of them only lightly fired), a quartz crystal, and several pieces of hematite pigment and animal bone were found just north of the pithouse, suggesting that this may have been a favored outdoor work spot.

Excavators also found an area of compact, discolored soil east of the antechamber that may indicate a ramped entryway into the antechamber of the pithouse. Few doorways have been documented for Basketmaker III pithouses in the Mesa Verde region, so if this proves to be an entryway, researchers may have to reconsider their assumptions about roof entry into these structures.

A Surprise Find in a Midden

Of course, any excavation would not be complete without a surprise. In early October, a field intern was directed to finish off a 1-x-1-meter test unit in the “west midden,” located south of the great kiva (a midden is a concentration of refuse). At the base of the midden deposits, she did not find the expected bright red, culturally “sterile” silt that underlies the entire site. Instead, the sediment began to look more and more like structure fill, with clumps of clay and charcoal flecking. Sure enough, at 50 centimeters below the modern ground surface, she exposed the floor of a previously unaccounted-for pithouse, now referred to as Structure 212. There were no artifacts sitting directly on the surface—just ash and construction slabs. This discovery brings the count of probable pithouses at the Dillard site to 10 and pushes the site into the category of a small village.

As Crow Canyon said farewell to the season’s last program participants, blue skies gave way to a few days of much-needed rain rolling in from the west (for an incredible rainbow photo, see Crow Canyon's Facebook page). It was a beautiful month highlighted by cottonwoods turning auburn and gold—a fitting end to the first year of the Basketmaker Communities Project.

Public Participation in the Basketmaker Communities Project

Only approximately 2 percent of human history has taken place since the advent of writing. Archaeology is the key to learning about the other 98 percent! Crow Canyon’s research brings to light the histories of peoples whose past would be otherwise unknown and helps us understand issues relevant to people today such as cultural diversity, human-environment interactions, and cultural change and continuity.

The public is encouraged to make a lasting contribution to archaeology and to the understanding of the Basketmaker III period by joining the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center for an archaeology program. At Crow Canyon, adults, families, educators, and students have the opportunity to work side-by-side with Crow Canyon archaeologists and educators in the field and lab, investigating this pivotal time in Pueblo history.

For more information about the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and its archaeology programs for the public, visit www.crowcanyon.org or call 800-422-8975.

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Photos courtesy Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

By   Sun, May 13, 2012

May 16th, 2012

Archaeologists Discover Possible Site of a Sixth Century Miracle in Jerusalem

The recent discovery of a Jerusalem quarry by archaeologists have led some archaeologists to suggest that it may be the site of the miracle described by historian Procopius of Caesarea in his work,The Buildings of Justinian, where God provided a miraculous supply of stone for the construction of the Nea Ekklesia of the Theotokos Church. During construction work in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia, a large 20 ft (6 m) tall and 30 in (80 cm) wide red stone, chiseled into the shape of a column, was found. Upon notification of the discovery, the Israeli Antiquities Authority ordered a halt to the construction work and systematic archaeological investigation was initiated. (Popular Archaeology)

A MUMMY SWITCHEROO?

Min, the ancient Egyptian god of phallus and fertility, might have brought some worldy advantages to his male worshippers, but offered little protection when it came to spiritual life. Researchers at the Mummy Project-Fatebenefratelli hospital in Milan, Italy, established that one of Min's priests at Akhmim, Ankhpakhered, was not resting peacefully in his finely painted sarcophagus. "We discovered that the sarcophagus does not contain the mummy of the priest, but the remains of another man dating between 400 and 100 BC," Egyptologist Sabina Malgora said. (Discovery News)

Archaeology team following clues to 1662 chapel

A team of archaeologists and volunteers has come tantalizingly close to locating the 1662 chapel at Newtowne Neck in St. Mary’s County. Scott Lawrence of Grave Concerns and James Gibb of Gibb Archaeology Consulting were hired by St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Compton and the Knights of Columbus to try to find the original chapel. The two already have completed an archaeological survey of the church’s original cemetery. (Southern Maryland Newspaper)

Thieves hunting ancient pharaonic treasures

Taking advantage of Egypt's political upheaval, thieves have gone on a treasure hunt with a spree of illegal digging, preying on the country's ancient pharaonic heritage. Illegal digs near ancient temples and in isolated desert sites have swelled a staggering 100-fold over the past 16 months since a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak's 29-year regime and security fell apart in many areas as police simply stopped doing their jobs. (IOL Scitech)

WWII fighter plane hailed the 'aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun's Tomb' found preserved in the Sahara

A Second World War aeroplane that crash landed in the Sahara Desert before the British pilot walked to his death has been found almost perfectly preserved 70 years later. (The Telegraph)

6,000-year-old settlement poses tsunami mystery

Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre-farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago — one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland. Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old — hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen. The midden — a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish — contained Stone Age implements, including two axes and a number of smaller stone tools. (www.irishexaminer.com)

May 14th, 2012

Ecuador seeks answer to riddle of Inca emperor's tomb

The mystery surrounding the tomb of the last Inca emperor - and its reputed treasure - might be closer to being solved. If Ecuadorean historian Tamara Estupinan is right, Emperor Atahualpa's mummified body was kept in the lush, hilly lowlands, a six-hour drive south-west of Ecuador's capital city, Quito. While it is still too early to confirm Ms Estupinan's theory, this discovery could shed light on a tumultuous historical period that marked the beginning of the Spanish colonial era in the Americas. At its height, in the early 1500s, the Inca empire covered most of the Andes, from southern Colombia to central Chile as well as some parts of Argentina. (BBC News)

Mass Grave Begins Revealing Soldiers' Secrets

It was one of the bloodiest battles of the Thirty Years' War, but until recently there was no trace of those who died there. Now a mass grave is shedding light on the mysteries of the Battle of Lützen. Were those who fought hungry young men or well-fed veterans? And where did they come from? (Spiegel Online)

How stone age man invented the art of raving

They were the stone-age equivalent of Glastonbury festival. People gathered in their hundreds to drink, eat and party every summer at revelries lasting several days and nights. Young men met women from nearby communities and married them. Herds of cattle were slaughtered to provide food. These neolithic carousals even had special sites. They were held on causewayed enclosures, large hilltop earthworks built by our forebears after they brought farming to Britain from the continent 6,000 years ago. (The Guardian)

Pitkin County archaeology discovery includes prehistoric tools and weapons

More than two dozen prehistoric tools and weapons found on an undeveloped plot in Pitkin County could provide archaeologists information about hunter-gatherer toolmaking in the West. The find, on private property in the Emma area, on Bear Ridge Road, was reported last week to the Pitkin County commissioners. The owners of the site, David Brown and Jody Anthes, have building rights on the property. They asked the local government last week to place it, instead, on the county’s historical register and grant them two transferable development rights. (Aspen Daily News Online)

Did ancient Germans steal the pharaoh's chair design?

Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe. The simple design consists of two movable wooden frames connected to each other with pins, and with an animal hide stretched between. Such chairs were already being used in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. The oldest depictions are found on 4,500-year-old Mesopotamian seals. (Stone Pages)

Ancient Swedish stone structure spurs debate

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kaseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones - each weighing up to 1,800 kilograms - in the outline of a 67-meter-long ship overlooking the Baltic Sea. (Stone Pages)

May 13th, 2012

Archaeologists Excavate a Lost Kingdom Buried Beneath Volcanic Ash

In 1980, people began to take notice when workers from a commercial logging company began dredging up pottery fragments and bones in an area near the little village of Pancasila on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Other locals began finding coins, brassware and charred timber in the same region, all buried beneath a thick layer of volcanic deposits. The finds were not far from the foot of the Tambora volcano, a volcano that, in April of 1815, produced the largest eruption in recorded history. In fact, so intense was the eruption, it's atmospheric effects influenced weather patterns across faraway Europe and North America. And in one evening alone, it destroyed at least one entire village kingdom near its feet. (Popular Archaeology)

NM teens find possible 900-year-old artifact

group of New Mexico seventh-graders have found what's being called 1 of the most significant, archaeological discoveries in a while. KOAT-TV reports (http://bit.ly/J7g8Ld) that a group of Sandia Prep seventh-graders recently discovered a 14-by-14 inch pot, possibly 900-years-old, while on a field trip in Cibola County. (KCBD)

Bronze Age boat replica fails to float

The band was ready, the champagne was on hand, Time Team's Tony Robinson was there to record the historic event, and the crowds gathered to watch as a half-size replica of Dover's Bronze Age boat prepared to take to the water. The only problem was, it started to sink. A team of craftsmen and archaeologists had been working for several months to build the replica boat, using the same tools and the same methods as their ancestors would have used when the original boat was built more than 3,500 years earlier. (East Kent Mercury)

Dead Sea Scrolls come to life in Philly exhibit

Inside a climate-controlled storage room with a guard posted at the door, Tania Treiger unzips a purposely nondescript case and lifts out one of the world's oldest and most significant archaeological artifacts. The Israel Antiquities Authority conservator is one of only four people in the world allowed to handle the Dead Sea Scrolls, the centerpiece of a new exhibition at The Franklin Institute, where a painstaking examination of the ancient treasures was conducted before they are placed on public view. (York Dispatch)

By   Wed, Feb 22, 2012

The N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh presents a rare opportunity to hear firsthand about the 2004 discovery and subsequent excavation of the ancient Harbor of Theodosius, the principal port of Byzantium or Constantinople, in present-day Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Ufuk Kocabas, Director of Istanbul University’s Department of Marine Archeology and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project, will present a lecture and question-and-answer session about the archaeological findings of the ancient harbor beneath the modern Yenikapi neighborhood of Istanbul on Thursday, March 1, at 7:30 p.m. at the museum. A reception begins at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free.  Kocabas’ two-week lecture tour, his first in the United States, will begin at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., and include stops in North Carolina, Texas and California before concluding with his final lecture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. 

Built in the late 4th century during the reign of Theodosius I (379-395 C.E.), the harbor served as the city’s major point of trade in Late Antiquity. In 2004 workers discovered the silted-up remains of the harbor while tunneling under the Bosphorus River for a rail link between Europe and Asia. Archaeologists have uncovered traces of the city wall of Constantine the Great and the remains of 36 Byzantine ships dating from the 7th to the 10th centuries. The Yenikapi site covers the equivalent of 10 Istanbul city blocks and has yielded approximately 35,000 artifacts spanning nearly 10,000 years of occupation.

“This is unquestionably one of the most important archaeological finds in the last 100 years,” said Joseph Schwarzer II, Director of the N.C. Maritime Museums System. “This has changed, and will continue to change, our understanding of Byzantine history.” The remains of the 36 ships — brick transport vessels, cargo boats, small lighters, and naval galleys — have revolutionized our understanding of ship construction and maritime trade.

Gold coins, jewels, 8,500-year-old skeletons, human skulls, animal bones, and clay amphorae for wine and oil are among the artifacts uncovered at the Yenikapi site. In addition, items fashioned of ivory, bronze, marble, porcelain and finely wrought wood have been recovered, as well as stone tools, iron anchors, and a basket of 1,200-year-old cherries. The artifacts are undergoing study, conservation, preservation and interpretation. As one worker at the Yenikapi site stated, “It’s what nautical archaeologists live for.”

Dr. Elizabeth Shelton, a former U.S. Consul in Adana, Turkey, who is currently the Executive Director of the American Friends of Turkey in Washington, D.C., will also be a special guest at the March 1 program.

For more information about the museum, go to www.ncmuseumofhistory.org or call 919-807-7900. To learn more about the Yenikapi project, visit http://tinyurl.com/87gjjda.

About the N.C. Museum of History

The museum is located at 5 E. Edenton Street, across from the State Capitol. Parking is available in the lot across Wilmington Street. Museum hours are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. The Museum of History, within the Division of State History Museums, is part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

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This article is an edited reprint of a press release provided by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.

Cover Photo, Top Left:  Dr. Ufuk Kocabas, Director of Istanbul University’s Department of Marine Archeology, and the Yenikapi Shipwrecks Project. Photo provided by N.C. Department of Cultural Resources    

By   Mon, Feb 20, 2012

A line of fallen ancient columns remain in place today, undisturbed, configured exactly where they fell after a massive, devastating earthquake destroyed this city on January 18th, 749 C.E. They appear as though the event had happened only yesterday. Images of ancient Pompeii come to mind.

But this was not Pompeii.

Known as Antiochia Hippos (Hippos meaning "horse", or Hebrew Sussita, also meaning "horse"), its ruins are perched atop Sussita Mountain, an isolated table-top mountain that overlooks the eastern bank of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) in present-day Israel. Established initially by the Seleucids as a Greco-Roman enclave, it once controlled two port facilities on the lake and its surrounding countryside. Hippos was part of the "Decapolis", a group of ten cities in Roman Palestine that were maintained as Greco-Roman cultural islands in the Near East. The damage the earthquake caused Hippos was so severe that its citizens abandoned it, never to return again. This left it to the ages with no succeeding settlement and, coupled with its relative isolation and enduring basaltic construction, preserved it much like it was left in the 8th century for 20th century archaeologists to explore.  Since the year 2000, a team of archaeologists, specialists, students and volunteers under Professor Arthur Segal and Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, have been excavating the site. 

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Hippos, the forum. The columns still lay where they fell in the 749 CE earthquake. Photo courtesy Michael Eisenberg

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"Twelve years of continuous archaeological excavations on the site," report Segal and Eisenberg, "have unearthed a wealth of Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad structures erected during a period of a thousand years – from the 2^nd century BCE to the 8^th century CE. Yet much excavation work still has to be done to reveal the city in all its former magnificence and glory."

Thus far, Segal and Eisenberg and their team have excavated a 42 x 42m Roman forum complex, a 55 x 30m Roman basilica, a structure called a "kalybe" (an imperial cult shrine established to express loyalty to Roman imperial rule), the walls of a Hellenistic sanctuary, or temenos, an odeion ( a small theatre-like structure used for small-scale entertainment events), and the remains of two Byzantine churches. 

Says Eisenberg: "During the past twelve seasons we have exposed only a small percentage of the total area of Hippos. Excavation is still in its first stages, but what has so far been discovered is sufficient to show that this is a fascinating site.......The building complexes, the rough wildness of the area, as well as the sweeping panorama of the landscape viewed from the mountain top overlooking the Kinneret and the Galilee, make Hippos one of the most attractive and impressive archaeological sites in Israel."  

Segal and Eisenberg hope to be able to uncover the entire ancient city, including its street network, its main religious and public buildings, as well as its domestic sectors, with an eye toward ultimately shedding more light on our understanding of the presence and role of Hellenistic and Roman culture in the Near East between the 2nd century BCE and the 8th century CE. They intend to do this one year, one season at a time, setting smaller, more manageable objectives through time. "During the four weeks of July 2012, the 13^th season of excavations will be held at the site", says Segal. "This time we will focus on the Roman basilica, on the residential quarter to the west, on the Roman bathhouse to the south, and on exposing the northeast insula". 

Individuals interested in participating in the Hippos excavations may obtain detailed information by going to the website: http://hippos.haifa.ac.il/, or by inquiry to Dr. Michael Eisenberg:  hippos@research.haifa.ac.il. 

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Aerial view of Hippos. Only a small part of the ancient city has been excavated thus far. Photo courtesy Michael Eisenberg

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Cover Photo, Top Left: A view of the ruins of Hippos. Johannes Herold, Wikimedia Commons

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By   Thu, Feb 16, 2012

New findings of a recent archaeoacoustic study suggests that the ancients of the 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center at Chavín de Huántar, in the central highlands of Peru, practiced a fine art and science of manipulating sound with architecture to produce desired sensory effects. With the assistance of architectural form and placement, and sounds emitted from conch-shell trumpets, the oracle of Chavín de Huántar "spoke" to the ancient center's listeners.

Says Miriam Kolar, Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, PhD Candidate
 at Stanford University and leader of the study: 

"At Chavín, we have discovered acoustic evidence for selective sound transmission between the site's Lanzon monolith and the Circular Plaza: an architectural acoustic filter system that favors sound frequencies of the Chavín pututus [conch-shell trumpets] and human voice." 

The Lanzon is a sacred statue or stela depicting the central deity of the ancient Chavín culture. It is housed in the central chamber of a series of underground passages within the Old Temple of the ceremonial and religious center of Chavín de Huántar. A central duct was built to connect the area of the monolith with that of the Circular Plaza, a place of ceremonial activity and significance. The duct was specifically designed to filter to a certain sound range -- namely, the range emitted by the Chavín pututu instrument.

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Located at the Chavín Museum, a model of Chavín de Huántar, New and Old Temple constructions. Courtesy Kimberly Munro

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The temple at Chavín de Huántar. Travail Personnel, Wikimedia Commons

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The Circular Plaza Terrace was built up around the Circular Plaza in order to make the 21m-diameter plaza artificially sunken. Located within the Circular Plaza Atrium, it appears that the terrace and the other components of the Atrium (the plaza, the terrace, a staircase, and three galleries) were constructed contemporarily. The 2.52m tall Tello Obelisk, carved from granite, excavated by Julio Tello in the 1930s and currently housed in the anthropology and history museum in Lima, would have originally stood in the center of this plaza. The thatch roofing, as described by Stanford archaeologist John Rick, protects a series of engraved stone plaques portraying jaguars and Chavin personages that were revealed during excavations in the Circular Plaza.  Photo and text CyArk, Wikimedia Commons.

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The Lanzon stela within its chamber. Frenchguy, Wikimedia Commons

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The Lanzon has been interpreted variously as a principal deity of Chavin, an oracle with the power to speak (thanks to a hole in the roof of the chamber), a symbol of trade, fertility, dualism, and humankind's interaction with nature, or any combination of these. What is evident is that the 4.5m (15 feet)-tall obelisk is a painstakingly carved piece of white granite in a roughly lance-like shape, and depicts a human-feline hybrid with claws, writhing snakes for hair and eyebrows, fangs curved sideways in a smile (thus the nickname 'Smiling God'), and one arm raised while the other is lowered. Other carvings at Chavin de Huantar depict Lanzon clutching a Strombus shell in one hand and a Spondylus shell in the other, which has been interpreted as a possible reference to fertility and the duality of the sexes. Photo and text CyArk, Wikimedia Commons.

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An example of a Chavín pututu. Click on PUTUTU for sound example of a pututu. Photo credit: Jyri Huopaniemi, Museo Nacional Chavín 

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"Because intact sound-producing instruments -- the conch-shell trumpets known in Spanish as "pututus" -- have been excavated at Chavín", continues Kolar, "we can study and record how these artifact instruments sound, and measure their acoustics. 

A comparison between the sounding characteristics of the pututus and the site's spatial acoustic features provides clues about how these instruments may have contributed to the ancient sound environment at the complex."

Central to the purpose of this careful arrangement of sound and architecture and the resulting dynamics is the sensory effect that the sound is designed to have on humans within earshot, which some scholars theorize creates the intended "state of mind" for religious or worshipping purposes. By conducting controlled psychoacoustic experimentation with human participants at the ancient site, researchers were able to test how the site architectural acoustics and artifact instrument sounds interact to produce sensory effects on the participants. 

The relationship between the interaction of architecture and sound and its sensory effect on humans is not a concept or cultural invention unique to or lost with ancients. Consider, for example, the effect on a person standing within an immense cathedral while listening to music of a religious nature. Medieval architects designed the architectural acoustics of these masterpieces of stone and structure to support or enhance the "spiritual" experience of worshippers who practiced within their walls.   

But the study has its limits.

"We could not design a study to determine what an ancient listener thought about what he or she heard, because such questions are both culturally and individually dependent," states Kolar. "However, it is possible to study functional perceptual mechanisms such as auditory localization -- the perception of where a sound source is in relation to the hearer/listener. We can extend findings from such experiments to understand some of the perceptual implications of site architectural acoustics for ancient humans." 

Kolar and colleagues hope to continue to develop research tools such as those used at Chavín de Huántar for application at other archaeological sites. 

The study and its findings were presented at the AAAS Annual Meeting on February 16, 2011.

To find out more about Chavín de Huántar, see the article, Ancient Peru: The First Horizon in Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Model of the ceremonial center. DTarazona, Wikimedia Commons  

By   Mon, Feb 13, 2012

A team of scholars and students will return to explore and investigate the site now thought to be the remains of the lost city of Helike, the legendary city that was for centuries the stuff of ancient writers and a tantalizing mystery for explorers and scientists for over 2,000 years. 

Led by Dr. Dora Katsonopoulou, Director of the Helike Society, researchers have uncovered a wealth of artifacts and structural remains dating from the Bronze Age through the Roman and Byzantine periods at sites near the southwest shore of the Gulf of Corinth in northern Peloponnesos. In 2000 and 2001, the research team located in this area what is now thought to be the remains of ancient Helike, on the coastal plain between the Selinous and Kerynites Rivers. Excavation of trenches revealed the architectural remains of Classical period buildings located at a depth of 3 m, likely destroyed by an earthquake and subsequently buried under the deposits of a shallow inland lagoon. "Thus the city did not sink into the depths of the Corinthian Gulf, as previously believed", reported the researchers, "but was submerged by an inland lagoon, which later silted over". The excavations also uncovered a rich array of artifacts.

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A view of the excavations at Helike. Drekis, Wikimedia Commons

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Also nearby, researchers uncovered evidence of an extensive and remarkably well-preserved Early Helladic coastal settlement (ca. 2600-2300 BC). This site is about 1 kilometer from the present shore, with remains at a depth of 3 to 5 meters below the surface. Finds included the foundations of a corridor house and other buildings that lined cobbled streets, along with abundant pottery. Luxury items found at the site, which included small gold and silver ornaments, have given clues about the apparent wealth of this earlier period city. Additionally, sediments covering the Early Bronze Age city contained marine and lagoon microfauna, indicating that the ancient city was submerged in seawater for a period of time. A wall of one building was clearly offset in a way that strongly suggests the result of seismic activity, indicating that this early settlement may have also been destroyed and submerged by an earthquake, about 2,000 years before the famous earthquake that destroyed classical Helike in 373/372 B.C.  

It was this massive 4th century earthquake that struck the southwest shore of the Gulf of Corinth and destroyed the Classical city of Helike, purportedly submerging it into the sea. According to the literature, Helike, which became the principal city of Achaea, was founded in the Mycenaean period by Ion, the leader of the Ionian race. Helike subsequently became the capital of the Twelve Cities of ancient Achaea. The city area was anciently considered the location of the sanctuary of Poseidon, god of the sea and earthquakes. It was widely discussed in literature by many ancient Greek and Roman writers and visitors such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodoris, Aelian and Ovid, and has been suggested by some scholars to be the inspiration for the story of Atlantis. But, like Atlantis, the actual whereabouts and evidence of Helike's remains have eluded scholars and explorers for 2,000 years.  

It was not until 1988 that efforts began to bear fruit, when Greek archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou launched the Helike Project to locate the site of the lost city. In 1994 a magnetometer survey was carried out in collaboration with the University of Patras in the delta region near the Corinthian Gulf coast where Helike was suspected to be located, revealing the outlines of a buried building. Excavations followed, unearthing a large Roman building with standing walls. But the Classical remains of the city of Helike itself were rediscovered in 2001, buried under vestiges of an ancient lagoon. Since then, excavations have been conducted in the Helike delta area every summer. These excavations have uncovered significant archeological finds dating from the time of Helike's founding to the time of its revival during Hellenistic and Roman times.

Individuals interested in participating in the excavations may find out more by going to the project website at http://www.helikeproject.gr/. 

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Ancient coin attributed to Helike. For a time, Helike minted its own coinage. Wikimedia Commons

By   Sat, Feb 11, 2012

We have seen cave paintings where the splashy red pigment was used to create images by ancient humans in present-day Europe tens of thousands of years ago. Scientists have said that ancient humans used it generally in Europe about 40,000 - 60,000 years ago, in West Asia as long ago as 100,000 years, and by the ancients in Africa as long ago as 200,000-250,000 years. Now, a new study suggests that Neanderthals were also using it in the present-day Netherlands region of Europe as far back as 200,000-250,000 years ago, if not earlier. 

The study, conducted by a team of scientists led by W. Roebroeks of Leiden University, examined and analyzed a sample of red material retrieved from excavations originally conducted during the 1980's at the Maastricht-Belvédère Neanderthal site in the Netherlands. The excavations exposed scatterings of well-preserved flint and bone artifacts that were produced in a river valley during the Middle Pleistocene full interglacial period. During the coarse of the excavation, soil samples were also collected, a typical procedure when excavating a site. Within the soil samples were traces of a reddish material. The samples were subjected to various forms of analyses and experimentation to study their physical properties. They identified the reddish material as hematite, a common mineral form of iron oxide that was used for pigmentation by prehistoric populations.

Said Roebroeks, et. al. in the report:    

We hypothesize that the best explanation is that the fine hematite material was originally concentrated in a liquid solution, and that blobs of this ochre-rich substance became embedded in the sediments during use of the liquid, spilled on the soil surface. To test this interpretation, we performed an experiment to observe the impact of drops of a hematite-rich liquid on the site C sediment. Despite the limitations of this experiment, the similarity of the experimentally produced concentrates to the archeological concentrates at both macroscopic and microscopic levels is remarkable and lend support to our interpretation of how the material entered the sediment. [1]

Moreover, the study further found that the nearest source of hematite for the red ochre pigment was "40 km from the site, in the Ardennes and Eifel areas", suggesting that the compound had to have been transported by the Neanderthals to the site from a distant location. The red ochre pigment thus might have been a part of their bag of desirable portables in their hunter-gatherer way of life. 

So what were these early Neanderthals actually doing with this liquified red ochre? Many scientists suggest they may have been used for body decoration, such as in the case of some modern hunter-gatherer groups. Based on archaeological finds, such compounds were also sometimes used to make a glue for adhering stone points to wooden shafts. And again, based on observations of use by modern hunter-gather groups, ochre may have been used to soften animal hides.  

The details of the study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), January 23, 2012.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Some of the many paintings inside the Laas Geel caves, near Hargeisa in Somaliland/Somalia.  Abdullah Geelah, Wikimedia Commons.

[1] Use of red ochre by early Neandertals, Wil Roebroeks, Mark J. Siera, Trine Kellberg Nielsena, Dimitri De Loeckera, Josep Maria Parésb, Charles E. S. Arpsd, and Herman J. Müchere, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands; Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana, 09002 Burgos, Spain; Paleomagnetic Laboratory Fort Hoofddijk, Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, 3584 CD, Utrecht, The Netherlands; dNCB Naturalis, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands; and University of Amsterdam, 6301 VK, Valkenburg, The Netherlands.

By   Thu, Feb 09, 2012

Scientists have long held that some of the rainforests of Central Africa disappeared about 3,000 years ago, abruptly replaced by savannas due to a dramatic shift in the regional climate. However, the conclusions of a recent study now suggest that it was not climate change alone that may have been responsible for the shift -- that humans may have had a big hand, as well.  

Germain Bayon and a research team of colleagues conducted a geochemical analysis of a marine sediment core taken at the mouth of the Congo River and determined that the sediment had undergone very significant chemical weathering around 3,000 years ago. While climate change at the time was a factor, the weathering also coincided with the arrival of Bantu-speaking farmers from the region that now encompasses modern-day Cameroon and Nigeria. These Bantu peoples, according to the researchers, brought their agriculture and iron smelting technologies with them, possibly contributing to and enhancing the changes that impacted the Central African rainforests. As they intensified their land use by cutting down trees to create arable land for agriculture and iron smelters, the ensuing erosion and effects on the climate helped to create a drier, more savannah-like landscape around 3,000 years ago, resulting in the conditions we see today.

Reports Bayon, et. al., "evidence from our proxy record that chemical weathering rates at that time were unprecedented during the last 40 thousand years clearly suggest that the environmental impact of human population in the central African rainforest was already significant about 2500 years ago, at least greater than that induced by the Late Quaternary (the past 0.5-1.0 million years) climatic oscillations"[1].

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The African savannah. Many scenes like this were once covered with tropical forest over 3,000 years ago.  Wikimedia Commons

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This paper is published online by the journal Science, at the Science Express website, on Thursday, 09 February. Seehttp://www.sciencexpress.org. 

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[1] "Intensifying Weathering and Land-Use in Iron Age Central Africa," by G. Bayon; B. Dennielou; J. Etoubleau; E. Ponzevera; S. Toucanne; S. Bermell at IFREMER in Plouzané, France. This work was sponsored by the French National Research Agency (ANR), via the ECO-MIST project.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Tropical rainforest in Gabon, Central Africa. Nik06, Wikimedia Commons

By James Dau   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

University archaeology programs are best known for sending their faculty and students to far-flung corners of the globe in their pursuit of the human past.  From the Egyptian desert to the heights of the Andes, archaeologists have made discovery after discovery, peeling back layers of history with each layer of soil and adding new chapters to the story of our species.  Their work has been, and remains, supremely important to our expanding understanding of where we have come from.  Their exploits, however, have so captivated the public eye that they have come to define the entirety of the field.  Few think to look closer to home for evidence of the past, and fewer still to the academic centers that sponsor the research.  Yet archaeology need not take place exclusively so far afield.  The places we live and work every day, including our universities, are just as much a source of knowledge about ourselves and our past as any Roman hill fort.  The archaeologists at Michigan State University have, since 2005, been applying this principle to their own school in the form of the Campus Archaeology Program.

Dr. Lynne Goldstein has run Michigan State’s Campus Archaeology Program since its inception six years ago.  “It started in the summer of 2005,” she told me from behind a desk covered in papers and books. “Before then, nobody was given permission to conduct any archaeology on campus.” 

As the first land grant institution in the United States, the university has a rich history spanning the last century and a half.  Buildings were built and torn down, with new structures erected above the remains of the old.  The campus, perhaps unsurprisingly, looks drastically different today than it did in 1855.  Miles of asphalt streets divide a school dotted with towering laboratories, libraries, class buildings, and parking structures.  Utility lines and drainage pipes run beneath the surface. Yet the proliferation of blueprints, plans, maps, and written documents from every period of the school’s history did little to encourage archaeological study of the campus. 

“I felt one of the problems was that they felt there were no archaeological resources to be found,” Goldstein said of the university’s prior attitude toward performing such research on its own campus.

This began to change in 2005, the 150^th anniversary of the university.  The provost of the school, Lou Anna Simon, requested of its many academic departments that they each propose a project related to the university in commemoration.  The archaeology department proposed an excavation at the site of Saints’ Rest, the school’s first dormitory building.  Initially their proposal met with skepticism and doubt, but as the year continued the school administration saw a shift in personnel that was more willing to give the project a chance.  Work began that summer, and the results were better than even Goldstein could have hoped for.  The Saints’ Rest project shed new light on the lives of students at a mid-nineteenth century university, both in terms of their living conditions and their lifestyles.  While the official rules and regulations of the school had been available in documentary sources since they were first recorded, the school archaeologists found evidence of frequent rule-breaking on the part of students, as the team found a variety of historic alcoholic beverage bottles among the artifacts.  The discovery of wood-burning stoves, along with structural remains, helped the team reconstruct the dorm rooms these students lived in, rooms of which no photographic evidence exists.

The Michigan State University Campus, ca. 1855.  Saints' Rest is on the far left.  Photo courtesy of Michigan State Anthropology Dept.

The Saints’ Rest project was deemed a resounding success by all involved, from the team on the ground all the way up to the highest echelons of university administration.  Archaeological consultation became a regular facet of campus development meetings.  The added responsibility was more than Goldstein, or any one person, could handle effectively alone.  With such widespread support and a clearly identifiable need for an expanded archaeological operation, the groundwork was laid for a more permanent campus archaeology initiative.  The cultural heritage of the campus has since proven to be far richer than any thought possible, extending from the depths of prehistory into the immediacy of the twentieth century.  Such unexpected wealth necessitated the expansion of the Campus Archaeology Program into its current form, an organization of the school’s anthropology department involved in most development and construction projects on campus, in addition to purely academic work.  According to Goldstein, this stands in contrast to comparable efforts at other universities. “Other schools that have tried similar projects tend to focus on a particular area of their campus," she said.  "I envisioned a broader scale for Michigan State, one that would allow us to be good stewards of our entire past.”

Students uncover the remains of a stove from the Saints' Rest site.  Photo by Lynne Goldstein.

The Campus Archaeology Program has continued to produce interesting and important findings since its foundation.  On a regular basis Goldstein and the students she now employs engage in cultural resource management for every construction project on campus, conducting field and archival research in order to determine whether any archaeological material is endangered by a particular endeavor, as well as taking steps to prevent the destruction of that material should they determine that it is in danger.  Concurrent with these small-scale efforts, commonplace in the field of archaeology as a whole, are larger projects which present more substantial academic gains.  In 2009, during routine shovel testing in advance of a project to replace worn and broken sections of sidewalk in the center of campus, the team uncovered part of the foundation of a College Hall, the first building erected at the school in 1855.  According to the excavation report submitted by the team to the university, further investigation yielded the location of the northeast corner of this building, with the possibility of uncovering further structural remains during future sidewalk replacement projects.  With each new investigation, the Campus Archaeology Program brings new light to these chapters of the school’s history.

A Campus Archaeology Program team excavates along the Red Cedar River.  Photo by Lynne Goldstein.

By uncovering the past, the Program hopes to help solve the problems of the present.  “Like other researchers on campus, we want to address sustainability at Michigan State,” Dr. Goldstein explained, “By looking at transportation and food networks, we can gauge how sustainable the school was in the past.”  By examining questions such as where the campus acquired food, whether by producing it on site or bringing it in from elsewhere, and how the advent of the automobile changed campus life, Program teams hope to shed light on what it means to be sustainable and how technological innovation has impacted sustainability at an institutional level.

The Campus Archaeology Program currently employs three to four student interns, as well as a part-time Campus Archaeologist, a graduate student who directly leads field projects and interfaces with the public under Dr. Goldstein’s supervision.  Katy Meyers, the current Campus Archaeologist, takes this responsibility to heart. “It’s important to conduct archaeology before any construction project, even more so at Michigan State because of our rich history.” 

In the last year, Project teams have uncovered a substantial historical trash deposit, as well as prehistoric features dating back millennia.  The efforts to gather data from these sources is ongoing, but the possibilities that both present cannot be understated.  The trash deposit, as with any such deposit in the archaeological record, has the potential to truly illuminate the lives of residents through the commonplace items they cast aside.  The prehistoric features, on the other hand, could very well add a new chapter to the story of this part of the world, extending its history back much further than before.

Simply reporting findings is not enough for Meyers, however.  A significant portion of her responsibilities lies with educating the public, both in and around the university, regarding that rich history and her team’s efforts to preserve and understand it. “Archaeology is a process, not just a moment of discovery," she maintains.  "It’s important for us to show people our field for what it is.”  Through the use of social media and public events at dig sites, she aims to accomplish just that.  By involving the local community in their work, by making their results accessible to this broader audience and encouraging their interest, they take the past out of the hallowed halls of academia that, in this case, literally surround these excavations and put it in the hands of those to whom it belongs.  The current local and student communities are the true heirs of the story the Campus Archaeology Project uncovers layer by layer, piece by piece.  “Through this job,” Meyers said, “I’ve seen that people really do care about the deep history here at Michigan State.”

Members of the community attend an open house during excavations.  Photo by Lynne Goldstein.

In addition to its academic goals, the Campus Archaeology Program also serves as a training ground for the future of the field.  Undergraduate and graduate students alike receive invaluable practical experience through Program work, both in the lab and in the field.  Every other summer the Project hosts an archaeological field school for Michigan State students, centering around specific areas of interest on campus.  The original Saints’ Rest project was the first such field school.  The field schools embody the three preeminent goals of the Campus Archaeology Program.  Academically, they aim to acquire greater insight into the cultural resources of the Michigan State campus.  As an arm of the anthropology department, they help educate and train students for work in the field.  As a part of the larger university community, they also promote public engagement with the past through guided tours during the field season, as well as by encouraging community participation through social media and blog updates.

Despite its many achievements and significant involvement in campus activities, the Program continues to meet with skepticism from those largely unfamiliar with it.  Many people believe that the presence of documentary sources in the university archives negates the need for archaeological research.  “We use archaeology as its own separate line of evidence,” Meyers said.  “It’s a different telling of the past as compared to the written record.”  Goldstein concurred, saying, “Archival documents tell you what people wrote about, what they thought most important to note, but archaeology tells you a different side of the story.  What people leave behind is just as important as what they write down.”  The truth of their words can be found in their earlier findings at Saints’ Rest, where evidence of rule-breaking students was uncovered through archaeology that would have never been found in the documentary sources that exist.  By reconciling material culture with the written record, a more complete story of a place emerges than would ever be possible with just one of those sources.

Campus Archaeologists excavate prior to a sidewalk replacement project.  Photo by Lynne Goldstein.

Archaeological research spans the entire globe, with teams working on every inhabited continent to uncover the truth of the human story.  So often our minds become captivated by the exotic nature of many of these projects, by the physical grandeur of the monuments that overshadow them or the inhospitable environments which surround them, that we overlook those projects which do not share the same sensational settings.  We find it hard to believe that a history just as important could lie beneath the surface of a place so deeply entrenched in the day-to-day business of modern life.  Yet the Michigan State Campus Archaeology Program proves otherwise.  By applying the same methods and mindset to their own community as they would a project on foreign soil, they have been able to produce findings every bit as compelling as those of the archaeologists their school has sent much farther afield, with impacts much more immediate.  The Program stands as a model for other institutions to take ownership of their own heritage rather than allowing it to pass by unnoticed. 

As Goldstein said at the close of our interview, “What we really want to do here is promote responsible stewardship of our own cultural resources.”  Archaeology, along with the material record it exposes and translates, represents our past, the very foundation of our culture.  By looking closer to home, the archaeologists at Michigan State University have been able to better understand their own origins, their own place in history.

By   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

A group of historians and archaeologists prepare a Tudor Christmas feast that would have been prepared over 400 years ago, using only the resources and techniques of 16th century Tudor England, including the clothes that were worn. The film covers not only the details involved in preparing the food and settings, but also the traditions and mentality of the times. The re-enactment or re-creation was made possible through meticulous research and study of historical sources and documents and information gleaned from archaeological finds and research. (Cover Photo, Top Left: A Tudor Manor House, Richard Croft, Wikimedia Commons)

By   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

A reassembled ship of the Pharaoh, using the original materials carefully stored away by the ancients themselves.  Photo Bradipus, Wikimedia Commons.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Watch Building Pharaoh's Ship on PBS. See more from NOVA.

By   Mon, Dec 05, 2011

Photo left: Jugs in Situ, Khirbet Qeiyafa, archaeology site excavation, Israel ca. 2009.  Photo credit: Hanay, Wikimedia Commons.  Video produced by Bob Gabel.

By   Tue, Nov 08, 2011