Archaeology News for the Week of June 5th, 2011

December 2011, Daily News

Sun, Jun 05, 2011

June 11th, 2011

Artifacts reveal Blackbeard's terror tactics

The notorious pirate Blackbeard used improvised weapons and missiles to terrorize the seas from Virginia to the Caribbean in the early 18th century, an exploration of the ocean floor off the North Carolina coast has revealed. Aimed at recovering a 1.4-ton anchor, the two-week expedition on what is believed to be the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship Queen Anne's Revenge, also produced new evidence about the pirate's terror tactics. (msnbc.com)

N.J. pushes forward with plans to close Petty's Run archaeological dig in Trenton

The state is moving ahead with a plan to close the Petty’s Run archaeological dig behind the Statehouse, soliciting bids for the $410,434 job of filling the excavation site. The project was advertised for bids May 27, and companies can bid for the job until June 21. Depending on construction schedules and the bids received, construction could start as soon as July. (nj.com)

Real life 'Indiana Jones' visited Sterlington

Just over a century ago, Clarence B. Moore traveled to Sterlington by steamboat and became the first to excavate an American Indian burial site in the area. (BastropEnterprise.com)

Broken idols of Keros: British archaeologists explain Greek mystery

To say it has been an archaeological mystery may be an understatement: why are fragments of beautiful but deliberately smashed bronze age figurines buried in shallow pits on a small, rocky Greek island whose main inhabitants have always been goats? Today, academics at Cambridge University will release findings that shed light on the 4,500-year-old puzzle of Keros, a tiny Cycladic island in the Aegean. (guardian.co.uk)

June 10th, 2011

Great Ancient Monumental Center in Peru Lies Forgotten, But Not for Long

The ruins of this mysterious ancient monumental center bespeak a majesty long forgotten through centuries of abandonment and decay. Built over 1,600 years ago atop a highland mesa at 3,200 meters (10,000 feet), it commands a sweeping view of the three Northern Peruvian mountain valleys below it. Archaeologists call it the "Machu Picchu of the North", and rightly so. Covering more than 3 kilometers of land, it is known for its impressively massive castillos and circular double-walled structures and enclosures. But over the years, its impressive remains have fallen prey to the elements, both natural and human-derived, such as weathering, plant growth, livestock grazing, and lack of conservation. Now, it appears its long decline ends and a new lease on life begins. (Popular Archaeology)

Human Ancestors in Eurasia Earlier than Thought

Archaeologists have long thought that Homo erectus, humanity's first ancestor to spread around the world, evolved in Africa before dispersing throughout Europe and Asia. But evidence of tool-making at the border of Europe and Asia is challenging that assumption. (Scientific American)

Students hope to dig up artifacts of King Philip's War in Mystic

Kevin McBride and his team of students from the UConn Archaeological Field School launched a dig at the Denison Homestead Thursday to seek evidence of a stockade and troops preparing to fight in King Philip's War from 1675 to 1676. (TheDay.com)

Mozart charity shop find only 'one of 10 in the world'

When an Oxfam volunteer at the charity's Reading shop opened up a box of donated sheet music, she knew almost immediately there was something special about the tatty score on top. Elestr Lee, a musician, quickly spotted the printed composer's name at the bottom - Wolfgang Mozart. (BBC News)

Asphalt may have poisoned ancient Americans

On the beaches of southern California you can sometimes find clumps of a sticky black substance with a texture halfway between molasses and rubber. These tarballs are made of an oily substance called bitumen, commonly used today in asphalt for roadway surfaces. Prehistoric people around the world used bitumen, which seeps from the ground naturally in places, to caulk the seams of ocean-going craft and for waterproofing woven baskets to make drinking vessels as well as for making casts for broken bones and poultices for sore joints. Some of California's prehistoric Chumash peoples even chewed bitumen like gum. (Stone Pages)

June 9th, 2011

Tut, tut: Microbial growth in pharaoh's tomb suggests burial was a rush job

In the tomb of King Tutankhamen, the elaborately painted walls are covered with dark brown spots that mar the face of the goddess Hathor, the silvery-coated baboons—in fact, almost every surface.Despite almost a century of scientific investigation, the precise identity of these spots remains a mystery, but Harvard microbiologist Ralph Mitchell thinks they have a tale to tell. Nobody knows why Tutankhamen, the famed "boy king" of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, died in his late teens. Various investigations have attributed his early demise to a head injury, an infected broken leg, malaria, sickle-cell anemia, or perhaps a combination of several misfortunes. Whatever the cause of King Tut's death, Mitchell thinks those brown spots reveal something: that the young pharaoh was buried in an unusual hurry, before the walls of the tomb were even dry. (EureAlert)

Silver from the Americas May Have Entered the Spanish Economy Later Than Thought

European metal dominated Spanish silver coinage up until the reign of Philippe III (1578-1621) and it was only in the 18th century that it was completely replaced by Mexican metal. These are the conclusions of a team of researchers from CNRS, ENS in Lyon and Université Lyon 1. Using mass spectrometry analyses, they have succeeded in determining the provenance of coinage circulating in Spain after 1492. (ScienceDaily)

Archaeologists discover skeleton in doctor's garden

A skeleton, possibly dating from Roman times, has been unearthed by archaeologists from the University of Bristol during a dig in the garden of vaccination pioneer Dr Edward Jenner in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. (University of Bristol)

The axeman cometh 450,000 years ago

WHEN Alan Price found himself with an hour to spare he decided to walk along the beach looking for the semi-precious stones which are often washed ashore. Instead, he stumbled upon an ancient axe which could be up to 450,000 years old and may change our understanding of Scottish history. (Scotsman.com)

Strabo ahead of his time by nearly 2,000 years

Chalk up another win for the ancient Greeks. The Greek historian and geographer Strabo wrote nearly 2,000 years ago that Piraeus, a small peninsula near Athens, had once been an island--and a new study in this month's issue of Geology shows he was right. (CBS News)

Farmers were genetic breeders 10,000 years ago

Chinese rice farmers 10,000 years ago were early pioneers of modern genetic breeding. Like modern breeders they seemed to realise that shorter plants would produce higher yields, and unwittingly selected for mutations in a gene that shrinks rice stems: the stalkier plants produce more grain without falling over. (NewScientist)

June 8th, 2011

Early Americans helped colonise Easter Island

South Americans helped colonise Easter Island centuries before Europeans reached it. Clear genetic evidence has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonised from the west, there was also some influx of people from the Americas. Easter Island is the easternmost island of Polynesia, the scattering of islands that stretches across the Pacific. It is also one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. (New Scientist)

Pyramid Hieroglyphs Likely Engineering Numbers

Mysterious hieroglyphs written in red paint on the floor of a hidden chamber in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza are just numbers, according to a mathematical analysis of the 4,500-year-old mausoleum. (Discovery News)

Bacteria munch grime to restore ancient art works

Biologists involved in the restoration of a church in Spain are using bacteria to clean years of grime from its 17th Century frescoes. The art works at the Church of Santos Juanes in Valencia were destroyed by a fire in 1936 but then restored badly in the 1960s. (Wired.co.uk)

The story behind the world's oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago

In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world's first museum. (io9)

June 7th, 2011

Out of Africa? Not so fast

The worldwide spread of ancient humans has long been depicted as flowing out of Africa, but tantalizing new evidence suggests it may have been a two-way street.A long-studied archaeological site in a mountainous region between Europe and Asia was occupied by early humans as long as 1.85 million years ago, much earlier than the previous estimate of 1.7 million years ago, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Early human Homo erectus is known to have occupied the site at Dmanisi later. Discovering stone tools and materials from a much earlier date raises the possibility that Homo erectus evolved in Eurasia and might have migrated back to Africa, the researchers said - though much study is needed to confirm that idea. (CBS News)

University of Chicago institute completes dictionary of ancient language after 9 decades

Some might wonder if it is a bit late in the game, but scholars at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute have finally completed the Assyrian Dictionary, listing 28,000 words of a language that hasn't been used for more than 2,000 years. (Chicago Tribune)

Autism May Have Had Advantages in Humans' Hunter-Gatherer Past, Researcher Believes

Though people with autism face many challenges because of their condition, they may have been capable hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times, according to a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology in May. (Science Daily)

Bulgarian Archaeologists Embark on Alpine Mission to Thracian Kings' Residence

Bulgaria's National History Museum are starting the largest alpine expedition in the history of Bulgarian archaeology in order to excavate the residence of the rulers of the Odrysian Kingdom, the state of the most powerful tribe of Ancient Thrace. (novinite.com)

7000 years old prototype of European towns found in Bulgaria

Bulgarian archaeologists discovered what they believe to be the oldest town in Europe, local media reported. Dubbed a 'proto-town', the site is situated near the town of Pazardzhic, in the center of the country. (Balkan Travellers)

Archaeologists excavate Chinese bronze age site

Chinese archaeologists report the discovery of a settlement thought to belong to the bronze age Dian period in Yunnan province. (SEAArch)

June 6th, 2011

The Road to Aqaba: Archaeologists Explore the Great Arab Revolt

If you are thinking that this has something to do with the revolts that are occurring today across the Arab world, you would be wrong. Aside from the turmoil that is making current headlines about that region of the world, archaeologists are quietly and systematically exploring the pieces and landscape left behind by the seminal events of World War I in the deserts of Jordan. You might recall the cinematic images of Lawrence of Arabia, attacking by surprise with Arab forces on camel-back into Aqaba and later blowing up Ottoman-controlled trains along the Hejaz railway. Remember the movie? For the past five years archaeologists working in Jordan have been showing us that there is more to the war story that defined the context of these events. They will return again in November, 2011, this time to investigate the historic road to Aqaba that T.E. Lawrence and many others took to wrest control of the strategic city from the Ottoman Turks. It was a key element for eventual victory in World War I. Investigations will also include an exploration of Abu al Lissan, the site of a major historic battle between the Hashemite and Ottoman forces. (Popular Archaeology)

Archaeology dating technique uncovers 'property boom' of 3700 BC

A new scientific dating technique has revealed there was a building spree more than 5,500 years ago, when many of the most spectacular monuments in the English landscape, such as Maiden Castle in Dorset and Windmill Hill in Wiltshire, were built, used and abandoned in a single lifetime. The fashion for the monuments, hilltops enclosed by rings of ditches, known to archaeologists as causewayed enclosures, instead of being the ritual work of generations as had been believed, began on the continent centuries earlier but spread from Kent to Cornwall within 50 years in about 3700 BC. (guardian.co.uk)

Sifting Through Garbage from the End of the Ice Age: It’s a Living for Frontier Scientists

This summer, archaeologists are continuing work at a 12,000-year-old prehistoric site which is yielding evidence of generations of wandering hunters who camped on a bluff overlooking the Kivalina River. What they have found is contributing new insights—and contrary new evidence--into the thinking on how humans spread throughout North America at the close of the Pleistocene. (Anchorage Daily News)

New View on the Origin of First Settlers in Iceland

An archeological find in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula (close to Keflavík Airport) may indicate that some men had started to come to Iceland before the year 874 AD, the year that has traditionally been considered the first year Nordic men came to Iceland to stay. Archeologist dr. Bjarni F. Einarsson says that research at Hafnir indicate ruins of a cabin (Icelandic: Skáli) built well before the traditional year of origin of settlement. (Iceland Review Online)

Etruscan House Reveals Ancient Domestic Life

Italian archaeologists have discovered the first-ever intact Etruscan house, complete with furniture, bricks and terracotta tiles identical to the ones still used in Tuscany today. (Free republic)

June 5th, 2011

Egyptian Mummies Hold Clues of Ancient Air Pollution

Ancient Egyptians may have been exposed to air pollution way back when, according to new evidence of particulates in the lungs of 15 mummies, including noblemen and priests. Particulates, tiny microscopic particles that irritate the lungs, have been linked to a wide array of modern-day illnesses, including heart disease, lung ailments and cancer. The particulates are typically linked to post-industrial activities, such as fossil-fuel burning. But after hearing of reports of such particulates being found in mummy tissue, Roger Montgomerie, a doctoral student at the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, decided to take a closer look at mummified lung tissue. His work represents the first attempt to identify and study particulates in multiple Egyptian mummies. (Live Science)

Major archaeological investigation launched on Roman religious site at Hadrian's Wall Maryport

A major archaeological investigation into the mystery of a group of Roman stones found more than 140 years ago has begun on the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site in Cumbria. The Roman altars, dedicated to the Roman God of Jupiter, were found by local digger Humphrey Senhouse at Camp Farm in 1870, buried under farmland enclosing the Maryport fort and civilian settlement. (Culture24)

Getting on with a colossal task [18th dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III]

The mortuary temple of the 18th-Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III was the largest temple complex in the Theban area. It stretched over a 350,000-square- metre space, guarded at the main gateway by a pair of gigantic statues of Amenhotep popularly known as the Colossi of Memnon, with smaller statues of Queen Tiye and Queen Mutemwiya at their feet. (Free Republic)

Over 200,000 ancient coins retrieved from well

Archaeologists in east China’s Jiangsu Province have unearthed about 200,000 ancient coins in a well on a construction site in the city of Suzhou. (Pakistan Times)

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