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Scientists Discover First Domestication of Cattle in China

Posted on November 8, 2013 by No Author -

It began with the discovery of a lower jaw of an ancient cattle specimen during an excavation in north-east China. Carbon dated to be 10,660 years old, it showed a wear pattern on the molars which, according to the researchers, is a strong indication of long-term human management of the animal. Moreover, analysis of the ancient DNA extracted from the jaw indicated that the animal was not related to the same cattle lineages that were domesticated in the Near East and South Asia.

The discovery overturns the long-accepted theory that the first domestication of cattle occurred in the Near East region around 10,000 years ago. Now, if the findings are correct, it seems domestication took place at more than one center around the same time.

The research was co-led by Professor Michi Hofreiter of the University of York and Professor Hucai Zhang of Yunnan Normal University in China. Said Hofreiter: “The specimen is unique and suggests that, similar to other species such as pigs and dogs, cattle domestication was probably also a complex process rather than a sudden event.”

Like the development of agriculture, domestication of cattle is considered a key benchmark in the expansion of human population and the rise of settlements and urban civilization. Until now, scientists have suggested that humans began domesticating cattle first around 10,000 years ago in the Near East, giving rise to humpless (taurine) cattle, followed by the management of humped cattle (zebu) two thousand years later in Southern Asia.

The new research is published in detail in Nature Communications.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release of the University of York.

Cover Photo, Top Left: China Rice field with cattle and farmer. Photographer: Markus Raab, Wikimedia Commons

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Popular Archaeology’s annual Discovery edition is a selection of the best stories published in Popular Archaeology Magazine in past issues, with an emphasis on some of the most significant, groundbreaking, or fascinating discoveries in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology and related fields. At least some of the articles have been updated or revised specifically for the Discovery edition. We can confidently say that there is no other single issue of an archaeology-related magazine, paper print or online, that contains as much major feature article content as this one. The latest issue, volume 2, has just been released. Go to the Discovery edition page for more information.

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Study Sheds Light on Dawn of Agriculture in Far Northern Climes

Posted on November 6, 2013 by No Author -

Floods didn’t make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth’s far north because the waters were virtually devoid of nitrogen, unlike other areas of the globe scientists have studied.

Instead, the hardy Norsemen and early inhabitants of Russia and Canada have microorganisms called cyanobacteria to mostly thank for abundant grasses that attracted game to hunt and then provided fodder once cattle were domesticated. The process is still underway in the region’s pristine floodplains.

The new findings are surprising because it’s long been assumed that nitrogen crucial to plant growth mainly arrived with floods of river water each spring, according to Thomas DeLuca, a University of Washington professor of environmental and forest sciences and lead author of a paper in the Nov. 6, 2013 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

Discovering that cyanobacteria in the floodplains were responsible for nitrogen fixation – that is taking it from the atmosphere and “fixing” it into a form plants can use – partially resolves the scientific debate of how humans harvested grasses there for hundreds of years without fertilizing, DeLuca said. It raises the question of whether farmers today might reduce fertilizer use by taking advantage of cyanobacteria that occur, not just in the floodplains studied, but in soils around the world, he said.

It also might lead to more accurate models of nitrogen in river systems because none of the prominent models consider nitrogen being fixed in floodplains, DeLuca said. Scientists model nitrogen loading of rivers, especially where industrial fertilizers and effluent from wastewater-treatment plants cause dead zones and other problems in the lower reaches and mouths of rivers.

Ten rivers and 71 flood plains were studied in northern Fennoscandia, a region that includes parts of Scandinavia and Finland. The rivers were chosen because their upper reaches are pristine, haven’t been dammed and are not subject to sources of human-caused nitrogen enrichment – much like river systems humans encountered there hundreds of years ago, as agriculture emerged in such “boreal” habitats. Boreal habitat – found at 60 degrees latitude and north all the way into the Arctic Circle, where it meets tundra habitat – is the second largest biome or habitat type on Earth.

In the northern regions of the boreal, the surrounding hillsides have thin, infertile soils and lack shrubs or herbs that can fix nitrogen. In these uplands, feather mosses create a microhabitat for cyanobacteria, which fix a modest amount of nitrogen that mostly stays on site in soils, trees and shrubs. Little of it reaches waterways. On the floodplains, high rates of nitrogen fixation occur in thick slimy black mats of cyanobacteria growing in seasonably submerged sediments and coating the exposed roots and stems of willows and sedges.

“We joke and call the floodplains the ‘mangroves of the North’ because there are almost impenetrable tangles of willow tree roots in places, like a micro version of the tropical and subtropical mangroves that are known to harbor highly active colonies of cyanobacteria,” DeLuca said.

“It turns out there’s a lot of nitrogen fixation going on in both,” he said. For example, the scientists discovered that in spite of the dark, cold, snowy winters of Northern Sweden, the cyanobacteria there fix nitrogen at rates similar to those living the life in the toasty, sun-warmed Florida Everglades.

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Huts used for storing fodder dot the floodplains, where sedges have been harvested for hundreds of years without additional fertilization. Early settlers cleared willows to encourage and harvest sedges and grasses. Credit: T DeLuca/U of Washington

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The amount of nitrogen provided by the cyanobacteria to unharvested willows and sedges is perhaps a quarter of what U.S. farmers in the Midwest apply in industrial fertilizers to grain crops and as little as a sixth of what they apply to corn.

Human-made fertilizers can be fuel-intensive to produce and use, for example, it takes the energy of about a gallon of diesel to produce 4 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer. In developing countries in particular, nitrogen fertilization rates are spiraling upward, driving up fossil-fuel consumption, DeLuca said. Meanwhile, cyanobacteria naturally occurring in farm soils aren’t fixing nitrogen at all in the presence of all that fertilizer, they just don’t expend the energy when nitrogen is so readily available, he said.

“Although modest in comparison to modern fertilization, the observation that cyanobacteria could drive the productivity of these boreal floodplain systems so effectively for so long makes one question whether cyanobacteria could be used to maintain the productivity of agricultural systems, without large synthetic nitrogen fertilizer inputs,” he said.

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Source Credit: Sandra Hines, University of Washington press release.

Co-authors of the paper are Olle Zackrisson and Ingela Bergman with the Institute for Subarctic Landscape Research, Sweden, Beatriz Díez

Cover Photo, Top Left: Sedges and willow trees get the nitrogen they need from cyanobacteria living in the sediments of pristine boreal floodplains found at 60 degrees latitude and north into the Arctic Circle. Credit: T DeLuca/U of Washington

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A Secret to the Building of the Forbidden City Revealed

Posted on November 5, 2013 by No Author -

Based on historical research and experiments in mechanical engineering, an international study group has confirmed that Chinese workers in the 16th century CE used artificially created ice paths lubricated with liquid water to transport massive stones to the Forbidden City in Beijing. The method was used, despite the fact that the Chinese civilization had already developed wheeled vehicles capable of moving very heavy objects for 2,000 years.

Study lead author Jiang Li and colleagues first researched the historical literature on the topic, including a 500-year-old document that records the moving of the “Large Stone Carving”. Weighing about 123 tons, a team of men moved it during the deep winter of 1557 a distance of 70 km over 28 days to the Forbidden City using a sliding sledge over a path of ice repeatedly lubricated by water dug from succeeding wells along the path. They tested the technique using materials and conditions that duplicated similar activity, and what they found supported the plausibility of the historical record.

“We show that an ice lubrication technique of water-lubricated wood-on-ice sliding was used instead of the common ancient approaches, such as wood-on-wood sliding or the use of log rollers,” reported Jiang Li and colleagues. “The technique took full advantage of the natural properties of ice, such as sufficient hardness, flatness, and low friction with a water film. This ice-assisted movement is more efficient for such heavy-load and low-speed transportation necessary for the stones of the Forbidden City.”*

The authors determined that fewer than 50 men would have been sufficient to pull the sledge using this method, whereas pulling the same load over ground using the more commonly known ancient methods would have required a force of more than 1,500 men. Given the climatic conditions that existed in the Beijing region in the mid-16th century, the researchers concluded that a wood sledge over lubricated ice could have moved fast enough over a lubricating water film before the water froze to impede forward movement.

The study report is published in full detail in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Workers likely slid massive stones, such as this 300-ton marble carving in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, Beijing, China, along artificial ice paths. Image courtesy of Chui Hu.

* Article #13-09319: “Ice lubrication for moving heavy stones to the Forbidden City in 15th- and 16th-century China,” by Jiang Li, Haosheng Chen, and Howard A. Stone.

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Rare Early Biblical Manuscripts Return to View at Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery

Posted on November 4, 2013 by No Author -

More than 100 years after they were first on view to the public in museum-founder Charles Lang Freer’s Detroit home, two rare antique biblical manuscripts will return to view at the Freer Gallery of Art Nov. 16. The Washington Codex–one of the oldest manuscripts of the four Gospels in the world–as well as an ancient parchment volume of Deuteronomy and Joshua will be on view through Feb. 16, 2014, in the unexpected setting of James McNeill Whistler’s blue-and-gold Peacock Room.

The Washington Codex, also known as the Codex Washingtonensis or Freer Gospels, is the third-oldest parchment manuscript of the gospels in the world, dating from the fourth to fifth centuries. The scriptures of Deuteronomy and Joshua are substantially complete texts from the Old Testament and date from the same period. Painted wooden covers, designed to protect the Gospels and decorated with representations of the four Evangelists, will also be on view. (More on Freer’s collection of Biblical manuscripts)

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Washington Manuscript III: The Four Gospels (Codex Washingtonensis) Egypt, late 4th–early 5th century Ink on parchment Gift of Charles Lang Freer Freer Gallery of Art, F1906.274 Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art

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Freer purchased the manuscripts in 1906 in Giza, Egypt, and later organized and underwrote significant early biblical scholarship. While researching their cultural context and physical structure, it was discovered that the Washington Codex contains a passage not found in any other biblical text-a segment at the end of the Gospel of Mark known as the Freer logion (a logion is a saying attributed to Jesus), which will be viewable during the exhibition.

However, Freer was mainly interested in aesthetic beauty and harmonies among the various objects in his collection, regardless of type or origin. In November 1912, he opened his Detroit home to the public and used Whistler’s Peacock Room as a display space to curate his acquisitions, filling the shelves with pottery from the Middle East and Asia, tables of Buddhist sculpture and glass cases containing the Washington Codex and Old Testament manuscripts. Having recently promised his collection to the Smithsonian, the room became a beautiful laboratory where Freer could bring seemingly disparate objects into a visual conversation.

“When Freer chose to exhibit his rare biblical manuscripts in the Peacock Room, he was demonstrating his belief in cross-cultural correspondence,” said Lee Glazer, curator of American art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. “Juxtaposing these sacred texts with ceramics and aesthetic decoration underscored Freer’s belief that ‘all works of art go together.'”

Due to their extreme fragility and sensitivity to light, the manuscripts are rarely exhibited, last appearing as highlights of the Sackler’s landmark exhibition in 2006, “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000.” For this reason, the opening of the Peacock Room shutters on the third Thursday of each month will be suspended while the bibles are on view, resuming on Feb. 20, 2014.

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The Freer Gallery of Art, located at 12th Street and Independence Avenue S.W. and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, located at 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., together house the nation’s collection of Asian art on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hours are from 10 a.m to 5:30 p.m. every day except Dec. 25, and admission is free. The galleries are located near the Smithsonian Metrorail station on the Blue and Orange lines. For more information, the public may call (202) 633-1000 or visit www.asia.si.edu.

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Source: Press release of the Freer Gallery of Art

Cover Photo, Top Left: Detail, Saint Mark and Saint Luke; right cover of Washington Manuscript II: The Four Gospels (Codex Washingtonensis) Egypt, Byzantine period, 7th c. Encaustic painting on wooden panel Gift of Charles Lang Freer Freer Gallery of Art, F1906.298 Courtesy Freer Gallery of Art

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Archaeology News for the Week of November 3rd, 2013

Posted on November 3, 2013 by No Author -

November 3rd, 2013

Tutankhamun’s body spontaneously combusted INSIDE his coffin following botched embalming job after he died in speeding chariot accident

The mummified body of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun burst into flames inside his sarcophagus after a botched attempt to embalm him, according to scientists in a new documentary. After his death in 1323 BC, Tutankhamun was rapidly embalmed and buried, but fire investigators believe a chemical reaction caused by embalming oils used on his mummy sparked the blaze. A fragment of flesh from the boy pharaoh, whose tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, was tested by researchers who confirmed his body was burnt while sealed in his coffin.(Daily Mail)

Persian silk in Viking burials

The silk trade was far more comprehensive than we have hitherto assumed and recent research may change our perceptions of the history of the Norwegian Vikings. After four years of in-depth investigation of the silk trade of the Viking Age, Marianne Vedeler, Associate Professor at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo has found that the Norwegian Vikings maintained trade connections with Persia and the Byzantine Empire through a network of traders from a variety of places and cultures who brought the silk to the Nordic countries. (Iranian.com)

King Herod’s Tomb a Mystery Yet Again

Herod the Great, the king of Judea who ruled not long before the time of Jesus, seems to have eluded historians once again. In 2007 archaeologists announced they had found the great king’s tomb, a surprisingly modest mausoleum that was part of the Herodium, a massive complex built by Herod on a cone-shaped hill in the desert outside Jerusalem. (LiveScience)

Blow to multiple human species idea

The idea that there were several different human species walking the Earth two million years ago has been dealt a blow. Instead, scientists say early human fossils found in Africa and Eurasia may have been part of the same species. Writing in the journal Science, the team says that Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus are all part of a single evolving lineage that led to modern humans. (BBC News)

Archaeologists discover 3,000-year-old religious center in northern Peru

A religious center more than 3,000 years old from the pre-Incan Chavin culture has been discovered by Peruvian researchers in the Congona archaeological zone in northern Peru’s Lambayeque region, archaeologist Walter Alva said Thursday. (Global Post)

Aztalan offers a peek into the past

Westbound from Milwaukee, the scenery on I-94 gradually shifts from subdivision and strip malls to rolling Wisconsin prairie blanketed in cornfields. At Exit 259, about two-thirds of the way to Madison, some make a seven-minute detour to Aztalan State Park, a tranquil rest stop on the banks of the Crawfish River. It’s a chance to see an unusual archaeological site, an outpost of a long-lost Indian civilization. Toward twilight, you can sit atop a grass-covered, 900-year-old ceremonial mound and take in the pastoral vistas. (BendBulletin)

Archaeology project unearths history at Quail Creek

The digging is over but the work has just begun on an archaeological project just inside the entrance to Quail Creek.
WestLand Resources in Tucson has had 10 workers at the two-acre site for about six weeks, and on Thursday ended what it calls data recovery. They’ll spend the next several months processing and analyzing artifacts and preparing a report for Quail Creek developer Robson Communities, which requested the work. (Sahuarita Sun)

Executions in Roman London

At a cemetery on the eastern fringes of Roman London in 100AD, a sombre, yet grand ceremony was taking place. A prosperous citizen was being buried just outside the city boundaries — no Roman, however rich, could be buried within the city walls to prevent the spread of disease. (IOL Scitech)

Resourceful Neanderthals in France

Posted on November 1, 2013 by No Author -

How “smart” were the Neanderthals, really? The question has been at the center of scholarly debate for decades. But the findings of recent research, including archaeological investigations at a site known as Abri du Maras, near Ardèche, southeastern France, have yielded clues that may expand the known repertoir of tools and behaviors that Neanderthals used to survive in the world that existed about 74,000 years ago.

An international team of scientists from France, the U.S. and Spain recently conducted residue analysis and zooarchaeological analysis on stone tools and other materials, including otherwise perishable materials such as wood fragments, recovered from excavations at the archaeological site of Abri du Maras in France’s Middle Rhône Valley.

What they found was enlightening.

“Neanderthal behavior is often described in one of two contradictory ways: 1) Neanderthals were behaviorally inflexible and specialized in large game hunting or 2) Neanderthals exhibited a wide range of behaviors and exploited a wide range of resources including plants and small, fast game,” state the authors in a publicly available abstract of a study soon to be published in Quaternary Science Reviews. But the results of their research show that Neanderthals actually “exploited a wide range of resources including large mammals, fish, ducks, raptors, rabbits, mushrooms, plants, and wood.”* The finds included such evidence as cut marks on bones of the European rabbit, rabbit hair residue, plant fragments and fibers, fragments of bird feathers and fish scales, and a variety of projectile points and Levalloise flakes. Levalloise flakes are usually associated with Neanderthal stone tool technology.

It flies in the face of the popular image of Neanderthals as a human species with a relatively limited set of tools, techniques and resources, a suggestion often cited by many scholars as one reason why they could not effectively compete with the new arrivals on the Eurasian scene, Homo sapiens, or modern humans, leading to the eventual extinction of the Neanderthals.

The evidence also included traces of twisted fiber, suggesting the manufacture of cordage or string, and six lithic points that show characteristics implying the use of complex projectile technology, a development that has been usually associated with early modern humans.

Concludes the study authors: “This evidence shows a level of behavioral variability that is often denied to Neanderthals. Furthermore, it sheds light on perishable materials and resources that are not often recovered which should be considered more fully in reconstructions of Neanderthal behavior.”*

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* Abstract, Bruce L. Hardy, et al., Impossible Neanderthals? Making String, throwing projectiles and catching small game during Marine Isotope Stage 4 (Abri du Maras, Farnce), Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 82, 15 December 2013.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Neanderthal skull, Muséum d’Anthropologie, campus universitaire d’Irchel, Université de Zurich (Suisse), Guerin Nicolas, Wikimedia Commons

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A Motherlode Raised from Blackbeard’s Pirate Ship

Posted on October 29, 2013 by No Author -

With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday, October 28, 2013, archaeologists with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources raised what is to date the biggest motherlode of artifacts yet from the wreckage of Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, still lying on the seafloor in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. The catch included five complete cannons and two large concretions. A concretion is hardened conglomerations of sand, shells, and coral which begin to build up around artifacts, especially iron objects, soon after they are deposited on the seabed.

Blackbeard is known to have gathered a hodge-podge of cannons from different countries as he equipped his vessel with 40 guns. To date, 29 guns have been located at the shipwreck site near Beaufort. The research team, led by the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, has recovered artifacts from 60 percent of the site, including cannons, anchors, gold dust, animal bones, lead shot, medical and scientific instruments, and much more. Altogether about 280,000 artifacts have been recovered. Full recovery is planned by 2014. An extensive Queen Anne’s Revenge exhibit is at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort.

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One of the five cannons being raised from Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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A large concretion raised from the wreckage of Backbeard’s pirate ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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Otherwise variously known as Edward Teach or Edward Thatch, Blackbeard served as a privateer during Queen Anne’s War (1701 – 1714). It was sometime soon after the war that he turned to piracy, plying the shipping lanes off the North American coastline and throughout the Caribbean with fellow pirate captains Benjamin Hornigold and Stede Bonnet, plundering scores of vessels for their goods and capturing and co-opting some of their sailors and others with needed skills to man their fleet. Things took a good turn for Blackbeard when in the late fall of 1717, after making their way to Martinique island in the eastern Caribbean, Blackbeard’s fellow pirate Hornigold captured a French slave ship, then known as La Concorde. Large and well-equipped, it made an attractive addition to their fleet, and Hornigold turned it over to Blackbeard. Blackbeard made it his new flagship, renaming it Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR).

Now empowered with his new flagship, Blackbeard sailed throughout the Caribbean and up the North American coast, plundering new targets and adding yet more to his treasures and his fleet. His flagship’s career ended in 1718, however, when Blackbeard attempted to enter Old Topsail Inlet in North Carolina, today known as Beaufort Inlet. During the attempt, Queen Anne’s Revenge, accompanied by the companion sloop Adventure, ran aground on an ocean bar and were abandoned, never to be used again.

But well over two centuries later, on November 21, 1996, a team from the private research firm Intersal, Inc., discovered a cluster of cannon and anchors on the seabed of Beaufort Inlet. It was first located by Intersal’s director of operations, Mike Daniel, using data from historical research provided by Intersal’s president, Phil Masters, and archaeologist David Moore, nautical archaeology curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum. A number of artifacts were recovered from the site, including a bronze bell dated to 1705, a sounding weight, an English blunderbuss barrel, a lead cannon apron, 2 cannonballs, cannon tubes, and 2 large anchors. The artifacts, in combination with historical documentation, geographic context, and further research, led the team to conclude that this was indeed the wreckage of Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. A follow-up dive in 1997, this time by the Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) of the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, afforded archaeologists the opportunity to thoroughly examine the shipwreck, leading to the additional recovery of two cannons, four cannonballs, a pewter platter, pottery fragments and other artifacts.

Since then, more than 280,000 artifacts have been recovered, including 20 cannons, ship timbers, 2 anchors, pewter flatware, medical instruments, gun parts, cannon shot, gold grains, glass wine bottles, and ceramic pieces, to name but a few of the types.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Cannons safely aboard deck after being raised from the seafloor. Courtesy NC Department of Cultural Resources.

Sources: Some of the material adapted from a press release by the NC Department of Cultural Resources.

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Nazi Death Camp Yields Its Secrets

Posted on October 27, 2013 by No Author -

October 14, 1943 is a date that is not well known in the annals of World War II. Yet it marks a remarkable event that reflected a moment of triumph in the story of thousands of human victims who went helplessly to their deaths at the hands of their Nazi captors inside the Sobibór extermination camp in eastern Poland. It was the day when 500 Jewish prisoners executed a rebellion and successful escape.

Israeli archaeologist Yoram Haimi made excavation and investigation of this site a personal journey — he had two uncles who died there during the War. Working with Dr. Philip Reeder, Dean of Duquesne University’s Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, he had the site surveyed, mapped, and then excavated over a period of 5 years beginning in 2007. Using technology and conventional archaeological excavation and recording techniques, an archaeological team uncovered evidence of structures and artifacts of victims, including those of children, in their original locations along the traces of walkways and buildings used to exterminate nearly 250,000 Jews during the camp’s operation from April 1942 to October, 1943.

It was not the first time anyone had attempted to excavate the site. In 2001, a group of Polish researchers, archaeologists, and historians began investigating the site, but very little of its material remains had been found. Following the revolt in 1943, the Nazis had effectively liquidated the site by removing most of its traces by demolishing the structures, covering it with soil, planting trees and disguising it as a farm. It took modern techniques of detection, including ground-penetrating radar, and work by a joint Polish-Israeli team with actual fieldwork carried out by a team of Polish archaeologists led by Wojciech Mazurek, to recover substantial numbers of artifacts along with significant evidence of the camp’s features and structures.

By August 2012, the team of workers had recovered numerous artifacts interpreted to be the last possessions of some prisoners. In addition to evidence of structures and other features on the camp area landscape, artifacts included teeth, bone shards, jewelry, keys and coins that gave clues to identifying the victims. “The most important of these was an aluminum identification tag belonging to a six-year old girl, Lea Judith De La Penha of Amsterdam,” writes Haimi in a recent preliminary report, “who arrived from the Westerbork Camp in Holland together with her parents, on a transport that left on July 6, 1943 and arrived to Sobibór on July 9, 1943. The child’s mother was Judith de Abraham Rodrigues Parreira, b. 1903 and her father was David de Hartog Juda De La Penha, b. 1909. The De La Penha family belonged to a community of ‘Portuguese Jews’ who arrived from Spain and Portugal to Holland approximately one hundred years after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492……Following the German invasion, the situation for Dutch Jews became critical and in July 1942, the first transports of Jews to Poland began.”

Arguably the most important discovery was, however, the traces of the postholes that marked the path of what the Nazis called the Himmelfahrstrasse, or “Road to Heaven”, the path along which the prisoners were marched naked to the gas chambers.

Sobibór is distinguished from other similar camps throughout Nazi occupied Europe in that approximately 500 Jewish camp workers organized a revolt that was carried out on October 14, 1943, leading to the successful escape of 300 Jews. Of the others, dozens were killed in the mine fields around the camp and still others were hunted down in the succeeding days.

A documentary honoring the 70th anniversary of the rebellion will be screened at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh on the evening of November 11, 2013. The film will be followed by speakers Philip Reeder and Yoram Haimi, who will relate the details of the excavation project at Sobibor. It is free to the public. More information is detailed below.

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When: Monday, Nov. 11, from 7 to 10 p.m.

7 p.m., Reeder address

7:20 p.m., Film screening and questions-and-answer session with Haimi

8:30 p.m., Haimi lecture, Archaeology of the Holocaust: Excavations at Sobibor

9:30 p.m., reception and informational discussions

Where: Power Center, Duquesne University, Forbes Avenue at Chatham Square, Pittsburgh

Admission: Free and open to the public

Sponsored by: The Nathan J. and Helen Goldrich Foundation, Duquesne University and its Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

Contacts: Rose Ravasio, 412.396.6051/cell 412.818.0234

Karen Ferrick-Roman, 412.396.1154/cell 412.736.1877

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Cover Photo, Top Left: I.D. tag of Lea Judith De La Penha. Courtesy Yoram Haimi

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Big Catch of Big Cannons at Blackbeard Shipwreck Site

Posted on October 26, 2013 by No Author -

BEAUFORT, N.C. — The final week of the expedition at the wreck of Blackbeard’s flagship,Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR), is pulling out the big guns. Literally. Five cannons, four weighing 2,000 pounds and one nearly 3,000 pounds, will be lifted from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean Monday, Oct. 28, weather permitting. All the cast iron cannons fired six pound cannon balls, and will bring to 20 the cannons raised from the site. This will be the biggest ‘catch’ of cannons recovered at one time.

“We think the largest of the four cannons may be of Swedish origin since the only other recovered gun this size was made in Sweden,” Project Director Billy Ray Morris observes. “We also hope to recover two large concretions each the size of a twin bed. They may contain barrel hoops, cannon balls and other treasures.”

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Source: Press release of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Cover Photo, Top Left: Cannon being lifted from the sea floor at the site of the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site. Credit: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

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For more information about the Queen Anne’s Revenge archaeological project, see the official website and a major feature article, Raising Pirates, in the September 2013 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Last Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans Still a Mystery

Posted on October 21, 2013 by No Author -

It appears that the search for and identification of fossil remnants of the last common ancestor (termed ‘LCA’ by paleoanthropologists) of both Neanderthals and modern humans, long a subject of debate among scientists studying human evolution, will remain a mystery. At least for now.

So suggests the conclusions of a PNAS-published study conducted by Aida Gómez-Robles, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scientist at the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology of The George Washington University, and an international team of colleagues.

The study, the first of its kind, used quantitative data collection and analysis techniques to reconstruct a mathematically-informed model of the probable dentition of the Neanderthal/modern human LCA. They then compared known fossil dentitions of classified species of Homo (the genus of great apes that includes modern humans and species closely related to them) to the reconstructed LCA model. Fossil examples from the European Middle Pleistocene (ca. 781 to 126 thousand years ago) and others from Africa were used in the comparison. They included fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species of Homo, including fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites in Spain, which have yielded some of the earliest known fossils of ancient humans in Europe. They considered two alternative Neanderthal/modern human divergence times based on previous research: 450 ka (thousand years) based on molecular clock estimate research results; and 1 Ma (million years) based on the morphological (physical form and structure) affinities among the various subject species found in the fossil record.

What they found was that “no known hominin species matches the expected morphology of this common ancestor”.*

“Furthermore,” write Gómez-Robles in their report, “we found that European representatives of potential ancestral species have had affinities with Neanderthals for almost 1 My (million years), thus supporting a model of early divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans.”*

This is a significant finding because Neanderthals and modern humans have previously been thought to have diverged from each other about 300,000 – 700,000 years ago (molecular clock estimate of 450 ka falling within that range) based on genetic studies. Thus the divergence time suggested by the fossil record may possibly be closer to the actual divergence time.

But this early divergence is by no means conclusive.

“Our results call attention to the strong discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates of the divergence time between Neanderthals and modern humans,” said Gómez-Robles. “These discrepancies cannot be simply ignored, but they have to be somehow reconciled.”

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This image shows diversity in premolar and molar morphology in Neanderthals, modern humans and potential ancestral species. Credit: Aida Gómez-Robles, PNAS

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Moreover, their research results show that African fossils dated within the range of 500 ka to 1 Ma “merit continued study and are currently the most promising source of candidates for the [Neanderthal/modern human] LCA.”*

But the relevant fossil record in Africa is currently too thin to be used as a viable database.

“The study tells us that there are still new hominin finds waiting to be made,” says P. David Polly, professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the study.

For going forward, the researchers suggest that quantitative and statistical methods provide a better way to settle debates about human origins than the descriptive analyses that have been used in the past. “Our primary aim,” they write, “is to put questions about human evolution into a testable, quantitative framework and to offer an objective means to sort out apparently unsolvable debates about hominin phylogeny.”* They also suggest applying their methodology to study other body parts represented in the hominin fossil record.

The details of the study report can be reviewed in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

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*Aida Gomez-Robles, et al., No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1302653110.

Source: Aida Gomez-Robles, et al., No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans, and press release of the George Washington University.

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Legio Excavations Reveal Roman Camp of VIth Ferrata Legion in Judea

Posted on October 19, 2013 by No Author -

WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 18, 2013)—This summer, the Jezreel Valley Regional Project (JVRP) teamed up with Israeli archaeologist Yotam Tepper to expose a Roman camp just south of Tel Megiddo. The first archaeological investigation of a second-century C.E. Roman camp in the Eastern Empire uncovered remains from the legendary Roman VIth Ferrata Legion. In a free web-exclusive report, directors Matthew J. Adams, Jonathan David and Yotam Tepper share dramatic discoveries from the 2013 Legio excavations.

The legion was deployed during the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (117–138 C.E.), and it remained stationed in Judea through most of the third century C.E. Based in the Jezreel Valley near Tel Megiddo, the Sixth Ironclad Legion was well situated to control important centers of the local Jewish population. Surveys conducted by Yotam Tepper clarified the location of the military base, and in the summer of 2013 Tepper and the JVRP excavated part of the long-lost camp of the Legio VI Ferrata.

In a free, web-exclusive report, the directors describe discoveries from test trenches excavated over an area of 295 by 16.5 feet. Finds include defensive earthworks, a circumvallation rampart, barracks areas and artifacts including roof tiles stamped with the name of the Sixth Legion, coins and fragments of scale armor.

The excavation of a Roman military headquarters with clear ties to major political and cultural events in the formative years of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity is exciting in itself, but Legio also provides a new window into the Roman military occupation of the eastern provinces. No military headquarters of this type for this particular period had yet been excavated in the entire Eastern Empire.

Legio and Tel Megiddo are identified with Biblical Har Megiddo, the gathering place for the armies before the Last Battle in the New Testament (Revelations 16:16), the origin of the modern term Armageddon. The Jezreel Valley Regional Project is only in its opening stages, but excavations at this theological and historical military gathering point have already yielded dramatic discoveries.

Click here to read the free online excavation report by Matthew J. Adams, Jonathan David and Yotam Tepper: www.biblicalarchaeology.org/legio

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Press Release by Noah Wiener, Bibilical Archaeology Society

Cover Photo: Crop stamp found at 2013 Legio excavations. Courtesy JVRP

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Ancient Humans Crossed Ocean Barrier?

Posted on October 17, 2013 by No Author -

A team of scientists are now suggesting that the Denisovans, an ancient human species that lived concurrent with Neanderthals and early modern humans, may have successfully crossed Wallaces Line, one of the world’s largest biogeographic marine barriers in Indonesia, subsequently interbreeding with early modern humans who were on their way to Australia and New Guinea.

In 2010, a small bone fragment of a finger bone was discovered in Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Asia. Later genetic analysis indicated that it belonged to a heretofore unknown ancient human species, named Denisovans, and that their DNA is still present in native populations of Australia, New Guinea and surrounding regions. There is a distinct, and puzzling, absence of the DNA in Asian populations.

Now, as published in a Science opinion article, Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide in Australia and Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in the UK are suggesting that the DNA presence could be the result of the Denisovans crossing over the deep oceanic marine barrier of Wallaces Line, a biogeographic gap that is so significant that it defines the division between European and Asian mammals on its west and marsupial-dominated Australasia on its east.

“In mainland Asia, neither ancient human specimens, nor geographically isolated modern indigenous populations have Denisovan DNA of any note, indicating that there has never been a genetic signal of Denisovan interbreeding in the area,” says Professor Cooper, Director of the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. “The only place where such a genetic signal exists appears to be in areas east of Wallace’s Line and that is where we think interbreeding took place — even though it means that the Denisovans must have somehow made that marine crossing.”

“The conclusions we’ve drawn are very important for our knowledge of early human evolution and culture,” says Stringer. “Knowing that the Denisovans spread beyond this significant sea barrier opens up all sorts of questions about the behaviours and capabilities of this group, and how far they could have spread.”

“The key questions now are where and when the ancestors of current humans, who were on their way to colonise New Guinea and Australia around 50,000 years ago, met and interacted with the Denisovans,” says Professor Cooper.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a University of Adelaid Press Release.

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Skull Find Could Change Picture of Early Human Evolutionary History

Posted on October 17, 2013 by No Author -

We may have to change some thinking about early human evolution in a major way, suggests researchers, after studying new fossil finds at the site of Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. What has previously been thought to be separate ancient human species – Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo ergaster, for example, may actually be variations of one and the same species. This is the conclusion of a recent examination of fossil finds uncovered at this, the world’s earliest known hominid site outside of Africa.

The new report describes the analysis of a complete, approximately 1.8-million-year-old cranium that was discovered in 2005 by scientists who, 5 years earlier, uncovered its corresponding mandible (jaw) at the same location. Combined, these fossils now constitute the most complete adult ancient human ancestor skull known to be identified with the Early Pleistocene genus of Homo (the genus of great apes that includes modern humans and species closely related to them). The Early Pleistocene time period ranged between 2.588 ± 0.005 Ma (million years ago) and 0.781 ± 0.005 Ma.

The cranium and mandible, together designated as Skull 5, combines a relatively small braincase with a long face and large teeth. These two fossils were discovered alongside the remains of four other early Homo fossil finds, animal fossils, and simple stone tools. The finds included associated fossils indicating modern human-like limb proportions and body size. What makes the discoveries unique is that all of the artifacts were found in context indicating the same time period and location, providing scientists the first and best opportunity to compare physical traits among multiple human fossil specimens representing what were previously thought to be members of different species living contemporaneously.

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This is the Dmanisi early Homo cranium in situ. Photo courtesy of Georgian National Museum

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The face of Dmanisi Skull 5 (cranium and mandible together). Photo courtesy of Malkhaz Machavariani, Georgian National Museum

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Dmanisi Skulls 1-5 (left to right), and a Dmanisi landscape. Image courtesy of M. Ponce de León and Ch. Zollikofer, University of Zurich, Switzerland

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After examining the remains, the research team, consisting of Dr. David Lordkipanidze from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, along with colleagues from Switzerland, Israel and the United States, concluded that the differences among these fossils vary no more than the differences between five modern humans or five chimpanzees.

“Thanks to the relatively large Dmanisi sample, we see a lot of variation,” said Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerland—a co-author of the Science report. “But the amount of variation does not exceed that found in modern populations of our own species, nor in chimps and bonobos……Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species.”

Historically, variations among Homo fossil finds in Africa and Asia have also been found, but these differences have never been found within the same spatial and time period context, and thus scientists have classified the various finds as belonging to separate species. These new findings suggest that researchers need to re-adjust their thinking when determining how early Homo fossil discoveries are classified.

In the larger picture, human evolutionists have theorized that the Homo fossils discovered at Dmanisi represent ancient human ancestors that diverged from Australopithecus and then soon after dispersed from Africa. The significance of Skull 5 suggests that, during the early Pleistocene, rather than several different Homo species, a single Homo species (Homo erectus), capable of coping with a variety of ecosystems, emerged from Africa.

The report is published in the 18 October issue of Science.

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Archaeology News for the Week of October 13th, 2013

Posted on October 14, 2013 by No Author -

October 14th, 2013

Link to Oetzi the Iceman found in living Austrians

Austrian scientists have found that 19 Tyrolean men alive today are related to Oetzi the Iceman, whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was found in the Alps. Their relationship was established through DNA analysis by scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University. The men have not been told about their connection to Oetzi. The DNA tests were taken from blood donors in Tyrol. (BBC News)

Prehistoric Code Found In Clay Balls From Mesopotamia May Represent First Data Storage System

Researchers studying clay balls from Mesopotamia have discovered clues to a lost code that was used for record-keeping about 200 years before writing was invented. The clay balls may represent the world’s “very first data storage system,” at least the first that scientists know of, said Christopher Woods, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, in a lecture at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, where he presented initial findings. (Huffington Post)

European hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers lived side-by-side for more than 2,000 years

Hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers lived side-by-side for more than 2,000 years in Central Europe, before the hunter-gatherer communities died out or were absorbed into the farming population. In a paper published today in Science, researchers describe their analysis of DNA and isotopes from human bones found in the ‘Blätterhöhle’ cave near Hagen in Germany, where both hunter-gatherers and farmers were buried. (EurekAlert)

Archaeologists discover rare 18th-century mission site in St. Augustine

The lot on Duero Street looks pretty much like any other slightly overgrown site to passers-by, but for archaeologists it’s a treasure trove. There is no gold or silver here, but lots of fragments of Native American pottery and some European pottery, signs this is the remains of a farmstead that was once part of an 18th-century mission site known as Pocotalaca. (Jacksonville.com)

Rare Second World War bunker unearthed in Hampshire by sewage workers

IT is a reminder of the days when the south was in the front line of defending the country from the Nazis. Thought to be one of just two in the country a rare Second World War bunker has been uncovered in Hampshire by sewage workers after being buried for half a century. (Southern Daily Echo)

Amesbury dig ‘could explain’ Stonehenge history

A group of archaeologists is undertaking a major dig in Wiltshire, which it is hoped could explain why Stonehenge was built where it was. The team, which consists of leading experts in the Mesolithic period, also hopes to confirm Amesbury as the oldest continuous settlement in the UK. (BBC News)

Discovery of a 2,700-Year-Old Portico in Greece

A 2,700-year-old portico was discovered this summer on the site of the ancient city of Argilos in northern Greece, following an archaeological excavation led by Jacques Perreault, Professor at the University of Montreal’s Centre of Classical Studies and Zisis Bonias, an archaeologist with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. (Science Daily)

Half a million years ago, proto-men recycled, say Israeli scientists

If you thought recycling was just a modern phenomenon championed by environmentalists— think again. There is mounting evidence that hundreds of thousands of years ago, our prehistoric ancestors recycled objects they used in their daily lives, say researchers gathered at an international conference in Israel. (HAARETZ)

6,000-Year-Old Wine Found In Greece; Ancient Samples May Be Oldest Unearthed In Europe

Conventional wisdom agrees that a fine wine generally gets better with age — good news for the 6,200-year-old wine samples unearthed in Greece, huh? Researchers working at an ongoing dig site in northern Greece recently announced that the final results of residue analysis from ancient ceramics showed evidence of wine dating back to 4200 B.C., according to the Greek Reporter. The excavation, located at a prehistoric settlement known as Dikili Tash, is situated 1.2 miles from the ancient city of Philippi and has been inhabited since 6500 B.C., according to the researchers’ website. (Huffington Post)

New Emotional Clues to Human and Ape Evolutionary Links

Posted on October 14, 2013 by No Author -

It has often been suggested by human evolutionists that humans and apes shared a common ancenstry about 6 milion years ago, not surprising given the fact that humans and certain species of apes, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, share approximately 99% of the same genetic plan.

Now, new additional clues to their linkage have been identified by researchers studying primate behavior in Africa.

Zanna Clay, PhD, and Frans de Waal, PhD, of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, recently conducted a study of bonobo emotional behavior at a sanctuary near Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This bonobo sanctuary includes many victims of bushmeat hunting. In the study, they found striking similarities between the emotional development of the bonobos and that of children, suggesting these great apes behaved emotionally in a human-like way.

By using video analysis techniques, they measured how well bonobos manage their own emotions as well as how they react to the emotions of others. Their observations indicated that young bonobos who were raised by their own mothers recovered more quickly and easily from their own emotional upheavals due to traumatic life events than those who were orphaned, and that those raised by their own mothers generally also showed more empathy toward their fellow bonobos when they suffered emotional upsets. The same pattern holds true for human children. For example, Clay noted that the bonobos who were raised by their original parents tended to give more body comfort, such as kissing, embracing, and touching, to those who were in distress, a type of behavior seen among human children, as well.

A similar pattern applies to the overall control of emotions. Bonobos who have been orphaned had greater difficulty managing their emotions as compared to their counterparts with stable original parents. This included the ability to temper strong emotions and avoid over-arousal. In human children, emotion regulation is considered critical to healthy social development. Socially competent children are able to maintain their emotions within bounds. A stable parent-child bond is essential for this, which is why human orphans typically have trouble managing their emotions.

Previous brain research has suggested that the bonobo (Pan paniscus), considered along with the chimpanzee as our closest primate relative, is the most empathic great ape. “This makes the species an ideal candidate for psychological comparisons,” says de Waal. “Any fundamental similarity between humans and bonobos probably traces back to their last common ancestor, which lived around six million years ago.”

The results are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Genetic Studies Reveal Ancient Makeup of Modern European Populations

Posted on October 10, 2013 by No Author -

The actual picture of human population origins may never have been as simple as traditional theories might have suggested. At least for Europeans, recent genetic studies seem to be hinting at mixtures and interactions resulting from multiple population migrations that formed the foundations of the modern populations we see today. To this end, international teams from a number of educational and research institutions worldwide have produced two major studies that show, through the analyses of isotopes and genetic material from archaeological sites in Germany, genetic changes that provide insight into human migration patterns during the transition from foraging to farming in Central Europe, including the persistence of hunting and gathering as a lifestyle even after farming was established.

In the first study, Guido Brandt and his colleagues researched ancient mitochondrial DNA of 364 individuals from nine different cultures that populated the Mittelelbe-Saale region of Germany over 4,000 years, spanning the period from about 5,500 to 1,550 BCE. This was during the time when Europeans were thought to be transitioning from hunting and gathering to farming and metallurgy. Their analysis suggested that, initially, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were replaced by Neolithic farmers for about 2,500 years after the advent of agriculture in the region. These new farmers were introduced from the Near East, Anatolia and the Caucasus. This was then followed by an exchange of genetic material with hunter-gatherers from Scandinavia. The research also suggested two more subsequent population events during the Late Neolithic, when the genomes of a people with farming lifestyles were introduced from the east and west. Based on this genetic mix during the late Neolithic, they found that the population resulting from these successive migrations and associated genetic exchanges were the likely ancestors of the current modern European population.

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Burials provide not only important insights into social and ritual life of prehistoric populations, but also biological information that can be used to reconstruct past population movements. A female of the Corded Ware culture was buried together with hundreds of shell sequins. Karsdorf, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. This image relates to the paper by Dr. Brandt et al. [Image courtesy of Juraj Lipták]

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In the second study, Ruth Bollongino and colleagues sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of 25 individuals from the ancient Blätterhöhle archaeological site in Hagen, Germany, and also analyzed the sulfur, nitrogen and carbon isotopes contained in the specimens’ bones and teeth. The results suggest that, over time, three distinct populations inhabited the region: one initial population of hunter-gatherers and two later populations — one consisting of Neolithic farmers that were likely new migrants to the region, and another consisting of Neolithic hunter-gatherers that subsisted primarily on freshwater fish. The latter two cultures apparently lived side-by-side for about 2,000 years with little or no interbreeding, suggesting that hunter-gatherer cultures persisted alongside farming cultures for 2,000 years after the introduction of agriculture to the region.

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Excavations inside the Blätterhöhle cave are impaired by its very narrow structure. This image relates to the paper by Dr. Bollongino et al. [Image courtesy of H. Wippermann]

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The Palaeogenetics Laboratory in Mainz, Germany, offers high-standard cleanroom facilities necessary for contamination-free analyses of ancient DNA. This image relates to the paper by Dr. Bollongino et al. [Image courtesy of R. Bollongino]

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The details of the study reports have been published in the journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a Science magazine press release.

Article #18: “Ancient DNA Reveals Key Stages in the Formation of Central European Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity,” by G. Brandt; C. Roth; A. Szécsényi-Nagy; S. Karimnia; S. Möller-Rieker; N. Nicklisch; K.W. Alt at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Mainz, Germany; W. Haak; A. Cooper at University of Adelaide in Adelaide, SA, Australia; C.J. Adler at University of Sydney in Sydney, NSW, Australia; H. Meller; R. Ganslmeier; S. Friederich; V. Dresely at State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt and Heritage Museum in Halle, Germany; J.K. Pickrell; D. Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA; F. Sirocko at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Mainz, Germany; The Genographic Consortium.

Article #23: “2000 Years of Parallel Societies in Stone Age Central Europe,” by R. Bollongino; C. Sell; Z. Fajkošová; A. Powell; J. Burger at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany; O. Nehlich; M.P. Richards at University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada; O. Nehlich; M.P. Richards at Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany; M.P. Richards at University of Durham in Durham, UK; J. Orschiedt at Free University Berlin in Berlin, Germany; M.G. Thomas at University College London in London, UK.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Burials provide not only important insights into social and ritual life of prehistoric populations, but also biological information that can be used to reconstruct past population movements. A burial site of the Bell Beaker culture with enclosures of stone. Karsdorf, Rothen Schirmbach, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. This image relates to the paper by Dr. Brandt et al. [Image courtesy of State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt]

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Getty Villa Examines Life and Legacy of Roman Emperor Tiberius

Posted on October 10, 2013 by No Author -

LOS ANGELES—Buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, an over-life-size bronze portrait of Tiberius (ruled A.D. 14–37) was discovered in 1741, during the first years of excavation at Herculaneum. On loan from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, this statue is the subject of the exhibitionTiberius: Portrait of an Emperor, on view at the Getty Villa October 16, 2013 through March 3, 2014. Brought to the Getty Villa for conservation and analysis last October, the sculpture provides an opportunity to re-examine the career and character of Rome’s second emperor. The exhibition has been co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples.

“Following the study and conservation project of the Apollo Saettantetwo years ago, we are delighted to once again be collaborating with our colleagues in Naples,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This year-long conservation project of the bronze sculpture of Tiberius has brought to light the processes by which over-life-sized statues, like this one, were produced. This research is pertinent to the study of all ancient bronzes, as is the study of the methods and materials of the sculpture’s eighteenth-century restoration.”

Conservation of the Statue

Standing over eight feet tall, the statue had been off view for decades on account of structural weaknesses in its lower sections and base. Putting this grand imperial portrait back in the public eye was, therefore, the primary goal of the collaboration. In order to do so, Getty conservators developed a new internal support that evenly distributes the substantial weight of the figure—some 1,050 pounds of bronze—and ensures its secure and safe display. The statue has also now been fully cleaned, revealing the lustrous dark patina it would have had when first showcased in the Royal Museum at Portici.

This portrait and other works of art were heavily damaged by volcanic debris that inundated Herculaneum. Because it was standard practice in the eighteenth-century to restore sculptures to appear complete and virtually unblemished, the Getty’s investigation of the figure revealed much about the techniques used in these early restorations, such as the pouring of molten bronze to fill missing areas, a series of bolts to secure the additions in place, and the applied patina, which would have hidden any trace of the restorers’ masterful intervention.

The opportunity to study the portrait in detail has also shed light on how it was manufactured in antiquity. As was typical for large-scale bronze statuary, the Tiberius was fashioned using the lost-wax casting technique. Casting and assembly, however, were unusually complex, involving some sixty individual pieces to create the numerous folds of the emperor’s toga and tunic.

The Life and Legacy of Tiberius

Next year marks the two thousandth anniversary of Tiberius’s accession as Emperor and a timely opportunity to display the newly conserved portrait and re-examine his career and character. Overshadowed by his predecessor, Augustus, Tiberius has long been thought of as an isolated and rather unpleasant character. Achieving power through twists of fate and familial circumstance, he was often uncomfortable in the role of ruler, and ultimately fled from Rome to the island of Capri and his magnificent Villa Jovis. There, his depravities—at least according to his detractors—reached their peak. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 or 24–79) called him “the gloomiest of men,” while Suetonius (about A.D. 70–130) relates that he was so disliked that, when he died, Rome resounded with a cry of “To the Tiber with Tiberius.” Yet many scandalous reports—still influential to this day—were written well after Tiberius’s death, and much of what they tell is little more than unsubstantiated rumor. This exhibition proposes a more balanced view of this complicated ruler—both his virtues and his failings—and the political and domestic power struggles that framed his life.

Tiberius: Portrait of an Emperor was organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei—Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Laboratorio di Conservazione e Restauro. It celebrates 2013 as the Year of Italian Culture in the United States, an initiative of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, realized under the leadership of the President of the Republic of Italy. The exhibition was co-curated by David Saunders, assistant curator of antiquities, and Erik Risser, associate conservator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Bust of Tiberius, Wikimedia Commons (This is NOT the bronze statue, the subject of this press release, on display at the Getty Museum.

Source: Press Release of the J. Paul Getty Museum

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The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu.

The J. Paul Getty Museum collects in seven distinct areas, including Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculpture and decorative arts, and photographs gathered internationally. The Museum’s mission is to make the collection meaningful and attractive to a broad audience by presenting and interpreting the works of art through educational programs, special exhibitions, publications, conservation, and research.

Visiting the Getty Villa

The Getty Villa is open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., withspecial Saturday hours until 9 p.m. October 12–November 30, 2013. It is closed Tuesday and major holidays. Admission to the Getty Villa is always free. A ticket is required for admission. Tickets can be ordered in advance, or on the day of your visit, at www.getty.edu/visit or at (310) 440-7300. Parking is $15 per car. Groups of 15 or more must make reservations by phone. For more information, call (310) 440-7300 (English or Spanish); (310) 440-7305 (TTY line for the deaf or hearing impaired). The Getty Villa is at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, California.

Additional information is available at www.getty.edu.

Sign up for e-Getty at www.getty.edu/subscribe to receive free monthly highlights of events at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa via e-mail, or visit www.getty.edu for a complete calendar of public programs.

Desirée Zenowich

Senior Communications Specialist

The Getty

1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 403

Los Angeles, CA 90049

Office: 310-440-7304

www.getty.edu

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Brooch of Tutankhamun Holds Evidence of Ancient Comet

Posted on October 8, 2013 by No Author -

Most have heard of the treasures of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Tutankhamun, first discovered by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in 1922 when they uncovered his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Few are familiar with his impeccably preserved brooch, recovered along with the numerous other artifacts within the tomb. Fewer still know about the striking yellow-brown scarab that is set at its center, and that it is made of a yellow silica glass stone procured from the sand of the Sahara and then shaped and polished by ancient craftsmen. The silica glass was originally formed 28 million years ago, when an ancient comet entered the earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Egypt, heating up the sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Celsius and resulting in the formation of a huge amount of the yellow silica glass, which lies scattered over a 6,000 square kilometer area in the Sahara.

The silica glass was one of a number of clues that eventually led Professor Jan Kramers of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and colleagues to a remarkable new discovery. At the center of it all is a mysterious black pebble found years ago by an Egyptian geologist in the area of the silica glass. After conducting highly sophisticated chemical analyses on this pebble, Professor Jan Kramers of the University of Johannesburg and a team of colleagues came to the inescapable conclusion that it represented the very first known hand specimen of a comet nucleus, rather than simply an unusual type of meteorite.

Kramers describes this as a moment of career defining elation. “It’s a typical scientific euphoria when you eliminate all other options and come to the realisation of what it must be,” he said.

“Comets always visit our skies – they’re these dirty snowballs of ice mixed with dust – but never before in history has material from a comet ever been found on Earth,” says Professor David Block of Wits University, a key researcher on the team.

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An artist’s rendition of the comet exploding in Earth’s atmosphere above Egypt (credit: Terry Bakker)

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The impact of the explosion also produced microscopic diamonds found within the pebble. “Diamonds are produced from carbon bearing material. Normally they form deep in the earth, where the pressure is high, but you can also generate very high pressure with shock. Part of the comet impacted and the shock of the impact produced the diamonds,” says Kramers.

The team named the diamond-bearing pebble “Hypatia” in honour of the first well known female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria.

Comet material is very elusive. Comet fragments have not been found on Earth before except as microscopic sized dust particles in the upper atmosphere and some carbon-rich dust in the Antarctic ice. Space agencies have spent billions to secure the smallest amounts of pristine comet matter.

“NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) spend billions of dollars collecting a few micrograms of comet material and bringing it back to Earth, and now we’ve got a radical new approach of studying this material, without spending billions of dollars collecting it,” says Kramers.

The discovery has not only provided the first definitive proof of a comet striking Earth millions of years ago, but it could also help unlock, in the future, the secrets of the formation of our solar system.

The efforts have grown into an international collaborative research programme involving a growing number of scientists drawn from a variety of disciplines. Dr Mario di Martino of Turin’s Astrophysical Observatory has led several expeditions to the desert glass area. This latest research, which will be published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, was conducted by a collaboration of geoscientists, physicists and astronomers including Block, lead author Professor Jan Kramers of the University of Johannesburg, Dr Marco Andreoli of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, and Chris Harris of the University of Cape Town.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Tutankhamun’s brooch

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More Findings Emerge from Oldest Known Hominin Fossils Outside of Africa

Posted on October 7, 2013 by No Author -

Researchers continue to squeeze new information from the sensational fossil finds that were uncovered at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia between 1991 and 2005. Considered the earliest known hominin remains outside of Africa and the earliest known human presence in the Caucasus, they have yielded a wealth of data about an early form of Homo erectus, an ancient human precursor and possibly one of the first early human species to have “gone global”, leaving their original African homelands.

Now, researchers have found that normal wear and tooth picking could explain the apparent broad range of dental diversity and mandible (jaw) shape and orientation among the fossil remains at the Dmansi archaeological site. The ancient mandibles have been dated to nearly 1.8 million years ago, and displayed a puzzlingly wide range of variation that researchers have thus far been unable to explain. But using modern hunter-gatherer populations in Australia and Greenland as a reference, David Lordkipanidze and colleagues have studied denticular fossil finds at Dmanisi and the hominin fossil sites of Tighenif in North Africa, Koobi Fora in East Africa, and Sima de los Huesos in Spain to quantify the effects of tooth wear and wear-related bone remodeling using direct observations and data derived from computed tomography (CT) and scanning electron microscopy.

They found that progressive tooth wear substantially changed many key characteristics commonly used to characterize hominin mandibles, such as how the rows of teeth are shaped and the height and inclination of the mandible. Based on the data, the authors report, the Dmansi mandibles reflect normal within-population variation augmented by individual differences in wear-related reshaping of the jawbones. In addition, the authors identified clear evidence of localized periodontitis (inflammatory diseases affecting the tissues that surround and support the teeth) caused by the repeated use of a “toothpick.”

Their findings reveal that tooth wear needs to be accounted for when conducting comparative taxonomic analyses of hominin mandibles.

Discovered beneath a medieval castle near the junction of the Masavera and Pinezaouri rivers, the Dmanisi fossil finds have informed the field of human Eurasian beginnings, and some key assumptions about human origins research. Four hominin fossils, including thousands of extinct faunal finds (animal bones and bone fragments) and over 1,000 lithic artifacts (stone tools) were found by excavators within 2-4.5 meters of alluvium. Two nearly complete hominin crania were uncovered, exhibiting features much like early Homo erectus. But Dmanisi’s collection of hominin fossils revealed a species that was smaller-brained, yet with both primitive and derived (more advanced) skeletal traits, and an assemblage of stone tools of the earliest and simplest (“Mode 1” or Oldowan) industry. They were securely dated to about 1.8 million years BP. However, more recent test excavations at Dmanisi recovered lithic artifacts of the Oldowan variety and fossil bones that have pushed back the chronology and revealed that the hominins may have occupied the area repeatedly between 1.85 and 1.78 million years ago, a time period that predated the appearance, according to the fossil record, of Homo erectus in East Africa.

This latest dental and mandible study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as Article #13-16052: “Tooth wear and dentoalveolar remodeling are key factors of morphological variation in the Dmanisi mandibles,” by Ann Margvelashvili, Christoph P.E. Zollikofer, David Lordkipanidze, Timo Peltomäki, and Marcia S. Ponce de León.

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Source: Adapted and edited from a press release and the related detailed published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cover Photo, Top Left: Restored cranium and mandible of fossil skull discovered at Dmanisi. Eduard Sola, Wikimedia Commons

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Archaeology News for the Week of October 6th, 2013

Posted on October 6, 2013 by No Author -

October 6th, 2013

Human brain boiled in its skull lasted 4000 years

SHAKEN, scorched and boiled in its own juices, this 4000-year-old human brain has been through a lot. It may look like nothing more than a bit of burnt log, but it is one of the oldest brains ever found. Its discovery, and the story now being pieced together of its owner’s last hours, offers the tantalising prospect that archaeological remains could harbour more ancient brain specimens than thought. If that’s the case, it potentially opens the way to studying the health of the brain in prehistoric times. (New Scientist)

London Dig Uncovers Roman-Era Skulls

Tunnelers expanding London’s Underground (Tube) stations have stumbled on a cache of more than two dozen Roman-era skulls. The skulls likely date from the first century A.D. and may possibly—just possibly—be victims of the famed Queen Boudicca’s troops, decapitated during her uprising against Roman rule in 61 A.D. The intriguing find was made some 20 feet below Liverpool Street as workers bored through ancient river sediments from the long-vanished Walbrook River, once a tributary of the Thames. (National Geographic)

Rats! Diet of Easter Islanders Revealed

The inhabitants of Easter Island consumed a diet that was lacking in seafood and was, literally, quite ratty. The island, also called Rapa Nui, first settled around A.D. 1200, is famous for its more than 1,000 “walking” Moai statues, most of which originally faced inland. Located in the South Pacific, Rapa Nui is the most isolated inhabited landmass on Earth; the closest inhabitants are located on the Pitcairn Islands about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) to the west. (Live Science)

Long-Hidden Sites Discovered in the Southwest May Change Views of Ancient Migrations

A type of site never before described by archaeologists is shedding new light on the prehistory of the American Southwest and may change conventional thinking about the ancient migrations that shaped the region. The sites, discovered in the southern mountains of Arizona and New Mexico, are remote Apache encampments with some often “disguised” features that have eluded archaeologists for centuries. (WesternDigs.org)

Archaeologists unearth Sweden’s own Pompeii: Hundreds died in ‘brutal massacre’ at island fort 1,500 years ago

Swedish archeologists have uncovered the remains of a brutal fifth century massacre at a remote island fort, described as being ‘frozen in time’ like the ruins of the Roman city of Pompeii. Bodies of victims slaughtered in the violence on the island of Öland, just off the Swedish coast, have remained untouched for centuries, and were found to resemble a modern day crime scene. (DailyMail.co.uk)

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona

Nearly 50 miles or so southeast of Phoenix, Arizona stands Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, built by the mysterious Hohokam civilization in the early 1300s. Archaeologists suggest that the “Great House” was an observatory of sorts, noting that the small round window on the west wall aligns perfectly with the setting sun on the annual summer solstice (June 21). Other openings line up with the sun and moon at significant dates throughout the year. (InfoLific)

Gamers take aim at ancient Pictish stone puzzle

ONLINE gaming fans are to be recruited by Scotland’s national museum to harness their technical skills to help piece together more than 3,000 recently discovered fragments depicting the Cross on a Pictish slab. The project, the first of its kind in the archaeological world, will see participants use a unique 3D programme developed by a Scottish technology firm to try to solve the mystery of the Hilton of Cadboll Stone. (The Scotsman)

Archives: Articles

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Archaeology News for the Week of October 13th, 2013

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Brooch of Tutankhamun Holds Evidence of Ancient Comet

More Findings Emerge from Oldest Known Hominin Fossils Outside of Africa

Archaeology News for the Week of October 6th, 2013

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