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Archaeology News for the Week of May 26th, 2013

Posted on May 30, 2013 by No Author -

May 30th, 2013

It is considered the driest desert in the world. Without provision, a person would not last long in this hostile place, where after a few days without water one just might hallucinate, might see things that simply were not there. And it could be that a small group of people may be seeing things in this place that are not what they seem to be — lines and walls on a landscape, remains of structures that may or may not be man-made. The site, located in the Atacama desert, a 105,000 square kilometer (41,000 sq mi) plateau along the Pacific coast of Chile, has attracted the focused attention of only a few to date. Most professional news organizations and journals will not touch the story, presumably because there is not enough solid information and evidence about the site advanced by any professionally recognized archaeologists or scholars to justify the risk of publishing even an acknowledgement of its existence. (Popular Archaeology)

Ancient Egyptians accessorized with meteorites

Researchers at The Open University (OU) and The University of Manchester have found conclusive proof that Ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make symbolic accessories. The evidence comes from strings of iron beads which were excavated in 1911 at the Gerzeh cemetery, a burial site approximately 70km south of Cairo. Dating from 3350 to 3600BC, thousands of years before Egypt’s Iron Age, the bead analysed was originally assumed to be from a meteorite owing to its composition of nickel-rich iron. But this hypothesis was challenged in the 1980s when academics proposed that much of the early worldwide examples of iron use originally thought to be of meteorite-origin were actually early smelting attempts. (EurekAlert!)

Archaeologist treats guests to 1,000-year-old recipes

Prehistoric Museum archaeologist Tim Riley displays some of the Fremont cuisine he prepared. (SunAdvocate)

‘World’s oldest Torah’ scroll found in Italy

The University of Bologna in Italy has found what it says may be the oldest complete scroll of Judaism’s most important text, the Torah. The scroll was in the university library but had been mislabelled, a professor at the university says. It was previously thought the scroll was no more that a few hundred years old. However, after carbon dating tests, the university has said the text may have been written more than 850 years ago. (BBC News)

Ancient First Nations site damaged during BC Hydro work

Members of a Nanaimo First Nations group are outraged after crews contracted by BC Hydro damaged a documented ancient rock art site during work recently. Douglas White, chief of the Snuneymuxw First Nation said the damage is disrespectful of native heritage and he doesn’t understand how crews could make the mistake, since existing petroglyph rock art sites are documented and protected by legislation. (Journal of Commerce)

The God-Kings of Paradise

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Patrick Vinton Kirch -

Patrick Vinton Kirch is Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology and Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and author of On the Road of the Winds, How Chiefs Became Kings, and the award-winning book, A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief, among other books. Photo by Therese Babineau

In the shadow of Haleakalā, the 10,023-foot high volcanic mountain that looms over Hawai’i’s eastern Maui Island, lies Kaupō, one of the twelve districts (moku) of the island’s ancient kingdom. Today Kaupō is a sleepy backwater whose few permanent residents are mostly engaged in ranching. But around A.D. 1710, almost seven decades before British Captain James Cook broke the immense sea barrier that had isolated the Hawaiian archipelago from the rest of the world for half a millennium, Kaupō was the royal seat of King Kekaulike. Kekaulike, revered to this day by Native Hawaiians on Maui, was a descendant of the great Pi’ilani, who for the first time unified the island kingdom around A.D. 1570. (The stone foundations of Pi’ilani’s huge temple and royal residence can still be seen at Kahanu Gardens, just outside the little town of Hāna.)

Kekaulike was an ali’i akua, literally a “god king.” In the complex and hierarchical society that had evolved in the Hawaiian Islands over the centuries prior to Kekaulike’s reign, the highest ranked chiefs or ali’i had become divine kings, tracing their genealogies back to the gods. To preserve and intensify their blood lines, these elites practiced so-called pi’o (“arched”) marriages between brother and sister, or between half-siblings. Kekaulike married his own half-sister Keku’iapoiwanui to produce a sacred heir, Kamehamehanui. Such royal incest had similarly been practiced by the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt as well as by the Inca of Peru, other ancient societies that anthropologists call “archaic states.” The Hawaiian god-kings were considered so sacred (kapu) that they could not be gazed upon by mere commoners; hence they often traveled at night, to avoid being seen. Should they pass in the presence of a commoner, the latter would have to perform the kapu moe (prostrating taboo), lying face-down on the ground. A stolen glance at the passing god-king, resplendent in his cloak and helmet of rare red and yellow birds’ feathers (Figure 1), could bring instant death from the warrior guard.

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Figure 1: A Hawaiian chief in his feathered cloak and helmet, as drawn by the French artist Arago in 1819 (Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).

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The Hawaiian society of Kekaulike’s time preserved its royal genealogies and histories through a highly developed system of oral tradition, memorized and transmitted from generation to generation by specially trained bards. In the mid-nineteenth century, after the arrival of Protestant missionaries who developed an alphabet and introduced literacy to this previously oral-aural culture, several knowledgeable sages began to commit the ancient traditions to writing. One of these was Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau, who authored a lengthy work known as Ruling Chiefs of Hawai’i. Kamakau tells us that in the early 1700s Kekaulike, having moved the royal seat from Hāna to Kaupō, was “engaged in building luakini heiaus for his gods.” A luakini was a temple (heiau) dedicated to the god of war, the fearsome Kū, who demanded human sacrifices at the dedication of his temple. Success in war required the construction and dedication of such a temple, often massive structures of dry-stacked stone masonry topped by carved wooden images, offering platforms, oracle towers, and other wooden structures. Kamakau also informs us that Kekaulike had his sights set on nothing less than the invasion and conquest of the “Big Island” of Hawai’i, facing Kaupō across the rough ‘Alenuihāhā Channel. To this end Kekaulike had assembled a formidable army and fleet of war canoes, ready to be launched from the bay of Mokulau.

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Figure 2: Plan map of Lo’alo’a heiau in Kaupō.

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One of the luakini temples built by Kekaulike, named Lo’alo’a, is well known to archaeologists. An imposing rectangular stone platform with a basal area of 44,800 square feet and a terraced front rising 30 feet from the ground, Lo’alo’a took countless hours of human labor to construct (Figure 2). But Kamakau tells us that Kekaulike also dedicated a second temple, Kanemalohemo, at a place called Pōpōiwi. Kanemalohemo was not as well recorded archaeologically, although its general location was known, on a hillside thoroughly overgrown with thick Christmas berry and other invasive plants. A few years ago, I decided to have a look at Kanemalohemo for myself. Perhaps it would provide some new insights into the society of the Hawaiian god-kings.

Finding the Second Temple

My graduate student Alex Baer was conducting an archaeological survey of Kaupō for his doctoral dissertation at Berkeley. Before he departed for Maui, I showed Alex the general location on the map where the ruins of Kanemalohemo should lie, obscured by thick vegetation. “See if you can manage to hack your way into that thick brush and find the main temple walls,” I told Alex in my Oceanic Archaeology Lab at Berkeley. “When I come out to visit later in the field season I’d like to try to make a map of the site.” Alex promised that he would make the relocation of Kanemalohemo a priority.

Some weeks later I flew into Maui; Alex met me at the airport with his rickety rental Jeep. Tossing my duffel bag into the back, I asked him if he had managed to find the ruins of Kanemalohemo. “You bet,” he grinned. Then he added: “You are going to be amazed at the size and extent of that site.” I couldn’t wait to see what he and his student assistant Kris Hara had found. A couple of hours later, Alex pulled the Jeep up a narrow dirt road and parked. Dank foliage hung over the rutted track; the humid air was thick with hungry mosquitoes. Slathering on repellent and picking up our machetes, Alex, Kris, and I plunged into the tropical vegetation, following a narrow trail they had cut a few days earlier.

After a couple of minutes we came into a more open space, where a giant candlenut tree shaded out the other vegetation. Looming up in front of us was a massive stone rampart, its rocks green with moss undisturbed for centuries. “My god,” I half muttered under my breath. “This thing is huge.” Alex suppressed a chuckle. “This is just one of the outer terraces. Wait until we get up on top of the main structure.”

For several hours the three of us explored the ruins of Kanemalohemo, covering roughly two continuous acres on the gentle slopes of Pōpōiwi, overlooking the bay of Mokulau. Alex and Kris had already spent several long days hacking away at the undergrowth with their machetes, so the main walls and terrace facings were now visible. Later, we would begin the laborious task of mapping the structure with plane table and alidade. For now, I just wanted to explore this site, linked in tradition with one of Maui’s most famous divine kings. We made our way up onto one of the two expansive main courts or plazas, paved with thousands of basket-loads of water-rounded pebbles hauled up from the beach at Mokulau. Alex tapped my shoulder. “Come over here, you’ve got to see this feature.”

We ducked under low-hanging Christmas berry branches, clambered over a stone wall and emerged on a small, well-paved terrace surmounting a promontory which overlooks the bay. Here the strong easterly winds that continually buffet Kaupō kept the wiry vegetation down to a few feet. I climbed out onto the perimeter wall and could see that I was on a kind of rampart supported by a massive stone facing that descended down the steep slope toward the coast (Figure 3). The facing was angled away from me like a sharp inverted Ʌ–one might say like the prow of a Polynesian canoe–with the point of the Ʌ facing directly toward Hawai’i Island. Struggling to keep from being blown over by the strong gusts as I balanced myself on the rounded boulders making up the rampart, I pulled my sighting compass out of my pocket. The bearing of the Ʌ-point was almost exactly the direction from here to Waipi’o Valley on Hawai’i Island. Waipi’o was the royal seat of the divine kings of Hawai’i Island, arch rivals and at the same time blood relatives of Kekaulike.

Backing off the windy rampart, Alex and I stood on the paved terrace and reflected on the importance of this site. We knew from Kamakau’s account that it was here that Kekaulike had assembled his warriors and fleet for his intended conquest of Hawai’i. Was this special terrace, so carefully paved with beach pebbles and with the Ʌ-shaped rampart seemingly directed at Waipi’o, the place where Kekaulike himself had once sat, cross-legged on fine mats, gazing at his goal, plotting his strategy? It seemed entirely possible.

That evening, after a well-earned meal of BBQ’d Maui steaks, the three of us sat on the porch of the hunting cabin at Nu’u which was Alex’s field base. Enjoying the spectacular stars, we engaged in a kind of informal seminar. These are always the best teaching moments with my students. In this case it was after a long day of fieldwork, reflecting on the significance of our hard work clearing thorny brush off of moss-covered walls.

“Hawai’i,” I said, pausing to take a long draw on my cigar, “is the last place on Earth where a true archaic state emerged.” Kris interjected to ask what I meant by the term archaic state. “An archaic state is one that was ruled by divine kings, like Kekaulike was, with a formal priesthood, and with distinct commoner and elite classes,” I replied. I told her that archaic states were sometimes called “pristine states,” because they had emerged out of simpler forms of sociopolitical organization, what anthropologists typically call “chiefdoms.” The early civilizations in Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, China, Egypt, and the Andes, were all archaic states.

Alex challenged me. “But most anthropologists and archaeologists have previously classified Hawai’i as a complex chiefdom, not an archaic state. That’s what Marshall Sahlins and Tim Earle have written in the books you assigned in your seminar at Berkeley.” Nothing like a good graduate student to keep you on your toes. “You’re absolutely correct Alex; I used to believe that as well. But in recent years I’ve come to question that view. I’m now finishing a book called How Chiefs Became Kings. It lays out in detail the argument for why the late pre-contact Hawaiian society should be considered a group of archaic states, rather than chiefdoms.”

From Chiefs to Divine Kings

As the evening wore on and the fire’s embers dimmed, we talked at length about how new research was changing our ideas about how Hawaiian society had evolved over eight centuries. The Hawaiian archipelago was discovered by Polynesian voyagers in their double-hulled canoes around A.D. 1000. These intrepid colonists brought with them crop plants such as taro and yams, and domesticated animals (pigs, dogs, and chickens), ready to establish a new society. They found a vast, resource-rich archipelago of subtropical islands in which their descendants could flourish.

And flourish they did. The valleys and streams of the older islands such as O’ahu and Kaua’i provided ample scope for developing extensive irrigation works in which to grow taro. On the younger islands, the fertile volcanic soils were conducive to yam and sweet potato farming. The reefs and inshore waters offered an abundance of fish and shellfish. The population was not afflicted by any of the main diseases of the Old World; consequently, the Hawaiian population grew at an exponential rate.

For at least two or three centuries after the arrival of the first Polynesian colonists, contacts with the homeland islands such as Tahiti in the South Pacific were maintained through occasional two-way voyages in the great double-hulled canoes. Hawaiian traditions still refer to the famous voyages made by such chiefs as Mo’ikeha, Kila, and Pā’ao. But after the end of the fourteenth century these voyages ceased for reasons that have never been fully explained. Hawai’i became totally isolated from the rest of the world. The bards kept a memory of the ancestral homeland of “Kahiki” (Tahiti), but henceforth the path of social and political evolution was completely driven by internal forces.

By A.D. 1400 the Hawaiian population had densely occupied what my colleague Robert Hommon once called the “salubrious core regions” of the islands. These were the most favorable ecological zones, especially the valleys with permanent streams amenable to irrigation. The population began to expand into the drier, leeward regions, such as the vast slopes of Kohala and Kona on Hawai’i Island, as well as across the similarly leeward regions of Kahikinui and Kaupō on Maui. Farming in these regions was not as highly productive as in the irrigated zones, but nonetheless the fertile volcanic soils produced good yields of sweet potato and dryland taro. Moreover, these dryland regions were extensive, allowing for further population growth and for a level of surplus production that the chiefs could tap into to fuel their political aspirations. Through his survey work, Alex Baer has shown that much of Kaupo was once covered in the rock walls and embankments of an intensive field system (Figure 4). This field system provided the surplus that Kekaulike drew upon to support his warriors and attendants.

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Figure 4: Digital elevation map of the Kaupō region (inset shows the island of Maui). The lines indicate ancient field system walls and embankments mapped through aerial photography.

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Figure 5: Rows of ancient agricultural field embankments can still be seen from the summit of Pu’u Kehena on Hawai’i Island. These are remnants of what at one time was a vast, sophisticated system capable of supporting a relatively large population.

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All Polynesian societies are based on principles of chiefly rank. The ancient Polynesian word for chief, ariki, is found in virtually every Polynesian society; its Hawaiian variant is ali’i. In an earlier time in Hawai’i, the ali’i would have simply been the members of the higher-ranked families, the first-born of the first-born. But over time, as the population expanded to encompass not just thousands but tens of thousands of people, the ali’i began to compete among themselves for increased status and power. Fine gradations between ali’i began to be developed, ultimately resulting in nine distinct ranks of elites.

At the same time, distinctions between the ali’i and the common people became more marked. In Hawai’i, the word for commoners at the time of European contact was maka’āinana. As with the word for chief, this term can be traced back to its deep roots in ancestral Polynesian society, where it originally meant the group of descendants of a common ancestor. The ancient word was mata–kāinanga, which gradually changed in Hawaiian to maka’āinana. But more than mere sound changes were involved, for while the original term referred to a group of kinsmen who shared a common territory and held rights to farm that land, the new word indexed the common people who worked the land by virtue of their tributary relationship to their chiefs.

The greatest change that sets Hawaiian society off from its Polynesian relatives was in the system of land tenure. Throughout virtually every other Polynesian society (Tonga is one other exception), access to land was by virtue of one’s membership in a hereditary social group (such as a mata–kāinanga). But in Hawai’i–at the time of European contact–the land tenure system was one of extensive territories called ahupua’a (often comprising a single valley) which were held by the prominent chiefs. Each ahupua’a was overseen by a konohiki or manager, who made certain that the individual commoner families not only worked their individual plots, but provided regular labor to communal projects such as repairing the irrigation works. More importantly, the konohiki ensured the regular production of surplus food stuffs and other goods which provided the necessary support for the chiefly households and for the king’s own establishment.

When did this fundamental transformation in Hawaiian society–from an older form of Polynesian chiefship to that of an emergent archaic state–occur? Recent research points to the time period around the close of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth century. According to the royal genealogies it was then that Pi’ilani and his son Kiha-a-Pi’ilani consolidated the Maui kingdom. At the same time on Hawai’i Island, the famous ‘Umi-a-Liloa defeated his half-brother Hākau and launched a series of wars of conquest against the previously independent chiefs of Hawai’i Island. ‘Umi-a-Liloa and Kiha-a-Pi’ilani were linked through the marriage of Kiha’s sister Pi’ikea to ‘Umi. Thereafter, the royal houses of Maui and Hawai’i would continue to elaborate the practices of divine kingship and vie between them for ultimate control of the entire archipelago.

But what of Kekaulike, the descendant of Pi’ilani who once sat on his fine mats at Kanemalohemo, gazing out across the foamy ‘Alenuihāhā Channel, plotting his conquest of fair Hawai’i? The old sage Kamakau recounts Kekaulike’s fate in the pages of Ruling Chiefs of Hawai’i. Kekaulike launched his war canoes at Mokulau, sailing across the channel past Kohala to descend unsuspected upon the Kona district of Hawai’i. The Maui forces took Hawai’i by surprise, devastating the productive field system, cutting down the old breadfruit trees. Then warriors under the command of Alapa’inui, the Hawai’i king, counterattacked, forcing the Maui troops back to their canoes. Fleeing north along the Kohala coast, the Maui warriors cut down all the coconut trees; they slaughtered any commoners in their path, seizing their possessions.

Kekaulike’s forces returned to Mokulau in Kaupō. The Maui king offered sacrifices to Kū at his luakini temples, making plans for a re-invasion of Hawai’i. But his rival Alapa’inui had been incensed by the cowardly way in which the Maui invaders had behaved, destroying productive plantations and attacking defenseless commoners. Before Kekaulike had time to prepare his troops, word came that the Hawai’i Island fleet was enroute across the channel. Kekaulike, according to Kamakau’s account, was seized with a violent illness, a kind of epilepsy, which the Hawaiians called ka maka huki lani, or “eyes drawn heavenward.” With his principal chiefs, Kekaulike fled Kaupō, giving over the kingship to his sacred son Kamehamehanui. When Alapa’inui arrived at Kaupō, he heard that Kamehamehanui was now the king. Kamehamehanui was in fact Alapa’inui’s own nephew, for the new king’s mother Keku’iapoiwanui was Alapa’inui’s sister! Such were the close familial relationships between the divine kings of ancient Hawai’i. Alapa’inui called off his war of revenge against Maui.

In this short article I have only given the barest glimpse into the fascinating history of ancient Hawai’i, through the lens of just one of the islands’ many archaeological sites–Kanemalohemo–and its builder, Kekaulike. The rise of archaic states in these islands, from ancestral Polynesian chiefdoms, is an ongoing topic of archaeological research. For readers who would like to delve more deeply into the remarkable history of the islands, I invite you to explore the pages of my recent book, A Shark Going Inland is my Chief: The Island Civilization of Ancient Hawai’i.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: View of a great ancient Hawaiian temple, with valley in background. Gillfoto, Wikimedia Commons

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Interested readers may purchase the book, A Shark Going Inland Is My Chief, at the University of California Press website.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe. Find it on Amazon.com.

Lady Moon

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Frank Holt -

Professor Frank Holt (MA and PhD, University of Virginia) teaches at the University of Houston and specializes in ancient Greek history. He has published seven books on Alexander the Great and his legacy. He has also published more than 50 articles and essays. He has been awarded several research prizes in the US and abroad, a national writing prize, and seven major teaching honors, including the inaugural Distinguished Leadership in Teaching Excellence Award (2011). He is currently working on several books, including a study of Alexander’s wealth to be published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with his appointment as an Onassis Senior Visiting Scholar.

Archaeology and astronomy sometimes share a remarkable path of discovery. The erstwhile planet Pluto, for example, was predicted to exist long before it was actually found. The astronomers Percival Lowell and William H. Pickering surmised that an unknown planet must lie somewhere near the edge of our solar system because of its tell-tale effect on the motion of Uranus. They guessed at the dwarf planet’s position, even its mass, but their intensive searches could not produce the object itself. Finally, in 1930 the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh spotted Pluto as a tiny dot on photographs of the constellation Gemini, confirming the scientific expectations of Lowell and Pickering. In similar fashion, it might be said that Ai Khanoum is the Pluto of Old World archaeology. This site on the farthest fringes of Greek civilization was predicted to exist, and was eagerly sought, centuries before its eventual discovery. And, just as with Pluto, experts still remain at odds about what to make of this distant place and its alien environment.

Ai Khanoum (meaning ‘Lady Moon’ in Uzbek) lay hidden on the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, cradled in the confluence of the Amu (ancient Oxus) and Kokcha Rivers. It is one of the fabled “thousand cities of Bactria” that the Greeks claimed to have sprinkled across Central Asia in the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s campaigns. Beginning early in the nineteenth century, European explorers—players in the deadly ‘Great Game’ of international intrigue between Czarist Russia and British India—searched remote Afghan mountains and valleys for just one of these lost Greek cities. They all failed. Some of these adventurous souls were captured, tortured, and beheaded by rivals or resentful locals, others endured disease and starvation—but all went to their graves convinced that somewhere in the wilds of Afghanistan there must be the remains of ancient cities on a par with Athens, Thebes, or Delphi. This dogged belief was not based solely on the unconfirmed statements of ancient authors, nor on the legends current in the region that descendants of Alexander’s soldiers still dwelt there. The real proof rested upon numismatics, a science as fundamental for archaeology as Newtonian physics to astronomy.

Numismatics is the scientific study of coinage, and those who scoured Afghanistan looking for lost cities found hundreds of thousands of gold, silver, bronze, and nickel coins minted in the names of Greek kings and queens who once ruled Bactria and neighboring India. This massive coinage betrayed, as surely as Pluto’s gravitational tug on Uranus, the existence of something huge but hidden from sight. Where there were Greek kings and coins, there must surely have been cities, palaces, and citadels–all guarded by soldiers, fed by farmers, enriched by merchants, and populated by Greek settlers. The coins revealed the names of the rulers, sometimes their relationships to each other, and often what Greek (or local) deities they worshipped in this far-off land. Modern explorers came face to face with a growing list of heretofore unknown royals who had stamped on coins their titles and fancy regalia. Some of these Greeks wore exotic plumed helmets and diadems, some donned headdresses molded from elephant scalps, and some brandished spears at unseen enemies. One of these kings issued the largest gold coin ever minted in the ancient world; another struck the largest silver (see Figure 1, below). They all, however, kept secret the whereabouts of the “thousand cities of Bactria.”

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Figure 1: The largest known ancient silver coin ever minted, depicting a Bactrian king.

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After many years of fruitless searching, the effort became better organized in 1922 with the foundation of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA), a French academic mission based in Kabul. Alfred Foucher, the first Director of the DAFA, led a wide-ranging archaeological exploration across Afghanistan keen to locate the missing Greek cities. A lifetime of exasperating labor led nowhere, and poor Foucher finally gave up with the bitter declaration that he had been chasing a mirage. Others continued the work of the DAFA, but as late as 1960 it was lamented that instead of Greek cities, archaeologists had unearthed nothing more than a multitude of coins plus a few pottery scraps unworthy of even a single museum shelf.

Then it happened, quite by accident. Muhammad Zahir Shah, the king of Afghanistan, was not hunting a vanished civilization in 1961when he paused to rest on the high ground between the rivers Amu and Kokcha. Yet, there on the very border between his kingdom and the Soviet Union, his eyes swept across a startling scene. As if drawn on paper, the outlines of an entire Greek city bulged before him, its old ramparts, buildings, and streets barely covered by a thin veil of dirt. In the middle of this tableau, a conspicuous Corinthian capital sprouted from the ground like a fossilized flower that had been planted by the ancient Greeks. Local villagers called the place Ai Khanoum (See Figure 2).

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Figure 2: The remains of Ai Khanoum

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The Afghan king soon notified the DAFA of his discovery, and teams of eager archaeologists descended on the site. Excavations led by Paul Bernard painstakingly exposed the lost city with trowel and brush, until the Soviet invasion of 1979 drove everyone away—except the looters. Today, even the ruins lie in ruins. Bulldozers have torn into the landscape, churning up anything left behind when the archaeologists fled; metal detectors meant to ferret out old Soviet landmines have instead guided rusty shovels to hidden treasures. Originally hailed as one of the greatest and most anticipated archaeological finds of all time, Ai Khanoum has been stripped of its fullest potential—demoted like luckless Pluto, the planet that no longer is.

Despite its sad fate, Ai Khanoum at least enjoyed sixteen seasons of scientific excavation, the results of which are still being published in the series Fouilles d’Ai Khanoum. These volumes offer our best chance to witness what life was like in at least one of the “thousand cities of Bactria.” At this site, a steep natural acropolis stands nearly 200 feet (60 m) high; it slopes down on its northern side to a large rectangular plateau that stretches over a mile (1800 m) along the high banks of the Oxus. An impressive rampart and ditch protected the exposed northeast side of the lower city, and the Kokcha River sealed off the southwest. Ten million bricks extended the rampart all around the triangular site. Inside the walls stood a sprawling palace with adjoining treasure-rooms, an arsenal, a temple, rows of mansions, and the essential amenities of any ancient Greek population: theater, gymnasium, and palaestra. Outside the city were more mansions, another temple, a cemetery, and signs of extensive irrigation that made this desolate landscape bloom.

Well-designed for defense and well-positioned to exploit the agricultural and mineral resources of the region, Ai Khanoum guarded a small but powerful Greek colonial presence some 3000 miles east of Athens. Stone inscriptions and papyri found inside the city record traces of the cultural ties maintained between these settlers and their Mediterranean homeland. The famed Delphic Maxims were copied and carried to Ai Khanoum so that, “blazing from afar,” they might keep Hellenism alive in this distant outpost. The palace library held copies of Greek classics, and imported olive oil was stored in the treasury. Yet, as with astronomers and Pluto, archaeologists have begun to second-guess how they ought to label Ai Khanoum. Some important features of the city were decidedly ‘unGreek’, such as temple architecture, and some of the treasury’s staff bore indigenous names such as Oxybazus and Oxyboakes. Was Ai Khanoum really a full-fledged Greek city, or should it be identified as Graeco-Asian or simply Bactrian? Unfortunately, there is no archaeological equivalent of the International Astronomical Union to settle this issue by a vote.

What happened to Ai Khanoum remains a mystery. The archaeological evidence indicates a sudden abandonment of the site in about 146 BC. The Greeks left behind a surprising number of valuables in the palace treasury, including semi-precious stones, artwork, and storage jars filled with silver coins. Once the Greek rulers departed, a fire swept through their palace and so-called squatters moved in to scavenge the dead city. The usual assumption is that nomads invaded Bactria and drove the terrified Greeks south across the Hindu Kush Mountains into India. But why the well-armed and securely entrenched Greeks lost their nerve and left so hastily, never to return, is difficult to explain. It is possible, after all, that the nomads only showed up after the Greeks had departed. Perhaps the discovery of more of Bactria’s thousand cities will someday solve this riddle.

Meanwhile, we still have all those coins to investigate. They had long intimated that cities existed in Central Asia, but what of the people who lived and labored in those cities? We can be certain they existed, too, but can we hope to discover anything more about them? Fortunately, a new branch of investigation called cognitive numismatics by the author can reveal much about the unseen masses who inhabited Bactria. For example, the anonymous workers who manufactured the coins have left idiosyncratic traces on the money. Sometimes it is possible to reconstruct their thought processes as they went about their tasks in the mint. We can see how they planned a coin’s design, how they went about engraving mirror-image dies, and how they occasionally botched the job due to stress or overwork. One metal die has actually come to light, carved to stamp out large silver coins for King Demetrius (See Figure 4). While exceedingly rare, the dies themselves need not survive to show us the work of the minters, for each die left its tell-tale story on as many as 30,000 coins struck from it. For example, some workers absent-mindedly left out letters or engraved them facing the wrong way; some might catch the error and try to remedy the die by recutting it or by simply sticking the missing letters somewhere else on the die. A simple word such as Basileos (King), which appears on nearly every coin, can at times be mangled by distracted mint workers (See Figure 5).

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Figure 4: Coin die found in Afghanistan, from the reign of King Demetrius. Photo courtesy of Osmund Bopearachchi

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Figure 5: Engraving errors found on Bactrian coins for the Greek word ‘king’. Photo courtesy Frank Holt

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By quantifying these practices, scholars can determine in which periods the minters were most error-prone. Intervals of statistically meaningful mistakes might signal a change in the workforce or a change in working conditions, perhaps in response to larger problems across Bactria. As it happens, serious minting errors characterize the years leading up to the abandonment of Ai Khanoum. This evidence from the ranks of unseen laborers suggests that the people at Ai Khanoum did not awake one morning to discover hordes of nomads suddenly bearing down upon them, but rather had been coping with some crisis for a long while prior to leaving. Scholars must therefore reconsider the once-popular notion that everything at Ai Khanoum was fine right up to its last day.

Using coins to eavesdrop on the workplace adds a deeper dimension to the archaeological search for this lost civilization. By following the money, we have found numerous Greek kings, one notable royal city, and generations of anonymous workers toiling in the mints with a lot on their minds. At sites such as ‘Lady Moon’, the rewards of archaeology can be truly astronomical.

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Much more about the search for ancient Greek Bactria can be found in Frank Holt’s recent book, Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan, which can be purchased at the University of California Press website.

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A Legacy in Stone and Artifacts

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Shmuel Browns -

Shmuel Browns is a licensed tour guide and photographer who lives in Jerusalem. Passionate about Israel, Shmuel takes people throughout the country exposing them to its history, nature and culture. Shmuel blogs about some of his experiences
at http://israel-tourguide.info.

Three years in the making, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has unveiled an extraordinary showing of ancient artifacts related to Herod the Great, the first major exhibition dedicated to King Herod. Entitled “Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey”, it is unmatched in its grandeur, befitting perhaps the great ambitions of the ancient king who is its subject. The exhibit occupies no less than 900 square meters and showcases approximately 250 artifacts, many exhibited for the first time. So weighty is the exhibit, in fact, the museum was required to reinforce its existing foundations and raise ceilings………..

Each day we rose before dawn before the unrelenting desert heat to continue digging east of the monumental staircase. In the summer of 2007, after Professor Ehud Netzer had discovered the base of the mausoleum, I volunteered at the archaeological site at Herodium. Among seas of pottery shards, we dug up baseball-sized stones hurled by a Roman catapult (ballista). Scanning with a metal detector, we found tiny, encrusted bronze coins, from the period of the Great Revolt.

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The remains of the base of King Herod’s great mausoleum. Some of the stonework is so well preserved that they appear to have been set only yesterday. Photo Shmuel Browns

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We uncovered a few well-carved stones strewn about – an egg and dart pattern, two five-petaled flowers from a decorative frieze. The high-quality limestone, or meleke from the root “king”, is not local to the site; it had been brought to Herodium specially for the mausoleum. But these pieces are no longer to be found at Herodium, and not because they were looted. Today, they grace the space of the spectacular new exhibit, Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey, in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The first image at the entrance to the exhibit is neither architecture nor artifacts, but the Judean desert – the area where Herod built some of his most important monuments.

Following Herod the Builder, museum staff re-constructed three rooms from Herod’s palaces at the museum. The first room you enter (see image below) is a replica of the throne room from Herod’s third palace at Jericho, excavated by Netzer for his doctorate. The original frescoes with their intense natural colors were removed from the palace and moved to the museum. So fond of Herod, Augustus had permitted him to mine cinnabar, a red mineral pigment, from his private property in Almadén, Spain, for application at the Jericho palace.

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The throne room of the palace at Jericho. Photo Shmuel Browns

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When Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’ deputy, visited Judea in 15 BCE he was so impressed by Herod’s building projects that he sent Roman builders and artists to Judea to contribute their sophisticated skills. Opus recticulatum is a technique for strengthening walls to resist earthquake damage. Three examples of this Roman technique are found in Herod’s projects, discovered by Ehud Netzer: in the palace at Jericho, at the remains of a building north of Damascus gate rumored to be Herod’s family tomb, and in a section of a temple wall at Banias.

The second room displays Herod’s private stone bathtub uncovered by Netzer at the palace in Cypros. The museum displays floors from Cypros and Herodium laid with a Roman technique, opus sectile. Natural-colored stone tiles are cut in geometric shapes and laid in repeated patterns. In other cases, the floors are mosaic, such as two mosaic floors from the bathhouse at Lower Herodian, one in an opus sectile pattern and the other with geometric shapes with pomegranates.

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Above, a view of the opus sectile floor and Herod’s private stone bathtub, all being prepared by museum staffers for the exhibit. Photo Shmuel Browns

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Closer view of stone bathtub found in calderium of bath-house at Cypros. Photo Shmuel Browns

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While excavating Lower Herodium, archaeologist Ehud Netzer found marble pieces of a wash basin in the bath-house, including a pair of Silenoi heads (right) – the companion and tutor of the wine god, Dionysos. Conceivably, it was a gift from the Emperor Augustus presented by his deputy Marcus Agrippa to Herod on his tour of Judea in 15 BCE and installed as a fountain. Imagine this fragile and heavy object making its journey from Greece to Rome to Judea and the bath-house at Herodium. The conservation staff of the museum painstakingly reconstructed the basin with its ornate decoration.

Though it is not known to what degree Herod observed traditional Jewish practices, he appears to have respected them. Aside from this basin, no other human images, in sculptural form, have been found in any of Herod’s palaces.

The bath-house wash basin. Photo Shmuel Browns

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When Netzer excavated above the theater at Herodium he found the loggia, the VIP box for Herod and his guests, like Marcus Agrippa. The third room of the exhibit displays its reconstruction. Delicate trompe l’oeil paintings were on the walls, done in secco. According to this Roman technique, paint is added to dry plaster compared with the more usual fresco – a fresh, wet plaster technique. These paintings are trompe de l’oeil views of an open window with wooden shutters that look out onto a natural scene, an artistic standard found in the finest palaces and villas in Rome and Pompeii (see below). Dudi Mevorah, one of the curators of the exhibit, pointed out a painting of a boat with billowing sail (see left) on plaster from the loggia, alluding to Marcus Agrippa’s history-changing victory over Mark Anthony at the naval battle of Actium. Herod dictated the images in the paintings as a lead-in to the discussions that Herod was interested in having with his guest.

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Reconstructed loggia, Herod’s VIP room above the theater. Photo Shmuel Browns

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Done in secco, the trompe de l’oeil view of an open window with wooden shutters, looking out onto a natural scene. Photo Shmuel Browns

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The exhibit is laid out faithfully to the site at Herodium where the loggia and the mausoleum flank the staircase. At the museum, we move through the viewing platform toward the full life-size reconstruction of the top-level of the mausoleum (see below). The very decorative stones I excavated at Herodium are in their proper places in the frieze. A microchip was attached to each stone of 30 tons that were transported from Herodium to the Museum – as an aid to tracking and assembly. For the same purpose, the Hebrew letter “chet” can be seen on one stone, a sign left by the ancient Jewish stone masons. The structure is so heavy that the floor had to be specially reinforced.

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The top level of the mausoleum. Photo Shmuel Browns

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In 1982, while Netzer was excavating, he came upon a water cistern in the mountain. He was puzzled that the cistern had been reinforced to support a great weight. Unbeknown to him, he had come within a meter of discovering the mausoleum. Why would Herod have insisted that the mausoleum be built on top of a cistern? According to the curator, Dudi Mevorah, Herod chose this precise location because it is best seen from Jerusalem. Once the mausoleum was complete, Herod dismantled the stage and buried his theater in order not to distract the eye.

Netzer drew on his familiarity with Herod’s oeuvre and his expertise as an architect and archaeologist to imagine the mausoleum. Netzer conceives a colossal three-story monument – 25 meters high (see drawing, right, courtesy Israel Museum). The first level is cube-shaped – only the base exists and can be viewed at Herodium halfway up the mountain on the north side. The second level is a tholos, a cylindrical structure with Ionic columns and crowned with a conical roof. In addition to the Roman style, there are Nabatean elements to memorialize Herod’s Nabatean mother Cypros – two stone replicas of Nabatean funerary urns are on display out of five that adorned the roof (see below).

Photo Shmuel Browns

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Entering within the structure, one sees the sarcophagus (left) that Netzer claims was Herod’s. Netzer found its shards – the stone box had been smashed in antiquity and reconstructed by museum staff.

Made of reddish limestone, mizzi ahmar, from the Arabic, this is very hard stone and would have been difficult to carve – perhaps that made it all the more appealing. Originally, Netzer suggested that the side panels of the sarcophagus were decorated with five flower medallions. There are sarcophagi like that, one in the Louvre taken from the Tomb of the Kings, and one outside the Islamic museum on the Haram el-Sharif. Based on the museum reconstruction, it appears that these panels are plain.

Beside the mausoleum, the other two sarcophagi (see below) that Netzer discovered are displayed. Netzer posits that these belonged to Herod’s family members. One is decorated with a vine pattern – very similar to the stucco decorations in Herod’s theater box. The other sarcophagus, displayed for the first time, is completely plain, as if waiting for the stone-carver.

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Photo Shmuel Browns

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Finally, the exhibit features scores of artifacts that hint at the taste for the luxury and sumptuous life of Herod’s private and public world and his inner circle. Some examples are shown below.

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Artifacts: Terra sigillata pottery and Roman glass from Herod’s palaces. Photo Shmuel Browns

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Glass drinking cups from the time of Augustus. Photo Shmuel Browns

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Stone fragments found near Hulda gate near the location of the ancient Temple Mount. Photo Shmuel Browns

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The Israel museum has built a monumental exhibit that expresses Herod’s architecture and aesthetics as discovered by archaeologist, Professor Ehud Netzer – Herod would have been pleased with the result. To understand more requires going beyond the exhibit halls to experience the drama of Herod’s life in situ, at the sites that Herod built.

The author is offering a Herod the Great tour that combines a comprehensive tour of Herodium and the Israel museum. See
http://israeltours.wordpress.com/herod-the-great-tour/ for more information.

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Photo of Herod’s sarcophagus, courtesy The Israel Museum/Meidad Suchowolski.

Window on an Ancient Landscape

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Marion Bamford -

Marion Bamford was born and educated in Zimbabwe before enrolling at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for a BSc degree majoring in Botany and Microbiology. She completed her BSc Honours degree in Plant Systematics and then went on to do her Masters and Doctoral research in Palaeobotany, all at the University of the Witwatersrand. After working at the Geological Survey in Pretoria, she returned to do post doctoral research at Wits on fossil woods for a diamond mining company. She lectures in Palaeobotany to Biology and Geology undergraduate students and supervises post graduate student research. Her main research interest is in fossil woods of all ages, but she is involved in a variety of plant aspects for numerous research projects in Africa. For example, she studies the fossil woods, leaves and seeds from Laetoli in Tanzania, Koobi Fora and Lukeino in Kenya, wood from Sterkfontein in South Africa, woods from southern Africa as well as charcoal and phytoliths. Marion is one of very few palaeobotanists in Africa and is at the Bernard Price Institute, the only African Palaeontology research institute. She has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, presented papers at numerous international conferences and is the editor of the scientific journal Palaeontologia africana. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and is the chief coordinator of the Scientific Advisory Committee for PAST (Palaeontological Scientific Trust, a non-governmental funding body for the palaeosciences in Africa).

My first glimpse of Olduvai Gorge was through dusty sunglasses and a dusty windscreen. Spread out below me was the Y-shaped gorge, stepped walls, dusty green acacia trees and spiky oldupai plants with the white, coarse quartzite of Naibor Soit glistening in the distance. Over a decade later and a total of more than a year spent camping there, the thrill of the first sight of the gorge has not diminished. It is always a delight to visit this famous hominid locality, home of the early hominid, Zinjanthropus boisei, in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, northern Tanzania.

I am part of a multinational team of scientists who have been excavating the 2 million year old sediments of an ancient lake, searching for fossil evidence of the past vegetation, animals, rivers and lake shores that was the home of two of the early hominids. The site was made famous in 1959 when Mary Leakey discovered the first African fossil hominid, the skull of Zinjanthropus boisei (renamed Paranthropus or Australopithecus boisei). Later, another skull was found, Homo habilis, and many stone tools that are now known as the Oldowan culture or technology, the oldest known stone tool technology. It is not clear which hominid made the tools as there are many stone artifacts and very few hominid skeletal remains. This team, the Olduvai Landscape Palaeoanthropology Project, or OLAPP, began work in 1989 with Fidelis Masao, Rob Blumenschine, Jim Ebert and Richard Hay, the geologist who had worked with Mary and Louis Leakey.

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Carefully examining the sediments and biotic traces in the field are Marion Bamford, Fidelis Masao and Rob Blumenschine.

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I joined the team in July 2000 to study the fossilized wood and sedge fragments. It was a very steep learning curve to remember the site names, stratigraphic layers, ages of the tuffs and to visualize the ancient lake that was located where today there are only dry dusty sediments exposed by the “river” erosion. This river only flows a few times a year and seldom in the dry season when we conduct our annual field season. Site names are in honour of the Leakeys and their colleagues — FLK, named after Frida Leakey Korongo (korongo = erosion gully), HWK (Henrietta Wilfrida Korongo), MNK, (Mary Nicol Korongo), DK (Douglas Korongo), and many more. My first excavation took place at MNK through Bed II strata (about 1.8 million years B.P.) under the close supervision of Joanne Tactikos and Augustino Valentin. I labored to recognize the differences between the sediments, the gritty grey tuffs (a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption), augitic sandstones, waxy claystones formed in the lake bottom and the earthy claystones formed in the river channels. Within these confusing layers were fossil bones of elephants, rhinos, bovids and carnivores, as well as stone cores, manuports and flakes. But for me the most interesting finds were the pure white fragments of wood, sedge and grass stems and other plants. Under the microscope, I could see the details of internal plant anatomy with vascular bundles, pith, wood tissue and some structures that I could not recognize. From the first field season there were more questions than answers and a desperate wish to return the next year – and the next.

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Rare occurrence of the Olduvai river flowing in July.

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Here we dug a geotrench – a stepped excavation into the eroding side of the gorge to map in detail the sedimentary layers and collect stone artifacts, bones, plant macroremains and microremains. The tuffs are used to correlate layers in the numerous trenches across the gorge.

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As so little botanical research has been done on similar aged sites with unusual preservation of fossil plants, another member of OLAPP, Charles Peters, and I had to look for living settings with similar vegetation types. From the fossils we knew that there were sedges and river sediments with volcanic ash layers in between, and this suggested an ancient landscape consisting of a wetland with active volcanoes nearby. Modern analogous localities were the shallow lake of Ol’Balbal nearby, Lake Makat in the Ngorongoro caldera, Lake Masek, Lake Ndutu and Lake Manyara. Together with the vertebrate paleontologists we visited these sites each year to monitor the vegetation (and breakup of animal skeletons). Unfortunately, these lakes and their associated wetlands were very saline and alkaline because of the volcanic ash and so the vegetation had a much lower diversity than our fossil wetlands. Therefore, we looked for fresh water wetlands in areas that were undisturbed by people and livestock. We also needed to find places that we could visit frequently and not be attacked by dangerous animals. Otherwise, we could become fossils ourselves! The Serengeti National Park, which is near our research area, has grasslands, woodlands, lakes, rivers and wetlands together with lions, crocodiles, hippos and buffalo. We eventually found several national parks in Southern Africa that were suitable and there we have safely mapped the vegetation, waded through wetlands, collected plants and plant fragments in order to understand the possible settings in which early hominids might have foraged for plant food, animal carcasses and found fresh water to drink.

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View over the south end of Lake Manyara where we have studied the modern vegetation. Note the expanse of white trona (dried out saline and alkaline lake salts) and the narrow channel of fresh water flowing into the lake and forming a large bright green wetland of sedges.

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A few years later Rosa Maria Albert, from Spain, joined the team. Her specialty is phytoliths. These are microscopic silica bodies that form inside some plant cells. They take on the shape of the cell but when the plant dies and rots away the phytoliths remain in the soils or fossilized sediments. The conditions required for the preservation of the larger plant fragments and for the phytoliths are different, so some fossil layers preserve one or the other, or both. Preserved pollen gives us another line of evidence of past vegetation, but is not often found at Olduvai. We collect and study all three types of botanical remains to reconstruct the past vegetation (Albert et al., 2006; Bamford et al., 2006).

Because we are attempting to reconstruct the ancient ecosystems (plants, animals, topography) we use all fossil remains available, as well as the geology. For example, from the small mammal bones found in fossilized owl pellets we know that there must have been roosting trees near the lake shore during uppermost Bed I times at FLK, but we could find no direct evidence of trees. In 2008, after very careful excavation of each thin sedimentary layer, we found casts of branches of trees or shrubs lying horizontally alongside a bank. We were thus able to complete the picture.

Also, along the eastern shore of the palaeolake we have found patches of a dry, weathered, grassland with the basal culms (stems) and the rhizomes silicified and preserved exactly where they were growing. Looking carefully at the plant layer and the overlying sediments, we were able to reconstruct the environment. All that remained of a large area of grasses and small herbs alongside the drying lake were the roots, rhizomes and basal culms (Bamford et al., 2008). This dry vegetation was then covered rapidly by a thin layer of mud, perhaps a heavy rainfall and rising lake water, only to be completely buried – and preserved – by a thick layer of volcanic ash from an erupting volcano nearby. Bones and stone tools were also preserved by this thick ash of Tuff about 1.8 million years ago.

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Cast of a woody branch from FLK site, about 20mm in diameter, provides evidence that there were woody plants growing on the peninsular at the time of “Zinj”.

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View of the internal anatomy of the basal culm of a sedge. The holes contain the vascular bundles.

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Fossil grassland – silicified weathered basal culms of a grass attached to a horizontal rhizome. Coin for scale = 15mm diameter.

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Section of a triangular sedge showing the arrangement of the vascular bundles and canals inside the stem.

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Over the years I have collected many fossil and modern samples, always looking for something different (Bamford 2012). We have visited and sampled other vegetation types, such as the delta and flood plain of Lake Eyasi, the forest at Gombe on Lake Tanganyika, and the open grasslands, kopjies and riverine woodlands in the Serengeti. Working closely with the geologists Ian Stanistreet and Harald Stollhofen, and the palaeontologists Rob Blumenschine, Jackson Njau, Charles Peters and Peter Andrews, we have developed an ecological model for the site where the cranium of “Zinj” (OH5, Paranthropus boisei) was found.

At the time of Zinj, (1.84 Ma) there was more topographical relief than expected at FLK with a peninsular that extended out into the freshwater lake, on the east shore of the palaeolake Olduvai. On one side of the peninsular (Mary Leakey’s FLK NN1 site) was a permanent wetland vegetated with Typha (cattail or bulrush) and various sedges. On the other side of the peninsular were freshwater river channels that fed water into the lake (FLK Fault and Mary Leakey’s site FLK 22). On this narrow peninsular, slightly raised above the water level, were groves of broad-leaved trees and palms where carnivores could prey on animals drinking water and hominids could scavenge the carcasses, collect water and forage for plant foods such as sedge rhizomes and perhaps fruits. The distribution of the stone artifacts and bones supports our scenario and further shows that the sites were not occupational floors but rather sites of scavenging and butchery activity (Blumenschine et al., 2012).

My research at Olduvai is not finished. There are other sites along the ancient shores and hundreds of thousands of years to research. There may not be many fossil hominids at Olduvai, but there are many landscapes to investigate.

References

Albert, R.M., Bamford, M.K., 2012. Vegetation during uppermost Bed I and deposition of Tuff IF at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, based on phytoliths and plant remains. Five Decades after Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis: Landscape Paleoanthropology of Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Journal of Human Evolution 63, 342-350.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.05.010.

Albert, R.M., Bamford, M.K., Cabanes, D. 2006. Taphonomy of phytoliths and macroplants in different soils from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania: application to Plio-Pleistocene palaeoanthropological samples. Quaternary International 148: 78-94.

Bamford, M.K. 2012. Fossil sedges, macroplants and roots from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Five Decades after Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis: Landscape Paleoanthropology of Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Journal of Human Evolution 63, 351-363.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.07.001

Bamford, M.K., Albert, R.M., Cabanes, D. 2006. Plio-Pleistocene macroplant fossil remains and phytoliths from Lowermost Bed II in the eastern palaeolake margin of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Quaternary International. 148: 95-112.

Bamford, M.K., Stanistreet, I.R., Stollhofen, H., Albert, R.M. 2008. Late Pliocene grassland from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 257, 280-293.

Blumenschine, R.J., Stanistreet, I.G., Njau, J.K., Bamford, M.K., Masao, F.T., Stollhofen, H., Andrews, P., Fernandez-Jalvo, Y., Prassack, K.A., Albert, R.M., McHenry, L.J., Camilli, E.L., Ebert, J.I. 2012. Environments and activity traces of hominins across the FLK Peninsula during Zinjanthropus times (1.84 Ma), Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Five Decades after Zinjanthropus and Homo habilis: Landscape Paleoanthropology of Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Journal of Human Evolution 63, 364-383. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.10.001

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Unless otherwise noted, all photos courtesy Marion Bamford.

The Discoveries at Quesna

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Joanne Rowland -

Joanne Rowland graduated from the Institute of Archaeology at UCL with her PhD in Egyptian Archaeology in 2004, having also studied for her BA and MA at UCL. Having began fieldwork in the Nile Delta in 1998, working with Fekri Hassan and G. J. Tassie at Kafr Hassan Dawood (Eastern Delta), she spent a season with the German Archaeological Institute mission to Buto/Tell el-Fara’in, before joining Penny Wilson (University of Durham) and her team to work at Sais, during which time she participated on the Northwest Delta Survey. Following on from this experience and from the results of her PhD research – which indicated our sparse knowledge of the central Nile Delta – Joanne started a regional survey in Minufiyeh Province in 2005 under the auspices of the EES, where she works to this day. Joanne has also worked briefly in the south Sinai and also at Elkab, north of Edfu. Her particular interests lie, clearly, in the archaeology of the Nile Delta, and also in the prehistoric and early historic periods of Egypt. She is also very interested in early mortuary practices, which she began researching during her MA year, and in the chronology of ancient Egypt; she was the Research Fellow in Egyptology for a Leverhulme Trust funded project at the University of Oxford (2006-2009) which focussed on synchronisms between the Egyptian chronology and scientific dating methods. After Oxford, Joanne joined the team of the Belgian Archaeological Mission to Elkab and was based in Brussels at the Royal Museums of Art and History from 2009-2010. Since then she has held a position as Junior Professor in the Egyptology Seminar of the Freie University of Berlin.

Heading north out of Cairo, Egypt, on the ‘Agricultural Road’ to Alexandria, it is a short drive of about one and a half hours to the Minufiyeh province. Today, Minufiyeh is a highly populated region, with very fertile land and crops in the fields year round. Agricultural practices are very different today than they were anciently. During the Pharaonic era and up until the raising of the first Aswan Dam at the turn of the 20th century, the population of Egypt depended upon the yearly inundation of the river Nile to bring water along with valuable fertile silt to irrigate and enrich the land. Driving through this region today, it is not easy to imagine the archaeological sites of the Delta, yet anciently the region was occupied from its western to its eastern desert edges. In the eastern Nile Delta, archaeological material dating to as early as the fourth millennium BC (the Egyptian Predynastic period) can be found on or close to the surface, and archaeologists have been working intensively in this region since the 1970s to locate and investigate both Predynastic and Early Dynastic cemeteries and settlements, as well as sites of later dates. One of these projects operates under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES). Known as the Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey, it is carried out in the modern day province of the same name within the Nile Delta region (http://minufiyeh.tumblr.com/). The project is part of the Society’s Delta Survey (http://www.deltasurvey.ees.ac.uk/ds-home.html), and represents one of several international teams that are working across the Nile Delta today.

This has not been the first archaeological activity in the area. Early archaeologists and Egyptologists, including Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, worked at important sites here in the late 19^th century. Other travellers and scholars, including Jean-Jacques Rifaud and Pascale Coste, left a record of monuments in the wider Delta as early as the 18^th century, and French Egyptologist Georges Daressy surveyed areas, including the central Delta, in the early 20^th century. Since the early 20^th century, however, the southern central Delta has received little attention and our knowledge of sites in the area over time has been very limited. Part of the problem is logistical — due to the varied geomorphology of the Nile Delta, the central and western regions are heavily overlaid with sediment from the very same inundations that enabled settlement in the Delta since the late 6^th millennium BC. Sites do remain, but the earliest settlements in the modern cultivated areas are accessible largely through use of de-watering equipment.

The purpose of the Minufiyeh Archaeological Survey is to develop new understanding about ancient settlements in the southerly reaches of the central Delta and the region stretching westwards to the desert edge. This project is aimed at surveying the central Delta to map the distribution of sites of all dates across this region and to consider what their relationships might have been to each other and with other sites across the country. There was also a special interest at the outset in 2005 regarding the possibility of locating prehistoric and early historic sites or temporary encampments.

The Minufiyeh Survey

As already noted above, the last major survey carried out in the southern central Delta was that by the French Egyptologist, Georges Daressy. He was working at a time when the region was much less densely populated and his reports, published in the journal Annales du Service des Antiquites de L’Egypte, have proved very instructive for the relocation of sites since 2005. Some of the sites that Daressy described are much altered today, with some features no longer visible within the modern landscape, e.g. red bricks associated with Roman baths. Some of the koms (an Arabic word used for mounds) he visited no longer exist, some have been greatly diminished in diameter, and still others were gradually built over. Reasons for these changes include re-use of ancient mudbrick, a building material valued for its qualities as a fertilizer, settlements being made on the koms, and the need for more agricultural land to support the rapidly expanding modern population in Egypt. The project re-visited findspots and sites recognized by Daressy, as well as those referred to on the Delta Survey of the EES or in other publications, detailing the state of preservation or the scope of archaeological evidence surviving in the mid 20th century, as compared to that previously recorded. Even with such variable and often sparse data, it all contributes to a better understanding of how the region functioned and also how it changed through time in response to environmental change (e.g. the movement of Nile branches), as well as the changing political climate. The methods for the survey were straightforward, including examination of maps (old as well as current), satellite imagery (since even levelled koms leave their mark on the landscape), and published material before going into the field. Out in the Delta the team made site visits, field-walked and, most important, engaged in discussions with local villagers and local inspectors of antiquities who have an intimate knowledge of the area. Visits were followed up at promising sites with geophysical survey, drill coring and, in a lower number of instances, small test trenches.

The results of the survey, which has been minimally invasive to date, have revealed that the majority of sites or findspots date to the Ptolemaic, Roman, Coptic and Islamic periods. These are sites in the main cultivated areas of the Delta. They number in excess of forty and consist of ceramic scatters with a low number of sites showing structural remains and/or stone blocks with inscriptions. Along the western Delta desert edge, however, the picture is strikingly different, because the material is no longer predominantly ceramic. It is lithic, dating from as early as c. 400,000 BP until the Neolithic (in Egypt, late 6^th through until the end of the fifth millennium BCE). There is a Neolithic settlement only c. 4km south of the current survey area, a site that was discovered in 1928 by Herman Junker and the Austrian West Delta Expedition, and it is very possible that further settlements exist both to the north and south of Merimde Beni Salama. Scatters of lithics are currently distributed from the highest ground up on the desert edge, to the lowest levels, close to the modern canals, east of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. In 2013, the current team will be joined by new colleagues to begin a program of drill coring and geophysical survey in the region to help to re-establish the ancient environment and the extent and location of the ancient floodplain in order to assess where sites would logically have been placed. In the Neolithic and Predynastic periods the region became much more arid, although in the preceding Palaeolithic, a series of alternating arid and humid phases occurred. In complete contrast to the rest of the southern central Delta, there is very little ceramic material in this region, with the exception of a very few Predynastic sherds, infrequent scatters of late Ramesside period to Late Period sherds, as well as rare scatters of Late Roman, Coptic and Islamic (Ottoman), as well as modern ceramics. Due to the very early date of some of the lithics, most of the material will relate to periods during which there were temporary encampments, although until now no in situ material has been found due to the high level of ground disturbance due to recent agricultural expansion into the desert. Preliminary reports on the survey sites have been published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology for those who would like to read more; upon conclusion of the survey, more details will be published. Within this framework, the project was also committed to the re-investigation of one of the few known and registered (by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, since 2011 under the Ministry of State for Antiquities) sites in Minufiyeh, the Quesna cemetery.

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Figure 1. Location of selected findspots from Minufiyeh. Image: J. Rowland in Google Earth

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Figure 2. Location of Quesna. Image: K. Strutt.

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Quesna

The site of Quesna takes its name from that of the modern town c7km to its west, and is recorded as site 639 on the Delta Survey Database (http://www.deltasurvey.ees.ac.uk/queisna.html). The archaeological remains are located on top of a huge sand hill (Pleistocene gezira), which was the chosen location for a cemetery both for the local population as well as a place to honour the god depicted as a falcon, Horus, one of the earliest of the ancient Egyptian deities. The site was discovered during sand quarrying to the south of the site, when a large mud-brick structure was uncovered and the site registered under the control of the (now) Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA). The structure proved to be a mausoleum that was in use from the Late Period until the Ptolemaic period (c747-30 BCE). Subsequent investigations and small test pits as well as open area excavations led to the discovery of a mud-brick structure which was used for the burial of falcon mummies, being offered up to Horus, as well as a cemetery consisting of pit and ceramic coffin burials of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (c305 BCE-AD 395).

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Figure 3. View from the south looking to the mausoleum, the first architectural features of the site found during the removal of sand. Photo: J. Rowland.

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The questions that faced the new project team upon arriving at Quesna in 2005 were multiple: When was the site at Quesna first used, which communities within its vicinity did it serve, within which of the Egyptian provinces (later known as nomes) did it fall, and what was the original extent of the site before the modern sand quarrying began?Furthermore, it was important to gather information about the individuals that used the site, the positions they might have held, their occupations, as well as to assess their state of health, longevity and the demographics of the population. In order to begin to answer these questions, it was imperative to ascertain the original extent of the site represented by the sub-surface archaeological remains of the site today, as well as to assess the original size of the gezira. Both objectives were considered early on in the project, beginning in 2006-7 when a magnetometer survey was carried out by Kristian Strutt and Sophie Hay of the Archaeological Prospection Service of the University of Southampton, and when Mohamed Hamdan, professor in the Department of Geoarchaeology at Cairo University, led a team to conduct drill cores around the gezira. The drill coring was successful in re-creating not only a clearer picture of the original extent of the gezira, charting the depth of sand beneath the modern surface and the distance to which it persisted away from the modern extent of the gezira, but also in detecting the waterways that existed in close proximity to the site in antiquity. The waterways were determined by examining the sediments from the drill cores. This type of work contributes much to the knowledge of ancient landscapes, which in turn allows for a better and clearer understanding of site location. It also acts as a tool by which archaeologists can better anticipate the location of sites. The river branches running through the Nile Delta were neither constant in their position or in their number in antiquity, which further complicates the picture — but new research being conducted in Egypt today by multi-disciplinary international teams working along the length of the Nile Valley may soon help to clarify matters in the Delta.

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Figure 4. Location of the drill cores around the Quesna gezira. Image: J. Rowland in Google Earth.

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The magnetic survey carried out in 2006-7 confirmed that the western area of the gezira was dense in archaeological materials, from the southern to northern extents of the site, whereas to the east, there appeared to be little in the way of ancient remains. The anomalies that can be seen covering the site predominantly relate to burials, including ceramic coffins which show up clearly on magnetic surveys. In addition, the full extent of the falcon necropolis in the north of the site could be seen for the first time. This was supplemented in 2009 and 2011 when Kris Strutt returned to Quesna to trial ground penetrating radar survey (GPR) at the site. He succeeded in quite literally deepening our level of knowledge about the structures at the site, as GPR data can inform on the presence of materials/features beneath the surface at various depths. The magnetic map had produced valuable horizontal data, although little indication of depth. Combined with the GPR results, this has subsequently allowed the team to precisely locate excavation trenches to help provide answers to the initial research questions.

Excavation under the current project began at Quesna in the 2007 season. Two trenches were opened. The first was placed to assess whether the Ptolemaic-Roman cemetery began directly to the west of the mausoleum. The second was to locate the entrance structure to the falcon gallery, indicated by the results of the magnetic survey. In Trench 1, burials within ceramic coffins and simple pit burials were found just beneath the surface, which does not necessarily mean that this was originally the case, since the depth might have been affected by environmental or other changes in the landscape over the past two thousand years. The burials revealed in Trench 1 did not suggest that the individuals had held any substantial socio-economic wealth, in contrast to the finds that had been made in the mausoleum, which included ceramic and numerous ushabtis (figures that accompanied the deceased into the afterlife to carry out work for them) and amulets of various materials. Although there was a general lack of grave goods, the location of packing material variably in the mouth, thorax, pelvis, abdomen or legs, or even on the face, indicates varying degrees of mummification, although none comparable to the fine mummification of some individuals indicated in the reports from the Egyptian excavations in the mausoleum. This concurs with the writings of Herodotus who described several different degrees of mummification depending upon the resources available to the individual. A number of different osteologists have worked in the cemetery since 2007 — Scott Haddow, Sonia Zakrzewski, Sarah Inskip and Lawrence Owens — and their research has provided much new data about the medical conditions as well as injuries and damage/healing to the bones themselves. Such data can help to clarify the types of activities with which the population was involved, although without accompanying textual or pictorial information, it is not easy to suggest exactly which exact occupations which individuals had practiced. Nevertheless, it can indicate, e.g., whether individuals had been habitually in a squatting position, or a position similar to that assumed by individuals when grinding grain. Another interesting observation has been the non-fusion of long bones on a low number of individuals, where the dental and pelvic data have suggested an age by which the fusion should have been complete. This is considered to possibly be the result of an endocrine disorder and incidences of this condition included one individual in Grave 1014 who died at age 15-24 years, and another in Grave 1019 (Burial 21), where examination of the teeth would suggest an age at death of 16-22 years, although age ranges based on the post crania suggest 18-19 or 15-24 years of age. Another individual presenting the same condition was excavated during the 2011 summer season, a tall individual (Burial 72) at 1.80m, and whereas the teeth suggested an age of 21 years, the non-fusion of some bones suggested a much younger age of 12-15 years. It is possible that some of these individuals either held an important position (possibly religious) during life, or, that their condition was such that they were provided with extra luck as they made the journey into the afterlife, although Burial 72 had no associated amulets or other grave goods. The individuals described here have been suggested as male due to their large stature. Burial 21 in Grave 1019 was provided with amulets of many different types made of plaster, scarabs, a ‘Hathor’ head, a sphinx, winged figure and simple discs or buttons.

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Figure 5. Joris van Wetering (left) carefully uncovering the plaster amulets lying on top of Grave 1019 (left), whilst Scott Haddow (right) plans the burial. Photo: S. Zakrzewski.

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Figure 6. Plan of Burial 21, in Grave 1019 showing the location of the amulets across the body. Digitised image: C. Mazzacuto from plan by S. Haddow.

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These amulets were laid all over the body and following excavation, our conservator Stavroula Golfomitsou succeeded in consolidating not only the amulets and fragments thereof, to prevent their disintegration, but also in starting to piece together the many fragments of plaster that had originally formed a single object – a face mask. The mask has recently been worked again, as Richard Jaeschke prepares the pieces for mounting on a backing cloth to re-create the original shape of the mask.

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Figure 7. Restoration of the face mask from Burial 21 in progress. Photo: R. Jaeschke.

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A second burial in Trench 1 also revealed amulets, although in this instance the individual did not display evidence for the same medical condition. The burial in this grave, Grave 1021, was placed within a ceramic coffin, although only the western vessel and upper body of the individual remained. The upper body was covered in plaster scarabs, all with their heads to the west, scarabs that had been made in moulds, and radiating out from around the head of the deceased were plumed crowns. There was even evidence of gold leaf remaining by the face, and this individual might also have originally had a face mask.

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Figure 8. Plan of Grave 1021, Burial 34 in Coffin 3, showing the location of the plaster crowns around the head and the scarabs on the body. Digitised image: C. Mazzacuto from plan by S. Haddow.

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A small amount of additional information for the provision of cartonnage in burials, found on the body, and also gold foil, has been found, although it is the exception rather than the rule. One of the individuals with traces of gold on various bones was found in the summer of 2012 in Trench 9, an individual within a multiple burial (Grave 1067) in a grave surrounded by a single to two-course wall of mud-bricks, bricks which had fragments of plaster remaining, including plaster that had been painted. The connection between the individuals in this and other multiple burials at Quesna is not certain, although in this instance adults and children had been buried together, with a definite total of four, and possibly five burials. The burials were all oriented with their heads to the east, not the most common position at Quesna, laid out on their backs with heads up (normal position across the site), and all were buried at approximately the same depth. Multiple burials, from the excavations to date, are not frequent in number at Quesna, although Grave 1014 in Trench 1 contained five burials. It was quite unlike Grave 1067 in that the burials had been made at three different levels, and sediment between the second row of burials and the final interment detected by the osteologist suggests that the final burial might have been made at a later date. All but one of the burials had their heads to the west, the other outstretched with the head to the east, and the final burial had no skull at the time of excavation. This tomb was also constructed with mud-bricks, although of smaller scale than Grave 1067, and the top layer of bricks were very disturbed when the tomb was discovered, which suggests that robbery resulted in the missing skull. Mud-brick as well as burned red-brick burials have also been found in Trench 1 and Trench 9, with two single mud-brick covered burials in Trench 1, one oriented east-west, and the other north-south, with the red-brick surrounded burial in Trench 9 oriented east-west.

Both burials in Trench 1 contained older females. A female aged 50+ was buried in Grave 1004, who probably suffered with osteoporosis and who had no teeth remaining when she died. The individual in Grave 1005 was aged between 45-60 years, also with osteoporosis and with no teeth remaining. This female also suffered from osteoarthritis. The majority of coffin burials are varieties of double-vessel types, with a lower frequency of tray coffins, coffins that were made as one piece and placed over, although not under the deceased. The first publication of the results from the excavations in the cemetery by the project will be available before the end of 2012.

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Figure 9. Mudbrick burial Grave 1005, Burial 6. Photo: P. Popkin.

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Figure 10. S. Golfomitsou (left) and S. Haddow (right) uncovering Burial 6, in Grave 1005. Photo: N. Billing.

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In addition to the work in the cemetery, there are two other areas at the site which have been under investigation by the current team and which can be introduced here. One of these was discovered by the MSA and excavated during the 1990s: the sacred falcon necropolis. Up until the summer 2012 season, there have been five trenches excavated within this structure. Trenches 2 and 3 were located in the entrance structure, at the southern entrance and in the northwestern corner, with Trenches 12, 13 and 15 directly to the south and the east of the area excavated by the Egyptian team in the 1990s. Trenches 12 and 13 were located due to the results of the GPR survey, which suggested that the corridors of the gallery continued further south than had originally been thought.

The entrance to the gallery was from a building on the western end of the structure. Constructed of mud-brick, a series of corridors running under arches led into a large room which appears to have been one of the access points to the gallery, as the fallen remains of mud-brick arches were detected in the eastern baulk of the trench. From here the galleries run over 100m in an easterly direction. Cut marks into the mud-bricks in the south and north of the entrance structure suggest robbing in antiquity, further confirmed by the presence of broken limestone pieces, including a decorated small column capital and possible decorative elements for door arches. Further to the east, in the galleries themselves, however, there are some areas that have not been subjected to heavy robbery. The main walls running through the galleries have been damaged and cut in the past, but it would seem more likely, based on associated evidence, including tiny fragments of gold and scattered human remains, that these cuts into the walls were in order to place burials within this sacred place. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that burials were also placed in the walls of the mausoleum in the south of the site.

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Figure 11. Looking south over the entrance structure to the corridors of the falcon necropolis. Photo: J. Rowland

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Figure 12. The repaired northwestern corner of the entrance structure to the falcon necropolis during excavation by Ashraf Amir, Laila Mohamed El Fatamawy and Daniel Jones. Photo: J. Rowland.

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Trenches 12, 13 and 15 allowed the team to better understand the main structure of the galleries, to detect the sloping walls which would have originally met beneath mud-brick arches. There are also dense deposits of bird mummies here in the galleries, deposits which stretch from wall to wall and which a specialist in animal remains, Salima Ikram, who examined the galleries in the summer of 2012, has suggested would have been laid down layer by layer, with the areas being bricked off once they were full. Although no totally complete ceramic jars have been found in the galleries, it is clear from the 1990’s MSA excavations that a certain type of jar, frequently encountered in the current excavations, had been found filled with falcon eggs and also with mummified remains.

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Figure 13. One of the jar stoppers from the ceramic jars which could contain mummified remains or bird eggs. Photo: G. J. Tassie.

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Late Finds

As is typical, the most exciting finds are often made as the excavation season comes to an end, and during final cleaning in preparation for photography and planning, the eastern back wall of the original structure was detected, with a series of later walls running eastwards. Investigations will have to continue in a future season, and it is not yet possible to date the later the extension, but the walls were definitely not continuous. They abutt each other. The expert cleaning that revealed this fact was made by one of our Qufti workforce who was working with the project’s assistant director, G. J. Tassie. The ‘Quftis’ come from the town of Quft in Upper Egypt, just north of modern Luxor, where men were first trained in archaeological excavation skills by Flinders Petrie. The team at Quesna has much appreciated their archaeological and logistical input since Rais Omer Farouk el-Quftawi and his men joined the team in the spring of 2010.

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Figure 14. View over the possibly original back (eastern) wall of the falcon necropolis at the point where slightly thinner east-west running walls are abutting it. Looking south. Photo: G. J. Tassie.

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Several connections are possible between the site of Quesna and nearby Athribis, which lies close by in the modern city of Benha, c4km as the crow flies. One of these connections may relate to the falcon gallery. Inscriptions on statues/statue bases from Athribis identify an individual of the name Djed Hor Pashed (Djed Hor the saviour) who was connected with the cults of Horus at Athribis, most probably in the 30^th Dynasty. When the various inscriptions were examined, there was no knowledge of the falcon necropolis at Quesna, because it was only found in the 1990s; however, it is possible that Djed Hor might have overseen the worship of the cult of Horus at Quesna and perhaps might have been responsible for the building of at least part of the structure. Inscriptions that were found in the mausoleum at Quesna also tell of priests related to the cult of Horus Khenty-Khety, which has been associated with Athribis since Middle Kingdom times. These include a priest of Osiris, Hor-Wadja, the sarcophagus of whom was found by the MSA, and which now can be found outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Due to its geographical position and the changing political organisation of the country, Quesna appears to have fallen under different provinces (later called nomes) at different periods of history. Quesna has been attached to Athribis, to Mustai, (which is just a short distance to the north) and also possibly even to Busiris, some distance further north. To which nome, however, might Quesna have been attached before the Late Period? There is one more discovery that was made at Quesna in the spring of 2010 that can be briefly introduced here. Surprisingly, during the cleaning and initial excavation of the sediment above another mud-brick structure, this time on the very northern edge of the Quesna gezira, ceramic sherds were found which were quite unlike anything else found at the site. It was quickly realised by a ceramicist from the Fayum, team-member Ashraf el-Senussi, that these were not ‘late’ pottery sherds, but rather fragments of jars known commonly as beer jars or offering jars. They were found in great numbers across the top of the structure. Fortunately, due to the variations in the typology of these beer jars, it is possible to associate them with quite tight chronological spans and in this instance the types found have been dated at the earliest to the late 3^rd Dynasty and at the latest to the reign of Khufu, the king interred in the Great Pyramid at Giza. The structure is large, with its maximum extents of 17m north-south and 13m east-west, and is built of mud-bricks up to c0.50m in length, another indicator of the early date of the structure. This mastaba tomb (named after the Arabic word for bench) had been badly damaged, possibly at various points in antiquity, when robbers had searched for the burial shaft leading down to the subterranean burial chamber with its provisions for the afterlife. Although the surface of the structure was excavated and planned in 2010, it is currently backfilled and waiting beneath the surface for new investigations, hopefully in 2013, which should reveal the location of the burial shaft and whatever fragments of the original provisions that remain. To help the team understand more about the individuals at the site and relationships with other sites already in the Old Kingdom, a period including Athribis is known through textual references (including the 5^th Dynasty Palermo Stone). The preservation of mud-seal impressions would be helpful in providing a possible personal name, or the title of a position held by the individual for whom the mastaba tomb was built.

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Figure 15. A view from the west over the Old Kingdom mastaba structure. Photo: J. Rowland.

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Figure 16. Close up showing the stepped façade of the mastaba structure (northern wall). Photo: J. Rowland.

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The work proceeds and in the course of the team’s fieldwork during the past two summer seasons there has also been a training school for Egyptian antiquities’ inspectors, university students from the University of Minufiyeh in nearby Shibin el-Kom, and students from the Freie Universität Berlin, where the author is currently based. The training focuses on archaeological field techniques covering all aspects of recording excavations, orienting trenches, taking levels, single-context recording (based on the Museum of London Archaeology’s methodology), planning, analysis and excavation of human skeletal remains, archaeological photography, as well as basic field conservation and the principles of analysis and recording of ceramic finds. This has been conducted in cooperation with our colleagues at the MSA, to whom thanks are given, and also with the Egypt Exploration Society, the University of Minufiyeh and, in 2012, the Freie Universität of Berlin. Funding for the fieldschool has been provided by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst. Funding for the fieldwork in Minufiyeh has been generously provided since 2006 by: the British Academy Small Research Grants, the Egypt Exploration Society (including the Centenary Award and the Amelia Edwards Project Grants), the Gerald Averay Wainwright Near Eastern Archaeological Fund, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the John Fell (Oxford University Press) Fund, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, The Michaela Schiff Giorgini Foundation, the Rutherford Press Limited and the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust. Sincere thanks go to the MSA in Cairo and also in Minufiyeh and to the inspectors who have accompanied us since 2005. We also exetnd our gratitude to all past and present team members.

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Figure 17. The Egyptian fieldschool students receiving their certificates in October 2012. Photo: O. Farouk.

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Figure 18. His Excellency Mr James Watt the British Ambassador to Cairo, Mrs Amal Watt and Ms. Jane Rawbone, during their visit to Quesna in September 2012. Photo: R. Abd el-Galil.

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More about work being conducted in Egypt under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society can be found in the article entitled Romancing the Stones of Egypt in the June 2012 issue of Popular Archaeology.

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The First Americans

Posted on September 5, 2012 by James Kensington -

Few had ever heard of the little town of Buttermilk Creek, Texas, until it was placed on the map in early 2011 when Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters made his public announcement. He and a team of archaeologists, researchers, students and volunteers had been painstakingly excavating at an archaeological site, known as the Debra L. Firiedkin site, for years. What they discovered there had generated excitement in the world of American archaeology.

Totaling 15,528 artifacts, the Buttermilk Creek Complex, as researchers are now calling the assemblage, contained evidence of small blades, choppers and scrapers, implements made by people who had long departed the scene, long before any notion in the minds of the early European explorers that anyone had ever inhabited the North American continent.

“Most of these are chipping debris from the making and resharpening of tools,” said Waters, “but over 50 are tools. There are bifacial artifacts that tell us they were making projectile points and knives at the site. There are expediently made tools and blades that were used for cutting and scraping.”

On the face of it, his discovery could hardly eclipse any of the finds made by other archaeologists through decades of excavation and research about the early peopling of the Americas. But there were several important differences that made the site, and the finds, unique. They had to do with the sheer number of the finds, their nature, and the dating, with the most sensational difference being the dating.

“What is special about the Debra L. Friedkin site is that it has the largest number of artifacts dating to the pre-Clovis time period, that these artifacts show an array of different technologies, and that these artifacts date to a very early time,” said Waters.

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Archaeological excavation at the Debra L. Friedkin site in Texas. Image courtesy Michael R. Waters.

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The Clovis time refers to a time period (about 13,500 years ago) to which, according to many scholars, the earliest known stone tools and weapons made by early ancestral Native Americans could be assigned. Best known for their medium to large fluted lanceolate projectile points and distinctive bone and ivory items, these stone artifact finds constitute the evidential basis for the widely accepted “Clovis First” hypothesis, which suggests that the people associated with the artifacts were the first inhabitants of the Americas. Clovis artifacts have been found in abundance at sites across the North American continent.

But the headline-making finds at the Friedkin site were not Clovis, and they were older than the oldest known Clovis tools by about 2,000 years.

Waters and his associates used Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating, a technique that measures the amount of light energy trapped over thousands of years in minerals within the sediment surrounding artifacts. Professor Steven Forman of the University of Illinois at Chicago worked with Waters at the site, collecting 50 core samples from two sites at Buttermilk Creek for testing. “We found Buttermilk Creek to be about 15,500 years ago — a few thousand years before Clovis” said Forman. “We dated the sediments by a variety of optical methods. We also dated different mineral fractions as well, and we consistently got the same ages. We looked at the age structure of the sediment by many different ways and got the same answers.”

In addition to providing compelling evidence for pushing the clock back on when the earliest Americans arrived, the Friedkin site findings have provided additional credence to the suggestion that the stone tool technology of the Clovis culture was not imported into the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge (“Beringia”) in accordance with the Clovis Model, but instead evolved in North America from an earlier technology. Given the nature and characteristics of the Buttermilk Creek Complex, Waters maintains that the Complex represents a “type of assemblage from which the Clovis assemblage could emerge” with the new dating providing “ample time for people to settle into the environments of North America, colonize South America by at least ~14.1 to 14.6 ka, develop the Clovis tool kit, and create a base population through which Clovis technology could spread”.[1]

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Some of the artifacts from the 15,500-year-old horizon. Image courtesy Michael R. Waters.

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The Mounting Evidence

The arguments against the traditional Clovis First perspective point to the fact that no Clovis-type artifacts have been found in Northeast Asia, from where the early Americans under the Clovis Model are suggested to have migrated, and fluted stone points that are iconic for Clovis and found in Alaska are all dated too late to be assigned to the Clovis horizon. Moreover, six major sites in South America with stratigraphic layers dated to the Clovis period are devoid of Clovis period artifacts.

Nevertheless, comparing the evidence of Clovis technology dated to very early occupation of the Americas with what is available for the same time period for other technology forms has traditionally given Clovis the decided edge in the debate. But new evidence against Clovis has been mounting. The Friedkin site is not the only site that has been dated to the pre-Clovis time period. Pre-Clovis finds have been recorded at sites such as Pedra Furada in Brazil, Monte Verde in Chile, two mammoth kill sites in Wisconsin, Topper in South Carolina, Cactus Hill and Saltville in Virginia, and Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania, among others. The evidence at these sites, however, has been in dispute and is not as robust as that found at Friedkin.

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Excavators examine a cluster on the proposed pre-Clovis surface at the Topper site. Courtesy Center for the Study of the First Americans.

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Proposed pre-Clovis artifacts found at the Topper site. Courtesy Center for the Study of the First Americans.

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Proposed pre-Clovis bend break tools found at the Topper site. Courtesy Center for the Study of the First Americans.

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But new discoveries have emerged and joined Friedkin with stronger evidence of pre-Clovis beginnings…….

At the Paisley caves in south-central Oregon, a team of research scientists led by Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History has found evidence that an early stone implement technology, known as “Western Stemmed” projectile points (darts or thrusting spearheads), were manufactured at least 11,070 to 11,340 radiocarbon years ago, making them concurrent with or possibly earlier than the Clovis culture (dated to 13,000 calendar years ago). The researchers obtained 190 radiocarbon dates on artifacts, human coprolites (dried feces), bones and sagebrush twigs within layers of silt deposited over thousands of years in the caves. The broad, concave-based, fluted Clovis projectile points often associated with early Americans who lived about 12,000 – 13,000 years ago were not found in the caves.

Past studies of the Paisley Caves have also reported very early dates from human coprolites with ancient DNA, but questions arose about whether those samples could have been contaminated, and whether they were found in true context with artifacts from the same era. So the researchers did an exhaustive examination of the stratigraphy, which is one of Davis’ specialties.

“We continued to excavate Paisley Caves from 2009 through 2011,” the authors wrote in Science. “To resolve the question of stratigraphic integrity, we acquired 121 new AMS [accelerator mass spectrometry] radiocarbon dates on samples of terrestrial plants, macrofossils from coprolites, bone collagen and water soluble extracts recovered from each of these categories. To date, a total of 190 radiocarbon dates have been produced from the Paisley Caves.”

Davis conducted microscopic analysis of the soil using a “petrographic” microscope, to eliminate any indications that liquid – such as water or urine from humans or animals – may have moved down from higher layers into the lower layers, thus “contaminating” or compromising the integrity of the dating of the soil. They also analyzed the silt where the stem points were found and bracketed above and below those layers to determine if the radiocarbon dates synchronized.

The result: “The stemmed points were in great context,” Davis said. “There is no doubt that they were in primary context, associated with excellent radiocarbon dates.” The new dating was valid and few could now argue with the results.

The significance of the Paisley finds extends from the fact that Western Stemmed points and Clovis points differ fundamentally in terms of their hafting portions, the part of the stone point that connects to a shaft. Stemmed points are narrower or constricted at their bases, whereas the hafting portions of Clovis points are not narrow, but thinned width-wise through removal of large flakes from their bases.

“These two approaches to making projectile points were really quite different,” Davis said, “and the fact that Western Stemmed point-makers fully overlap, or even pre-date Clovis point makers likely means that Clovis peoples were not the sole founding population of the Americas.”

Moreover, the dating of the Western Stemmed projectile points to possibly pre-Clovis times adds new data to digest in the ongoing debate about the starkly different production technologies overlapping in time and whether or not they developed separately. The results even suggest that the Clovis culture may have developed or originated in the Southeastern region of the United States and moved westward, while the Western Stemmed tradition originated, perhaps earlier than the Clovis, in the West and moved eastward.

“From our dating, it appears to be impossible to derive Western Stemmed points from a proto-Clovis tradition,” Jenkins said. “It suggests that we may have here in the Western United States a tradition that is at least as old as Clovis, and quite possibly older. We seem to have two different traditions co-existing in the United States that did not blend for a period of hundreds of years.”

It is interesting to note in this context that Clovis technology has only been found in the New World, whereas Western Stemmed technology is similar to stone technology seen in northeastern Asia.

At least three other Western sites, including Cooper’s Ferry in Idaho, Smith Creek Cave in Nevada, and Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, also in Nevada, also contain only Western Stemmed points in deposits of this early time period.

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Displayed in the hand of University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins are three bases for Western Stemmed projectiles from the Paisley Caves in Oregon. The bases date to some 13,000 years ago. [Photo by Jim Barlow]

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Enter here another site, located in Manis, Washington, where the fossil remains of a mastodon were excavated by Dr. Carl Gustafson and a team from Washington State University in the 1970’s. He concluded from radiocarbon dating of charcoal deposits around the remains that it was about 14,000 years old. It was a conclusion that had been the subject of considerable debate among scholarly critics, particularly as he maintained that a bone point found embedded in the rib bone of the mastodon was an early projectile point, similar to other bone projectile points found at other Paleo-indian sites.

The case was revisited recently when Dr. Michael Waters of Texas A & M University, the excavator of the Firiedkin site who, along with a team of colleagues, used mass spectrometry to date carbon in samples of bone from the rib, a pair of tusks found at the same site, and the embedded point. Results indicated that all of the fossils tested were about 13,800 years old. They also used high-resolution X-ray CT scanning of the embedded bone point to produce a three-dimensional visual study or image. Based on this, they determined that the point was likely at least 27 centimeters long, similar in length to those of later, Clovis-age projectile points that were used in throwing or thrusting weapons made by Paleolithic hunters of North America. Moreover, the team examined the specimen using DNA protein analysis of material from the bone point and the rib in which it was embedded. They concluded that the point itself was fashioned from mastodon bone.

Most significantly, the findings constitute more evidence that Paleo-Indians settled the Americas before 13,000 – 13,500 B.P.E., the earliest date range that has traditionally been assigned to the emergence of the “Clovis” cultural horizon.

Said Waters, “We’re looking at another pre-Clovis locality in North America where, in this case, bone weaponry was used to hunt mastodons 800 years before Clovis stone weaponry show up on the landscape.”

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This is a mastodon skeleton and outline of a mastodon. The location of the rib and approximate angle of the spear is indicated. The point had to penetrate 25-30 cm of hide, tissue, and muscle. [Image courtesy of Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University]

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Mastodon rib with the embedded bone projectile point. (A) Closeup view. (B) Reconstruction showing the bone point with the broken tip. The thin layer represents the exterior of the rib. (C) CT x-ray showing the long shaft of the point from the exterior to the interior of the rib. (D) The entire rib fragment with the embedded bone projectile point. [Image courtesy of Science/AAAS]

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But the archaeological finds are not the only body of evidence emerging in the changing picture related to who, when, and from where the first peopling of the Americas took place. New findings are developing with the application of genetic and paleoclimate studies…………

Following the DNA Trail

In a recent study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Theodore Schurr, an associate professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Anthropology, in collaboration with a research team that included Ludmila Osipova of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia and others, analyzed the genetics of individuals living in Russia’s Altai Republic for markers in both mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA. Mitochondrial DNA traces the maternal, or female line of descent, whereas Y chromosome DNA traces the paternal, or male, descent. They compared the samples to those that had previously been collected from individuals in southern Siberia, East Asia, Central Asia, Mongolia, and a number of different Native American groups.

After analyzing the Y chromosome DNA, the researchers found a unique mutation common to both the Native Americans and southern Altaians in a lineage dubbed as “Q”. The Altai region is located at the four corners of what is today China, Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Says Schurr, it “is a key area because it’s a place that people have been coming and going for thousands and thousands of years. Our goal in working in this area was to better define what those founding lineages or sister lineages are to Native American populations.”

They found similar results when analyzing the mitochondrial DNA. “We find forms of haplogroups C and D in southern Altaians and D in northern Altaians that look like some of the founder types that arose in North America, although the northern Altaians appeared more distantly related to Native Americans” says Schurr.

Determining how long ago the mutations took place, the researchers concluded that the southern Altaian lineage diverged genetically from the Native American lineage about 13,000 to 14,000 years ago. This correlates with current theories that support the migration of peoples into the Americas from Siberia between roughly 15,000 and 20,000 years ago.

The large and diverse nature of the database ensured a relatively high degree of confidence among the researchers about the validity and precision of the findings. Says Schurr, “at this level of resolution we can see the connections more clearly”.

Moreover, the recently completed research at the Paisley caves has also confirmed, through additional DNA testing, that the early occupants of the caves had ancestral Siberia-East Asian origins, and that they were using the caves as far back as at least 12,450 radiocarbon years ago (about 13,500 calendar years ago).

The results of another recent study (published in the July 11, 2012 issue of the journal Nature), while supporting Schurr’s analysis and conclusions, paints a dramatically more complex picture of early American origins.

Led by Professor Andres Ruiz-Linares from the University College London (UCL) and Professor David Reich of the Harvard Medical School, an international team of researchers analyzed data samples from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups, examining more than 300,000 DNA sequences to examine patterns of genetic similarities and differences between the population groups. The study was complicated by the fact that the Americas experienced an influx of European and African immigrants since 1492, with 500 years of genetic mixing. To address this, the researchers developed a methodology to isolate genomes that were of entirely Native American origin. “We developed a method to peel back this mixture to learn about the relationships among Native Americans before Europeans and Africans arrived,” Reich said, “allowing us to study the history of many more Native American populations than we could have done otherwise.”

What they found was eye-opening.

“For years it has been contentious whether the settlement of the Americas occurred by means of a single or multiple migrations from Siberia,” said Ruiz-Linares. “But our research settles this debate: Native Americans do not stem from a single migration”.

Their results showed that Native American populations originally arose, not from one single migration of people, but at least three. The majority descended from a single original group of First American migrants, but at least two subsequent migrations also made important genetic contributions. Moreover, their origins could be genetically traced to populations traversing across the ancient Beringia land bridge (pictured above, right) that existed during the ice ages over 15,000 years ago. The second and third migrations left their imprint only in Arctic populations that speak Eskimo-Aleut languages and in the Canadian Chipewyan who speak a Na-Dene language. But even these people inherited most of their genetic makeup from the first migration. Eskimo-Aleut speakers, for example, derive more than 50% of their DNA from the first migrants, and the Chipewyan even more, about 90%. This suggests that the two later migrant groups mixed with descendants of the first migrants after they arrived in North America.

Said co-author Reich, “the Asian lineage leading to First Americans is the most anciently diverged, whereas the Asian lineages [the second and third migrations] that contributed some of the DNA to Eskimo–Aleut speakers and the Na-Dene-speaking Chipewyan from Canada are more closely related to present-day East Asian populations.”

What is more, said Ruiz-Linares, “our study also begins to cast light on patterns of human dispersal within the Americas”.

They found that people expanded southward along a route that hugged the coast. As they went southward, population groups split off along the way. After the splitting, there was little gene flow among Native American groups, especially in South America.

But the dynamics were not always this simple. They found, for example, that the first, Central American Chibchan-speakers have ancestry from both North and South America, suggesting a back-migration from South America, and that the Naukan and coastal Chukchi from north-eastern Siberia carry ‘First American’ DNA: the Eskimo-Aleut speakers migrated back to Asia, bringing with them the Native American genetic material.

Clues from a Past Climate

The broadly accepted view about when and how the first Americans entered the Americas has revolved in part around the changes in the glacial periods associated with the last glacial period of the Ice Age. Since about 40,000 B.P., the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets covered much of Canada. However, during the warmer interglacial periods they retreated to create ice-free corridors along the Pacific coast and areas east of the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Scientists have long suggested that it was through these corridors that humans were likely able to cross Beringia into the Americas. Beringia was a land bridge as much as 1,000 miles wide that joined present-day Alaska and eastern Siberia at various times 110,000 to 10,000 years ago. Exactly when and how this crossing may have occurred has been a matter of debate for decades, but the most widely accepted proposal advances the suggestion that it occurred around 15,000 years ago.

Now, a new study recently published in the professional journal, Quaternary Science Reviews, has resulted in findings that differ from this prevailing hypothesis by as much as 2,000 years. Led by Nicole Misarti of Oregon State University, the study, known as the Sanak Island Biocomplexity Project and funded by the National Science Foundation, was intended to examine the abundance of ancient salmon runs in the Beringia region. They analyzed core samples taken from Sanak Island, a remote island about 700 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, and about 40 miles from the coast of the western Alaska Peninsula. As the researchers began examining core samples from Sanak Island lakes looking for evidence of salmon remains, they came up with radiocarbon dates much earlier than they had expected. The dates were based on organic material in the sediments, composed of terrestrial plant macrofossils that indicated the region was actually ice-free earlier than believed. Deglaciation there from the last Ice Age, it seemed, took place as much as 1,500 to 2,000 years earlier. Moreover, the researchers had also concluded that the maximum thickness of the ice sheet in the Sanak Island region during the last glacial maximum was actually only 70 meters – or about half that previously projected. This suggested that deglaciation could have happened more rapidly than earlier models had predicted. Given the location, this opened the door for the possibility of earlier coastal migration models for the Americas.

“It is important to note that we did not find any archaeological evidence documenting earlier entrance into the continent,” said Misarti. “But we did collect cores from widespread places on the island and determined the lake’s age of origin based on 22 radiocarbon dates that clearly document that the retreat of the Alaska Peninsula Glacier Complex was earlier than previously thought. Glaciers would have retreated sufficiently so as to not hinder the movement of humans along the southern edge of the Bering land bridge as early as almost 17,000 years ago.”

This shed new light on a long-standing question. If humans had not arrived in the Americas until about 15,000 B.P. as traditional models have suggested, then how could they have spread so quickly to inhabit areas thousands of miles southward, as evidenced archaeologically by their presence at sites such as Monte Verde, Chile, and Huaca Prieta, showing remains dating back to 14,000 to 14,200 years ago? The answer, based on the Sanak Island findings, was that they had actually arrived in the Americas up to 2,000 years earlier.

Another finding was related to the presence of pollen in the samples.

“We found a full contingent of pollen that indicated dry tundra vegetation by 16,300 years ago,” Misarti said. “That would have been a viable landscape for people to survive on, or move through. It wasn’t just bare ice and rock.”

Moreover, she added, based on the findings in the tested area, “the region wasn’t one big glacial complex. The ice was thinner and the glaciers retreated earlier.” Furthermore, previous studies have indicated warmer sea surface temperatures possibly preceding the retreat of the Alaska Peninsula Glacier Complex (APGC), creating conditions more favorable to supporting productive coastal ecosystems that humans could have exploited.

Thus, if the researchers are right, the stage for human entry into the Americas had been set earlier than long theorized. As they wrote in the published study: “While not proving that first Americans migrated along this corridor, these latest data from Sanak Island show that human migration across this portion of the coastal landscape was unimpeded by the APGC after 17 (thousand years before present), with a viable terrestrial landscape in place by 16.3 (thousand years before present), well before the earliest accepted sites in the Americas were inhabited.”

The Emerging Picture

Taken together, new discoveries and research results are thus beginning to paint a picture of a human beginning in the Americas that is considerably more complex and likely earlier than previously thought.

That genetic studies have shown that a single original population of modern humans dispersed from southern Siberia toward the Bering Land Bridge, or ancient Beringia, as early as about 30,000 years ago, and further dispersed from Beringia to the Americas by perhaps 16,500 years ago. But there was more than one migration event, and some of them traversed from the Americas back into Asia. From the paleoclimate evidence, we see indications that the environmental stage was set by at least 16,300 years ago for an accommodating passage for humans into the Americas. From archaeology, we know that humans appeared south of the Canadian ice sheets by at least 15,000 years ago, 2,000 or more years before the emergence and spread of the Clovis culture, and it is no longer clear that there is a clear linear evolutionary relationship between the Clovis culture and early technology discovered in the western regions of the North American continent. Finally, from archaeology, evidence builds to support a suggested route along the deglaciated north Pacific coastline.

To be sure, new discoveries could significantly change or challenge this developing paradigm of the peopling of the American continents, but it could also continue to strengthen it. Time and continuing research will tell. Writes a researcher at the Center of the Study for First Americans at Texas A& M University: “This is an exciting time to be studying the peopling of the Americas. We are confident that through continued empirical research and active interdisciplinary dialog, we will soon know precisely when and how humans dispersed across the New World.”[1]

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[1] The Story of the First Americans, The Center for the Study of the First Americans. http://csfa.tamu.edu/who.php

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Up From The Ashes

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Emma Johnston -

Emma Johnston is currently studying for a PhD in Volcanology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Bristol University (U.K). With a background in Archaeology and an interest in the natural world and its interaction with human populations, she has been able to join her passion for the two subjects focusing her research on large-scale eruptions and their effects on ancient civilisations. Emma has worked on excavations in the U.K, Greece and Indonesia, including the 2011 Tambora excavations.

Nothing captures the world’s attention like a natural disaster — particularly a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. These can be perceived as primordial and fatalistic, a response to the extraordinary power of volcanism and our powerlessness in controlling such gigantic forces. Human memory records impressive volcanic events such as the 1883 Krakatau eruption in Indonesia and the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption in Italy. By comparison, relatively few have heard of the 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano on the island of Sumbawa, also in Indonesia. Ten times more powerful than the eruption of Krakatau, it is now recognised as the largest explosive volcanic event in recorded history. It blasted 100 cubic kilometres of gases, rock and ash into the atmosphere and onto the island of Sumbawa and the surrounding Indonesian islands. Much more than this, the eruption changed, at least for a time, world climate. How did such a catacysmic event get by most of us? The answer lies in part with the invention of the telegraph in 1830. When Krakatau erupted in 1883 news spread quickly, and it became the first worldwide news story. In contrast, word of the 1815 Tambora eruption travelled no faster than a sailing ship, limiting its notoriety.

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Orbital photograph of Tambora volcano with the huge caldera (6 km diameter and 1,100 m deep). Today the crater floor is occupied by an ephemeral freshwater lake, recent sedimentary deposits, and minor lava flows and domes from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. (Source: Earth Observatory, NASA).

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Before the eruption, Tambora volcano was around 4,000 meters high, but in 1815 it literally blew its top off and was reduced in size to 2,851 meters (see image left, Tambora volcano’s present flat-top profile), producing a crater 7 kilometers in diameter and 1,100 meters deep.

A Disaster of Global Proportions

The volcano had never been active before in living memory, so the eruption was completely unexpected. In 1811, Java had fallen under British control, so we have contemporary reports of the eruption written by British resident agents, sea captains and army officers who were scattered along the East Indian Archipelago. These reports, in addition to modern-day volcanological and archaeological study, furnish fascinating insights into the nature and consequences of the eruption.

The great event began with ‘rumblings’ and a minor ash fall on April 5th, 1815. This was followed by a Plinian eruption column reaching heights of 33 kilometers, showering pumice and ash over the Island of Sumbawa, lasting for 2.8 hours. Between April 5th and 10th, the eruption became less intense, but the volcano continued to erupt and disperse small amounts of ash over the surrounding area. But this proved to be the “calm before the storm”. A larger, climactic eruptive phase began at 7 pm on April 10th with a 43 kilometer high Plinian column transporting material to a ‘great height’ and raining down ash and pumice on Sumbawa. This continued until around 10 pm when ‘violent winds’ were reported at Sangaar, a peninsula of Sumbawa, indicating a change in the eruptive style and marking the beginning of pyroclastic flows. These flows (a mixture of hot ash, dust and gas), affected the entire region around Tambora. They travelled down the volcano’s slopes at a rapid pace, destroying and killing everything, leaving deposits up to 20 m thick. (Carbonised tree trunks, rice and charred skeletons later recovered by excavators evidenced the high temperatures within these flows). Once they reached the sea, their impact generated a 4 meter high tsunami, which claimed lives along the northern cost of Sangaar before spreading out to areas of eastern Java.

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An artist’s depiction of people fleeing the 1815 Tambora eruption (Source: Greg Harlin)

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At the time of the eruption, there were an estimated 1800 settlements throughout the island of Sumbawa, all belonging to one of the six petty kingdoms or sultanates existing at the time (Sumbawa, Bima, Dompo, Sangaar, Pekat and Tambora).

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Digital Elevation Model (DEM) map of the Island of Sumbawa marked with the location of the excavation site (red star). The volcano’s location is identifiable by the crater. The six different kingdoms or sultanates are also highlighted (Data: 90m SRTM data)

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The kingdom of Tambora was a small and wealthy sultanate with about 10,000 inhabitants, located in the Sangaar peninsula on the volcano’s western flanks. Settlements were located inland, near rivers and a safe distance from seagoing pirates, with buildings constructed out of wood and bamboo. The people made a living by growing rice, mung beans, maize, and by trading items such as coffee, horses, beeswax, pepper, timber, incense and red dye.

But this all came to an end when the volcano erupted. The consequences were monumentally disastrous. The kingdom, along with a neighboring kingdom known as Pekat to its south, was buried under the ashfall, with no survivors. The unique language that was spoken became extinct, and the rest of Sumbawa was affected by an immediate famine and a lack of clean water. Survivors were reduced to eating dry leaves and selling their children to obtain rice. They were even driven to scavenge from the dead, digging up personal grave goods to use them for barter in an attempt to survive. Reports made by British sea captains describe the remains as ‘horrifying’: corpses were left lying about on roads, rice fields and beaches. There were so many of them that they couldn’t all be buried fast enough, becoming prey for dogs, pigs and birds. Not only humans were affected: 75% of the island’s livestock were also killed, and bird and bee colonies were wiped out by the ash.

Large parts of the Indonesian Archipelago were plunged into darkness for days as a consequence of the vast amounts of ash released by the eruption (See map below). The sounds of the accompanying explosions were audible as far away as Sumatra (2600 km) and in many places mistaken for cannon reports. The neighbouring islands of Bali, Lombok and south Sulawesi were hit badly; ash fall of up to 20-30 cm thick caused the collapse of buildings, trapping and killing those inside. Secondary effects such as famine, plague and epidemics plunged these islands into an abyss of poverty and misery.

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Isopach maps of the ash dispersal (Source: Oppenheimer, 2003: Fig 3b)

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The eruption also had major global effects. It has been connected to the 1816 climactic phenomenon known as the `year without summer’. Fine ash particles and sulphate aerosols were carried high up into the atmosphere by the eruption column, where winds transported them around the globe. This veil of volcanic dust blocked out solar radiation, causing the earth to cool down. In the northern hemisphere, temperatures were abnormally low, causing a cold summer. This led to catastrophic flooding and famine worldwide. Many crops failed to ripen, and poor harvests led to famine, disease and socioeconomic problems. Europe was still recuperating from the Napoleonic Wars and already suffering from food shortages. The effects of the eruption exaggerated these problems further, leading to food riots in Britain and France. In Switzerland, the food crisis was so bad that people resorted to eating moss and cat flesh.

The months and years following the Tambora eruption were remembered in popular writing for the remarkable meteorological and optical phenomena produced by the spreading dust veil. In England, spectacular sunsets and orange, red, purple and pink twilights were observed. It is claimed that some of the paintings of J.M.W Turner, characterised by vivid oranges and red skies, were inspired by these volcanically induced stratospheric optics. It has been estimated that, overall, this eruption caused 11,000 deaths from direct volcanic effects and an additional 49,000 from famine and disease.

The Excavations

Despite the massive destruction caused by eruptions, volcanic disasters have a remarkable way of creating a lasting record of the things they ‘destroy’. This was no less true of the Tambora event. Like Mount Vesuvius and ancient Pompeii, Mount Tambora left a legacy of a people and the physical vestiges of their civilization intact, available for study and view for future generations. The scorching pyroclastic flows which had buried and otherwise dessimated the island kingdom of Tambora had also carbonised everything in their path, effectively ‘freezing’ both organic and inorganic forms in the moments of the disaster. It is this legacy that is now being excavated by archaeologists.

In 1980, P.T Veneer Products (a commercial logging company), discovered what appeared to be a site of human settlement to the northwest of the village of Pancasila, near the Tambora volcano. According to reports, the finds included pottery fragments (late 18th Century south China Porcelain), other pot sherds and bones. Others found coins, brassware and charred timber in the same region, all buried beneath a thick layer of volcanic deposits.

Finds like this continued to be discovered by locals, and in 2004 Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson (University of Rhode Island) embarked to investigate these reports in this ‘museum gully’ as it had become known, which lay deep in the jungle on the volcano’s western flank. By using Ground Penetrating Radar, Sigurdsson was able to identify a complete house buried under 2-3 metres of pyroclastic flow and surge deposits. Although entirely charred, its form was well preserved, making it possible to distinguish beams and bamboo floors. Artefacts found inside the structure included Chinese porcelain, iron tools and copper bowls. Two victims were also discovered; one complete skeleton was found by the hearth in the kitchen area and the second, which was very badly damaged, identifiable only by the leg and a vertebra, was found on the porch.

Official excavations began in 2006 and continue to the present day. They have revealed a settlement that follows a linear composition, with houses spaced roughly 20 m apart, facing what was presumably a path or road through the site. The houses are built in the same style today, so it is possible to fairly accurately imagine how the kingdom of Tambora would have appeared (See photo below).

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Photograph of a modern-day Sumbawan house. The buildings of the old kingdom of Tambora were constructed using the same techniques and in the same style as today (Photograph: Made Wita)

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In 2008, a house was uncovered containing a male skeleton sitting upright, adorned with a copper tobacco box tied to his waist and a ceremonial spear at his side. He wore rings inlaid with precious stones, a bracelet on his wrist, and a large brass pendulum necklace around his neck. During the 2009 excavation season, another carbonised house was discovered, this time with a body lying just outside under the volcanic debris, with his left arm held up to his head perhaps in a (failed) attempt to protect himself from the falling pumice. In 2011, the remains of half of a house were identified, with a complete piece of the thatch wall remarkably well preserved. Some coarse-ware pottery and a tarsal bone from a goat were also found within the kitchen area.

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One victim who was discovered during the 2009 excavations. His left arm is held up to his head perhaps in a (failed) attempt to protect himself from falling pumice. The carbonised beams of the house are also shown (Photograph: Rik Stoetman)

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The 2011 excavation trench (Photograph: Emma Johnston)

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Excavating carbonised building beams (Photograph: Made Wita)

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Based on the artefacts found, particularly the many bronze objects and jewels, evidence suggests the site was once inhabited by the wealthy or an elite who had grown prosperous through trade. Historical evidence supports this theory, as Tamborans historically were known in the East Indies for their honey, horses, red dye and sandalwood. The design and decoration of the artefacts suggest that the Tamboran culture was linked to Vietnam and Cambodia.

The excavations thus far have only scratched the surface. The rich finds suggest that there is much more waiting to be discovered at the site, now deservedly called ‘the Pompeii of the east’ (See table of finds, left). The excavations will continue in 2012 under the direction of Dr M. Geria of the Bali Institute for Archaeology.

Volcanic Deposits and Implications for Tambora

By examining the stratigraphy of the eruption deposits alongside the archaeological evidence, it is possible to identify the fateful events that took place at this site in April 1815 and brought an end to a thriving kingdom in the most horrific and deadly of circumstances.

The Tambora eruption deposits cover a greater spatial area compared to that of other Plinian eruptions. Nonetheless, the deposits are substantially thinner than has been noted for other, less explosive eruptions despite the proximity of the settlement to the volcano (at Tambora the pumice fall is 14-24 cm thick vs. Pompeii where the pumice reaches thicknesses of 280 cm). It is likely that this influenced the people of Tambora to stay rather than flee the site as was done during the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption. For the inhabitants, this light but persistent ash and pumice fall would have been confusing, but probably no more than a nuisance, hindering the chores of everyday life (See figure below, the eruption deposit stratigraphy recorded at the excavation location during the 2011 season. Photograph: Emma Johnston).

However, they would not have been aware of the impending danger, and as night fell on April 10th, the intensity of the eruption would increase and larger pieces of pumice would begin to rain down more swiftly on the kingdom.

We know from the excavations and deposit stratigraphy that the houses were mostly inhabited when the accumulating pumice fall led to the collapse of the houses, trapping and killing those inside. The evidence uncovered so far indicates this was the fate of all victims identified so far.

However, some houses may have remained standing, their occupants seeking refuge inside. As night advanced, any survivors who sat in the darkness would have been unaware of what was coming next. The eruption’s intensity became too great to be sustained any longer: the eruption column collapsed and the pyroclastic flows swept down the sides of the volcano, destroying and burying anything in their path, including the kingdom of Tambora.

The kingdom of Tambora is particularly intriguing because very little is known about its residents, their language and their everyday lives. The remoteness of the site has kept it secret until recently. Now, with archaeological and volcanological research, a picture is beginning to emerge of the lives of the people who lived here and how they so quickly and dramatically came to an end one fateful night in April 1815.

For detailed information about the area and further inquiries, readers are directed to: http://visittambora.wordpress.com.

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The table above left summarizes the main finds found to date in the Tambora excavations (Information courtesy of Made Geria)

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Probing the Secrets of Jerusalem’s Patio Tomb

Posted on May 31, 2012 by William Tarant -

William (Bill) Tarant is a sales manager with GE Inspection Technologies.

Bill Tarant was not an archaeologist. When in the spring of 2008 he received a call from Felix Golubev, the producer of the James Cameron/Simcha Jacabovici documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”, he knew it wasn’t a call for his archaeological insights. It was about plans to make a second documentary, this time about another tomb located just a short distance from the now famous and somewhat controversial Talpiot Tomb, the subject of the “Lost Tomb of Jesus” documentary. This other tomb, known as the ‘Talpiot B’ Tomb, or more popularly as the ‘Patio Tomb’ because of its location securely beneath the patio of an apartment complex in the Talpiot neighborhood of southern Jerusalem, was already very familiar to Bill. In 2005, he, as a representatvie of GE Inspection Technologies (a company that sells remote visual cameras) was a member of the technical team instrumental in providing the camera resources and expertise to explore the tomb using a 7.5 meter long industrial Videoprobe and a Cazoom PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) camera. Directed through a “soul pipe”, or long tubular opening reaching 25 feet down into the tomb beneath the patio surface, he and his colleagues, including Felix Golubev, investigating scholar James Tabor of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and filmmaker Simcha Jacabovici, were able to view and visually record the contents of the tomb without disturbing its sacred contents. The camera revealed burial niches and seven ossuaries (stone boxes containing the bones of the deceased), typical of many burials associated with the well-to-do Jewish inhabitants of 1st Century Jerusalem. Now, Felix was asking him to go back with the crew for a second probe.

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The first image of the ‘Patio Tomb’ taken during the 2005 exploration, showing an ossuary resting within a stone-cut niche. This tomb was unearthed and mapped briefly by archaeologists in 1981, then sealed off after protests.

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The “Patio Tomb” could be accessed only through a “soul pipe”, which led the remote camera system 25 feet below the apartment complex patio (built in modern times over the tomb location) to the tomb.

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Above and below: Views of separate ossuaries within their niches inside the tomb as viewed during the 2005 exploration.

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Bill had questions about the necessity of this second trip. “We filmed it for 2 days, dropping the camera through the soul pipe and saw nothing of great interest,” he said to Felix. In 2005, these ossuaries appeared to be unremarkable. They were only seven among many hundreds of similar bone boxes commonly found throughout the Jerusalem area over the years.

But now producer Felix and the other members of the research team wanted to get a much closer look at the ossuaries……close enough to detect and read any possible inscriptions on their sides, anything that would tell them more about who’s bones may occupy the boxes and with what family or group the tomb may be associated.

This got Bill’s attention. But this new expedition posed some unique challenges, requiring innovative thinking and bringing to bear the full professional capabilities of the technical team put together to help explore the tomb. In his own words, he explains how they did it……….

We met for lunch and Felix explained that they wanted to use a camera to get closer to the ossuaries and search for inscriptions to see if they could determine who was buried inside. From the video shot in 2005, we knew a PTZ would not work. It would not fit into the gaps between the ossuaries and the walls. We considered using a Rover Crawler with a zoom camera, but there was too much rubble on the floor of the tomb and the gaps between the ossuaries and the walls of the niches were too small, even if we cold drive it up to the ossuaries. We needed to use a smaller Videoprobe, but had to find a method to transport it 3 meters across the tomb. The probe we used to explore the tomb before was flexible along its entire length, causing it to droop, like a wet noodle. We needed a stiff extension for the Videoprobe arrangement.

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The narrow gaps between the ossuaries and the walls of the niches presented a major problem for a camera probe.

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In the past, for industrial applications, I used carbon fiber poles, painters poles, and metal tubes, but these were hand-held and never 3 meters long. For this application, whatever transported the probe would be required to first go down several meters, then be raised up to be parallel to the floor and then extend 3+ meters. Clearly we needed a custom solution.

Manufacturers and operators of high value assets can afford to contract with engineering companies to design and build highly automated and sophisticated tools, justifying the cost vs. savings. In our case there were no savings. The cost was to come out of the film shooting budget. This was not the Titanic or Mission Impossible. This was a project based on a hunch that there was something interesting inside the Patio Tomb.

Through a referral from a friend, Felix met Walter Klassen, an expert in two disciplines related to major motion pictures and TV. He is a special effects prop creator and a manufacturer of steady-cam equipment. His experience in remotely moving objects and expertise in cameras created a perfect match. His devotion to the movie business and love of a good challenge brought him on board. He would work within the limited budget to create a robotic arm that was crucial to the success of this venture.

Felix and I met with Walter at his studio in downtown Toronto. Felix brought out the tomb map, the building drawing and pictures of the patio and frame grabs from inside the tomb. We discussed several key questions before coming up with a specification for the arm.

How were we going to get into the tomb?

Through the Soul Pipe

The Soul Pipe is 6” in diameter and 25 feet long, running inside a cement pylon and opening up near the roof of the tomb through a 90 degree elbow.

Walter stated that the 6” opening and 25-foot drop down to the tomb was feasible, but the elbow at the end of the soul pipe was problematic, for two reasons. The extension arm would have to be made of a material that could bend to negotiate the elbow, yet become rigid to support the cameras at the end. Secondly, the arm needed to rotate to cover the tomb, and the elbow would prevent any left/right movement.

There was another possible solution………

Drill a [new] core hole from the patio straight into the tomb.

From Walters perspective, this was possible, eliminating the incompatibility of the previous arrangement. His concerns now were the extra weight of the extension poles required and the longer lengths of the necessary control cables.

From my perspective, using a larger PTZ camera would not be a problem as all of its functions were electrical. The pan, tilt, zoom, lights and focus were controlled through the single cable and that cable could be 600 feet long. However, the Videoprobe was a concern because of the length required to do the job. The 25 feet from the patio down to the tomb and the 15 feet needed in the tomb required a 40 foot probe. Though GE makes probes in lengths up to 100 feet, for this application I wanted to keep the length down to 25 feet. I needed as much light as possible to capture better images. Light travelling through glass fibers will attenuate, and the longer the probe, the less light. The color also changes — the longer the probe, the greener the light. I also wanted as much articulation as possible. The ability to move the camera head as much as 150 degrees (we actually went 180 degrees) would be needed to get into the tight places.

From Felix’s perspective, he had to find another way into the tomb. Even if he could drill the 25 feet, the cost would be high, and it would generate a lot of noise and vibration that would disturb the neighbors.

The next critical questions were: How far did the arm have to reach? How high was the ceiling from the floor and how big will the access hole be?

The rough sketch of the tomb done in 1981 (when it was unearthed and mapped briefly by archaeologists in 1981, then sealed off after protests) showed it to be about 3 meters by 3 meters square. The 9 burial niches that were on the north, east and west side appeared to be just under 2 meters deep. It was agreed that if these measurements were close, the arm needed to extend to 3 meters. The insertion of the videoprobe into the niches would thus be accomplished by using a combination of a rigid tube, semi rigid tube and the probe itself.

Based on previous caves found and images taken from the video, the best guestimate was 1 meter high.

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So it was agreed that the robotic arm would compact into a meter bend at the ceiling level and clear the floor when it was raised to a horizontal level. It would then extend as needed to a maximum of 3 meters. It would also be able to rotate 360 degrees with a 4-pound PTZ camera, cable and a 25-foot videoprobe at its distal end.

Walter had what he needed to get started. Felix was on his way back to Israel to find a better place to drill that was closer to the tomb. Using the soul pipe and support pylon as a reference, Felix, working with local civil engineers, overlaid the tomb map with the original drawings of the building. They determined that only two locations would work. One was east of the pylon and one west of the pylon. The east spot was located inside a tenant’s storage locker, the west in the hallway outside the locker. The tenant did not want to cooperate, which left the hallway as the only spot to drill.

Felix hired a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) expert to survey the corridor to try to validate his best guess as to where to drill. The GPR indicated a void could be present at the end of the hall. Next, he contacted a local concrete drilling company to quote on drilling a 20 cm wide, two-meter deep hole. They determined a one meter long diamond tipped core bit was required to complete the job.

Measuring the Size of the Tomb

Before bringing Walter and the arm to Israel, the size of the tomb had to be confirmed. If the size of the tomb was even a half meter larger than the drawing, the arm would not reach. Modifying the arm in Israel was not an option. We had to measure the tomb from our entry point at the end of the hall.

Walter built a simple arm that we could lower into the tomb and raise the boom with the camera on the end. We rented a Cinetape ultrasonic range finder to attach to the PTZ camera. In June of 2010 I made the first of 3 trips to Israel. This trip had three objectives; get into the tomb, measure the tomb and find out if there was anything else we would need for the main shoot.

Drilling the first hole went well. The core bit slowly chewed through the limestone and reached 2 meters where Felix expected to break through into the tomb. The drillers continued. At 2.2 meters, no tomb. At 2.4 meters, no tomb. A decision was made to drill a second hole on an angle towards the tomb. At 2.4 meters, we were still drilling rock. All eyes were on Felix, wondering if he totally miscalculated and we were drilling in the wrong spot. We packed it in for the day.

After a tense meeting over dinner, we decided to drill a little bit deeper into the first hole. Even if we broke through in the wrong place, the camera would show us where we were on the map. At 8 a.m. the next morning we set up and the drillers began. At 2.5 meters the bit cut into the tomb. We were inside and Felix was right. He went from zero to hero as a result of 10 cm of limestone.

The measurement went according to plan and we confirmed that the size matched the drawing. As for the third objective, to determine what else was needed, we had some thoughts. From our new perspective, we got a better look at where the ossuaries were placed. Some were so close to the walls or to each other that I was concerned about getting the videoprobe, not closer, but further away in order to capture a wider view. I was also concerned about articulating the camera, should there not be enough room. When back in Toronto Felix, Walter and I planned to discuss some options.

We visited Walter soon after our return. The arm was 90% complete. Using the human arm as a reference to describe the robotic one, there were three sections. From the elbow to the shoulder were the metal poles at the top end of the arm. The elbow section articulated from 0 to 110 degrees. The ulna/radius from the elbow had four sections: The inner three would retract and extend into the outer section, fixed at the elbow. Two of the sliding parts were moved with a series of pulleys, controlled by a winch at the top. The third section was motor driven. This third section, in addition to moving in and out, could also move left and right. Finally, at the wrist there was an air cylinder that could move the camera from 0 to 90 degrees. The main reason for this was to allow Walter to increase the length of the arm and still clear the one meter ceiling to floor distance. (See photo illustration below of the entire apparatus)

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The insertion sequence would go like this:

1 The arm fully retracted and the camera head at 0 degrees.

2 The total arm carried into the hallway, then inserted into the hole.

3 Walter to connect the seat, winches and air control panel.

4 From the second hole we insert another PTZ camera to watch the arm.

5 The arm is lowered until the camera clears the ceiling.

6 The camera is raised to 90 degrees as the arm is lowered to the elbow.

7 Once the elbow is clear, the arm is raised with the up-down winch.

8 The camera is then lowered to 0 degrees so as not to hit the ceiling.

9 The arm is raised to 90 degrees and the in-out winch extends the two sections.

10 The motor is activated and extends the last section.

Once inside the tomb, the boom could be rotated left and right by moving the poles that made up the humerus (upper arm). The ulna/radius could extend and contract, the section connected to the wrist could move left and right and the camera could tilt up and down from 0 to 90 degrees.

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View of arm articulated camera up inside the tomb. Image taken from HD monitor.

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The arm aparatus set up at the end of the hall.

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In addition to the range of motion of the robotic arm, the PTZ camera (pictured below) could rotate + / – 177 degrees and tilt + / – 140 and optically zoom in 10 to 1 (see drawing). The XLG3 Videoprobe which ran from the surface to the end of the arm through a semi flexible tube also had full range of motion, extending out from the tube and being able to articulate in all directions. The G3 also had interchangeable lenses allowing for wide angle and close up views.

More Challenges

We discussed a major concern I had about the lack of space between the wall and the ossuaries. Because we could not change to a smaller Videoprobe, we were left with one possible solution…….move the ossuaries. Unfortunately, the agreement the producers made with the relevant parties was that we could not touch or move anything. This became a moot point. However, there was a challenge on the table and Walter and I thought of ways to do it, if we could.

The arm would not have enough torque to move the ossuary, nor could it retract with enough force to pull the ossuary if we managed to get a grappling hook into it. I proposed that we attach a large fish hook to a small steel cable that ran to the surface and pull on it. But Walter responded with a much more practical method. He proposed an air bladder that would attach to a small pneumatic piston. The flat bladder would be positioned between the wall and the ossuary and then inflated. The more air, the more it would move.

We thus had a solution and it would not cost more than a few dollars for the bladder, cylinder and an airline. Walter built it into the arm on the off chance that, if we needed it, we could ask permission to use it. If they said no, we were no worse off.

We did not get to use it. In some way, the Haredim (orthodox Jews) who were monitoring the investigation knew about it before we arrived. This would not have been included in this narrative, except that it solved a different problem we had on the first day of the shoot.

Recall that we measured the tomb from the first drilled hole. From that vantage point, we could see most of the tomb, but the support pylon prevented us from seeing into the first niche on the east side of the tomb. When we went to look at niche 1 from the third hole we could not reach the ossuary with the Videoprobe. We were almost a meter short. The producers were very disappointed. All that measuring and extra expense, and we were still short. The problem was that the ossuary was set over a meter deep into the niche. Had it been where the map showed it, we would have been in a better position.

The producers called Walter and I aside, but still let the camera roll the tape and then later let us know how they felt. We asked for some time to come up with a way to extend the reach.

After thinking it through, we decided to use the space used by the bladder at the end of the piston and added a rigid plastic pipe to where the bladder was to have been. Coupled with the length of the piston, we added about .8 of a meter. That was enough to reach where we had to get in niche #1. This kluged solution actually gave us much more reach and control than we had before it was added.

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We spent a week in September of 2010 investigating every niche and ossuary and documented it all on tape. We discovered two significant and now very controversial ossuaries (which included the news-making “Jonah” ossuary). They were the last two we shot in niche 3. Both were difficult to reach and capture with the Videoprobe, as the distance between objects was small. What we saw could not have been discovered by a PTZ. Only by manipulating the camera into the spaces and taking shots at all possible angles were we able to see the Greek inscription clearly enough to read most if it without post enhancements (that is, not enhancing the images after the shot, but adjusting exposure, contrast etc.)

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Above and below: Views of the inscribed images discovered on the “Jonah Ossuary”, made possible through the robotic arm camera system devised by the team engineers.

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The Broadcasters were happy with what we shot, but complained that much of the story was shot inside the tomb, which was done in standard definition. They asked if it were possible to reshoot the tomb in HD. Felix asked me if there was anything I could do to make it happen.

Rising to the challenge, I called Kevin Bush, the engineer in charge of the PTZ product line. In his laid back central New York State manner, he said it was possible. That was all I needed to hear. I told Felix we could do it, but he would have to pay for Kevin to join us in Israel. My logic was twofold. One, it was a great incentive for Kevin to skunkwork the project and get it built, and two, if something happened to the camera while in Israel, he would be in a position to fix it. Felix agreed, Kevin agreed and another problem was solved.

One last technology item before this saga ends. Rami Arav, one of the archaeologists working on this project, asked for a way to measure the tomb, as this is a common practice on all archaeological digs.

The solution was simple. The PTZ had an optional laser measurement feature. A pair of red lasers with a 2” distance between them was used as a reference measurement on a captured, still image. We calibrated the screen by placing cursers on the laser dots and assigning the distance between them as 2”, as that distance is constant regardless of how far away the camera is. We could then place new cursers anywhere on the image and the computer would calculate the actual distance.

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Taking the laser measurements

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In conclusion, I feel fortunate that the success of the robotic arm and remote cameras was showcased in a documentary. But most importantly, this experience taught me that anything can be done if you get the right people on your team and believe in what you are doing. Fortunately, I did not have to interpret or justify the significance of the discoveries. My job was to help discover.

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*What is the controversy surrounding the Patio Tomb? Among other things, the cameras captured inscriptions and images that, according to the principal investigators, suggested possible examples of the earliest Christian art or symbolism, depicting the concept of a resurrection, a core belief of Christianity. Although the interpretation of the finds is steeped in dispute among scholars, the art could predate by at least 200 years the earliest Christian symbols now known to exist in the catacombs of Rome. See “The Resurrection Tomb” in this issue for more about the exploration and finds of the Patio Tomb.

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All photos credit William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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The Resurrection Tomb

Posted on May 31, 2012 by James Kensington -

It was exposed by a dynamite blast. At the time, the blast would not have been an unexpected sound in this part of Jerusalem where, in April of 1981, the Solel Boneh Construction company was preparing to construct a new condominium complex in the East Talpiot neighborhood, less than three kilometers south of the Old City. As in many cities with an ancient past, construction workers stumbled upon something ancient and buried. In this case, it appeared to be a tomb—also not surprising, as it was located within an area long known to feature a necropolis of ancient tombs. Construction work was halted and, as is required by law, Amos Kloner, a Jerusalem district archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority, was immediately called in to investigate the tomb.

He could enter the tomb only through a break in the ceiling. Its ancient square entrance was closed, sealed tight by a large “stopper” stone. What he first saw was a 3.5 by 3.5 meter rock-cut single square chamber. Cut into and along three of its sides were nine carved gabled burial niches in all (called kokhim in Hebrew), about 2 meters deep, three in each side. Each niche was sealed in front with a blocking stone. He suspected that inside the niches would be ossuaries, or bone boxes. For Kloner this would not be a surprising find, given the context. Ossuaries, or bone boxes, were commonly used by the wealthy Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem during the 1st Century B.C.E. up until 70 C.E. to permanently store the skeletal remains of deceased family members, often in a stone-cut family tomb. Kloner observed skeletal remains in the niches, with significant primary burial remains in four of them, meaning those skeletal remains had not yet been placed permanently into ossuaries. Also found were some cooking pots placed in three locations on the floor.

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Bones found in situ within one of the niches of the tomb. Photo credit: William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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But Kloner wasn’t afforded much time to examine the tomb. Soon, he was forced to leave the tomb by protesting ultra-Orthodox Jews, determined to protect the sanctity of the tomb. But this was not before he was able to acquire one smaller ossuary for examination—a decorated ossuary with no inscription, fit for the remains of a child. He entrusted it to the custody of IAA authorities at their Rockefeller headquarters (The ossuary is now part of the State of Israel collections).

Despite the protests, Kloner and the IAA were determined to investigate the find. Although he had to depart the country to fulfill another commitment, he entrusted two IAA archaeologists, the late Joseph Gath and Shlomo Gudovitch, to continue the investigation. Upon returning to the site, they were able to remove the blocking stones from the niches and examine ossuaries inside, a total of seven, taking photographs and recording their positions. All ossuaries but one were decorated and two were observed to have Greek inscriptions. They spent several days at the tomb location, removing the ossuaries from their niches and opening their lids for further examination. While preparing to raise the ossuaries up through the tomb ceiling to transport them to the IAA Rockefeller headquarters, they were again prevented from completing the task by a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters. The seven remaining ossuaries were returned to their niches, albeit not all in their original positions. There they remain to this day.

Mission (Almost) Impossible

It was not until 2005, more than 25 years later, that a new archaeological team was assembled to take another look at the tomb (today known as the “Talpiot B” or “Patio” tomb) and its contents. This latest exploration was conducted by a team co-led by prominent biblical historian James D. Tabor of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and noted archaeologist Rami Arav of the University of Nebraska. The team included a comparatively eclectic mix of experts, including the well-known Canadian film producer and director Simcha Jacobovici, top Canadian film producer Felix Golubev, two key technical experts, Walter Klassen and William Tarant, and Dr. James H. Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary as the team’s primary academic consultant.

What prompted the new initiative was the proximity of the tomb to two other tombs, the first being the controversial, high-profile Talpiot or “Jesus Family Tomb” (also known as the “garden” tomb because of its proximity to a garden) discovered in 1980 and further investigated in 2005; and the second, a tomb mostly destroyed in 1980 by a dynamite blast during preparations for construction work. The “Jesus Family Tomb” or “garden” tomb, only 45 meters away from the subject Patio Tomb, contained nine ossuaries and a niche for a missing 10th, six of them inscribed with names: Yeshua bar Yehosef (Jesus, Son of Joseph), Maria (Mary), Yose (Joseph), Yehuda bar Yeshua (Jude, Son of Jesus), and Matya (thought to be a form for Matthew or Matthias), all in Aramaic, and Mariamenou Mara or Mariam kai Mara (Martha) in Greek. (It has been suggested by some that the controversial “James, Brother of Jesus” ossuary is the missing 10th.) The suggestion that this tomb could be connected to Jesus of Nazareth and his family opened a pandora’s box of scholarly dispute when, in 2007, it was brought into the public limelight.

“It was the proximity of these three tombs, and the possibility that they were clustered together on a wealthy estate in the 1st century CE that prompted us to request a permit to carry out further investigations,” reported Tabor in his Preliminary Report about the Patio Tomb exploration. The immediate vicinity of the three tombs also included the remains of a plastered ritual bath (or mikveh), water cisterns, and an ancient olive press. Joseph Gath, who surveyed the area, determined that they, including the tombs, belonged to a large, wealthy agricultural estate. They were likely the family tombs of the owner of the estate. “The object of our investigation was to determine whether the “patio” tomb, still intact, might contain names or other evidence that would provide for us further data that might conceivably shed light on the adjacent “garden” tomb with its intriguing cluster of names,” reported Tabor in a preliminary report of the findings. “Our stated intent in our proposal to the Israel Antiquities Authority was that we wanted to determine if further scientific information about these tombs and their possible relationship to one another might still be obtained 30 years after their initial exploration.”[1]

The team knew that re-examining the tomb would, to say the very least, be difficult. The gravity of the challenge was enhanced by several factors. First, there was the challenge of obtaining permissions from four different sources, each of which had a different agenda and a different set of interests to consider and safeguard. They included the IAA, the condominium owners (as the tomb was located below the basement of the condominium complex), the municipal police, and finally, perhaps most sensitive of all, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups that objected to exploration of tombs. Permission was obtained from all, provided certain conditions were met.

Even with the administrative/logistical hurdles cleared, however, there was still the technical challenge of locating, accessing, and then moving remotely within the tomb to film and record what they needed to see. Given the underground, sealed location of the tomb 25 feet below the condominium complex, the requirement not to move the ossuaries to respect the sensitivities and conditions of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the dimensions and configuration of the tomb, and the extremely limited clearance space around the ossuaries within the niches, it was a monumental task that seemed almost insurmountable. It had never been done before.

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Remote camera view of one of the tomb niches containing ossuaries. The team could see that maneuvering cameras within the spaces would be a challenge, to say the least. Photo credit: William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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View of niche with ossuary within the tomb, showing blocking stones. Photo credit: William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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Inside the Tomb

The only clue the team had regarding the precise location of the tomb was a “ritual vent” or “soul pipe”, the entry point of which was located on a patio about 25 feet above the tomb. By Jewish law, a soul pipe is required to be installed whenever construction is performed above a tomb. (The pipe allows an opening through which the soul of the deceased may escape from the tomb.) They knew that the pipe ran down directly into the tomb based on earlier preliminary investigatons, when they were able to successfully drop a small camera attached to the end of a flexible cable through the opening down into the tomb and shoot some video footage of the tomb features and contents. This aparatus, however, had no capability to maneuver about within the tomb to closely examine the contents. As one of the prime requirements was to approach close enough to the ossuaries to observe and record any markings or inscriptions that would tell them something about who was buried there and the ownership of the tomb, the team went to work to devise an innovative scheme and tool that could accomplish this. It would include a unique robotic arm and camera/video assembly specially designed for the task.*

With the specialized tools developed, the robotic arm investigation began in June of 2010. The plan was to explore the tomb systematically, working counterclockwise from the sealed entrance and going niche by niche. Not without roadblocks along the way, the team was able to obtain a more detailed view of the ossuaries, with some startling discoveries. What follows is what they discovered:

(1) Ossuary 1 was richly ornamented on its front side, including two carved rosettes, an elaborate frieze for a border, and a pillar or nephesh (a figure representing the soul) carved between the rosettes. Clear evidence of a reddish-rose paint was on the rosette petals. The rest of the ossuary was plain with no features or inscriptions, although it had deep horizontal scratches on the back.

(2) Ossuary 2 was also richly ornamented on its front side with carved rosettes and a frieze border. There was an incised marking in the upper right corner, indistinguishable upon the first examination. The rest of this ossuary was plain.

(3) Ossuary 3 featured a partial rosette with the name ‘Μapa’ faintly inscribed in Greek letters. Mapa, also written as ‘Mara’, is rarely seen on Jerusalem ossuaries of the 1st century. One of the few examples was found in the nearby Talpiot “Jesus Family Tomb” as Mariamenou Mara or Mariam kai Mara . It is often considered a version of the name ‘Martha’, found in the Gospels of the New Testament.

(4) Ossuary 4 was also ornamented, but because of its position inside its niche, including its closeness to the niche wall, the team was unable to study it closely. Its far end appeared to feature a name inscribed in Greek.

(5) Ossuary 5 showed an ornamental front façade with twin rosettes and elaborate frieze border. Interestingly, between the rosettes was a four-line Greek inscription.

(6) Ossuary 6, originally (when explored by Kloner) in the first position closest to the tomb entrance, featured perhaps the most interesting markings. Its front (museum replica pictured right) showed what the team interpreted as the image of a fish, including tail, fins, and scales, with what appeared to be a stick-like human figure with a large head emerging from its mouth. Along the top border was a series of smaller, fish-shaped images. Incised on the left end was a bell-shaped circle that featured a cross inside. On the right end was an image that appeared to be a scaled body and tail of a fish, although only the lower portion of it is shown, upended.

(7) Ossuary 7 was plain with no markings or decorations.

What Does It All Mean?

Of the finds in the tomb, the most striking and significant were the inscriptions found on ossuaries 3, 5 and 6.

As already related, ossuary 3 featured an inscription translated as ‘Mapa’ or ‘Mara’. It is considered significant for two reasons, the first being the rarity of the occurence of this name on any extant 1st century Jerusalem ossuary, and the second, the fact that the relatively rare name was found on an ossuary in a tomb only 45 meters away from the Talpiot A tomb, or famous “Jesus Family Tomb” described above, explored in 1980 and then again in detail in 2005. One might recall that the Talpiot A included, among the other names found in the tomb that were associated with Jesus in the Gospels, the name ‘Mariamenou Mara’, interpreted as another version of the name Martha.

These name interpretations and associations have been much disputed by other biblical scholars. To counter their arguments, Tabor, in making reference to the recent “Jeus Family Tomb” finds, advances these remarks in his February, 2012 Preliminary Report on the Patio tomb investigations:

Other than theological objections, the response most often offered to any probable identification of this tomb with Jesus and his family is that “the names are common.” Subsequent research has definitely shown that is not the case, either from a statistical standpoint or even a practical observation—though one hears it endless[ly] repeated even from academics who should know better. There is not a single cluster of names ever found in any tomb in Jerusalem from this period, other than this one, out of the estimated 900 that have been exposed, that one could plausibly even make the argument of correspondence with Jesus and names associated with his family. This does not prove the tomb is that of Jesus of Nazareth and his family, but it does demonstrate that its probability should not be dismissed.[1]

Ossuary 5 carried the four-line inscription in Greek. The use of Greek would not necessarily be considered extraordinary. The translated text, however, reading as it were like an epitaph, was quite extraordinary under these circumstances. More unusual still was the use of the word for the name of God, Yahweh, written in Greek on a 1st century ossuary in what is clearly a tomb belonging to a Jewish family of the time, and words that expressed a raising up or resurrection (“rise up to God”, or “rise up to heaven”). As Tabor describes it in his Preliminary Report:

We are convinced that our inscription clearly makes some affirmation about either resurrection from the dead or lifting up to heaven…….Although it is true that ideas of resurrection of the dead and even ascent to heaven are found in a multiplicity of Jewish sources in the late 2nd Temple period, they do not appear as expressions in burial contexts unless we have an exception here in the Talpiot tomb. That, along with the unprecedented example of writing the divine name Yahweh in Greek letters in a Jewish tomb—a place of tum’a or ritual defilement—argues for a heterodox or sectarian context. The family buried in this tomb are Jews to be sure, and the style of the tomb, the ornamentations of the ossuaries, and everything else about it is nothing out of the ordinary— other than these semi-informal inscriptions of both epitaph and icon.[1]

Considering these finds alone, the Talpiot B or Patio tomb, like the Talpiot A or “Jesus Family Tomb”, stood out from all others of its kind, and there are about 900 discovered thus far.

As though the other finds were not rare enough, Ossuary 6 with its fish inscriptions, perhaps the most sensational and most controversial discovery emerging from the tomb, was rarer still. This was, according to the investigative team interpretation, not only because they could be images of a fish, an animal, on a 1st century Jewish ossuary (something that would have been prohibited by 1st century Judaism), but because the imagery was similar to that seen within the 3rd and 4th century CE Christian tombs of the catacombs in Rome—the “sign of Jonah” (as in Jonah and the whale of the biblical account) images that symbolized the resurrection. As Tabor proposed in the Report:

We interpret this drawing as a presentation of the biblical story of Jonah and the “big fish.” In ancient Jewish art there are no attested representations of Jonah and the fish. Other biblical scenes are common such as Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Noah and the ark, Moses and the burning bush, Daniel in the lion’s den, especially in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. In contrast, images of what is called the “Jonah cycle” occur over 100 times in early Christian art, most often in tombs, as a way of proclaiming and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus—and thus Christian resurrection hope more generally. [1]

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Focused view of the head/mouth of the fish image on ossuary 6. Photo credit: William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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Could the ‘Jonah’ or fish image actually be something else?

Other scholars have suggested so, and it has been one of the most hotly contested issues of the tomb discoveries. The most prominent interpretation advanced by others is that the fish-like images, particularly the largest image, actually represent amphorae or funerary nepheshes or pillars, images that are not uncommonly inscribed on ossuaries. To this Tabor has responded that his research team has “carefully examined all the extant examples of nephesh and amphora on ossuaries of this period and have not found anything that is even close” in appearance, despite the fact that the image was comparatively crudely drawn. “It was clearly done by a family member, or someone associated with the family, who was not a professional engraver. It is nonetheless the most elaborately carved ossuary in the tomb, testifying to the importance of its individual and particular expression.”[1]

To this has recently been added the work of James H. Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary, who announced the deciphering of a four letter inscription on the ossuary that spells out the name “Jonah” (the same as ‘Yonah’) in ancient Hebrew. Charlesworth is the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton. He is a noted expert in the epigraphy of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Herodian script of the period to which the tomb is dated. Another well-known epigrapher, Robert Deutsch, has confirmed Charlesworth’s reading of YONAH, although his noted epigrapher colleague Haggai Misgav of Hebrew University reads the markings as ZOLAH rather than YONAH. Other epigraphers have been invited to examine and analyze the inscription for additional perspectives.

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Closeup view of ossuary 6 with YONAH inscription highlighted. Background photo credit: William Tarant, GE Inspection Technologies and Associated Producers, Ltd.

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Thus, put together, the most significant finds and their interpretation from the original investigative team’s perspective is summed up well in the words of Tabor:

“………..We are dealing here with a family or clan that is bold enough to write out the holy name of God in a tomb, with a declaration about “raising up” or resurrection—something totally unparalleled in any of the 900 tombs from the period known in Jerusalem. And further, this is a family that is willing to put an image of a fish and a human, both eschewed by pious Jews as “graven images” on the most prominent ossuary in this wealthy tomb— located at the front of the first niche on the right as one enters the tomb—and fill it with the bones of more than one family member…………..We are convinced that the best explanation for these unusual epigraphic features in the Talpiot “patio” tomb is its proximity to the Jesus family tomb less than 45 meters away. What we apparently have is a family connected to the Jesus movement who reaches beyond the standard burial norms of the Jewish culture of the period to express itself individually in these unique ways.” [1]

Other scholars have strongly disputed this interpretation. But it has raised some intriguing popular questions: Is the Patio tomb, together with the nearby “Jesus Family Tomb” and 3rd tomb (mostly destroyed during construction work), a cluster of tombs belonging to a wealthy family, perhaps even that of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy member of the Sanhedran who, according to the Gospels, donated a tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus‘ Crucifixion? Or, aside from the hypothetical association with Joseph of Arimathea or a wealthy Jewish family, was it associated with the early followers of Jesus, those that made up the initial “inner circle”, including family members? Or was it both?

“Whether one might identify it as “Christian,” or, to be more historically precise, as associated with the early followers of Jesus, is another question,” writes Tabor. “I would strongly argue in the affirmative.”[1]

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* The detailed account of how the technical team gained access and remotely moved about the tomb is presented in the article, Probing the Secrets of Jerusalem’s Patio Tomb, by team member William Tarant.

[1] A Preliminary Report of a Robotic Camera Exploration of a Sealed 1st Century Tomb in East Talpiot, Jerusalem. James D. Tabor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Some of the views expressed in this article are the views of the exploration team and do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor and staff of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Read about the most fascinating discoveries with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine. Find out what Popular Archaeology Magazine is all about.

Archaeological Digs

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Dan McLerran -

As Founder and Editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, Dan is a freelance writer and journalist specializing in archaeology. He studied anthropology and archaeology in undergraduate and graduate school and has been an active participant on archaeological excavations in the U.S. and abroad. He is the creator and administrator of Archaeological Digs, a popular weblog about archaeological excavation and field school opportunities.

There are archaeology field schools and research activities being conducted all over the world. Many excavations are conducted during the summer months; however, some are ongoing throughout the year, and some are being conducted even during the winter months in parts of the world where the climate is favorable. Click on each listing below to link to a website:

1. Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin

2. Dig List at Popular Archaeology

3. Past Horizons

4. Earthwatch Expeditions

5. Biblical Archaeology Society

6. Archaeologyfieldwork.com

7. Passport in Time

8. ShovelBums

The Hard Stuff of Culture: Oldowan Archaeology at Kanjera South, Kenya

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Thomas Plummer -

The material culture of humanity litters our world. The residues and trash of past civilizations fill up museums, and have provided the fodder for countless dissertations. From an evolutionary perspective, much of the variation in human cultural practices is “noise;” it does not provide a significant adaptive advantage or disadvantage to the population in question. But the capacity for culture, and the use of culturally derived technologies, behavioral practices, and social institutions to adapt to varying environmental circumstances has been a critical part of humanity’s success.

Whereas other primates (e.g., the living great apes, and some populations of capuchin monkeys) may exhibit culture, and produce technologies that assist in foraging, humans are unique in being dependent on cultural practices for survival. But how far back in time does this dependency on culture go? The oldest evidence for material culture in the human family tree extends back to nearly 2.6 million years ago (Ma) in Africa. Stone tools found at sites dated roughly between 2.6 and 1.6 million years ago are attributed to the Oldowan Industrial Complex, named after the type site of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (Plummer, 2004). Oldowan archaeological sites are restricted to East Africa between 2.6 to 2.0 Ma, and thereafter are found in North and South Africa. In the Oldowan, large pebbles, cobbles, or angular blocks of stone (cores) were struck with another rock (a hammerstone) to detach flakes that had sharp edges and could be used for a variety of cutting tasks (Fig. 1). Large mammal butchery was one demonstrable use of the artifacts, as cut marked bones are coeval with the oldest stone tools, but they may have been used to work wood and process plant foods as well.

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Figure 1. Oldowan artifacts from Kanjera South made from red felsite. A. Hammerstone. B. Core showing flake release surfaces. C. Flake. Photo credits: Jim Oliver and Tom Plummer

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One of the primary goals of my research is to investigate the adaptive significance of Oldowan tools. Were stone tools a critical part of the foraging ecology of early humans, or were they only used incidentally, or seasonally, more akin to chimpanzee tool use? It is likely that more than one species of early human used Oldowan tools, including two members of the human genus Homo, named Homo habilis (ca. 2.4 – 1.4 Ma) and Homo erectus (ca. 1.9 – 0.2 Ma). Understanding how Oldowan stone tools were manufactured, transported, used, and discarded across the landscape will tell us something fundamental about the behavior and cognitive sophistication of the oldest stone tool makers, and the importance of tool use and manufacture to their lives. Although not abundant, there are a growing number of Oldowan sites from Africa. Here I will be describing on-going research from sites in roughly the middle of the timespan for the Oldowan, from the Homa Peninsula, southwestern Kenya.

The Oldowan Site of Kanjera South, Kenya

Since 1995 I have been co-directing research on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya with Dr. Richard Potts of the Human Origins Program of the Smithsonian Institution, working with an interdisciplinary team of paleontologists, archeologists, and geologists investigating the late Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits exposed there (Behrensmeyer et al., 1995; Bishop et al., 2006; Braun et al., 2008, 2009a,b; Ditchfield et al., 1999; Ferraro, 2007; Ferraro et al., ms; Plummer et al., 1999, 2009a,b). The Homa Peninsula juts into the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria. Centrally located on the peninsula, the peaks of the Homa Mountain carbonatite complex are ringed by sediments deposited by streams and lakes as well as alluvial fans off the flanks of the mountain. Fossil-bearing sediments extend back in time to at least 6 Ma, with the oldest well-dated archaeological occurrence being found at Kanjera South (Fig. 2).

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Figure 2. Location of Kanjera South on the Homa Peninsula, Winam Gulf, southwestern Kenya.

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Based on magnetostratigraphy and biostratigraphy, the archaeological sites at Kanjera South are approximately 2 million years old. Excavation through silts and fine sands from an ephemerally flowing system of small, shallow channels in the margins of an ancient lake has recovered multiple levels of stone artifacts and associated fauna through three beds (from oldest to youngest KS-1 through KS-3) spanning several meters of sediment (Fig. 3) (Plummer et al., 1999).

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Figure 3. A. Excavation 1. B. Artifacts and fossils being recovered during excavation. C. Composite stratigraphic log shows the basal three beds of the Southern Member of the Kanjera Formation (KS-1 to KS-3) and the base of KS-4. Spatially associated artifacts and fossils are found as diffuse scatters and also in more vertically discrete concentrations from the top of KS-1 through KS-3, with KS-2 providing the bulk of the archaeological sample. Photo credit: Tom Plummer

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Except for several discontinuous conglomerate units, hominin activity was the primary agent of accumulation of the Kanjera archaeological materials (Plummer et al., 1999; Ferraro, 2007). The 169 m² Excavation 1 is the largest excavation to date, and has yielded approximately 3700 fossils and 2900 artifacts with 3D (N, E, and Z) coordinates from a one meter thick sequence, exclusive of materials from spit bags and sieving. This represents one of the largest collections of Oldowan artifacts and fauna found thus far.

The Environmental Setting of Hominin Activities

The habitats that were available to hominins, and whether they preferred a specific habitat or utilized a range of habitats, are important to document to understand their adaptation. Over larger timescales and geographic regions, patterns of environmental change can be related to patterns of hominin (living humans and related fossil species) evolution to investigate whether environmental change triggered evolutionary change (DeMenocal, 1995). It seems likely, for example, that the spread of grassy environments played an important role in transformations in the human evolutionary tree through time. Early in our excavation it became apparent that the faunal signal from Kanjera South was more “open” than is typically associated with early archaeological sites. Antelopes whose living relatives are found in open settings today dominate the bovid sample, and fossil zebras are also common. This fauna indicates that grassy habitats were well represented within the regional plant paleocommunity. On a more local scale, analysis of the chemistry of soil carbonate nodules associated with the archeological horizons provides information about the vegetation cover (proportion of grasses using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway versus plants such as bushes, shrubs, or trees using the C₃ photosynthetic pathway) at the time that hominins were making, using and discarding stone tools at the site. The Kanjera soil carbonates have δ¹³C values indicative of a very grassy setting (> 75% grass) within the range of open habitats such as wooded grasslands to open grasslands today. Stable carbon isotope analysis of enamel indicates that these taxa uniformly had a large amount of grass in their diets, reflecting the dominance of grass in the vegetation community (Fig. 4).

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Figure 4. Stable carbon isotopic composition of fossil mammal tooth enamel from KS-2 in Excavation 1. The KS-2 fauna is supplemented by several taxa unique to KS-1 or KS-3, or found on the surface of the KS-1 to KS-3 sequence, to provide a more complete sense of the diet of the mammalian community during the deposition of the archeological levels. The shading reflects the relative importance of C₃ browse versus C₄ grass in the diet, with δ¹³C values greater than -1 reflecting a diet with more than 75% C₄ vegetation. A probable ostrich (cf. Struthio) eggshell fragment was also analyzed. Modified after Plummer et al. (2009), Figure 3.

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This is true even for taxa that normally have a C₃-rich (fruit or browse) diet (e.g., tragelaphine antelopes and the monkey Cercopithecus sp.). One of the two teeth from Deinotherium, an elephant-like creature that normally exclusively browsed, has the most positive δ¹³C value ever documented for this taxon indicating that it at least occasionally consumed C₄ plants. The strong C₄ signal occurs across the spectrum of animals found at Kanjera South, including non-dispersing taxa such as monkeys, rhinos, tragelaphine bovids, and suids. This confirms that the grassland dietary signal is not simply the result of dry season domination of the residential mammalian community by migratory grazers congregating near a permanent water source.

The ca. 2.0 Ma sediments at Kanjera South thus provide some of the best early evidence for a grassland dominated ecosystem during the time period of human evolution, and the first clear documentation of human ancestors forming archaeological sites in such a setting. The presence of artifacts and archeological fauna both low and high in the KS-2 sequence and in the underlying KS-1 and overlying KS-3 indicates that hominins repeatedly visited this grass-rich area on the landscape for hundreds or even thousands of years. This is significant for several reasons. The open setting contrasts with the more wooded settings associated with other Oldowan sites. This suggests that by 2 Ma, the hominins forming the Oldowan sites were utilizing a broad spectrum of habitats during their foraging. Activities in open settings may have correlated with hominin utilization of plant or animal resources that were specific to those habitats. Moreover, the formation of sites in an open setting provides one line of evidence that hominins, in at least some paleoecosystems, were able to compete effectively with large carnivores. This is an important finding, as there is clear evidence that Oldowan hominins were consuming animal carcasses, and this dietary shift would have increased the frequency in which hominins and carnivores came into contact, perhaps in competition for the same carcass.

The Importance of Lithic Technology

We are very fortunate that the Homa Peninsula and its immediate environs has a geologically complex history, so that a diverse array of rocks are exposed in outcrops or as cobbles in conglomerates (Braun et al., 2008; 2009a, b). This raw material diversity is reflected in the artifact assemblages at Kanjera South, which were made using a greater variety of raw materials than typically found at most other Oldowan sites (Fig. 5) (Plummer, 2004).

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Figure 5. Artifacts made from a representative sample of raw materials from Kanjera. Photo credit: Tom Plummer

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Extensive raw material surveys both on and off the Homa Peninsula combined with petrological and geochemical characterization of samples collected from primary outcrops and ancient stream and river conglomerates have been used to build a lithological data base for sourcing most of the rocks used in artifact manufacture. We thus have a good idea of how far the artifacts were transported away from their sources prior to their discard at Kanjera South (Braun et al., 2008). Moreover, these rocks vary in physical properties (e.g., hardness) that can be quantified, with the harder, and often more easily flaked raw materials being found in conglomerates off the Homa Peninsula, outside of the drainage system of Homa Mountain (Fig. 6).

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Figure 6. The placement of Kanjera within the zone of the radial drainage system of the Homa Mountain carbonatite complex. Non-local “high quality” raw materials are found in conglomerates at least 10-13 km away from Kanjera. Image provided by David Braun.

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Hardness is an important variable, as experiments have shown that a flake of a hard raw material, like the quartzite found off of the Homa Peninsula 10 or more km away from the site, will maintain a sharp edge much longer than a flake of a soft raw material, such as limestone, that outcrops locally. The geographic distribution of raw materials varying in their physical attributes provides an opportunity to assess aspects of hominin decision making in the selection, transport, and flaking of stone. If stone tool manufacture was not a critical component of the foraging behavior of the hominins at Kanjera, there would be little pressure to transport stone, and one would expect the artifact assemblage to be overwhelmingly dominated by locally available raw materials from the conglomerates in the radial drainage system off of Homa Mountain. What we found is that approximately 30% of the artifacts recovered from Kanjera were made from rocks that were transported to the site from conglomerates at least 10-13 km away (Braun et al., 2008). Moreover, these nonlocal raw materials were more extensively flaked, and flaked more efficiently (generating more cutting edge per unit volume) than the local raw materials found on the peninsula (Braun et al., 2009a, b). Flakes of some of the nonlocal, hard raw materials are occasionally retouched (the removal of tiny flakes from an artifact’s edge to resharpen it). Retouching is uncommon in the Oldowan, and at Kanjera it was only carried out with the hard, non-local raw materials. This again reflects the attention hominins paid to raw materials best suited for tool use. The finding that there are not nearly enough cores to account for all of the flakes at the site further hints that the artifact sample at Kanjera was part of a larger transport system. It appears that cores were being carried by hominins, for use to dispense flakes as needed for various cutting tasks.

The fact that hominins were investing energy in the transport of hard raw materials, and more efficiently reducing them, suggests that artifact manufacture was of great importance in their day-to-day lives. But what was it that they were doing with these artifacts? One certain use was animal butchery. Hominins were predominantly acquiring small antelopes the size of Grants Gazelles or a bit larger (Ferraro et al., ms). The representation of the different bones of the skeleton indicates that complete carcasses of these animals were brought to the site. Analyses of dental eruption and long bone fusion indicate that many of these antelopes were immature when they died. Damage to the fossils indicates that hominins were using stone tools to slice meat off of bones, and to break bones open for their fatty marrow. Carnivore toothmarks are also found on bones, showing that they too were interested in the carcasses at the site. But the carnivore damage largely follows the hominin damage, and appears to represent scavenging of the leftovers of the hominin meals.

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Figure 7. A shaft fragment from an ungulate leg bone showing a single, deep stone tool cutmark and carnivore toothmarks. One toothmark overlays the cutmark, indicating that the hominins had stripped meat off the bone prior to carnivore gnawing. Photo credit: Tom Plummer.

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The overall pattern of hominin access to the complete carcasses of small antelopes may be the signal of hominin hunting. If so, this would be the oldest evidence of hunting to date in the archaeological record. There are bones from larger antelopes and other ungulates as well, but their skeletons are not as complete, and it is unclear whether the hominins were having access to fleshy carcasses of these animals, or whether larger bovids were sometimes acquired by scavenging carnivore kills.

Artifact use-wear analysis provides another avenue for assessing the range of activities carried out by ancient hominins. We categorized the traces produced by working different materials (e.g., soft and hard wood, grass, wild tubers, animal skin and flesh) using an experimental collection of artifacts made using the same raw materials as those used by the Kanjera hominins. This use-wear reference collection was then available for diagnosing what hominins were cutting and scraping based on the use-wear of the tools found at the archaeological site. Thus far, the use-wear on the quartz and quartzite subsample of Kanjera artifacts confirms that animal butchery was conducted on-site, but also demonstrates the processing of a variety of plant tissues, including wood (for making wooden tools?) and tubers (Gibbons, 2009; Lemorini et al., 2009). This is significant, because the processing of plant materials appears to have been quite important, but would otherwise have been archaeologically invisible.

Summary and Future Research

Research at Kanjera has informed us a great deal about the habitat use and behaviors of Oldowan hominins, and about the importance of stone technology to the lives of our ancestors living 2 million years ago. Hominins were foraging in a variety of habitats, from grasslands to woodlands, and processing plant and animal foods with stone tools. Tool use seems to have been adaptively significant, as hominins preferentially utilized and transported stones that were hard, and produced flakes that held a sharp edge for a long time. Hominins consumed foods including animal carcasses and tubers that would have required stone tool use to acquire and/or process, were of high nutritional value, and came in packets large enough to be shared.

There is a great deal of more research to be carried out on the Homa Peninsula. In addition to further research at Kanjera, the next round of excavations will include several new Oldowan sites to the west and south of the Homa Mountain carbonatite complex. These sites will allow us to investigate how Oldowan hominin behavior and technology varied across different habitats, and with differential access to high quality raw material.

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Literature Cited

Behrensmeyer, A.K., Potts, R., Plummer, T. W., Tauxe, L., Opdyke, N. & T. Jorstad (1995). The Pleistocene locality of Kanjera, Western Kenya: stratigraphy, chronology and paleoenvironments. Journal of Human Evolution 29:247-274.

Bishop, L., Plummer, T. W., Ferraro, J., Ditchfield, P., Braun, D., Hertel, F., Hicks, J. & R. B. Potts (2006). Recent research into Oldowan hominin activities at Kanjera South, Western Kenya. African Archaeological Review 26: 31-40.

Braun, D., Plummer, T. W., Ditchfield, P., Ferraro, J. V., Maina, D., Bishop, L. C., Potts, R. (2008) Oldowan Behavior and Raw Material Transport: Perspectives from the Kanjera Formation. Journal of Archaeological Science 35: 2329–2345.

Braun, D., Plummer, T. W., Ditchfield, P., Bishop, L. & J. Ferraro (2009a). Oldowan technology and raw material variability at Kanjera South, Kenya. In Hovers, E. & D. Braun (eds) Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding the Oldowan, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 99-110.

deMenocal, P.B. (1995). Plio-Pleistocene African climate. Science 270: 53-59.

Braun, D., Plummer, T. W., Ferraro, J., Ditchfield, P. & L. Bishop (2009b). Raw material quality and Oldowan hominin toolstone preferences: Evidence from Kanjera South. Journal of Archaeological Science 36: 1605–1614

Ditchfield, P., Hicks, J., Plummer, T. W., Bishop, L. & R. Potts (1999). Current research on the Plio-Pleistocene deposits north of Homa Mountain, Southwestern Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution 36:123-150.

Ferraro JV (2007) Broken bones and shattered stones: on the foraging ecology of Oldowan hominins. PhD dissertation. University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.

Ferraro, J.V., Plummer, T.W., Pobiner, B.L., Oliver, J.S., Bishop, L.C., Braun, D.R., Ditchfield, P.W., Seaman, J.W. III, Binetti, K.M., Seaman, J.W. Jr., Hertel, F. and R. Potts. (manuscript) Earliest evidence of persistent hominin carnivory.

Gibbons, A. (2009). Of tools and tubers. Science 324: 588-589.

Lemorini, C, Plummer, T, Braun, D, Crittenden, A, Marlowe, F, Schoeninger, & P. Ditchfield (2009). Functional interpretation by use-wear analysis of 2 million-year-old Oldowan tools from Kanjera South, Kenya. Presented at the annual meetings of the Paleoanthropology Society in Chicago, Illinois, March 31 & April 1.

Plummer, T. W., Bishop, L., Ditchfield, P. & J. Hicks (1999). Research on late Pliocene Oldowan sites at Kanjera South, Kenya. Journal of Human Evolution 36:151-170.

Plummer, T. W. (2004). Flaked stones and old bones: biological and cultural evolution at the dawn of technology. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 47: 118-164.

Plummer, T. W., Bishop, L., Ditchfield, P., Kingston, J., Ferraro, J., Hertel, F. & D. Braun (2009a). The environmental context of Oldowan hominin activities at Kanjera South, Kenya. In Hovers, E. & D. Braun (eds) Interdisciplinary Approaches to Understanding the Oldowan, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 149-160.

Plummer T. W., Ditchfield, P.W., Bishop, L. C., Kingston, J.D., Ferraro, J.V., Braun, D. Hertel, F. & R. B. Potts (2009b) Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem. PLoS ONE 4(9): e7199, 1-8.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Office of the President of Kenya, and the National Museums of Kenya for permission to study the Kanjera fossils and artifacts. The Homa Peninsula field research was conducted through the cooperative agreement between the National Museums of Kenya and the Smithsonian Institution. Logistical support and funding was also provided by the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. Funding from the L. S. B. Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Award Program for Kanjera field work is gratefully acknowledged. I thank the co-director of the Kanjera project, Laura Bishop, and Rick Potts and the Human Origins Program for support during all phases of the Kanjera research. Collaborators on this project include Laura Bishop and Fritz Hertel (paleontology), David Braun (lithic technology), Peter Ditchfield and John Kingston (geology and geochemistry), Jennifer Parkinson, Jim Oliver, and Joe Ferraro (zooarcheology) and Rick Potts (archaeology, logistics).

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About the Author

Tom Plummer is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department at Queens College, City University of New York, and a member of the CUNY graduate faculty and the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology. His research broadly focuses on late Pliocene and early Pleistocene hominin behavior and ecology, with a special interest in exploring the adaptive significance of the first stone tools. He co-directs field research on the Homa Peninsula, Kenya with Richard Potts, where Plummer is focusing on late Pliocene and Pleistocene archeological and paleontological sites.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: View of excavations at Kanjera South. Photo credit: Tom Plummer

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New Clues to Early Pueblo Communities

Posted on December 5, 2011 by No Author -

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2011 Field Season

Evidence of Masonry at the Great Kiva

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

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

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Life In and Around a Pithouse

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

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

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

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

A Surprise Find in a Midden

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

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

Public Participation in the Basketmaker Communities Project

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

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

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

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Photos courtesy Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

The Road Through Sicevo

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Mirjana Roksandic -

Dr. Mirjana Roksandic is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Winnepeg. She conducts pioneering research in two distinct areas: the study of hominid fossils in Europe, and mortuary archaeology, with current fieldwork focusing on sites in Serbia, Portugal and Cuba.

Historically, the road through Sicevo gorge was the main communication route from what is today Western Europe to Greece and further on to Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Set in the carstic hillsides of Southern Serbia, near the third largest town in the country, the gorge presents a natural crossroads between the North and the South and the West and the East. Any map of human migrations into Europe – of any given archaeological and historical period – will have at least one arrow placed loosely over this region. The Paleolithic period (2.6 million years to 10,000 years BP) is no exception to this rule. When megafauna (large animals) moved from Africa into Europe in the Early Pleistocene, this was the most likely corridor for their movement. The megafauna was followed by the “megafauna-chasing-hominins” – hunters or scavengers who must have used the same route in their early advancement into Europe.

The Balkans area in which the gorge is located is not only incredibly promising as a potential region for investigating early dispersal of humans into Europe, it is also a natural refuge for later populations of plants, animals and humans that were chased out of northern realms by advancing glaciers. What makes this glacial refuge different from the other two southern peninsulas of Europe (the Apennine and the Pyrenean), is the fact that it never experienced isolation from the rest of the world during glacial times. One, then, has to wonder why the Balkans in the Pleistocene has received so little attention in archaeological research. Could it be that the actual richness of archaeological remains in the region, that of the classical (both Greek and Roman) architecture and archaeology, and the rich Neolithic heritage and unique Mesolithic manifestations with sculptures and urban planning, precluded research into far less visible and far more difficult to access Pleistocene sites? It could well be so. The late 19^th century findings of Pleistocene specimens, a skull of Neandertal from Belgrade and a Pleistocene mandible from the loesses in the vicinity of the same city, both Paleolithic artefacts of southern Serbia, were soon forgotten or lost during the turbulent first half of the 20^th century.

Fortunately for us, a systematic reconnaissance of the Central Balkans is taking hold. In Serbia, it has been through the efforts of Professor Dusan Mihailovic of the University of Belgrade, and the Senior curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Belgrade, Bojana Mihailovic, that we now have archaeologically sound information about a number of sites in the region, and are slowly and painstakingly building the picture of human occupation of the Balkans during the Paleolithic. From the Pannonian basin all the way to Southern Serbia they have identified and excavated a number of very unique Mousterian sites, both open air and in caves. (The Mousterian was a stone tool industry or culture that was commonly produced and used by Neandertals). They are starting to discern different patterns of occupation and different tool kits. The possibility of reconstructing migrations of Paleolithic populations, and the way that different groups among them established contact, is slowly emerging. The large geographic and temporal scale and the lack of supporting faunal, geomorphological and paleoenvironmental analysis makes this task difficult but extremely rewarding. Every new find is significant and every new site is now telling a unique, previously unheard story of hominin migration, mode of life and interaction with the environment and other hominin groups in the region.

In the Sicevo (pronounced Sichevo) and Jelasnica (Yelashnitza) gorges alone, we have identified and (to an extent) excavated four caves with definite Pleistocene remains and one open air site that was most likely used for raw material quarrying. When all of the sites in the region are taken together, the sequence possibly spreads over most of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene and covers the important time when Upper Paleolithic stone tool industries, usually associated with early modern humans, move into Europe to replace the Mousterian.

One of these sites has produced the first uncontestable Pleistocene hominin specimen from the region in 2008, and that is when Professor Mirjana Roksandic joined the field excavation as a paleoanthropologist. This specimen is a partial mandible found in the Pleistocene deposits of Mala Balanica (Balanitza) cave, about 1.5 meters below the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian artifacts. The site, as well as an adjoining larger cave and a number of other caves in the vicinity are being dated by ESR and U-series methods by Professor Jack Rink from McMaster University and through Thermoluminescence methods by Dr. Norbert Mersier from the University of Bordeaux.* Complementing the international team is the geomorphologist from Britain, Dr. Mike Morley from Oxford Brookes University.

The find is raising important questions about the spread of Neandertals and earlier hominins in the Central Balkans, as the mandible does not exhibit any of the traits characteristic of Neandertals, which are commonly considered to have been the only hominin group inhabiting Europe in the Middle and early Late Pleistocene. The mandible is relatively primitive in all aspects of its morphology. The initial impression is that it exhibits most of its similarities with the H. erectus morphology, especially with the famous specimen D211 from Dmanisi in Georgia. While primitive traits do not allow us to assign species designation to this specimen, it nevertheless appears to cluster well with the Early Pleistocene hominins.

The absence of Neandertal traits in a specimen of this age is counter to the common assumption that Neandertals were the only hominin group in Europe during this time period, though the fragmentary nature of the mandible precludes any definite assignment to a particular species. (See update below)

Any new finds are bound to be extremely important as there is a dearth of information in this critical area related to human and animal movement into and out of Europe. The Balkans, by virtue of being one of the three Southern refugia during glaciations in Europe, and because it is the only one of the three which never experienced isolation, offers much to the research in the biogeography of both human and animal populations in the Pleistocene.

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Partiable mandible BH-1, discovered in the Mala Balanica Cave in 2008. Rink WJ, Mercier N, Mihailovic´ D, Morley MW, Thompson JW, et al. (2013) New Radiometric Ages for the BH-1 Hominin from Balanica (Serbia): Implications for Understanding the Role of the Balkans in Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution. PLoS ONE 8(2): e54608. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054608 Credit Mirjana Roksandic

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Above: Excavation in Mala Balanica cave.

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The research team conducts a field school every summer through the University of Winnipeg. More information about the school can be found at http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/anthro-field-school-index.

Professor Mihailovic giving an improvised morning lecture to a group of undergraduate and graduate students.

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*Update: According to the recent report on dating of the find, the mandible has been dated to between 395 and 525 Kya, a time period when Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have inhabited Western Europe.

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New Discoveries in Egypt

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Susan Redford and Donald Redford -

Professor Donald Redford is professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean Studies at the Pennsylvania State University and the director of the Mendes expedition. He is a noted expert in the field of Egyptology and Biblical Studies and is the author of numerous books and articles, including The History of Ancient Egypt: Egyptian Civilization in Context, (Dubuque, 2005), and City of the Ram-man, the Story of Ancient Mendes,(Princeton, 2010). Prof. Redford has been featured in numerous series and documentaries on A&E and the History Channel.

Dr. Susan Redford is faculty lecturer in the Dept. of Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the Pennsylvania State University and the director of the Theban Tomb Survey. Dr. Redford is the author of numerous articles and The Harem Conspiracy: The Murder of Ramesses III (Northern Illinois University Press, 2002). She has been featured in documentaries by National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.

For the past 36 years, from 1975 to the present, The Akhenaten Temple Project (A.T.P), a program initially created to study and reconstruct on paper the dismantled sun-temples of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten (14^th Century B.C.), has undertaken archaeological work at four major sites in Egypt: At East Karnak (Luxor), where our excavations have uncovered the largest temple of this king; across the river in the Theban necropolis, where we initiated a tomb survey of burials and sepulchres including that of Akhenaten’s butler Parennefer; at Tel el-rub’a in the eastern Nile delta, where we commenced excavation of the ancient city of Mendes; and in the Sinai, a New Kingdom fortress today known as Tel Kedwa. The archaeological field work of the A.T.P. has made significant contributions to our knowledge of all the major time periods of Ancient Egypt, and opened untold opportunities for student participation and training. From 1998, directors, Prof. Donald Redford and Dr. Susan Redford, have combined the work of the project with a field school run under the sponsorship of Penn State Education Abroad, which has been highly successful in training undergraduates, not only in history, but also in the mechanics of archaeological field methodology, epigraphy, recording of reliefs and artifacts, human osteology, paleobotany and conservation. Since field operations always involve native Egyptian labor, students move within the local native community and are obliged to learn a little Arabic. It has been a marvelous opportunity for undergraduates to come into close contact with another important world culture and the Islamic way of life.

The Theban Tomb Survey

One of the most famous antiquities sites in the world, and also among the best explored, is the Theban necropolis. This, Egypt’s second largest ancient burying ground, covers an area of approximately 5.5 square miles on the west bank of the Nile River, just opposite the modern town of Luxor (ancient Thebes) , and encompasses not only tombs, but other substantial monuments such as temple and palace complexes, shrines, and the remains of domestic communities. An incomparable wealth of historic material has been retrieved and continues to be recovered and documented from its environs, providing us with an enormous compendium of information and invaluable insights into most of the major periods of the Ancient Egyptian civilization. The funerary structures themselves are a reflection of political, economic and social conditions of the time. The various cemeteries incorporated within the area range in date from the Old Kingdom through Greco-Roman times, and include those exclusively for royal interments, today known as the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, as well as those of the aristocracy, the Valley of the Nobles.

It is the Valley of the Nobles that has been the site of my research for the past 20 plus years. In 1988, I was given a concession by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to clear, record and publish three tombs in the Valley of the Nobles, thereby officially inaugurating ‘The Theban Tomb Survey’. While all of the rock-carved sepulchers contracted to my research project were of historical importance, one tomb in particular has commanded the most attention and time and effort throughout my years of digging in the valley. The tomb, numbered 188 in the Theban Tomb registry, is that of the royal butler of the pharaoh, Akhenaten, whose name is Parennefer.

Parennefer’s burial monument is situated in a region of the ancient necropolis known as the Assasif, an area which lies adjacent to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. Eight field seasons have been spent documenting the decorated walls of Parennefer’s tomb chapel, a task which involved producing facsimile drawings of the scenes and a photographic record, as well as conservation and stabilization of the paintings and structure itself. The monument also required meticulous clearing of five shafts and associated burial crypts that had been discovered within the confines of the tomb; but as anyone who works in the Theban necropolis can tell you, one’s single tomb concession can quite suddenly and unexpectedly broaden. The necropolis is a virtual rabbit’s warren of tomb shafts and ancient robbers’ tunnels that intersect with each other and communicate with unknown interments and often undiscovered tombs buried under slope debris. This turned out to be the case at my Assasif concession which has now expanded west well beyond the boundaries of Theban Tomb 188. The honeycombed shafts in Parennefer’s tomb have led to the discovery of four other previously unknown monuments.

The external entrances of this line of newly discovered tombs situated side-by-side along the cliff terrace, were once completely covered over by slope debris, but have been partly cleared through the efforts of my own team and that of the West Bank Antiquities Inspectorate (fig. 1 below). Much more, however, remains to be done. In cooperation with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, the continuation of this clearance operation will be the focus of the Theban Tomb Survey’s 2012 summer expedition. The goal is to fully expose the ancient courtyards of these tombs by freeing the area of accumulated detritus as far as the dirt road on the valley floor (fig. 2 below), and given the expanse of space and some substantial depressions of the topography, undoubtedly more hidden tombs will be uncovered.

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Fig. 1: Entrance and courtyard of one of the newly-discovered tombs of the Assasif concession.

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Fig. 2: The slope of limestone debris which will be under excavation in the 2012 field season.

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As in the past, the contents of the slope debris itself will yield important historical information and forensic data. Despite the systematic plundering of the Theban necropolis which continued up to modern times, there is still a tremendous quantity of artifacts from these ancient burials left to be retrieved, as well as human remains. The objects represent burial assemblages that ranged in date from the New Kingdom through to late Ptolemaic/early Roman times, a time period of about 1100 years. Among the types of items collected from our last field season, in which we initiated the clearance of the slope to the immediate west of Parennefer’s tomb, were canopic jars (which once held the organs of the deceased), fragments of painted coffins, pieces of stringed beaded nets and collars, numerous funerary cones inscribed with the names of the deceased, shawabtis (small Osiride figurines of the deceased), amulets, statue fragments and decorated blocks removed from the walls of nearby tomb chapels. Two of the most exciting finds that were recovered were the remains of a cedar coffin with a finely-carved facial mask (fig. 3 below), and a beautiful, limestone relief showing the head and elaborate hairstyle of Parennefer’s wife which had been removed by robbers from the reveal of his tomb’s entrance passage (fig. 4 below).

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Fig. 3: Remains of a carved cedar coffin discovered by slope clearance in the 2008 field season.

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Fig. 4: A block of decorated relief depicting the tomb-owner’s wife removed by vandals from Parennefer’s tomb.

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The success and important results of the Theban Tomb Survey have been very much due to a team effort that includes members of my technical staff of artists, photographers, architect, ceramicists, and osteologists,— not to mention the many students that have accompanied us! Besides the hands-on field training that these students have gained, the field school has provided the research project with productive field assistants. Students are involved in all aspects of the field work with tasks that include clearance in controlled excavation, object registration, sifting, osteological documentation, sorting and tabulation of ceramics, assistance with photography and site planning, and general site recording (fig. 5 above right, student sorting pottery “on the mats”). Over the years, students who have joined the expedition have come not only from Penn State, but from other universities across North America, including the University of Toronto, Princeton, Yale, UCLA, New York University, Boston University, University of California, and the University of Hawaii.

Susan Redford

The Mendes Excavations

Although the average tourist to Egypt spends almost all of the time visiting the antiquities of Upper Egypt, the Nile Valley, scholarship has long since realized the equal, if not overriding importance of Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta, in ancient times. Here were situated many cities of political, cultural and religious importance, some of which functioned at certain periods of history as the capital of Egypt. Reduced today to ruin mounds of mud-brick rubble, they present a challenge, but also a reward to the diligent excavator. These cities give abundant evidence of Egypt’s relations, military, commercial and cultural, in ancient times with the external world of Phoenicia, Greece and Rome.

For 19 years I have been excavating one of these cities, ancient Mendes, lying in the center of the Nile Delta, midway between Cairo and the Mediterranean coast. The city has been occupied for nearly 5,000 years, and even today could be said to continue to exist in the numerous villages around the ruin mound. Our excavations have demonstrated the existence of human occupation from the prehistoric period, c. 4000 B.C., while the period of state creation, the advent of complex society and the invention of the hieroglyphic script c. 3100 B.C. is well represented. In fact, we have recovered a sequence of very early texts which illustrate the evolution of writing in Egypt. The thousand years of the Pyramid Age, the Old Kingdom, is in abundant evidence with a faunal and palaeo-botanical record that chronicles types of plant cover, land use and faunal population over this uninterrupted time period. The city suffered an abrupt, though temporary, cessation of occupation shortly after 2200 B.C. (confirmed by Carbon-14 dating), when fire destroyed the local temple and a massacre of the inhabitants occurred. When revived in the second millennium B.C. the city featured a large, processional temple, fronted by two pylons, with a long approach flanked by subsidiary temples (fig. 6 below).

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Fig. 6: The Mendesian temple of the Ram-god as it looks today.

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From remote antiquity the inhabitants of Mendes had worshiped a ram god and a fish goddess. The sacred rams had been embalmed and laid away at death in a special vault, each in its own diorite sarcophagus. Immature fish of the schilby species, sacred to the fish-goddess, had been placed in pottery vessels and buried in a special part of the city reserved for the purpose (fig. 7 below).

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Fig. 7: One of many caches of pottery vessels, each containing the remains of a schilby fish.

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Our excavations have identified several harbors at the site, communicating with the local branch of the Nile which provided ready access to the Mediterranean. Storehouses filled with pottery have provided evidence of foreign trade in perfumes (for which Mendes was famous throughout the classical world) and wine with the eastern and central Mediterranean. Sometime approximately in the 7^th Cent. B.C. Mendes became the eastern terminus of a new east-west canal, cut across the Delta from the city of Buto in the western Delta, to facilitate commerce and the transfer of troops in both directions. In 399 B.C. the thriving city was the location of a number of families of great political power, and for 20 years Mendes became the capital of Egypt. The tomb of the founder of this (29^th) Dynasty, Neferites I (399-393 B.C.), was discovered by our expedition in 1993. Sadly, it was not intact. Neferites had been a Afreedom-fighter, instrumental in liberating Egypt from the yoke of the Persian empire; and when, in 343 B.C. the Persians succeeded in reconquering Egypt, they made a point of destroying his tomb.

After 205 B.C. Mendes began to decline. As the Mendesian branch of the Nile weakened and moved away to the east, the great harbour silted up, and with its demise the commercial basis of life in the city dwindled away. In the first cent. after Christ the city=s population began to diminish and its industry decline; and the town center moved south to what had earlier been a suburb of Mendes. By the 4^th Cent. A.D. some of the older temples had been turned into churches.

Mendes is a cross section of Egyptian history. With no villages built over the ruins, it is completely open to our exploration. A fascinating agenda of investigation remains to be acted upon: urbanism in a Lower Egyptian setting, town planning, the distribution of economies, house lay-out. All these themes beckon enticingly!

The expedition is housed in our archaeological institute of 20 rooms, including sleeping and eating quarters, a library, laboratories, draftsmen’s room and pottery work-shop (fig. 8 below). Our professional staff includes historians, palaeo-botanists, faunal experts, physical anthropologists, geologists, ceramicists, all of whom also provide hands-on training to our student participants (fig. 9 below). (Not all our researchers are on staff during a single season, being present when our program goals require their expertise). Areas of research this coming season of 2012 will include: (a) the clearance and partial restoration of a Temple built by Amasis (569-526 B.C.); and (b) excavation of houses of the period 2300-2200 B.C.

Donald Redford

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Fig. 8: The Mendes expedition house

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Fig. 9: The 2010 Mendes team.

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How You Can Help

Penn State’s Summer Abroad field school offers students six credits in the area of archaeology, ancient Mediterranean studies and international cultures toward their degree. Those who are interested in taking part in this exciting research and gaining a memorable cultural experience can submit an application on-line at www.outreach.psu.edu/summerabroad/study-egypt for the up-coming 2012 expeditions.

Blue Creek: Rise and Fall of a Maya Center

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Thomas Guderjan and Colleen Hanratty -

Dr. Thomas Guderjan is the President of MRP and Director of the Blue Creek project and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Tyler. His book, The Nature of an Ancient Maya City: Resources, Interaction and Power at Blue Creek, Belize. University of Alabama Press (2007), summarizes much of the work done at Blue Creek.

Colleen Hanratty is a doctoral candidate at Southern Methodist University. She has worked with the non-profit organization, the Maya Research Program, for the past 16 years. She has conducted archaeological research in the southeastern and southwestern USA, Mexico, Peru and Belize. Her doctoral research is on the collapse and abandonment of Blue Creek, Belize.

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

Location of Blue Creek in Northwestern Belize

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

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Blue Creek Site Core and Residential Zones

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Blue Creek Central Precinct

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

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

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

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

Sequence of Events at Blue Creek during the Classic Period

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

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Plan View of Blue Creek Site Core during the Early Classic

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

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Structure 9 Masks

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

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Jade Cache Event

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

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Structure 9 in the Late Classic

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

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Palaces in the Late Classic

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

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

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Residential Areas and Ditched Fields of Blue Creek

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

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

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

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

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

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Kin Tan Plan View

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

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Special Deposit from Structure 50

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

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Plan View of Rosita

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

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

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Postclassic at Blue Creek

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How You Can Participate at Blue Creek

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

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

2011 Students and Volunteers and Explorer’s Club Flag Expedition

2012 Field Season Dates:

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

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

www.mayaresearchprogram.org
1910 East Southeast Loop 323 #296
Tyler, Texas 75701
817-831-9011
[email protected]

From the Sands of Egypt

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Michael Gordon -

El-Behnesa, Egypt, 1896. There was little to see. It was a landscape of windblown sand surrounding a sleepy arab village. But for Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, young English scholars of classicism from the Queen’s College in Oxford, there was something about the place that screamed at them. Set astride a small river that anciently served as a canal of the Nile, they knew it was the location of two ancient cities, the more ancient called Per-Medjed, a capital of the Egyptian 19th Dynasty, and the younger called Oxyrhynchus Polis (meaning “City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish”), a Greco-Roman town initially under the Ptolemaic rulership of 3rd-1st century B.C. Egypt. But all that could be seen of them today was a lone, well-weathered Greek column and a few traces of stone-lines and banks of sand that only hinted at the city’s ancient presence. The site was nothing like the visual splendor that greeted explorers and adventurers at places like Luxor, Giza, and Abu Simbel.

But Grenfell and Hunt (pictured right) were not interested in architecture. They were interested in researching ancient papyri, and having recently excavated in the Fayum area, the region surrounding the well-known ancient Egyptian site of Crocodilios, they had hopes that this new, relatively obscure site might yield something significant.

The Motherlode

As it turned out, they were right……but far more than they had ever imagined.

Securing the help of 200 local men from the nearby village of El-Behnesa, they began digging into mounds that anciently served as garbage dumps for the refuse of centuries of succeeding human generations. For a thousand years, the inhabitants of ancient Oxyrhynchus had dumped their garbage in mounds outside the city, and for another thousand years, the intensely dry climate and winds of sand had covered them into oblivion.

The digging was not easy. Battling strong winds and blowing sand that stung the skin and threatened the eyes, they toiled undaunted through an Egyptian winter season, digging down inch by inch until their efforts were finally rewarded in January of 1897.

They found papyrus. It began as a trickle. Then the site generously yielded one papyrus fragment or bundle after another until the layers seemed to virtually flow with papyri.

The first major find to emerge from the sand was a papyrus that contained, in Greek script, what was later translated as the Gospel of Thomas, an apocryphal work that was never canonized into the New Testament of the Bible. Three manuscripts were unearthed. They are to this day the only known manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas in Greek. The only other manuscript was written in coptic, discovered later among the finds at Nag Hammadi, also in Egypt. A fragment of the Gospel of Matthew followed soon after. The finds were astonishing, not so much because of the biblical references, but because of the sheer mass of the discovery. By the time Grenfell and Hunt’s excavations had ended in 1907, there were enough papyri to fill 700 boxes, a total of 500,000 fragments that made their way back to Oxford, England, for preparation and study.

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Excavating papyri at Oxyrhynchus. Courtesy Egypt Exploration Society

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During the summers between seasons, Grenfell and Hunt labored over cleaning, sorting, identifying and deciphering the meaning of the hundreds of thousands of fragments uncovered. As scholars, they were hoping to acquire works, known, unknown, and lost, of classical Greek literature. They were not disappointed. They uncovered fragments of the works of the playwright Menander, Sophocles, Satyrus, Euclid, and latin works by Livy. More Christian texts, too, were among the major finds, including parts of Matthew, John, Mark, Romans, the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of Baruch and the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and parts of the Old Testament.

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From the Gospel of Matthew. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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But only 10 percent of the finds were literary. Roughly 70 percent consisted of public and private documents such as codes, edicts, official correspondence, census returns, tax assessments, petitions, court records, bills of sales, leases, wills, inventories, and even horoscopes and private letters. Excavations continued by an Italian team from 1910 to 1934 added many more finds to the inventory. It was, most importantly and without question, the most detailed and intimate account of the lives and times of an ancient people of an ancient city. It was an unprecedented window into the past, unmatched by any other archaeological undertaking.

In 1898, Grenfell and Hunt published the first volume of the finds. They continued to translate and publish until 1934, when Hunt died after continuing the work with others following Grenfell’s death in 1920. Translation work has continued since the 1930s, and for more than twenty years the work has been performed under the supervision of Professor Peter Parsons of Oxford University. More than seventy five volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have thus far been published. The volume of finds was so great, however, that new volumes will continue to be published (at a rate of one volume a year), and translation of the many thousands of fragments left for study continue to promise work for scholars for years to come. Recently, a collaborative effort has been launched by a consortium of universities, museums, and scholars to expedite the translation work. Called the Ancient Lives Project, it is coordinated under the auspices of the Citizen Science Alliance and invites the public to get involved in the work through a web-based process at the Ancient Lives website. The documents, housed in the electronic database of Oxford University’s Imaging Papyri Project, can be viewed free of charge by anyone online.

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Oxyrhynchus papyrus (P.Oxy. I 29) showing fragment of Euclid’s Elements. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Private Lives

It has been estimated that over 70 percent of the world’s literary papyri come from Oxyrhynchus. For many, however, the greatest value lies in the numerous fragments and documents that detail the ordinary, even mundane, aspects of living in ancient Greco-Roman Egypt. More than any other group of papyrus finds, the Oxyrhynchus papyri have offered the world an intimate glimpse into the personal lives and business dealings of a people and culture long departed. For today’s scholars of history, anthropology, and history, and particularly for the rest of humanity living lives of little public consequence and notoriety, the papyri carry a meaning that transcends the traditional fascination or interest in the great people and events of conventional written history. This is realized in the volumes of recovered transactions, dealings, accounts and letters (example pictured right) that documented the everyday lives of the people of Oxyrhynchus Polis, lives that but for the papyri would have been lost and forgotten for posterity.

Consider, for example, the following letter excerpt written by one named Hilarion to his wife. He is residing for a time in Alexandria, Egypt, while his wife remains at a distant location. He discusses a family matter of finance and pending childbirth, with an interesting cultural or personal twist that would be considered unthinkable for many in today’s modern culture:

Know that we are still even now in Alexandria. Do not worry if they all come back and I stay in Alexandria. I urge and beg you, be concerned about the child and if I receive my wages soon, I will send them to you. If by chance you give birth, if it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, throw it out. You have said to Aphrodisias, “Do not forget me.” How can I forget you? So, I urge you not to worry.

POxy 744, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri

And the following letter fragment, alluding to the activities of a one-eyed astrologer, makes one wonder what was done to Serenilla:

‘. . . I withdrew and went to sleep, and I sent the astrologer — the one-eyed one (monophthalmon) — to call you and he said that he could not find you. At lamp-lighting I returned and when I heard from Serenilla the things that you had done to her I was upset that you behaved in a way unworthy of you. So receive her kindly up there before the (end of the?) festival. And I would have been there already had I not been ‘dog-devoured’ (kunobrotos, i.e. bitten by a dog?) on the very day of the rise of the Dog star, the 25th, by a mad dog, and until now I . . . terribly . . .’.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXI no. 4126

The following letter fragment about a meeting says something about the important role that astrology might have played (as is also alluded in the letter fragment above) in the every day thinking or lives of people in the Greco-Roman world:

‘Elis to his most esteemed Carpus, very many greetings. Don’t forget about the order for the three plates, two big ones and (one line missing here, perhaps ‘and one small one’));. … meet (or: make a contract with) your friend when the Moon is in Sagittarius, at the 4th hour; it arrives there on 12th Thoth; it is there again also on the 13th and 14th until the 7th hour. At these times meet (or: make a contract with) your friend. Farewell.’

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXV no. 4483

And the following repudiation of a betrothal by the potential bride’s father reminds us that fathers’ feelings for their daughters have never changed:

‘. . . eleventh indication. I John, father of Euphemia, my unemancipated daughter, do send this present deed of separation and dissolution to you, Phoebammon, my most honourable son-in-law, by the hand of the most illustrious advocate Anastasius of this city of Oxyrhynchus. It is as follows. Forasmuch as it has come to my ears that you are giving yourself over to lawless deeds, which are pleasing to neither God nor man, and are not fit to be put into writing, I think it well that the engagement between you and her, my daughter Euphemia, should be dissolved, seeing that, as is foresaid, I have heard you are giving yourself over to lawless deeds and that I wish my daughter to lead a peaceful and quiet life. …’’

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol 1, CXXXIX

It is easy to forget that history is made up of real people, complete with all of the foibles, issues, opinions, needs, and loves that color the lives of ordinary people everywhere, at every place and time in world history. The world, even over 2,000 years ago, had personality…….they were, in most respects, like us.

Biblica Non Grata

Among the most sensational finds of the Oxyrhynchus excavations were the fragments of biblical texts that were unearthed and subsequently translated and published for the world’s eager biblical scholars and lay person alike to study and peruse. Like the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea Scroll finds that followed later in the century, they grabbed headlines and the published volumes of text lined the bookshelves of those who were serious enough to absorb their content.

More engaging and curious still, were the mysterious Gospel writings that opened additional windows on the man Jesus — the man who, for much of the global population, forever changed the world more than any man in history.

Very early in the excavations the first such papyrus emerged and, once translated, captured the attention of scholars and, soon, a fascinated public. Grenfell and Hunt called it Logia Iesu or the “Sayings of Jesus” (Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, or POxy 1), because of the monologue clearly identifiable to that of Jesus of the canonized Gospels of the New Testament. Fifty years later, nearly identical lines were found written in coptic among papyrus codices found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, this time in a complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas, a work that was hidden away by monks because the writings were considered heretical. Thus, unbeknownst to them at the time, Grenfell and Hunt were the first to discover the lost Gospel of Thomas.

Equally intriguing was a find made by Grenfell and Hunt during their sixth season of excavations. It was a small parchment book containing writings from a gospel still unknown to this day. Known by scholars as POxy 840, it recounts a dialogue between Jesus and a Pharisaic priest upon entry of Jesus and his disciples into the sacred precinct of the Second Century Temple of Jerusalem:

And he took them [the disciples] and went into the place of purification itself and walked around in the Temple. And a certain Pharisee, a high priest named [ ] approached them and fell in with them and said to the savior, “Who allowed you to set foot in this place of purification and look upon these holy vessels when you have not bathed and your disciples have not even washed their feet? In spite of being unclean, you have set foot in this temple which is clean, in which no one may walk unless he has bathed and changed his clothes, nor dare to look at these holy vessels.”

And standing with his disciples, the savior answered him, “Then are you, being in the Temple, clean?”

He [the Pharisee] said to him, “I am clean, for I have bathed in the pool of David. I went down into it by one flight of stairs and came up out of it by another. Then I put on clean, white clothes. Only then did I come and view these holy vessels.”

The savior answered him, “Woe to the blind who cannot see! You have bathed in these gushing waters, in which dogs and pigs lie night and day! And you have washed and scraped the outer layer of skin, just where prostitutes and flute girls anoint, bathe, cleanse and adorn in order to arouse the desires of men—but they are filled with scorpions and all kinds of evil on the inside. But I and my disciples, whom you say have not washed, have been dipped in waters [ ]………

The Oyrhynchus Papyri, POxy 840

These exact lines and the mysterious gospel source from which they came have not been found in any other ancient context. The discovery is unique to Oxyrhynchus.

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Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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What Lies Beneath

The Greco-Roman city of Oxyrhynchus, and the older Egyptian city that lies beneath it, have never been extensively excavated because the modern town of el-Bahnasa has been built above it. Any excavations would, therefore, be surgical in nature. If full-scale excavations could be conducted, there is little doubt that much would be uncovered as it was, during Hellenistic times, the third largest city in Egypt and served as a regional capital. After the introduction of Christianity, it became a prominent location for churches and monasteries and became the seat of a bishopric. It is therefore known to have featured a number of public buildings, including a hippodrome, a gymnasium, public baths, a theatre with a capacity for 11,000 people, and likely military buildings as it was a site for military garrisons stationed during the Roman and Byzantine periods. It was graced with an abundance of temples during the Greek and Roman periods, including temples to Demeter, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, Serapis, Osiris, Zeus-Amun, Hera-Isis, Mars, and Jupiter-Capitolinus.

A number of artifacts other than papyrus have been excavated from the surrounding ancient refuse mounds. The massive amount of work that remains to be done on the un-translated papyrus texts, however, and the potential archaeological bonanza that still lies beneath the modern town (if someday accessible), speaks volumes about the untapped knowledge and adventure of discovery that awaits future archaeologists, scholars, and a visiting public. If you read ancient Greek or Latin, you can play a direct personal role in that process by going to the Ancient Lives Project website. If you are an archaeologist or student of archaeology, you may one day play a part in uncovering more of the ancient city herself.

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Cover Photo, Top Left: Excavators hard at work at the site of Oxyrhynchus. Courtesy Egypt Exploration Society.

Photo, Second from Top, Right: Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt. Public Domain

Photo, Ninth from Top, Right: A papyrus private letter found at Oxyrhynchus. Public Domain.

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El Pilar: Archaeology Under the Canopy

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Anabel Ford and Maggie Knapp -

Anabel Ford is dedicated to decoding the ancient Maya landscape. While living in Guatemala in 1978, she learned from local people that the Maya forest was an edible garden when she mapped a 30-km transect between the Petén sites of Tikal and Yaxhá. In 1983, she discovered and later mapped the Maya city El Pilar. In 1993, after settlement survey and excavations, she launched a multidisciplinary program to understand the culture and nature of El Pilar. Ford’s publications are cited nationally and internationally as part of the foundation of Maya settlement pattern studies. Her archaeological themes are diverse, appearing in geological, ethnobiological, geographical, and botanical arenas and locally in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. Her concern for management of cultural monuments, in-situ conservation, and tourism appear in Getty publications.

Maggie Knapp is an Art History and Global Studies double major studying at UC Santa Barbara, currently working for the nonprofit ESP~Maya under the direction of Dr. Anabel Ford. Knapp plans to work with cultural patrimony and social development serving indigenous areas of the world such as that of the Maya. Knapp has authored articles in the areas of both art criticism and anthropology, researched aesthetic and social theory, and will be pursuing graduate work in art as a tool of cultural and economic development.

Walking through this place might be a puzzling, yet surprisingly delightful experience for the first-time visitor. Where are all the great stone pyramids, ball-courts, temples, and other monuments so often attributed to great ancient Maya centers? One sees a tropical landscape that is anything but flat. There is a jungle-shrouded mound here, another one over there. A well-planned walking path winds through what one could describe as the Maya version of the Garden of Eden. Like the very first 18th and 19th century explorers of the Maya world, one sees what could be ancient structures still hidden beneath their canopy shroud. Some of them have been partially exposed, betraying what might lie beneath and leaving the rest to the imagination. Visitors soon acquire the impression that this place is very different than any other encountered in the Maya world………..

The Maya Forest as a Garden

In the midst of today’s globalizing forces, the traditional stewardship strategies that conserved the tropics and sustained the rural Maya for centuries are threatened with extinction. Contemporary conservation practices for tropical forest ecosystems have relied upon the western approach: removing the human element from the equation. Yet ecological, agricultural, and botanical research on the Maya forest demonstrates that it is in fact a variegated garden dominated by plants of economic value, and thus highly dependent on human interaction. The co-creation of the Maya and their forest environment is based on a strategy of resource management that resulted in a landscape called the Maya “forest garden.”

In fact, every facet of Maya culture is deeply intertwined with their terrain, betraying a relationship that extends far beyond mere subsistence. Even the Maya language demonstrates a long-embedded knowledge of forest ecology. But until recently, mainstream scholarship on the Maya did not take into account the multidisciplinary lines of evidence that inform this relationship. In his popular synthesis on societal collapse, Jared Diamond, for instance, posits that lowland Maya interactions with the surrounding forest were largely destructive in nature—in particular, deforestation associated with agriculture. Diamond concludes that this deforestation led to the detriment and ultimate ‘‘collapse’’ of the Classic Maya society around 1,000 years ago. Such conclusions are based upon inductive reasoning from a single line of reasoning, without embracing the remarkable sources of data that relate to the region from the fields of biology, botany, and agriculture.

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Even the Maya language demonstrates a long-embedded knowledge of forest ecology. Photo courtesy Exploring Solutions Past~The Maya Forest Alliance

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Ethnobiologists, economic botanists, and agroecologists working with the Maya today hold a different view of Maya interactions with their environment. Extensive evidence exists on the management of forest resources, the flora and fauna, and the subtleties of Maya ecological knowledge. Traditional practices of forest gardening support a model of long-term, sustainable management of natural resources by the Maya. This view acknowledges the Maya as managers rather than as destroyers, which is an essential step in understanding how to conserve theirs and other threatened tropical ecosystems today. Rather than casting the Maya as destructive – and their ancient ancestors as a “failed society” – the focus of forest gardening is on a responsible interaction with the local environment that can provide western audiences with a model of global sustainability.

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The Maya were forest managers, not forest destroyers. Photo courtesy Exploring Solutions Past~The Maya Forest Alliance

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El Pilar: Past Treasure, Future Blueprint

El Pilar is not your typical Maya archaeological site. It doesn’t wow visitors with exposed temples, plazas, ball courts, and palaces like those encountered at Palenque or Tikal. Yet, the site does boast imposing temples and expansive plazas wrapped in forest foliage, ranking it among the major ancient centers of the lowland Maya region. Straddling the border of Belize and Guatemala, El Pilar, a designated Archaeological Reserve and Monumento Cultural on its way to becoming a bi-national Peace Park, does not flaunt monumental prowess with cleanly exposed stone structures. In fact, most of the ancient structures still lie in shade under the forest canopy protected by vegetation, because El Pilar is the subject of a whole new kind of archaeological presentation. It will prove to be a model for projects to come, informing future solutions for how humanity can sustain itself and flourish by cooperating with nature instead of dominating and destroying it.

The research that underlies the principles of archaeology practiced at El Pilar is based upon the premise that the ancient Maya worked with their tropical environment, as opposed to transfiguring it, and by doing so created a flourishing civilization sustained by the natural rainforest ecosystem. Exploring this concept could answer some age-old questions about what contributed to the remarkable prosperity of the ancient Maya and, certainly, what may have contributed to their decline. By extension, in an age of increasing global environmental awareness this peaceful site serves at once as a living museum, classroom, and laboratory, drawing on what can be learned about ancient cultural practices to create a viable conservation model for the future of our own civilization.

The very recent discovery of El Pilar offers the opportunity to pursue a different kind of conservation strategy called Archaeology Under the Canopy, where the natural forest and surrounding environment of the monuments are maintained to protect the site’s fragile structures from the elements. Living biofilms attack the limestone where exposed, which rapidly deteriorates the vulnerable limestone facades. It is tree cover that reduces exposure to sunshine and rain and maintains an even temperature that will preserve the monuments. Experimentally, Archaeology Under the Canopy serves the needs of archaeologists while experientially furnishing the visitor a more conscientious encounter with the ancient Maya. El Pilar is a place for reflection and introspection, gently shaded by forest canopy and full of a palpable mystery that evokes its enigmatic past; it demonstrates an authentic archaeological discovery rather than a naked city.

When full archaeological investigations were launched at El Pilar in the early 1990s, tropical vegetation had overtaken the site’s temples, plazas, palaces, residential areas, and causeways. The feeling that immediately greeted one at the site is wondrous – it was such an overwhelmingly serene space, offering visitors a sense of personal discovery. Though the ancient site has since undergone extensive mapping and excavation, much of the disturbance has been recovered, and the archaeological team has backfilled their excavations. Visitors today, therefore, can encounter a similar setting and sensation to that felt by the first archaeologists to discover El Pilar. This style of tourism destination model is unique to the treatment of Maya archaeology.

Based on excavations exposures, several key locales at El Pilar have been consolidated for viewing under the forest canopy, while most have been preserved under a mantel of earth for later consideration. Partial exposures offer examples of the monumental architecture, while the covered temples can be compared with those exposed at other sites. The objective of Archaeology under the Canopy is to maintain architectural harmony and integrity and to give priority to the monuments at risk. The pursuit of Archaeology Under the Canopy maintains the holistic vision of the site and ensures stability of temperature, humidity, and precipitation – factors that can quickly erode delicate plaster walls and elaborate facades.

The ancient monuments of El Pilar are protected by their natural habitat from damaging wind, rain, and acid-producing bacteria. Unique in the entire Maya world, a fully excavated house site called Tzunu’un evokes everyday Maya life. The ancient house compound provides a tangible experience of the home, and is surrounded by its own forest garden. Visitors discover the only existing presentation of a Maya house preserved in its forest garden on the Lakin Trail, where they will encounter windows into the past through remains revealed in situ, and catch glimpses of resident animals in the verdant surrounding jungle.

The El pilar house site, Tzunu’un.

Intrepid tourists today who choose to visit this ongoing project are captivated by the winding trails and mysterious complexes beneath fragrant boughs of the dominant plants of the Maya forest. One often hears the calls of howler monkeys in the canopy high above and the distinctive announcement of the toucan, smelling the fragrant blossoms of fruit trees wafting through the complexes.

The trail at El Pilar.

Exploring Solutions Past~The Maya Forest Alliance and the Future

Exploring Solutions Past~The Maya Forest Alliance (ESP~Maya), a decade-old nonprofit organization, has been charting the way to conserve the disappearing heritage of the Maya, their tangible ancient monuments and their intangible knowledge of sustainable forest gardening. The aim of ESP~Maya’s work is to showcase one of our world’s vital human landscapes: The Maya forest. To promote conservation, ESP~Maya identifies the sustainable history of the ancient Maya, educates the world on its intrinsic value to nature and culture, and demonstrates the critical expertise of the Maya forest gardeners. ESP~Maya combines international academic scholars with regional development and conservation specialists to promote the principles of Archaeology Under the Canopy and accredit still-thriving Maya conservation traditions. Based on multidisciplinary strategies of research, collaboration in the lab and field has defined the regional resources of the ancient Maya city of El Pilar, a sustainable visitor destination which bridges Belize and Guatemala. At El Pilar, ESP~Maya has created a living museum landscaped with the Maya forest gardeners, integrating traditional Maya forest garden knowledge into local education and international tourism with the experience of Archaeology Under the Canopy.

It has been nearly a century since the creation of the iconic Maya tourist model of Chichén Itzá, one that has sadly proven devastatingly destructive to the ancient Maya architecture. By exposing the limestone monuments to the elements, the strategies undertaken at Chichén privileged immediate viewing rather than long-term stability. Touted today as the most complete restoration of an archaeological site in the Maya region, Chichén Itzá was “restored” in the early 20^th century according to a European perspective on the narrative of indigenous life: a subjugated populace and glamorous rituals. The tourist experience today has been fueled by the international tourism industry and the impression that such fanciful reconstructions are what bring international capital to the region. It has been an effective strategy in the past, but it cannot endure.

The presentation of authentic sites of humanity’s history is becoming increasingly valuable to contemporary visitors who are interested in getting more than a shallow impression of the Maya out of their experience. If the established narrative of Maya history is perpetuated, we risk threatening, discrediting, and devaluing the very thing from which we are trying to learn. Rather than weaving imaginative tales from a Eurocentric vision, the practice of Archaeology Under the Canopy pursues the clarification and illumination of our collective memory. To consider the validity of Archaeology Under the Canopy in the context of the Maya opens the door for alternatives to the Chichén model, giving way to fresh treatment and holistic stewardship of future Maya sites, preservation of their natural surroundings, and recognition of the neighboring communities which maintain and surround them.

Cultural Heritage as International Asset

The history of El Pilar is not linked to the great explorers of the 19^th century, but emerges at the threshold of the 21^st century – a time when we are coming to recognize that not only are our earth’s resources limited, but that those same scarce resources are the increasing focus of a growing tourism industry. By introducing the practice of Archaeology Under the Canopy to Maya sites, we can demonstrate the grandeur of the Maya, protect the monuments for posterity, and shade the visitors who will enjoy a personal experience in the forest garden just as the traditional Maya once did. As we experience the growing scarcity of our natural resources, understanding alternative strategies is vital to the management and cooperation of humanity and the natural world, let alone to our coveted tourist destinations.

Tourism today has a unique opportunity to acknowledge lost societies and civilizations such as those of the Maya. We also have the chance to embrace the gifts of the present-day communities of Maya descendants, who not only inform our understanding of how these ancient peoples lived, but how they have continued to thrive in their immensely rich and biodiverse habit. Tourism is a central means by which this unique population and their legacy can enter the world economy, featuring their historical, cultural, and environmental heritage. The success of the El Pilar model is dependent upon the results of integrated, collaborative, and multi-disciplinary programs and adaptive management strategies with full participation of the officials, the community, and the experts that are involved in maintaining the reserve on a long-term basis. The overarching vision for El Pilar is a responsibly managed site that benefits local populations, regional governments, and international tourists while promoting sustainable stewardship of the land for posterity. No one goal can be attained at the expense or neglect of another, and we can hardly pursue our objectives without weighing the demands of all parties who have a stake in history’s treasures.

Tourism is the only product where the consumer must journey to the source to appreciate it, and the most recent statistics demonstrate that tourism accounts for a growing proportion of income in the Central American region. Tourists are becoming ever more conscious of the unity of human values and coming to regard ancient monuments as part of our common cultural and human heritage. With this post-national appreciation will come the recognition of our common responsibility to safeguard these monuments for future generations (according to the 1964 ICOMOS Venice Charter). It is with these aims in mind that we see the El Pilar project as an opportunity to explore alternative strategies that can provide a unique educational experience for the visitor and a long-term solution to conservation. The model of Archaeology Under the Canopy practiced at El Pilar has attracted local involvement, student class visits, regional university interns, international permaculture enthusiasts, and worldwide environmental educators. With effective models based on the inherent value of a traditional people’s conservation strategies like those of the Maya, we see increasing acknowledgement that the preservation of living cultures and regional economic development are mutually dependent elements of sustainability. Cultural heritage is thus an asset that is indispensable to the achievement of a sustainable future.

All photos not attributable to Exploring Solutions Past~The Maya Forest Alliance are courtesy BRASS/El Pilar Project.

Photo above: Plaza Jobo of the restricted northern H’Mena acropolis at El Pilar. Courtesy Adalaide Sadler, El Pilar Project.

Photo below: Panoramic view of El Pilar region.

The Bones of Ol Pejeta: Clues to the Past

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Briana Pobiner and Kris Kovarovic -

Briana Pobiner, the Science Outreach & Education Program Specialist for the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, has a BA in Evolutionary Studies from Bryn Mawr College, where she created her own major, and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from Rutgers University. Her research centers on the evolution of human diet (with a focus on meat-eating), but has included topics as diverse as cannibalism in the Cook Islands and chimpanzee carnivory. She has done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Indonesia and has been supported in her research by the Fulbright-Hays program, the Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, Rutgers University, the Society for American Archaeology, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Her favorite field moments include falling asleep in a tent in the Serengeti in Tanzania while listening to the distant whoops of hyenas, watching a pride of lions eat a zebra carcass on the Kenyan equator, and discovering fossil bones that were last touched, butchered and eaten by one of her 1.5 million year old ancestors. She came to the Smithsonian in 2005 to help work on the upcoming Hall of Human Origins, got bitten by the “public understanding of science” bug and hasn’t looked back, continuing to do her research while leading the Human Origins Program’s education and outreach efforts. She currently manages the Human Origins Program’s public programs, website content, social media, and volunteer content training.

Kris “Fire” Kovarovic, PhD, is Lecturer in Human Evolution at Durham University, UK. Originally from Connecticut, Kris moved to Montréal, Canada where she attended McGill University to complete a BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies, followed by an MSc in Archaeology and a PhD in Anthropology from University College London, UK (UCL). Kris subsequently spent time as a postdoctoral researcher in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History and then returned to UCL to take up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship prior to moving to Durham. Her broad research interests include palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and faunal analysis, particularly at Plio-Pleistocene hominin sites in East Africa. Her current research programme continues to explore the ways in which mammalian communities are shaped by their environments and how this can inform our understanding of the past distribution of mammals and habitats, as well as investigating the differences in habitat signals provided by fossil bovid dentition and skeletal remains. She is most excited and inspired by her role as co-director of BONES with good friend and co-conspirator, Briana Pobiner.

Early in the morning in the Kenyan bush, the human and other mammalian residents and visitors of Ol Pejeta Conservancy (or “OPC”) are getting watered, fed and ready for a new day. There are numerous conservancy staff members and a handful of researchers: PhD students preparing for careers in animal behaviour and conservation, teams of Earthwatch volunteers and their leaders and other visiting scientists, all of whom are contributing to our knowledge about and welfare of the many mammal species who call this equatorial landscape home. And there we are thrown into the mix: Dr. Briana Pobiner (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History) and Dr. Kris “Fire” Kovarovic (Durham University, UK). We aren’t conservationists and we aren’t often focused on the present. We can be variously described as archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleontologists, and paleoecologists; broadly speaking we are interested in human evolutionary history and how we evolved in the context of past environments.

We aren’t at OPC to study wildlife in the flesh; instead, we are interested in their bones that accumulate naturally on the ground after death. The objects of our study are often curiously regarded by the other researchers, if not considered somewhat inelegant by those who, rightly so, are awe-inspired and deeply committed to the living objects of their own study. We are not infrequently asked: “What are two people who study human prehistory doing looking at bones of dead animals?” That’s a good question, and the answer rests upon the connection drawn between modern bones on the ground and their fossil counterparts that are collected at palaeontological sites. If we can understand the processes that cause modern bones to deteriorate, accumulate and be buried in certain characteristic ways, or the taphonomy of these remains, we can interpret the same processes and their resultant patterns in assemblages of fossil bones. In 2007 we began our long-term project at OPC, BONES: Bones of Ol Pejeta: Neotaphonomic and Ecological Survey. Our aim is to understand the myriad ways in which a number of ecological characteristics condition bone accumulations.

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A scatter of bones found by Drs. Pobiner and Kovarovic during the summer of 2011 at OPC. Photo credit: Dr. Briana Pobiner

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How we relate mammal bones to environments is, however, another question we are often asked. It’s an important question and one that bears upon a major line of inquiry in the study of human evolution, which is aimed at determining how our hominin ancestors responded to climate change (e.g. Potts 1996; Bobe et al. 2002) in terms of both behavioral and morphological adaptations. We can only understand this if we can accurately reconstruct the environments at sites where hominin, or early human, fossils are found in the first place. Basic ecological theory can help us understand one major way in which mammals are important in this regard: the characteristics of a habitat determine which animals can live there successfully. Therefore, if we know what animals once lived in a particular place, we can glean some idea of what their habitat was like. Any habitat is characterised by both abiotic and biotic factors, such as the soil type, drainage patterns, features of the terrain (abiotic) and the vegetation and animal life present (biotic). These factors combine to provide two broad niches for each species to exploit. The spatial niche is quite literally the space in which a species lives, sleeps and moves around; the trophic niche is essentially the dietary preference of a species. For example, a moist forest habitat will support a number of arboreal species that live and feed on fruits and leaves in the trees. In contrast, a grassland habitat will have fewer of these species because trees are not well represented in the vegetation — but open country, terrestrial, grass-grazing species will be abundant. From the perspective of the fossil record, bones and teeth are clearly relevant for an interpretation of the ecological niches exploited by fossil mammalian communities. The bones of arms and legs will provide information about how and where a species moved or locomoted, or the spatial niche, since limbs that are adapted for swinging about in the trees will look quite different from those adapted to running around on the ground. The teeth and jaws will tell us something about what the species ate, or what trophic niche(s) they exploited, as again those adapted for a diet of meat will look very different from those best adapted to eating plants. Fossils of non-hominin animals are abundant and often well-preserved at Plio-Pleistocene (5 – 1.8 million years ago) sites in Africa, providing ample opportunity to explore past environmental conditions through a study of their remains.

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A Grevy’s zebra with a warthog in the background, both in their “typical” habitat: open grasslands. Photo credit: Dr. Nick Walton.

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We bring unique areas of scientific expertise to bear on the BONES project. One of us (Kovarovic) is an expert in understanding how the different species in a community exploit available niches, especially through the study of adaptive morphologies that can be linked specifically to the efficient exploitation of particular habitats, particularly in the mammalian family Bovidae (hooved, horned ungulates like gazelle, buffalo and related taxa). Evaluating such ecomorphologies is a routine method used in the reconstruction of paleoenvironments at hominin fossil sites (e.g. Kappelman 1991, Kappelman et al. 1997, Kovarovic & Andrews 2007). It has the advantage of not requiring identification of fossil mammal remains to the species or even genus level – what is important is not so much who the animals were, but for what they were adapted. Any fossil that retains ecomorphological information in an assemblage can be studied, so sample sizes tend to be large and therefore the statistical analyses more robust. The other of us (Pobiner) is a taphonomist, with a dual interest in how predator-prey relationships can be understood through an evaluation of the damage that carnivores do to the bones of their prey when they consume them as well as how bones naturally weather on the land surface. Tell-tale signs of carnivore activity, such as tooth punctures, pits and scores, as well as signs of gnawing, are used to determine overall predator pressure and in the fossil record contribute to our understanding of how and when hominins began competing with other carnivores for access to animal resources.

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Drs. Kovarovic and Pobiner collecting data on a bone occurrence. Photo credit: Dr. Nick Walton.

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OPC is an excellent place to situate our BONES project for several reasons. It is a research-friendly environment, hosting a number of projects including a well-established Earthwatch project documenting the ecology of black rhinos. This team collects annual abundance data on the entire living mammal community as well as details of the regional vegetation associations and habitat distributions. Earthwatch Project Director, Dr. Geoffrey Wahungu (Moi University, Kenya) and OPC’s Ecological Monitoring Manager, Nathan Gichohi share detailed GIS habitat maps with us, which allow us to confidently associate bone accumulations to specific habitat types. They also share long-term (decade-scale) data on mammalian abundances, critical information that allows us to correlate the proportions of live animals with information derived from bone accumulations, such as predation patterns that can be reconstructed from studies of carnivore damage. In turn, we share our data and analyses, which facilitate OPC and Earthwatch’s work in monitoring living communities. Finally, the conservancy has presented us with a unique situation: a fence that previously divided a smaller wildlife reserve (formerly Sweetwaters Game Reserve) from a large cattle ranch (formerly Ol Pejeta Ranch) was taken down in 2007, and the whole area became one large conservancy. The wild animals living on both sides of the fence have been able to migrate to new areas and, as we’re not only interested in reconstructing environmental conditions at one time and place, but in tracing changes in such conditions, this provides us with an opportunity to see how quickly the “bone community” reflects known changes in the living animal community.

Each day in the field we follow an established protocol of walking along 1km transects looking for bones and documenting every one that we encounter (Behrensmeyer et al. 1979). We conduct these walking transects in each of the habitat types at OPC, collecting a variety of different types of data, including things like: (a) exact GPS location of every bone and bone scatter; (b) genus, species and body size of each bone occurrence, where possible; (c) weathering stage, which indicates how long the bone has been on the land surface (Behrensmeyer 1978), allowing us to establish a short term chronology of bone accumulation; (d) habitat information, including broad habitat type and local microenvironment; (e) indicators of carnivore damage which identify the predator species responsible for the kill (Haynes 1980, Pobiner & Blumenschine 2003, Pobiner 2007) and (f) ecomorphological data when the skeletal element is from a bovid (Kovarovic & Andrews 2007, Kovarovic unpublished). In the past, we’ve used old-fashioned paper and pencil to record our data, but this year our research colleague Dr. Nick Walton developed a fantastic digital data collection system tailored for our specific data types and research questions. Using iPaqs and bluetooth GPS units, we can now input all of our data directly into an electronic database while we are in the field, saving the time of later having to transcribe handwritten datasheets onto our computers. Each bone encounter that we record is automatically tagged with a date and time stamp and GPS location, so not only will mapping and spatial analyses be easier to conduct, but we can easily pull up details of the data we have collected each year, in each habitat or on each species.

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Drs. Kovarovic and Pobiner walking a bone transect with their armed guard. Photo credit: Dr. Nick Walton.

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Dr. Nick Walton teaching Dr. Briana Pobiner how to use the new digital data collection system. Photo credit: Dr. Kris “Fire” Kovarovic.

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The data we collect will be used in numerous ecological analyses. The first of these is a “live-dead” analysis in which we test the hypothesis that the bone accumulations can accurately reconstruct the proportions of living species in the community. The habitat data also allows us to see if animals are dying in the habitats they’re adapted for and living in, and we’ll apply ecomorphological models to all bovid bone occurrences to predict the proportion of available habitat types and ecological niches in OPC. These results will be compared to the actual known habitat types to determine if ecomorphology provides a faithful environmental reconstruction or if it is biased against certain habitats.

A determination of the body size and predator involvement of each bone occurrence will then be used to investigate the correlations between these two potential biases and where they are responsible for similar patterns observed in the fossil record. If we find correlations between the proportion of undamaged bones and prey size or predator species, we will have identified a systematic pattern of bias that will result in an under- or over-representation of particular habitats in a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Ecomorphological analyses of carnivore damaged fossil assemblages thus would be similarly biased. Large carnivores are known to cause damage to or destroy skeletal elements of prey of varying sizes while feeding on them, so it is likely that some degree of bias exists, but we are unclear to what extent it affects our analyses (e.g. Haynes 1980, Pobiner 2007). If we wish to contextualize hominin evolution at a finer temporal scale, an understanding of – and possible corrections for – this bias is critical to an accurate interpretation of environmental change in the past.

Our project is intended to be a longitudinal study, and it takes many years of fieldwork to acquire the sample sizes required for analysis. Each year that we collect data we record information from bones deposited at different times in the past; fortunately, these data can be stratified according to the time of deposition on the landscape by applying weathering stage models. Time is an important variable, especially where the fossil record is concerned, so it is important for us to determine if the bone accumulations correlate to known increases or decreases in the abundances of both predator and prey species over the past 10+ years (e.g. Miller & Behrensmeyer 2005, Faith & Behrensmeyer 2006, Western & Behrensmeyer 2009), as well as in ecomorphological representations of the available habitats. OPC welcomes this study as it will offer data on changes in carnivore- and habitat-specific predation pressure over time, which may in turn help to understand temporal and spatial shifts in the living mammal biodiversity. The unique and fruitful collaborations occurring under the auspices of BONES have shown that the linkages between past and present mammalian communities are relevant to our understanding of the modern world, while simultaneously aiding the development of models used in interpreting the fossil record and our evolutionary past.

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Literature Cited

Behrensmeyer, A.K. (1978). Taphonomic and ecologic information from bone weathering. Paleobiology 4, 150-162.

Behrensmeyer, A.K., Western, D. & Dechant Boaz, D.E. (1979). New persepectives in vertebrate paleoecology from a recent bone assemblage. Paleobiology 5, 12-21.

Bobe, R., Behrensmeyer, A.K. & Chapman, R.E. (2002). Faunal change, environmental variability and late Pliocene hominin evolution. Journal of Human Evolution 42, 475-497.

Faith, J.T. & Behrensmeyer, A.K. (2006). Changing patterns of carnivore modification in a landscape bone assemblage, Amboseli Park, Kenya. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 1718-1733.

Haynes, G. (1980). Prey bones and predators: potential ecologic information from analysis of bone sites. Ossa 7, 75-97.

Kappelman, J. (1991). The paleoenvironment of Kenyapithecus at Fort Ternan. Journal of Human Evolution 20, 95-129.

Kappelman, J., Plummer, T., Bishop, L., Duncan, A., & Appleton, S. (1997). Bovids as indicators of Plio-Pleistocene paleoenvironments in East Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 32, 229-256.

Kovarovic, K. & Andrews, P. (2007). Bovid psotcranial ecomorphological survey of the Laetoli palaeoenvironment. Journal of Human Evolution 52, 663-680.

Miller, J.H. & Behrensmeyer, A.K. (2005). Skeletal distributions across time: A multivariate approach to the changing taphonomy of Amboseli Park, Kenya. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 25, 92A.

Pobiner, B. (2007). Hominin-Carnivore Interactions: Evidence from Modern Carnivore Bone Modification and Early Pleistocene Archaeofaunas (Koobi Fora, Kenya: Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania). PhD dissertation, Rutgers University.

Pobiner, B. & Blumenschine, R. (2003). A taphonomic perspective on the Oldowan hominid encroachment on the carnivoran palaeoguild. Journal of Taphonomy 1, 115-141.

Potts, R. (1996). Evolution and climate variability. Science 273, 922-923.

Western, D. & Behrensmeyer, A.K. (2009). Bone assemblages track animal community structure over 40 years in an African savanna ecosystem. Science 324, 1061-1064.

The Dedication of Roman Weapons and Armor in Water as a Religious Ritual

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Brandon Olson -

Brandon Olson is pursuing his Ph.D. in the department of archaeology at Boston University and has earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology (Fort Lewis College) and graduate degrees in archaeology (Sheffield University), ancient history (University of North Dakota), and classics (Pennsylvania State University). His research interests include the archaeology and history of the Hellenistic and Roman east with particular focus on ancient warfare, epigraphy, ceramics, settlement, GIS applications to archaeology, and social history. He is currently involved with ongoing archaeological projects in the Eastern Mediterranean including the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in southern Cyprus, the Mopsos Survey in southern Turkey, the Tel Akko excavations in northern Israel, the Polis Chrysochous excavations in southern Cyprus, and the excavations at Mendes in northern Egypt.

Through chance finds, formal excavations, looting, and dredging operations, several pieces of intact, fully functional Roman weapons and armor have been recovered from aquatic contexts in Gaul and Britain dating from the first century B.C.E to late first century C.E. Some scholars have attempted to explain the phenomenon as a series of accidental losses, while others allude to intentional deposition.[1]Although one cannot completely disregard accidental loss, the facts that military equipment was both expensive and heavily regulated and the veneration of water played an important role in Roman religion suggests that, in the majority of cases, gear found in water was a result of a conscious act, most likely of religious nature.

In Roman religion, the dedication of objects to gods took two forms: votive offerings, items dedicated to propitiate a god, and vows, objects dedicated to fulfill a contract with a deity. The religious rites were integral to the relationship between gods and mortals, as they provided a medium through which humans and the divine could interact. Roman religious practice prescribed a strong tradition of dedicating objects and a veneration of water; yet, few works, both ancient and modern, attest to a tradition of soldiers dedicating gear into water as a religious rite. It is the purpose of this investigation to argue that military equipment recovered from aquatic contexts in the western provinces cannot always be interpreted as accidental loss, but rather through emulation of a widespread Celtic practice, Roman soldiers dedicated weapons and armor into water as a religious rite.

Contextualizing the Assemblage

Examining religious praxis by way of military gear is problematic due to the difficulty encountered when attempting to link artifacts with specific behavior without proper archaeological context. Most equipment recovered from water lacks précis provenience, which is a direct result of recovery. Few formal excavations have been conducted in the major rivers and streams in Gaul and Britain, and several of the examples available for study are byproducts of dredging operations. Although the exact context of artifacts is essential for any study of material culture, understanding the manner in which military equipment became archaeological material helps bridge this gap. The following discussion of the processes of deposition will demonstrate that military arms and armor differed greatly from other material forms because they were never regarded as trash or discarded as such; thus, they entered the archaeological record in more specific and deliberate ways.

Loosely following Schiffer’s life-cycle theory, there are two processes that transform Roman military gear into material culture: cultural deposition processes and depositional processes.[2] Cultural deposition occurred when accoutrements were deliberately discarded or ritually offered in the ground or other concealed places where recovery was difficult. In such cases, the items no longer functioned in their traditional behavioral systems and become incorporated into an archaeological context. These acts include burying gear to prevent others from utilizing it, hoarding, mortuary contexts, cross-cultural utilization and, as will be discussed later, religious dedication. Often, when a garrison stayed at a particular fort for a period of several years, soldiers and officers increased the quantity of their possessions. When it came time to abandon a fort, the army would take what they could and bury the rest, preventing non-Roman forces from utilizing whatever they left behind. During unsettled times, or when abandoning a fort, soldiers would, on occasion, bury valuable possessions in a hoard. For example, the Corbridge hoard in Britain, excavated in 1964, contained an assemblage of equipment that included several pieces of lorica segmentata (metal, plated body armor), spearheads, artillery bolts, nails, wax writing tablets, papyri fragments, iron alloy, copper alloy, and glass fragments.[3] The owner buried the gear inside of an iron-bounded chest covered with a piece of leather. The amount of care taken when interring the items and sheer value of this material demonstrates that the owner planned to reclaim it. In the event of a soldier’s death, a colleague returned his equipment to a repository, buried it with the soldier, or his items simply disappeared. During their service, many soldiers drafted a will indicating who would receive their possessions after death. In some cases gear is found in burial contexts, suggesting it was interred ex testamento (according to a will).[4] Cross-cultural discard occurred when Roman equipment acquired as war booty, tribute, mercenary equipment, and trade objects was deposited in a non-Roman region.[5]

Depositional processes, on the other hand, constituted the accidental loss of fully functional items within a behavioral system. The transformation from the functional context of the gear to the archaeological context is, therefore, accidental. While on campaign, soldiers did, on occasion, lose their equipment. If a unit crossed a river or was suddenly ambushed, it was possible for soldiers to lose weapons and armor in the chaos. Although it is difficult to identify lost equipment archaeologically, Vegetius notes that accidental loss was a concern. He states, “the passages of rivers are very dangerous without great precaution. In crossing wide or rapid streams, the baggage, servants, and sometimes the most foolish soldiers are in danger of being lost.”[6] One must question, however, to what extent the current assemblage represents a traditional depositional process. As stated earlier, gear was expensive and regulated. Strict laws allowed officials to severely punish soldiers for mishandling their equipment. Legal works, such as the ex Ruffo Leges Militates, Corpus Juris Civilis, and the Strategica, preserve laws that forbade soldiers from losing and haphazardly disposing their gear.[7] If a soldier lost his sword, for example, an official could punish him twice, both for disarming himself and for potentially arming the enemy. Punishments for such an offense included, but were not limited to, flogging, a reduction in rank, and death.

Military equipment is unique as, unlike most other artifact types, arms and armor, in whatever condition, were never considered refuse at any point in their life-cycle, and entered the archaeological record in specific ways. Therefore, the processes of deposition are fairly predictable, and the exact context of the material is not entirely necessary for a discussion of the connection between military accoutrements and religion.

Celtic Evidence

The Celtic and Roman traditions of depositing weapons and armor are very similar in practice, and will be compared later to discuss the nature of Roman religion in Gaul and Britain. Celtic religion was deeply rooted in a veneration of water as streams, rivers, lakes, wells, and bogs were sacred places for Celtic worship. Aquatic locations—with the exception of bogs—represented life, curative qualities, fertility, and well-being. Bogs were feared and associated with danger and treachery.[8] Rivers, lakes, and streams became places centered on votive behavior, whereas in bogs individuals made both offerings and sacrifice. It is through the classical sources, presence of Celtic water deities, and the archaeology that Celtic water veneration and the various religious practices associated with it emerge.

In describing the destruction of Tolosa by Quintus Servilius Caepio, both Strabo and Justinus note how the Celtics ritually deposited valuables in sacred lakes.[9] In 105 B.C.E., the Roman proconsul Caepio went to southern Gaul and fought against the Tectosagi. At the siege of Tolosa, he seized a great treasure of gold and silver from a sacred lake, which was identified as the booty seized from Delphi by the Gauls in 279 B.C.E. Caepio committed a sacrilegious act, according to Strabo and Justinus, by draining the lake and taking the treasure. Later that year, Roman forces suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Arausio and, according to Orosius, the Cimbri and Teutoni seized large quantities of booty. Orosius states:

The enemy, after gaining possession of both camps and great booty, by a certain strange and unusual bitterness completely destroyed all that they had captured; clothing was cut to pieces and thrown about, gold and silver were thrown into the river, corselets of men were cut up, trappings of horses were destroyed, the horses themselves were drowned in whirlpools, and men with fetters tied around their necks were hung from trees, so that the victor laid claim to no booty, and the conquered to no mercy.[10]

The gold and silver may have been part of the booty seized by Caepio from Tolosa, given that he was a military leader at the battle. Caepio, after being prosecuted by Norbanus for stealing the Tolosa treasure, was exiled to Smyrna and died.

Classical accounts of Celtic water veneration are not restricted to Caepio. Caesar alludes to a deep respect for water when he describes the subjugation of Uxellodunum in 51 B.C.E.[11] Caesar notes that the inhabitants continued to resist his advance until troops fully blocked a spring running through the settlement. The inhabitants interpreted the dry stream as an inauspicious omen and quickly surrendered. Prudentius, a fifth-century C.E. Roman poet from Spain, describes in his Psychomachia the battle between Pudicitia (Chastity) and Libido (Lust). After Pudicitia defeated and killed Libido with her great sword, Pudicitia cleaned the sword in the Jordan River and deposited the victorious weapon into a religious space. Prudentius writes, “she dedicated it to the altar of the sacred spring in the Catholic temple, eternally shining there it shines with light.”[12] Writing in Gaul during the sixth century, Gregory of Tours offered yet another example of the Celts offering valuable items in water. Gregory writes:

In the territory of Javols there was a mountain named after Hilary that contained a large lake. At a fixed time a crowd of rustics went there and, as if offering libations to the lake, threw [into it] linen cloths and garments that served men as clothing. Some [threw] pelts of wool, many [threw] models of cheese and wax and bread as well as various [other] objects, each according to his own means, that I think would take too long to enumerate. They came with their wagons; they brought food and drink, sacrificed animals, and feasted for three days.[13]

The six classical accounts demonstrate clearly that the Celts and other groups dedicated valuable objects into water and that Roman culture had knowledge of the tradition.

Roman contact with Celtic groups initiated ideological reforms for both cultures. Prior to the Roman conquests of Gaul and Britain, the Celts did not wholly identify the divine physically. According to Green, Roman contact provided a catalyst for Celtic concepts of the divine to be freed from anonymity.[14] It is because of this contact that we can begin to identify specific Celtic water deities and classify them into two categories: those attached to a specific river and those attached to water features. The former category includes Verbia (goddess of the Wharfe River), Sequana (goddess of the Seine River), and Souconna (goddess of the Saone River). The latter includes Sulis (goddess of the springs at Bath among other things), Coventina (goddess of a spring at Carrawburgh), and Condantis (a goddess worshipped in Britain, whose name means “watersmeet”).[15] The deities mentioned above served many functions in Celtic religion, but they also played a role in Roman religious practices in Gaul and Britain.

The Celtic tradition of tossing objects into water as a religious rite originates in the Bronze Age (Hallstatt culture) and lasts through the Roman periods (Le Tene Culture). The archeological evidence for this practice is abundant and extensively studied . Both Wait and Roymans have published comprehensive archaeological accounts of Celtic weapons discovered in water from Britain and Gaul.[16] Wait examines Celtic swords, helmets, and shields in his study of ritual and religion in Britain within three chronological periods: seventh century B.C., Middle Iron Age, and Late Iron Age. Since the focus of the present study is the relationship between Celtic and Roman religious ritual, the material from the Middle Iron and Late Iron ages will be discussed in detail. The Celtic periodization scheme in Britain interprets the La Tene period as beginning at the onset of the Iron Age and ending with the Roman conquest in the first century C.E. Of the 113 Celtic swords dating to the La Tene period discovered in Britain, 66% came from rivers and bogs, 9% came from burials, 1% from hoards, 15% from an archaeological site, and 9% were chance finds. Only three helmets from an aquatic context have been recovered in Britain dating to the La Tene period. Map 1 depicts sword and helmet densities in relation to major rivers in Britain.

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Map 1 (after Wait 1985): Distribution of Le Tene period swords and helmets discovered in aquatic contexts in Britain. Satellite imagery courtesy of Bing.

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Roymans adopted a similar approach in his study of Belgic Gaul. He identified and plotted all the Le Tene swords and helmets from his study area. The periodization scheme for Celtic Gaul differs from the British scheme, as the La Tene period began at the onset of the Iron Age, but ended with the Roman conquest in the first century B.C.E. Of the 15 Celtic helmets found in Belgic Gaul, 27% came from a grave, 40% came from a river, 13% from a cult place, and 20% are of unknown provenience. Of the 109 Celtic swords recovered, 48% are grave finds, 34% came from a river, 13% from a cult place, and 6% are of unknown provenience. Map 2 depicts sword and helmet densities from Roymans’ study area.

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Map 2 (after Roymans 1996): Distribution of Le Tene period swords and helmets discovered in aquatic contexts in Belgic Gaul. Satellite imagery courtesy of Bing.

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Based on classical accounts, the presence of several water deities, and the studies of Wait and Roymans, Celts groups from both the Hallstatt and Le Tene periods had a strong tradition of dedicating military equipment in water for hundreds of years. This tradition both predates and continues well after the Roman conquests of Gaul and Britain. Roman soldiers came into contact with a well-established religious ritual, which, as we will see, was incorporated into their religious system.

Roman Evidence

There is no question that water held a religious significance in Roman culture. In discussing the importance of water in Roman religion during the Republican period, Edlund-Berry argues that, although the use of water figured greatly in religious practices, it was an unofficial, private affair.[17] Although the veneration of water was not an official state-sponsored ritual, it was practiced in the private realm. The sites of several Roman bridges show evidence of religious activity. Archaeologists excavating the intersection of the Via Appia and the Garigliano River at the site of ancient Minturnae uncovered several artifacts, including 4,918 coins deliberately tossed into the river.[18] Moreover, the Thames River within the urban confines of London also produced thousands of coins, demonstrating that offerings of valuable property were made into water.[19] There are, however, no classical accounts that attest to a Roman practice of depositing military gear or other valuables in water as a religious practice, nor are there water deities similar to those found in Celtic Britain and Gaul attested in the Roman pantheon. If, indeed, water veneration was an unofficial, private ritual, as Edlund-Berry argues, and water veneration among non-Roman groups was deemed abnormal as the aforementioned classical sources suggest, it is of little surprise that historical records do not attest to such a ritual within Roman culture. The archaeological record, however, does provide evidence supporting such a religious ritual.

In his study of Romanization in Belgic Gaul, Roymans also examines Roman military equipment. He categorized and investigated the Roman evidence in the same manner as the Celtic material. All Roman gear utilized in his study dates to the first century C.E. Of the 68 Roman swords discovered in Belgic Gaul, 51% are grave finds, 25% are river finds, 10% are from a cultic place, and 13% come from a military camp. Of the 51 Roman helmets from this region, 8% are grave finds, 69% are river finds, 2% are from a cult place, and 22% are from a military camp. Map 3 illustrates sword and helmet densities in relation to the major river systems in northwest Gaul. Unfortunately, Roymans’ study does not incorporate material from Britain. However, military equipment has been recovered from aquatic contexts at Newstead, possibly Corbridge, and the Thames River.

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Map 3 (after Roymans 1996): Distribution of Roman swords and helmets discovered in aquatic contexts in Belgic Gaul. Satellite imagery courtesy of Bing.

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It is clear that Roman culture adopted and adapted deities and religious practices from other groups. Mithraism, for example, had a strong following among the Roman army. The Persian god was sent to Earth to kill the sacred bull, whose blood symbolized life forces.[20] Several iconic representations from Britain and Gaul survived, depicting Mithras slaying the primeval bull with a serpent and scorpion trying to prevent the blood from reaching the fertile ground. When Rome expanded into new territories, cultural exchange occurred on both ends; Romanization was never a one-sided affair, and it certainly appears that Celtic culture left an indelible mark on Roman religion in the western provinces.

At least three Roman deities were subjected to substantial Celtic influence while retaining a Roman identity.[21] For example, a goddess identified as Sulis Minerva, worshipped at the Roman site of Bath, attests to a dual cultural origin. The name is preserved in several inscriptions and lead curse tablets.[22] The combining of the Celtic goddess Sulis and the Roman goddess Minerva demonstrate a Romano-Celtic deity. Other hybrid deities include a Celtic Mars and a Romano-Celtic sky god from Britain. A statuette from Martlesham in England depicted a mounted warrior with an inscription dedicating it to Mars Cocidius. An altar from Chester possesses a dedicatory inscription to Jupiter Optimus Maximus Tanarus, who was a Celtic thunder deity from Gaul and Germany.[23]

Discussion and Conclusions

Classical accounts, the presence of specific water deities, and the archaeology of Celtic groups in Britain and Gaul suggest that soldiers stationed in the western Roman provinces witnessed and eventually adopted a strong religious tradition of water veneration, whereby individuals dedicated valuable military gear in water. Comparison of the density maps of the Le Tene and Roman material from Gaul (Map 2 and 3) and the pie charts in Figure 1 (below), provides evidence of a similar practice, though locations of deposition and types of military gear were different. Unlike the Celtic material, Roman helmets far exceed swords, and the highest concentration of Roman gear is found along the Rhine River, the frontier between Rome and Germany. Figure 1 depicts the specific artifact densities of swords and helmets from the Roman and Le Tene periods in Gaul. Despite subtle differences in preferred material types and depositional locales, the archaeology demonstrates a great degree of cultural exchange and continuity in the religious realms of the Celts and Romans.

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Figure 1: Pie charts comparing the depositional practices of Le Tene and Roman period military equipment.

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The hybrid Romano-Celtic deities and the similar practices in the deposition of arms and armor in water paints an interesting picture of Roman and Celtic religion and interaction from the first century B.C.E. to first century C.E. The religious practices of the Roman army did not take over and replace native Celtic forms nor did Celtic religion remain the same. The Roman practice of offering military gear in water was a result of Celtic interaction. The purpose and belief systems behind such a tradition varied across time and space. Celtic culture saw water as a life force, key to wellbeing and fertility. It is impossible to determine if Roman soldiers who dedicated their gear perceived water or their newly adopted ritual in the same way. Although generally, in practice, the Roman and Celtic traditions concerning water appears similar, different cultural and ideological backgrounds gave the ritual a distinctively different meaning.

Cover Photo Top: Roman infantry soldiers. Courtesy David Fiel, Wikimedia Commons

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Works Cited

Alcock, Joan. “Celtic Water Cults in Roman Britain.” American Journal 122 (1965): 1-12.

Allason-Jones, Lindsay, and Mike Bishop. Excavations at Roman Corbridge: the Hoard. London: Historic Buildings & Monuments Commission for England, 1988.

Bishop, Mike, and J. C. N. Coulston. Roman Military Equipment: from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006.

Brand, C. E. Roman Military Law. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.

Breeze, David, Joanna Close-Brooks, J. N. Graham Ritchie, Ian Scott, and A. Young. “Soldiers’ Burials at Camelon, Stirlingshire, 1922 and 1975.” Britannia 7 (1976): 73-95.

Czarnecka, Krystyna. “The Re-Use of Roman Military Equipment in Barbarian Contexts: A Chain-Mail Souvenir?” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 5 (1994): 245-253.

Edlund-Berry, Ingrid. “Hot, Cold, Smelly: The Power of Sacred Water in Roman Religion, 400-100 BCE.” In Religion in Republican Italy, Yale Classical Studies 33, edited by Celia Schultz and Paul Harvey Jr., 162-180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Green, Miranda. The Gods of Roman Britain. Oxford: Shire Archaeology, 1983.

Green, Miranda. Celtic Myths. Austin: Texas University Press in cooperation with British Museum Press, 1993.

Klumbach, Hans. Romische Helme aus Niedermanien. Koln: Rheinland-Verlag, 1974.

Oldenstein, Jurgen. “Two Roman Helmets from Eich, Alzey-Worms District.” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 1 (1990): 27-37.

Rald, Ulla. “The Roman Swords from Danish Bog Finds.” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 5 (1994): 227-241.

Rhodes, Michael. “The Roman Coinage from London Bridge and the Development of the City of Southwark.” Britannia 22 (1991): 179-190.

Robinson, H. Russell. The Armour of Imperial Rome. New York: Scribner, 1975.

Roymans, Nico. “The Sword or the Plough. Regional Dynamics in the Romanisation of Belgic Gaul and the Rhineland Area.” In From the Sword to the Plough: Three Studies on the Earliest Romanisation of Northern Gaul, edited by Nico Roymans, 9-126. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996.

Ruegg, S. Dominic. Underwater Investigations at Roman Minturnae. Jonsered: Paul Astroms Forlag, 1995.

Schiffer, Michael. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

Smith, Charles R. Illustrations of Roman London. London: Printed for the Subscribers and not Published, 1859.

Tomlin, R. S. O. Tabellae Sulis: Roman Inscribed Tablets of Tin and Lead from the Sacred Spring at Bath. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988.

Wait, G. A. Ritual and Religion in Iron Age Britain, BAR British Series 149(i). Oxford: B.A.R., 1985.

Webster, Graham. Celtic Religion in Roman Britain. New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986.

[1] For accidental loss, see Hans Klumbach, Romische Helme aus Niedermanien (Koln: Rheinland-Verlag, 1974); H. Russell Robinson, The Armour of Imperial Rome (New York: Scribner, 1975) and Jurgen Oldenstein, “Two Roman Helmets from Eich, Alzey-Worms District,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 1 (1990): 27-37. See Mike Bishop and J.C.N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment: from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006), 26-34 who tentatively suggest votive deposition.

[2] Michael Schiffer, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 25-140.

[3] Lindsay Allason-Jones and Mike Bishop, Excavations at Roman Corbridge: the Hoard (London: Historic Buildings & Monuments Commission for England, 1988).

[4] David Breeze, Joanna Close-Brooks, J. N. Graham Ritchie, Ian Scott, and A. Young, “Soldiers’ Burials at Camelon, Stirlingshire, 1922 and 1975,” Britannia 7 (1976): 73-95.

[5] Ulla Rald, “The Roman Swords from Danish Bog Finds,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 5 (1994): 227-241 and Krystyna Czarnecka, “The Re-Use of Roman Military Equipment in Barbarian Contexts: A Chain-Mail Souvenir?” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 5 (1994): 245-253.

[6] Veg. Mil. 3.7.1. Translations are the author’s unless stated otherwise.

[7] All legal works are published in C. E. Brand, Roman Military Law (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969). See ex Ruffo Leges Militares 29 and 59; Corpus Juris Civilis (Book XLIX, Title 16 Military Affairs): 3. Modestinus, Punishments, Book 4.3 and 14. Paulus, Military Punishments, Book 1.1 and Strategica (by Maurice) 7.

[8] Miranda Green, Celtic Myths (Austin: Texas University Press in cooperation with British Museum Press, 1993), 51-52.

[9] Strabo Geographica 4.1.13 and Justinus Epitome 32.3.

[10] Paulus Orosius Historium Adversum Paganos V.16 (Deferrari).

[11] Caesar De Bello Gallico VIII.43.4.

[12] Prudentius Psychomachia 106-108.

[13] Gregory of Tours In Gloria Confessorum 2 (Van Dam).

[14] Miranda Green, The Gods of Roman Britain (Oxford: Shire Archaeology, 1983), 12.

[15] For Celtic water deities see: Joan Alcock, “Celtic Water Cults in Roman Britain,” American Journal 122 (1965): 1-12; Green, Celtic Myths; and Graham Webster, Celtic Religion in Roman Britain (New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986).

[16] G. A. Wait, Ritual and Religion in Iron Age Britain, BAR British Series 149(i) (Oxford: B.A.R., 1985) and Nico Roymans, “The Sword or the Plough. Regional Dynamics in the Romanisation of Belgic Gaul and the Rhineland Area,” in From the Sword to the Plough: Three Studies on the Earliest Romanisation of Northern Gaul, ed. Nico Roymans (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), 9-126.

[17] Ingrid Edlund-Berry, “Hot, Cold, Smelly: The Power of Sacred Water in Roman Religion, 400-100 BCE,” in Religion in Republican Italy in Yale Classical Studies 33, eds. Celia Schultz and Paul Harvey Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 180.

[18] S. Dominic Ruegg, Underwater Investigations at Roman Minturnae (Jonsered: Paul Astroms Forlag, 1995), 68.

[19] Charles R. Smith, Illustrations of Roman London (London: Printed for the Subscribers and not Published, 1859) and Michael Rhodes, “The Roman Coinage from London Bridge and the Development of the City of Southwark,” Britannia 22 (1991): 179-190.

[20] Green, The Gods.

[21] Green, The Gods, 43.

[22] R. S. O. Tomlin, Tabellae Sulis: Roman Inscribed Tablets of Tin and Lead from the Sacred Spring at Bath (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988).

[23] Green, The Gods, 46.

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