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Earliest likely evidence for bow and arrow use in Europe 54,000 years ago found in southern France

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Nyla Husain -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—In Grotte Mandrin, a rock shelter in southern France, researchers have discovered what could be the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow technology used in Europe by modern humans around 54,000 years ago. The findings hint that these weapons may have been critical to modern humans’ advantage over Neanderthals during their first migrations into Neanderthal territory. Projectile weapons like bows and arrows and spear throwers are thought to have appeared abruptly among modern humans in Eurasia during the Upper Paleolithic period roughly 45,000 years ago. Such advanced weaponry is believed to have given modern humans leverage over Neanderthals, but its origins and sophistication have remained unclear. A recent study at the Grotte Mandrin site, located near the Rhône River valley in southern France, uncovered 54,000-year-old dental remains from modern humans, which suggests that humans arrived in the area some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. (See below for a link to a related study published in Science Advances, co-authored by the authors of the current study.) Now, Laure Metz and colleagues have identified hundreds of 54,000-year-old artifacts from the same site that have telltale signs of past use as projectile weaponry. The researchers recovered 852 artifacts resembling well-defined points, blades, and flakes, many of which display wear patterns indicative of having been thrusted or thrown (percussive motion) or used to saw or cut (pressure motion). In total, they identified 383 objects with such patterns, including 196 with signs of percussive wear – primarily on points, micropoints, and nanopoints. These findings suggest that projectile weaponry such as the bow and arrow could have been mastered during, rather than after, modern humans’ incursion into Neanderthal territory. “The use of these advanced technologies may be of crucial importance in the understanding of the remarkable expansion of the modern populations,” Metz et al. write.

A 2022 study published in Science Advances, co-authored by the authors of the current study, reported that 54,000-year-old hominin dental fossils were found at the Grotte Mandrin site – indicating that modern humans arrived in Neanderthal territories some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496

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View of arrcheological excavations at the entrance of the Grotte Mandrin. Philippe Psaila

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Dr. Ludovic Slimak showing a flint point made by the first modern humans n Europe. Philippe Psaila

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Tiny points made by Homo sapiens 54.000 years ago and used as arrowhead. Laure Metz/Ludovic Slimak

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A horse mandibular and a Neronian point appearing on the archeological layer E (Neronian) from Grotte Mandrin. Ludovic Slimak

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release.

*Bow and arrow, technology of the first Modern humans in Europe 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France, Science Advances, 22-Feb-2023. 10.1126/sciadv.add4675

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Don’t miss out on this unforgettable evening as Dr. Hawass reveals the most closely guarded secrets of ancient Egypt and presents his groundbreaking new discoveries and latest research live on stage. As the man behind all major discoveries in Egypt over the last few decades and director of several ongoing archaeological projects, Dr. Hawass may yet surprise you with unexpected revelations that will make news across the world.

Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East

Posted on February 22, 2023 by Brown University -

BROWN UNIVERSITY—PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Archaeologists know that people have practiced cranial trephination, a medical procedure that involves cutting a hole in the skull, for thousands of years. They’ve turned up evidence that ancient civilizations across the globe, from South America to Africa and beyond, performed the surgery.

Now, thanks to a recent excavation at the ancient city of Megiddo, Israel, there’s new evidence that one particular type of trephination dates back to at least the late Bronze Age.

Rachel Kalisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, led an analysis of the excavated remains of two upper-class brothers who lived in Megiddo around the 15th century B.C. She found that not long before one of the brothers died, he had undergone a specific type of cranial surgery called angular notched trephination. The procedure involves cutting the scalp, using an instrument with a sharp beveled edge to carve four intersecting lines in the skull, and using leverage to make a square-shaped hole.

Kalisher said the trephination is the earliest example of its kind found in the Ancient Near East.

“We have evidence that trephination has been this universal, widespread type of surgery for thousands of years,” Kalisher said. “But in the Near East, we don’t see it so often — there are only about a dozen examples of trephination in this entire region. My hope is that adding more examples to the scholarly record will deepen our field’s understanding of medical care and cultural dynamics in ancient cities in this area.”

Kalisher’s analysis, written in collaboration with scholars in New York, Austria and Israel, was published on Wednesday, Feb. 22, in PLOS ONE.

Two brothers, up close

Israel Finkelstein, who co-authored the study* and serves as director of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa, said that 4,000 years ago, Megiddo stood at and controlled part of the Via Maris, an important land route that connected Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. As a result, the city had become one of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the region by about the 19th century B.C., with an impressive skyline of palaces, temples, fortifications and gates.

“It’s hard to overstate Megiddo’s cultural and economic importance in the late Bronze Age,” Finkelstein said.

According to Kalisher, the two brothers whose bones she analyzed came from a domestic area directly adjacent to Megiddo’s late Bronze Age palace, suggesting that the pair were elite members of society and possibly even royals themselves. Many other facts bear that out: The brothers were buried with fine Cypriot pottery and other valuable possessions, and as the trephination demonstrates, they received treatment that likely wouldn’t have been accessible to most citizens of Megiddo.

“These brothers were obviously living with some pretty intense pathological circumstances that, in this time, would have been tough to endure without wealth and status,” Kalisher said. “If you’re elite, maybe you don’t have to work as much. If you’re elite, maybe you can eat a special diet. If you’re elite, maybe you’re able to survive a severe illness longer because you have access to care.”

In her analysis, Kalisher spotted several skeletal abnormalities in both brothers. The older brother had an additional cranial suture and an extra molar in one corner of his mouth, suggesting he may have had a congenital syndrome such as Cleidocranial dysplasia. Both of the brothers’ bones show minor evidence of sustained iron deficiency anemia in childhood, which could have impacted their development.

Those developmental irregularities could explain why the brothers died young, one in his teens or early 20s and the other sometime between his 20s and 40s. But Kalisher said it’s more likely that the two ultimately succumbed to an infectious disease. A third of one brother’s skeleton, and half of the other brother’s, shows porosity, legions and signs of previous inflammation in the membrane covering the bones — which together suggest they had systemic, sustained cases of an infectious disease like tuberculosis or leprosy.

Kalisher said that while some skeletal evidence points to leprosy, it’s tough to deduce cases of leprosy using bones alone. She’s currently working with researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to conduct DNA analyses of specific lesions in the bones. If they find bacterial DNA consistent with leprosy, these brothers will be among the earliest documented examples of leprosy in the world.

“Leprosy can spread within family units, not just because of the close proximity but also because your susceptibility to the disease is influenced by your genetic landscape,” Kalisher said. “At the same time, leprosy is hard to identify because it affects the bones in stages, which might not happen in the same order or with the same severity for everyone. It’s hard for us to say for sure whether these brothers had leprosy or some other infectious disease.”

It’s also difficult to know, Kalisher said, whether it was the disease, the congenital conditions or something else that prompted one brother to undergo cranial surgery. But there’s one thing she does know: If the angular notched trephination was meant to keep him alive, it didn’t succeed. He died shortly after the surgery — within days, hours or perhaps even minutes.

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Digging into medical history

Despite all the evidence of trephination uncovered over the last 200 years, Kalisher said, there’s still much archaeologists don’t know. It’s not clear, for example, why some trephinations are round — suggesting the use of some sort of analog drill — and some are square or triangular. Nor is it clear how common the procedure was in each region, or what ancient peoples were even trying to treat. (Doctors today perform a similar procedure, called a craniotomy, to relieve pressure in the brain.) Kalisher is pursuing a follow-up research project that will investigate trephination across multiple regions and time periods, which she hopes will shed more light on ancient medical practices.

“You have to be in a pretty dire place to have a hole cut in your head,” Kalisher said. “I’m interested in what we can learn from looking across the scientific literature at every example of trephination in antiquity, comparing and contrasting the circumstances of each person who had the surgery done.”

Aside from enriching colleagues’ understanding of early trephinations, Kalisher said she hopes her analysis also shows the general public that ancient societies didn’t necessarily live by “survival of the fittest” principles, as many might imagine.

“In antiquity, there was a lot more tolerance and a lot more care than people might think,” Kalisher said. “We have evidence literally from the time of Neanderthals that people have provided care for one another, even in challenging circumstances. I’m not trying to say it was all kumbaya — there were sex- and class-based divisions. But in the past, people were still people.”

In addition to Kalisher and Finkelstein, other authors of the analysis included Melissa Cradic from the University at Albany; Matthew Adams of the W.F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem; and Mario Martin from the University of Haifa and University of Innsbruck. The study’s associated excavation was funded by the Shmunis Family Foundation.

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Left: Trephination with refit excised cranial piece. Right: Both extant pieces found during analysis. Rachel Kalisher et al

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a-b: Magnified edges of the trephination, each with a 2 mm scale bar. c: All four edges of the trephination, scale bar is 1 cm. d: Reconstructed location of trephination on head. Rachel Kalisher et al

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Article Source: BROWN UNIVERSITY news release.

*Cranial trephination and infectious disease in the Eastern Mediterranean: The evidence from two elite brothers from Late Bronze Megiddo, Israel, PLoS ONE, 22-Feb-2023. 10.1371/journal.pone.0281020

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Back to the time of the first Homo Sapiens with a futuristic clock, the new Radiocarbon 3.0

Posted on February 15, 2023 by University of Bologna -

UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA—It is called Radiocarbon 3.0: it is the newest method developments in radiocarbon dating, and promises to reveal valuable new insights about key events in the earliest human history, starting with the interaction between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe. This is shown by the combination of updated radiocarbon pretreatment, the latest AMS instrumental advances, and the application of the Bayesian model coupled with the new IntCal20, including the Kauri floating tree-ring section.

These important findings – published in the journal PLOS ONE – are the result of extensive research work, coordinated by Professor Sahra Talamo, director of the BRAVHO Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Bologna. Two international radiocarbon experts from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland) collaborated to the research as well as the isotope expert at Simon Fraser University (Canada).

The new publication presents an advanced evaluation and discussion of two earlier, widely recognized publications (Hublin et al. Nature 2020; Fewlass et al. Nature Eco&Evo 2020), focused on the earliest Homo Sapiens in Europe and their temporal relationship with Neanderthals. The crucial challenge is high temporal resolution chronology, which so far was severely limited by the low number of dates per site, low resolution of the Radiocarbon calibration curve, and limited Bayesian modelling.

In this new publication, these central aspects are addressed in a new, fully integrated way: (1) Only dates of samples pretreated in the state-of-the-art methodology are considered, (2) the most recent advances in the AMS Radiocarbon measurement technique are applied, and (3) Radiocarbon calibration is now based on a section of high-resolution Glacial tree-ring chronologies in the age range of 44,000 and 41,000 calendar years BP (Before 1950 AD).

The concise amalgamation of these three aspects, called Radiocarbon 3.0, leads to a new level of temporal interrelation between Homo Sapiens at the site of Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, and, for the first time, a link between the respective presence of modern humans to climatic events (warm and cold phases) in the Glacial, documented in Greenland ice cores.

“Using Radiocarbon 3.0, we were able to reconstruct more accurately the movements of ancient hominids, which occurred at major European archaeological sites, during different climatic phases,” says Sahra Talamo, professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of Chemistry “Giacomo Ciamician” and first author of the study. “Thanks to this kind of analyses, it is therefore possible to obtain new valuable information on the evolution of the earliest human settlements and the resilience of hominids in different climatic phases, all of which may have contributed to the global spread of Homo Sapiens.”

Radiocarbon is the most widely applied dating method in archaeology, especially in studies of human evolution. In recent decades, it has enabled scholars around the world to make important advances in reconstructing the chronology of key events in our history. However, this method – based on the detection of a radioactive isotope of carbon, Carbon-14, in the organic samples studied – does not always allow us to obtain sufficiently precise and accurate dates to fully understand the important processes of human evolution, e.g., the interaction between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. The challenge was therefore to expand the capabilities of radiocarbon, increasing its high temporal resolution chronology.

Two new Bayesian models were constructed, using the direct dates of Homo Sapiens at Bacho Kiro, and Neanderthal dates of Vindija, Croatia, and Fonds-de-Foret, Belgium. Only the high-precision dates of Bach Kiro allow to assign the presence of Homo Sapiens at this site during the cold phase of GS 12 (Fig. 2 in the paper).

“In this study, we have shown that the human occupation at Bacho Kiro did not occur at once, but there were three different occupations (one around 44,650 to 44,430, one at 44,200 to 43,420 and one at 43110 to 42700 cal BP) or two different one (one around 44,650 to 44,430, one at 44,310 to 43,710 cal BP), depending on the 14C dates considered and the Bayesian model used,” explains Talamo.

At present, both scenarios could be supported because it is not yet known whether the Initial Upper Paleolithic may have lasted longer in Bacho Kiro than in the Levant or may have overlapped temporally with the Protoaurignacian dispersal.

“Moreover, obtaining a small 14C error in a time period around 42,000 years ago is a key point of radiocarbon 3.0,” explains Lukas Wacker, at the ETH Zurich and co-author of the paper. “The better this error interval is defined and obtained, the more accurate the final age calibration process will be”.

“In this paper, we have demonstrated the potential and advantages, both in terms of temporal and environmental accuracy, of discussing chronologies obtained from 14C ages with the same tight error intervals,” says Bernd Kromer at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and co-author of the paper. “In addition, the extent of the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) is constrained better by the new models, compared to the previous publications” (Fig. 3 in the paper).

“Our exercise shows that using radiocarbon 3.0 we are able to accomplish the definitive high resolution of European key archaeological sites during recurrent climate fluctuations, and model the human and faunal species’ responses from a diachronic perspective,” explains Michael Richards at Simon Fraser University (Canada) and co-author of the paper. “This is the way to promote knowledge exchange between archaeology, palaeoclimatology, geochronology, and geosciences in general, all essential disciplines in the study of the human past.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE under the title “Back to the future: the advantage of studying key events in human evolution using a new high-resolution radiocarbon method.” It was carried out by an international research team, led by Prof. Sahra Talamo (University of Bologna), including Bernd Kromer (University of Heidelberg, Germany), Michael P. Richards (Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Lukas Wacker (ETH Zurich, Switzerland).

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Professor Sahra Talamo, director of the BRAVHO Radiocarbon Laboratory at the University of Bologna and first author of the study. University of Bologna

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Article Source: UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA news release

*Back to the future: the advantage of studying key events in human evolution using a new high resolution radiocarbon method, PLoS ONE, 15-Feb-2023. 10.1371/journal.pone.0280598

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2.9-million-year-old butchery site reopens case of who made first stone tools

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History -

SMITHSONIAN—Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya, Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

The study*, published today, Feb. 9, in the journal Science, presents what are likely to be the oldest examples of a hugely important stone-age innovation known to scientists as the Oldowan toolkit, as well as the oldest evidence of hominins consuming very large animals. Though multiple lines of evidence suggest the artifacts are likely to be about 2.9 million years old, the artifacts can be more conservatively dated to between 2.6 and 3 million years old, said lead study author Thomas Plummer of Queens College, research associate in the scientific team of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.

Excavations at the site, named Nyayanga and located on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya, also produced a pair of massive molars belonging to the human species’ close evolutionary relative Paranthropus. The teeth are the oldest fossilized Paranthropus remains yet found, and their presence at a site loaded with stone tools raises intriguing questions about which human ancestor made those tools, said Rick Potts, senior author of the study and the National Museum of Natural History’s Peter Buck Chair of Human Origins.

“The assumption among researchers has long been that only the genus Homo, to which humans belong, was capable of making stone tools,” Potts said. “But finding Paranthropus alongside these stone tools opens up a fascinating whodunnit.”

Whichever hominin lineage was responsible for the tools, they were found more than 800 miles from the previously known oldest examples of Oldowan stone tools—2.6-million-year-old tools unearthed in Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia. This greatly expands the area associated with Oldowan technology’s earliest origins. Further, the stone tools from the site in Ethiopia could not be tied to any particular function or use, leading to speculation about what the Oldowan toolkit’s earliest uses might have been.

Through analysis of the wear patterns on the stone tools and animal bones discovered at Nyayanga, Kenya, the team behind this latest discovery shows that these stone tools were used by early human ancestors to process a wide range of materials and foods, including plants, meat and even bone marrow.

The Oldowan toolkit includes three types of stone tools: hammerstones, cores and flakes. Hammerstones can be used for hitting other rocks to create tools or for pounding other materials. Cores typically have an angular or oval shape, and when struck at an angle with a hammerstone, the core splits off a piece, or flake, that can be used as a cutting or scraping edge or further refined using a hammerstone.

“With these tools you can crush better than an elephant’s molar can and cut better than a lion’s canine can,” Potts said. “Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand-new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.”

Potts and Plummer were first drawn to the Homa Peninsula in Kenya by reports of large numbers of fossilized baboon-like monkeys named Theropithecus oswaldi, which are often found alongside evidence of human ancestors. After many visits to the peninsula, a local man named Peter Onyango working with the team suggested they check out fossils and stone tools eroding from a nearby site that was ultimately named Nyayanga after an adjacent beach.

Beginning in 2015, a series of excavations at Nyayanga returned a trove of 330 artifacts, 1,776 animal bones and the two hominin molars identified as belonging to Paranthropus. The artifacts, Plummer said, were clearly part of the stone-age technological breakthrough that was the Oldowan toolkit.

Compared to the only other stone tools known to have preceded them—a set of 3.3-million-year-old artifacts unearthed at a site called Lomekwi 3, just west of Lake Turkana in Kenya—Oldowan tools were a significant upgrade in sophistication. Oldowan tools were systematically produced and often fashioned using what is known as “freehand percussion,” meaning the core was held in one hand and then struck with a hammerstone being wielded by the opposing hand at just the right angle to produce a flake—a technique that requires significant dexterity and skill.

By contrast, most of the artifacts from Lomekwi 3 were created by using large stationary rocks as anvils, with the toolmaker either banging a core against the flat anvil stone to create flakes or by setting the core down on the anvil and striking it with a hammerstone. These more rudimentary modes of fabrication resulted in larger, cruder and more haphazard-looking tools.

Over time, the Oldowan toolkit spread all the way across Africa and even as far as modern-day Georgia and China, and it was not meaningfully replaced or amended until some 1.7 million years ago when the hand-axes of the Acheulean first appeared.

As part of their study, the researchers conducted microscopic analysis of wear patterns on the stone tools to determine how they were used, and they examined any bones seen to exhibit potential cut marks or other kinds of damage that might have come from stone tools.

The site featured at least three individual hippos. Two of these incomplete skeletons included bones that showed signs of butchery. The team found a deep cut mark on one hippo’s rib fragment and a series of four short, parallel cuts on the shin bone of another. Plummer said they also found antelope bones that showed evidence of hominins slicing away flesh with stone flakes or of having been crushed by hammerstones to extract marrow.

The analysis of wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools found at the site showed that they had been used to cut, scrape and pound both animals and plants. Because fire would not be harnessed by hominins for another 2 million years or so, these stone toolmakers would have eaten everything raw, perhaps pounding the meat into something like a hippo tartare to make it easier to chew.

Using a combination of dating techniques, including the rate of decay of radioactive elements, reversals of Earth’s magnetic field and the presence of certain fossil animals whose timing in the fossil record is well established, the research team was able to date the items recovered from Nyayanga to between 2.58 and 3 million years old.

“This is one of the oldest if not the oldest example of Oldowan technology,” Plummer said. “This shows the toolkit was more widely distributed at an earlier date than people realized, and that it was used to process a wide variety of plant and animal tissues. We don’t know for sure what the adaptive significance was but the variety of uses suggests it was important to these hominins.”

The discovery of teeth from the muscular-jawed Paranthropus alongside these stone tools begs the question of whether it might have been that lineage rather than the Homo genus that was the architect of the earliest Oldowan stone tools, or perhaps even that multiple lineages were making these tools at roughly the same time.

The excavations behind this study offer a snapshot of the world humans’ ancestors inhabited and help illustrate the ways that stone technology allowed these early hominins to adapt to different environments and, ultimately, give rise to the human species.

“East Africa wasn’t a stable cradle for our species’ ancestors,” Potts said. “It was more of a boiling cauldron of environmental change, with downpours and droughts and a diverse, ever-changing menu of foods. Oldowan stone tools could have cut and pounded through it all and helped early toolmakers adapt to new places and new opportunities, whether it’s a dead hippo or a starchy root.”

This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, the Leakey Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the City University of New York, the Donner Foundation and the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research.

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Nyayanga site in July 2014 prior to excavation. Tan and reddish brown sediments are late Pliocene deposits where Oldowan tools and fossils were later excavated. T.W.Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Index map showing location of Nyayanga Oldowan site on the Homa Peninsula in southwestern Kenya. J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Nyayanga site being excavated in July 2016. J.S. Oliver, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts at the Nyayanga site in July 2016. T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Oldowan flake lying directly on a hippo shoulder blade fossil at the Nyayanga site. T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Examples of an Oldowan percussive tool, core and flakes from the Nyayanga site. (Top row) Percussive tool found in 2016. (Second row from top) Oldowan core found in 2017. (Bottom rows) Oldowan flakes found in 2016 and 2017. T.W.
Plummer, J.S. Oliver, and E. M. Finestone, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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Paranthropus molars recovered from Nyayanga site. Left upper molar (top) was found on the surface at the site, and the left lower molar (bottom) was excavated. S. E. Bailey, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project

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The skull of Paranthropus boisei, known as KNM ER 406, photographed at the Nairobi National Museum in August 2012. Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

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Paranthropus – forensic facial reconstruction. Drawing made by Cicero Moraes and 3D scanning of the skull by Dr. Moacir Elias Santos. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History news release

*Expanded geographic distribution and dietary strategies of the earliest Oldowan hominins and Paranthropus, Science, 9-Feb-2023. 10.1126/science.abo7452

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AlUla exhibits the first known reconstruction of a Nabataean woman from the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra

Posted on February 6, 2023 by Royal Commission for AlUla -

AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 6 February 2023: A team of archaeologists, academics and specialists in the fields of forensic science and modelmaking has completed the first known digital and physical reconstruction of a Nabataean woman discovered at Hegra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that was once a vibrant city for this North Arabian kingdom which dominated the historic Incense Road. The Nabataean woman is known as Hinat, and is thought to have been a prominent woman who died around the first century BCE and lay for over 2,000 years in a Hegra tomb.

The reconstruction is now being displayed at the Hegra Welcome Centre in AlUla. Hinat’s return comes in the 15^thyear since Hegra was inscribed as the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Saudi Arabia. UNESCO’s citation at the time said the site “bears outstanding witness to important cultural exchanges in architecture, decoration, language use and the caravan trade”¹.

Thanks to the Hinat reconstruction, Hegra continues to bear witness to important cultural moments. And the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) expects many more important advances in coming years as the painstaking work of archaeology across the AlUla area diligently uncovers the secrets of the past.

AlUla has at its heart an oasis and valley that has hosted successive communities and civilizations from its earliest occupants to its residents today. An important hub on epic routes of trade – including in valuable incense, spices and other luxury commodities – it has vestiges from virtually every major period from prehistory to the present day including the site of Hegra, a significant city of the Nabataean Kingdom.

By the first century BCE, Hegra under the Nabataeans had eclipsed nearby Dadan as the key stopping point on trade routes linking southern Arabia to Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Mada’in Salih Archaeological Project began its archaeological work at the Hegra site in 2002.

Hinat, as she is affectionately known by the archaeologists who discovered her, was excavated from one of Hegra’s monumental tombs in 2008. Excavations of the tomb revealed around 80 individuals interred there, and the pathology suggests at least some were blood relations. The majority were disarticulated but Hinat’s skeleton was near complete. The inscription on the tomb reads: “This is the tomb that Hinat daughter of Wahbu made for herself and her children and descendants forever”. This inscription emphasises the importance of women in Nabataean Hegra society, who owned property and had the financial means to commission their own tombs.

Mada’in Salih Archaeological Project Co-Director Laïla Nehmé and project anthropologist Nathalie Delhopital led the selection of an appropriate skull, with sufficient preservation to ensure adequate information for successful reconstruction.

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A one-day scientific roundtable event, drawing together leading experts on Hegra, the Nabataeans and the archaeology of AlUla, saw a lively discussion around the likely appearance of Hinat, her potential status in society, and what she may have worn. This established the scientific boundaries and guidance for the accuracy and character of the reconstruction and resulted in the writing of a profile with reference imagery for clothing, hair and jewelry. They were joined by a multidisciplinary production team, bringing together expertise in forensic anthropology and reconstruction, and physical modelmaking.

Dr Helen McGauran, Heritage Curatorial Expert at RCU, who led the RCU-facilitated initiative, said: “Through pioneering efforts such as this, which bring together professional rigor and careful artistic interpretation, we are able to deepen our understanding of the lives and culture of the Nabataeans – a civilization that has gifted the world the extraordinary site of Hegra, and continues to be a source of knowledge and inspiration.”

Leila Chapman, Narrative Experience Expert at RCU, added: “The opportunity for our visitors to come face to face with a Nabataean woman at the actual site of Hegra – where she lived, and was honored by her family – is hugely exciting. We are especially excited that AlUla’s people will see this recreation of their ancient ancestor.”

RCU-supported archaeological research and conservation teams continue to shed new light on the history of the region and lay the intellectual foundation of the Kingdoms Institute, a hub of archaeological knowledge being established at AlUla. The ‘Living Museum’ of these discoveries can be explored in person in AlUla and online at livingmuseum.com.

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Hinat at the Welcome Center. Courtesy Royal Commission for AlUla

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Tombs af Hegra (Mada’in Saleh). Tom and Linda Anderson, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Royal Commission for AlUla news release

About the Royal Commission for AlUla

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) was established by royal decree in July 2017 to preserve and develop AlUla, a region of outstanding natural and cultural significance in north-west Saudi Arabia. RCU’s long-term plan outlines a responsible, sustainable, and sensitive approach to urban and economic development, that preserves the area’s natural and historic heritage, while establishing AlUla as a desirable location to live, work, and visit. This encompasses a broad range of initiatives across archaeology, tourism, culture, education, and the arts, reflecting a commitment to meeting the economic diversification, local community empowerment, and heritage preservation priorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program.

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Early human migration into North America along Pacific coast

Posted on February 6, 2023 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Models and paleoceanographic data reveal climatically favorable intervals when humans could have traversed the Cordilleran coastal corridor during the terminal Pleistocene Epoch, according to a study. Human dispersal pathways from Beringia into North America continue to be debated. Summer Praetorius and colleagues analyzed new records of sea ice variations and synthesized previously published reconstructions of sea ice, sea surface temperature, salinity, and ice-rafted debris from marine sediment cores in the North Pacific Ocean. The model results showed that the average strength of the Alaska Current more than doubled along the Southeast Alaska margin during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), compared with modern conditions. The accelerated currents might have impeded southward seafaring migration. In addition, Gulf of Alaska shorelines had extensive seasonal sea ice during the LGM, which was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. The results suggest that environmentally favorable time periods for coastal migration after glacial retreat events include two spans: from 24,500 to 22,000 years ago and between 16,400 and 14,800 years ago. During these periods, regional climate conditions may have provided both winter sea ice and summer kelp ecosystems for year-round marine resource diversity, which may have facilitated human dispersal along the Cordilleran coastal corridor. Together, the data help discern major climate and oceanographic changes that may have facilitated and impeded human migration during the terminal Pleistocene Epoch.

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Pacific northwest coast. Mrs. Brown, Pixabay

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Ice and ocean constraints on early human migrations into North America along the Pacific coast,” by Summer Praetorius et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6-Feb-2023. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208738120

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The chemistry of mummification – Traces of a global network

Posted on February 2, 2023 by LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN -

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN, Munich/Tübingen, 01.02.2022 —Exactly100 years ago, the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered, complete with his world-famous mummy. Since then, researchers have learned a lot about how the ancient Egyptians prepared bodies for mummification. Until now, however, too little was known about how they ultimately made the bodies of the deceased immortal by embalming them. A German-Egyptian team of researchers has now been able to gain completely new insights into the chemistry of embalming. Their findings* were published in Nature.

In collaboration with the National Research Center in Cairo, a team of researchers from LMU Munich and the University of Tübingen has analyzed chemical residues in vessels from an embalming workshop in Saqqara – not far from the pyramid of Unas – that was not discovered until 2016. “We were able to do all the scientific analyses ourselves in Egypt,” says LMU archeologist Philipp Stockhammer. And Maxime Rageot from the University of Tübingen adds: “For that we must thank Ramadan Hussein, who discovered and led the excavation for the DFG Saqqara Saite Tombs Projects, and who sadly died unexpectedly in the spring.”

In the newly discovered workshop, experts mummified the dead in the seventh and sixth century BC. For the Egyptologists, being able to recover numerous vessels used so long ago by skilled craftsmen was a tremendous stroke of luck. Better still, the vessels were labeled with their previous contents, and some even had instructions for use. “We have known the names of many of these embalming ingredients since ancient Egyptian writings were deciphered,” says Susanne Beck from the University of Tübingen, who is leading the excavation. “But until now, we could only guess at what substances were behind each name.”

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Embalming – Specific substances for certain parts of the body

Analyzing the chemical residue in the vessels has now allowed the molecular remains of those substances that were once used in a given vessel to be isolated and identified. As the mystery unraveled, there were a number of surprises. Maxime Rageot, archeologist at the University of Tübingen and head of the analysis project, reveals one of them: “The substance labeled by the ancient Egyptians as antiu has long been translated as myrrh or frankincense. But we have now been able to show that it is actually a mixture of widely differing ingredients that we were able to pick apart with the aid of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.” The antiu used in Saqqara was a blend of cedar oil, juniper/cypress oil and animal fats.

These insights facilitate a re-reading of familiar texts about ancient Egyptian embalming. Comparing the identified substances with the labels on the vessels has now, for the first time, enabled the team of researchers to determine exactly what substances were used to embalm certain parts of the body. Pistachio resin and castor oil, for example, were used only for the head. “What really surprised us was that the bulk of the substances used for embalming were not from Egypt itself. Some of them were imported from the Mediterranean region and even from tropical Africa and Southeast Asia,” says LMU archeologist Philipp Stockhammer, who funded the research with his ERC Starting Grant.

Besides pistachio resin, cedar oil and bitumen – all probably from the Levant – the researchers also found residues of dammar gum and elemi resin. These two substances in particular show how globalized trade relationships had already become nearly 3,000 years ago. While the resin of the elemi tree came to Egypt from tropical Africa or Southeast Asia, the dammar tree to this day still grows solely in tropical Southeast Asia. Tremendous effort thus evidently went into sourcing very specific chemical substances for the embalming process. “Ultimately, Egyptian mummification probably played an important role in the early emergence of global networks,” Rageot says. “Large quantities of these exotic resins were needed.” Stockhammer agrees: “Thanks to all the inscriptions on the vessels, we will in the future be able to further decipher the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian chemistry that we did not sufficiently understand to date.”

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Egyptian mummy. Meelimello, Pixabay

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Article Source: LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN news release

*Biomolecular analyses enable new insights into ancient Egyptian embalming, Nature, 1-Feb-2023.10.1038/s41586-022-05663-4

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First solid scientific evidence that Vikings brought animals to Britain

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Durham University -

Durham University—Archaeologists have found what they say is the first solid scientific evidence suggesting that Vikings crossed the North Sea to Britain with dogs and horses.

Research led by Durham University, UK, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, examined human and animal remains from Britain’s only known Viking cremation cemetery at Heath Wood, in Derbyshire.

Scientists looked at strontium isotopes contained within the remains. Strontium is a natural element found in different ratios across the world and provides a geographical fingerprint for human and animal movements.

Their analysis showed that within the context of the archaeology, one human adult and several animals almost certainly came from the Baltic Shield area of Scandinavia, covering Norway and central and northern Sweden, and died soon after arrival in Britain.

The researchers say this suggests that Vikings were not only stealing animals when they arrived in Britain, as accounts from the time describe, but were also transporting animals from Scandinavia, too.

As the human and animal remains were found in the remnants of the same cremation pyre, the researchers believe the adult from the Baltic Shield region may have been someone important who was able to bring a horse and dog to Britain.

The analysed remains are associated with the Viking Great Army, a combined force of Scandinavian warriors that invaded Britain in AD 865.

The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Lead author Tessi Löffelmann, a doctoral researcher jointly working in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, and the Department of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, said: “This is the first solid scientific evidence that Scandinavians almost certainly crossed the North Sea with horses, dogs and possibly other animals as early as the ninth century AD and could deepen our knowledge of the Viking Great Army.

“Our most important primary source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, states that the Vikings were taking horses from the locals in East Anglia when they first arrived, but this was clearly not the whole story, and they most likely transported animals alongside people on ships.

“This also raises questions about the importance of specific animals to the Vikings.”

The researchers analyzed strontium ratios in the remains of two adults, one child and three animals from the Heath Wood site.

Strontium occurs naturally in the environment in rocks, soil and water before making its way into plants. When humans and animals eat those plants, strontium replaces calcium in their bones and teeth.

As strontium ratios vary in different parts of world the geographical fingerprint of the element found in human or animal remains can help show where they came from or settled.

Strontium ratios in one of the adults and the child showed that they could have been from the area local to the Heath Wood cremation site, southern or eastern England or from Europe, including Denmark and south-west Sweden which were outside of the Baltic Shield region.

But the remains of the other adult and all three animals – a horse, a dog and what the archaeologists say was possibly a pig – had strontium ratios normally found in the Baltic Shield area.

While the researchers say their findings suggest the horse and dog were transported to Britain, it may be that the pig fragment was a piece from a game or another talisman or token brought from Scandinavia, rather than a live pig. The remains had also been cremated and buried under a mound, which the researchers say could be a link back to Scandinavian rituals at a time when cremation was absent in Britain.

Research co-author Professor Janet Montgomery, in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, said: “Our study suggests that there are people and animals with different mobility histories buried at Heath Wood, and that, if they belonged to the Viking Great Army, it was made up of people from different parts of Scandinavia or the British Isles.

“This is also the first published strontium analysis on early medieval cremated remains from Britain and shows the potential that this scientific method has to shed further light on this period in history.”

The research team also included archaeologists from the University of York, UK, who excavated the Heath Wood cemetery between 1998 and 2000, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

Professor Julian Richards, of the Department of Archaeology, University of York, who co-directed the excavations at the Heath Wood Viking cemetery, said: “The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Norman cavalry disembarking horses from their fleet before the Battle of Hastings, but this is the first scientific demonstration that Viking warriors were transporting horses to England two hundred years earlier.

“It shows how much Viking leaders valued their personal horses and hounds that they brought them from Scandinavia, and that the animals were sacrificed to be buried with their owners.”

The research was funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (Northern Bridge) funding, the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and The Rosemary Cramp Fund and the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, both Durham University.

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Viking burial mound at Heath Wood being excavated. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Cremated animal and human bone from the Heath Wood Viking cemetery. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York

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Fragment of a sampled cremated horse radius/ulna from burial mound 50 at Heath Wood. Credit: Jeff Veitch, Durham University.

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Clasp from the Viking warrior’s shield found during the original excavations in 1998-2000. The clasp was found in the same grave as the human and animal remains analysed during the latest research. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Decorated hilt guard from the Viking warrior’s sword. The sword was found in the same grave as the human and animal remains analysed during the latest research. Credit: Julian Richards, University of York.

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Article Source: Durham University news release

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About the Arts and Humanities Research Council

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, funds internationally outstanding research across all arts and humanities. This includes research which supports important UK economic sectors such as the creative and digital industries, creative practice and arts in all its forms. Our research also explores complex social and cultural issues that underpin our understanding of our interaction with society, ourselves and the natural world. We invest in research which places humanity at the heart of today’s biggest questions and their answers.

About Durham University

Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.

We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.

We conduct boundary-breaking research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2023).

We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).

For more information about Durham University visit: www.durham.ac.uk/about-us/

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Straight-tusked elephant bones hint at routine hunting and butchering by Neanderthals

Posted on February 1, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—New evidence* suggests that straight-tusked elephants, the largest terrestrial mammals of their time, were hunted and butchered by Neanderthal groups that were larger and less mobile than previously thought. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser and colleagues discovered telltale signs via cutmarks on 125,000-year-old skeletal remains excavated from central Germany more than 25 years ago. From 1985 to 1996, a team of researchers uncovered the remains of more than 70 of these elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) from a site near Halle, Germany called Neumark-Nord 1, which constitutes the largest known assemblage of P. antiquus. Although these remains have been studied extensively, researchers have so far been unable to confirm speculations that Neanderthals – who also inhabited Eurasia during that period – may have hunted or scavenged the giant creatures. Now, Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. have identified cutmarks on skeletal remains from the Last Interglacial that suggest these elephants were routinely hunted and butchered by Neanderthals. By evaluating bone surfaces under a microscope and reviewing what was already known about the remains, the researchers inferred that Neanderthals methodically cut, hacked, and extracted parts of the animal, leaving distinct markings on the bone surfaces. With male elephants weighing as much as 12 tons, butchering an animal of this size must have involved multiple tools and butchers, taken days to complete, and yielded copious amounts of meat that could have lasted for up to 3 months for as many as 25 people, the researchers say. They speculate that Neanderthals must have lived more stationary lifestyles in larger units than commonly supposed. In a related Focus, Britt Starkovich notes that “It is increasingly clear that Neanderthals were not a monolith and, unsurprisingly, had a full arsenal of adaptive behaviors that allowed them to succeed in the diverse ecosystems of Eurasia for over 200,000 years.”

Summary author: Nyla Husain

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Deep cut marks on the heel bone of a male elephant (Individual E24), ~50 years of age at death. Easily visible with the naked eye, the longest cut mark in the center of the picture is c. 4 cm. Disarticulation of foot bones enabled access to the rich fat deposits in the elephant’s foot cushions. Wil Roebroeks, Leiden

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Cut marks on a foot bone of an elephant (Individual E30), made by stone tools during disarticulation of the foot (Scale bar = 5 mm). Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser/Lutz Kindler, MONREPOS

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Dr. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser (height 160 cm) next to a life-sized reconstruction of an adult male straight-tusked elephant (P. antiquus), in the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle, Germany. Lutz Kindler, MONREPOS

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

*Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants, 125.000 years ago – implications for Neanderthal behaviour, Science Advances, 1-Feb-2023. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg6072

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Mastodons were hunted in pre-Clovis times with bone projectile points

Posted on February 1, 2023 by American Association for the Advancement of Science -

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Bone fragments recovered from the rib of an American mastodon found in present-day Washington state suggest that this extinct Ice Age megafauna was hunted by Paleo-Americans using bone projectile points 13,900 years ago – some 900 years before the well-known Clovis point emerged. Michael Waters and colleagues have identified a thin, smooth, pointed object through a digital reconstruction of the bone fragments – a finding consistent with a human-made projectile point. The discovery follows a 2011 study published in Science, co-authored by members of the same research group, that described the original discovery of the bone fragments: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1207663

Summary author: Nyla Husain

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Manis site. Mastodon rib with embedded point to the left. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

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Manis site. CT scan of bone point fragments embedded in the rib. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

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Manis site. CT scan of bone point fragments embedded in the rib. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

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Manis site. Arrow points to the trajectory of the spear. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

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Article Source: AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS) news release

Cover Photo, Top Left: Close up of the bone point embedded in the rib. Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

*Late Pleistocene osseous projectile point from the Manis site, Washington—Mastodon hunting in the Pacific Northwest 13,900 years ago, Science Advances, 1-Feb-2023. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1207663

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Penn Museum Researchers Uncover Ancient Tavern in Southern Iraq, Complete with 5,000-Year-Old Fridge

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Penn Museum -

PHILADELPHIA—Archaeologists from the Penn Museum, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pisa, have uncovered a large tavern dating back to 2,700 BCE in the city of Lagash, located in southern Iraq. With an open-air dining area and a partial kitchen, the researchers found the ancient pub was complete with benches, a refrigerator, an oven, and the remains of old food—shedding light on the people who lived there, including a historically overlooked “middle class.”

Rather than digging straight down vertically in one spot, the team used a phased excavation approach—thanks to Field Director Dr. Sara Pizzimenti from the University of Pisa, who immediately identified the context as similar to those she had excavated years ago in Rome. By digging horizontally—layer by layer—they uncovered the tavern only 19 inches under the surface.

“Recovering a site like this almost 5,000-year-old public eatery so close to the surface is remarkable,” Dr. Holly Pittman, the Lagash Archaeological Project (LAP) Director, and Curator of the Penn Museum’s Near East Section, says. “Only a meticulous, multi-phased horizontal excavation can expose what remains.”

Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) was one of the oldest and largest cities in southern Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium (3,000-2,001 BCE). It encompassed nearly two square miles. Surrounded by marshes, it was a major population and production center—an industrial hub with access to fertile land that focused on agriculture, together with marsh-related resources, like fishing, reeds, birds, and netting.

This year marks the fourth season that Dr. Pittman and the international team of researchers involved in the Lagash Archaeological Project have continued their work at this ancient site, where they are studying what role craft production played in this ancient city’s enormous economic success. They hope to continue to explore ceramic production in another area and see if the production practices in various sectors differentiate from one another.

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Since 2019, the archaeologists have found two houses, roads, alleyways, countless pottery pieces, and seven ceramic kilns that remained intact for thousands of years.

By incorporating state-of-the-art technology, such as remote sensing, including magnetometry and drone photography, together with strategic testing, researchers can “see” beneath the surface to carefully select areas that will help to answer research questions.

Dr. Pittman and her team are examining Mesopotamia with a completely different perspective from earlier researchers. Archaeologists of the past restricted ancient peoples to one of two categories—elite or enslaved. These views are outdated, Dr. Pittman says, as Lagash’s residents were independent people thriving in urban neighborhoods.

“Probably what we have—and especially in an environment as precarious as southern Mesopotamia—is that you have a broad band of people that we might consider ‘middle class’ during the 3rd millennium,” Dr. Pittman explains. “They had agency; they made decisions. They didn’t have wealth necessarily, but they were largely independent and had mobility.”

Embracing meaningful community engagement, the Lagash Archaeological Project works with nearby residents to employ them during excavations, as well as the documentation and processing of the excavated materials. Its researchers teach school children and their families about archaeology, while informing them about what the retrieved materials say about the people who lived there in the past.

The Lagash Archaeological Project has also worked to improve infrastructure across the region. Through its collaboration with the regional and national archaeological communities, LAP researchers are training the next generation of archaeologists in a variety of techniques, including GIS survey, remote sensing through drone photography, and magnetometry. In the future, the team is hoping to secure funding to bring three Iraqi archaeology students onto the project.

Dr. Pittman, along with Reed C. Goodman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, will be the speakers for the Great Lecture, “Marshland of Cities: Lagash and its Neighbors ca. 2,500 BCE” on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 6:00 pm inside Harrison Auditorium at the Penn Museum. They will discuss their work and how recent finds help to reconstruct the ancient environment of southern Iraq, using remote sensing, geological coring, and excavation. Cost: $15. A live streaming option is available for $5. Tickets are available here.

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In Fall 2022, Penn Museum researchers uncover a 5,000 year old tavern at Lagash. Photo-Lagash Archaeology Project

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Drone photo of Trench 6 with clay pits, street and alley. Photo-Lagash Archaeological Project

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An international team of researchers, including archaeologists from the Penn Museum, planning the next steps at Lagash. Photo: Lagash Archaeological Project.

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About the Penn Museum

Home to over a million extraordinary objects, the Penn Museum has been highlighting our shared humanity across continents and millennia since 1887. In expanding access to archaeology and anthropology, the Penn Museum builds empathy and connections between cultures through experiences online and onsite in our galleries.

The Penn Museum is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm. The Café is open Tuesday–Thursday, 9:00 am–3:00 pm and Friday and Saturday, 10:00 am–2:00 pm. For updated information, visit www.penn.museum, call 215.898.4000, or follow @PennMuseum on social media.

Article Source: Penn Museum news release.

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‘Golden boy’ mummy was protected by 49 precious amulets, CT scans reveal

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Frontiers -

FRONTIERS—Scientists used CT scans to ‘digitally unwrap’ the approximately 2,300-year-old undisturbed mummy of a teenage boy of high socioeconomic status. The body was equipped with 49 amulets of 21 different types, many of which were made of gold, which had been carefully placed on or inside the body. These included a two-finger amulet next to the uncircumcised penis, a golden heart scarab placed inside the thoracic cavity, and a golden tongue inside the mouth. He was clad in sandals and garlanded with ferns, with ritual significance. This mummy is a showcase of Egyptian beliefs about death and the afterlife during the Ptolemaic period.

Main text: The ancient Egyptians believed that when we died, our spiritual body sought out an afterlife similar to this world. But entry into this afterlife wasn’t guaranteed: it first required a perilous journey through the underworld, followed by an individual last judgment. For this reason, relatives and embalmers did everything they could to ensure that their loved one might reach a happy destination.

The mummy’s coffin. SN Saleem, SA Seddik, M el-Halwagy

Here, scientists from Egypt used computerized tomography (CT) to ‘digitally unwrap’ the intact, never-opened mummy of a 2,300-year-old teenage boy of high socioeconomic status. They found that this ‘Golden boy’ is an undisturbed showcase of ancient Egyptian beliefs about life after death. For example, he was sent on his way with no fewer than 49 amulets of 21 types to promote his bodily resurrection. He wore sandals and was garlanded with ferns, rich in ritual meaning. These results provide a unique insight into mummification procedures and beliefs about the importance of grave ornaments during the Ptolemaic period. They are published in Frontiers in Medicine.

“Here we show that this mummy’s body was extensively decorated with 49 amulets, beautifully stylized in a unique arrangement of three columns between the folds of the wrappings and inside the mummy’s body cavity. These include the Eye of Horus, the scarab, the akhet amulet of the horizon, the placenta, the Knot of Isis, and others. Many were made of gold, while some were made of semiprecious stones, fired clay, or faience. Their purpose was to protect the body and give it vitality in the afterlife,” said Dr Sahar Saleem, the study’s first author and a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Cairo University, Egypt.

Sandals to walk to the afterlife

The ’Golden boy’ mummy had been found in 1916 at a cemetery used between approximately 332 and 30 BCE in Nag el-Hassay in southern Egypt. It has been stored unexamined in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo until the present study.

The mummy was laid inside two coffins, an outer coffin with a Greek inscription and an inner wooden sarcophagus. Within, he wore a gilded head mask, a pectoral cartonnage that covered the front of the torso, and a pair of sandals. Apart from the heart, the viscera had been removed through an incision, while the brain had been removed through the nose and replaced with resin.

“The sandals were probably meant to enable the boy to walk out of the coffin. According to the ancient Egyptians’ ritual Book of The Dead, the deceased had to wear white sandals to be pious and clean before reciting its verses,” said Saleem.

No wisdom teeth

Amulets were placed on or inside the mummy in three columns. SN Saleem, SA Seddik, M el-Halwagy

The CT scans showed that the boy was 128 cm tall, not circumcised, and without any known cause of death other than natural causes. From the degree of bone fusion and the non-erupted wisdom teeth, the authors estimate that the boy was between 14 and 15 years old. His teeth were good, with no evidence of caries, tooth loss, or periodontal disease.

Ferns were garlanded around the mummy’s outer surface. “Ancient Egyptians were fascinated by plants and flowers and believed they possessed sacred and symbolic effects. Bouquets of plants and flowers were placed beside the deceased at the time of burial: this was done for example with the mummies of the New Kingdom kings Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Ramesses the Great. The deceased was also offered plants in each visit to the dead during feasts,” said Saleem.

The amulets are a testament to a wide range of Egyptian beliefs. For example, a golden tongue leaf was placed inside the mouth to ensure the boy could speak in the afterlife, while a two-finger amulet was placed beside his penis to protect the embalming incision. An Isis Knot enlisted the power of Isis in the protection of the body, a right-angle amulet was meant to bring balance and leveling, and double falcon and ostrich plumes represented the duality of spiritual and material life. A golden scarab beetle was found placed inside the thoracic cavity, of which a copy was 3D printed by the researchers.

Scarab to silence the heart

“The heart scarab is mentioned in chapter 30 of the Book of the Dead: it was important in the afterlife during judging the deceased and weighing of the heart against the feather of the goddess Maat. The heart scarab silenced the heart on Judgement Day, so as not to bear witness against the deceased. It was placed inside the torso cavity during mummification to substitute for the heart if the body was ever deprived of this organ,” explained Saleem.

Based on these exciting results, the management of the Egyptian Museum decided to move the mummy to the main exhibition hall under the nickname ‘Golden boy’. In its new location, visitors can admire the mummy next to CT images and a 3D printed version of the heart scarab amulet, to get as close as possible to the glories of ancient Egyptian civilization.

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The mummy digitally unwrapped in four stages. SN Saleem, SA Seddik, M el-Halwagy

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Article Source: FRONTIERS news release.

*Scanning and 3D-printing using Computed Tomography (CT) of the ‘Golden boy’ mummy, Frontiers in Medicine, 24-Jan-2023. 10.3389/fmed.2022.1028377

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Changing Paradigms for Sustainability

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Dan McLerran -

Most of the heroes on this planet go unsung and unrecognized. They represent a number that cannot be possibly counted.

That is because their acts, contributions and knowledge often get lost in the bigger picture of world-over events and actions of the few who, for a variety of reasons, capture the notice of the media and those who have the power to move and shape what the world sees as valuable and important.

Occasionally, however, the cloud of obscurity hiding some of these untold heroes is lifted. Such was the case when, on January 13, 2023, a small delegation of representatives from Belize were invited to attend a special event hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara, to highlight the environment-sustaining principles of a practice called Maya Forest Gardening, and to recognize the achievement of Master Gardener Narciso Torres with the highest award that UC Chancellor Henry Yang can bestow: the Chancellor’s Medal.

Dr. Anabel Ford, an archaeologist who has directed decades of research at the archaeological site of El Pilar on the Belize-Guatemala border and who is President of Exploring Solutions Past ~ The Maya Forest Alliance and Director of ISBER/MesoAmerican Research Center at UC Santa Barbara, explains why.

Chancellor Henry Yang (left) with Narciso Torres (right) holding the Chancellor’s Medal. Image courtesy Macduff Everton

“We have had delegations in the past and were able to collaborate to showcase the importance of local ecological knowledge,” said Ford. “Master Forest Gardener Narciso Torres has worked with our team in the Maya forest for 40 years—ka’ katun in Mayan—and has helped us at El Pilar understand the nature of ancient Maya settlement patterns and land use. He sustains his family and conserves natural resources at his forest garden, Chak Ha Kol, in Belize.”

“This was a great way to frame this citizen scientist’s honor,” she continues, “and the promotion of principles critical to sustainability and resilience that apply everywhere in actions for environmental justice that build fertility in biochar and organic matter; reduce erosion through plant diversity holding soil and water; lower temperature through plants shading the landscape; conserve water by shade to reduce evapotranspiration; increase biodiversity of plants that serve multiple human uses; and generally care for people and our planet.” All of these things are supported and promoted with the Maya Forest Garden, a practice that underwrote the ancient Maya civilization and has been sustained by indigenous Maya people for centuries, with a tradition that has been carried down to experts today like Narciso Torres.

Ford and others like her believe that this practice holds solutions that can be applied to modern-day environmental problems and generate a new way of thinking about our environment.

For more details about Narciso, the Maya Forest Garden and the ancient site of El Pilar, see the article, The Milpa Way, a major feature article previously published in Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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Narciso and Anabel at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Image courtesy Macduff Everton

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A Maya house site at El Pilar (Belize side). The El Pilar story has shown that even the process of discovering the ancient Maya can be done sustainably. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, Wikimedia Commons

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Violence was widespread in early farming society, study says

Posted on January 19, 2023 by University of Edinburgh -

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH—Violence and warfare were widespread in many Neolithic communities across Northwest Europe, a period associated with the adoption of farming, new research* suggests.

Of the skeletal remains of more than 2300 early farmers from 180 sites dating from around 8000 – 4000 years ago to, more than one in ten displayed weapon injuries, bioarchaeologists found.

Contrary to the view that the Neolithic era was marked by peaceful cooperation, the team of international researchers say that in some regions the period from 6000 BC to 2000 BC may be a high point in conflict and violence with the destruction of entire communities.

The findings also suggest the rise of growing crops and herding animals as a way of life, replacing hunting and gathering, may have laid the foundations for formalized warfare.

Researchers used bioarchaeological techniques to study human skeletal remains from sites in Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden.

The team collated the findings to map, for the first time, evidence of violence across Neolithic Northwestern Europe, which has the greatest concentration of excavated Neolithic sites in the world.

The team from the Universities of Edinburgh, Bournemouth and Lund in Sweden, and the OsteoArchaeological Research Centre in Germany examined the remains for evidence of injuries caused predominantly by blunt force to the skull.

More than ten per cent showed damage potentially caused by frequent blows to the head by blunt instruments or stone axes. Several examples of penetrative injuries, thought to be from arrows, were also found.

Some of the injuries were linked to mass burials, which could suggest the destruction of entire communities, the researchers say.

Dr Linda Fibiger, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “Human bones are the most direct and least biased form of evidence for past hostilities and our abilities to distinguish between fatal injuries as opposed to post-mortem breakage have improved drastically in recent years, in addition to differentiating accidental injuries from weapon based assaults.”

Dr Martin Smith, of Bournemouth University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, said: “The study raises the question to why violence seems to have been so prevalent during this period. The most plausible explanation may be that the economic base of society had changed. With farming came inequality and those who fared less successfully appear at times to have engaged in raiding and collective violence as an alternative strategy for success, with the results now increasingly being recognized archaeologically.”

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Neolithic burial, La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin, Loiret, France. Roulex, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH news release

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is available here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2209481119

*Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 16-Jan-2023. 10.1073/pnas.2209481119

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Marriage in Minoan Crete

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology -

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—When Heinrich Schliemann discovered the gold-rich shaft tombs of Mycenae with their famous gold masks over 100 years ago, he could only speculate about the relationship of the people buried in them. Now, with the help of the analysis of ancient genomes, it has been possible for the first time to gain insights into kinship and marriage rules in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. The results were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA), together with an international team of partners, analyzed over 100 genomes of Bronze Age people from the Aegean. “Without the great cooperation with our partners in Greece and worldwide, this would not have been possible,” says archaeologist Philipp Stockhammer, one of the study’s* lead authors.

First biological family tree of a Mycenaean family

Thanks to recent methodological advances in the production and evaluation of ancient genetic datasets, it has now been possible to produce extensive data even in regions with problematic DNA preservation due to climate conditions, such as Greece. For a Mycenaean hamlet of the 16th century BC, it has even been possible to reconstruct the kinship of the house’s inhabitants – the first family tree that has so far been genetically reconstructed for the entire ancient Mediterranean region.

Apparently, some of the sons still lived in their parents’ hamlet in adulthood. At least their children were buried in a tomb under the courtyard of the estate. One of the wives who married into the house brought her sister into the family, as her child was also buried in the same grave.

Customary to marry one’s first cousin

However, another finding was completely unexpected: on Crete and the other Greek islands, as well as on the mainland, it was very common to marry one’s first cousin 4000 years ago. “More than a thousand ancient genomes from different regions of the world have now been published, but it seems that such a strict system of kin marriage did not exist anywhere else in the ancient world,” says Eirini Skourtanioti, the lead author of the study who conducted the analyses. “This came as a complete surprise to all of us and raises many questions.”

How this particular marriage rule can be explained, the research team can only speculate. “Maybe this was a way to prevent the inherited farmland from being divided up more and more? In any case, it guaranteed a certain continuity of the family in one place, which is an important prerequisite for the cultivation of olives and wine, for example,” Stockhammer suspects. “What is certain is that the analysis of ancient genomes will continue to provide us with fantastic, new insights into ancient family structures in the future,” adds Skourtanioti.

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Life picture: olive harvesting in the Aegean Bronze Age. © Nikola Nevenov

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release

*Ancient DNA reveals admixture history and endogamy in the prehistoric Aegean, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 16-Jan-2023. 10.1038/s41559-022-01952-3

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Human evolution in the Holocene Epoch

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A collection of articles from “The Past 12,000 Years of Behavior, Adaptation, and Evolution Shaped Who We Are Today” Special Feature highlights bioarchaeological research on how human evolution in the Holocene Epoch has shaped the biology and behavior of modern humans. In the collection, a Perspective explores the effects of past rapid climate change on human health through a review of published case studies. The review revealed that climate change had diverse effects on patterns of epidemics, violence, and migration in past societies that were contingent on historical, sociocultural, and biological dynamics. Another Perspective reviews published genomic evidence to explore links between human dispersals and the spread of agriculture and language families across the world. The analysis revealed a complex history with highly variable genetic and linguistic outcomes when expanding groups encountered resident groups. In one study, researchers measured strontium and oxygen isotopes in the tooth enamel of 99 individuals buried at archaeological sites in Turkey spanning the 14th-6th millennium BCE, documenting reduced mobility, varied kinship practices, and arrival of nonlocals during the transition to large villages. A study of the variation and societal context of healed and unhealed violent injuries in skeletal remains from the Neolithic period of Northwestern Europe finds that violence was widespread and included intergroup conflicts that resulted in the destruction of communities, possibly motivated by increasing competition and inequality. Another study of trends in human body size over the past 35,000 years involving 3,507 skeletons from 366 archaeological sites finds that body sizes decreased before the adoption of agriculture, remained stable in regions where domestication originated, and increased in some regions coincident with the spread of dairying and lactose tolerance. Together, the collection explores trends and transitions in human health, nutrition, demography, and interpersonal conflict over the past 12,000 years.

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Skeletal sampling has provided data for Holocene Epoch human study. Niner09, Pixabay

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“The past 12,000 years of behavior, adaptation, population, and evolution shaped who we are today,” by Clark Spencer Larsen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17-Jan-2023.10.1073/pnas.2209613120

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A Pictorial: The Masters of Akrotiri

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Dan McLerran -

Standing and peering out from here, I could easily see why people the world over flock to this destination. Far below me lay what appeared to be a vast, lustrous blue Mediterranean inlet. In fact, it is a massive, ancient water-filled caldera — the result of multiple past volcanic eruptions. This is what makes Fira, Greece’s sunny, bustling Santorini tourist town, a magnet for Europe’s honeymooners and vacationing couples. Behind me I could hear throngs of them walking the strand that hugs the great caldera’s high ledge. They are here to shop the countless pricey boutiques that line the strand — jewelry, clothing, souvenirs, everything money can buy. Some of them are wearing the clothes they purchased in these shops just yesterday. Many of them, however, are either unaware or uninterested in arguably the most valuable asset this popular resort island has to offer: its past.

Just a short walking distance from where I stood, one of the world’s most prolific collections of ancient Aegean artifacts are displayed. Built in the early 70’s on the site of the earthquake-destroyed Ypapanti Church, the Museum of Prehistoric Thera stands almost unnoticed within a well-appointed gated space. Though almost lost among the commercial bustle that surrounds it, here is housed a time capsule of human habitation and life that flourished as much as over 5,000 years ago.

And even before.

One exhibit near the museum entrance features fossilized flora recorded in the walls of the ancient caldera, echoing a 60,000-year-old ecosystem with a Mediterranean climate not unlike today’s climate on Santorini (known anciently as Thera). Beyond this, the spaces reveal a rich Late Neolithic and Bronze Age history of human occupation, with the most prolific exhibits showcasing the great 17th century BC florescence of the remarkable Minoan civilization that dominated the island at that time. The urban settlement of Akrotiri, the archaeological remains of which Santorini is best known and from which most of the artifacts exhibited in the museum were excavated, represents one of archaeology’s most spectacular discoveries, second only to Italy’s Pompeii and Herculaneum for the wealth and preservation of the material culture ancient people have left behind……….

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View of the caldera from modern day Fira on Santorini.

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The Museum of Prehistoric Thera

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A view of the interior of the Museum of Prehistoric Thera

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Fossilized leaves of the olive tree from the walls of the caldera, dated to 60,000 BP.

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The Wonder of Akrotiri

For the people who went about their routine and peaceful daily lives in the island city of Akrotiri between 1609 and 1560 BCE, signs of the nearby volcano’s coming fury must have been noticeable for days. Earth tremors and tell-tale vapor-like plumes at its summit sounded the alarm, giving them time to quickly gather their most precious and necessary belongings and family members and make their way to the boats. As a maritime society where fishing, an aquatic industry and seagoing trade defined their lives, the technology and resources for evacuation were probably at hand.

Archaeologists can paint such a picture of a society prepared to escape the loss of life characteristic of such a disaster, as excavations of the city’s remains yielded little or no skeletal remains which would evidence a population caught and perished in the great cataclysm that was the eruption of the Thera volcano — one of the largest volcanic events of human history. It is said to have ejected up to four times as much material as the famous eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, destroying all indigenous life on the island. Its effect was experienced across the globe, its plume and volcanic lightning possibly described in the Egyptian Tempest Stele, and the Bamboo Annals of ancient China reporting rare yellow skies and summer frost during the Shang dynasty — clear signs of a volcanic winter.

Though largely abandoned by the time Thera released its first explosive bellow, Akrotiri’s pre-eruption structural face was transformed in the fiery onslaught. Yet, like ancient Rome’s Pompeii and Herculaneum below the pyroclastic expulsion of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Thera’s ejecta and ash produced a remarkable result — an ancient city much destroyed yet miraculously well enough preserved to create a stunningly detailed time capsule of life and advanced human achievement more than 3,500 years old.

Extensive excavations beginning in 1967 by archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos and his team uncovered a remarkably advanced urban settlement, with multi-storied buildings, paved streets, evidence of fine furniture, various religious and domestic vessels, magnificent fresco wall paintings, an elaborate and advanced drainage system, and much more. Like Pompeii and Herculaneum, Akrotiri proved to be one of the most spectacular archaeological sites ever uncovered. Of all the objects and features of the ancient city discovered, however, no other Bronze Age site in the world could compare to Akrotiri in terms of the early advanced works of distinctive fresco painting produced by its master artists — the most prolific collection of such paintings preceding the great fresco works of the masters of ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy much later.

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Aerial view of the central area of the Akrotiri excavation site (model as exhibited within the Museum of Prehistoric Thera).

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Akrotiri: “Triangle Square”, shows the height at which the structures at Akrotiri were preserved from the volcanic eruption. See below for additional examples of site preservation.

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“Millhouse Square”

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“Pithoi Room”

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“Pithoi Room”

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“Pithoi Room”

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Plaster cast of a carved wooden table.

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Plaster cast of a portion of a chair.

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Basket impression

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Above and below: Amazingly well preserved furnishings.

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Maximilian Dörrbecker, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license, Wikimedia Commons

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The Paintings of Akrotiri

The excavations at Akrotiri have informed a picture of public and religiously significant buildings and other structures adorned with masterfully created fresco paintings that reflected, for this time in ancient history, a unique, avant-garde style. They have marked the Minoans as a standout in this way among ancient populations, particularly during the 17th century BC. Moreover, of all the Minoan settlements that have been excavated, Akrotiri has yielded the best preserved paintings recovered in situ from the walls of its structures……….

Xeste 3

Located south within the excavation area, a large structure (the second largest excavated at Akrotiri) was found to contain the largest assemblage of wall paintings, and is distinct from all other structures in that it housed a lustral basin. In Minoan palaces such as that found at Knossos on Crete, lustral basins were sunken rooms that are thought to have been used either for ritual purification, or as bathrooms. This multi-storey building featured stone benches, a grand staircase, and 15 rooms. The rooms were connected with multiple pier-and-door partitions/doorways that permitted flexibility and adaptability to be interconnected or shut off when necessary. Archaeologists believe, based on the findings, that the building was used for public ceremonies and ritual activity. The rooms as well as the grand staircase were adorned with wall paintings.

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Artist rendering of Xeste 3, as presented at the Museum of Prehistoric Thera

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Above and below: Excavated remains of Xeste 3.

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Above and below: Xeste 3, Room 3, 1st Floor: Females gathering crocus flowers, then offering their stigmas to the Godess of Nature through the intervention of a monkey.

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Above and below: Xeste 3, Room 3, Ground Floor: Painted above the Lustral Basin, three females perform a ritual involving crocus plants on the Theran landscape.

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Above and below: Xeste 3, Room 3 Ground Floor: Male figures performing a rite of passage ceremony.

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Xeste 3: Wall painting with relief ornaments and painted rosettes: From a room on the second story

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The West House

Located in the west central part of the excavation site, the structure designated as the “West House” by archaeologists contained some of the best known, best preserved wall paintings. The house was long and relatively narrow, consisting of a ground floor, first floor, second floor and main staircase that gave access to each storey. The ground floor featured storerooms, workshops, a kitchen and a mill-installation. The first floor had storage rooms, a lavatory, two rooms featuring magnificent mural paintings, and a large chamber dedicated to weaving. The upper floor also contained rooms. The notable wall paintings found in the West House include two frescoes of fishermen, or youth fishers, a fresco of a female holding a vessel, interpreted as a priestess, and a magnificent miniature frieze depicting what is interpreted to be a flotilla, illustrating a major overseas voyage of a fleet visiting several harbors and towns.

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Artist’s conception of the West House, as exhibited at the Museum of Prehistoric Thera.

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Above and below: Excavated remains of the West House.

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Above and below: Fishers as displayed in West House.

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A partial frieze, a portion of which may be illustrating a naval battle.

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Above and below: Paintings depicting the chambers of a ship.

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Above and below: Frieze illustrating the adventures and explorations of early Aegean seafarers.

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The House of the Ladies

Located in the northwest section of the site, the “House of the Ladies” is a large, multi-storey building thought to be the house of an upper class family. It was named after the wall fresco of the ladies and papyrus plants that decorated the interior of one of the rooms. The structure is thought to have once been a three-storey house with as many as 10 rooms on each floor, but extensive destruction of the north end of the building has created uncertainty.

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Above and below: Excavated remains of the House of the Ladies

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Above and below: The wall paintings from the House of the Ladies.

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Sector Beta

Situated in the south central area of the site, two attached buildings featured three of the most notable frescoes of Akrotiri. The first floor of the western building was adorned with two wall paintings, the Antelopes and the Boxing Boys. The eastern building featured the large, avant-garde composition called “Fresco of the Monkeys”, showing monkeys climbing over a rocky landscape at the side of a river.

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The wall paintings of the monkeys as they would have related in situ in sector B structure room (As displayed in the Museum of Prehistoric Thera).

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Complex Delta

Occupying a central position in the city is the Complex Delta, which actually comprises four structures or buildings, each crowned above the entrance with double horns of consecration. Mud flow from the eruption inundated the rooms, yet preserved in situ one of Akrotiri’s most famous artworks, the Spring Fresco, in one of the rooms. Also preserved were imprints of wooden vessels and furniture, seen today as plaster casts. Other finds included tablets of the Linear A script and numerous examples of imported pottery, precious stone and bronze objects.

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Above and below: Excavated remains of Complex Delta.

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Above: Spring Fresco detail. Below: Spring Fresco in its entirety as exhibited at the National Archaeology Museum of Athens

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Creating the Art

Much of the style and iconography of the Theran wall paintings were clearly derived from those seen on Crete, where the greater part of Minoan civilization flourished. This included the common tripartite organization of the wall compositions, females represented in white flesh and males in brown, and themes including natural world elements and ritualistic, productive human activity. Although the artists drew from centuries-old Cycladic tradition in art creation, most of the Theran artists trended toward the avant-garde in their representations, a characteristic that set them apart from other artistic traditions and achievements of the time.

As to the process of creating the paintings, the artists applied a mixed technique of buon fresco, applying pigments to wet plaster, and fresco secco, applying pigments to dried plaster.

The paintings were created in four successive phases:

Wall surfaces were first smoothed with a layer of mixed mortar and straw. Over this, they applied a layer of lime plaster (stucco) about 1 to 2.5 cm thick, then a layer or two of fine stucco.
While the stucco was still wet, a taught, fine string was stretched/pressed into the stucco to create three horizontal physical divides in the wall composition. Wall paintings on Thera were typically divided into three zones in this way.
The artist would render a sketching of the subject(s) by incising or light washing the lies into the stucco. This guided the actual painting onto the still-wet stucco/plaster, where the colors were absorbed into the plaster itself. Smaller details were then added often after the stucco had dried.
The palette of colors used were largely the same as that used by the Minoans on Crete: the background white of the stucco, earth pigments for black, red and yellow from hematite and yellow ochre, and Egyptian blue, imported from Egypt, and/or glaucophane. The painting was then enriched with different tones, including colors such as rose, pale pink, reddish brown, and dark brown. To achieve these variations, the artist combined pigments or mixed them in lime water.

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Pithos containing lime-plaster. Above and below artifacts excavated at Akrotiri.

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Semiglobular cup containing red pigment

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Pigments and lime

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Paintings and painting techniques were not exclusive to walls. Here, for example, is a Minoan offering table excavated at Akrotiri, showing use of painting to illustrate ceramic ware with scenes and subjects from their natural surroundings. Ceramic ware pieces below indicate the same trend or style of painting throughout the culture at Akrotiri.

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A Theran Diaspora?

Though the distinctive Minoan style of wall painting can be said to be a regional phenomenon (e.g., Thera and Crete), in recent years archaeologists have found evidence of its presence in other parts of the Mediterranean. Were the art masters of Thera known and in employment demand among the palace, temple, and wealthy elites throughout the Bronze Age Old World trade network? Or did the artist refugees of the great Thera eruption find their way to other parts of the known world to ply their trade and perhaps even to settle?

The Canaanite site of Tel Kabri in present-day northwest Israel, for example, could hold clues to answers. The author spoke with the George Washington University’s Dr. Eric H. Cline in Washington, D.C. in May of 2011. Cline had already been co-director of the excavations at Kabri for years at that point.*

“Kabri, which is a Canaanite palace,” said Cline, “has Minoan wall and floor paintings in it…… We already knew about this site because Kabri had been excavated before by [Aharon] Kempinski and [Wolf-Dietrich] Niemeier from 1986 to 1993, and they found a painted floor and about 2,000 fragments of painted plaster.”

There are several things that strongly suggest the paintings were Minoan or Cycladic in style, according to Cline.

“One is this whole technique of painting on the plaster wall while it is still wet,” continues Cline. “That is an Aegean technique. In the Near East, they more often painted after the plaster was dry. Second, there is a technique of using strings to help in the painting process. For example, the Minoans took a string and just tightened it so that it contacted the wet plaster and created a perfectly straight line. We have plaster at Kabri that shows that. The other thing they did was take string and dip it in, for example, red paint, and tighten it quickly against the plaster. The red paint thus makes a perfectly straight line. That is how the floor at Kabri was created. That is a Minoan technique.”

Moreover, the painted subject matter appears to match the subject elements typically depicted in wall paintings such as those found at Akrotiri on Thera and Knossos on Crete, says Cline, such as certain plant and flower types, the ships, and architecture.

Were they works produced by Theran artisans who were displaced by the great Theran eruption? Possibly, says Cline, But he emphasizes that this is purely speculative.

Were they evidence of new, permanent Minoan settlers at Kabri? Possibly, says Cline. But likely not for long. Cline summarizes his view on this question:

“There is no evidence so far that Minoans, or any other Aegean people, such as those in the Cyclades or mainland Greece, migrated to and settled at Kabri as a group. We don’t have enough Minoan pottery to support that. I suspect that, yes, the eruption at Santorini may have caused a migration of people from the island, including artisans who may have painted at Akrotiri or Knossos and were in need of employment, staying at Kabri temporarily. Certainly the paintings at Kabri look an awful lot like the ones on Santorini [ancient Thera]. So it may have been a refugee situation, but that would be mere speculation. The one thing we can support right now is that, if there was a group of Aegean people at Kabri, they were only living there temporarily.”

At least three other places or excavation sites in the eastern Mediterranean have evidenced painting like that found at Akrotiri. One is Tel Dab’a in Egypt, another in Turkey at Alalakh, and finally at Qatna in Syria, currently being excavated by a German/Italian/Syrian team.

Married to the Sea

As I found myself hiking along the edge of Santorini’s great caldera and gazing out and down at ocean water where, anciently in some places dry land existed, I could not help but think about the ancient landscape, and the people who once thrived here over 3600 years ago.

Though the written records of Akrotiri — as they were created on clay tablets in Linear A, a yet undeciphered script — have offered few clues to this ancient society, the artifacts, structures, and paintings revealed by the excavations have provided a rare window on the lives of this ancient people: We know they were advanced in the sense that they lived in multistoried buildings with sophisticated drainage and water distribution systems, indoor bathrooms, lustral basins for ritual practice, and apartments and rooms designed for flexible and adaptable use. Though they practiced agriculture, they were most of all a maritime people, whose economy flourished on extensive trade with other civilizations in and around the Mediterranean, such as Minoan Crete, Mainland Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Levant. Pottery imports and other artifacts, as well as their wall paintings depicting ships, testify to this. This therefore was a people who were enriched through trade. Its position on an island that occupied a strategic position between Cyprus and the Levant to the east, Crete and Egypt to its south, and mainland Greece to its north, made sure of that. Its people wore fine clothing. Artifacts and structures evidenced a well-developed textile industry. The beautifully-clad women appeared to have been revered and, indeed, occupied an important and even elevated position in its culture and religious practices, even in the form of deities. Their culture and way of life was deeply defined by their religion. In addition, they loved and esteemed their natural environment, as clearly demonstrated by their art. Above all, the masterful paintings have given the world an almost intimate and stylistic window on the minds of the Akrotirian inhabitants.

Walking among the remains of Akrotiri, I marveled at how the 3,600-year-old shroud of its volcanic ash and debris was painstakingly removed many years ago by teams of archaeologists and their volunteers. Today the city stands silent and empty, at least the small portion that has been thus far revealed — a shadow of a once bustling community. Only the mind’s eye can now fill these streets with life. But subtle clues in its remains tell us they were a people likely much like us.

Perhaps more than we might imagine.

https://popular-archaeology.com/article/the-minoan-connection/

Tutankhamun, Nefertiti, and the Lost Tomb

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Eric Vasallo -

Author and Egyptologist Nicolas Reeves presents his view that the tomb of Tutankhamun was, in fact, originally intended for Nefertiti, and that part of the tomb of the great queen still lies hidden behind the famous Tut burial space . . .

This article is available to Premium members of Popular Archaeology.

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100 Years of Knowing Tut

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Eric Vasallo -

Scholars present their latest findings and views in the ongoing discovery of ancient Egypt’s famous boy king . . .

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Preserving the Past for Our Future: The Carter House and the Tomb of Tutankhamun

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Eric Vasallo -

Luxor, Egypt — Before Howard Carter and his team of Egyptian workers made one of the greatest discoveries of all time on November 4^th, 1922, Carter lived in a dig house atop a hill, surrounded by desert, only a short donkey ride away from the Valley of the Kings. The home’s construction was funded by his fellow archaeologist and photographer friend and financier Lord Carnarvon. Carter lived there from 1910-1939. Later, in the 1950’s it became a rest house for antiquities inspectors and in 2009 it was converted into a house museum to honor Howard Carter’s contributions to the field of archaeology.

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The Restored House

Portrait of Howard Carter. By William Carter. Public Domain.

The mudbrick of the home was in danger of collapse due to insufficient drainage. That pressing problem has since been corrected with a new drainage system to address rising water levels. A complete and thoughtful restoration of the home’s simple yet beautiful interior spaces was unveiled as well. The home is an elegant and peaceful space surrounded by lush greenery effectively transporting you back to Carter’s time. Director Nicholas Warner and Egyptologist Tom Hardwick worked with a team of restorers to match the colors of the walls and interior furnishings faithful to the period in which Carter lived in the house. The seemingly personal items displayed behind glass were historically accurate objects that an archaeologist would have used on a daily basis working in Egypt in the 1920’s. There are also replicas of Carter’s masterfully painted watercolor images throughout the home. (Carter’s father was a well-respected painter of landscapes and hunting scenes, and he followed in his father’s footsteps before becoming an archaeologist). The only personal item owned by Carter still on site is a foundation brick gifted to him by Lord Carnarvon to commemorate the foundation of the home.

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Above and below: Views of two of the rooms in the restored Carter House.

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A Replicated Tomb and the Wonders of Digital Restoration

Steps away from the Carter house and on the same property was another re-opening: an exact and completed replica of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, created to ease the damaging effects of thousands of humans breathing moisture into the original tomb and endangering its delicate murals. Factum Arte in conjunction with the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative (TNPI) recreated the famous tomb by capturing an unbelievable 100 million measured points per square meter, 2.54 pixels/inch using a close-range, non-contact laser recording system called the Lucida 3D scanner, requiring 6 hours recording time per square meter. The technology was created in-house by artist-engineer Manuel Franquelo with a team of conservators and engineers. (The National Gallery in London recently acquired Factum Arte’s Lucida 3D scanner to record and digitize their collections).

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Exterior view of the replicated tomb of Tutankhamun.

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Interior view of the replicated tomb of Tutankhamun.

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The only thing missing in this replica tomb is the mummy of the boy king. One item not in the original tomb but included in the replica tomb is a recreation of the painted plaster wall painting that was created by the ancient artists to hide the burial chamber on the other side from tomb robbers. The scene shows the goddess Isis greeting Tutankhamun with her hands down, palms up in a welcoming nini gesture conveyed by two hieroglyphs held in her hands. Three underworld deities are shown seated behind the goddess. The original fragments of this sacred scene were unfortunately lost to time after Howard Carter broke through the wall to access the burial chamber. The pieces were reconstructed utilizing Harry Burton’s original photographs from 1922 and Factum’s cutting-edge 3D photo technology.

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The recreated wall painting lost by Carter.

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Director and visionary Egyptologist Aliaa Ismail explains, beaming with pride “The level of details this technology can record far surpasses anything the naked eye can capture.” For example, when Factum worked on scanning the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I housed at Sir John Soane’s museum in London through their high-resolution scans, technicians were able to bring to light the complex carved sarcophagus hieroglyphs, otherwise invisible today due to thousands of years that have damaged the original paint. They were also able to piece together the remaining fragments of the sarcophagus lid to eventually create a 3D replica of the complete sarcophagus.

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Virtual reality experiences will become common as an aid to helping the public understand our ancient heritage.

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Digital restoration is fast becoming a vital tool for restorers and is changing the way academia functions. In their recently completed Seti I project, Florence Baberio and the team from Basel University pieced together many fragments using this new technology. They recorded fragments from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Louvre in Paris, the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin, the British Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, the Griffith Institute in Oxford, the Archaeological Museums in Bologna and Florence and in a private collection. All these recorded fragments will be reconstructed virtually and archived into Factum Foundation’s final facsimile, resulting in a copy which will be more complete than the original tomb as it stands today.

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The tomb of Seti I. Carole Raddato, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons

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Ismail explains that the data recorded for the Seti I tomb allowed them to complete another exact replica of the Hall of Beauties from inside Seti’s tomb and they are currently negotiating with the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) to have it included as a permanent addition to the museum’s collection, providing a more immersive experience for visitors. Factum Arte’s next project is to fully document Queen Nefertari’s tomb and to eventually train many teams, preferably Egyptians, so they can scan all the remaining tombs in the Theban Necropolis, numbering over 1,500.

The readily available photographic data will also allow for researchers to easily reunite artifacts or plaster fragments from different museums or private collections across the world, enabling researchers to finally fill in the blanks. In essence, it is a new tool to add to the arsenal that archaeologists can use to recreate the past and make exciting new discoveries.

One example of a potential discovery utilizing this non-invasive technology occurred in 2009. Britisha rchaeologist Nicholas Reeves reviewed high resolution scans of the burial chamber walls and noticed in the relief renderings presented in separate layers that there were slight variations in that wall. This information was crucial for Reeves to formulate the theory he presented recently at the ARCE Centennial Event in Luxor. Through studying this forensic data and differences behind painted cartouches on the burial chamber’s walls, he theorizes that Nefertiti’s tomb may be hidden behind that wall in the same way Tutankhamun’s burial chamber was hidden behind a decorated false wall.The potential for finding another intact tomb on par with Tutankhamun’s is a possibility that has captured the imagination of millions around the globe.

If the people cannot be brought to these works of ancient art, then Factum intends to bring these monuments to the people and at the same time preserve them in perpetuity because, at any moment a natural disaster such as an earthquake or flood can destroy these ever-important monuments to humanity in an instant. A recent article from the New York Times highlights work done to combat the effects of climate change already damaging sites across Egypt.

Factum Arte is a pioneer in marrying VR technology with archaeology to protect sites like King Tutankhamun’s tomb, to promote archaeology to children in schools, and inspire us all to look more closely at these ancient sites left behind by our ancestors. They are close to launching the VR experience of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. The potential for education and generating interest is limitless.

A report on Factum’s work completed thus far in the Tomb of Seti I in conjunction with the University of Basel and Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities is here. You can also visit the reconstructed tomb (sarcophagus included) of Seti I at the Valley of the Kings virtually here.

Another pioneering company using VR technology to inspire future generations in the field of archaeology is Positron, an American company. They recently created a mind-blowing 4D, virtual reality experience for the Ramses the Great exhibit, currently on nationwide tour and available to experience at San Francisco’s de Young Museum.

Any lover of our ancient past has dreamt of teleporting in a time machine to see how it all really looked and felt. Positron is like that time machine, enabling us to see and feel what it was like and will only be more immersive as the technology improves over time.

It isn’t hard to imagine museums around the world incorporating these new technologies to inspire generations of archaeologists and enthusiasts of our ancient past well into the future.

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