PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers uncovered a submerged Stone Age wall that is almost a kilometer in length and may have been used to hunt reindeer. Submerged archaeological sites can remain well-preserved but are often challenging to study in detail. Jacob Geersen and colleagues used hydroacoustic data of up to a centimeter-scale resolution, sedimentological samples, and optical images to characterize a Stone Age megastructure located at a depth of 21 meters in the Bay of Mecklenburg, Germany. The authors used shipborne measurements, an autonomous underwater vehicle, and divers to examine the site. The structure was composed of around 1,670 individual stones, largely less than 1 meter in height and less than 2 meters in width, placed side by side over 971 meters. Geological analysis revealed that the structure was adjacent to the shoreline of a now-submerged lake or bog. The shape and location of the structure were not consistent with a natural origin. The structure was likely constructed by regional hunter-gatherers more than 10,000 years ago and subsequently submerged around 8,500 years ago. The structure may have been used to direct the movements of herds of large ungulates, such as Eurasian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), to facilitate hunting. According to the authors, the site may represent one of the oldest known hunting structures on Earth and the largest known late Pleistocene/early Holocene structure in Europe.
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Section of a Stone Age megastructure in the Bay of Mecklenburg, Germany. Philipp Hoy
*“A submerged Stone Age hunting architecture from the Western Baltic Sea,” by Jacob Geersen et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12-Feb-2024. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2312008121
Beneath the protective man-made structural shroud that overhangs and envelopes this natural rockshelter, an archaeologist from St. John’s College of the University of Cambridge dons a hazmat suit, multiple hairnets, and a respirator. He proceeds to incise into a vertical profile of sediment with a scalpel to extract a cube of an ancient deposit before placing it carefully into a centrifuge vial. The sediment cube sample comes from what has been dubbed the “deep hole,” consisting of some of the earliest and deepest excavated cultural layers within the famous site of Meadowcroft, a rockshelter located within a remote forested area of the western Pennsylvania Appalachian mountains. Meadowcroft is long known to have revealed evidence of what scientists arguably suggest to be among the sites that feature the earliest presence of humans in North America — an almost continuous of-and-on, come-and go human occupation that may go back as far as 16,000 radiocarbon years ago, or 19,000 calendar years. The purpose of the sampling, among other things, is to test the possible presence of human DNA still remaining in the soil.
“All the way through that long sequence of a human presence,” says James Adovasio, the archaeologist who led excavations at the site, “….the people are using this site the same way—to collect wild plant and animal food….”
Adovasio makes clear that he is not hanging his hat on the DNA samples, just one small chapter in the investigations of this site. “We stress that the absence of any human, animal, or plant DNA in no way undermines previous conclusions about the site,” he emphasizes. The archaeological investigations have historically churned up too much other data to be overturned by any new, single sampling. Moreover, investigations are not finished. “More than one-third of the site remains unexcavated,” Adovasio adds. But there are no plans to conduct on-site investigations in the immediate future. Despite the carefully meticulous and scientific excavations and analysis already conducted for the site, further excavation will be left to future generations with new techniques and technology….
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View of interior of Meadowcroft rockshelter. Sue Ruth, CC-BY-4.0 Deed, Wikimedia Commons
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Peering up at it from below, I could see this wouldn’t be a leisurely stroll. This flight of seemingly countless steps, ascending with rails almost like scaffolding to a destination high above, invited a sense of adventure. But I could envision that, long before this modern, convenient construction, human visitors surely had a more challenging task. I was told that casual visitors once had to ascend with the aid of a rope assemblage, and long before that, Native Americans had to reach it using whatever devices or efforts at their disposal. Carved by nature in a bluff overlooking a tributary of the Ohio River known as Cross Creek, the ancient rockshelter above had remained tucked away for millennia within a lush green, hilly landscape of what is today called the Allegheny Plateau of western Pennsylvania. Thousands of years of weathering and erosion made this place a cave-like shelter for prehistoric human sojourners—affording them protection from outside elements and a space to rest, sleep and eat within.
Once I reached the top of the steps, I could move freely over a spacious, human-made platform, designed to hold small capacity crowds. I could now see the interior of the rockshelter clearly laid out before me, left as it was after the latest large-scale archaeological excavations closed out. But long before archaeologists and others came to investigate and work at the site, nature’s hand had already morphed its appearance many times over through thousands of years of weathering and erosion. I could see the visible reminders of this in the face of the sandstone cliffs surrounding it. Slowly sculpted by water, wind and ice, it was an almost surrealistic picture of what time and the elements could do to otherwise seemingly impermeable and impenetrable stone. Today, the rockshelter is enveloped in an impressive, protective overhanging wooden construction, an architectural wonder by itself.
For those who know something about the site, the Meadowcroft rockshelter is now widely thought to have yielded evidence of a very early human presence in North America, along with the longest sequence of continuous human occupation. It was first systematically excavated by Dr. James M. Adovasio, now senior scientist at APTIM and director of archaeology at Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His efforts at the site included a team of colleagues and field school students in the early 1970’s. As a team, they uncovered evidence of a human presence they suggested dated thousands of years before the time of the advent of what for decades was considered the first broadly recognized human culture in the Americas—the Clovis—and its implied first peopling of the North American continent.
But this stature and acceptance didn’t come quickly and easily for Meadowcroft and its chief archaeologist. It challenged the prevailing paradigm, radically pushing back the dates on human occupation of the continent. From the very beginning, the validity of his findings related to the early human modified stone objects and other features of human habitation found at the site were marked with controversy. Decades later, however, the story of the Meadowcroft controversy has evolved to one of broad acceptance. Partly due to the mounting evidence from other sites with Pre-Clovis artifacts across the Americas, and in no small measure to the meticulous and scientifically rigorous methods used in the Meadowcroft research, the site has arguably become a kingpin in a new mainstream of scientific inquiry that has increasingly legitimized the ‘Pre-Clovis’ way of thinking.
The Interview
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Popular Archaeology took the opportunity to interview Dr. Adovasio (pictured) about the site and its significance within the context of the ongoing search and debate on the first peopling of the Americas. What follows are the details of that interview:
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Q1: Would you describe your personal route/experience, attributes and interests that drove you to your current occupation or career?
As I indicated in my book, “The First Americans,” I was essentially programmed to be an archaeologist by my mother, Lena M. Adovasio. She was a four-field major in college, one of which was history and another of which was chemistry. She taught me to read well before kindergarten with geology, paleontology, and archaeology books. As a consequence I never really wanted to do anything else except pursue an archaeology career. I knew where I wanted to go to undergraduate school in the 6th grade and, in fact, attended that institution (The University of Arizona). The attributes which I brought to the “archaeology table” were and remain, extreme attention to detail, a high degree of organization leavened with intense self-discipline, and, I suppose, the ability to absorb and synthesize oftentimes very diverse data sets. It probably helped that, like my mother, I was endowed with a near perfect memory.
Q2: What is the story of how Meadowcroft first came to your attention?
When I assumed a faculty position at The University of Pittsburgh in 1972, I was told that one of the parameters of that position was the establishment of an archaeological and geoaracheological field training program in western Pennsylvania. What I had hoped to locate was an area with little or no previous archaeological or geoarchaeological research coupled with relatively easy striking distance of Pittsburgh for obvious logistical reasons. I also sought an area which contained at least one cave or rockshelter site because these were the sites I was most familiar with from my graduate career at The University of Utah. Because I had previous research commitments on the Island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, I did not have the time to locate a suitable study area myself. So I circulated word amongst my colleagues in the profession, and as a result, a now deceased historian/amateur archaeologist from what was then California State College, California, Pennsylvania, informed me about Meadowcroft Rcokshelter in the early spring of 1973. His name was Phil Jack, a longtime friend of the landowner, Albert Miller, who discovered the site. I arranged with both of them to visit the site in the later spring of 1973 and upon viewing it decided to solicit permission from the landowners to begin excavations there in June of 1973. The rest is, literally, history.
Q3: While excavating at Meadowcroft in the 1970’s, what was it that made you realize that there was something special or unusual about this site?
We initially believed that the deposits at Meadowcroft would be something less than a meter in thickness and that the oldest occupation would be Late Archaic or Early Woodland, at best. These estimates were based on excavations at other rockshelters in southwestern Pennsylvania and adjacent portions of Ohio and West Virginia. However, early in the 1973 season it became clear that the deposits at the site were well in excess of a meter in thickness and the recovery of Middle and Early Archaic materials signaled an older occupation than we had imagined. Of course, when the first radiocarbon dates were run after the 1973 season was over, it was evident that the site was initially occupied earlier than we suspected.
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General view of Meadowcroft Rockshelter facing west before excavation in 1973; vegetation marks the limits of the vegetation current overhang; large block in lower left represents a roof detachment ca. 12,500 years ago. Image courtesy James M. Adovasio
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Q4:What finds convinced you that you had uncovered evidence of human occupation at this site going back possibly 16,000 years or more?
The answer to this question is more complicated than it seems. The deposits at Meadowcroft are characterized by a series of roof spalling and block collapse events which dramatically altered both the configuration of the rockshelter, as well as the availability of “livable” floor space through time. One such spalling event marks, in effect, the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary as well as, for all intents and purposes, the end of the Clovis interval in southwestern Pennsylvania. Beneath this spalling event, we expected to encounter no additional, older cultural material, but rather the parent bedrock of the rockshelter in the form of the Birmingham Shale. Instead of the Birmingham Shale, we found a series of apparent occupational surfaces replete with shallow fire pits and associated artifacts of indisputable anthropogenic origin. Radiocarbon dates derived from charcoal within these pits clearly preceded the established age of Clovis in eastern North America, thereby, and surprisingly to us, indicating an earlier than Clovis occupation. Additionally, none of the recovered artifacts, most notably the unfluted lanceolate so-called Miller projectile point [named after the site’s discoverer] and small blade flakes, were consistent with a Clovis ascription.
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Lithic shown under rockfall is the type specimen of the Miller Lanceolate projectile point form. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Miller Lanceolate projectile point type specimen, obverse surface; the specimen is significantly re-sharpened and reduced in overall dimensions from the hypothesized prototype; it is unfluted, but basically ground. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Assorted Miller Complex artifacts from Stratum IIa (containing the oldest cultural remains radiocarbon dated to at least 16,000 years B.P.) at Meadowcroft Rockshelter; from left to right: Miller Lanceolate type specimen made of local Cross Creek chert, prismatic blade flake made from Onandaga chert, prismatic blade flake made from Flint Ridge chert, biface fragments made from Flint Ridge or Kanawha chert (black specimens are Kanawha). Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Q5: What is the significance of these findings within the context of the Clovis First debate?
Meadowcroft was the first site in nearly 40 years to seriously challenge the long held Clovis-First paradigm. Between 1933 and 1973, more than 500 archaeological sites in North and South America were claimed to be older than the Clovis horizon of ca. 10,900 to 11,300 uncorrected radiocarbon years ago. Prior to Meadowcroft, all of these Pre-Clovis claimants exhibited a similar history. First, you would read about them in a local newspaper or popular scientific journal, then more extensive treatments would appear in the technical scientific literature. Inevitably, the sites would then be exposed for some real or imagined flaw – the artifacts were not definitively of human origin; the stratigraphy was non-existent or imperfectly defined; the context and association of even genuine recovered artifactual material was problematic, etc. As I pointed out in “The First Americans,” each of these sites enjoyed a Warholesque 15 minutes of fame, then disappeared into oblivion. Each time one of these claimant sites failed, it reinforced the Clovis-First model. Therefore, by the time the initial reports on Meadowcroft appeared, there was a long established record of failure which served to render the Meadowcroft discoveries suspect ab initio.
Q6: Do you think the Clovis First paradigm is now discredited, or on its way out, given the findings from other sites across the Americas that show evidence of human occupation before Clovis times? (In other words, do you think there is sufficient evidence now to support a pre-Clovis presence or culture in the Americas, and why?)
To answer this question, it is perhaps useful to cite an observation by Dr. Jonathan C. Lothrop in his review of a Pre-Clovis site in the Americas, a volume published by the Smithsonian Institution. He says,
“In 2015, if one polled New World archaeologists familiar with the literature, I suspect most would agree that there is a growing body of evidence of human occupation in the Americas that pre-dates ca. 13,200 Cal. B.P.” (Lothrop 2015: p. 256)
I certainly concur with Lothrop’s assessment, but it is also worth stressing that a handful of very vocal, Clovis-Firsters still remain and, like Hrdlicka in an earlier time, will probably go to their graves with their minds unchanged. The death of established paradigms often takes a very long time—as witnessed, for example, by the many decades which elapsed between the promulgation of continental drift and its widespread acceptance in the geological community. I completely underestimated how long it would take for Clovis-First to expire and I also misjudged the degree to which its “spear carriers” would hold on to their beliefs. This is all particularly interesting given the fact that, almost from its inception, most European scholars and virtually all South American scholars questioned the underpinnings of the Clovis-First model. The American response, of course, was that the Europeans were simply ignorant of the facts and that the South Americans didn’t even publish in English. The number and distribution of what might be called broadly acceptable Pre-Clovis archaeological sites now clearly points to an earlier than Clovis presence. I stress, however, that even if there were only one, then one would be sufficient. Monte Verde effectively terminated the argument even if its still vocal critics don’t accept the fact.
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Blade flakes from Stratum IIa at Meadowcroft Rockshelter; cross sections range from prismatic on the first three specimens to triangular on the forth; the edge is intentionally dulled for hafting. Courtesy Jame M. Adovasio
Close up of blade flakes from Meadowcroft Rockshelter; one edge of each blade flake is intentionally dulled for hafting, while the opposite edge is the working edge. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Polyhedral blade cores of the type from which Meadowcroft blade flakes were struck; these are very different from Clovis blade cores. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Q7: What were the specific challenges of excavating and investigating the site?
All cave and rockshelter sites around the world are part of what some archaeologists call the “marked landscape”. Places so designated were well known to aboriginal populations both in time and through time and as such, were frequently visited and utilized. While some of these sites probably witnessed yearly visits, many were only episodically visited. Because of repetitive visits, often over very long periods of time, such sites provide the opportunity for studying environmental change and concomitant human adjustments to those changes in very unique ways. Unfortunately, depending on the nature, intensity, and duration of these visits, these types of sites may evidence considerable anthropogenic disturbance with attendant difficulties in establishing the stratigraphic/occupational sequence. Additionally, because of the nature of the depositional process in many of these sites, even without human disturbance, the stratification may be remarkably complex. The combination of naturally complicated stratigraphy and repetitive human visits with attendant disturbance render the proper excavation of these kinds of sites very difficult.
Q8: What specific techniques, processes, methodologies and applications made the investigation of this site stand out from other excavations or investigations?
A necessary preamble to this answer is to state that a field archaeologist in virtually any setting – prehistoric, historic, or forensic – has three basic responsibilities. The first, and most fundamental of these, is the reconstruction of stratigraphy from visible stratification. While in English, we tend to use the terms “stratigraphy’ and “stratification” interchangeably, they do not, in fact, mean the same thing. Stratification is an objective phenomenon. It has both subjective and objective physical properties which can be detected, assessed, and measured. Stratification is a product. Stratigraphy is both the process by which stratification is created and the study of that process. The establishment of stratigraphy from observable stratification is fundamental and critical to the other two responsibilities of a field archaeologist. Without it, the other two cannot be done. The second responsibility is the delineation of context. Context literally means place in time and space and unless the context of all recovered material is explicitly defined in a stratigraphic perspective, there is no context. Finally, perhaps the most difficult field responsibility is the demonstration of association. Association means that two or more items have entered the archaeological record penecontemporaneously as a consequence of the same process. Association refers, in forensic terms, to primary or probative evidence as opposed to secondary or circumstantial evidence.
Suffice to note, for reasons already articulated, it is particularly and peculiarly difficult to execute the three responsibilities of a field archaeologist in a cave or rockshelter situation. To execute these responsibilities in any excavation situation requires knowledge of and the ability to operationalize all of the so-called laws of stratigraphy. While most people are familiar with the first of these laws – superposition – many are, to varying degrees, unfamiliar with the remainder. These include original horizontality, lateral continuity, and intersecting relationships. The key to operationalizing all of these principles – frequently referred to as Steno’s Laws – requires the ability to recognize and delineate the contacts or interfaces between discrete strata. Without digressing into an arcane lecture on methodology, it should be noted that during the Meadowcroft excavations much of our attention was directed precisely at facilitating and defining interfaces and contacts. Students were exhaustively trained to recognize strata differences on the basis of perceived textural differences. In practice, this meant that they could use their trowels to detect differences in compactness versus friability, density versus porosity, and related properties by feel and even sound. Once sufficiently skilled, our students could recognize stratigraphic differences quite literally with their eyes shut in much the same way that anyone could detect by feel and sound alone the difference between layers of cake and icing between those layers. Despite the reliance on texture in the excavation training process, a wide array of other things were done to maximize the ability to “see” stratigraphic transformations in profile. Meadowcroft, virtually from the outset, was fully electrified and thanks to University of Pittsburgh engineers in conjunction with assistance from Westinghouse, we were able to install an experimental lighting system that allowed the excavators to combine different light sources to illuminate stratigraphic profiles in a variety of ways. The difference between different light source combinations was and is striking and, at that time, had not been employed extensively as a supplement to excavation.
In order to systematically plot the three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates of artifacts and ecofacts, a series of vertical and horizontal datum points were combined, initially manually, and later, via total stations, to ensure the establishment of the appropriate provenience or context of excavated materials. Since the rockshelter had an active phone line, we could then communicate directly via telephone modem to the mainframe at the University of Pittsburgh to encode excavation data. To my knowledge, this is also the first time that was ever done – at least in a cave or rockshelter setting.
In order to provide objective verification of what were subjectively defined strata, samples of sediment from each stratum or microstratum were processed with a Coulter blood cell counter converted to measure sediment size differences. Once again, this was the first time such technology had been employed in the field.
I could continue in this vein, but the point here is simply this – given the experience and imagination of the investigators, coupled with sufficient funding, we were able to implement a variety of data recovery and documentation as well as analytical protocols which had never been extensively employed before. While some of these did not work as expected, many did. The collective effect was a level of precision in the excavations which virtually no critic of the site has ever questioned.
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Precision and care: Excavation of a thin anthropogenic surface at the site via single-edged razorblade. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Above and below: On-site documentation procedures at Meadowcroft Rockshelter; colored pencils which represented different combinations of silt, sand, and clay-sized materials were employed to produce microstratigraphic profile maps of all parts of the excavation. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Q9: What arguments or issues did you have to address regarding the validity of the finds and their dating?
Virtually from the publication of the first radiocarbon chronology from Meadowcroft in 1974, the possible age of the earliest occupation of the site engendered great controversy. Significantly, especially as compared to other putative Pre-Clovis claimant localities, none of this controversy surrounded either the excavation methodology employed at the site nor the possible anthropogenic origin of any of the earliest artifacts. As already noted, the excavations at Meadowcroft were, and still are, widely hailed as “meticulous” and the “early” artifacts bear the unmistakable stigmata of humanly modified materials. Instead, the criticisms of the possible antiquity of the site pivoted around three basic issues: 1) the possible particulate or non-particulate contamination of only the eleven oldest radiocarbon samples from the site; 2) the absence of Pleistocene faunal remains; and 3) the apparently anomalous character of the recovered floral materials.
Dozens of pages of published material have been devoted to refuting the objections to the apparent age of the lower and middle Stratum IIa materials from Meadowcroft and these arguments will not be repeated here. It should be sufficient to note that there is absolutely no probative evidence for the particulate contamination of any of the eleven oldest C-14 samples from Meadowcroft. As to non-particulate contamination, the introduction of dissolved older carbon into just the eleven deepest radiocarbon samples from Meadowcroft requires a vehicle for contamination in the form of groundwater movement. An intensive micromorphological study conclusively demonstrated that such movement did not occur and, therefore, the non-particulate contamination issue is moot.
As to the faunal and floral critiques, modern research indicates that the paleoenvironment south of the glacial ice front in North America was remarkably variable and diverse. Further, the floral species represented at Meadowcroft were not inconsistent with such diversity. Finally, the faunal remains from Meadowcroft’s oldest deposits are diminutive both in numbers and weight, though all of the species represented have been reported in Late Pleistocene contexts elsewhere in eastern North America.
Put most simply, all of the currently available data suggests that Meadowcroft was sequentially and sporadically visited before the advent and spread of Clovis technology by populations who may or may not have been the ancestors to the makers of fluted points.
Of course, a larger issue, at least for some scholars, was the absence for a period of time of “other Meadowcrofts.” Now, of course, there are other sites of demonstrable Pre-Clovis age. Despite the best efforts of diehard Clovis-Firsters to discredit these other localities, often with incredibly convoluted and far-fetched scenarios, the existence of Pre-Clovis populations in the new world is now widely accepted.
Meadowcroft set the evidentiary bar! Monte Verde broke it! Other sites are appearing to join them. For Clovis-First it is the end of the game.
Q10: If you were to create a scenario or story describing the nature and lifestyle of the early, Pre-Clovis inhabitants of the site, what would it be?
As described in various publications, the earliest visitors to Meadowcroft appear to have been broad spectrum foragers rather than megafauna-focused big game hunters. These populations visited the site, as would their successors, principally in the fall of the year, utilizing a durable technology that included the production of unfluted lanceolate projectile points and the manufacture of diminutive blade flakes from polyhedral cores. They also employed a perishable technology that included basketry and presumably a variety of other less well documented related technologies. Their visits to Meadowcroft were apparently brief and perhaps separated by a number of years. They exploited a wide array of lithic raw material sources which I personally do not believe reflect their range. I would suspect these materials were acquired by trade and exchange. These sources include Kanawha chert from West Virginia, Onandaga chert from New York, and Flint Ridge chert from Ohio to name but a few. Evidence of these earliest visitors to Meadowcroft, named by us the Miller Complex after Albert Miller who discovered the site, are also evidenced at several other localities in the Cross Creek Drainage and a very similar durable technology is also evident at more remote locations like Cactus Hill in Virginia. While there are no obvious technological connections between Miller durable technology and Clovis, there is the possibility that some sort of relationship may be discovered in the future.
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Reenactment of Paleoindian family unit showing both genders, different ages, durable and non-durable technology. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
Q11: What is in store for the future investigation and research of this site?
About one third of Meadowcroft remains unexcavated. This area is available for future study when there are even more resolute excavation, documentation, and analysis protocols available. The main task at present is to complete the long overdue final report as well as a series of smaller contributions about one or another aspect of the long Meadowcroft sequence.
Q12: Are there any other comments you would like to make?
The Meadowcroft/Cross Creek operation was originally designed as an undergraduate and graduate training project aimed at both anthropology/archaeology students and those in related fields. Obviously, there was also a research component but this was, at least on paper, secondary to the student training goal. Because of the experience of the multidisciplinary research staff as well as access to extraordinary funding, it was possible to not only offer students state-of-the-art protocols in site excavation, documentation, and analysis, but also to constantly refine those protocols from both a methodological and substantive perspective. Because of the foregoing, the excavations at Meadowcroft were considered by others to be at the very cutting edge of the field. That they are still considered by many to be so is a testimony to the success of the methodological aspect of the project. We have always been more proud and pleased with the methodological “end” of the Meadowcroft project than any, or even all, of the results it produced. Expanding the envelope of the field in any perspective is rewarding, but in terms of actual enhancement of field data collecting procedures, it is and has been particularly gratifying. From a more substantive perspective, while the earliest materials from Meadocroft have garnered the most attention, the incredible length of the occupational sequence is to us far more striking. Because of the lengthy and hyper-detailed Paleo-environmental record from Meadowcroft, we can examine macro and micro climatic changes and their attendant consequences very precisely. We can also articulate in unique ways human responses and adjustments to those changes. That was in essence the “cake” we were trying to bake. That the site proved to be quite old was the unintended “icing.”
If you liked this article, you may like The Update: Trackways of Otero 2, a previously published in-depth premium feature article about 22,000-year-old human footprints discovered in White Sands, New Mexico. (Image courtesy Dan Flores as illustrated in said article)
I must admit that I lived a full three years less than a two-hour drive away from the Meadowcroft Rockshelter site before actually seeing this site in person. Likely many thousands more are not even aware that this, clearly one of the most important archaeological sites related to Early Americans, sits so closely to their doorsteps. Accessing the impressively well maintained site and its associated visitation area is, however, not a simple and straightforward endeavor. It isn’t located conveniently off the well-traveled freeway circuits. But the driving directions provided at the website can be extremely helpful to any first-time visitor. Any visitor should be aware in advance that, to physically access the rockshelter itself, one must ascend a relatively lengthy flight of stairs. But this effort, though comparatively modest as hiking and climbing goes, is richly awarded with an up-close-and-personal view of the site and its scenic surrounding context.
—Ed.
General view of Meadowcroft, facing northeast after sunset. Courtesy James M. Adovasio
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Decidious and evergreen forests dominate the limestone karst formations of the northwestern highlands of Thailand. A vast number of caves and rock shelters intersperses the mountains. In over 40 such caves in Mae Hong Son province, large wooden coffins mounted on stilts, dating between 2,300 and 1,000 years ago, can be found. During the Iron Age period, each of these up to several-meter-long coffins was crafted from a single teak tree and features refined carvings of geometric, animal- or human-like shapes at the handles of both ends.
This archaeological assemblage has been studied for over two decades by members of the Prehistoric Population and Cultural Dynamics in Highland Pang Mapha Project, led by Professor Rasmi Shoocongdej, from the Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Archaeology, Silpakorn University. “Our research examines the relationship between humans and their environments in the seasonal tropics. One crucial aspect is the exploration of the social structure of these prehistoric communities, as well as explaining their connections with other pre-Neolithic, Neolithic and post-Neolithic groups in this region,” says Rasmi Shoocongdej, an archaeologist and senior author of the study*.
To understand the genetic profile of the Log Coffin-associated communities, and the connection of individuals buried in different caves, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Germany and Thailand has analyzed the DNA of 33 ancient individuals from five Log Coffin sites. The genomes recovered from the ancient individuals allow the first detailed study of the structure of a prehistoric community from Southeast Asia. “This project illustrates how ancient DNA can contribute to our understanding of past communities, their every-day life, and their cross-regional connections”, says first author Selina Carlhoff, a researcher in the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Complex genetic landscape in post-Neolithic mainland South East Asia
DNA preservation conditions in tropical regions are challenging and limit ancient population genetic studies from Southeast Asia. Most studies were limited to single individuals or small groups representing a country and period, and identifying only broad patterns, such as genetic admixture of farmers from the Yangtze River valley in southern China with the local Hòabìnhian hunter-gather-associated gene pool during the pre-Neolithic. The current study identifies two separate farmer-associated ancestries in the Log Coffin-associated individuals. One connected to the Yangtze River Valley, and another to the Yellow River valley in China. While previously published individuals from Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam also carry the Yellow River-related ancestry, it was absent in Bronze and Iron Age individuals from Ban Chiang in northeastern Thailand. These genetic differences mirror cultural differences between the two regions, such as mortuary practices and diet, and point towards separate influence spheres and connections to separate initial migration routes during the Neolithic period.
“Our results contribute to the emerging picture of a complex genetic landscape in post-Neolithic mainland Southeast Asia; however, this study provides successful genetic results from samples in limestone caves from the northwestern highlands of Thailand. Future studies of samples retrieved from open-air archaeological sites in the lowlands seem promising. If possible, they can provide additional insight into the genetic history of Mainland Southeast Asia,” says Wibhu Kutanan, a scientist from Naresuan University, Thailand, involved in the conception of the study. Detailed analyses of uniparental markers, which can reveal sex-specific demographic histories of Log Coffin-associated groups, will be provided in a forthcoming study. Further archaeogenetic studies in collaboration with local scholars, as well as novel admixture modelling and dating techniques, will illuminate the developing patterns better and enable direct connections to archaeological findings and hypotheses.
First community-level analysis in Southeast Asian archaeology
On the local scale, the study provided the first community-level analysis in Southeast Asian archaeology. To investigate the relations between individuals, the authors used genetic regions that are identical in two individuals, because they were inherited from a common ancestor. The analysis of so-called IBD blocks (identical-by-descent) helps tracing complex biological relatedness patterns within a site and across regions – and had so far not been applied in archaeogenetic studies of Southeast Asia. The study identified close genetic relatives buried in the same cave system, such as parents and children or grandparents and grandchildren. This cluster of closely related individuals was more distantly connected to all other individuals buried at the site.
While this suggests a selection of burial place under consideration of genetic relatedness, the more distant genetic relationships between Log Coffin sites, a low level of consanguinity, as well as high mitochondrial and low genome-wide diversity suggest that the Log Coffin-associated groups were rather large and constantly connected to each other across different river valleys. “This result is highly significant, since wooden coffins were also used in other archaeological cultures all over Southeast Asia. Comparing relatedness patterns and cross-regional genetic connections would be a fascinating future collaborative project which could potentially explain the cultural dynamics and population interactions within Southeast Asian and other regions”, says Rasmi Shoocongdej.
*Genomic portrait and relatedness patterns of the Iron Age Log Coffin culture in northwestern Thailand, Nature Communications, 22-Dec-2023. 10.1038/s41467-023-44328-2
A team composed of scientists and scholars from Italy, Germany and Switzerland are suggesting that a form of writing was independently invented on Rap Nui (Easter Island) and used before European contact occurred in the early 18th century. To come to this consensus, they examined four inscribed wood tablets stored at the Congregazione dei Sacri Cuori di Gesù e di Maria, in Rome. The tablets featured a glyphic writing system known as Rongorongo, a local island script observed by outsiders in 1864. They employed radiocarbon dating techniques to date the wood upon which the script was inscribed.
“Until now, only two tablets [out of at least 27 known to exist] were directly dated, placing them in the nineteenth c. AD, which does not solve the question of independent invention,” states the study authors in the recently released paper published in Scientific Reports. “Here we radiocarbon-dated four Rongorongo tablets preserved in Rome, Italy. One specimen yielded a unique and secure mid-fifteenth c. date, while the others fall within the nineteenth c. AD. Our results suggest that the use of the script could be placed to a horizon that predates the arrival of external influence.”*
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The study report* was published in Nature on February 2, 2024.
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*Ferrara, S., Tassoni, L., Kromer, B. et al. The invention of writing on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). New radiocarbon dates on the Rongorongo script. Sci Rep14, 2794 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-53063-7
Image, Above: Rapa Nui tablet. (A) 3D model of the Rapa Nui tablet D Échancrée. (B) Enlargement on the script. ( Ferrara, S., Tassoni, L., Kromer, B. et al., CC-BY-4.0 Deed.
AlUla, Saudi Arabia, 1 February 2024: The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), the cultural custodian of northwest Arabia, has launched a new, inclusive heritage conservation campaign that aims to deepen and enrich the public’s knowledge, awareness, and desire to protect and uplift AlUla’s ancient history.
The I Care campaign, which launches 1 February, shines a local, national, and global spotlight on the importance of RCU’s diverse and ongoing heritage protection projects in AlUla as the county continues to be developed into the world’s largest living museum.
I Care will promote the need to safeguard AlUla’s diverse landscape of cultural assets, including natural and manmade monuments, as a means of boosting economic development, driving community engagement, and expanding people’s knowledge and appreciation of their AlUla’s storied past – goals that align with the aims of Saudi Vision 2030.
As an iconic first phase of the campaign, RCU has partnered with the acclaimed US artist David Popa to create a unique, landmark piece set within the landscape of AlUla itself. The artwork, which takes the shape of two protective hands, is constructed around the iconic Tomb of Lihyan, Son of Kuza, a monumental heritage destination at Hegra which was designated as Saudi Arabia’s first World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2008.
Famous for his sustainable approach and innovative techniques, Popa’s artwork is symbolic of I Care’s ambition to carefully protect and cherish places of great historic and cultural value – vulnerable sites that resonate deeply with the community and global heritage experts alike.
An impressive and ephemeral piece of creativity constructed using exclusively natural elements, including yellow earth from Europe and red earth from the Middle East, it is one of Popa’s largest to date. Designed to disintegrate in a matter of weeks, Popa’s artwork highlights the pressing need for collective action to safeguard cultural heritage locations in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, and the wider world.
Dr Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani, Executive Director of Archaeology, Conservation and Collections at RCU, said: “The roots of Saudi culture and tradition can be traced back millennia, influenced by civilisations as diverse as the Nabataeans, Minaeans and Lihyanites. The I Care campaign is an important and inclusive step towards increasing the AlUla community’s awareness and appreciation of the incredible history that exists on their doorstep.
“The Kingdom has made great strides to conserve and develop its cultural heritage and rich collection of assets, including AlUla with its 200,000 years of human history. As guardians of this unique crossroads for civilisations, RCU is focused on raising people’s awareness of the need to engage with conservation efforts through the new I Care campaign. This will help to deepen RCU’s connection with our community as we work towards a common, shared, and inclusive purpose – to protect and celebrate our heritage so it can be enjoyed for generations to come.”
US artist David Popa said: “Working on this project has been an immense privilege.I Care is not just a campaign; it is a celebration of AlUla’s and the Kingdom’s legacy and traditions. AlUla’s heritage is a treasure for the entire world, and I have been enriched by the enlightening conversations I have had with the local storytellers, the Rawis, the Heritage Rangers, and the young ambassadors being trained in the Hammayah programme to take on guardianship of this invaluable heritage.”
A key audience of the I Care campaign is AlUla’s younger generation. RCU will provide schools with comprehensive toolkits to educate and empower youngsters and their teachers through a series of carefully designed workshops that focus on the importance of heritage protection and how landmarks connect with the community stories, life, and traditions. RCU will also host school visits and community activities at AlUla’s diverse collection of historic landmarks, such as Hegra.
The community, young and old, have an active and key role to play in helping to conserve AlUla’s cultural landscape, with the I Care campaign seeking to fill any knowledge gaps and promote future discovery amongst residents, visiting tourists, and Saudi citizens.
With its landscape of diverse heritage sites, vast mountains, lush wadis, and wide-open desert scenery, AlUla is now established as a new global destination for culture, history, archaeological discovery, and the sharing of ancient knowledge.
AlUla is home to the extraordinary Nabataean city and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra; the city of Dadan, which was the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms; the Jabal Ikmah open-air library, whose ancient inscription are now included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register; and AlUla Old Town, which has been named as one of UNWTO’s Best Tourism Villages.
These sites and many others are part of RCU’s active programme of conservation, exploration, and study as AlUla is comprehensively regenerated into a destination for culturally curious tourists.
For more information on The Royal Commission for AlUla and its programmes, visit www.rcu.gov.sa.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – BERKELEY—A genetic analysis of bone fragments unearthed at an archaeological site in central Germany shows conclusively that modern humans — Homo sapiens — had already reached Northern Europe 45,000 years ago, overlapping with Neanderthals for several thousand years before the latter went extinct.
The findings establish that the site near Ranis, Germany, which is known for its finely flaked, leaf-shaped stone tool blades, is among the oldest confirmed sites of modern human Stone Age culture in north central and northwestern Europe.
The evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side is consistent with genomic evidence that the two species occasionally interbred. It also feeds the suspicion that the invasion of Europe and Asia by modern humans some 50,000 years ago helped drive Neanderthals, which had occupied the area for more than 500,000 years, to extinction.
The genetic analysis, along with an archaeological and isotopic analysis and radiocarbon dating of the Ranis site, are detailed in a trio of papers appearing today in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The stone blades at Ranis, referred to as leaf points, are similar to stone tools found at several sites in Moravia, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. These tools that are thought to have been produced by the same culture, referred to as the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician (LRJ) culture or technocomplex. Because of previous dating, the Ranis site was known to be 40,000 years old or older, but without recognizable bones to indicate who made the tools, it was unclear whether they were the product of Neanderthals or Homo sapiens.
The new findings demonstrate that “Homo sapiens made this technology, and that Homo sapiens were this far north at this time period, which is 45,000 years ago,” said Elena Zavala, one of four first authors of the Nature paper and a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. “So these are among the earliest Homo sapiens in Europe.”
Zavala was a Ph.D. student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig in 2018 when she first began working on the project, which was a major effort spearheaded by Jean-Jacque Hublin, former director of the institute and a professor at the Collège de France in Paris.
“The Ranis cave site provides evidence for the first dispersal of Homo sapiens across the higher latitudes of Europe. It turns out that stone artifacts that were thought to be produced by Neanderthals were, in fact, part of the early Homo sapiens toolkit,” Hublin said. “This fundamentally changes our previous knowledge about the period: Homo sapiens reached northwestern Europe long before Neanderthal disappearance in southwestern Europe.”
Bones from maternal relatives?
Zavala conducted the genetic analysis of hominid bone fragments from the new and deeper excavations at Ranis between 2016 and 2022 and from earlier excavations in the 1930s. Because the DNA in ancient bones is highly fragmented, she employed special techniques to isolate and sequence the DNA, all of it mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that is inherited solely from the mother.
“We confirmed that the skeletal fragments belonged to Homo sapiens. Interestingly, several fragments shared the same mitochondrial DNA sequences — even fragments from different excavations,” she said. “This indicates that the fragments belonged to the same individual or their maternal relatives, linking these new finds with the ones from decades ago.”
The bone fragments were initially identified as human through analysis of bone proteins — a field called paleoproteomics — by another first author, Dorothea Mylopotamitaki, a doctoral student at the Collège de France and fomerly of MPI-EVA.
By comparing the Ranis mitochondrial DNA sequences with mtDNA sequences obtained from human remains at other paleolithic sites in Europe, Zavala was able to construct a family tree of early Homo sapiens across Europe. All but one of the 13 Ranis fragments were quite similar to one another and, surprisingly, resembled mtDNA from the 43,000-year-old skull of a woman discovered in a cave at Zlatý kůň in the Czech Republic. The lone standout grouped with an individual from Italy.
“That raises some questions: Was this a single population? What could be the relationship here?” Zavala said. “But with mitochondrial DNA, that’s only one side of the history. It’s only the maternal side. We would need to have nuclear DNA to be able to start looking into this.”
A transitional site between Middle and Upper Paleolithic
Zavala specializes in the analysis of DNA found in long-buried bones, on bone tools and in sediment. Her search through sediment from various levels of the Ranis excavation turned up DNA from a broad array of mammals, but none from hominids. The analysis, combined with morphological, isotopic and proteomic analysis of bone fragments, paints a picture of the environment at that time and of the diet of both humans and animals that occupied the cave over the millennia.
The presence of reindeer, cave bear, woolly rhinoceros and horse bones, for example, indicated cold climatic conditions typical of steppe tundra and similar to conditions in Siberia and northern Scandinavia today, and a human diet based on large terrestrial animals. The researchers concluded that the cave was used primarily by hibernating cave bears and denning hyenas, with only periodic human presence.
“This lower-density archaeological signature matches other Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician sites and is best explained by expedient visits of short duration by small, mobile groups of pioneer H. sapiens,” according to one of the papers published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
“This shows that even these earlier groups of Homo sapiens dispersing across Eurasia already had some capacity to adapt to such harsh climatic conditions,” said Sarah Pederzani, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of La Laguna in Spain, who led the paleoclimate study of the site. “Until recently, it was thought that resilience to cold-climate conditions did not appear until several thousand years later, so this is a fascinating and surprising result.”
The Ranis site, called Ilsenhöhle and located at the base of a castle, was initially excavated mainly between 1932 and 1938. The leaf points found there were eventually assigned to the final years of the Middle Paleolithic period — between about 300,000 and 30,000 years ago — or the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which begins around 50,000 years ago.
Because of the importance of the Ranis site for understanding the LRJ technocomplex and the transition from the Neanderthal-associated late Middle Paleolithic to the modern human Upper Paleolithic in central Europe, Hublin and his team decided to reexcavate the site using modern tools of archaeology.
The new excavations extended to bedrock, about 8 meters below the surface, and involved removing a rock — likely fallen from the cave ceiling — that had halted the previous excavation. Here, Hublin’s team uncovered chips from flint tools and a quartzite flake consistent with the LRJ technocomplex. Subsequent proteomic analysis of thousands of recovered bone chips confirmed that four were from hominids. Of bone chips uncovered during the 1930s excavations, nine were from hominids.
Zavala’s DNA analysis confirmed that all 13 bone fragments came from Homo sapiens.
A revised settlement history of Northern Europe
The team also carried out radiocarbon dating of human and animal bones from different layers of the site to reconstruct the site’s chronology, focusing on bones with traces of human modifications on their surfaces, which links their dates to human presence in the cave.
“We found very good agreement between the radiocarbon dates from the Homo sapiens bones from both excavation collections and with modified animal bones from the LRJ layers of the new excavation, making a very strong link between the human remains and LRJ. The evidence suggests that Homo sapiens were sporadically occupying the site from as early as 47,500 years ago,” said another first author, Helen Fewlass, a former Max Planck researcher who is now a European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
“The results from the Ilsenhöhle in Ranis fundamentally changed our ideas about the chronology and settlement history of Europe north of the Alps,” added Tim Schüler of the Thuringian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments and Archaeology in Weimar, Germany.
Among other co-authors of the Nature paper are co-first author Marcel Weiss of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Shannon McPherron of MPI-EVA, who co-led the Ranis excavation with Hublin, Schüler and Weiss. Zavala, in addition to being co-first author of the Nature paper, co-authored the two papers in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The excavations and much of the subsequent analysis were financially supported by the Max Planck Society.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—A baton made of mammoth ivory discovered in a German cave appears to be a tool that was used more than 35,000 years ago to make sturdy rope, according to a new analysis* by Nicholas Conard and Veerle Rots. The tool offers a glimpse at how people of the early Upper Paleolithic may have aligned and combined fibers to create multi-strand rope that could be used in various technologies. The baton was found in pieces at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, among other artifacts attributed to the Aurignacian archaeological culture in Central Europe. Radiocarbon dating of animal bones showing signs of human modification places the collection of artifacts between 40,000 and 35,000 years old, the researchers conclude. The baton itself has four holes, with each hole containing precisely carved spiraling grooves. To learn more about the baton’s use, Conard and Rots looked for traces of wear and plant residues in the perforations of the Hohle Fels tool and in a similar artifact from another German archaeological site from the period. The wear and residues found in both artifacts suggest that fibers were pulled through the holes, guided by the grooved pattern. The researchers then reproduced the perforated tool and tested deer sinew and a variety of plant fibers through its holes, finding that the tool helped to straighten, align, and combine multiple strands of fiber. The experiments required several people to operate the tool, which suggests that making rope in Aurignacian times may have been a cooperative effort, Conard and Rots note.
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Ivory perforated baton from Hohle Fels Cave, southwestern Germany with four views. Conard et al, Sci. Adv. 10, eadh5217 (2024)
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Macro- and microscopic images of the ivory perforated baton and residue evidence. Conard et al, Sci. Adv. 10, eadh5217 (2024)
Editor’s Note: The following article is a republication of a previous article published September 6, 2016 at Popular Archaeology Magazine.
Ein Hatzeva.
In Hebrew, it means “strong spring”.
It also describes the ancient place by this name about 35 kms south of the Dead Sea.
The name says it all, because deep in this desert region, in what the ancients called the Arava, water meant everything. The natural fresh water spring made it a reason for ancient roads to converge here — a critical and welcoming oasis for traveling caravans along the spice and incense route, facilitating commerce and providing much-needed rest for weary travelers. And with this clear strategic value, it became a perfect place for expanding kingdoms to establish their presence.
Fortresses on the Edge
Although the fresh water oasis of Ein Hatzeva has been thought by some to have possibly accommodated ancient Amorites and other wandering, nomadic peoples, it was mostly expanding commerce that transformed this tiny spot into a strategic way station on the fringe of kingdoms. It sat at the intersection of the main Arava road and the Negev-Edom road, a critical stopping point for the traveling caravans of spices and other goods and, at one time, a good location to facilitate oversight and protection of the copper mines at Faynan, near Eilat.
And a good place to build a fort.
Which is why Ein Hatzeva, otherwise known as Biblical Tamar*, has seen the presence of at least five succeeding major fortifications. Archaeological excavations since 1972 have uncovered at least 8 historic periods, revealing a sequence including Early Israelite, Edomite, Nabataean, Roman, Early Arab, and later occupations.
The Israelite and Judahite Fortresses
The earliest of the fortifications was constructed during the 10th century BCE. Comparatively small, some scholars and archaeologists have interpreted these Iron Age remains as one of a number of fortifications constructed throughout the land to secure the border of the united kingdom of Israel under Solomon**. But the most magnificent of the Iron Age fortifications was built somewhat later (archaeologists suggesting its construction during the 9th-8th centuries BCE), atop and around the smaller, older fortress footprint. This fortress, according to Biblical scholars, represented the might of the Kingdom of Judah, although it is not certain who among the Judahite kings was responsible for initiating its construction. Some suggest King Jehoshaphat (867 – 846 BCE), desiring an enlarged fortress as part of his policy to renew and build upon commercial ties with the rich kingdoms of present day southern Arabia to the south and east. Others suggest King Amaziah (798-769 BCE) or Uzziah (769-733 BCE).
In any case, the enlarged fortress is considered to have been among the largest Judahite fortresses ever built, fulfilling a critical role in the Kingdom of Judah’s border defenses. Beginning in the first expansion with a 50 x 50 meter surrounding wall, it was later expanded to 100 x 100 meters, comparable in area to a town of the time. Excavations have uncovered a massive three-meter-thick casemate wall, the casemate sections filled with packed earth. Buttressing the wall was a defensive rampart. Towers were set at its corners. A four-chambered gatethouse complex (a standard feature for cities and fortifications of the period) still stands to a height of three meters in the northeastern corner of the fortress remains. Not intended by its original builders, however, part of the gate complex leans, as if, with one powerful push, one could topple it over. It is a testament to damage caused by a powerful earthquake in the mid-8th century BCE. The fortress remains also feature stores or granaries and silos for food—evidence of wheat and barley found within one of the silos—and a defensive moat.
But as massive and imposing as the 8th century fortress was, the Judahite kingdom eventually lost control of what is today the Negev region, leaving opportunity for expansion by the neighboring Edomites and the fortress’s resulting destruction near the end of the 8th century BCE. A smaller 7th century fortress was built over the remains of the former, but it never attained the grandeur and defensive prowess that characterized the previous larger fortress.
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Aerial view of the excavated remains at Ein Hatzeva. Credit: Biblewalks.com
Aerial view of the excavated remains of Ein Hatzeva with excavated area of the first Iron Age (10th century BCE) Israelite fortress highlighted in yellow. Credit: Biblewalks.com
Aerial view of the excavated remains of Ein Hatzeva with excavated area of the first Judahite fortress (9th-8th centuries BCE) highlighted in yellow. Credit: Biblewalks.com
Aerial view of the excavated remains of Ein Hatzeva with excavated area of the expanded Judahite fortress (9th-8th centuries BCE) highlighted in yellow. Credit: Biblewalks.com
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View of a section of the Iron Age (Israelite) city gate complex remains, one of the grandest discovered in the ‘Holy Land’ region to this day.
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Above and below, view of a section of the Iron Age (Israelite) city gate complex remains.
Above: View of the exterior remains of the northwest wall of the expanded Iron Age fortress
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The Four-Room House
A key feature uncovered at Ein Hatzeva was a four-room house, built during the period of the Israelite/Judahite fortifications:
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Above and below: The foundation still visible, pictured here are its remains—what archaeologists have identified as a classic Israelite four-room house structure. Most houses inhabited by the Israelites during the Iron Age, beginning at the end of the 11th century BCE until about the time of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE, were designed after this floor plan pattern. It characterized the ground floor of the house, as this is the house level that could be determined through archaeological investigation. It typically featured four sections, or rooms, three of which were defined by two rows of wooden pillars arrayed through the center of the structure and functioning to divide the spaces, and the fourth ‘broadroom’ oriented across the back or rear of the three vertical rooms. This ground level typically functioned as space to stable livestock and for storage. The family, or extended family, resided on the upper level. Like any domicile even today, these houses varied in size, and were constructed either as stand-alone houses or as connected houses (ancient equivalent of the modern day townhouse). Many connected houses were constructed with the back, or broadroom, exterior wall abutting the surrounding casemate wall of a city. Walls, constructed of fieldstones and dried mud, were typically around one meter in thickness, with exterior walls often thicker. The house exteriors were likely plastered to prevent water erosion. Archaeological investigation has revealed that smaller urban houses may have been clustered, sharing exterior walls between and likely inhabited by nuclear families, whereas larger stand-alone houses, like the one illustrated here at Ein Hatzeva, belonged to wealthy or extended families of the elite. “This is the biggest Israelite house in Israel,” says Dr. DeWayne Coxon of the house at Ein Hatzeva. “It was probably the priest’s house.” Coxon is President of Blossoming Rose, the organization that curates the archaeological site at Ein Hatzeva.
Along with the Israelite and Roman fortresses, bathhouse, and the Edomite cultic shrine, the large Israelite four-room house stands as one of the distinguishing features of the archaeological park, known as the Biblical Tamar Park, administered by Blossoming Rose on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
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The Shrine
During the 7th century BCE, just north of the fortress ruins, the Edomites built a temple or cultic shrine, likely functioning to serve traders journeying from Edom to the Negev region. Excavations have revealed the foundational outlines of the structure, as well as an assemblage of broken ritual clay vessels and evidence of several stone altars, discovered in a repository within the structure. The finds include bowl-shaped incense stands on round bases, one of them featuring small clay objects in the shape of pomegranates (considered symbols of fertility), originally hanging from hooks; and anthropomorphic stands featuring human figures with decorated bowls atop their heads.
Archaeologists and historians suggest that the shrine was probably destroyed and the ritual objects smashed during the reign of the Judahite king Josiah, who embarked on a campaign of religious reforms at the end of the 7th century BCE. The Biblical account (2 Kings 22-23) records this campaign of destruction. The shrine remains and the ritual vessels found at the site are currently exhibited at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
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Above and below: Two views of the shrine remains. Above photo courtesy Victoria Brogdon.
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Aerial view of the site remains, highlighting the locations of the four-room house and shrine in relation to the ancient fortress remains. Credit: Biblewalks.com
Archaeologists unearthed evidence of a small Nabataean (1st century BCE – 1st century CE) fortress and temple beneath the remains of the later Roman fortress (described below). Investigators believe these structures were constructed here as part of a way station the Nabataeans established as a rest and commercial stop along their Incense road.
The Romans
Ancient Rome’s expanding empire from the 1st century BCE through the 4th century CE saw its presence in almost every corner of the known Western world, and the attractive desert oasis of Ein Hatzeva was no exception. Because of its location along the lucrative caravan routes for transport and trade in spice and merchandise, not to mention its position relative to controlling and protecting the critical Faynan copper mines to the southeast near present-day Eilat and territorial defense against the incursion of outside nomadic tribes, the Romans quickly recognized the imperative of establishing a strategic foothold here. A large Roman fortress took shape over its gentle rise of earth and ruins, and soldiers were garrisoned here in a new fortification, the architectural remains of which have been unearthed by teams of archaeologists in recent years. Part of the massive Roman fortress has been exposed and partially restored by experts and volunteers, including a significant associated bathhouse complex.
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Aerial view showing highlighted Roman fortifications and structures. Credit: Biblewalks.com
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Above and below: Excavated sections of the Roman period bathouse remains.
For decades, Blossoming Rose, the organization established to administer the site of Ein Hatzeva as an archaeological park, has governed the planning and execution of activities related to the park on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Today, the site hosts volunteer groups for continuing site restoration and excavation, as well as tour groups organized by various organizations and tour leaders in the country visiting the biblically historic sites throughout the ‘Holy Land’ region. Many visitors, by arrangement, stay in rustic but comfortable accommodations while performing volunteer or other activities at the site.
Although Ein Hatzeva, or Biblical Tamar, is off the beaten path for most typical tour groups and visitors to this historic region of the world, the site administrators and archaeologists hope that the significance of the site will continue to rise on the ‘radar screens’ of the general public and those visiting the region. Certainly the site’s finds, both monumental and small, have played an important role in helping archaeologists and historians to better understand the history and culture of the region. Indeed, according to Coxon, there are 26,000 artifacts from this site alone in the Israel Museum, one of the nation of Israel’s most visited destinations and arguably one of the world’s preeminent archaeologic museums.
There is much more work to be done at Ein Hatzeva before the full story of its remains can be realized. With funding and a greater commitment of resources, however, the site can prospectively yield much more, including the possibility of uncovering remains from time periods pre-dating the Iron Age, or Israelite, period. More information about the site and the park can be obtained at blossomingrose.org.
*The archaeological remains were surveyed near the start of the 20th century and then excavations between 1987 and 1995 confirmed its identification with Biblical Tamar: Ezekiel 48:28 —“The border shall be even from Tamar by the waters of strife in Kadesh (Ezekiel 48:28) and as the Roman Tamara.”
** 1 Kings 9: 17-18: “And Solomon built Gezer, and Beth-horon the nether, and Baalath, and Tadmor [Tamar] in the wilderness, in the land……”
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UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—Last summer, archaeologists from Gothenburg University and Kiel University excavated a dolmen, a stone burial chamber, in Tiarp near Falköping in Sweden. The archaeologists judge that the grave has remained untouched since the Stone Age. However, the odd thing is that parts of the skeletons of the people buried are missing.
Skulls and large bones are missing and may have been removed from the grave. We don’t know whether that has to do with burial rituals or what’s behind it,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
Now that the researchers have examined the material from the grave, they have found that it contains bones from hands and feet, fragments of rib bones and teeth. But skulls and larger bones such as thigh and arm bones are very few.
“This differs from what we usually see in megalith graves, i.e. stone burial chambers from the Neolithic period,” Karl-Göran Sjögren explains. “Usually, the bones that are missing are smaller bones from feet and hands.”
Torbjörn Ahlström, Professor of Osteology at Lund University, studied the bone finds. His conclusion is that the bones come from at least twelve people, including infants and the elderly. But the archaeologists don’t yet know why they died.
“We haven’t seen any injuries on the people buried so we don’t think violence is involved. But we are continuing to study their DNA and that will show whether they had any diseases,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
Falköping has long been known for its many passage graves dating from a somewhat later period, approximately 3300 BCE. Agriculture reached Falbygden in about 4000 BCE, i.e. about 500 years before the grave in Tiarp was built. In all likelihood, the people buried in the dolmen were farmers.
“They lived by growing grain and keeping animals and they consumed dairy products,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
Are the people buried in the grave related?
A number of samples were taken at the excavation last summer, including DNA from the skeletal remains.
“The preliminary DNA results show that the DNA in the bones is well preserved. This means we will be able to reconstruct the family relationships between the people in the grave and we are working on that now,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
Falbygden is known for its many traces of people from the Stone Age. There are more than 250 passage graves here, large graves built of blocks of stone.
“But this dolmen is older. It’s about 200 to 150 years older than the passage graves, making it one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden and across the whole of Scandinavia,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
There is another thing that makes the grave unique.
“It’s the way it is constructed. There’s a little niche at each end. This is unique for graves in Falbygden,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.
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The archaeological excavation in Tiarp in summer 2023 was carried out jointly by Gothenburg and Kiel Universities. From left: Julia Dietrich, Ann-Katrin Klein, Malou Blank and Karl-Göran Sjögren. Photo: Cecilia Sjöberg
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The chamber under excavation. East side mould removed. The plastic tubes are samples for environmental DNA. Photo: Karl-Göran Sjögren
*Tiarp Backgården. An Early Neolithic Dolmen in Falbygden, Sweden and Early Megalithic Tombs in South Scandinavia and Northern Central Europe, Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, 22-Dec-2023. https://doi.org/10.12766/jna.2023.8
UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING—The oft-used description of early humans as “hunter-gatherers” should be changed to “gatherer-hunters,” at least in the Andes of South America, according to groundbreaking research led by a University of Wyoming archaeologist.
Archaeologists long thought that early human diets were meat based. However, Assistant Professor Randy Haas’ analysis of the remains of 24 individuals from the Wilamaya Patjxa and Soro Mik’aya Patjxa burial sites in Peru shows that early human diets in the Andes Mountains were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.
The study, titled “Stable isotope chemistry reveals plant-dominant diet among early foragers on the Andean Altiplano,” has been published by the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE. It applies methods in isotope chemistry and statistical modeling to unveil a surprising twist in early Andean societies and traditional hunter-gatherer narratives.
“Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting — an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the Paleodiet,” Haas says. “Our analysis shows that the diets were composed of 80 percent plant matter and 20 percent meat.”
For these early humans of the Andes, spanning from 9,000 to 6,500 years ago, there is indeed evidence that hunting of large mammals provided some of their diets. But the new analysis of the isotopic composition of the human bones shows that plant foods made up the majority of individual diets, with meat playing a secondary role.
Additionally, burnt plant remains from the sites and distinct dental-wear patterns on the individuals’ upper incisors indicate that tubers — or plants that grow underground, such as potatoes — likely were the most prominent subsistence resource.
“Our combination of isotope chemistry, paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological methods offers the clearest and most accurate picture of early Andean diets to date,” Haas says. “These findings update our understanding of earliest forager economies and the pathway to agricultural economies in the Andean highlands.”
Joining Haas in the study were researchers from Penn State University, the University of California-Merced, the University of California-Davis, Binghamton University, the University of Arizona and the National Register of Peruvian Archaeologists.
Undergraduate students also had the opportunity to conduct research during the initial 2018 excavations at the Wilamaya Patjxa burial site.
Currently a Ph.D. student in anthropology at Penn State University, Jennifer Chen, the journal article’s lead author and a former undergraduate student in Haas’ research lab, performed the isotope lab work and much of the isotope analysis following the excavations.
“Food is incredibly important and crucial for survival, especially in high-altitude environments like the Andes,” Chen says. “A lot of archaeological frameworks on hunter-gatherers, or foragers, center on hunting and meat-heavy diets — but we are finding that early hunter-gatherers in the Andes were mostly eating plant foods like wild tubers.”
Haas notes that archaeologists now have the tools to understand early human diets, and their results are not what they anticipated. This case study demonstrates for the first time that early human economies, in at least one part of the world, were plant based.
“Given that archaeological biases have long misled archaeologists — myself included — in the Andes, it is likely that future isotopic research in other parts of the world will similarly show that archaeologists have also gotten it wrong elsewhere,” he says.
Haas investigates human behavior in forager societies of the past to better understand human behavior in the present. He leads archaeological excavations and survey projects in the Andes and mountain regions of western North America. To learn more about his research, email Haas at whaas@uwyo.edu.
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The Wilamaya Patjxa archeological site in Peru produced human remains showing that the diets of early people of the Andes were primarily composed of plant materials. Randy Haas
*Stable isotope chemistry reveals plant-dominant diet among early foragers on the Andean Altiplano, PLoS ONE, 24-Jan-2024. 10.1371/journal.pone.0296420
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—High-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions from southern Italy, dating to between around 200 BCE and 600 CE, provide a clearer picture of how climate and disease intersected in ancient Rome. Reconstructions showed that temperature and precipitation became increasingly unstable after ~130 CE, with several cold periods tied to historic pandemic outbreaks such as the Justinian Plague. Paleoclimate proxies can offer insights into how past climate change may have influenced human societies, such as when warm or cool intervals coincided with periods of social development or pandemics. The Roman Warm Period – identified from paleoclimate proxies as an era of unusual warmth between roughly 200 BCE and 150 CE – has been associated with a time of prosperity for the Roman Empire. Alternatively, the onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age around 540 CE, coinciding with the Justinian Plague, is thought to have played a key role in the empire’s decline. Sparse proxy records have made it difficult to characterize these dynamics in detail. Here, Zonneveld et al.* studied temperature and precipitation records at ~3-year resolution between 200 BCE to 600 CE, using proxy data from marine sediments found in the Gulf of Taranto. They observed stronger climate variability beginning after ~130 CE, marking the apparent end of the Roman Warm Period. Comparing these reconstructions with existing records of infectious disease outbreaks in the heart of Rome, they found pulses of ever cooler and drier conditions coinciding with three major pandemics: the Antonine Plague (~165 to 180 CE), the Plague of Cyprian (~251 to 266 CE), and the Justinian Plague, the first wave of the First Plague Pandemic, which began around 540 CE. An extreme temperature drop – about 3°C cooler than the warmest intervals of the Roman Warm Period – occurred between around 537-590 CE, Zonneveld et al. found, which may have amplified the devastation of the Justinian Plague when it emerged in the region.
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St Sebastian pleading for the life of a gravedigger afflicted with plague during the 7th-century Plague of Pavia. Painting at the Walters Art Museum, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
A team of archaeologists excavating at the site of Ziyaret Tepe in southeastern Turkey discovered a rare and unique cuneiform tablet — one that tells a story of frustration and desperation expressed by an ancient Assyrian official, providing a glimpse of conditions in the Assyrian Empire just before its collapse in the 7th century, B.C.
Recovered within the remains of what archaeologists have identified as an administrative complex, the clay tablet, small enough to be held in the palm of one’s hand, features, in cuneiform script, a letter written by Mannu-ki-libbali, who was a senior official of the Assyrian provincial capital of Tushan. Tushan was a 7th-century city that governed an area on the outskirts of the Assyrian Empire. In the letter, he responds to an order to assemble a unit of chariotry, but he explains that all of the skilled professionals he needed to accomplish it had already fled the city. He expresses his frustration and resignation with these final statements:
“How can I command? ….. Death will come out of it. No one will escape. I am done!”
“This letter is unparalleled,” writes the excavation leadership in an article published in Popular Archaeology Magazine. “It can only have been written as the front line drew close to Tushan and the infrastructure of the empire collapsed. As a first-hand account of Assyria in its death-throes it is unique.”
The administrative complex in which the tablet was found also yielded a remarkable archive of cuneiform tablets. Totaling 27, they were discovered in fragments on the floors of the rooms of the complex. “The contents of the tablets include movements of grain, the loan of a slave, lists of personnel, the resettlement of people and a census enumerating military officers and their agricultural holdings,” wrote the excavation leadership about the finds. “But the majority of the tablets deal with transactions of barley – deliveries from outlying farmsteads, loans and payments for rations.”They span the period from 614 BC to 611 BC — around the time of the the fall of Nineveh.
“This is the first time that Assyrian administrative texts from this period have ever been found,” stated dig directors Timothy Matney and John MacGinnis. The archive provides a window on the Assyrian world as the Babylonian king Nabopolassar was waging military campaigns against a disintegrating Assyrian empire.
Full-scale excavations at Ziyaret Tepe began in 2000 and lasted for 12 seasons. Located on the upper Tigris river abut 60 km east of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, the site consists of a central mound 30 m high and the remains of a surrounding lower town about 30 hectares in area. The project, which was headed in the field by Prof. Timothy Matney of the University of Akron, Ohio, began with geophysical prospection and ceramic surface collection, and work at the site eventually yielded structural and artifact remains that evidenced a massive provincial capital that flourished for almost 300 years. According to written records, it was founded on a previously occupied site by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in 882 BC, but was then finally captured by the Babylonian king Nabopolassar in 611 BC. Archaeologists have uncovered a palace, an administrative complex, elite residences, and a military barracks at the site.
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Letter ZTT 22, in which the writer Mannu-ki-libbali reports on the disintegration of the military infrastructure as the Assyrian empire collapsed. Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project
CNRS—Our ancestors were already living in the north of present-day China around 45,000 years ago. This discovery, made as a result of research at the Shiyu site by an international team including researchers from CNRS1 , challenges the established timeline of colonization in China by Homo sapiens populations 40,000 years ago.
Located about 20 kilometers from the city of Shuozhou, the Shiyu site is, to date, the oldest archaeological site with evidence of the arrival of modern humans in China. Artifacts discovered, including a perforated disc made of graphite — currently the oldest jewelry item ever found in China — and a bifacially shaped bone tool, present a series of characteristics indicative of a diverse range of cultural influences at the time our species arrived in the region. Analysis of tools made of obsidian, a volcanic rock, also revealed the existence of social networks spread over distances of up to 1,000 kilometers. Scientists believe that interactions between Homo sapiens and indigenous populations, far more complex than archaeologists previously imagined, led to significant genetic and cultural mixing.
These results, published on 18 January in Nature Ecology & Evolution,* shed new light on the global expansion of Homo sapiens and broaden our understanding of human history.
1 – Working at the “From prehistory to today: culture, environment and anthropology” laboratory (CNRS/French Ministry of Culture/Université de Bordeaux).
*Initial Upper Palaeolithic material culture by 45,000 years ago at Shiyu in northern China. Shi-Xia Yang, Jia-Fu Zhang, Jian-Ping Yue, Rachel Wood, Yu-Jie Guo, Han Wang, Wu-Gan Luo, Yue Zhang, Emeline Raguin, Ke-Liang Zhao, Yu-Xiu Zhang, Fa-Xiang Huan, Ya-Mei Hou, Wei-Wen Huang, Yi-Ren Wang, Jin-Ming Shi, Bao-Yin Yuan, Andreu Ollé, Alain Queffelec, Li-Ping Zhou, Cheng-Long Deng, Francesco d’Errico and Michael Petraglia (2023). Nature Ecology and Evolution, 18 janvier 2024.
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)—Ancient DNA and isotopic analyses of a female woolly mammoth tusk dated to be 14,000 years old has helped scientists trace her relatives and migration route, from the western Yukon to her final resting place in an early Alaskan hunter-gatherer settlement. Although there is no direct evidence that humans actively hunted this mammoth, the presence of other mammoth remains in and around the camp site suggest that mammoth herds congregated there, Audrey Rowe and colleagues say – and humans may have chosen the site’s location specifically for that reason. The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an iconic ice age animal, subject to ongoing debates over the causes of its extinction and recent efforts to “de-extinct” it. The species thrived in steppe tundra across northern Eurasia and Beringia (what is now Russia and Alaska) during the last ice age. Humans are thought to have spread across Beringia between 20 and 12 thousand years ago, overlapping with woolly mammoths for at least 1,000 years. Although humans are known to have used these animals for food and raw materials such as ivory, details about whether they actively hunted the giants, and how humans may have affected the animals’ extinction, remain elusive. Here, Rowe et al.* examined a full woolly mammoth tusk among other mammoth remains found at Swan Point – a 14,000-year-old archaeological site in Tanana Valley, central Alaska, thought to have been used as a seasonal hunting camp by early Alaskans. DNA showed that the mammoth was a young adult female, around 20 years old when she died, and was closely related to other mammoths found at the site. Isotope analyses revealed that she likely spent the beginning of her life in what is now northwestern Canada before migrating about 1,000 kilometers northwestward for around 2.5 years, through the White Mountains and eventually into the camp where her tusk was found.
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Sequential isotopic analyses along an entire ~60-cm-long transect of a female mammoth tusk from the Swan Point archeological site, interior Alaska. Rowe et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadk0818 (2024)
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Artist’s rendering of a mammoth traversing the landscape. Willgard, Pixabay
Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics from history, culture, and beliefs to daily living of ancient and today’s indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and South America. His articles are published online at travelthruhistory.com, ancient-origins.net and popular-archaeology.com, and in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com). In the U.K. his articles are found in mexicolore.co.uk.
The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org, Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. (rgs.org). He is a member in good standing with the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX (mayaexploration.org) the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA (archaeological.org),NFAA-Non Fiction Authors Association (nonfictionauthrosassociation.com) and the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. (americanindian.si.edu).
The Lambayeque region in northern Peru is home to cultures as great as any other that emerged in the country’s Pacific Coast and in the Andes Mountains.
One of them is the Chachapoya, whose history arose east of Chiclayo in the rugged and remote northwestern province of Amazonas, bounded by the Marañón River valley to the north and west, and the Huallaga River to the south and east. Between these large rivers, affluents of the powerful Amazon, lies the Utcubamba valley, where the citadel of Kuélap was built ten thousand feet up in the northern Andes mountains.
Map shows location of Chachapoya culture in Peru (in green). Marco Carrasco, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The Chachapoyas’ origins are uncertain, but they are believed to have migrated centuries ago, probably from Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest. Moving west, they crossed the mighty and dangerous Marañón (or Atunmayo River), a tributary of the Amazon, whose challenging power made their return hazardous. For this reason and because of their relative isolation, the Chachapoyas are a little-known ethnic group among the ancient societies of the Andes.
The culture appears to have developed sometime between the seventh and ninth centuries (unless otherwise noted, all dates are AD/CE). Sometime after that, at a cultural crossroads that once connected villages on the northeastern slopes of the Andes, the Chachapoyas developed trade with the cultures of the Amazon and with those on the lower western slopes of the Andes. Remains of their ancient villages (ayllus) and structures can be found between the Marañón and the Huallaga rivers.
The timeline of the Chachapoyas (called “Warriors of the Clouds” by scholars for their remote location in the tropical jungle-clad mountains of the northern Andes), points to interactions with the Chimú (900-1470) and other cultures on northern Peru’s Pacific Coast. They were followed by the Quechua (Runasimi) speakers from the central Andes around the late 900s (Lathrap, 1970; Isbell, 1974). The new arrivals cultivated maize on artificial stepped terraces at select elevations, but favored settlement locations on high defensible ridge tops, between seven thousand and eleven thousand feet. The geographic limits for the people we call Chachapoya, however, have never been clearly defined (Bradley, 2005). They were later conquered by the Incas, who appear to have given them the name Chachapoyas, since there is no record of their original name in the local language.
The Citadel
It is during the mid-fifteenth century that the tenth Sapa-Inca, Tupac Inca Yupanqui (1471-1493), the son of the great Pachacuti, conquered the Chachapoyas and forcibly transferred local villagers under the Inca system of forced resettlement of conquered people to other parts of the empire known as mitmaq. Archaeologist Federico Kauffmann Doig (2017) describes a citadel built on two large and leveled platforms on the ten thousand feet high plateau called La Barreta that overlooks much of the Utcubamba river valley. La Barreta is two thousand feet long by five hundred feet wide, narrowing down to less than a hundred feet in parts of its length. A seventy feet high stone wall surrounds most of the plateau.
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Eastern facade of the wall surrounding Kuélap fortress. Martin St-Amant, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons
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The citadel’s location, in the area’s cold and windy climate, was ideal as a storage facility for grains, other dry foodstuff and possibly, for short-time storage, dehydrated meat. It was also dedicated to the local animist cult, with buildings for permanent residents such as priests, civic leaders, and service staff. The circular structures were built for storage. They have no openings for either doors or windows; however, several were found to have small access ramps. The cone-shaped roofs were made of natural fibers tied onto a wood frame. There were openings for both access to storage from the top and ventilation at ground level to let in the dry mountain air. The reason for such a large food storage complex was primarily to answer periods of bad crops, among which were those generated by El Niño and La Niña climate events, which periodically decimated coastal and highland cultures. Each farmer may have contributed to a set quantity of products from their crops for storage under a levy or tax system.
Kuélap is built in concentric tiers within which are over five hundred densely packed structures enclosed by the site’s outer wall, which is seventy feet high in its highest section (Narváez, 1996). Within the complex are several groups of circular buildings, as well as five square ones that may have housed administrators and service staff. Among the structures is the Atalaya, a forty-foot-high rectangular stone tower. Located at the northern low end of the plateau, it was a lookout post as well as a bastion from which to defend the site from attack along this lowest part of the ridge (Muscutt, 1993). At the opposite end of the site is an unusual circular structure called the Tintero (inkwell) for its inverted conical shape with sides flaring outward at its top. The neck of the inkwell forms a chimney that can only be accessed from above.
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The fortress of Kuélap. Shown here are living quarters and storage. Elemaki, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
James McGraw, from the San Diego Museum of Man, noticed that the chimney is not fully vertical but deliberately tilted. Its dimensions correlate with the sun at noon on the day of the winter solstice, a key day in Andean rituals for agricultural cycles. At that time, the sun rays shine down the Tintero‘s top opening and projects a beam of light onto its floor. At its bottom were carved stones that may have served to track the movement of the sun, making the structure a solar calendrical observatory (Muscutt, 1993). Geometrical pattern motifs are found on select structures, together with representations of the jaguar and the serpent, both symbols found in most ancient cultures of the Americas. The jaguar is the dominant life-form in most domains by day or night, while the serpent is associated with nature’s rebirth, witnessed by the periodic shedding of its skin (molting).
When Bandelier (1907) and Langlois (1934) visited Kuélap, they noted that many of the niches in the buildings were used as open graves, for they found human remains on the outside of their walls, making the site both a living and a mortuary community. Even though the context for many of these burials is unknown, recent excavations have revealed the presence of many entombments within the site’s walls. Archaeologist Narváez, after counting over a hundred such burials, concluded that “in reality the outer wall is a cemetery” (1988). Recent excavations suggest that other burials could still be found within the site’s walls. Two trapezoidal entryways, about two hundred feet long and ten feet wide at the entry point, allowed access to the citadel. However, their width narrows down to allow only one person at a time to enter the guarded gate to the central plaza (Narvaez, 1988). A third narrow corridor opens west; it is difficult to access from the outside and was probably used to discard material in a ravine below.
Who built Kuélap is uncertain, for archaeological evidence is scant (Muscutt, 1998). Earlier dates indicate that it might have been originally conceived for defense against the expansion of the Chimú Empire, which exerted control over much of the central highlands (Kauffmann Doig, 1998). The site was likely visible from agricultural fields that lie west of the Utcubamba river. Church and Von Hagen report that many of the large communities that lie to the west of the citadel are in locations directly visible from the site’s outer walls (2007), such as the town of Chillo, in Kuélap’s shadows. The remains within the citadel’s walls were in all probability those of select ancestors of people living in nearby villages. Crandall points out that the social relationship between ancestor remains and living people, was an ongoing set of practices designed to reaffirm social ties to the ayllu or kin group (2012).
Based on Ruiz’s association (1972), the monumental construction and tombs probably began around the year 900. Southern sites, however, such as Gran Pajatén, Los Pinchudos and Revash, in today’s Rio Abiseo National Park, were occupied in Inca times (Bonavia, 1968, Church, Von Hagen, 2008). Other larger regional centers, besides Kuélap, appear to have developed between the eighth and tenth centuries. In the late nineteen-nineties, the area south of Leymebamba received much attention when pre-Columbian chullpas, (mausoleums or funeral houses), were found at Revash, fifty-two miles from Kuélap in the surrounding hills around Gran Pajatén, which may have been built at the height of the Chachapoya cultural florescence in the first millennium.
Karajia
The citadel is an imposing socio-economic and religious complex, whose purposes were like those of other smaller sites. The common denominator with those sites is the prevalence of ancestor remains, which are found in either a coffin or wrapped up in funerary bundles placed in mausoleums. As Crandal (2012) notes, Chachapoya ontology, akin to other Andean people, was predicated on a collective relationship to ancestors who played an active role in reproducing social life. Coffins are called purunmatshus in the local language and were made to receive a single individual. The erect purunmatshus of Karajia in Luya province, are among the most eminent. They are found in large recesses carved in an abrupt rock face, that creates a rocky overhang, thus shielding them from the rain and helping in their preservation.
Their isolated location and overhang were at times insufficient against birds and rodents. They were studied by Kauffmann Doig and his teams during their field research which spanned from the late-1970s to the mid-2000s. The Karajia purunmatshus were found 985 feet up the rock wall overlooking the Aispacha River, each holding a family member or close relative. The coffins are made of clay mixed with natural fibers set on a wood frame; they portray a human shape that, at over eight feet in their upright position, is impressive.
Their appearance is chiefly due to the modeling of their heads and faces, the only anatomical reference to a human body. Their faces and bodies are painted with yellow, tan, and dark ochre designs that make them appear surrealistic and underline that they are men. Even though a few stands alone, they are commonly found in groups of four to ten standing on a thick mud base.
A space between the line of coffins at Karajia, shows that there were originally eight purunmatshusin the original group, but one of them (No.3), is recorded to have fallen in the river below during the violent 1928 earthquake (Kauffmann Doig, 2002). Above their heads, a mummified human skull was held in place by a spike. Of note, however, is that the skull did not belong to the individual inside the prunmatshu, but is from another party. We have no record of, nor do we know the reason why the mummified skull was placed there. Was it to record the hierarchical status of the departed? Neither do we have a history of the ancestors’ identities who, according to the collective memory of local people, point to ancestors of the mythic Ocspalin, a cacique or chief of the Conila’s ayllu or community, who built the bridge with the people over the Aispacha River. Why were the standing coffins placed in inaccessible locations? It seems that it was not so much to avoid eventual plunder, for at that time ancestors from all segments of society were fearfully respected and so were their resting places. The reason may be linked to the fact that those select ancestors were believed to hold powerful spiritual powers in the “other world.” At times, ancestors may raise the wrath of malevolent forces for the actions of their descendants.
In ancient Peru, the purunmatshus were only used by the Chachapoyas in their territory on the left bank of the Utcubamba river. Kauffmann Doig, in 1986, identified six types spanning from the sophisticated Type.A or Purunmatshu Regio at Karajia, to Types B, C and D, which varied through time and locations. The distinctive feature of B, C and D, is the migration through time of the head, made of compact clay on top of a stocky ovoid body without neck, to the chest and later to the belly. The absence of head applies to the more recent cone shaped Type E, while Type F is referred to as a pseudo-sarcophagus, for it is made of a semi-circular, four-feet-high wall made of clay placed in front of a rock face where, within the enclosure, bundled up mummies were found. In Type A, the mummified body inside was tightly wrapped in fine llama wool blankets in a seating or squatting position (the similarity with Wari mummies is striking), with small ceramics and stone votive items placed between the wrappings and at the feet of the ancestor.
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Above and below: The Karajia sarcophagi. BluesyPete, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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Detail
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Detail
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Under the Inca
In mid-fifteenth century, the Chachapoyas were incorporated into the Inca “Realm of the Four Parts” (the Tahuantinsuyu in Quechua), under the “son of the Sun,” the great Sapa-Inca in Cuzco, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (1418-1471). Pachacuti organized the kingdom into four regions or suyu: northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast, with Cuzco at the center. His son Topa Inca Yupanqui (1441-1493) would eventually extend the Tahuantinsuyu along the Pacific Coast to today’s western Ecuador, south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, and most of Chile to the south. But before that, in the mid-fifteenth century the Sapa Inca conquered the powerful Chimú Empire on Peru’s north coast; his army then turned inland toward the Andes. The northeast (antisuyu) territory extended deep into the eastern slopes of the mountain range which was covered by a dense tropical forest. Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616) wrote that the Inca invasion of the Chachapoya territory started in the mid-1450s. The invaders went through repeated hard-fought battles in the challenging topography, but the Chachapoyas fought hard and were never defeated. The account does not include Kuélap, which may have been bypassed by the Inca armies. Historical sources relate that by the 1460s, after months of relentless battles and deadlocks, the Chachapoyas had no option but to concede to a bitter peace agreement. In accordance with the empire’s rules of occupation, Cuzco sent civil servants and army officers to oversee the territory’s towns and villages.
Furthermore, under the Inca’s rules of occupation, up to fifty per cent of the younger population was moved as mitmaq’ colonists to distant parts of the empire (Espinoza, 1967), while high ranking Chachapoya women were married to Inca administrators. The mummies of those Inca officials are found in mausoleums with their bundles placed side-by-side with those of Chachapoyas. As Crandal (2012) writes, Chachapoya ontology, akin to other Andean people, was predicated on a collective relationship to ancestors who played an active role in reproducing social life.
Gran Pajatén
A smaller yet prominent Chachapoya site with unique particulars is the ancient city of Gran Pajatén, in the Andean cloud forest. Most sites are found between the Marañón and Huallaga rivers in the Rio Abiseo National Park. Gran Pajatén was discovered by Eduardo Peña Meza (1886-1968), but it was known before to people in surrounding villages and stands 9,350 feet on a five-acre hilltop above the Montecristo River, an affluent of the Abiseo River. Based primarily on architectural evidence, the settlement is unequivocally Chachapoya. The remains of over twenty-six circular stone structures, some with two levels, are built atop terraces with stairways. Initially several of them may have stood some fifty feet high with their high cone shaped roof supported by wood beams and covered with natural fibers (Bonavia, 1969, Davis, 1996).
Gran Pajatén is unique not only for its exceptional architecture, but for the number of symbolic and decorative motifs seen on its structures built in Inca times. Like Kuélap, besides being a religious locus, it was a granary depot and distribution center to answer recurring food scarcities. Unlike Kuélap, however, the site was most significant for its religious influence, attested by structures decorated with stone slates mosaic motifs, among which are human shapes and birds held in place with mortar. By and large, the recurrent patterns of most motifs are salient thematic elements that also bear similarities with Inca and Wari cultures. The walls of the second level of Circular Structure 1 are the most elaborate and best-preserved. The building technique shows finely cut limestone slates jutting out of the walls to create geometric motifs. The exceptions to the use of slates in human motifs are the heads, which were sculpted in the round from sandstone, and embedded in the slate design at the appropriate place through a spike jutting out from the head’s back. Kaufmann Doig notes that the schematic and geometric human figures are essentially those of a female that, as a mythical being, held various symbolic attributes.
The figures are repeatedly shown in a circular frieze that encircles Structure 1 and Structure 2, and singly on other buildings (1986). The main recurring stylized human motif is that of the powerful Pachamama. The earth-mother figure, which is shown in a seating position with legs bent at the knees and thighs spread out, indicates that she is giving birth to both humans and nature’s worlds.
Pachamamma motif detail on Pajaten structure. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Pachamamas are found on both structures and are similar but for their stylized headgear. The first headgear is shown as a starlike crown, and may refer to bird feathers, probably those of the macaw from the Amazon. The second headgear is understood to be the wings of a bird of prey, probably that of the hawk, not the condor. The hawk, a foremost actor in the magico-religious beliefs and ceremonies of the cultures of the Andes tropical forest, is also found in other ancient societies. As Kauffmann Doig points out, thePachamama “is the foremost fertility goddess who presided over planting and harvesting and is found in other cultures of ancient Peru” (2017). The Pachamama is the patron deity of most ayllus or localized social groups, self-defined as ancestor-focused kindred.
It was then believed that, among Pachamama’s abilities, was her ever-present creative powers that sustained life on this earth (1992). Ceramics analysis shows that Gran Pajatén was occupied as early as 200 BC, while stone and ceramics link the structures to early Inca occupation. So far there is no record of human remains, mummified or otherwise. The ancient city, like Kuélap, was a granary depot guarded by a strong force and backed up, it was believed, by powerful ancestors and the deities of another world. As Anselmo Lozano Calderón writes “The ancestral past of Andean and Amazonian cultures was replete with the esthetic and symbolic depiction of their existence, akin to the rhythms of nature, and grounded historically in their faith, their land and magic of the divine” (in Kauffmann Doig, 2017).
Los Pinchudos
A day’s walk from Gran Pajatén, at 8,900 feet in the cloud forest, is the site ofLos Pinchudos. It is another Chachapoya burial complex located in theRio Abiseo National Park, in one of Peru’s northern Andean cloud forests. The site was named for seven mausoleums, two of them badly damaged. Los Pinchudos is notable for the carved wood figures displaying a prominent anatomy. They hang from the outside of the mausoleum’s walls below the stone awnings that protected them from the rain. The name “Los Pinchudos” is from local slang that stands for “the ones with penis.” Sculpted from hard wood, the twenty-inch tall Pinchudos dangle from a wood shaft, integral to the statue, that anchored it into the wall of the burial chamber. No mummies were found, but a few bones and pieces of wool from bundles indicated that the ancestors’ bundles were removed by the Europeans during the 16th or 17th century. The geometric symbolism used in the parietal ornaments is like the ones seen at Gran Pajatén and Gantumarca on the left bank of the Marañón river which, for their architecture, bear a close filiation with those of Los Pinchudos. Over five hundred years ago the five mausoleums were covered with painted clay whose residues were found on the back of one of the figures. We do not know if the Pinchudos mausoleums were each painted red, yellow-ochre, or white (Kauffmann 1980; Morales et al. 2002). The symbolic significance of colors was important associated with corresponding rituals, but those are unknown. Unlike purunmatshusmade for one person, mausoleums harbored several mummified individuals each tightly wrapped in a bundle.
Mummies and burials are rooted in people’s cultural and spiritual faith in a finite geographical environment. As for most cultures, those roots are primarily defined by language, traditions, and a common belief, which secure their “right of blood” to the soil where they were born and where their ancestors are buried, as opposed to the “right of land” claimed by invaders. In ancient Peru, mummification, or preservation of family members, rested on the belief that their death would be like their past life. They had no expectations about a paradise or a hell, a concept associated with Christianity that arrived with the Spaniards in 1532. Mummification was an ancient practice in Peru: witness the 420 mummy bundles from the Paracas Necropolis, 300-200BC (Tello, 1949). The process of mummification varied through time and place and followed strict imperatives beyond rituals, which were dependent on those of the local environment. In the case of Paracas, the area was, and still is, a dry desert with little humidity coming from the Pacific Ocean.
For the Chachapoyas and other cultures of northwestern Peru, however, the humidity factor was important in the process applied to preserving human remains. Trained people were probably members of shamanic fraternities of either gender, that may have been attached to the priesthood, and were dedicated to the task. The process required dehydration of the body in a cold, dry and well-ventilated location where the removal of the viscera and cleaning of the abdominal cavity took place. Organs in the thorax were not removed, nor were the eyes and brain. Organic substances such as ginger, other roots, and coca leaves were mixed in a light corn paste, which was then used to thoroughly clean and embalm the body. Cotton plugs, and a variety of plant leaves were introduced into the nose cavities as well as in the mouth, to preserve the appearance of the departed. The process was so skillful that the eyes’ sclera was preserved. The body was then placed in a tightly flexed seating position with legs and arms tied up against the body, the hands placed over the face. Each finger was wrapped before the body was tightly bundled up in fine llama wool fabrics. Between the wrappings were placed votive figurines or small items cherished by the departed. The bundle was then placed in a cold, dry and well-ventilated location for several weeks or months before being transferred permanently to its last resting place.
Mausoleums such as those seen at Revash, are called “house of the departed” in Quechua (Runasimi), and do not show Inca influence in their architecture. These funerary structures referred to as pukulio or tshullpas are known throughout Peru spanning from the Wari (500-1000) to the Chimú (900-1450). The Chachapoya mausoleums were built in an existing open corridor in the rock face that was enlarged and extended. The walls of the small structures are made of shaped stones set with mortar with a symbolic “roof.”
The roofs over the structures were of the gable or lean-to type but were not necessary since the tshullpas were already protected by the rocky overhang. According to local folklore, the roofs were made for ancestors to “feel at home.” Built close together, the mausoleums look like a little village, their walls covered with mud of a tan color.
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Revash Main Site – Funeral site of the Chachapoyas people. BluesyPete, above, and PsamatheM, below, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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Not so inaccessible as the purunmatshus, over time the tshullpas were visited by people that damaged the mummies’ bundles in search of valuables. Unlike at Karajia, however, the mausoleums are collective with remains of select individuals of the same or extended family, for as in other parts of the Americas, not all progenitors qualified as ancestors. Revash’s distinctive features are symbolic figures painted red on the structures and on the rock face above the mausoleums, such as human shapes, local camelids (llama), and geometric motifs.
In most cultures of the Americas, red pigment is associated with blood, the stream of life. Cinnabar, a red pigment oxide powder, was used in burials, for it was believed to protect the departed soul’s “divine substance” and ward off malevolent forces while it traveled through the underworld. Other architectural particulars are cruciform shapes. Today, in ancient and traditional cultures in the Americas, the equilateral cross openings in structures or painted on ceramics, depict the four changing cardinal directions of the spiritual universe associated with their respective twenty deities and colors, such as red, yellow, black, and white for the Mayas. The equilateral Inca chakama cross holds the same symbolic significance. Each of the twenty right angles of the cross carries its own deity, while the steps between each arm of the cross are representative of andenes or terraces built in steep mountain slopes. Of note is that only funerary bundles of ascendant lineage members worthy of being venerated, were placed in mausoleums or in a purunmatshu. Many mausoleums dot the Chachapoya landscape such as Tingorbamba-Pueblo de los Muertos, La Petaca-Diablo Huasi, Laguna de los Condores and Huabayacu, among many.
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One wonders why human remains have been so important to all cultures. Veneration of ancestors is found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN-A,12,800-8,500BP), and much farther back in time. We have seen this concern at Kuélap, Los Pinchudos, and Revash among other sites in the Chachapoya landscape. As Paul Cornerton points out, repetitive rituals act as a mechanism to create communal memory (1989), and one should add identity. Constant to most ancient and traditional cultures today, is the belief in the permanence of life beyond life, hence the prominence given to forefathers believed to help in relieving the pains of life’s here and now.
The shape of funerary bundles recalls plant seeds about to sprout from their shells and was commonly associated with the rhythm of the seasons and the belief in an eternal return. As McAnany reminds us, “the cult to ancestors was integral to the cosmologies and traditions of most cultures in the Andean region and is well documented in those of Mesoamerica” (1995).
The phases of places and divinities follow the same fate as that of people, appearing and disappearing on the scene of life. The sixth Sapa-Inca of the Hanan dynasty, Huayna Capac (1464-1524), had two sons, Atahualpa (1502-1533), born in Ecuador and Huascar, born in Cuzco (1503-1532). Huayna Capac unwisely divided the empire between his two heirs. The northwest and the northeast were assigned to Atahualpa, while the southwest and the southeast, with Cuzco at the center of the realm, were allocated to Huascar. The decision proved deadly to the Inca empire. As expected, the brothers were soon at war with each other. The Chachapoyas in the northeast were drawn into the crossfire, and factions arose with some leaning toward Huascar, while others sided with Atahualpa. A major battle took place in the upper Andes that took the lives of over six thousand Chachapoya warriors. This tragedy so angered the population against Atahualpa, that it rose from rage to a full-fledged revolt. This massacre turned the Chachapoya population against the victorious Atahualpa, who exacted vengeance by killing their leaders and ordered all adolescents of both sexes deported to other parts of the empire (Keith Muscutt, 1998). Kuélap may have been bypassed by the Inca army because it might not have been militarily relevant at the time. Of note, however, is that more than 2,500 stones for slings were stashed in the Atalaya square tower, indicating that the citadel’s defenders were ready to fight off invaders. Large clumps of burnt roofing thatch, however, indicate that residents either burned the structures when the site was abandoned for unknown reasons, or that Kuélap came to a violent end. Whatever the outcome, for the next five centuries, remains of the ancestors buried in its walls were the citadel’s sole occupants.
Professor Frank J. Korn has retired from his teaching position on the Classical Studies faculty at Seton Hall University.He is a Fulbright Scholar at the American Academy in Rome and the author of nine books on various aspects of the Eternal City.He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who as “a notable classical educator and writer.”Recipient of the Princeton Prize for Distinguished Teaching, he resides with his wife Camille in Scotch Plains, N.J.The couple’s three sons –Frank, Ronald, and John and their families live nearby.His latest book–Below Rome, the Story of the Catacombs–which he co-authored with his wife, is available on Amazon or from the publisher, St. Johann Press, Haworth, N.J.
Engineering miracles. That is what the ancient Romans should best be remembered for.
Many other nations of antiquity assembled mighty armies that conquered far and wide. Many raised imposing architecture that dazzled the eye. But none could hold a candle to Rome’s mind-boggling achievements in engineering, particularly when it came to managing water.
When an oracle warned that a certain enemy would never be defeated as long as there was water in Lake Albano, Roman hydraulic engineers simply drained the lake bone-dry, paving the way for the vaunted legions to overcome the Veiians.Whenever the imperial government had an unwanted river on its hands, the corps of engineers would merely re-route the stream and fling it over some handy cliff. When a greater water supply was needed to accommodate a rapidly expanding population, the same genius would design pipelines to reach out great distances to snatch water from pure mountain streams and bring it rushing down into the City on the Tiber. Since the pipelines would lead (duct) water (aqua) from one place to another, they were given the name “aqueducts.”
Watering Rome
By 312 B.C. the city’s population had reached such numbers that its previous sources of water–natural springs, wells, cisterns, and the Tiber–no longer sufficed. Thus it was in that year that Appius Claudius, as censor, gave old Rome the first of its eventual eleven aqueducts.(Censors were responsible not only for safeguarding public morals but also for authorizing and supervising public works.) Actually, it was a co-censor, Gaius Plautius, who discovered the mountain stream and planned the pipeline that would channel the water into the city.But he retired from the elective office before the start of work on the plan, leaving Appius to oversee the construction and completion of the project and to give it his name. This pipeline, the Aqua Appia, redirected some of the water from a spring in the Alban Hills, ten miles to the south, down into the southern corner of Rome, more precisely into the “Greek quarter,” in the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills.
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The Aqua Appia. Lalupa, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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Map of Aqua Appia in Rome. Coldeel, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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In 273 B.C. another aqueduct was added, this one drawing its supply from the River Anio that rushes tumultuously down from the Sabine Mountains, about thirty miles east of Rome. (Originally called simply “Anio” it took on the name Anio Vetus (old) when a second aqueduct, drawing from another stretch of the same river, was completed, earning the name Aqua Anio Novus (new). A century and a half later, a public official named Marcius Rex gave Rome the Aqua Marcia. “The dearest of all streams on earth, unsurpassed in coolness and salubriousness, a true gift of the gods to Rome,” was how Pliny the Elder enthused over it.
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Remains of the Aqua Marcia and Aqua Tepula. Chris 73, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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This was a very ambitious undertaking. Stretching for fifty-six miles, it came with a final price tag of just under 180,000,000 sesterces i.e. about nine billion of today’s U.S. dollars. It supplied enough water to nourish nine of the fourteen precincts into which Rome was later divided by Caesar Augustus.
The year 125 B.C. saw the completion of a fourth water-works, the Aqua Tepula, so called for the tepid temperature of its stream (62 degrees Fahrenheit). This, however, was not fit for drinking. Incidentally, there are many under the impression that the aqueducts’ use was strictly for slaking the thirst of the populace. The fact is that the water also supplied the public baths and gardens, nymphaea, spectacular monumental fountains that were solely for the city’s esthetics, and private homes and villas of the very wealthy. Any overflow went toward flushing latrines and sewers.
During the reign of Augustus, a feverish building boom resulted in new urban problems, one of which was an inadequate water supply. In consultation with his chief adviser, Marcus Agrippa, the emperor commissioned the construction of the Aqua Virgo.This pipeline provided deliciously pure spring water from about nine miles to the east, up toward Tivoli. It is about a meter and a half in width and was built primarily to furnish the water for the Baths of Agrippa, a sumptuous spa in the section of Rome called, since ancient times, the Campus Martius. (Virgo is Latin for “virgin.” Agrippa so named the facility because one day a lovely young girl is said to have shown a company of his soldiers, parched with thirst, the location of the spring.)
The wonderful British writer H.V. Morton once had the opportunity to visit the site of Aqua Virgo’s source and tells this charming anecdote:“I was watching these very waters rushing by, knowing that twenty-four hours from now [that’s how long it took for the channeled water to reach the City] they would form the cascades of the fabled Fountain of Trevi and be the subject of hundreds of photographs snapped by an army of wide-eyed tourists.”
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60 metres (200 ft) stretch of the Aqua Virgo arches, recently found inside the Rinascente shopping complex. Alexxant, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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The Augustan era also saw the addition of two more aqueducts, the Aqua Julia, which tapped into a cool mountain stream about fifteen miles out from Rome, up above the picturesque hill-town of Grottaferrata; and the Aqua Alsietina, which drew from aquifers near Lake Bracciano, some thirty two miles or so to the north, toward the old, still walled-in Etruscan city of Viterbo. The water, however, was non-potable and used for the naumachia (an artificial lake for mock naval battles) in the trans Tiber district.
So big was this business becoming that by the late first century a full-blown Water Bureau, with offices adjacent to the Roman Forum, was established. This was headed by a commissioner with what today would be considered “cabinet status.” One of the most distinguished of these department heads, or Curatores Aquarum, was Sextus Julius Frontinus. Appointed by the Emperor Nerva in A.D. 96 and re-appointed by Trajan in 98, Frontinus wrote De Aquis Urbis Romae, a technical manual on Rome’s waterworks that is most instructive on the techniques of aqueduct-building. In the preface, he thanks and praises the man who gave him the prestigious post:
“Nescio diligentiore an amantiore rei publicae imperatore Nerva Augusto….
“I do not know anyone who is more diligent, or who loves the State more, than the emperor Nerva Augustus.”
Frontinus goes on to say that since the position had always been assigned to the most outstanding men of the community,“per principes semper civitatis nostrae viros,” and since the task of the Water Commissioner involves the health and well-being and even the safety of the city, “ad salubritatem atque etiam securitatem urbis pertinens,” he takes the office entrusted to him with the utmost sense of commitment and seriousness.
Form and Function
Such an abundance of water was the fruit of the hydrogeological character of the hilly and mountainous territory surrounding Rome, containing cascading streams by the hundreds. First of all, the source of an aqueduct has to be higher than its destination. Some of the streams originated from over a thousand feet above sea level. Each pipeline–in order to function effectively–had to maintain a slight slope to assure that the downward flow of the water retained its velocity continuously to the destination.Thus the whole enterprise depended not on pumping stations but on gravity.
The conduit was mostly underground. En route to the city there were hills that had to be penetrated. When confronted with valleys and lowlands the water channel had to be borne aloft by arch-supported bridge-like structures, the ruins of which, in some instances, still grace the Roman Campagna. This segment of an aqueduct consisted of a flat-bottomed channel, about three feet wide and five feet deep, and was open to the sky, hence vulnerable to debris and clogging. Such “bridges” maintained a steady gradient.
These waterworks were therefor not only wonders of engineering but also masterpieces of architecture, as Vitruvius points out in his book, “De Architectura”. The French writer Chateaubriand, on his grand tour of Rome, marveled that the ancient aqueducts had brought water to the Eternal City “on arches of triumph.”One need only visit Nimes in France and view the Augustan era Pont du Gard spanning the Gardon River, at the giddy height of a hundred and sixty feet, to agree with both authors; or travel to Segovia in Spain to observe its soaring, remarkably preserved Roman aqueduct. (There were eventually hundreds of aqueducts across the far-flung Empire.)
The earliest of Rome’s aqueducts had pipelines generally of lead, which created difficulties in soldering and/or welding. The builders ultimately had to resort to using terracotta conduits, coated in a smooth-surfaced volcanic cement called pozzolana.
With most aqueducts the water of a stream or spring was first led into a nearby concrete “springhouse”, thence into the main pipeline. The course of it finished–in the city–in a “castello,” which was a massive, towered structure containing one or more chambers of decantation and a vast reservoir from which the water was redistributed into smaller urban conduits.
As for maintenance, there were crews made up of slaves and plebeians, with only the latter, of course, getting a “paycheck.”These workers, called aquarii, had to deal with problems such as leakage, loose debris and soil blown up by winds and storms, clogging by calcium carbonate deposits that narrowed the walls and had to be scraped away, and illegal tappings by farmers and vineyard owners whose lands happened to be hard by the route of the aqueduct. (Despite the strict laws and severe penalties against such mischief, it somehow persisted)
As for security, there were guards and patrols, night and day, at the source site and at other vulnerable areas. The fact that an aqueduct ran either underground or up on arches, a hundred feet high or more, was in itself a built-in form of security.
For private property owner subscribers the water bills became major headaches. Still, they paid willingly for the luxury. Indeed, there was quite a long waiting list for the service. In one letter, the satirical poet Martial gripes about getting the runaround from the haughty bureaucrats after applying for a pipeline to his estate. Yet, Martial’s allegations aside, a position at the waterworks was not the usual political sinecure. There were no, so to speak,”water-cooler jobs” to be had. The clerks, engineers, mechanics, masons, and unskilled laborers were kept busy all hours of the day and night with complaints of pressure failure. More woes were caused by the periodic necessity of shutting off the pipelines to clean them of their lime deposits.
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In A.D. 38, the mentally unbalanced Caligula ordered work to begin on a new aqueduct that would bring water from springs near Subiaco, about forty miles east of Rome. Taking fourteen years to construct, it was completed in the reign of Emperor Claudius, who gave it the name Aqua Claudia. The most important of all these ancient Roman projects, it was called “Magnificentissima” by Frontinus. Underground for the most part, it went overland on a series of sturdy lofty arches for its last nine miles, ending with excellent pressure up on the Caelian Hill. It was later extended across a valley to the Palatine Hill so that it could serve the imperial palace and grounds. In A.D. 1587, Pope Sixtus V utilized what remained of it to construct an up-to-date facility which he called theAqua Felice. (His given name was Felice Peretti.) Today it nourishes the zones of the Esquiline, Quirinal, and Viminal hills but is largely utilized for the splendid fountains of the city’s historic center, including the terminus: The Fountain of Moses.
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View of the Aqua Claudia. Chris 73, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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On the subject of restoration, it was another pontiff, Pope Paul V, who got the Aqua Traiana up and running again, renaming it, naturally, the Aqua Paola. Emperor Trajan had this aqueduct built in the year 119, drawing its water from springs up in the Sabatini mountains to the north, over a course of nearly forty miles. In our time, as it did in antiquity, it still services the Janiculum Hill and trans Tiber district below it. (That quarter of the city is today’s colorful, ever popular, Trastevere.) The terminus of this waterway is the immense–and immensely beautiful–Fontana Paolina with its five cascades, a name which inadvertently honors both the architect (Domenico Fontana) and the patron (Paul).
Besides the Claudian and Trajanian works, two others were rehabilitated by popes: the Aqua Marciaby Pius IX (who renamed it Aqua Pia), and the Virgoby Nicholas V.
(What necessitated these later restorations was the result of the A.D. 537 Ostrogoth siege of Rome, thirsting the Romans into submission by cutting the aqueducts and choking off the water supply. When the dust finally settled after the last barbarian invasion, Rome deteriorated into a veritable, uninhabitable ghost town, its population dwindling from a peak of a million at the height of the imperial era to a scant fifteen thousand through the early Middle ages.)
The last of the eleven aqueducts of Republican and Imperial Rome was built by order of Emperor Alexander Severus in A.D. 226 and bore his name: Aqua Alexandrina. Its source was a number of springs in the Sassolello Hills, twelve miles north, near the old city of Gobi. Its main purpose was to provide the water for the Neronian Baths.
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The Aqua Alexandrina. Paola Pittori, CC-BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
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The great historian Edward Gibbon paid this eloquent tribute to these civil engineering wonders:“The boldness of the enterprise, the solidity of the execution, and the uses to which they were subservient, rank the aqueducts among the noblest monuments of Roman genius and power.”
For the Romans of antiquity, these endlessly astonishing hydraulic projects exponentially improved the quality of life–and hygiene. Their hauntingly romantic ruins speak in silent eloquence of the grandeur of long-ago Rome, which even as long ago as its heyday had already acquired two popular and poetic nicknames:Urbs Aeterna (The Eternal City) and Caput Mundi (The Capital of the World).When those eleven mighty aqueducts were in their prime, they bestowed on Rome yet another sobriquet:Regina Aquarum …”Queen of the Waters.”
Compelling stories dramatize and humanize major events and characters in the history of Ephesus, the ruins of which are a popular destination for tourists in present-day Turkey.Historium Press, 2023.Available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
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