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ELSEVIER—Amsterdam, September 7, 2020 – A recent study by a team based at the University of Bologna, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, has shed new light on the Minoan system of fractions, one of the outstanding enigmas tied to the ancient writing of numbers.

About 3,500 years ago, the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete developed a writing system composed of syllabic signs, called Linear A, which they sometimes used to inscribe offerings at sanctuaries and adorn their jewelry, but mainly assisted the administration of their palatial centers.

Today, this script remains largely undeciphered and includes a complex system of numerical notation with signs that indicated not only whole numbers, but also fractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.). While the whole numbers were deciphered decades ago, scholars have been debating on the exact mathematical values of the fractional signs.

Principal Investigator Silvia Ferrara, Professor of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna, said: “We aimed to solve the problem through a lens combining different strands of research, very seldom tied together: close paleographical analysis of the signs and computational methods. In this way we realized that we could access information from a new perspective.”

The members of the European Research Council project INSCRIBE (Invention of Scripts and their Beginnings), Michele Corazza, Barbara Montecchi, Miguel Valério, and Fabio Tamburini, led by Dr. Ferrara, applied a method that combines the analysis of the sign shapes and their use in the inscriptions together with statistical, computational and typological strategies to assign mathematical values to the Linear A signs for fractions.

The team first studied the rules that the signs followed on the clay tablets and other accounting documents. Two problems had so far complicated the decipherment of Linear A fractions. First, all documents containing sums of fractional values with a registered total were damaged or difficult to interpret, and second, they contradicted uses of certain signs, which suggest the system changed over time. Thus, the starting premise had to rely on documents concentrated to a specific period (ca. 1600-1450 BCE), when the numerical system was in coherent use across Crete.

To investigate the possible values of each fractional sign, the team excluded impossible outcomes with the aid of computational methods. Then all possible solutions – almost four million – were whittled down also comparing fractions that are common in the history of the world (e.g., typological data) and using statistical tests. Finally, the team applied other strategies that considered the completeness and coherence of the fractions as a system and in this way the best values were identified, with the least redundancies. The result, in this case, was a system whose lowest fraction is 1/60 and which shows the ability to represent most values of the type n/60.

The system of values suggested by the Bologna team has yielded further important implications.

The results explain how the Linear B script, adopted by the later Mycenaean Greek culture (ca. 1450-1200 BCE) from Linear A, reused some of these fractions to express units of measurement. The new results suggest that, for example, the Linear A sign for 1/10 was adapted to represent a capacity unit for measuring dry products which was, in turn, 1/10 of a larger unit. This explains a historical continuity of use from fractions to units of measurements across two different cultures.

This research aims to show that traditional methods and computational models, when used in synergy, can help us make remarkable progress into explaining some unresolved issues tied to ancient scripts that are still undeciphered.

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On the left, the signs of the fractions in Linear A; on the right, one of the tablets analyzed. Elsevier

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Article Source: Elsevier news release.

*”The mathematical values of fraction signs in the Linear A script: A computational, statistical and typological approach,” by Michele Corazza, Silvia Ferrara, Barbara Montecchi, Fabio Tamburini, and Miguel Valério (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105214). It appears in Journal of Archaeological Science (September 2020), published by Elsevier.

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DARTMOUTH COLLEGE—A Dartmouth-led study using multisensor drones has revealed a large circular earthwork at what may be Etzanoa, an archaeological site near Wichita, Kansas. Archaeologists speculate that the site was visited by a Spanish expedition, led by Juan de Oñate, a controversial conquistador, in 1601. The earthwork may be the remains of a so-called “council circle,” as it is similar to several other circular earthworks in the region, according to the study’s findings published in American Antiquity.

“Our findings demonstrate that undiscovered monumental earthworks may still exist in the Great Plains. You just need a different archeological approach to recognize them,” explained lead author, Jesse J. Casana, a professor and chair of the department of anthropology at Dartmouth. “Our results are promising in suggesting that there may be many other impressive archaeological features that have not yet been documented, if we look hard enough,” he added.

Archaeological features have various thermal effects. After the ground cools at nighttime, things below the ground cool and emit heat at different rates, enabling researchers to identify features based on thermal infrared radiation. The researchers obtained thermal and multispectral imagery of the site using drones.

The 18-hectare area of the site where the drone survey was conducted is currently home to a ranch property in the lower Walnut River valley, which has been used as a pasture. Topographically, the area is flat with no visible archaeological features. Yet, imagery shows that underground there is an ancient, circular shaped ditch measuring 50 meters wide and approximately 2 meters thick that has been infilled. As the soil erodes, it fills up the ditch with a different type of soil than was there before, and therefore retains water differently giving it unique thermal properties. The water retention levels also impact vegetation. Using near-infrared imagery, the researchers were able to identify areas that had been infilled because grass growth was more vigorous. As the study reports, the results provide evidence for what may have been a “single, sprawling population center” back in its day.

To confirm that the findings were not an anomaly, the team collected a time series of aerial and satellite images of the area from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. They found that the circular feature was “faintly visible in June 2015 and July 2017 but not in June 2012 or February 2017.”

The debate is widespread as to what council circles were used for, whether they were astronomical in nature or made for ceremonial, political and/or defense purposes. Casana added, “While we may never know what the council circles were used for or their significance, new archaeological methods allow us to see that people made these earthworks.”

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Left: Drone-acquired orthoimage of the site showing major features discussed in the paper. Right: Thermal images mosaic collected from 11:15 pm-12:15 am. (Images from Figure 6 of the study). Images by Jesse Casana, Elise Jakoby Laugier, and Austin Chad Hill.

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Aerial view of the site. Image is from Figure 3 of the study. Photograph by Jesse Casana.

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Article Source: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE news release

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ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY—A Rochester Institute of Technology researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization. In an article recently featured in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, Nishant Malik, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, outlined the new technique he developed and showed how shifting monsoon patterns led to the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization, a Bronze Age civilization contemporary to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.

Malik developed a method to study paleoclimate time series, sets of data that tell us about past climates using indirect observations. For example, by measuring the presence of a particular isotope in stalagmites from a cave in South Asia, scientists were able to develop a record of monsoon rainfall in the region for the past 5,700 years. But as Malik notes, studying paleoclimate time series poses several problems that make it challenging to analyze them with mathematical tools typically used to understand climate.

“Usually the data we get when analyzing paleoclimate is a short time series with noise and uncertainty in it,” said Malik. “As far as mathematics and climate is concerned, the tool we use very often in understanding climate and weather is dynamical systems. But dynamical systems theory is harder to apply to paleoclimate data. This new method can find transitions in the most challenging time series, including paleoclimate, which are short, have some amount of uncertainty and have noise in them.”

There are several theories about why the Indus Valley Civilization declined–including invasion by nomadic Indo-Aryans and earthquakes–but climate change appears to be the most likely scenario. But until Malik applied his hybrid approach– rooted in dynamical systems but also draws on methods from the fields of machine learning and information theory–there was no mathematical proof. His analysis showed there was a major shift in monsoon patterns just before the dawn of this civilization and that the pattern reversed course right before it declined, indicating it was in fact climate change that caused the fall.

Malik said he hopes the method will allow scientists to develop more automated methods of finding transitions in paleoclimate data and leads to additional important historical discoveries. The full text of the study is published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science.

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This figure shows the settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization during different phases of its evolution. RIT Assistant Professor Nishant Malik developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of the ancient civilization. RIT

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Article Source: ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY news release

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STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY, STONY BROOK, NY, September 3, 2020 – The ability for humans to digest milk as adults has altered our dietary habits and societies for centuries. But when and how that ability – known as lactase persistence or lactose tolerance – occurred and became established is up for debate. By testing the genetic material from the bones of people who died during a Bronze Age battle around 1,200 BC, an international team of scientists including Krishna Veeramah, PhD, of Stony Brook University, suggest that lactase persistence spread throughout Central Europe in only a few thousand years, an extremely fast transformation compared to most evolutionary changes seen in humans. Their findings are published in Current Biology.

Despite the prominence of milk drinking in Europe and North American today, approximately two-thirds of the world’s population remains lactose intolerant. Generally, no mammal digests milk as an adult, which is why for example people should not give adult cat or dog pets milk. However, a subset of humans have a genetic mutation that enables the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose sugar found in milk throughout an individual’s lifetime. Many of these people are from Central or Northern Europe.

The battle occurred on the banks of the Tollense, a river in present day Germany, and is the most significant that we know about from Bronze Age Europe, probably consisting of about 4,000 warriors, almost a quarter of which died during the fighting. Despite being more than three thousand years old, the researchers were able to sequence DNA from some of the bone fragments recovered from the battle site.

Veeramah, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, led part of the research that involved analyzing how the overall genetic ancestry of the battlefield population compared to other modern and ancient populations, and then compared the frequency of the lactase-persistent allele to other modern and ancient populations, particularly medieval European populations.

The research team, led by Joachim Burger and colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), found that despite the battle occurring more than 4,000 years after the introduction of agriculture in Europe – which in part would have involved the consumption of dairy from early cattle, goats and sheep domesticates – only one in eight of the warriors had a genetic variant that enabled them to break down lactose.

“When we look at other European genetic data from the early Medieval period less than 2,000 years later, we find that more than 60 percent of individuals had the ability to drink milk as adults, close to what we observe in modern Central European countries, which ranges from 70 to 90 percent” said Veeramah. “This is actually an incredibly fast rate of change for the gene that controls milk digestion. It appears that by simply possessing this one genetic change, past European individuals with the ability to digest lactose had a six percent greater chance of producing children than those who could not. This is the strongest evidence we have for positive natural selection in humans.”

Joachim Burger of JGU, lead author on the study, added that there still is not definitive answer to the question: Why did being able to digest the sugar in milk after infancy provide such a big evolutionary advantage?

“With milk being a high-energy, relatively uncontaminated drink, its ingestion may have provided greater chances of survival during food shortages or when supplies of drinking water may have been contaminated,” explained Burger.

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Various bones at a Bronze Age battle excavation site, some of which were genetically tested to determine the presence of the lactase-persistent gene. Stefan Sauer / Tollense Valley Project

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Article Source: STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—Using radiocarbon dating and CT scanning to study ancient bones, researchers have uncovered for the first time a Bronze Age tradition of retaining and curating human remains as relics over several generations.

While the findings*, led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Antiquity, may seem eerie or even gruesome by today’s convention, they indicate a tangible way of honoring and remembering known individuals between close communities and generations some 4,500 years ago.

“Even in modern secular societies, human remains are seen as particularly powerful objects, and this seems to hold true for people of the Bronze Age. However, they treated and interacted with the dead in ways which are inconceivably macabre to us today,” said lead author, Dr Thomas Booth, who carried out the radiocarbon dating work at the university’s School of Chemistry.

“After radiocarbon dating Bronze Age human remains alongside other materials buried with them, we found many of the partial remains had been buried a significant time after the person had died, suggesting a tradition of retaining and curating human remains.”

“People seem to have curated the remains of people who had lived within living or cultural memory, and who likely played an important role in their life or their communities, or with whom they had a well-defined relationship, whether that was direct family, a tradesperson, a friend or even an enemy, so they had a relic to remember and perhaps tell stories about them,” said Dr Booth.

In one extraordinary case from Wiltshire, a human thigh bone had been crafted to make a musical instrument and included as a grave good with the burial of a man found close to Stonehenge. The carefully carved and polished artifact, found with other items, including stone and bronze axes, a bone plate, a tusk, and a unique ceremonial pronged object, are displayed in the Wiltshire Museum. Radiocarbon dating of this musical instrument suggests it belonged to someone this person knew during their lifetime.

“Although fragments of human bone were included as grave goods with the dead, they were also kept in the homes of the living, buried under house floors and even placed on display”, said Professor Joanna Brück, principal investigator on the project, and Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.

“This suggests that Bronze Age people did not view human remains with the sense of horror or disgust that we might feel today.”

The team also used microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) at the Natural History Museum to look at microscopic changes to the bone produced by bacteria, to get an indication of how the body was treated while it was decomposing.

“The micro-CT scanning suggested these bones had come from bodies that had been treated in similar ways to what we see for Bronze Age human remains more generally. Some had been cremated before being split up, some bones were exhumed after burial, and some had been de-fleshed by being left to decompose on the ground,” Dr Booth said.

“This suggests that there was no established protocol for the treatment of bodies whose remains were destined to be curated, and the decisions and rites leading to the curation of their remains took place afterwards.”

There is already evidence people living in Britain during the Bronze Age practiced a range of funerary rites, including primary burial, excarnation, cremation and mummification. However, this research reveals the dead were encountered not just in a funerary context, but that human remains were regularly kept and circulated amongst the living.

These findings may tell us something about how Bronze Age communities in Britain drew upon memory and the past to create their own social identities. Unlike our regard for saintly relics today, they do not seem to have focused on very old human remains and the distant past of ancestors, rather they were concerned with the remains of those within living memory.

“This study really highlights the strangeness and perhaps the unknowable nature of the distant past from a present-day perspective. It seems the power of these human remains lay in the way they referenced tangible relationships between people in these communities and not as a way of connecting people with a distant mythical past,” said Dr Booth.

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Burial of a woman from Windmill Fields, Stockton-upon-Tees accompanied by skulls and limb bones from at least 3 people. The 3 people represented by the skulls and long bones had died 60-170 years before the woman with whom they were buried. Tees Archaeology

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Unique Pronged Bronze Object from the Wilsford G58 burial found alongside the human bone musical instrument. Wiltshire Museum, copyright University of Birmingham/David Bukachit

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL news release

*’Radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for the curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain’ by Thomas Booth and Joanna Bruck in Antiquity

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UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN-NUREMBERG—Climate change occurring shortly before their disappearance triggered a complex change in the behavior of late Neanderthals in Europe: they developed more complex tools. This is the conclusion reached by a group of researchers from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Università degli Studi die Ferrara (UNIFE) on the basis of finds in the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria.

Neanderthals lived approximately 400,000 to 40,000 years ago in large areas of Europe and the Middle East, even as far as the outer edges of Siberia. They produced tools using wood and glass-like rock material, which they also sometimes combined, for example to make a spear with a sharp and hard point made of stone.

From approximately 100,000 years ago, their universal cutting and scraping tool was a knife made of stone, the handle consisting of a blunt edge on the tool itself. These Keilmesser (backed, asymmetrical bifacially-shaped knives) were available in various shapes, leading researchers to wonder why the Neanderthals created such a variety of knives? Did they use different knives for different tasks or did the knives come from different sub-groups of Neanderthals? This was what the international research project hoped to find out.

Keilmesser are the answer

‘Keilmesser are a reaction to the highly mobile lifestyle during the first half of the last ice age. As they could be sharpened again as and when necessary, they were able to be used for a long time – almost like a Swiss army knife today,’ says Prof. Dr. Thorsten Uthmeier from the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at FAU. ‘However, people often forget that bi-facially worked knives were not the only tools Neanderthals had. Backed knives from the Neanderthal period are surprisingly varied,’ adds his Italian colleague Dr. Davide Delpiano from Sezione di Scienze Preistoriche e Antropologiche at UNIFE. ‘Our research uses the possibilities offered by digital analysis of 3D models to discover similarities and differences between the various types of knives using statistical methods.’

The two researchers investigated artifacts from one of the most important Neanderthal sites in Central Europe, the Sesselfelsgrotte cave in Lower Bavaria. During excavations in the cave conducted by the Institute of Prehistory and Early History at FAU, more than 100,000 artifacts and innumerable hunting remains left behind by the Neanderthals have been found, even including evidence of a Neanderthal burial. The researchers have now analyzed the most significant knife-like tools using 3D scans produced in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Marc Stamminger and Dr. Frank Bauer from the Chair of Visual Computing at the Department of Computer Science at FAU. They allow the form and properties of the tool to be recorded extremely precisely.

‘The technical repertoire used to create Keilmesser is not only direct proof of the advanced planning skills of our extinct relatives, but also a strategic reaction to the restrictions imposed upon them by adverse natural conditions,’ says Uthmeier, FAU professor for Early Prehistory and Archaeology of Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers.

Other climate, other tools

What Uthmeier refers to as ‘adverse natural conditions’ are climate changes after the end of the last interglacial more than 100,000 years ago. Particularly severe cold phases during the following Weichsel glacial period began more than 60,000 years ago and led to a shortage of natural resources. In order to survive, the Neanderthals had to become more mobile than before, and adjust their tools accordingly.

The Neanderthals probably copied the functionality of unifacial backed knives, which are only shaped on one side, and used these as the starting point to develop bi-facially formed Keilmesser shaped on both sides. ‘This is indicated in particular by similarities in the cutting edge, which consists in both instances of a flat bottom and a convex top, which was predominantly suited for cutting lengthwise, meaning that it is quite right to refer to the tool as a knife,’ says Davide Delpiano from UNIFE.

Both types of knife – the simpler older version and the newer, significantly more complex version – obviously have the same function. The most important difference between the two tools investigated in this instance is the longer lifespan of bi-facial tools. Keilmesser therefore represent a high-tech concept for a long-life, multi-functional tool, which could be used without any additional accessories such as a wooden handle.

‘Studies from other research groups seem to support our interpretation,’ says Uthmeier. ‘Unlike some people have claimed, the disappearance of the Neanderthals cannot have been a result of a lack of innovation or methodical thinking.’

Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN-NUREMBERG news release

Cover Image, Top Left: Charles R. Knight, oil on canavas, 1911, Public Domain

SIBERIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY—A team of archaeologists from Siberian Federal University and Novosibirsk State University provided a detailed reconstruction of a technology that was used to carve ornaments and sculptures from mammoth ivory. The team studied a string of beads and an ancient animal figurine found at the Paleolithic site of Ust-Kova in Krasnoyarsk Territory. Over 20 thousand years ago its residents used drills, cutters, and even leveling blades. The unusual features of some of the items showcased the mastery of the craftsmen. The new data obtained by the scientists will help study the relations between the residents of different Siberian sites. The article about the study was published in the highly respected journal Archaeological Research in Asia.

The Ust-Kova site is located in Kezhemsky District of Krasnoyarsk Territory at the mouth of the Kova river. Archaeologists from Krasnoyarsk have been working there since the middle of the 20th century, but the major part of the excavation work took place between 1980 and 2000. Based on the results of radiocarbon dating, the site is considered to be over 20 thousand years old. Of all findings from Ust-Kova, scientists consider animal figurines the most interesting. They also found various ornaments and tools made from mammoth ivory. However, until recently the technology of their manufacture has been unknown.

“We studied several mammoth ivory items found at Ust-Kova: a mammoth figurine, a seal sculpture, and bracelets and beads of different sizes that were created around 24 thousand years ago. Our group was supervised by Prof. L.V. Lbova, a PhD in History, from the Department of Archeology and Ethnography of Novosibirsk State University. We conducted detailed microscopic analysis of each object to identify the tools used in their manufacture by the markings they left,” said Prof. Nikolay Drozdov, a PhD in History, representing Siberian Federal University.

After processing the microscopic images of the mammoth figurine with DStretch, the team was able to reconstruct the ancient technology in every detail. The image showed markings that were left by different tools. According to the scientists, at first a craftsman had to break a mammoth tusk down into segments. After that smaller plates were turned into beads: the master cut them into rectangles and made a hole in the center of each piece using a stone drill. Bigger parts were used to create animal sculptures. To depict a mammoth, the craftsman outlined a head and legs with a leveling blade and then removed the excess of the bone with a cutter. After the figurine was finished, it was decorated with a pattern to imitate eyes and hair.

The team also analyzed the chemical composition of the findings. The scientists were especially interested in the traces of dark-red pigment on the surface of the sculpture. It turned out that ancient craftsmen used to paint many of their items with manganese and magnesium (presumably, they were extracted from salt rocks situated not far from the site). The mammoth figurine was painted with a red pigment on one side and with a black one on the other. In the mythology of the Ust-Kuva people red was a symbol of life and black meant death. The researchers also found several layers of pigment on the beads. They assumed that the ornaments had been in use for many years and had to be regularly repaired.

The study can help better understand the relationships between different tribes and territories. Now scientists will be able to compare tools from different sites by various parameters. This will show whether distant tribes were in contact with each other and also help identify individual styles of ancient master carvers.

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A team of archeologists from Siberian Federal University and Novosibirsk State University provided a detailed reconstruction of a technology that was used to carve ornaments and sculptures from mammoth ivory. The team studied a string of beads and an ancient animal figurine found at the Paleolithic site of Ust-Kova in Krasnoyarsk Territory. Over 20 thousand years ago its residents used drills, cutters, and even leveling blades. Lbova L. / 2020, Archaeological Research in Asia

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Article Source: SIBERIAN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—The last decade has seen rapid development in the archaeology of Saudi Arabia. Recent discoveries range from early hominin sites hundreds of thousands of years old to sites just a few hundred years old. One enigmatic aspect of the archaeological record of western Arabia is the presence of millions of stone structures, where people have piled rocks to make different kinds of structures, ranging from burial tombs to hunting traps. One enigmatic form consists of vast rectangular shapes. Archaeologists working with the AlUla Royal Commission gave these the name ‘mustatils,’ which is Arabic for rectangle.

Mustatils only occur in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had been previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic.

In this new article led by Dr Huw Groucutt (group leader of the Extreme Events Research Group which is a Max Planck group spanning the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology, the Science of Human History, and Biogeochemistry) an international team of researchers under the auspices of the Green Arabia Project (a large project headed by Prof. Michael Petraglia from the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Saudi Ministry for Tourism as well as collaborators from multiple Saudi and international institutions) conducted the first every detailed study of mustatils. Through a mixture of field survey and analyzing satellite imagery, the team have considerably extended knowledge on these enigmatic stone structures.

More than one hundred new mustatils have been identified around the southern margins of the Nefud Desert, between the cities of Ha’il and Tayma, joining the hundreds previously identified from studies of Google Earth imagery, particularly in the Khaybar area. The team found that these structures typically consist of two large platforms, connected by parallel long walls, sometimes extending over 600 meters in length. The long walls are very low, had no obvious openings and are located in diverse landscape settings. It is also interesting that little in the way of other archaeology – such as stone tools – was found around the mustatils. Together these factors suggest that the structures were not simply utilitarian entities for something like water or animal storage.

At one locality the team were able to date the construction of a mustatil to 7000 thousand years ago, by radiocarbon dating charcoal from inside one of the platforms. An assemblage of animal bones was also recovered, which included both wild animals and possibly domestic cattle, although it is possible that the latter are wild auroch. At another mustatil the team found a rock with a geometric pattern painted onto it.

“Our interpretation of mustatils is that they are ritual sites, where groups of people met to perform some kind of currently unknown social activities,” says Groucutt. “Perhaps they were sites of animal sacrifices, or feasts.”

The fact that sometimes several of the structures were built right next to each other may suggest that the very act of their construction was a kind of social bonding exercise. Northern Arabia 7,000 years ago was very different to today. Rainfall was higher, so much of the area was covered by grassland and there were scattered lakes. Pastoralist groups thrived in this environment, yet it would have been a challenging place to live, with droughts a constant risk.

The team’s hypothesis is that mustatils were built as a social mechanism to live in this challenging landscape. They may not be the oldest buildings in the world, but they are on a uniquely large scale for this early period, more than two thousand years before pyramids began to be constructed in Egypt. Mustatils offer fascinating insights into how humans have lived in challenging environments and future studies promise to be extremely useful at understanding these ancient societies.

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New archaeological research in Saudi Arabia documents hundreds of stone structures interpreted as monumental sites where early pastoralists carried out rituals. Image shows character of these structures as two platforms connected by low walls. Note researchers at far end for scale. Huw Groucutt

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Mustatils only occur in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had been previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic. Image shows view from inside the largest mustatil yet identified, stretching for over 600 metres. Huw Groucutt

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – IRVINEIrvine, Calif., – Physical evidence found in caves in Laos helps tell a story about a connection between the end of the Green Sahara – when once heavily vegetated Northern Africa became a hyper-arid landscape – and a previously unknown megadrought that crippled Southeast Asia 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, scientists at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Pennsylvania, William Paterson University of New Jersey and other international institutions explain how this major climate transformation led to a shift in human settlement patterns in Southeast Asia, which is now inhabited by more than 600 million people.

“In this study, we provide the first proof for a strong link between the end of the Green Sahara and Southeast Asian monsoon failure during the mid- to late Holocene period,” said co-author Kathleen Johnson, UCI associate professor of Earth system science. “Our high-resolution and well-dated record suggests a strong connection between Northern Africa and mainland Southeast Asia during this time.”

To create a paleoclimate record for the study, Johnson and other researchers gathered stalagmite samples from caves in Northern Laos. In her UCI laboratory, they measured the geochemical properties of the oxygen and carbon isotopes, carbon-14, and trace metals found in the specimens. This helped them verify the occurrence of the drought and extrapolate its impacts on the region.

Johnson said they combined data from the analysis of these stalagmite-derived proxies with a series of idealized climate model simulations – conducted by co-author Francesco Pausata of the University of Quebec in Montreal – in which Saharan vegetation and dust concentrations were altered in a way that permitted them to investigate the ocean-atmosphere feedbacks and teleconnections associated with such an abrupt shift in precipitation.

The modeling experiments suggested that reduced plant growth in the Sahara led to increased airborne dust that acted to cool the Indian Ocean and shift the Walker circulation pattern eastward, causing it to behave in ways similar to modern-day El Niño events. This, ultimately, led to a large reduction in monsoon moisture across Southeast Asia that lasted more than 1,000 years, according to Johnson.

Anthropologists and archaeologists have previously studied the effects of the demise of the Green Sahara, also known as the African humid period, on population centers closer to Western Asia and North Africa, noting the collapse of the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, the de-urbanization of the Indus Civilization (near present-day Pakistan and India) and the spread of pastoralism along the Nile River.

But the link to the origin of the Southeast Asia megadrought and lifestyle pattern shifts in the region had not been previously investigated, according to lead author Michael Griffiths, professor of environmental science at William Paterson University of New Jersey.

“Archaeologists and anthropologists have been studying this event for decades now, in terms of societal adaptations and upheavals, but its exact cause has eluded the scientific community,” said Griffiths, who was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-supported postdoctoral scholar in Johnson’s lab and has collaborated with her on this research topic for more than 10 years.

“Results from this work provide a novel and convincing explanation for the origin of the Southeast Asia megadrought and could help us better understand, to varying degrees, the observed societal shifts across many parts of the tropics and extra-tropics,” he said.

The researchers suggest that the centuries-long megadrought corresponds to the “missing millennia” in Southeast Asia between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, a time characterized by a noticeable lack of archaeological evidence in interior Southeast Asia compared to earlier and later portions of the Holocene.

They propose that the mid-Holocene megadrought may have been an impetus for mass population movements and the adoption of new, more resilient subsistence strategies – and that it should now be considered as a possible driver for the inception of Neolithic farming in mainland Southeast Asia.

“This is outstanding evidence for the type of climate change that must have affected society, what plants were available, what animals were available,” said co-author Joyce White, adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. “All of life had to adjust to this very different climate. From an archaeological point of view, this really is a game changer in how we try to understand or reconstruct the middle Holocene period.”

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To create a paleoclimate record for the study, co-author Kathleen Johnson, UCI associate professor of Earth system science, and other researchers collected stalagmite samples from caves in Northern Laos. The specimens hold geochemical evidence of past climate change in the highly populated Asian monsoon region. Amy Ellsworth

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – IRVINE news release

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SWANSEA UNIVERSITY—Three mummified animals from ancient Egypt have been digitally unwrapped and dissected by researchers, using high-resolution 3D scans that give unprecedented detail about the animals’ lives – and deaths – over 2000 years ago.

The three animals – a snake, a bird and a cat – are from the collection held by the Egypt Centre at Swansea University. Previous investigations had identified which animals they were, but very little else was known about what lay inside the mummies.

Now, thanks to X-ray micro CT scanning, which generates 3D images with a resolution 100 times greater than a medical CT scan, the animals’ remains can be analyzed in extraordinary detail, right down to their smallest bones and teeth.

The team, led by Professor Richard Johnston of Swansea University, included experts from the Egypt Centre and from Cardiff and Leicester universities.

The ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as humans, including cats, ibis, hawks, snakes, crocodiles and dogs. Sometimes they were buried with their owner or as a food supply for the afterlife.

But the most common animal mummies were votive offerings, brought by visitors to temples to offer to the gods, to act as a means of communication with them. Animals were bred or captured by keepers and then killed and embalmed by temple priests. It is believed that as many as 70 million animal mummies were created in this way.

Although other methods of scanning ancient artifacts without damaging them are available, they have limitations. Standard X-rays only give 2-dimensional images. Medical CT scans give 3D images, but the resolution is low.

Micro CT, in contrast, gives researchers high resolution 3D images. Used extensively within materials science to image internal structures on the micro-scale, the method involves building a 3D volume (or ‘tomogram’) from many individual projections or radiographs. The 3D shape can then be 3D printed or placed into virtual reality, allowing further analysis.

The team, using micro CT equipment at the Advanced Imaging of Materials (AIM) facility, Swansea University College of Engineering, found:

• The cat was a kitten of less than 5 months, according to evidence of unerupted teeth hidden within the jaw bone.
• Separation of vertebrae indicate that it had possibly been strangled
• The bird most closely resembles a Eurasian kestrel; micro CT scanning enables virtual bone measurement, making accurate species identification possible
• The snake was identified as a mummified juvenile Egyptian Cobra (Naja haje).
• Evidence of kidney damage showed it was probably deprived of water during its life, developing a form of gout.
• Analysis of bone fractures shows it was ultimately killed by a whipping action, prior to possibly undergoing an ‘opening of the mouth’ procedure during mummification; if true this demonstrates the first evidence for complex ritualistic behavior applied to a snake.

Professor Richard Johnston of Swansea University College of Engineering, who led the research, said:

“Using micro CT we can effectively carry out a post-mortem on these animals, more than 2000 years after they died in ancient Egypt.

With a resolution up to 100 times higher than a medical CT scan, we were able to piece together new evidence of how they lived and died, revealing the conditions they were kept in, and possible causes of death.

These are the very latest scientific imaging techniques. Our work shows how the hi-tech tools of today can shed new light on the distant past.”

Dr Carolyn Graves-Brown from the Egypt Centre at Swansea University said:

“This collaboration between engineers, archaeologists, biologists, and Egyptologists shows the value of researchers from different subjects working together.

Our findings have uncovered new insights into animal mummification, religion and human-animal relationships in ancient Egypt.”*

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Mummy snake: The coiled remains of an Egyptian Cobra, undisturbed for thousands of years. Digitally dissected and revealed beneath the wrappings. Swansea University

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Digitally dissected lower jaw (mandible) and teeth of the mummified kitten. Reveals fractures and unerupted mandibular first molars (red) indicating it was a kitten at the time of death. Scale: skull total length = 68.9 mm. Swansea University

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*Evidence of diet, deification, and death within ancient Egyptian mummified animals. Richard Johnston*, Richard Thomas, Rhys Jones, Carolyn Graves-Brown, Wendy Goodridge, Laura North. To be published in Scientific Reports at 16.00 (London) on Thursday 20 August 2020, and available from that time at this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69726-0

Article Source: SWANSEA UNIVERSITY news release

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AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—An analysis of facial expressions in ancient Mesoamerican sculptures finds that some emotions expressed in these artworks match the emotions that modern U.S. participants would anticipate for each discernible context, including elation, sadness, pain, anger, and determination or strain. For instance, elation was predicted in the context of social touch while anger was predicted in the context of combat. The results support the hypothesis that some emotions conveyed through facial expressions are universal, reinforcing that feelings can be expressed nonverbally in ways that transcend culture. While previous studies have explored cross-cultural similarities and differences in how facial expressions convey emotions, these studies have typically asked people from Eastern or indigenous cultures to match depictions of Western expressions to situations or words in their native language. Such work may be perceived as biased since it treats Western emotional expression as the norm. To circumvent this bias, Alan Cowen and colleagues asked U.S. research subjects to label emotions expressed in ancient American art sculptures, which predated exposure to modern Western civilizations. The researchers combed through tens of thousands of images of Mesoamerican sculptures on museum websites, identifying 63 authentic sculptures that displayed facial expressions within clearly identifiable contexts, such as a smiling mother holding a baby. Next, Cowen et al. digitally separated each sculpture’s expression from its context, producing, for example, one image of just the smile and one image of the mother holding the baby, with no expression visible. They asked the U.S. participants to label each image of a sculpture’s facial expression with the emotion it depicted, and, separately, to label images of a sculpture’s context with the emotion they would expect to see. Sculptures depicting some emotions passed the test of universality, with facial expression labels (“elated,” for the mother’s facial expression) matching the expectations of participants who only saw the context (an expressionless mother holding a baby). This suggests that emotional expressions can be inferred through universal human themes, such as a mother-child relationship, even without a common language. “We would eventually be interested in replicating this work in other cultures,” says Cowen, noting examples of sculpture from ancient Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese cultures that could potentially be analyzed using similar study protocols. “For the time being, we are heavily focused on studying emotional expression in everyday life across many countries, aided by machine learning tools.”

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

Cover image, top left: Dezalb, Pixabay

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Science, AAAS—The Stone Age inhabitants of southern Africa used a mixture of grasses and ash to create comfortable, pest-free bedding at least 200,000 years ago, according to a new study. The findings represent the earliest known human use of grass bedding – exceeding previous evidence for the behavior by more than 100,000 years. Because plant material is so poorly preserved in the archaeological record, evidence for the early use of plants outside of being a source of food is rare and often difficult to interpret. Until now, the oldest-known use of plant bedding by Stone Age humans dated to around 77,000 years ago, where layered sedge interspersed with medicinal plants and the ashes of previous bedding was used to cover the living spaces of rockshelter habitations. Lyn Wadley and colleagues, however, describe new archaeological findings from the Border Cave site in the KwaZulu region of South Africa, that indicates that these practices likely began far earlier. The Border Cave site contains a well-preserved record of intermittent human occupation spanning nearly 230,000 years. Using a range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, Wadley et al. identified the ephemeral micromorphological traces of the ancient grass bedding within thin slices of the cave’s complex stratigraphy. According to the findings, the Stone Age inhabitants of Border Cave used sheaves of leaved grass to create bedding atop layers of ash, which may have been used to deter ticks and other biting insects from infesting these living spaces. Relatedly, in the oldest bedding, remains of camphor-bush – an aromatic plant that is still used in East African bedding to repel insects – were identified. Wadley et al. argue that the findings suggest an early potential for the cognitive, behavioral and social complexity that become more apparent in the archaeological record beginning 100,000 years ago.

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Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains. Panorama from drone images. A. Kruger

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Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains. Drone image. A. Kruger

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Border Cave excavations. D. Stratford

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Field photograph of Border Cave 200,000-year-old fossilized grass fragments. L. Wadley

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Border Cave on site chemical analysis of ash, using ATR-FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared
Spectroscopy). L. Wadley

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Article Source: Science news release
This research appears in the 14 August 2020 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Cover Image, Top Left: Border Cave excavations. F. d’Errico

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PLOS and CNRS—Ancient people in the Near East had begun the practice of intentionally cremating their dead by the beginning of the 7th millennium BC, according to a study published August 12, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fanny Bocquentin of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and colleagues.

Excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun in Northern Israel have uncovered an ancient cremation pit containing the remains of a corpse that appears to have been intentionally incinerated as part of a funerary practice. These remains were directly dated to between 7013-6700 BC, making them the oldest known example of cremation in the Near East.

The gender of the human remains found inside remains unknown. What is known is that the individual was a young adult injured by a flint projectile several months prior to their death in spring some 9,000 years ago. Preserved due to it being buried, the pit represents the oldest proof of direct1 cremation in the Middle-East. An international team lead by CNRS archaeo-anthropologist Fanny Bocquentin2 with aid from PhD candidate Marie Anton and several experts in animal, plant, and mineral remains, discovered and studied the bones found inside the pyre. An analysis of the clay used to coat the inside of the pit showed the 355 bone fragments, some of which were burnt, were exposed to temperatures reaching 700°C. The position of the bones and the preserved joints seem to indicate the body was placed seated onto the pyre and was not moved during or after cremation. Whether used as fuel, as ornamentation, or as a scent, siliceous traces indicated the presence of flowering plants, which made it possible to identify the season the person died. In addition to the exceptional pyre pit, the cremated remains of five other adults were discovered at the site. They dated back to the same period as burials whose traces were discovered among the ruins of abandoned dwellings. 

This early cremation comes at an important period of transition in funerary practices in this region of the world. Old traditions were on the way out, such as the removal of the cranium of the dead and the burial of the dead within the settlement, while practices like cremation were new. This change in funeral procedure might also signify a transition in rituals surrounding death and the significance of the deceased within society. Further examination of other possible cremation sites in the region will help elucidate this important cultural shift.

Bocquentin says: “The funerary treatment involved in situ cremation within a pyre-pit of a young adult individual who previously survived from a flint projectile injury—the inventory of bones and their relative position strongly supports the deposit of an articulated corpse and not dislocated bones.” She adds, “This is a redefinition of the place of the dead in the village and in society.”

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A section of the Beisamoun site (Israel) where the pyre pit is visible. © mission Beisamoun

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Picture of bones in situ: A. Segment of axial skeleton: ribs and vertebrae exposed in the middle of the structure. B. Right coxal in situ; preserved almost complete by a piece of collapsed mud wall (see Fig 2D). C. Four right pedal proximal phalanges found directly under the right coxal. Bocquentin et al, 2020 (PLOS ONE, CC BY)

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Flint point thrust inside a burnt shoulder blade © mission Beisamoun

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Article Source: Adapted from news releases from PLOS and the CNRS.

*Bocquentin F, Anton M, Berna F, Rosen A, Khalaily H, Greenberg H, et al. (2020) Emergence of corpse cremation during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A multidisciplinary study of a pyre-pit burial. PLoS ONE 15(8): e0235386. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235386

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UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD—Radiocarbon dating is set to become more accurate than ever after an international team of scientists improved the technique for assessing the age of historical objects.

The team of researchers at the Universities of Sheffield, Belfast, Bristol, Glasgow, Oxford, St Andrews and Historic England, plus international colleagues, used measurements from almost 15,000 samples from objects dating back as far as 60,000 years ago, as part of a seven-year project.

They used the measurements to create new international radiocarbon calibration (IntCal) curves, which are fundamental across the scientific spectrum for accurately dating artefacts and making predictions about the future. Radiocarbon dating is vital to fields such as archaeology and geoscience to date everything from the oldest modern human bones to historic climate patterns.

Archaeologists can use that knowledge to restore historic monuments or study the demise of the Neanderthals, while geoscientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rely upon the curves to find out about what the climate was like in the past to better understand and prepare for future changes.

Professor Paula Reimer, from Queen’s University Belfast and head of the IntCal project, said: “Radiocarbon dating has revolutionised the field of archaeology and environmental science. As we improve the calibration curve, we learn more about our history. The IntCal calibration curves are key to helping answer big questions about the environment and our place within it.”

The team of researchers have developed three curves dependent upon where the object to be dated is found. The new curves, to be published in Radiocarbon, are IntCal20 for the Northern Hemisphere, SHCal20 for the Southern Hemisphere, and Marine20 for the world’s oceans.

Dr Tim Heaton, from the University of Sheffield and lead author on the Marine20 curve, said: “This is a very exciting time to be working in radiocarbon. Developments in the field have made it possible to truly advance our understanding. I look forward to seeing what new insights into our past these recalculated radiocarbon timescales provide.”

The previous radiocarbon calibration curves developed over the past 50 years, were heavily reliant upon measurements taken from chunks of wood covering 10 to 20 years big enough to be tested for radiocarbon.

Advances in radiocarbon testing mean the updated curves instead use tiny samples, such as tree-rings covering just single years, that provide previously impossible precision and detail in the new calibration curves. Additionally, improvements in understanding of the carbon cycle have meant the curves have now been extended all the way to the limit of the radiocarbon technique 55,000 years ago.

Radiocarbon dating is the most frequently used approach for dating the last 55,000 years and underpins archaeological and environmental science. It was first developed in 1949. It depends upon two isotopes of carbon called stable 12C and radioactive 14C.

While a plant or animal is alive it takes in new carbon, so has the same ratio of these isotopes as the atmosphere at the time. But once an organism dies it stops taking in new carbon, the stable 12C remains but the 14C decays at a known rate. By measuring the ratio of 14C to 12C left in an object the date of its death can be estimated.

If the level of atmospheric 14C were constant, this would be easy. However, it has fluctuated significantly throughout history. In order to date organisms precisely scientists need a reliable historical record of its variation to accurately transform 14C measurements into calendar ages. The new IntCal curves provide this link.

The curves are created based on collecting a huge number of archives which store past radiocarbon but can also be dated using another method. Such archives include tree-rings from up to 14,000 years ago, stalagmites found in caves, corals from the sea and cores drilled from lake and ocean sediments. In total, the new curves were based upon almost 15,000 measurements of radiocarbon taken from objects as old as 60,000 years.

Alex Bayliss, Head of Scientific Dating at Historic England, said: “Accurate and high-precision radiocarbon dating underpins the public’s enjoyment of the historic environment and enables better preservation and protection.

“The new curves have internationally important implications for archaeological methodology, and for practices in conservation and understanding of wooden built heritage.”

Darrell Kaufman of the IPCC said: “The IntCal series of curves are critical for providing a perspective on past climate which is essential for our understanding of the climate system, and a baseline for modelling future changes.”

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD news release

Cover Image, Top Left: Kestrel, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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PLOS—A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published 6th August in PLOS Genetics.

Roughly 50,000 years ago, a group of humans migrated out of Africa and interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia. But that’s not the only time that our ancient human ancestors and their relatives swapped DNA. The sequencing of genomes from Neanderthals and a less well-known ancient group, the Denisovans, has yielded many new insights into these interbreeding events and into the movement of ancient human populations. In the new paper, the researchers developed an algorithm for analyzing genomes that can identify segments of DNA that came from other species, even if that gene flow occurred thousands of years ago and came from an unknown source. They used the algorithm to look at genomes from two Neanderthals, a Denisovan and two African humans. The researchers found evidence that 3 percent of the Neanderthal genome came from ancient humans, and estimate that the interbreeding occurred between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. Furthermore, 1 percent of the Denisovan genome likely came from an unknown and more distant relative, possibly Homo erectus, and about 15% of these “super-archaic” regions may have been passed down to modern humans who are alive today.

The new findings confirm previously reported cases of gene flow between ancient humans and their relatives, and also point to new instances of interbreeding. Given the number of these events, the researchers say that genetic exchange was likely whenever two groups overlapped in time and space. Their new algorithm solves the challenging problem of identifying tiny remnants of gene flow that occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago, when only a handful of ancient genomes are available. This algorithm may also be useful for studying gene flow in other species where interbreeding occurred, such as in wolves and dogs.

“What I think is exciting about this work is that it demonstrates what you can learn about deep human history by jointly reconstructing the full evolutionary history of a collection of sequences from both modern humans and archaic hominins,” said author Adam Siepel. “This new algorithm that Melissa has developed, ARGweaver-D, is able to reach back further in time than any other computational method I’ve seen. It seems to be especially powerful for detecting ancient introgression.”

Article Source: PLOS news release

*Hubisz MJ, Williams AL, Siepel A (2020) Mapping gene flow between ancient hominins through demography-aware inference of the ancestral recombination graph. PLoS Genet 16(8): e1008895. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895

Funding: MJH and AS were supported by US National Institutes of Health grant R35-GM127070 (to AS) (https://www.nih.gov), and MJH was additionally supported by National Science Foundation GRFP DGE-1650441 (https://www.nsf.gov). ALW was supported by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (https://sloan.org/fellowships/) and a seed grant from Nancy and Peter Meinig. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562 (https://www.nsf.gov). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Feature image, top left: A genome sequencing machine. KennethR, Pixabay

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—A new study led by archaeologists from the CNRS, the Inrap, the Ohio State University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, reports on fluted points from the archaeological sites of Manayzah in Yemen and Ad-Dahariz in Oman. Fluted stone tools are a distinctive, technologically advanced form of projectile points, including spearheads and arrowheads. Fluting is a specific technique that involves the extraction of an elongated flake along the length of a projectile point, leaving a distinctive groove or depression at the base of the spearhead or arrowhead.

Fluting is a distinct technological tradition invented by early human cultures that spread across the Americas. Fluted point technology is very well known in North America, evidenced by finds across the continent dating from 13,000 to 10,000 years ago. As lead author Dr. Rémy Crassard of the CNRS notes, “Until the early 2000s, these fluted points were unknown elsewhere on the planet. When the first isolated examples of these objects were recognized in Yemen, and more recently in Oman, we recognized that there could be huge implications.”

The sites of Manayzah and Ad-Dahariz yielded dozens of fluted points. The Arabian examples date to the Neolithic period, about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, at least two thousand years later than the American examples. As Professor Petraglia of the Max Planck explains, “Given their age and the fact that the fluted points from America and Arabia are separated by thousands of kilometers, there is no possible cultural connection between them. This is then a clear and excellent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention in human history.”

The new PLOS ONE article carefully examines the fluted points found in south Arabia. Detailed technological analysis, backed up by stone tool experiments and replication by an expert modern flintknapper, illustrate the similarities between the American and Arabian fluting procedures.

In addition to the similarities, the authors of the new study also investigated the contrasts between the technologies of the two regions. Technological differences were apparent in the nature and location of the flute. The authors emphasize that the ‘fluting method’ was likely a mental conceptualization of stone tool manufacture, more than just a technical way to produce a projectile and hafting zone. Whereas the apparent function of fluting in the Americas is to facilitate hafting, or attaching the point to a shaft, most of the Arabian fluted points do not have hafting as a functional final aim. The fluting concept and the method itself are the same in both American and Arabia, yet the final aim of fluting appears to be different.

Arabian and American fluted point technologies were highly specialized stone tool production methods. The PLOS ONE study of Arabian fluting technology demonstrates that similar innovations and inventions were developed under different circumstances and that such highly-skilled and convergent production methods can have different anthropological implications. As discussed in the article, Professor McCorriston argues that “fluting in Arabia was used as a display of skill, rather than serving a purely functional purpose such as hafting, as is more widely accepted in the Americas.”

In Arabian prehistory, southern Arabia experienced developments of local origin, with multiple examples of inventions and innovations not culturally transmitted by outside traditions. The fluting method is then a hallmark of this indigenous development in the south Arabian Neolithic.

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The sites of Manayzah (Yemen) and Ad-Dahariz (Oman) yielded dozens of fluted points. The Arabian examples date to the Neolithic period, about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, at least two thousand years later than the American examples. Joy McCorriston, OSU

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Fluting is a specific technique that involves the extraction of an elongated flake along the length of a projectile point, leaving a distinctive groove or depression at the base of the spearhead or arrowhead. Rémy Crassard, CNRS

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Detailed technological analysis, backed up by stone tool experiments and replication by an expert modern flintknapper, illustrate the similarities between the American and Arabian fluting procedures. Jérémie Vosges, CNRS

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release.

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PENN STATE—A llama carved from a spondylus shell and a cylindrical laminated gold foil object were the contents of a carved stone box—an offering—found at the bottom of Lake Titicaca, according to researchers from Penn State and the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. The offering, found near an island in the lake, was not located where others had found offerings in the past.

“We knew they (Inca) did some form of ritual offerings and that they did them in the lake,” said Jose Capriles, assistant professor of anthropology, Penn State. “The 16th and 17th century chronicles indicate there were submerged offerings.”

Lake Titicaca is located in the Andes between Bolivia and Peru. It is the largest lake in South America and was important to many cultures, including the Tiwanaku and the Inca.

Amateur divers in 1977 found other offerings, or artifacts that could be part of offering bundles near the Island of the Sun, but these were not intact offerings. Professional divers between 1988 and 1992 investigated the area of the Khoa reef and found pre-Inca and Inca artifacts including stone boxes with miniature figures. Recent excavations show that the Khoa reef was an important ceremonial site for the Inca and prior societies; however, this new group of artifacts was not found on the Khoa reef, but on the K’akaya reef.

Capriles and Christophe Delaere, junior research fellow, Université libre de Bruxelles, report their findings today (Aug. 4) in Antiquity.

“Since 2012, the Université libre de Bruxelles has implemented a research program with the goal of locating and inventorying the underwater heritage of Lake Titicaca,” said Delaere. “Our team has systematically surveyed around the islands and reefs in the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca.”

The K’akaya Archipelago is west of Challapata Bay in the eastern shore of Lake Titicaca and is a series of a main island and three small ones. K’akaya reef is the last islet of the small chain and is covered in bird droppings.

The divers retrieved the box intact although currents had eroded one side. The box was tightly sealed, but not watertight. Resting in the box, beneath the silt that had filtered in, was the spondylus shell llama and the rolled gold foil.

One indication that these boxes contain artifacts valuable enough for offerings, beside the gold foil, is the spondylus shell llama. The closest location where the Inca could obtain this spiny oyster shell was in warm coastal ocean waters off the coast of Ecuador.

Finding this box in a new location suggests to the researchers that Lake Titicaca was a locus of ritual and ceremonial activity by the Inca. Similar offerings are found in other parts of what was the Inca Empire, some on land and some on water, but the researchers think that the lake was important in the consolidation of the empire.

According to Capriles, as the Inca radiated out from Cuzco in Peru, Lake Titicaca became a focal point. Prior archaeological evidence indicates that many of the islands, reefs and archipelagos contain ruins of temples and other monumental architecture.

“Most of what we know outside of archaeology is from the Spanish,” said Capriles. “Indications were that Lake Titicaca was a pilgrimage center for the Inca, but also served as a focal point for alliances with other groups.”

Spanish myths about the Inca dumping their gold into Lake Titicaca are apparently untrue, but the lake holds much more information still to be uncovered, said the researchers.

The artifacts reside with the Bolivian municipality of Escoma, which has jurisdiction over the area in which they were found.

“One of the goals of our underwater archaeological survey was to identify the existence of similar sites and to our surprise we found at least one,” said Delaere. “It presents not only one of the rare intact discoveries of an Inca underwater offering, but also that it was found at another place in the lake, which has an important implication for understanding the relationship between the expanding Inca empire, the local communities who lived in the lake, and Lake Titicaca itself prior to European contact.

“The inland underwater world remains largely unexplored and offers outstanding opportunities to understand prehistoric societies,” said Delaere. “The underwater heritage of Lake Titicaca still has many surprises to reveal.”

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Stone box with carved shell llama and rolled gold foil. Teddy Sequin

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Map of Lake Titicaca showing islands. José Capriles, Penn State and Christophe Delaere, Université libre de Bruxelles

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Article Source: PENN STATE news release

Université libre de Bruxelles and Wiener-Anspach Foundation supported this work.

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TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY—Ancient sediment found in a central Texas cave appears to solve the mystery of why the Earth cooled suddenly about 13,000 years ago, according to a research study co-authored by a Texas A&M University professor.

Michael Waters, director of The Center for The Study of the First Americans and Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, and colleagues from Baylor University and the University of Houston have had their work published in Science Advances.

Some researchers believed the event – which cooled the Earth by about 3 degrees Centigrade, a huge amount – was caused by an extraterrestrial impact with the Earth, such as a meteor collision.

But Waters and the team found that the evidence left in layers of sediment in Hall’s Cave were almost certainly the result of volcanic eruptions.

Waters said that Hall’s Cave, located in the Texas hill country, has a sediment record extending over 20,000 years and he first began researching the cave in 2017.

“It is an exceptional record that offers a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary cooperation to investigate a number of important research questions,” he said.

“One big question was, did an extraterrestrial impact occur near the end of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago as the ice sheets covering Canada were melting, and cause an abrupt cooling that thrust the northern hemisphere back into the ice age for an extra 1,200 years?”

Waters and the team found that within the cave are layers of sediment, first identified by Thomas Stafford (Stafford Research Laboratories, Colorado), that dated to the time of the proposed impact that could answer the question and perhaps even identify the trigger that started the ancient cold snap.

The event also likely helped cause the extinction of large mammals such as mammoth, horse and camel that once roamed North America.

“This work shows that the geochemical signature associated with the cooling event is not unique but occurred four times between 9,000 and 15,000 years ago,” said Alan Brandon, professor of geosciences at University of Houston and head of the research team.

“Thus, the trigger for this cooling event didn’t come from space. Prior geochemical evidence for a large meteor exploding in the atmosphere instead reflects a period of major volcanic eruptions.

“I was skeptical,” Brandon said. “We took every avenue we could to come up with an alternative explanation, or even avoid, this conclusion. A volcanic eruption had been considered one possible explanation but was generally dismissed because there was no associated geochemical fingerprint.”

After a volcano erupts, the global spread of aerosols reflects incoming solar radiation away from Earth and may lead to global cooling post eruption for one to five years, depending on the size and timescales of the eruption, the team said.

“The Younger Dryas, which occurred about 13,000 years ago, disrupted distinct warming at the end of the last ice age,” said co-author Steven Forman, professor of geosciences at Baylor.

The Earth’s climate may have been at a tipping point at the end of Younger Dryas, possibly from the ice sheet discharge into the North Atlantic Ocean, enhanced snow cover and powerful volcanic eruptions that may have in combination led to intense Northern Hemisphere cooling, Forman said.

“This period of rapid cooling coincides with the extinction of a number of species, including camels and horses, and the appearance of the Clovis archaeological tradition,” said Waters.

Brandon and fellow University of Houston scientist Nan Sun completed the isotopic analysis of sediments collected from Hall’s Cave. They found that elements such as iridium, ruthenium, platinum, palladium and rhenium were not present in the correct proportions, meaning that a meteor or asteroid could not have caused the event.

“The isotope analysis and the relative proportion of the elements matched those that were found in previous volcanic gases,” said Sun, lead author of the report.

Volcanic eruptions cause their most severe cooling near the source, usually in the year of the eruption, with substantially less cooling in the years after the eruption, the team said.

The Younger Dryas cooling lasted about 1,200 years, “so a sole volcanic eruptive cause is an important initiating factor, but other Earth system changes, such as cooling of the oceans and more snow cover were needed to sustain this colder period, “Forman said.

Waters added that the bottom line is that “the chemical anomalies found in sediments dating to the beginning of the Younger Dryas are the result of volcanism and not an extraterrestrial impact.”

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Workers excavating Hall’s Cave in Central Texas. Mike Waters/Texas A&M University

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Article Source: TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY news release

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Science Advances, AAAS—Most of the hulking sandstone boulders – called sarsens – that make up the United Kingdom’s famous Stonehenge monument appear to share a common origin 25 kilometers away in West Woods, Wiltshire, according to an analysis of the stones’ chemical composition. The findings support the theory that the stones were brought to Stonehenge at around the same time, contradicting a previous suggestion that one large sarsen, the Heel Stone, originated in the immediate vicinity of the monument and was erected earlier than the others. The results may also help scientists identify the route the monument’s ancient builders would have taken to transport the enormous rocks to their celebrated resting site. “Until recently we did not know it was possible to provenance a stone like sarsen,” says David Nash, the lead author of the study. “It has been really exciting to use 21^st century science to understand the Neolithic past and answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries.” Since technology for determining the origins of the enormous sarsens, which tower at up to 30 feet tall, weigh as much as 25 tons, and make up most of Stonehenge, did not exist until recently, most research has revolved around the monument’s smaller “bluestones” – various types of rock that clearly were not gathered locally. To learn where the behemoth boulders came from, Nash and colleagues used portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (PXRF) to initially characterize their chemical composition, then analyzed the data statistically to determine their degree of chemical variability. Next, the researchers performed inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and ICP-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) of samples from a core previously drilled through one sarsen stone and a range of sarsen boulders from across southern Britain. After comparing these signatures, Nash et al. were able to point to West Woods as the sarsens’ earliest home. The reason the monument’s builders selected this site remains a mystery, although the researchers suggest the size and quality of West Woods’ stones, and the ease with which the builders could access them, may have factored into the decision.

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Stonehenge in the Wiltshire landscape. Andre Pattenden (English Heritage)

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Map showing the locations of Stonehenge and West Woods, together with possible routeways over which sarsen stones might have been transported to the monument. David Nash (University of Brighton)

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Jake Ciborowski (University of Brighton) analysing the sarsen core extracted from Stone 58 at Stonehenge using a portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Sam Frost (English Heritage)

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Plan of Stonehenge using the numbering system devised by W.M. Flinders Petrie in the late 19th century. David Nash (University of Brighton)

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Large sarsen stone at West Woods, the probable source area for most sarsens used to construct Stonehenge. Katy Whitaker (Historic England/University of Reading)

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Article Source: Science Advances news release

Science Advances is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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PLOS—Alarming results from a 2019 survey of well-known archaeological site Ageröd reveal drastic bone and organic matter deterioration since the site’s initial excavations in the 1940s, suggesting action is needed to preserve findings from Ageröd and similar sites, according to a study* published July 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Adam Boethius from Lund University, Sweden, and colleagues.

Archaeologists need organic remains like bone and plant matter to reconstruct ancient human cultures and environments; however, organic matter is only preserved under specific conditions, becoming rarer as sites deteriorate due to environmental change like drainage and pollution. Boethius and colleagues here attempt to measure and analyze this phenomenon using the well-known Swedish Mesolithic peat bog site Ageröd I (8700-8200 cal BP), uncovered in the 1930s with excavations in the 1940s and 1970s, and renowned for its abundant and well-preserved quantities of bone and flint.

In 2019, the authors and colleagues excavated five test pits (five square meters total) at Ageröd, near areas containing the greatest number of remains as found in previous excavations. They then compared 61 bone, tooth, and antler fragments (as determined to the species or family level) uncovered in the test pits with 3716 bone fragments previously retrieved during the 1940s and 1970s excavations.

Osteological analyses of the bone remains from 2019 as compared with those found in the 1940s and 1970s indicate that bones at Ageröd have suffered accelerated deterioration over the last 75 years, with measured bone weathering averages going from 2.8 in the 40s (hard, heavy bones with occasional cracks) to 3.4 in the 70s (lighter bones with bigger cracks and interior exposure) to 3.7 in 2019 (light and heavily eroded bones, outer surface loss). More worryingly, complete destruction of some bones was suggested in this latest excavation, which uncovered no smaller fur game bones or bird bones, in contrast to earlier excavations–likely because small mammals and birds have smaller, lighter bones that break down faster than heavier bones. The authors also detected oxidized pyrite in the bones from 2019, in contrast to those from the 40s and 70s (which showed only non-oxidized pyrite). This suggests that oxygen was re-introduced into the bog environment between the 1970s excavations and 2019, destabilizing the typically anoxic bog conditions and permitting pyrite to oxidize and produce sulphuric acid (which drops soil pH and damages organic matter) as a by-product.

Although the 2019 excavation was much smaller in scope than previous excavations–in part to help limit further potential destruction at the site–the careful location of the test pits suggests the decay and loss of bone remains documented here is likely indicative of issues occurring across Ageröd. The authors note that Ageröd has not been subjected to more or heavier encroachment than most other archaeological sites, raising concerns as to the state of preservation in similar sites. They note that though Ageröd still holds significance, it has already lost many of its unique preservation properties–and if future steps to protect the site are not taken, then the organic remains preserved in its peat bog for 9000 years will soon be lost forever.

The authors add: “The fact is that we know very little of the state of our buried archaeological remains from most areas, but we are increasingly becoming aware of their rapid destruction. Unfortunately, this destruction is not only a matter of connecting the present with long lost ancient cultures or societies, as an interest of the ancient past. The record being destroyed is also a long-term perspective database which, if properly used, can help us create models of future environmental scenarios. Especially if going back to periods after the last Ice Age when the climate experienced rapid changes in global warming while human groups started to affect their local environment at much higher levels than previously seen. Unfortunately, the older the remains, the rarer and more vulnerable they become and if the pattern observed at Ageröd is similar in other areas we are in an extreme hurry to remedy the situation and recreate soils that allow organic preservation or, indeed, excavate the remains. If we do nothing, wait and hope for the best it is likely that the archaeo-organic remains in many areas will be gone in a decade or two. Once it is gone there is no going back and what is lost will be lost forever. It is worth considering, especially given recent advances in archaeological molecular science, i.e. aDNA and stable isotopes etc. If the organic remains deteriorate, these type of analyses will not be possible to do anymore and given the information we are now generating from them it will be a devastating blow to our understanding of ancient cultures, diet and subsistence strategies, migration and mobility etc.”

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Organic bone preservation at Ageröd. a-d bones from 2019; e-i from old excavations. a) astragalus and calcaneus from wild boar found articulated in the transition between white cultural layer and lower peat in trench 205, likely deposited in wet conditions with tendons and ligament still connected, weathering category 8. b) metatarsal from aurochs found in white cultural layer in trench 217, weathering category 6. c) radius diaphysis from elk found in white cultural layer in trench 201, one of the best-preserved bone fragments from the 2019 excavation, weathering category 3. d) tibia from red deer found in white cultural layer of trench 205, weathering category 7. e) drilled and ornated cervid antler from the 1940s, weathering category3. f) “net sinker” made from burr of red deer antler, from the 1940s excavation, weathering category 2. g) scapula from red deer found in the white layer in the 1970s, weathering category 3. h) femur diaphysis from aurochs from the 1940s, weathering category 2. i) slotted bone point from the 1940s, in mint condition with resin and inserted microliths. All photos realized for this publication by the authors (OM and AB). Boethius et al (2020)–PLOS ONE, CC BY 4.0

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Boethius A, Kjällquist M, Magnell O, Apel J (2020) Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair. PLoS ONE 15(7): e0236105. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236105

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