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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—As part of the Silk Road and located at the geographical intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has long served as a major crossroads for trans-Eurasian exchanges of people, cultures, agriculture, and languages. Since the late 1990s, the discovery of hundreds of naturally mummified human remains dating to circa 2,000 BCE to 200 CE in the region’s Tarim Basin has attracted international attention due to their so-called ‘Western’ physical appearance, their felted and woven woolen clothing, and their agropastoral economy that included cattle, sheep and goat, wheat, barley, millet, and even kefir cheese. Buried in boat coffins in an otherwise barren desert, the Tarim Basin mummies have long puzzled scientists and inspired numerous theories as to their enigmatic origins.

The Tarim Basin mummies’ cattle-focused economy and unusual physical appearance had led some scholars to speculate that they were the descendants of migrating Yamnaya herders, a highly mobile Bronze Age society from the steppes of the Black Sea region of southern Russia. Others have placed their origins among the Central Asian desert oasis cultures of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), a group with strong genetic ties to early farmers on the Iranian Plateau.

To better understand the origin of the Tarim Basin mummies’ founding population, who first settled the region at sites such as Xiaohe and Gumugou circa 2,000 BCE, a team of international researchers from Jilin University, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Seoul National University of Korea, and Harvard University generated and analyzed genome-wide data from thirteen of the earliest known Tarim Basin mummies, dating to circa 2,100 to 1,700 BCE, together with five individuals dating to circa 3,000 to 2,800 BCE in the neighboring Dzungarian Basin. This is the first genomic-scale study* of prehistoric populations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and it includes the earliest yet discovered human remains from the region.

The Tarim Basin mummies were not newcomers to the region

To their great surprise, the researchers found that the Tarim Basin mummies were not newcomers to the region at all, but rather appear to be direct descendants of a once widespread Pleistocene population that had largely disappeared by the end of the last Ice Age. This population, known as the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE), survives only fractionally in the genomes of present-day populations, with Indigenous populations in Siberia and the Americas having the highest known proportions, at about 40 percent. In contrast to populations today, the Tarim Basin mummies show no evidence of admixture with any other Holocene groups, forming instead a previously unknown genetic isolate that likely underwent an extreme and prolonged genetic bottleneck prior to settling the Tarim Basin.

“Archaeogeneticists have long searched for Holocene ANE populations in order to better understand the genetic history of Inner Eurasia. We have found one in the most unexpected place,” says Choongwon Jeong, a senior author of the study and a professor of Biological Sciences at Seoul National University.

In contrast to the Tarim Basin, the earliest inhabitants of the neighboring Dzungarian Basin descended not only from local populations but also from Western steppe herders, namely the Afanasievo, a pastoralist group with strong genetic links to the Early Bronze Age Yamanya. The genetic characterization of the Early Bronze Age Dzungarians also helped to clarify the ancestry of other pastoralist groups known as the Chemurchek, who later spread northwards to the Altai mountains and into Mongolia. Chemurchek groups appear to be the descendants of Early Bronze Age Dzungarians and Central Asian groups the from Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC), who derive their ancestry from both local populations and BMAC agropastoralists.

“These findings add to our understanding of the eastward dispersal of Yamnaya ancestry and the scenarios under which admixture occurred when they first met the populations of Inner Asia,” says Chao Ning, co-lead author the study and a professor of School of Archaeology and Museology at Peking University.

The Tarim Basin groups were genetically but not culturally isolated

These findings of extensive genetic mixing all around the Tarim Basin throughout the Bronze Age make it all the more remarkable that the Tarim Basin mummies exhibited no evidence of genetic admixture at all. Nevertheless, while the Tarim Basin groups were genetically isolated, they were not culturally isolated. Proteomic analysis of their dental calculus confirmed that cattle, sheep, and goat dairying was already practiced by the founding population, and that they were well aware of the different cultures, cuisines, and technologies all around them.

“Despite being genetically isolated, the Bronze Age peoples of the Tarim Basin were remarkably culturally cosmopolitan – they built their cuisine around wheat and dairy from the West Asia, millet from East Asia, and medicinal plants like Ephedra from Central Asia,” says Christina Warinner, a senior author of the study, a professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, and a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

“Reconstructing the origins of the Tarim Basin mummies has had a transformative effect on our understanding of the region, and we will continue the study of ancient human genomes in other eras to gain a deeper understanding of the human migration history in the Eurasian steppes,” adds Yinquiu Cui, a senior author of the study and professor in the School of Life Sciences at Jilin University.

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Aerial view of the Xiaohe cemetery. Wenying Li, Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

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A profile view of the burial M13 from the Xiaohe cemetery. Wenying Li, Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

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A naturally mummified woman from burial M11 of the Xiaohe cemetery. Wenying Li, Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY news release.

*The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies, Nature, 27-Oct-2021. 10.1038/s41586-021-04052-7 

Seven Roman altars at Newcastle University’s Great North Museum: Hancock have been transformed in vivid hues thanks to an innovative creative project called Roman Britain in Colour. The display is a collaboration between the Museum and Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project (WallCAP), working alongside creative studio NOVAK. 

The seven altars feature animated videos projected directly onto the stone surface, giving visitors a sense of how colorful they were when made around 1900 years ago.  

The animations also offer artistic interpretations of the altars and the gods associated with them. For instance, the altar to Neptune, Roman god of freshwaters and rivers, was found in the River Tyne. It depicts a blue underwater scene filled with fish.  

The altar to Oceanus, god of the sea, is animated with seaweed, starfish and a crab, whereas the altar to Fortuna drips with bright crimson, perhaps suggesting a ritual using wine or the blood of a sacrificed animal. 

Other altars with new animations are dedicated to Jupiter, supreme deity of the Roman pantheon, Minerva, goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, and Antenociticus, a native British god only found at Condercum Roman Fort – present-day Benwell in the west end of Newcastle. 

Dr Rob Collins, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and WallCAP Project Manager, Newcastle University, said: 

“Roman altars are a great source for understanding the culture of the Roman Empire, but they can seem boring and uninteresting for people that do not know how to ‘read’ them.  

“Working with NOVAK and the Great North Museum: Hancock, the altars come alive and invite you to look more closely at the artistry and information that they hold.” 

Andrew Parkin, Keeper of Archaeology at the Great North Museum: Hancock, said: 

“We’re used to the look of sandstone altars and reliefs in museums but we forget that they were originally painted in bright colors. The paint has been lost over the centuries but researchers have found trace amounts of pigment using ultraviolet light and x-rays. 

“These new projected animations really make the altars stand out and add greatly to the Hadrian’s Wall gallery in the museum. The team at NOVAK have done a fantastic job in creating the artwork and mapping the projections precisely onto the stones.” 

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, WallCAP aims to improve the heritage of Hadrian’s Wall, by understanding the risks to the monument, and working with local communities to identify, secure and protect the heritage and cultural significance of Hadrian’s Wall. 

Anyone interested in volunteering for the WallCAP project can register at wallcap.ncl.ac.uk. Volunteers receive regular updates to alert them of forthcoming opportunities and events to investigate and protect the Wall. 

The Roman Britain in Colour display can be found in the Hadrian’s Wall gallery at the Great North Museum: Hancock. The Museum is open daily with free entry, although donations are welcomed. Visitors can plan a trip at greatnorthmuseum.org.uk. 

A film explaining the project can also be found at youtube.com/watch?v=558FKNwxUGQ

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Altars to Fortuna, Minerva and Antenociticus. Great Northern Museum, Hancock

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Altars to Jupiter, Fortuna, Minerva and Antenociticus. Great Northern Museum, Hancock

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Article Source: Great North Museum: Hancock news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA—A team of international researchers led by the University of Arizona reported last year that they had uncovered the largest and oldest Maya monument – Aguada Fénix. That same team has now uncovered nearly 500 smaller ceremonial complexes that are similar in shape and features to Aguada Fénix. The find transforms previous understanding of Mesoamerican civilization origins and the relationship between the Olmec and the Maya people.

The team’s findings are detailed in a new paper *published in the journal Nature Human Behavior. UArizona anthropology professor Takeshi Inomata is the paper’s first author. His UArizona coauthors include anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Lab director Greg Hodgins.

Using data gathered through an airborne laser mapping technique called lidar, the researchers identified 478 complexes in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz. Lidar penetrates the tree canopy and reflects three-dimensional forms of archaeological features hidden under vegetation. The lidar data was collected by the Mexican governmental organization Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía and covered a 32,800-square-mile area, which is about the same size as the island of Ireland.

Publicly available lidar data allows researchers to study huge areas before they follow up with high-resolution lidar to study sites of interest in greater detail.

“It was unthinkable to study an area this large until a few years ago,” Inomata said. “Publicly available lidar is transforming archaeology.”

Missing Links?

There’s a longstanding debate over whether the Olmec civilization led to the development of the Maya civilization or if the Maya developed independently.

The newly uncovered sites are located in a broad area encompassing the Olmec region and the western Maya lowlands. The complexes were likely constructed between 1100 B.C. and 400 B.C. and were built by diverse groups nearly a millennium before the heyday of the Maya civilization between A.D. 250 and 950.

The researchers found that the complexes share similar features with the earliest center in the Olmec area, San Lorenzo, which peaked between 1400 and 1100 BC. Aguada Fenix in the Maya area and other related sites began to adopt San Lorenzo’s form and formalize it around 1100 BC.

At San Lorenzo, the team also found a previously unrecognized rectangular space.

“The sites are big horizontally but not vertically,” Inomata said. “People will be walking on one and won’t notice its rectangular space, but we can see it with lidar really nicely.”

The researchers’ work suggests that San Lorenzo served as a template for later constructions, including Aguada Fénix.

“People always thought San Lorenzo was very unique and different from what came later in terms of site arrangement,” Inomata said. “But now we show that San Lorenzo is very similar to Aguada Fénix – it has a rectangular plaza flanked by edge platforms. Those features become very clear in lidar and are also found at Aguada Fénix, which was built a little bit later. This tells us that San Lorenzo is very important for the beginning of some of these ideas that were later used by the Maya.”

Sites Were Likely Ritual Spaces

The sites uncovered by Inomata and his collaborators were likely used as ritual gathering sites, according to the paper. They include large central open spaces where lots of people could gather and participate in rituals.

The researchers also analyzed each site’s orientation and found that the sites seem to be aligned to the sunrise of a certain date, when possible.

“There are lots of exceptions; for example, not every site has enough space to place the rectangular form in a desired direction, but when they can, they seem to have chosen certain dates,” Inomata said.

While it’s not clear why the specific dates were chosen, one possibility is that they may be tied to Zenith passage day, which is when the sun passes directly overhead. This occurs on May 10 in the region where the sites were found. This day marks the beginning of the rainy season and the planting of maize. Some groups chose to orient their sites to the directions of the sunrise on days 40, 60, 80 or 100 days before the zenith passage day. This is significant because the later Mesoamerican calendars are based on the number 20.

San Lorenzo, Aguada Fénix and some other sites have 20 edge platforms along the eastern and western sides of the rectangular plaza. Edge platforms are mounds placed along the edges of the large rectangular plazas. They define the shape of the plazas, and each are usually no taller than about 3 feet.

“This means that they were representing cosmological ideas through these ceremonial spaces,” Inomata said. “In this space, people gathered according to this ceremonial calendar.”

Inomata stressed that this is just the beginning of the team’s work.

“There are still lots of unanswered questions,” he said.

Researchers wonder what the social organization of the people who built the complexes looked like. San Lorenzo possibly had rulers, which is suggested by sculptures.

“But Aguada Fénix doesn’t have those things,” Inomata said. “We think that people were still somehow mobile, because they had just begun to use ceramics and lived in ephemeral structures on the ground level. People were in transition to more settled lifeways, and many of those areas probably didn’t have much hierarchical organization. But still, they could make this kind of very well-organized center.”

Inomata’s team and others are still searching for more evidence to explain these differences in social organization.

“Continuing to excavate the sites to find these answers will take much longer,” Inomata said, “and will involve many other scholars.”

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Olmec Head No. 1 from San Lorenzo. Mesoamerican, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA news release

*Origins and spread of formal ceremonial complexes in the Olmec and Maya regions revealed by airborne lidar, Nature Human Behavior, 25-Oct-2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01218-1

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Horses were first domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, northern Caucasus, before conquering the rest of Eurasia within a few centuries. These are the results of a study led by paleogeneticist Ludovic Orlando, CNRS, who headed an international team including l’Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, the CEA and l’Université d’Évry. Answering a decades-old enigma, the study is published in Nature on 20 October 2021.

By whom and where were modern horses first domesticated? When did they conquer the rest of the world? And how did they supplant the myriad of other types of horses that existed at that time? This long-standing archaeological mystery finally comes to an end thanks to a team of 162 scientists specializing in archaeology, palaeogenetics and linguistics.

A few years ago, Ludovic Orlando’s team looked at the site of Botai, Central Asia, which had provided the oldest archaeological evidence of domestic horses. The DNA results, however, were not compliant: these 5500-year-old horses were not the ancestors of modern domestic horses1. Besides the steppes of Central Asia, all other presumed foci of domestication, such as Anatolia, Siberia and the Iberian Peninsula, had turned out to be false. The scientific team, therefore, decided to extend their study to the whole of Eurasia by analyzing the genomes of 273 horses that lived between 50,000 and 200 years BC. This information was sequenced at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CNRS/Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier) and Genoscope2 (CNRS/CEA/Université d’Évry) before being compared with the genomes of modern domestic horses.

This strategy paid off: although Eurasia was once populated by genetically distinct horse populations, a dramatic change had occurred between 2000 and 2200 BC. A genetic profile, previously confined to the Pontic steppes (North Caucasus), began to spread beyond its native region, replacing all the wild horse populations from the Atlantic to Mongolia within a few centuries.

But how can this rapid population growth be explained? Interestingly, scientists found two striking differences between the genome of this horse and those of the populations it replaced: one is linked to a more docile behavior and the second indicates a stronger backbone. The researchers suggest that these characteristics ensured the animals’ success at a time when horse travel was becoming “global”.

The study also reveals that the horse spread throughout Asia at the same time as spoke-wheeled chariots and Indo-Iranian languages. However, the migrations of Indo-European populations, from the steppes to Europe during the third millennium BC could not have been based on the horse, as its domestication and diffusion came later. This demonstrates the importance of incorporating the history of animals when studying human migrations and encounters between cultures.

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Horse mandible excavated from the Ginnerup archaeological site, Denmark, July 2021. (This site was included in the study.) © Rune Iversen, East Jutland Museum.

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Article Source: CNRS news release

*The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes, Pablo Librado, (…), Ludovic Orlando. Nature, 20 Octobre 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04018-9

This study was directed by the the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CNRS/ Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier) with help from Genoscope (CNRS/CEA/Université d’Évry). The French laboratories Archéologies et sciences de l’Antiquité (CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre/Ministère de la Culture), De la Préhistoire à l’actuel : culture, environnement et anthropologie (CNRS/Université de Bordeaux/Ministère de la Culture) and Archéozoologie, archéobotanique : sociétés, pratiques et environnements (CNRS/MNHN) also contributed, as did 114 other research institutions throughout the world. The study was primarily funded by the European Research Council (Pegasus project) and France Genomique (Bucéphale project).

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CELL PRESS—Human feces don’t usually stick around for long—and certainly not for thousands of years. But exceptions to this general rule are found in a few places in the world, including prehistoric salt mines of the Austrian UNESCO World Heritage area Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut. Now, researchers who’ve studied ancient fecal samples (or paleofeces) from these mines have uncovered some surprising evidence: the presence of two fungal species used in the production of blue cheese and beer. The findings appear in the journal Current Biology on October 13.

“Genome-wide analysis indicates that both fungi were involved in food fermentation and provide the first molecular evidence for blue cheese and beer consumption during Iron Age Europe,” says Frank Maixner (@FrankMaixner) of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy.

“These results shed substantial new light on the life of the prehistoric salt miners in Hallstatt and allow an understanding of ancient culinary practices in general on a whole new level,” adds Kerstin Kowarik (@KowarikKerstin) of the Museum of Natural History Vienna. “It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history.”

Earlier studies already had shown the potential for studies of prehistoric paleofeces from salt mines to offer important insights into early human diet and health. In the new study*, Maixner, Kowarik, and their colleagues added in-depth microscopic, metagenomic, and proteomic analyses—to explore the microbes, DNA, and proteins that were present in those poop samples.

These comprehensive studies allowed them to reconstruct the diet of the people who once lived there. They also could get information about the ancient microbes that inhabited their guts. Gut microbes are collectively known as the gut microbiome and are now recognized to have an important role in human health.

Their dietary survey identified bran and glumes of different cereals as one of the most prevalent plant fragments. They report that this highly fibrous, carbohydrate-rich diet was supplemented with proteins from broad beans and occasionally with fruits, nuts, or animal food products.

In keeping with their plant-heavy diet, the ancient miners up to the Baroque period also had gut microbiome structures more like those of modern non-Westernized individuals, whose diets are also mainly composed of unprocessed food, fresh fruits and vegetables. The findings suggest a more recent shift in the Western gut microbiome as eating habits and lifestyles changed.

When the researchers extended their microbial survey to include fungi, that’s when they got their biggest surprise: an abundance in one of their Iron Age samples of Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae DNA.

“The Hallstatt miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry,” Maixner says.

The findings offer the first evidence that people were already producing blue cheese in Iron Age Europe nearly 2,700 years ago, he adds. In ongoing and future studies of the paleofeces from Hallstatt, they hope to learn more about the early production of fermented foods and the interplay between nutrition and the gut microbiome composition in different time periods.

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This image shows 2600 year old human excrement from the Hallstatt salt mines in which beans, millet and barley are clearly visible. Anwora/NHMW

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This image shows paleofeces samples from Hallstatt salt mines analyzed in this study. Eurac Research/Frank Maixner

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Article Source: CELL PRESS news release

*Current Biology, Maixner et al.: “Paleofeces analyses indicate blue cheese and beer consumption by Iron Age Hallstatt salt miners and a non-Westernized gut microbiome structure in Europe until the Baroque period”  13-Oct-2021  https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01271-9 

This work was supported by Programma Ricerca Budget prestazioni Eurac 2017 of the Province of Bolzano, Italy, and the South Tyrolean grant legge 14, the European Regional Development Fund, the European Research Council grant, the US National Institutes of Health, and the US National Science Foundation.

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PLOS—The Tomb of Nestor’s Cup, a famous burial in Italy, contains not one deceased individual, but several, according to a study published October 6, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Melania Gigante of the University of Padua, Italy and colleagues.

The Tomb of Nestor’s Cup is considered one of the most intriguing discoveries in Mediterranean pre-classic archaeology. Formally designated Cremation 168 and dating to the 8th century BCE, this tomb is one of hundreds uncovered in the Italian site of Pithekoussai. The tomb contains cremated bones, a rich set of grave goods, and the exceptional eponymous cup featuring one of the earliest known Greek inscriptions. Previous research suggested that the tomb’s remains belong to a single young human, but the question of “Who’s buried with Nestor’s Cup?” remains a puzzle.

In this study*, Gigante and colleagues performed detailed analyses on the shape (morphology) and tissues (histology and histomorphometry) of the 195 burnt bone fragments in the tomb. They determined that only about 130 of these fragments are human, while at least 45 belong to animals, including goats and possibly dogs. Among the human remains, the researchers identified bone tissue characteristic of varying life stages, indicating at least three individuals of different ages. This is the first evidence of multiple individuals (and non-humans) among the remains in the Tomb of Nestor’s Cup.

These results raise even more questions about the mysterious tomb. This study was unable to determine details about the humans among the remains, including their age at death or why they were buried with the cup. As for the animal remains, the researchers suspect these might have been included as food or companions for the deceased. This study represents the usefulness of histological data for examining burial sites. Further such study might unravel the puzzles surrounding the formation of this tomb and its famous cup.

The authors add: “More than fifty years after its discovery, the Tomb of Nestor’s Cup (Ischia Island, in the Gulf of Naples, Italy), widely considered one of the most important archaeological findings of Pre-Classical Mediterranean Archeology, is back in the news. Our research rewrites the history and the previous archaeological interpretation of the Tomb, throwing new light on funeral practices, culture and society of the Greek immigrants in the ancient West Mediterranean. Our research, which combines the great work of archaeological interpretation to specific know-how in histology and advanced analysis on cremated remains, marked a double goal: firstly, we were able to reconstruct the osteobiography of the individuals from Tomb 168 at Pithekoussai (the first settlement of Greek colonist at the dawn of Magna Graecia in Italy), answering the thorny question: who/what was buried with Nestor’s Cup? Secondly, we are sure that our study can be a new methodological step toward the reconstruction of the life-history of people in ancient times, even in case of poor preservation and/or complexity of the skeletal assemblage.”

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The Cup is on permanent display at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Villa Arbusto, Lacco Ameno (Ischia Island). The metric inscription, partially in hexameter verses, translates roughly to ‘I am Nestor’s cup, good to drink from. Whoever drinks this cup empty, straightaway desire for beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize him’ (picture from Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per l’area metropolitana di Napoli). Gigante et al., 2021, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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Article Source: PLOS news release

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—A study examines factors that led to colonization of the Azores. Humans have altered much of Earth’s landscape over time. Remote islands may provide insight into how landscapes evolved in response to the impacts of early settlers. However, limited historical records have hampered understanding of how and when such landscapes were colonized. Pedro Raposeiro and colleagues analyzed and dated fecal biomarkers and coprophilous fungal spores in sediment cores collected from lakes on five islands that are part of the Azores Archipelago. The authors also accounted for climate conditions through time. Island occupation began approximately between 700 and 850 CE, around seven centuries earlier than prior research suggests. Anthropogenic pressure on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems increased gradually through activities such as logging, livestock introduction, and slash-and-burn agriculture and eventually resulted in irreversible alterations. Colonization occurred simultaneously with anomalous northeasterly winds and warming Northern Hemisphere temperatures, which may have repressed exploration from southern Europe but benefited Norse explorers from the northeast Atlantic. The findings suggest that the Azores Archipelago was not pristine when Portuguese settlers first arrived, and that the Norse may have been the first settlers to colonize the region, according to the authors.

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Landscape view of Pico (foreground) and Faial (background) Islands. Santiago Giralt.

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Article Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES news release.

*“Climate change facilitated the early colonization of the Azores Archipelago during medieval times,” by Pedro M. Raposeiro et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4-Oct-2021. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108236118

J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles – The Center for Architectural Conservation at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design has received a $1.3 million grant from Getty to develop a conservation and management plan and professional training program for Wupatki National Monument in Arizona.

Wupatki National Monument and its sister Monuments, Walnut Canyon and Sunset Crater Volcano, are unique in North America for their exceptionally well-preserved archeological record, their geographical diversity, and their ancestral significance to Northern Arizona American Indian communities. All three monuments are units of the National Park Service (NPS), a longtime partner of Penn’s Center for Architectural Conservation (CAC).

“Reflective of contemporary concerns that address climate threat and cultural appropriation, this project will develop a framework for integrated site stewardship based on an understanding of sustainability as both a physical and cultural necessity,” says Frank Matero, CAC’s director and professor and chair in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at Penn. “Identifying the vulnerabilities of sites like Wupatki is perhaps the most critical challenge currently facing all cultural and natural resource managers today. Mitigation, resilience, and adaptation in the form of renewed cultural partnerships with affiliated tribal communities will move the conservation needs front and center in this model project.”

Once home to the ancestors of the Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hualapai, and several bands of Apache and Paiute, the Wupatki landscape holds a precious record of migration, trade, and other practices dating back to the 11th century. In addition, many Northern Arizona American Indian communities view the Wupatki village as continuously inhabited by their ancestors.

“Wupatki tells a long and irreplaceable story of human experience on the land through time,” says Ian Hough, archaeologist and Flagstaff Area National Monuments cultural resources program manager.

Wupatki National Monument’s cultural heart is the impressive 900-year-old Wupatki Pueblo, a traditional multi-room stone masonry complex that housed as many as 100 residents and today draws more than 200,000 visitors annually. The Pueblo has undergone various preservation campaigns and ongoing maintenance over the past century, and as such is an example of preservation attitudes and techniques in the American Southwest for over a century. However, extreme weather events from global warming have accelerated deterioration and damage to the structures and their surrounding cultural landscape. The site is also at risk from seismic instability, flooding and debris slides. Aging repairs and an incomplete understanding of the complexities of how sites like Wupatki deteriorate, especially in a changing climate, require adaptive strategies for the preservation and better management of all built heritage, especially archaeological sites.

“Getty has championed best practices in archaeological site preservation for decades” says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation, the grantmaking program of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “With climate change now impacting so many treasured sites throughout the Southwest, the project at Wupatki National Monument promises to make a major contribution to their protection, enriched by the participation of affiliated tribal communities.” 

As part of its engagement at Wupatki, the Penn team and partners will also expand professional training, cultural heritage education, and career discovery opportunities for Native youth focused on the conservation of American Indian ancestral sites, including a 12-week summer program in partnership with Conservation Legacy’s Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps. The program will incorporate fieldwork, job shadowing, and mentoring by cultural resources advisors from Northern Arizona Tribes and a 10-week summer internship program for Native degree-seeking students through Northern Arizona University.

“Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps is excited to partner with Wupatki National Monument and Vanishing Treasures, Getty and the University of Pennsylvania on this great project, protecting and preserving these ancestral sites for current and future generations to enjoy and honoring the ancestors who built them generations ago,” says Chas Robles, director of Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps. “ALCC has partnered with the National Park Service to engage Indigenous young people in meaningful conservation and national service programs that create positive impacts for our communities, the environment and our participants.  Projects such as this one are incredibly impactful for our participants, who are descendants of the original architects and builders of these places.”

The National Park Service has a long history of advancing the practice of built heritage conservation to protect and preserve natural and cultural resources for the American public. As the National Monument approaches its 100^th anniversary in 2024 within the NPS, the Wupatki project is uniquely positioned to expand the scope of the typical Conservation and Management Plan, which addresses past and current conditions of and threats to structures and landscapes, management priorities, and applied solutions for continued conservation and interpretation. An important aspect of the project will be identifying how such classic heritage stewardship can be better informed by Indigenous values and practices. If successful, the methodology could serve as a model for similar sites in the region and beyond.

“One long-term goal of the project is to continue to develop and strengthen an already active community of practice. This includes a network of local Indigenous stakeholders, NPS staff, students, faculty, and other professionals from related fields to support conserving critical heritage resources in national parks in the West,” says Lauren Meyer, program manager of the NPS Intermountain Historic Preservation Services and project co-director for the National Park Service. “This will involve working closely with site stewards and stakeholders to understand the variety of resource values, as well as the many challenges to conservation and management to develop proactive and long-lasting solutions.”

Partners from the National Park Service include Wupatki Cultural Resources Program, Vanishing Treasures Program, and the Western Center for Historic Preservation, a preservation training arm of the NPS. Also on the team is Paulo Lourenço, professor of civil engineering at the University of Minho in Portugal and an expert in historic masonry and seismic risk, whose team will study the structural performance of Wupatki’s rubble stone and earthen mortar construction systems.

In carrying out its work at Wupatki, the Penn team draws on engagements currently underway at other climate-vulnerable cultural heritage sites throughout the American Southwest, among them Fort Union National Monument and Pecos National Historic Park, New Mexico and Tumacacori National Historic Site and Tuzigoot National Monument, Arizona. As public health guidelines allow, work will begin this fall with a final report in 2024. 

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Wupatki Pueblo. NPS Image, Public Domain

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Wupatkii Pueblo at sunrise. NPS Photo, H. Rich

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Wukoki Pueblo. NPS Photo, H. Rich

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Article Source: J. Paul Getty Trust news release.

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Established at Penn in 1991, the Center for Architectural Conservation conducts a full agenda of research and teaching dedicated to documentation, recording, field survey, material analysis, condition assessment, risk analysis, and the development of new treatments and treatment evaluation of historic structures and sites. In addition to providing graduate and post graduate students with then necessary environment to participate and collaborate in applied projects at home and abroad, the CAC offers professional workshops and master classes for the public and professional community.

One of 12 schools at the University of Pennsylvania, the Weitzman School of Design prepares students to address complex sociocultural and environmental issues through thoughtful inquiry, creative expression, and innovation. As a diverse community of scholars and practitioners, Weitzman is committed to advancing the public good—locally, nationally, and globally—through art, design, planning, and preservation.

Getty is a leading global arts organization committed to the exhibition, conservation, and understanding of the world’s artistic and cultural heritage. Working collaboratively with partners around the globe, the Getty Foundation, Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute are all dedicated to the greater understanding of the relationships between the world’s many cultures. The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs share art, knowledge, and resources online at Getty.edu and welcome the public for free at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa.

The Vanishing Treasures Program (VT) is a multi-regional effort of the U.S. National Park Service that supports the conservation of the deteriorating, yet significant heritage architecture of the American west; facilitates the perpetuation of traditional building practices through staff-, youth- and partner-focused training; and promotes connections between culturally associated communities and American Indian tribes and places of their heritage. Established in 1998, VT supports a diverse and active community of practice and works across park, regional and organizational boundaries to identify and address critical resource needs.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA—In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early civilization for a few thousand years. At that time, it was 10 times larger than Jerusalem and 5 times larger than Jericho.

“It’s an incredibly culturally important area,” said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at the UC Santa Barbara. “Much of where the early cultural complexity of humans developed is in this general area.”

A favorite site for archaeologists and biblical scholars, the mound hosts evidence of culture all the way from the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, all compacted into layers as the highly strategic settlement was built, destroyed, and rebuilt over millennia.

But there is a 1.5-meter interval in the Middle Bronze Age II stratum that caught the interest of some researchers, for its “highly unusual” materials. In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick, and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

“We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius,” said Kennett, whose research group at the time happened to have been building the case for an older cosmic airburst about 12,800 years ago that triggered major widespread burning, climatic changes and animal extinctions. The charred and melted materials at Tall el-Hammam looked familiar, and a group of researchers including impact scientist Allen West and Kennett joined Trinity Southwest University biblical scholar Philip J. Silvia’s research effort to determine what happened at this city 3,650 years ago.

Their results are published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Salt and Bone

“There’s evidence of a large cosmic airburst, close to this city called Tall el-Hammam,” Kennett said, of an explosion similar to the Tunguska Event, a roughly 12-megaton airburst that occurred in 1908, when a 56-60-meter meteor pierced the Earth’s atmosphere over the Eastern Siberian Taiga.

The shock of the explosion over Tall el-Hammam was enough to level the city, flattening the palace and surrounding walls and mudbrick structures, according to the paper, and the distribution of bones indicated “extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans.”

For Kennett, further proof of the airburst was found by conducting many different kinds of analyses on soil and sediments from the critical layer. Tiny iron- and silica-rich spherules turned up in their analysis, as did melted metals.

“I think one of the main discoveries is shocked quartz. These are sand grains containing cracks that form only under very high pressure” Kennett said of one of many lines of evidence that point to a large airburst near Tall el-Hammam. “We have shocked quartz from this layer, and that means there were incredible pressures involved to shock the quartz crystals— quartz is one of the hardest minerals; it’s very hard to shock.”

The airburst, according to the paper, may also explain the “anomalously high concentrations of salt” found in the destruction layer — an average of 4% in the sediment and as high as 25% in some samples.

“The salt was thrown up due to the high impact pressures,” Kennett said, of the meteor that likely fragmented upon contact with the Earth’s atmosphere. “And it may be that the impact partially hit the Dead Sea, which is rich in salt.” The local shores of the Dead Sea are also salt-rich so the impact may have redistributed those salt crystals far and wide — not just at Tall el-Hammam, but also nearby Tell es-Sultan (proposed as the biblical Jericho, which also underwent violent destruction at the same time) and Tall-Nimrin (also then destroyed).

The high-salinity soil could have been responsible for the so-called “Late Bronze Age Gap,” the researchers say, in which cities along the lower Jordan Valley were abandoned, dropping the population from tens of thousands to maybe a few hundred nomads. Nothing could grow in these formerly fertile grounds, forcing people to leave the area for centuries. Evidence for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and nearby communities appears again in the Iron Age, roughly 600 years after the cities’ sudden devastation in the Bronze Age.

Fire and Brimstone

Tall el-Hamman has been the focus of an ongoing debate as to whether it could be the biblical city of Sodom, one of the two cities in the Old Testament Book of Genesis that were destroyed by God for how wicked they and their inhabitants had become. One denizen, Lot, is saved by two angels who instruct him not to look behind as they flee. Lot’s wife, however, lingers and is turned into a pillar of salt. Meanwhile, fire and brimstone fell from the sky; multiple cities were destroyed; thick smoke rose from the fires; city inhabitants were killed and area crops were destroyed in what sounds like an eyewitness account of a cosmic impact event. It’s a satisfying connection to make.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” Kennett said, “but there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.” However, the researchers said, the disaster could have generated an oral tradition that may have served as the inspiration for the written account in the book of Genesis, as well as the biblical account of the burning of Jericho in the Old Testament Book of Joshua.

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The archaeological site of Tall el-Hammam, Jordan that overlooks the Jordan Valley. Deg777,  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SANTA BARBARA news release.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Scientists have been excavating the ruins of Tikal, an ancient Maya city in modern-day Guatemala, since the 1950s — and thanks to those many decades spent documenting details of every structure and cataloguing each excavated item, Tikal has become one of the best understood and most thoroughly studied archaeological sites in the world. 

But a startling recent discovery by the Pacunam Lidar Initiative, a research consortium involving a Brown University anthropologist, has ancient Mesoamerican scholars across the globe wondering whether they know Tikal as well as they think.

Using light detection and ranging software, or lidar, Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, and Thomas Garrison, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin, discovered that what was long assumed to be an area of natural hills a short walk away from Tikal’s center was actually a neighborhood of ruined buildings that had been designed to look like those in Teotihuacan, the largest and most powerful city in the ancient Americas.

Houston said their lidar analysis, coupled with a subsequent excavation by a team of Guatemalan archaeologists led by Edwin Román Ramírez, has prompted new insights on, and big questions about, Teotihuacan’s influence on the Maya civilization. 

“What we had taken to be natural hills actually were shown to be modified and conformed to the shape of the citadel — the area that was possibly the imperial palace — at Teotihuacan,” Houston said. “Regardless of who built this smaller-scale replica and why, it shows without a doubt that there was a different level of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan than previously believed.”

The results, including lidar images and a summary of excavation findings, were published on Tuesday, Sept. 28 in Antiquity.

Tikal and Teotihuacan were radically different cities, Houston said. Tikal, a Maya city, was fairly populous but relatively small in scale — “you could have walked from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day, maybe two” — while Teotihuacan had all the marks of an empire. Though little is known about the people who founded and governed Teotihuacan, it’s clear that, like the Romans, their influence extended far beyond their metropolitan center: Evidence shows they shaped and colonized countless communities hundreds of miles away.

Houston said anthropologists have known for decades that inhabitants of the two cities were in contact and often traded with one another for centuries before Teotihuacan conquered Tikal around the year 378 A.D. There’s also ample evidence suggesting that between the second and sixth centuries A.D., Maya elites and scribes lived in Teotihuacan, some bringing elements of the empire’s culture and materials — including its unique funerary rituals, slope-and-panel architectural style and green obsidian — back home to Tikal. Another Maya expert, David Stuart of U.T. Austin, has translated inscriptions that described the era when Teotihuacan generals, including one named Born from Fire, traveled to Tikal and unseated the local Maya king. 

But the research consortium’s latest lidar findings and excavations prove that the imperial power in modern-day Mexico did more than just trade with and culturally influence the smaller city of Tikal before conquering it. 

“The architectural complex we found very much appears to have been built for people from Teotihuacan or those under their control,” Houston said. “Perhaps it was something like an embassy complex, but when we combine previous research with our latest findings, it suggests something more heavy-handed, like occupation or surveillance. At the very least, it shows an attempt to implant part of a foreign city plan on Tikal.”

Houston said that excavations following the lidar work, led by Román Ramírez, confirmed that some buildings were constructed with mud plaster rather than the traditional Maya limestone. The structures were designed to be smaller replicas of the buildings that make up Teotihuacan’s citadel, down to the intricate cornices and terraces and the specific 15.5-degree east-of-north orientation of the complex’s platforms.

“It almost suggests that local builders were told to use an entirely non-local building technology while constructing this sprawling new building complex,” Houston said. “We’ve rarely seen evidence of anything but two-way interaction between the two civilizations, but here, we seem to be looking at foreigners who are moving aggressively into the area.”

At an adjacent, newly uncovered complex of residential buildings, archaeologists found projectile points crafted with flint, a material commonly used by the Maya, and green obsidian, a material used by residents of Teotihuacan — providing seeming evidence of conflict.

And near the replica citadel, archaeologists also recovered the remains of a body surrounded by carefully placed vessels, ceramic fragments, animal bones and projectile points. The site was dotted with charcoal, suggesting it had been set ablaze. Houston said the scene bears little resemblance to other burials or sacrifices at Tikal but is strikingly similar to the remains of warriors found years ago in Teotihuacan’s center.

“Excavations in the middle of the citadel at Teotihuacan have found the burials of many individuals dressed as warriors, and they appear to have been sacrificed and placed in mass graves,” Houston said. “We have possibly found a vestige of one of those burials at Tikal itself.”

Houston and his international colleagues still have much more to uncover and analyze. Andrew Scherer, an associate professor of anthropology at Brown and a bone specialist, will study the human remains to determine their origins, potentially revealing more about Teotihuacan’s relationship with Tikal. This summer, as COVID-19-related travel restrictions began to ease, Houston joined Garrison, Román Ramírez and Morgan Clark, a Brown graduate student in anthropology, in Guatemala to uncover buildings, fortifications and storage tanks in related fortresses nearby. Excavations will resume this fall at Tikal, under the leadership of Román Ramírez.

The more they find out, Houston said, the more he hopes they understand about Teotihuacan’s presence in Tikal — and, more broadly, how its imperial power changed the diverse cultural and political landscape in Mesoamerica.

“At this time, people are quite interested in the process of colonization and its aftermath, and in how our views of the world are informed or distorted by the expansion of economic and political systems around the globe,” Houston said. “Before European colonization of the Americas, there were empires and kingdoms of disproportionate influence and strength interacting with smaller civilizations in a way that left a large impact. Exploring Teotihuacan’s influence on Mesoamerica could be a way to explore the beginnings of colonialism and its oppressions and local collusions.”

The consortium’s ongoing research is authorized by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala and funded by Guatemala’s PACUNAM Foundation, in partnership with the United States-based Hitz Foundation.

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A recent lidar analysis revealed that an area once assumed to be natural hills, center, near Tikal’s Lost World complex, right, is actually an 1,800-year-old ruined citadel. Thomas Garrison/PACUNAM

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Tikal. Jancickal, Pixabay

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Teotihuacan, Mexico. jjnanni, Pixabay

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Article Source: BROWN UNIVERSITY news release.

*Houston, S., Ramírez, E., Garrison, T., Stuart, D., Ayala, H., & Rosales, P. (2021). A Teotihuacan complex at the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala. Antiquity, 1-9. doi:10.15184/aqy.2021.140

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