Humans occupied a lava tube in Saudi Arabia for thousands of years

Bones and artifacts indicate a timeline of herding and agriculture in northern Arabia

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

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RESEARCHERS EXPLORING THE UMM JIRSAN LAVA TUBE SYSTEM.

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CREDIT: PALAEODESERTS PROJECT, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

A large lava tube in Saudia Arabia provided valuable shelter for humans herding livestock over at least the past 7,000 years, according to a study published April 17, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mathew Stewart of Griffith University, Brisbane and colleagues.

Research in northern Arabia over the last decade has highlighted a diverse Holocene archaeological record. However, the timing of human occupations and their connections with the nearby Levant remain poorly understood, primarily due to poor preservation of organic remains in the region’s arid conditions. To circumvent this problem, Stewart and colleagues focused investigations on caves and other underground settings where ancient materials are sheltered from sun, wind and high fluctuations in temperature. In this study, they analyze an archaeological site from a lava tube called Umm Jirsan located in the volcanic field of Harrat Khaybar in Saudi Arabia, approximately 125km north of Medina.

Within the lava tube are artifacts, rock art, and skeletal remains that document repeated human occupation over at least the past 7,000 years. The lava tube seems to have been an important resource for pastoralists keeping and herding livestock, as evidenced by rock art and animal bones representing domesticated sheep and goats. Isotopic analysis of human remains reveals an increase over time in C3 plants such as cereal and fruit in the diet, possibly linked to a rise in oasis agriculture in the Bronze Age.

The authors conclude that Umm Jirsan was likely not a permanent home, but instead a valuable stopping point for people traveling between oasis settlements. Lava tubes and other natural shelters were valuable resources for communities surviving in a challenging environment, and with further investigation, they present a key source of archaeological information about the history of human occupation in Arabia.

The authors add: “Exploring Arabia’s hidden past, our study uncovers millennia of human occupation within and around the Umm Jirsan lava tube, shedding light on ancient lifestyles and adaptations to environmental change in this harsh desert environment.”

The freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299292

The resettlement history of the Iron-Age metropolis of Hazor in Israel

 

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DURING THE BRONZE AGE, HAZOR WAS ONE OF THE LARGEST CITIES IN THE REGION. THE SETTLEMENT MOUND IS LOCATED IN THE NORTH OF ISRAEL.

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CREDIT: MARYAM MATTA

The early origins of the Israelites are at the centre of a new research project at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. A team of researchers led by Hebrew Bible scholar and archaeologist Prof. Dr Benedikt Hensel will explore over a three-year period how one of the largest “megacities” of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean was abandoned and then resettled over centuries – and how the narratives about these events influenced the shaping of early Israelite identities.

The Gerda Henkel Foundation is providing around 400,000 euros in funding for the project, titled “Resettlement of Ruins and Memories in the Making – A Case Study on Hazor and the Shaping of Early Israelite Identities during the Iron Age”, as part of its “Lost Cities” programme. The international team of researchers based in Oldenburg will work closely with academics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and the University of Regensburg.

The ruins of the ancient city of Hazor are located in northern Israel, north of the Sea of Galilee. Based on the archaeological findings the site was first settled about 5,000 years ago, in the Early Bronze Age. By the Middle and Late Bronze Age Hazor’s population had grown to between 10,000 and 15,000 people thanks to its strategic location at the crossroads of several trade routes, making it the largest city in the entire region. Various sources from this period, including letters and clay tablets from cities in Syria and Egypt with which the rulers of Hazor conducted trade, testify to the central role Hazor played as a trading hub and cultural melting pot for the entire Near East region.

At the end of the Bronze Age, around 1300 B.C., Hazor was destroyed and temporarily abandoned for unknown reasons. In the subsequent Iron Age, the site was repopulated, albeit on a much smaller scale. “Which culture the inhabitants of Hazor belonged to is something we don’t know for sure,” says Hensel. In addition to the archaeological findings, biblical texts have also served as a key source of information on Hazor. The Book of Joshua from the Old Testament, for instance, describes how the Israelites conquered Hazor, which was inhabited by Canaanites at the time. The historicity of these passages is, however, disputed among researchers, because the texts date from a much later period. “They are probably not directly connected to the resettlement of Hazor,” says Hensel, whose specialty is biblical archaeology.

The interdisciplinary research team is now examining the resettlement period in greater detail. Researchers from the fields of archaeology, social and cultural history, anthropology and Hebrew biblical studies plan to use the results to create a comprehensive overview of the cultural and ethnic transformations that took place in the area between the Euphrates and the Sinai Peninsula known as the Levant during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age – and of how the identity of the early Israelites developed in the course of these upheavals.

Why did the new settlers avoid certain places in the abandoned city?

One of the project’s key objectives is to investigate the resettlement of the Bronze Age ruins during the Iron Age. The researchers aim to learn more about how the new settlers viewed and treated the remains of the destroyed buildings at the site and gain insights into their cultural and ethnic identity. “The new settlers seem to have deliberately avoided certain places in the city, such as the former temple district in the upper city, which would actually have been an ideal place to settle,” Hensel explains. The team plans to carry out further excavations to locate other sites with a similar history within the city complex.

A second objective of the project is the literary-historical and cultural-historical reconstruction of the accounts of Hazor and the Canaanites within the biblical tradition, and an examination of how these narratives are linked to the biblical imagination of Israel as an early tribal culture. “In the biblical narratives, Hazor is portrayed as the capital of the Canaanites. This image is for the most part artificial, but over the centuries during which the biblical texts were compiled it endured – even long after the settlement had been abandoned,” Hensel explains. “Hazor serves as a counter-image to the Israelites, shaping the identity of biblical Israel through literary means," he observes. The project team is investigating the potential historical anchor points of these identity-building processes.

Extensive archaeological excavations have been underway in Hazor since the 1990s. They are led by Professor Hensel and by Dr. Igor Kreimermann from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is also involved in the current project. Oldenburg students also took part in the Hazor Excavations Project for the first time last year. The project funds will enable volunteers from Oldenburg to continue to participate in the archaeological work.

1,500 Indigenous Australian message sticks analyzed

 Indigenous Australian message sticks, which feature markings to convey messages over long distances, analyzed for first time at scale through new database of 1,500 artifacts

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Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299712

Pacific cities much older than previously thought

 

 

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A VIEW OF THE URBAN AREA AT MU‘A. 

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CREDIT: CREDIT: PHILLIP PARTON/ANU.

New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).  

The study used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.  

Lead author, PhD scholar Phillip Parton, said the new timeline also indicates that urbanisation in the Pacific was an indigenous innovation that developed before Western influence.

“Earth structures were being constructed in Tongatapu around AD 300. This is 700 years earlier than previously thought,” Mr Parton said.  

“As settlements grew, they had to come up with new ways of supporting that growing population. This kind of set-up – what we call low density urbanisation – sets in motion huge social and economic change. People are interacting more and doing different kinds of work.” 

Mr Parton said traditionally, studying urbanisation in the Pacific has been tricky due to challenges collecting data, but new technology has changed that.  

“We were able to combine high-tech mapping and archaeological fieldwork to understand what was happening in Tongatapu,” he said.                                                                                                 

“Having this type of information really adds to our understanding of early Pacific societies.

“Urbanisation is not an area that had been investigated much until now. When people think of early cities they usually think of traditional old European cities with compact housing and windy cobblestone streets. This is a very different kind of city. 

“But it shows the contribution of the Pacific to urban science. We can see clues that Tongatapu’s influence spread across the southwest Pacific Ocean between the 13th and 19th centuries.” 

According to Mr Parton, the collapse of this kind of low-density urbanisation in Tonga was largely due to the arrival of Europeans. 

“It didn’t collapse because the system was flawed; it was more to do with the arrival of Europeans and introduced diseases,” he said. 

“This is just the beginning in terms of early Pacific settlements. There’s likely still much to be discovered.”  

The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.

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JOURNAL

Experimental collaboration highlights the prevalence of equifinality in archaeological interpretation

 

 

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CLOVIS FLUTED POINTS HAFTED ONTO WOODEN HANDLES BY MICHAEL WILSON. (IMAGES CREDIT: METIN I. EREN)

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CREDIT: METIN I. EREN

Kent State University’s experimental archaeologists, along with those from several other universities, joined forces with the popular hunting, outdoors, and conservation media platform, MeatEater, Inc., for a unique animal processing experiment, shedding new light on ancient stone knives and showcasing the importance of testing and looking for equifinality.  ‘Equifinality’ is when two or more distinct processes can lead to the same outcome or result.

The Kent State archaeologists included Professor Metin I. Eren, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor Michelle Bebber, Ph.D. and Alumni Michael Wilson (Kent State B.A., ‘18; M.A., ‘21) and Lawrence Mukusha (Kent State M.A., ‘23). The primary objective of the experiment was to test the efficiency of Clovis stone tools in processing a bison, offering insights into early human technologies. ‘Clovis’ refers to 13,000-year-old archaeological culture that represents some of the earliest hunting and gathering peoples in North America.

The experiment was meticulously documented and detailed in a recently published open-access article in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

While the researchers learned much about Clovis knife efficiency and other aspects of stone tool animal processing, one outcome that the researchers did not anticipate was that several of the replica knives broke during animal processing very similarly to breaks some assume would result from shooting the Clovis points.

“Even though one can use Clovis stone points for both hunting and processing, the breakage resulting from these distinct activities can be similar,” Eren said. “If an archaeological site is found that is comprised of a large animal and broken Clovis points, some archaeologists might assume that's because the points were used to hunt the animal. What our experiment suggests is another interpretation: the animal was already dead and people scavenged it and processed it with knives.”

The researchers also documented several other instances of equifinality, involving bone cut marks, tool functional morphology, and resharpening.  

“I used to think that the power of experimental archaeology was that it allowed us to help reverse engineer past technologies. And it can,” Eren said. “But, I think a more valuable aspect of experimental archaeology that's becoming more and more consequential is that it documents equifinality, providing a vital check on archaeologists’ interpretations.”

Partnering with MeatEater, Inc.
Inspiration for the experiment stemmed from previous conversations that David J. Meltzer, Ph.D. (Southern Methodist University) and Eren had during their guest appearances on The MeatEater Podcast, where discussions about mammoth hunting led to the idea of a collaborative butchery experiment. Meltzer was a co-author on the study.

“The unique skills of the MeatEater crew in animal processing and media documentaries, combined with our expertise in archaeology and artifact recreation, sparked the idea of testing Clovis stone tools’ efficiency,” Eren said.

The entire experiment was recorded by a MeatEater film crew, and an edited version of the video was posted on YouTube as a documentary entitled Butchering a Bison with Clovis Points and Tools (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmsrkFjPiKM).

“It was a career highlight for us to work with all the folks at MeatEater who have amazing experience and skills; we learned so much from them,” Eren said. “And they’re so curious – they’re natural scientists.”

 

LINK TO STUDY: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104480

Unraveling the iconography of the Etruscan lamp of Cortona

A re-evaluation of the ancient bronze lamp concludes that it is a cult object associated with the mystery cult of the god Dionysus

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DE GRUYTER

 

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THE ETRUSCAN LAMP OF CORTONA

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CREDIT: MUSEO DELL'ACCADEMIA ETRUSCA E DELLA CITTÀ DI CORTONA

A large, highly decorated bronze lamp found in a ditch near the town of Cortona, central Italy, is significantly older than previously estimated and shows the god Dionysus, a new study published in De Gruyter’s Etruscan and Italic Studies argues.

The date of the lamp and the meaning and significance of its decorations have been the subject of controversy since its discovery in 1840. Now, PhD student Ronak Alburz and Associate Professor Gijs Willem Tol of the University of Melbourne, Australia, have used literary sources and other iconographic evidence to provide a comprehensive new analysis of the object.

The Cortona lamp is a bronze hanging oil lamp, roughly in the shape of a chandelier, measuring 60cm across and weighing almost 60kg. It originates from the Etruscan civilization of Archaic Etruria, a region of central Italy corresponding roughly to present-day Tuscany and part of Umbria. The Etruscan civilization thrived from about 900 BCE, but was gradually absorbed into the Roman Republic after about 400 BCE.

The Cortona lamp has defied a comprehensive and satisfactory explanation for two main reasons. Firstly, very few similar objects (‘comparanda’) have been discovered in Etruscan or Ancient Greek art, making it difficult to draw insightful comparisons. Secondly, the lamp lacks context, having been found with only an inscribed bronze plaque which originates from much later. This means there is no information about the building in which it was used or how it related to other artifacts. Scholars were therefore restricted to analyzing individual decorative motifs displayed on the lamp.

In their re-evaluation, Alburz and Tol identify new comparanda that indicate the lamp originated in about 480 BCE, significantly earlier than many other estimates.

They also argue that earlier scholars were incorrect in identifying the lamp’s 16 bull-horned figures as the Greek river god Acheloos. By drawing on various literary sources and presenting new iconographic evidence, they show that Dionysus, the Ancient Greek god of wine and pleasure, was also often portrayed with bull features. They thus propose that the lamp depicts the Dionysian thiasus, the ecstatic retinue of Dionysus who are often portrayed as inebriated revelers.

Lead author Alburz said: “The lamp was probably an object associated with the mystery cult of Dionysus. Its decoration represents the Dionysian thiasus, perhaps engaged in a cultic performance in the cosmos of the mysteries in celebration of Dionysus.”

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JOURNAL

Etruscan and Italic Studies

DOI

10.1515/etst-2023-0019 

Early herding communities of the Southern Iberian Peninsula

 

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DENTAL PIECES OF SHEEP FOUND IN THE CUEVA DE EL TORO SAMPLED FOR THIS STUDY. (AUTHOR: ALEJANDRO SIERRA, UAB).

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CREDIT: ALEJANDRO SIERRA, UAB

The herding groups of the Southern Iberian Peninsula applied different management strategies for their livestock at the beginning of the Neolithic period, with different breeding, feeding and movement patterns, depending on their ecological and productive needs. This is indicated by a study led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) that has reconstructed the feeding practices of the first herding communities occupying the Cueva de El Toro (Antequera, Malaga) 7,200 years ago, with the aim of exploring their feeding strategies and the socioeconomic factors that could have influenced them.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, involved researchers from the Department of Prehistory of the UAB, as well as from the University of La Laguna (Tenerife), Milà i Fontanals Institution of Humanities Research (IMF-CSIC), the University of Cardiff, and the Natural History Museum of Paris.

The agricultural economy in the Iberian Peninsula during the Neolithic period developed very quickly, between 7,600 and 7,400 years ago. However, specific information on the herding strategies of the first Neolithic communities, especially in the south, is limited, mainly due to the difficulty of investigating these management practices in the same place and in such a short archaeological period of time.

The study published today has been able to reconstruct their livestock management practices, including those of altitudinal mobility, in the same site and with a very precise time resolution. By means of high-resolution radiocarbon dating of eight dental specimens from the Cueva de El Toro and the analysis of stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in the enamel, researchers were able to confirm that the animals were managed in the cave during a period of only 240 years, during the Neolithic expansion throughout the Iberian Peninsula, and to establish their feeding patterns.

The results show that the herding communities applied different breeding patterns - in the autumn, winter and spring - thereby controlling the reproduction of their herds; they fed the animals different plants throughout the annual cycle, with some animals consuming species typical of saline areas in the summer and had them graze at different altitudes and in mountainous areas. This large variability indicates that, probably, each sheep was herded in a different way, and that it was possible to apply different patterns within one same flock.

These discoveries question the previous perception of homogeneity in the management of livestock at the beginning of the Neolithic in the western Mediterranean and reinforce the hypothesis of the complexity of the first Neolithic populations of southern Iberia. "The different herding strategies that we have found fit in the economic model proposed for the Neolithic communities of southern Iberia, which have been considered as highly mobile herding communities", says Alejandro Sierra, researcher at the UAB who coordinated the study.

The variability identified could be explained as an adaptive response of the first agricultural and farming societies for diverse and not unrelated reasons, such as better access to resources, changes in climatic conditions or the dominant socio-economic characteristics of each location. In this sense, the study published today "may have broader implications for understanding the adaptability of the first agricultural and farming communities at the beginning of the Neolithic period in the Iberian Peninsula", says María Saña, researcher at the UAB and coordinator of the research.