Controversy over reopening the 'Sistine Chapel' of Stone Age art

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Plans to reopen Spain's Altamira caves are stirring controversy over the possibility that tourists' visits will further damage the 20,000-year old wall paintings that changed views about the intellectual ability of prehistoric people. That's the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS' weekly newsmagazine. The caves are the site of Stone Age paintings so magnificent that experts have called them the "Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art."



Carmen Drahl, C&EN associate editor, points out in the article that Spanish officials closed the tourist mecca to the public in 2002 after scientists realized that visitors were fostering growth of bacteria that damage the paintings. Now, however, they plan to reopen the caves. Declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Altamira's rock paintings of animals and human hands made scientists realize that Stone Age people had intellectual capabilities far greater than previously believed.

The article explains how moisture and carbon dioxide from tourists' breath, body heat and footsteps (which kick up bacterial spores) foster growth of bacteria on the cave walls. Those bacteria damage the precious wall paintings, which supposedly influenced great modern artists like Picasso. Drahl discusses the scientific controversy over limited reopening of the caves to tourism and measures that could minimize further damage to the paintings.

Viking Buried With Axe, Sword and Spear Found With Fully Intact Viking Boat

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The UK mainland's first fully intact Viking boat burial site has been discovered by archaeologists working in the Scottish Highlands. The 5m-long grave contained the remains of a high status Viking, who was buried with an axe, a sword with a beautifully decorated hilt, a spear, shield boss and bronze ring-pin.

The Viking had been buried in a ship, whose 200 or so metal rivets were also found by the team.

Other finds included a knife, what could be the tip of a bronze drinking horn, a whetstone from Norway, a ring pin from Ireland and Viking pottery.

Dozens of pieces of iron yet to be identified by the team were also found at the site, which has now been fully excavated.

Co-Director of the project and archaeology Teaching Fellow Dr Hannah Cobb, from The University of Manchester, has over the past six years been excavating artefacts in the Ardnamurchan Peninsula underpinning 6,000 years of its history.

Dr Cobb said: "This is a very exciting find. Though we have excavated many important artefacts over the years, I think it's fair to say that this year the archaeology has really exceeded our expectations.

"A Viking boat burial is an incredible discovery, but in addition to that, the artefacts and preservation make this one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain.

"Viking Specialist Dr Colleen Batey from The University of Glasgow, has said the boat is likely to be from the tenth century AD.

The team believe the site is also the first intact pagan Norse grave of its kind to have been excavated in mainland Scotland for 30 years and the first ever on the West Coast Mainland.

But the site has yielded other riches over the years, including an Iron Age fort from between 2500 to 1500 years ago this year.

Dr Oliver Harris, project co-director from the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, said: "This project examines social change on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula from the first farmers 6000 years ago to the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

"In previous seasons our work has examined evidence of changing beliefs and life styles in the area through a study of burial practices in the Neolithic and Bronze age periods 6000 -- 4500 years ago and 4500 to 2800 years ago respectively.

"It has also yielded evidence for what will be one of the best dated Neolithic chambered cairns in Scotland when all of our post excavation work is complete.

"But the find we reveal today has got to be the icing on the cake."

Hunters present at least 800 years earlier than previously thought

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The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming that the first inhabitants arrived earlier to North America than previously thought, says a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University archaeologist.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Colorado, Washington and Denmark believe the find at the Manis site in Washington demonstrates that humans were in the area around 13,800 years ago, or 800 years earlier than was believed. Their work is published in the current issue of Science magazine.

In the late 1970s, an adult male mastodon was excavated from a pond at the Manis site. The distribution of the bones and the discovery that some of the bones were broken suggested that the elephant had been killed and butchered by human hunters, Waters explains. However, no stone tools or weapons were found at the site. The key artifact from the site was what appeared to be a bone point sticking out of one of the ribs, but the artifact and the age of the site were disputed.

Waters contacted team member and original excavator, Carl Gustafson, about performing new tests on the rib with the bone point. New radiocarbon dates confirmed that the site was 13,800 years old. High resolution CT scanning and three-dimensional modeling confirmed that the embedded bone was a spear point, and DNA and bone protein analysis showed that the bone point was made of mastodon bone.

"The Manis site is an early kill site" Waters says.

"The evidence from the Manis site shows that people were hunting mastodons with bone weapons before the Clovis stone spear point."

The new evidence from Manis supports extinction theories of large mammals at the end of the last Ice Age, Waters says. During the last cold period, herds of mammoth, mastodon, camels, horses and other animals roamed Texas and North America. At the end of the Ice Age, these animals became extinct.

"While these animals were stressed by the changing climate and vegetation patterns at the end of the Ice Age, it is now clear from sites like Manis that humans were also hunting these animals and may have been a factor in their demise," Waters adds. He also notes that "there are at least two other pre-Clovis kill sites in Wisconsin where hunters killed mammoths."

'Clovis' is the name given to the distinctive tools made by people starting around 13,000 years ago. The Clovis people invented the 'Clovis point', a spear-shaped weapon made of stone that is found in Texas and the rest of the United States and northern Mexico. These weapons were used to hunt animals, including mammoths and mastodons, from 13,000 to 12,700 years ago.

Waters says that "the evidence from the Manis site is helping to reshape our understanding of the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, the last continent to be occupied by modern humans."

Ancient Etruscan childbirth image is first for western art

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An archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, the site of a 2,700-year-old Etruscan settlement in Italy's Mugello Valley, has turned up a surprising and unique find: two images of a woman giving birth to a child.

Researchers from the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which oversees the Poggio Colla excavation site some 20 miles northeast of Florence, discovered the images on a small fragment from a ceramic vessel that is more than 2,600 years old.

The images show the head and shoulders of a baby emerging from a mother represented with her knees raised and her face shown in profile, one arm raised, and a long ponytail running down her back.

The excavation is a project of Southern Methodist University, Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in collaboration with The Open University in Milton Keynes, England.

The identification of the scene was made by Phil Perkins, an authority on Etruscan bucchero and professor of archaeology at The Open University.


"We were astounded to see this intimate scene; it must be the earliest representation of childbirth in Western art," said Perkins. "Etruscan women are usually represented feasting or participating in rituals, or they are goddesses. Now we have to solve the mystery of who she is and who her child is."

The Etruscans were the first settlers of Italy, long before the Roman Empire. They built the first cities, were a conduit for the introduction of Greek culture to the Romans, and were known for their art, agriculture, fine metalworking and commerce. They occupied Italy for the first millennium B.C., but were conquered by the Romans and eventually became absorbed into their empire.

Image on elite pottery has implications for Poggio Colla sanctuary worship
"The birth scene is extraordinary, but what is also fascinating is what this image might mean on elite pottery at a sanctuary," said Greg Warden, professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU and a director of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project.

"Might it have some connection to the cult," Warden said, "to the kind of worship that went on at the hilltop sanctuary of Poggio Colla?"

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Acoustical archeology reveals sounds of Renaissance Venice:

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The Renaissance period of Venice, Italy, is famed for its vast architectural and musical masterpieces. It was during this time that music became more complex and choirs were separated to produce the first “stereo” effect in Western history. To better understand both the music and the role of architecture in the acoustics of this period, a research team used a combination of historical evidence and scientific modeling to listen to music as it would have sounded in the churches of Venice 400 years ago.

Researchers Braxton Boren, a Ph.D. student in music technology at New York University, and Malcolm Longair, a physics professor at the University of Cambridge, will present their findings at the Acoustical Society of America’s 162nd annual meeting in San Diego, Calif.

Using modern acoustic simulation technology, the team set out to explore how complex polyphonic music was heard during the Renaissance in two of Venice’s churches: the Basilica of San Marco and the Redentore.

“We built a filter for the churches’ acoustics as they would have existed in the 16th century,” explains Boren. “Then we can record a choir singing in an anechoic chamber, with no sound reflections, and put it through the filter to hear the choir as it would have sounded during the Renaissance.”

The churches built during this period are known for their long reverberation times, which blur the fast, complex music that was composed for these spaces. But the researchers’ models show that during festivals when this music was performed, the large audience and decorative tapestries would have introduced absorption into the churches – dramatically reducing reverberation times and increasing the clarity of the music. Although architectural historians had suggested that these churches’ acoustics would be more favorable on festive occasions, neither the historians nor the researchers expected the dramatic improvements predicted by their simulations.

“Our models also show how the Doge – the ruler of Venice – would have heard the split-choir stereo effect during the Renaissance,” Boren says. In the Basilica of San Marco, the Doge’s throne had the best acoustics, but only with a straight line of sight to the choir. Their models reveal that the galleries built during the 16th century were critical to maintaining this sight, and providing the Doge the “best seat in the house.”

This supports the work of other historians who believe that these galleries were built to enhance the stereo effect for the Doge. And it turns out that even during the Renaissance, it took money (and power) to get a really good sound system.

Piecing Together the Priceless "Cairo Genizah"

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Researchers use computers to reassemble the world's largest medieval library


A well-known collection of historical texts, the Cairo Genizah is one of the most valuable sources of primary documents for medieval historians and religious scholars. The 350,000 fragments found in the Genizah include not only religious texts, but also social and commercial documents, dating from the 9th to 19th century. But the collection is scattered among 70 institutions worldwide, including libraries in Cambridge, Jerusalem, and New York City, and scholars are hampered by both the wide dispersal of the collection as well as their fragmentary condition.

Now researchers at Tel Aviv University are working to piece together this illuminating collection, bringing the pages of the texts back together for the first time in centuries. The results are being made available to scholars around the world through a website. Profs. Lior Wolf and Nachum Dershowitz of TAU's Blavatnik School of Computer Science have developed sophisticated software, based on facial recognition technology, that can identify digitized Genizah fragments thought to be a part of the same work and make editorial "joins."

Their technology was developed in close collaboration with the Friedberg Genizah Project, a non-profit organization that seeks to facilitate Genizah research by tracking, cataloguing, and digitizing all the fragments of this collection.


Restoring history

Under Jewish law, religious texts cannot simply be thrown away once they're "worn out" from overuse. While many texts were buried, many synagogues also operated genizahs, or storerooms, to store disused holy texts, usually until burial. But the Cairo Genizah, originally located in the loft of the ancient Ben Ezra Synagogue and discovered in the late 19th century, contains more than decrepit prayer books.

The genizah in Cairo became a place to dispose of texts that were not just religious in origin, explains Prof. Wolf, such as merchant's lists, divorce documents and personal letters, spanning hundreds of years. It is the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts ever discovered. For this reason, he notes, the Genizah is an invaluable resource not just for Jewish studies, but also for the socioeconomic conditions of Middle Eastern life.

In conjunction with the Friedberg Genizah Project, which has received permission to digitize most of the fragments of the Genizah collection worldwide, Profs. Wolf and Dershowitz are working to put the pieces back together — no easy task, given the dispersal of fragments around the globe. Whereas scholars concentrate primarily on content, the software looks at features of the writing itself, since it cannot read what is written. Using computer vision and image processing tools developed at TAU, the software analyzes fragments based on parameters such as the handwriting, the physical properties of the page and the spacing between lines of writing. The program scans digitized fragments for "matches," and joins them together in a kind of digital loose-leaf binder. "Its big advantage is that it doesn't tire after examining thousands of fragments," Prof. Dershowitz says. A scholar must then review and verify the computer-proposed "joins."

So far, Prof. Wolf says, the researchers have had a great deal of success. Within a few months, they made some 1,000 confirmed "joins," almost as many as were made in 100 years of Cairo Genizah scholarship. One exciting find, he notes, was the identification of pages from a work by Saadia Gaon, a prominent rabbi and philosopher from the 10th century. "All extant specimens of his work were thought to have been already discovered," he explains.

Tackling the Dead Sea Scrolls

Their work on the Cairo Genizah has extensive implications for scholars, who will have access to complete digital documents from the collection for the first time. Digital reconstructions will be publically available through the Friedberg Genizah Project Web site, a non-profit venture.

But Profs. Wolf and Dershowitz don't plan to stop with Cairo. They recently began to apply their technology to the reconstruction of the Dead Sea Scrolls in a project spearheaded by the Internet giant Google. "It's a more complicated challenge. The fragments are for the most part much smaller, and many of the texts are very unique," explains Prof. Wolf. "These texts shed light on the beginnings of Christianity."

New technologies challenge old ideas about early hominid diets

New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas.

By analyzing microscopic pits and scratches on hominid teeth, as well as stable isotopes of carbon found in teeth, researchers are getting a very different picture of the diet habitats of early hominids than that painted by the physical structure of the skull, jawbones and teeth. While some early hominids sported powerful jaws and large molars -- including Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" -- they may have cracked nuts rarely if at all, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer, study co-author.

Such findings are forcing anthropologists to rethink long-held assumptions about early hominids, aided by technological tools that were unknown just a few years ago. A paper on the subject by Sponheimer and co-author Peter Ungar, a distinguished professor at the University of Arkansas, was published in the Oct. 14 issue of Science.

Earlier this year, Sponheimer and his colleagues showed Paranthropus boisei was essentially feeding on grasses and sedges rather than soft fruits preferred by chimpanzees. "We can now be sure that Paranthropus boisei ate foods that no self-respecting chimpanzee would stomach in quantity," said Sponheimer. "It is also clear that our previous notions of this group's diet were grossly oversimplified at best, and absolutely backward at worst."

"The morphology tells you what a hominid may have eaten," said Ungar. But it does not necessarily reveal what the animal was actually dining on, he said.

While Ungar studies dental micro-wear -- the microscopic pits and scratches that telltale food leaves behind on teeth -- Sponheimer studies stable isotopes of carbon in teeth. By analyzing stable carbon isotopes obtained from tiny portions of animal teeth, researchers can determine whether the animals were eating foods that use different photosynthetic pathways that convert sunlight to energy.

The results for teeth from Paranthropus boisei, published earlier this year, indicated they were eating foods from the so-called C4 photosynthetic pathway, which points to consumption of grasses and sedges. The analysis stands in contrast to our closest human relatives like chimpanzees and gorillas that eat foods from the so-called C3 synthetic pathway pointing to a diet that included trees, shrubs and bushes.

Dental micro-wear and stable isotope studies also point to potentially large differences in diet between southern and eastern African hominids, said Sponheimer, a finding that was not anticipated given their strong anatomical similarities. "Frankly, I don't believe anyone would have predicted such strong regional differences," said Sponheimer. "But this is one of the things that is fun about science -- nature frequently reminds us that there is much that we don't yet understand.

"The bottom line is that our old answers about hominid diets are no longer sufficient, and we really need to start looking in directions that would have been considered crazy even a decade ago," Sponheimer said. "We also see much more evidence of dietary variability among our hominid kin than was previously appreciated. Consequently, the whole notion of hominid diet is really problematic, as different species may have consumed fundamentally different things."

While the new techniques have prompted new findings in the field of biological anthropology, they are not limited to use in human ancestors, according to the researchers. Current animals under study using the new tooth-testing techniques range from rodents and ancient marsupials to dinosaurs, said Sponheimer.

Evidence of earliest mass production found in Israel

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A team of archaeologists from Tel Aviv University, Israel, working in the Qassem Cave in the Samarian foothills, just outside Tel Aviv have discovered that the local inhabitants of the late Lower Paleolithic period over 200,000 - 400,000 years ago were involved in massive collective blade production. The area is surrounded by large quantities of flint and the tools made there were of a very high quality, covering all stages from hunting the prey to precise butchering, having one sharp edge and one blunt one, so they could be hand held comfortably.

The inhabitants were part of the Acheulo-Yabrudian cultural complex which was restricted to the area now known as Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Little is known of these tool makers, who were an early forerunner to Homo Sapiens and only a few teeth have so far been discovered. But this discovery has pushed back the boundaries of modern man's existence in the area to over 200,000 years. There is still considerable work to do in the caves and it is hoped that more human remains can be found, to give more knowledge and insight into these ancient industrial pioneers.

Controversy over "Jeremiah's Pit"

...Dr. Eilat Mazar - who is considered one of the most productive researchers in Jerusalem and in the City of David area in particular - has castigated Elad for the excavation of a large subterranean pit, called "Jeremiah's Pit," at the entrance to the City of David visitors' center complex.

In a sharply worded letter she sent 10 days ago to Prof. Ronny Reich, chairman of the Archaeological Council, Mazar demanded an urgent discussion of the excavations, which she says are being carried out in violation of accepted procedures.

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Mazar's claims against Elad are being leveled at a crucial time as a proposed law to privatize public parks is being considered. If approved, the bill will enable Elad, a private association which excavates, maintains and conducts tours of the City of David, to maintain control of the historic site - situated in the predominantly Arab village of Silwan, adjacent to the Old City...

Mazar claims that the excavation in the area of the pit contravenes several accepted practices in archaeology, among them, the digging up of an unusually small area of a mere "two squares," or 10 square meters, which makes it difficult to analyze the findings in relation to the overall area. An excavation of this size, claims Mazar, is made only in situations where there is no other choice.

Mazar is also critical of the diggers' intention to destroy the wall of the pit, which has not been properly investigated. She also notes that the dig "interferes with the nearby excavations," which will undermine her ability to complete the research in the area. She claims that it is not acceptable to transfer an area being excavated by one archaeologist to another one, without the former's consent...

Archaeologist argues world's oldest temples were not temples at all

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Ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world's oldest temples may not have been strictly religious buildings after all, according to an article in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not the gods.

The buildings at Göbekli, a hilltop just outside of the Turkish city of Urfa, were found in 1995 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues from the Şanlıurfa Museum in Turkey. The oldest of the structures at the site are immense buildings with large stone pillars, many of which feature carvings of snakes, scorpions, foxes, and other animals.

The presence of art in the buildings, the substantial effort that must have been involved in making and erecting them, and a lack of evidence for any permanent settlement in the area, led Schmidt and others to conclude that Göbekli must have been a sacred place where pilgrims traveled to worship, much like the Greek ruins of Delphi or Olympia. If that interpretation is true it would make the buildings, which date back more than 10,000 years to the early Neolithic, the oldest temples ever found.

However, Banning offers an alternative interpretation that challenges some of Schmidt's claims.

He outlines growing archaeological evidence for daily activities at the site, such as flintknapping and food preparation. "The presence of this evidence suggests that the site was not, after all, devoid of residential occupation, but likely had quite a large population," Banning said.

Banning goes on to argue that the population may have been housed in the purported temples themselves. He disagrees with the idea that the presence of decorative pillars or massive construction efforts means the buildings could not have been residential space.

"The presupposition that 'art,' or even 'monumental' art, should be exclusively associated with specialized shrines or other non-domestic spaces also fails to withstand scrutiny," Banning writes. "There is abundant ethnographic evidence for considerable investment in the decoration of domestic structures and spaces, whether to commemorate the feats of ancestors, advertise a lineage's history or a chief's generosity; or record initiations and other house-based rituals."

Archaeological evidence for domestic art from the Neolithic period exists as well, Banning says, such as the wall paintings at Çatalhöyük, another archaeological site in Turkey.

Banning suggests that the purported temples may instead have been large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles."

"If so, they would likely have housed quite large households that might provide an extremely early example of what the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, called 'house societies,'" Banning said. "Such societies often use house structures for competitive display, locations for rituals, and explicit symbols of social units."

Banning hopes that more excavation at the site will ultimately shed more light on how these buildings were used. In the meantime, he hopes that researchers will not automatically assume that the presence of art or decoration in structures at Göbekli and elsewhere denotes an exclusively religious building.

"It is … likely that some of these buildings were the locus for a variety of rituals, probably including feasts, mortuary rites, magic, and initiations," he writes. "Yet there is generally no reason to presume a priori, even when these are as impressive as the buildings at Göbekli Tepe, that they were not also people's houses."