Latest Archaelogy News

Israel

Major Archaeological Discovery Puts Biblical Excavators and Israeli Highway Construction

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 22 hours ago

A major archaeological discovery in Israel raised the question of how to preserve the past without stopping progress towards the future when a modern highway and an ancient town came to a crossroads. "No one expected it, including the Israel Antiquities Authority," said Yehuda Govrin, who headed the salvage excavation at Beit Shemesh. What they found was the biblical town of Beit Shemesh from the time of Isaiah and Hezekiah. "We thought the Assyrians destroyed (it) and it took years for us (the Jewish people) to come back and that everyone left and there was no one here. But ... more »

 

Archaeologist: Thick wall found at Lachish indicates King Solomon’s son built it

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago

[image: Archaeologists at work excavating the biblical city of Lachish, where an early 12th century BCE Canaanite alphabet inscription was found in 2014. (courtesy of Yossi Garfinkel, Hebrew University)] Archaeologists at work excavating the biblical city of Lachish, where an early 12th century BCE Canaanite alphabet inscription was found in 2014. (courtesy of Yossi Garfinkel, Hebrew University) An archaeologist has recently uncovered a fortified wall in the ancient city of Lachish, a discovery he said shores up the biblical account of the site and suggests that a centralized kingd... more »

 

Neanderthals/Denisovans

 

Modern analysis of ancient hearths reveals Neanderthal settlement patterns

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago

[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Field photograph of Neanderthal combustion structure and microscope photograph of organic components in the black layer of the combustion structure. view more Credit: Leierer et al, 2019 Ancient fire remains provide evidence of Neanderthal group mobility and settlement patterns and indicate specific occupation episodes, according to a new study published in *PLOS ONE* on April 24, 2019 by Lucia Leierer and colleagues from Universidad de La Laguna, Spain. Most paleolithic household activities are thought to have taken place around hearths or fires. The author... more »

 

Archaeologists discovered a flintstone workshop of Neanderthals in the southern Poland

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 days ago

Complete article Researchers discovered a flint workshop of Neanderthals in Pietraszyno (Silesia). According to scientists, it is the first such large workshop in Central Europe that was not located in a cave. So far, researchers have counted 17,000 stone products created 60 thousand years ago. Neandertals (*Homo neanderthalensis*) were very close relatives of contemporary man (*Homo sapiens*). They probably appeared in Poland approximately 300,000 years ago. The oldest stone tools they used, discovered on the Vistula, are over 200,000 years old, and the remains are over 100,00... more »

 

Woolly mammoths and Neanderthals may have shared genetic traits

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

A new Tel Aviv University study suggests that the genetic profiles of two extinct mammals with African ancestry -- woolly mammoths, elephant-like animals that evolved in the arctic peninsula of Eurasia around 600,000 years ago, and Neanderthals, highly skilled early humans who evolved in Europe around 400,000 years ago -- shared molecular characteristics of adaptation to cold environments. The research attributes the human-elephant relationship during the Pleistocene epoch to their mutual ecology and shared living environments, in addition to other possible interactions between the... more »

 

Ancient DNA reveals new branches of the Denisovan family tree

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

It's widely accepted that anatomically modern humans interbred with their close relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, as they dispersed out of Africa. But a study examining DNA fragments passed down from these ancient hominins to modern people living in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea now suggests that the ancestry of Papuans includes not just one but two distinct Denisovan lineages, which had been separated from each other for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, the researchers suggest, one of those Denisovan lineages is so different from the other that they really ... more »

 

Americas

Human settlements in Amazonia much older than previously thought

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago

Humans settled in southwestern Amazonia and even experimented with agriculture much earlier than previously thought, according to an international team of researchers. "We have long been aware that complex societies emerged in Llanos de Moxos in southwestern Amazonia, Bolivia, around 2,500 years ago, but our new evidence suggests that humans first settled in the region up to 10,000 years ago during the early Holocene period," said Jose Capriles, assistant professor of anthropology. "These groups of people were hunter gatherers; however, our data show that they were beginning to de... more »

 

Archaeologists recreate ancient brewing techniques in Peru to learn how beer kept an empire afloat

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

Field Museum [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The team worked with Peruvian brewers to recreate the ancient chicha recipe used at Cerro Baul. view more Credit: Donna Nash A thousand years ago, the Wari empire stretched across Peru. At its height, it covered an area the size of the Eastern seaboard of the US from New York City to Jacksonville. It lasted for 500 years, from 600 to 1100 AD, before eventually giving rise to the Inca. That's a long time for an empire to remain intact, and archaeologists are studying remnants of the Wari culture to see what kept it ticking. A new study found an im... more »

 

Researchers interpret Cherokee inscriptions in Alabama cave

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

For the first time, a team of scholars and archaeologists has recorded and interpreted Cherokee inscriptions in Manitou Cave, Alabama. These inscriptions reveal evidence of secluded ceremonial activities at a time of crisis for the Cherokee, who were displaced from their ancestral lands and sent westward on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. "These are the first Cherokee inscriptions ever found in a cave context, and the first from a cave to be translated," said Jan Simek, president emeritus of the University of Tennessee System and Distinguished Professor of Science in UT's Departme... more »

 

Europe

 

Mary Rose crew 'was from Mediterranean and North Africa'

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago

Complete article The crew on board the sunken Henry VIII ship the Mary Rose was from the Mediterranean, North Africa and beyond, researchers have found. Bone structure and DNA of 10 skeletons found on board were analysed by team at Cardiff and Portsmouth universities. They said four of the skeletons were of southern European heritage, and one seems to have hailed from Morocco or Algeria. The findings cast fresh light on the ethnic makeup of Tudor Britain. - The Mary Rose: A Tudor ship's secrets revealed - Mary Rose ship crew 'to be identified using DNA' - Shipwreck skulls go o... more »

 

Mysterious Ritual Burials From the Iron Age

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 6 days ago

Complete report [image: One woman was buried with her feet removed and placed by her side, and her arms behind her head.]One woman was buried with her feet removed and placed by her side, and her arms behind her head. Thames Water While laying down some water pipes, workers at the U.K. utility company Thames Water had a workday interrupted in a rather macabre fashion when they unearthed what turned out to be the remains of 26 people who had been ritualistically buried in pits in Oxfordshire. One set of remains belonged to a woman who was interred with her feet cut off and placed by ... more »

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Funerary customs, diet, and social behavior in a pre-Roman Italian Celtic community

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Localization of main Celtic necropolises of Italy and examples of burials from SV. view more Credit: Laffranchi *et al*, 2019. Analysis of human remains from a Pre-Roman Celtic cemetery in Italy shows variations in funerary treatment between individuals that could be related to social status, but these variations were not reflected by differences in their living conditions. Zita Laffranchi of Universidad de Granada, Spain, and colleagues present these new findings in the open access journal *PLOS ONE* on April 17, 2019. Archeological and written evidence have... more »

 

 

Megalith tombs were family graves in European Stone Age

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

Uppsala University [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The Ansarve site on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is embedded in an area with mostly hunter-gathers at the time. view more Credit: Magdalena Fraser In a new study published in the *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, an international research team, led from Uppsala University, discovered kin relationships among Stone Age individuals buried in megalithic tombs on Ireland and in Sweden. The kin relations can be traced for more than ten generations and suggests that megaliths were graves for kindred groups in Stone Age... more »

 

Archaeologists identify first prehistoric figurative cave art in Balkans

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Digital tracing of Bison featured in rock art. view more Credit: Aitor Ruiz-Redondo An international team, led by an archaeologist from the University of Southampton and the University of Bordeaux, has revealed the first example of Palaeolithic figurative cave art found in the Balkan Peninsula. Dr Aitor Ruiz-Redondo worked with researchers from the universities of Cantabria (Spain), Newfoundland (Canada), Zagreb (Croatia) and the Archaeological Museum of Istria (Croatia) to study the paintings, which could be up to 34,000 years old. The cave art was first disc... more »

Beowulf is the subject of fierce academic debate

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

Beowulf is the subject of fierce academic debate, in part between those who claim the epic poem is the work of a single author and those who claim it was stitched together from multiple sources. Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is arguably one of the most important works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating pertains to the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025.[3] The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "*B... more »

 

Near East

Mesopotamian King Sargon II envisioned ancient city Karkemish as western Assyrian capital

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 days ago

In "A New Historical Inscription of Sargon II from Karkemish," published in the *Journal of Near Eastern Studies*, Gianni Marchesi translates a recently discovered inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon II found at the ruins of the ancient city of Karkemish. The inscription, which dates to around 713 B.C., details Sargon's conquest, occupation, and reorganization of Karkemish, including his rebuilding the city with ritual ceremonies usually reserved for royal palaces in capital cities. The text implies that Sargon may have been planning to make Karkemish a western capital of Assyr... more »

Crusaders made love and war, genetic study finds

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

First genetic study of the Crusaders confirms that warriors mixed and had families with local people in the near East, and died together in battle Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The first genetic study of ancient human remains believed to be Crusaders confirms that warriors travelled from western Europe to the near East, where they mixed and had families with local people, and died together in battle. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators analysed ancient DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century, which were discovered in a bu... more »

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Urine salts provide evidence of Early Neolithic animal management

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

A close examination of midden soil layers at the early Neolithic site of A??kl? Höyük in Turkey reveals that they are highly enriched in sodium, chlorine, and nitrate salts commonly found in human and goat and sheep urine, offering a distinct signal for following the management of those animals through the history of the site. The findings, along with an enriched nitrogen signal in the soil, suggest a new way for archaeologists to study the evolution of animal management at this critical point in human history, at similarly dry, thickly stratified sites that may not contain other d... more »

 

General archaeology

Better labor practices could improve archaeological output

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 days ago

New analysis illuminates how much archaeological knowledge production has fundamentally relied upon site workers' active choices in responding to labor conditions Lehigh University [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *An excavation site in Petra, Jordan. view more Credit: Allison Mickel Archaeological excavation has, historically, operated in a very hierarchical structure, according to archaeologist Allison Mickel. The history of the enterprise is deeply entangled with Western colonial and imperial pursuits, she says. Excavations have been, and often still are, according to Mickel, led by fore... mor

People used natural dyes to color their clothing thousands of years ago

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *With the help their new method the researchers were able to reconstruct the distribution of the dyes. view more Credit: Annemarie Kramell Even thousands of years ago people wore clothing with colourful patterns made from plant and animal-based dyes. Chemists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have created new analytical methods to examine textiles from China and Peru that are several thousand years old. In the scientific journal *Scientific Reports* they describe their new method that is able to rec... more »

 

Asia

Genome analysis showed common origin of Russian Pskov, Novgorod and Yakutia populations

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

Scientists for the first time compared complete genome data of different ethnic groups in Russia. Using a special algorithm, they traced the development history for some groups. In the future, such data can be used in other important studies: for example, it can help to identify genetic risk factors in various populations of Russian people. The results are published in *Genomics*. The Russian Federation is a large country uniting many nationalities and populations. However, their genetic diversity is still understudied: existing researchs consider either a specific population or a p... mo

 

New species of early human found in the Philippines

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago

[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Professor Philip Piper from the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology inspects the cast of a hominin third metatarsal discovered in 2007. The bone is from a new species of... view more Credit: Lannon Harley, ANU An international team of researchers have uncovered the remains of a new species of human in the Philippines, proving the region played a key role in hominin evolutionary history. The new species, Homo luzonensis is named after Luzon Island, where the more than 50,000 year old fossils were found during excavations at Callao Cave. Co-author and a ... more »

 

Egypt

Egypt unveils colourful Fifth Dynasty tomb

Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago

This picture taken on April 13, 2019 shows a view inside the newly-discovered tomb of the ancient Egyptian nobleman "Khewi" dating back to the 5th dynasty (2494–2345 BC), at the Saqqara necropolis, about 35 kilometres south of the capital Cairo. Mohamed el-Shahed / AFP. 27 In a major archaeological discovery, Egypt on Saturday unveiled the tomb of a Fifth Dynasty official adorned with colourful reliefs and well preserved inscriptions. Complete article The tomb, near Saqqara, a vast necropolis south of Cairo, belongs to a senior official named Khuwy who is believed ... more »

Major Archaeological Discovery Puts Biblical Excavators and Israeli Highway Construction

A major archaeological discovery in Israel raised the question of how to preserve the past without stopping progress towards the future when a modern highway and an ancient town came to a crossroads.  

"No one expected it, including the Israel Antiquities Authority," said Yehuda Govrin, who headed the salvage excavation at Beit Shemesh.

What they found was the biblical town of Beit Shemesh from the time of Isaiah and Hezekiah.

"We thought the Assyrians destroyed (it) and it took years for us (the Jewish people) to come back and that everyone left and there was no one here.  But it's not true. And we know it's not true because we have these finds," said Amanda Weiss, director of the Bible Lands Museum (BLM).
Archaeologists thought a much earlier site on the other side of the road was all there was to ancient Beit Shemesh.  But before expanding a highway they excavated and found a treasure.


"If the Israel Antiquities Authority would have known this is what was there, they wouldn't have allowed the development of the road there," Govrin told CBN News.
"What they understood from the finds is that after the city of Beit Shemesh was destroyed in the year 701 by Sennacherib the King of Assyria – a very, very famous historical and biblical event -- a new settlement was found not on the top of the mound but on the slope, on the eastern slope of the mound," said Yehuda Kaplan, curator of the Bible Lands Museum exhibit 'Highway Through History' that contains artifacts from the site.
"And (it's) a very, very interesting settlement with a lot of olive oil industry and also a lot of administration," Kaplan told CBN News.

The road also connects to the Elah Valley where David killed Goliath and Beit Shemesh is associated with the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.
"We can read the Bible, we can study history, we can learn archaeology but when all of those three elements come together then we have the proof of that history and that historicity of the biblical text," Weiss told CBN News.  "So for us at the Bible Lands Museum, it's basically winning the lottery."

Jar handles with royal seals, smashed figurines and other artifacts from the site are displayed in the exhibit.  But there's more to the story.    
"We walk the land and we're walking on top of history. The progress that is required to build a new nation with housing and roads and infrastructure requires digging down and building new things," Weiss said.

Modern-day Beit Shemesh is about 20 miles outside Jerusalem. It has a population of more than 110,000 and is growing fast.
"It's complicated because I want to protect the road. I want to protect the Tel, the site and I need to find the way to protect both of them. It's very important for everybody," Beit Shemesh Mayor Aliza Bloch told CBN News.
Archaeologists and developers knew they had to work together.
"The reality is that people need homes and roads to be created and there's this balance, there's this debate in how do we do it," Weiss said.
So they came up with a compromise plan to alter the road and still preserve the historical site with the hope of developing the past for future generations.

Modern analysis of ancient hearths reveals Neanderthal settlement patterns

IMAGE: Field photograph of Neanderthal combustion structure and microscope photograph of organic components in the black layer of the combustion structure. view more 

Credit: Leierer et al, 2019

Ancient fire remains provide evidence of Neanderthal group mobility and settlement patterns and indicate specific occupation episodes, according to a new study published in PLOS ONE on April 24, 2019 by Lucia Leierer and colleagues from Universidad de La Laguna, Spain.
Most paleolithic household activities are thought to have taken place around hearths or fires. The author of the present study chose to examine the Middle Paleolithic site El Salt in Spain, which contains eleven well-preserved and overlapping open-air hearth structures. It was previously unclear whether these hearths were formed during successive short-term site occupations or fewer, longer term occupations. The authors examined the micromorphology of the different layers within the hearth structures to assess occupation timings within the study unit and conducted both a lipid biomarker analysis and isotope analysis to gain information about potential food and fuel.
The results of the analyses show stratified hearths built on multiple different topsoils over different periods of time. The burned organic matter present at the El Salt hearths is rich in herbivore excrement and flowering plant residues. The presence of flint and bone shards, as well as conifer wood charcoal collected from trees not present at the site, provide evidence of limited activity at the site. The authors suggest these data indicate at least four successive short-term Neanderthal occupations separated by relatively long periods of time, potentially based around the seasons.
The authors suggest their molecular and micromorphological methods would work well at similar paleolithic sites where fires were built. Their findings provide evidence for successive short-term Neanderthal occupations at this site, and could inform our understanding of Neanderthal group mobility and settlement more generally.
Leierer adds: "Micromorphology combined with lipid biomarker analysis is a powerful approach to investigate anthropogenic combustion-related archaeological contexts from a microstratigraphic perspective which can contribute valuable information on the timing and intensity of Neanderthal occupations as well as the natural setting of the site. These are key factors of group mobility and settlement patterns."

Human settlements in Amazonia much older than previously thought

Humans settled in southwestern Amazonia and even experimented with agriculture much earlier than previously thought, according to an international team of researchers.
"We have long been aware that complex societies emerged in Llanos de Moxos in southwestern Amazonia, Bolivia, around 2,500 years ago, but our new evidence suggests that humans first settled in the region up to 10,000 years ago during the early Holocene period," said Jose Capriles, assistant professor of anthropology. "These groups of people were hunter gatherers; however, our data show that they were beginning to deplete their local resources and establish territorial behaviors, perhaps driving them to begin domesticating plants such as sweet potatoes, cassava, peanuts and chili peppers as a way to acquire food."
The archaeological team conducted its study on three forest islands -- Isla del Tesoro, La Chacra and San Pablo -- within the seasonally flooded savanna of the Llanos de Moxos in northern Bolivia.
"These islands are elevated above the surrounding savanna, so they do not flood during the rainy season," said Capriles. "We believe people were using these sites recurrently as seasonal camps, particularly during the long rainy seasons when most of the Llanos de Moxos become flooded."
The team's excavations of the forest islands revealed human skeletons that had been intentionally buried in a manner unlike that of typical hunter gatherers and instead were more akin to the behaviors of complex societies -- characterized by political hierarchy and the production of food. Their results appear today in Science Advances.
"If these were highly mobile hunter gatherers you would not expect for them to bury their dead in specific places; instead, they would leave their dead wherever they died," said Capriles.
Capriles noted that it is rare to find human or even archaeological remains that predate the use of fired pottery in the region.
"The soils tend to be very acidic, which often makes the preservation of organic remains very poor," he said. "Also, organic matter deteriorates quickly in tropical environments and this region completely lacks any type of rock for making stone tools, so even those are not available to study."
According to Umberto Lombardo, earth scientist at the University of Bern, when the researchers first published their discovery of these archaeological sites in 2013, they had to base their conclusions on indirect evidence -- mostly geochemical analyses -- rather than direct evidence such as artifacts.
"Because of the lack of direct evidence many archaeologists were skeptical about our findings," said Lombardo. "They did not really believe that those forest islands were early Holocene archaeological sites. The current study provides strong and definitive evidence of the anthropocentric origin of these sites, because the archaeological excavations uncovered early Holocene human burials. These are the definitive proof of the antiquity and origin of these sites."
Capriles noted that the human bones on these forest islands were preserved despite the poor conditions because they were encased within middens -- or trash heaps -- containing abundant fragments of shell, animal bones and other organic remains.
"These people were foraging apple snails during the wet season and disposing of the shells in large heaps, called middens," said Capriles. "Over time, water dissolved the calcium carbonate from the shells and those carbonates precipitated over the bones, effectively fossilizing them."
Because the human bones were fossilized, the team was unable to date them directly using radiocarbon dating. Instead, they used radiocarbon dating of associated charcoal and shell as a proxy for estimating the time range that the sites were occupied.
"The abundant remains of burned earth and wood suggests that the people were using fire, likely to clear land, cook food and keep warm during long rainy days," said Capriles.
According to Capriles, a gap exists between the people his team studied who lived on the forest islands between 10,000 and 4,000 years ago and the rise of complex societies, which began around 2,500 years ago.
"This paper represents the first step in the effort to learn more about the people who inhabited southwestern Amazonia for thousands of years but we know nothing about," said Lombardo.
Capriles added, "Are the people we found direct predecessors of those later, more complex societies? There are still questions to be answered and we hope to do so in future research."

Mary Rose crew 'was from Mediterranean and North Africa'

Complete article

The crew on board the sunken Henry VIII ship the Mary Rose was from the Mediterranean, North Africa and beyond, researchers have found.

Bone structure and DNA of 10 skeletons found on board were analysed by team at Cardiff and Portsmouth universities.
They said four of the skeletons were of southern European heritage, and one seems to have hailed from Morocco or Algeria.
The findings cast fresh light on the ethnic makeup of Tudor Britain.

• The Mary Rose: A Tudor ship's secrets revealed
• Mary Rose ship crew 'to be identified using DNA'
• Shipwreck skulls go online in 3D

The Mary Rose sank in 1545 in the Solent during a naval battle with the French, with the loss of between 400 and 600 lives.

Image copyright Geoff Hunt/Mary Rose Trust

Image caption It is not known precisely why the Mary Rose sunk

Dr Nick Owen headed the team at Swansea University which used photogrammetry - a method of producing high definition, photorealistic 3-D images - to visually analyse the remains.
"Having studied the skull of one of the men who went down with the Mary Rose, we found the bone structure was consistent with someone who had North African features, and DNA evidence seems to back this up," he said.
"Today, with a much more mobile world population, it would have been harder to isolate, but in the 16th Century it's easier to pinpoint facial characteristics to a specific location.

Archaeologist: Thick wall found at Lachish indicates King Solomon’s son built it

 

Archaeologists at work excavating the biblical city of Lachish, where an early 12th century BCE Canaanite alphabet inscription was found in 2014. (courtesy of Yossi Garfinkel, Hebrew University)

An archaeologist has recently uncovered a fortified wall in the ancient city of Lachish, a discovery he said shores up the biblical account of the site and suggests that a centralized kingdom ruled by King David and his descendants was founded and expanded earlier than previously believed.

Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, announced the find at a conference two weeks ago, according to the Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday.

The discovery, he argued, bolsters the biblical account in the book of Chronicles of the city under 10th century BCE King Rehoboam’s reign, which says: “And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defense in Judah: He built even Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, and Beth-zur, and Soco, and Adullam, and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, and Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin, fortified cities.”

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“During the Late Bronze Age, Lachish was a very large, grand Canaanite city. Then in the 12th century B.C.E., it was destroyed, and stood waste for 200 or 250 years,” said Garfinkel. “The big question for research in the city is what happened in Layer 5 [of the early period] of the Iron Age: Is that a fortified city, or a village? If it was a city, when was it built? Some say, in the time of David and Solomon, in the early 10th century. Others think it was only built in the late 9th century.”

Yosef Garfinkel with a shrine model made of stone, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa (Courtesy of Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Using carbon dating, the site was pegged to the 10th century.
“We looked in three places, and ultimately, in the northern section, we found a wall between Layer 6 and Layer 4. Later the excavators reached a floor that stretches to the wall, which could be dated using olive pits found beneath the floors. Samples of the pits were sent to the particle accelerator at Oxford, which ruled that the wall had been built around 920 B.C.E., which was exactly the rule of Rehoboam, son of Solomon and grandson of David.”
The discovery of a fortified city two days’ walk from King David and Solomon’s Jerusalem suggests the broader kingdom of Judah was established about a century earlier than historians currently believe.
But critics have rejected the discovery as proof of the biblical timeline, according to the paper.
Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Nadav Na’aman told Haaretz the thicker wall could have been built by Philistines or other rulers.
“In the 10th century B.C.E., Judah was still very peripheral, and very weak. It only began to gain strength in the 9th century B.C.E.,” he said.

Complete article

Mesopotamian King Sargon II envisioned ancient city Karkemish as western Assyrian capital

In "A New Historical Inscription of Sargon II from Karkemish," published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Gianni Marchesi translates a recently discovered inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon II found at the ruins of the ancient city of Karkemish. The inscription, which dates to around 713 B.C., details Sargon's conquest, occupation, and reorganization of Karkemish, including his rebuilding the city with ritual ceremonies usually reserved for royal palaces in capital cities. The text implies that Sargon may have been planning to make Karkemish a western capital of Assyria, from which he could administer and control his empire's western territories.
The cuneiform inscription was found on fragments from three different clay cylinders in 2015 as part of the Nicolò Marchetti-led Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition at Karkemish. Now in ruins, the site is located on the Euphrates river on the border between present day Syria and Turkey.
Marchesi analyzed and translated the total of thirty-eight lines of partially broken Akkadian text, using reference material, academic literature and other inscribed Assyrian artifacts as reference points for filling in the gaps. The lines of text ranged from two-thirds complete to much less, and no line of text was completely intact.
"Even so, we can grasp much of the original text, which turns out to be very informative," Marchesi writes. "In fact, unlike other Sargon cylinders, which contain relatively standard 'summary' inscriptions or annalistic accounts of the events of Sargon's reign, the Karkemish Cylinder provides us with a completely new inscription, dealing almost exclusively with the newly conquered city on the Euphrates in a highly-elaborated, literary style."
In the inscription, Sargon tells of the "betrayal" of Pirisi, the Hittite King of Karkemish who exchanged hostile words about Assyria with its enemy, King Midas of Phrygia. Sargon invades Karkemish, deports Pisiri and his supporters, destroys his palace, seizes his riches as booty and incorporates Pisiri's army into his own. He resettles the city with Assyrians. Having previously blocked the water supply to Karkemish, the meadows "let go fallow, like a wasteland," Marchesi translates, he now reactivates the irrigation system, planting orchards and botanical gardens. "I made the scent of the city sweeter than the scent of a cedar forest."
He also details an inauguration ceremony where he received gifts from Assyrian provinces and sacrifices them to deities. "My lords the gods Karhuha and Kubaba, who dwell in Karkemish, I invited them into my palace," Marchesi translates. "Strong rams of the stable, geese, ducks and flying birds of the sky I offered before them."
Marchesi was struck by the attention that Sargon paid to Karkemish, in particular the elaborate inauguration ceremony and construction of botanical gardens, both indicative not of a typical provincial capital but of a royal palace.
"Because of its glorious past and strategic position, Karkemish was fully entitled to become a sort of western capital of the Assyrian Empire: a perfect place in which to display the grandeur of Assyria, and from which to control the western and north-western territories of the empire," Marchesi writes.
This vision of Karkemish was short-lived, however. Though much care was taken to detail the city's rise in these texts, the city is not mentioned in any known inscriptions of Sargon's successors.
"The unthinkable, ominous death of Sargon on the battlefield in Tabal probably prevented this project from being accomplished, and negatively marked the destiny of Karkemish itself, which no longer attracted the interest of Assyrian kings who followed after him," Marchesi writes.

Better labor practices could improve archaeological output

New analysis illuminates how much archaeological knowledge production has fundamentally relied upon site workers' active choices in responding to labor conditions

Lehigh University

IMAGE: An excavation site in Petra, Jordan. view more 

Credit: Allison Mickel

Archaeological excavation has, historically, operated in a very hierarchical structure, according to archaeologist Allison Mickel. The history of the enterprise is deeply entangled with Western colonial and imperial pursuits, she says. Excavations have been, and often still are, according to Mickel, led by foreigners from the West, while dependent on the labor of scores of people from the local community to perform the manual labor of the dig.
In a recently published paper examining some of this history specifically in the context archaeological excavations undertaken in the Middle East?Mickel writes: "Even well into the 20th century, locally hired excavation workers continued to benefit little from working on archaeological projects, still predominantly directed by European and American researchers who paid extremely low wages and did not share their purpose, progress, hypotheses, or conclusions with local community members."
Over time, the teams have gotten smaller in size, but hiring and labor practices remain the same, explains Mickel, an assistant professor of anthropology at Lehigh University, who specializes in the Middle East.
"We haven't really changed the hierarchy of how we hire or the fact that workers are paid minimum wage--sometimes as little as a few dollars a day, which is not very much to spend even in their own context, for work that is dangerous and has a lot of risk to it," she says.
In a new paper, "Essential Excavation Experts: Alienation and Agency in the History of Archaeological Labor," published in Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, Mickel illuminates the ways that nineteenth century archaeologists working in the Middle East managed local labor in ways that reflected capitalist labor management models. She focuses on two case studies from early Middle Eastern archaeology by examining the memoirs of two 19th century archaeologists: Italian archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni, known for his work in Egypt, and British archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard, best known for his work in Nimrud, an ancient Assyrian city about 20 miles south of Mosul, Iraq.
Mickel's analysis reveals the different ways local laborers responded to similar conditions. Her examination ultimately reveals how much archaeological knowledge has fundamentally relied upon the active choices made by the local laborers who do the digging.
Divergent responses to exploitative labor practices
Mickel argues that the framework established by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx of the capitalist mode of production can be seen in 19th century archaeological work in the Middle East?and, in many ways, in archaeological projects today. This includes Marx's assertion that, she writes, "...the capitalist mode of production leads to workers experiencing a sense of powerlessness and an inability to fulfill the potential of their own skills, expertise, and abilities."
In Mickel's analysis, Belzoni's approach to securing and retaining local laborers for his work in Egypt, which began in 1816, exemplified the conditions of modes of production that lead to his workers' "...alienation in the Marxist sense," beginning with how little he paid them.
She writes: "Monetarily devaluing the archaeological work of native Egyptians in this way engenders an understanding that archaeological labor is quite literally of little worth--one that in Marx's view deeply impacts the self-image of the workers in a production process. Not only were the workers paid next to nothing for performing the manual labor of Belzoni's endeavors, they were also not involved in the conceptualization of the project. In the end, the antiquities were subsequently shipped thousands of miles away, challenging both ideologically and spatially any relationship between the workers and the archaeological objects being unearthed through excavation, as well as the knowledge gleaned from them."
Mickel also writes about Belzoni's use of strongarm tactics to maintain the workforce he employed. These include resorting to physical violence and bribery?strategies Belzoni used, in one example, on a foreman to force laborers to return to work during a strike.
During his famed excavation of the Memnon Head in 1816, Belzoni had to leave the site for an extended period of time in order to raise funds. He believed, writes Mickel, "...that the workers and their families were too lazy to dig on their own..."
"Indeed," she continues, "no substantial digging proceeded in Belzoni's absence by the time he returned. The reasons for this surely have nothing to with any indolence on the part of the native Egyptian workforce, but rather can be explained in terms of alienation."
In examining Layard's memoir, Mickel finds that although Layard worked in the same region and during the same time period as Belzoni, his workers' responded to similar working conditions very differently.
"Operating under extremely similar circumstances," writes Mickel, "the groups of workers examined here made very divergent decisions about how best to respond to an exploitative labor system, whether to rise up demonstratively against it or to resist the devaluation of their work by establishing themselves as essential to the production of artifacts and historical knowledge."
Layard's strategies for hiring and managing a local labor force had much in common with Belzoni's, including elements of capitalist labor relations modes such as low wages. Additionally, Layard's memoirs suggest "...that he viewed the total excavation endeavor as metaphorically signifying the superiority of Western civilization over Oriental peoples and cultures."
And yet Layard's workmen, explains Mickel, often appear in his writing as trusted experts in the excavation process: "These men developed impressive excavation abilities that Layard himself recognized, repeatedly hiring the same groups of people for season after season and site after site. One native Assyrian man whom he hired again and again, Hormuzd Rassam, ultimately went on to lead his own excavations on behalf of the British Museum at places like Nimrud and Nineveh; Rassam even published his own archaeological memoirs for popular distribution like Layard and other archaeologists of the time"
Mickel compares these two contexts and concludes: "Operating under extremely similar circumstances, the groups of workers examined here made very divergent decisions about how best to respond to an exploitative labor system, whether to rise up demonstratively against it or to resist the devaluation of their work by establishing themselves as essential to the production of artifacts and historical knowledge."
Focusing attention on the divergent decision these two groups of laborers made reveals how much is owed to archaeological workers' localized responses to a structure designed to maximize benefit to the archaeologists and minimize workers' control within the project, asserts Mickel.
She writes: "What would the archaeological record look like if this was not the case? How would archaeological knowledge be transformed if the means of its production were not controlled by archaeologists alone but shared with local stakeholders?"
Digging and questioning
As part of her work, Mickel supervises and participates in excavations in regions such as Petra, Jordan and Catalhoyuk, Turkey, while researching the history of archaeology and its contemporary practice.
Mickel has spent two to three months each summer in Turkey and Jordan, and between 2011 and 2015 spent a year at both sites, conducting dissertation fieldwork on a Fulbright grant.
"What I find in [Petra and Catalhoyuk] is relevant to a lot of other contexts because archaeology is fairly regional in its practice," she says.
Beyond digging, Mickel examines records of archaeological excavations for the individuals listed as site workers. She visits their homes and asks questions about the site workers' experiences on the excavations.
"I found that this system has led to one in which workers are doing this dance all the time in archaeology where they are integral to carrying out an excavation, they work for almost nothing, they are good at what they do, they have decades of experience in addition to generational knowledge that's been handed down. ... Most of these people, for context, their fathers worked in archaeology, their grandfathers worked in archaeology--it's almost like a family business for them to be there. So they have a ton of knowledge, but if I tell them how much I admire their expertise, they react really negatively to that label of expertise."
Mickel believes that an improvement of labor practices would benefit not just workers, but archaeology as a whole. She argues for ways in which the field could be producing better science if archaeologists were to change their labor practices.
"This isn't charity work," says Mickel. "If we want to have better archaeology, if we want to know more about the past, then we need to find ways to benefit from the knowledge that local people have been hiding for decades and decades and decades from us."

Archaeologists discovered a flintstone workshop of Neanderthals in the southern Poland

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Researchers discovered a flint workshop of Neanderthals in Pietraszyno (Silesia). According to scientists, it is the first such large workshop in Central Europe that was not located in a cave. So far, researchers have counted 17,000 stone products created 60 thousand years ago.

Neandertals (Homo neanderthalensis) were very close relatives of contemporary man (Homo sapiens). They probably appeared in Poland approximately 300,000 years ago. The oldest stone tools they used, discovered on the Vistula, are over 200,000 years old, and the remains are over 100,000 years old.

"On the bank of the river in Pietraszyno, we discovered an unprecedented amount of flint products - 17,000 - abandoned by Neanderthals approximately 60,000 years ago" - says Dr. Andrzej Wiśniewski from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław. Since 2018, the researcher has been conducting joint excavations with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in the framework of a National Science Centre project. In his opinion, this is the first such large Neandertal workshop discovered in Central Europe that was not located in a cave.
Until now, scientists believed that such large accumulations of flint tools in one place began to appear a bit later, with contemporary man, between 40,000 years and 10 thousand years ago. "This was proof of a more systematic and regular operation in a given area" - the archaeologist says.

Scientists believed that Neanderthals not living in caves did not settle in such places for too long. Therefore, it was difficult to find strong traces of their presence; most often they are individual tools scattered near the places where they were been used, for example, where animals were slaughtered.
"The finds from Pietraszyno completely contradict the old vision of the use of open areas by Neanderthals. It appears that in this place a community was present over a longer period, as evidenced by the large number of discovered objects. In addition, there are also preserved remains of mammoth, rhinoceros and horse bones" - the scientist says.
Archaeologists were able to identify the places where certain types of tools had been made. During excavations, they found numerous flint wasted generated during the production of tools such as hand axes or knives. Interestingly, for the first time in this part of Europe, scientists were able to reconstruct the whole process of making the tool from the first hit on a block of stone to a finished product. Archaeologists were also able to say which tools had been used, and which had not.

"Neanderthals made very few types of tools in this place, which indicates that these activities were socially agreed upon and served the common goals. Some of the products were probably used to cut meat. Evidence of this are the remains of animals discovered next to them" - says Dr. Wiśniewski. The scientist adds that this is also evidenced by microtraces visible on the tools.

Mysterious Ritual Burials From the Iron Age

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One woman was buried with her feet removed and placed by her side, and her arms behind her head. Thames Water

While laying down some water pipes, workers at the U.K. utility company Thames Water had a workday interrupted in a rather macabre fashion when they unearthed what turned out to be the remains of 26 people who had been ritualistically buried in pits in Oxfordshire. One set of remains belonged to a woman who was interred with her feet cut off and placed by her side, and her arms bound behind her head. The bones are believed to be nearly 3,000 years old.

The utility company turned the work at Childrey Warren, as the site is known, over to Cotswold Archaeology, which carefully excavated the graves and associated areas. The archaeologists unearthed evidence of dwellings, a bone comb, pottery, an animal skull (possibly from a horse), deer antlers for digging, flint tools, and a Roman brooch. “The Iron Age site at Childrey Warren was particularly fascinating, as it provided a glimpse into the beliefs and superstitions of people living in Oxfordshire before the Roman conquest,” said Neil Holbrook, chief executive of Cotswold Archaeology, in a statement. He also added that previous research has uncovered similar pit burials that suggest that Britain’s ancient population may have practiced human sacrifice.

A skeleton with its skull placed at its feet. Thames Water

Archaeologists recreate ancient brewing techniques in Peru to learn how beer kept an empire afloat

Field Museum

IMAGE: The team worked with Peruvian brewers to recreate the ancient chicha recipe used at Cerro Baul. view more 

Credit: Donna Nash

A thousand years ago, the Wari empire stretched across Peru. At its height, it covered an area the size of the Eastern seaboard of the US from New York City to Jacksonville. It lasted for 500 years, from 600 to 1100 AD, before eventually giving rise to the Inca. That's a long time for an empire to remain intact, and archaeologists are studying remnants of the Wari culture to see what kept it ticking. A new study found an important factor that might have helped: a steady supply of beer.
"This study helps us understand how beer fed the creation of complex political organizations," says Ryan Williams, an associate curator and Head of Anthropology at the Field Museum and the lead author of the new study in Sustainability. "We were able to apply new technologies to capture information about how ancient beer was produced and what it meant to societies in the past."
Nearly twenty years ago, Williams, Nash, and their team discovered an ancient Wari brewery in Cerro Baúl in the mountains of southern Peru. "It was like a microbrewery in some respects. It was a production house, but the brewhouses and taverns would have been right next door," explains Williams. And since the beer they brewed, a light, sour beverage called chicha, was only good for about a week after being made, it wasn't shipped offsite--people had to come to festivals at Cerro Baúl to drink it. These festivals were important to Wari society--between one and two hundred local political elites would attend, and they would drink chicha from three-foot-tall ceramic vessels decorated to look like Wari gods and leaders. "People would have come into this site, in these festive moments, in order to recreate and reaffirm their affiliation with these Wari lords and maybe bring tribute and pledge loyalty to the Wari state," says Williams. In short, beer helped keep the empire together.
To learn more about the beer that played such an important role in Wari society, Williams and his co-authors Donna Nash (Field Museum and University of North Carolina Greensboro), Josh Henkin (Field Museum and University of Illinois at Chicago) and Ruth Ann Armitage (Eastern Michigan University) analyzed pieces of ceramic beer vessels from Cerro Baúl. They used several techniques, including one that involved shooting a laser at a shard of a beer vessel to remove a tiny bit of material, and then heating that dust to the temperature of the surface of the sun to break down the molecules that make it up. From there, the researchers were able to tell what atomic elements make up the sample, and how many--information that told researchers exactly where the clay came from and what the beer was made of.
"The cool thing about this study is that we're getting down to the atomic level. We're counting atoms in the pores of the ceramics or trying to reconstruct and count the masses of molecules that were in the original drink from a thousand years ago that got embedded into the empty spaces between grains of clay in the ceramic vessels, and that's what's telling us the new information about what the beer was made of and where the ceramic vessels were produced," says Williams. "It's really new information at the molecular level that is giving archaeologists this new insight into the past."
To check that the ingredients in chicha could indeed be transferred to the brewing vessels, the researchers worked with Peruvian brewers to recreate the brewing process. "Making chicha is a complicated process that requires experience and expertise. The experiments taught us a lot about what making chicha would look like in the ruins of a building and how much labor and time went into the process," says Donna Nash, an adjunct curator at the Field Museum and professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, who led the brewing recreation. (Incidentally, the Field Museum and Chicago's Off Colour Brewing released a beer based on Nash's work, a pink ale infused with pepper berries, called Wari Ale; it's being re-released in Chicago-area stores and bars in June.)
By looking at the chemical makeup of traces of beer left in the vessels and at the chemical makeup of the clay vessels themselves, the team found two important things. One, the vessels were made of clay that came from nearby, and two, the beer was made of pepper berries, an ingredient that can grow even during a drought. Both these things would help make for a steady beer supply--even if a drought made it hard to grow other chicha ingredients like corn, or if changes in trade made it hard to get clay from far away, vessels of pepper berry chicha would still be readily available.
The authors of the study argue that this steady supply of beer could have helped keep Wari society stable. The Wari empire was huge and made up of different groups of people from all over Peru. "We think these institutions of brewing and then serving the beer really formed a unity among these populations, it kept people together," says Williams.
The study's implications about how shared identity and cultural practices help to stabilize societies are increasingly relevant today. "This research is important because it helps us understand how institutions create the binds that tie together people from very diverse constituencies and very different backgrounds," says Williams. "Without them, large political entities begin to fragment and break up into much smaller things. Brexit is an example of this fragmentation in the European Union today. We need to understand the social constructs that underpin these unifying features if we want to be able to maintain political unity in society."

Crusaders made love and war, genetic study finds

First genetic study of the Crusaders confirms that warriors mixed and had families with local people in the near East, and died together in battle

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The first genetic study of ancient human remains believed to be Crusaders confirms that warriors travelled from western Europe to the near East, where they mixed and had families with local people, and died together in battle. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators analysed ancient DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century, which were discovered in a burial pit in Sidon, Lebanon.
The results, published today (18 April) in the American Journal of Human Genetics, confirm that while the Crusaders mixed with local people and recruited them to their cause, their genetic presence in the region was short-lived.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the near East. It's known that nobility led the Crusades, but historical records lack details of the ordinary soldiers who travelled to, lived and died in the near East.
In recent years, archaeologists uncovered 25 skeletons dating back to the 13th century within a burial pit in Sidon, Lebanon. All of those found in the pit were male and had been violently killed during battle, as seen by the blunt force injuries to their skulls and other bones. Their bodies had been disposed of in the pit and burned.
Nearby, an isolated skull was found. The head may have been used as a projectile that was catapulted into the opposition's camp to spread disease and slash morale, illustrating the brutality of the battles.
Clues found alongside the skeletons in the pit, such as European shoe buckles, a coin and carbon-14 dating analysis, led archaeologists to believe the human remains were Crusaders.
In a new study, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute produced whole-genome sequences of the ancient skeletons' DNA and confirm they were in fact Crusaders.
The team report that three individuals were Europeans of diverse origins, including Spain and Sardinia, four were near Easterners who had been recruited to the fight, and two individuals had mixed genetic ancestry, suggesting they were the descendants of mixed relationships between Crusaders and near Easterners.
Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "Historical documents tell us the names of the nobility who led the Crusades, but the identities of the soldiers remained a mystery. Genomics gives an unprecedented view of the past and shows the Crusaders originated from western Europe and recruited local people of the near East to join them in battle. The Crusaders and near Easterners lived, fought and died side by side."
However, the researchers believe the Crusaders' influence in the region was short-lived as European genetic traces are insignificant in people living in Lebanon today.
When the researchers sequenced the DNA of people living in Lebanon 2,000 years ago during the Roman period, long before the Crusades, they found that today's Lebanese population is genetically similar to the Roman Lebanese, suggesting the Crusades had no lasting impact on Lebanese genetics.
Dr Marc Haber, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "The Crusaders travelled to the near East and had relationships with the local people, with their sons later joining to fight their cause. However, after the fighting had finished, the mixed generation married into the local population and the genetic traces of the Crusaders were quickly lost."
In the study, the team worked with archaeologists at the Sidon Excavation site to transfer bones of the nine skeletons from Lebanon to a laboratory in Cambridge dedicated to ancient DNA. Here, small portions of the surviving 800 year-old DNA were extracted from the temporal bone in the skulls by DNA extraction experts. An ultra-sterile working environment was set up by the scientists to prevent contamination of the samples with their own DNA, which would render them useless.
The ancient DNA samples were particularly difficult to extract and sequence as the bodies had been burned and buried in a warm and humid climate, where DNA degrades quickly. Recent advances in DNA extraction and sequencing technology made studying the ancient and damaged DNA possible.
Dr Claude Doumet-Serhal, Director of the Sidon excavation site in Lebanon, said: "I was thrilled to discover the genetic identities of the people who lived in the near East during the Crusades. Only five years ago, studies like this would not have been possible. The uniting of archaeologists and geneticists creates an incredible opportunity to interpret significant events throughout history."

Funerary customs, diet, and social behavior in a pre-Roman Italian Celtic community

IMAGE: Localization of main Celtic necropolises of Italy and examples of burials from SV. view more 

Credit: Laffranchi et al, 2019.

Analysis of human remains from a Pre-Roman Celtic cemetery in Italy shows variations in funerary treatment between individuals that could be related to social status, but these variations were not reflected by differences in their living conditions. Zita Laffranchi of Universidad de Granada, Spain, and colleagues present these new findings in the open access journal PLOS ONE on April 17, 2019.
Archeological and written evidence have provided scant insight into social organization among the Cenomani Gauls, Celtic people who began to spread into Northern Italy in the 4th century BC. In a preliminary step to address this knowledge gap, Laffranchi and colleagues analyzed remains from Verona - Seminario Vescovile, a Cenomani burial site that was used between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC.
Seminario Vescovile features some variety in funerary approaches. Some individuals were buried face up, face down, or on their sides; some with animals; and some with varying amounts and types of objects, such as pottery and decorations. Focusing on 125 individuals buried at the site, the researchers set out to explore links between funerary treatment, age, sex, and diet--the first such study for Cenomani Gauls.
Bone analysis revealed different carbon and nitrogen isotope levels between sexes, indicating that men and women at Verona-Seminario Vescovile had different diets. Tooth analysis suggests that the population had higher rates of dental enamel defects than did other Pre-Roman and Celtic groups of the Italian Peninsula, pointing to higher physiological stress levels during childhood.
The researchers were surprised to find no differences between sexes in funerary treatment. They also found no links between funerary differences and isotope measurements or enamel defects. Increased age was somewhat related to increased number of grave objects, but age and burial position were not linked. These findings suggest the existence of weak social differentiation that could have influenced funerary treatment, but that, apart from different diets for men and women, individuals in the group shared similar living conditions.
The authors conclude that the individuals they analyzed were likely members of a homogeneous and potentially low-status group within the original population. Still, they call for extensive additional research to clarify the implications of their findings.
The authors add: "This is the first combined study of diet, developmental stress, and funerary patterns in a Celtic community from the Italian peninsula: the little known Cenomani (North-Eastern Italy)."