Americas
Methods used 1,400 years ago could boost water availability during Lima's dry season
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 22 hours ago
------------------------------ Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, Peru's coastal region relies on surface water from the Andes for drinking water, industry, and animal and crop farming. The region, which includes Peru's capital city Lima, is often overwhelmed with rain in the wet season -- but by the time the dry season comes, water is scarce. These factors, together with Lima's rapidly growing population, mean the city struggles to supply water to its 12 million residents during the dry months of May to October. Now, Imperial researchers and their colleagues ... more »
Climate change had significant impact on Amazon communities before arrival of Europeans
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Raised fields in the Bolivian Llanos de Moxos region. view more Credit: Umberto Lombardo Climate change had a significant impact on people living in the Amazon rainforest before the arrival of Europeans and the loss of many indigenous groups, a new study shows. Major shifts in temperature and rainfall caused the disappearance of communities long before 1492, researchers have found. In contrast other cultures still flourished just before the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. New analysis of what the climate was like in the Amazon from 700 to 1300 shows the... more »
Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic hunter-gatherer migration to North America ~5,000 years ago
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
The first humans in North America arrived from Asia some time before 14,500 years ago. The next major stream of gene flow came about 5000 years ago, and is known to archaeologists as Paleo-Eskimos. About 800 years ago, the ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup'ik people replaced this population across the Arctic. By about 700 years ago, the archaeological evidence for the Paleo-Eskimo culture disappeared. Their genetic legacy in living populations has been contentious, with several genetic studies arguing that they made little contribution to later North Americans. In the curren... more »
Europe
Levänluhta jewellery links Finland to a European exchange network
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago
University of Helsinki [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Archaeological findings of Levänluhta in the Finnish National Museum's exhibition. In the front arm rings and necklaces found from the burial site, made out of copper alloy. view more Credit: Elisabeth Holmqvist-Sipilä The Levänluhta water burial site, dating back to the Iron Age (300-800 CE), is one of Finland's most famous archaeological sites. Nearly one hundred individuals, mainly women or children, were buried in a lake located at Isokyrö in SW Finland, during the Iron Age. Some of the deceased were accompanied by arm rings and ne... more »
Breakthrough in the discovery of DNA in ancient bones buried in water
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
During the Iron Age around 300 AD something extraordinary was initiated in Levänluhta area in Isokyrö, SW Finland. The deceased were buried in a lake, and this habit was continued for at least 400 years. When trenches were dug in the local fields in mid-1800's skulls and other human bones were surfacing. These bones had been preserved almost intact in the anoxic, ferrous water. Archaeologists, historians and locals have been wondering about these finds for over 150 years now. In 2010, a multidisciplinary research group at the University of Helsinki ... more »
Early Celts in Burgundy appropriated Mediterranean products and feasting practices
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Selection of the Early Celtic vessels held in the archive of the Württemberg State Museum. view more Credit: Victor S. Brigola Early Celts in eastern France imported Mediterranean pottery, as well as olive oil and wine, and may have appropriated Mediterranean feasting practices, according to a study published June 19, 2019 in *PLOS ONE*, by Maxime Rageot from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Tübingen, and colleagues. Hundreds of fragments of imported Mediterranean pottery have been excavated from the Early Celtic hillfort site of... more »
Archaeology has rediscovered historical Cordoba U
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is the ancient geomorphology of the city of Cordoba. view more Credit: Antonio Monterroso-Checa On the land where Cordoba is located in the 21st century, two cities coexisted in the past, each on a hill. An Iberian city was located where Cruz Conde Park lies today, and a Roman city, which was founded at a later time, was located about 500 meters away. Archaeology has had to depend upon geological studies up to now in order to determine how the city developed throughout history, but now, thanks to LiDAR technology, 3D images have been obtained that show... more »
The short life of Must Farm
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a scaffold platform above Must Farm's 'structure 1'. view more Credit: D. Webb Must Farm, an extraordinarily well-preserved Late Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgeshire, in the East of England, drew attention in national and international media in 2016 as 'Britain's Pompeii' or the 'Pompeii of the Fens'. The major excavation was funded by Historic England and Forterra Building Products Ltd, which owns the Must Farm quarry. Now for the first time, published today in *Antiquity*, archaeologists from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit present a definitiv... more »
Living and dying at the port of ancient Rome
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is an aerial photo of the Portus Project excavations in 2009. view more Credit: Portus Project Portus Romae was established in the middle of the first century AD and for well over 400 years was Rome's gateway to the Mediterranean. The port played a key role in funnelling imports - e.g. foodstuffs, wild animals, marble and luxury goods - from across the Mediterranean and beyond to the citizens of Rome and was vital to the pre-eminence of the city in the Roman Mediterranean. But, what of the people who lived, worked and died there? In a study published t... more »
Ancient DNA from Roman and medieval grape seeds reveal ancestry of wine making
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
A grape variety still used in wine production in France today can be traced back 900 years to just one ancestral plant, scientists have discovered. With the help of an extensive genetic database of modern grapevines, researchers were able to test and compare 28 archaeological seeds from French sites dating back to the Iron Age, Roman era, and medieval period. Utilising similar ancient DNA methods used in tracing human ancestors, a team of researchers from the UK, Denmark, France, Spain, and Germany, drew genetic connections between seeds from different archaeological sites, as well... more »
The Neolithic precedents of gender inequality
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
Researchers from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Seville have studied the archaeological evidence of prehistoric societies in the Neolithic Period in the Iberian Peninsula from the perspective of gender. According to the results of their work, which address the analysis from the point of view of bioarchaeology and funerary archaeology, it was in the Neolithic that gender differences first appeared which meant male domination in later periods of history. To arrive at these conclusions, the researchers have analysed two groups of indicators. On the on... more »
Unusual rings are a novel type of Bronze Age cereal-based product
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *The annular objects from the find assemblage in the debris layer of pit V5400. view more Credit: Heiss et al, 2019 Strange ring-shaped objects in a Bronze Age hillfort site represent a unique form of cereal-based product, according to a study published June 5, 2019 in the open-access journal *PLOS ONE* by Andreas G. Heiss of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAW-ÖAI) and colleagues. Agricultural practices are well known in the archaeological record, but less understood is how food was produced and prepared by ancient cultures. In this study, Heiss and co... more »
Details of first historically recorded plague pandemic revealed by ancient genomes
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Lunel-Viel (Languedoc-Southern France). Victim of the plague thrown into a demolition trench of a Gallo-Roman house; end of the 6th-early 7th century. view more Credit: 1990; CNRS - Claude Raynaud An international team of researchers has analyzed human remains from 21 archaeological sites to learn more about the impact and evolution of the plague-causing bacterium *Yersinia pestis* during the first plague pandemic (541-750 AD). In a study published in *PNAS*, the researchers reconstructed 8 plague genomes from Britain, Germany, France and Spain and uncovered... more »
Africa
Oldest flaked stone tools point to the repeated invention of stone tools
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *A large green artifact found in situ at the Bokol Dora site. Right: Image of the same artifact and a three dimensional model of the same artifact. view more Credit: David R. Braun A new archaeological site discovered by an international and local team of scientists working in Ethiopia shows that the origins of stone tool production are older than 2.58 million years ago. Previously, the oldest evidence for systematic stone tool production and use was 2.58 to 2.55 million years ago. Analysis by the researchers of early stone age sites, published this week in... more »
Oceania
Retracing ancient routes to Australia
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 5 days ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Arrival of First Australians infographic view more Credit: Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) New insights into how people first arrived in Australia have been revealed by a group of experts brought together to investigate the continent's deep history. They used sophisticated modelling to determine not only the likely routes travelled by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, but also the sizes of groups required for the population to survive in harsh conditions. The research, published ... m
Human migration in Oceania recreated through paper mulberry genetics
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Making barkcloth from paper mulberry bark in Buda village, Viti Levu, Fiji. view more Credit: A. Seelenfreund The migration and interaction routes of prehistoric humans throughout the islands of Oceania can be retraced using genetic differences between paper mulberry plants, a tree native to Asia cultivated for fibers to make paper and introduced into the Pacific in prehistoric times to make barkcloth. Daniela Seelenfreund of the University of Chile and Andrea Seelenfreund of the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano University, Chile report on prehistoric human m... more »
Asia
Archaeological mystery solved with modern genetics
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 5 days ago
Researchers at the University of Tokyo conducted a census of the Japanese population around 2,500 years ago using the Y chromosomes of men living on the main islands of modern-day Japan. This is the first time analysis of modern genomes has estimated the size of an ancient human population before they were met by a separate ancient population. "Evidence at archaeological dig sites has been used to estimate the size of ancient human populations, but the difficulty and unpredictability of finding those sites is a big limitation. Now we have a method that uses a large amount of moder... more »
Ancient pots from Chinese tombs reveal early use of cannabis as a drug
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
Chemical analysis of several wooden braziers recently excavated from tombs in western China provides some of earliest evidence for ritual cannabis smoking, researchers report. The study suggests that smoking cannabis for ritual and religious activities was practiced in western China by at least 2500 years ago, and that the cannabis plants involved were producing high levels of psychoactive compounds, indicating that people were aware of and interacting with specific populations of the plant. Cannabis, one of the oldest cultivated plants in East Asia, is also one of the most widely ... more »
Dramatic change in ancient nomad diets coincides with expansion of networks across Eurasia
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Map of millet and wheat/barley consumption over time: a) 1000-500 cal BC, b) 500-200 cal BC, and c) 200 BC-AD 400. view more Credit: I. Reese and A. R. Ventresca Miller, 2017 A meta-analysis of dietary information recorded in the bones of ancient animals and humans recovered from sites scattered across the Eurasian steppe, from the Caucasus region to Mongolia, demonstrates that pastoralists spread domesticated crops across the steppe through their trade and social networks. Researchers from Kiel University sifted through previously published stable isotopic d... more »
DNA from 31,000-year-old milk teeth leads to discovery of new group of ancient Siberians
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Alla Mashezerskaya maps the artefacts in the area where two 31,000-year-old milk teeth were found. view more Credit: Elena Pavlova Two children's milk teeth buried deep in a remote archaeological site in north eastern Siberia have revealed a previously unknown group of people lived there during the last Ice Age. The finding was part of a wider study which also discovered 10,000 year-old human remains in another site in Siberia are genetically related to Native Americans - the first time such close genetic links have been discovered outside of the US. The int... more »
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
Complete article A watchtower dating from the time of the Kingdom of Judah (8th century BCE – during the reign of King Hezekiah) was recently uncovered during archeological excavations by IDF soldiers, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, at a paratroopers base in the south of the country. The tower, whose dimensions in antiquity is estimated to have been 5 x 3.5 m, was erected at a high geographic site, and as such, was an observation point to the Hebron Mountains, the Judean plain and the Ashkelon vicinity. It was built of especially large stones, some 8 tons in weight... more »
A city gate from the time of King David
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
Complete article A city gate from the time of King David was discovered after 32 years of excavation in the ancient city of Bethsaida in the Golan Heights’ Jordan Park, opening up a world of new possibilities, opinions and theories about the ancient landscape of the Land of Israel. According to Professor Rami Arav of the University of Nebraska, chief archaeologist overseeing the excavations, told the *Jerusalem Post* that the gate and further findings found within the ancient city give the notion that it was possible that Solomon and David might not have been the sole kings of the... more »
Near East
9,000 years ago, a community with modern urban problems
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
Çatalhöyük had overcrowding, violence, environmental troubles [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *These are excavations in a number of Neolithic buildings at Catalhoyuk. view more Credit: Scott Haddow COLUMBUS, Ohio - Some 9,000 years ago, residents of one of the world's first large farming communities were also among the first humans to experience some of the perils of modern urban living. Scientists studying the ancient ruins of Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, found that its inhabitants - 3,500 to 8,000 people at its peak - experienced overcrowding, infectious diseases, violence and environment... more »
Ancient feces reveal parasites in 8,000-year-old village of Çatalhöyük
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 weeks ago
New research published today in the journal *Antiquity* reveals that ancient faeces from the prehistoric village of Çatalhöyük have provided the earliest archaeological evidence for intestinal parasite infection in the mainland Near East. People first gave up hunting and gathering and turned to farming in the Near East, around 10,000 years ago. The settlement of Çatalhöyük is famous for being an incredibly well preserved early village founded around 7,100 BC. The population of Çatalhöyük were early farmers, growing crops such as wheat and barley, and herding sheep and goats. "It h... more »
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