IMAGE: Medieval ceramic article from Chalcis
typical of main Middle Byzantine Production (MBP), in the collection of
the Musée National de Céramique and the Manufacture de Sèvres (Cité de
la Céramique)....
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Credit: S. Y. Waksman
In the 12th century, the Byzantine Empire was flourishing and the
city of Thebes--between Corinth and Athens--was a bustling center of
commercial and cultural exchange. Its outlet to the sea was the port of
Chalcis, part of a vast maritime trade network. In addition to
agricultural products and silk, ceramic tableware was shipped from
Chalcis throughout the Mediterranean. Most of this tableware has been
assigned to the main Middle Byzantine Production (MBP) ceramic type.
The research team examined one lot of MBP ceramics salvaged from a
wreck discovered by the island of Kavalliani, near Chalcis, in the
Southern Euboean Gulf. Analyses performed at the Archéologie et
Archéométrie research unit revealed their chemical composition, which
the scientists then compared with that of ceramics known to have been
produced at Chalcis. The chemical profiles were a match, leading them to
conclude that MBP ceramics were indeed manufactured in Chalcis. This
was followed up with a study of pieces from the collections of the Cité
de la Céramique in Sèvres, in collaboration with the Centre de Recherche
et de Restauration des Musées de France (French Ministry of Culture).
These findings provide a new perspective on medieval Mediterranean
trade and reveal that Chalcis was an epicenter of maritime commerce,
exporting goods across a vast territory. They also pinpoint the place of
manufacture of a large number of Byzantine ceramics currently on
display in museums around the world.
At an archaeological site in northeastern Jordan, researchers have
discovered the charred remains of a flatbread baked by hunter-gatherers
14,400 years ago. It is the oldest direct evidence of bread found to
date, predating the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The
findings suggest that bread production based on wild cereals may have
encouraged hunter-gatherers to cultivate cereals, and thus contributed
to the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic period.
A team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, University
College London and University of Cambridge have analysed charred food
remains from a 14,400-year-old Natufian hunter-gatherer site - a site
known as Shubayqa 1 located in the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan.
The results, which are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the earliest empirical evidence for the production of bread:
"The presence of hundreds of charred food remains in the fireplaces
from Shubayqa 1 is an exceptional find, and it has given us the chance
to characterize 14,000-year-old food practices. The 24 remains analysed
in this study show that wild ancestors of domesticated cereals such as
barley, einkorn, and oat had been ground, sieved and kneaded prior to
cooking. The remains are very similar to unleavened flatbreads
identified at several Neolithic and Roman sites in Europe and Turkey. So
we now know that bread-like products were produced long before the
development of farming. The next step is to evaluate if the production
and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation
and domestication at all," said University of Copenhagen archaeobotanist
Amaia Arranz Otaegui, who is the first author of the study.
University of Copenhagen archaeologist Tobias Richter, who led the excavations at Shubayqa 1 in Jordan, explained:
"Natufian hunter-gatherers are of particular interest to us because
they lived through a transitional period when people became more
sedentary and their diet began to change. Flint sickle blades as well as
ground stone tools found at Natufian sites in the Levant have long led
archaeologists to suspect that people had begun to exploit plants in a
different and perhaps more effective way. But the flat bread found at
Shubayqa 1 is the earliest evidence of bread making recovered so far,
and it shows that baking was invented before we had plant cultivation.
So this evidence confirms some of our ideas. Indeed, it may be that the
early and extremely time-consuming production of bread based on wild
cereals may have been one of the key driving forces behind the later
agricultural revolution where wild cereals were cultivated to provide
more convenient sources of food." Charred remains under the microscope
The charred food remains were analysed with electronic microscopy at
a University College London lab by PhD candidate Lara Gonzalez
Carratero (UCL Institute of Archaeology), who is an expert on
prehistoric bread:
"The identification of 'bread' or other cereal-based products in
archaeology is not straightforward. There has been a tendency to
simplify classification without really testing it against an
identification criteria. We have established a new set of criteria to
identify flat bread, dough and porridge like products in the
archaeological record. Using Scanning Electron Microscopy we identified
the microstructures and particles of each charred food remain," said
Gonzalez Carratero.
"Bread involves labour intensive processing which includes
dehusking, grinding of cereals and kneading and baking. That it was
produced before farming methods suggests it was seen as special, and the
desire to make more of this special food probably contributed to the
decision to begin to cultivate cereals. All of this relies on new
methodological developments that allow us to identify the remains of
bread from very small charred fragments using high magnification," said
Professor Dorian Fuller (UCL Institute of Archaeology). Research into prehistoric food practices continues
A grant recently awarded to the University of Copenhagen team will
ensure that research into food making during the transition to the
Neolithic will continue:
"The Danish Council for Independent Research has recently approved
further funding for our work, which will allow us to investigate how
people consumed different plants and animals in greater detail. Building
on our research into early bread, this will in the future give us a
better idea why certain ingredients were favoured over others and were
eventually selected for cultivation," said Tobias Richter.
IMAGE: This is incipient J?mon pottery from Hanamiyama site, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
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Credit: Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties
A study into some of the earliest known pottery remains has
suggested that the rise of ceramic production was closely linked with
intensified fishing at the end of the last Ice Age.
Scientists examined 800 pottery vessels in one of the largest
studies ever undertaken, focussing mainly on Japan- a country recognised
as being one of the earliest centres for ceramic innovation.
A three year study led by researchers at BioArCh, the University
of York, concluded that the ceramic vessels were used by our
hunter-gatherer ancestors to store and process fish, initially salmon,
but then a wider range including shellfish, freshwater and marine fish
and mammals as fishing intensified.
Scientists say this association with fish remained stable even
after the onset of climate warming, including in more southerly areas,
where expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting game and
gathering plants.
The research team were able to determine the use of a range of
ceramic vessels through chemical analysis of organic food compounds that
remained trapped in the pots despite ca. 10,000 years of burial.
The samples analysed are some of the earliest found and date from
the end of the Late Pleistocene - a time when our ancestors were living
in glacial conditions - to the post-glacial period when the climate
warmed close to its current temperature and when pottery began to be
produced in much greater quantity.
The study has shed new light on how prehistoric hunter-gatherers
processed and consumed foods over this period - until now virtually
nothing was known of how or for what early pots were used.
As part of the study, researchers recovered diagnostic lipids
from the charred surface deposits of the pottery with most of the
compounds deriving from the processing of freshwater or marine
organisms.
Lead author, Dr Alex Lucquin, from BioArCh, Department of
Archaeology, University of York, said: "Thanks to the exceptional
preservation of traces of animal fat, we now know that pottery changed
from a rare and special object to an every-day tool for preparing fish.
"I think that our study not only reveals the subsistence of the
ancient Jomon people of Japan but also its resilience to a dramatic
change in climate.
Professor Oliver Craig, from the Department of Archaeology and
Director of the BioArCh research centre at York, who led the study,
said: "Our results demonstrate that pottery had a strong association
with the processing of fish, irrespective of the ecological setting.
"Contrary to expectations, this association remained stable even
after the onset of warming, including in more southerly areas, where
expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting and gathering.
"The results indicate that a broad array of fish was processed in
the pottery after the end of the last Ice Age, corresponding to a
period when hunter-gatherers began to settle in one place for longer
periods and develop more intensive fishing strategies"
"We suggest this marks a significant change in the role of
pottery of hunter-gatherers, corresponding massively increased volume of
production, greater variation in forms and sizes and the onset of
shellfish exploitation."
Dr Simon Kaner, from the University of East Anglia, who was
involved in the study, added: "The research highlights the benefits of
this kind of international collaboration for unlocking some of the big
questions about the human past, and the potential of engaging with
established research networks as created by the Sainsbury Institute over
the years."
The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and
the study was funded by the AHRC. It was an international collaboration
including researchers in Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.
In 1991, German tourists discovered, in the Eastern Italian Alps, a
human body that was later determined to be the oldest naturally
preserved ice mummy, known as Otzi or the Iceman. Now, researchers
reporting in the journal Current Biology on July 12 who have
conducted the first in-depth analysis of the Iceman's stomach contents
offer a rare glimpse of our ancestor's ancient dietary habits. Among
other things, their findings show that the Iceman's last meal was heavy
on the fat.
The findings offer important insights into the nutritional habits of
European individuals, going back more than 5,000 years to the Copper
Age. They also offer clues as to how our ancient ancestors handled food
preparation.
"By using a complementary multi-omics approach combined with
microscopy, we reconstructed the Iceman's last meal, showing that he has
had a remarkably high proportion of fat in his diet, supplemented with
wild meat from ibex and red deer, cereals from einkorn, and with traces
of toxic bracken," says Frank Maixner of the Eurac Research Institute
for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy. Bracken is a genus of large ferns.
Maixner and colleagues, including Albert Zink, explains that the
analysis hadn't happened earlier because scientists were initially
unable to identify the Iceman's stomach. That's because it had moved up
during the mummification process. In 2009, his stomach was spotted
during a re-investigation of CT scans, and an effort to analyze its
contents was launched.
"The stomach material was, compared to previously analyzed lower
intestine samples, extraordinarily well preserved, and it also contained
large amounts of unique biomolecules such as lipids, which opened new
methodological opportunities to address our questions about Otzi's
diet," Maixner says.
The researchers combined classical microscopic and modern molecular
approaches to determine the exact composition of the Iceman's diet prior
to his death. The broad-spectrum approach allowed them to make
inferences based on ancient DNA, proteins, metabolites, and lipids.
The analysis identified ibex adipose tissue as the most likely fat
source. In fact, about half of the stomach contents were composed of
adipose fat. While the high-fat diet was unexpected, the researchers say
it "totally makes sense" given the extreme alpine environment in which
the Iceman lived and where he was found.
"The high and cold environment is particularly challenging for the
human physiology and requires optimal nutrient supply to avoid rapid
starvation and energy loss," says Albert Zink, also at the Eurac
Research Institute for Mummy Studies. "The Iceman seemed to have been
fully aware that fat represents an excellent energy source."
The analysis indicated that the wild meat was eaten fresh or perhaps
dried. While the presence of toxic bracken particles is more difficult
to explain, the researchers say it's possible that the Iceman suffered
from intestinal problems related to parasites found earlier in his gut
and took the bracken as a medicine. On the other hand, he may have used
the fern's leaves to wrap food and ingested toxic spores
unintentionally.
Their analysis also revealed traces of the original gut bacterial
community present in the Iceman's intestinal contents. The researchers
say they plan to conduct further studies aimed to reconstruct the
ancient gut microbiomes of the Iceman and other mummified human remains.
IMAGE: After conservation: cleaned, smoothed and
consolidated. A specialized papyrus conservator was brought to Basel to
make this 2,000-year-old document legible again.
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Credit: University of Basel
Since the 16th century, Basel has been home to a mysterious papyrus.
With mirror writing on both sides, it has puzzled generations of
researchers. A research team from the University of Basel has now
discovered that it is an unknown medical document from late antiquity.
The text was likely written by the famous Roman physician Galen.
The Basel papyrus collection comprises 65 papers in five languages,
which were purchased by the university in 1900 for the purpose of
teaching classical studies - with the exception of two papyri. These
arrived in Basel back in the 16th century, and likely formed part of
Basilius Amerbach's art collection.
One of these Amerbach papyri was regarded until now as unique in the
world of papyrology. With mirror writing on both sides, it has puzzled
generations of researchers. It was only through ultraviolet and infrared
images produced by the Basel Digital Humanities Lab that it was
possible to determine that this 2,000-year-old document was not a single
papyrus at all, but rather several layers of papyrus glued together. A
specialist papyrus restorer was brought to Basel to separate the sheets,
enabling the Greek document to be decoded for the first time. A literary papyrus
"This is a sensational discovery," says Sabine Huebner, Professor of
Ancient History at the University of Basel. "The majority of papyri are
documents such as letters, contracts and receipts. This is a literary
text, however, and they are vastly more valuable."
What's more, it contains a previously unknown text from antiquity.
"We can now say that it's a medical text from late antiquity that
describes the phenomenon of 'hysterical apnea'," says Huebner. "We
therefore assume that it is either a text from the Roman physician
Galen, or an unknown commentary on his work." After Hippocrates, Galen
is regarded as the most important physician of antiquity.
The decisive evidence came from Italy - an expert saw parallels to
the famous Ravenna papyri from the chancery of the Archdiocese of
Ravenna. These include many antique manuscripts from Galen, which were
later used as palimpsests and written over. The Basel papyrus could be a
similar case of medieval recycling, as it consists of multiple sheets
glued together and was probably used as a book binding. The other Basel
Amerbach papyrus in Latin script is also thought to have come from the
Archdiocese of Ravenna. At the end of the 15th century, it was then
stolen from the archive and traded by art collectors as a curiosity. Utilizing digital opportunities in research
Huebner made the discovery in the course of an editing project
funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. For three years, she
has been working with an interdisciplinary team in collaboration with
the University of Basel's Digital Humanities Lab to examine the papyrus
collection, which in the meantime has been digitalized, transcribed,
annotated and translated. The project team has already presented the
history of the papyrus collection through an exhibition in the
University Library last year. They plan to publish all their findings at
the start of 2019.
With the end of the editing project, the research on the Basel
papyri will enter into a new phase. Huebner hopes to provide additional
impetus to papyrus research, particularly through sharing the
digitalized collection with international databases. As papyri
frequently only survive in fragments or pieces, exchanges with other
papyrus collections are essential. "The papyri are all part of a larger
context. People mentioned in a Basel papyrus text may appear again in
other papyri, housed for example in Strasbourg, London, Berlin or other
locations. It is digital opportunities that enable us to put these
mosaic pieces together again to form a larger picture." The Basel Papyrus Collection
In 1900, the University of Basel was one of the first
German-speaking universities and the first in German-speaking
Switzerland to procure a papyrus collection. At that time, papyrology
was booming - people hoped to discover more about the development of
early Christendom and to rediscover works of ancient authors believed to
be lost. The Voluntary Museum Association of Basel provided CHF 500 to
purchase the papyri, an amount equivalent to around CHF 5,000 today.
The current value of such a papyrus collection, however, would be in
the hundreds of thousands. The Basel collection contains 65 documents
in five languages from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods and late
antiquity. Most of the collection is made up of documentary papyri,
which are primarily of social, cultural and religious historical
interest as they record the daily life of ordinary people 2,000 years
ago. Most of the Basel papyri have not been published and remained
largely ignored by research until now.
The world-renowned general Julius Caesar may have been rather less
heroic than we imagine, in terms of victories as well as physique.
Caesar was largely bald and had a deformed skull, resulting from
difficulties during his birth.
As for military campaigns, he suffered
his greatest defeat in the Low Countries, possibly near the Dutch city
of Maastricht, according to new research suggesting that he fought a
substantial proportion of the Gallic Wars in the northern part of Gaul.
These findings emerged from the research conducted by the archaeologist
and author Tom Buijtendorp on Caesar’s activities in the Low Countries,
in response to the mounting pile of clues for his presence here.
Buijtendorp’s research was recently published in the book Caesar in de
Lage Landen (Caesar in the Low Countries)
Caesar’s own statistics on killed
Roman soldiers, suggest that roughly half of these deaths took place in
the north, in Gallia Belgica. In this harsh northern region Caesar
encountered his largest defeat ever, and faced a second defeat at the
same place the year after. The northern military effort was so
burdensome that Caesar had to limit his British ambition. Caesar’s idea
of the Rhine as natural border, would impact the strategy of the Roman
Empire for a long time.
Buijtendorp’s research for his book ‘Caesar in de Lage Landen’
(Caesar in the Low Countries) was based in part on recently-excavated
Caesarian camps, an analysis of indigenous gold coins, geographical
analyses, and a renewed assessment of Caesar’s own statistics. The
findings for example suggests that a hilltop stronghold near Maastricht
may have served in 54 and 53 BC as the camp and logistics centre of
Caesar’s army, site of his largest loss. This is indicated, for
instance, by a detailed analysis of gold coins and the camp’s size,
which was recently established. Caesars description of the battle site
fits quite well with the environment.
In addition, the site becomes a
logical choice when looking at the reconstruction of Caesars northern
campaign. And new insights in the possible location of other camps, also
provide a possible match. Like in more cases, this new perspective
generates a working hypothesis that may help to actually discovery
archaeological remains and protect sites. The recently recognized unique
shape of the hobnails in the boots of Caesar’s soldiers, since 2010
enabled researchers to link three northern camps to Caesar.
New
discoveries may follow, for which the book – which is written in the
manner of a travel guide – identifies several possible sites. This
remains challenging for marching camps. A large excavation at
Limburg-Eschhofen only revealed three hobnails, while at Hermeskeil a
gate probably used for several months was a special hobnail find spot.
Mauchamp with clear old traces of Caesars’ large camp, did not provide
related finds lacking sizeable modern excavations.
A scientific consortium led by Dr. Eleanor Scerri, British Academy
Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford and researcher at the
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has found that
human ancestors were scattered across Africa, and largely kept apart by a
combination of diverse habitats and shifting environmental boundaries,
such as forests and deserts. Millennia of separation gave rise to a
staggering diversity of human forms, whose mixing ultimately shaped our
species.
While it is widely accepted that our species originated in Africa,
less attention has been paid to how we evolved within the continent.
Many had assumed that early human ancestors originated as a single,
relatively large ancestral population, and exchanged genes and
technologies like stone tools in a more or less random fashion.
In a paper published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution this
week, this view is challenged, not only by the usual study of bones
(anthropology), stones (archaeology) and genes (population genomics),
but also by new and more detailed reconstructions of Africa's climates
and habitats over the last 300,000 years. One species, many origins
"Stone tools and other artifacts - usually referred to as material
culture - have remarkably clustered distributions in space and through
time," said Dr. Eleanor Scerri, researcher at the Max Planck Institute
for the Science of Human History and the University of Oxford, and lead
author of the study. "While there is a continental-wide trend towards
more sophisticated material culture, this 'modernization' clearly
doesn't originate in one region or occur at one time period."
Human fossils tell a similar story. "When we look at the morphology
of human bones over the last 300,000 years, we see a complex mix of
archaic and modern features in different places and at different times,"
said Prof. Chris Stringer, researcher at the London Natural History
Museum and co-author on the study. "As with the material culture, we do
see a continental-wide trend towards the modern human form, but
different modern features appear in different places at different times,
and some archaic features are present until remarkably recently."
The genes concur. "It is difficult to reconcile the genetic patterns
we see in living Africans, and in the DNA extracted from the bones of
Africans who lived over the last 10,000 years, with there being one
ancestral human population," said Prof. Mark Thomas, geneticist at
University College London and co-author on the study. "We see
indications of reduced connectivity very deep in the past, some very old
genetic lineages, and levels of overall diversity that a single
population would struggle to maintain." An ecological, biological and cultural patchwork
To understand why human populations were so subdivided, and how
these divisions changed through time, the researchers looked at the past
climates and environments of Africa, which give a picture of shifting
and often isolated habitable zones. Many of the most inhospitable
regions in Africa today, such as the Sahara, were once wet and green,
with interwoven networks of lakes and rivers, and abundant wildlife.
Similarly, some tropical regions that are humid and green today were
once arid. These shifting environments drove subdivisions within animal
communities and numerous sub-Saharan species exhibit similar
phylogenetic patterns in their distribution.
The shifting nature of these habitable zones means that human
populations would have gone through many cycles of isolation - leading
to local adaptation and the development of unique material culture and
biological makeup - followed by genetic and cultural mixing.
"Convergent evidence from these different fields stresses the
importance of considering population structure in our models of human
evolution," says co-author Dr. Lounes Chikhi of the CNRS in Toulouse and
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Lisbon."This complex history of
population subdivision should thus lead us to question current models of
ancient population size changes, and perhaps re-interpret some of the
old bottlenecks as changes in connectivity," he added.
"The evolution of human populations in Africa was multi-regional.
Our ancestry was multi-ethnic. And the evolution of our material culture
was, well, multi-cultural," said Dr Scerri. "We need to look at all
regions of Africa to understand human evolution."
