Caribbean settlement began in Greater Antilles

Rigorous reexamination of radiocarbon dating of sites on 55 islands shoots down the idea that colonization moved step by step from south to north

University of Oregon

IMAGE: Students from the University of Oregon, North Carolina State University and University College London work at a Grand Bay cultural site on Carriacou Island, located in the Grenada Grenadines in... view more 

Credit: Photo by Scott Fitzpatrick

EUGENE, Ore. - Dec. 18, 2019 - A fresh, comprehensive look at archaeological data suggests that seafaring South Americans settled first on the large northernmost islands of the Greater Antilles rather than gradually moving northward from the much closer, smaller islands of the Lesser Antilles.
That pattern of movement emerged as an eight-member University of Oregon team reevaluated 2,500 radiocarbon results from cultural sites on 55 islands. Migrations occurred in two waves, the first beginning 5,800 years ago and the second 2,500 years ago, the team reported Dec. 18 in the Science Advances.
Caribbean colonization has been little understood, said Matthew Napolitano, the study's lead author and a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology.
"This scenario contradicts a competing stepping-stone model that many archaeologists still subscribe to, which asserts a south-to-north settlement beginning in the Lesser Antilles," he said.
Based on the team's examination, the first Caribbean islanders went directly from South America to the northern Caribbean, initially settling on the large islands that became Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.
These islands likely offered productive lands and resources that would have been attractive to early settlers. Early colonization involved the movement across hundreds of miles of open seas, likely in single-hulled canoes.
The new study, done over a four-year period, is the culmination of a graduate student project supervised by Scott Fitzpatrick, associate director of the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History and professor in the Department of Anthropology. The work was designed to test the stepping-stone model.
In their reexamination, the researchers assessed the reliability of radiocarbon dating at each site, using strict criteria related to the geologic and archaeological contexts of the dated material, the quality of the samples and the lab conditions under which the materials were analyzed. Slightly more than half of the dates passed muster, despite more than 50 years of scholarship in the region.
The dates were then subjected to rigorous statistical analyses, resulting in a new and exceptionally robust colonization model.
"By carefully applying these criteria, we were able to improve confidence about the reported dates, as well as whether the dated materials actually relate to human activity," said Fitzpatrick, an expert in island and coastal archaeology whose research focuses on the Caribbean and Pacific. "Our analysis of the resulting acceptable dates, which represent human occupations on 26 islands, provides the first reliable model for initial arrival in the region."
The study has also resulted in the largest publicly accessible database of radiocarbon dates for the region.

Archaeologists find Bronze Age tombs lined with gold

The family tombs are near the 2015 site of the 'Griffin Warrior,' a military leader buried with armor, weapons and jewelry.

University of Cincinnati

IMAGE: UC archaeologists found a sealstone made from semiprecious carnelian in the family tombs at Pylos, Greece. The sealstone was engraved with two lionlike mythological figures called genii carrying serving vessels... view more 

Credit: UC Classics

Archaeologists with the University of Cincinnati have discovered two Bronze Age tombs containing a trove of engraved jewelry and artifacts that promise to unlock secrets about life in ancient Greece.
The UC archaeologists announced the discovery Tuesday in Greece.
Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, archaeologists in UC's classics department, found the two beehive-shaped tombs in Pylos, Greece, last year while investigating the area around the grave of an individual they have called the "Griffin Warrior," a Greek man whose final resting place they discovered nearby in 2015.
Like the Griffin Warrior's tomb, the princely tombs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea also contained a wealth of cultural artifacts and delicate jewelry that could help historians fill in gaps in our knowledge of early Greek civilization.
UC's team spent more than 18 months excavating and documenting the find. The tombs were littered with flakes of gold leaf that once papered the walls.
"Like with the Griffin Warrior grave, by the end of the first week we knew we had something that was really important," said Stocker, who supervised the excavation.
"It soon became clear to us that lightning had struck again," said Davis, head of UC's classics department.
The Griffin Warrior is named for the mythological creature -- part eagle, part lion -- engraved on an ivory plaque in his tomb, which also contained armor, weaponry and gold jewelry. Among the priceless objects of art was an agate sealstone depicting mortal combat with such fine detail that Archaeology magazine hailed it as a "Bronze Age masterpiece."
Artifacts found in the princely tombs tell similar stories about life along the Mediterranean 3,500 years ago, Davis said. A gold ring depicted two bulls flanked by sheaves of grain, identified as barley by a paleobotanist who consulted on the project.
"It's an interesting scene of animal husbandry -- cattle mixed with grain production. It's the foundation of agriculture," Davis said. "As far as we know, it's the only representation of grain in the art of Crete or Minoan civilization."
Like the grave of the Griffin Warrior, the two family tombs contained artwork emblazoned with mythological creatures. An agate sealstone featured two lion-like creatures called genii standing upright on clawed feet. They carry a serving vase and an incense burner, a tribute for the altar before them featuring a sprouting sapling between horns of consecration, Stocker said.
Above the genii is a 16-pointed star. The same 16-pointed star also appears on a bronze and gold artifact in the grave, she said.
"It's rare. There aren't many 16-pointed stars in Mycenaean iconography. The fact that we have two objects with 16 points in two different media (agate and gold) is noteworthy," Stocker said.
The genius motif appears elsewhere in the East during this period, she said.
"One problem is we don't have any writing from the Minoan or Mycenaean time that talks of their religion or explains the importance of their symbols," Stocker said.
UC's team also found a gold pendant featuring the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.
"Its discovery is particularly interesting in light of the role she played in Egypt as protectress of the dead," Davis said.
The identity of the Griffin Warrior is a matter for speculation. Stocker said the combination of armor, weapons and jewelry found in his tomb strongly indicate he had military and religious authority, likely as the king known in later Mycenaean times as a wanax.
Likewise, the princely tombs paint a picture of accumulated wealth and status, she said. They contained amber from the Baltic, amethyst from Egypt, imported carnelian and lots of gold. The tombs sit on a scenic vista overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on the spot where the Palace of Nestor would later rise and fall to ruins.
"I think these are probably people who were very sophisticated for their time," she said. "They have come out of a place in history where there were few luxury items and imported goods. And all of a sudden at the time of the first tholos tombs, luxury items appear in Greece.
"You have this explosion of wealth. People are vying for power," she said. "It's the formative years that will give rise to the Classic Age of Greece."
The antiquities provide evidence that coastal Pylos was once an important destination for commerce and trade.
"If you look at a map, Pylos is a remote area now. You have to cross mountains to get here. Until recently, it hasn't even been on the tourist path," Stocker said. "But if you're coming by sea, the location makes more sense. It's on the way to Italy. What we're learning is that it's a much more central and important place on the Bronze Age trade route."
The princely tombs sit close to the palace of Nestor, a ruler mentioned in Homer's famous works "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." The palace was discovered in 1939 by the late UC Classics professor Carl Blegen. Blegen had wanted to excavate in the 1950s in the field where Davis and Stocker found the new tombs but could not get permission from the property owner to expand his investigation. The tombs would have to wait years for another UC team to make the startling discovery hidden beneath its grape vines.
Excavating the site was particularly arduous. With the excavation season looming, delays in procuring the site forced researchers to postpone plans to study the site first with ground-penetrating radar. Instead, Stocker and Davis relied on their experience and intuition to focus on one disturbed area.
"There were noticeable concentrations of rocks on the surface once we got rid of the vegetation," she said.
Those turned out to be the exposed covers of deep tombs, one plunging nearly 15 feet. The tombs were protected from the elements and potential thieves by an estimated 40,000 stones the size of watermelons.
The boulders had sat undisturbed for millennia where they had fallen when the domes of the tombs collapsed. And now 3,500 years later, UC's team had to remove each stone individually.
"It was like going back to the Mycenaean Period. They had placed them by hand in the walls of the tombs and we were taking them out by hand," Stocker said. "It was a lot of work."
At every step of the excavation, the researchers used photogrammetry and digital mapping to document the location and orientation of objects in the tomb. This is especially valuable because of the great number of artifacts that were recovered, Davis said.
"We can see all levels as we excavated them and relate them one to the other in three dimensions," he said. UC's team will continue working at Pylos for at least the next two years while they and other researchers around the world unravel mysteries contained in the artifacts.
"It has been 50 years since any substantial tombs of this sort have been found at any Bronze Age palatial site. That makes this extraordinary," Davis said.

Ancient 'chewing gum' yields insights into people and bacteria of the past

University of Copenhagen The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences

IMAGE: During excavations on Lolland, Denmark, archaeologists have found a 5,700-year-old birch pitch. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in extracting a complete ancient human genome from the pitch... view more 

Credit: Photo: Theis Jensen.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in extracting a complete human genome from a thousands-of-years old "chewing gum". According to the researchers, it is a new untapped source of ancient DNA.
During excavations on Lolland, archaeologists have found a 5,700-year-old type of "chewing gum" made from birch pitch. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen succeeded in extracting a complete ancient human genome from the pitch.
It is the first time that an entire ancient human genome has been extracted from anything other than human bones. The new research results have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
'It is amazing to have gotten a complete ancient human genome from anything other than bone,'' says Associate Professor Hannes Schroeder from the Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, who led the research.
'What is more, we also retrieved DNA from oral microbes and several important human pathogens, which makes this a very valuable source of ancient DNA, especially for time periods where we have no human remains,' Hannes Schroeder adds.
Based on the ancient human genome, the researchers could tell that the birch pitch was chewed by a female. She was genetically more closely related to hunter-gatherers from the mainland Europe than to those who lived in central Scandinavia at the time. They also found that she probably had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes.
Sealed in mud
The birch pitch was found during archaeological excavations at Syltholm, east of Rødbyhavn in southern Denmark. The excavations are being carried out by the Museum Lolland-Falster in connection with the construction of the Fehmarn tunnel.
'Syltholm is completely unique. Almost everything is sealed in mud, which means that the preservation of organic remains is absolutely phenomenal,' says Theis Jensen, Postdoc at the Globe Institute, who worked on the study for his PhD and also participated in the excavations at Syltholm.
'It is the biggest Stone Age site in Denmark and the archaeological finds suggest that the people who occupied the site were heavily exploiting wild resources well into the Neolithic, which is the period when farming and domesticated animals were first introduced into southern Scandinavia,' Theis Jensen adds.
This is reflected in the DNA results, as the researchers also identified traces of plant and animal DNA in the pitch - specifically hazelnuts and duck - which may have been part of the individual's diet.
Bacterial evolution
In addition, the researchers succeeded in extracting DNA from several oral microbiota from the pitch, including many commensal species and opportunistic pathogens.
'The preservation is incredibly good, and we managed to extract many different bacterial species that are characteristic of an oral microbiome. Our ancestors lived in a different environment and had a different lifestyle and diet, and it is therefore interesting to find out how this is reflected in their microbiome,' says Hannes Schroeder.
The researchers also found DNA that could be assigned to Epstein-Barr Virus, which is known to cause infectious mononucleosis or glandular fever. According to Hannes Schroeder, ancient "chewing gums" bear great potential in researching the composition of our ancestral microbiome and the evolution of important human pathogens.
'It can help us understand how pathogens have evolved and spread over time, and what makes them particularly virulent in a given environment. At the same time, it may help predict how a pathogen will behave in the future, and how it might be contained or eradicated,' says Hannes Schroeder.

Roman Fish Sauce - Made in Ashkelon

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recently discovered ancient vats for producing fish sauce about 2km south of Ashkelon. Fish sauce (garum) was a popular condiment in the Mediterranean diet during the Roman and Byzantine periods, but archaeologists have rarely found the installations used to produce it. These vats are among the few discovered in the Eastern Mediterranean.

“ Long before pasta and pizza, the ancient Roman diet was based largely on fish sauce. Historical sources refer to the production of special fish sauce, that was used as a basic condiment for food in the Roman and Byzantine eras throughout the Mediterranean basin.

— Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini

One explanation for the seldom discovery of garum installations is the fact that producing fish sauce is a smelly business. According to Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini from the IAA, ancient sources describing garum production “report that the accompanying strong odors during its production required its being distanced from urban areas.” This is exactly what archaeologists found to be the case at Ashkelon, as the production site was about 2km away from the main city.

In addition to its uncommon nature, this discovery is significant because of what it tells us regarding the spread of Roman Culture. According to Dr. Tali Erickson-Gini, “The discovery of this kind of installation in Ashkelon evinces that the Roman tastes that spread throughout the empire were not confined to dress but also included dietary habits.”

The Roman site, together with its garum installations, was eventually abandoned. However, being a favorable area for cultivating vineyards, a Byzantine monastic community was established there in the 5th century CE. The community made a living from wine production, as evidenced by three winepresses built next to an elaborately decorated church. Little of the church survived to be uncovered, but architectural fragments found on site show that it was decorated with impressive mosaics and marble. Nearby, archaeologists unearthed a large kiln complex used to produce wine jars. Apparently, the jars were for exporting wine. 

Complete report,with images

Celebrated ancient Egyptian woman physician likely never existed

For decades, an ancient Egyptian known as Merit Ptah has been celebrated as the first female physician and a role model for women entering medicine. Yet a researcher from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus now says she never existed and is an example of how misconceptions can spread. "Almost like a detective, I had to trace back her story, following every lead, to discover how it all began and who invented Merit Ptah," said Jakub Kwiecinski, PhD, an instructor in the Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology at the CU School of Medicine and a medical historian.
His study was published last week in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
Kwiecinski's interest in Merit Ptah (`beloved of god Ptah') was sparked after seeing her name in so many places.
"Merit Ptah was everywhere. In online posts about women in STEM, in computer games, in popular history books, there's even a crater on Venus named after her," he said. "And yet, with all these mentions, there was no proof that she really existed. It soon became clear that there had been no ancient Egyptian woman physician called Merit Ptah."
Digging deep into the historical record, Kwiecinski discovered a case of mistaken identity that took on a life of its own, fueled by those eager for an inspirational story.
According to Kwiecinski, Merit Ptah the physician had her origins in the 1930s when Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead, a medical historian, doctor and activist, set out to write a complete history of medical women around the world. Her book was published in 1938.
She talked about the excavation of a tomb in the Valley of Kings where there was a "picture of a woman doctor named Merit Ptah, the mother of a high priest, who is calling her `the Chief Physician.'"
Kwiecinski said there was no record of such a person being a physician.
"Merit Ptah as a name existed in the Old Kingdom, but does not appear in any of the collated lists of ancient Egyptian healers - not even as one of the `legendary'; or `controversial cases," he said. "She is also absent from the list of Old Kingdom women administrators. No Old Kingdom tombs are present in the Valley of the Kings, where the story places Merit Ptah's son, and only a handful of such tombs exist in the larger area, the Theban Necropolis."
The Old Kingdom of Egypt lasted from 2575 to 2150 BC.
But there was another woman who bears a striking resemblance to Merit Ptah. In 1929-30, an excavation in Giza uncovered a tomb of Akhethetep, an Old Kingdom courtier. Inside, a false door depicted a woman called Peseshet, presumably the tomb owner's mother, described as the `Overseer of Healer Women.' Peseshet and Merit Ptah came from the same time periods and were both mentioned in the tombs of their sons who were high priestly officials.
This discovery was described in several books and one of them found its way into Hurd-Mead's private library. Kwiecinski believes Hurd-Mead confused Merit Ptah with Peseseth.
"Unfortunately, Hurd-Mead in her own book accidentally mixed up the name of the ancient healer, as well as the date when she lived, and the location of the tomb," he said. "And so, from a misunderstood case of an authentic Egyptian woman healer, Peseshet, a seemingly earlier Merit Ptah, `the first woman physician' was born."
The Merit Ptah story spread far and wide, driven by a variety of forces. Kwiecinski said one factor was the popular perception of ancient Egypt as an almost fairytale land "outside time and space" perfectly suited for the creation of legendary stories.
The story spread through amateur historian circles, creating a kind of echo chamber not unlike how fake news stories circulate today.
"Finally, it was associated with an extremely emotional, partisan - but also deeply personal - issue of equal rights," he said. "Altogether this created a perfect storm that propelled the story of Merit Ptah into being told over and over again."
Yet Kwiecinski said the most striking part of the story is not the mistake but the determination of generations of women historians to recover the forgotten history of female healers, proving that science and medicine have never been exclusively male.
"So even though Merit Ptah is not an authentic ancient Egyptian woman healer," he said. "She is a very real symbol of the 20th century feministic struggle to write women back into the history books, and to open medicine and STEM to women."

Rare find: human teeth used as jewelry in Turkey 8,500 years ago

University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Humanities

IMAGE: The two drilled 8,500-year-old human teeth found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. view more 

Credit: University of Copenhagen

At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as pendants in a necklace or bracelet. Researchers have never documented this practice before in the prehistoric Near East, and the rarity of the find suggests that the human teeth were imbued with profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them.
During excavations at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey between 2013 and 2015, researchers found three 8,500-year-old-teeth that appeared to have been intentionally drilled to be worn as beads in a necklace or bracelet. Subsequent macroscopic, microscopic and radiographic analyses confirmed that two of the teeth had indeed been used as beads or pendants, researchers conclude in a newly published article in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
"Not only had the two teeth been drilled with a conically shaped microdrill similar to those used for creating the vast amounts of beads from animal bone and stone that we have found at the site, but they also showed signs of wear corresponding to extensive use as ornaments in a necklace or bracelet," University of Copenhagen archaeologist and first author of the article Scott Haddow said. He added:
"The evidence suggests that the two teeth pendants were probably extracted from two mature individuals post-mortem. The wear on the teeth's chewing surfaces indicates that the individuals would have been between 30-50 years old. And since neither tooth seems to have been diseased-which would likely have caused the tooth to fall out during life, the most likely scenario is that both teeth were taken from skulls at the site."
Deep symbolic value
Researchers have previously found human teeth used for ornamental purposes at European sites from the Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, but this practice has never been documented before in the Near East during these or subsequent timeframes. This makes these finds extremely rare and surprising.
"Given the amount of fragmentary skeletal material often circulating within Neolithic sites, not least at Çatalhöyük where secondary burial practices associated with the display of human skulls were frequent, what is most interesting is the fact that human teeth and bone were not selected and modified more often. Thus, because of the rarity of the find, we find it very unlikely that these modified human teeth were used solely for aesthetic purposes but rather carried profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them," Scott Haddow explained.
He concluded:
"The fact that the teeth were recovered from non-burial contexts is also highly interesting in that burials at the site often contain beads and pendants made from animal bone/teeth and other materials, indicating that it seems to have been a deliberate choice not to include items made from human bone and teeth with burials. So perhaps these human teeth pendants were related to specific - and rare - ritual taboos? Or perhaps we should look to the identity of the two individuals from whom the teeth were extracted for an explanation? However, given the small sample size, the ultimate meaning of the human teeth pendants will remain elusive until new findings at Çatalhöyük or elsewhere in the Near East can help us better contextualise the meaning these human teeth artefacts."

Archaeologists has uncovered — for the first time — two “head cones” in the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna

 

Ancient Egyptians wearing head cones of wax were excavated from graves at Amarna, south of Cairo. A. Stevens et al., via The Amarna Project and Antiquity Publications, 2019 via The New York Times. 


Complete report
Painted throughout ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics are scenes of people at boisterous banquets. On top of the dark, braided heads of some revelers sat peculiar white cones. Archaeologists have long puzzled over the purpose of the mysterious headgear, and whether they were real items worn by people, or just iconographic ornaments, like halos crowning saints in Christian artwork. Now, a team of archaeologists has uncovered — for the first time — two of the “head cones” in the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna, nearly 200 miles south of Cairo. The cones were made of wax and dated from 1347 to 1332 B.C. when Egypt was ruled by the pharaoh Akhenaten, husband to Queen Nefertiti and the supposed father of King Tutankhamen.