Southeast Asia
Humans colonized diverse environments in Southeast Asia and Oceania during the Pleistocene
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Lowland Palawan, the Philippines -- Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in regard of early hominin movements across the supposed "Movius Line " a boundary previously argued to separate populations.... view more Credit: Noel Amano Investigations into what it means to be human have often focused on attempts to uncover the earliest material traces of 'art', 'language', or technological 'complexity'. More recently, however, scholars have begun to argue that more attention should be paid to the ecological uniqueness of our species. A new study, p... more »
'X-ray gun' helps researchers pinpoint the origins of pottery found on ancient shipwreck
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 hours ago
Field Museum [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Ceramic bowls in situ at the Java Sea Shipwreck site. view more Credit: (c) Field Museum, Anthropology. Photographer Pacific Sea Resources. About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from--the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo, which was discovered on the seabed in the 1980s. Since the wreck's recovery in the 1990s, researchers have been piecing toge... more »
Americas
New findings show Magic Mountain archaeological site is older than originally understood
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago
--> An archaeological site near Golden, Colorado, was occupied by humans thousands of years earlier than originally understood, according to new research conducted by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in partnership with the Paleocultural Research Group and the University of Kansas Odyssey Archaeological Research Program. The site, nicknamed Magic Mountain, served as a campground for nomadic hunter-gatherers for millennia. The Museum, PCRG and OARP have conducted fieldwork there for the past few summers. The site was also excavated in the 1950s and 1990s. Previous excavations... more »
Vikings enjoyed a warmer Greenland
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 days ago
Northwestern University [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a 21st-century reproduction of Thjodhild's church on Erik the Red's estate (known as Brattahlíð) in present day Qassiarsuk, Greenland. view more Credit: G. Everett Lasher/Northwestern University A new study may resolve an old debate about how tough the Vikings actually were. Although TV and movies paint Vikings as robust souls, braving subzero temperatures in fur pelts and iron helmets, new evidence indicates they might have been basking in 50-degree summer weather when they settled in Greenland. After reconstructing souther... more »
Solving the ancient mysteries of Easter Island
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 4 weeks ago
*VIDEO: *Binghamton University archaeologist Carl Lipo has shed light on some of the ancient mysteries of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) through his ongoing research. The ancient people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) built their famous ahu monuments near coastal freshwater sources, according to a team of researchers including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York. The island of Rapa Nui is well-known for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly its numerous statues (moai) and the monumental platforms that supported them (ahu.) Researchers have long w... more »
Eurasia
Peasant farmers began transforming diets across the Old World 7,000 years ago
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 day ago
Since the beginning of archaeology, researchers have combed the globe searching for evidence of the first domesticated crops. Painstakingly extracting charred bits of barley, wheat, millet and rice from the remains of ancient hearths and campfires, they've published studies contending that a particular region or country was among the first to bring some ancient grain into cultivation. Now, an international team of scientists, led by Xinyi Liu of Washington University in St. Louis, has consolidated findings from hundreds of these studies to plot a deta... more »
The Caucasus: Complex interplay of genes and cultures
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 4 days ago
Genetic studies of ancient populations in the Caucasus region testify to the complex interaction of populations from the Eurasian steppe and the Caucasus Mountains in the Bronze Age Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Twin peaks of Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Caucasus (5600 m). The Caucasus is a crucial contact zone in the history of Europe, both genetically and culturally. During... view more Credit: Sabine Reinhold An international research team, coordinated by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SH... more »
Ancient fortress reveals how prehistoric civilizations of Central Asia lived
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
Russian Science Communication Association [image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *View of the Uzundara citadel from above. view more Credit: Nigora Dvurechenskaya *et al.* Scientists from Russia and Uzbekistan found a unified fortification system that on the northern border of ancient Bactria. This country existed in the III century BC. The fortress found blocked the border and protected the oases of Bactria from the nomads raids. During the excavations, scientists revealed the fortress citadel, drew up a detailed architectural plan and collected rich archaeological material indicating the construct... more »
New studies reveal deep history of archaic humans in southern Siberia
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
Oxford University scientists have played a key role in new research identifying the earliest evidence of some of the first known humans - Denisovans and Neanderthals, in Southern Siberia. Professor Tom Higham and his team at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford worked in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team from the UK, Russia, Australia, Canada and Germany, on the detailed investigation over the course of five years, to date the archaeological site of Denisova cave. Situated in the foothills of Siberia's Altai Mountains, it is the only site ... more »
Ancient Mongolian skull is the earliest modern human yet found in the region
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a view of the find spot in the Salkhit Valley, Mongolia © Institute of History and Archaeology & Academy of Sciences (Mongolia). view more Credit: © Institute of History and Archaeology & Academy of Sciences (Mongolia) A much debated ancient human skull from Mongolia has been dated and genetically analysed, showing that it is the earliest modern human yet found in the region, according to new research from the University of Oxford. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have revealed that the only Pleistocene hominin fossil discovered in Mongolia, initi... more »
On the steppes of Genghis Khan – Mongolia’s nomads
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 weeks ago
The new international special exhibition at Moesgaard Museum tells the fascinating story of Genghis Khan and the nomads of the Mongolian steppes. For more than a millennium, Mongolian nomads made their mark on contacts between East and West, through belligerent expansion and by controlling trade routes across steppe and desert. The story of Genghis Khan and his ravaging horsemen, who, by brilliant military strategies, created the foundations for the greatest empire the world has ever seen, is well known. Through his enormous conquests in the early 13th century, this commander from th... more »
Neanderthals
Modern humans replaced Neanderthals in southern Spain 44,000 years ago
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
A study carried out in Bajondillo Cave (in the town of Torremolinos, in the province of Malaga) by an international team made up of researchers from Spain, Japan and the U.K. revealed that modern humans replaced Neanderthals 44,000 years ago. This study, published today in the journal *Nature Ecology and Evolution* and in which University of Cordoba and University of Granada scientists participated, demonstrates that replacing Neanderthals for modern humans in southern Iberia is an early, not late, occurrence, in the context of Western Europe. That is to say it happened 5,000 years ... more »
Neanderthal hunting spears could kill at a distance
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 1 week ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a replica spear produced by Owen O'Donnell, an alumnus of UCL Institute of Archaeology. view more Credit: Annemieke Milks (UCL) Neanderthals have been imagined as the inferior cousins of modern humans, but a new study by archaeologists at UCL reveals for the first time that they produced weaponry advanced enough to kill at a distance. The study, published in *Scientific Reports*, examined the performance of replicas of the 300,000 year old Schöningen spears - the oldest weapons reported in archaeological records - to identify whether javelin throwers ... more »
Egypt
Careful Conservation of the Tomb of Tutankhamen Wraps After a Decade of Work
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 2 weeks ago
[image: The north wall of the burial chamber depicts three separate scenes, ordered from right to left. In the first, Ay, Tutankhamen’s successor, performs the “opening of the mouth” ceremony on Tutankhamen, who is depicted as Osiris, lord of the underworld. In the middle scene, Tutankhamen, dressed in the costume of the living king, is welcomed into the realm of the gods by the goddess Nut. On the left, Tutankhamen, followed by his ka (spirit twin), is embraced by Osiris.] The north wall of the burial chamber depicts three separate scenes, ordered fromright to left. In the fir... more »
Near East
11,500-year-old animal bones in Jordan suggest early dogs helped humans hunt
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 3 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *Selection of gazelle bones from Space 3 at Shubayqa 6 displaying evidence for having been in the digestive tract of a carnivore. view more Credit: University of Copenhagen 11,500 years ago in what is now northeast Jordan, people began to live alongside dogs and may also have used them for hunting, a new study from the University of Copenhagen shows. The archaeologists suggest that the introduction of dogs as hunting aids may explain the dramatic increase of hares and other small prey in the archaeological remains at the site. Dogs were domesticated by humans a... more »
Archeological discovery yields clues to how our ancestors may have adapted to their environment
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 5 weeks ago
During the Stone Age ancestral humans lived with a variety of animal species along what was an area of wetlands in the middle of the Jordanian desert. The site, in the town of Azraq Basin, has been excavated and has revealed an abundance of tools and animal bones from up to 250,000 years ago, leading to better understanding of how ancestral humans have adapted to this changing environment. James Pokines, PhD, associate professor of forensic anthropology at Boston University School of Medicine, was a leader of the excavation with a team from the Azraq Marshes Archaeological and Paleo... more »
Europe
Illuminating women's role in the creation of medieval manuscripts
Jonathan KantrowitzatArchaeology News Report - 4 weeks ago
[image: IMAGE] *IMAGE: *This is a magnified view of lapis lazuli particles embedded within medieval dental calculus. view more Credit: Monica Tromp During the European Middle Ages, literacy and written texts were largely the province of religious institutions. Richly illustrated manuscripts were created in monasteries for use by members of religious institutions and by the nobility. Some of these illuminated manuscripts were embellished with luxurious paints and pigments, including gold leaf and ultramarine, a rare and expensive blue pigment made from lapis lazuli stone. In a stud... more »
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