Daily Dose of Archaeology 4.0

There is nothing remotely Elysian about the Phlegræan Fields, which lie on the north shore of the Bay of Naples; nothing sylvan, nothing green. The Fields are part of the caldera of a volcano that is the twin of Mount Vesuvius, a few miles to the east, the destroyer of Pompeii. The volcano is still active–it last erupted in 1538, and once possessed a crater that measured eight miles across–but most of it is underwater now. The portion that is still accessible on land consists of a barren, rubble-strewn plateau. Fire bursts from the rocks in places, and clouds of sulfurous gas snake out of vents leading up from deep underground.
The Fields, in short, are hellish, and it is no surprise that in Greek and Roman myth they were associated with all manner of strange tales. Most interesting, perhaps, is the legend of the Cumæan sibyl, who took her name from the nearby town of Cumæ, a Greek colony dating to about 500 B.C.– a time when the Etruscans still held sway much of central Italy and Rome was nothing but a city-state ruled over by a line of tyrannical kings.

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A farmer who was picking watermelons in the northwestern province of Düzce’s Çilimli district found an ancient pot thought to date back to the late Eastern Roman Empire. during the late Eastern Roman Empire.

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Archaeologists working at the site of a medieval monastery in Veliki Preslav, one of the former capitals of Bulgaria, have found 101 copper coins said to date from the late 12th to early 13th centuries CE.
Preslav was the capital of the First Bulgarian Kingdom from 893 to 972 CE. The site is about 20km from the town of Shoumen in north-easternBulgaria.
The coins bear the images of Byzantine emperors Isaac II Angelos, who reigned from 1185 to 1195, and Alexios III Angelos, whose reign was from 1195 to 1203.

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Eight decorated servicemen died when the MK III Lancaster was attacked by a Luftwaffe ace during a dawn raid on German gun emplacements in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

None of their bodies were found and the plane lay undiscovered for nearly 70 years until the wreckage was pinpointed by British aviation archaeologist Tony Graves.

He was first taken to the site by a group of French locals who had seen a wheel sticking out of the earth.

A local metal detector later found a mangled ring in a nearby marsh which bore the initials 'AC' and the engraved inscription 'Love Vera'.

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A skeleton uncovered north of Vienna is forcing archaeologists to take a fresh look at prehistoric gender roles after it appeared to be that of a female fine metal worker - a profession that was previously thought to have been carried out exclusively by men.

The Museum of Ancient History in Lower Austria says the grave originates from the Bronze Age around 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, and that the bones belonged to a woman who would have been aged between 45 and 60.

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ST. LOUIS, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Archaeologists in Guatemala say they uncovered the seventh-century tomb of one of the great queens of Classic Maya civilization.
The tomb of .... K'abel was discovered during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Peru-Waka in northwestern Peten, Guatemala, Washington University in St. Louis reported Wednesday.
Washington University anthropology Professor David Freidel, co-director of the expedition, said a small, carved alabaster jar found in the burial chamber was evidence the tomb was that of .... K'abel.

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) — A fragment of a child's skull discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania shows the oldest known evidence of anemia caused by a nutritional deficiency, reports a new paper published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
The discovery, made by a global team of researchers led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from Complutense University, Madrid, suggests that early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier in history than previously believed. The skull fragment identified is thought to belong to a child somewhat younger than two and shows bone lesions that commonly result from a lack of B-vitamins in the diet.
Previous reports show that early hominids ate meat, but whether it was a regular part of their diet or only consumed sporadically was not certain. The authors suggest that the bone lesions present in this skull fragment provide support for the idea that meat-eating was common enough that not consuming it could lead to anemia.

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) — With tiny 1-inch long jaws, a new species of plant-eater has come to light in rocks in South Africa dating to the early dinosaur era, some 200 million years ago. This “punk-sized” herbivore is one of a menagerie of bizarre, tiny, fanged plant-eaters called heterodontosaurs, or “different toothed reptiles,” that were among the first dinosaurs to spread across the planet.
The single specimen of the new species was originally chipped out of red rock in southern Africa in the 1960s and discovered in a collection of fossils at Harvard University by Paul Sereno, paleontologist and professor at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Details of the dinosaur’s anatomy and lifestyle are part of a monograph by Sereno dedicated to these puny herbivores and published in the online journal ZooKeys.
Named Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa,” the new species had a short parrot-shaped beak up front, a pair of stabbing canines, and tall teeth tucked behind for slicing plants. The tall teeth in upper and lower jaws operated like self-sharpening scissors, with shearing wear facets that slid past one another when the jaws closed. The parrot-shaped skull, less than three inches long, may have been adapted to plucking fruit.

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MEXICO CITY — Mexican archaeologists said Friday they uncovered the largest number of skulls ever found in one offering at the most sacred temple of the Aztec empire dating back more than 500 years.
The finding reveals new ways the pre-Colombian civilization used skulls in rituals at Mexico City's Templo Mayor, experts said. That's where the most important Aztec ceremonies took place between 1325 until the Spanish conquest in 1521.
The 50 skulls were found at one sacrificial stone. Five were buried under the stone, and each had holes on both sides – signaling they were hung on a skull rack.
Archaeologist Raul Barrera of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said the other 45 skulls appeared to have just been dumped on top of the stone.
The team of archeologists unearthed the skulls and jaw bones in August. They stumbled on them as they were renovating a section of the Templo Mayor in the heart of Mexico City.
Barrera said they believe the 45 skulls were those of women and men between 20 and 35 years old and could have been dug up from other sites and reburied.

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MEXICO CITY — Mexican archaeologists say they have determined that the ancient Mayas built watchtower-style structures atop the ceremonial ball court at the temples of Chichen Itza to observe the equinoxes and solstices, and they said Friday that the discovery adds to understanding of the many layers of ritual significance that the ball game had for the culture.
The structures sit atop the low walls of the court, where the Mayas played a game that consisted, as far as experts can tell, of knocking a heavy, latex ball with their elbows, knees or hips, through a stone ring set in the walls.
The bases of the structures – essentially, look-out boxes set atop the walls, each one with a small slit running through it _had been detected before, but archaeologist hadn't been sure what they were used for. Since the ball court was built around 864 A.D., the boxes and the stairs leading to them had crumbled.
The government's National Institute of Anthropology and History announced Thursday that the boxes had been 90-percent reconstructed, based on the stone footings that remained. Late last year and early this year, a team led by archaeologist Jose Huchim confirmed that the sun shone through the slit-like openings when the setting sun touches the horizon at the winter solstice.

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Archaeologists near Vernon, B.C., have uncovered thousands of First Nations artifacts — some of which could be more than 6,000 years old — on a stretch of highway in Lake Country.
Archaeologists have been working the site since January, pulling thousands of artifacts from the ground.
"One of the cool things we found … was what we think are the remains of a fishing net," archaeologist ....... Coates told CBC News.
"We found these 30 flat, notched rocks spread out over about three meters. The net was left there with the rocks and over time the net would rot away."
Thousands of arrowheads, spear points and hammer stones are among the finds.

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HUMAN remains found on the A453 of bodies dating up to three hundred years apart are thought by archaeologists to have been related.
Evidence of two bodies was uncovered this week during an archaeological excavation as part of preparatory work for the new dual carriageway.
The one hectare site, set back from the existing road near Clifton, is thought to be a late Iron Age/Early Roman settlement. It is said to have been a farmstead which lasted more than 2,000 years and was home to several generations of ordinary Romano-British people.
A ten-strong team of Archaeologists, working eight hour days for the last five weeks, this week found a skull, with the teeth still embedded, and upper arm of one body and the part of a leg of another.
One of the bodies was found in a crouched position and the gender is not yet known, although the brow ridge was heavy, indicating it might have been a man. The other was discovered in a horizontal position, indicating a later burial of up to three hundred years, and thought to be female. Both have been removed from site under licence and are now being examined more closely by specialists.

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Drive west from Orkney's capital, Kirkwall, and then head north on the narrow B9055 and you will reach a single stone monolith that guards the entrance to a spit of land known as the Ness of Brodgar. The promontory separates the island's two largest bodies of freshwater, the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray. At their furthest edges, the lochs' peaty brown water laps against fields and hills that form a natural amphitheatre; a landscape peppered with giant rings of stone, chambered cairns, ancient villages and other archaeological riches.
This is the heartland of the Neolithic North, a bleak, mysterious place that has made Orkney a magnet for archaeologists, historians and other researchers. For decades they have tramped the island measuring and ex- cavating its great Stone Age sites. The land was surveyed, mapped and known until a recent chance discovery revealed that for all their attention, scientists had completely overlooked a Neolithic treasure that utterly eclipses all others on Orkney – and in the rest of Europe.

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2012) — To discover why Neandertals are most closely related to people outside Africa, Harvard and Max Planck Institute scientists have estimated the date when Neandertals and modern Europeans last shared ancestors. The research, published in the journal PLoS Genetics, provides a historical context for the interbreeding. It suggests that it occurred when modern humans carrying Upper Paleolithic technologies encountered Neandertals as they expanded out of Africa. When the Neandertal genome was sequenced in 2010 it revealed that people outside Africa share slightly more genetic variants with Neandertals than Africans do. One scenario that could explain this observation is that modern humans mixed with Neandertals when they came out of Africa. An alternative, but more complex, scenario is that African populations ancestral to both Neandertals and modern humans remained subdivided over a few hundred thousand years and that those more related to Neandertals subsequently left Africa.

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Richard Wrangham, an anthropologist at Harvard, claims that hominids became people—that is, acquired traits like big brains and dainty jaws—by mastering fire. He places this development at about 1.8 million years ago. This is an appealing premise no matter who you are. For those who see cooking as morally, culturally, and socially superior to not cooking, it is scientific validation of a worldview: proof that cooking is literally what makes us human. For the rest of us, it means we have a clever retort the next time one of those annoying raw-food faddists starts going on about how natural it is never to eat anything heated above 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
There’s one problem with Wrangham’s elegant hypothesis: It’s hardly the scientific consensus. In fact, since 2009, when Wrangham explained his theory in the book Catching Fire, several archaeologists have come forward with their own, wildly divergent opinions about what is arguably the oldest intellectual property debate in the world. Who really mastered fire, in the sense of being able to create it, control it, and cook with it regularly? Was it .... erectus, Neanderthals, or modern humans?

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