Iceman was Central Europe native, new research finds

Otzi the Iceman, an astonishingly well-preserved Neolithic mummy found in the Italian Alps in 1991, was a native of Central Europe, not a first-generation émigré from Sardinia, new research shows. And genetically, he looked a lot like other Stone Age farmers throughout Europe. 

The new findings, reported Thursday here at the American Society of Human Genetics conference, support the theory that farmers, and not just the technology of farming, spread during prehistoric times from the Middle East all the way to Finland. 

"The idea is that the spread of farming and agriculture, right now we have good evidence that it was also associated with a movement of people and not only technology," said study co-author Martin Sikora, a geneticist at Stanford University.

In what may be the world's oldest cold case, Otzi was pierced by an arrow and bled to death on a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy more than 5,000 years ago. [ Album: A New Face for Otzi the Iceman ]

Read the rest of this article...

Archaeologists discover Thracian golden jewelry

Archaeologists say they have unearthed an almost 2,400-year-old golden hoard in an ancient Thracian tomb in northern Bulgaria.

he treasure was found on Thursday near the village of Sveshtari, 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Sofia, team leader Diana Gergova said.

She said that among the artifacts, dating back to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century B.C., were gold jewelry and applications for horse trappings, a tiara with reliefs of lions and fantasy animals, as well as four bracelets and a ring.

The Thracians lived in what is now Bulgaria, and parts of modern Greece, Romania, Macedonia, and Turkey between 4,000 B.C. and the 7th century A.D., when they were assimilated by the invading Slavs.

Read the rest of this article...

Unique Thracian treasure found in Bulgaria

Bulgarian archaeologists have found a unique gold Thracian treasure in the famous Sveshtari tomb.

The team, led by one of the most prominent Bulgarian experts on Thracian archaeology, Prof. Diana Gergova, from the National Archaeology Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, BAS, made the discovery during excavations at the so-called Omurtag mount.

The researchers found fragments of a wooden box, containing charred bones and ashes, along with a number of extremely well-preserved golden objects, dated from the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century B. C.. They include four spiral gold bracelets, and a number of intricate applications like one which shows the head of a female goddess adorned with beads, applications on horse riding gear and a forehead covering in the shape of a horse head with a base shaped like a lion head. The objects weigh 1.5 kg, but the excavations continue.

The precious find also contains a ring, buttons and beads. Gergova explains that it seemed the treasure was wrapped in a gold-woven cloth because a number of gold threads were discovered nearby.

Read the rest of this article...

Oldest Arrowheads Hint at How Modern Humans Overtook Neandertals

Tiny stone blades from Pinnacle Point Cave 5-6 in South Africa that once tipped arrows or darts represent the oldest known projectile weapons. Image: Simen Oestmo

Archaeologists excavating a cave on the southern coast of South Africa have recovered remains of the oldest known projectile weapons. The tiny stone blades, which were probably affixed to wooden shafts for use as arrows, date to 71,000 years ago and represent a sophisticated technological tradition that endured for thousands of years. The discovery bears on an abiding question about when and how modern human cognition emerged, and suggests a way by which early modern Homo sapiens outcompeted Neandertals to eventually become the last human species standing.

Fossils show that humans who basically looked like us had evolved by around 200,000 years ago. Yet based on the cultural stuff they left behind, it looked as though anatomically modern humans didn’t begin thinking like us until much later. And when the creative spark did eventually ignite, the flame flickered only briefly before fizzling, only to spark and fade again and again as populations died out, taking their innovations to the grave. Projectile weapon technology, for example, seemed to make a brief first appearance sometime between 65,000 and 60,000 years ago and didn’t stick until after 40,000 years ago. But whether this flickering pattern in the archaeological record is real or merely an artifact of the small number of sites excavated has been unclear. The new South African finds, which come from a site called Pinnacle Point 5 – 6 (PP5-6), support the latter scenario.

Read the rest of this article...

Mammoth skeleton found in France

Archaeologists in France have unearthed a rather hairy fossil — a nearly complete skeleton of a mammoth.

The bones — thought to belong to a creature that roamed the earth between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago — were discovered by accident during the excavation of an ancient Roman site 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Paris.

It may be only the third remains of a long-haired woolly mammoth discovered in France in the last 150 years. Such discoveries are more common in Siberia.

Archaeologists will try to establish the circumstances of the long tusked specimen's death: If it drowned in the River Marne or was hunted by Neanderthal Man.

Read the rest of this article...

Archeologists Examine One of the Oldest Hoards Found in Europe

Jewelry and female figurines from Belica, Serbia, to be exhibited for the first time at Tübingen University Museum.

Archeologists from the University of Tübingen's Institute of Prehistory are working with the Serbian Archeological Institute in Belgrade to analyze the most comprehensive Early Neolithic hoard ever found. Work on the nearly 8000 year old collection of jewelry and figurines is funded by the Thyssen Foundation.

The unique hoard is composed of some 80 objects made of stone, clay and bone. "This collection from Belica, in all its completeness, provides a unique glimpse into the symbols of the earliest farmers and herdsmen in Europe," says Tübingen archeologist Dr. Raiko Krauss, who heads the German side of the project.

The objects include stylized female figures, parts of the human body, as well as miniature axes and abstract figures. Much attention has been given to the rotund female figures of water-smoothed stone given human features by human hands. Were they idols, lucky charms or fertility symbols? Their purpose is unknown.

Read the rest of this article...

Tolkien estate bans reference to 'hobbits'

It was, perhaps, inevitable that Homo floresiensis, the one-metre-tall species of primitive human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, would come to be widely known as "hobbits". After all, like JRR Tolkien's creation, they were "a little people, about half our height". But a New Zealand scientist planning an event about the species has been banned from describing the ancient people as "hobbits" by representatives of the Tolkien estate.

Brent Alloway, associate professor at Victoria University, is planning a free lecture next month at which two of the archaeologists involved in the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, Mike Morwood and Thomas Sutikna, will speak about the species. The talk is planned to coincide with the premiere of The Hobbit film, and Dr Alloway had planned to call the lecture "The Other Hobbit", as Homo floresiensis is commonly known.

But when he approached the Saul Zaentz Company/Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns certain rights in The Hobbit, he was told by their lawyer that "it is not possible for our client to allow generic use of the trade mark HOBBIT".

Read the rest of this article...

Archaeologists find prehistoric remains in Truro

A slate disc decorated on both sides is believed to date to the later Neolithic, found at the Truro site Credit: Cornwall Council

Archaeologists working at the site of the future Truro Eastern District Centre (TEDC) have discovered the fragmentary remains of a prehistoric enclosure likely to have been built around 5,500 years ago.

Initial findings from the excavations, led by Cornwall Council’s Historic Environment Service, suggest the eastern end of the site may have been a ‘causewayed enclosure’ dating from the early Neolithic period (3800BC to 3600BC).
Now the team will catalogue their findings, take samples and, in line with national guidance, carefully re-bury the site to protect it for future generations.

“While it is important that we take the opportunity to learn more about our findings now, best practice is for the site to be preserved for future generations of archaeologists who will have better technologies to understand it than we do today,” said Dan Ratcliffe from the Council’s Historic Environment Service. “Scientific analysis of evidence recovered during the excavations is expected to take some years after the sample excavation has concluded.”

Read the rest of this article...

Europe's oldest prehistoric town unearthed in Bulgaria

Archaeologists in Bulgaria say they have uncovered the oldest prehistoric town found to date in Europe.

The walled fortified settlement, near the modern town of Provadia, is thought to have been an important centre for salt production.

Its discovery in north-east Bulgaria may explain the huge gold hoard found nearby 40 years ago.

Archaeologists believe that the town was home to some 350 people and dates back to between 4700 and 4200 BC. 

That is about 1,500 years before the start of ancient Greek civilisation.

Read the rest of this article...

Prehistoric remains unearthed in Cornwall

Archaeologists working at the site of the future Truro Eastern District Centre (TEDC) have discovered the fragmentary remains of a prehistoric enclosure likely to have been built around 5,500 years ago.

Initial findings from the excavations, led by Cornwall Council’s Historic Environment Service, suggest the eastern end of the site may have been a ‘causewayed enclosure’ dating from the early Neolithic period (3800BC to 3600BC).

Now the team will catalogue their findings, take samples and, in line with national guidance, carefully re-bury the site to protect it for future generations.

Read the rest of this article...

Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing

Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of 'a breakthrough'

The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.

This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.

"I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough," says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.

Dr Dahl's secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before.

Read the rest of this article...

Core sample sends carbon clock farther back in time

The carbon clock is getting reset. Climate records from a Japanese lake are set to improve the accuracy of the dating technique, which could help to shed light on archaeological mysteries such as why Neanderthals became extinct.

Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material — in effect, any living thing. The technique hinges on carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of the element that, unlike other more stable forms of carbon, decays away at a steady rate. Organisms capture a certain amount of carbon-14 from the atmosphere when they are alive. By measuring the ratio of the radio isotope to non-radioactive carbon, the amount of carbon-14 decay can be worked out, thereby giving an age for the specimen in question.

But that assumes that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant — any variation would speed up or slow down the clock. The clock was initially calibrated by dating objects of known age such as Egyptian mummies and bread from Pompeii; work that won Willard Libby the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But even he “realized that there probably would be variation”, says Christopher Bronk Ramsey, a geochronologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the latest work, published today in Science¹. Various geologic, atmospheric and solar processes can influence atmospheric carbon-14 levels.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient sundial found in northern Greece

The ancient sundial dating from the Greco-Roman period found in Polichrono in Chalkidiki [Credit: Greek Reporter]

One of the rarest sundials dating from the Greco-Roman period was found in Polichrono in Chalkidiki, northern Greece. This sundial is not a usual one as it shows the correct time at any given place.

It is noteworthy that in the Ancient Greek world, sundials consisted of a gnomon (indicator) in the form of a vertical post or peg set in a flat surface, upon which the shadow of the gnomon served to indicate the time.

This sundial has a surface which is separated in 12 parts representing 12 hours of the day. More particularly, the sundial consists of a hyperbola tracing the shadow’s path at the winter solstice, a second one for the summer solstice, and a straight east-west line in between marking the equinoctial shadows.

Read the rest of this article...

»Ötzi 3« wird nun bestattet

Vitrinenfenster zur Kühlzelle der Mumie vom Hauslabjoch (© Südtiroler Archäologiemuseum)

»Ötzi 3« ist ein Mann, der seinen Körper nach seinem Tod der Wissenschaft zur Verfügung gestellt hat. 15 Jahre lang, seit 1997, diente er der Forschung im Südtiroler Archäologiemuseum in Bozen, um die Kühlkammer von Ötzi zu perfektionieren. Nun ist die Aufgabe beendet und der Leichnam wurde nach Innsbruck überführt, wo er begraben wird.

Read the rest of this article...

Prehistoric Autopsy: Alice Roberts

Professor Alice Roberts, one of the presenters of Prehistoric Autopsy (credit: BBC) 

Professor Alice Roberts is back on our screens next week with Prehistoric Autopsy, which sees a team of experts reconstructing some of our ancient ancestors. We caught up with Alice to ask her about the three early human relatives that will feature in the programme.

Lucy's species (Australopithecus Afarensis)

"Our closest living relatives – chimpanzees – stand on two legs. The distinction is, are you a habitual biped? To get from A to B, is that your locomotion of choice? If it is, that causes changes in your anatomy. Lucy’s skeleton had these changes, and it’s very similar to our skeletons." 

"Another piece of evidence is the ‘Laetoli footprints’ from Tanzania. One expert on Prehistoric Autopsy is Robin Crompton, who’s studied Lucy’s gait, primarily by analysing the Laetoli footprints and how they represent stepping onto the ground – compared with humans and chimpanzees. The way we form footprints reflects the pressures applied at different points, because the whole of your foot doesn’t hit the floor at the same time: pressure comes through the heel, then down onto the ball and onto the toes. And when Robin looks at Lucy’s footprint, it appears quite similar to the way we walk."

Read the rest of this article...

‘Time-capsule’ Japanese lake sediment advances radiocarbon dating for older objects

A new series of radiocarbon measurements from Japan’s Lake Suigetsu will give scientists a more accurate benchmark for dating materials, especially for older objects, according to a research team that included Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.

The research team extracted cores of beautifully preserved layers of sediment, containing organic material (such as tree leaf and twig fossils), from the bottom of the Japanese lake where they had lain undisturbed for tens of thousands of years. As an article in the journal Science explains, the findings are hugely significant because they provide a much more precise way to examine radiocarbon ages of organic material for the entire 11,000-53,000-year time range. For example, archaeologists should now be able to pinpoint more accurately the timing of the extinction of Neanderthals or the spread of modern humans into Europe.

At the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Professor Christopher Ramsey with his doctoral student Richard Staff and chemist Dr Fiona Brock worked with two other radiocarbon laboratories (the NERC facility at East Kilbride, Scotland, and Groningen in the Netherlands) on the radiocarbon record from the lake. This research is part of a large international research team, led by Professor Takeshi Nakagawa of Newcastle University, studying the cores for clues about past climate and environmental change.

Read the rest of this article...

'Fox hole' opens passage to Neolithic past, possibly Hades

(Photo Courtesy of Bill Parkinson)

Alepotrypa Cave was home to a Neolithic community more than 5,000 years ago. The first archaeologist to dig inside unearthed hundreds of burials and hypothesized that the cave was believed to be Hades, or the underworld in Greek mythology.

 

A Field Museum curator is digging around a cave in Southern Greece that’s been compared to the mythical underworld, Hades.  That cave might help explain why people choose to migrate to big cities or high tail it to the suburbs.

And it has a surprising Chicago tie. 

William Parkinson is the associate curator of Eurasian anthropology at the Field Museum. He is on a research team, called The Diros Project, made up of two Greek and two American archaeologists (both Chicago natives).

They are excavating Alepotrypa Cave, which is nearly four football fields long. The researchers compare the most striking room in the cave to a Cathedral.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient 'sauna' unearthed in Assynt

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of what they believe could be an Bronze Age bathing site, or a sauna.

The metre-deep pit with a channel to a nearby stream was discovered at Stronechrubie, Assynt, in the north west Highlands.

The find was made by the Fire and Water Project, which is run by archaeology and history group Historic Assynt.

The project team had been trying to understand what a crescent shaped mound of stones had been created for.

Excavations at the mound by archaeologists and volunteers unearthed the pit and channel from beneath a layer of clay.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient tomb found at 'Sweden's Stonehenge'

Sweden's 'Stonehenge', the Ale's Stones in Skane [Credit: Xuanxu/Flickr[

Swedish archaeologists have unearthed what is presumed to be a dolmen, or a portal tomb, that is believed to be over 5,000 years old near the megalithic monument Ale’s stones in southern Sweden.

”The findings confirm what we have believed; that this has been a special place for a very long time,” said archaeologist Bengt Söderberg to news agency TT.

On Saturday, the first day of the dig, the scientists already had a hunch that they would find something on the site, expecting a Stone Age grave and a Bronze Age monument.

And since, the hunch has become stronger.

Read the rest of this article...

Dig team uncovers 4,000-year-old artefact

Project manager Jane Harrison

VOLUNTEER archaeologists in Blackbird Leys had a shock on their second day of digging yesterday, when they stumbled upon a 4,000-year-old artefact. 

Around 20 people started digging near the Kassam Stadium on Tuesday, as part of a five week project to learn more about the area’s history. 

Organised by the lottery-funded Archaeology of East Oxford Project (Archeox), the diggers hope to discover information about a 12th century priory on the site. 

But they got more than they bargained for at the site on Minchery Farm Paddock yesterday morning.

Project manager Jane Harrison said: “It was pretty exciting. I got into the trench we have there, took four swipes with a trowel and it just popped up.

Read the rest of this article...