Take a virtual look at Neolithic Stonehenge

ARCHAEOLOGISTS from Bournemouth University have created a virtual map of Neolithic Stonehenge.

Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge, is the first computer application of its kind to transport users around a virtual prehistoric landscape to explore Stonehenge.

It was developed using new field data gathered during investigations by teams from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.

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From Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge

Anew paper in Archaeology in Wales, produced by Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University and Dr Richard Bevins of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales confirms, for the first time, the exact origin of some the rhyolite debitage found at Stonehenge. This work could now lead to important conclusions about how stones were transported from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge.


Over a period of nine months, Bevins and Ixer have been carefully collecting and identifying samples from rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire to try and locate the provenance of rocks that can be found at what is today, one of the world’s most iconic archaeological sites.

Their recent discovery confirms that the Stonehenge rhyolite debitage originates from a specific 70m long area namely Craig Rhos-y-felin near Pont Saeson. Using petrographical techniques, Ixer and Bevins found that 99% of these rhyolites could be matched to rocks found in this particular set of outcrops. Rhyolitic rocks at Rhos-y-felin are distinctly different from all others in South Wales, which gives almost all of Stonehenge rhyolites a provenance of just hundreds of square metres.


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Tax bill paid with 2,000-year-old Iron Age fire guard

A 2,000-year-old Iron Age fire guard has been accepted into Wales' national museum in lieu of inheritance tax.

The Capel Garmon Firedog, once one of a pair on the hearth of a chieftain's roundhouse, is regarded as one of the finest surviving prehistoric iron artefacts in Europe.

Previously on loan to the National Museum it will now be part of Wales' collections of Early Celtic Art.

It was discovered in a peat bog in 1852.

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Neanderthals built homes with mammoth bones

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 44,000 year old Neanderthal building that was constructed using the bones from mammoths.

The circular building, which was up to 26 feet across at its widest point, is believed to be earliest example of domestic dwelling built from bone.

Neanderthals, which died out around 30,000 years ago, were initially thought to have been relatively primitive nomads that lived in natural caves for shelter.

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Scientists discover source of rock used in Stonehenge's first circle

Scientists have succeeded in locating the exact source of some of the rock believed to have been used 5000 years ago to create Stonehenge's first stone circle.

By comparing fragments of stone found at and around Stonehenge with rocks in south-west Wales, they have been able to identify the original rock outcrop that some of the Stonehenge material came from.

The work - carried out by geologists Robert Ixer of the University of Leicester and Richard Bevins of the National Museum of Wales - has pinpointed the source as a 70 metre long rock outcrop called Craig Rhos-y-Felin, near Pont Saeson in north Pembrokeshire. It's the first time that an exact source has been found for any of the stones thought to have been used to build Stonehenge.

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Forget the cave! Neanderthals were homely creatures who built their own houses from mammoth bones

Forget the idea Neanderthals simply picked any old cave to sleep in for the night.

Researchers have discovered an elaborate 44,000-year-old Neanderthal house in Molodova, eastern Ukraine, made from mammoth bones, delicately decorated with carvings and pigments.


It had been thought Neanderthals, which died out around 30,000 years ago, were primitive nomads who lived in caves simply for shelter.

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'Bronze Age' artefacts found at Anglesey Abbey

"Potentially Bronze Age" artefacts found at Anglesey Abbey could prove the site was occupied up to 2,000 years earlier than had been thought.

The discoveries were made during work to build a new car park at the National Trust property near Cambridge.

Cambridge Archaeological Unit said the site, containing possible roundhouses, a granary, pottery and a shale bracelet fragment, could have been a farmstead.

It was previously thought the area was occupied from the early 12th Century.

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University of Oxford Online Archaeology Courses

Enrolment is now open for the following University of Oxford online courses in archaeology:
Archaeology of the Bible Lands (Online)
Exploring Roman Britain (Online)
Greek Mythology (Online)
Origins of Human Behaviour (Online)
Ritual and Religion in Prehistory (Online)
Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers (Online)

'New' ancient monuments come to light at Knowth

New and exciting archaeological finds have been made at the Knowth tumulus over the last few months, according to archaeologists working on the site.

The passage tomb cemetery at Brú na Binne has produced some extraordinary discoveries over the decades ever since Professor George Eogan made his first tentative exploration in and around the site.

A number of previously unknown large-scale monuments in the field lying immediately to the south-east of the large mound have recently come to light.

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We do have bigger brains than Neanderthals did

Modern humans possess brain structures larger than their Neanderthal counterparts, suggesting we are distinguished from them by different mental capacities, scientists find. 

We are currently the only extant human lineage, but Neanderthals, our closest-known evolutionary relatives, still walked the Earth as recently as maybe 24,000 years ago. Neanderthals were close enough to the modern human lineage to interbreed, calling into question how different they really were from us and whether they comprise a different species.

To find out more, researchers used CT scanners to map the interiors of five Neanderthal skulls as well as four fossil and 75 contemporary human skulls to determine the  shapes of their brains in 3-D. Like modern humans, Neanderthals had larger brains than both our living ape relatives and other extinct human lineages.

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Public urged to vote for Peak archaeology dig site

ARCHAEOLOGICAL excavations in the Peak District are in the running for a national award and support from the public can make all the difference.

The Fin Cop project is one of five shortlisted for the prestigious Archaeological Research Project of the Year Award by readers and editors of Current Archaeology magazine.

The excavations at Fin Cop, an Iron Age hill fort overlooking Monsal Dale, near Bakewell, rose to national significance when unexpected evidence of a prehistoric massacre was revealed.

Skeletal remains of several young women and children were found thrown into a ditch with the ramparts pushed over them more than 2,000 years ago.

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4,000-year-old Stone Age camp discovered by dog walker near Cannock

HISTORIANS believe they have unearthed evidence of a 4,000-year-old Stone Age camp in the Midlands – thanks to a dog walker.

Roger Hall discovered a handful of strange-shaped rocks while walking his pet pooch in picturesque Cannock Wood, Staffordshire,

But experts have identified them as flint ‘flakes’ – the off-cuts from tools crafted by Stone Age Man an astonishing 4,000 years ago.

If confirmed, they could mark the spot of the only neolithic camp known in our region, says Roger Knowles, a member of the Council for British Archaeology.

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Tools of a kind

Culturally speaking, ancient East Africans were a stone’s throw away from southern Arabia.

Stone tools collected at several sites along a plateau in Oman, which date to roughly 106,000 years ago, match elongated cutting implements previously found at East African sites from around the same time, say archaeologist Jeffrey Rose of the University of Birmingham, England, and his colleagues. New finds also include cores — or rocks from which tools were pounded off with a hammer stone — that correspond to East African specimens, the researchers report online November 30 in PLoS ONE.

East African sites that have yielded these distinctive stone artifacts extend southward along the Nile River to the Horn of Africa.

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Bronze Age boats discovered at a quarry in Whittlesey

Bronze Age boats, spears and clothing dating back 3,000 years and described as the "finds of a lifetime" have been discovered near Peterborough.

Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge have unearthed hundreds of items at a quarry in Whittlesey.

The objects, discovered at one of the most significant Bronze Age sites in Britain, have been perfectly preserved in peat and silt.

It is thought the settlement burned down in about 800 BC.

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The earth mother of all neolithic discoveries

French archaeologists have discovered an extremely rare example of a neolithic "earth mother" figurine on the banks of the river Somme.


The 6,000-year-old statuette is 8in high, with imposing buttocks and hips but stubby arms and a cone-like head. Similar figures have been found before in Europe but rarely so far north and seldom in such a complete and well-preserved condition.

The "lady of Villers-Carbonnel", as she has been named, can make two claims to be an "earth mother". She was fired from local earth or clay and closely resembles figurines with similar, stylised female bodies found around the Mediterranean.

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Rock Shelter Inhabitants Slept in Comfort 77,000 Years Ago

The Sibudu rock shelter sits above the uThongathi river in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Here, archaeologists have over the past decade uncovered finds that have shed fascinating light on the behavior and life-ways of early modern humans. Finds have included perforated shells interpreted to have been used like bead ornaments, sharpened bone points likely used for hunting, evidence of bow and arrow technology, and even snares and traps for hunting and glue production for the hafting of stone implements. Now, an international team of scientists have discovered within the shelter what they believe to be mats that were used as bedding and as a living surface.


Led by Professor Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in collaboration with Christopher Miller of the University of Tübingen, Germany, Christine Sievers and Marion Bamford of the University of the Witwatersrand, and Paul Goldberg and Francesco Berna of Boston University, USA, the team has revealed at least 15 layers containing what they suggest to be deliberately laid plant bedding dated from 77,000 to 38,000 years ago. Consisting of layers of compacted leaves and stems from rushes and sedges spread out up to three square meters, at least some of the bedding contained evidence of plants that are also known to have medicinal and insecticidal properties.

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Solving the Mystery of a 35,000-Year-Old Statue

Archeologists have discovered previously unknown fragments of a figurine known as the "Lion Man," and are piecing it back together. Could the 35,000-year-old statue actually represent a female shaman? Scientists hope to resolve a decades-long debate.

Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings.

Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette.
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Earliest Human Beds Found in South Africa

"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," wrote Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard's Almanack. That may have held true a couple of hundred years ago, but when it comes to our ancient human ancestors, researchers don't know much about how—or even where—they slept. Now a team working in South Africa claims to have found the earliest known sleeping mats, made of plant material and dated up to 77,000 years ago—50,000 years earlier than previous evidence for human bedding. These early mattresses apparently were even specially prepared to be resistant to mosquitoes and other insects.

Early members of our species, Homo sapiens, were nomads who made their living by hunting and gathering. Yet they often created temporary base camps where they cooked food and spent the night. One of the best studied of these camps is Sibudu Cave, a rock shelter in a cliff face above South Africa's Tongati River, about 40 kilometers north of Durban. Sibudu was first occupied by modern humans at least 77,000 years ago and continued to serve as a favored gathering place over the following 40,000 years. Since 1998, a team led by Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, has been excavating at Sibudu, uncovering evidence for complex behaviors, including the earliest known use of bows and arrows.

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World's 'oldest beds' found - and the cavemen who slept on them 77,000 years ago even used mosquito repellent

Humans were making themselves comfy on plant mattresses as long as 77,000 years ago, a study has found - and our ancestors were surprisingly clever at getting a good night's sleep.

Scientists discovered early evidence of bedding made from compacted stems and leaves at a rock shelter in South Africa.

At least three different layers at the Sibudu site contained bed remains, left by people who slept there between 38,000 and 77,000 years ago - and as well as providing a place to sleep, the leaves contained insecticide chemicals that would have kept mosquitoes at bay.

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Scientists Discover Some Keys to Human Brain Evolution

The questions surrounding why and how the human brain has evolved over the past six million years as compared to other primates in the evolutionary timeline have been central in the discussions of human origins research for many years. When and how did this happen? Some possible clues may have emerged as a result of new research by an international team of scientists in China and Germany, suggesting that changes in the activity levels of certain genes of the human brain during brain development may have been the cause, and that these changes were controlled by key regulatory molecules called microRNAs.


As reported in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, the researchers analyzed brain genetic activity in humans, chimpanzees and macaques across their lifetimes, beginning with newborns. They targeted two key brain regions: the cerebellum, which controls movement, and the prefrontal cortex, which plays a major role in cognitive behavior, such as abstract thought, innovation and social interaction. What they found was that the human gene activity displayed a markedly different pattern during individual life-time human brain development from that of chimpanzee and macaque primate counterparts. Moreover, the distinquishing patterns were most pronounced in the prefrontal cortex, where, for example, genes showing the human-specific changes were four times as numerous as those showing the chimpanzee-specific changes. Many of the genes showing the human-specific patterns were identified as having neural functions, suggesting a connection to cognitive development.


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Historic Cwmbran finds declared treasure

TREASURE dating from the late Bronze Age was found in a Cwmbran field, an inquest in Newport was told yesterday.

The plain pegged spearhead fragment and the single runner casting jet were found by David Harrison while metal detecting in Llantarnam in March last year.

A casting jet is a plug of metal which fits into a mould and is knocked out when the object is completed.

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Russian scientists to clone woolly mammoth

Scientists from Russia and Japan are undertaking a Jurassic Park-style experiment to bring the woolly mammoth out of extinction.

The scientists claim that a thigh bone found in August contains remarkably well-preserved marrow cells, which could form the starting point of the experiment.

The team claim that the cloning could be complete within the next five years.

But others have cast doubt on whether such a thing is possible.

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Neandertals’ mammoth building project

Extinct hominids may have been first to build with bones

 

Neandertals are stumping for bragging rights as the first builders of mammoth-bone structures, an accomplishment usually attributed to Stone Age people.

Humanity’s extinct cousins constructed a large, ring-shaped enclosure out of 116 mammoth bones and tusks at least 44,000 years ago in West Asia, say archaeologist Laëtitia Demay of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and her colleagues. The bone edifice, which encircles a 40-square-meter area in which mammoths and other animals were butchered, cooked and eaten, served either to keep out cold winds or as a base for a wooden building, the scientists propose in a paper published online November 26 in Quaternary International.
 

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'New' ancient monuments come to light at Knowth

Excavations unearth new features from Neolithic period

One of the wall stones with a finely carved spiral uncovered by archaeologists at Knowth. Photo: Kevin O'Brien, OPW

 

New and exciting archaeological finds have been made at the Knowth tumulus over the last few months, according to archaeologists working on the site.

The passage tomb cemetery at Brú na Binne has produced some extraordinary discoveries over the decades ever since Professor George Eogan made his first tentative exploration in and around the site.

A number of previously unknown large-scale monuments in the field lying immediately to the south-east of the large mound have recently come to light.

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Town and Country in Roman Essex: Settlement Hierarchies in Roman Essex

The Town and Country in Roman Essex project is a large scale regional study based on correspondence analysis of finds assemblages, including coins, pottery, registered finds, animal bone and vessel glass. By comparing quantified finds datasets from different individual sites and whole classes of site, such as urban centres, small towns, villas, nucleated settlements and lower-status rural sites, the project looks at how consumption is influenced by factors such as the influence of command and or/market economies, cultural identity and site status/function. The project also attempted to assess the viability of conducting such research and report on any relevant issues, relating to the recording, archiving and publication of finds assemblages.

Data was primarily gathered from existing published or archive sources and was collected from sites in Essex, south-east Cambridgeshire and London dating to the period c 50BC-AD250. The database includes linked tables on small finds, glass, pottery and coins, as well as for the following aspects of the animal bone assemblages: NSIP, MNI, tooth-wear, MNE and metrics for bone elements.

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Trail of 'stone breadcrumbs' reveals the identity of 1 of the first human groups to leave Africa

A series of new archaeological discoveries in the Sultanate of Oman, nestled in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, reveals the timing and identity of one of the first modern human groups to migrate out of Africa, according to a research article published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

An international team of archaeologists and geologists working in the Dhofar Mountains of southern Oman, led by Dr. Jeffrey Rose of the University of Birmingham, report finding over 100 new sites classified as "Nubian Middle Stone Age (MSA)." Distinctive Nubian MSA stone tools are well known throughout the Nile Valley; however, this is the first time such sites have ever been found outside of Africa.

According to the authors, the evidence from Oman provides a "trail of stone breadcrumbs" left by early humans migrating across the Red Sea on their journey out of Africa. "After a decade of searching in southern Arabia for some clue that might help us understand early human expansion, at long last we've found the smoking gun of their exit from Africa," says Rose. "What makes this so exciting," he adds, "is that the answer is a scenario almost never considered."

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Pits add to Stonehenge mystery

Researchers say they've found two pits to the east and west of Stonehenge that may have played a role in an ancient midsummer ceremony. The discovery suggests that the 5,000-year-old circle of stones we see today may represent just a few of the pieces in a larger geographical, astronomical and cultural puzzle.

The previously undetected pits could provide clues for solving the puzzle.

"These exciting finds indicate that even though Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may at times not have been the only, or most important ritual focus, and the area of Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date," Vince Gaffney, an archaeology professor at the University of Birmingham, said in a news release issued over the weekend.

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Archaeological discovery provides evidence of a celestial procession at Stonehenge

Archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection have discovered evidence of two huge pits positioned on celestial alignment at Stonehenge.
Shedding new light on the significant association of the monument with the sun, these pits may have contained tall stones, wooden posts or even fires to mark its rising and setting and could have defined a processional route used by agriculturalists to celebrate the passage of the sun across the sky at the summer solstice.

Positioned within the Cursus pathway, the pits are on alignment towards midsummer sunrise and sunset when viewed from the Heel Stone, the enigmatic stone standing just outside the entrance to Stonehenge. For the first time, this discovery may directly link the rituals and celestial phenomena at Stonehenge to activities within the Cursus.

The international archaeological survey team, led by the University of Birmingham’s IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna (LBI ArchPro) have also discovered a previously unknown gap in the middle of the northern side of the Cursus, which may have provided the main entrance and exit point for processions that took place within the pathway. Stretching from west to east, the Cursus is an immense linear enclosure, 100 metres wide and two and a half kilometres across, north of Stonehenge.

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When Humans First Plied the Deep Blue Sea

In a shallow cave on an island north of Australia, researchers have made a surprising discovery: the 42,000-year-old bones of tuna and sharks that were clearly brought there by human hands. The find, reported online today in Science, provides the strongest evidence yet that people were deep-sea fishing so long ago. And those maritime skills may have allowed the inhabitants of this region to colonize lands far and wide.

The earliest known boats, found in France and the Netherlands, are only 10,000 years old, but archaeologists know they don't tell the whole story. Wood and other common boat-building materials don't preserve well in the archaeological record. And the colonization of Australia and the nearby islands of Southeast Asia, which began at least 45,000 years ago, required sea crossings of at least 30 kilometers. Yet whether these early migrants put out to sea deliberately in boats or simply drifted with the tides in rafts meant for near-shore exploration has been a matter of fierce debate.

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Archaeologists make new Stonehenge 'sun worship' find

Two previously undiscovered pits have been found at Stonehenge which point to it once being used as a place of sun worship before the stones were erected.

The pits are positioned on celestial alignment at the site and may have contained stones, posts or fires to mark the rising and setting of the sun.

An international archaeological survey team found the pits as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project.

The team is using geophysical imaging techniques to investigate the site.

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'Earliest' evidence of human violence

A healed fracture discovered on an ancient skull from China may be the oldest documented evidence of violence between humans, a study has shown.

The individual, who lived 150,000-200,000 years ago, suffered blunt force trauma to the right temple - possibly from being hit with a projectile.

But the ancient hunter-gatherer - whose sex is unclear - survived to tell the tale: the injury was completely healed by the time of the person's death.

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Moreton-in-Marsh Stone Age axe find leads to seaside theory

A Stone Age hand axe which was found on a building site could help prove part of Gloucestershire was once "almost on the seaside", experts have said.

Archaeologists uncovered the finely-worked stone tool, which may be about 100,000 years old, on a housing development in Moreton-in-Marsh.

They said they believed it may have been used by cavemen on the shores of a lake that spanned across the Midlands.

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Bronze Age hoard found in Wiltshire field

A Bronze Age hoard of more than 100 objects dating back over 2,700 years has been discovered in west Wiltshire.

The objects, including weapons and tools, were found in October in a field near Tisbury by a metal detectorist.

His initial find, a spearhead, was reported to a finds liaison officer and the site excavated by archaeologists.

Adrian Green, from the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, said "it's the biggest hoard found in the county since the Salisbury Hoard in the 1980s."

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Neanderthals Vanished Because of Their Own Success, Suggests Study

Using data obtained from the archaeological record, a team of researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado, Denver, conducted experiments using complex computer modeling to analyze evidence of how human hunter-gatherers responded culturally and biologically to the dramatic changes that took place during the last Ice Age. The results showed, among other things, that the Neanderthals, thought by many scientists to have become extinct at least in part because of their inadaptability and inability to compete with the expanding presence of modern humans, may have actually been victims of their own success.


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Earliest Sample of Minoan Hieroglyphics Found in Western Crete

A four-sided red jasper sealstone is among the finds unearthed during this season’s excavation of the Minoan peak sanctuary at Vrysinas, located south of the city of Rethymnon.  The whole area was officially announced and included in the archaeological sites list by the Central Archaeological Council of Greece.

The sealstone, which is carved on all four surfaces with characters of the Minoan Hieroglyphic script, constitutes the sole evidence to date for the presence of this earliest Minoan style of writing in Western Crete.

The excavation, which began in 2004, is conducted by the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities under the supervision of the archaeologist Helena Papadopoulou in collaboration with Prof. Iris Tzachili from the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete.

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Archeologists Discover Huge Ancient Greek Commercial Area On Island of Sicily

The Greeks were not always in such dire financial straits as today. German archeologists have discovered a very large commercial area from the ancient Greek era during excavations on Sicily.

Led by Professor Dr. Martin Bentz, archeologists at the University of Bonn began unearthing one of Greek antiquity's largest craftsmen's quarters in the Greek colonial city of Selinunte (7th-3rd century B.C.) on the island of Sicily during two excavation campaigns in September 2010 and in the fall of 2011.


The project is conducted in collaboration with the Italian authorities and the German Archaeological Institute. Its goal is to study an area of daily life in ancient cities that has hitherto received little attention.

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Bulgarian archaeological site destroyed by bulldozers

An archaeological site in Bulgaria, including remnants of a village said to date back 8000 years, has been destroyed by bulldozers, allegedly the work of a construction company building part of a new road from Bulgaria to Greece.

The destruction means that archaeologists have lost thousands of years of history, Bulgarian National Television reported.

A special commission from the Ministry of Culture is inspecting the damage to the site, near Momchilgrad, and police are investigating.

Zharin Velichkov, chief inspector at the Ministry of Culture’s national institute for immovable cultural heritage, said that the site had individual layers dating back thousands of years, believed to reach back as far as 6000 BCE.

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Bronze Age burial site excavated on Dartmoor

An early Bronze Age burial cist containing cremated bones and material dating back 4,000 years has been excavated on Dartmoor.

Archaeologists uncovered items from the site on Whitehorse Hill including a woven bag or basket and amber beads.

Cists are stone-built chests which are used for the burial of ashes.

Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) said the discovery could be one of the most important archaeological finds in 100 years.

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Twigs suggest Assynt site 'genuine Iron Age broch'

Radiocarbon dating of burnt twigs found inside an ancient building in Assynt suggest its interior remained untouched after it was built in the Iron Age.

Brochs were often modified during later periods of use. One at Nybster in Caithness has evidence of possible Pictish and medieval occupation.

The dating of twigs possibly used for woven mats points to the Assynt site remaining unaltered until it collapsed.

The broch at Clachtoll was built using stones weighing up to 100kg each.

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A question of style: Reading rock art using art history

Ancient engravings and drawings are present all around the world. They are witnesses of people’s journeys through time and space. While their original meaning is lost, they still tell stories about their creator, about the content, about the climate and the environment of that time.

About rock art

Contrary to common assumptions, rock art is not only restricted to the Ice Age. It is a phenomenon that has survived until today. In northern Europe it mostly appears in the form of graffiti, which can be found nearly everywhere people have passed.

Although the meaning and purpose of today’s rock art is most probably different from ancient forms, the methodological approach to their study is similar. Researchers commonly refrain from explaining rock art’s meaning, since there is no absolute proof to any given hypotheses.

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New dating of cave site upsets Neanderthal theory

Members of our species (Homo sapiens) arrived in Europe several millennia earlier than previously thought. This was the conclusion by a team of researchers, after carrying out a re-analyses of two ancient deciduous teeth.


These teeth were discovered in 1964 in the “Grotta del Cavallo”, a cave in southern Italy. Since their discovery they have been attributed to Neanderthals, but this new study suggests they belong to anatomically modern humans. Chronometric analysis, carried out by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, shows that the layers within which the teeth were found date to ~43,000-45,000 cal BP. This means that the human remains are older than any other known European modern humans. The research work was published in the renowned science journal Nature.

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Prehistoric Men Scarred, Pierced, Tattooed Privates

Men in prehistoric Europe scarred, pierced and tattooed their penises, likely for ritualistic and social group reasons, according to a new study.

Analysis of phallic decorations in Paleolithic art, described in the December issue of The Journal of Urology, may also show evidence of the world's first known surgery performed on a male genital organ. The alteration, or surgery, might have just been for ornamental purposes, or a piercing, the researchers suggest.

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Ground-breaking technology shows no second chamber at Newgrange

The technology used in an attempt to find out whether a second passage tomb, which may also be aligned with a solstice event, exists at Newgrange had proved its worth during experimentation by a Slovakian team of scientists who visited the Boyne Valley, an Irish archaeologist said this week.

Dr Conor Brady, archaeologist and lecturer at Dundalk Institute of Technology, who lives at Slane, said that while there would be no "dramatic announcements" about discovery of a second chamber at Newgrange at this stage, the microgravitational technology used in the experiments had proven valuable to archaeologists and scientists.

The possibility that Newgrange could have a second passage tomb, which may also be aligned with a solstice event, was being explored by a team of Irish and Slovakians archaeologists using ground-breaking technology.

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Spotted Horses in Cave Art Weren’t Just a Figment, DNA Shows

Roughly 25,000 years ago in what is now southwestern France, human beings walked deep into a cave and left their enduring marks. Using materials like sticks, charcoal and iron oxides, they painted images of animals on the cave walls and ceilings — lions and mammoths and spotted horses, walking and grazing and congregating in herds.

Today, the art at the Pech-Merle cave, and in hundreds of others across Europe, is a striking testimony to human creativity well before modern times
.
But what were these cave paintings, exactly? Were prehistoric artists simply sketching what they saw each day on the landscape? Or were the images more symbolic, diverging from reality or representing rare or even mystical creatures? Such questions have divided archaeologists for years.

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Archaeologists Find Habitation Sites in Port of Rotterdam

The site of what is now Rotterdam’s Yangtzehaven was inhabited by humans in the Middle Stone Age. At a depth of 20 metres, in the sea bed, unique underwater archaeological investigation found traces of bone, flint and charcoal from around 7000 BC. These finds are the very first scientific proof that humans lived at this spot in the Early and Middle Stone Age. Up to now, very little was known about this period in particular, the Early and Middle Mesolithic, so far to the west of the Netherlands.

The striking results were announced yesterday by the Port of Rotterdam Authority and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. The Port Authority’s Project Organisation Maasvlakte 2 is responsible for the expansion of the port in the form of Maasvlakte 2. The archaeological investigation that is being conducted is part of a series of studies being carried out in connection with the construction of Maasvlakte 2. Delltares, Bureau Oudheidkundig Onderzoek Rotterdam (Archaeological Research Office) and the Archeologisch Dienstencentrum (Archaeological Service Centre) are among the parties involved in these studies. The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands is guiding the research and is the supervisory authority.

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Human Ancestor 'Family' May Not Have Been Related

A famous trail of footprints once thought to have been left behind by a family of three human ancestors may have actually been made by four individuals traveling at different times.


In a new examination of Laetoli in northern Tanzania, where a 3.6-million-year-old track of footprints of the bipedal human ancestor Australopithecus is preserved, researchers now argue that the classic understanding of this site is mistaken. The footprints have been buried since the mid-1990s for preservation, but a section recently opened for study as Tanzanian officials make plans for a museum on the site.

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Prehistoric Cave Paintings of Horses Were Spot-On, Say Scientists

Long thought by many as possible abstract or symbolic expressions as opposed to representations of real animals, the famous paleolithic horse paintings found in caves such as Lascaux and Chauvet in France likely reflect what the prehistoric humans actually saw in their natural environment, suggests researchers who conducted a recent DNA study.


To reach this conclusion, scientists constituting an international team of researchers in the UK, Germany, USA, Spain, Russia and Mexico genotyped and analyzed nine coat-color types in 31 pre-domestic (wild) horses dating as far back as 35,000 years ago from bone specimens in 15 different locations spread across an area that included Siberia, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula.

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Ancient horses' spotted history reflected in cave art

Scientists have found evidence that leopard-spotted horses roamed Europe 25,000 years ago alongside humans. 

Until now, studies had only recovered the DNA of black and brown coloured coats from fossil specimens.

New genetic evidence suggests "dappled" horses depicted in European cave art were inspired by real life, and are less symbolic than previously thought.

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Archaeologists unearth treasure trove from across the ages in Argyll

A ROUTINE archaeological survey at a planned housing development has uncovered a treasure trove of Iron and Bronze Age artefacts.

The find, on a hillside near Oban, includes a Neolithic axe-head dating back 5,000 to 6,000 years, three roundhouses around 2,500 to 3,000 years old and the remains of an 18th-century farmstead and metalwork store.

Other objects include a hoard of stone tools dating back 3,000 years, hundreds of fragments of Bronze Age and late 18th- century pottery, plus a clay pipe from around 1760-1820.

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Humans ventured as far as Torquay more than 40,000 years ago

The early humans were pioneers who took advantage of a temporary warm spell to visit Britain during the last ice age

A fragment of human jaw unearthed in a prehistoric cave in Torquay is the earliest evidence of modern humans in north-west Europe, scientists say.

The tiny piece of upper jaw was excavated from Kents Cave on the town's border in the 1920s but its significance was not fully realised until scientists checked its age with advanced techniques that have only now become available.

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Ancient artefacts unearthed in Tisbury

A MAJOR hoard of ancient artefacts has been unearthed near Tisbury.

A metal detector enthusiast located more than 100 bronze items, thought to be about 2,700 years old, on a farmland site which is being kept secret.

Having first found a spearhead, he decided not to disturb the ground and notified archaeologists, who were able to conduct a meticulous excavation.

The finds, from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, include tools such as chisels, axe heads and gouges, and weapons including fragments of a sword and scabbard and more spearheads.

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Scientists digitise our prehistoric past

Researchers in Leipzig are compiling a ground-breaking digital archive of artefacts from around the world. Created to compare Neanderthals with modern man, the archive could revolutionise their field — which is exactly why many oppose it.


Visitors to Tel Aviv University are greeted by three skulls with seashells in their eye sockets and on a table behind them, a student completes a detailed drawing of the teeth in a human jaw.  The bone chamber lies behind a simple steel door on the ground floor, located right next to the delivery entrance of the anatomy institute at Tel Aviv University, what looks like a simple storeroom is actually one of the world’s largest repositories of human history.

Nestled on foam within blue storage drawers are all sorts of fragile bones, from femurs to mandibles, and phalanges to ribs, children’s skulls and a whole range of teeth. These are one-of-a-kind fossils that reveal a key episode in the history of the human species.

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Prehistoric site is found at Cave Hill in Belfast

Archaeologists have discovered what is believed to be a prehistoric ceremonial site on Cave Hill in north Belfast.

It follows a community excavation involving more than 400 people at the site of Ballyaghagan cashel on the Upper Hightown Road, which had never before been unearthed.

Dr Harry Welsh, an archaeologist with Queen's University, which led the Big Dig project, said some of the earliest items on the site dated back to 3,500 years BC.

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Jawbone found near Kennewick Man site, raising specter of controversy

Federal archeologists are investigating a very old jawbone that turned up Monday along the Columbia River in Kennewick, Wash. The human remains were found a short distance from where Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and sparked a decade-long legal conflict.

The battles over Kennewick Man have scientists being extra cautious with the new discovery.

The jawbone with six worn teeth was spotted in shallow water by a jail work crew doing routine park cleanup. Kennewick Police and the Benton County coroner quickly determined the bone belonged to an adult human, but was too old to connect to any modern crime.


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A Rest, a Meal, Then Death for 5,000-Year-Old Glacier Mummy: Scientists Consolidate Results of Research Into Ötzi’s State of Health and His Death

There is now broad agreement on the circumstances of Ötzi's death. Around 100 experts on mummies from nearly every single continent gathered for the "2nd Bolzano Mummy Congress" held at the European Academy of Bolzano from the 20th to the 22nd October 2011, with the aim of discussing any diseases he might have been suffering from and the events surrounding his death. From the moment of his discovery 20 years ago, Ötzi -- the 5,000-year-old glacier mummy -- has been puzzling the scientific research community, though little by little he is also revealing many of his secrets.

There was broad agreement at the Bolzano Congress about the last hour of his life. Albert Zink, Head of the Institute for Mummy Research at EURAC, reports as follows about the circumstances of the Iceman's death: "He felt safe enough to take a break, and settled down to a copious meal. While thus resting, he was attacked, shot with an arrow and left for dead." There was no evidence pointing to a possible burial as some scientists have suggested in the past. "The position of the mummified body with his arm pointing obliquely upwards, the lack of any piles of stones or other features which often accompany burial sites, runs counter to the burial theory," he continues.


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Controversy Over Reopening the 'Sistine Chapel' of Stone Age Art

Plans to reopen Spain’s Altamira caves are stirring controversy over the possibility that tourists’ visits will further damage the 20,000-year old wall paintings that changed views about the intellectual ability of prehistoric people. That’s the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. The caves are the site of Stone Age paintings so magnificent that experts have called them the “Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art.”

armen Drahl, C&EN associate editor, points out in the article that Spanish officials closed the tourist mecca to the public in 2002 after scientists realized that visitors were fostering growth of bacteria that damage the paintings. Now, however, they plan to reopen the caves. Declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Altamira’s rock paintings of animals and human hands made scientists realize that Stone Age people had intellectual capabilities far greater than previously believed


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Solving the Mysteries of Short-Legged NeandertalsWhile most studies have concluded that a cold climate led to the short lower legs typical of Neandertals, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that lower leg lengths shorter than the typical modern human's let them move more efficiently over the mountainous terrain where they lived. The findings reveal a broader trend relating shorter lower leg length to mountainous environments that may help explain the limb proportions of many different animals. Their research was published online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and will appear in print in the November issue. Read the rest of this article...

While most studies have concluded that a cold climate led to the short lower legs typical of Neandertals, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that lower leg lengths shorter than the typical modern human's let them move more efficiently over the mountainous terrain where they lived. The findings reveal a broader trend relating shorter lower leg length to mountainous environments that may help explain the limb proportions of many different animals.

Their research was published online in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and will appear in print in the November issue.


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Archaeology Courses at the Oxford Experience 2012

1 July to 11 August 2012

The 2012 Oxford Experience Programme is now online.

The Oxford Experience is a residential summer school held at the college of Christ Church, University of Oxford.

The programme consists of 6 weeks of courses and participants attend for one or more weeks.

It offers a choice of twelve seminars each week over a period of five weeks. Participants do not need any formal qualifications to take part, just an interest in their chosen subject and a desire to meet like-minded people.

You can also find details of the various archaeology courses offered at Oxford Experience here...

Face-To-Face With an Ancient Human

A reconstruction based on the skull of Norway's best-preserved Stone Age skeleton makes it possible to study the features of a boy who lived outside Stavanger 7 500 years ago.

"It is hoped that this reconstruction is a good likeness and that, if someone who knew him in life had been presented with this restoration, they would hopefully have recognised the face," says Jenny Barber, an MSc student at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

She has scientifically rebuilt the face of the strong and stocky Viste Boy, who lived in the Vistehola cave near Stavanger, so that people can now look him right in the eye.

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Gold hoard thrown in skip displayed

A hoard of Early Bronze Age gold that was salvaged from a skip following a botched robbery has gone on display.

The ancient artefacts were recovered by gardai in 2009 after being dumped along with the stolen safe they had been kept in at Sheehan's Pharmacy in Strokestown, Co Roscommon.

The thieves had not realised that the 5,000-year-old gold was hidden among documents when they tipped out what they thought were the safe's worthless contents.

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Search on for a second passage in Newgrange

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are examining whether one of the country's most popular tourist attractions may have more to it than meets the eye.

Newgrange in Co Meath may have a second passage, and it too could be aligned with a solstice event.

Teams from Ireland and Slovakia are exploring the possibility -- using technology that has proven successful at the pyramids in Egypt.

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Clues About Early Diets Found in Fossilized Teeth

By studying the pits and scratches on fossilized teeth and analyzing the carbon isotopes on enamel, researchers have discovered new information about the diets of early hominids.

“The new data suggests our simple story, of harder and harder diets over time, is not accurate,” said Peter Ungar, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Arkansas, whose lab does microscopic analysis of dental wear.

The genus Australopithecus, which lived two million to four million years ago, shows a greater variation in diet over geographic region than over time, he said.

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Possible Iron Age find at site of proposed housing development

IRON Age remains may have been found in a Harborough field earmarked for possible housing development.
Archaeological experts have dug trenches at the site, off Lubenham Hill, to investigate further.

Evidence of possible cattle and sheep farming by agricultural workers in the Iron Age is believed to have discovered.

Resident Red Williams said: “A crew started digging trenches with a JCB on Monday. I heard there’s an Iron Age dig taking place in the field near where I live at the top right-hand side of Lubenham Hill near the spinney.”

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Stanton Drew – new Great Circle entrance found

New evidence of archaeological features in and around the three prehistoric stone circles at Stanton Drew has been revealed.

The results of a geophysical survey carried out by Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society (BACAS) in collaboration with Bath & North East Somerset Council's Archaeological Officer in summer 2010 have just been published.

 The 2010 survey was led by John Oswin and John Richards of BACAS and shows evidence of below-ground archaeological features, including a second entrance into the henge monument first identified by English Heritage in 1997. The second entrance is south-west facing and forms a narrow causeway, defined by two large terminal ends of the circular ditch. Further work at the South-West Circle suggests that it sits on a deliberately levelled platform.

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Ancient Greek ships carried more than just wine

A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods — not just wine, as many historians have assumed. The study, in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science¹, finds evidence in nine jars taken from Mediterranean shipwrecks of vegetables, herbs and nuts. The researchers say DNA testing of underwater artefacts from different time periods could help to reveal how such complex markets developed across the Mediterranean.

Archaeologist Brendan Foley of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts and geneticist Maria Hansson of Lund University, Sweden, retrieved DNA from nine amphorae — the storage containers of the ancient world — from sunken ships dating from the fifth to the third centuries BC.

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4,000 years of history crashes to the ground

An ancient monument has crashed to the ground after standing for more than 4,000 years as an important landmark.

The famous standing stone at Bedd Morris, on Newport mountain, was snapped over the weekend, toppling over and crushing a nearby fence.

Archaeologist Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, an expert who has worked on several sites in the Preselis, plans to play an active role in getting the stone reinstated.

He said: “It’s a tragedy, the stone has snapped and it’s a real mess.

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Göbeklitepe site unveils mystery

The latest excavation in Göbeklitepe in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa reveals that inhabitants 12,000 years ago also had a belief system and a certain culture. The remains show there is much more to be discovered from those ancient people, according to scholars.

Recent excavations at the Göbeklitepe archaeological site have revealed that ancient people living there 12,000 years ago engaged in agriculture, processed leather, made sculptures and rock accessories and possessed a significant belief system.

The site in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa includes important information on the people 12 millennia ago, said Assistant Professor Cihat Kürkçüoğlu of the local Harran University.

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Prehistoric Painters Planned Ahead

When Vincent Van Gogh moved to the southern French town of Arles in 1888, he painted nearly 200 vivid canvasses before cutting off his left ear in a fit of madness. This artistic explosion was possible in part because Van Gogh kept his brushes, paints, and palette constantly at the ready. A new discovery in South Africa suggests that prehistoric human painters also planned ahead, using ochre paint kits as early as 100,000 years ago. But just what they used the paints for is still a matter of debate.

Red or yellow ochre, an iron-containing pigment found in some clays, is ubiquitous at early modern human sites in Africa and the Near East. Some researchers think the earliest known art comes from the site of Blombos in South Africa, about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town, where pieces of ochre incised with an abstract design have been dated to 77,000 years old. Scientists have found even earlier signs of ochre use at Blombos and other sites as old as 165,000 years, but solid evidence that the pigment was used in artistic or other symbolic communication has been lacking.

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Tribes of Science 1 – Archaeologists

Peter Curran puts archaeologists under his anthropological microscope. He meets a tribe who are excavating the culture of the Stone Age on the island of Jersey.

Listen to the broadcast...

An early Celtic “Stonehenge” discovered in the Black Forest

A huge early Celtic calendar construction has been discovered in the royal tomb of Magdalenenberg, nearby Villingen-Schwenningen in the Black Forest.

This discovery was made by researchers at the Römisch-GermanischesPress Zentralmuseum at Mainz in Germany when they evaluated old excavation plans. The order of the burials around the central royal tomb fits exactly with the sky constellations of the Northern hemisphere.

Whereas Stonehenge was orientated towards the sun, the more then 100 meter width burial mound of Magdalenenberg was focused towards the moon. The builders positioned long rows of wooden posts in the burial mound to be able to focus on the Lunar Standstills. These Lunar Standstills happen every 18,6 year and were the ‘corner stones’ of the Celtic calendar.

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A henge beneath the water of the Stenness Loch? Time will tell

Survey work in the Loch of Stenness has revealed what could be a massive prehistoric monument lying underwater to the south of the Ring of Brodgar.

The underwater “anomaly” has come to light in a project looking at prehistoric sea level change in Orkney. The project, The Rising Tide: Submerged Landscape of Orkney, is a collaboration between the universities of St Andrews, Wales, Dundee, Bangor and Aberdeen.

But although it is tempting to speculate that the ring-shaped feature, which lies just off the loch’s shore, is the remains of a henge — a circular or oval-shaped flat area enclosed and delimited by a boundary earthwork (usually a ditch with an external bank) — or perhaps a prehistoric quarry, at this stage the project leaders are urging caution.

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Stone circle to rival Ring of Brodgar found off Orkney coast

THE remains of a Neolithic stone circle that could rival the most impressive in Britain may have been found off the coast of Orkney.

Archaeologists surveying the seabed near the island chain’s famous Ring of Brodgar believe they could have discovered an earlier version just 500 metres offshore from the major tourist attraction.

Preliminary findings from an investigation seeking previously hidden historical sites in the area have raised hopes that prehistoric structures built up to 5,000 years ago have survived, even though they were submerged under the waves by rising sea levels. Marine surveys – using remote sensing and seismic profiling techniques – have revealed “anomalies” which could be man-made structures around 12 feet under water.

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Der Kriminalfall »Ötzi«

Die Pfeilspitze, die mit größter Wahrscheinlichkeit zum Tode des Eismannes geführt hat, wurde im Süden hergestellt. Ein aktueller Materialvergleich zeigt allerdings, das solche Pfeilspitzen vereinzelt auch im nördlichen Alpengebiet auftauchen.

Bei der tödliche Pfeilspitze, deren Entnahme der Südtiroler Landeshauptmann untersagt, gibt es sehr genaue Röntgen und Computertomographie-Aufnahmen.Es handelt es sich um eine 2,8 Zentimeter große, flächenretuschierte Spitze, die an der Basis einen Schäftungsdorn aufweist. Diese Art von Pfeilspitzen ist in der kupferzeitlichen Remedello-Kultur in Oberitalien verbreitet. Das Rohmaterial ist mit größter Wahrscheinlichkeit der bekannte Feuerstein der Monti Lessini in der Prov. Verona, aus dem auch die sechs Feuersteingeräte des Eismannes gefertigt wurden. 


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Ancient Greek farmers found buried with livestock: Report

Archaeologists in northern Greece have found a rare group of ancient graves where farmers were interred with their livestock, a Greek daily reported on Friday.


At least 11 adults and 16 farm animals were found buried together near the town of Mavropigi in the northern region of Macedonia, some 21km from the city of Kozani, Ethnos daily said.

The men, women and a child lay alongside horses, oxen, dogs and a pig in two rows of graves, the area's head archaeologist told the newspaper.

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Ancient Greek city digitally recreated

A submerged ancient Greek city, from the heroic era portrayed in Homer’s Iliad, is being ‘raised’ from the bottom of the Aegean. 

Using cutting edge underwater survey equipment and site reconstruction software, archaeologists and computer scientists have joined forces to map and digitally recreate a Bronze Age port which was swallowed by the waves up to 3000 years ago. 

It’s the first time that a submerged city has ever been fully mapped in photo-realistic 3D.

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Studying Grecian Battles and Human Origins

Curtis Marean received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1990 and is now a member of the Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. In addition to studying climates and environments of the past,his research focuses on the origins of modern humans, the prehistory of Africa and the study of animal bones from archaeological sites.

Much of his recent work involves anthropological finds at Pinnacle Point, a sea cliff along the south coast of South Africa where a large number of caves overlook the Indian Ocean. In 2007, Marean and a team of researchers reported finding evidence at Pinnacle Point that suggests humans may have eaten seafood more than 40,000 years earlier than previous estimates and it may have been a catalyst for early human migration out of Africa.


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Iron Age gold coins discovered in Kimbolton

The 67 Iron Age coins were discovered by a metal detector in October last year but details of the find, described as significant by a curator at the British Museum, were only made public last week. The coins were subject to an inquest at Lawrence Court in Huntingdon on Thursday (September 29), where it was down to the deputy coroner of Cambridgeshire, Belinda Cheney, to determine if the hoard should be officially classified as treasure.

After their discovery, the coins were sent by a local finds liaison officer to the British Museum in London, where they were examined by the curator of Iron Age and Roman coins, Ian Leins. In his report to the inquest, Mr Leins expressed his opinion that the coins were treasure, as defined by the 1996 Treasure Act.

The inquest heard that the coins were discovered by Andrew Thomas, from Loughborough, in a field owned by John Williams, on October 26. The find included 67 gold coins known as staters, and a single quarter-stater coin.

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Bronze Age boat sets sail on Euro mission

THE official launch of a European project with the Dover Bronze Age Boat as its centrepiece has taken place in France.

Boat 1550 BC Bronze Age Maritime Communities, funded with £1.7million of European Interreg cash, is a three-year education and exhibition project.

It is jointly run by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust and Canterbury Archaeological Trust, the University of Lille 3 and European Social Sciences and Humanities Research Institute (MESHS), Canterbury Christ Church University, Ghent University, INRAP (the French national archaeology service), the Conseil general du Pas-de-Calais, the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer and the British Museum.

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Bluestonehenge: An ancient alignment revealed

igital archaeologist Henry Rothwell was working on graphics for a smartphone app about the world famous monument of Stonehenge and the wider landscape, and required imagery for the Bluestonehenge section. What followed was a discovery that shines new light onto the ancient alignments of the henge monuments.


Using an image by archaeological photographer Adam Stanford, taken during the excavations on  The Stonehenge Riverside Project, Rothwell created a digital circle of stones and overlaid the images. In discussion with Adam Stanford, he realised that a stone hole had been missed from the reconstruction on the far right.  This prompted Henry to return to the digital model and increase the circumference to take in the ‘extra’ hole, however  it looked too large and no longer fitted well with the other stone holes.

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Archaeologists make rare discovery during Crossrail excavations in Royal Oak

Prehistoric animal bones have been uncovered by archaeologists as they carried out excavations for a Crossrail tunnel in Westbourne Green.


The remains, found near Royal Oak station, include those of bison, deer and the auroch, a large ancestor of modern cattle.

Some of the bones appear to have small marks on them which may suggest butchery by humans.
They will now be cleaned and studied before they are incorporated into the Natural History Museum's permanent collection.

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Prehistoric Teen Girl's Grave Found Near Henge

The finding of the 17-year-old girl's grave adds more evidence that henges were linked to death rituals.

Four to five thousand years ago, a wealthy teenage girl was laid to rest in a grave at what archaeologists believe is a newly found henge in Kent, England.

The discovery of the 17-year-old's grave -- along with a unique prehistoric pot inside of a ringed ditch near two other women -- strengthens the idea that important death-related rituals took place at many of these mysterious ancient monuments when they were first erected.

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Jersey’s Ice Age heritage

A UK archaeological research team are returning to Jersey this October to undertake scientific analysis at the Neanderthal site of La Cotte de St Brelade.

The team, funded through a National Environment Research Council (NERC) Urgency Award, are currently mobilising to undertake sampling and stabilisation work ahead of winter. The site and the team’s research featured in Digging For Britain, on BBC2.

Dr Pope said, “The NERC award has provided a chance to study and stabilise an area of the site which had remained hidden under scree for at least 60 years. During last summer our team established this section of the site was at threat from erosion. It’s unlikely that anyone alive has seen these deposits and we had pretty much thought they were lost to modern scientific study. Through this NERC-funded work, we now have an opportunity to show what targeted science-based archaeology can do to enhance our understanding of the deep past.”

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How continents shaped human culture

How modern-day humans dispersed on the planet and the pace of civilization-changing technologies that accompanied their migrations are enduring mysteries. Scholars believe ancient peoples on Europe and Asia moved primarily along east-west routes, taking advantage of the relative sameness in climate, allowing technological advances to spread quickly.


But what about in North and South America, with its long, north-south orientation and great variability in climate? How did people move and how quickly did societal innovations follow?

Studying the human genome

Using advanced genetic analysis techniques, evolutionary biologists at Brown University and Stanford University studied nearly 700 locations on human genomes drawn from more than five dozen populations. They say that technology spread more slowly in the Americas than in Eurasia and that the continents’ orientation seems to explain the difference. After humans arrived in the Americas 20,000 to 40,000 years ago, genetic data shows, the migrating populations didn’t interact as frequently as groups in Eurasia.

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Prehistoric cave etchings 'created by three-year-olds'

Archaeologist Jessica Cooney told the BBC's David Sillito that the most prolific artist was a five-year-old girl

Prehistoric etchings found in a cave in France are the work of children as young as three, according to research.

The so-called finger flutings were discovered at the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths in Rouffignac, alongside cave art dating back some 13,000 years.

Cambridge University researchers recently developed a method identifying the gender and age of the artists.

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High resolution 3D Stonehenge model unveiled

Adetailed survey of every stone that makes up Stonehenge using the latest technology, including a new scanner that has never before been used on a heritage project in Britain, has resulted in the most accurate digital model ever produced of the world famous monument.

With resolution level as high as 0.5mm in many areas, every nook and cranny of the stones’ surfaces is revealed with utmost clarity, including the lichens, Bronze Age carvings, erosion patterns and Victorian graffiti.

 

Most surprisingly, initial assessment of the survey has suggested that the ‘grooves’ resulting from stone dressing on some sarsen stones appear to be divided into sections, perhaps with different teams of Neolithic builders working on separate areas. A first glimpse of the model can now be viewed on the English Heritage website.

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Stone-age toddlers had art lessons, study says

Research on Dordogne cave art shows children learned to finger-paint in palaeolithic age, approximately 13,000 years ago

Stone age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art, say archaeologists.

Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient form of finger-painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early efforts were given pride of place on the living room wall.

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Lost city found in Dardanelles, Turkey : Older than Troy

A group of scientists and archeologists from Canakkale (Dardanelles) University have found traces of a lost city, older than famed Troy, now buried under the waters of Dardanelles strait.

Led by associate professor Rüstem Aslan, the archeology team made a surface survey in the vicinity of Erenkoy, Canakkale on the shore. The team has found ceramics and pottery, what led them to ponder a mound could be nearby. A research on The found pottery showed that the items belonged to an 7000 years old ancient city. The team has intensified the research and discovered first signs of the lost city under the waters of Dardanalles Strait.

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Bronze Age finds at Llangollen's Pillar of Eliseg

Remains dating back to the Bronze Age have been uncovered by archaeologists excavating the site of a 9th Century monument.

The finds were made during the latest dig at the Pillar of Eliseg near Llangollen, Denbighshire.

Possible cremated remains and bone fragments are now being examined.

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Ancestors' lifestyle change probed by archaeologists

Archaeologists are investigating islands around Britain to find out why our ancestors gave up being hunter-gatherers 6,000 years ago and turned to farming. 

Academics from the universities of Southampton and Liverpool are hoping to shed new light on the long-standing debate about whether the change around 4,000BC was due to colonists moving into Britain or if the indigenous population gradually adopted the new agricultural lifestyle themselves. 

The experts will be excavating three island groups in the western seaways - the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly and the Outer Hebrides - to understand what sailing across this area would have been like in 4,000BC.

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Excavation of islands around Britain to establish origins of Neolithic period

Archaeologists at the University of Liverpool are investigating three island groups around Britain to further understanding of why, in approximately 4,000 BC, humans altered their lifestyle from hunting and gathering to farming the land.

Some scholars believe that this change occurred due to colonists from the continent moving into Britain, bringing farming and pottery-making skills with them, but others argue that the indigenous population of Britain adopted this new lifestyle gradually on their own terms.

To shed new light on the debate, archaeologists, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, are excavating three island groups in the western seaways and producing oceanographic models to understand what sailing across this area would have been like in 4,000 BC. The team will also construct a database of 5th and 4th millennium occupation sites.

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Leicestershire archaeologists find Iron Age skeleton

A team of archaeologists has unearthed an Iron Age skeleton during excavations in Leicestershire. 

Dr Jermey Taylor, who has been examining the bones at the University of Leicester, said they were providing a wealth of information about how ancient people lived.

He believes the remains, found at Burrough on the Hill, could have belonged to an important young man who lived 200 years before the Romans arrived in Britain.

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First Aboriginal genome sequenced

A 90-year-old tuft of hair has yielded the first complete genome of an Aboriginal Australian, a young man who lived in southwest Australia.

He, and perhaps all Aboriginal Australians, the genome indicates, descend from the first humans to venture far beyond Africa more than 60,000 years ago, and thousands of years before the ancestors of most modern Asians trekked east in a second migration out of Africa.

"Aboriginal Australians are descendents of the first human explorers. These are the guys who expanded to unknown territory into an unknown world, eventually reaching Australia," says Eske Willerslev, a palaeogeneticist at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who led the study. It appears online today in Science¹.

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Archaeologists Investigate Origins Of Agriculture In Britain

Archaeologists are investigating three island groups around Britain to further understanding of why, in approximately 4,000 BC, humans altered their lifestyle from hunting and gathering to farming the land.

Some scholars believe that this change occurred due to colonists from the continent moving into Britain, bringing farming and pottery-making skills with them, but others argue that the indigenous population of Britain adopted this new lifestyle gradually on their own terms.

To shed new light on the debate, archaeologists at the at the University of Liverpool, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, are excavating three island groups in the western seaways and producing oceanographic models to understand what sailing across this area would have been like in 4,000 BC. The team will also construct a database of 5th and 4th millennium occupation sites.

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Human Skulls Mounted On Stakes Found By Researchers At Stone Age Site In Sweden

Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southeast Sweden mounted the skulls of their dead on stakes and buried them in a lake, according to a team of archaeologists. The researchers unearthed remains and artifacts estimated to be 8,000 years old—including the skulls of 11 individuals—at a site thought to have served as a ceremonial gathering place.

Two years ago, archaeologists found what they believed to be a Stone Age settlement near what was once a shallow lake in Motala, a town in southeast Sweden. Conducted to pave the way for a new railway line, the excavation took an unexpected turn when the researchers discovered skulls and skull fragments from 11 individuals, including men, women, children and infants. Recent carbon dating determined that the items unearthed at the site, which is known as Kanaljorden, are roughly 8,000 years old.


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Major archeological finds made at Wrexham's Borras quarry

HUNDREDS of ancient artefacts have been unearthed at a quarry. Fragments of Neolithic pottery and a rare ancient arrowhead have been discovered in one of the most fruitful archaeological digs yet at Tarmac’s Borras Quarry, near Wrexham. Archaeologists from the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said the quarry was slowly giving up its ancient secrets. Read the rest of this article...

Neanderthal man lived on seafood far earlier than previously thought

Neanderthal man lived on a diet of seafood in the caves of southern Spain much longer ago than previously thought, new archaeological findings show. Much as modern day man enjoys tucking into a plateful of seafood paella when visiting the Costa del Sol, Neanderthals living on the Iberian coast 150,000 years ago supplemented their diet with molluscs and marine animals. Archaeological examination of a cave in Torremolinos unearthed early tools used to crack open shellfish collected off rocks along the Iberian coast and found fossilised remains of the early meals. Read the rest of this article...

Bluestone Henge twin?

new digital reconstruction of the monument, discovered by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2009 suggests that the circle of Welsh blue stones found at the southern terminus of the avenue may well have been oval, and not round. If this is correct, it echoes the layout of the Bluestone oval at the centre of Stonehenge. Henry Rothwell, Creative Lead at Heritage Data Solutions explains; “The model was created as part of the forthcoming smartphone app ‘Journey to Stonehenge’. When we built the first wire-frame of the circle we ended up with a fairly standard circular representation. We were using a low level aerial image taken by Adam Stanford. It showed the full extent of the excavation, including the socket holes of the blue stones, into which the Stonehenge Riverside Project team had placed upturned black buckets.” Read the rest of this article...

Bulgarian Archaeology Finds Said to Rewrite History of Black Sea Sailing

Massive ancient stone anchors were found by divers participating in an archaeological expedition near the southern Bulgarian Black Sea town of Sozopol. The expedition, led by deputy director of Bulgaria's National Historical Museum Dr Ivan Hristov, found the precious artifacts west of the Sts. Cyricus and Julitta island. The 200-kg beautifully ornamented anchors have two holes in them – one for the anchor rope and another one for a wooden stick. They were used for 150-200-ton ships that transported mainly wheat, but also dried and salted fish, skins, timber and metals from what now is Bulgaria's coast. Read the rest of this article...

Human-Neanderthal coupling was rare: study

Scientists have shown that modern humans have some traces of genes from Neanderthals, but a study out Monday suggests that any breeding between the two was most likely a rare event. The new computational model, based on DNA samples from modern humans in France and China, shows successful coupling happened at a rate of less than two percent. The research suggests that either inter-species sex was very taboo, or that the hybrid offspring had trouble surviving, according to the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read the rest of this article...

Iron age hill fort excavation reveals ‘possible suburbia

The most intensive investigation ever undertaken of Britain’s largest iron age hill fort is expected to reveal new details of how Britons lived 2,000 years ago – and maybe even that they were almost as suburban as we are. Stretching across 80 hilltop hectares, behind three miles of ramparts, the fort, at Ham Hill in Somerset, and the outline of its history have been known for many years. The Durotriges tribe, which lived on the hill, was subdued in AD45 by soldiers of the 2nd Legion under the command of the future emperor Vespasian, but what the Romans found there: a street system lined with houses on their own plots of land, is what archaeologists from Cambridge and Cardiff universities hope to uncover more fully in excavations over the next three summers. Read the rest of this article...

Iron Age findings help build picture

AN IRON Age community discovered in the Daventry district has been described as of “regional, if not national importance”. New investigations at the site, which is located at Daventry International Railfreight Terminal (DIRFT), have given a greater insight into what happened at the 2,000-year-old community. The findings, including evidence of settlement such as hut circles, will be discussed at the Community Landscape Archaeology Survey Project (CLASP) annual meeting on Monday (September 12). Read the rest of this article...