Ancient calculator on display at Archaeological museum

An exhibition entitled "The wreck of Antikythera - The ship, the treasures, the Mechanism", will open at the Archaeological Museum in Athens on April 5 and will run for a year.

 

This is the first time that all the findings from the Antikythera wreck, dated between 60-50 BC, will be displayed together, while some of the items have never been displayed before.

 

Sometime before Easter 1900, Elias Stadiatis, a Greek sponge diver, discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off Antikythera Island at a depth of 42 m (138 ft). Sponge divers retrieved several statues and other artifacts from the site.

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Neanderthaler hatten Sinn für Symbolik

Ob der Adler schon vor 90.000 Jahren als Machtsymbol angesehen wurde oder ob der Greifvogel für unsere Urzeit-Vettern eine andere Bedeutung hatte, wird man wohl nie sicher sagen können. Jedenfalls dienten die Könige der Lüfte wohl kaum als Nahrung - das meinen jetzt zwei Wissenschaftler aus Kanada und Frankreich nachweisen zu können.

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Worsley Man: Hospital scanner probes Iron Age bog death

Bryan Sitch, curator of archaeology at the museum, said it now appeared the man had been beaten about the head, garrotted and then beheaded

 

The head of an Iron Age man who died almost 2,000 years ago has been scanned in a Manchester hospital to shed light on how he died.

Worsley Man is thought to have lived around 100 AD when Romans occupied much of Britain.
Since its discovery in a Salford peat bog in 1958, the head has been kept at Manchester Museum on Oxford Road.

The scans at the Manchester Children's Hospital have now revealed more details about his violent death.

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Kent’s Prehistoric Pottery on Show

Wessex Archaeology’s London & South East office is hosting the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group’s Spring Meeting.

Join us on 28th April 2012 to hear about new discoveries and directions in the study of Kent’s prehistoric pottery.

The audience will be introduced to recent discoveries from the East Kent Access Road, one of the biggest excavations in the country over the last few years (Link) as well as from the Cliffs End, Thanet Earth and Swalecliffe projects. Some of the Country’s leading experts will explore the pivotal role Kent played in the period.

There will be a chance to have a hands-on look at key groups of pottery from the various schemes and to hear and engage in some lively debate and catch up on current thinking. There will also be a chance to view some exciting recent Beaker and Early Bronze Age finds (around 4000 years old).

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Bronze Age ring in Hampshire declared treasure

A Bronze Age gold ring found in a Hampshire field has been declared as treasure by a coroner.

The 3,000-year-old double ring was found by Winchester artist Alan Cracknell in February 2010 in a field at Headbourne Worthy.

He was using a metal detector and thought the artefact was an old bottle top when he first picked it up.

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Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder

Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology. But in fact, they're so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps.

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder.

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Rise of the citizen scientist

Sometimes, even the cleverest of scientists could benefit from a helping hand. Be it the need for an extra pair of eyes, volunteers for large experiments or fundraising, crowd sourcing is becoming an ever popular way of getting the public involved with scientific endeavours.

Just this week it was announced that archaeologists at the famous Bronze Age site Flag Fen, Cambridgeshire would be inviting members of the public to get on board with the excavations.

The site, an ancient causeway, must be kept constantly wet to preserve the fragile timbers. By opening the dig up to the public, the team will be able to completely excavate the site before it eventually dries out as a result of climate change.

The project will also gain a much-needed funding injection, as each volunteer will need to provide a hefty £125 donation.

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The Science and Art of Neandertal Teeth [Slide Show]

The fossilized teeth of the Neandertals are scientifically informative--and pleasing to the eye

Of all the human ancestors represented in the fossil record, Neandertals are the best known. A significant proportion of what scientists have learned about the Neandertals is based on a set of remains that the Croatian paleontologist Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger recovered between 1899 and 1905 from a rock shelter in the town of Krapina, some 60 kilometers north of Zagreb. The Krapina sample dates to between 120,000 and 130,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch, and includes multiple representatives of nearly every bone and tooth of the body.

Early on, Gorjanović-Kramberger took an interest in the teeth from Krapina, noting anomalies such as taurodontism, in which the pulp chamber expands into the roots. First described from the Krapina remains, taurodontism turns out to be common in Neandertals, although not exclusive to them. Since Gorjanović's time, studies of the more than 275 Neandertal teeth from Krapina have yielded key insights into Neandertal life history.

rchaeologists digging up the remains of Manchester’s grimmest Victorian slum near the new Co-op building have helped Dean Kirby make a surprising discovery – and bring to light a long-forgotten family tragedy ... IT might just be a hole in the ground to any Tom, Dick or Harry passing in the street above. But this was the not-so-sweet home of my long-lost Victorian forefather, William Kirby. He was a farm labourer who fled County Mayo in the west of Ireland following the potato famine and became a fishmonger in ‘Angel Meadow’ – Manchester’s filthiest and most violent slum.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487068_digging-up-the-past-archaeologists-reveal-grim-secrets-of-angel-meadow-manchesters-filthiest-slum?rss=yes

rchaeologists digging up the remains of Manchester’s grimmest Victorian slum near the new Co-op building have helped Dean Kirby make a surprising discovery – and bring to light a long-forgotten family tragedy ... IT might just be a hole in the ground to any Tom, Dick or Harry passing in the street above. But this was the not-so-sweet home of my long-lost Victorian forefather, William Kirby. He was a farm labourer who fled County Mayo in the west of Ireland following the potato famine and became a fishmonger in ‘Angel Meadow’ – Manchester’s filthiest and most violent slum.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487068_digging-up-the-past-archaeologists-reveal-grim-secrets-of-angel-meadow-manchesters-filthiest-slum?rss=yes

rchaeologists digging up the remains of Manchester’s grimmest Victorian slum near the new Co-op building have helped Dean Kirby make a surprising discovery – and bring to light a long-forgotten family tragedy ... IT might just be a hole in the ground to any Tom, Dick or Harry passing in the street above. But this was the not-so-sweet home of my long-lost Victorian forefather, William Kirby. He was a farm labourer who fled County Mayo in the west of Ireland following the potato famine and became a fishmonger in ‘Angel Meadow’ – Manchester’s filthiest and most violent slum.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487068_digging-up-the-past-archaeologists-reveal-grim-secrets-of-angel-meadow-manchesters-filthiest-slum?rss=yes

Archaeologists digging up the remains of Manchester’s grimmest Victorian slum near the new Co-op building have helped Dean Kirby make a surprising discovery – and bring to light a long-forgotten family tragedy ... IT might just be a hole in the ground to any Tom, Dick or Harry passing in the street above. But this was the not-so-sweet home of my long-lost Victorian forefather, William Kirby. He was a farm labourer who fled County Mayo in the west of Ireland following the potato famine and became a fishmonger in ‘Angel Meadow’ – Manchester’s filthiest and most violent slum.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487068_digging-up-the-past-archaeologists-reveal-grim-secrets-of-angel-meadow-manchesters-filthiest-slum?rss=yes

Archaeologists digging up the remains of Manchester’s grimmest Victorian slum near the new Co-op building have helped Dean Kirby make a surprising discovery – and bring to light a long-forgotten family tragedy ... IT might just be a hole in the ground to any Tom, Dick or Harry passing in the street above. But this was the not-so-sweet home of my long-lost Victorian forefather, William Kirby. He was a farm labourer who fled County Mayo in the west of Ireland following the potato famine and became a fishmonger in ‘Angel Meadow’ – Manchester’s filthiest and most violent slum.

Read more at: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1487068_digging-up-the-past-archaeologists-reveal-grim-secrets-of-angel-meadow-manchesters-filthiest-slum?rss=yes

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Un site Néolithique dans la vallée de la Seine

Ce secteur de Pont-sur-Seine fait l’objet d’un suivi archéologique attentif depuis l’ouverture d’une carrière au milieu des années 1990. En 2009, les archéologues de l’Inrap ont fouillé une surface de quatre hectares et mis au jour un village néolithique exceptionnel par la densité de l’occupation, la monumentalité des bâtiments et le caractère inédit de certaines architectures.
Watch the video...

Flag Fen archaeology idea brings in public to dig deep

 

 

The exposed "causeway" must be watered constantly in order to preserve it

Renowned Bronze Age archaeological site Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire will host a first-of-its-kind dig that makes the public integral to the project.

The idea combines both "crowdfunding" and "crowdsourcing"; for contributions starting at £125, donors can get their hands very dirty and dig for a day.

The venture's website will also stream live video from the dig as well as host lectures and interviews with experts.

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Radical theory of first Americans places Stone Age Europeans in Delmarva 20,000 years ago

When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: a dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp.

Forty years later, this rediscovered prehistoric slasher has reopened debate on a radical theory about who the first Americans were and when they got here.

Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

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Tools May Have Been First Money

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Hand axes, small handheld stone tools used by ancient humans, could have served as the first commodity in the human world thanks to their durability and utility.

The axes may have been traded between human groups and would have served as a social cue to others, Mimi Lam, a researcher from the University of British Columbia, suggested in her talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting here on Feb. 18.

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De nouvelles révélations sur Stonehenge

On sait aujourd'hui que le gigantesque site britannique de Stonehenge, l'un des plus importants de la fin du Néolithique, a été construit en plusieurs étapes, de 3000 à 1600 avant J.-C. environ. Les techniques employées pour son édification surpassent en ingéniosité celles utilisées durant la préhistoire. Mais une question demeure : comment des hommes de cette époque ont-ils pu transporter puis disposer les pierres géantes qui composent cet ensemble mégalithique ? De récentes enquêtes ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives sur sa construction et sa finalité. Mené par l'archéologue Mike Parker Pearson de l'université de Sheffield, le projet Stonehenge Riverside s'efforce d'apporter du nouveau en explorant non seulement l'intérieur mais aussi les environs de ce site de la fin du Néolithique.

Watch the video...

Also available in German "Neues aus Stonehenge"

Oetzi the Iceman's nuclear genome gives new insights

 "The Iceman" has been the subject of constant study for more than 20 years

New clues have emerged in what could be described as the world's oldest murder case: that of Oetzi the "Iceman", whose 5,300-year-old body was discovered frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991.

Oetzi's full genome has now been reported in Nature Communications.
It reveals that he had brown eyes, "O" blood type, was lactose intolerant, and was predisposed to heart disease.

They also show him to be the first documented case of infection by a Lyme disease bacterium.

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Scientists find clue to Neanderthal extinction

Washington: An international team of researchers, studying ancient DNA, have suggested that most Neanderthals in Europe already were largely extinct 50,000 years ago - long before modern humans first arrived in the continent.

The findings contradict the long-held notion that Neanderthal populations were stable in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years until modern Homo sapiens arrived.

The scientists say the Neanderthal human species already had died off as early as 50,000 years ago, but a small group recovered and survived for another 10,000 years in areas of central and western Europe before modern humans entered the picture.

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DNA reveals Neanderthal extinction clues

Neanderthals were already on the verge of extinction in Europe by the time modern humans arrived on the scene, a study suggests.

DNA analysis suggests most Neanderthals in western Europe died out as early as 50,000 years ago - thousands of years before our own species appeared.

A small group of Neanderthals then recolonised parts of Europe, surviving for 10,000 years before vanishing.

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Theory and method in the prehistoric archaeology of Central Europe

International Conference
„Theory and method in the prehistoric archaeology of Central Europe“
24th-26th October 2012
Mikulov – Czech Republic

Conference objectives:

• discuss modern (and post-modern!) developments in current world archaeology
• bridging the national and linguistic differences – English language
• making sense of systematic research processes, scientific method and the approaches of the social sciences, and our part­ner disciplines in cultural anthropology

Find Call for Sessions here and feel free to send your proposal to theory_and_method(@)yahoo.com until the end of March 2012

Further information...

European Neandertals were on the verge of extinction even before the arrival of modern humans

New findings from an international team of researchers show that most neandertals in Europe died off around 50,000 years ago. The previously held view of a Europe populated by a stable neandertal population for hundreds of thousands of years up until modern humans arrived must therefore be revised.

This new perspective on the neandertals comes from a study of ancient DNA published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The results indicate that most neandertals in Europe died off as early as 50,000 years ago. After that, a small group of neandertals recolonised central and western Europe, where they survived for another 10,000 years before modern humans entered the picture. The study is the result of an international project led by Swedish and Spanish researchers in Uppsala, Stockholm and Madrid.

"The fact that neandertals in Europe were nearly extinct, but then recovered, and that all this took place long before they came into contact with modern humans came as a complete surprise to us. This indicates that the neandertals may have been more sensitive to the dramatic climate changes that took place in the last Ice Age than was previously thought", says Love Dalén, associate professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.


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Western Neanderthals already a fading light before arrival of modern humans

Newly published results from an international team of researchers show that most of an earlier population of Neanderthals in Europe had already died off around 50,000 years ago.

Previously, the established view was of a stable Neanderthal population in Europe from nearly 250,000 to 30,000 years ago and then they disappeared from the archaeological record after modern humans arrived, however this new research suggests the accepted paradigm must be revised.

A new perspective

This new perspective on the Neanderthals comes from a study of ancient DNA published today in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The results indicate that most European Neanderthals had died off as early as 50,000 years ago. After which, a smaller group of Neanderthals recolonised central and western Europe, where they survived until modern humans entered the picture.

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Bronze Age hoard declared treasure

A "significant discovery" of a Bronze Age artefacts in Carmarthenshire have been recorded as treasure. 

The museum says the hoard shows the type of weapons and dress items worn nearly 3,000 years ago [Credit: NNC]

The hoard of 13 bronze items found in a field at St Ishmael, near Kidwelly, last June, included a bracelet, fragments of a spearhead and an axe. 


The artefacts are thought to have been buried around 1000 to 800 BC, and were declared treasure by the Carmarthenshire coroner on Friday.

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Scientists revive sacred sounds

Ancient peoples around the world seem to have designed their sacred spaces not only for ceremonial sights, but for ceremonial sounds as well, archaeologists say. In Peru, for example, a 3,000-year-old Andean ceremonial center's design was optimized for the blare of a priest's conch-shell trumpet. In Mexico, the Chichen Itza temple site features a staircase that can make hand claps sound like the chirp of a quetzal bird. And one of the best-known ancient monuments of all, England's Stonehenge, has a layout that's acoustically pleasing as well as astronomically significant. The big question is, did ancient societies really have acoustics in mind when they built their monuments? Read the rest of this article...

Neolithic settlers colonized Spain from N. Africa

The Neolithic period, around 10,000 BC in the Middle East, a time when the nomadic economy became permanent, founded on farming and breeding, could have arrived on the Iberian peninsula through a third route of expansion - North Africa. This is according to a study carried out by the Autonomous University of Madrid, the University of Seville and the Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and other Spanish, Portuguese and American universities. The study has been published in the journal "Quaternary Research".  Stone Circle in Cromeleque dos Almendres [Credit: ANSA] Until now, two routes had been traditionally accepted: one identifying a first expansion of the northern margin of the Mediterranean sea, and the second, by sea, which reached the Balearic islands from Cyprus. The new research, though, highlights a third route from North Africa, which would identify the Neolithic characteristics that are found in the south of the Iberian peninsula.  Read the rest of this article...

Solent's Stone Age village 'had modern high street links'

Work on an 8,000-year-old Stone Age settlement under the surface of the Solent in Hampshire is throwing up evidence of clear parallels of the modern "high street", archaeologists say.

After 30 years of excavating the area around Bouldnor Cliff, a boatyard was uncovered last summer, which teams have been working on ever since.

Since The Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology spotted a swamped prehistoric forest in the 1980s, the Stone Age village was found by chance at the end of the last century.

Divers taking part in a routine survey spotted a lobster cleaning out its burrow on the seabed and to their surprise the animal was throwing out dozens of pieces of worked flint - which turned out to be the first sign of the village.

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‘Welsh Stonehenge’ Halts Work on Windfarm

A multimillion pound windfarm could be scrapped after a Stone Age monument was spotted on the site using Google Earth.

Work to install the 15 wind turbines had already began after experts said they were unable to find anything of historical interest on the mountaintop in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

But a weekend rambler stumbled upon a row of stones while trekking across the site on the mountain and realised they were of historical interest.

Archaeologists were called in and discovered the stones on Mynydd Y Betws were between 3,500 and 5,000 years old and could have been part of an ancient site of worship.

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'Digger nearly destroyed Betws Mountain's Neolithic stone row'

THE man who discovered the Neolithic stone row on Betws Mountain has told how the historic find came within 20 minutes of being destroyed.

Freelance archaeologist Dr Sandy Gerrard said a digger working on the construction of the 15-turbine MynyddyBetwswindfarm had to be halted in its tracks.

“In fairness to the developers they stopped work instantly – we have no criticism at all on that score,”
he told the Guardian.

“Asit is, the rowhas been cut in two places by the windfarm access road.

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Neanderthals Used Red Ochre Pigment 250,000 Years Ago

We have seen cave paintings where the splashy red pigment was used to create images by ancient humans in present-day Europe tens of thousands of years ago. Scientists have said that ancient humans used it generally in Europe about 40,000 - 60,000 years ago, in West Asia as long ago as 100,000 years, and by the ancients in Africa as long ago as 200,000-250,000 years. Now, a new study suggests that Neanderthals were also using it in the present-day Netherlands region of Europe as far back as 200,000-250,000 years ago, if not earlier.


The study, conducted by a team of scientists led by W. Roebroeks of Leiden University, examined and analyzed a sample of red material retrieved from excavations originally conducted during the 1980's at the Maastricht-Belvédère Neanderthal site in the Netherlands. The excavations exposed scatterings of well-preserved flint and bone artifacts that were produced in a river valley during the Middle Pleistocene full interglacial period. During the coarse of the excavation, soil samples were also collected, a typical procedure when excavating a site. Within the soil samples were traces of a reddish material. The samples were subjected to various forms of analyses and experimentation to study their physical properties. They identified the reddish material as hematite, a common mineral form of iron oxide that was used for pigmentation by prehistoric populations.

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Time Team: Mary-Ann Ochota quits Channel 4 archaeological show

Time Team has been thrown into disarray after Mary-Ann Ochota became the second presenter to leave the Channel 4 archaeological programme. 

Mary-Ann Ochota, 30, who holds a master’s degree in archaeology and anthropology from Cambridge University, has left the show after a row with Prof Mick Aston, the archaeologist.

Her leaving the show comes after Prof Aston, 65, also quit the show after producers hired Ms Ochota, a former model, as the programme’s co-presenter with Tony Robinson.

Prof Ashton, who has been on the show for 19 years, said he had been left “really angry” by changes which led to the introduction of co-presenter and some archaeologists being axed.

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Reply to my complaint to Channel 4 concerning Time Team Changes

As expected, a wishy-washy response - but the more people who write in, the better!

"Dear Mr Beard,

Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding TIME TEAM.

We are sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the new format of the show and that Prof. Mick Aston has decided to leave. We are saddened by Mick 's decision to leave, he has been a fantastic member of the Time Team team and we wish him well in the future.

Please be assured your complaint has been logged and noted for the information of those responsible for our programming.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We appreciate all feedback from our viewers; complimentary or otherwise.

Regards,

Doug Masterson

Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries"

Please take the time to send your own comments to Channel 4.  Use the link here...

See the original story " Mick Aston quits Time Team after producers hire former model co-presenter"...

Research: Neanderthal demise due to many influences, including cultural changes

Computer modeling shows interactions between Neanderthals and modern human ancestors

 As an ice age crept upon them thousands of years ago, Neanderthals and modern human ancestors expanded their territory ranges across Asia and Europe to adapt to the changing environment.

In the process, they encountered each other.

Although many anthropologists believe that modern humans ancestors "wiped out" Neanderthals, it's more likely that Neanderthals were integrated into the human gene pool thousands of years ago during the Upper Pleistocene era as cultural and climatic forces brought the two groups together, said Arizona State University Professor C. Michael Barton of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity and School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

"The traditional story in textbooks doesn't fit well with what we know about hunter-gatherers. For the most part, they don't like to go far from home. It's dangerous," Barton said.

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Mick Aston quits Time Team after producers hire former model co-presenter

Mick Aston, the archeologist, has quit Time Team after producers hired a former model as the programme’s co-presenter. 

The 65-year-old, who has been on the show for 19 years, said he had been left “really angry” by changes which led to the introduction of co-presenter Mary-Ann Ochota and some archaeologists being axed.

In an interview with the magazine British Archaeology, Prof Aston, the show’s former site director, said: “The time had come to leave. I never made any money out of it, but a lot of my soul went into it. I feel really, really angry about it.”

He was responding to changes first proposed by producers at Channel 4 in late 2010, which included a new presenter to join Tony Robinson and decisions to “cut down the informative stuff about the archaeology”.

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Click here to contact Channel 4 to tell them what you think of their decision.

Stonehenge as you've never seen it

Archaeologists reveal a new way of viewing Stonehenge using Google Earth software

Millions of people have used Google Earth's geo-modelling software to take a tour of the moon, Mars, foreign countries, or – let's be honest – to compare their homes with those of their neighbours. But now a new project developed by Bournemouth University academics is giving surfers access to a virtual prehistoric landscape: Stonehenge.

The World Heritage site near Salisbury is now more accessible than ever, archaeologists claim, thanks to Google's Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge project. Their last few years of findings, combined with the search giant's technology, allows surfers to visit the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls, to scout around prehistoric houses, to see reconstructions of Bluestonehenge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue and to explore the great timber monument called the Southern Circle. The sites look as they would have appeared more than 4,000 years ago – and all from the comfort of your desk.

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Ancient Greek Pills Found in Greek Shipwreck

In 130 BC, a ship fashioned from the wood of walnut trees, bulging with medicines and Syrian glassware, sank off the coast of Tuscany, Italy. Archaeologists found its precious load 20 years ago and now, for the first time, archaeobotanists have been able to examine and analyse pills that were prepared by the physicians of ancient Greece.


DNA analyses show that each millennia-old tablet is a mixture of more than 10 different plant extracts, from hibiscus to celery.

“Medicinal plants have been identified before, but not a compound medicine, so this is really something new,” says Alain Touwaide, director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, which has the world’s largest digital database of medical manuscripts.

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Did Early Humans Ride the Waves to Australia?

Everybody is African in origin. Barring a smattering of genes from Neanderthals and other archaic Asian forms, all our ancestors lived in the continent of Africa until 150,000 years ago. Some time after that, say the genes, one group of Africans somehow became so good at exploiting their environment that they (we!) expanded across all of Africa and began to spill out of the continent into Asia and Europe, invading new ecological niches and driving their competitors extinct.

There is plenty of dispute about what gave these people such an advantage—language, some other form of mental ingenuity, or the collective knowledge that comes from exchange and specialization—but there is also disagreement about when the exodus began. For a long time, scientists had assumed a gradual expansion of African people through Sinai into both Europe and Asia. Then, bizarrely, it became clear from both genetics and archaeology that Europe was peopled later (after 40,000 years ago) than Australia (before 50,000 years ago).

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Archaeologists and pagans alike glory in the Brodgar complex

Archaeologists are notoriously nervous of attributing ritual significance to anything (the old joke used to be that if you found an artefact and couldn't identify it, it had to have ritual significance), yet they still like to do so whenever possible. I used to work on a site in the mid-1980s – a hill fort in Gloucestershire – where items of potential religious note occasionally turned up (a horse skull buried at the entrance, for example) and this was always cause for some excitement, and also some gnashing of teeth at the prospect of other people who weren't archaeologists getting excited about it ("And now I suppose we'll have druids turning up").

The Brodgar complex has, however, got everyone excited. It ticks all the boxes that make archaeologists, other academics, lay historians and pagans jump up and down. Its age is significant: it's around 800 years older than Stonehenge (although lately, having had to do some research into ancient Britain, I've been exercised by just how widely dates for sites vary, so perhaps some caution is called for). Pottery found at Stonehenge apparently originated in Orkney, or was modelled on pottery that did.

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Study Reveals Possible New Key to Human Evolution

For the first five years of life, human cognition slowly comes to fruition, receiving and storing information and experience from the environment and enabling humans to advance beyond the capabilities of their primate cousins, according to a study published online in Genome Research.  An international team of researchers have identified extended synaptic development in the prefrontal cortex of the human brain that sheds new light on the evolution of human cognition and suggests another reason why the human family diverged from other primates 4-6 million years ago.

"Why can we absorb environmental information during infancy and childhood and develop intellectual skills that chimpanzees cannot?" asks study author Dr. Philipp Khaitovich of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "What makes the human brain so special?"

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Estonian students find Iron Age life smoky and cold

Ever wondered what it was like to endure an Iron Age winter?


Five students in the small Baltic state of Estonia, who have abandoned modern conveniences for a week in a replica wooden hut built on the site of an ancient hill fort, have discovered that Iron Age accommodation was mainly cold, dark and smoky.

"You can't heat and be in the building and after dark there is no light," said Kristiina Paavel, 24, one of the students.

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Stonehenge Precursor Found? Island Complex Predates Famous Site

On an island off Britain's northern tip, new discoveries suggest a huge Stone Age ritual complex is older than Stonehenge.

But age is only the half of it. Researchers say the site may have in fact been the original model for Stonehenge and other later, better-known British complexes to the south.

First discovered in 2002, the waterside site—called the Ness of Brodgar ("Brodgar promontory")—lies on Mainland, the largest of Scotland's Orkney Islands (map).
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Arabia the First Stop for Modern Humans Out of Africa, Suggests New Study

Questions surrounding when and where early modern humans first migrated from Africa to populate the rest of the world have long been a focus of debate and study among scientists, where genetic research has played a key role. Now, recent genetic research study results have been released by an international team of scientists. The research, published January 26 by Cell Press in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that modern humans settled first in Arabia more than 60,000 years ago on their way out through the Horn of Africa.  
Says senior study author Dr. Luisa Pereira of the University of Porto in Portugal (IPATIMUP): "A major unanswered question regarding the dispersal of modern humans around the world concerns the geographical site of the first steps out of Africa. One popular model predicts that the early stages of the dispersal took place across the Red Sea to southern Arabia, but direct genetic evidence has been thin on the ground."

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The forgotten Mound of Down

There are plenty of drumlins in County Down - but have you heard of the Mound of Down? 

If not, that is probably because it has been hidden from public view by trees and gorse for decades.

But work is now under way to expose this fortification which could be about 1,000 years old.

Tim Campbell, director of the St Patrick Centre in Downpatrick, said it was one of the largest megalithic hill forts in western Europe.

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Archaeologists Excavate Ancient Populonia

A team of archaeologists and students excavate the remains of a major Etruscan center in Italy.

A team of archaeologists, students and volunteers will return again during the summer of 2012 to investigate the remains of a major Etruscan port city that straddles the Mediterranean coast of Tuscany, Italy. Located near the Italian town of Piombino, it features one of the most important necropolises in the country, as well as an acropolis and a history that goes back to Etruscan settlers around 900 B.C.E. and a Bronze Age culture that dates back to about 1200 B.C.E. The ancient site is known today as Populonia, a city that was for centuries a prominent Mediterranean center for iron smelting and trade.

The "main objective is to fill as many of the gaps as possible in our knowledge of the history of Populonia and its territory, from the late Etruscan period to the late Roman age", reports the team leadership. Co-led by Andrea Camilli (Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Tuscany), Giandomenico De Tommaso (University of Florence), and Carolina Megale (Archeodig Project), they intend to focus their investigation on a section of the site's lower city that is still intact, where they have identified evidence of a late Roman building and, beneath that, a part of the Etruscan necropolis.
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Archaeology Courses at the Oxford Experience 2012

The Oxford Experience Summer School

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...

Underwater archaeology: Hunt for the ancient mariner

Armed with high-tech methods, researchers are scouring the Aegean Sea for the world's oldest shipwrecks.

Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium. “It's our best day so far,” he says of his dive that morning. “We've discovered two ancient shipwrecks.”

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete.

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Neanderthals used ochre much earlier than previously thought

Scientists have uncovered evidences that show Neanderthals were using red paint up to 250,000 years ago - thousands of years earlier than previously thought. 


Traces of the paint, made from ochre, were dug up in the Netherlands and dated to a quarter of a million years ago. 

Scientists are upto finding out what the sub-species of humans did with it back then although it is often considered a sign of symbolic behaviour such as artwork and body painting. 

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Facebook in our Genes?

A new study indicates that social networking is an integral part of humankind's nature, carried down from ancient humans who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

This was Hadza land, a type of rugged African landscape that we have all seen in pictures and movies about the African Serengeti. Coren Apicella and her research assistants were frequently on the move, traveling the region by Land Cruiser, struggling to cross mud-drenched trails. At one location, they had to lay felled trees on the ground in order to advance, and at another point, they had to flee a horde of elephants. But it all came with the territory. They were studying a nomadic people called the Hadza, or Hadzabe, an ethnic group of people in north-central Tanzania, living around Lake Eyasi in the central Rift Valley and in the neighboring Serengeti Plateau. The Hadza people number less than 1,000 in total population. Roaming over 4,000 square kilometers of the African landscape, several hundred of them still live as hunter-gatherers, much as their ancestors lived tens of thousands of years ago before the invention of agriculture. Some consider them to be the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. To Coren and other researchers, they offer an interesting case for ground-breaking research and discovery about the dynamics and evolution of social networking in the human family, one element that made modern humans what they are today.

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Complex Fish Traps Over 7,500 Years Old Found in Russia

One might argue that the stone age technology among people living in Russia during the Mesolithic and Neolithic ages was relatively unimpressive. But the fishing equipment of a certain group living near present-day Moscow more than 7,500 years ago would be something to shout about, according to archaeologists.


An international team of archeologists, led by Ignacio Clemente, a researcher with the Spanish National Research Council, has discovered and documented an assemblage of fish seines and traps in the Dubna Basin near Moscow that are dated to be more than 7,500 years old. They say that the equipment, among the oldest found in Europe, displays a surprisingly advanced technical complexity. The finds illuminate the role of fishing among European settlements of the early Holocene (about 10,000 years ago), particularly where people did not practice agriculture until just before the advent of the Iron Age.

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Neanderthals and their contemporaries engineered stone tools

New published research from anthropologists at the University of Kent has scientifically supported for the first time the long held theory that early human ancestors across Africa, Western Asia and Europe engineered their stone tools.

For over a century, anthropologists have debated the significance of a group of stone age artifacts manufactured by at least three prehistoric hominin species, including the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). These artifacts, collectively known as ‘Levallois’, were manufactured across Europe, Western Asia and Africa as early as 300,000 years ago.

Levallois artifacts are flaked stone tools described by archaeologists as ‘prepared cores’ i.e. the stone core is shaped in a deliberate manner such that only after such specialised preparation could a prehistoric flintknapper remove a distinctive ‘Levallois flake’. Levallois flakes have long been suspected by researchers to be intentionally sought by prehistoric hominins for supposedly unique, standardised size and shape properties. However, such propositions were regarded as controversial by some, and in recent decades some researchers questioned whether Levallois tool production involved conscious, structured planning that resulted in predetermined, engineered products.


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Modern flint expert 'reverse engineers' Neanderthal stone axes - and says our ancestors were clever, elegant craftsmen

Researchers at the University of Kent have recreated the processes Neanderthals used to produce sharp flint axes, and found that our ancestors were skilled engineers. 


A modern-day 'flintknapper' replicated the sharpening processes that Neanderthals used to create tools - a sort of modern 'reverse engineering' of ancient techniques in use by three kinds of early 'hominin' including Neanderthals as early as 300,000 years ago.

The researchers found that Neanderthals could shape 'elegant' stone tools - shaping them to be hard-wearing, easily sharpened and with a perfectly balanced centre of gravity.

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Star Carr archaeologists given more than £1m in funding

rchaeologists excavating what they claim is Britain's oldest house have secured more than £1m in funding.


The circular structure at Star Carr near Scarborough was found in 2008 and dates from 8,500BC.

Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and York say the site is deteriorating due to environmental changes.

The European Research Council has given them £1.23m to finish the work before information from the site is lost.

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Seeing beneath Stonehenge revealed

Two new 21st century inventions are helping us to understand and visit the wonders of Stonehenge from the comfort of our own homes. ‘Google Under-the-Earth’ is an extension of the well known ‘Google Earth’ and adds archaeological layers to the base levels.

‘Seeing beneath Stonehenge’ has been developed as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, using data gather by the combined team from the Universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London.

Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge is the first application of its kind to transport users around a virtual prehistoric landscape, exploring the magnificent and internationally important monument.

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Bronze Age boat to ride the waves

A modern day boat builder is being challenged to recreate one of the oldest boats found in western Europe, dating to around 1500 BCE.

The prehistoric boat will be built using ancient tools including bronze axes at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, as part of a collaborative project devised by the University of Exeter.

Sewn plank boats

The construction will be overseen by a professional boat builder as they begin building their ‘sewn-plank boat’ in April.

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Archaeologists uncover oldest evidence of ploughing in Czech lands

Archaeologists in Prague-Bubenec have uncovered a site with the oldest traces of ploughing and a field in the Czech Lands, that date back to the mid-4th millennium B.C., Archaeological Institute spokeswoman Jana Marikova has told CTK.


The research in two streets, completed late last year, also uncovered a rich evidence on the area's population in later periods, from the Celtic people and German tribes to the early medieval inhabitants, Marikova said.

Probably the most important find is the system of four approximately parallel lines that are nine metres long, ten metres wide and eight centimeters deep, which archeologists say, are furrows.

Experts believe the furrows date back to the earlier phase of Copper Age, i.e. between 3800 and 3500 B.C.

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Ancient Greek sites could soon be available for rent

In a move bound to leave many Greeks and scholars aghast, Greece's culture ministry said Tuesday it will open up some of the debt-stricken country's most-cherished archaeological sites to advertising firms and other ventures.

The ministry says the move is a common-sense way of helping "facilitate" access to the country's ancient Greek ruins, and money generated would fund the upkeep and monitoring of sites. The first site to be opened would be the Acropolis.

Archaeologists, however, have for decades slammed such an initiative as sacrilege.

The culture ministry said any renting of ancient Greek sites would be subject to strict conditions.

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Maritime Museum in Falmouth to build Bronze Age ship

Academics from the University of Exeter, overseen by a professional boat builder, are to reconstruct a Bronze Age ship.

The ship will be built of oak planks stitched together with flexible yew stems at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth.

The aim is to see how seaworthy the vessels were when they were in use 4,000 years ago.

Building is expected to start in April and last five months.

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Must Farm Bronze Age site: Archaeologists at work

Over three thousand years ago the inhabitants of a small southeast fenland community were skilled boat builders, enjoyed fishing, and practised a method of eel trapping still in use today in East Anglia. Mark Knight, senior project officer for Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said: “It’s archaeology like it’s never been preserved before.” The incredibly detailed picture of  Bronze Age life discovered on the River Nene, at Must Farm quarry, Whittlesey, has everything from well preserved boats, spears and swords to clothing and jewellery as well as carved bowls and pots still full of  food, making it one of the most significant sites of its kind ever found in Britain. View the rest of this article

Archaeologist objects - Achill-Henge may be built over prehistoric site - VIDEO Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/news_from_ireland/Archaeologist-objects---Achill-Henge-may-be-built-over-prehistoric-site---VIDEO

Theresa McDonald, Managing Director of the Achill Archaeological Field School, voiced her objections this week over the Achill-Henge which was built at Pollagh in November by Joe McNamara. The archaeologist believes that a prehistoric site could be less than half a kilometer from where Achill-Henge is now standing.

Speaking to The Mayo News, McDonald said, “We’re worried that there is an archaeological site, mostly prehistoric, less than half a kilometre from the site. It is mostly covered by bog, as are a lot of sites in Ireland. There was also an old railway line from Slieve Mor going through the site of the so-called ‘henge’ to Purteen Harbour, that’s gone now because of the unauthorised development.”

The Achill-Henge was constructed in November by architect Joe McNamara and resembles the famous Stonehenge structure.

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Archaeologists ready for Bronze Age boat build

The processes behind building the oldest boat ever found in Western Europe will be investigated by a team of modern- day maritime experts.

Archaeologists from the University of Exeter will lead the project at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth as they attempt to rebuild a sewn-plank boat, examples of which date to around 2000 BC. The Bronze Age vessels, which measured up to 16 metres in length, are thought to have been unique to England and Wales.

"Because none of the boats have ever been found as complete boats, this project will seek to understand how they were constructed, how to steer such a long boat, measure how fast it can go, understand how the crew used paddles, as sails were not evident, and how watertight it is," said Professor Robert Van de Noort, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter.


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Meet the Contenders for Earliest Modern Human

Paleoanthropologists agree that modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago, yet the fossil evidence for the earliest examples of Homo sapiens is scarce. One problem is the difficulty in recognizing true modern humans in the fossil record: At this time, many of the fossils thought to be early members of our species possess a mix of modern and primitive traits. For some paleoanthropologists, it means our species once had a greater range of physical variation than we do today. For others, it means more than one species of Homo may have lived in Africa at this time, sharing some traits in common.

Despite the challenges of identifying early humans, there are several candidates for the earliest known members of our species. Here’s a look at some of the top contenders.

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Star Carr excavations enter exciting new phase

A rchaeologists at the University of York have secured major European funding to carry out sophisticated new research at one of Europe’s most important Early Mesolithic sites.


A team led by Dr Nicky Milner has won a €1.5 million grant from the European Research Council to develop a high-resolution approach to understanding how hunter-gatherers adapted to climatic and environmental change between 10,000 and 8,000 BC at Star Carr in North Yorkshire.

Last year a team of archaeologists, from York and the University of Manchester, discovered Britain’s earliest surviving house. The house dates to at least 9,000 BC – when Britain was part of continental Europe. The research team unearthed the 3.5 metres circular structure next to an ancient lake at the site, near Scarborough, which archaeologists say is comparable in importance to Stonehenge. They also excavated a well preserved 11,000 year-old tree trunk with its bark still intact and the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe.

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Archaeologists get £1m funding boost to carry out research at Stone Age Star Carr site

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have secured more than £1 million in funding to delve deeper into the history of Britain’s earliest surviving house discovered in North Yorkshire, writes Daniel Birch.


A team of archaeologists from the universities of York and Manchester helped unearth the house at Star Carr, a Stone Age site, near Scarborough, in 2010.

The wooden house, which is 3.5 metres wide, predates the house previously thought to be Britain's oldest house in Howick, Northumberland, by at least 500 years.

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It's Official: Stonehenge Stones Were Moved 160 Miles

Some of the volcanic bluestones in the inner ring of Stonehenge officially match an outcrop in Wales that's 160 miles (257 kilometers) from the world-famous site, geologists announced this week. (See Wales pictures.)

The discovery leaves two big ideas standing about how the massive pieces of the monument arrived at Salisbury Plain: entirely by human hand, or partly by glacier.

As it looks today, 5,000-year-old Stonehenge has an outer ring of 20- to 30-ton sandstone blocks and an inner ring and horseshoe of 3- to 5-ton volcanic bluestone blocks. (See Stonehenge pictures.)

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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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