Geoff Wainwright obituary

Influential archaeologist who helped to change the public experience of Stonehenge

Geoff Wainwright at Stonehenge, the proving ground for many of his ideas about the management of the historic environment. Photograph: Timothy Darvill

The young Geoff Wainwright once nervously approached Dame Kathleen Kenyonto inquire about employment prospects in archaeology. She apparently told him that without an inheritance or private income he had no hope. Luckily, he disregarded her advice and went on to become a big influence on archaeology in Britain and Europe.

Geoff, who has died aged 79, was fascinated by archaeology from an early age and in 1956, while still a student, excavated a Mesolithic settlement at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire, two miles from his family home. His early excavations were traditional affairs, but led him to a realisation that empirical research required clearly defined questions, and methods that matched the scale of the problem.

Read the rest of this article...

Pollen adds to intrigue over Bronze Age woman 'Ava'

A facial reconstruction of Ava was made last year

Analysis of pollen found on pottery buried with a young woman more than 4,100 years ago has identified plants used for medicinal purposes.

The woman's bones, including a skull and teeth, were discovered at Achavanich in Caithness 30 years ago.

Known as "Ava", an abbreviation of Achavanich, she is the subject of a long-term research project managed by archaeologist Maya Hoole.

Ms Hoole said the presence of the pollen "raises interesting questions".

Last year, forensic artist Hew Morrison created a facial reconstruction of Ava.

Now the results of other research have been published.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient skulls may belong to elusive humans called Denisovans

Fossil fragments (yellow) were put together with their mirror-image pieces (purple) to visualize the skull of an archaic human who lived in eastern China.

Fossil fragments (yellow) were put together with their mirror-image pieces (purple) to visualize the skull of an archaic human who lived in eastern China.
Z. Li et al., Science 355, 6328 (3 March 2017)
Ancient skulls may belong to elusive humans called Denisovans
By Ann GibbonsMar. 2, 2017 , 2:00 PM
Since their discovery in 2010, the ex­tinct ice age humans called Deniso­vans have been known only from bits of DNA, taken from a sliver of bone in the Denisova Cave in Siberia, Russia. Now, two partial skulls from eastern China are emerging as prime candidates for showing what these shadowy people may have looked like.

In a paper published this week in Science, a Chinese-U.S. team presents 105,000- to 125,000-year-old fossils they call “archaic Homo.” They note that the bones could be a new type of human or an eastern variant of Neandertals. But although the team avoids the word, “everyone else would wonder whether these might be Denisovans,” which are close cousins to Neandertals, says paleo­anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London.

Read the rest of this article...

Prehistoric Norfolk mine Grime’s Graves to open second pit to public

Tourists will be winched deep underground to see 4,000-year-old site where Neolithic miners used antlers to hack out flint

The remains of the ancient pits created an extraordinary pockmarked landscape. Photograph: English Heritage/PA Wire

A challenging descent by ladder, winch and harness into a prehistoric underworld will open to the public for the first time this year, allowing exploration of shafts and galleries cut deep under Norfolk heathland more than 4,000 years ago.

The extraordinary surface landscape of Grime’s Graves, pockmarked with hundreds of shallow depressions, puzzled people for many centuries until they were identified about 150 years ago as neolithic flint mines. 


The name Grime’s Graves has Anglo-Saxon origins, given long after the mines fell out of use as metal tools replaced flint, and some of the convenient hollows were used as burial grounds in the Iron Age. Under the Normans the site was used to keep rabbits for their meat and skins, as the poor sandy soil was ideal for the animals’ warrens.

Read the rest of this article...

'Patchwork' Early Human Fossils Suggest Intermixing

Two partial skulls (shown here in a digital reconstruction) of an early human were discovered at an archaeological site (shown here) in Xuchang in central China.

Credit: Xiu-Jie Wu

Fossils unearthed in China appeared to be strange patchworks of extinct and modern human lineages, with the large brains of modern humans; the low, broad skulls of earlier humans; and the inner ears of Neanderthals, a new study reported.

These new fossils suggest that far-flung groups of ancient humans were more genetically linked across Eurasia than often previously thought, researchers in the new study said.

"I don't like to think of these fossils as those of hybrids," said study co-author Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "Hybridization implies that all of these groups were separate and discrete, only occasionally interacting. What these fossils show is that these groups were basically not separate. The idea that there were separate lineages in different parts of the world is increasingly contradicted by the evidence we are unearthing." [In Photos: New Human Relative Shakes Up Our Family Tree]

Read the rest of this article...

Treasure hunters find Iron Age gold in farmer's field - the earliest ever discovered

Intricate jewellery found buried in a Staffordshire field is the earliest example of Iron Age gold ever found in Britain.

The collection, made up of four twisted metal neckbands, called torcs and a bracelet, was discovered by two metal detectorists just before Christmas. 

Experts say they would have been owned by wealthy powerful women who probably moved from continental Europe to marry rich Iron Age chiefs. 

The pair who discovered the find had swept the field 20 years earlier and uncovered nothing. But after abandoning a fishing trip to go treasure hunting they came across the horde, which could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

Read the rest of this article...

Last of 'too silky' woolly mammoths blighted by bad mutations

Researchers comparing genomes of ancient and more recent Arctic island relatives find latter developed coats too soft for the cold

Scientists analysing genomes of the last woolly mammoths dwelling on island between Russia and Alaska found they were in the grip of mutational meltdown. Photograph: Andrew Nelmerm/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

Woolly mammoths were in the grip of a mutational meltdown before dying out, scientists have revealed, adding that the last surviving population of the hairy giants might have had silky, soft coats, a poor sense of smell and even heartburn.

Woolly mammoths died out in mainland North America and Siberia about 10,000 years ago owing to a combination of human hunting and a warming climate. However, small populations continued to exist on islands in the Arctic Ocean lying between Russia and Alaska until the creatures finally went extinct about 3,700 years ago.


Now scientists have carried out the most in-depth comparison yet of genomes from ancient mainland woolly mammoths and their more recent island-dwelling relatives, shedding light on their decline.

Read the rest of this article...

Neanderthal DNA contributes to human gene expression

The last Neanderthal died 40,000 years ago, but much of their genome lives on, in bits and pieces, through modern humans. The impact of Neanderthals' genetic contribution has been uncertain: Do these snippets affect our genome's function, or are they just silent passengers along for the ride? In Cell on February 23, researchers report evidence that Neanderthal DNA sequences still influence how genes are turned on or off in modern humans. Neanderthal genes' effects on gene expression likely contribute to traits such as height and susceptibility to schizophrenia or lupus, the researchers found.

"Even 50,000 years after the last human-Neanderthal mating, we can still see measurable impacts on gene expression," says geneticist and study co-author Joshua Akey of the University of Washington School of Medicine. "And those variations in gene expression contribute to human phenotypic variation and disease susceptibility."

Read the rest of this article...

Did Stone Age People Build A Large Labyrinth In Denmark?

A series of Stone Age palisade enclosures have been discovered in Denmark in recent years and archaeologists are still wondering what they were used for.

The dark green dotted lines indicate where scientists have dug their trenches and excavated the site. The position of  where the palisade is believed to have been is marked in red. The light green dashed line shows the lack of finds 

Credit: Danish Geodata Agency/Pernille Rohde Sloth]

One of the latest additions is a huge construction, discovered by archaeologists from the Museum Southeast Denmark. The fence dates from the Neolithic period and seems to frame an oval area of nearly 18,000 square meters.

“It was actually somewhat overwhelming to experience that it is possible to reveal the traces of such a huge building from the Neolithic period. There are many suggestions for what they could’ve been used for, but to put it simply, we just don’t know,” says archaeologist Pernille Rohde Sloth who leads the excavation.

Read the rest of this article...

Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection, scientists reveal

Scientist leading ‘de-extinction’ effort says Harvard team could create hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo in two years

Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), a model of an extinct Ice Age mammoth. Photograph: Andrew Nelmerm/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

Shares

36,319

Comments

1,496

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

@hannahdev

Thursday 16 February 2017 15.00 GMTLast modified on Thursday 16 February 2017 22.00 GMT

The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.

Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the “de-extinction” effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant.

“Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,” said Prof George Church. “Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years.”

Read the rest of this article...

Late Bronze Age Weapons Hoard Dug Up At Scottish Building Site

GUARD Archaeologists have recently recovered a very rare and internationally significant hoard of metalwork that is a major addition to Scottish Late Bronze Age archaeology.

The Bronze Age Hoard as it was first revealed during excavations at Carnoustie 

[Credit: © GUARD Archaeology Ltd]

A bronze spearhead decorated with gold was found alongside a bronze sword, pin and scabbard fittings in a pit close to a Bronze Age settlement excavated by a team of GUARD Archaeologists led by Alan Hunter Blair, on behalf of Angus Council in advance of their development of two football pitches at Carnoustie.

Each individual object in the hoard is significant but the presence of gold ornament on the spearhead makes this an exceptional group. Within Britain and Ireland, only a handful of such spearheads are known - among them a weapon hoard found in 1963 at Pyotdykes Farm to the west of Dundee. These two weapon hoards from Angus - found only a few kilometres apart - hint at the wealth of the local warrior society during the centuries around 1000-800 BC.

Read the rest of this article...

National Trust blamed for visitors urinating on Avebury stones after deciding to close loos at 4pm

The National Trust is being blamed for visitors urinating on Europe's largest stone circle

after deciding to shut its loos early.

Locals in the village of Avebury in Wiltshire say the 5,000-year-old monuments are being damaged by tourists who are getting caught short.

The residents say it's down to the National Trust only opening the doors to the toilets in its museum from 10am to 4pm each day.

Read the rest of this article...

7,000 Year Old Enigma Displayed At The National Archaeological Museum In Athens

The “7,000-year-old enigma,” as it has been dubbed by the National Archaeological Museum, has been put on display until March 26 after being brought from the museum’s storerooms.

It is the latest item to be presented under the title “The Unseen Museum” — a reference to the roughly 200,000 antiquities from statues to gold jewellery and every-day objects in store and not on daily display.

Carved out of granite, the 36cm “enigma” statuette of the late Neolithic era has a pointed nose and long neck leading to a markedly round belly, flat back and cylindrical stumpy legs.

“It could depict a human-like figure with a bird-like face, or a bird-like entity which has nothing to do with man but with the ideology and symbolism of the Neolithic society,” Katya Manteli, an archaeologist with the museum, told Reuters.

Read the rest of this article...

Stonehenge tunnel plan given backing by English Heritage and National Trust

Plans for a tunnel past Stonehenge would reconnect the "extraordinary"  ancient landscape which is severed by a busy road, heritage groups have said. 

Under proposals announced by Highways England, a large strip of the A303  road will be excavated and placed alongside the Bronze Age ruins. 

Having won the support of English Heritage and the National Trust, the two  bodies that manage the historical site, the new dual carriageway will  replace the existing road infrastructure, in turn minimising the damage caused by nearby congestion and pollution. 

Read the rest of this article...

Stonehenge tunnel: heritage groups warn over ancient barrow

Historic England, English Heritage and the National Trust say western end is too close to important neolithic tombs

Traffic passing Stonehenge on the A303 in Wiltshire. 

Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The Stonehenge tunnel scheme has suffered a setback after three influential heritage organisations closely involved in the ancient site and the surrounding landscape raised concerns over a crucial aspect of the government’s preferred route.

Historic England, English Heritage and the National Trust all said they backed the idea of a tunnel for the busy A303, which would remove the sight and sound of thousands of vehicles thundering close to the stone circle.

However all three are worried that the proposed western portal – the tunnel entrance and exit – is too close to the Normanton Down Barrows, an important collection of tombs considered one of the gems of the wider Stonehenge landscape.

Read the rest of this article...

38,000-Year-Old Rock Art Discovered in France

Archaeologists discovered this 38,000-year-old engraved image of an aurochs in a rock shelter in France.

Credit: Ph. Jugie/Musée national de Préhistoire collections

In the summer of 2012, a group of archaeologists turned over a broken block of limestone on the floor of a rock shelter in southwestern France and discovered what could be one of the oldest examples of art in Europe.

Scrawled with the image of an aurochs (an extinct species of cattle) and dozens of small dots, the slab was created by the Aurignacians, the first Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe. Radiocarbon tests showed that the engraving dates back to about 38,000 years ago, according to a Jan. 24 report in the journal Quaternary International.

New York University anthropologist Randall White, a co-author of the study who led recent excavations at the rock shelter, said that the discovery "sheds new light on regional patterning of art and ornamentation across Europe" at a time when humans were just starting to spread across the continent. [Gallery: Photos of Europe's Oldest Rock Art]

Read the rest of this article...

Baltic Hunter Gatherers Adopted Farming Without Influence Of Mass Migration, Ancient DNA Suggests

Ancient DNA analyses show that – unlike elsewhere in Europe – farmers from the Near East did not overtake hunter-gatherer populations in the Baltic. The findings also suggest that the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family originated in the Steppe grasslands of the East.

The shores of Lake Burtnieks in Latvia, near where the human remains were discovered from which  ancient DNA was extracted for this study [Credit: Valters Grivins]

New research indicates that Baltic hunter-gatherers were not swamped by migrations of early agriculturalists from the Middle East, as was the case for the rest of central and western Europe. Instead, these people probably acquired knowledge of farming and ceramics by sharing cultures and ideas -- rather than genes -- with outside communities.

Scientists extracted ancient DNA from a number of archaeological remains discovered in Latvia and the Ukraine, which were between 5,000 and 8,000 years old. These samples spanned the Neolithic period, which was the dawn of agriculture in Europe, when people moved from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a settled way of life based on food production.

We know through previous research that large numbers of early farmers from the Levant (the Near East) -- driven by the success of their technological innovations such as crops and pottery -- had expanded to the peripheral parts of Europe by the end of the Neolithic and largely replaced hunter-gatherer populations.

Read the rest of this article...

Iceman Oetzi's last meal was 'Stone Age bacon'

Oetzi the famous "iceman" mummy of the Alps appears to have enjoyed a fine slice or two of Stone Age bacon before he was killed by an arrow some 5,300 years ago.

His last meal was most likely dried goat meat, according to scientists who recently managed to dissect the contents of Oetzi's stomach.

"We've analysed the meat's nanostructure and it looks like he ate very fatty, dried meat, most likely bacon," German mummy expert Albert Zink said at a talk in Vienna late Wednesday.

More specifically, the tasty snack is thought to have come from a wild goat in South Tyrol, the northern Italian region where Oetzi roamed around and where his remains were found in September 1991.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-iceman-oetzi-meal-stone-age.html#jCp

Read the rest of this article...

Neolithic hoard discovered during St Andrews University energy centre work

Pottery and flint tools buried for 4,000 years were uncovered during excavations for St Andrews University’s new energy centre.

The ancient artefacts were dug up at Kincaple as engineers laid pipework.

Archaeologist Alastair Rees from consultancy firm ARCHAS Ltd said the find, which included flint tools believed to be from Norfolk or Yorkshire, provided more evidence of trade links across the UK.

“These finds provide yet another piece in the jigsaw to help us reconstruct the mundane, as well as the more interesting, aspects of how societies interacted and travelled in ancient Britain,” he said.

Read the rest of this article...

The Caves That Prove Neanderthals Were Cannibals

Deep in the caves of Goyet in Belgium researchers have found the grisly evidence that the Neanderthals did not just feast on horses or reindeer, but also on each other.

Belgian archaeologist Christian Casseyas shows the latest explored area as he gives a tour of the Goyet cave, where 96 bones and three teeth from five Neanderthal individuals were found 

[Credit: Emmanuel Dunand, AFP]

Human bones from a newborn, a child and four adults or teenagers who lived around 40,000 years ago show clear signs of cutting and of fractures to extract the marrow within, they say.

"It is irrefutable, cannibalism was practised here," says Belgian archaeologist Christian Casseyas as he looks inside a cave halfway up a valley in this site in the Ardennes forest.

The bones in Goyet date from when Neanderthals were nearing the end of their time on earth before being replaced by Homo sapiens, with whom they also interbred.

Once regarded as primitive cavemen driven to extinction by smarter modern humans, studies have found that Neanderthals were actually sophisticated beings who took care of the bodies of the deceased and held burial rituals.

But there is a growing body of proof that they also ate their dead.

Read the rest of this article...

Archäologen entdecken weitere Teile eines 5.000 Jahre alten Wagens

Erfolgreicher Abschluss der öffentlich zugänglichen Grabung von Olzreute-Enzisholz (Landkreis Biberach)

Kurz vor Weihnachten 2016 wurden die Arbeiten auf der Ausgrabung in Olzreute-Enzisholz (Landkreis Biberach) beendet. Archäologen des Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege im Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart untersuchten dort eine fast 5.000 Jahre alte Siedlung der Jungsteinzeit. In den vergangenen Jahren waren dort schon einige hölzerne Wagenräder zum Vorschein gekommen. Nun fanden die Forscher kurz vor dem Ende der Geländearbeiten einen weiteren Beleg für die steinzeitliche Mobilität: ein Achsenfragment aus Holz.

Read the rest of this article...

Europe's Earliest Humans Did Not Use Fire

New research conducted by scientists at the University of York and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona reveals for the first time that Europe's earliest humans did not use fire for cooking, but had a balanced diet of meat and plants - all eaten raw.

Studying dental plaque from a 1.2 million year old hominin (early human species), recovered by the Atapuerca Research Team in 2007 in Sima del Elefante in northern Spain, archaeologists extracted microfossils to find the earliest direct evidence of food eaten by early humans.

These microfossils included traces of raw animal tissue, uncooked starch granules indicating consumption of grasses, pollen grains from a species of pine, insect fragments and a possible fragment of a toothpick.

All detected fibres were uncharred, and there was also no evidence showing inhalation of microcharcoal - normally a clear indicator of proximity to fire.

Read the rest of this article...

Archäologen entdecken erste befestigte Flachland-Siedlung der Eisenzeit in Westfalen

Werne (lwl). Wo der Versandhandelsriese Amazon aktuell künftige Geschenke für das Weihnachtsfest lagert, deponierten die Menschen schon vor über 2.000 Jahren in Speichern und Gruben Lebensmittel und Ernten. Mit Siedlungsspuren aus dem ersten Jahrhundert vor Christi Geburt rechneten die Archäologen des Landschaftsverbandes Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) durchaus, als die Untersuchungen auf dem Gelände des neuen Logistikzentrums des Versandhändlers in Werne begannen. Dass zusätzlich eine gewaltige Befestigungsanlage bei den Bauarbeiten im neuen Gewerbegebiet Wahrbrink II zum Vorschein kam, war eine Überraschung. Die Archäologen dokumentierten hier die Spuren der ersten Siedlung der Eisenzeit in Westfalen abseits der Gebirgsregionen, die mit einem riesigen Graben gesichert war. 

Read the rest of this article...

Neanderthals visited seaside cave in England for 180,000 years

SAINT HELIER, Jersey, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Neanderthals may have taken vacations, or at least they liked the view from the granite cliffs of Jersey. New evidence suggests Neanderthals visited La Cotte de St Brelade, a prehistoric site on the island of Jersey, for at least 180,000 years.

Previous surveys of La Cotte de St Brelade have been limited in scope, focused mostly on concentrations of mammoth remains within the cave. The latest effort involved a wide-angle approach.

Researchers re-examined stone artifacts unearthed in the 1970s to better understand how they were made and where materials were sourced from. The survey helped archaeologists get a better sense of how visitors to La Cotte de St Brelade utilized local resources and the surrounding landscape. The analysis also revealed where Neanderthals were visiting from.

Read the rest of this article...

Sex of prehistoric hand-stencil artists can be determined forensic analysis

"This geometric approach is very powerful as it allows us to look at the palm and fingers independently," researcher Patrick Randolph-Quinney said.

Researchers built a model cave wall to test their ability to determine the sex of hand stencil artists in the lab. Photo by University of Liverpool

Attempts to determine the sex of prehistoric hand-stencil artists have turned up contradicting conclusions. Researchers in England and South Africa suggest focusing on hand size and finger length is unreliable.

To solve the problem, scientists adopted a forensics technique to yield more definitive results. Scientists believe the new analysis strategy can sex 40,000-year-old hand stencils with 90 percent accuracy.

"The problem with focussing on hand size and finger length is that two different shaped hands can have identical linear dimensions and ratios," Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a forensic anthropologist at the universities of Central Lancashire and Witwatersrand, said in a news release. "To capture shape, we applied geometric morphometrics, a technique used in forensic studies that had never been tested on hand stencils before."

Read the rest of this article...

Late Bronze Age Grave Of Yound Girl Wearing Elaborate Diadem Found In Northern Greece

The skeleton of the young girl as found during the discovery of the tomb [Credit: Ethnos]

The coronet was unearthed among a trove of other valuable personal items found in the grave of a young girl thought to be between 6-7 years of age.

The diadem, which is comprised of three rows of spherical bronze plates mounted on a perishable material (leather or, more likely, a fabric), was wrapped at least twice around the girl's head.

Archaeologist Konstantinos Noulas said the skeleton of the girl, found in a strongly contacted position in the grave, was adorned with numerous jewels and precious items. Among these was a necklace with glass and carnelian beads, a bracelet, three bronze rings, two bronze girdles or belts, while pottery surrounded the interior of the grave.

Read the rest of this article...

Why don't humans have a penis bone? Scientists may now know

Speed of human mating might be behind the lack of a baculum in humans, suggests study tracing bone’s evolution

It can be as long as a finger in a monkey. In the walrus, it can be two feet long. But the human male has lost it completely. And researchers are a little stumped.

Known as the baculum to scientists with an interest, the penis bone is a marvel of evolution. It pops up in mammals and primates around the world, but varies so much in terms of length and whether it is present at all, that it is described as the most diverse bone ever to exist.

Prompted by the extraordinary differences in penis bone length found in the animal kingdom, scientists set out to reconstruct the evolutionary story of the baculum, by tracing its appearance in mammals and primates throughout history.

Read the rest of this article...

France to unveil stunning copy of landmark prehistoric art cave

More than 70 years after the original cave was discovered, France will unveil a stunning real-to-life copy of the 18,000 year-old Lascaux cave, which cost €66 million and took four years to create.

The last of four boys who discovered the Lascaux cave paintings, a stunning display of prehistoric art in southwest France, will visit a new replica of the site Saturday.
Simon Coencas, now 89, will join President Francois Hollande for the inauguration of the display at a visitors' centre in Montignac, a village at the foot of the hills where he discovered the cave as a teenager.
More than seven decades after he got his first look at the site, Coencas will -- health permitting -- revisit a complete copy of the caves.

Read the rest of this article...

Human blood, organs, and a surprising virus detected in ancient pottery

The vessels were interred in a burial mound near an Iron Age hillfort in Germany, known as the Heuneburg, reconstructed here.

Sometime between 600 and 450 B.C.E., a high-status individual in what is today Germany developed some disturbing symptoms: large bruises, bleeding from the nose and gums, and bloody diarrhea and urine. His fellow villagers, shocked—or perhaps intrigued—by his condition, stored his blood and organs in pottery vessels after he died, and interred them in a burial mound. Now, using a novel technique based on analyzing ancient proteins, archaeologists have reconstructed the contents of these vessels to conclude that the individual likely died from Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), a severe tick-borne disease that still kills people across the world today.

"This is the first identification of CCHFV or any hemorrhagic fever virus in the archaeological record," says Conner Wiktorowicz, the study's lead researcher and a Ph.D. candidate in archaeology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. It’s also the only known example of human blood and organs being buried in pottery vessels during this time in this region, raising the question of whether this was a more widespread practice, previously unknown to archaeologists.

The contents of ceramic vessels decay over time, leaving a film of residue containing proteins from any organic matter stored within. Archaeologists are exploring new ways to recover and analyze these proteins. In the new study, a team led by Wiktorowicz ground up a small portion of each of the pottery fragments (or sherds), used detergent and other chemicals to dislodge any proteins stuck to them, and isolated and analyzed the protein fragments using various techniques. The team then fed this information into a national protein database.

Read the rest of this article...

Archaeologists uncover clues to life of Iron Age man

Archaeologists have been able to provide insights into the life of a man whose remains were found at an Iron Age site on Orkney.

A human jaw with two teeth was discovered centrally placed in a large, carved whalebone vertebra within the ruins of a broch earlier this year.

Analysis, including radiocarbon dates, of the find on South Ronaldsay show the man died when he was 50 or older.

His diet also appears to have been unusually rich in fish.

Read the rest of this article...

Anglesey dig discovers human remains at 'internationally important' neolithic site

Two partial sets of human remains have been found at a massive neolithic site on Anglesey.

Archaeologists have also unearthed a fourth house from the period at the Llanfaethlu dig.

CR Archeology have been working at the site since late 2014 and have called the discoveries made there "unparalleled".

More than 6,000 artefacts have been recovered which is the most of any Prehistoric site in North Wales and these include a massive range of pottery styles from both the neolithic and Bronze age.

The discovery of two partial sets of human remains could cause a "revolution" in how historians view the origins of North Wales agriculture, say CR Archeology, who have been working with Anglesey Council, Wynne Construction and Gwynedd Archaeological Planning Services.

Read the rest of this article...

Moderner als gedacht - Neandertaler passten ihre Überlebensstrategien aktiv an

Wissenschaftler des Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment an der Universität Tübingen haben herausgefunden, dass Neandertaler auch ohne äußere Einflüsse, wie Umwelt- oder Klimaveränderungen ihre Überlebensstrategien variierten. Mit einer neuen Methode zeigen sie anhand von Karbonatisotopie an fossilen Zähnen, dass die Vorfahren der heutigen Menschen vor 250.000 Jahren moderner in ihrer Entwicklung waren als bisher gedacht.

Read the rest of this article...

‘Bronze Age burial reveals its long held secret’

Archaeologists studying Neolithic and Early Bronze Age human remains in the Manx Museum collection for the ‘Round Mounds of the Isle of Man’ project have made an exciting discovery. 

Contained within a box of cremated bones excavated in 1947, osteologist Dr Michelle Gamble, discovered a collection of small bone objects that had not been noticed by the excavators. The bones had been buried almost 4000 years ago at Staarvey Farm in what is now German parish, Isle of Man. 

The site was excavated by Basil Megaw (1913-2002) who was director of the Manx Museum (1945-1957). Mr Megaw had been contacted by the farmer who had hit a large stone during ploughing. Excavations revealed a stone-built cist (a box made out of stone slabs) containing fragments of burnt bone, two flint tools, and two Collared Urns (Bronze Age pots) buried upside-down. But it is only now that the bones have been studied in detail.

Read the rest of this article...