8,000-Year-Old Heads on Stakes Found in Mysterious Underwater Grave

None of the human skulls had jaw bones. There was one human jaw bone at the site, but it wasn't associated with any of the skulls.

The discovery of a burial containing 8,000-year-old battered human skulls, including two that still have pointed wooden stakes through them, has left archaeologists baffled, according to a new study from Sweden.

It's hard to make heads or tails of the finding: During the Stone Age, the grave would have sat at the bottom of a small lake, meaning that the skulls would have been placed underwater. Moreover, of the remains of at least 11 adults placed on top of the grave, only one had a jawbone, the researchers said.

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Neanderthals' lack of drawing ability may relate to hunting techniques

Replica of drawing of lions painted in the Chauvet Cave. Art in the cave has been identified 

as created by early modern humans [Credit: UC Davis]

Neanderthals had large brains and made complex tools but never demonstrated the ability to draw recognizable images, unlike early modern humans who created vivid renderings of animals and other figures on rocks and cave walls. That artistic gap may be due to differences in the way they hunted, suggests a University of California, Davis, expert on predator-prey relations and their impacts on the evolution of behaviour.

Neanderthals used thrusting spears to bring down tamer prey in Eurasia, while Homo sapiens, or modern humans, spent hundreds of thousands of years spear-hunting wary and dangerous game on the open grasslands of Africa.

Richard Coss, a professor emeritus of psychology, says the hand-eye coordination involved in both hunting with throwing spears and drawing representational art could be one factor explaining why modern humans became smarter than Neanderthals.

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Major Neolithic ceremonial enclosure uncovered at Windsor

An aerial view of the site of the Neolithic causewayed enclosure 

[Credit: Wessex Archaeology]

A major 5,500 year old Neolithic ceremonial gathering place known as a causewayed enclosure has been partially uncovered within sight of Windsor Castle in Berkshire. The discovery was made at Riding Court Farm, near Datchet as part of CEMEX UK’s archaeological programme on the quarrying site, which is monitored on behalf of the local planning authority by Berkshire Archaeology.

Defined by encircling bank and ditch segments with gap entrances, such sites represent some of the earliest known acts of monument building in Britain. Around 80 monuments have been identified across Britain, and others are known on the Continent. The Riding Court causewayed enclosure may have been seasonally occupied, a place where communities gathered to undertake ceremonial feasting, exchange of goods, the marking of festivals and social obligations. Imported objects found in other enclosures suggest trade and exchange of exotic objects (stone axes and pottery), while evidence of feasting and human burials are known from other sites.

One feature is the deliberate consumption and wasting of meat and the exposure of human remains including the placing of skulls in the base of ditches. There are signs that pots were deliberately smashed perhaps as festivities came to a close.

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Mystery of 8,000-Year-Old Impaled Human Heads Has Researchers Stumped

Archaeologists have never before encountered this grisly phenomenon in Mesolithic Scandinavia, and they're hard-pressed to explain it.

Impaled Mesolithic Skull 

found on the bottom of a shallow lake in Kanaljorden #Sweden

ca. 7,000 years old 

In 2009, a new railway bridging southern Sweden's Motala Ström River was slated for construction. But then, archaeologists began turning up artifacts there that were thousands of years old. Over the next few years, animal bones, tools made from antlers, wooden stakes, and bits of human skull were found in the bog's lime sediment.

The remains belonged to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, a group that existed around 8,000 years ago between the Old and New Stone Ages. These societies have been known to show respect for the bodily integrity of their dead—that is, until now. (Related: "Mysterious Graves Discovered at Ancient European Cemetery")

In 2011, Fredrik Hallgren of the Cultural Heritage Foundation led an archaeological project on the Kanaljorden excavation site near the Motala Ström River. When the team began excavating the site, they uncovered the first known instance of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers mounting human skulls on stakes. (Related: "Archaeologists Discover New Mass Grave From Notorious Shipwreck")

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Discovery of Windsor neolithic monument excites archaeologists

Scientists expect to uncover entire circuit of causewayed enclosure at Berkshire quarry

An aerial view of the site of the Neolithic causewayed enclosure. 

Photograph: Wessex Archaeology

A neolithic monument has been discovered less than two miles from Windsor Castle. Dating from 5,500 years ago, it is one of the earliest known examples of monument-building in Britain.

A ceremonial gathering place known as a causewayed enclosure has been revealed with the discovery of a series of encircling ditches, artificial boundaries with gap entrances, at a vast site in Berkshire.

Archaeologists have found extensive quantities of animal bones as well as decorated pottery sherds, and evidence that pots were deliberately smashed, perhaps as festivities came to a boisterous close. Other finds include finely worked, leaf-shaped flint arrowheads, serrated blades, stone axes and grinding stones.

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Housebuilder uncovers Iron Age chamber on Lewis

A 2,000-year-old underground chamber has been uncovered during work to build a house on the Isle of Lewis.

The Iron Age soutterrain was revealed during the digging of the foundations for the property in Ness.

Local archaeologists, husband and wife team Chris and Rachel Barrowman, are recording the soutterrain.

Mr Barrowman said theories on the purpose of the stone-lined, flat stone-roofed structures included storing food.

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Stonehenge A303 tunnel plans will 'protect and enhance' monument

This is the proposed western approach to the new Longbarrow junction

Plans for a tunnel near Stonehenge will "enhance and protect" the ancient site but need further work, heritage experts have warned.

Initial designs for the scheme have been unveiled for the first time as a major public consultation starts.

Highways England said the design would "restore the tranquil environment and setting of the monument".

Opponents have said the tunnel could destroy archaeological treasures and scar the landscape irreparably.

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Cheddar Man: First modern Briton had 'dark to black' skin, DNA research reveals

The first modern Briton had “dark to black” skin, groundbreaking new analysis of his 10,000-year-old remains has revealed.

Britain’s oldest complete skeleton, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset.

But an unprecedented examination of his DNA, along with a facial reconstruction of the fossil, shows the young man would have had a darker complexion than previously thought, along with blue eyes and dark, curly hair.

Previous reconstructions of Cheddar Man, which were not based on DNA data, depicted him with a lighter skin tone.

Yet research by evolution and DNA specialists at the Natural History Museum and University College London suggests the pigmentation associated with northern European ancestry is a more recent development.

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Could these be the oldest Neandertal tools made with fire?

These 171,000-year-old digging sticks may have been made by Neandertals.

In the spring of 2012, while digging a hole for a thermal pool, construction workers in Grosseto, Italy, hit scientific pay dirt: layers of stratified soil and rock filled with prehistoric bones and artifacts close to 171,000 years old. Excavating the pool would have to wait. With further digging, the researchers found tantalizing evidence of early fire use—nearly 60 partially burned digging sticks made mostly of boxwood. The most likely creators of the sticks were Neandertals, who are known to have lived in Europe at that time. If our extinct cousins did indeed craft the sticks, they represent the earliest use of fire for toolmaking among Neandertals.

Neandertals evolved in Europe perhaps as early as 400,000 years ago, but it’s unclear when they began to regularly use fire. Until now, the earliest evidence of Neandertals controlling fire dates to the late Middle Pleistocene, about 130,000 years ago. And because wood decomposes easier and faster than materials like bone and stone, it’s unusual to find prehistoric wooden artifacts. The oldest wooden weapons discovered so far are spears in Schöningen, Germany. They are thought to have been made by Homo heidelbergensis or Neandertals some 300,000 years ago.

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First modern Britons had 'dark to black' skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals

The genome of Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, suggests that he had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair

The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed.

The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population.

It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and fair hair, but his DNA paints a different picture, strongly suggesting he had blue eyes, a very dark brown to black complexion and dark curly hair.

The discovery shows that the genes for lighter skin became widespread in European populations far later than originally thought – and that skin colour was not always a proxy for geographic origin in the way it is often seen to be today.

Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked on the project, said: “It really shows up that these imaginary racial categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at all.”

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Genome erzählen die Bevölkerungsgeschichte Nordeuropas

Schädel, der im Rahmen dieser Studie untersucht wurde. Fundort: Ölsund, Hälsingland, Schweden, datiert auf etwa 2,300 v. Chr., im Reinraumlabor für die Analyse alter DNA des Max-Planck-Instituts für Menschheitsgeschichte. (© Alissa Mittnik)

Ein internationales Forschungsteam unter Leitung des Max-Planck-Instituts für Menschheitsgeschichte in Jena, hat das Erbgut von 38 Nordeuropäern aus der Zeit von etwa 7.500 bis 500 vor Christus analysiert. Die Studie, die jetzt in Nature Communications erschien, zeigt, dass Skandinavien ursprünglich über eine südliche und eine nördliche Route besiedelt wurde und dass die Landwirtschaft in Nordeuropa wahrscheinlich durch einwandernde Bauern und Weidehirten rund 2000 Jahre später als in Mitteleuropa eingeführt wurde.

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New tunnel bypassing Stonehenge could destroy traces of human life dating back to the Ice Age, experts warn

Hoof prints dating back 8,000 years could be destroyed by road plans at ‘precious‘ site, archaeologist says

The Government has backed road works to ease traffic congestion near Stonehenge Getty

A new tunnel bypassing Stonehenge could destroy a “unique” site where traces of humans living as far back as the last Ice Age have been preserved, experts have warned.

Hoof prints of wild cattle known as aurochs were recently discovered at excavations a mile and a half from the famous stone circle in Wiltshire, University of Buckingham archaeologist David Jacques said.

The 6,000-year-old marks, preserved in what appears to be a ritualistic manner, are the latest finds of a decade-long dig at Blick Mead, which Prof Jacques said form a "national archive of British history".

However, the proposed tunnel and a flyover close to Blick Mead, which could be built under Government-backed roadwork plans to ease congestion on the A303, could irrevocably damage the site, he warned.

Opponents of the plan fear it could harm the rich archaeological landscape.

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Stonehenge tunnel could destroy 'unique library' of early history

Plans for A303 could spell loss of Blick Mead site, where humans may have lived since the Ice Age

The construction of a tunnel past Stonehenge could spell the loss of a unique site that can trace the presence of people back to the last Ice Age, experts have said.

Perfectly preserved hoofprints of wild cattle known as aurochs have recently been found at excavations a mile and a half from the Wiltshire stone circle, David Jacques, and archaeologist at the University of Buckingham, said.

The 6,000-year-old prints, preserved in what appears to be a ritualistic way, are the latest in a wealth of finds made during a decade-long dig at Blick Mead, which Jacques said amounted a “national archive of British history”.

The tunnel, and a flyover close to the Blick Mead excavations which could also form part of the roadworks to improve the A303, could irrevocably damage the site, he said.

The government has backed plans to build a tunnel to house the A303 as it passes Stonehenge as part of measures to ease congestion and improve the setting of the neolithic site.

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Scandinavians shaped by several waves of immigration

Directly following the last ice age, people from the western parts of what is now Norway were a population that had substantially different genetics from the people living in the area corresponding to present-day Sweden.

Anne-Marian Snaaijer, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology works  in Trondheim's Archive Centre at Dora. The collection trays hold lots of bone discoveries 

[Credit: Åge Hojem, NTNU University Museum]

"We were surprised that the results showed such marked dissimilarities," says associate professor and archaeologist Birgitte Skar at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) University Museum. Skar is responsible for the museum's Stone Age and Bronze Age collections.

Scandinavia was one of the last parts of Europe to become habitable when the glaciers released their icy grip more than 10,000 years ago. The ocean's resources and the coastal archipelago attracted marine hunter-gatherers of yore to the region.

Swedish and Norwegian researchers have collaborated on analysing the DNA in 9500-year-old bone samples from the southern and western Norwegian coast and from the Swedish islands of Gotland and Stora Karlsö. This period corresponds to the Mesolithic Stone Age.

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Melting Glaciers Could Reveal How Our Ancestors Dealt With Changing Climates

While some archaeologists dig with trowels and shovels, others use a warming planet to their advantage.

Archaeologist holding a c. 1400-year-old arrow, lost reindeer hunting in the high mountains of Oppland, Norway, during the Late Antique Little Ice Age. 

PHOTOGRAPH BYJULIAN MARTINSEN, SECRETS OF THE ICE OPPLAND COUNTY COUNCIL

When Lars Pilø, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program at Oppland County Council, noticed Norway was experiencing a particularly warm autumn in 2006, the archaeologist turned to the mountains. If climate change was thawing glacial ice, what did that mean for the artifacts that were emerging from the melt? So, starting officially in 2011, Pilø and an international team took to Norway's icy Jotunheimen and Oppland mountains to see what ancient objects they could rescue from the snowmelt.

Over the years, the archaeologists uncovered thousands of artifacts, some of which date back 6,000 years. Since the ice acts like a giant freezer and preserves the objects, the finds look like they could have been uncovered yesterday. (Read: "Alaska's Thaw Reveals—And Threatens—A Culture's Artifacts")

"The moment these artifacts melt out of the ice, they're immediately vulnerable to the elements," says James H. Barrett, a University of Cambridge environmental archaeologist.

The glacier archaeologists detailed their findings in a Royal Society Open Science paper published January 24. Pilø and Barrett are authors on the paper.

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Archaeologists may have found architects' camp for Stonehenge

A team of archaeologists believe they may have discovered a spot where some of the architects of Stonehenge gathered and camped.

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The team have been investigating a causewayed enclosure – these are thought to be ancient meeting places or centres of trade – on army land at Larkhill close to Stonehenge.

They found an alignment of posts that matches the orientation of the circle at Stonehenge, leading to the theory that Larkhill could have been some sort of blueprint for the temple.

Si Cleggett, of Wessex Archaeology, conceded it was possible to suggest that any evidence of prehistoric settlement could be connected to the creation of Stonehenge.

But he argued that the proximity of Larkhill – a relatively short walk from the stone circle – and the coincidence of the alignment of the nine posts gave weight to the idea that the people who created and visited the enclosure could have had a hand in the conceptualisation of Stonehenge.

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Ancient human remains found in Mayo date back over 5,000 years

Ben Gorm Mountain, Mayo

Image: T Kahlert via Department of Culture

THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has revealed that ancient human remains, which were discovered by a local hillwalker on a Mayo mountainside in 2016, date back as early as 3,600 BC.

The research found that the natural boulder chamber in which the remains were found was used for human burial practice through the Neolithic period.

A least 10 individuals – adults, teenagers and children – were placed in the chamber over a period of up to 1,200 years, according to the research. One of the adult bones dated to 3,600 BC, while a bone of a child skeleton dated to 2,400 BC.

In August 2016, local hillwalker Michael Chambers discovered a cave-like chamber among some large boulders on Ben Gorm Mountain in Newport, Mayo.

He found human bones scattered over the rock floor of the chamber and contacted gardaí in order to have them tested.

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Unusually sophisticated prehistoric monuments and technology in the heart of the Aegean

Excavations underway on Dhaskalio, off Keros 

[Credit: Cambridge Keros Project]

New work at the settlement of Dhaskalio, the site adjoining the prehistoric sanctuary on the Cycladic island of Keros, has shown this to be a more imposing and densely occupied series of structures than had previously been realised, and one of the most impressive sites of the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC).

Until recently, the island of Keros, located in the Cyclades, south of Naxos, was known for ritual activities dating from 4,500 years ago involving broken marble figurines. Now new excavations are showing that the promontory of Dhaskalio (now a tiny islet because of sea level rise), at the west end of the island next to the sanctuary, was almost entirely covered by remarkable monumental constructions built using stone brought painstakingly from Naxos, some 10km distant.

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Bronze Age Arrows and a Viking Sword – The 2017 Fieldwork Was Awesome!

The Storfonne ice patch, photographed in September 2014 during a major melt. Notice the light grey lichen-free zone surrounding the ice. This area was exposed by ice melt in the last 15-20 years. Photo: Lars Pilø, Secrets of the Ice/Oppland County Council.

Both sites had only seen short visits prior to this field-season. This had resulted in a number of artifact recoveries, especially arrows, found close to the melting ice. However, we knew that there were other finds on these sites, and that they were lying on the surface, exposed to the elements. The main job would be to rescue these artefacts. To achieve this, we planned to conduct a systematic and thorough survey of the lichen-free zone (where the ice has melted recently) surrounding the ice on both sites.

The Lauvhøe ice patch

The Lauvhøe ice patch was up first. The earliest finds from this site were reported in 2007: three arrows, dating to the Iron Age and the medieval period. Even with these remarkable finds, the site had to wait ten years for a proper systematic survey. This may sound harsh, but with the short time window available for surveys each year, other sites with more and older finds had to be surveyed first. Lauvhøe’s turn had finally come this year.

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LES FOUILLES ARCHÉOLOGIQUES PRÉVENTIVES DÉMARRENT SUR LA ZAC ODE ACTE 2 SUR LES COMMUNES DE LATTES ET DE PÉROLS (HÉRAULT)

Les fouilles préventives du site des « Hauts de Lattes » s’inscrivent dans la poursuite de l’aménagement de la « Zac Ode Acte 2 », dans le cadre du projet urbain Ode à la Mer qui s’étend depuis la Lironde jusqu’au Parc des Expositions, sur les communes de Lattes et de Pérols.

8 HECTARES DE FOUILLES SUR LE SITE « HAUTS DE LATTES »
À la suite d’un diagnostic archéologique réalisé fin 2015 - début 2016, l’État (Drac Occitanie) a prescrit la réalisation d’une fouille préventive de 8 hectares, situés à l’extrémité nord de la « butte de Pérols », entre la vallée de la Lironde et l’étang de l’Estanel. La SA3M ( Société d’Aménagement de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole), ainsi que deux autres maîtres d’ouvrage (les sociétés Pitch Promotion et Pégase Immobilier) ont choisi de confier ces recherches à l’Inrap, qui s’est associé au service archéologique de la SAM (Sète Agglopole Méditerranée) pour cette opération.

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Menschheitsgeschichte muss nicht neu geschrieben werden

Der »Fall Untermaßfeld«

In einer kürzlich im Fachjournal »Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology« veröffentlichten Studie widerlegt der Senckenberg-Wissenschaftler Prof. Dr. Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke gemeinsam mit einem internationalen Team renommierter Steinzeitexperten eine kürzlich erschienene Veröffentlichung zur Ausbreitung des Menschen in Europa. In dieser wird die These aufgestellt, dass die ersten Menschen schon vor etwa einer Million Jahre in Nord- und Mitteleuropa lebten – gut 200.000 Jahre früher als bisher belegt. Das Team zeigt zudem, dass die »Belegstücke« der archäologischen Untersuchung vermutlich aus der Forschungsgrabung Untermaßfeld gestohlen wurden.

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Neolithic girl's reconstructed face unveiled at Athens Acropolis Museum on January 19th

Myrtis is the reconstructed head of a girl that once lived in Classical-era ancient Athens and died during the plague in Athens in the 5th century BC

An 18-year-old girl who lived in Greece 7,000 years ago and was unearthed by archaeologists in Theopetra cave, near the city of Trikala, has had her face reconstructed and is about to officially introduce herself to the public.

Eight years after the revelation of Myrtis, the reconstructed head of a girl that once lived in Classical-era ancient Athens and died during the plague in Athens in the 5th century BC and following the international sensation that it caused, the Acropolis museum is ready to to introduce Dawn’s new face from an even earlier past, to Greek and international audiences.

Dawn (Avgi in Greek) is a woman from the Mesolithic era (7,000 BC) who lived in the Theopetra cave, according to Athens University professor Manolis Papagrigorakis; who has invested a great deal of time and learning in order to bring Greeks “face to face” with their ancestors.

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Ancient highland ruins probed by archaeologists

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are probing an ancient mystery uncovered by workers deep in a Highland forest.

The crumbling ruins are believed to have been an Iron Age fort, or possibly the home of a local chief or lord, and date back to about 2,400 years ago.

The site was known about from a survey taken in the 1940s, but had been forgotten about until it was spotted by loggers clearing the land.

Now researchers are unravelling its tantalising mystery, with evidence showing the structure may have a violent past and was burnt down twice and rebuilt before finally being abandoned.

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Evidence of 'special site' for Bronze Age burials near Loch Ness

The latest grave to be found is pictured before and after soil was removed from inside it

Archaeologists say they are finding increasing evidence that a site near Loch Ness was important for burials in the Bronze Age.

A second 4,000-year-old grave has been located in an area being developed in Drumnadrochit where a stone-lined grave known as a cist was found in 2015.

The discovery two years ago included human remains.

The latest grave had filled with soil causing degradation to the pit, but a single Beaker pot was found.

Archaeologists said the decorated pot may have held an offering to the person who was buried in the cist.

The first grave was discovered during work constructing the new Drumnadrochit Medical Centre and excavated by AOC Archaeology Group.

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Prehistoric women's arms 'stronger than those of today's elite rowers'

Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins celebrate Olympic victory in 2012. Neolithic women’s arm bones were about 30% stronger than those of women today. 

Photograph: Francisco Leong/IOPP Pool/Getty Images

Prehistoric women had stronger arms than elite female rowing teams do today thanks to the daily grind of farming life, researchers have revealed, shedding light on their role in early communities.

The study of ancient bones suggests that manual agricultural work had a profound effect on the bodies of women living in central Europe between about the early neolithic and late iron age, from about 5,300BC to AD100.

“We think a lot of what we are seeing is the bone’s response to women grinding grain, which is pretty much seated but using your arms really repetitively many hours a day,” said Dr Alison Macintosh, co-author of the research from the University of Cambridge.

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Ancient sword and other incredible items discovered during dig at Glenfield Park

Archeologists have discovered an unprecedented collection of artefacts from the Iron Age at Glenfield Park in Leicestershire.

Prehistoric cauldrons, a complete ancient sword and third century BC brooch, and dress pins are among the nationally significant findings discovered by University of Leicester archaeologists.

The Iron Age site is believed to have been a ritual and ceremonial centre for a community that also hosted large feasts, while the findings represent the most northerly discovery of such objects on mainland Britain and the only find of this type of cauldron in the East Midlands.

Evidence also suggests the site was used over a long period of time by multiple generations and underwent striking changes in character.

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Bronze Age Burial Of 'Shaman' Discovered In Slovakia

Archaeologists found an interesting discovery when researching the area of the transport infrastructure for Jaguar Land Rover and accompanying industrial park in Nitra. They found a human skeleton from the Bronze Age that was probably a shaman. He was not buried in a standard grave but placed in hole serving a food storage.

“When the hole was not used anymore, people backfilled it with soil and this person was placed or thrown inside later. We don’t know whether he was thrown in or placed in, because the human was lying on his stomach,” said Klaudia Daňová, a scientific secretary from the Archaeological Institute in Nitra, as cited by the SITA newswire.

“Bronze decorations were placed near his ears. They were connected by little ear bones,” added Daňová for SITA. Archaeologists suggest that those are poultry bone but an analysis will be done to make sure.


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Fairy Tales Are Much Older Than You Think

How does the same story come to be known as “Beauty and the Beast” in the U.S. and “The Fairy Serpent” in China?

As Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm collected Germanic folktales in the 19th century, they realized that many were similar to stories told in distant parts of the world. The brothers Grimm wondered whether plot similarities indicated a shared ancestry thousands of years old.

Folktales are passed down orally, obscuring their age and origin. “There’s no fossil record [of them] before the invention of writing,” says Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University.

To test the Grimms’ theory, Tehrani and literary scholar Sara Graça da Silva traced 76 basic plots back to their oldest linguistic ancestor using an international folktale database. If a similar tale was told in German and Hindi, the researchers concluded its roots lay in the languages’ last common ancestor. “The Smith and the Devil,” a story about a man who trades his soul for blacksmith skills, was first told some 6,000 years ago in Proto-Indo-European. Now we tell a similar tale about the blues guitarist Robert Johnson.

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When the Gloves Come Off – Why We Do Not Use Gloves to Handle Artifacts in the Field

Ever since we started publishing pictures of our crew holding artifacts without using gloves, we have taken some heat in the Facebook comment sections. People have been worrying (or even cringing) about bad effects of touching the artifacts with bare hands. Their worry is that this could contaminate the artifacts with body oils or DNA. This blogpost explains why using gloves in the field is not necessary.

Body oils and other residues

When artefacts are handled in museums, you will see the museum staff wearing gloves while holding the objects. This is done to protect the artifacts from getting into contact with body oils and other residues on the person’s hand. It may seem like an obvious conclusion that the artifacts should also be handled wearing gloves in the field. However, this is rarely seen in practice. Why is there a difference in procedures?

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Living With Gods review – 40,000 years of religious art, and this is it?

 Chosen for content over aesthetic merit … six Zoroastrian tiles, Parsi shrine, 1989-90, India. Photograph: © Trustees of the British Museum

After a few minutes in the exhibition that accompanies Neil MacGregor’s new BBC Radio 4 series on the power of religion, my skin started to sizzle and my blood to boil. I truly felt branded inside, marked out as a reprobate, for the premise of the show is that belief in God(s) is such a universal human trait that if you lack it, you may not be human.

That is signalled by a large wall text at the start, suggesting that the correct name for our species may not be homo sapiens, but “homo religiosus”. As someone who doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t miss her, I felt a bit left out. Is belief really the all-pervasive force this exhibition claims?

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Fossil of 'our earliest ancestors' found in Dorset

The mammals ventured out at night to hunt insects

Fossils of the oldest-known ancestors of most living mammals, including human beings, have been unearthed in southern England.

Teeth belonging to the extinct shrew-like creatures, which scampered at the feet of dinosaurs, were discovered in cliffs on the Dorset coast.

Scientists who identified the specimens say they are the earliest undisputed fossils of mammals belonging to the line that led to humans.

They date back 145 million years.

''Here we have discovered from the Jurassic coast a couple of shrew-like things that are to date unequivocally our earliest ancestors,'' said Dr Steve Sweetman of Portsmouth University, who examined the ancient teeth.

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'Big, bad wolf' image flawed - scientists

Wolves are good at working together to get food rewards

New research casts doubt on the idea that dogs are naturally more tolerant and friendly than wolves.
In tests of cooperation skills, wolves outperformed their domesticated relatives.

Scientists say the findings challenge assumptions about how dogs were tamed from wolves and came to live alongside humans.
Previous evidence has suggested that the domestication process may have given dogs a more tolerant temperament.

"We still have very much this idea of the big, bad wolf and the cuddly pooch on your sofa," Dr Sarah Marshall-Pescini, who led the research, told BBC News.

"But, I think the simplest message is that the story is not quite as clear as that."

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Whisper it – Greek amphitheatre's legendary acoustics are a myth

Epidaurus. Ancient Greeks might have used all manner of devices to amplify sound, including placing hollow vessels at strategic locations.

Photograph: DEA / S. VANNINI/De Agostini/Getty Images

It has been held up as a stunning example of ancient Greek sound engineering, but researchers say the acoustics of the amphitheatre at Epidaurus are not as dazzling as they have been hailed.

Dating from the fourth century BC, and seating up to 14,000 spectators, the amphitheatre has long been admired for its sound quality, with claims that audiences are able to hear a pin drop, or a match being struck, at any seat in the house. Even the British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler raved about the amphitheatre, declaring in clipped tones in a 1958 broadcast: “Even a stage whisper could be picked up by the furthest spectator with the cheapest ticket.”

But new research suggests such assertions are little more than Greek myth.

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Prehistoric humans are likely to have formed mating networks to avoid inbreeding

Early humans seem to have recognized the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found.

Detail of one of the burials from Sunghir, in Russia. The new study sequenced the genomes of individuals from the site and discovered that they were, at most, second cousins, indicating that they had developed sexual partnerships beyond their immediate social and family group.

Credit: By José-Manuel Benito Álvarez (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Early humans seem to have recognised the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found.

The study, reported in the journal Science, examined genetic information from the remains of anatomically modern humans who lived during the Upper Palaeolithic, a period when modern humans from Africa first colonised western Eurasia. The results suggest that people deliberately sought partners beyond their immediate family, and that they were probably connected to a wider network of groups from within which mates were chosen, in order to avoid becoming inbred.

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Ax Linked to Ötzi the Iceman Found North of the Alps

Apart from a few scratches, the 2.6-inch-long (6.5 centimeters) blade is undamaged. 

Credit: Res Eichenberger

Archaeologists found a copper blade in Switzerland that's just like the ax Ötzi the famous "Iceman"was carrying when he died.

Like Ötzi's ax, this tool was made with copper that came from hundreds of miles away, in present-day Tuscany in central Italy. The discovery could shed light on Copper Age connections across Europe.

Bad fortune eventually made Ötzi the Iceman famous. About 5,300 years ago, he was shot with an arrow, struck in the head and left to die near a mountain pass high in the Alps. He was entombed in a glacier until 1991, when hikers near the Italian-Austrian border discovered his body.

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Mysterious Stone Tools Unearthed at Bronze-Age Site in Wales

The stone tools found by the CRAG team vary in size, from around 220 millimeters (8.5 inches) in length, down to about 50 millimeters (2 inches).

Credit: Ian Brooks/CRAG

Amateur archaeologists excavating a Bronze Age site in the United Kingdom have discovered a cache of unusual stone tools unlike any that have been found before.

The tools appear to have been deposited deliberately — perhaps ceremonially — in what would have been a stream around 4,500 years ago, according to the researchers.

Around 20 of the roughly triangular stone hand tools, of various sizes, were found at the excavation site in the Clwydian Range, a series of hills in Denbighshire in northeast Wales, by the Clwydian Range Archaeological Group (CRAG) during four weeks of excavations in July and August. [See More Photos of the Stone Tools at the Bronze-Age Site]

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Antikythera Shipwreck Yields More Amazing Finds

For the third consecutive year, the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities has conducted an underwater excavation at the site of the Antikythera shipwreck. Work was carried out between the 4th and the 20th of September, under particularly good weather conditions, as has been announced by the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Finds from the excavation at the site of the Shipwreck of Antikythera 

[Credit: Ministry of Culture and Sports]

During research, excavations continued in the sea area, from where come the remains of skeletons from last year’s operation, as well as components from the ship itself such as: sections of lead tubing, counterweights and aggregates of iron objects. At the same time, a multitude of shards of amphorae and other vessels were recovered in this year’s excavation season.

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Antikythera shipwreck yields bronze arm – and hints at spectacular haul of statues

Arm points to existence of at least seven statues from Greek shipwreck, already the source of most extensive and exciting ancient cargo ever found

This bronze arm was discovered with a bespoke underwater metal detector, which has revealed the presence of other large metal objects nearby under the seabed. 

Photograph: Brett Seymour/EUA/ARGO 2017

Marine archaeologists have recovered a bronze arm from an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, where the remains of at least seven more priceless statues from the classical world are believed to lie buried.

Divers found the right arm, encrusted and stained green, under half a metre of sediment on the boulder-strewn slope where the ship and its cargo now rest. The huge vessel, perhaps 50m from bow to stern, was sailing from Asia Minor to Rome in 1BC when it foundered near the tiny island between Crete and the Peloponnese.

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