Prehistoric henge unearthed in Kent

An “incredible” prehistoric henge has been unearthed during an archeological dig in Sittingbourne. The Bronze Age find at the Meads in Sonora Fields is the first of its kind to be confirmed and excavated in Swale.

An aerial view of the site [Credit: Canterbury Archaeological Trust]

Experts said the Neolithic monument “would have been a significant feature on the landscape”, and its discovery centuries later at the centre of a busy housing estate could turn into a future mecca for historians.

Dr John Hammond, a specialist in prehistory at Canterbury Archeological Trust, which carried out the work, said: “This is an incredibly important site. It’s the second confirmed henge monument to be found in Kent [the first was in Ringlemere near Sandwich] and dates back to the period of Stone Henge. It’s incredibly exciting and we look forward to finding out more about how our ancestors lived 5,000 years ago. At the moment it’s a site of regional importance, but in two years’ time we could be talking about one of national importance.”

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Neanderthal clues to cancer origins

A Neanderthal living 120,000 years ago had a cancer that is common today, according to a fossil study.

A fossilised Neanderthal rib found in a shallow cave at Krapina, Croatia, shows signs of a bone tumour.

The discovery is the oldest evidence yet of a tumour in the human fossil record, say US scientists.

The research, published in the journal PLOS One, gives clues to the complex history of cancer in humans.

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Archaeologists find evidence French winemaking had roots in Italy

The earliest evidence of wine in France suggests that it came from Italy, and that it was mixed with basil, thyme and other herbs, according to new research.

This early wine may have been used as medicine, and likely was imbibed by the wealthy and powerful before eventually becoming a popular beverage enjoyed by the masses, researchers said.

The artefacts found at the French port site of Lattara, near the southern city of Montpellier, suggest that winemaking took root in France as early as 500 BC, as a result of libations and traditions introduced by the ancient Etruscans in what is now Italy.

The analysis in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is based on ancient wine containers and a limestone press brought by seafaring Etruscan travellers.

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3000-year-old dolmens throw light on last rites

In a discovery that is expected to throw light on burial or funeral practices in the Southern parts of the state in the pre-historic era, a group of archaeologists on Sunday found four dolmens (portal tombs) that are believed to be more than 3,000 years old at Amairkaradu near the Western Ghats in Palani.

The site where four 3,000-year-old dolmens were found by an archaeological team near the Western Ghats, close to Palani in Dindigul district, on Sunday [Credit: Indian Express]

V. Narayanamoorthy, Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Archaeology Research Institute, who led the team that discovered the relics, told Express that the find confirms Palani’s importance as a major site that has several traces of ancient history.

“For the past five months, we found many inscriptions and stone structures in Palani,” Narayanamoorthy affirmed. He explained that the dolmens would help archaeologists understand ancient funeral rites that had long existed in Tamil Nadu.

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New Biomolecular Archaeological Evidence Points to the Beginnings of Viniculture in France

This is an ancient pressing platform from Lattara, seen from above. Note the spout for drawing off a liquid. It was raised off the courtyard floor by four stones. Masses of grape remains were found nearby. (Credit: Photograph courtesy of Michael Py, copyright l'Unité de Fouilles et de Recherches Archéologiques de Lattes.)

France is renowned the world over as a leader in the crafts of viticulture and winemaking -- but the beginnings of French viniculture have been largely unknown, until now.

Imported ancient Etruscan amphoras and a limestone press platform, discovered at the ancient port site of Lattara in southern France, have provided the earliest known biomolecular archaeological evidence of grape wine and winemaking -- and point to the beginnings of a Celtic or Gallic vinicultural industry in France circa 500-400 BCE. Details of the discovery are published as "The Beginning of Viniculture in France" in the June 3, 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Dr. Patrick McGovern, Director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and author of Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture (Princeton University Press, 2006) is the lead author on the paper, which was researched and written in collaboration with colleagues from France and the United States.

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Bronze Age boats 'more sophisticated' than assumed

Conservation work has started on eight preserved and extremely rare Bronze Age log boats excavated from a brick manufacturing clay quarry near Peterborough.

The 3,500-year-old boats were discovered in 2011 and will be conserved using techniques pioneered for the Mary Rose.

Jo Black went to meet some of the people behind the project.

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Peterborough Bronze Age boats conservation begins

Eight 4,000-year-old boats found in a quarry in Cambridgeshire are being preserved with the same techniques used on the Mary Rose Tudor warship.

The vessels were discovered by archaeologists as they excavated a section of a quarry at Must Farm near Peterborough in 2011.

The boats are being kept in cold storage at Flag Fen, where they will be sprayed with a special wax.

The two-year project will stop the ancient timbers from degrading.

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Preserving a piece of history

One of the Bronze Age boats being preserved. Photo: ITV News Anglia

Eight Bronze Age wooden boats discovered in a quarry in Peterborough are now being conserved at the city's Flag Fen archaeological centre.

The 4,000 year old vessels are being kept cold and wet to stop them from deteriorating.

The boats are being treated with the same chemical process that preserved the Tudor warship, the Mary Rose.

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How prehistoric people expressed creativity and identity

Research by archaeologists at the University of Southampton and the Natural History Museum Vienna  will be showcased in London at a special prehistoric fashion show event – staged as part of an international Humanities festival, ‘The Time and the Place’.

Clothing and jewellery displayed on the catwalk will demonstrate findings of a three-year collaborative research project called ‘Creativity and Craft Production in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe’ (CinBA).

Making the leap

The project explores how prehistoric people dressed and expressed creativity and identity through pottery, metalwork and textiles during the period 1800-500 BC.

University of Southampton archaeologist Dr Jo Sofaer, who is leading CinBA, says:  “I’m interested in finding out what drove Bronze Age people to make the leap from clothing which was purely functional – to using clothes, along with metalwork and accessories, as a form of expression.

“It is well understood that the Bronze Age saw huge advances in techniques to produce clothes, pottery and metal objects, but the wealth of creativity employed when making these goods is little recognised or researched.

“The clothing collections we’ll be exhibiting at the fashion show demonstrate the intricate weaves, patterns and striking colours prehistoric people used in their dress.”

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Ape-like feet 'found in study of museum visitors'

Bonobos have bendy feet to help them grip branches

Scientists have discovered that about one in thirteen people have flexible ape-like feet.

A team studied the feet of 398 visitors to the Boston Museum of Science.

The results show differences in foot bone structure similar to those seen in fossils of a member of the human lineage from two million years ago.

It is hoped the research, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, will establish how that creature moved.

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Scandalous Construction in Bulgarian Black Sea Archaeology Site Halted

Photos of the illegal construction started circulating Bulgarian social networks on Saturday.

Municipal authorities have ordered a temporary stop of work on a construction site in the area of a protected archaeology site along Bulgaria's Black Sea coast.

The ongoing rapid construction was apparently started just ahead of Sunday's early general elections in Bulgaria, and raised among an outcry among environmentalistsand the general public.

The site appears to fall within the area of the Yaylata National ArchaeologicalReserve, located in a scenic area near the village of Kamen Bryag.

Monday Bulgaria's Ministry of Environment announced it has found that the ongoing construction does not comply with the construction permit issued.

The permit refers to "Reconstruction of a roof and masonry of a fisherman's hut," while builders have already erected two stories of a massive concrete building.

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Prehistoric ear bones could lead to evolutionary answers

Tiny ear bones (from left) the incus, stapes, and malleus could provide big clues to human evolution. Credit: Texas A&M

The tiniest bones in the human body – the bones of the middle ear – could provide huge clues about our evolution and the development of modern-day humans, according to a study by a team of researchers that include a Texas A&M University anthropologist.

Darryl de Ruiter, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Binghamton University (the State University of New York) and researchers from Spain and Italy have published their work in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science).

The team examined the skull of a hominin believed to be about 1.9 million years old and found in a cave called Swartkrans, in South Africa. Of particular interest to the team were bones found in the middle ear, especially one called the malleus. It and the other ear bones – the incus and the stapes – together show a mixture of ape-like and human-like features, and represent the first time all three bones have been found together in one skull.

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DNA reveals origin of Greece's ancient Minoan culture

The palace of Knossos on Crete is now a major tourist attraction

Europe's first advanced civilisation was local in origin and not imported from elsewhere, a study says.

Analysis of DNA from ancient remains on the Greek island of Crete suggests the Minoans were indigenous Europeans, shedding new light on a debate over the provenance of this ancient culture.

Scholars have variously argued the Bronze Age civilisation arrived from Africa, Anatolia or the Middle East.

Details appear in Nature Communications journal.

The concept of the Minoan civilisation was first developed by Sir Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist who unearthed the Bronze Age palace of Knossos on Crete.

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Early Greek states beyond the 'polis'

The Greek polis, as a political and territorial entity, is a remarkable social organisation that emerged in the Greek world after the collapse of the Mycenaean palace system and the “transition” period that followed. Because of its very distinctive character within the ancient world, the city-state dominates the study of Greek history. But how did this start and how can it be recorded?

Lefkandi on the island of Euboea and was extensively occupied since the
Early Bronze Age (roughly 2100 BC) to the end of the Geometric
period (ca 700 BC) [Credit: ULB]

Scholars often link the polis with communal rites and feasting in sacred or public spaces and they consider that these activities were a means to enhance the territory or group cohesion. Earlier literature has discussed cult and burial practices for periods earlier than the formation of the polis. However, what is missing is an up-to-date study of collective ceremonies from the Post Palatial period (ca 12th-11th c. BC) to the Archaic period (6th c. BC) where complex communal practices would be examined within a wider social context and, more importantly, beyond the structure of the Greek polis.

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Earliest evidence of human ancestors as hunters/scavengers found

A U.S. anthropologist says a dig in Africa has revealed the earliest evidence of humans involved in hunting and scavenging as food acquisition strategies.

Around 2 million years ago early stone tool-making humans known as Oldowan hominin started to exhibit a number of physiological and ecological adaptations -- an increase in brain and body size, heavier investment in their offspring and significant home-range expansion -- that required greater daily energy expenditures, and there has been debate about how those early humans acquired that extra energy.

A wealth of archaeological evidence from a site in Kenya known as Kanjera South, or KJS, including animal bones and rudimentary stone tools, suggests they met their new energy requirements through an increased reliance on meat eating, Baylor University anthropologist Joseph Ferraro said.

"Considered in total, this study provides important early archaeological evidence for meat eating, hunting and scavenging behaviors -- cornerstone adaptations that likely facilitated brain expansion in human evolution, movement of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia, as well as important shifts in our social behavior, anatomy and physiology," he said.


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Heavy equipment invades İstanbul excavation site, harming Neolithic ruins

An archeologist examines a human skeleton found during construction in İstanbul's Pendik district. (Photo: AA, Şebnem Coşkun)

Heavy equipment belonging to a construction firm that is working on the long-expected Marmaray project -- an undersea commuter train connecting İstanbul's Asian and European sides -- invaded an excavation site in Yenikapı and has damaged remnants dating back to the Neolithic Age.

Archaeological excavation started in 2004 at the Yenikapı Marmaray construction site, reaching 8,500 years into the history of İstanbul. Skeletons, chapel remains, water wells, footprints, the world's best-preserved shipwreck and a merchant vessel, whose contents and wooden parts are in exceptionally good condition, have been uncovered by archaeologists so far. The excavations are still going on at the site, but the Marmaray construction firm interrupted the work when its heavy equipment invaded the excavation site on May 11, not thinking of any possible damage that it might cause to objects as yet unrevealed.

According to a Radikal daily report on Monday, without considering the warnings and concerns of archaeologists, the management of the construction firm insisted on continuing their work at the Neolithic site, which carries great importance in terms of shedding light on the history of world civilization. The construction firm started its activities at the site without informing the Cultural and Natural Assets Conservation Board and the İstanbul Archaeology Museum. Now, archaeologists, universities and nongovernmental organizations have called on state officials to stop the heavy equipment that might eliminate their chances of finding new artifacts.

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Unique workshop of Palaeolithic hunters discovered in Silesia

The digital model of a biface discovered in the area of the site. Below, a schematic tool cross section showing the method of making of plano-convex form. Scanning by M. Mackiewicz

More than a thousand flint tools and waste generated on during their treatment were discovered near Pietrowice Wielkie (Silesia) by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław - told PAP head researcher Dr. Andrzej Wiśniewski.

The flint workshops, remains of which were found by archaeologists, had been used by Neanderthals. The researchers are waiting for more detailed information on the site dating. The workshop is certainly more than 45 thousand years old.

"Tools were made by a specific canon of Neanderthals living in Central Europe. These items have a cutting edge on both sides, they are bifacial" - said Dr. Wiśniewski.

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Ancient wooden boat found in the Boyne river

Find made as shopping trolleys removed from river

Sean Cahill of the Boyne Fishermen’s Rescue and Recovery Service beside the log boat. Photograph: BFRRS

An ancient log-boat, possibly thousands of years old, has been discovered partly embedded in the banks of the River Boyne in Drogheda, possibly where it originally sank.

An initial examination by specialist archaeologist Karl Brady, suggests it could be unique because, unlike other dug-outs or log boats found in the Republic, it has a pair of oval shaped blisters on the upper edge.

Such features were “ very rare”.

“I have seen them on some boats found in Northern Ireland and Britain but not in Ireland. They could have been used for holding oars,” said Mr Brady, who is an underwater archaeologist with the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

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Neolithic huts built at Old Sarum by English Heritage

The aim is to build these Neolithic huts at the Stonehenge visitor next year

Three Neolithic-style huts have been built at Old Sarum to learn more about how the builders of Stonehenge lived.

The huts, made of chalk and straw daub and wheat-thatched roofing, have been based on archaeological remains found at Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge.

Project leader Luke Winter said: "What we're trying to do is get a sense of what these buildings looked like above-ground."

The hope is to re-build the huts at Stonehenge visitor centre next year.

Mr Winter added: "What makes the buildings interesting is that they were dated to about the same time as the large Sarson stones were being erected at Stonehenge.

"One of the theories is that these may have housed the people that were helping with construction of that monument."

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Toba super-volcano catastrophe idea 'dismissed'

Toba traces: The volcanic glass fragments are thinner than human hair

The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say.

In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals.

An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe.

It could find none.

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