We are running circles... Thanks so much Pete for the cleaning.
We will seriously considering a radical change of the website over the Xmas period. And this forum is giving us much more headaches than something to be proud of or happy.

And Anew, thanks for the detailed info and suggestions: something definitely worth pondering upon.

It looks those darn hackers were waiting for the forum to reopen. Just after a few hours they attacked us again, defacing the home page of the forum and putting in some very nasty code.

Now we cleared up everything, but again we are wondering if it is really worth the effort to keep this forum going...

Diego

Dear friends,
We spent too many hours trying to get rid of spammers, hackers and other malicious users from this forum. And we must say that we are start thinking if all this really is worth the effort.

As you already know, nowadays discussions are being held on social networks and a forum like this one is in sharp decline. Part of the reason is that we simply don't have the time to follow this forum as we would have liked - and our absence is clearly detrimental.

However, we would really like to get some feedback from you: shall we keep this forum down? Or is it better to keep it barely alive as it is now?

We're open to any suggestion you may have.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Diego & Paola

The Laboratoire de Tribologie et de Dynamiques des Systèmes have analyzed the oldest obsidian bracelet ever identified, discovered in the 1990s at the site of Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey; the researchers have revealed the astounding technical expertise of craftsmen in the eighth millennium BCE. This work is published in the December 2011 issue of Journal of Archaeological Science, and sheds new light on Neolithic societies.
      Dated to 7500 BCE, the obsidian bracelet studied by the researchers is the earliest evidence of obsidian working, which only reached its peak in the seventh and sixth millennia BCE. It has a complex shape and a remarkable central annular ridge, and is 10 cm in diameter and 3.3 cm wide. Discovered in 1995 at the site of Asıklı Höyük in Turkey and displayed ever since at the Aksaray Archeological Museum, the ring was studied in 2009, after Mihriban Özbasaran, Professor at the University of Istanbul's Department of Prehistory, resumed excavations.
      Laurence Astruc, a CNRS researcher and her colleagues analyzed the bracelet using technologies developed by LTDS researchers Hassan Zahouani (ENISE) and Roberto Vargiolu (ECL). These methods, known as multi-scale tribological analysis, have been adapted for the study of micro-topographic features on archeological artefacts. They seek to identify every single operation performed on the surface of these objects.
      This process has revealed that the bracelet was made using highly specialized manufacturing techniques. The analyses carried out showed that the bracelet was almost perfectly regular. The symmetry of the central annular ridge is extremely precise, to the nearest degree and nearest hundred micrometers. This suggests that the artisans of the time used models to control its shape when it was being made. The surface finish of the bracelet (which is very regular, resembling a mirror) required the use of complex polishing techniques capable of obtaining a nanometer-scale surface quality worthy of today's telescope lenses.
      The work was carried out as part of the 'Obsidian: Practical Techniques and Uses in Anatolia' program. In the program, the Asıklı Höyük bracelet is the first object to have been studied among some sixty other polished obsidian artefacts. In collaboration with the University of Manchester and the British Museum, Laurence Astruc's team is now analyzing ornamental objects found at the Halaf sites of Domuztepe in Eastern Central Anatolia and Arpachiyyah in Iraq.

Edited from PhysOrg.com (21 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004661

A prehistoric settlement from the early and late Iron Age and several remains from 1,000 BCE to II-III century CE have been discovered at the site of Bare, southern Serbia.
      Several objects dating from the Iron Age were found on an area covering about three hectares, said the head of the team, Maja Djordjevic of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia. The items found, said Djordjevic, point to a rich life at the site, where there used to be a large settlement at the time.
      Due to torrential rains and intensive agriculture at the location, the multilayer site Bare is now largely destroyed. "Had the site been investigated in the sixties of the last century, the findings would have been far richer, unveiling more significant evidence," Djordjevic said.

Edited from ANSAmed (20 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004660

Lead researcher Nikolai Ovodov of the Russian Academy of Science "was immediately suspicious that there was something different" about the 33,000-year-old canine skull found in a cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.
      Odvodov turned to evolutionary biologist Susan Crockford, adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia (Canada) - a specialist in the biology of ancient dogs, and an expert in dog domestication among aboriginal nations in North America - for help in analysing the specimen and comparing it with other early cases of canine evolution.
      "It doesn't meet all of the criteria for what we consider to be a fully domesticated dog," she said; "It's got some evidence that it is part-way through the process... It's smaller than a wolf but it still has wolf-sized teeth."
      Crockford - part of a six-member team of researchers from Russia, Britain, the USA and the Netherlands - said the process of domestication "was, in most cases, entirely natural" and not really a "human accomplishment," which began when wolves began living at the fringes of human encampments and scavenging meals from piles of the discarded bones of human-hunted game.
      "Traditional anthropological definitions of domestication consider the process to be a deliberate act of selection by humans," the published study states. "However, this view has been challenged in recent years by the hypothesis that animals colonised anthropogenic environments of their own volition and evolved into new species via natural evolutionary processes. ... After initial changes occurred, the resulting new species were modified during their association with people via natural adaptation, human selection, and genetic drift."
      It is believed the wolf-dog lineage seen in the Altai Mountains specimen did not continue through the Ice Age that took hold of the region beginning some 25,000 years ago.

Edited from Postmedia News, The Vancouver Sun (19 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004659

A new paper in Archaeology in Wales, produced by Dr Rob Ixer of Leicester University and Dr Richard Bevins of Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales), confirms for the first time the exact origin of some the rhyolite found at Stonehenge, which could lead to important conclusions about how stones were transported from Pembrokeshire to Stonehenge.
      Bevins and Ixer have been carefully collecting and identifying samples from rock outcrops in Pembrokeshire to try and locate the provenance of rocks at one of the world’s most iconic archaeological sites.
      Their discovery confirms that the Stonehenge rhyolite originates from a specific 70 metre long area called Craig Rhos-y-felin near Pont Saeson. Using petrography, Ixer and Bevins found that 99% of these rhyolites could be matched to rocks found in this particular set of outcrops. Rhyolitic rocks at Rhos-y-felin are distinctly different from all others in South Wales, which gives almost all of Stonehenge rhyolites a provenance of just hundreds of square metres.
      What is more, along the crags, the rhyolites are distinctly different on a scale of metres or tens of metres. This has enabled Bevins and Ixer to match some samples even more precisely to the extreme northeastern end of the area - small enough for archaeologists to excavate to try and uncover evidence for associated human activity.
      In addition, the work carried out at Rhos-y-felin confirms that the four remaining above surface rhyolite and dacite menhirs at Stonehenge do not come from Rhos-y-felin and work is in hand to determine if their source can be identified.

Edited from Mike Pitts Blog (17 December 2011), The Independent (18 December 2011), BBC News, Past Horizons (19 December 2011), Yahoo! News (20 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004658

Researchers at the Universities of Manchester (UK) and Barcelona (Spain) studying 390 human skulls from Hallstatt, Austria, have shown that changes to skull shape long thought to have been separate events may actually be connected.
      The skulls are part of a famous collection; local tradition dictates that the remains of the town's dead are buried but later exhumed to make space for future burials. The skulls are decorated with paintings and, crucially, bear the name of the deceased. The Barcelona team made measurements of the skulls and collected genealogical data from records of births, marriages and deaths, allowing them to investigate the inheritance of skull shape.
      The team tested whether certain parts of the skull changed independently, as anthropologists have always believed, or were in some way linked. They found that, rather than being separate evolutionary events, changes in one part of the brain would facilitate and even drive changes in the other parts.
      According to Dr Chris Klingenberg, of Manchester University's Faculty of Life Sciences, "We were able to use the genetic information to simulate what would happen if selection were to favour particular shape changes in the skull. For each of the simulations, we obtained a predicted response that included not only the change we selected for, but also all the others. All those features of the skull tended to change as a whole package. This means that, in evolutionary history, any of the changes may have facilitated the evolution of the others."
      Lead author Dr Neus Martínez-Abadías, from the University of Barcelona, added: "This study has important implications for inferences on human evolution and suggests the need for a reinterpretation of the evolutionary scenarios of the skull in modern humans."

Edited from ScienceDaily (20 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004657

Results from collaborators in California, Iran, Taiwan and Israel, suggest that European and American breeds were much more influenced by dogs from Southeast Asia than by ancient Western dogs or by dogs from the Middle East, as was previously thought.
      "The two most hotly debated theories propose that dogs originated in Southeast Asia or the Middle East," said study co-author Ben Sacks, director of the Canid Diversity and Conservation Group in the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory of the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine (USA). The laboratory is an international leader in animal genetics research and provides DNA testing and forensic analysis for numerous wildlife, companion animal and livestock species.
      "In contrast to those theories, our findings suggest that modern European and American dogs are overwhelmingly derived from dogs that were imported from Asia since the silk trade, rather than having descended directly from ancient dogs native to Europe," Sacks said.
      Other findings from the study demonstrate that Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian village dogs must have originated from a common gene pool thousands of years ago, or from distinct groups of wolves or wolf-like dogs.
      In order to compare the evolutionary relationships between the dogs of Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the researchers analysed DNA samples from 642 canines: 9 wild members of the dog family, and 633 domestic dogs. The domestic dogs were mostly from villages in the Middle East and Southeast Asia; they also included Australian dingoes, desert-bred salukis, which are Middle Eastern sight hounds, and 93 purebred dogs representing 35 other breeds.
      The village dogs of Southeast Asia and the Middle East were chosen because they are considered to have developed independently of modern breeds and are likely to reflect the genetics of ancient dogs of their regions. The Australian dingoes and Bali dogs were included because they have been isolated from other canine populations for thousands of years.

Edited from PhysOrg.com (20 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004656

After more than 40 days of excavation, archeologists found an about 5,000-year-old Yangshao culture site in Zezhou county of Shanxi province. A well-persevered pottery kiln dating back to the Xia and Shang dynasties over 4,000 years ago was unearthed, providing valuable information about ancient ceramic firing techniques. Liu Yan, an archeologist from the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, said they found the well-preserved pottery kiln in Pit No. 25. The kiln still works well and has great research value.
   The Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the central Yellow River in China. It is dated from around 5000 BCE to 3000 BCE. The culture is named after Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, which was discovered in 1921 in Henan Province by the Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson.

Edited from Xinhuanet (22 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004655

Heritage Minister John Penrose has protected one of the UK's most outstanding historical sites whose importance has been established through work by the University of York's Department of Archaeology. On the advice of English Heritage, the early Mesolithic site at Star Carr, North Yorkshire is being made a scheduled monument for its rarity and archaeological importance.
      The designation provides legal protection for the site where last year a team of archaeologists, from York and the University of Manchester, discovered Britain's earliest surviving house. The house dates to at least 9,000 BCE - when Britain was part of continental Europe. The research team unearthed the 3.5 metres circular structure next to an ancient lake at the site, near Scarborough. They also excavated a well preserved 11,000 year-old tree trunk with its bark still intact and the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe.
      Nick Bridgland, Designation Team Leader for the North at English Heritage, said: "The remains at Star Carr, including what may be the earliest building known in Britain, are unequalled in British archaeology and designation as a Scheduled Ancient Monument recognises this importance. Scheduling Star Carr will help archaeologists manage the site effectively and carry out critically important excavations to recover the rapidly decaying remains so we can all learn as much as possible about this fascinating period of prehistory."
      Dr Nicky Milner from the University of York and Dr Chantal Conneller and Barry Taylor from the University of Manchester have worked at Star Carr since 2004.  Dr Conneller said: "The scheduling of Star Carr confirms its position as Britain's most important Mesolithic site. We are delighted that the finds from our excavations - in particular the house and the wooden platform - have increased our understanding of such an iconic site."

Edited from ArtDaily (22 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004654

'Potentially Bronze Age' artefacts found at Anglesey Abbey (a country house in the village of Lode, 9 km northeast of Cambridge, England) could prove the site was occupied up to 2,000 years earlier than had been thought. The discoveries were made during work to build a new car park at the National Trust property near Cambridge.
      Cambridge Archaeological Unit said the site, containing possible roundhouses, a granary, pottery and a shale bracelet fragment, could have been a farmstead. The features uncovered are believed to date from the late Bronze Age to the middle Iron Age (1000 BCE to 100 BCE). They include possible storage pits which contained pottery, animal bones, and burnt stones which were thought to have been used for cooking food.
      Before the excavation, historians believed occupation of the site could only be traced as far back as the early 1100s when Henry I had a hospital built there.
      Analysis of the findings is being carried out by the archaeology unit, which is part of Cambridge University. It is hoped the artefacts will eventually be put on public display at Anglesey Abbey.

Edited from BBC News (19n December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004653

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 44,000 year old Neanderthal building that was constructed using the bones from mammoths. The circular building, which was up to 26 feet across at its widest point, is believed to be earliest example of domestic dwelling built from bone.
      Neanderthals were initially thought to have been relatively primitive nomads that lived in natural caves for shelter. The new findings, however, suggest these ancient human ancestors had settled in areas to the degree that they built structures where they lived for extended periods of time. Analysis by researchers from the Muséum National d'Histories Naturelle in Paris also found that many of the bones had been decorated with carvings and ochre pigments.
      Laëtitia Demay, an archaeologist who led the research, said: "It appears that Neanderthals were the oldest known humans who used mammoth bones to build a dwelling structure. This mammoth bone structure could be described as the basement of a wooden cover or as a windscreen. Neanderthals purposely chose large bones of the largest available mammal, the woolly mammoth, to build a structure. The mammoth bones have been deliberately selected and were circularly arranged. Under a cold climate in an open environment, the lack of wood led humans to use bones to build protections against the wind."
      The bone structure was found near the town of Molodova in eastern Ukraine on a site that was first discovered in 1984. It was constructed of 116 large bones including mammoth skulls, jaws, 14 tusks and leg bones. Inside at least 25 hearths filled with ash were also discovered, suggesting it had been used for some time. The researchers believe that the Neanderthals both hunted and killed the mammoths for meat before using their bones but also collected some of the bones from animals that had died of natural causes.
      Simon Underdown, a senior lecturer in biological anthropology who researches Neanderthals at Oxford Brookes University, said: "It's another piece in the newly emerging Neanderthal jigsaw puzzle. Far from being the stupid cavemen of popular image it's becoming increasingly clear the Neanderthals were a highly sophisticated species of human. We can now add shelter building to the list of advanced behaviours that includes burying the dead, spoken language, cooking and wearing jewellery."





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004652

One of the Jerseys's most valuable archeological treasures, an extremely rare jade ring, has been returned to the island - a British Crown Dependency off the coast of France. The Neolithic polished stone was thought to have been lost to the island in 1993, when it was sold to a private collector. But the Societe Jersiaise received a donation from one of its members towards an auction bid.
      Together with Jersey Heritage and the support of archeologists at the Prehistoric Society, the British Museum and the Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique France, they managed to buy it at a Christies Auction in New York earlier this month, for $17,500. It will now be returned to the island where it will go on show, first at Jersey Museum and then La Hougue Bie.
      The ring, which was discovered in 1986 is made from stone, quarried high in the Alps. It was one of the few highly valued objects brought to the island by the first colonising farmers more than 7000 years ago.
      Curator of Archaeology at Jersey Heritage, Olga Finch, said: "The jadeite ring is one of the finest in Western Europe and I'm thrilled this important part of our heritage is coming back for everyone to enjoy. It's incredible to think that as an important symbol of power and prestige, this beautiful stone ring passed hand to hand from its source in the Alps all the way to Jersey, 7,000 years ago. The skills and craftsmanship involved in making it demonstrates just how sophisticated our Neolithic ancestors were."

Edited from Channel Online TV (16 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004651

Modern humans possess brain structures larger than their Neanderthal counterparts, suggesting we are distinguished from them by different mental capacities. We are currently the only extant human lineage, but Neanderthals, our closest-known evolutionary relatives, still walked the Earth as recently as 24,000 years ago.
      To find out more, researchers used CT scanners to map the interiors of five Neanderthal skulls as well as four fossil and 75 contemporary human skulls to determine the shapes of their brains in three dimensions. The investigators discovered modern humans possess larger olfactory bulbs at the base of their brains. This area is linked primarily with smell, but also with other key mental functions such as memory and learning. Intriguingly, smell may also play a social role, such as for recognising family and friends and reinforcing group cohesion.
      Compared with Neanderthals, modern humans also possess larger temporal lobes, an area near the base of the brain. "Neuroscientists relate temporal lobes with language functions, long-term memory, theory of mind (the ability to consider the perspective of others), and also emotions," says Markus Bastir, a paleo-anthropologist at Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, in Madrid. We also have a relatively wider orbito-frontal cortex than Neanderthals, a part of the brain immediately above the eyes. The area is linked with decision-making.
      All in all, it remains unclear exactly how these brain differences might have set us apart from Neanderthals, Bastir cautioned. We only know how these skulls moulded themselves around these brains, and not the precise structures of the brains in question.

Edited from LiveScience (13 December 2011), ScienceDaily (14 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004650

Oetzi's body was discovered in 1991 inside a glacier near the mountainous border between Italy and Austria, where it had been naturally mummified about 5300 years ago.
      Previous analysis concluded Oetzi's stomach was almost empty of food, but Albert Zink (of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, in Bolzano, Italy) and his colleagues realised that the empty 'stomach' was in fact a section of Oetzi's colon, and that the real stomach, which had been forced upwards under the iceman's ribs, actually contains plenty of partially digested ibex meat - suggesting that Oetzi enjoyed a hearty meal very shortly before he was shot from behind with an arrow.
      Oetzi had three gallstones, suggesting a diet rich in animal fat. Previous work showed his arteries were full of fatty deposits. His knees show evidence of wear associated with hiking in mountainous terrain.

Edited from NewScientist (11 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004649

A portion of a spear point shaped from chert has emerged from 2.4 metres below a city parking lot along the Cedar River, in the city of Cedar Rapids (Iowa, USA). David Benn, research coordinator and principal investigator for Bear Creek Archeology of Cresco, Iowa, calls the find of the Hardaway spear point - named for a site in the state of North Carolina - 'significant', and a rare event in the state of Iowa and the Midwest region.
      Its estimated age, about 9,500 years, comes from its similarity to spear points from more extensively studied sites, Benn explains. Benn says that 9,500 years ago people had already been in the area for a couple thousand years, and describes the spear point as very thin and technologically advanced over projectile points from an earlier time.
      The archeological work is taking place on the east side of the Cedar River, in advance of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control project. The dig also turned up prehistoric pieces of pottery from the Late Woodland Period of 1,000 to 1,500 years ago and the Middle Woodland period of about 2,000 years ago.

Edited from Eastern Iowa Government (9 December 2011)





Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage..._12.html#004648