Bronze Age boat replica fails to float

A half-size replica of Dover's Bronze Age boat started to sink as it was lowered into the water at Dover Marina (Kent, England), and had to be hoisted out again after a few minutes.
     A team of craftsmen and archaeologists had been working for several months to build the boat, using the same tools and methods as when the original was built more than 3,500 years ago.
     The team, though disappointed, were undeterred, and said they would continue their work. "We are hopeful that we can think again and make the boat good," said archaeologist Peter Clark who has led the project, named "Ole Crumlin-Pederson" after a Danish archaeologist who had worked on the project, but died before it was completed.

Edited from East Kent Mercury (16 May 2012)

  Prehistoric farming village discovered in Cyprus

The oldest agricultural settlement ever found on a Mediterranean island has been discovered in Cyprus by a team of French archaeologists. Previously it was believed that the first Neolithic farming societies did not reach Cyprus until a thousand years after the birth of agriculture in the Middle East (circa 9500 to 9400 BCE), however the discovery of a village dating from nearly 9000 BCE proves that early cultivators migrated to Cyprus shortly after the emergence of agriculture, bringing wheat as well as dogs and cats, demonstrating that they had already mastered maritime navigation at the dawn of the Neolithic period.
     The Klimonas site has yielded the remnants of a half-buried mud brick communal building used to store the village's harvests, 10 meters in diameter and surrounded by dwellings. A few votive offerings have been found inside the building, including flint arrowheads and green stone beads. A great many remnants of other objects, including flint chips, stone tools and shell adornments, have been discovered in the village. The stone tools and the structures resemble those found at Neolithic sites from the same period on the nearby continent.
     Remains of carbonised seeds of local plants and grains introduced from the Levantine coasts have also been found - including emmer, one of the first Middle Eastern wheats. Analysis of bone remains revealed that the meat consumed came from the hunting of a small wild boar native to the island.

Edited from PhysOrg (15 May 2012)

  Upper Palaeolithic revealed at Mas d'Azil cave

Mas d'Azil is an immense cave, and one of the major prehistoric sites in France. The first research was carried out in 1860, with Felix Garrigou presenting the general stratigraphy in 1867. Edouard Piette conducted extensive excavations from 1887-1889, recovering thousands of flint tools and hundreds of portable art objects.
     It was Piette who defined the Azilian culture. Between the Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic (10,000 to 7,500 BP), this Epi-palaeolithic culture was characterised by red deer antler harpoons with an elongated perforation at the base, very short end-scrapers, and more or less geometric projectile elements. Art is represented by painted or engraved pebbles.
     In 1901-1902, Henri Breuil defined the chronology of the later Magdalenian culture based on his excavations, and discovered the first parietal art works in the cave (bison, horse, feline, fish, etc.). From 1935 to 1942, Marthe and Saint-Just Pequart excavated the deep gallery, revealing one of the rare "occupations in an obscure cave", in which a few masterpieces of Magdalenian art were found: spear throwers, pierced batons, contour cut-outs, etc. Between 1936 and 1958, Joseph Mandement discovered numerous previously unknown cavities.
     Since this time, little research has been conducted, but recent archaeology carried out on the site of the future visitor centre has revealed a long stratigraphical sequence, several metres deep, including sand and pebble layers deposited by the Arize River during ancient floods contemporary with the last Quaternary glaciation. Until now, evidence of this flooding had never been seen at Mas d'Azil.
     Study is still in progress, but the first carbon-14 dates reveal a tentative chronology. Most of the earliest occupation, found beneath the flood layers, are attributed to the Aurignacian culture (35,000-33,000 BP). It had been thought that Aurignacian peoples did not live deep in caves. The Magdalenian culture (14,700 BP) arrived after the flooding.

Edited from Past Horizons (15 May 2012)

  Human migrations: Eastern odyssey

Some 74,000 years ago, a volcano called Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra unleashed one of the greatest eruptions ever known, spreading ash across southern Asia. The catastrophe had witnesses. Archaeologists digging beneath the ash layer have found stone artefacts indicating that humans were living in the Jurreru Valley of southern India before the eruption. But were they modern humans, or some other, now extinct group?
     When modern humans left Africa for Asia - as well as the routes they followed, the tools they carried, and the reasons they went - are all controversial.
     The first question is, pre-Toba, or post-Toba? Paul Mellars at the University of Cambridge argues that modern humans left Africa long after the Toba eruption, 60,000 years ago at the earliest. Equipped with new technologies, including bows and arrows, they beach-hopped along the coastline of the Arabian peninsula, India and southeast Asia, reaching Australia in short order.
     Michael Petraglia at the University of Oxford, UK, on the other hand, is convinced that people spread into Asia at least 74,000 years ago, and perhaps as early as 125,000 years ago - well before Toba, during a wet, warm interlude between ice ages - carrying tools no more sophisticated than those made by earlier humans, and wandering along river valleys and lake shores.
     Researchers have mostly relied on the DNA of living people to reconstruct the ancient story - focusing on isolated native groups thought to be descendants of early human settlers in their areas, collecting mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA - inherited only from the mother), identifying distinctive variants (haplotypes), comparing them, and using estimates of mutation rates as a molecular clock.
     The origin is marked by a haplotype called L3 that appeared before humans left Africa, an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 years ago - suggesting humanity left Africa a few thousand years after Toba. The three next-oldest haplotypes - immediate descendants of L3 outside Africa - are 60,000 to 65,000 years old. All three gave rise to multiple bursts of genetic variation, from Arabia to Bali. "For that to happen," says geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer of the University of Oxford, "people would have had to move very fast, before new mutations occurred."
     The most plausible route for a rapid migration is along the coast of the Indian Ocean. By the mid-2000s, most researchers accepted the 'coastal express', post-Toba migration scenario.
     Stephen Oppenheimer studies mtDNA and contributed to the coastal-express model. In his view, the migration had to have been rapid and coastal - but not necessarily as recent as others have insisted. DNA is not a precise clock. A clue to an earlier date, he says, comes from mtDNA studies in India. One set of variants was less diverse than expected, suggesting to him that the first modern humans in India suffered some kind of catastrophe that reduced their numbers to almost nothing. The cause, he speculated, might have been the Toba ash cloud.
     Petraglia and his supporters say that evidence for the earlier migration has grown much stronger in the past two years. A group led by Jeffrey Rose of the University of Birmingham, UK, found 106,000-year-old stone relics in Oman, consisting of distinctive triangular cores and the long spear points made from them - technology first excavated at sites inhabited by modern humans in Nubia, in northern Sudan, more than 2,000 kilometres away and on the other side of the Red Sea. "There's no question," says Rose. "It's the same people."
     At the time, the Arabian peninsula was a moist savannah teeming with game. When the climate cooled and dried about 75,000 years ago, turning Arabia back into a desert, the Nubian pioneers either died out or retreated to Africa, but other ancient Arabian populations might have wandered farther into Asia.
     At a site in the United Arab Emirates called Jebel Faya, Simon Armitage of Royal Holloway, University of London, and his colleagues have found even older artefacts, dating to as early as 125,000 years ago and resembling objects made by modern humans in eastern Africa. "It's extremely plausible that a population at Faya could have moved on," Armitage says.

Edited from Nature Magazine (2 May 2012)

  The Dolmen at Monticello

The village of Monticello - near Finale Ligure, in the west of Italy, is located along the western slopes of Gottaro. The dolmen is located in Valeggia, 199 metres above sea level along the northern slopes of Bric delle Pernici.
     The dolmen is made of limestone, about 250 centimetres high, with a horizontal cap stone supported on one side by a single stone, and on the other side by two large stones and a sort of dry wall. The chamber has a maximum height of 1 metre. The cap stone has a transverse V-shaped crack, and the top is eroded, but some erosion could be interpreted as a petroglyph and even as cup marks. A larger depression is similar to those found on the Stone-Altar above Arma Strapatente, and might have had the function of collecting liquid, and therefore a ritual significance. The floor of the chamber has not been probed, since the complex has been considered the result of a landslide, but the arrangement is not typical of a landslide.
     Dolmens and menhirs are not strangers to the Finalese and Subalpine cultural zones, as thought until a few decades ago, when it was believed that the megalithic culture had been arrested without crossing the Alps. The only exception was Puglia, in southern Italy. There the dolmens and other megaliths were attributed to the influx of populations from the Balkan Peninsula, across the Adriatic.
     In the late 1980s, two circular burial mounds were identified near Sanremo, Imperia province, one of which was attributed to the final phase of the Bronze Age. Accordingly, other Ligurian artefacts - especially in the Finalese (the menhir and dolmen of Verezzi, for example) - acquired new importance, and the lack of megalithic remains in Italy could be explained by the change of civilisation over time, resulting in the loss of many sites.
     The creation of megalithic structures, such as menhirs and dolmens, is placed in a period between the end of the fifth millennium at the end of the third millennium BCE, roughly between the Neolithic and the Bronze Ages, and corresponding with that of other megaliths already described by experts and by the author, in the vicinity of Monticello - such as the rudimentary anthropomorphic Stele of 'Pila delle Penne', Plateau of St Bernardino (including the so-called Observatory of Bric Pianarella) - but also other megaliths of Finalese.

Edited from Tracce (3 April 2012)

  Did ancient Germans steal the pharaoh's chair design?

Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe.
     The simple design consists of two movable wooden frames connected to each other with pins, and with an animal hide stretched between. Such chairs were already being used in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. The oldest depictions are found on 4,500-year-old Mesopotamian seals.
     Some 20 Nordic folding stools have been discovered so far, most of them north of the Elbe River in Germany. The only complete specimen was found in 1891 in Guldhoj (Golden Hill) near Kolding on the Jutland peninsula - now mainland Denmark. The chair was found lying in a tree-trunk coffin, and dated to 1389 BCE.
     The fact that the design reached so far north led many scholars to posit that northern Europeans developed it independently, but that view has now been challenged. "The design and dimensions of the chairs are too similar," says Bettina Pfaff, an archaeologist from Nebra, near the eastern German city of Halle, who specialises in prehistory.
     Scholars are also determining the dates of such knowledge transfers. Egypt became a major power under Thutmose III (1479 to 1426 BCE), whose armies reached the borders of modern-day Turkey. Starting in 1400 BCE, the stools began being made in the far north and abruptly became fashionable.
     Many speculate that the furniture belonged to clan leaders, but not all find this theory convincing. The objects were often discovered in "poorly furnished graves," explains Pfaff. She believes the furniture belonged to a "spiritual elite" such as healers and magicians.

Edited from Spiegel Online International (3 May 2012)

  Mexican experts find ancient blood on stone knives

Traces of blood and fragments of muscle, tendon, skin and hair found on 2,000-year-old stone knives have given researchers the first conclusive evidence that the obsidian blades were used for human sacrifice.
     Researchers had long seen cut marks on ancient bones that appeared to suggest varied practices of dismembering victims in many pre-Hispanic cultures, but the find announced Wednesday positively identifies the sort of actual knives that were used.
     Researchers in Mexico had noticed what they believed were fossilised blood stains on stone knives as long as 20 years ago. But the institute said it took a methodical examination using a scanning electron microscope to positively identify the human tissues on 31 knives from the Cantona site in the central Mexico state of Puebla.
     The collection of stone knives is from the little-known Cantona culture, which flourished at about the same time as the mysterious city-state of Teotihuacan. Cantona preceded by more than 1,000 years the region's most famous human sacrifice practitioners, the Aztecs.
     The archaeologists who found the knives gave them to researcher Luisa Mainou at the anthropology institute's restoration laboratories about two years ago. With help from specialists at Mexico's National Autonomous University, they were studied under the scanning electronic microscope.
     While historical accounts from Aztec times, as well as drawings and paintings from earlier cultures, had long suggested that priests used knives and other instruments for non-life-threatening bloodletting rituals, the presence of the muscle and tendon traces indicates the cuts were deep and intended to sever portions of the victim's body. "These finds confirm that the knives were used for sacrifices," Mainou said.
     The find has already begun to shed some new light on the sacrifice practices of pre-Hispanic cultures, which believed that human blood was a sort of vital liquid needed to keep the cosmos in balance.
     Some knives in the test had more traces of red blood cells, while others had more skin, and others more muscle or collagen, "which suggest that each cutting tool was used for a different purpose, according to its form," Mainou said.

Edited from Daily Democrat, Associated Press (3 May 2012)

  New study chronicles the rise of agriculture in Europe

As reported in the 27 April issue of the journal Science, an analysis of 5,000-year-old DNA taken from the Stone Age remains of four humans excavated in Sweden is helping researchers understand how agriculture spread throughout Europe long ago. According to Pontus Skoglund from Uppsala University in Sweden and colleagues, the practice of farming appears to have moved with migrants from southern to northern Europe.
     "We analysed genetic data from two different cultures - one of hunter-gatherers and one of farmers - that existed around the same time, less than 400 kilometres away from each other," said Skoglund. "After comparing our data to modern human populations in Europe, we found that the Stone Age hunter-gatherers were outside the genetic variation of modern populations but most similar to Finnish individuals, and that the farmer we analysed closely matched Mediterranean populations."
     "When you put these findings in archaeological context, a picture begins to emerge of Stone Age farmers migrating from south to north across Europe," said Skoglund. "And the result of this migration, 5,000 years later, looks like a mixture of these two groups in the modern population."
     "The results suggest that agriculture spread across Europe in concert with a migration of people," added Skoglund. "If farming had spread solely as a cultural process, we would not expect to see a farmer in the north with such genetic affinity to southern populations."

Edited from EurekAlert! (26 April 2012)

  Ancient Swedish stone structure spurs debate

Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kaseberga. They carefully arranged the massive stones - each weighing up to 1,800 kilograms - in the outline of a 67-meter-long ship overlooking the Baltic Sea.
     Archaeologists generally agree this megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ('Ale's Stones'), was assembled near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument. But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as England's Stonehenge.
     Nils-Axel Moerner, a retired geologist from Stockholm University, co-authored the paper published in March in the International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Moerner says his team observed that the sun rises and sets at specific points around Ales Stenar at the summer and winter solstices. They also observed that certain aspects of the stone ship's geometry matched those of Stonehenge.
     Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, managing editor of the archaeology journal Fornvaennen, has another view. "The idea that the stone ship might have been an astronomical calendar has no supporters among academic archaeologists".
     The Swedish countryside is home to many similar megalithic structures, known as stone ships. Most of them date to Sweden's Late Iron Age (approximately 500-1000 CE), and serve as burial monuments, Rundkvist explains.
     Archaeologists using radiocarbon dating have calculated that Ales Stenar was built about 1,400 years ago - long after the date estimated by Moerner's team. "This was the world of Beowulf," says Rundkvist.

Edited from LiveScience (18 April 2012)

  Volunteers race to save hill fort in Devon

A team of archaeologists will be surveying and excavating the remains of a hill fort before it is lost to the waves forever. The work at Embury Beacon in Hartland (Devon, England) will be a race against time to save the remaining 25 per cent of the fort.
     Previous surveys suggest that the monument may have enclosed the crest of a prominent coastal headland, most of which has eroded away in the last 2,000 years. The current excavations, which began on April 16 by a team of volunteers, are examining how the original entrance opened.
     Justin Seedhouse, National Trust Ranger, said: "We have enjoyed involving local schools in the digs. Woolsery Primary School got their hands dirty learning to be trainee archaeologists and hearing about the history of the fort here, and we have Hartland Primary School also coming to visit."
     The excavation is part of the 'unlocking our coastal heritage' project, supported by the Rural Development Programme for England, which aims to improve the visitor experience along the South West Coast Path National Trail.

Edited from North devon Gazette 24 (6 May 2012)

  Bones of early American disappear from underwater cave

One of the first humans to inhabit the Americas has been stolen - and archaeologists want it back. The skeleton, which is probably at least 10,000 years old, has disappeared from a cenote, or underground water reservoir, in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
     In response, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico City has placed 'wanted' posters in supermarkets, bakeries and dive shops in and around the nearby town of Tulum. They are also considering legal action to recover the remains.
     The missing bones belong to a skeleton dubbed Young Man of Chan Hol II, discovered in 2010. The cenote in which it was found had previously yielded another 10,000-year-old skeleton - the Young Man of Chan Hol, discovered in 2006.
     The earlier find has anatomical features suggesting shared heritage with Indonesians and south Asians. Other skeletons found in cenotes in the area with similar features may date to around 14,000 years ago. Such finds imply that not all early Americans came from north Asia.
     Both skeletons were laid to rest at a time when sea level was much lower than it is today and the cenote, now about 8 metres below the water, was dry. Archaeologists have also found the remains of elephants, giant sloths and other animals in the caves, giving an indication of what the ancient humans ate.
     INAH researchers have been aware of creeping theft of specimens from cenotes, but they lack the resources to guard the hundreds of sites that dot the peninsula.

Edited from NewScientist (25 April 2012)

  Bronze Age remains X-rayed in England

Early Bronze Age remains from a burial site in Dartmoor National Park (south Devon, England) will be X-rayed at Salisbury District Hospital. The items were found in a burial cist, a stone chest containing the ashes and belongings of a dead person.
     Senior conservator, Helen Williams, said: "We have a real opportunity to research these finds and potentially discover more about the individual buried there." The items, which include a woven bag, will be scanned at the spinal unit.
     The burial cist was excavated from Whitehorse Hill in August 2011. Archaeologists found cremated human bone, burnt textile, and a delicate woven bag inside. The bag contained shale disc beads, amber spherical beads and a circular textile band.
     Senior archaeologist for Dartmoor National Park Authority and Whitehorse Hill project manager, Jane Marchand, said: "This is a most unusual and fascinating glimpse into what an early Bronze Age grave goods assemblage on Dartmoor might have looked like as it was buried, including the personal possessions of people living on the Moor around 4,000 years ago."
     Once the X-ray work is complete, further analysis will be made of the peat surrounding the cist. Archaeologists believe this will give an insight into evidence of the vegetation and climate at the time of the burial.

Edited from BBC News (24 April 2012)

  4000-year-old rock art discovered in Mongolia

Eighteen rock art sites dating back over 4,000 years have been discovered by archaeologists in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The prehistoric art was discovered in the Yinshan Mountains in Urad Middle Banner (an administration division of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), said Liu Binjie, head of the Cultural Relics Bureau of Urad Middle Banner.
     The rock art is still clear and Liu added that they are the finest of their kind that have been unearthed so far. Among the carvings, seven faces were exaggerated and monstrous, and have been interpreted as the seven stars of the 'Big Dipper' (Ursa Major) constellation. Liu concluded that these may have been drawn by prehistoric people for worship. So far, over 10,000 rock arti sites have been discovered in the Yinshan Mountains, according to the archaeologists.
     Liu said that carvings of faces found on Yinshan Mountains cliffs are similar to those in the Helan Mountains, located on the boundary between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. They are also similar to those in eastern Russia, showing close connections with ancient peoples' migration patterns, showing similar worship ceremonies.
     Local government and relevant departments have made efforts to protect the rock art in this area, including restrictions on grazing and the installation of monitoring equipment.

Edited from China Daily (22 April 2012)

  A possible additional chamber in an Orcadian tomb

The chambered tomb at Banks, in South Ronaldsay (Orkney, Scotland), continues to throw up yet more surprises, including the discovery of what appears to be a sixth chamber within the structure.
     Hamish Mowatt originally discovered the tomb by the car park of the Skerries Bistro, at Banks, in 2010. Recently, Mr Mowatt explained that last month he employed the services of a Canadian archaeologist, over a four-week period, to excavate the tomb's central passageway down to floor level. It was during this work, said Mr Mowatt, that a lintel stone was discovered directly underneath the entrance, leading to what appears to be a further chamber below. This sixth chamber has yet to be excavated.
     A number of discoveries were also made in the central chamber of the tomb last month, including more human remains, various fragments of pottery and a piece of antler. Now that the passageway has been opened up, visitors can gain access to the tomb and see inside it for themselves. Mr Mowatt also has a CCTV camera set up inside, allowing visitors to view the interior from an external viewing area.
     Other work carried out at the site included the reinstatement of one area of the tomb, and the replacement of cut stone to lay over the structure to protect it from the elements.

Edited from Orkneyjar (20 April 2012)

  6,000-year-old settlement found in Ireland

Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre-farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago - one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland. Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old - hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen.
     A midden - a cooking area where nomad hunter-gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish - was discovered at Fanore Beach in Clare in 2009 by local woman Elaine O'Malley. Along with the midden were axes and smaller stone tools, artifacts of the Stone Age. Also found at the site was a'mysterious black layer of organic material' which researchers believe could have been from a tsunami that struck the Western coast of Ireland during the Stone Age, possibly wiping out the population of the area.
     "This is the oldest settlement in Clare," said Michael Lynch, field monument adviser for Co Clare. "We have always thought hunter-gatherers existed in Clare but this is the first real evidence of that. We know that they were cooking and eating shellfish here, but we don't know yet exactly what method they were using to cook it. So hopefully that is one of the things we can uncover in the weeks ahead."
     The mysterious black layer found at the site remains under investigation. "We have not been able to identify exactly what this black layer is yet but, as it happens, it is this layer which helped to protect the ancient settlement that we are currently excavating," said Lynch. "If we can establish a date for this black material, it will help us to piece together more of the mystery of this site and it could tell us a bit about what happened here that brought the use of the midden to an end. It is possible that this is the result of a major climatic event, a massive storm or possibly a tsunami, or some other major event of that sort, which would have thrown up a large amount of debris all at one time."

Edited from Irish Eaminer (9 May 2012), Irish Central (10 May 2012)