Stone Pages - Archaeo News (Americas)

Prehistoric artefacts found in Maryland

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:03:19 +0100

A trove of projectile points, drills, and other artefacts some 5,000 to 9,000 years old have been unearthed as part of the Herring Run Archaeology Project - a free, community-based, volunteer public archaeology programme in northeast Baltimore (Maryland, USA) operating since 2014. Other finds include pottery shards from the more recent Woodland Period (circa 1,000 BCE to 1,000 CE), some of which are handsomely decorated. Artefacts of the same kind have been found all over this mid-Atlantic USA state, but the new discoveries add as many as 9,000 years to the history of the city. Stones used for some tools provide evidence of trading or migration over a considerable area.
The site has two freshwater springs, and was probably used as a seasonal hunting and fishing camp for many centuries. As the name implies, the long narrow park follows part of the course of the Herring Run River, which joins the Back River a few kilometres downstream, where they feed a sizeable tidal inlet.

Edited from BaltimoreBrew (4 December 2021)

New hypothesis for origin of Amazonian Dark Earths

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:13:25 +0100

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are unusually fertile soils characterised by elevated concentrations of charcoal. Discovered decades ago in central Brazil, ADEs are regarded as a Pan-Amazonian phenomenon. Frequent occurrences of pre-Columbian artefacts at ADE sites led to their classification as soils of human origin, though it remains unclear how areas of high fertility became established in one of the most nutrient-impoverished environments on Earth.
New data from a well-studied site in the Brazilian Amazon reveal levels of phosphorus and calcium - two of the least abundant macronutrients in the region - which are orders of magnitude higher in ADE profiles than in the surrounding soil, beginning several thousands of years before the earliest evidence of soil management for plant cultivation in the region.
Amazonian landscapes are dominated by soils characterised by high acidity and low nutrient concentrations. Native plant species display adaptations which allow the soils to maintain some of the most productive ecosystems on Earth while limiting food production even under intensive management.
The Amazon basin has a complex history of occupation and land use. Prior to European contact, indigenous peoples relied on more than 80 different plant species. Three main phases of human occupation are thought to have occurred: a pre-cultivation period more than 6000 years ago, an early-cultivation period 6000 to 2500 years ago, and a late-cultivation period 2500 to 500 years ago - a chronology supported by genomic, linguistic, and archaeological evidence.
Recent findings indicate domestication of native plant species dates back more than 10,000 years in western Amazonia. Complex societies relying on soil management for agriculture occur less than 4000 years ago. Some of the earliest evidence of settlements comes from the Peruvian Andes, where records of deforestation and soil erosion exist for much of the past 6900 years. For most of the Amazon basin the earliest evidence of intensive cultivation falls between 3380 and 700 years ago. ADEs are rare near Andean settlements; the vast majority are thousands of kilometres away in the central and eastern Brazilian Amazon, where evidence of management is more recent - 2500 to 500 years ago.
The latest research focused on a typical well-studied ADE site, thought to have originated from a large settlement less than 2000 years ago. Artefacts are found in charcoal-rich soil layers where vestiges of human faeces are also present. The current view attributes those layers to biomass burning, but experiments show this inadequate to replicate basic characteristics of indigenous ADEs. At the study site, the enrichment of micro-charcoal and mineral elements began around 7630 years ago, before the earliest evidence of soil management that characterizes the late-cultivation period. To achieve the observed levels of enrichment, large human populations would have had to actively manage soils continuously for thousands of years prior to the currently accepted chronology of settlement. The study found direct and indirect evidence that natural processes were responsible, suggesting indigenous peoples used their knowledge to settle areas of exceptionally high fertility before the onset of intensive land use in central Amazonia.

Edited from Nature Communications (4 January 2021), University of Oregon (5 January 2021)

Ancient cave art inspired by hallucinogens

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 20:04:08 +0100

New research has uncovered evidence linking prehistoric cave paintings in California and a poisonous flower known for its hallucinogenic properties. According to researchers from the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Southampton, native Californians made use of the Datura wrightii plant in various rituals. The researchers have proposed rock art was created as part of a hallucinogenic experience.
The discovery was made during excavations at a cave site in California after archaeologists uncovered cave paintings of what appeared to be the Datura flower. Datura - also known as Jimson weed - has a long history of medicinal and religious use in the southwestern USA. All parts of the plant contain hazardous levels of toxic alkaloids that can be fatal if consumed, however the plant also has a history of being used recreationally as it has been known to induce hallucinations. In Native California, the plant has a strong association with adolescent initiations. Datura's root was processed into a drink for young members of the community to drink.
Archaeologists discovered chewed-up Datura at the site where the painting was discovered, strengthening link between hallucinogens and cave paintings. Because the painting depicts the flower itself rather than the visions it induced, the researchers believe it shows an appreciation for the flower's properties, that the site was used as a communal space for seasonal gatherings, and that art played a significant role in the local community's day-to-day business.

Edited from Express (24 November 2020), Haaretz (25 November 2020)

Remains of female hunter challenge ancient gender roles

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 19:55:53 +0100

The remains of a female hunter were found in 2018 during archaeological excavations at a high-altitude site called Wilamaya Patjxa in Peru. The young woman who lived around 9,000 years ago was buried alongside "a well-stocked, big-game hunting toolkit" including "stone projectile points for felling large animals, a knife and flakes of rock for removing internal organs, and tools for scraping and tanning hides".
Her sex was confirmed by protein analysis of dental remnants, and her bones suggest she may have been between 17 to 19 years old at the time of her death.
The researchers then looked at archaeological records of 429 other burials throughout North and South America from about 14,000 to 8,000 years ago. They found evidence of 27 individuals buried with big-game hunting tools * 11 female and 16 male. Based on their findings, the team suggests that between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of big-game hunters who lived more than 10,000 years ago in the Americas may have been women.
Dr Randy Haas, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and lead author on the study says it is well-established that in most contemporary and recent societies of hunter gatherers hunting is predominantly done by males, and archaeological evidence has tended to support the conclusion that past gender roles were similar. On occasion, female remains have been associated with materials that suggested that they were hunters but the examples have been treated as outliers, however in Dr Haas' opinion "It's now clear that sexual division of labour was fundamentally different - likely more equitable - in our species' deep hunter-gatherer past."

Edited from BBC Science Focus, The New York Times (5 November 2020)

Ancient humans planted 'forest islands' in Amazonia's Grasslands

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:42:31 +0100

Every spring, rains and snowmelt swamp vast grasslands that stretch between the Andes Mountains and Amazon rainforest in northern Bolivia, but thousands of tree-covered mounds stand solid, several feet above the flooded grasses.
"They are like islands in a sea of savannah," says Umberto Lombardo of the University of Bern, Switzerland. In 2006, Lombardo first stepped onto a forest island in this Llanos de Moxos region, puzzling over how such features could form naturally. One theory suggested that over the past few centuries, ranchers had carved away rainforest to create pastures, leaving scattered groves of about 300 trees each - but that didn't explain why the trees grew on higher ground.
It turns out the forest islands were made by people, and are much older than suspected: roughly 10,800 years ago, humans cultivated crops in the Llanos de Moxos - confirming that Amazonia was one of the first places on Earth where people domesticated wild species.
In 2012, Lomnardo and José M. Capriles, study co-author and archaeologist at Penn State, launched excavations, which confirmed that three mounds were made by ancient people, based on burned clay, food scraps and human burials found at the sites.
For the new study, Lombardo mapped 6,643 forest islands in the region. The researchers probed some and found archaeological debris similar to the fully excavated sites in 64 out of 82 of the tested mounds between 2,300 and 10,850 years old. From that ratio, they estimated humans erected at least 4,700 of the 6,643 forest islands mapped.
In the probes, the team also identified microscopic plant remains from the oldest-known squash in Amazonia and the oldest-known crops of the tuber cassava (also known as manioc or yuca) in the world, as well as nearly 7,000-year-old corn - a plant domesticated about 2,000 years earlier in Mexico. It seems people passed seeds from one community to the next, spanning over 2,000 miles from Central to South America. The new data also suggests an 8,000-year gap between the start of garden-scale cultivation and full-blown agriculture with canals, fields and dependence on domesticated species.

Edited from Discover Magazine (19 December 2020)

Stones fuel debate over when America's first settlers arrived

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:40:05 +0100

In 2017, scientists reported that around 130,000 years ago, an unidentified Homo species used stone tools to break apart a mastodon's bones near what is now San Diego (California, USA). If true, that would mean that humans or one of our close evolutionary relatives reached the Americas at least 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Critics have questioned whether the unearthed stones were actually used as tools. And other researchers suggested that supposed tool marks on the bones could have been created as the bones were carried by fast-moving streams or caused by construction activity that exposed the California site before its excavation.
But new analyses by a team of researchers bolster the controversial claim: chemical residue of bones appears on two stones previously found among mastodon remains at the Cerutti Mastodon site, the scientists report. The two Cerutti rocks also show signs of having delivered or received hard blows where bone residue accumulated, the team says. The larger stone may have served as a platform on which the bones were smashed open with the smaller stone, possibly to remove marrow for eating or to obtain bone chunks suitable for shaping into tools.
"Many repeated blows are likely to have created the concentrations of broken [mastodon] bones" found at the site, says Richard Fullagar, a geoarcheaologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Hominids — perhaps Neandertals, Denisovans, Homo erectus or Homo sapiens — battered the large creature's remains on one or possibly several visits to the site, Fullagar contends.
In the new study, Fullagar and colleagues used microscopes to determine that the chemical and molecular structure of residue on the two stones matched that of bones in general. That residue must have been acquired by pounding apart mammoth bones that were found scattered around the stones, the team argues. Since microscopic remnants of bone appeared only where stones showed signs of wear and hard impacts, it's unlikely that the stones accumulated the residue accidentally, the scientists say. Parts of broken Cerutti mammoth bones are also covered with hardened crusts that formed thousands of years ago or more, contradicting the argument that the stones and bones may have been damaged by construction activity.
But the new findings haven't settled the dispute. Truck traffic over the area during construction could have jostled recently buried stones against older, fossilized mastodon bones, creating damage that has been confused for ancient, intentional tool use, says archaeologist Gary Haynes of the University of Nevada. Stones presumably used a long time ago to break fresh mastodon bones should have picked up residue containing at least some collagen, which is missing from the newly analyzed bone residue.

Edited from Science News (4 December 2020)

A 3,400-year-old Mesoamerican ball court

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 16:54:10 +0100

Millennia ago, a stone court would have hosted teams of players using their hips to knock a hard rubber ball toward goals at either end of the court. The ball game, which re-enacted a creation story recorded in the Maya religious text Popul Vuh, was a major part of political, religious, and social life for the Maya and the Aztec, and for the Olmec before them. But archaeologists don't yet know much about where people first started playing the game or how it became a cultural phenomenon that spread across the area that now includes Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The ball court - a stone-floored alley about 50 meters (165 ft) long, bounded by steep stone walls and earthen mounds - once occupied a place of honor in the heart of the ancient city of Etlatongo (Mexico). But sometime between 1174 and 1102 BCE, the people of dismantled parts of the court and ritually 'terminated' its life leaving burned bits of plant, mingled with broken pottery, animal bones, shells, and a few human bones.
But beneath that 12th century BCE ball court lay another, even older one, dating to 1374 BCE. Archaeologists Jeffrey Blomster and Victor Salazar were surprised to find a ball court so old in the mountainous highlands of Mexico.
The oldest known Mesoamerican ball court, which dates to 1650 BCE and has a floor of compacted earth rather than stone, is at Paso de la Amada in Chiapas, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Until now, it looked like people didn't start building formal stone ball courts in the Mexican highlands until almost a thousand years later.
This ball court challenges that assumption. Its presence means that by 1374 BCE, the game was already important enough to people in the highlands to occupy a prominent place in the city and justify the investment of resources it took to build a stone court. And that suggests that people in the highlands may also have played a role in developing its rules and the layout of the court. Blomster and Salazar suggest that ideas about the game may have passed among communities until it eventually coalesced into something that would have been recognized from one end of Mesoamerica to the other.
The find also suggests that the ball game was already at the center of trade and interaction between regions. The customary equipment for the game was a hard rubber ball, and Castilla elastica rubber trees grow in the lowland coastal regions, so there must have been trade in rubber - or more likely, in rubber balls. And the connections between communities weren't just commercial.
The earliest versions of the ball game were probably played in open fields, and informal games probably kept being played wherever there was open space for millennia, which means they didn't leave archaeological evidence behind. Communities like Etlatongo and Paso de la Amada didn't start building stone courts until the ball game became a major social and political fixture.
Blomster and Salazar found another structure under the 1374 BCE ball court at Etlatongo. It was once a long, narrow structure, laid out in the same direction as the ball court, and it had been incorporated into the later ball court's east wall. The first ball court's layout and alignment is clearly based on the older structure's, Salazar said, but archaeologists didn't have enough time in the field to excavate enough of the older structure to say for sure whether it was an even earlier ball court.

Edited from Science Advances (13 March 2020) Ars Technica (25 March 2020)

Peruvian monument revealed after 2,000 years

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:39:57 +0100

In a high jungle in what is now northern Peru researchers have made a detailed 3D scan of a 2,000 yeae old stone monolith decorated with swirls, circular patterns, and fangs belonging to a deity archaeologists call a "feline feathered figure".
In danger of being lost to erosion, the abstract and ornate images and patterns are difficult to describe. Archaeologists wanting to record the carvings hiked and rode horses from 1,800 metres to a remote village 4,000 metres above sea level.
The monolith is made of a sedimentary stone that is not found locally. Around one ton in weight, the rock is about 3 metres wide, 75 centimetres high, and 150 centimetres long.
The engraving of the feline feathered figure indicates the carvings were created during what archaeologists call the 'formative period' between 200 BCE and 200 CE. There was no writing in Peru during this period, but studies of other archaeological sites show the feline feathered figure was popular at the time.
The Inca who flourished in the area during the 15th century CE built two baths not far from the monolith.

Edited from LiveScience (24 January 2020)

New evidence found for timing of human migration from Asia to America

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 16:45:49 +0100

During the Pleistocene Epoch (2,600,000 BCE to 9,700 BCE) there were various times when there was a land bridge between the continents of Asia and North America. These were commonly known as the Beringia Land Bridge. This link is believed to have been at its largest (i.e. sea levels at their lowest) in approximately 18,000 BCE, during the last Pleistocene Glacial Stage.
There has been speculation that this land link allowed for large scale human migration into North America. Weight has been added to this argument by recent studies carried out by Yakut scientists (Russian Federation), led by Doctor Albert Protopopov.
On the island of Kotelney, located in the East Siberian Sea, the remains of a woolly mammoth had been found, which is now housed in the Mammoth museum in Yakutsk. The mammoth has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 19,000 BCE by the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo (Japan).
Whilst the mammoth find in itself may not be all that remarkable, the method of its death proved to be more interesting. Extensive evidence was found to suggest that the mammoth had been systematically and comprehensively butchered by humans who, Dr Protopopov believes, were part of the great migration across the continents and he is quoted as saying "Recent DNA research suggests that the split in the populations [Asia and America] happened from around 25,000 years ago". He went on to add "This is one of the most interesting things in the discovery of this mammoth, as it will add more information to our knowledge of how people gradually moved towards America".

Edited from The Siberian Times (3 January 2020)

Mounds in the USA could be older than previously thought

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 12:34:47 +0100

Earlier research concluded that earthen mounds on what is now the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge were built 5,500 to 6,000 years ago, but LSU geology professor Brooks Ellwood claims bone fragments scarred in a super-heated fire suggest the mounds could be 11,300 years old.
Researchers found what appeared to be tiny remnants of mammal bones surrounded by high concentrations of reed and cane material. Because reed and cane burn too hot for cooking, the material may have been used for incineration.
Native American mounds have increasingly attracted the interest of researchers, but it wasn't until the past 30 or 40 years that archaeologists realised how old they were. Many are scattered along or near the Mississippi River, with several in Louisiana, including those at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site in the northeastern part of the state. Baton Rouge is on the Mississippi River about 120 kilometres west-northwest of New Orleans.
Little is known about the people who built the mounds. Ellwood speculates they were descendants of Clovis people, the Paleo-American culture known from their distinctive stone points. What researchers find remarkable about sites like the LSU campus mounds and Poverty Point is that people at the time didn't have agriculture, livestock, or metal tools. If Ellwood's calculations are correct, the age of the mounds could provide important clues about humans throughout the Americas.
Researchers at LSU have long tried to preserve the mounds from further deterioration, and the university is exploring options to further protect them. The latest findings may lead to more support for a plan.

Edited from The Advocate (19 January 2020)

Footprints of Ice Age mammoths and prehistoric humans

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 18:24:30 +0100

One of the largest collections of vertebrate animal tracks from the Ice Age can be found preserved on a dried lake bed called Alkali Flat, at White Sands National Monument in south central New Mexico USA, about 1,300 kilometres east of Los Angeles.
Locally referred to as 'ghost tracks' they're extremely difficult to see, but researchers using ground-penetrating radar at the site have now been able not only to identify and map tracks made by big animals such as mammoths and giant ground sloths, but also those of the humans that hunted them.
Examination of the radar images reveals something resembling 'hooks' below the bases of the mammoth footprints - possibly from compression of the sediment at the time the tracks were made - which could provide crucial information about the way the animals walked. The pressure data from the mammoth footprints closely resembles those of modern elephants.
Scientists believe the radar can be used to map human footprints at other sites, and image the pressure patterns beneath dinosaur tracks. Radar imaging allows study of how these ancient creatures walked without disturbing the fossil footprints, and has huge advantages for conservation.

Edited from The Next Web (22 December 2019)

South Americans began settling the Caribbean 5,800 years ago

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 18:23:41 +0100

The earliest migrations from South America to the Caribbean began 5,800 years ago - not to the more southerly Lesser Antilles islands as many have supposed, but to the larger northernmost islands now known as Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. Analyses of more than 2,500 radiocarbon measurements from sites on 55 Caribbean islands completely contradict the 'stepping-stone' model which asserts a south-to-north settlement beginning on the smaller islands.
The new findings suggest the first Caribbean settlers may have traveled hundreds of miles across open seas in single-hulled canoes.

Edited from UPI (19 December 2019)

Understanding ancient dietary practices in Mexico

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 15:46:29 +0100

Researchers examined plant remains found on ceramic artifacts such as bowls, bottles and jars, and stone tools such as blades and drills, dating to the Early Formative period (2000-1000 BCE), which were excavated from the village site of La Consentida, located in the coastal region of Oaxaca in southwest Mexico.
They focused on remnants of starch grains, and a careful analysis found the remains of flowering plants, wild bean families and grasses, including maize. The findings support existing evidence that the village was transitioning from a broad, Archaic period (7000-2000 BCE) diet to one based on agriculture.
"The work provides us with a better idea of how plants became cultivated and how they made their way to our plates," explains Éloi Bérubé, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, who conducted the work with advisor Shanti Morell-Hart, an assistant professor of anthropology.
Researchers found maize microfossils pointing to the storage and processing of different parts of the plant, as well as indications of heat damage, likely caused by cooking. Evidence of maize and wild beans was also found in artifacts used for burial offerings.
"La Consentida was among Mesoamerica's earliest villages, and these new dietary results help us better understand some of the changes the community was experiencing, including a shift toward permanent settlements and the beginnings of social complexity," says Guy Hepp, director of the La Consentida Archaeological Project and assistant professor of anthropology at CSUSB.
Pottery from the site includes jars used in domestic and communal cooking events and likely also for storage. Some of the jars were later reused as offerings with human burials. Decorative bowls were likely used for serving foods at communal feasts. Ceramic bottles, also found in feasting refuse, likely held beverages brewed from maize and possibly even cacao.
Combined with other evidence from the site, including variations in burial offerings and the diversity of human depictions in small-scale ceramic figurines, this study suggests that the community was in the early stages of establishing a complex social organization.

Edited from PhysORG (11 December 2019)

Ancient Hunter-Gatherers teach how to produce thermo-stable paint

Sat, 07 Dec 2019 23:22:36 +0100

Ancient Hunter-Gatherers had used natural materials to create paint and pigments for hundreds of thousands of years but until recently it was not known how they had actually made it. Now a team of scientists from the University of Missouri (USA) have been using 21st Century technology to try and re-create the processes used by our ancestors, all that time ago.
A considerable amount of time and money has been spent in recent decades trying to produce a thermo-stable paint which would be suitable for use in the high tech world and demanding environment of aerospace engineering. The scientists analysed the ochre pigments which had been used in the Rock Art of British Columbia (Canada), which dates back to the Megalithic Era and is still vibrant and colourful today. What they found was astonishing.
To produce a stable paint from ochre our ancestors harvested aquatic iron-rich bacteria and then deliberately super heated it to between 750 and 850 degrees Centigrade, to produce the distinctive red paint.
Brandi MacDonald, leader of the team, is quoted as saying "Ochre is one of the only types of material that people have continually used for over 200,000 years, if not longer. Therefore we have a deep history in the archaeological record of humans selecting and engaging with this material but few people study how it is actually made".

Edited from Nature and PhysOrg (19 Nov 2019)

Pre-Inca temple dedicated to Water Cult discovered in Peru

Sat, 07 Dec 2019 23:22:11 +0100

Tucked away in northwestern Peru, in the Zana Valley, in an area known as Oyotun, you can find the Huaca El Toro site, where archaeologists from the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum have just uncovered a megalithic temple, the first to be found in the valley.
It is believed that the temple had evolved in three stages. The first stage was during the period from 1500 BCE to 800 BCE, which was the timespan referred to as the Formative or Neo-Indian Period. This was a period of major social development as well as an increase in monument building. This was when the original clay foundations were laid down forming a base for the main construction which consisted of large rocks, transported to the site from mountains located over 3 km away. The rocks were then carved in situ.
The temple had been built at the confluence of two rivers, which joined to form the Zana River. This location gave rise to the theory that the temple was dedicated to a Water Cult.
An archaeologist from the team, Edgar Bracamonte, believes that this theory is supported by the evidence of a series of wells in the area, showing that the occupants of the valley had a good understanding of weather patterns and the rainy/dry seasons. He also believed that its location was also a form of 'territorial symbolism', a trait of the Formative Period, an era of spectacular social transformation marked by the development of social stratification and monument building. The next period of occupation, evidenced by several burial tombs, occurred during the time of the Chumy People and this was followed by occupants of the Chavin Culture before being finally abandoned in approximately 250 BCE

Edited from Live Science (20 Nov 2019), International Business Times (21 Nov 2019)