Neolithic site revealed in China

New archaeological discoveries in Yuyao city, in eastern China's Zhejiang province, provide a clearer picture of life in China's Neolithic age.
     Archaeologists are completing a 10-year dig in Tianluo Mountain - one of the cradles of Chinese civilisation. Sun Guoping, captain of the exploration team, said: "It is so far the best preserved site of the Hemudu culture. We can see a clear wooden structure of the living and working areas of a tribe. There were walls, food stores, paddy fields and even piles of rice husks."
     The Hemudu site records activities from 7000 to 5000 BCE - one of China's earliest Neolithic sites - and covers more than 3 hectares, with 6 layers. Some 1800 square metres has been explored during the past 10 years of exploration, and more than 7,000 relics recovered.
     Yao Xiaoqiang, deputy curator of the Hemudu Cultural Site Museum, said that the Tianluo Mountain site had well-preserved paddy fields from the early and late Hemudu period. "You can see the complete layout of primitive paddy fields, which is of great research value," Yao said, adding that many of the discoveries were the first of their kind in 40 years of exploration of Hemudu culture. These include ancient ladders made from a single piece of wood, big houses for ritual activities, wood-carved ritual wares with birds, and wooden swords.
     The Tianluo Mountain site was accidentally discovered in 2001 by locals who were trying to drill a well.

Edited from China Daily (18 May 2013)

  Star Carr finds exhibited together for the first time

Deer skull head-dresses, a wooden paddle, bone harpoons, and amber and shale jewellery - some of the most remarkable and complete finds from Britain's Stone Age - will be assembled for the first time in a special exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, in York (England), starting in May 2013.
     On loan from museums all over the country, the objects all come from Star Carr - the type-site for understanding hunter-gatherer communities of the Mesolithic period in Europe, where a number of settlements once stood on the shores of prehistoric Lake Flixton.
     The exhibition coincides with the publication of "Star Carr: Life in Britain After the Ice Age" by the Council for British Archaeology, telling the story of excavations at the site, which was buried in a deep layer of peat.
     Professor Nicky Milner, of the University of York, co-director of excavations at Star Carr since 2004, said: "This site is incredibly important and it is fantastic that people will get a chance to see the amazing finds which tell the story of how people lived 11,000 years ago."
     'After the Ice' is the first in a series of displays forming part of a three-year 'Prehistory in Yorkshire' research and exhibition project. This first year focuses on the Mesolithic period and the site of Star Carr, the second will look at Yorkshire's Bronze Age, and the third at its Iron Age.

Edited from Scarborough News (18 May 2013)

  Minoans originated in Europe, not Egypt

The Minoan culture - famous for the myth of the half-man, half-bull, Minotaur in the labyrinth - emerged on the Mediterranean island of Crete, and flourished for more than a thousand years from about 2700 BCE to 1420 BCE, building Europe's first advanced civilisation. By comparing DNA from 4,000-year-old Minoan skeletons found in a sealed cave on Crete's Lassithi Plateau with that of people from modern Crete, and throughout Europe and Africa, a long-held theory that the ancient Minoans came from Egypt has been disproved.
     Study co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos - a human geneticist at the University of Washington, USA - says: "We now know that the founders of the first advanced European civilisation were European. They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very similar to present-day Cretans".
     It is likely, says Stamatoyannopoulos, that the Minoans descended from Neolithic populations that migrated to Europe from the Middle East and Turkey. Archaeological excavations suggest that early farmers were living in Crete by around 9,000 years ago, so these could be the ancestors of the Minoans. Similarities between Minoan and Egyptian artefacts were probably the result of cultural exchanges across the navigable Mediterranean Sea, rather than wholesale migrations.
     Stamatoyannopoulos notes that his team's findings are limited, because mitochondrial DNA represents only a single maternal lineage for each individual - a mother's mother, and so on. With Johannes Krause, a palaeo-geneticist at the University of Tubingen in Germany, the team now plans to sequence the nuclear genomes of Minoans and other ancients to learn more about their history.
     Wolfgang Haak, a molecular archaeologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, thinks that Crete's early history is probably more complicated, with multiple Neolithic populations arriving at different times.
     Some believe a massive volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini doomed the Bronze Age civilisation, while others argue that invading Mycenaeans toppled the once-great power.

Edited from Discovery.com (14 May 20134), Scientific American (15 May 2013)

  Ancient burials uncovered in Amesbury

Archaeologists have discovered previously unknown round barrows dating back 4000 years to the Bronze Age, just a few miles from Stonehenge. The finds, which also include six Pagan Saxon skeletons dating back over 1000 years, were unearthed at a development site in Amesbury - famous for the so-called "Amesbury Archer", a early Bronze Age man found buried among arrowheads.
     The remains are thought to be those of adolescent to mature males and females. Five skeletons were arrayed around a small circular ditch, with the grave of a sixth skeleton in the centre. Two lots of beads, a shale bracelet and other grave goods were also found, which suggest the findings are Pagan.
     The site is now being excavated by Wessex Archaeology, led by Phil Harding - known for his work on Channel 4's "Time Team" programme. Phil said: "Given that the Stonehenge area is a well-known prehistoric burial site, it was always very likely some interesting discoveries would be made here. The fact that these round barrows were previously unknown makes this particularly exciting. Finding the skeletons also helps us to get a clearer picture of the history of this area. To my knowledge these are the first Pagan Saxon burials to be excavated scientifically in Amesbury."
     The archaeologists are expected to be on site for six weeks in total. Video from the dig may be included in a production for ITV's History Channel, to be aired in January 2014.

Edited from 24 dash.com (17 May 2013), Salisbury Journal (18 May 2013)

  Agriculture may predate rice in subtropical China

Using a new method of analysis on ancient grinding stones, archaeologists in southern subtropical China have discovered evidence that people living in Xincun 5000 years ago may have practised agriculture before the arrival of domesticated rice in the region.
     Current archaeological thinking is that the advent of rice cultivation along the Lower Yangtze River marked the beginning of agriculture in southern China. Poor organic preservation in the study region means that traditional archaeo-botany techniques are not possible.
     The research was the result of a two-year collaboration between Doctor Huw Barton, from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester (UK), and Doctor Xiaoyan Yang, of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
     Doctor Barton, Senior Lecturer in Bio-archaeology, describes the find: "We have used a relatively new method known as ancient starch analysis to analyse ancient human diet. At Xincun we really hit the jackpot. Starch was well-preserved and there was plenty of it. While some of the starch granules we found were species we might expect to find on grinding and pounding stones - some seeds and tuberous plants such as freshwater chestnuts, lotus root and the fern root - the addition of starch from palms was totally unexpected and very exciting."
     Several types of tropical palms store prodigious quantities of starch. This starch can be literally bashed and washed out, dried as flour, and eaten. It is not particularly tasty, but it is reliable and can be processed all year round. Many communities in the tropics today - particularly in Borneo and Indonesia, but also in eastern India - still rely on flour derived from palms.
     Doctor Barton said: "The presence of at least two, possibly three species of starch-producing palms, bananas, and various roots, raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement. If they were planted at Xincun, this implies that agriculture did not arrive here with the arrival of domesticated rice, as archaeologists currently think, but that an indigenous system of plant cultivation may have been in place by the mid-Holocene."
     Barton continues: "The adoption of domesticated rice was slow and gradual in this region; it was not a rapid transformation as in other places. Our findings may indicate why this was the case. Future work will focus on grinding stones from nearby sites to see if this pattern is repeated along the coast."

Edited from EurekAlert!, ScienceDaily (17 May 2013), ScienceBlog (May 2013)

  Scottish island hints at undiscovered burial sites

Evidence of previously undiscovered historic burial sites may have been found on the Scottish island of Iona. A geophysical survey revealed signs of burial to the south of the village, and at Martyr's Bay. Both will be excavated at a later date.
     The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) survey was the first to focus away from the island's Columban monastic enclosure and the Benedictine Abbey.
     The study was carried out by Doctor Sue Ovenden and Alastair Wilson, and examined two areas - one close to the current village hall and south of the Nunnery, and the other at Martyr's Bay. The area close to the village hall appears to show features of recent or natural origin which will be excavated later this year. The more interesting result came from Martyr's Bay, where skeletal remains were excavated in the 1960s from a mound by the roadside.
     Of the Martyr's Bay site, the trust's head of archaeology, Derek Alexander, said: "The geophysical survey shows that on the landward side, this mound may have been revetted (walled) by stones and surrounded by a shallow ditch. This could be a sign of burials. It's possible that this mound has some connection to another graveyard that's marked on an old map, known as Clad Nan Druineach. It has always been suggested that there are numerous burial sites on Iona, and there have been various finds over the years - the most famous of which is in the graveyard at Relig Odhrain to the south of the Abbey."

Edited from BBC News, Scotsman.com (17 May 2013)

  Dismembered dogs point to ancient initiation rite

Did Bronze Age initiation rites for boys 'destined' to become warriors involve animal sacrifice? At first, archaeologists Dorcas Brown and David Anthony were deeply puzzled. While excavating the Bronze Age site of Krasnosamarkskoe in Russia's Volga region, they unearthed the bones of at least 51 dogs and 7 wolves. All the animals had died during the winter months, judging from the telltale banding pattern on their teeth, and all were subsequently skinned, dismembered, burned, and chopped with an ax. Moreover, the butcher had worked in a precise, standardized way, chopping the dogs' snouts into three pieces and their skulls into geometrically shaped fragments just an inch or so in size. "It was very strange," says Anthony.
     To him and Brown, both of whom teach at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, the skilled and standardized method of butchering the dogs pointed to some sort of ritual. Pam Crabtree, an archaeozoologist at New York University, who was not a member of the team, agrees. She notes that the butchery pattern was entirely different from those used in prehistoric Europe and other parts of the world for slicing off dog meat to eat. "The bone was chopped into small bits, and it was not the way you would do it if you were looking at getting the major muscle groups," Crabtree says.
     In search of clues, Anthony and Brown combed the mythology, songs, and scriptures in Eurasia's early and closely related Indo-European languages. Many ancient Indo-European speakers associated dogs with death and the underworld. Reading through prayers composed by tribes in India possibly as early as 1400 BCE, the researchers found a description of secret initiation rites for boys destined to become roving warriors.
     At the age of eight, the boys were sent to ritualists, who bathed them, shaved their heads, and gave them animal skins to wear. Eight years later, the initiates underwent a midwinter ceremony in which they ritually died and journeyed to the underworld. After this, the boys left their homes and families, painted their bodies black, donned a dog-skin cloak, and joined a band of warriors.
     Brown and Anthony think that similar rites may have taken place at Krasnosamarskoe at the onset of the raiding season, which ran from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. And they speculate that part of the ceremony required the boys to kill their own dogs. The dead canines ranged in age from 7 to 12 years, suggesting that they were longtime companions - possibly even hounds raised with the boys from birth.
     "That makes a lot of sense," concludes Brown. To take on the mantle of a warrior, an innocent boy had to become a killer. Recent research conducted by military psychologists, moreover, suggests that the transition from civilian to soldier can be very difficult. In other words, "you have to train people to kill," says Brown. For the Bronze Age boys at Krasnosamarskoe, this training may have included killing one of their childhood companions - their faithful dog.

Edited from National Geographic Daily News (14 May 2012)

  The mysterious mounds of Nicaragua

National Geographic explorer and archaeologist Alex Geurds is currently in the field investigating a prehistoric, ceremonial center of stone circles in Central Nicaragua.
     Researchers will be working for the next few weeks at the site of Aguas Buenas, located to north of the city of Juigalpa. In that area, stone and earthen mounds are visible at regular intervals. The Central Nicaragua Archaeological Project is an ongoing archaeological investigation to shed light on the prehistory of Nicaragua, in particular its extraordinary indigenous tradition of monumental stone sculptures and its poorly understood ceremonial complexes.
     As part of this, the Aguas Buenas archaeological site holds special interest. Recent explorations of the site have revealed its unequalled architectural characteristics and extraordinary number of mounds, spread out over the hilly Chontales landscape by means of wide concentric semi-circles. Current knowledge of prehistoric monumental architecture in Central America cannot tell us anything specific about why this site looks like it does. Nor is there a significant amount of previous archaeological research in the region to help us out in understanding Aguas Buenas.
     The 2013 field season features students from Leiden University, the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua and the University of Calgary, geared towards completing a GPS mapping of the site and excavating several of the more than 500 mounds. What are these mounds actually? When were they built and how? Do they serve a purpose as individual mounds or rather playing a role in the larger complex of the site itself? These are just some of the questions fuelling the effort to withstand scorching heat, prickly shrubs and the occasional snake and scorpion.
     Standing among the mound, one would never guess the 600-meter diameter semi-circular patterns these mounds clearly follow from an airborne perspective. Researchers determined the mound to be excavated by working on creating an understanding of when distinct sectors of the site may have been built and how comparable the contents of mounds really are.
     The excavation progress can be followed online.

Edited from National Geographic News Watch (13 May 2013)

  Evolutionary answers from prehistoric ear bones

According to a recent study, the bones of the middle ear could provide huge clues about our evolution and the development of modern-day humans. 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.
     The malleus appears to be very human-like, the findings show, while the incus and stapes resemble those of a more chimpanzee-like, or ape-like creature. Since both modern humans and our early ancestors share this human-like malleus, the changes in this bone must have occurred very early in our evolutionary history.
     "The discovery is important for two reasons," de Ruiter explains. "First, ear ossicles are fully formed and adult-sized at birth, and they do not undergo any type of anatomical change in an individual lifetime. Thus, they are a very close representation of genetic expression. Second, these bones show that their hearing ability was different from that of humans - not necessarily better or worse, but certainly different."
     "Bipedalism (walking on two feet) and a reduction in the size of the canine teeth have long been held to be 'hallmarks of humanity' since they seem to be present in the earliest human fossils recovered to date. Our study suggests that the list may need to be updated to include changes in the malleus as well," de Ruiters concludes.
     de Ruiter recently authored a series of papers in Science magazine that demonstrate the intermediate nature of the closely related species, Australopithecus sediba, and provide strong support that this species lies rather close to the ancestry of Homo sapiens. The current study could yield additional new clues to human development and answer key questions of the evolution of the human lineage.

Edited from PhysOrg (13 May 2013)

  Beaker burial ground uncovered in Scotland

Human remains and earthen vessels dating to the Bronze Age 'Beaker' settlers were uncovered at Duns Law, in southeast Scotland. The finds are estimated to be 4500 years old.
     Simon Brassey, Scottish Water's specialist engineer on their environment team said: "Whilst stripping back the topsoil to prepare the ground for the new water mains being laid, the team uncovered some significant archaeological findings adjacent and outside of the scheduled monument of Duns Law Fort and Camp, north of Duns in the Scottish Borders."
     The finds include the cremated bones of a woman and other fragments of human bone from at least two other adults and a juvenile. Up to seven earthen vessels from the Beaker era were revealed, each decorated with comb-impressions with different geometric patterns. A stone axe was also found.
     The burial pit involved a complex construction process and probably encompasses several different periods. It was first dug, then two small shallow scoops excavated at the base of the pit where the vessels containing the possessions of the Beaker dead were placed and covered over. Large angular stones were also sunk into the pit. It is thought that when filled, the pit may have had a mound or cairn over the top to denote the burial ground.

Edited from The Berwickshire News (11 May 2013)

  Indus civilization: a melting pot with powerful women

The sophisticated Indus Valley civilisation - which flourished four millennia ago in what is now Pakistan and western India - remains tantalisingly mysterious. At its peak, its settlements spanned an area greater than that of its contemporary in ancient Egypt. Indus jewellery was so coveted that examples have been found as far as Mesopotamia, 2500 kilometres away. Indus cities boasted blocks of houses built on a grid pattern, and drains that channelled sewage to dumping grounds outside the city walls.
     Unable to decipher the Indus script, archaeologists have pored over beads, shards of pottery, and other artefacts for insights into one of the world's first city-building cultures.
     A new study focuses on Harappa, one of the largest and most powerful Indus centres, with a population of up to 80,000. Researchers examined the chemical composition of teeth from a Harappan cemetery used from roughly 2550 to 2030 BCE. The analysis showed that the city was a cosmopolitan melting pot. Many of the deceased had grown up outside Harappa.
     Many of the outsiders, surprisingly, are men buried near women native to Harappa. The findings are preliminary, but they suggest men moved in with their brides, even though in South Asia women traditionally move to their husband's homes. Confirmation of these early results, says lead author Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin (USA), would point to a "system where women were powerful."

Edited from National Geographic News (29 April 2013)

  Making of Europe unlocked by DNA

DNA sequenced from 39 ancient skeletons suggests the foundations of the modern European gene pool were laid down between 4000 and 2000 BCE, in Neolithic times - likely by the rapid growth and movement of some populations.
     Decades of study suggest two major events in prehistory significantly affected the continent's genetic landscape: its initial peopling by hunter-gatherers 35,000 years ago in Palaeolithic times, and a wave of migration by Near Eastern farmers some 6,000 years ago in the early Neolithic.
     Genetic signatures of people from the Early Neolithic were either rare or absent from modern populations. From the Middle Neolithic onwards, mitochondrial DNA patterns more closely resemble those of people living in the area today, pointing to a major and previously unrecognised population upheaval around 4000 BCE.
     Co-author Professor Alan Cooper, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, said: "What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don't know why."
     A significant contribution appears to have been made in the Late Neolithic, by populations linked to the so-called Bell Beaker culture. The origins of the "Beaker folk" are the subject of much debate - Beaker individuals in this study excavated from the Mittelelbe Saale region of Germany showed close genetic similarities with people from modern Spain and Portugal.
     Other remains belonging to the Late Neolithic Unetice culture attest to links with populations further east.

Edited from BBC News (23 April 2013)

  Reconstruction of the face of an ancient Maltese woman

Heritage Malta surprised guests at the Malta Fashion Week with an exhibition entitled 'Jewellery through the times' showing that Malta's first residents were not the aggressive, dirty individuals with unkempt hair which most imagine them to have been. The exhibition was followed by a fashion show of replica prehistoric jewellery, which preceded the main highlight: changing the misconception related to the image of prehistoric people by means of a unique reconstruction.
     The items featured in the fashion show were replicas of objects worn by individuals who lived on the Maltese islands some 5600 years ago. The artefacts exhibited were discovered at various prehistoric sites and form part of the permanent display at Heritage Malta's National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.
     Heritage Malta also launched a 3D virtual reconstruction of facial features based on one of the prehistoric skulls (over 5,000 years old) found at the Xagħra Stone Circle in Gozo. It revealed, for the very first time, what one of the earliest Maltese actually looked like. It was a face which was much closer to what one would expect from a woman of our day and age rather than that of a person who lived on the islands over 5,000 years ago.

Edited from Times of Malta (7 May 2013), Gozo News (8 May 2013)

  Neanderthals were right handed

Eleven of the 13 Neanderthals who lived in northern Spain's El Sidron cave were right-handed, indicating that these cousins of modern humans had a brain structure similar to that of Homo sapiens, a study published in Plos One magazine said.
     Researchers, among them members of Spain's CSIC research council, analyzed grooves in more than 60 Neanderthal dental pieces. Manual laterality "reflects specialized organization of the brain, so its evolutionary origin has been the subject of research for decades," project director Antonio Rosas said. Although some primates can have a certain degree of preference for the use of one of their hands, strict laterality - a spontaneous preference for the use of limbs located on the right or left side - has only been observed in human species, Rosas, who is with the National Museum of Natural Sciences, said.
     The ability to study 11 Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) from the same group together was a unique opportunity, but researchers must still determine whether the other two individuals in the group were right-handed or left-handed since their dental pieces did not survive, Rosas said. Of the 27 Neanderthals studied around the world so far, just two appeared to show a preference for using their left hands, a percentage comparable to that in modern humans, researchers said.

Edited from Global Post (7 May 2013)

  40,000 boxes of Neolithic artifacts locked in Turkish warehouse

Marmaray Metro Project consists of the construction of an undersea rail tunnel under the Bosphorus strait in Turkey as well as the modernization of rail lines along the Sea of Marmara from Halkalı on the European side to Gebze on the Asian side. The archaeological excavations started in 2004 to accommodate the project are still uncompleted, while about 40,000 boxes of historical findings are under serious threat as they have been locked in depots.
     Though the 8,500-year-old historical artifacts from the Neolithic period drew worldwide interest, the excavations were stopped due to lack of funding. About 40,000 boxes of artifacts found in the excavations, which were carried out with the sponsorship of the Transportation Ministry State Ports and Airports Authority (DLH), were locked in depots and sealed.
     After an initial report that the objects had been sealed, Culture Minister Ömer Çelik announced that Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım had said an additional budget had been allocated to continue the excavations and the objects would be unsealed soon. Though three months have passed since that announcement, the seals on the depots have not been removed. The excavations have not been restarted and the dismissed archaeologists have not been rehired. The museum authorities said they were currently waiting for the budget to restart the excavations. DLH authorities, on the other hand, said they had provided the additional budget but they did not yet fulfill the conditions of the contract.
     The current condition of the artifacts is not known since they have been locked in depots for three months. A protocol made with DLH assured that financial support would be provided until they obtained full results from the excavations. As the discoveries of artifacts kept the Marmaray Project from being completed by the end of 2010, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in 2011, "Is any of this stuff more important than people?"

Edited from Hurriyet Daily News (4 May 2013)