Bandurria may be the oldest Peruvian site

The archaelogical site of Bandurria dating back 3200 BCE (located in the province of Huaura, Lima) is considered the origin of ancient American civilization, said archaeologist Alejandro Chu Barrera, director of the Archaeological Project of Bandurria. "Several radiocarbon datings done in the United states confirmed that Bandurria dates back from 3200 BCE, while Caral dates from 2900", said the archaeologist.
     The expert mentioned that the main reason for the development of highly organized cultures along the Peruvian coast is explained in the availavility of marine resources which allowed to improve the population's diet of the place.
     Bandurria is located 140 kilometres from Lima and received this peculiar name because of a bird which inhabit this area. It was discovered by late 1973 but first excavations took place in 1977. It wasn't until July 2005 that the site begun to be excavated by a team of archeologists and students from San Marcos National University, led by archeologist Alejandro Chu.

Source: Andina (26 April 2008)

  Old Scatness Broch gets funding after debate

Shetland Councillors this week turned down a three-year funding request towards work on the Old Scatness Broch (Shetland, Scotland), instead approving funds of just under £150,000 for this year only. Shetland Amenity Trust requested £381,481 over a three-year period up to 2011 towards the cost of completing the inter­pretation of archaeological finds, to enable the site to continue operating as a visitor attraction and to develop detailed plans for making it into a year-round visitor attraction.
     Following a heated debate during the first meeting of the council's revived development committee, members approved funding of £148,340 for the current financial year but backed Betty Fullerton's call for the amenity trust and the economic development unit to produce a detailed plan of all the projects the trust has in the pipeline. Ms Fullerton said she supported the Old Scatness Broch project but it was vital that the council got a full picture of what the trust was up to.
     
Source: The Shetland Times (25 April 2008)

  Rock-art sites found in India

The Indian Department of Archaeology & Museums has discovered rock-art sites in Warangal and Mahabubnagar districts, priceless stone sculptures in Warangal and a Buddhist settlement in Visakhapatnam. Disclosing the discoveries made last month, Director P. Chenna Reddy said rock-art sites were found in the reserve forest area near Narsapur and Bandala hamlets in Thadwai mandal of Warangal district and near the Akkamahadevi caves in the Srisialam hill ranges of Mahabubnanagr district by the technical staff of the department.
     The rock paintings in red, ochre and white pigments depict various types of animals such as such as antelopes and peacocks, human figures representing hunting and dancing, and geometrical designs. The paintings near the Akkamahadevi caves are being ascribed to late Mesolithic times, that is, approximately 3000 BCE based on the various animals drawn and style of execution. The rock shelters at Narsapur and Bandal are being associated with Dolmenoid cist chamber burials which helped the department date these painting to
Megalithic times (1000 BCE onwards). Reddy said more surveys had been planned in the region.

Source: The Siasat Daily (25 April 2008)

  Prehistoric settlement uncovered in Scotland

Biggar Archaeology Group (south Lanarkshire, Scotland) have discovered the location of an ancient 5000-6000-year-old settlement site in a ploughed field at Carwood Farm near the town. After only two days walking ploughed fields to look for evidence of the past, an annual Spring event for the group, the ancient site was located.
     Tam Ward, group leader, explained: "Last year we found a few flints at this location, and this time the first thing we noticed on the ground were carbonised hazel nut shells and bits of pottery. Straight away, we knew this meant the Early Stone Age when the first people to settle on the land built houses, used pottery and farmed the landscape. Such sites are rare in Britain." Tam added: "After two gruelling weekends, we opened a huge trench and found lots of pottery, bits of stone axes and several pits cut into the ground. These all contained charcoal which will be analysed and dated to give us a picture of what the landscape would have been like and an accurate date for the site. One pit was stuffed with pottery from at least two pots."
     This was discovered by Elliot Veitch, a young archaeologist from Biggar Museums. The eight-year-old said: "I love archaeology, but never thought I'd find something as old as this. The pottery is older than the pyramids!" The site is covered over once more but the group will be out searching more fields.

Source: Hamilton Advertiser (24 April 2008)

  Ancient artifacts found in Thai cave

Archeologists found scattered household utensils and pottery belonging to the prehistoric period in a cave in an eastern Thai province bordering Cambodia. Lt. Niran Yano accompanied by archeologists explored a cave on Chanthaburi's Khao Noi mountain near the Thai-Cambodian border and reported the discovery of archeological objects dated back 4,000 years.
     The exploration was carried out after the local residents reported the accidental discovery of such objects scattered and in some cases, buried, in the floor of a cave large enough to accommodate hundreds of people. The villagers also said that objects of similar appearance and antiquity had been found in other sites such as caves on Khao Jum-pa and Khao Sa-thorn mountains. The two caves are seven kilometres apart, according to Lt. Niran.
     Kammanitya Direksilpa of the Chanthaburi Marine Archeological Office said his Office had already explored the three archeological sites. He said it was quite certain the 7-kilometre site could be the location of an ancient community dating back to the prehistoric period. The archeologist added the site was possibly one of Asia's major trade and cultural routes connecting the present Chanthaburi with an ancient community in Cambodia before Thailand and Cambodia were separated by modern political boundaries. Unique to this site is the burial of the ancient utensils and artifacts.
       While various officials and scholars are aware of the existence of the ancient trade routes in this region, Mr. Kammanitya said, there has never been a formal exploration of the area.

Sources: MCOT, TNA (24 April 2008)

  Buried Dogs were divine 'escorts' for ancient Americans

Hundreds of prehistoric dogs found buried throughout the southwestern United States show that canines played a key role in the spiritual beliefs of ancient Americans, new research suggests. Throughout the region, dogs have been found buried with jewelry, alongside adults and children, carefully stacked in groups, or in positions that relate to important structures, said Dody Fugate, an assistant curator at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
     Fugate has conducted an ongoing survey of known dog burials in the area, and the findings suggest that the animals figured more prominently in their owners' lives than simply as pets, she said.
"I'm suggesting that the dogs in the New World in the Southwest were used to escort people into the next world, and sometimes they were used in certain rituals in place of people," Fugate said.
     To conduct her research, Fugate collected data on known dog burials and urged her archaeologist colleagues to note when canine remains were found during excavations. "I have a database now of almost 700 dog burials, and a large number of them are either buried in groups in places of ritual or they're buried with individual human beings," she said. Many of the burials are concentrated in northwestern New Mexico and along the Arizona-New Mexico border, she said.
     Fugate's database indicates that dog burials were most common between 400 BCE and 1100 CE. "The earlier the [human] burial, the more likely you are to have dog in it," Fugate said. By the 1400s and 1500s the practice of burying people with dogs had stopped. Indeed, she noted, today's Pueblo and Navajo Indians believe it is improper to bury dogs. What the ancient dogs looked like is an open question, she said, but their remains suggest that they were far more diverse than was previously believed.
     Susan Crockford is a zooarchaeologist at Canada's University of Victoria who has studied dog breeds in the Pacific Northwest. She agreed that dog remains have often been overlooked during archaeological excavations. Archaeologists tend to examine animal bones at excavation sites with an eye to what humans were eating, rather than what their relationships with dogs were like, she said. Crockford suggested that dogs' spiritual role was among their most important functions in the region, second perhaps to their value as hunting or herding companions.

Source: National Geographic News (23 April 2008)

  Pakistani dam endangers ancient carvings

A high level meeting was held between the elected Pakistani representatives and officials of Northern Areas and the Federal Government to review rock/archaeological carving being impacted by the proposed Basha Dam. Reportedly thousands of rock carvings have been discovered so far in many areas during the last three decades by German scholars in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology, Government of Pakistan. The survey is still under process to document these rock carvings spread in different areas of Northern part of Pakistan.
     More than 50,000 Petroglyphs and over 5000 inscriptions in 39 different scripts and languages have been recorded so far along the Karakoram Highway in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. These rock carvings are threatened and endangered due to the proposed construction of a dam near Basha. It is estimated that about 30907 out of 32405 rock carvings will be submerged by the Basha-Diamer reservoir including 3,290 inscriptions.
     As the Basha-Diamer reservoir is a project of national importance, a meeting was arranged in Islamabad in order to discuss the various issues for safeguarding of engaged rock carvings. The meeting unanimously decided that the unique petroglyphs will be up uplifted (wherever possible) from the location of reservoir and preserved in the Museums to he established at Gilgit and Chilas by the Department of Archaeology & Museums, Government of Pakistan. All other important petroglyphs will be copied through a 3-D Digitizer Scanner and their replicas will be displayed in the proposed Museums. The members of the Local Administration of Northern Areas of Pakistan agreed to provide suitable piece of land free of charge for the Museums at Gilgit and Chilas.

Source: Associated Press of Pakistan (23 April 2008)

  Early Pacific settlement dig yields fine jewelry, pottery

Excavation of the earliest human settlement in Fiji has yielded fine jewelry and high quality pottery made by ancient Lapita people some 3,000 years ago — and never produced in the area since, a South Pacific geographer said. "These people were artists," Prof. Patrick Nunn said, announcing archaeological finds including the first-ever discovery of a Lapita jewelry cache, found at Bourewa Beach on the southwest coast of Fiji's main island, Viti Levu.
     Lapita people, the original colonizers of the South Pacific, are believed to have migrated eastward from the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands and other Pacific islands. Nunn said the two-month excavation he led at Bourewa Beach found stilt houses built above the sea, quantities of Lapita-decorated pottery and stone tools and the "big mystery" of the high quality jewelry.
     Fiji Museum staffer Sepeti Matararaba found the jewelry, made from shells, under an upturned clay pot that Nunn said was "a deliberate burial" by someone 3,000 years ago. When Matararaba turned over the pot over, he uncovered a cache of nine shell rings of different sizes, four shell bracelets and six necklace pieces complete with drill holes. "These are the first people in the South Pacific, they are a Stone Age people," he said. "Within a decade or so of arriving in Fiji they were producing exquisite shell jewelry (and) they were producing intricately decorated pottery. Yet about 550 BCE they disappeared as a distinctive cultural group. After that you don't see anyone in Fiji making shell jewelry like that, or pottery like that."
     Peter Shepphard, associate professor of Anthropolgy at Auckland University in New Zealand, who works on early Lapita and other settlement in Solomon Islands, described the finds as an "extraordinary set of materials" from "a very important site." The "elaborate decorative systems" of the early settlers were "indicative" of efforts to "retain their ties back into their homeland area" in the Bismarck Archipeligo, he said.

Sources: Fijilive (22 April 2008), Associated Press, International Herald Tribune (23 April 2008)

  Turkish site a Neolithic 'supernova'

Klaus Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute, has found in Turkey a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable. "This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt. "Within a minute of first seeing it, I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
     The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are his workplace since 1994. Compared with Stonehenge, they are humble affairs. None of the circles that have been excavated, four out of an estimated 20, is more than 100 feet across. Two of the slender, T-shaped pillars tower at least three feet above their peers. What makes them remarkable are the carved reliefs of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions that cover them, and their age. Dated at about 9500 BCE, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
     "Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture," said Ian Hodder, a Stanford University anthropology professor who has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey's most-famous Neolithic site, since 1993. "Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex, and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."
     With only a fraction of the site opened after a decade of excavation, Gobekli Tepe's significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think it was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman. Mr. Schmidt, however, is skeptical. He agreed the site could well have been "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy" and pointed out that if it is in near-perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning. However, the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless.
     "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods," according to Mr. Schmidt. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms, and they have hands. They are makers. In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all. What is this universe? Why are we here?" With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Mr. Schmidt thinks the hilltop was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly 100 miles and he notes how the tallest stones all face southeast.

Source: The Washington Times (21 April 2008), Tehran Times (26 April 2008)

  Sea level study may change views on Orcadian landscape

A radically different picture of the prehistoric landscape around Orkney's World Heritage Site (Scotland) is beginning to emerge – a landscape which perhaps didn't feature the Stenness and Harray lochs. Preliminary results from an archaeo-environmental project indicate that, prior to 1500 BCE, the Stenness loch was an area of wet marshland surrounding small pools or lochans.
     The Rising Tide project is looking at past sea level change and prehistoric settlement around Orkney. At the helm is local archaeologist Caroline Wickham Jones and Sue Dawson from the University of Dundee. Since 2006, the pair have gathered core samples. The analysis of the remains of tiny creatures known as diatoms, preserved in the sediments of both sea and loch, allows experts to pinpoint when the sea around the islands reached its present level.  
     Sue Dawson explained: "Two dates have now been obtained which start to give a more precise idea of the period at which the sea reached present level." The Echnaloch samples gave a date of 2340 – 2570 BCE, while at Voy, in Stenness, the date is between 1440 BCE and 1270 BCE. Compare this to the estimated construction dates of the Ring of Brodgar (c2500 BCE-2000 BCE) and Standing Stones of Stenness (c3100 BCE). By the time the Stenness loch was fully established, the Ring of Brodgar had been standing for approximately 500 to 1,000 years.
     These single dates give an initial idea of when sea level reached present levels around Mainland Orkney. The time lag between Voy and Echnaloch is likely to be due to the different geographical positions and sheltered nature of Voy.
     Caroline Wickham Jones commented: "Archaeologically, the dates are important because they indicate just how much the landscape of Orkney has changed since the World Heritage sites were built, around 5,000 years ago. Environmental reconstruction from coring suggests that, rather than being connected to the sea, the Loch of Stenness comprised a lake with reed beds at the time when the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness were first built. While the sites were in use the sudden ingression of sea into the Loch of Stenness must have been a notable event. The subsequent flooding of the Stenness basin took place over the later life of the monuments making this an area of dynamic environmental change which must have impacted on the lives of those living in the area. Around Orkney relative sea levels would have been lower for much of the Neolithic, raising the possibility of submerged Neolithic sites and landscapes in the shallow seas between the islands."
     The dates immediately raise a number of questions over the Ness of Brodgar monuments. If there was no loch, for example, the theory the stones were floated to their present site goes out the window. Another casualty is the idea that the Standing Stones of Stenness and Ring of Brodgar were erected where they are because of an interaction between the land, lochs and sky. However, archaeologist Nick Card of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA) feels the lack of lochs would not necessarily have lessened the significance of the Ness to the Neolithic builders. If anything, he suggests, it may have enhanced it. "If we had these two marshy, boggy areas on both sides of the Ness, not only would that mean the Ness was more pronounced, in relation to the low lying landscape around it, but it would remained a 'liminal' place, bordered by two 'no-go' areas. The fact remains that the monuments were constructed in a natural amphitheatre and right through the middle of it there's a natural walkway or causeway, running north-west to south-east." He added: "It's a primary strand of evidence," said Nick, "but we do need more dates and more evidence which I hope the project will be able to supply in the future. It's going to alter the way we view the landscape surrounding the Ness of Brodgar in the Neolithic and maybe into the Bronze Age."
     In June, the project plans further coring to refine the history of the loch of Stenness.

Source: Orkneyjar (20 April 2008)