Estonian students find Iron Age life smoky and cold

Five students in the small Baltic state of Estonia, who have abandoned modern conveniences for a week in a replica wooden hut built on the site of an ancient hill fort, have discovered that Iron Age accommodation was mainly cold, dark and smoky.
     "You can't heat and be in the building and after dark there is no light," said Kristiina Paavel, 24, one of the students. "We tried the old method of burning a cinder of wood for light, but it gave too much smoke, so we will just go to sleep earlier tonight," she said.
     Dressed in layers of dark woolen and felt clothes and covered with a sheepskin coat while she crochets, Paavel said there are some basic issues modern humans take for granted such as smokeless heating and light at night. "We were worried about the cold weather and heating, but after this morning we feel a little more confident we can last the five days," Paavel said after the temperature fell to -25 degrees Celsius.
     The log hut's design was from before chimneys were in use and took two years to cut and assemble by hand. It sits on top of the foundations of an original Iron Age building excavated in 1955. The five sleep on a single low platform covered with hay, sheepskin and cloth across the back wall of the building. Inside, acrid smoke fills the windowless room and flows out of a small square door and a small vent in the wall.
     Kristin Ott squatted on the earthen floor beneath a cloud of smoke cutting up meat and putting it in wooden dishes. In the corner, an open fire burned with rocks placed on top to help preserve the heat over the night. The students get water from melting snow. "Although some of the Iron Age life is romantic, it is more comfortable in the modern world," said Paavel.

Edited from Yahoo! News (1 February 2012)

  Prehistoric stone row discovered in Wales

Sandy Gerrard, a former English Heritage designation officer for 20 years, reported the discovery of an ancient stone row on the site of a proposed wind farm in Wales. It seems that the row at the Mynydd y Betws wind farm development went unnoticed by archaeologists researching the site prior to work starting.
     There are two roads scheduled to cross the stone row but work has now stopped in the area around the row pending clarification by archaeologists working for Cambrian Renewable Energy Limited, the company building the wind farm.
     "There are currently three scheduled monuments on Bancbryn and we decided to head straight there. Within moments we had identified several sites including a number of stoney mounds, a few hollows, a line of pits with associated banks and leading into and returning out from the fenced off area - a line of stones. In amongst these archaeological features but significantly not actually touching any of them were the scars of archaeological trenches indicating that excavation had indeed happened but appeared to have missed all the visible archaeology," said Mr Gerrard. "Our visit confirmed there were indeed archaeological remains and we are confident that future work will demonstrate that they are of some importance," he added.
     Mr Gerrard said that the stone row is probably the most important of the features found and as it is associated with over 30 cairns, some of which are kerbed, it seems to form the focus of an incredibly important ceremonial landscape where the form of space between the numerous earthwork and built elements are as integral and important as the earthworks themselves. Mr Gerrard has spent much of his archaeological working life on Dartmoor and he believes the form of the newly discovered stone row is so identical to the same rows in England as to suggest a definite and tangible link between these people. The small size of the stones reflects what was available and even on Dartmoor some of the rows are formed by similar sized stones.
     GPS measurements allowed experts to trace the stone row for 700m. The row is aligned south west to north east which is the most common alignment for South West England rows. Many of the stones peep through the peat and many more are probably lurking below.
     "The discovery of this exciting monument has been tempered by the realisation that it is being cut into three parts by the new roads and the feeling that if it had been known about before it could have perhaps been saved in its entirety," said Gerrard. "The site is delicate and the huge diggers which have been trundling across it have already caused irreparable damage. It is to be hoped that the row will survive its amputation and outlast its temporary ignominy. To this end I have asked Cadw to schedule the monument as a matter of priority to ensure that any straying diggers do not complete the destruction," he concluded.

Edited from Heritage Action News (26 and 29 January 2012)

  Ancient jade tool baffles scientists

Some time ago, researchers discovered a 3,300-year-old on Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago (a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea). The 2-inch (5-centimeters) stone tool was probably used to carve, or gouge, wood. It seems to have fallen from a stilted house, landing in a tangle of coral reef that was eventually covered over by shifting sands.
     The jade gouge may have been crafted by the Lapita people, who appeared in the western Pacific around 3,300 years ago, then spread across the Pacific to Samoa over a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians, according to the researchers. Jade gouges and axes have been found before in these areas, but what's interesting about the object is the type of jade it's made of: it seems to have come from a distant region. Perhaps these Lapita brought it from wherever they originated.
     "In the Pacific, jadeite jade as ancient as this artifact is only known from Japan and its usage in Korea," study researcher George Harlow, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said in a statement. "It's never been described in the archaeological record of New Guinea."
     Researchers from American Museum of Natural History studied the artifact with X-ray micro-diffraction, trying to pinpoint the origin of rocks. "When we first looked at this artifact, it was very clear that it didn't match much of anything that anyone knew about jadeite jade," Harlow said. The artifact's chemical composition "makes very little sense based on how we know these rocks form."
     The jadeite in the rock is different from the jadeite jades found in Japan and Korea at the time. It's missing certain elements and has more-than-expected amounts of others; the stone came from another geological source, but the researchers aren't sure where. The only chemical match the researchers knew of was a site in Baja California Sur, Mexico. The researchers don't think it's likely that Neolithic people of thousands of years ago could have transported it across the Pacific, but they couldn't find any other explanations for its composition.
     However, in an unpublished 20th-century German manuscript, C. E. A. Wichmann, described some curious rocks from Indonesia -about 600 miles (1,000 km) from the site where the jade tool was found - and the chemical properties he reported seem very similar to that of the artifact. Researchers are now investigating those samples to see if modern techniques can prove that the tool came from Indonesia.

Edited from LiveScience (26 January 2012)

  Neanderthal mammoth hunters in Jersey?

Archaeologists are investigating the truth behind the story that Ice Age Neanderthals in Jersey would push mammoths off cliffs in St Brelade for food. About 30 years ago, evidence suggested early residents of what is today the island of Jersey chased the giant mammals off the cliffs at La Cotte above Ouaisne.
     Dr Geoff Smith, an analyst for Jersey Archive, is now using new technology to look at whether that theory is correct or not. Dr Smith said: "I record the ages of the animals to see if they resemble natural deaths or whether it is indicative of human hunting or other carnivore. Was the climate change so severe it forced them into a refuge somewhere from which they became such a small population they couldn't survive? We still don't know, new theories are coming out every day."
     In a cave at La Cotte in Ouaisne Bay archaeologists have, over the years, found tools and the fossilised bones and teeth of woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave bear and reindeer. These remains date from a time when the view from Ouaisne was not sea, but a huge treeless land stretching all the way to what is now St Malo.
     Groups of nomadic people would move northwards in the spring, following the animals to their summer pastures in the place where England is today. On the cliffs at Ouaisne, it was thought these nomadic people would hunt for food by sneaking up on grazing animals and making them stampede over the edge.
   
Edited from BBC News (26 January 2012)

  4,000-year-old artifact found in Connecticut

An ancient spearpoint was found at an excavation site in Connecticut (USA) during a Norwalk Community College-sponsored archaeology dig. Chelsea Dean, senior at Fairfield Ludlowe High School, took the Introduction to Archaeology course with Professor Ernest Wiegand last fall as part of the schools avocation program. During the last dig of the semester, Chelsea found a spearpoint more than 4,000 years old.
     "It's like an arrowhead. The section I was working on had a lot of stuff coming up, but nothing was complete. When the actual projectile point came up, it was the first intact artifact I found," she said. "One of the things I learned taking the course is that I want to continue with archaeology, whether it's a career or recreational," Chelsea said.
     Mr. Wiegand, coordinator of the college's archaeology club, said Chelsea discovered a spearpoint made of white quartz. This type of ancient artifact is known as a Burwell projectile point and was probably used as the tip of a spear. The excavation at Gallows Hill Rd. has been a 10-year project by Mr. Wiegand and his students. "The point type is the first of its kind found at the site," he said. "It is one more clue to tell us as to who was there." The artifact is being kept with other findings from the Gallows Hill site, where dig will continue when Mr. Wiegand and his students return in the spring.
     Daniel Cruson, a local historian and archaeologist, said the spearpoint finding is not uncommon for this area. During several digs at Putnam Park Mr. Cruson has headed since 2001, a component of an Indian camp was uncovered along with other findings. "We found a complete projectile point, six or seven broken points and stone bifaces made of quartz," said Mr. Cruson. These findings also date to between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago.

Edited from The Redding Pilot (25 January 2012)

  Underwater archaeology: The elusive Minoan wrecks

Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, made a four-week survey of the waters around Crete last October as part of a long-term effort to catalogue large numbers of ancient shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea. The grand prize would be a wreck from one of the most influential and enigmatic cultures of the ancient world - the Minoans, who ruled these seas more than 3,000 years ago.
     A Bronze Age wreck called Ulu Burun shows how the remains of a single ship can transform archaeologists' understanding of an era. Discovered in 1982, about 9 kilometres southeast of Kash in southern Turkey, it dates from around 1300 BCE, a century or two after the Minoans disappeared. It took ten years to excavate, and researchers are still studying the nearly 17 tonnes of treasures recovered, including ebony, ivory, ostrich eggs, resin, spices, weapons, jewellery and textiles, as well as ingots of copper, tin and glass. What really stunned archaeologists was that the artefacts on this one vessel came from at least 11 different cultures.
     The Ulu Burun sailed at around the time that Tutankhamun ruled Egypt, yet "it is far more important than Tutankhamun's tomb as a contribution to our understanding of the period", according to Shelley Wachsmann, an expert in ancient seafaring at Texas A&M University, USA.
     The earlier Minoans set the stage for such a widespread trading network through their domination of the eastern Mediterranean, and what archaeologists crave is a Minoan equivalent of Ulu Burun - a long-distance trading ship packed with valuable cargo that would reveal how different cultures interacted.
     Robert Ballard, an oceanographer based at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, has pioneered deep-sea exploration and discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. Ballard has spent years searching for ancient wrecks and has learned the importance of finding areas beyond the reach of the fishing trawlers which scour the sea floor, destroying archaeology in the process. Historians once assumed that the number of wrecks in the deep sea was negligible, but in the 1990s Ballard found eight ancient wrecks far from shore, between Sicily and Sardinia. "The ancient mariner was not afraid of going out to sea," says Ballard. Like Foley, he believes Minoan ships are waiting to be discovered.
     Foley estimates that hundreds of thousands of ships must have sunk in ancient times - thousands in the Bronze Age alone. That could shift marine archaeologists into an era in which they can use statistical data gathered to build up a bigger picture of trade routes, migration and warfare throughout history. "We'd rather find 500 ships than excavate one," says Ballard.

Edited from Nature (25 January 2012)

  Neanderthals and their contemporaries engineered stone tools

New published research from anthropologists at the University of Kent (UK) has scientifically supported for the first time the long held theory that early human ancestors across Africa, Western Asia and Europe engineered their stone tools.
     For over a century, anthropologists have debated the significance of a group of stone age artefacts manufactured by at least three prehistoric hominin species, including Neanderthals. These artefacts, collectively known as 'Levallois', were manufactured across Europe, Western Asia and Africa as early as 300,000 years ago.
     Levallois artefacts are flaked stone tools described by archaeologists as 'prepared cores', shaped in a deliberate manner such that only after such specialised preparation could a prehistoric flint knapper remove a distinctive 'Levallois flake'. Levallois flakes have long been suspected to be intentionally sought by prehistoric hominins for unique standardised properties of size and shape.
     Now, a experimental study in which a modern-day flint knapper replicated hundreds of Levallois artefacts supports the notion that Levallois flakes were indeed engineered. By combining experimental archaeology with morphometrics (the study of form) and statistical analysis, the Kent researchers have proved that Levallois flakes removed from these types of prepared cores are significantly more standardised than the flakes produced incidentally during Levallois core shaping, called 'debitage flakes'. Importantly, they also identified the specific properties of Levallois flakes that would have made them preferable.
     Dr Metin Eren, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University's School of Anthropology and Conservation, and the flint knapper who crafted the tools, said: "The more we learn about the stone tool-making of the Neanderthals and their contemporaries, the more elegant it becomes. The sophistication evident in their tool-making suggests cognitive abilities more similar to our own than not."
     Dr Stephen Lycett, Senior Lecturer in Human Evolution and the researcher who conducted the laboratory analysis, explains: "Amongst a variety of choices these tools are 'superflakes'. They are not so thin that they are ineffective but they are not so thick that they could not be re-sharpened effectively or be unduly heavy to carry, which would have been important to hominins such as the Neanderthals".

University of Kent, Mail Online (24 January 2012)

  7,500-year-old fishing village found in Russia

A team of Spanish and Russian archeologists has documented a series of seines and fish traps - on the banks of the River Dubna, 100 kilometres north of Moscow - which are more than 7,500 years old. The equipment, among the oldest in Europe, displays great technical complexity. The survey will aid in understanding the role of fishing among European settlements by the early Holocene (10,000 years ago), especially in areas where the inhabitants did not practice agriculture until nearly the Iron Age.  
     Ignacio Clemente, researcher at the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas) and manager of the project, explains: "Until now, it was thought that the Mesolithic groups had seasonal as opposed to permanent settlements. According to the results obtained during the excavations, in both Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, the human group that lived in the Dubna river basin, near Moscow, carried out productive activities during the entire year". According to Clemente and his team, the inhabitants preferred to hunt during summer and winter, fish during spring and early summer, and harvest wild berries at the end of summer and in autumn.
      While it is commonly accepted that the first permanent settlements appeared with the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, that theory overlooks other valid possibilities - such as the fishermen in the Bay of Biscay, who did not cultivate the land until long after the practice reached Spain, about 5,000 years ago. The recent Russian findings support a new hypothesis: fishing, and not agriculture, allowed certain populations to become sedentary.
     During the three year project just ended, several types of objects were found: everyday objects (spoons, plates, etc.), working tools, hunting weapons and fishing implements, all of them manufactured with flint and other stones, bones and shafts. Clemente adds: "The documented fishing equipment shows a highly developed technology, aimed for the practice of several fishing techniques. We can highlight the finding of two large wooden fishing traps (a kind of interwoven basket with pine rods used for fishing), very well-preserved, dating back 7,500 years. This represents one of the oldest dates in this area and, no doubt, among the best-preserved since they still maintain some joining ropes, manufactured with vegetable fibers". In addition, the researchers have recovered related objects such as hooks, harpoons, weights, floats, needles for the manufacture and repair of nets, as well as moose rib knives to scale and clean the fish.  
     The Zamostje 2 site has preserved numerous organic materials, such as wood, bones, tree leaves, fossil feces, and especially fish remains. These will allow researchers to estimate the percentage of fish in the diet, survey species, catch amount and size, and fishing season. The team have also found abundant remains of hunting; mostly moose, beaver and dog. "We have found signs of presence throughout the year," says Clemente; "these people were not nomadic." He then adds, "Farming did not arrive in this area until some 3,000 years ago." The greatest secret is how the fish traps were constructed. "We have no idea how they managed such thin rods of pine, although it could be that the wood was frozen," concludes Clemente.

Edited from CSIC (25 January 2012), El Publico (26/01/2012)

  Early evidence of popcorn found in Peru

The first evidence of the domesticated production of corn in the Americas can be found in Mexico and dates back to 7,000 BCE. It was developed from a wild grass called teosinte. After a few thousand years its usage and cultivation spread over South America and evidence has been found in areas even before the use of pottery.
     Until now the earliest evidence had only dated back as far as 3,000 BCE. Now a team of scientists from the Washington Natural History Museum (USA) have found evidence of processed (cooked) corn in Peru, dating from approximately 4,700 BCE.
     Dolores Piperno, a curator of New world archaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is quoted as saying "These new and unique races of corn may have developed quickly in South America, where there was no chance that they would continue to be pollinated by wild teosinte. Because there is so little data available from other places for this time period, the wealth of morphological information about the cobs and other corns remains at this early date is very important for understanding how corn became the crop we know today".  

Edited from EureAlert! (18 January 2012) BBC News, National Geographic News (19 January 2012)

  Ancient geoglyphs found under Amazonian rainforest

In an area on the western boundary of the Brazilian Amazon, known as Acre, rare geoglyphs have been uncovered by a farmer clearing his land. The area has long been believed to have been forested for thousands of years, with no appreciable human occupation. But this theory is now under fire.
     The farmer, senhor Araújo, thought at first that they were part of abandoned fortifications from the Bolivian War but recent work by archaeologists has dated them at between 1,000 and 2,000 years old, representing a picture of the landscape in the time before Columbus arrived in the Americas.
     The geoglyphs uncovered on senhor Araújo's land are deeply carved earth avenues, up to 6 and a half metres deep. Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian palaeontologist involved in uncovering some of these geoglyphs, believes that they are highly significant. He is quoted as saying "What impressed me the most about these geoglyphs was their geometric precision, and how they emerged from the forest we had all been taught was untouched except by a few nomadic tribes".
     These finds are now causing alarm bells to ring with environmentalists, as they present a view of a much smaller rainforest. William woods, a geographer who is part of the team investigating the Acre site, is quoted as saying "If one wants to recreate pre-Columbian Amazonia most of the forest needs to be removed, with many people and a managed, highly productive landscape replacing it. I know that this will not sit well with ardent environmentalists but what else can one say?"

Edited from The New York Times (14 January 2012)

  Haematite to colour ancient stones found in Scotland

Archaeologists working on prehistoric sites at Daer on Lowther Hills, an extensive area of hill country in the Southern Uplands of Scotland, are discovering further sites within a forestry plantation.
     For the first time Biggar Archaeological Group has found colouring substances, used by hunter-gatherers over 6000 years ago. "Haematite was rubbed on stones to give a bright maroon coloured powder which makes good paint," explained group leader Tam Ward. "How it was used at Daer is not known but in Denmark, where graves are often found, the skeletons are covered in this stuff. The overlap between the hunters and the first farmers has also been found and is causing some excitement."

Edited from Lanark Gazette (22 January 2011)

  Seafaring in the Aegean: new dates

Seafaring before the Neolithic - circa 7th millennium BCE - is a controversial issue in the Mediterranean. However, evidence from different parts of the Aegean is gradually changing this, revealing the importance of early coastal and island environments. The site of Ouriakos on the island of Lemnos (Greece) tentatively dates to the end of the Pleistocene and possibly the beginning of the Holocene, circa 12,000 BP.
     A team formed by N. Laskaris, A. Sampson and I. Liritzis from the Laboratory of Archaeometry, University of the Aegean, Department of Mediterranean Studies, Rhodes; and F. Mavridis from the Ephorate of Palaeo-anthropology and Speleology of Southern Greece suggested that obsidian sources on the island of Melos in the Cyclades could have been exploited earlier. Studies of material from Franchthi cave in the Argolid indicated Melos as its origin, but obsidian hydration dating was not applied to the artefacts recovered.
     Obsidian, or 'volcanic glass', has been a preferred material for stone tools wherever it is found or traded. It also absorbs water vapour when exposed to air - for instance, when it is shaped into a tool - and absolute or relative dates can be determined for that event by measuring the depth of water penetration. In 10,000 years, the expected hydration depth is about 10 mm from the tool surface.
     Two routes for the obsidian found at Franchthi have been considered: a direct one of around 120 kilometres with islets in between, and another one through Attica including crossings of 15 to 20 kilometres between islands. The presence of obsidian in mainland and island sites indicates that these voyages included successful return journeys.
     Sites in Ikaria, in Sporades, and on Kythnos demonstrate that, during the Mesolithic, a well established system of obsidian exploitation and circulation existed - a phenomenon that has its routes even earlier, as dates from sites in Attica indicate. Furthermore, obsidian artefacts have recently been found in two other Mesolithic sites in Greece, one in the island of Naxos and the other one in the small island of Halki. Exchange systems therefore brought obsidian to the eastern and the north-west Aegean, and even reached coastal inland sites of mainland Greece such as Attica, though not yet found in mainland sites. Possibly through sites in this latter region obsidian was also brought to the Peloponnese.

Edited from Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 38, Issue 9, pp. 2475-2479 (2011)

  Cave in Croatia yields oldest-known astrologer's board

A research team has discovered what may be the oldest astrologer's board - used to depict a person's horoscope - in the Nakovana cave famous for its conspicuously phallic stalagmite, overlooking the Adriatic Sea in Croatia.
     Dating back more than 2,000 years, the surviving portion of the board consists of 30 ivory fragments inscribed with signs of the zodiac in a Greco-Roman style. They include images of a crab (Cancer), twins (Gemini) and fish (Pisces). The fragments were discovered next to the phallic-shaped stalagmite, amid thousands of pieces of ancient Hellenistic (Greek style) drinking vessels.
     "This is probably older than any other known example," says Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, adding, "We have a lot of [Greco-Roman] horoscopes that are written down as a kind of document on papyrus, or on a wall, but none of them as old as this."
     Jones and Stasho Forenbaher, a researcher with the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, reported the discovery in the most recent edition of the Journal for the History of Astronomy.
     In 1999, the team was digging near the entrance of the cave, well known to people at the nearby hamlet of Nakovana who simply call it 'Spila' (the cave).
     What no one knew at the time was that the cave had another section, sealed off more than 2,000 years ago. Forenbaher's girlfriend (now his wife) burrowed through the debris, discovering a wide low passageway that continued nearly 10 metres. Forenbaher described going through the passageway as "The unique King Tut experience, coming to a place where nobody has been for a couple of thousand years. There was a very thin limestone crust on the surface that was cracking under your feet when you went in, which meant that nobody walked there in a very, very, long time."
     When the archaeologists investigated they found the phallic-shaped stalagmite, numerous drinking vessels that had been deposited over hundreds of years, and something else. "In the course of that excavation these very tiny bits and pieces of ivory came up," said Forenbaher. "What followed was years of putting them together, finding more bits and pieces, and figuring out what they were."
     Archaeologists are not certain how the board came to the cave or where it was originally made. Radiocarbon testing shows that the ivory dates back around 2,200 years, shortly before the appearance of this form of astrology. The signs would have been attached to a flat (possibly wooden) surface to create the board.
     "There is definitely a possibility that this astrologer's board showed up as an offering together with other special things that were either bought or plundered from a passing ship," Forenbaher said. He pointed out that the drinking vessels found in the cave were carefully chosen. They were foreign-made, and only a few examples of cruder amphora storage vessels were found with them.
     The phallic-shaped stalagmite appears to have been a centre for these offerings. "This is a place where things that were valued locally were deposited to some kind of supernatural power, to some transcendental entity or whatever," says Forenbaher.

Edited from New York University (January 2012), LiveScience (16 January 2012)

  Ancient Sumerian fermented cereal beverage

Archaeologists from the Ludwig Maximilian University, together with brewing experts from the Technical University of Munich, carried out an experiment in an attempt to replicate the beer of ancient Sumer, in Mesopotamia.
     Cuneiform writing scholar Peter Damerow of the Max Planck Institute believes that, although the experiment produced a brew, it only demonstrates that modern methods can produce a beer under ancient conditions. However he does think the experiment was a step in the right direction. "Given our limited knowledge about the Sumerian brewing processes, we cannot say for sure whether their end product even contained alcohol", wrote Damerow in the Cuneiform Digital Library Journal.
     Although many of the more than 4,000 year old cuneiform texts contain records of deliveries of emmer, barley and malt to breweries, as well as documentation of the activities, there is hardly any information on the production processes, and no recipe. Moreover, the methods used for recording this information differ between locations and time periods, and the records and calculations are not based on any consistent number system - Sumerian bureaucrats used different number systems depending on the nature of the objects to be counted or measured.
     This has cast doubt on the popular theory that Mesopotamian brewers used to crumble flat bread made from barley or emmer into their mash. The so-called 'bappir' (Sumerian for 'beer bread') is never counted as bread in the administrative texts, but in measuring units, like coarsely ground barley. "Such interdisciplinary research efforts might well lead to better interpretations of the 'Hymn of Ninkasi' than those currently accepted among specialists working on cuneiform literature", said Damerow.
     The 'Hymn of Ninkasi', a mythological poem or lyric text from the Old Babylonian period (circa 1800 BCE) which glorifies the brewing of beer - and one of the most significant sources on the ancient art - provides no reliable information about ingredients, nor does it conclusively describe the procedure.

Edited from PhysOrg.com (17 January 2012), Discovery News, Heritage Daily (19 January 2012)

  Oldest evidence of ploughing in the Czech Republic

Archaeologists in Prague-Bubenec have uncovered a site with the oldest traces of field ploughing in the Czech Republic, that date back to the mid-4th millennium BCE. The research, completed late last year, also uncovered a rich evidence on the area's population in later periods, Archaeological Institute spokeswoman Jana Marikova said.
     The most important find is the system of four approximately parallel lines that are nine metres long, ten metres wide and eight centimeters deep, which archeologists think are furrows. Experts believe the furrows date back to the earlier phase of Copper Age, i.e. between 3800 and 3500 BCE. The oldest evidence on the use of primitive ploughs in Europe also coincide with this period.
     "The Bubenec finds are exceptional in that the furrows probably cannot be considered ritual ploughing. If so, it would be the oldest trace of a field in the Czech Republic," Marikova said,

Edited from Prague Daily Monitor (17 January 2012)