Stone Pages - Archaeo News (Rest of Europe)

Estonian students find Iron Age life smoky and cold

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:45:00 +0100

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)

Neanderthal mammoth hunters in Jersey?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:39:43 +0100

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)

Underwater archaeology: The elusive Minoan wrecks

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 09:27:38 +0100

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)

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

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:48:28 +0100

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)

Seafaring in the Aegean: new dates

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:25:25 +0100

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

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:24:50 +0100

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)

Oldest evidence of ploughing in the Czech Republic

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:19:19 +0100

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)

Rare ancient artefact found in Malta

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:43:09 +0100

The discovery of a very small fragment of agate stone is causing excitement, as it has a 13th Century BCE cuneiform inscription. Not so surprising, you might think, for an artefact found in Mesopotamia, as the inscription shows that it was part of an object dedicated to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin. But this fragment was found in Malta!
An excavation is being conducted at the site of a megalithic temple, from the late Neolithic Age, in an area on Malta known as Tas-Silg, which is an ancient sanctuary site. The excavation team is lead by palaeontology professor Alberto Casella from the University of Rome (Italy). The main question is how such an article could have found its way so far west and to such a remote location. One theory is that it may have been looted in a military campaign and then been passed through the hands of merchants and traders. Another theory centres around the high value which would have been placed on the object, which may suggest that the Tas-Silg sanctuary site may have had more significance than previously thought.

Edited from Popular Archaeology (22 Dec 2011)

New German-Israeli center to study human evolution

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:13:28 +0100

When it comes to human evolution, Europe and the Near East are crucial places: Europe has the first cave art, and the Near East has the first sightings of modern humans out of Africa. Now a leading scientific body, the Munich-based Max Planck Society, is teaming up with Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science to create a joint center devoted to studying archaeology and human evolution, to be based in both Rehovot, Israel, and Leipzig, Germany.
On 11 January, Max Planck President Peter Gruss, and Daniel Zajfman, president of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, will sign a contract to create the new center, worth about €5 million over the next 5 years. The new Max Planck Weizmann Center for Integrative Archaeology and Anthropology, as it will be called, won't have a new building. Instead, the money will fund up to 10 postdocs or graduate students in each city, says anthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin. It will also support equipment and infrastructure such as the rental of additional lab space in Leipzig and the kitting out of existing space at the Weizmann Institute.
The center will focus on key questions such as the timing of cultural change over the past tens of thousands of years and the nature of coexistence between Neanderthals and modern humans. But Hublin says no decisions have been made about specific projects. In addition to CT scanning of bones and teeth and radiocarbon dating of previously excavated materials, researchers hope to launch new archaeological digs, possibly in Europe or the Near East.

Edited from Science Magazine (6 January 2011)

9500-year-old obsidian bracelet reveals craftsmen's skills

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:36:27 +0100

The Laboratoire de Tribologie et de Dynamiques des Systèmes have analyzed the oldest obsidian bracelet ever identified, discovered in the 1990s at the site of Aşıklı Höyük, Turkey; the researchers have revealed the astounding technical expertise of craftsmen in the eighth millennium BCE. This work is published in the December 2011 issue of Journal of Archaeological Science, and sheds new light on Neolithic societies.
Dated to 7500 BCE, the obsidian bracelet studied by the researchers is the earliest evidence of obsidian working, which only reached its peak in the seventh and sixth millennia BCE. It has a complex shape and a remarkable central annular ridge, and is 10 cm in diameter and 3.3 cm wide. Discovered in 1995 at the site of Asıklı Höyük in Turkey and displayed ever since at the Aksaray Archeological Museum, the ring was studied in 2009, after Mihriban Özbasaran, Professor at the University of Istanbul's Department of Prehistory, resumed excavations.
Laurence Astruc, a CNRS researcher and her colleagues analyzed the bracelet using technologies developed by LTDS researchers Hassan Zahouani (ENISE) and Roberto Vargiolu (ECL). These methods, known as multi-scale tribological analysis, have been adapted for the study of micro-topographic features on archeological artefacts. They seek to identify every single operation performed on the surface of these objects.
This process has revealed that the bracelet was made using highly specialized manufacturing techniques. The analyses carried out showed that the bracelet was almost perfectly regular. The symmetry of the central annular ridge is extremely precise, to the nearest degree and nearest hundred micrometers. This suggests that the artisans of the time used models to control its shape when it was being made. The surface finish of the bracelet (which is very regular, resembling a mirror) required the use of complex polishing techniques capable of obtaining a nanometer-scale surface quality worthy of today's telescope lenses.
The work was carried out as part of the 'Obsidian: Practical Techniques and Uses in Anatolia' program. In the program, the Asıklı Höyük bracelet is the first object to have been studied among some sixty other polished obsidian artefacts. In collaboration with the University of Manchester and the British Museum, Laurence Astruc's team is now analyzing ornamental objects found at the Halaf sites of Domuztepe in Eastern Central Anatolia and Arpachiyyah in Iraq.

Edited from PhysOrg.com (21 December 2011)

Prehistoric settlement discovered in Serbia

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:35:56 +0100

A prehistoric settlement from the early and late Iron Age and several remains from 1,000 BCE to II-III century CE have been discovered at the site of Bare, southern Serbia.
Several objects dating from the Iron Age were found on an area covering about three hectares, said the head of the team, Maja Djordjevic of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia. The items found, said Djordjevic, point to a rich life at the site, where there used to be a large settlement at the time.
Due to torrential rains and intensive agriculture at the location, the multilayer site Bare is now largely destroyed. "Had the site been investigated in the sixties of the last century, the findings would have been far richer, unveiling more significant evidence," Djordjevic said.

Edited from ANSAmed (20 December 2011)

Evolution of the human skull

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:12:54 +0100

Researchers at the Universities of Manchester (UK) and Barcelona (Spain) studying 390 human skulls from Hallstatt, Austria, have shown that changes to skull shape long thought to have been separate events may actually be connected.
The skulls are part of a famous collection; local tradition dictates that the remains of the town's dead are buried but later exhumed to make space for future burials. The skulls are decorated with paintings and, crucially, bear the name of the deceased. The Barcelona team made measurements of the skulls and collected genealogical data from records of births, marriages and deaths, allowing them to investigate the inheritance of skull shape.
The team tested whether certain parts of the skull changed independently, as anthropologists have always believed, or were in some way linked. They found that, rather than being separate evolutionary events, changes in one part of the brain would facilitate and even drive changes in the other parts.
According to Dr Chris Klingenberg, of Manchester University's Faculty of Life Sciences, "We were able to use the genetic information to simulate what would happen if selection were to favour particular shape changes in the skull. For each of the simulations, we obtained a predicted response that included not only the change we selected for, but also all the others. All those features of the skull tended to change as a whole package. This means that, in evolutionary history, any of the changes may have facilitated the evolution of the others."
Lead author Dr Neus Martínez-Abadías, from the University of Barcelona, added: "This study has important implications for inferences on human evolution and suggests the need for a reinterpretation of the evolutionary scenarios of the skull in modern humans."

Edited from ScienceDaily (20 December 2011)

Neanderthals built homes with mammoth bones

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:11:33 +0100

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 44,000 year old Neanderthal building that was constructed using the bones from mammoths. The circular building, which was up to 26 feet across at its widest point, is believed to be earliest example of domestic dwelling built from bone.
Neanderthals were initially thought to have been relatively primitive nomads that lived in natural caves for shelter. The new findings, however, suggest these ancient human ancestors had settled in areas to the degree that they built structures where they lived for extended periods of time. Analysis by researchers from the Muséum National d'Histories Naturelle in Paris also found that many of the bones had been decorated with carvings and ochre pigments.
Laëtitia Demay, an archaeologist who led the research, said: "It appears that Neanderthals were the oldest known humans who used mammoth bones to build a dwelling structure. This mammoth bone structure could be described as the basement of a wooden cover or as a windscreen. Neanderthals purposely chose large bones of the largest available mammal, the woolly mammoth, to build a structure. The mammoth bones have been deliberately selected and were circularly arranged. Under a cold climate in an open environment, the lack of wood led humans to use bones to build protections against the wind."
The bone structure was found near the town of Molodova in eastern Ukraine on a site that was first discovered in 1984. It was constructed of 116 large bones including mammoth skulls, jaws, 14 tusks and leg bones. Inside at least 25 hearths filled with ash were also discovered, suggesting it had been used for some time. The researchers believe that the Neanderthals both hunted and killed the mammoths for meat before using their bones but also collected some of the bones from animals that had died of natural causes.
Simon Underdown, a senior lecturer in biological anthropology who researches Neanderthals at Oxford Brookes University, said: "It's another piece in the newly emerging Neanderthal jigsaw puzzle. Far from being the stupid cavemen of popular image it's becoming increasingly clear the Neanderthals were a highly sophisticated species of human. We can now add shelter building to the list of advanced behaviours that includes burying the dead, spoken language, cooking and wearing jewellery."

Neolithic jade ring returned to Jersey

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:10:41 +0100

One of the Jerseys's most valuable archeological treasures, an extremely rare jade ring, has been returned to the island - a British Crown Dependency off the coast of France. The Neolithic polished stone was thought to have been lost to the island in 1993, when it was sold to a private collector. But the Societe Jersiaise received a donation from one of its members towards an auction bid.
Together with Jersey Heritage and the support of archeologists at the Prehistoric Society, the British Museum and the Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique France, they managed to buy it at a Christies Auction in New York earlier this month, for $17,500. It will now be returned to the island where it will go on show, first at Jersey Museum and then La Hougue Bie.
The ring, which was discovered in 1986 is made from stone, quarried high in the Alps. It was one of the few highly valued objects brought to the island by the first colonising farmers more than 7000 years ago.
Curator of Archaeology at Jersey Heritage, Olga Finch, said: "The jadeite ring is one of the finest in Western Europe and I'm thrilled this important part of our heritage is coming back for everyone to enjoy. It's incredible to think that as an important symbol of power and prestige, this beautiful stone ring passed hand to hand from its source in the Alps all the way to Jersey, 7,000 years ago. The skills and craftsmanship involved in making it demonstrates just how sophisticated our Neolithic ancestors were."

Edited from Channel Online TV (16 December 2011)

Were Neanderthals our earliest builders?

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:05:00 +0100

A debate has started on the origin and provenance of a mammoth bone structure which is being researched in Molodova, Ukraine. The site, first excavated in 1950 CE, is being researched by a team from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris (France). The structure in question has been made from the tusks, ribs and other larger parts of mammoths, which were then placed in a shallow trench to form a circular structure. There is evidence within this circle of butchery, cooking (15 fire pits have been excavated) and eating.
The two opposing views centre on whether this was constructed by Homo Sapiens or by Neanderthals. The view for the Neanderthals is represented by archaeologist Laetitia Demay of the Paris team. She believes that the stone tools found on the site are typical of the Neanderthals that lived in Europe and west Asia. The opposing view is championed by archaeologist John Hoffecker, of the University of Colorado Boulder (USA). He believes that Homo sapiens arrivals from Africa, some 45,000 years ago, copied the Neanderthal stone tools and that lack of any further fossil evidence at the Molodova site leaves the identity of the builders unresolved.

Edited from Science News (2 December 2011)