Expedition to study ancient Saharan giraffe rock carvings
Archaeologists are planning an expedition to the Sahara desert to study one of the most extraordinary prehistoric works of art yet discovered: a group of giraffes carved on rock. The archaeologists will be taking casts of the images, which were carved nine-thousand years ago on a slab of desert sandstone in a remote part of Niger.
One of the giraffes depicted is more than six metres tall. It has been described by rock art experts as one of the greatest pieces of rock carving in the world. The exact location of the site, known only to local tribespeople and a handful of archaeologists, is being kept secret to avoid any chance of looting.
Source: BBC World Service
Early Metal Use Found in Peru
Ancient residents of the Andes Mountains produced delicate gold and copper foils, 1,000 years earlier than archaeologists had previously thought they learned to work metal. Burger and Yale geologist Robert B. Gordon unearthed delicate copper and gold foils near an ancient temple made at Mina Perdida, a site in the Lurin Valley along Peru's central coast thought to be occupied for about 800 years during the second millennium B.C, in the journal Science.
A 71-feet high flat-topped pyramid dominates the site, which lies on a natural terrace above the valley's floodplain. The researchers discovered over a dozen delicate foils (each smaller than a postage stamp) at a platform near the pyramid's base, on its flat summit, and on earthen terraces behind the pyramid. Elaborate carvings of supernatural beings on the walls of buildings at the six centers, as well as the presence of ceremonial paraphernalia, indicate the centers were used for religious rituals as well as other civic purposes, the researchers said.
Based on the dating of carbon atoms attached to the foils, they appear to have been created between 1410 and 1090 B.C., roughly the period when Moses led the Jews from Egypt and the era of such pharaohs as Amenhotep III, Tutankhamen and Ramses. The earliest previous evidence of metalworking in the Andes was by the Chavin and Cupisnique cultures between 600 and 200 B.C. The gold was worked cold, pounded with stone hammers to a tenth of a millimeter or less: thinner than a piece of a paper.
The finding shows that early Americans were using metals hundreds of years before we thought they were, says archaeologist Jeffrey Quilter at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. We continually underestimate the abilities of our ancestors, they were much more clever than we give them credit for, he says. Quilter suspects the flashy foils might have been used to adorn people or ritual objects during ceremonies.
Sources: Associated Press / ABC News
Relics looted and recovered from prehistoric cave in France
A Neolithic tomb in southern France has been looted only days after its discovery. Several artifacts are believed to have been stolen from the tomb, which is described by experts as of exceptional archaeological importance, 24 miles (40km) west of Montpellier.
Workmen building a new motorway discovered the cave (which is believed to be around 3,500 years old) near the village of Mourèze. The cave is about 10 square metres in size and is believed to be a burial site. The region, in the foothills of the Massif Central, has other finds dating back to the same era, but the new site is thought to be the most important ever discovered. The mayor of Mourèze, Gabriel Navas, had ordered the cave be sealed so experts from Paris could examine it. The well-preserved skeletons of four people, thought to be a woman and three children, had been found along with pieces of pottery and a stone axe. But when Mr Navas checked the cave two days after its discovery, he found it had been looted. He said the thieves removed a rock from the entrance but had not disturbed the skeletons. Mr Navas, who said the town could not afford to pay for security guards, said the looters had taken pottery and an axe. I am disgusted by the human race, he said.
Luckily, the next day French police recovered a skull, ax and pottery stolen from the Mourèze cave. There were no reports of arrests. The recovery was a result of an anonymous call to police.
Sources: BBC News / Associated Press
Future Improvements at Stonehenge
Great Britain's Culture Secretary Chris Smith spelled out his vision for a more dignified future for Stonehenge, with the traffic removed and new visitor facilities located outside the World Heritage Site at Countess East. Speaking at a meeting in Amesbury with the local authorities and representatives of the local community, Chris Smith said:
Now that the scheme to improve the section of the A303 road next to the stones is included in DETR's Targeted Programme of Improvements, we can at last begin to plan ahead. Opportunities like this do not often arise, and we must grasp the chance we now have to rescue Stonehenge from its surrounding pollution and clutter.
We can get rid of the present mess, remove all the unsightly modern surroundings, remove the traffic noise and intrusion, and return Stonehenge to its original landscape. Visitors will be able once again to wander freely round and through the stones in open downland. This is a prize to be fought for.
This vision is the only viable way to achieve that; the only realistic alternative is to do nothing, and I believe that would be unacceptable to most people. The overwhelming balance of advantage lies in removing the noise and visual intrusion of the A303 from the Stonehenge landscape, as is now proposed.
Now that we are able to take forward the proposal to dual the A303, we will initiate positive discussions with Wiltshire County Council about closing the A344 next to the Stones. This is not only crucial to the success of English Heritage's scheme for improved visitor facilities, but will remove a notoriously dangerous junction with the A303.
Now, too, we can begin to make real plans for creating new visitor facilities for Stonehenge. There is a new, more environmentally sustainable possibility: to locate visitor facilities at Countess East with a Park and Ride link to Fargo. Countess East has the advantage of being outside the World Heritage site but close enough to allow access to the stones within reasonable time. English Heritage is exploring the possibility of developing a new visitor centre there in partnership with a commercial operator. All car parking for Stonehenge would be at the new centre, which would be linked by a free park-and-ride scheme to a dropping off point at Fargo North.
Source: British Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Iron Age stately home rises again
As part of a research programme to discover how Iron Age architects built their largest buildings, archaeologists in south-west Wales are recreating a 45ft wide (13.7m) roundhouse on the exact spot it stood 23 centuries ago. Designing the roof angle to minimise rainwater retention, they have worked out that the original structure must have stood 26ft (7.9m) high.
The chieftain's house, at Castell Henllys in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park - will be among the largest reconstructed prehistoric buildings in Europe, and the only structure of its size in the UK built on its original site. The shallow foundations of the wattle and daub walls are even being built in the trench dug by the Iron Age architects in circa 300BC.
The roundhouse was almost certainly built, and is being rebuilt, entirely from timber uprights and roof beams, water reeds for the room thatch, young hazel branches for latticework walls (wattles) and clay, cow dung, straw and horsehair for daub to cover the wall latticework.
The building would have been home for a powerful local chieftain. It stood within and dominated a small village surrounded by multiple earthwork, stone and timber defences. Apart from the chief's stately pile, the settlement boasted up to a dozen smaller roundhouses, lived in by up to 150 relatives and retainers.
The chieftain, who probably controlled a territory of some 30 square miles, is likely to have been a leading member of a tribal people later known as the Demetae (from which the modern regional name Dyfed is derived).
Castell Henllys will reopen at Easter (10am-5pm daily)
Source: The Independent
4,000 year old street found in Lebanon
We've found a street with mudbrick houses dating back to 2000BC and 2500BC, said archaeologist Jean Paul Thalmann, who heads the excavations at Tal Arqa, a 40-metre-high hill 25km north of Tripoli, Lebanon.
Consecutive layers of settlements dating from 6000 BC to 1400 AD have been discovered at the site, which is among the largest of its kind. Underneath the houses lay 20 clay pots which contained the skeletons of children. In those days people used to bury their children under the floor of the house, said Thalmann.
From the structure of the foundations Thalmann concluded that the houses were about five metres high. People lived on the top floor and used the bottom one for storage. Other spectacular finds from the same period were a pottery workshop and a warrior tomb. The excavations have gone through the mediaeval, Arab, Byzantine, Greek and Phoenician layers and have now reached the early Bronze age.
So far we've excavated only half of the Tal, he said. We know for sure that settlement dates back to 6000BC. At the bottom of the hill we found a workshop for making stone tools and a large block of obsidian, a volcanic material similar to glass which was used to cut stone. The fact that obsidian is found only in eastern Turkey indicates that even then there was large-scale trade going on.
Source: The Daily Star
