Archaeo News: November 28, 2001 Archives

"Sensational" Bronze Age village found near Pompeii

Italian archaeologists have found what might be the best preserved Bronze Age village in the world. The prehistoric settlement has been uncovered near Pompeii (Italy), more than 3,500 years after it was buried by Mount Vesuvius as the Roman city was centuries later.
      Experts called the find at Nola, near Naples, "sensational". The site is north of both Pompeii and Vesuvius, and suggests that the community was thriving when it was surprised by the eruption. Prof Stefano De Caro, archaeological superintendent for the province, said it was a "new Pompeii", with everyday life frozen in a suspended state, as it was in Pompeii in AD 79. "We knew that Vesuvius erupted a number of times, before and after Pompeii, including in particular in about 1750 BC," Prof De Caro said.
      Wooden structures in the village were destroyed by the heat but the mud that filled the buildings created a natural mould of everything they contained. "What we found was a plaster-cast mould, two or three metres high, of the village in reverse," Prof De Caro said. "It is the first site where we have found everything together - the dead, the living, dwellings, crafts, customs, food." Among the items found were the bones of hams, a hat decorated with the teeth of a wild boar and a cage which had been raised six feet off the ground - probably to protect it from dogs - containing the remains of pregnant goats. "We also found a kiln with a pot still inside it that was being fired," Prof De Caro said. "In other words, we found life in progress."
      Archaeologists believe that a man and a woman whose skeletons were dug up five years ago had been trying to escape from the village during the eruption.

Sources: Ananova, Daily Telegraph News (28 November 2001)

Massive Iron Age hillfort unearthed

English Heritage archaeologists announced that they had finally discovered a massive long-lost prehistoric fortress. Traces of the sophisticated complex on precipitous Roulston Scar, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire (England), have been recorded over the centuries, but it is only now to be given its proper place in the schedule of ancient monuments. Suspicions that a hill fort existed in the area date back to the mid-19th Century, when an Ordnance Survey team mapped a stretch 670ft long of "tell-tale" Iron Age earthworks, but they were later confused with medieval boundary ditches and deleted.
      A combination of global positioning technology by mappers' satellites and "good old-fashioned legwork" revealed the true nature and the awesome scale of the fort. The survey revealed that the fort was enclosed by a two-metre-deep trench and a four-metre-high "box rampart", fronted by a timber palisade and topped by a defended walkway; only two entrances were detected, adding to the site's impregnability.
      "We were shocked to discover such a huge complex," said Alastair Oswald, archaeological field investigator for English Heritage. Preliminary examinations of the remains suggest it was more than twice the size of most other prehistoric strongholds. Built of timber palisades and girdled by a 1.3 mile circuit of ramparts, 60 per cent of which are cut out of solid limestone, the fort has been provisionally dated at 400BC.
      As well as its defensive function, archaeologists think it may have been a "statement of power", possibly housing the Iron Age equivalent of a regional assembly. "Such a large fort would have taken a vast amount of timber and labour to build, which poses many more intriguing questions," said Mr Oswald. The fortress must have taken several years - and more than 10,000 cubic metres of earth and rock, and 3,000 trees - to build, but nobody seems to have lived there for any length of time. Most hillforts were more akin to fortified villages or walled towns, often with substantial permanent populations.
      The evidence so far from Roulston Scar suggest it never was a permanent settlement. Significantly, the stronghold faces what was in Iron Age times the territory of the Brigantes tribe, on the border between the Brigantes and their neighbours, the Parisii. One possibility is that the fortress was built by the Parisian king or paramount chieftain to impress, deter or intimidate their Brigantian neighbours.
      Roulston's colourful history has been one reason for the fort's elusiveness; the famous White Horse of Kilburn, carved in the chalk, obliterated a stretch of rampart with its head. Richard Darn, for English Heritage, said: "The Victorian schoolmaster who carved the horse created a fake prehistoric monument by destroying part of a real one, which he didn't know was there." The site was also damaged during the second world war, when defensive works were dug in the main area, which has been the base of the Yorkshire Glider Club for 80 years. So many German gliding enthusiasts had used the grassy hilltop in the 1920s and 1930s that it was seen as a possible Nazi invasion site.

Sources: BBC News (1 November 2001) The Guardian, The Independent, The Times (2 November 2001)

Ancient standing stone recovered

An amateur historian has found a lost standing stone in his own "back garden" - 18 months after beginning a search for it.
      Stephen Davis and historian friend Clare Forbes used ancient documents to help track down The Horestone near Stroud, Gloucestershire (England), some 350 years after it was lost. Mr Davis learned of the stone when he began researching the history of his own house in 1987. He then started to swap notes with local historian Ms Forbes and this led to the pair agreeing to look for the stone together.
      The first known reference to the stone was in legal documents dated 1170, but it is believed to mark a Bronze Age burial site dating back to around 2,500 BC. The area was declared common land after a law suit was fought over it in the 14th Century; its last official recording was in 1636 in a tax record.
      The land on which it stands, which is behind Mr Davis' house, was sold off 300 years ago and is now part of a housing estate. The two stone-hunters feared the ancient rock on Rodborough Common might have been smashed up or buried.
      Mr Davis said: "We had no reason to believe that we'd actually find it. These things are buried, ploughed over or they just fall over." They almost missed finding it because it was so overgrown with ivy it looked like a tree stump.
      On uncovering the stone, Mr Davis said: "It's curious to excavate a piece of history. It wasn't just stumbling across it, but just stumbling across it while we were looking for it. "It was the most astonishing of moments. It spoke immediately of lost time and still had all the atmosphere of a pagan shrine. I was certainly not expecting to have such a stunning moment in my own back garden."
      English Heritage is now expected to declare the six-feet-high stone a scheduled ancient monument.

Source: BBC News (23 November 2001)

News on Seahenge

The famous 4,000-year-old Bronze Age timber circle discovered on a Norfolk beach (England), known as Seahenge, should be conserved rather than returned to its original site, says English Heritage. Despite protests by local residents and Druid groups, who said it was a religious monument, the timbers were dug up in the summer of 1999 for scientific study and to protect them from the waves. English Heritage, which oversaw and financed the removal, said the wooden circle could be destroyed by the North Sea if it is returned to its original site as some have requested.
      Three-dimensional laser scanning is currently helping archaeologists to discover new facts about the monument. The research has so far found the community that built the structure was more highly developed and organised than expected. The new digital-imaging techniques pick out detail in the axe marks left on the wood during construction showing that at least 38 different axes were used on the timbers.
      Francis Pryor, director of archaeology at Flag Fen Archaeological Centre near Peterborough, said: "The widely different 'fingerprints' of each of the axes show up clearly in the high resolution images. "It is remarkable that this tiny community was able to lay hands on such a large number of tools only about 100 years after the knowledge of how to make bronze arrived in this country." The axe marks found could be the oldest metal axe cuts in Britain.
      Scanning of the timber circle's posts and central stump began last month and is due to end in December. It will produce an accurate and permanent record of the timbers, which are some of the earliest ever found. They have been precisely dated to the spring of 2049 BC when the trees were cut down. "The scan will enable us to examine other features of the timbers, such as the insides of the "tow holes" in the central stump, through which honeysuckle ropes were threaded to haul it into position," said Dr Pryor.
      Dr Pryor and his wife Maisie Taylor, an expert on prehistoric wood working, are starting to understand how the circle was set out. The central stump was placed first, then a back panel and an entrance opposite were set out, followed by marker timbers in an arc. The spaces between the markers were then filled in.
      Debris left from dragging the timbers reveals that a stockpile of wood was kept to one side of the circle, while woodworking was carried out on another.
      English Heritage has agreed to pay for the conservation process it has recommended. It is estimated to take about five years and will cost about £40,000. The organisation said in a statement: "Such a unique prehistoric structure of international importance should be conserved so as to be available for future generations, rather than be reburied deeply on the beach at Holme."

Sources: BBC News (19 November 2001), The Guardian (20 November 2001)

1,470 ancient tombs found in Central China

Chinese archaeologists have found over 1,470 ancient tombs dating back over 3,000 years near Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province. More than 100 pieces of bronzeware and over 3,000 pieces of earthenware have been found in the tombs which were uncovered during work to build the Zhengzhou High-Technology Development Zone in the last two years.
Some 70 of the tombs belonged to aristocrats of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which stretched from 1046 B.C. to 771 B.C., Xinhua said. It said about 700 tombs date from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty - or 770 B.C.-256 B.C. - and 700 graves were from the Warring States Period, 475 B.C.-221 B.C. The bronzewares include three-legged tripods and four-legged cauldrons, deep circular vessels with two or four handles, used as containers for grain, and cups used for drinking or warming wine.
According to the archeologists, the presence of so many tombs from these dynasties in the Zhengzhou area is remarkable, as Zhengzhou is famous for its Shang Dynasty (16th century B.C.-11th century B.C.) culture. In the Waliu Ruins in the development zone alone, over 700 tombs dating from the Warring States Period have been discovered. Most of them are small, with the largest being 3.5 meters long and 2.3 meters wide.

Source: Guardian Unlimited (18 October 2001)

Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations

Scientists have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago.
      Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. Today's crater lies on what would have been shallow sea 4,000 years ago, and any impact would have caused devastating fires and flooding.
      The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BC. They include the demise of the Akkad culture of central Iraq, with its mysterious semi-mythological emperor Sargon; the end of the fifth dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom, following the building of the Great Pyramids and the sudden disappearance of hundreds of early settlements in the Holy Land.
      Until now, archaeologists have put forward a host of separate explanations for these events, from local wars to environmental changes. Recently, some astronomers have suggested that meteor impacts could explain such historical mysteries.
      The crater's faint outline was found by Dr Sharad Master, a geologist at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on satellite images. Detailed analysis of other satellite images taken since the mid-1980s showed that for many years the crater contained a small lake. The draining of the region, as part of Saddam's campaign against the Marsh Arabs, has since caused the lake to recede, revealing a ring-like ridge inside the larger bowl-like depression - a classic feature of meteor impact craters.
      The crater also appears to be, in geological terms, very recent. Dr Master said: "The sediments in this region are very young, so whatever caused the crater-like structure, it must have happened within the past 6,000 years." A survey of the crater itself could reveal tell-tale melted rock. "If we could find fragments of impact glass, we could date them using radioactive dating techniques," he said.
      A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.

Source: Daily Telegraph News (4 November 2001)

Dolphin skull discovered at site of Miami circle

A dolphin skull has been discovered at Miami's (USA) mysterious stone Indian ruins. Officials said it is the first such discovery at an archaeological site outside the Pacific Northwest.
      The animal remains were laid upon an east-west axis in the Miami Circle. An archaeologist put the skull together from 100 parts found in the ruins; the scientists said it was nestled among the remains of a shark and a sea turtle. From the way the findings were aligned, archaeologists said they believe they were significant and could possibly have been made as a spiritual offering.
      Officials believe Tequesta Indians along the Miami River used the circle as a trading post. The state and Miami-Dade County purchased the 2.2-acre property after the circle was discovered in 1998.
      Archaeologists say Tequesta Indians carved the 38-foot circle into limestone 2,000 years ago. They believe it was the base of a large building, but are not sure what its purpose was.

Source: Associated Press/MSN (22 November 2001)

Ötzi's Dinner

Almost a decade has passed since the frozen body of a Stone Age man now called Ötzi was discovered in the Ötztal Alps on the border between Italy and Austria, and science is still revealing secrets and refining theories about the 5,000-year-old Iceman.
      Discovered September 19, 1991, the corpse was draped over a boulder and equipped with clothes (a bearskin hat, bark-fiber cape, jacket and leggings of goat- and deer-skin, a loincloth and shoes) and gear (a fire-making kit, longbow, quiver of arrows, hafted copper axe, birch-bark containers, and a backpack).
      Only about 160 centimeters (5 feet, 3 inches) tall and about 46 years old, Ötzi has kept scientists busy around the world. At the University of Glasgow (Scotland) a recently completed microscopic analysis of a tiny sample of food residue extracted from Ötzi's colon has shed new light on his diet, his state of health, and the season of his death.
      Analysis of pollen in the residue revealed a variety of pollen types, including that of a small tree called hop hornbeam. Much of the hornbeam pollen still contains its cellular contents. Ötzi probably ingested this pollen in drinking water at a time when the tree was in flower - late spring to early summer. It had previously been supposed that he had died during the autumn. The food residue also contains the eggs of a parasite, a whipworm; and had the infestation been bad, it could have been debilitating, causing diarrhea and even dysentery.
      Bran fragments in the colon show Ötzi had eaten a primitive cereal called einkorn, as well as some barley. The fineness of the bran suggests the grains were in the form of bread rather than a coarsely ground gruel. The analysis also revealed undigested meat fibers. Perhaps he had eaten Alpine ibex, since a splinter from an ibex neck bone was found beside the body. Whatever the precise identity of the meat, it is clear that he ate a wide variety of foodstuffs. In other words, Ötzi was omnivorous, as we would expect of prehistoric eating habits.

Sources: Archaeology Today (23 October 2001), USA Today (24 October 2001)