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September 2003 | |
 Stone Age settlements found underwater in Britain
Archaeologists have stumbled across the first underwater evidence of Stone Age settlements in Britain. A team from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England say they found flint artifacts including tools and arrowheads eight metres (26ft) under the North sea, off the coast near Tynemouth during a training session to prepare them for dive searches elsewhere.
They say the items pinpoint two sites: one dates back to the late Mesolithic period, about 8,000 years ago; the other, found further out to sea at the end of a long, rocky outcrop which would once have been a cliff face, is thought to be even older - possibly as old as 10,000 years. Both settlements would once have been on dry land but have been gradually submerged as the sea rose at the end of the Ice Age. The precise location of the sites is being withheld for their protection.
Dr. Penny Spikins, the archaeologist leading the team, said she had originally applied for funding to search for this type of site in Scotland and had been amazed to find the items lying undisturbed on the sea bed near such a built-up area. "I was learning to scuba dive and was in the middle of a training session in the sea, when I noticed a lot of pieces of flint beneath me, on the sea bed." she said. "These sites are set to provide us with a unique opportunity to begin to understand early Mesolithic coastal occupation," Spikins said.
David Miles, chief archaeologist at English Heritage, hailed the discovery as "tremendously exciting", mainly because it is only the second such Mesolithic settlement to be discovered in the UK (the very first one has been discovered in the Solent near Southampton). "We know that there is a prehistoric Atlantis beneath the North sea, where an area equal to the size of Britain attached us to the continent. This discovery gives us a stepping stone into this unknown world." he added.
Although a fishing boat picked up a Mesolithic antler harpoon in the North sea early in the last century, experts believe the new findings could lead to significant further discoveries. Similar sites uncovered in the Danish North Sea have yielded a rich seam of artefacts; among the discoveries were preserved canoes, decorated paddles and even the remains of entire houses.
Sources: Reuters, BBC News (11 September 2003), The Guardian, The Independent, The Scotsman, Telegraph.co.uk News, This is the North East (12 September2003)
Human remains found near "Miami Circle"
Archaeologists working on a construction site close to the site of the Miami Circle have found fragments of human bone. In all, a piece of skull, and four finger bones have been uncovered. They are the only human bones to have been discovered on the six acre site so far, which will feature offices, retail sites, and luxury flats. The developers have promised to include space to exhibit non-human artefacts.
The nearby Miami Circle was found in 1998, and is believed to be more than 2.000 years old. It is thought that it was carved by Tequesta Indians, and many ancient Indian artefacts have been found around the mouth of the Miami River, including pottery, cutting tools, and hair pins.
Human bones have previously been found in the area, at the Miami Circle itself, and at Weston, Cutler Ridge, in Miami Lakes and on North Miami Beach. There is also a Tequesta cemetery at Brickell Park, about a block away from the Miami Circle site.
Source: Naples Daily News (6 September 2003)
Iron Age skull found in English garden
A family in North Shields in north-eastern England uncovered a human skull while gardening. Carmel Healy was with her nephew digging in the back garden in Kirklinton Road, when he lifted the skull out of the ground on his fork.
The police were called, and the skull - christened Yoric by the family - was taken to a specialist forensic lab in Bradford, where tests revealed it belonged to a middle-aged man from the Iron Age. It is believed that the Marden estate on which the family live was built on the site of an Iron Age village following an archaeological dig in the 1950s.
Following further tests, the skull is expected to be taken to the Museum of Antiquities at Newcastle University.
Source: Evening Chronicle (5 September 2003)
English village is 4,000 years older than thought
Archaeological discoveries by a student on her summer holiday have dated a Devon village (England) 4,000 years older than previously thought. Lympstone resident Charlotte Coles, 19, who is studying archeology at Bournemouth University, spent her summer holiday with a trowel never far from her side and discovered a flint 5cm knife from 4,000 BCe.
Charlotte said: "The knife is an amazing find. It got us all gasping because it is so old. "It looks as if it is broken at one end and retouched for sharpness on each side. A total of six flint pieces were found showing that Neolithic man was clearly a Lympstone resident."
The dig is continuing on a three-acre plot at Lympstone Nursery.
Source: Western Morning News (10 September 2003)
Rare Paleoindian hunting camp discovered
University of Vermont archaeologists have identified what is unequivocally the first Late Paleoindian site (10,000-9,000 BCe) in the state - and one of very few known to exist in the eastern United States - near Sunderland Brook in Colchester. The site was discovered during an archaeological investigation of property that will be impacted by the construction of a highway.
Preliminary analysis suggests the site was a hunting camp where Native Americans removed and replaced spear points broken during hunts. Other tools recovered suggest that animals may have been butchered and their hides prepared at the site, according to John G. Crock, director of UVM's Consulting Archaeology Program and research assistant professor of anthropology.
"The general lack of Late Paleoindian sites once caused archaeologists to hypothesize that people left what is now Vermont for roughly 1,000 years between the end of the Early Paleoindian Period (10,000 BCe) and the beginning of the Early Archaic period (9,000-7,500 BCe)," Crock explained.
But recovered at the Colchester site (christened the Mazza site, after landowner Sam Mazza) were fragments of several parallel-flaked spear point bases known as Agate Basin points. These were used during the Late Paleoindian period - not only by inhabitants of Vermont and the broader Northeast where this period is poorly understood, but by people who roamed areas from the High Plains to the Mississippi Valley and beyond.
"The Mazza site and its artifacts indicate not only that people were in Vermont during this period, but also that they shared unifying cultural traits with other groups across North America," Crock said.
Much of the stone material recovered in Colchester came from Mount Jasper in what is now Berlin, N.H. This suggests trade or direct travel across the Green Mountains and White Mountains, probably over a route not too different from what is now U.S. Route 2, Crock said. The Mazza site is located next to a tributary of Sunderland Brook, which in turn flows into the Winooski River, which enters Lake Champlain south of Colchester point. "Native Americans used drainages like this one as natural travel corridors and because they contained concentrations of useful plants and animals," Crock said.
Artifacts and other materials from the Mazza site will be processed, analyzed, catalogued and temporarily displayed at UVM's archaeology laboratory. Most of the site has been salvaged, Crock noted, but remaining portions are likely to be destroyed when the highway is developed.
Source: AScribe (10 September 2003)
30,000-year-old carving might be work of Neanderthals
Intricate ivory carvings said to be the oldest known examples of figurative art have been uncovered in a cave in southwestern Germany. The artefacts - including a figurine depicting a Lowenmensch ('lion man') - have been carbon-dated to around 30,000 years ago, when some of the earliest known relatives of modern humans populated Europe. Discovered last year by a team led by US archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany, at the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, the objects include figures depicting a horse and a bird.
Conard says he thinks that the figures are older than a previously discovered Lowenmensch, fragments of which were found by German archaeologists in 1939 near Vogelherd and dated to about the same time. Until now, those artefacts were accepted as the oldest examples of figurative art in the world. The newly discovered objects are older, Conard argues, as they were uncovered at a lower level in the cave floor's sediments.
Conard, who has studied human migration from Africa at dig sites stretching from Syria to Germany, believes that humans first arrived in central Europe by following the River Danube west into the area. The figurines add a new dimension to theories about the Danube route, agrees Gamble. "During the Ice Age in Europe, the frozen Danube would be like a highway," he says, "providing a fast track to new environments."
Fossil remains suggest that modern humans and Neanderthals both lived in Europe during this period. Conard reported that the sedimentary levels in which the ivory carvings were embedded did not include any Neanderthal fossils. But some archaeologists argue that it is possible that the much-maligned Neanderthals produced similar objects.
Attributing artefacts to one of the two hominid groups remains difficult; Gamble says that the discovery will spur fresh exploration of France, Spain and South Africa, where even older cave drawings - but not figurative art of this age - have been identified.
Source: Nature (4 September 2003)
Ancient fish trap found in Alaska
While walking along the lower Chilkoot River (near Haines, Alaska, USA) just over a year ago, a Lutak resident noticed a pattern in some wooden stakes embedded on the bank. Some two dozen partially eroded posts of similar width and height were spaced almost strategically.
The resident contacted local archaeologist Tom Prang, who determined the stakes were likely left over from a Native village that once thrived at the Chilkoot. He sent a stake to Florida's Beta Analytical for carbon dating. Turns out, the resident had come upon remnants of what appears to be a 2,100-year-old fish trap. It's the oldest known artifact discovered in the Chilkat Valley, said Sheldon Museum director Cynthia "C.J." Jones.
"We might be looking at the center or one of the ends (of the fish trap), but because we don't know how much the river has changed over time or how much things have eroded, we're only seeing a snapshot of what used to be out there," Prang said. Jon Loring, an archaeologist who worked with the Alaska State Museum, said fish traps were traditionally used widely throughout the region. "(Traps) have been used all over the Northwest Coast culture area, from Yakutat down to Oregon," Loring said. The oldest dated fish trap is a 5,000-year-old found near Sandy Beach in Petersburg.
Source: Daily News Miner (6 September 2003)
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