Is there any wonder why metal detectors are so popular in the UK? This list of six found treasures are all from the British Isles. Shown here is the treasure called the Hoxne Hoard, uncovered in Suffolk and valued at £1,750,000! Peter Whatling and Eric Lawes found it while searching for a lost tool in 1992. Link -Thanks, Danny!

(Image credit: Mike Peel)

A 400-year old cottage was discovered by a construction crew near Pendle Hill (in northern England) that is believed to have been the home of one of the Pendle Witches. The eleven women known as the Pendle Witches were found guilty of murdering ten people with witchraft in 1612, and all but one were hanged for their supposed crimes.

Archaeologists believe this cottage has ties to witchcraft because they found the remains of a cat set inside a brick in the wall. From BBC News:

It is believed the cat was buried alive to protect the cottage’s inhabitants from evil spirits…

Simon Entwistle, an expert on the Pendle witches, said: “In terms of significance, it’s like discovering Tutankhamen’s tomb.

“We are just a few months away from the 400th anniversary of the Pendle witch trials, and here we have an incredibly rare find, right in the heart of witching country. This could well be the famous Malkin Tower – which has been a source of speculation and rumor for centuries.

“Cats feature prominently in folklore about witches. Whoever consigned this cat to such a horrible fate was clearly seeking protection from evil spirits.”

It will be interesting to see what develops in this case, perhaps the witches will be found innocent four centuries later.

Link –via BoingBoing

The 2,000-year-old leather footwear was discovered along with Roman jewelry, coins, pottery, and animal bones at the site, which is located at the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

The cache of Roman shoes and sandals—one of the largest ever found in Scotland—was uncovered recently in a ditch at the gateway to a second century A.D. fort built along the Antonine Wall. The wall is a massive defensive barrier that the Romans built across central Scotland during their brief occupation of the region.

In what will most likely prove to be a garbage dump, archaeologists are finding clues to life in one of the “most important Scottish excavations in the last decade.” Link

(Image credit: Martin Cook)

Photo: Zhang Xiaoli/Xinhua

Archaeologists in Luoyang, China, dug up 5 chariots and 12 horse skeletons from a 2,500-year-old tomb. The photos over at National Geographic are fantastic, but can someone explain to me why the skeletons of the horses are flat? Link

The rituals at Kanaljorden were conducted on a massive stone pavement constructed on the bottom of a shallow lake (currently a peat fen). Some crania were fairly intact while others were found as isolated fragments. The more intact ones represent eleven individuals, both men and women, ranging in age between infants and middle age. Two of the skulls have had wooden stakes inserted all the way from the base to the top. In another case a woman’s temple bone was found inside the skull of another woman. Besides human skulls, the finds also include a small number of post-cranial human bones and bones from animals, as well as artefacts of stone, wood, bone and antler.

The skull depositions at Kanaljorden are clearly ritual in character. The next step is to find out if the human bones are relics of dearly departed that were handled in a complex secondary burial ritual, or trophies of defeated enemies. The archaeologists hope that the ongoing laboratory analysis [stable isotopes] will give clues as to whether the bones are the remains of locals or people with a distant geographic origin, and if they represent a family group or persons unrelated to each other.

Read more at Aadvarchaeology. Link

(Image credit: Anna Arnberg)

Archaeologists in Austria have discovered the remains of an unusual school under the grounds of Vienna: a school for Roman gladiators, where slaves and prisoners were taught to fight to the death.

One of the distinctive parts of the ruins is a thick wooden post in the middle of the training area which was used by gladiators as a practice enemy.

The Roemisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum said the three-dimensional images of the school reveal it to have been a mixture of a barracks and a prison.

Lovers of Professor of Archaeology Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D. rejoice! (Who? You probably know him as "Indiana Jones").

To mark the 30th anniversary of "Raiders of the Los Ark," known here in the NeatoHQ as "the best movie ever," Lucasfilm, National Geographic and Canada's X3 PRoductions are teaming up to bring priceless artifacts (or movie props for you nonbelievers) in a touring exhibit.

(Real) Archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert of National Geographic has this to say about the Indiana Jones movie franchise and its importance to archaeology:

Let me tell you the perspective from National Geographic’s in-house archaeologists, because that’s what I am, and it’s a very special hat to wear, to use an Indiana Jones idiom.

I normally deal with what I call the Indiana Joneses who come to National Geographic to do real research, and it’s an amazing group of scholars that we have …. A great number of them have been inspired by the films of Indiana Jones. It’s like a whole generation.

I used to teach at the university where in Intro to Archaeology — Archaeology 101 — one of the first questions that I always ask is, “How many of you were inspired by Indiana Jones?” What’s amazing is that this is the 30th anniversary of the first Indiana Jones film, and these students are like 20 years old, and 70% of them raise their hands, saying they were inspired by the films.

That is one of the world’s most awesome inspirations that could happen. It’s almost like Indiana Jones is the world’s most famous archaeologist. Even now. He’s not a real person, but he’s had an incredible, incredible impact on the field of professional archaeology, both at the university, and here, now, that I have the great honor to sit at National Geographic ….

We are all inner Indiana Joneses. Every archaeologist has a little bit of that adventure in them.

The Los Angeles Times' Hero Complex blog has more details: Link (and sadly, no US tour dates have been announced)

See also: Indiana Jones items over at the NeatoShop

Genesis Medical Imaging, Inc. has allowed scientists from Chicago’s The Field Museum use of a mobile CT scanner to scan their ancient discoveries, and the results have been surprising. In one mummy they found nothing but straw under the wraps, in another only a skull and legs, and although some of their findings have been disappointing overall the Field Museum has been happy to know exactly what they have in their collection. Read more about it at Art Daily.

Link

A road crew in Dorset, England found a mass grave of Viking bodies that appear to have been slaughtered by Britons, as their heads, torsos and legs were buried in separate graves and no weapons, equipment or clothing were found. The bones showed signs of utter brutality being delivered upon the poor fellows, but more intriguing is the fact that the Vikings teeth had horizontal lines deliberately filed into them. Archaeologists feel that this was done in order to appear more fearsome in battle, and that the excruciating filing of the teeth must have been done by a master craftsman.

Link

Mexican archaeologists have discovered a Prehispanic grave site they believe to be Mayan in the state of Tabasco. Estimated to be around 1200 years old and containing 116 bodies, this is the largest group of skeletons found in the region. The area was thought to have been used as a cemetery, with the elite buried in a separate area from their companions, and skeletons found with dental inlays, cranial deformation and other body modifications. Read more about it at ArtDaily.

Link

An engraved bone, believed to be from a mastodon, giant sloth or mammoth, may be the oldest example of primitive art ever found in the Americas. The carved bone features the depiction of an ancient mammoth, and was discovered by an amateur fossil hunter in Florida, in an area near Vero Beach where other mammoth bones have recently been found. The archaeological team working on carbon dating the bone feel that it is at least 13,000 years old, and that the etching must be at least that old as well.

Link

"At the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, we have found evidence of an early human occupation… 2,500 years older than Clovis," said Dr. Waters. "This makes the Friedkin site the oldest credible archaeological site in Texas and North America. The site is important to the debate about the timing of the colonization of the Americas and the origins of Clovis."

The newly discovered tools are small and made of chert, and the researchers suggest that they were designed for a mobile toolkit — something that could be easily packed up and moved to a new location. These tools are recognizably different from Clovis tools although they do share some similarities, including the use of biface and bladelet technology.

Link (Photo: Michael R. Waters)

Recovered from the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck site in 2008, the quillon could have been made in England or France, according to Wendy Welsh, conservator of the Queen Anne’s Revenge artifacts for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

Beyond the hilt, only a stump of the blade remains, but Welsh said Jan Piet Puype, a Dutch arms historian, thinks the weapon was probably relatively short and was carried by a gentleman with some status—at least before a pirate got hold of it.

Although it could have been used for self-defense, the sword was mainly a decorative  accessory and was manufactured sometime between the mid-17th century and the early 18th century, according to Puype.

See more pictures and information at National Geographic News. Link

(Image credit: Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources)

Archaeologists have announced the discovery of the world’s oldest winemaking facility. The winery was found in an Armenian cave near the village of Areni -the same cave where the oldest shoe ever was found last year. Carbon dating shows that the winery dates back 6,100 years!

In September 2010 archaeologists completed excavations of a large, 2-foot-deep (60-centimeter-deep) vat buried next to a shallow, 3.5-foot-long (1-meter-long) basin made of hard-packed clay with elevated edges.

The installation suggests the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way, using their feet, Areshian said.

Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat, where it was left to ferment, he explained.

The wine was then stored in jars—the cool, dry conditions of the cave would have made a perfect wine cellar, according to Areshian, who co-authored the new study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Analysis of residue found malvidin, a plant pigment found in red wine. Read more about the discovery at National Geographic News. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

(Image credit: Hans Barnard)

Ani is an abandoned city in Turkey near the Armenian border. At one time it had 200,000 residents, but no one has lived there for 300 years. Huge empty ancient buildings remain, all alone in their magnificence. The history of this city is long and bloody, and the remaining archaeological site is in danger of disappearing completely. See lots more pictures at Kuriositas. Link

“It’s very exciting to come to this conclusion,” said archaeologist Avi Gopher, whose team examined the teeth with X-rays and CT scans and dated them according to the layers of earth where they were found.

He stressed that further research is needed to solidify the claim. If it does, he says, “this changes the whole picture of evolution.”

The accepted scientific theory is that Homo sapiens originated in Africa and migrated out of the continent. Gopher said if the remains are definitively linked to modern human’s ancestors, it could mean that modern man in fact originated in what is now Israel.

Sir Paul Mellars, a prehistory expert at Cambridge University, said the study is reputable, and the find is “important” because remains from that critical time period are scarce, but it is premature to say the remains are human.

The archaeologists from Tel Aviv University are confident that other human fossil evidence will be found at the site. Link -Thanks, özi!

(Image credit: AP/Oded Balilty)

“It was assumed the pills were medicines that the physicians were using. There were things associated with this chest that led them to believe it was a physician’s chest,” said Fleischer.

Using DNA sequencing, Fleischer has identified some of the plant components in the tablets: carrot, radish, parsley, celery, wild onion, cabbage, alfalfa, oak and hibiscus.

Researchers are looking into the ingredients to determine what they were for. Speculation is that the tablets were used to treat dysentery, which was common among ancient sailors. Link

(Image credit: Harry A. Alden)

The soup and bones were discovered in a small, sealed bronze vessel in a tomb being excavated to make way for the extension of the airport in Xian, home to the country’s famed ancient terracotta warriors, the report said.

The liquid and bones in the vessel had turned green due to the oxidation of the bronze, it said. Scientists were expected to conduct further tests to confirm the liquid was indeed soup and to identify the ingredients.

Another liquid discovery at the same site is believed to be wine. Link -via Fortean Times

(Image credit: Xinhua)

He has persisted for three millennia—an omnipresence in art, folklore, churches, and census rolls. To Muslims, he is Daoud, the venerated emperor and servant of Allah. To Christians, he is the natural and spiritual ancestor of Jesus, who thereby inherits David’s messianic mantle. To the Jews, he is the father of Israel—the shepherd king anointed by God—and they in turn are his descendants and God’s Chosen People. That he might be something lesser, or a myth altogether, is to many unthinkable.

“Our claim to being one of the senior nations in the world, to being a real player in civilization’s realm of ideas, is that we wrote this book of books, the Bible,” says Daniel Polisar, president of the Shalem Center, the Israeli research institute that helped fund Eilat Mazar’s excavation work. “You take David and his kingdom out of the book, and you have a different book. The narrative is no longer a historical work, but a work of fiction. And then the rest of the Bible is just a propagandistic effort to create something that never was. And if you can’t find the evidence for it, then it probably didn’t happen. That’s why the stakes are so high.”

National Geographic looks at competing theories about the archaeological finds in Israel and the few hard facts that we have about them. Link

(Image credit: Greg Girard)

Mr Mowatt said he had always wondered what lay under an 8ft stone in the garden and eventually curiosity got the better of him.

He dug a small hole close to the stone to see how thick it was. He then managed to get a thin wire pushed under the stone and confirmed there was definitely a space underneath. While doing this, a finger-hole size appeared in the earth to his right. This allowed him to push the wire in — to a depth of three feet.

By carefully removing a small area of earth and two stones, Mr Mowatt could see a rock face. Shining a torch inside, he saw a chamber with about nine inches of water lying in the bottom.

Mr Mowatt added: “I have an underwater camera, so I got it in through the hole and the monitor rigged up. On the screen, I could see the rock face clearly, but when I went further I could clearly see what I thought was a white skull, with two eye sockets, looking back at me.”

So far, three skulls are visible in the stone chamber, which is filling up with water. Experts think there might be multiple connected chambers on the site. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Sigurd Towrie)

The examples of ancient Greco-Roman statuary that survive to this day may be bare stone and earthenware, but archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann argues that they were originally brightly painted:

Armed with high-intensity lamps, ultraviolet light, cameras, plaster casts and jars of costly powdered minerals, he has spent the past quarter century trying to revive the peacock glory that was Greece. He has dramatized his scholarly findings by creating full-scale plaster or marble copies hand-painted in the same mineral and organic pigments used by the ancients: green from malachite, blue from azurite, yellow and ocher from arsenic compounds, red from cinnabar, black from burned bone and vine.

Call them gaudy, call them garish, his scrupulous color reconstructions made their debut in 2003 at the Glyptothek museum in Munich, which is devoted to Greek and Roman statuary. Displayed side by side with the placid antiquities of that fabled collection, the replicas shocked and dazzled those who came to see them. As Time magazine summed up the response, “The exhibition forces you to look at ancient sculpture in a totally new way.”

Link via io9 | Images: Stiftung Archaeologie

Primordial butchers using sharp stones to fillet a carcass in ancient East Africa made the marks, the researchers said.

“It pushes back tool use almost a million years,” said archaeologist Shannon McPherron at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who discovered the bones last year at Dikika, Ethiopia, about 300 miles from Addis Ababa.[...]

Until now, the oldest known stone tools dated to about 2.5 million years ago. Those implements, of which thousands were found in East Africa, are thought to be the work of an early human species. The older find announced Wednesday, however, would predate the evolution of the human family, known as the genus Homo, and raises new questions about the role of tools in spurring human evolution. They may have initiated a shift in pre-humans’ diet, which in turn may have aided the development of larger brains.

Link via Discover | Photo: Dikika Research Project/PA

Sometimes things are worth waiting for.  Guédelon in France is a castle being built using only medieval techniques. As such (and perhaps unsurprisingly) it is the first castle of its type to be built in France for getting on for 800 years.  An experiment in archaeology in reverse.  Instead of digging down, the archaeologists are building up.

Little known outside of France the castle still boasts a huge amount of visitors, over 300,000 in 2009 (making it worthwhile visiting early in the morning before the those clad in twenty first century clothing somewhat dim the experience). Visitors can wear what they will. Workers on the site on the other hand cannot wear modern items such as watches although they can get away with spectacles if they are needed.

Link

Also see a previous report on Guédelon, and Michel Guyot’s other project in Arkansas.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.

The new "henge" – which means a circular monument dating to Neolithic and Bronze Ages – is situated about 900m (2,950ft) from the giant stones on Salisbury Plain.

Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.

"You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench," he said.

"When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.

"When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, ‘that’s a henge monument’ – it’s a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.

Link

For several years, shrinking icefields in arctic and mountain regions have been revealing rare artifacts that had been covered by snow and ice for millennia.  Most of these reports have come from Canada and Alaska, but recently Craig Lee, a Research Associate from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered an atlatl dart near Yellowstone Park.

As glaciers and ice fields continue to melt at an unprecedented rate, increasingly older and significant artifacts — as well as plant material, animal carcasses and ancient feces — are being released from the ice that has gripped them for thousands of years, he said.

The dart Lee found was from a birch sapling and still has personal markings on it from the ancient hunter, according to Lee. When it was shot, the 3-foot-long dart had a projectile point on one end, and a cup or dimple on the other end that would have attached to a hook on the atlatl. The hunter used the atlatl, a throwing tool about two feet long, for leverage to achieve greater velocity.

Later this summer Lee and CU-Boulder student researchers will travel to Glacier National Park to work with the Salish, Kootenai and Blackfeet tribes and researchers from the University of Wyoming to recover and protect artifacts that may have recently melted out of similar locations.

Link (with video).  Photo: Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado

“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.

By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.

The ground where the boat was found had been undisturbed for 200 years. Back then, the site was much nearer the Hudson River. Link -via reddit

(Image credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Somerset County Council archaeologists excavated the pot — a type of container normally used for storing food — it weighed 160kg (350 pounds) and contained 52,500 coins.

The hoard was transferred to the British Museum in London where the coins were cleaned and recorded.

The coins date from AD 253 to 293 and most of them are made of debased silver or bronze.

You can view a photo gallery of the treasure trove at the link.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: CNN

Neatoramanauts, here’s your chance to play armchair archaeologist. Our friends over at the National Geographic is crowdsourcing a project to identify archaeological treasures in Mongolia using satellite imagery (via the GeoEye Foundation) and other modern tools.

The goal of Valley of the Khans Project is to identify archaeological sites, but the fun part is that you get to participate in a real-time treasure hunt. The project is led by Dr. Albert Yu-Min Lin, a dashing real-life Indiana Jones who’s looking for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan:

Hello fellow explorers!

The entire Valley of the Khans team is very excited to begin the expedition to Mongolia but, for me, the adventure begins today. By enlisting the help of thousands of "virtual explorers" like you, we can start to uncover the mysteries of the Valley of the Khans right now!

The area that we will be exploring has been untouched for more than 800 years. There are no maps, no roadsigns and no one to ask for directions. But we’ve scanned the landscape with super high-resolution satellite imagery. By participating in the online exploration on this site, YOU can join our team by examining these satellite images and searching for clues that will guide our quest to discover the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Maybe you’ll map out roads and rivers that our expedition can follow to make our way through this inhospitable territory. Perhaps you can identify traces of a nomad’s ger that might be a good place for us to camp. Or maybe you’ll see the buried outline of an ancient tomb that could be the clue we’re searching for…

So don’t let your computer have all the fun looking for aliens on its spare time, check it out and play archaeologist in the homeland of Genghis Khan from the comfort of your own home.

Links: Project Main Page | About the Expedition | Project Blog with daily updates – Thanks Marilyn!

More photos after the jump:

Satellite Images

Illustration: GeoEye, Inc.

Multispectral imagery collected by the GeoEye-1 and Ikonos Earth-sensing satellites,
generously provided by the GeoEye Foundation, allows the team to survey the expansive Mongolian landscape for sites of interest.

The Ikonos satellite, at right, was the first sensor in the world to offer publicly available high-resolution imagery at 1- and 4-meter resolution. It has played a critical role in expedition planning and landscape mapping.

Data from the newly launched GeoEye-1 satellite, at left, which boasts 0.41-meter resolution capabilities, was collected to enable more detailed ground survey through crowdsourcing.

Satellite imagery: GeoEye Foundation

Satellite image shows mining camp to the right of a possible site of archaeological
interest on the left. (small blueish circle)

Satellite imagery: GeoEye Foundation

Satellite image of Mongolia showing a bridge

Satellite imagery: GeoEye Foundation

Satellite image of Mongolia showing a possible site of archaeological interest.

Photos from the Summer 2009 Expedition

Albert Lin crosses a stream. Photo: Mike Hennig

Lightning strikes across the plains as a storm approaches base camp. Photo: Mike Hennig

Albert Lin in Mongolia. Photo: Mike Hennig

Albert Lin scans the Mongolia horizon. Photo: Mike Hennig

Team members in Mongolia. Photo: Mike Hennig

Mongolian shaman shrine. Photo: Mike Hennig

The team gets one of their trucks out of the mud. Photo: Mike Hennig

The team travels on horse for parts of the journey that cannot be traveled via modern transportation modes. Photo: Mike Hennig

Back in UCSD

Albert Lin and team members stand in front of the UCSD HYPERspace wall.
Photo: Erik Jepsen

Albert Lin stands in front of the UCSD HYPERspace wall. Photo: Erik Jepsen

Photo: Erik Jepsen

Various members of the Valley of the Khans project examine 3-D images of Mongolia in the StarCAVE at the University of California, San Diego.

The StarCAVE is a five-sided virtual reality room where scientific models and animations are projected in stereo on 360-degree screens surrounding the viewer, as well as onto the floor. The room operates at a combined resolution of over 68 million pixels—34 million per eye—distributed over 15 rear-projected walls and two floor screens.

Each side of the pentagon-shaped room has three stacked screens, with the bottom and top screens tilted inward by 15 degrees to increase the feeling of immersion.

Three years ago, Alex posted about the discovery of a 3,000-year old shoe. It was then thought to be the oldest ever found. Now archaeologists have found one about 5,500-years old in a cave in Armenia:

Stuffed with grass, perhaps as an insulator or an early shoe tree, the 5,500-year-old moccasin-like shoe was found exceptionally well preserved—thanks to a surfeit of sheep dung—during a recent dig in an Armenian cave.

About as big as a current women’s size seven (U.S.), the shoe was likely tailor-made for the right foot of its owner, who could have been a man or a woman—not enough is known about Armenian feet of the era to say for sure.

Made from a single piece of cowhide—a technique that draws premium prices for modern shoes under the designation “whole cut”—the shoe is laced along seams at the front and back, with a leather cord.

There’s a comment on its design from fashion mogul Manolo Blahnik at the link.

Link | Photo: Gregory Areshian

An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city of Caracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize. The survey revealed previously unknown buildings, roads, and other features in just four days, scientists announced earlier this month at the International Symposium on Archaeometry in Tampa, Florida.

How much bigger is it?

…the project also revealed thousands of new structures, 11 new roads, tens of thousands of agricultural terraces, and even a number of hidden caves throughout a city, which is now known to stretch over 68 square miles (177 square kilometers).

Caracol was burned around A.D. 895, and was completely abandoned by the year 1050. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image credit: University of Central Florida Caracol Archaeological Project)

As Arctic ice fields retreat, more and more artifacts that were frozen and buried are coming to light. In 1997, hunters found a dart that turned out to be over 4,000 years old. Since then, scientists are searching for history that was preserved under ice for thousands of years. Biologists are finding specimens of well-preserved plants and animals. Archaeologists are collecting evidence of human habitation. Pictured is a bone arrow with a copper tip, believed to be about 1600 years old. TYWKIWDBI has a roundup of stories of newly-found glacial artifacts. Link

The 120 lead ingots, each weighing about 33 kilograms, come from a larger load recovered 20 years ago from a Roman shipwreck, the remains of a vessel that sank between 80 B.C. and 50 B.C. off the coast of Sardinia. As a testimony to the extent of ancient Rome’s manufacturing and trading capacities, the ingots are of great value to archaeologists, who have been preserving and studying them at the National Archaeological Museum in Cagliari, southern Sardinia. What makes the ingots equally valuable to physicists is the fact that over the past 2,000 years their lead has almost completely lost its natural radioactivity. It is therefore the perfect material with which to shield the CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events) detector, which Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) is building at the Gran Sasso laboratory.

Link -via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

(image credit: INFN/Cagliari Archeological Superintendence)

The four different patterns and markings are repeated and believed to convey ownership or purpose and to differentiate the eggs from each other.

The researchers led by Pierre-Jean Texier, of the University of Bordeaux, said that before this discovery, the first signs of art, writing or ‘culture’ was thought to have been first shown in the late Stone Age between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago.

It included cave paintings dating back to 30,000 years BC, thought to be some of the earliest examples of decorative art or written communication.

But this latest discovery, which is much older, showed “collective identities and individual expressions” that were the beginning of modern civilised behaviour, they said.

In other words, writing. Or at least a form or communication that led to writing. The researchers examined 270 fragments of ostrich eggs found in South Africa. Link -via Scribal Terror

Link | Butser Ancient Farm | Photo: Butser Ancient Farm

The Cro Magnon were said to be the precursor to the Homo sapiens, however we know very little about their religion, traditions, and way of life. What we do know is that their cave drawings were strategically placed in inaccessible areas. What were they trying to accomplish and what did the drawings mean?

What’s interesting about the Cro Magnon cave drawings is that the animals are quite lifelike in their orientation, yet the people drawn were not. Furthermore, the animals painted-bison, horses, wild boar, and bears-depict arrows and spears plunging into their bodies at the most critical points during a hunt. This same action is shared with the Native Americans, who similarly shot arrows into certain points within the animals to provide the animal with a swift death.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

As if answering the dare to make us feel more inadequate, the world gave us Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird in recorded history. These beasts possessed a wingspan between 19- and 26-feet, and a wing area of 75-feet, which you may notice is only slightly smaller than a Lear Jet. In addition to its staggering size and 240-pound weight, the bird is believed to have swallowed prey as large as cattle in one fell swoop.

Link -via Gorilla Mask

Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.

Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.

More digging unearthed a total of 30 hand axes plus other tools at nine locations on Crete. The rock terraces the tools were taken from are thought to range from 45,000 years old to 130,000 years old.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”

It was thought that humans earlier than Homo sapiens were incapable of long deliberate sea voyages. Link

(image credit: Thomas Strasser)

That’s the provocative title of an article in this month’s Archaeology magazine exploring the scientific, legal, and ethical considerations involved. Extensive information about the Neanderthal genetic code is available, and the technologic problems can apparently be overcome. Questions remain about how the process might best be accomplished, and whether it should be done at all.

The Neanderthals broke away from the lineage of modern humans around 450,000 years ago… As different as Neanderthals were, they may not have been different enough to be considered a separate species.  “There are humans today who are more different from each other in phenotype [physical characteristics],” says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin… Many of the differences between a Neanderthal clone and a modern human would be due to genetic changes our species has undergone since Neanderthals became extinct… Clones created from a genome that is more than 30,000 years old will not have immunity to a wide variety of diseases, some of which would likely be fatal. They will be lactose intolerant, have difficulty metabolizing alcohol, be prone to developing Alzheimer’s disease, and maybe most importantly, will have brains different from modern people’s…

“I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties,” says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The law does not define what a human being is, but legal scholars are debating questions of human rights in cases involving genetic engineering…

Hawks believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. “We are going to bring back the mammoth… the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away.” He doesn’t think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. “In the end,” Hawks says, “we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I’m just sure of it.”

Much more at the link.  The image is a computer-assisted reconstruction of a Neanderthal child by a research team at the University of Zurich.

Previously on Neatorama: Misconceptions About Neanderthals, and Cavemen Did Have Compassion: They Cared for Disabled Children.

Researchers found his body on an imperial Roman estate and took dental samples. Why examine teeth? Well, the water you drink at birth leaves a distinct signature in your teeth. That water signature is in the form of oxygen isotopes, atoms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons. Isotopes say something about the latitude and elevation of your birthplace—which in the case of our mystery man definitely wasn’t southern Italy.

Then the researchers tested his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through your maternal lineage. And this fellow had east Asian genes.

Link | Photo: Indiana University

Egyptian archaeologists who found the temple say it was built by Queen Berenike II, wife of Greek King Ptolemy III, who ruled Egypt from 246 to 221 B.C.

Cats were important house pets in ancient Egypt and were often depicted in private tombs. In some cases, cats were mummified in the same way as humans and buried at temples.

The statue pictured is made of limestone. Link

(image credit: Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities)

Professor Mark Horton of the Bristol University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who is coordinating this side of the research, explained the strategy: “We know that Saxon royalty moved around quite a lot, and we hope to match the isotope results with known locations around Wessex and Mercia, where she could have spent her childhood. If we can prove this truly is Eadgyth, this will be one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years.”

Eadgyth is likely to be the oldest member of the English royal family whose remains have survived. Her brother, King Athelstan is generally considered to have been the first King of England after he unified the various Saxon and Celtic kingdoms following the battle of Brunanburgh in 937. His tomb survives in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, but is most likely empty. Eadgyth’s sister Adiva – also offered to Otto as wife, but he choose Eadgyth instead – was also married to an unknown European ruler, but her tomb is not located.

Link -via Fark

(image credit: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Juraj Liptak)

“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” said Hawass in the statement. “If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”

Evidence from the site, Hawass said, indicates that the approximately 10,000 laborers working on the pyramids ate 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms in northern and southern Egypt.

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Egyptians had the Book of the Dead to express one’s descent into the afterlife. At the Valley of the Statues in Colombia, however, there are guardians watching over the land. History comes alive in these hand carved figurines, telling the story of various cultures that called San Agustin their home.

Link

(image credit: Jan Arkesteijn)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

The reasons for perpetrating hoaxes and forgeries range as widely as the kinds of fakes. Common motives for making bogus artifacts include publicity and self-promotion, monetary gain, practical jokes, and revenge, but some fakers have had the goal of supporting their own theories about the human past. Fakes have often been inspired by nationalism, with patriotic perpetrators boosting their country through spurious links to past civilizations.

People are taken in by hoaxes and fakes for many reasons. Successful bogus artifacts often match expectations or preconceived ideas of antiquities. Spectacular fakes have worked because those who buy them are blinded by their own pride of ownership–and the higher the price tag, the harder it is to make an embarrassing admission that it’s a fake.

Shown is the Fawcett idol, which led Percy Fawcett to search for Atlantis in the jungles of South America. He never returned. Link -via Metafilter

In this documentary video, historians and archaeologists from the year 3000 try to piece together information about The Beatles from 20th Century fragmentary remains. The impact that John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie had on music, culture, and technology cannot be underestimated.

The video was created by Scott Gairdner, a producer of viral humor videos.

via The Presurfer

Thousands of mummified animals have been recovered in Egypt over the past hundred years. They include gazelles, shrews, rams, crocodiles, hawks, fish, dung beetles, and of course, cats. In the early days of excavation, they were considered unimportant, as things to be pushed aside in order to get to the treasure. Scientists are now studying them in detail for clues about the way ancient Egyptian humans lived. National Geographic looks at how the animals were preserved, and why. Link

(image credit: Richard Barnes)

The Staffordshire Hoard contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.

Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries.

“(It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”

Some of the gold pieces are inlaid with precious stones such as garnets.  The hoard appears to date from the 7th century; at present there is no indication of who owned it or why it was buried in the Staffordshire field.

Link to BBC article and slideshow of 12 photos.

Link to a gallery of photos at The Guardian.

Photo credit to The Stafforshire Hoard, which appears to be a sort of “home page” for the find.

Archaeologists have found new clues from the Maya ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:

… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.

"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it’s a frozen moment in time." [..]

When the team started exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates (muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back."

Let’s tell the archaeologists to hurry up. 2012 is just around the corner …Here’s an interesting article by Dan Vergano for USA Today: Link

What sets the newfound cup apart is its inscription, which is still sharply etched but so far impossible to understand.Similar to intentionally enigmatic writing in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the cup’s script appears to be a secret code, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the two written languages used in Jerusalem at the time (see video of a village where the language of Jesus is still spoken).

“They wrote it intending it to be cryptic,” Gibson said.

The inscription will eventually be posted online. Link

(image credit: S. Pfann/UHL)

To accommodate armchair tourists too timid to risk life and limbs, the Italian government funded the creation of The Virtual Museum of Iraq, showcasing pieces dating from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian eras and more.

Check it out: Link – via Neal Ungerleider’s True/Slant blog