The Excavation director at the entrance to a recently excavated eighth-century B.C. tomb of an important high priestess; Source: USA Today; Credit: Nicholas Stampolidis

In an Archaeology magazine report, writer Eti Bonn-Muller details the results from last summer’s excavation of the tombs of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna on Crete, where a team found the burials of a high priestess of Zeus and three acolytes this summer.

“People then may have considered them sorceresses, or intermediaries with the gods,” Bonn-Muller says. Led by archaeologist Nicholas Stampolidis, the team dates the four burials to 2,800 years ago. Earlier digs had discovered the cremated remains of other priestesses, buried together in large “pithoi” jars from 2,900 to 2,700 years ago. All of the women appear related, based on distinctive features of their teeth, the team reports. “What’s really remarkable is the find shows these women were a dynasty that lasted at least 200 years in this location,” Bonn-Muller says.

The burial site is near Mount Ida, where in Greek mythology, Zeus, the king of the gods, was sheltered from his father in infancy. Artifacts from the tombs show trade with Egypt, Greece and the Near East took place on Crete at the time. “The finds have the potential to change how we think about the roles of women during this period of time,” Bonn-Muller adds. “Archaeologists had thrift of the era as an empty period but we are seeing a lot took place then.

Source: USA Today

Fragments of engraved ostrich eggshells from the Diepkloof Rock Shelter. Credit: Pierre-Jean Texier, Diepkloof project

This fits with other recent suggestions of symbolism from South Africa. For example, last year researchers reported pieces of ochre etched with what may be abstract designs and dated to 100,000 years ago at Blombos Cave on the Southern Cape; similar etchings dated to about 77,000 years ago were previously reported from Blombos. The Blombos team argued that this represented a continuous, long-standing symbolic tradition, but some archaeologists question whether such etchings qualify as true symbolic behaviour.

Since 1999, a team led by pre-historian Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux in France has been working at another site, theDiepkloof rock shelter , on the Western Cape about 180 kilometers north of Cape Town. This shelter contains evidence of several cultures that used stone tools typical of modern humans. Over the past few years, the team has uncovered fragments from an estimated 25 ostrich eggs in 18 archaeological layers dated by two separate techniques to between 55,000 and 65,000 years ago. The fragments are etched with several kinds of motifs, including parallel lines with cross-hatches and repetitive non-parallel lines, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Moreover, the team found that some of the patterns seem to have changed over time. The hatched-band motif is found only in the earlier 12 layers at Diepkloof and then disappears. The team also found a few eggshell fragments that appeared to have been pierced with a tool to make a hole in the top part of the egg. The researchers suggest that the large eggs, which had a volume of about 1 liter, might have been used as water containers, as hunter-gatherers in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert have used ostrich eggshells during historical times. The Kalahari people decorated the eggshells with engravings to indicate either who owned them or what they contained. The team concludes that the discovery “represents the earliest evidence of the existence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.”

But is this really symbolism? Yes, says Stanley Ambrose, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “The diversity of design motifs is impressive. It is an important new addition to the corpus of evidence for the development of modern human symbolic and artistic expression in Africa.”

Others aren’t so sure. The engravings could have been done for aesthetic purposes unrelated to symbolism, says Thomas Wynn, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Researchers need to demonstrate that such engravings “require symbolic thinking,” rather than simply assuming that all such etchings are symbolic, says Wynn.

Source: Science Now (Science Magazine)

The huge head as seen after its excavation. Credit: SCA

A multi-national team of Egyptian and European archaeologists excavating at the site of Amenhotep III’s enormous funerary temple in the Kom El-Hettan area of Luxor’s West Bank have uncovered the 3,000-year-old head of a massive statue of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh, the king of Egyptian kings, whom DNA testing has recently proven was Tutankhamun’s grandfather.

The find – made by the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project – was announced on Monday by Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni. Measuring 2.5 metres, made from solid red granite and depicting Amenhotep III wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown, it has been described in a press statement by Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass as a “masterpiece of highly artistic quality”.

The head, added Hawass, is a “portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features”. It was sheared from the body statue at the chin and neck. The body statue – fragments of which are currently in restoration – is believed to show Amenhotep III in a standing position, with his hands crossed over his chest and holding the royal insignia.

Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, Leader of the project at Amenhotep III’s funerary temple, said that more of the statue may still lie in the rubble of the enormous ruined monument, which is one of the biggest man-made structures in ancient history. Measuring 700 metres long and 500 metres wide, and covering an area of 350,000 square metres – it was ten times larger than any other mortuary monument in Egypt.

Investigation and restoration of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple is expected to take upwards of 20 years. 84 statues have been unearthed there already, among them representations of King Amenhotep III and his wife, Queen Tiye.

Queen Tiye’s mummy was recently identified by Dr Hawass and a team of scientists as part of a painstaking medical and archaeological endeavour to map the family history of Tutankhamun. The results will be revealed in the Discovery Channel’s documentary King Tut Unwrapped, which will air this Wednesday and Thursday in the UK.

The project also determined that Amenhotep III – ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, ruler of Egypt between 1390 BC and 1352 BC – was King Tut’s grandfather. The boy king is believed to have been born of an incestuous marriage between Akhenaten and his sister, both the offspring of Amenhotep III.

Amenhotep was the wealthiest and most powerful of all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. In a list compiled by American business and financial bible Forbes in 2008, he was ranked as the 12th richest person in human history.

Article: Independent

An aerial photo of Rathnadrinna Fort (from the OS map of Ireland), c.3km south of the Rock of Cashel in Co Tipperary; Source: Irish Times

Their initial findings suggest that the site may have been used for Bronze Age sporting contests in an arena that is the ancient equivalent of Semple Stadium.

Archaeologists have long been curious about the origins of the Rathnadrinna Fort located about 3km south of the Rock of Cashel – one of Ireland’s most important heritage locations and seat of the High Kings of Munster.

The unusually large and distinctive landmark is still subject to many of the traditional taboos surrounding fairy forts. Archaeologists say that many people in rural areas still believe it is unwise to enter a fairy fort or to cut down perimeter trees or vegetation.

Ian Doyle, head of conservation services and archaeology with the Heritage Council, said it was traditionally believed that the fort was a “defended farmstead” of a type commonly built in Ireland about 1,200 years ago.

But while the “average run-of-the-mill fairy fort” is ringed by one defensive perimeter ditch, “Rathnadrinna Fort is quite rare because it has three rings”. Despite the historical significance of the landscape, the fort has never been excavated.

Mr Doyle said “when you think of Tara, the countryside surrounding the Rock of Cashel must hold massive potential for discoveries”. This led the council to fund a survey of the site which was carried out by a team of archaeologists led by Cashel-based Richard O’Brien and the Co Mayo company Earthsound Archaeological Geophysics.

Using highly sensitive equipment, the soil was subjected to “high-resolution magnetic imaging” – similar to an MRI scan. It is the first time that any of the fairy forts in the countryside surrounding the Rock of Cashel has been surveyed in this manner.

Speaking to The Irish Times about the results, Mr O’Brien said that “none of the traditional evidence associated with ring forts – such as houses, hearths or rubbish pits – was found”. Instead, the team discovered that the site may have been first used 3,000 years ago during the late Bronze Age.

He said one of the most exciting discoveries was evidence of a Stonehenge-style circle of wooden posts suggestive of “a ceremonial or ritual role for the fort”.

Mr O’Brien said the use of the site would have changed down through the centuries and the survey results indicate that it had “a royal function”. But the most intriguing possibility, he said, was that the “vast interior area which is much larger than most ring forts is like a sports arena”.

Rathnadrinna translates as the “Fort of the Contest”, he added.

Source: Irish Times

A Satellite image of India; Source: Google Earth

The international and multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls ‘Pompeii-like excavations’ beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time.

“This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,” said project director Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.

The team has concluded that many forms of life survived he super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.

According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens.

Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa.

“Though we are still searching for human fossils to definitively prove the case, we are encouraged by the technological similarities.

An area of widespread speculation about the Toba super-eruption is that it nearly drove humanity to extinction.

The fact that the Middle Palaeolithic tools of similar styles are found right before and after the Toba super-eruption, suggests that the people who survived the eruption were the same populations, using the same kinds of tools, says Petraglia.

The research agrees with evidence that other human ancestors, such as the Neanderthals in Europe and the small brained Hobbits in Southeastern Asia, continued to survive well after Toba.

Although some scholars have speculated that the Toba volcano led to severe and wholesale environmental destruction, the Oxford-led research in India suggests that a mosaic of ecological settings was present, and some areas experienced a relatively rapid recovery after the volcanic event.

The team has not discovered much bone in Toba ash sites, but in the Billasurgam cave complex in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, the researchers have found deposits which they believe range from at least 100,000 years ago to the present.

They contain a wealth of animal bones such as wild cattle, carnivores and monkeys.

They have also identified plant materials in the Toba ash sites and caves, yielding important information about the impact of the Toba super-eruption on the ecological settings.

Source: BERNAMA

'Lake Avernus ? The Fates and the Golden Bough' painted by JMW Turner ; Source: The Telegraph UK; Credit: IMAGNO

They discovered the remains while excavating religious sanctuary built in honour of the goddess Diana near an ancient volcanic lake in the Alban Hills, 20 miles south of Rome.

They believe the enclosure protected a huge Cypress or oak tree which was sacred to the Latins, a powerful tribe which ruled the region before the rise of the Roman Empire.

The tree was central to the myth of Aeneas, who was told by a spirit to pluck a branch bearing golden leaves to protect himself when he ventured into Hades to seek counsel from his dead father.

In a second, more historically credible legend, the Latins believed it symbolised the power of their priest-king.

Anyone who broke off a branch, even a fugitive slave, could then challenge the king in a fight to the death. If the king was killed in the battle, the challenger assumed his position as the tribe’s leader.

The discovery was made near the town of Nemi by a team led by Filippo Coarelli, a recently retired professor of archaeology at Perugia University.

After months of excavations in the volcanic soil, they unearthed the remains of a stone enclosure.

Shards of pottery surrounding the site date it to the mid to late Bronze Age, between the 12th and 13th centuries BC.

“We found many, many pottery pieces of a votive or ritual nature,” said Prof Coarelli. “The location also tells us that it must have been a sacred structure. We spent months excavating, during which we had to cut into enormous blocks of lava.”

The stone enclosure is in the middle of an area which contains the ruins of an immense sanctuary dedicated to Diana, the goddess of hunting, along with the remains of terracing, fountains, cisterns and a nymphaeum.

“It’s an intriguing discovery and adds evidence to the fact that this was an extraordinarily important sanctuary,” said Prof Christopher Smith, the head of the British School at Rome, an archaeological institute.

“We know that trees were grown in containers at temple sites. The Latins gathered here to worship right up until the founding of the Roman republic in 509BC.”

The story about the golden bough and Aeneas, who is said to have journeyed from Troy to Italy to found the city of Rome, was documented by Virgil in his epic, the Aeneid.

“Virgil tells us that the sibyls told Aeneas to go to the underworld to take advice from his father but he had to take a branch of gold as a sort of key to allow him access,” said Prof Smith.

The legend inspired JMW Turner to paint a grand canvas entitled ‘Lake Avernus – The Fates and the Golden Bough’, now held by the Tate Collection.

Source: The Telegraph Uk

The Orthadocus was a precursor to the modern-day shark, and it is reckoned to have been smaller than sharks are today; Photo: Tiger Shark; Flickr User AlKok

The tooth that was discovered is thought to have belonged to a member of the Orthadocus family, an extinct type of shark.  A precursor to the modern-day shark, the Orthadocus is reckoned to have been smaller than sharks are today, and lived in the Cretaceous period approximately 100 million years ago.

It was here in Cambridgeshire at Barrington Quarry that the interesting find was made. Amateur geologist John Drayton, 61, from Impington, discovered the tooth; the first of its kind to be excavated in Europe.

It is thought that the discovery of the shark tooth will help to clarify understandings about where and when the shark lived. Though other finds had proved that sharks had lived in the oceans of what is now East Anglia in the Jurassic era, they had not proved their presence in the area in the Cretaceous period.

The Orthadocus is not the only creature to have traversed the waters of Cambridge millions of years ago. The tooth was actually unearthed just metres from the remnants of an Ichthyosaur, a giant marine reptile, which resembled a cross between a fish and a dolphin.

Dr Preston Miracle, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge said, “clearly we need to be doing all we can to protect and preserve the UK’s cultural and natural heritage – and that is true for discoveries of things that are millions of years old as well as others that may be only a few centuries old.”

The shark tooth has now been entrusted to David Ward, a retired veterinary surgeon with an interest in fossil sharks. He will study the tooth with Dr Charlie Underwood of the University of London.  After this the tooth will be housed at the Natural History Museum in London, following its donation to the museum by the owner’s of the quarry, Cemex.

Source: The Varsity – Cambridge

In total, 295 artefacts have so far been recovered, weighing a total of more than 84kg; Source: The Telegraph

The trading vessel was carrying an extremely valuable cargo of tin and hundreds of copper ingots from the Continent when it sank.

Experts say the “incredibly exciting” discovery provides new evidence about the extent and sophistication of Britain’s links with Europe in the Bronze Age as well as the remarkable seafaring abilities of the people during the period.

Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900BC, as being a “bulk carrier” of its age.

The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze – the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of not only weapons, but also tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items.

Archaeologists believe the copper – and possibly the tin – was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across the Continent.

Academics at the University of Oxford are carrying out further analysis of the cargo in order to establish its exact origins.

However, it is thought the copper would have come from the Iberian peninsular, Alpine Europe, especially modern day Switzerland, and possibly other locations in France, such as the Massif Central, and even as far as Austria.

It is first time tin ingots from this period have ever been found in Britain, a discovery which may support theories that the metal was being mined in the south west at this time.

If the tin was not produced in Britain, it is likely it would have also come from the Iberian peninsular or from eastern Germany.

The wreck has been found in just eight to ten metres of water in a bay near Salcombe, south Devon, by a team of amateur marine archaeologists from the South West Maritime Archaeological Group.

In total, 295 artefacts have so far been recovered, weighing a total of more than 84kg.

The cargo recovered includes 259 copper ingots and 27 tin ingots. Also found was a bronze leaf sword, two stone artefacts that could have been sling shots, and three gold wrist torcs – or bracelets.

The team have yet to uncover any of the vessel’s structure, which is likely to have eroded away.

However, experts believe it would have been up to 40ft long and up to 6ft wide, and have been constructed of planks of timber, or a wooden frame with a hide hull. It would have had a crew of around 15 and been powered by paddles.

Archaeologists believe it would have been able to cross the Channel directly between Devon and France to link into European trade networks, rather than having to travel along the coast to the narrower crossing between modern day Dover and Calais.

Although the vessel’s cargo came from as far afield as southern Europe, it is unlikely it would have been carried all the way in the same craft, but in a series of boats, undertaking short coastal journeys.

The wreck site is on part of the seabed called Wash Gully, which is around 300 yards from the shore.

There is evidence of prehistoric field systems and Bronze Age roundhouses on the coast nearby and it is thought the vessel could have sunk while attempting to land, or could have been passing along the coast.

The coastline is notoriously treacherous and there is a reef close by which could have claimed the vessel.

The recovery work took place between February and November last year but the discovery was not announced until this month’s International Shipwreck Conference, in Plymouth.

The finds have been reported to both English Heritage and the Receiver of Wreck, which administers all shipwrecks. The artefacts are due to be handed over to the British Museum next week.

They will be independently valued and the museum will pay the team for the items.

Mick Palmer, chairman of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, said: “For the British Isles, this is extremely important. This was a cargo trading vessel on a big scale.

“There is more down there and we will carry on searching for it. We anticipate a lot more will be found.”

Dave Parham, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at Bournemouth University and a member of the team, said: “What we are seeing is trade in action.

“We are not stuck with trying to work out trade based on a few deposits across a broader landscape. We are looking at the stuff actually on the boat being moved.

“Everything that is in the ship sinks with it and is on the seabed somewhere. What you would call this today is a bulk carrier. It was carrying what was for the time a large consignment of raw materials.”

Dr Peter Northover, a scientist at the University of Oxford who has been analysing the find, said: “These are the produce of a multitude of countries, scattered right around Europe, up and down the Atlantic coast and inland.

“It came from a combination of places. It is showing the diversity of the trade.

“Metal traders and workers would have traded parcels of metal with each other. The metal would have moved in steps, along networks of contacts exchanging metal as and when they need it.”

Dr Stuart Needham, a Bronze Age archaeologist, said: “This is genuinely exciting.

“Everyone knows that man has been walking around on land since time immemorial, but I think people now will be surprised to know how much they were plying the seaways at this time, up and down the Atlantic seaboard and across the Channel.

“There’s a complex lattice of interactions across Europe happening throughout this period.

“A lot of stuff may have moved across land, but it is eminently possible at this stage that there were quite sophisticated maritime networks with specialist mariners – people who know how to read the tides and the stars and who are not just casually going out on the sea to do some deep sea fishing.

“If you have got specialist mariners plying the Atlantic seaways, there is every possibility they could be picking up material in different locations and stockpiling it.

“The mainstay of this exchange network might have been a number of vessels undertaking short journeys. It doesn’t mean there weren’t occasional vessels and people going longer distances.”

One other Bronze Age vessel has previously been found near Salcombe, where just 53 artefacts were recovered. Another eight Bronze Age items have also been found at a third nearby spot, indicating another possible wreck.

The only other Bronze Age wrecks found in the UK have been located on land, or on the foreshore, at Dover and North Ferriby, on the Humber.

Ben Roberts, Bronze Age specialist at the British Museum, said: “It is an incredibly exciting find. What we have here is really, really good evidence of trade. We don’t get many shipwreck sites.

“It is very rare to get a snapshot of this level of activity. It is very possible there were also animals and people going across the Channel too.

“We hardly ever get to see evidence of this cross Channel trade in action. It is a huge amount of cargo.”

Source: The Telegraph

X-ray of the Urn containing Roman remains; Source: This is Devon

Passing through customs was a very old pot that the visitors had left behind during their stay in the county some time in the mid-70s AD.

The black-burnished urn was dug up during an archaeological dig in Cullompton and since then everyone has been wondering what was in it.

Rather than put a hand in and root about inside or hold it upside down and scatter the contents on the table, the pot was sent along to the airport which has a big X-ray machine usually devoted to ensuring airline passengers’ security.

Staff from Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum – whose own X-ray gear was a bit small for the job – gathered round to see what would be revealed.

And in the end it was a 2,000-year-old dead Roman. Or at least, the remains of a dead Roman, along with some strange curved objects that may or may not be pieces of jewellery or brooches.

Jenny Durrant, the museum’s assistant curator of antiquities, said experts would now be sifting through the remains to learn more. “It was very unusual to find an urn like this intact. It could have been a Roman soldier or may be even a well-off local person.”

The find is helping rewrite the history of Cullompton. A Roman fort at St Andrews Hill in the Mid-Devon town, which was abandoned around the mid-70s AD, was discovered in 1984

Source: This is Devon

The discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists; Source: Art Daily; Credit: EFE/Héctor Montaño/INAH.

The discovery adds up to the sarcophagus recently uncovered by specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The wall dated in 708 AD was detected at El Palacio; a stucco portrait of K’inich B’aaknal Chaahk, the most powerful seignior of the ancient Maya city, was found as well.

Dr. Juan Yadeun Angulo, coordinator of Tonina Conservation and Research Project, declared that K’inich B’aaknal Chaahk forged “one of the greatest military seigniories of Maya history before Mexica people arrived to the region”.

Two vaulted rooms found with the wall and portrait are part of El Palacio or Casa de las Luciernagas (Palace or House of Fireflies), an architectural complex at the Acropolis, which is “one of the greatest pyramidal structures of Mexico and the world”.

Dr. Carlos Pallan Gayol, director of INAH Acervo Jeroglifico e Iconografico Maya, Ajimaya (Maya Hieroglyphic and Iconographic Heap), who has dedicated to study the recently found wall, declared that it is important because it confirms that The Palace was the power seat of K’inich B’aaknal Chaahk, the 6th of 14 (known to present) rulers of Tonina.

“This wall is fundamental to understand a chapter of Tonina history between 680 and 715 AD, when the 6th seignior appears in the dynastic sequence of the site. To present, it is known that K’inich B’aaknal Chaahk was the ruler with greater politic and hegemonic power in Tonina, a city known in its times as Po’ (white in Mixe-Zoque language)”, he explained.

Behind the stuccoed wall with hieroglyphs that represent 2 dates corresponding to March and June of 708 AD, is located the seat of a throne, the only of 4 found at El Palacio placed in a very private and restricted location.

Pallan, also part of INAH National Coordination of Archaeology, remarked the good conservation state of the wall which, besides the fine-modeled stucco hieroglyphs, maintains most of its blue and reddish pigments.

“The seignior might have seated behind the wall to converse with foreign dignitaries and other characters, clearly establishing the rank difference with them. K’inich B’aaknal Chaahk was the personification of political power and had a sacred character as well”.

The wall, considered Pallan Gayol, will bring in valuable information for different fields, since it contains historical data, as well as mythological and linguistic information”, he concluded.

Source: Art Daily