For Those Interested in Archaeology

Ooffya!
There's a forensic team at Dundee University who specialise in stuff like that. They took the skull of a knight unearthed at Stirling Castle about a decade ago, and recreated his face-
Stirling Castle knight revealed as English nobleman - BBC News

 

Legend.

 

"A 4,000-year-old tomb has been rediscovered in Ireland—more than 170 years after it was thought to have been destroyed.
The tomb is called Altóir na Gréine, which means the “Altar of the Sun” in Irish. In 1838, an English aristocrat named Georgiana Chatterton visited and sketched the site, writing in her travel journal that she’d found “a curious piece of antiquity once an altar, supposed to have been used for offering sacrifices to the sun,” according to Seán Mac an tSíthigh of RTE News, which first reported the story.
In 1852, however, the antiquarian Richard Hitchcock visited the site and concluded that the tomb had been dismantled, perhaps so that its stones could be reused elsewhere. Since then, researchers assumed that Altóir na Gréine was no more.
But Billy Mag Fhloinn, an Irish archaeologist and folklorist at Sacred Heart University, wondered if the tomb’s remains still existed.
“I was just struck by the mystery of this thing being missing—and, in a way, the drama of the location itself along the ridge of that hill,” Mag Fhloinn tells MClatchy's Moira Ritter. “It was something that I just wanted to tie together. I just felt like there’s an unanswered question here.'
He started building a photogrammetric model using images he’d taken of the site, which is located near his home in southwest Ireland. A few months ago, the researcher spotted a stone that reminded him of Chatterton’s sketch.
Mag Fhloinn contacted Ireland’s National Monuments Service, which sent in archaeologist Caimin O’Brien. Upon closer inspection, they confirmed they’d located the long-lost Altóir na Gréine.
Getting there, however, took a bit of creative maneuvering.
“The way I found it was by climbing over barbed-wire fences, but not everybody wants to do that,” Mag Fhloinn tells Live Science's Tom Metcalfe.
He adds that only one of the tomb’s ancient stones was still standing, but several others appear to be buried below the soil. He doesn’t expect to find human remains at the site, as the wet soil surrounding the tomb would have likely hastened the erosion of any bones.
The tomb is located on top of a hill near Ballyferriter, a small village on the Dingle Peninsula. Archaeologists say it’s a wedge tomb, a common burial structure in the region formed by situating large, upright stones in a rectangle and then placing a large capstone on top. This particular example likely dates to between 2500 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E."
Everyone Thought This 4,000-Year-Old Tomb Had Been Destroyed. Then, an Archaeologist Found It | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

 

Just noticed this thread's now been running 15 years.
"The famous Herculaneum scroll, charred papyrus found buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD, has been deciphered by artificial intelligence.
The feat was achieved by students in the Vesuvius challenge, which used algorithms to scan the artifact that would otherwise had been destroyed if unraveled by human hands.
The winning team read more than 2,000 'never-before-seen' texts that discussed sources of pleasure, such as music, the taste of capers and the color purple.
The three students, from Egypt, Switzerland and the US, share a $700,000 grand prize for uncovering hundreds of words across more than 15 columns of text, corresponding to around five percent of an entire scroll.
The Vesuvius Challenge was launched in March 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, and Silicon Valley backers.
At the time, Seales released thousands of 3D images of two rolled-up scrolls, as well as an AI program that had been trained to read letters in the marks left by ink.
Shortly after, Luke Farritor from Nebraska and Youssef Nader from Egypt independently revealed the same word hidden within the heart of the sealed manuscript - 'πορφύραc' - meaning purple dye or clothes of purple.
And the pair shared a $40,000 prize."
First passages of Herculaneum scroll are DECIPHERED by AI: Students use program to read more than 2,000 words on charred papyrus buried by Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD | Daily Mail Online

 

The orange band is where new stars are being born…the nursery arm (ward)

 

Yep, nothing new under the Sun.
"Hundreds of human remains from one burial site hint at a prolonged conflict between Stone Age people, long before the formation of powerful states.
Stone Age people were fighting small-scale wars in Europe over 5000 years ago, earlier than thought. The conflicts took place long before powerful states formed in the region.
The evidence comes from a re-analysis of hundreds of human remains found at a burial site in northern Spain. The bones are predominantly male and many have evidence of injuries from stabbing and blunt-force trauma – suggesting they belonged to a warrior class.
“It’s too large to be conflict within a community,” says Rick Schulting at the University of Oxford. The sheer scale of the conflict points to early warfare, rather than just interpersonal conflicts or skirmishes, he says.
The site in question is San Juan ante Portam Latinam, a rock shelter in a valley in northern Spain. It was found by accident in 1985 when a bulldozer uncovered human remains while widening a track. Radiocarbon dating of the bones suggests they were laid down between 3380 and 3000 BC, during the European Neolithic period.
San Juan ante Portam Latinam is about 20 square metres in area. In that small space, researchers found densely packed human bones. They include 90 complete skeletons, over 200 partial skeletons and thousands of seemingly isolated bones.. There were also many stone weapons, including blades, arrowheads and axes. Many of the bones showed signs of injuries, and because they were all dumped together, the site was initially interpreted as the remains of a massacre.
Schulting and his colleagues have systematically re-analysed the remains. They say San Juan ante Portam Latinam probably doesn’t represent a single massacre, but rather evidence of sustained conflict that was mostly conducted by young males – in other words, warfare."
Earliest known war in Europe was a Stone Age conflict 5000 years ago | New Scientist
And here's the other paper that's mentioned-
Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe | PNAS

 

Probably played AFL…

 

And lost, by the looks of it!

 

There always is…Grumble grumble…The moment man makes a passable Fembot…Its the death knell for real women…There I said it.

 

One down, one to go.
"Nearly 50 years ago, archaeologists made an awesome discovery when excavating the ancient town of Vergina in northern Greece.
They found three royal tombs containing remains of the family of Alexander the Great, dating back to the 4th century BC.
At the time, they were deemed to be the great warrior's father, son and elder half brother.
But according to scientists, the father and the half brother have been caught up in a case of mistaken identity that has lasted since.
In a new study, the experts now 'conclusively' reveal that the skeleton long identified as belonging to the half brother is in fact the father, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, the resting place of Alexander the Great himself remains a mystery.
The new study was led by Antonios Bartsiokas, professor of anthropology at the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece."
Alexander the Great's FATHER is found: Ancient Greek tomb discovered in 1977 is confirmed to contain the remains of King Philip II | Daily Mail Online

 

Something else you never thought of.
"How old are these bones? This standard question in archaeology can be answered quite precisely in many cases with the help of the carbon isotope 14C. But there are exceptions. Certain living habits, such as that of prehistoric hunter-gatherer-fisher communities, can distort 14C dating, because carbon in aquatic ecosystems typically contains less 14C than carbon from terrestrial plants and animals.
An international team led by researchers from the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA), the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence and Kiel University (CAU) has now been able to date Neolithic graves at the important site of Sakhtysh (Russia) accurately for the first time, thereby identifying new patterns in the cultural development of the era.
"At the same time, the method used here also enables more precise dating of human remains in other regions with similar environmental conditions," says Dr. John Meadows. He is the lead author of the study, which has been published in Science Advances.
One of the largest known prehistoric burial sites in northeastern Europe
In Sakhtysh, about 200 kilometers northeast of Moscow, around 180 prehistoric burials were excavated between 1962 and 1992. Pottery remains show that they date from around 5000 to 3000 BC. This makes Sakhtysh one of the largest known burial sites from this period in northeastern Europe.
However, the exact dating of the individual burials and thus also their chronological order has so far remained uncertain. One of the reasons: The buried people ate a lot of fish during their lifetime.
"It is known that this diet reduces the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the bones. As a result, the bones appear much too old. These shifts are, moreover, highly variable and have so far been difficult to correct," explains John Meadows, who conducts research at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie in Schleswig (LEIZA-ZBSA) and at Kiel University and is a member of the ROOTS network.
The team of the current study compared isotope analyses on two samples of people who were excavated at Sakhtysh: one on a tooth and one on the petrous bone. The teeth and the petrous bone are the only mineralized parts of the human body that are not remodeled after they form, and they are formed at different ages.
"If diet changed during childhood and adolescence, the differences in isotope values between an individual's tooth and petrous bone allow us to draw conclusions about how much the 14C dating of the individual needs to be corrected," says Meadows.
A mathematical model of these differences indicated a shift of up to 900 years for some burials. The corrections lead to a completely new chronology of the burial site, which allows new interpretations of the cultural background. For example, an anomalous grave turned out to be the youngest, dating to the early 3rd millennium BCE. The oldest burials, on the other hand, date from the early 5th millennium BCE."
New approach to carbon-14 dating corrects the age of a prehistoric burial site (phys.org)