For Those Interested in Archaeology

"ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXCAVATING IN FRANCE HAVE DISCOVERED A 6,000-YEAR-OLD SETTLEMENT BELONGING TO SOME OF EUROPE’S EARLY BUILDERS OF MEGALITHIC MONUMENTS.
During the Neolithic period, people in west-central France constructed barrows and dolmens, but where they lived has been a mystery for archaeologists for over a century.
During an aerial survey of the Le Peu enclosure, the researchers found evidence of an early settlement, the results of which have been published in the journal Antiquity.
The study has revealed a palisade encircling several timber buildings built during the fifth millennium BC, making the wooden structures the oldest examples in the region and the first residential site contemporary with the Neolithic monument makers.
Archaeologists have identified three residential dwellings, each around 13 metres long, clustered together near the top of a small hill that overlooks the Tusson megalithic cemetery.
An analysis of the palaeosols recovered from the site suggests that it was located on a promontory bordered by a marsh. These natural defences were further fortified by a ditch palisade wall, with two monumental structures that guarded the entrance to the enclosure.
“The site reveals the existence of unique monumental architectures, probably defensive. This demonstrates a rise in Neolithic social tensions,” said Dr Vincent Ard from the French National Centre for Scientific Research."
6,000-year-old settlement of Europe’s prehistoric megalithic builders

 

"Archaeologist Steve Tomlinson, from Ramsgate, was mudlarking with friend Emily Brown last September when he discovered a 3,000-year-old, late Bronze Age toddler’s shoe in north Kent. The shoe is potentially the oldest found in the British Isles, and also thought to be the smallest Bronze Age shoe found in the world. "
Ramsgate archaeologist discovers 3000 year old Bronze Age toddler’s shoe – possibly oldest found in country and smallest in world

 

And it’s letting in water..

 

We're on our uppers now, men...

 

Makes sense to this non-technical bloke.
"A STUDY BY THE UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD COULD PROVIDE THE KEY TO STUDYING SUBMERGED CIVILISATIONS BY LOOKING FOR ANOMALIES IN MAGNETIC FIELDS.
According to Ben Urmston from the University of Bradford, magnetic fields could indicate the presence of archaeological features without the need for exploratory underwater excavations.
Magnetometry has previously been used by terrestrial archaeologists but has not been used extensively to examine submerged landscapes...
...According to Urmston: “Small changes in the magnetic field can indicate changes in the landscape, such as peat-forming areas and sediments, or where erosion has occurred, for example in river channels. As the area we are studying used to be above sea level, there’s a small chance this analysis could even reveal evidence for hunter-gatherer activity.”
“We might also discover the presence of middens, which are rubbish dumps that consist of animal bone, mollusc shells and other biological material that can tell us a lot about how people lived,” added Urmston.
Such features could be analysed closer by taking samples of the seabed which are then sent for carbon dating and a microscopic analysis."
www.heritagedaily.com/2023/03/magnetic-fields-could-provide-the-key-to-studying-submerged-civilisations/146463

 

"The site of a major prehistoric archaeological discovery in Miami’s Brickell district is extensive and significant enough to merit protection from development under local laws, according to a new analysis jointly drawn up by independent experts and the city’s historic preservation office. The analysis, to be presented to the city’s historic preservation board in a public hearing on Tuesday, could significantly up the ante in a growing effort by archaeologists, preservationists, Brickell residents and Native American activists to spare at least some of the ancient indigenous site, on the south bank of the Miami River, from planned high-rise development by prominent real estate developer Related Group. A presentation slide deck prepared for the hearing concludes the site meets several of the legal criteria for designation as a protected historic and archaeological landmark, not least because of its antiquity. The site was part of an extensive town believed to have been built some 2,500 years ago by the Tequesta tribe, which disappeared with the end of the first Spanish occupation of Florida in 1763. Experts contend the Brickell discoveries may constitute the most significant in a series of archaeological finds made at the mouth of the Miami River in the past 25 years that include the Miami Circle National Historic Landmark, thought to be around 2,000 years old."
www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article273776890.html#storylink=cpy

 

Neanderthal Nebs. They're a thing.
"It's something that many people are self-conscious of, and if you not a fan of your nose, we finally know who to blame.
Scientists have revealed that Neanderthal DNA helps dictate the shape of your nose.
A new study led by UCL researchers found that a particular gene, which leads to a taller nose, may have been the product of natural selection as ancient humans adapted to colder climates after leaving Africa.
Dr Kaustubh Adhikari, who led the study, said: 'In the last 15 years, since the Neanderthal genome has been sequenced, we have been able to learn that our own ancestors apparently interbred with Neanderthals, leaving us with little bits of their DNA.
'Here, we find that some DNA inherited from Neanderthals influences the shape of our faces.
'This could have been helpful to our ancestors, as it has been passed down for thousands of generations.'
The researchers used data from more than 6,000 people across Latin America, of mixed European, Native American and African ancestry, who are part of the UCL-led Candela study, which recruited from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru.
Genetic information from the people was compared to photographs of their faces.
To see how different facial traits were linked to the presence of different genetic markers, the researchers looked specifically at distances between points on their faces, such as the tip of the nose or the edge of the lips.
According to the study, researchers newly identified 33 genome regions associated with face shape.
They were able to replicate 26 in comparisons with data from other ethnicities using people in east Asia, Europe, or Africa.
In one genome region in particular, called ATF3, the researchers found that many people in their study with Native American ancestry (as well as others with east Asian ancestry from another group) had genetic material in this gene that was inherited from the Neanderthals.
They found that this contributed to increased nasal height."
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12058825/Hate-nose-Blame-ancient-cousins-Neanderthal-DNA-dictates-shape-study-finds.html

 

"It is a commonly-held view that the Romans did not spend a long time in Scotland or have much interest in it - but new research is highlighting the extraordinary extent of what they built and their persistence in trying to subdue the Caledonian tribes.
Dr Andrew Tibbs, an honorary research fellow in archaeology at Durham University, has carried out a digital survey of almost 100 sites thought to be linked with the first invasion of Scotland in the decade after 70AD.
It happened at a time when the Romans may have thought they could conquer the whole of the country and before they built Hadrian's Wall and the later Antonine Wall in a bid to secure the empire's north-western border.
Dr Tibbs says: "For the Romans, campaigning in Scotland is almost a bit of a prestige piece.
"Several emperors are keen to do it because it's a part of the country that's never been conquered.
"It's never been fully occupied on a long-term basis. It's a military zone, it's a war zone. It's comparable with what's happening in Ukraine at the moment."
Dr Tibbs says his survey is the first big-data study of the positioning of all the early Roman sites and their relationship with the landscape.
It combines remote sensing techniques with existing archaeological and historical data and precise details of the terrain held in a digital geographical information system.
This wealth of data meant Dr Tibbs was able to reach a better understanding of why the Romans built where they did."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65388673

 

"Scientists believe they have discovered the earliest human footprints - tracks left by a family of extinct humans 300,000 years ago.
The perfectly preserved prints of a small family of 'Heidelberg people,' a species of human long since extinct, were uncovered in Germany.
This subspecies of archaic humans, formally known as Homo heidelbergensis, were the first to build homes and hunt large animals but disappeared from the Earth about 28,000 years ago - and experts say it was because of climate change.
The traces were discovered in the Paleolithic site complex of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, along with ancient animal imprints, including the first evidence of elephants in the region.
The discovery was made by scientists with the University of Tübingen (SHEP), who pieced together the ancient seen found at the site.
'In an open birch and pine forest overgrown with grass, there is a lake a few kilometers long and a few hundred meters wide. Herds of elephants, rhinos and even-toed ungulates come to its muddy shores to drink and bathe, the team shared in an announcement.
'In the middle of this scenery stands a nuclear family of the 'Heidelberg people.'
The scientists assigned two of the three human traces in Schöningen to young individuals who used the lake and its resources in a small mixed-age group.
The study's first author Dr Flavio Altamura said: 'Depending on the season, plants, fruits, leaves, shoots and mushrooms were available around the lake.
'Our finds confirm that the extinct human species lived on the shores of lakes or rivers with shallow water.
'This is also known from other sites with Lower and Middle Pleistocene hominin footprints.
'Due to the footprints of children and young people, it is more of a family outing than a group of adult hunters.'"
www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12090699/Oldest-human-footprint-discovered-300-000-year-old-prints-extinct-Heidelberg-people.html

 

It should have read "the oldest-known human footprints from Germany"-
"In a study published today in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, an international research team led by scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment presents the earliest human footprints known from Germany."
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-year-old-snapshot-oldest-human-footprints.html
Those Cretan footprints are controversial in themselves-
"Some scientists are skeptical of the study’s claims, doubting that the Graecopithecus freyberg species even existed. Israel Hershkovitz, a biological anthropologist at Tel Aviv University who was not involved in the research, speculates that the footprints were actually left by a late European ape. .
“All we have from Europe is a group of pre-human apes,” he tells Haaretz. “They are interesting and attest to much more favorable climatic conditions [during the late Miocene], but I don’t think they are directly or indirectly associated with human evolution.”
Speaking with Amalyah Hart of Cosmos magazine, Julien Louys , a paleontologist at Griffith University who wasn’t involved in the study, adds, “Some of the footprints look like a bipedal animal, but a lot of the other footprints are very ambiguous and variable in size. Some of them don’t look like footprints at all. So, the issue here is making a very large claim on the basis of information that’s quite open to interpretation.”
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-human-like-footprints-dated-to-605-million-years-ago-180978889/

 

It's a toofer.
"Human history is intimately entwined with the use and control of fire. However, working out when our relationship with fire began and how it subsequently evolved has been notoriously difficult.
This is partly due to the incomplete nature of archaeological records, and also because fire use was fleeting, making burnt remains difficult to detect.
But our team has found evidence of the controlled use of fire by direct human ancestors—or hominins—at a site in Spain dating to 250,000 years ago. This pushes the earliest evidence of fire control in Europe back by 50,000 years. The findings have been published in Nature Scientific Reports. It is truly special to find the remains of human ancestors and fire at the same location.
There is much earlier evidence of hominins exploiting fire, but this could have taken the form of hominins taking advantage of the burning embers from a natural wildfire to cook their food. The controlled use of fire is where humans intentionally start it and then manage, say, its extent or temperature. This is what we have evidence for at the site in Spain."
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-humans-europe-years-earlier-previously.html

"Stone Age hunters in the Middle East and Central Asia used giant stone structures to trap wild animals. Today, archaeologists refer to these massive constructions as desert kites because of how they look from above—like a kite with several long tails.
Now, in a study published last week in the journal PLOS One, researchers say they have found stone engravings that are accurate, to-scale depictions of desert kites that date to between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago. This makes them the oldest known realistic plans for large, human-made structures, the authors write.
Humans have recreated their surroundings in art forms, including sculptures and paintings, for at least 40,000 years. But what makes the newly found blueprints noteworthy is their precision.
“The amazing discovery is that the plans are to scale,” Remy Crassard, a co-author of the study and an archaeologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, tells Scientific American’s Tom Metcalfe. The depictions are “constrained by shape, by symmetry and by dimensions,” he adds to the publication. “We had no idea that people at that time were able to do that with such accuracy.”
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-discover-the-oldest-known-blueprints-180982207/