For Those Interested in Archaeology

The detective work continues-
"Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, is perhaps the United States’ most consistently prolific archaeological site. This year researchers have analyzed four previously excavated graves found in the chancel of the original 1608 church, a burial location surely reserved for prominent figures. Scientific, forensic, and genealogical work identified the remains of four members of Jamestown’s leadership—and turned up at least one new mystery."
http://archaeology.org/issues/200-1601/features/3959-jamestown-colonial-america-burials

 

Been a while, so here's a couple of good 'uns.
[SIZE=medium]"TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, Dublin, Ireland, Dec. 28th, 2015 - A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]However, the origins of this heritage are unknown. The only way to discover our genetic past is to sequence genomes directly from ancient people, by embarking on a type of genetic time travel."[/SIZE]
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/scientists-sequence-first-ancient-irish-human-genomes

"Analysis of the oldest-known cemetery in the South Pacific may help resolve a longstanding debate over the origins and ancestry of Polynesians. Modern-day Polynesians bear strong cultural and linguistic similarities to the ancient people associated with the Lapita Culture who settled on Vanuatu more than 3,000 years ago. However, the origin of the Lapita people remains debated, with recent biological studies suggesting that the group may be of mixed ancestry with a strong contribution from Melanesian populations, who were already established on islands to the west near New Guinea. Frederique Valentin, Matthew Spriggs, and colleagues conducted morphological analyses involving craniometric measurements of skeletons from a roughly 3,000-year-old cemetery at Teouma on the south coast of Vanuatu’s Efate Island. Measurements were taken on five ca. 3,000 to 2,850-year-old skulls recovered from the Teouma site and 270 more skulls from Australia, Melanesia, Western Micronesia, Polynesia, and China. They found that early Lapita remains comport with present-day Polynesian and Asian populations. Later generations, by contrast, begin to exhibit characteristics associated with a Melanesian phenotype.
[SIZE=medium]Combined with archaeological data, their findings* suggest that Lapita settlers in Vanuatu expanded relatively quickly into Polynesia to become the primary contributor to modern Polynesians’ biological make-up. Melanesian migration from previously established areas followed during a time when the early Polynesians were effectively isolated, eventually dominating the original Lapita phenotype, according to the authors."[/SIZE]
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/new-insights-on-origin-of-polynesians

 

I have Haemochromatosis...I must be Irish decent...oh, I am indeed!

 

Good news.
"Aerial flood maps of Britain are revealing more than just at-risk regions - they have also led to the discovery of several Roman roads.
Amateur archaeologists have been able to use the flood-mapping technology to trace the paths of Roman roads which have remained buried under the land for some 1,600 years.
The aerial flood maps were created by aircraft equipped with laser scanners which measure the distance between the aircraft and the ground.
Using light detection and ranging (Lidar) technology, the Environment Agency was able to detect the areas of Britain which are most at risk of flooding.
The precision technology can detect differences in the height of the land of as little as 5cm, making it ideal for detecting hidden structures buried under the soil.
Although the Environment Agency has been using the technology for some 20 years, it was only made freely available to the public in 2013.
And in just two years, teams of archaeologists have already unearthed seven long-lost Roman roads across the country."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3381432/Long-lost-Roman-roads-discovered-flood-maps-Hi-tech-Lidar-data-reveals-route-2-000-year-old-highways-Britain.html#ixzz3w6FhmKP4

 

Pointless following them...they all lead to Rome...

 

This could be amazing!
"Archaeologists say they have uncovered Britain's "Pompeii" after discovering the "best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found" in the country.
The circular wooden houses, built on stilts, form part of a settlement at Must Farm quarry, in Cambridgeshire, and date to about 1000-800 BC.
A fire destroyed the posts, causing the houses to fall into a river where silt helped preserve the contents.
Pots with meals still inside have been found at the site.
An earlier test trench at the site, near Whittlesey, revealed small cups, bowls and jars.
In addition, archaeologists said "exotic" glass beads that formed part of a necklace "hinted at a sophistication not usually associated with the Bronze Age".
Textiles made from plant fibres such as lime tree bark have also been unearthed."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35280290

 

Scuba diving must be a fascinating hobby. If I was younger, I would think about trying it since the Firth of Forth has many wrecks from the World Wars.
"While a group of divers was doing a routine geophysical survey in the Thames River, the team unexpectedly came upon a sunken English Navy warship. Many have thought that this particular warship was lost for good, but with the accidental find, divers have been working nonstop to preserve anything and everything they discover. The warship is old; it has been in the Thames for decades. Because of the deterioration of the wreck, the crew is trying to salvage as many artifacts as possible before the items disappear.
The ship was built to undergo stress and had been successful in battle; no one on the ship expected its fate. The London set sail in 1665 when the Second Anglo-Dutch War was just beginning. The captain of the Second Rate 76-gun warship was under orders to sail from the Chatham Dockyard and up the Thames toward Gravesend. The weapon-stocked ship and its crew had nothing to worry about; they would be coming back alive and victorious in battle. The ship had nearly 300 people on board, including a large number of women. It was carrying wives and girlfriends who were looking to bid their last goodbyes to the men fighting in the war.
It’s not clear exactly how it happened, but the warship’s gunpowder was ignited accidentally. This caused the ship to rip apart, taking the 300 people on board down with it. One man, Samuel Pepys, documented the accident and said that at least 24 men and one woman were able to survive the wreck. Another man, John Evelyn, said that the disaster had created nearly 50 widows, and that 45 of the 50 women with child.
The ship ended up lying in the water for nearly 345 years, until 2005 when the diving group happened upon the sunken wreck. The team’s sonar scan was used in the London Gateway project. The project was proposed when there needed to be new construction of a deep-water port at Thurrock, which required the Thames channel to be deepened as well.
Before beginning the project, the divers had to make sure that there weren’t any archaeological remains in danger of being destroyed in the deepening of the channel. The divers did expect some archaeological sites to be found due to the channel’s being one of the major routes connecting London. Divers found a ship from the Second World War, a Stuka, and the SS Dovenby. These findings helped lead the divers to the warship; soon after, the preservation of the artifacts began."
https://m.thevintagenews.com/2016/01/02/43745/

 

Problem is....those same floods, particularly this year's atrocious ones, are rapidly destroying some of the last surviving stretches of paved Roman road Particularly on exposed moorland. Pounding rain, record rainfalls, running water etc. are just washing them away at last.

 

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/sir-david-attenborough-and-the-giant-dinosaur-bbc-biggest-ever-a6812386.html

Sir David Attenborough set to reveal the biggest dinosaur ever to walk the planet in upcoming BBC show.
The newly-discovered dinosaur, which has not yet been named, is estimated to have weighed around 70 tonnes, the weight
of 920 average adults, and believed to have measured 37 metres from nose to tail - the length of four double-decker buses.
This bone was discovered near a farm in Chubut province, Argentina, in 2014.

Attenborough and The Giant Dinosaur is set to premier on BBC One at 6:30PM on Sunday 24 January.

 

From: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35320938

Mammoth kill linked to earliest Arctic settlers
A well preserved mammoth carcass pulled from frozen sediments in the far north of Russia proves humans were present in the Arctic some 45,000 years ago.
This is 10,000 years earlier than previous evidence had indicated.

 

Another lucky so-and-so-
"A hoard of almost 3,340 Roman coins unearthed by accident by a JCB driver on a building site in Yeovil could be worth as much as £175,000 ($251,000).
They date from second and third centuries AD, a time when the Romans regularly marched through the then-village, on the Fosse Way - the main road between Exeter and Lincoln.
The massive collection of silver coins include those with depictions of various emperors, as well as an elephant and even a hippopotamus.
Mark Copsey, 44, discovered the coins on March 20, 2013, when he was levelling a recreation ground for a hockey pitch and spotted something green in the soil.
He said: 'I was stripping subsoil to the rock and was on an eight by ten metres strip to clear the second-to-final strip when I looked behind me and noticed a green colour in the soil.
'I stopped my machine and got out and investigated and discovered a broken pot with some sort of coins.'
Mr Copsey put them in a plastic carrier bag, before reporting the incredible find.
The 3,339 coins have now been cleaned and examined by The British Museum, which believes they were buried in around 270AD.
They include 164 silver denarii coins, four brass sestertii, four of which were worth one denarii.
The rest are radiates, which were much like modern pennies and had a small value.
Some of the coins carry the heads of empresses, and others emperors, including Philip I, born in Syria of a Syrian father, around 204AD.
The denarii come from the reigns of Antoninus Pius (138-61AD), Septimius Severus (193-211AD), Caracalla (198-217AD), Macrinus (217-8AD), Elagabalus (218-222AD), Severus Alexander (222-35AD), Maximinus I (235-8AD) and Gordian III (238-44AD), The British Museum told MailOnline." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3421222/Hoard-3-000-Roman-coins-unearthed-Rare-monies-buried-270AD-bear-image-various-emperors-elephant-hippo-worth-175-000.html#ixzz3yZv7XBll

 

Lovely stuff!
[SIZE=medium]"R[/SIZE]esearch published in 2012 garnered international attention by suggesting that Australopithecus sediba (A. sediba), a possible early human ancestor species discovered in South Africa by anthropologist Lee Berger, had lived on a diverse woodland diet including hard foods mixed in with tree bark, fruit, leaves and other plant products.
[SIZE=medium]But new research by an international team of researchers now shows that A. sediba didn't have the jaw and tooth structure necessary to exist on a steady diet of hard foods.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]"Most australopiths had amazing adaptations in their jaws, teeth and faces that allowed them to process foods that were difficult to chew or crack open. Among other things, they were able to efficiently bite down on foods with very high forces," said team leader David Strait, PhD, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]"Australopithecus sediba is thought by some researchers to lie near the ancestry of Homo, the group to which our species belongs," said Justin Ledogar, PhD, Strait's former graduate student and now a researcher at the University of New England in Australia. "Now we find that A. sediba had an important limitation on its ability to bite powerfully; if it had bitten as hard as possible on its molar teeth using the full force of its chewing muscles, it would have dislocated its jaw."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=medium]The study, published Feb. 8 in the journal Nature Communications, describes biomechanical testing of a computer-based model of an A. sediba skull. The model is based on the fossil skull recovered in 2008 from the Malapa fossil site by Berger and his team. Malapa is a cave near Johannesburg, South Africa. The biomechanical methods used in the study are similar to those used by engineers to test whether or not planes, cars, machine parts or other mechanical devices are strong enough to avoid breaking during use."[/SIZE]
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/a-surprising-find-about-a-possible-early-human-ancestor

 

Another example of viewing evidence through a tunnel...It could well be that while Sediba didn't have the bite power to "happily" exist on a steady diet of hard foods that it: Chewed anyway and wore down the teeth at a faster rate (and died earlier) or moved, or used tools to pre-soften prior to eating...

 

Here's another one in the vicinity of Stonehenge-
"The Stonehenge site has been scoured by archaeologists for decades as they attempt to learn more about the history of the land around Britain's famous ancient monument.
But the latest discovery at the site has been excavated by a rather unlikely source - a badger.
A Bronze Age cremation site was found after badgers dug into an ancient burial mound on land belonging to the Ministry of Defence at Netheravon in Wiltshire.
Artefacts including Bronze Age tools, pottery and an archer's wrist guard, dating back to between 2,200BC and 2,000BC, were discovered alongside cremated human remains at a site that sits just 5 miles (8km) from the monument.
Archaeologists spotted the site after a badger unearthed a cremation urn and left shards of pottery lying on the ground around the burial mound.
Richard Osgood, senior archaeologist at the MoD's Defence Infrastructure Organisation, led an excavation of the site and described it as an 'exciting find'.
Experts have said the discovery may be of similar significance to the famous Amesbury Archer, which was found in 2002."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3438781/Exciting-Bronze-Age-cremation-site-unearthed-near-Stonehenge-BADGER-Human-remains-4-000-year-old-artefacts-near-animal-s-sett.html#ixzz3zgdviCqE

 

So, it is a new species apparently.
"Some 13 years ago, experts found the remains on nine man-like creatures on the island of Flores.
They have been named Homo floresiensis – or more colloquially “the hobbits”.
However, it has now been proved that they are not part of the Homo family at all.
It had thought that these mysterious beings were a form of early humans that lived 15,000 years ago, but this has been proved to be untrue.
Another theory was that they were humans who moved to the island but shrank over several generations in a process known as "insular dwarfing” which is where an animal species shrinks over the years as the food supply gets smaller on an isolated island.
Lead author on the study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, Antoine Balzeau, a scientist at France's Natural History Museum, said that he and his team have been studying the skulls of one of the hobbits – which would have stood at just a metre tall and weighed 25kg.
He said: "There is a lot of information contained in bone layers of the skull.”
However, there was not enough information in these skulls to deduce what the species is.
"There were no characteristics from our species" was all that they could conclude."
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/644599/Mysterious-15-000-year-old-hobbit-creatures-found-NOT-to-be-related-to-humans

 

Metal detector boys turn up trumps again-
"Nowadays it is just a barley field in the middle of the Fens.
But following a chance find, archaeologists say that in 750 AD the site was a ‘significant’ centre of international trade.
Experts believe that monks, priests and noblemen lived on what was an island – until it had to be abandoned around the time Viking hordes began pillaging the British isles.
Liason officer Adam Daubney and metal detectorist Graham Vickers have discovered a 'significant' archaeological site
A host of ornate silver writing instruments, coins, brooches and lead weights suggest a previously unknown monastery or trading centre may have stood near Little Carlton in Lincolnshire. Above, animal bone, which was found on the site
A host of ornate silver writing instruments, coins, brooches and lead weights suggest a previously unknown monastery or trading centre may have stood there.
The site, which may have been in use for a couple of hundred years, was discovered at Little Carlton, near Louth in Lincolnshire. In Anglo-Saxon times it was an island in a channel of the river Lud, five miles from the coast. Centuries of drainage have since made it solid ground.
A glimpse of the site’s secrets was finally revealed when metal detectorist Graham Vickers found an ornate silver pen-like stylus lying in a ploughed field.
The find, which was once used for writing on a wax tablet, was reported to the local board of antiquities. But the 2011 discovery was kept quiet so the site could be excavated, and can only now be reported."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3471968/A-marvel-marshes-Anglo-Saxon-trade-citadel-teeming-treasures-Fens.html#ixzz41lCuC06L

 

Would be amazing if they're right-
"THE LOST medieval village of Cadzow may have been finally located after artefacts more than 1,000 years old were unearthed during upgrading work on the M74.

The discoveries near Hamilton in South Lanarkshire include coins believed to date from the 10th or 11th century, and fragments of glazed medieval pottery and clay smoking pipes.

They were found under the motorway verge near junction six, opposite the Hamilton Services.

It came during work to widen that stretch of the M74 as part of the £500 million improvements to the motorway and nearby M73 and M8 by Transport Scotland.

The Scottish Government agency said archaeologists believed this could finally identify the location of the lost village of Cadzow - now part of Hamilton.

James II gave permission for Cadzow to be renamed Hamilton in 1445, after the Dukes of Hamilton, who owned lands in the area.

Archeologists said the site may have lain undisturbed because it was where the Netherton Cross, which also dates from 10th or 11th century, once stood,

A memorial stone was left to mark the spot when the cross was moved to Hamilton Old Parish Church in 1925."
http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/1-000-year-old-lost-medieval-village-found-under-m74-motorway-1-4052326#ixzz42MjPCc3P

 

Haven't visited this site for a while-
"A warrior king buried almost 2,500 years ago has been discovered in an iron-age settlement unearthed at the foot of the Yorkshire Wolds. The remains of the burial ground is being hailed as one of the largest and most significant iron age finds of recent times.
In 2014 a housing developer stumbled upon the fossil site in the small market town of Pocklington in east Yorkshire, a find that is said to be of extreme “national and international significance”.
One of the most exciting discoveries was the “remarkably” well-preserved remains of a youthful warrior. Found in the cemetery and dated to 800BC he had been ritually speared to “release his spirit” and lay in the ground next to his sword.
The site contains more than 75 graves holding 160 skeletons of people from the Arras culture, a group who lived in the region in the middle iron age.
The burial chambers – known as barrows – included the skeleton of the young warrior, who was lying with a broken sword by his side."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/17/warrior-king-uncovered-yorkshire-iron-age-settlement

"Shaggy, heavy-shouldered bison have grazed the wide open spaces of the American Southwest for thousands of years. They made a tempting target for the hunters who walked the empty landscape between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago. The bison were attracted to a lush landscape west of Socorro, New Mexico where wetlands created by mountain runoff stretched across hundreds of acres. The hunters were attracted to the bison.
In 2000, archeologist Robert Dello-Russo was hired by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMERTC) at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to survey land where they wanted to build a new observation facility for their explosives research. He contracted to look for archeological sites on the state-owned land, and found much more than anyone expected.
"We found the Water Canyon Paleo-Indian site and a lot of other early Holocene sites because we were right at the edge of this big alluvial fan so there were other sites eroding out and basically, we said well if you are going to build this, you are going to have to move it some place that is not littered with archeological sites," said Dello-Russo.
EMRTC is internationally famous for the quality of its research and a welcoming spirit that brought the television show Myth Busters back repeatedly to blow up all sorts of things. The EMRTC scientists didn't realize an obscure part of their 14-square-mile field laboratory was a major archeological site.
Uncovering the mystery of very early humans in New Mexico
In the years since he discovered the site at Water Canyon Dello-Russo and his colleagues have returned to the site repeatedly to explore the scope of the ancient wetlands, finding more and more evidence that the best documented earliest humans, known as Paleo-Indians on the North American continent hunted here. EMERTC has helped wherever possible, supplying water, lending a backhoe for a major excavation and generously allowing the access Dello-Russo needed." http://phys.org/news/2016-03-uncovering-mystery-early-humans-mexico.html#jCp


"A German excavation mission from Bon University discovered 15 separate prehistoric graffiti texts during their excavation work in the Noblemen cemetery in Aswan.
"It's a very important discovery because it is an indication that this area was a human settlement since the predynastic era," Antiquities Minister Mamdouh Eldamaty told Ahram Online, adding that he considers the newly discovered graffiti to be "the oldest engraving ever found in such area until now."

Eldamaty went on to say that the graffiti also reveals that the area where it was found was a holy place which urged the predynastic people living there to engrave sacred graffiti on its stone rocks.

"More graffiti is to be found, for sure, after further exploration works," Eldamaty explained.

Mahmoud Afifi, the head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities section in the antiquities ministry, pointed out that the graffiti found depicts engravings of wild animals, cattle, gazelles, birds and ostriches.

Sacred religious rituals are also engraved at the site. These rituals reveal the early religious practices that were untertaken to facilitate the hunting of wild animals."
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/193114/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Holy-predynastic-graffiti-uncovered-in-Aswan.aspx

 

Around these parts- a developer would probably not claim a historical site, as that would delay the development $. Not that there is much history here. Maybe dinosaur bones. ..figure the Chinese were here first. Maybe the Vikings.

 

Has this been on here yet?





Slaughter at the bridge: Uncovering a colossal Bronze Age battle


Ow...

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