A worthy endeavour

Off The Beaten Path: Archeologists work to preserve artifacts in Kentucky’s forests

Hmmm...

In the Shadows of Archaeological Swashbucklers

Historians, curators and moviemakers are delving into the histories of Middle East archaeological sites, some now destroyed or inaccessible in war zones, and resurrecting the stories of swashbuckling characters who dug there.

The early 1900s archaeologist and diplomat Gertrude Bell, a daughter of a British baronet, will soon be the subject of a Werner Herzog film, “Queen of the Desert,” starring Nicole Kidman; a book by the Canadian archaeologist Lisa Cooper; an exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle Upon Tyne, near her hometown; and a documentary “Letters Fom Baghdad.” The documentary’s makers, Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl, are drawing upon Bell’s photos and writings from her global travels and negotiations with tribal leaders and shaky governments.

In 1926, two days before her 58th birthday, Bell was found dead in Baghdad after an overdose of sleeping pills. Her family preserved her papers, and Newcastle University owns the bulk of them. Other artifacts have recently emerged in the hands of descendants and collectors, including Bell’s Kurdish weavings and her silver cigarette case.

As much as I love archaeology and Aegyptology, I have always seen the Europeans as erstwhile plunderers of ancient civilisations, often ignoring the wishes of their modern-day descendants. But given the instability in the Middle East, I have to admit, perhaps it better for an artefact to be in some Western museum than dynamited by radicals. On the other hand, instability can hit just about anywhere. But still, I fear a good deal has been lost in some of these war-torn areas. I admire the people who are actively trying to save their culture, though, whether locals or others.

Then there was this

Very Well Aged: Archaeologists Say Ancient Wine Cellar Found Archaeologists say they have discovered a 3,700-year-old wine cellar in Israel, a finding that offers insights into the early roots of winemaking.

The large wine cellar was unearthed in the ruined palace of a Canaanite city in northern Israel, called Tel Kabri, not far from the country's modern wineries. The excavations revealed 40 one-meter-tall (about 3 feet) jars kept in what appeared to be a storage room.

No liquid contents could have survived the millennia. But an analysis of organic residue trapped in the pores of the jars suggested that they had contained wine made from grapes. The ancient tipple was likely sweet, strong and medicinal—certainly not your average Beaujolais.

I found this very interesting

24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians

The genome of a young boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia some 24,000 years ago has turned out to hold two surprises for anthropologists.

The first is that the boy’s DNA matches that of Western Europeans, showing that during the last Ice Age people from Europe had reached farther east across Eurasia than previously supposed. Though none of the Mal’ta boy’s skin or hair survives, his genes suggest he would have had brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin.

The second surprise is that his DNA also matches a large proportion — about 25 percent — of the DNA of living Native Americans. The first people to arrive in the Americas have long been assumed to have descended from Siberian populations related to East Asians. It now seems that they may be a mixture between the Western Europeans who had reached Siberia and an East Asian population.

Granted, it's one skeleton's DNA, but it is definitely worth more research, I think.

Cool

Bulgarian archaeologists find golden treasures in ancient Thracian tomb: Tiara, snake-head bracelets and gold buttons among artefacts from Getae burial site near northern village of Sveshtari

The site is at the ancient Getic burial complex near the village of Sveshtari, about 250 miles north-east of Sofia. One of the tombs there, the Tomb of Sveshtari, is included in the Unesco world heritage list for its unique architectural decor showing half-human, half-plant female figures and painted murals.

The Thracians, ruled by a powerful warrior aristocracy wealthy for their gold treasures, inhabited an area extending over modern Romania and Bulgaria, northern Greece and the European part of Turkey from 4000BC.

They lived on the fringes of the Greek and Roman civilisations, often intermingling and clashing with the more advanced cultures until they were absorbed, in about the year 45, into the Roman empire. Archaeologists have discovered a large number of artefacts in Bulgaria's Thracian tombs in recent decades, providing most of what is known of their culture as they had no written language and left no enduring records.

Thrace is often connected to and even purported to be the origin of the worship of the Goddess Hekate, whom I honour as well. So this is of interest to me besides the obvious archaeological significance.

Not that it's going to change the minds of the Doomsday crowd, but...this is rather interesting

Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 "Doomsday" Myth

In the last known largely unexcavated Maya megacity, archaeologists have uncovered the only known mural adorning an ancient Maya house, a new study says—and it's not just any mural.

In addition to a still vibrant scene of a king and his retinue, the walls are rife with calculations that helped ancient scribes track vast amounts of time. Contrary to the idea the Maya predicted the end of the world in 2012, the markings suggest dates thousands of years in the future.

Perhaps most important, the otherwise humble chamber offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of Maya society.

It's a shame that some are faded, and that the city, known to the Mayans as Xultún, was largely looted in the '70s. What treasures might have been there? Still, this is a great find. I hope they uncover more about this culture and the city.

As a gardener and history/archaeology buff, this made me happy

Ancient biblical gardens 'bloom' again: Reconstruction of 2,500 garden relied on analyses of excavated pollen and reveals a paradise of exotic plants

An ancient royal garden has come back into bloom in a way, as scientists have reconstructed what it would've looked like some 2,500 years ago in the kingdom of the biblical Judah.

Their reconstruction, which relied on analyses of excavated pollen, reveals a paradise of exotic plants.

Nice mysterious artefact

Bronze Artifact Found on Alaska's Seward Peninsula

A research team is attempting to discover the origin of a cast bronze artifact excavated from an Inupiat Eskimo home site believed to be about 1,000 years old.

The artifact resembles a small buckle, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder said in an announcement. How it got to Alaska remains a mystery.

"The object appears to be older than the house we were excavating by at least a few hundred years," research assistant John Hoffecker said in the release. Hoffecker led excavating at Cape Espenberg on Alaska's Seward Peninsula.

Nifty, no? Leather connected to the bar dates to about 600 CE, but they're trying to find more wood in the stratum to date it more thoroughly through radiocarbon method. The house is away from the then-shoreline, so would not simply have washed up from some sort of sea vessel, and the indigenous peoples did not cast metal. So the question is, were they visited by someone from the Old World far earlier than the Europeans who came later?

Ah, amore!

Roman-era couple held hands for 1,500 years: Archaeologists believe the pair was buried in a position of mutual adoration

The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding hands for 1,500 years.

Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner.

"We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after death," Donato Labate, the director of the excavation at the archaeological superintendency of Emilia-Romagna, told Discovery News.

These are nice

Lost Cities Photos

I have been fascinated with ancient ruins since I was a little girl. These photos capture several 'lost cities' and structures around the globe.

Double :)

Armchair archaeologists wanted, no experience necessary

Would you like to transcribe ancient Egyptian papyrus fragments written in Greek? Oh, you don’t know Greek … not a problem. Researchers at Oxford University have devised a way for you to help them transcribe these documents, even if you don’t know your thetas from your omegas. Hundreds of thousands of images of these fragments, owned by the Egypt Exploration Society, have been posted online, and a simple web interface can guide you in identifying most of the Greek alphabets.

Pieces of papyri, written during a period when Egypt was controlled by Greek settlers, were recovered in the early 20th century at the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, known as ‘City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish’ (a sacred fish of the Nile). Victorian archaeologists excavating rubbish mounds left by the city’s inhabitants collected the fragments, mostly written in Greek, and well preserved in dry desert conditions. To this day, many of them have yet to be transcribed.

Ancient Lives Project web site

Interactive tutorial to get you started

Via PF Anderson (@pfanderson).

Cool

Carving found in Gower cave could be oldest rock art

Wall carving in Gower cave The location of the wall carving is being kept secret for the time being.

The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.

Sometimes it's not just what you find, but how on earth it could be there

Brains on campus, sure, but 2,500 years old?: Found in a skull, scientists puzzled by how fragile soft organ lasted so long

A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs.

Except for the brain, all of the skull's soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus.

"It was just amazing to think that a brain of someone who had died so many thousands of years ago could persist just in wet ground," said Sonia O'Connor, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bradford. O’Connor led a team of researchers who assessed the state of the brain after it was found in 2008 and looked into likely modes of preservation.

Usually the brain is one of the first things in the human body to go after death. It liquefies. But this one didn't, and scientists set out to discover why.

And you think your Thanksgiving leftovers lingered in the fridge too long

Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old 'soup'

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.

The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.

Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.

Discovering history

Undisturbed artifacts will detail lives of Civil War prisoners

Nearly 150 years after it was left behind at a Civil War prison camp, the 3-inch clay pipestem still shows a Union soldier's teeth marks.

The pipe, whose stem features the name of its manufacturer, proves the resourcefulness of a prisoner who really wanted his tobacco. He fashioned the bowl from lead, possibly by melting rifle bullets.

No one knows what became of the unknown soldier at Camp Lawton, which during its short existence in south Georgia was the Confederacy's largest prison camp.

"His name his been lost to history but his story has not," said Kevin Chapman, who led a group of college students that found the exact location of the camp's slave-built stockade and, in the soil beneath tall pine trees, nearly 200 artifacts.

Those are the first of what is expected to be a treasure of artifacts that will bear witness to the lives of prisoners and the horrors they endured.

The site is remote and is on federal land, jutting into a state park as well, so it is largely undisturbed. It provides a wonderful opportunity to see into the lives of the people involved.

Politics, speculation, archaeology, and faith--a lively combination

Are these the bones of John the Baptist?

In a region already rich with archaeological artefacts, the excavation of a small alabaster box containing a few pieces of bone amid the ruins of a medieval monastery might easily have passed unnoticed.

But when Bulgarian archaeologists declared they had found relics of John the Baptist, one of the most significant early Christian saints, their discovery became the subject of rather more interest -- prompting angry exchanges in the local media and even calls for a government minister's resignation.

The claim is based on a reliquary -- a container for holy relics -- found on July 28 under the altar of a fifth century basilica on Sveti Ivan, a Black Sea island off Sozopol on Bulgaria's southern coast. Inside, archaeologists found eight pieces of bone, including fragments of skull and face bone and a tooth.

A later monastery on the island was dedicated to John the Baptist; indirect evidence, according to excavation leader Kazimir Popkonstantinov, that the relics under the altar were those of the church's saint.

But Popkonstantinov told CNN the "key" clue to the relics' origins was a tiny sandstone box found alongside the reliquary with a Greek inscription: "God, save your servant Thomas. To St John. June 24."

Popkonstantinov said the date, celebrated by Christians as John's nativity, indicated a direct link between the saint and the site. The rest of the inscription suggested the bearer of the box used it as an amulet for protection, perhaps carrying the relics in a simple container to avoid attracting attention, he speculated.

There's certainly a lot of speculation going on in this case, which is ultimately unprovable for, as the excavation leader states, ...'[T]here is no database with DNA profiles of the saints. Here, I believe, the science stops. Since we cannot prove the attribution of any of the relics with scientific methods, we have to be tolerant of those who want to believe that they are'. They hope to find out more about the bones (gender, whether they are from the same person, age, etc.) But it's still an interesting find.

Some of the news I'm reading

Chimps kill chimps ... for their land: Rival gangs murder each other in turf wars, scientists say

Chimp-on-chimp attacks in the wild are very common, especially among small packs of males on patrol. Now research suggests the motive for these crimes is to gain territory.

Ancient Egyptian city located in Nile Delta by radar

An ancient Egyptian city believed to be Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos people who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been located by radar, Egypt's culture ministry says.

Lucy's 'great-grandfather' found

Anthropologists say they have discovered the 3.6 million-year-old partial skeleton of a creature that came from the same species as Lucy, but was 400,000 years older and at least as good at walking upright.

Cassini Skims Through Titan’s Upper Atmosphere

The flyby took Cassini within 547 miles of Titan’s surface, about two and a half times the altitude of the International Space Station. Although this distance shaved only 43 miles off the next nearest approach, the flyby was the first to take the spacecraft below Titan’s ionosphere, a layer of charged particles in the upper atmosphere. The ionosphere shielded the spacecraft from Saturn’s much larger magnetic field, allowing scientists the first hints of whether Titan has a magnetic field of its own.

Archaeologists find remains of Nevern Castle in Wales

Archaeological excavations on the site of Nevern Castle in Wales has revealed a large group of buildings thought to date from the 12th century. It is hoped that the discovery will provide new details on the history of the Norman fortress that was built in 1108.

7th-graders discover mysterious cave on Mars

The 16 students from teacher Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found what looks to be a Martian skylight — a hole in the roof of a cave on Mars.

The intrepid students were participating in the Mars Student Imaging Program at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. The program allows students to frame a research question and then commission a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image to answer their question.

E-Reader Prices Are Slashed

Barnes and Noble started a price war by slashing its 3G Nook to $199 and its Wi-Fi-only Nook to $149. Amazon has responded by reducing the Kindle from $259 to $189. I so want a Kindle, and this only increases the temptation. But for now, I'm concentrating on bills....

I'm a history geek, too, of course

Copernicus reburied in Poland

The remains of Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer who first theorized that the earth revolved around the sun, were reburied on Saturday in the cathedral of Frombork in northern Poland.

Scientists have been examining Copernicus’s skull and leg bones since they were discovered by archaeologists three years ago in an unmarked grave in the cathedral. Testing revealed that the body was of a 70 year old man, and that he had a broken nose, which would have the same age and condition of the Polish scientist when he died. Furthermore, DNA taken from teeth and bones matched hairs that were found in one of his books, and they ultimately concluded that they had found Copernicus.

This is so nifty cool...

I am an Aegyptology geek, what can I say. :)

57 tombs with mummies found in Egypt: Archaeologists say discovery throws new light on religion

Exciting

China unearths 114 new Terracotta Warriors

Archaeologists in China have unearthed 114 new terracotta warriors at the vast Qin dynasty tomb complex in Xian province, state media reports.

The statues, many of which were found in pieces, were brightly coloured and lying alongside pots, weapons and other items, said China Daily.

Research teams also found evidence of burn marks on the clay, proof that the pit had at some point been set on fire.

More than 8,000 of the statues, made in 221BC, have already been unearthed.