Exciting science at Stonehenge

SHATTERING bananas and expanding rubber gloves were part of an exciting science day at Stonehenge School.

Professor Tim Harrison from ChemLabs at Bristol University held two sessions at the school, firstly for Year eight students then for youngsters from local primary schools.

About 230 pupils from Amesbury Primary, Amesbury Archer, Christ the King in Amesbury, Newton Tony Primary, Shrewton Primary, Netheravon All Saints, St Michael’s Figheldean and Durrington Junior schools came along.

Professor Harrison showed them fun experiments using liquid nitrogen to freeze bananas and flowers then smashing them with a hammer, and put dry ice in a rubber glove which then expanded with the carbon dioxide as pupils handled the glove.

Teacher Phil Monk, said: “He had them hanging on his every word. All the junior schools said what great fun it was, it was a great success.”

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A history of Ireland in 100 objects

Basket earrings, Amesbury, England, circa 2300 BC

A man in his late 30s or early 40s was buried alone at Amesbury, near the great English monument of Stonehenge, sometime around 2400-2200 BC.

From the huge range of objects in his grave, he had considerable status. The objects were similar to finds from the same period in Ireland: barbed and tanged arrowheads, a stone wrist guard, beaker-shaped pots. He even wore gold basket-shaped earrings or hair ornaments strikingly similar to some in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

But although we can glean a certain amount from the artefacts found in Ireland, they don’t tell us much about the people who owned them. In Amesbury, owner and objects were found together, offering far more information. And, although we must be cautious in our interpretations, this information is likely also true of Ireland. What makes him so significant for an understanding of Irish prehistory is where he came from and the fact that copper knives and other tools in the grave show that he was a metalworker.

By studying the chemical isotopes in his teeth, scientists have established that the so-called Amesbury Archer grew up in the Alpine region of southern Germany or Switzerland, where the mining and use of copper and gold had long been known. Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology suggests, from the evidence of some of the grave goods, that he probably made his way to England via southern France, the Iberian peninsula and the Atlantic.

Why does he matter for Ireland? Because the Amesbury Archer provides crucial evidence about the biggest development after the arrival of agriculture: the mining and shaping of metals. There is no dispute that the arrival of metalworking, around 2400 BC, is linked to new cultural practices characterised by the kind of objects found in the archer’s grave and by the practice of single rather than communal burial.

What is not clear about the arrival of metalworking, though, is, as Mary Cahill of the National Museum puts it, “whether it was brought by people on the move looking for new sources of metals or whether it’s a transmission of information as opposed to people. But the fact that the Amesbury Archer turns out not to have been born in southern Britain and has travelled all the way from central Europe is indicative of some movement of people”.

We know that by about 2400 BC Ross Island in the Killarney lakes was established as perhaps the most important copper mine in northwestern Europe. The first Irish evidence of metalworking is therefore already quite highly developed. It is very unlikely that this expertise emerged spontaneously. As Fitzpatrick puts it, “Ross has to be developed by people who already have the knowledge. You can’t just make that up.” It is clearly no coincidence that the pottery found at Ross is of the new beaker type. A large cultural shift is under way in Ireland, and it is associated with the mining of copper and gold.

This does not mean that Ireland was “invaded” by new tribes of metalworkers. But migrants from central Europe and the Atlantic coasts of France and Spain almost certainly played a key part in the end of Stone Age Ireland.

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Unlocking the past with the West Runton Elephant

Using an ultra-high resolution mass spectrometer, bio-archaeologists were able to produce a near complete collagen sequence for the West Runton Elephant, a Steppe Mammoth skeleton which was discovered in cliffs in Norfolk in 1990. The remarkable 85 per cent complete skeleton – the most complete example of its species ever found in the world - is preserved by Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service in Norwich.

Bio-archaeologist Professor Matthew Collins, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said: “The time depth is absolutely remarkable. Until several years ago we did not believe we would find any collagen in a skeleton of this age, even if it was as well-preserved as the West Runton Elephant.

“We believe protein lasts in a useful form ten times as long as DNA which is normally only useful in discoveries of up to 100,000 years old in Northern Europe. The implications are that we can use collagen sequencing to look at very old extinct animals. It also means we can look through old sites and identify remains from tiny fragments of bone.”

Dr. Mike Buckley, from the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester, said: “What is truly fascinating is that this fundamentally important protein, which is one of the most abundant proteins in most (vertebrate) animals, is an ideal target for obtaining long lost genetic information."

The collagen sequencing was carried out at the Centre for Excellence in Mass Spectrometry at the University of York and is arguably the oldest protein ever sequenced; short peptides (chains of amino acids) have controversially been reported from dinosaur fossils.

The research formed part of a study into the sequencing of mammoths and mastodons, which is published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. The West Runton Elephant was compared with other mammoths, modern elephants and mastodons. Despite the age of the fossil, sufficient peptides were obtained to identify the West Runton skeleton as elephantid, and there was sufficient sequence variation to discriminate elephantid and mammutid collagen.

Nigel Larkin, co-author and Research Associate with Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, said: “The West Runton Elephant is unusual in that it is a nearly complete skeleton. At the time this animal was alive, before the Ice Ages, spotted hyenas much larger than those in Africa today were scavenging most carcases and devouring the bones as well as meat. That means most fossils found from this time period are individual bones or fragments of bone, making them difficult to identify. In the future, collagen sequencing might help us to determine the species represented by even smallest scraps of bone.

“Therefore this research has important implications for bones and bone fragments in all archaeological and palaeontological collections in museums and archaeology units around the world, not just those of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service in Norwich.”
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Stone tools reveal India's 1.5 million year old prehistory | Past Horizons

Archaeologists have discovered India’s oldest stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, at a prehistoric site near Chennai. The discovery may change existing ideas about the earliest arrival of human ancestors from Africa into India.

A team of Indian and French archaeologists have used two dating methods including Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam are at least 1.07 million years old, and could date as far back as 1.5 million years.

12 years of painstaking work
The Tamil Nadu site was first discovered in 1863 by British geologist Robert Bruce Foote, and has been excavated at various times since then.

Archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education have spent the last 12 years continuing to excavate the site and have now found 3,528 artefacts that bear a distinct similarity to prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa.

The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus – ancestors of modern humans – in Africa about 1.6 million years ago.

“This means that soon after early humans invented the Acheulian tools, they crossed formidable geographical barriers to get to southern Asia,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, who is an expert in Asian prehistoric archaeology but was not associated with the Chennai study. “The suggestion that this occurred 1.5 million years ago is simply staggering,” he said.

Petraglia himself had earlier been involved in excavating the Hunsgi valley in Karnataka, which has yielded 1.27 million-year-old stone tools, regarded as India’s oldest until now. Although earlier excavations had revealed Acheulian tools at a few sites on the Indian subcontinent, including a two million-year-old site in Pakistan, the dates assigned to the artefacts so far have remained under debate.

Source from : http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/stone-tools-reveal-indias-1-5-million-year-old-prehistory

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Archaeology Excavations Begin at Four Ancient Sites in Macedonia

Major archaeological excavations have started at four ancient sites around Macedonia.

The archaeology excavations, funded by about 20 million euro by Macedonia’s government, will take place at the sites of Heraklea Lynkestis, Skopje’s Kale Fortress, Stobi and Isar, the Dnevnik newspaper reported. It is expected that the sites will be completely explored, Pasko Kuzman, Director of Cultural Heritage Protection in the Macedonian Ministry of Culture, told the publication.

About 100 people already started excavating unearthed parts of the Heraklea Lynkestis site, which is located at about two kilometres from the town of Bitola in south-western Macedonia. The work on one of the best preserved ancient cities in the country is led by archaeologists Anitsa Georgievska and Engin Hasud from the Institute, Museum and Gallery in Bitola.

Founded in the fourth century BC by the ancient Greek ruler Philip II of Macedon – the father of Alexander the Great, and conquered by the Romans two centuries later, Heraklea Lynkestis stood on the Via Egnatia and became one of the key stations on this trading route. Some of the remains that archaeologists have discovered at the site so far are impressive mosaics (in the photograph), Roman baths, town walls, a portico, ancient basilicas, an Episcopal church, a Jewish temple and a Roman amphitheatre which is often used for summer concerts and theatre shows.

Research teams, led by Professor Dragi Mitrevski, also began work at Skopje’s Kale Fortress, situated on a hill above the capital. Today’s remains date to the sixth century, when Byzantines used stone blocks from the destroyed city of Skupi nearby to construct it. After the 1963 earthquake, Kale’s circular, rectangular and square towers were conserved and restored.

The exploration of the Roman city Stobi, near the town of Veles in central Macedonia, also began, under the leadership of archaeologist Silvana Blazheva, director of the newly formed institution Stobi.

The ancient town was built where the Erigón River (present-day River Crna) joins the Axiós river (present-day Vardar), making it a strategic trade and warfare centre.

Hundreds of people will also be excavating the Isar site at the village of Marvinci, near the town of Velandovo in southern Macedonia. A team, led by Zlatko Videski, headed there last weekend in order to begin preliminary field work.



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8,000-year-old remains of early Anatolians discovered in Istanbul

Two skeletons dating back 8,500 years, making them the oldest ever found in what is now Turkey, have been discovered during archaeological excavations in Istanbul’s Yenikapı area.

“Such remains have not been discovered during the excavation before; these are the oldest graves in Anatolia,” said Dr. Yasemin Yılmaz, an expert on anthropology and prehistory, who expressed excitement about the find.

According to Yılmaz, the use of wooden blocks – preserved to this day – to cover the coffins makes them distinctive from other finds.

Since the archaeology excavations around Yenikapı, the site of the ongoing construction on the Marmaray tunnel underneath the Marmara Sea, started in 2004, many shipwrecks, amphoras, cemeteries and around 40,000 artifacts have been uncovered in the area.

Several archaeologists have collaborated with some 200 workers to carefully excavate a 60,000-square-meter area where many traces of human history have been discovered 16 meters belowground and nine meters below sea level. The two ancient coffins were found 40 days ago but only revealed recently by the excavation team.

The find was the first time a coffin was found together with its wooden cover within the city walls, said Sırrı Çömlekçi, who is leading the Marmaray excavations. Typically, cut wood decays in around 15 to 20 years, but these samples have lasted for more than eight millennia thanks to a black clay material that has preserved them to the present day, said the archaeologist.

“We can clearly say that the artifacts found next to the graves date back to 6500 B.C. These coffins also date back to the same period. Their exact age will be revealed using carbon-14 dating. After DNA tests are applied, we will find out from where these people came to Anatolia and learn information about their roots,” Çömlekçi said.

Work in the excavation area, covered with white tents, is being conducted with major and fastidious research. Archaeologists sitting beneath a huge tree use cotton buds to clean the clay and mud from a skeleton.

“Istanbul is said to have a 2,500-year-old history. With the Marmaray excavations, we have revealed that Istanbul has an 8,000-year-old history,” Çömlekçi said. “This is the biggest open-air excavation. There is no such research in any other place. The artifacts being found here illustrate the richness of the history of Istanbul and Anatolia.”


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Egypt's Archaeological Sites Stand Unguarded

Concerned archaeologists called today on Egypt’s Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to return police to archaeological sites. The move is required to put an end to illegal excavations and wild looting of storehouses and tombs.

“The desecration of archaeological sites and monuments is not only a huge loss for the people of Egypt on a national, economic, and human level, but is also a loss to all of humanity and to science,” Tarek El Awadi, director of the National Egyptian museum, said in an open letter to Sharaf.

Following the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak last month, a new unprecedented wave of looting and vandalism took place at various sites in Egypt.

“During the revolution of January 25th, the Egyptian Army protected our heritage sites and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However, in the last 10 days the army has left these posts because it has other tasks to do,” said Zahi Hawass, who resigned this week as minister of antiquities in protest at the lack of proper action on the looting.

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Part of a pylon of the Isis temple discovered by Underwater Achaeologists

Egyptian archaeologists have lifted an ancient granite temple pylon out of the waters of the Mediterranean, where it had been lying for about centuries as part of the palace complex of Cleopatra, submerged in Alexandria’s harbor.

The pylon, which previously stood at the entrance to a temple of Isis, is to be the showpiece of an ambitious underwater museum planned by Egypt to display the sunken city, which is supposed to have been collapsed into the sea by earthquakes in the 4th century.

Divers and underwater archaeologists used a huge crane and ropes to haul up the 9-ton, 7.4-foot-tall pylon, covered with dirt and seaweed, out of the muddy waters. It was placed on shore as Egypt’s top archaeologist Zahi Hawass and other officials observed.

The temple, devoted to Isis, a pharaonic goddess of fertility and magic, is at least 2,050 years old, but likely much older, and the pylon was cut from a single slab of red granite excavated in Aswan, some 700 miles to the south, officials said. It was part of a rambling palace from which the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and where 1st Century B.C. Queen Cleopatra persuaded the Roman general Marc Antony before they both committed suicide following their defeat by Augustus Caesar.

Egyptian authorities hope that ultimately it will turn out to be a part of the underwater museum, an ambitious effort to draw tourists to the country’s northern coast, often outshined by the grand pharaonic temples of Luxor in the south, the Giza pyramids outside Cairo and the beaches of the Red Sea.

Still in its developing stages, the museum would permit visitors to saunter through underwater tunnels for close-up views of sunken artifacts, and it may even comprise a submarine on rails.

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An ‘alternative’ archaeological tour of Jerusalem

Yonathan is one of the founding members of Emek Shaveh, a non-profit organization composed of archaeologists, Silwan residents and human rights activists, which aims to “hut light on the vital role of archaeology in the Israeli-Palestinian quarrel.” Yonathan worked as an archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) for many years. Sent to work in East Jerusalem he witnessed firsthand the collusion of government, academic institutions and Israeli interest groups in utilizing archeology for political purposes.

The City of David archaeological site lies in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians and the international community define as occupied country. Stretching down from the Dung Gate of the Old City, the site bisects the village of Silwan - splicing the Palestinian district in two. Although its presumed historical significance not to mention its illegality under international law, Israel allows the site to be the country’s only privately owned and administered “national” park. Israel has chosen for this role the Elad Association, an Israeli organization that funds Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority helps to legitimize Elad’s activities and particular vision of history by monitoring the excavations on its behalf. Elad also enjoys the support of both the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and the Jerusalem Municipality.

The archaeological digging has destabilized the structure of many buildings in Silwan, cracks have opened up in floors and walls, and gaping holes have appeared in Silwan’s streets after heavy rainfall. 88 Palestinian homes have been given destruction notices in order to build the “archaeological park.” Elad has little incentive to respect the rights of those living on or near the site.

In the blessed land today it is impossible to separate archaeology from politics. Archaeology is used in the battle over differing narratives. Yonathan attempts to explain Elad’s logic: “If the past can be proven to belong to ‘us’ then the present and future should be ‘ours’.” In the quest to suitable more land, the building of tourist parks and the expansion of archaeological sites is presented as an academic and thus innocent activity. Yonathan wonders how the scientists, archaeologists working at the dig, can separate themselves from the apparently inherent political ramifications of their work considering their surroundings.

During recent tensions resulting from the government announcement of more settlements in East Jerusalem, aggravation and anger were taken out on a guard post at the exit of the tourist site. The little metal box that once contained Israeli armed security personnel has been burnt to a brittle. The guns were not there to protect local residents, but rather to protect settlers and tourists from these residents. The ‘alternative’ tourists on our archaeological tour gape and wonder at the charred wood as we make our way out of the City of David and onto the residential streets that may be bulldozed someday soon.

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X-ray technique peers beneath archaeology's surface

Striking discoveries in archaeology are being made possible by strong beams of X-rays, say researchers.

A report at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, showed how X-ray sources known as synchrotrons can unravel an artefact's mysteries.

Light given off after an X-ray blast yields a neat list of the atoms within.

The technique can illuminate layers of pigment beneath the surfaces of artefacts, or even show the traces of tools used thousands of years ago.

This X-ray fluorescence or XRF works by measuring the after-effects of X-ray illumination.

As atoms absorb the X-rays, the rays' energy is redistributed, and very rarely some is re-emitted as light.

Each atom releases a characteristic colour of light, yielding a full chemical analysis, and as such the XRF technique is gaining ground as a means to meticulously analyse artefacts from the past.
Intense sources

Small X-ray sources have been used in the past to get a laundry list of atoms generally present in art, but Robert Thorne of Cornell University in the US told BBC News that the intense, focused X-rays from enormous sources known as synchrotrons have more recently shown their potential.

"These give you extremely intense X-ray beams, and what that allows you to do is not just collect a spectrum from one point, but you can 'raster scan' your sample in front of the beam and collect the full chemical analysis at each point."
Roman inscription on pottery (R Thorne) The technique has already been used to elucidate Roman and Greek inscriptions

Compared to handheld sources, he said, "you can get months' worth of photons delivered in a second, and that's critical".

Professor Thorne and his collaborators were in 2005 the first to use the technique to analyse inscriptions from Greek and Roman pottery.

The technique has been shown to shed light on layers of glaze beneath the surface of finished pottery.

It has even shown, in the case of an inscription that had worn entirely away, that minuscule amount of iron left by the chisel showed a pristine version of the inscription on what appeared to be smooth stone.

"We did an experiment at Diamond [Light Source in Oxford] last year on a heavily-worn surface, and we couldn't quite guess what the letters were," he said.

The translation said it was a decree involving three different individuals. We looked at the pattern of iron we saw from tool wear and pigments that one letter couldn't be consistent with the letter that had been put there - it turns out that letter changed the name of one of the people, and the story was about three brothers - just down to that one simple change."

More recently, the team has turned its attention toward the Americas. The technique is best used on artefacts whose inscriptions or decoration has worn away completely - but these, Professor Thorne said, are much harder to find because collectors and museums have until now viewed them as less valuable.

"That's what's exciting about working on pottery from Mesoamerica, because there's a ton of it in American collections, much of which we can get access to," he said.

"We're looking at some Mayan artefacts with some collaborators at Cornell and they're interested in the iconography of a particular subgroup within the Mayans.

"On the pottery a lot of the glaze has flaked off, so what you see is little black dots on the surface; it's very hard to tell if those black dots are glaze or dirt, but with the XRF you can tell."

Dr Thorne was guarded about the most recent results from the Mayan studies, which will be published soon.

"The message here is that physicists have developed this really fantastic technique to do full XRF imaging of objects.

"It's not a magic bullet - there never is in this business. But I think as a general tool for art and art historical and archaeological exploration, it's the best new thing to come out in a very long time."

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Million-year-old tools found near Chennai - India’s prehistory pushed back

Archaeologists have discovered India’s oldest stone-age tools, up to 1.5 million years old, at a prehistoric site near Chennai. The discovery may change existing ideas about the earliest arrival of human ancestors from Africa into India.

A team of Indian and French archaeologists has used two dating methods to show that the stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam are at least 1.07 million years old, and could date as far back as 1.5 million years.

In nearly 12 years of excavation, archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, Chennai, have found 3,528 artefacts that are similar to the prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa.

Their findings will appear tomorrow in the US journal Science. The tools fall in a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were invented by the Homo erectus —ancestors of modern humans — in Africa about 1.6 million years ago.

“This means that soon after early humans invented the Acheulian tools, they crossed formidable geographical barriers to get to southern Asia,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, who is an expert in Asian prehistoric archaeology but was not associated with the Chennai study.

“The suggestion that this occurred 1.5 million years ago is simply staggering,” he said.

Petraglia himself had earlier been involved in excavating the Hunsgi valley in Karnataka, which has yielded 1.27 million-year-old stone tools, regarded as India’s oldest until now. Although earlier excavations had revealed Acheulian tools at a few sites on the Indian subcontinent, including a two million-year-old site in Pakistan, the dates assigned to the artefacts so far have remained under debate.

Pappu and her colleagues assigned dates to the Attirampakkam tools by analysing traces of certain elements embedded in them and by correlating the archaeological layers excavated at the site with changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“We adopted two different dating methods and arrived at consistent results,” Pappu told The Telegraph. “We believe this is the strongest evidence so far for an Acheulian industry in India older than one million years.”

The dating studies were carried out by collaborating geophysicists in French academic institutions. Researchers believe the new dates will have major implications for current ideas about who carried the Acheulian culture into India.

In the past, some researchers had attributed the flow of Acheulian tools into southern Asia and Europe to the Homo heidelbergensis, another ancestor of modern humans but one that appeared long after the Homo erectus. But the 1.5 million year date assigned to the Attirampakkam tools suggests that groups of Homo erectus carried the tool-making culture into India.

“This is important as it implies that a smaller-brained form of hominin was able to cross formidable barriers and adapt to the ecological settings of India,” said Petraglia, who has been an advocate for a long chronology of hominin presence in India.

In an independent research study, Petraglia and his colleagues have analysed Acheulian tools in India that appear to be only 120,000 years old. The two findings suggest that the Acheulian toolmakers inhabited India for 1.4 million years — from 1.5 million years ago to 120,000 years ago.

Archaeological evidence from Jwalapuram, another prehistoric site in India, suggests that modern humans — Homo sapiens — arrived in India in another wave out of Africa at least about 80,000 years ago.

The Attirampakkam site, located near a tributary of the Kortallaiyar river, about 60km northwest of Chennai, was discovered in 1863 by British archaeologist Robert Bruce Foote who launched studies of prehistoric sites in India.

The tools in Attirampakkam suggest that the Homo erectus carried the Acheulian culture into India before the Homo heidelbergensis ferried this tool-making culture into Europe, where the earliest sites are about 600,000 years old, said Robin Dennel, a senior archaeologist at the University of Sheffield, in a special scientific commentary in tomorrow’s issue of Science.

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mummification story

An important man has died and his body needs to be prepared for burial.

The process of mummification has two stages. First, the embalming of the body. Then, the wrapping and burial of the body.

Embalming the body

First, his body is taken to the tent known as 'ibu' or the 'place of purification'. There the embalmers wash his body with good-smelling palm wine and rinse it with water from the Nile.



One of the embalmer's men makes a cut in the left side of the body and removes many of the internal organs. It is important to remove these because they are the first part of the body to decompose.

The liver, lungs, stomach and intestines are washed and packed in natron which will dry them out. The heart is not taken out of the body because it is the centre of intelligence and feeling and the man will need it in the afterlife.

A long hook is used to smash the brain and pull it out through the nose.


The body is now covered and stuffed with natron which will dry it out. All of the fluids, and rags from the embalming process will be saved and buried along with the body.

After forty days the body is washed again with water from the Nile. Then it is covered with oils to help the skin stay elastic.


The body has been cleaned, dried and rubbed with good-smelling oils. Now it is ready to be wrapped in linen.

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Mummification Process

Mummification Steps

1. Announcement of Death
2. Embalming the Body
3. Removal of Brain
4. Removal of Internal Organs
5. Drying Out Process
6. Wrapping of the Body
7. Final Procession

Step 1: Announcement of Death

This first step was to let the people know that someone had died. A messenger was sent out to the streets to announce the death. This allowed people to get themselves ready for mourning period and ceremony.


Step 2: Embalming the Body

The second step was taking the body to be embalmed. The embalmers were located in special tents or
buildings. These buildings were called embalming workshops, and were maintained by teams of priests. Oftentimes during the embalming, the priests would have to step outside to get away from the horrible smell.


Step 3: Removal of Brain

The first part of the body to be removed was the brain. Egyptians did not know the purpose of the brain, so they thought it was a waste of space. To extract the brain, a hook was inserted through the nose. The embalmers pulled out as much as they could, then put it in water to dissolve. Some people think the water was then thrown out, but others think it was taken with the mummy to the burial chamber.


Step 4: Removal of Internal Organs

Next to be removed were the internal organs: the liver, the lungs, the stomach, and the intestines. A small slit was made on the left side of the abdomen, then the embalmers reached in and pulled out the organs. Each of the organs was individually mummified, then stored in little coffins called canopic jars. There were four canopic jars, one for each of the organs. These jars were protected by the four sons of Horus.

• Imset protected the liver.


• He had the head of a human.


• Ha'py watched over the lungs.


• He had the head of a baboon.


• Duamutef looked after the stomach.


• He had the head of a jackal.


• Qebehsenuef looked over the intestines.


• He had the head of a falcon.

Once the internal organs were removed, the inside of the body was washed out with palm oil, lotions, and preserving fluids. Next the body was stuffed with linen, straw, or other packing material to keep the general shape of the person. Sometimes the embalmers were careless and either stuffed too much or too little. This caused the mummy to look puffy or disfigured.


Step 5: Drying Out Process

The body was placed on a slab and covered with either nacron or natron salt. The slab was tilted so that the water would run off into a basin. This removed moisture and prevented rotting. The body was taken outside and let dry for about forty days. After the body was completley dried out, the wrapping of the body began.


Step 6: Wrapping of the Body

Wrapping the body was a painstaking process. The body was anointed with oils, and a gold peice with the Eye of Horus was placed over the slit in the abdomen. Hundreds of yards of linen were used to wrap the body, and each toe and finger was wrapped separatley. Charms, amulets, and inscribed pieces of papyrus were placed between each layer of bandage. Egyptians believed that these charms had magical properties that would protect and bring luck to the body. The Eye of Horus, the symbol of protection, was used often. The wrapping process would be stopped every once in a while so that the priests could say certain prayers and write on the linen. A final shroud was placed on the mummy to keep all the wrappings together. Mummia was added to the shroud to "glue" it all together. (That's where the word "mummy" comes from.) Sometimes false eyes were inserted and make-up applied. Then a painted portrait mask was placed over the mummy's head so that dead person's soul (Ka) could recognize its owner. The mummy was then placed into a painted, decorated coffin.


Step 7: Final Procession

The last step of mummification was the final procession. The final procession was where the family and friends of the deceased walked through the town on their way to the burial place. Mourners were paid to cry so that the gods of the other world would see that the person was well loved. The more people who cried, the more he was loved, and the better chance he had of going to the after world. Before the mummy was taken inside the tomb, a ceremony called the "Opening of the Mouth" took place.

Opening of the Mouth
The Opening of the Mouth was performed by priests outside the burial chamber. This was one of the most important preparations. The family of the mummy recited spells while the priests used special instruments to touch different parts of the mummy's face. The Egyptians believed that the mummy would not be able to eat, see, hear, or move in the afterlife if this ceremony did not take place. The mummy was then laid in the burial chamber along with all of his belongings, the canopic jars, and the Book of the Dead. The Book of the Dead was not actually a book, but a collection of over 200 magic spells written on papyrus. This book contained instructions on how to acheive eternal life. Then the tomb was sealed.

Weighing of the Heart
The most important task to achieve immortality was not actually seen by anyone. This task was called "The Weighing of the Heart." Egyptians believed that the most powerful part of a person was his heart. The heart was never removed from the body, because it was considered to be the center of a person's being. In this ceremony, the gods of the underworld judged the mummy's heart, or how well he behaved during his natural life. Maat, the goddess of truth, brought out her scale; on one side was the mummy's heart, and on the other was the Feather of Truth. Anubis, the god of the underworld, made the final judgement, and Thoth, the scribe god, recorded it all. If the heart balanced the feather, the soul of the mummy was granted immortality. If the heart was heavier than the feather (if the sins outweighed the virtues), the soul was doomed to a horrible fate. The heart was thrown to a monster called Ammit, or Devourer of the Dead.

Source from : http://www.angelfire.com/wi/egypt/mummy2.html

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Roman quarry in Barry old harbour, claims archaeologist

An archaeologist believes he has discovered the remains of a Roman quarry in the old harbour at Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Karl-James Langford says the pottery find reinforces his belief that beach man-made walls may be 1,900 years old.

The quarry was operational until the 19th Century but its origins were unknown.

"It's not in the records - it may have been been completely ignored because it's too obvious," said Mr Langford.

He believes the quarry to be the source of limestone used for the Roman fort whose remains can be seen in the walls around Cardiff Castle, although historical records do not mention such a quarry.

"I've had this belief that there was a Roman quarry there all my life," said Mr Langford, a landscape archaeologist from Barry.

He said a wall of unquarried high-quality lias limestone left in place on the beach was evidence of a quarry, similar to larger examples along the coast at Porthkerry, Rhoose and Aberthaw.

People would have been able to extract the material behind the wall at any time, without being engulfed by the sea.

A discovery during a recent expedition with students convinced Mr Langford of the quarry's Roman origins.

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Looters strip Latin America of archaeological heritage

Etched into the surviving art of the Moche, one of South America's most ancient and mysterious civilisations, is a fearsome creature dubbed the Decapitator. Also known as Ai Apaec, the octopus-type figure holds a knife in one hand and a severed head in the other in a graphic rendition of the human sacrifices the Moche practiced in northern Peru 1,500 years ago.

For archaeologists, the horror here is not in Moche iconography, which you see in pottery and mural fragments, but in the hundreds of thousands of trenches scarring the landscape: a warren of man-made pillage. Gangs of looters, known as huaqueros, are ransacking Peru's heritage to illegally sell artefacts to collectors and tourists.

"They come at night to explore the ruins and dig the holes," said Cuba Cruz de Metro, 58, a shopkeeper in the farming village of Galindo. "They don't know the history, they're just looking for bodies and for tombs. They're just looking for things to sell."

A looting epidemic in Peru and other Latin American countries, notably Guatemala, has sounded alarm bells about the region's vanishing heritage.

The issue is to come under renewed scrutiny in the run-up to July's 100th anniversary of the rediscovery of Machu Picchu, the Inca citadel in southern Peru, by US historian Hiram Bingham. He gave many artefacts to Yale university, prompting an acrimonious row with Peru's government which ended only this year when both sides agreed to establish a joint exhibition centre.

A recent report, Saving our Vanishing Heritage, by the Global Heritage Fund in San Francisco, identified nearly 200 "at risk" sites in developing nations, with South and Central America prominent.

Mirador, the cradle of Mayan civilisation in Guatemala, was being devastated, it said. "The entire Peten region has been sacked in the past 20 years and every year hundreds of archaeological sites are being destroyed by organised looting crews seeking Maya antiquities for sale on the international market."

Northern Peru, home to the Moche civilisation which flourished from AD100-800, had been reduced to a "lunar landscape" by looter trenches across hundreds of miles. "An estimated 100,000 tombs – over half the country's known sites – have been looted," the report said.

The sight breaks the heart of archaeologists and historians piecing together the story of a society which built canals and monumental pyramid-type structures, called huacas, and made intricate ceramics and jewellery.

The Moche, who pre-dated the Incas by 1,000 years, also painted murals and friezes depicting warfare, ritual beheading, blood drinking and deities such as the Decapitator, who has bulging eyes and sharp teeth. Analysis of human remains confirmed that throat-cutting was all too real but, in the absence of written records, archaeology must shed light on what happened.

In villages such as Galindo that is becoming all but impossible. Crude tunnels and caves make Moche ruins resemble rabbit warrens. Deep gashes cut into walls expose the brickwork below. Millennia-old adobe bricks are torn from the ground and scattered as though in a builder's yard.

Most huaqueros are farmers supplementing meagre incomes. Montes de Oca, one of three police officers tasked with environmental protection in a region of a million people, said he was overwhelmed. "I've been doing this for 28 years. There are three of us and one truck. It's insufficient but we do everything possible."

Ten miles away Huaca del Sol, one of the largest pyramids in pre-Columbus America, is an eroded, plundered shell. Here the culprits were not impoverished farmers but Spanish colonial authorities who authorised companies to mine for treasure, said Ricardo Gamarra, director of a 20-year-old conservation project.

"They diverted the river to wash away two-thirds of the huaca and reveal its insides," he said. "They mined through the walls and caused it to collapse in various places. It's impossible to guess how much was taken because we don't know how much was there."

Donations from businesses and foundations have helped Gamarra's team protect what is left, drawing 120,000 visitors each year, but of 250 other sites in the region just five have been protected. "In the mountains it's the same. It is full with archaeological sites, almost all of them have been destroyed," said Gamarra.

There has been good news from Chotuna, also in northern Peru, where archaeologists found frescoes in a 1,100-year-old temple of the Lambayeque civilisation, which flourished around the same time as the Incas.

Jeff Morgan, executive director of the Global Heritage Fund, urged Peru to funnel tourists away from Machu Picchu, overrun by two million visitors a year, to lesser known sites which could then earn revenue to protect their heritage.

The government should resist the temptation to pocket the money. "One of the biggest problems is the disconnect between local communities and management of the sites. We think locals should get at least 30% of revenues." Only then, said Morgan, would cultural treasures fom the Moche and other civilisations be saved.


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Roman find threatens rugby plans

Dozens of trenches, dug in open countryside as part of an archaeological excavation, could determine the future of a controversial scheme to build a state of the art national rugby centre for Wales.

Archaeologists called in to excavate the site on the east bank of the river Usk near Caerleon have uncovered part of a Roman road and the remains of several buildings from the civilian settlement that grew up outside the Roman garrison town almost 2,000 years ago.

The excavation has been carried out as part of an environmental impact assessment demanded by planning officials. Sixty trenches, each up to 40 metres long (131 feet), have been dug over a 1 sq km area in an attempt to establish the extent of the settlement.

Cadw, the body responsible for looking after ancient monuments in Wales, is awaiting a report from the archaeological team before deciding how best to protect the site.

Plans to site the proposed Welsh Rugby Union "centre of excellence" on the flood plain of lower Usk valley have met with opposition from environmentalists and residents. They hope the results of the excavation will signal the death knell for a project they claim would lead to "urbanisation" of the valley and cause noise and light pollution.

Steve Howell, a spokesman for the site owners, said yesterday it would be possible to amend the proposals to take account of the archaeological findings.

The £5m centre, designed to include six floodlit pitches, accommodation and indoor training facilities for Wales's rugby stars of the future, would be built on 28 acres of low grade farmland.

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Ancient temple complex discovered near Le Mans

Excavations near the antique city of Vindunum (now Le Mans) have revealed a vast religious site dating from the first to the third centuries AD with remarkably well-preserved offerings.

Sometimes archaeology requires imagination. And you need it to conjure up the vast complex of temples that stood nearly 2,000 years ago on this flat two-hectare strip of land, in what is now Neuville-sur-Sarthe, 4km to the north of Le Mans.

"I have been an archaeologist for 30 years, and I've been lucky enough to work on some wonderful digs. But this is an exceptional discovery, the sort that all archaeologists dream of making once in their lives," said Gérard Guillier, who heads the team from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) that has been poring over this piece of land since June. The team has no time to lose because in the autumn this former Gallo-Roman sanctuary will be transformed into an "urban development zone".

After an aerial assessment that revealed the shape of the ancient buildings in the wheat fields, followed by the some underground probing, mechanical diggers were sent in to clear the surface of the site. Unfortunately the blocks of limestone and sandstone from the antique buildings had disappeared, salvaged over the centuries for other building work in the area. Only a few stones bear witness to the original temple structures. Young archaeologists uncover them delicately one at a time, using trowels, scrapers and brushes. Every stone is numbered, drawn and its location marked on a map.

"Given the size of the site, hundreds of pilgrims, possibly thousands, would have come here to honour the gods," said Guillier. "They probably held other mass events here too."

The lines drawn on the ground by the archaeologists make the site resemble a vast treasure hunt. The red ones indicate the streets, paths and galleries that once connected the buildings, while blue circles mark the holes that held the pillars supporting the colonnade, which led the visitors to the temples.

At the entrance to the site, there once stood a large E-shaped building, probably for welcoming the pilgrims, selling religious objects and housing the temple guardians. One wide path littered with iron slag (Vindunum was a major metalworking centre), leads a few hundred metres south to the foundations of a circular fanum (temple) about 12 metres in diameter. That round shape was rare in Gallo-Roman times and there are only a few such examples in France.

In fact, three temples were erected successively during the second and third centuries. Possibly they had to be rebuilt because of the instability of the ground. A pergola and a flight of steps would have led to the temple, which had stone walls around seven metres high covered by a tiled roof. Inside, the cella (central room) housed the statue of the god.

Another fanum stood at the west, the oldest in the sanctuary, dating to the first century. It was square, 15 metres wide and apparently in the Celtic temple tradition. This one was originally built in wood and stone added later, together with a cella surrounded by a gallery for circumambulation and a wall separating the sacred space from the profane. Fragments of coloured plaster show that the walls were once panted. The temple was surrounded by octagonal or square-shaped secondary "chapels".

It is here that the archaeologist uncovered a marvellous selection of objects placed as offerings. They include Gallic, Celtic and Roman silver coins, bronze and silver-plated bronze fibulae (broaches), some jewellery including a gold ring with a green quartz representing a deity, as well as bronze keys, pottery and knives. They also found a dagger, sledgehammers and hammers, possibly offerings from soldiers and ironmongers, who held high-risk occupations requiring more divine protection than others.

But what gods were worshipped there? No statues or inscriptions have been found as clues, and the Gallic pantheon was as plentiful as the Roman one.

Another large sanctuary once stood in Allonnes, to the south of Le Mans, dedicated to the Gallo- Roman god Mars Mullo. Would there have been two major sanctuaries in one city? According to Guillier, "Situated as they were on hillocks on either side of Vindunum, they probably had a protective role for the town."

The archaeologists have another enigma to solve. They have uncovered several graves near the circular fanum, with funerary objects such as a glass bottle and a box for seals. Until now archaeologists have never found temples and graves in such close proximity, since Romans observed strict separation between what they perceived as the "pure" and the "impure". It will take years to reconstruct the history of the sanctuary and its pilgrims. And a great deal of imagination.

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Evidence of more bodies illegally dumped in Burr Oak Cemetery

There's evidence that more bodies were illegally dumped in a southwest suburban cemetery that was the scene of a gravedigging scandal.

In 2009, three workers and a manager from Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip were charged in a scheme to dig up bodies from unmarked graves and pocket money from new burials there.

An archaeology firm appointed by a bankruptcy judge who is overseeing the possible sale of Burr Oak says it has evidence that more bodies are buried in an unused section of the cemetery.

Sheriff Tom Dart says the findings back up his view that there should not be any new burial plots sold at Burr Oak.

"With erosion, numerous fragments of bones have come to the surface," Dart said. "I myself found numerous bones when I was out there."

Dart says the unused section of the cemetery should be sealed off for the time being.

He says the investigation should not affect families who have already purchased burial plots at the cemetery.


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Somerset and Edinburgh Museums to keep archaeological treasure

Some of the most spectacular recent finds of archaeological treasure – a mass of Roman coins stuffed into a giant pot-bellied jar and four gold Iron Age torcs – have been acquired by museums in Somerset and Edinburgh.

The announcement that the two hoards have been saved with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund charity, public donations and from other charities adding up to almost £1m, comes as good news for cash-strapped national collections. Both finds will be pored over by experts for years, uncovering the history which left treasure in nondescript farm land of no known historical significance.

The torcs, which will go in display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, were found in 2009 by David Booth six inches below the surface of a field in Stirlingshire. Booth, who works in a Scottish safari park, was using his new metal detector for the first time. He has since found a medieval seal set with a Roman carved gemstone

The collars were made more than 2,000 years ago, and reveal sophisticated metalwork and complex cultural influences: two twisted ribbons of gold are in a local style; one broken example from southern France is the only one found in Britain; and the fourth is unique, made of braided gold wire in a technique associated with the Mediterranean.

The Frome find is less seductively beautiful, but equally fascinating to historians. The hoard of more than 52,500 coins, the largest ever found in a single container, includes many unique coins, others better than the examples owned by the British Museum, and the largest collection ever found of Carausius coins. They were minted for a military commander sacked by the Romans for corruption but proclaimed emperor by his soldiers. He reigned for only a few years before being murdered by his chancellor. The coins were found by hospital chef Dave Crisp in a field near Frome last year, when he returned to investigate a scatter of coins he had already found. He called in the experts immediately he realised he had an undisturbed hoard in its original container - "I knew they'd wet themselves," he said – and ended up sleeping in a tent with his grandson to protect the site as archaeologists took days to retrieve the 16kg of coins, believed to be one stupendous ritual offering.

His find will now become one of the star exhibits at the Somerset County Museum when it reopens at Taunton castle this summer after a £6.9m refurbishment. The precise number of coins is still unknown, because many are still corroded together in clumps

Both men were detecting with the permission of the land owners, who will share the rewards. The torcs were valued at £462,000, raised through £154,000 from the NHMF and £100,000 from the Art Fund, with additional funding from the Scottish government and national museum. The Frome hoard cost £320,250, but there is an additional £105,000 for years of conservation work.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: "Both the Roman coins in Somerset and torcs in Scotland are going to absolutely the right places, where generations can learn, enjoy and be inspired by them, and experts can carry out vital research."


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La Pointe-Krebs House artifacts report to be revealed

As artifacts unearthed at the La Pointe-Krebs House in the digs of last summer are being analyzed at the University of South Alabama's archaeology lab in Mobile, members of the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical Society have eagerly awaited a report on the findings.

They will get some answers this Tuesday night, 6 p.m., during the Society's regular meeting at the Pascagoula Public Library meeting room when archaeologist Bonnie Gums will discuss findings to date.

"During the summer digs, several structural remains were found, including a brick foundation, one very large pit possibly for underground food storage, and a pit where mortar was produced for one of the plantation buildings," Gums said. "For the last six months, the artifacts have been cleaned and are now being analyzed."

The summer excavation project yielded highly decorated Native American pottery, Indian tobacco pipes made of stone and clay, French, British and Spanish colonial ceramics, religious medallions and glass trade beads.

Gums will have some of the artifacts on display at the program meeting, which is open to the public.

With a grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), staff and student assistants from the Center for Archaeological Studies at USA in Mobile conducted excavations during last summer at Pascagoula's historic site.

Despite the heat, more than 50 people, including children, teenagers, and families, from Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia joined the Saturday volunteer digs.

An archaeologist for 20 years working in the Midwest, and for the past 16 years at the USA Center, Gums received her BA and MA from Southern Illinois University focusing on French colonial archaeology in Illinois.

She has been involved in excavations at Old Mobile, Fort Mims, Fort Conde village in downtown Mobile, and many other sites in southwestern Alabama. Her special interests include historic pottery kilns on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay and colonial plantations on the Gulf Coast, including the La Pointe-Krebs House.

In 2005, the historic house and its museum were damaged by Hurricane Katrina and the park closed. The historic house will be restored using MDAH grants. The museum will be repaired using FEMA funds.

A qualified historical architect will oversee the project, which has been awarded to Compton Engineering.

The La Pointe-Krebs House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a designated Mississippi Landmark.

Also at Tuesday's meeting, Melanie Moore, chairman of the Fete La Pointe gala, will give a report on the upcoming Friday event that benefits and promotes the LPK House and Museum development. Final preparations and plans will be discussed.

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Israeli scientists get heads up on underground archaeological digs

A breakthrough in conducting archaeological excavations may give Israeli scientists an edge in the race to uncover antiquities before they are destroyed by bulldozers clearing the way for roads and buildings.

A team headed by Dr. Lev Eppelbaum of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences has developed a new method of efficiently detecting objects buried dozens of meters below ground, using the same methods submarines do to communicate between each other.

The method, recently been published in the journal "Advances in Geosciences," is based on differentiating between the densities of various buried objects by gathering data from seven different technologies, among them echomagnetic soundings, radio transmissions of the type used to communicate with submarines and temperature measurements.

Some of these technologies are already in use in archaeological research; however, the innovation by Eppelbaum and his team is that it uses all of these methods together to overcome "noise from irrelevant objects," such as pipes in the ground, Eppelbaum told Haaretz.

After 15 years of work, Eppelbaum, together with two other Tel Aviv University scientists, Dr. Leonid Alperovich and Dr. Valery Zheludev, formulated an algorithm that combines the data "so that if one or more of the methods fail, good results can still be obtained from the data received from the other methods," Eppelbaum said.

The method, which has been tried at various archaeological sites involves installing sensors in a drone that hovers a little above ground level to pick up the data.

According to Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, archaeologists in Israel today are not using sophisticated systems.

"We use ground-penetrating radar, which locates underground walls by sound waves and sketches a line, but we don't do this over a whole valley," he said. Satellite imagery or infrared technology "can help find walls under thick vegetation, but not very far underground," Bunimovitz said.

He said he and his colleagues normally survey land for antiquities "simply by going over the ground, meter by meter, looking at the surface and finding various remains, such as potsherds, identifying and dating them, and through them, drawing an archaeological map."

That is more or less the method by which archaeological surveys have been carried out in this country since the 1930s. Since the Archaeological Survey in Israel was founded in 1964, some 30,000 sites have been discovered by experts and volunteers, but archaeologists estimate there are another 20,000 still waiting to be found.

Bunimovitz says the new method will be useful, "for example, when we come to areas where there is concern that alluvial material has covered the site, or along Israel's coastline where sites are covered by seawater."

Be that as it may, Eppelbaum hints that the method is already moving toward a military application in discovering tunnels deep underground.

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Cheddar cave dwellers ate their dead and turned their skulls into cups

A macabre collection of bone cups made from human skulls, unearthed in a Somerset cave, are the oldest of their kind, researchers believe.

The extraordinary vessels are the handiwork of early modern humans, who used stone tools to prepare and finish the containers around 14,700 years ago after the last ice age.

The three cups, made from the skulls of two adults and one three-year-old child, were dug up several decades ago, alongside the cracked and cut-marked remains of animal and human bones at Gough Cave in Cheddar Gorge, south-west England. They have now been re-examined using new techniques.

The human bones show clear signs of butchery, implying that the bodies were stripped for meat and crushed for marrow before the heads were severed and turned into crockery.

There is no suggestion that the cups are trophies made from the remains of dead enemies. It is more likely that making skull cups was a traditional craft and their original owners died naturally.

"It would probably take a half day to prepare a skull cup," said Silvia Bello, the palaeontologist who led the study at the Natural History Museum in London. "Defleshing the skull was a skilled and lengthy business."

Researchers said it was impossible to know how skull cups were used, but historically they have held food, blood or wine. Some are still used today in Hindu and Buddist rituals. "To us they can still seem a little strange," said Bello. "I wouldn't have my cereal in one."

Writing in the journal Plos One, the scientists describe revisiting excavated remains from the cave, including a skull cup unearthed in 1987 by Chris Stringer, head of human origins research at the museum. Detailed examination of 37 skull fragments and four pieces of jaw using a 3D microscope revealed a common pattern of hard strikes followed by more finessed stone tool work that turned a freshly decapitated head into a functional cup or bowl.

"This is the first time we've understood how this material was processed, and the fact that the skulls were not just cut and butchered, but were shaped in a purposeful way," said Stringer.

The discarded human bones had the same cut and saw marks found on butchered animal bones at the site, and some were cracked open or crushed, as was done with animal bones to expose nutritious marrow. Only the skulls seem to have been treated with special care. The cuts and dents show they were scrupulously cleaned of any soft tissues soon after death.

"They systematically shaped the skulls to make them into cups. They scalped them to remove the hair, they removed the eyeballs and ears, they knocked off the faces, then removed the jaws and chiseled away the edges to make the rims nice and even. They did a pretty thorough job,' Stringer said.

The smaller cup, made from the child's skull, would have leaked because the cranial bones had not fully fused together, but the larger two might have carried food or around two pints of liquid.

"We assume it was some kind of ritual treatment. If there's not much food around they may have eaten their dead to survive. Perhaps they did this to honour the dead, to celebrate their lives," Stringer added.

The cave dwellers were among the first humans to return to Britain at the end of the last ice age. The island was unpopulated and almost completely under ice 20,000 years ago, but as the climate warmed, plants and animals moved across Doggerland, a now submerged land bridge that linked Britain to mainland Europe. Where food went, early humans followed and brought art, craft and toolmaking skills with them.

The ages of the remains at Gough Cave suggest it was home to humans for at least 100 years. The cave is well-sheltered and, with skin flaps over the entrance, would have made a cosy abode, Stringer said. The residents were ideally placed to hunt passing deer and wild boar, while up on the Mendip Hills roamed reindeer and horses.

In the 1900s, several hundred tonnes of soil were removed from the cave to open it up as a tourist attraction, a move that may have destroyed priceless ancient remains. The skull cup and other bones unearthed in 1987 survived only because they were lodged behind a large rock.

In 1903, field researchers working in the cave's entrance uncovered Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton in Britain at more than 9,000 years old. A painting of a mammoth was found on the wall in 2007. Other artefacts from the site include an exquisitely carved mammoth ivory spearhead.

A precise replica of one of the skull cups, complete with cut marks, will go on display at the Natural History Museum in London from 1 March for three months.


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Discovery of ancient cave paintings in Petra stuns art scholars

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art.

Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity's lost masterpieces, while revealing little about their colours and composition, so the revelation of these wall paintings in Jordan is all the more significant. They were created by the Nabataeans, who traded extensively with the Greek, Roman and Egyptian empires and whose dominion once stretched from Damascus to the Red Sea, and from Sinai to the Arabian desert.

Such is the naturalistic intricacy of these paintings that the actual species of flowers, birds and insects bursting with life can be identified. They were probably painted in the first century, but may go back further. Professor David Park, an eminent wall paintings expert at the Courtauld, said that the paintings "should make jaws drop".

At the instigation of the Petra National Trust (PNT), conservation experts Stephen Rickerby and Lisa Shekede restored the paintings to life. The work took three years, and was completed only last week. "The paintings were a real mess," Rickerby said.

He described what has emerged from the blackened layers as "really exceptional and staggeringly beautiful, with an artistic and technical quality that's quite unlike anything else".

Three different vines, grape, ivy and bindweed – all associated with Dionysus, the ancient Greek god of wine – have been identified, while the birds include a demoiselle crane and a Palestine sunbird with luscious colours. The scenes are populated by putti-like figures, one winged child playing a flute while seated in a vine-scroll, others picking fruit and fighting off birds pecking at the grapes. The paintings are exceptional in their sophistication, extensive palette and luxurious materials, including gold leaf.

Petra – the Greek word for "rock" – is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, where ancient eastern traditions combine with Hellenistic architecture, with monumental buildings sculpted out of the solid red sandstone. A Unesco world heritage site since 1985, it was the Nabataeans' capital city, flourishing as an economic and religious centre from the third century BC for some 400 years. Its site, in the Shera mountains, was an important crossroads for Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia.

The paintings are not at the main site, but at the less well known canyon of Siq al-Barid in Beidha – nicknamed "Little Petra" – about 5km away. As they are now the most important surviving examples of Nabataean art, they rank among Petra's most remarkable treasures and are likely to become a major tourist attraction, Rickerby said. They are located within the "biclinium" (dining area), a principal chamber and a recess, where ritual dining is thought to have taken place. The most outstanding painting covers the vault and the walls of the recess.

The site was a retreat for affluent Nabataeans. The surrounding land shows evidence of ancient vineyards and grape-pressing sites, which explains the significance of the paintings' subject-matter. The Greek historian Strabo conveyed a sense of their wealth when he wrote: "The Nabataeans are a sensible people, and are so much inclined to acquire possessions that they publicly fine anyone who has diminished his possessions."

Rickerby said: "They show a lot of external influences from the ancient world and are as good as, or better than, some of the Roman paintings you see, for example at Herculaneum… This has immense art-historical importance, reflecting a synthesis of Hellenistic–Roman cultural influences."

Park said: "Petra is a vast site at the cultural crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean, and among the rock-cut tombs and temples the survival of a fragile wall painting that decorated a dining hall is extraordinary… The quality of the painting is matched by the luxury of its materials, including gilding and translucent glazes. It is the only surviving [in situ] figurative wall painting from the Nabataean civilisation that created Petra.

"It provides an incredibly rare insight into the lifestyle of this ancient and little-known civilisation."

Source from : http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/22/hellenistic-wall-paintings-petra

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GEOPHYSICAL SURVEY REVEALS NEW HENGE

The discovery of a previously unknown henge monument has been found close to Stonehenge.
Using the latest geophysical imaging techniques, which "see" below the ground without archaeology excavation, it is possible to make out a dark circle of interrupted ditch. There are two wider gaps opposite each other - these were entrances to the monument and are aligned on the midwinter sunset and midsummer sunrise - like Stonehenge itself. Inside the ditch it is also possible to discern the slight shadows of 24 postholes encircling the the central area, 25 metres in diameter. Near the centre are more dark areas indicating pits, and a large shadow suggesting that a mound was constructed there, perhaps in a later phase of the monument's use. The henge probably dates to around 2500-3000BC, contemporary with Stonehenge.


Source from : http://www.archaeology.ws/stonehenge.html

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For earliest farmers, agriculture was a step backward

A new study by economist and Professor Sam Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, suggests that the agricultural revolution that saw the advent of farming and herding 12,000 years ago was, in fact, a step backward technologically.

The traditional view of agriculture’s adoption is that hunter-gatherers took up cultivation because it was simply a better way to make a living, Bowles says.
Like the bow and arrow, the steam engine, or the computer, in this widely held economic model of technical change, cultivating plants rather than foraging wild species is believed to have raised the productivity of human labour, encouraging adoption of the new technology and allowing farming populations to expand.

Bowles, using archaeological evidence and data about hunting and gathering technologies and primitive farming, estimated the calories produced by an hour of work in both pre-historic farming and foraging. He found that foragers were about 50 percent more productive than farmers.
“It certainly wasn’t a better mouse trap,” says Bowles. “Farming did not take off because it lessened the toil of subsistence. Rather, its early success probably had more to do with its social, military, and demographic advantages.”
Without the need for constant movement, child-rearing would have been easier and safer, leading to a population increase, Bowles said. And since stored grain might be looted, farmer communities could have banded together for defence and would have eventually pushed out neighbouring foragers, he suggests.


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Deciphering pseudo-script in ancient Egypt

In addition to using Hieratic script, the ancient Egyptian workers also developed their own identity marking system. The Egyptian New Kingdom (ca. 1150-1070 B.C.E.) in particular provides many examples of these marks, but although Hieratic has now been deciphered, the system of marks is still a mystery.

In an effort to understand more about these marks, Egyptologist Dr Ben Haring from the University of Leiden, has been awarded a grant to carry out a more detailed research.
Tomb workers
In his research project, Symbolizing Identity; Identity marks and their relation to writing in New Kingdom Egypt, Dr Haring focuses on the marks of the workers who were occupied in constructing the royal tombs during the New Kingdom. By analysing what is a particularly well-documented system, the ‘marks‘ can be studied in a context of rich archaeological and textual data.

Pseudo-script
Dr Haring explains, “The workers used individual marks to identify themselves. The marks have been found on their possessions and in graffiti that they applied in their living and working quarters. They were also used to make administrative lists and accounts on ostraca, or fragments of pottery and stone, hundreds of which have been found.”
This, and also the organisation of the marks into rows and columns, mean that the shorthand tags have become a writing system, in effect, a pseudo-script.

Functions-and-exchanges
Hieratic writing did not cause the disappearance of pictographic systems, with non-textual marks indicating ownership, responsibility or production by groups of people or by individuals. In literate societies, marking systems are heavily influenced by writing, even to the extent that series of marks may look like written records. Yet marks are not writing in the true (i.e. linguistic) sense. The research focuses on the relation between these identity marks and writing.
• What the precise nature of identity marks represents?
• What interaction is there between these marks and writing?
• Is there a functional division in the uses of the two phenomena?
The research consists of two sub-projects, for which two PhD researchers will be appointed. One of the sub-projects will concentrate on the nature of the logos themselves, the other on their functions and the history – including the social history – of this system of marks in the workers’ community.

Source from : http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/deciphering-logos-in-ancient-egypt

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