Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2017 i ARCHAEOLOGY

PROTEINS SOLVE A HOMININ PUZZLE Around 40,000 years ago, modern humans made their way into Europe, sweeping through the continent and, eventually, driving to extinction our close relatives, the Neanderthals. Exactly how that process took place is still up for debate. Tangled up in that conversation are questions about the sophistication of Neanderthals, including whether they were capable of artistic expression, or made jewelry or complex stone tools. Archaeologists agree that hand axes and scrapers were definitely part of the Neanderthal toolkit, and modern humans are credited with developing points made of bone and antler, as well as flint blades. But in between these two types of technology, chronologically, are the so-called Châtelperronian tools, characterized by sawtooth edges and knives with convex backs. Researchers are still unsure which hominin was…

1. ALASKA: Metal artifacts from a house site on the Seward Peninsula are the first evidence of trade between the Thule, ancestors of today’s Inuit, and Asia. The house is between 700 and 900 years old, constructed centuries before sustained trade with Europeans or Russians. The Thule did not smelt their own metals, and X-ray fluorescence shows that the artifacts, including a buckle and a bead, had been smelted—and the material resembles metals made in Asia at the time. 2. MEXICO: In a return to Lambityeco, a city occupied from A.D. 500 to 850 and first excavated in the 1960s, archaeologists discovered a massive carved stone crocodile. It is thought that it was once part of a temple’s ceremonial staircase, but was moved to the ground and placed upside down.…

A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY 3:33 a.m. Five Japanese midget subs take positions around 10 mile 3:42 a.m. Minesweeper USS Condor spots a submarine south of the Pearl Harbor entrance. 5:45 a.m. Cargo ship USS Antares spots a submarine conning tower in the Defensive Sea Area. 5:50 a.m. First attack wave—183 planes— begins takeoff from Japanese aircraft carriers 6:37 a.m. Destroyer USS Ward fires on and sinks the submarine spotted by Antares. These are the first shots and casualties of the Pacific War 7:02 a.m. Two American privates at the Opana Mobile Radar Station report a signal indicating a group of 50 planes or more 7:15 a.m. Second attack wave—167 planes—begins takeoff. 7:33 a.m. American code breakers determine that Japanese diplomats have been told to break off talks…

In the landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos, thousands of massive stone jars dot the Xieng Khouang Plateau. Scattered across 2,100 square miles of steep slopes, grassy fields, and forested foothills, these ancient megaliths create an archaeological landscape known as the Plain of Jars. The jars, more than 2,000 in all, are distributed across at least 80 sites—some with just a few, others with nearly 400. Most jars sit on mountain slopes, and the largest, which can be as much as nine feet tall and six feet in diameter, are found in highland locations above 3,600 feet. The majority are carved from sandstone, and geologists estimate the heaviest weigh 25 tons or more. One of the biggest assemblages is found at a location called Site 1, where 344 jars sit…

The most important thing when going for a hike is to be prepared—don’t forget to bring a decent map, drinking water, extra food, a hat and gloves, and to dress in layers. And if you’re planning to hike in snowy mountain passes, it’s best to wear snowshoes. Discovered at an altitude of more than 10,000 feet on the Gurgler Eisjoch Glacier, the world’s oldest snowshoe has recently been radiocarbon dated and found to be more than 5,500 years old. But according to archaeologist Catrin Marzoli, director of the Office of Cultural Heritage of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, the technology hasn’t changed much over the millennia. “This Late Neolithic snowshoe is of a very simple, yet effective construction,” she says. “Until a few decades ago, in rural areas, snowshoes of…

Rogers Island, in the middle of New York’s Hudson River about an hour north of Albany, is part of a large eighteenth-century fort and supply base built by the British in 1755 and used throughout the French and Indian War (1754–1763). During that time, expansion of the fort—to accommodate at least 16,000 soldiers—made the island and the riverbank village of Fort Edward the largest city in colonial North America, after New York and Philadelphia. Many consider the fort to be the spiritual home of the U.S. Army Rangers, as that was where Major Robert Rogers wrote his 28 “Rules of Ranging” in 1757 to dictate principles of reconnaissance and guerilla forest warfare. (Number 21: “If the enemy pursue your rear, take a circle till you come to your own tracks,…

LONDON’S EARLIEST WRITING London, England The largest and most significant collection of Roman waxed writing tablets is providing an intriguing glimpse into life in early Roman London. More than 400 wooden tablets were unearthed by archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) during excavations at the site of the Bloomberg company’s new European headquarters. Roman London (called Londinium) was founded around A.D. 50, and the recovered texts, written by ordinary residents, record various names, as well as events and transactions that took place during the settlement’s first few decades. The tablets, which began to be published in 2016, feature a oncepopular method of Roman writing that involved using a pointed stylus to etch letters into a thin layer of wax that had been spread onto a small plank. Since tablets…

NEXT TO THE small, rundown house at 5015 Eugene Street on the north side of Boise, Idaho, is a whitewashed clapboard shed. Inside, the walls are covered with peeling, puckered blue wallpaper decorated, incongruously, with sailboats. It might have been built as a chicken coop, or perhaps just for storage, but for 30 years it served as the studio and living space of a man named James Castle. He is the reason that, in October 2016, archaeologists, students, and volunteers arrived at the shed to excavate its dirt floor. Castle was born in 1899 in the remote town of Garden Valley, in the mountains north of Boise, to a large, hardworking Irish Catholic farming family. He was profoundly deaf from birth, and despite five years at the Idaho School for…

Brain size has traditionally been seen as the best way of comparing the intelligence levels of human ancestors. Now a team of researchers believes it has found a more accurate gauge: cerebral metabolic rate, or the amount of energy consumed by the cerebrum, which can be estimated based on the amount of blood delivered to it. As a proxy for cerebral blood flow, they measured the size of openings in the base of the skull through which the internal carotid arteries pass. The team studied 35 skulls from 12 hominin species, including Australopithecus africanus, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans. They found that, over more than three million years of evolution, hominin brain size has increased 350 percent—while cerebral blood flow has increased 600 percent. “This suggests that brain metabolism…

SOME 3,000 YEARS AGO, throughout Britain, broad changes in settlement patterns, society, and technology were slowly bringing an end to what archaeologists call the British Bronze Age (2500–800 B.C.). In the coming centuries, the Iron Age would emerge. But in the wetlands of East Anglia, referred to as the Fenland, a transformation of another sort, both more conspicuous and tangible, was taking place. Climate change was gradually causing water levels to rise, and, as marshland increased, vital dry land became scarcer. The solution for one small settlement was to build its homes on pylons directly above the water. However, by some twist of fate, shortly after the new settlement was built, it was destroyed by fire—whether deliberate or accidental is not known. The conflagration caused the houses and their contents…

THE ACCEPTED IMAGE of the Vikings as fearsome marauders who struck terror in the hearts of their innocent victims has endured for more than 1,000 years. Historians’ accounts of the first major Viking attack, in 793, on a monastery on Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England, have informed the Viking story. “The church of St. Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God,” wrote the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin of York, “stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans....Who is not afraid at this?” The Vikings are known to have gone on to launch a series of daring raids elsewhere in England, Ireland, and Scotland. They made inroads into France, Spain, and Portugal. They colonized Iceland and Greenland, and even crossed the Atlantic, establishing…

EXCAVATE, EDUCATE, ADVOCATE archaeological.org AIA Invites You to the 118th AIA-SCS Joint Annual Meeting in Toronto The Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for Classical Studies are hosting their 118th Joint Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, from January 5 to 8, 2017. The annual event is the largest gathering of archaeologists and classical scholars in North America. The meeting will feature 72 academic sessions, including six workshops and 28 colloquia, and several special events such as an opening night lecture and reception and the annual awards ceremony. Registration and hotel information and rates, along with the program and other meeting-related items, are available at archaeological.org/annualmeeting. The opening night lecture on Thursday, January 5, features renowned maritime archaeologist James P. Delgado, director of maritime heritage for the National Marine Sanctuaries…