Innholdsfortegnelse for January - February 2018 i ARCHAEOLOGY

One of history’s greatest “what ifs” is the question of what would have happened had the Germans been able to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. The Wehrmacht’s effort to do just that, called the Uranverein, or “Uranium Club,” began in 1939 when German Army physicist Kurt Diebner began to research the potential military applications of nuclear fission. By year’s end, the renowned German physicist Werner Heisenberg had expressed his belief that nuclear fission chain reactions, and thus, eventually, nuclear bombs, might be possible, but only if he had access to enough of a singular substance known as heavy water. No facilities for manufacturing heavy water existed in Germany. But on April 9, 1940, the Germans invaded Norway, and in so doing acquired the Vemork Norsk Hydro Plant…

Gold is generally thought to have been prized by people throughout human history, and researchers have discovered that the Nahuange, who lived in northern Colombia during the first millennium a.d., intentionally treated gold jewelry to turn it a pinkish orange. Marcos Martinón-Torres of University College London and Juanita Sáenz-Samper of the Museum of Gold in Colombia analyzed 44 Nahuange artifacts in the museum’s collection that were made from tumbaga, a gold alloy containing a substantial amount of copper. All the objects were initially subjected to “depletion gilding,” in which copper is removed from the surface through hammering, annealing, or both, producing a golden surface that belies the metal’s true contents. This gilding was later deliberately removed, bringing out the copper’s pinkish tones. “We suggest that at a particular moment, it…

The ship that sank in 65 b.c. off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera and that once held the famous mechanism that ancient Greeks used to plot the motion of celestial bodies has yielded intriguing new discoveries thanks to a customized metal detector put to use in the 2017 field season. The team turned up a bronze plate decorated with a bull, and an arm from a previously unknown bronze statue, which joins seven to nine other statues previously found at the underwater site. According to the project’s codirector Brendan Foley of Lund University in Sweden, who is working in cooperation with Angeliki Simosi, director of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, the new finds hint that there may be even more ancient Greek artwork lying beneath the sand.…

A villager in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi was renovating a house when he was shocked to discover it was built over an ancient tomb. Archaeologists called in to excavate the site dated it to the Song Dynasty (a.d. 960–1127) and found that the burial chamber had been decorated with tile carvings depicting horses and flying deer, as well as an elaborate fresco of a lavish family feast. “It’s a glimpse of real life during the Song Dynasty,” says Zhong Longgang of the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, who supervised the dig. “We think the party fresco depicts the people who were actually buried in the tomb, and it gives us a look at the clothing, diet, and etiquette of the period.” Many of the tiles recovered from the…

Excavations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem led by Joe Uziel and Avi Solomon of the Israel Antiquities Authority have uncovered a Roman-era building that may have been used to host performances or political assemblies. The building may date to the mid-second century a.d. when the emperor Hadrian was having the city rebuilt after the Roman army destroyed it and the Second Temple in a.d. 70. The newly discovered building probably seated about 200 people and was located under what is now called Wilson’s Arch, after the nineteenth-century explorer who identified it. The arch was part of a causeway that led into the temple and may have had acoustic properties that made it an attractive location for public speaking or singing.…

SKULL CULT AT GÖBEKLI TEPE Sanliurfa, Turkey Göbekli Tepe is one of the world’s most significant, yet mysterious, archaeological sites. Between the tenth and eighth millennia b.c., people there erected a series of massive stone circles where groups gathered for religious or social purposes. This year, researchers revealed that microscopic analysis of bone fragments found at the site suggests that human skulls may once have hung there on prominent display. The fragments belong to three partially preserved skulls that were carved and altered after death. This is the first indication of how Göbekli Tepe’s inhabitants may have treated their dead, and archaeologists believe it may provide evidence of an Early Neolithic “skull cult” that exhibited the decapitated heads of either venerated ancestors or dispatched enemies at designated spots. The discovery…

Archaeologists excavating at the foot of the Aztecs’ Great Temple, in downtown Mexico City, discovered a dazzling collection of gold artifacts and the skeleton of a juvenile wolf. Occupying a stone box the size of a dishwasher, the gold artifacts are the finest yet excavated at the 40-year-old dig, says lead archaeologist Leonardo López Luján. They include ear and nose ornaments and a piece of body armor known as a pectoral—glittering, stylized versions of attire that were used to decorate the sacrificed wolf, as if the canine were symbolizing a human warrior. The wolf ’s head faced west, signaling that it was “the companion of the sun, after the sunset, during its journey to the underworld,” says López Luján. The offering was buried during the reign of Ahuitzotl (1486–1502), a…

Four torcs uncovered in Leekfrith are the earliest Iron Age gold items ever found in Britain. They can be dated to between 400 and 250 b.c. based on their stylistic qualities, says Julia Farley of the British Museum, who notes they were most likely worn by women. The torcs’ age is remarkable because, for several hundred years starting around 800 b.c., people in Britain appear to have largely abandoned wearing and manufacturing gold jewelry. One explanation is that the trade networks that brought gold to England had broken down. Tin and copper, used to make bronze, which had been key imports, were no longer needed once locally produced iron became available. Societies became focused on community survival rather than individual status. “Communal identity might have been more important than things which emphasize…

Excavations at Jebel Irhoud, near Morocco’s west coast, have uncovered the 300,000-year-old bones of some of the earliest members of the Homo sapiens lineage. Human bones were first discovered at the site in 1961, and their strange combination of archaic and modern features intrigued scientists, who guessed they belonged to Neanderthals and dated to about 40,000 years ago. In 2006, a team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reopened excavations at Jebel Irhoud. This year, they revealed their results, providing a glimpse of the earliest members of the ancestral line that led to modern humans. The Jebel Irhoud hominins apparently lived 350,000 years after Neanderthals and Homo sapiens last shared a common ancestor, long enough for the two lineages to develop some obvious differences.…

AIA-MOS FAIR CONTINUES TO ATTRACT THOUSANDS OF PARTICIPANTS On a rainy Saturday in October 2017, the AIA and the Museum of Science in Boston (MOS) celebrated IAD by welcoming more than 2,500 people to the Eleventh Annual AIAMOS Archaeology Fair. With more than 15 presenters and activities, the fair was a one-day archaeological extravaganza that had something for people of all ages and interest levels. Attendees had a chance to meet Roman soldiers, excavate shipwrecks, grind corn, reconstruct pottery, and learn how archaeologists interpret the artifacts they find. Archaeology fairs are attended by thousands of people each year, and are a wonderful opportunity for the public to participate in engaging and informative activities led by professional archaeologists and educators. Fairs are also a great forum for archaeological organizations to showcase…

New acquaintances often react to learning that I am an archaeologist by asking, “What’s the best thing you ever found?” Underlying this innocent question is the assumption that archaeologists are treasure hunters—that we are searching for something. Nothing could be further from the truth. Archaeologists study human material culture to learn about the past. Human material culture is anything that people manufactured and left behind, such as pottery, coins, and buildings. Other types of finds from excavations are studied by specialists in related fields, for example, animal bones by zooarchaeologists, human physical remains by biological anthropologists, and ancient plant remains by paleobotanists. Archaeologists excavate not to find something but to answer questions about the past based on remains we dig up in their original context. Therefore, searching for an object…

Overlooking the Caribbean Sea, just outside the town of Saint Ann’s Bay on Jamaica’s north shore, Seville Heritage Park encompasses thousands of years of the island’s history. The 300-acre property has been settled during every period of Jamaica’s human occupation. It contains the remains of Maima, an indigenous Taino village that Christopher Columbus encountered upon first landing in Jamaica in 1494. In 1509 the Spanish founded their first colonial capital there, which they called Sevilla la Nueva, before abandoning it in 1534. England invaded Jamaica and wrested control from Spain in 1655. As a reward for service to the army during that campaign, English captain Richard Heming was given the land. In 1670, he established a sugar plantation that, until emancipation in 1838, was home to an average of 275…

Archaeologists working with aerial and satellite technology have discovered nearly 400 stone structures in a sparsely populated region of Saudi Arabia called Harrat Khaybar, dominated by now-inactive lava mounds. They estimate that the structures, which they call gates, date to the Middle Neolithic period, roughly 7,000 years ago. David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia explains that while the landscape now appears forbidding, the area has supported human communities in periods between eruptions. “The most recent eruption, as visible from the lava flow, was quite limited in its direct impact,” he says. “People lived there before recent times.” Kennedy has not been able to determine the function of the structures from satellite images alone. “I usually look for a simple solution,” he says. “In this case I would prefer…

Archaeologists excavating a Bronze Age Assyrian city in Iraqi Kurdistan have unearthed a cache of almost 100 cuneiform tablets. Led by the University of Tübingen’s Peter Pfälzner, the team discovered the archive under the remains of a large public building that had been deliberately destroyed in antiquity, most likely during an enemy attack. Dating to about 1250 b.c., most of the tablets were in a ceramic pot that had been buried in a thick layer of clay, probably after the city was sacked. “We think the tablets were originally stored in that building, and that they remained in their original position after the structure was destroyed,” says Pfälzner. “They could have protected them somewhere else, so there must have been some importance behind keeping the archive there.” Most of the…

The sinking of USS Indianapolis is ranked as one of the greatest disasters in U.S. naval history. The much-decorated Portlandclass heavy cruiser left San Francisco on July 16, 1945, with 1,196 crewmen aboard. Her final mission, as she raced to the naval base on the North Pacific island of Tinian, was to deliver components of “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Mission completed, the ship set out along a prescribed course only to be hit by torpedoes fired from a Japanese submarine on July 30. Indianapolis began to sink within a mere 12 to 15 minutes. Three and a half days passed before aircraft spotted survivors. The wreck of Indianapolis was lost for 72 years. Now, it has been found, some 18,000 feet under the North Pacific. Because…

Archaeologists have discovered an oversized inscription that offers a new glimpse into the early development of the Egyptian writing system. A team led by Yale University Egyptologist John Darnell found the hieroglyphs on a cliff face within view of a desert road north of the ancient city of Elkab. Dating to around 3250 b.c., they were carved during Dynasty 0, a period when the Nile Valley was divided into competing kingdoms and scribes were just beginning to master writing. Previously discovered Dynasty 0 inscriptions are less than an inch in height and are largely confined to arcane administrative matters, but the newly discovered inscription is 27 inches tall, and is the earliest known set of large-scale, highly visible hieroglyphs by some 300 years. The inscription’s symbols—a bull’s head on a pole,…

Construction workers on Rome’s new “C” metro line uncovered what is believed to have been part of the Aqua Appia, Rome’s oldest-known aqueduct, which dates back to 312 b.c. The remains were found near the Colosseum, at around 55 to 60 feet below Piazza Celimontana, a depth usually unreachable by archaeological excavation, says Simona Morretta of the Archaeological Superintendency of Rome. The section of aqueduct measures 6.5 feet tall and is made up of large gray, granular tufa blocks arranged in five rows. “The total absence of any traces of limestone inside the duct suggests that its use over time has been limited,” says Morretta, “or that the structure was abandoned just after a maintenance intervention.” It stretches for more than 100 feet and continues beyond the investigation area bounded…

University of Michigan archaeologist John O’Shea was reading a book, some 10 years ago, about modern-day reindeer herders living in the Subarctic and some of the elaborate stone structures they use to manage their animals—usually called caribou in North America. O’Shea studies not only prehistoric cultures, but also nineteenth-century shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. That’s why at around the same time he was reading up on human interactions with reindeer, he was also examining new underwater topographical maps of Lake Huron. Those charts showed that a rocky underwater feature known as Six Mile Shoal was actually a continuous underwater ridge stretching 112 miles from northeastern Michigan to southern Ontario. As O’Shea looked at the map and envisioned what this ridge might have looked like in the past, he realized that…

Zeus. scion of the titans, ruler of the Olympian gods, and infamous seducer of both mortals and immortals alike. Within the canon of Greek mythology, there is no figure as central and none as sacred. According to one story, Zeus was born on the remote peak of Mount Lykaion in the heart of the Peloponnese. Throughout antiquity, the mountain was revered as hallowed ground where the cult of Zeus Lykaios performed solemn rituals in the god’s honor. Pilgrims from all over Greece came to bestow offerings by burning animal bones, pouring libations of wine, or proffering gifts. These rites were even rumored to include human sacrifice. These tales must surely belong to the realm of myth and legend. Yet, recent archaeological work atop the nearly 5,000-foot peak has unearthed fascinating…

Anyone who has ever had a dog knows they are good for your health. Dogs can be trained to help people suffering from such disorders as seizures, and petting a dog can lower your blood pressure and reduce the risk of stressrelated illnesses. The healing power of dogs was well known in antiquity, too. At Epidaurus, the sanctuary dedicated to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine, sacred dogs (and snakes) are said to have licked the wounds of pilgrims who came to be cured. An inscription found at the site records that a growth on a boy’s neck was healed when one of the temple’s dogs licked it. This finely crafted canine may also have a connection to ancient medicine. The statue was found recently in a hoard of…

Gabriel Prieto originally planned to excavate next to a church in Huanchaco, on Peru’s north coast. Three days before he was to begin, he was notified that it was no longer possible— Pope Francis would be visiting in January 2018 and preparations needed to be made. After first digging in the middle of a street, where he found mostly looted burials, eventually Prieto secured a new site in a nearby schoolyard. There, in layers undisturbed by either looters or modern activity, he excavated a cemetery more than 10 feet deep in which he found evidence of some of the leastknown periods of ancient Peruvian history. “This unplanned discovery proved to be the best discovery I have made in the last five years,” says Prieto. Some burials date to the Gallinazo…

CANADA: Nearly 60 years after it disappeared, one of the models of Canada’s most legendary jet fighter, the Avro Arrow, has been discovered by an ROV in Lake Ontario. The technologically advanced plane was developed in the 1950s, but the program was suddenly scrapped in 1959, and all existing aircraft and blueprints were destroyed. The 12-foot-long, 10-foot-wide, smallscale test model had been launched over the lake to determine its flight worthiness and improve the Arrow’s final design. ARIZONA: Canyon Creek in eastern Arizona was one of the turquoise sources exploited by pre-Columbian indigenous groups, but it has long been considered insignificant. A new study of the area, however, has shown that the mines were actually a major supplier of the bluish-green mineral during the 13th and 14th centuries, when turquoise…

The discovery of a 106-year-old fruitcake on Antarctica’s Cape Adare may help redeem the delicacy’s much-maligned reputation. The centenarian cake was found by a team from the Antarctic Heritage Trust in the continent’s oldest building, a hut erected in 1899, and is thought to have been left there in 1911 by members of the Northern Party, part of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. The tin holding the Huntley & Palmers fruitcake was somewhat rusty, but the cake itself was in fine shape—likely due to the cold, dry conditions. “It felt and looked like a new fruitcake,” says Lizzie Meek, the trust’s program manager. “It was only if you got quite close to it that you could smell that slightly off smell of butter that’s gone wrong.”…

Remains of early humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans have been discovered at just a limited number of sites in Europe and Asia. This has long frustrated archaeologists, who are confident that many more locations were occupied throughout these regions. This year, however, researchers announced a new way of detecting the hominins’ presence—through genetic traces in cave sediments. A team led by Viviane Slon of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology analyzed sediments from seven sites in France, Belgium, Spain, Croatia, and Russia, and found Neanderthal DNA at three sites dating to up to 60,000 years ago, and Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in Russia’s Denisova Cave dating to around 100,000 years ago. In a number of cases, the genetic evidence was located at stratigraphic levels where no hominin remains…

Avebury, the Neolithic monument just north of Stonehenge, may be best known for its outer stone circle, the largest of its kind in Europe, which encompasses the entire site. Archaeologists have now discovered that within one of its inner circles, there was an earlier, square formation. Using radar technology, they have identified evidence of an arrangement of stones that they believe commemorated the footprint of a Neolithic house, a structure built as early as 3500 b.c. While past theories have postulated that Avebury was constructed from the outside in, these findings suggest the site instead sprang from a single building. “One interpretation is to see it like ripples on a pond,” says Mark Gillings of the University of Leicester. “The house decays, its position is marked with a huge standing…

On February 22, 2011, New Zealand’s second-largest city, Christchurch, suffered a devastating earthquake. Overall, between 2010 and 2012, there would be a series of quakes, but this one, because of its combination of magnitude and depth, was rated as “IX” or “extreme.” A previously unknown fault juddered to life and ripped through the city, destroying roads, buildings, pipes, electricity lines, and anything else in its path. One hundred eighty-five people lost their lives to the magnitude 6.3 earthquake, and over 10,000 homes and businesses had to be demolished. In the space of a few minutes this prosperous and thriving city became a tangled pile of rubble. “It was many months before we were allowed to go near the city center again,” says Christchurch resident Sharron Farnley, “and when we did,…

Just beyond the walled city of Angkor Thom, within the ancient Khmer metropolis of Angkor in northwestern Cambodia, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of what might be the world’s first government healthcare system. They are investigating the remains of a twelfth-century hospital complex called Tonle Sngout, which sat at one of five gates to Angkor Thom. The hospital served as a bustling checkpoint for thousands of residents, travelers, patients, and pilgrims entering and leaving the city. The findings, including six rare statues, attest to the empire-building efforts of the Khmer king Jayavarman VII, who ruled between 1182 and 1218. Arguably the greatest of all ARCHAEOLOGY • January/50 February 2018 the Khmer rulers, he built Angkor Thom, instituted Buddhism as the state religion, and expanded the Khmer kingdom to its apogee by…

In modern Albania, the mélange of historical cultures is packed so densely they often seem to collide. The national E852 highway follows the same bank of the Shkumbin River as an ancient highway, the Via Egnatia, which was first traveled by Roman soldiers around 200 b.c. The road was modernized and maintained for centuries thereafter, and it became the main thoroughfare between Constantinople and the Adriatic, facilitating communication and trade between Rome and the eastern lands of the empire. Today, luxury Mercedes swerve between transcontinental bicyclists taking in the lush Mediterranean landscape and donkey carts hauling towering piles of forage. The route winds gently past medieval Ottoman Turkish bridges and white obelisks from the Communist era immortalizing partisan battles fought during World War II. Scrappy tobacco fields and mounds of…