Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2019 i ARCHAEOLOGY

Everyone has rituals, some of them mundane and personal, such as brushing your teeth or getting on the same bus at the same time every day to go home from work. Some center on family, like using the pumpkin pie recipe each Thanksgiving that was handed down by your mother. Others focus on faith, such as celebrating an important religious occasion by attending services conducted in much the same way as they have been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Some rituals celebrate your home country, like Fourth of July fireworks. If you’re a baseball fan, you’ve no doubt seen players perform very personalized rituals—tapping their feet a certain number of times in the batter’s box, adjusting their batting gloves before they step up to the plate, or pointing…

YOU SAY WHAT YOU EAT Try saying “f” and “v” and pay close attention to your lower lip and upper teeth. Would it surprise you to learn that these sounds are relatively recent additions to human languages? Languages, of course, develop over time as usage, meaning, and pronunciation change. But what about the ways our bodies have changed over the millennia? Could this also contribute to changes in language? In a new study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Zurich have used evidence from paleoanthropology, speech biomechanics, ethnography, and historical linguistics to determine that, in fact, it is a combination of factors—both cultural and biological—that produces changes in language and has contributed to the diversity of languages that exist today.…

A leather fragment of a late fourteenth-century child’s shoe was recovered during rescue excavations beneath the cobbled streets of Saint-Ursanne, Switzerland. Preserved in waterlogged soil, the ankle boot likely belonged to a child of about one year old, and would have been fastened with leather button clasps. Although the shoe’s style was common for the period, says Marquita Volken of the Lausanne Shoe Museum, its decorative technique is very rare. The intricate geometric and foliage patterns were created by scraping away the leather grain to form a suedelike surface, rather than punching or stamping the designs, as was usual. “Such a pretty little shoe for a baby probably meant the same as it would today,” says Volken. “We want our children to look cute—even if the shoes aren’t needed for…

Near the end of the dig season at a necropolis on the western bank of the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, a team led by Antonio Mozas-Calvache of the University of Jaen discovered a tomb with an unopened coffin visible inside. The approximately two-by-eight-foot chamber was largely closed off and its entrance far too narrow for the archaeologists to squeeze through. These limitations forced Mozas-Calvache and his team to improvise. They mounted a remote-controlled camera at the end of a 12-foot-long pole, pushed it inside the chamber, and used it to photograph the contents. The team used the images to generate 3-D models of the tomb, including a detailed representation of the 3,800-year-old coffin. They were able to read hieroglyphs on the coffin, which revealed the mummy’s identity to be Shemai,…

CONNECTICUT: Coins, wampum beads, and other colonial-era objects found near the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield may be associated with the earliest settlers of Connecticut’s oldest English town. Archaeologists hope that these objects, along with the remains of a 17th-century wooden palisade, will provide vital information on one of the most infamous events in the state’s history—a 1637 raid by Pequot Indians that killed several colonists and helped fuel the deadly conflict known as the Pequot War. FLORIDA: Artifacts from a 19th-century African-American community were exposed when Hurricane Michael uprooted dozens of trees at the site of a fort located on the Apalachicola River. The fort was originally built by the British during the War of 1812, and became a place of refuge for thousands of freed and escaped slaves who…

IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE 45 million annual visitors to Las Vegas, you might happen to glance west at some point during your stay and notice that the horizon in that direction is dominated by the Spring Mountains. For most visitors, these craggy limestone peaks—Nevada’s most biodiverse range—are a distant backdrop to the glitz and bustle of Las Vegas. To the area’s residents, they might be a destination for camping and hiking. For the 2,000 people of the 11 tribes of the Southern Paiute, though, the Spring Mountains are sacred, the place where they were first created. They call the range’s highest peak, Mount Charleston, Nuvagantu, or “where the snow sits.” Some Southern Paiute believe Nuvagantu marks the end of the Salt Song Trail, the path to the afterlife.…

ON A CRISP WINTER DAY some 1,100 years ago, several boats circled the Island of the Sun in the middle of Lake Titicaca, in what is now Bolivia. Fragrant smoke curled up from incense burners sculpted in the shape of pumas, and llamas wearing gold leaf ornaments were sacrificed, their bodies released to the freezing depths below. These sacraments were all part of a ritual conducted by priests of the Tiwanaku culture, which emerged in the Titicaca Basin around the sixth century a.d. and endured until the twelfth century, extending its influence across much of the southern and central Andes. The Tiwanaku, who are named for their capital city 50 miles south of the Island of Sun, left no written records, and their settlements were in ruins by the time…

Water not only sustains us, it also brings us together—travel by boat has always been easier and less costly than overland transit. I was reminded of the importance of maritime journeys during a recent visit to Malta. These small rocky islands to the south of Sicily lie in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, which, throughout history, has connected peoples living on and beyond its shores. For at least 7,000 years, many of these peoples passed through Malta, among them Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Sicilians, Normans, Spanish, French, and British. Acts 28 recounts that the apostle Paul, who came from the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), spent time in Malta in the first century after being shipwrecked while on his way to Rome. Of particular interest to me…

Over many centuries, a settlement on an oasis along the Silk Road grew into one of the world’s great metropolises. Ancient Merv was a nexus of commercial goods, languages, ideas, and religious beliefs connecting Europe, Africa, and the Far East. The site was first settled in the fifth century B.C. by the Achaemenids, whose empire stretched from the Caucasus to Egypt. Their settlement, Erk Kala, was succeeded by Gyaur Kala, which was built by Greek Seleucids under Antiochus I (r. 281–261 B.C.). Over the next millennium, Merv became a major economic and political center for a succession of empires. By the eighth century A.D., the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate had established Merv as their eastern capital. They called it Sultan Kala and turned it into one of the world’s largest urban…

An early nineteenth-century clay pipestem, one of many unearthed in the slave quarters at the former Belvoir tobacco plantation on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, has allowed archaeologists to rescue a lost history. DNA yielded by the seemingly unremarkable artifact has enabled them to determine that the pipe was used by a woman closely related to the Mende people of present-day Sierra Leone. This is a new way to connect an individual to an artifact she once used, says Julie Schablitsky, project director and chief archaeologist with the Maryland Department of Transportation. “You have this small, common object, and all of sudden this new world opens up and there is a whole person behind it,” she says. “It starts to take us back to the beginning, back to West Africa, where her…

Remnants of the foundation of a former cotton mill that later served as the main barracks for a Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina, were unearthed during a recent excavation. The prison, which opened in late 1861, was known as a relatively pleasant spot in its early years, with recreational activities including baseball games that may have matched prisoners against guards. By late 1864, however, its prisoner population had swelled to 10,000—four times the number the entire complex was designed to hold. Many prisoners took up residence in the yard, where they dug sleeping holes and, in some cases, escape tunnels. Thousands died of disease or were gunned down by guards in response to uprisings. he prison was abandoned near the end of the Civil War, and Union troops destroyed…

The size and power of golden eagles have made these raptors potent symbols in modern human cultures around the world, but a new analysis of eagle bones found at sites across Europe and Asia shows they played an important role for Neanderthals as well. Researchers compiled data on bird bones found at 154 Neanderthal sites dating to as early as 130,000 years ago. The results show that, before they made contact with Homo sapiens, Neanderthals across Eurasia were hunting golden eagles and using parts of their carcasses, mainly the talons, as jewelry or other kinds of symbolic artifacts. The findings run counter to the widely accepted idea that Neanderthals were big-game hunters who couldn’t adapt to hunting smaller, faster prey, such as eagles, when bigger, slower species, such as elk…

THE EMPEROR NERO is thought to have visited the southern Italian city of Pompeii in A.D. 64, perhaps spending a few nights in the enormous villa his wife, Poppaea, owned in the nearby town of Oplontis. Nero would have seen a city struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake two years earlier. “Pompeii was a city in crisis and flux,” says archaeologist Stephen Kay of the British School at Rome. The Pompeians labored to fix damaged roads, repaint walls whose frescoes had been ruined, rebuild their homes, revitalize the city’s infrastructure, repair its cemeteries, and construct what they were confident would be a new, earthquake-proof temple to their patron goddess, Venus. The Pompeians may not have known it, but the A.D. 62 earthquake had been a warning that the volcano…

ON THE MORNING OF September 15, 1944, some 18,000 U.S. marines from the First Division invaded the tiny Western Pacific island of Peleliu, at the south end of the Palau archipelago. Nearly three years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Americans and their allies were on the offensive, pushing their way across the Pacific. This campaign involved millions of U.S. military personnel, and unfolded over thousands of miles of ocean. Many of the key battles were fought over Pacific islands such as Guadalcanal and Guam, both of which the Americans captured after fierce fighting. They then established bases on these islands as they advanced closer and closer to Japan. By fall 1944, the Americans were eager to begin a long-planned invasion of the Japanese-occupied Philippines. They saw Peleliu,…

Some 1,500 years ago, a hunter-gatherer in the canyon lands of the Lower Pecos region of southwest Texas made the unfathomable decision to gulp down a whole snake, fangs and all. Texas A&M University archaeologist Elanor Sonderman discovered evidence for this queasy-making culinary event while studying a human coprolite, or desiccated feces, that was excavated in the 1960s at the site of Conejo Shelter. While examining the coprolite, which contained the expected plant remains, Sonderman found a fang, as well as scales and bones, belonging to a venomous snake—either a copperhead or a rattlesnake. Other coprolites from the area show that people did, occasionally, eat snakes at the time, but only after dressing and cooking them. The bones in this case showed no signs that the reptile had been prepped.…

Several of the sea otters that frequent Bennett Slough Culverts at Moss Landing in central California are in the habit of smashing mussels on waterside boulders to extract their meat. An interdisciplinary team of researchers has identified telltale evidence of this behavior, including visible patches of wear on points and ridges of the rocks facing the water, as well as a distinctive breakage pattern in the shells, with the left side intact and the right side broken in half diagonally. Underwater middens at the site are estimated to contain tens to hundreds of thousands of similarly smashed shells. Natalie Uomini, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says this type of research shows a new way to apply archaeological methodology to animal behavior. “Archaeology…

A modern shipping accident off the coast of the Netherlands led to the discovery of a sixteenth-century shipwreck that may provide insight into a transitional period in the history of global exploration and commerce. Salvagers attempting to retrieve 300 shipping containers that had fallen into the North Sea from the merchant ship MSC Zoe during a storm in January 2019 also recovered three wooden planks and 12 timbers from a much older ship’s frame, as well as a cargo of copper plates. Upon examination, the plates were found to bear the crest of the German Fugger family, one of early modern Europe’s wealthiest banking families. Analysis of the wood has established that the ship was built in the late 1530s. The vessel sank sometime before 1545. Underwater archaeologist Martijn Manders…

In the years since the Battle of Peleliu, Palauans have largely avoided the ridges and caves where the worst fighting took place, wary of chancing upon the ubiquitous unexploded ordnance and disturbing the human remains that were left at the end of the war. But these areas were once very much a part of Palauan life. In their surveys of the battlefield, archaeologists led by Rick Knecht of the University of Aberdeen and Neil Price of Uppsala University have found Palauan pottery likely dating back many centuries near every natural cave used by the Japanese during the battle, as well as large prehistoric shell middens in sections of remote jungle. “The battle was fought on a Palauan cultural landscape,” says Knecht. Peleliu, along with the rest of the Palauan archipelago,…

Outside the village of Brampton, Cambridgeshire, a handful of archaeologists huddle with a small group of local volunteers. Some of these professionals have been working here for two years and are all that remain of one of the largest archaeological teams ever assembled in Britain. They are in the final stages of excavating a small medieval hamlet called Houghton and have invited members of the public to join them for their final few weeks. Houghton was once a bustling little settlement, its dozen or so properties arranged around a broad central track. The scattered postholes and pits from this long-forgotten village are emblematic of the entire landscape, which has seen waves of people come and go over the past 6,000 years. Each has left an imprint upon the terrain. Dump…

CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY DAY ON OCTOBER 19, 2019 This year’s International Archaeology Day (IAD) will take place on October 19, 2019. IAD is a global celebration of archaeology and the thrill of discovery, held annually on the third Saturday of October. This will be the ninth Archaeology Day since the AIA first called on the archaeological community to help share the wonder and importance of archaeology through educational and outreach activities. AIA Societies and collaborating organizations all over the world host events throughout October, making archaeology accessible to as many people as possible. The inaugural Archaeology Day saw almost 15,000 attendees, and each year the number of collaborating organizations, events, and participants has grown. Last year’s festivities included over 1,000 events attended by more than 200,000 people worldwide. Be sure…