Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2020 i ARCHAEOLOGY

The words and thoughts expressed by individuals from past cultures do not always survive to our time. In many cases, the objects and monuments these people created have endured, but we have no evidence of what they thought about their creations, or even what they might have called the things they used or saw every day Some people, like those of the Trypillia Culture of Eastern Europe, who you will read about in “Megasites of Ukraine” by Berlin-based journalist Megan Gannon, were preliterate, while others, like the ancestors of today’s Shoshone featured in “Villages in the Sky” by writer and photographer Matt Stirn, passed along their traditions using oral rather than written means. Regardless of the medium, in this issue, you will encounter a truly impressive array of voices from…

The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is one of the best-known buildings of the ancient world. Yet, despite its renown, it turns out that for more than 2,000 years, we may have been calling the temple by the wrong name. “I knew that scholars didn’t really understand why it’s called the Parthenon,” says Utrecht University archaeologistJanric van Rookhuijzen, “so I started looking into a giant puzzle of ancient texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains.” His surprising, perhaps even heretical, theory suggests that “Parthenon” may not have originally referred to the structure we know today—which is sometimes called the Great Temple of Athena—but to part of an altogether different temple on the Acropolis. For van Rookhuijzen, the crux of the issue lies in the meaning of the Greek word parthenon—“a room for…

The oldest known remains of a sake brewery inJapan have been unearthed by archaeologists in Kyoto. Discovered ahead of construction on the former grounds of the Zen Buddhist Tenryuji Temple in the city’s Saga district, the brewery is believed to have been in use during the period leading up to the Onin War (ca. 1467-1477), a power struggle between the ruling Muromachi Shogunate and an alliance of rebellious feudal lords that ravaged Kyoto. The breweryremains include a cellar, storage jars, and a heavy wooden press, in which cloth bags holding unrefined sake were squeezed to produce the finished product. “The facility is estimated to be approximately three hundred years older than one built in 1674 in Itami City, which was considered the oldest until now,” says site director Masato Murao…

When the ancient Greeks encountered the nomadic Scythians, who dominated the Eurasian steppe in the first millennium B.C., they recorded that they were deeply impressed by the spectacle of Scythian women riding into battle. Recently, a team excavating a fourth-century B.C. burial mound in western Russia found that it held theremains of four of these real-life Amazons. Two of the women were buried with horse tackle and weapons, and one of themhad her legs positioned as if she were riding a horse. “We can certainly say that these two women were horse warriors,” saysteam leader Valerii Guliaev of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute ofArchaeology, “and we suppose that all four women in the grave were warriors.” Guliaev also found that the burial mound held 30 iron arrowheads, and that…

Sixty years ago, the discovery of four Nean derthal skeletons clustered together in Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan led some scholars to conclude, controversially; that members of the extinct human species practiced burial customs. Since then, other scholars have questioned that interpretation, suggesting the quartet died together of exposure or during a rock fall. Now; a team co-led by University ofCambridge bioarchaeologist Emma Pomeroy has returned to Shanidar and unearthed the upper portion of a Neanderthal skeleton not far fromwhere the four complete skeletons were originally excavated. Dubbed Shanidar Z, the bones were surrounded by sediment that had accumulated quickly, suggesting, says Pomeroy, that the body had been intentionally covered. Other remains ofNeanderthals have been found in the cave, but they seem to date to as much as 30,000…

THE STORY OF URBANISM traditionally begins in what is today southern Iraq. There, around 5,500 years ago, the Sumerian settlement of Uruk developed on the banks of the Euphrates River. At its peak, some 50,000 people, including nobl merchants, and slaves, are thought to have-i city’s mudbrick walls, which enclosed t This large urban population existed thanks in part to an agricultural surplus managed by a centralized bureaucracy that tracked economic transactions on cuneiform tablets. But a few hundred years before Uruk emerged, some 1,700 miles to the northwest in the forest steppe of central Ukraine, farmers with no written language were already living in settlements so large they sprawled over an area up to 1.5 square miles, and were home to perhaps as many as 20,000 people. In age…

In ancient Mesopotam ia, irrigation was the key to civilization. Rivers such as the Tigris and Euphrates carried a plentiful flow ofwater, fed by snowmelt from the mountains of Anatolia to the north. However, unlike the Nile in Egypt, which flooded on a regular annual schedule that perfectly accommodated the growing seasons, Mesopotamian rivers did so unpredictably and violently. To protect against the havoc caused by untamed flooding and to provide a steady supply ofwater to cultivate the land, Mesopotamian kings saw the construction of irrigation systems as among their chief responsibilities. The pride rulers took in these engineering feats is made clear by a number of celebratory rock reliefs that have been discovered near irrigation projects dating to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (883-609 B.C.). At the site of Khinis, for…

Engaging the public, one of an archaeologist’s most rewarding jobs, can take many forms. Many of ARCHAEOLOGY’s readers are aware of the Archaeological Institute of America’s public lecture program, but perhaps fewer know about the Institute’s Site Preservation Program. The United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites has singled out the Site Preservation Program as one of the most innovative models in heritage management. For more on this program and to read about the Pyramids and Necropolis of Nuri Project in Sudan, a recent awardee, go to archaeological.org/sitepreservation. In addition to their work to preserve sites, archaeologists spend a great deal of time and effort on public engagement and community building in the areas where they excavate. The people most affected by archaeological work, be they…

Roughly 1,000 feet above sea level in the hilly interior o f Calabria—the toe o f Italy’s b o o t—the town o f Oppido Mamertina is surrounded by ancient forested terrain. The m odern town is the successor to a medieval town called O ppido Vecchio that was destroyed b y an earthquake in 1783, and whose evocative ruins s till stand fo r visitors to admire. These include town gates and streets, and cloisters b u ilt b y religious orders. There is also a castle, dating to the eleventh-century Norman conquest o f southern Italy, which was periodically renovated according to the shifting fashions o f the times un til the seventeenth century. Archaeologists have discovered that the area was home to Iron A ge settlem ents dating back far earlier, to a…

An Italian-Turkish team has unearthed the A a world’s nwt oldest-knownpolychrome mosaic floor at Usakli Hoyuk, a Hittite settlement in central Turkey. The partially preserved mosaic measures 23 feet by 10 feet and once adorned an open courtyard belonging to a building that archaeologists believe was a second-millennium B.C. temple. The mosaic, which was set into a beaten-earth surface, consists of more than 3,000 multicolored stones arranged in rectangular frames, each with three rows of alternating white, red, and blue-black triangles. Stone pavements served a practical function in Hittite architecture. “It’s the way Hittites built their houses and public buildings, probably as a solution to prevent problems connected with rain,” says archaeologist Anacleto D’Agostino of the University of Pisa. D’Agostino adds that these colored geometric patterns have not been found…

The ibis, with its brilliant white feathers and narrow, curved beak, was the sacred bird ofThoth, the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom and writing. Beginning about 600 B.C., ibises were frequently mummified and given as sacrifices to the god. “Pilgrims would offer an ibis mummy to Thoth on his feast day either to ask for a wish to be granted or to thank him,” saysarchaeologist Sally Wasef of Griffith University. At the peak of this practice, upwards of 10,000 ibises were sacrificed every year, a number so large that some scholars have proposed that the birds must have been bred in centralized farms to meet the demand. Although more than four million ibis mummies have been found at the site ofTuna el-Gebel, which lies on the NileRiver about 170 miles…

CANADA: The two ships of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, mysteriously disappeared in the 1840s on their journey to locate the Northwest Passage. It was only in the last decade that the vessels’ wrecks were finally located near King William Island, where the ships became trapped in ice. During recent exploration of Erebus, divers retrieved 350 artifacts, including ceramic dishes, hairbrushes, a lieutenant’s epaulettes, and many personal items belonging to the captain’s steward, Edmund Hoar. CONNECTICUT: In a cellar in Ridgefield, construction workers unearthed the skeletal remains of 4 men who may have perished in the Battle of Ridgefield, a 1777 Revolutionary War engagem ent in which the Colonial forces were led by Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Although the skeletons bear no apparent signs of trauma,…

Some time around 89 e.c.-the b. —exact year is debated debated— Roman forces led by the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla laid siege to the city of Pompeii, likely in response to its residents' residents’ agitation for full Roman citizenship. The walls on the city’s city’s north side, where fortifications were particularly weak, still bear the impact marks of projectiles fired by the attacking Romans. In a number of areas inside the city walls, archaeologists have found catapult balls, small lead slingshot bullets, and machine-launched arrows known as scorpio bolts, all fired during the siege. "I “I don’t don't think anyone at the time was under any illusions that sustained bombardment would actually bring down the walls,” walls," says archaeologist lvo Ivo Van der Graaff of the University of New Hampshire.…

The Wind River Range in the Rocky Mountains stretches 100 miles across northwesternWyoming and the Continental Divide, extending from the thick pine forests ofYellowstone National Park toward the vast grasslands ofthe Great Plains. Fromthe river valleys and lakes below, the peaks of the mighty “Winds” rise toward the sky, reaching 13,000 feet above sea level. These granite towers pierce the clouds and are surrounded by highaltitude plateaus dotted with tundra and remnants of Ice Age glaciers. From a distance, they appear imposing, barren, and hostile, but closer inspection reveals a vibrant scene—herds of bighorn sheep traversing the horizon, marmots peeking up from boulder fields, and clusters of ancient whitebark pines standing watch over it all. On the outskirts of a scragglywhitebark pine forest at 11,000 feet above sea level in…

The discovery of the burials of four medieval knights near the Polish village of Cieple has highlighted the region’s connections to Scandinavia during the reign of the first Polish kings. The warriors were found lying in richly adorned chamber tombs dating to the early eleventh century A.D., the time of Bolesiaw I the Brave. They had been buried with a variety ofweapons, including swords, spears, and daggers, as well as full sets of equestrian equipment, such as spurs, stirrups, bits, and buckles. Isotope and DNA analysis demonstrated, though, that these individuals were not locals, but instead likely immigrated from an area around Denmark. The four warrior tombs were found at the center ofa necropolisthat contained at least 60 other individuals, ofboth local and Scandinavian ancestry. The men were likely members…

I n the ruins of Xanadu, the summer capital of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan (r. A.D. 1260-1294), Chinese archaeologists unearthed one of the world’s world’s earliest surviving guns. Measuring just 14 inches long, the bronze hand cannon was stamped with a serial number and a date corresponding to A.D. 1298. The small cannon was fashioned by Chinese artisans who benefited from working in a tradition ofgunpowder weaponry that was already at least 400 years old. Some time just before the rise ofChina’s China’s Song Dynasty (A.D. (a. d. 960-1279), alchemists in search of new medicines found that, by combining nitrates such as saltpeter with sulfur and charcoal, they could create a chemical explosive. The Chinese word for gunpowder means "fire “fire medicine,” medicine," but Song Dynasty officials were soon…

Gladiatorial contests were wildly popular among the ancient Romans, drawing tens of thousands of spectators. At first, the bouts were simple affairs, fought between combatants lightly armed with swords or spears. But as these events grew more popular and involved a greater number of fighting pairs, the Romans boosted their entertainment value by pitting gladiators who specialized in different sets of weapons, armor, and fighting style against each other. This increased the unpredictability of a match’s outcome. For example, a secutor carried a short sword and a large shield and wore a rounded helmet that covered his entire head, except for two small eyeholes. A secutor often opposed a retiarius, who was equipped with a net in one hand and a long trident in the other. Other classes of gladiatorsincluded…

Fifteen years ago, retired archaeologist Ronald Messier, who had spent much of his career excavating the site of Sijilmasa on the northern edge of the Sahara, got a phone call from Frederick Vreeland, a former American ambassador to Morocco and the son ofthe fashion editor and columnist Diana Vreeland. Vreeland, who was also retired and lived on an estate just south of the bustling city of Marrakech, asked Messier to come and take a look at some nearbyruins that locals called the hammam, the Arabic word for bathhouse. Vreeland was concerned that something important might be slipping away from decay and neglect at the dilapidated site next to a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the modern village of Ghmat. Messier visited the site a few days later, and, after just…