Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2020 i ARCHAEOLOGY

It’s hard to imagine that a tiny tree ring could help solve one of the medieval world’s most puzzling mysteries. But by applying the familiar technique of radiocarbon dating in a novel way, scholars have been able to answer the confounding question of why no one ever lived in, or even used, a striking complex of buildings at a site in the Tuva Republic called Por-Bajin. Por-Bajin, or “Clay House” in Tuvan, is located on an island more than 4,000 feet above sea level in southern Siberia’s Lake Tere-Khol. Archaeological explorations of the site started in the late nineteenth century and an extensive research project has taken place there since 2007. It was known from the recent excavations that the 700-by-530-foot complex was constructed by a Uighur khan in a…

For wealthy Bronze or Iron Age southern Europeans, nothing beat an ostrich eggshell cup. It is known that these coveted luxury items were imported from the Levant and Egypt, but until recently, little has been understood about the ancient ostrich egg trade. A team lead by University of Bristol archaeologist Tamar Hodos has compared ancient ostrich eggshell artifacts to modern ostrich eggs to learn how these precious objects were acquired. A ninth-century B.C. inscription at the Neo-Assyrian capital of Nimrud in modern Iraq suggests that royals may have held ostriches captive for hunting, but Hodos and her team ruled out the idea that the big birds were kept to harvest their eggs. Instead, they found that ancient eggshells resembled modern wild ostrich eggs more than they did those from farmed…

After they invaded Mexico in the early sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadores took advantage of indigenous copper-smelting technology to produce weapons that helped them solidify their dominion over Mesoamerica. Smelting technology had arrived in Mesoamerica from the Andes and northern coastal South America beginning around A.D. 700. Historical records show that the Spanish wanted to construct cannons out of bronze—an alloy of copper and tin. However, the invaders did not know how to smelt copper ore and were forced to negotiate with indigenous specialists to obtain it. New research at the site of El Manchon in the Mexican state of Guerrero suggests that members of a community there smelted copper both before and after the Spanish invasion. Archaeological evidence includes the remains of furnaces, mounds of copper slag, and copper ore.…

Using remote sensing, archaeologists have identified a series of massive Neolithic pits two miles northeast of Stonehenge that were once part of Britain’s largest sacred prehistoric complex. “Stonehenge has been studied by archaeologists and antiquaries for several hundred years,” says University of Bradford archaeologist Vincent Gaffney. “One might have expected nothing of this scale could be left to find.” The team identified evidence for 20 huge shafts, each measuring around 33 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep when they were created 4,500 years ago. By plotting the shafts’ locations on a broader map of the region, the researchers realized that they formed a huge circle 1.2 miles in diameter around the site of Durrington Walls. The shafts may have originally demarcated the sacred henge site’s boundary, guiding pilgrims toward…

ILLINOIS: The catalyst behind the pre-Columbian city of Cahokia’s rapid rise may have been the arrival of maize cultivation technology. Isotope analysis of human and dog teeth found there provided insight into the local diet, and dating of corn kernels from the Mississippi River site reveal that maize was abruptly introduced to the area between A.D. 950 and 1000. This development likely helped fuel Cahokia’s population explosion over the next century, at the end of which it had as many as 20,000 inhabitants, making it the largest settlement in North America. MEXICO: For nearly 2 decades, experts were puzzled by ancient human remains found in the now-submerged Sagitario cave system on the eastern Yucatan Peninsula. They now think these remains may belong to Paleolithic miners who exploited the oldest ochre…

ANCIENT CANYONS, DRY MESAS, and high deserts form the iconic landscape of what is now called the American Southwest. To the Navajo, who call themselves Diné (“the people”), this is sacred land, a place they know as Dinétah. It’s the center of their universe, the place where Diné history began. The story of their emergence is passed from generation to generation through days of oral accounts that describe how their ancestors traveled through four worlds—black, blue, yellow, and white—moving through each at an appropriate time, aided by sacred creatures, usually animals or insects, to arrive at the present world. “I think this is a metaphor for the stages of development of our human consciousness and human spirit,” says Navajo archaeologist Adesbah Foguth. Foguth works as an interpretive ranger at Chaco…

On October 17, 2020, and throughout the months of October and November, more than 1,000 events are happening across the United States, Canada, and abroad to connect archaeology enthusiasts like you with local histories and past cultures close to where you live. Ten years ago in October, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) launched National Archaeology Day, a grassroots partnership celebrating archaeological discoveries. From some 15,000 participants its first year, Archaeology Day has grown to include more than 250,000 people. Over the last decade, it has involved organizations from all 50 states and some 45 countries, and was thus renamed International Archaeology Day (IAD). The AIA’s most popular program, IAD celebrates archaeological research and discoveries by providing a platform for collaborating organizations to promote their programs and activities. Eighty percent…

Off of Route 41 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a trail leads visitors around the childhood home of W.E.B. Du Bois, the African American author, scholar, activist, and cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Born in Great Barrington on February 23, 1868, Du Bois witnessed and chronicled the journey of African Americans through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the early Civil Rights movement. As editor of The Crisis magazine, he penned essays on politics, race and class disparities, pan-African identity, and the injustices of colonialism. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963, on the eve of the March on Washington. Before he became a public intellectual and world traveler, Du Bois grew up on a small rural homestead belonging to his mother’s family, the Burghardts, who had…

In the heart of the mountains of southeast Iran’s province of Sistan and Baluchestan, archaeologists have identified a history of continuous occupation dating from prehistory to the present day. The remote region is known for its nearly impassable mountains and arid deserts—as well as its populations of leopards and black bears. Thus far, researchers have identified 12 ancient sites and recovered samples of pottery that will help date them. “In the future we want to work with ethnographers to look at what the similarities are between today’s societies in the region and those of the prehistoric period,” says Hossein Vahedi of Shahrekord University. Of particular note, he says, is the persistence of circular architecture, which first appeared in the prehistoric period and is still used by the region’s seminomadic inhabitants.…

AS THE NILE SLICES THROUGH the barren desert of North Africa, it runs straight north, with the exception of one magnificent curve, reminiscent of a giant S. This stretch of the river winds through northern Sudan approximately 250 miles south of the Egyptian border. Known as the Great Bend of the Nile, it marks the southern boundary of Nubia, a region that stretches from Sudan into southern Egypt and has been home to the Nubian people for millennia. The modern Nubian town of Kerma sits at the northern end of the Great Bend. It is a bustling riverside community teeming with animated produce markets and fishing boats piled high with six-foot Nile carp. At the center of the town rises a five-story mudbrick tower, or deffufa in the Nubian language,…

PERHAPS INSPIRED BY classical texts hinting at the possibility of reaching the Indian Ocean by sailing around the southern tip of Africa, and eager to exploit the riches of the East, Portuguese explorers Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama became the first Europeans to round the Cape of Good Hope—Dias in 1488 and da Gama on his journey to India in 1497. The success of da Gama’s voyage revolutionized global trade, quickly rendering the millennia-old land routes of the Silk Road obsolete and spurring centuries of mercantile competition. European royal courts and merchant houses began to jostle for shares of land and goods on the African continent and all around the Indian Ocean. It was in this context that, in 1647, a Dutch East India Company ship ran aground in…

On the 8:20 a.m. boat to Alcatraz, no one gawks at the spectacular views of San Francisco along the shore of the bay. It’s cold and overcast, as is typical for late spring. The conversations are familiar and collegial—this ferry is limited to people who work on the island, including National Park Service rangers, volunteers, and maintenance personnel. The 22-acre rocky island of Alcatraz is less than two miles north of downtown San Francisco, so the journey lasts only about 10 minutes. Since the maximum security Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closed in 1963, after just under three decades of operation, the prison’s picturesque location and former celebrity inmates have generated reams of tourism-industry copy, inspired numerous Hollywood films, spawned urban legends, and made Alcatraz Island one of America’s most popular National…

Archaeologists excavating in the Egyptian royal necropolis of Deir el-Bahari, on the west bank of the Nile, believe they have found the long-sought location of the tomb of the early 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose II (r. ca. 1492–1479 B.C.). Near a chapel dedicated to the pharaoh that was part of the temple of his son and successor, Thutmose III (r. ca. 1479–1425 B.C.), the researchers uncovered a range of items that may have been part of a foundation deposit commemorating the tomb’s construction. Beneath some 10 feet of rubble and slate dust, the team, led by Andrzej Niwińskiof the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Archaeology, discovered a stone chest containing the remains of a goose, a goose egg, and an ibis egg—each wrapped separately in linen. They also uncovered a…

Among fragments of ink-on-wood writing tablets discovered at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in northern England (“Tablet Time,” November/December 2017) are newly translated documents from the personal correspondence of Julius Verecundus, the fort’s first known commanding officer. The tablets are thought to date to between the fort’s construction in A.D. 85 and a subsequent rebuild in A.D. 90. In one curious dispatch, a decurion, or cavalry officer, named Masclus requests leave for five men from the Raetian tribe of the Alps. He also reports on the status of plant cuttings and asks for the return of a certain knife. “Verecundus commanded the First Cohort of Tungrians, an infantry-only unit from what is now Belgium,” says archaeologist Andrew Birley, director of excavations for the Vindolanda Trust. “Why is a decurion making…

Unusual artifacts fashioned from antlers found at a site in northwest Siberia suggest that reindeer were domesticated far earlier than once thought. When archaeologists first discovered the 2,000-year-old L-shaped objects at Ust’-Polui in the Yamal region, they were perplexed. The barbed prongs included in some of them were particularly puzzling. It was not until the team consulted with members of nearby Nenets communities that they finally learned the items’ function. According to these modern-day reindeer herders, the ancient items were probably part of headgear harnesses used to train young reindeer to pull sleds. Since the barbs would have been painful, the animals would have quickly learned not to resist. “When I first saw these artifacts I had no idea how they might have been used,” says University of Alberta anthropologist…

“In the west almost all Spain had been subjugated, except that part which adjoins the cliffs where the Pyrenees end and is washed by the nearer waters of the Ocean. Here two powerful nations, the Cantabrians and the Asturians, lived in freedom from the rule of Rome.”—Second-century A.D. Roman historian Florus, Epitome of Roman History BY THE FINAL DECADES of the first century B.C., Rome had grown from a small city-state on the Italian Peninsula into a vast empire whose territories completely encompassed the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Its possessions extended inland as well, as much of Western Europe had succumbed to the relentlessly advancing Roman armies. Yet one small region remained impervious to Roman rule. This was a narrow swath of mountainous terrain wedged between the Northern Meseta…