Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2022 i ARCHAEOLOGY

Pots are likely the most plentiful and often the most illuminating artifacts an archaeologist will find while in the field. Once pottery-making technology had been developed, wherever ancient people lived they left behind pots—or at least sherds from broken pots—which they had used for activities as varied as drinking fine wine, making offerings to the gods, and, of course, cooking family dinners. I am sure that many of you have wondered who made the first pot. In “Pottery’s Origin Stories,” you will find the surprising answer to that question and follow the fascinating story of how hunter-gatherers from Ice Age Japan to the woodlands of North America used pottery not just to cook hearty stews and store supplies in preparation for harsh winters, but as a catalyst to come together…

As a central base camp for travelers who want to explore Chile’s Atacama Desert, San Pedro de Atacama is a literal oasis in one of the driest regions on Earth. The town is home to the Atacameños, an Indigenous people who first settled the area 3,000 years ago. The Atacameños, whose ancestors had hunted and gathered in the foothills of the Andes for millennia, relocated to the desert and began to grow maize, which had come to the area from Mesoamerica. They established permanent settlements alongside rivers and salt flats and built exchange networks that spanned thousands of miles across South America. According to archaeologist Mark Hubbe of Ohio State University, evidence of these interregional networks is apparent in burial goods excavated from Atacameño cemetery sites. “Atacameños wanted to represent…

AT THE TIME POMPEII was buried by the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, it was a bustling, cosmopolitan Roman city. Sitting at the crossroads of major regional arteries, it was a commercial hub with a mixed population that included descendants of Greek settlers and of people known as the Samnites who had migrated to the area from the Apennine Mountains in the fifth century b.c., as well as Romans who had arrived beginning in the third century b.c. Weaving their way along busy streets, residents and travelers alike rubbed elbows at public fountains and in bars, baths, and bakeries. The city eventually spilled beyond its walls, where shops, workshops, and apartment buildings sprang up just outside some of its seven gates. These areas, however, had long been the realm…

In the shade of a ground-floor parking deck inside a campus garage, Santa Clara University archaeologist Lee Panich points out a dark rectangle etched into the gray concrete surface. It marks the foundation of an adobe structure, one of the few physical reminders of a part of California history usually left out of the books. Between 1777 and 1833, what is today the city of Santa Clara was the site of a Spanish missionary outpost. Home to a few Franciscan friars, a handful of Spanish soldiers, and hundreds of Indigenous Californians, it was one of a string of missions that extended the reach of the Spanish Empire nearly 2,000 miles north of Mexico City in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 2012, construction work prompted the university to…

Domesticated horses are thought to have arrived in Mesopotamia around 2000 B.c., but before then, Sumerian scribes wrote of another type of equid, the family that includes horses, donkeys, and zebras. These animals were used to pull war wagons in battle and were given as royal dowries. The precise zoological classification of these animals, called kungas—a transliteration of the ancient Akkadian symbol meaning hybrid equid—had never been determined. Recently, a team of researchers analyzed the remains of equids that were discovered in a cemetery dating to between 2600 and 2200 B.c. at the site of Umm el-Marra in what is now Syria. They concluded that the characteristics of the animals’ skeletons do not fit with those of donkeys, which arrived in Mesopotamia from Egypt, where they were first domesticated around…

In a valley in Siberia’s Tuva region, archaeologists have discovered a large wooden barrow containing the skeletons of a woman and a young child who were buried around 2,500 years ago with a set of intriguing artifacts. The deceased belonged to the Aldy-Bel culture, a nomadic Scythian people based in the mountainous area just north of the Mongolian border in present-day Russia. Alongside the woman’s skeleton, excavators unearthed an iron knife, a bronze mirror, a wooden comb, and several gold ornaments, including a pectoral in the shape of a sickle or crescent. This type of pectoral has previously been found exclusively in the graves of men and is believed to indicate membership in a selective group or caste, possibly of warriors. “This woman must have played a special role in…

FLORIDA: When conservators cleaned an encrusted button found in a 1782 shipwreck off the coast of St. Augustine, they were stunned by the 3 letters it displayed: USA. That might not ordinarily have caused surprise, but experts knew that when the ship went down, it was carrying British soldiers and loyalists fleeing the Revolutionary War. It’s possible that the button was taken from a Continental soldier’s uniform by a supporter of the crown on the battlefield and saved as a war token. ARIZONA: Artifacts recovered from a site in Santa Cruz County may provide new information about Francisco Coronado’s 1540 expedition through the American Southwest. Starting in Mexico, the Spanish conquistador eventually traveled as far north as Kansas, although the exact route he took is debated. Hundreds of newly found…

AT ITS HEIGHT IN THE seventh century B.C., the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire extended from Egypt through the Levant and Mesopotamia to the northern reaches of Anatolia and into Asia Minor. To control this domain, the Neo-Assyrians relied on highly skilled and deadly efficient military forces. They equipped their army with siege weapons, such as catapults and battering rams, and introduced innovative forms of cavalry warfare, including the use of battle chariots. Neo-Assyrian kings demanded surrender, fealty, and tribute, and depicted their conquests in vivid carvings that lined the walls of palaces and public monuments. Warriors traversed the empire’s enormous territory on horses, which scholars believe were first domesticated on the Eurasian steppe around 3500 b.c. and arrived in the Assyrian heartland of Iraq and Syria some 1,500 years later. The…

SIZE ADVANTAGE There are many advantages to smaller horses (Around the World: England, March/April 2022). Faster mounting and dismounting are important in battle and much easier on a small steed. Better clearance while charging through woods is of prime concern when chasing or being chased. Small horses also live longer, and, finally, you’ll take a shorter fall. Thanks for your fine publication. Christi S. Driggs Tucson, AZ A FATHER’S LEGACY I read with great interest “Mapping ARCHAEOLOGY welcomes mail from readers. Please address your comments to ARCHAEOLOGY, 36-36 33rd Street, Long Island City, NY 11106, fax 718-472-3051, or e-mail letters@archaeology.org. The editors reserve the right to edit submitted material. Vol ume precludes our acknowledging individual letters. a Vanished Landscape” (March/April 2022)—a broadly fascinating article with appeal to students of multiple…

Inhabited as a colonial city by Macedonian soldiers in the third century B.c., the hilltop settlement of Blaundos in western Anatolia is surrounded by a deep canyon on all sides into which its inhabitants carved hundreds of burial chambers. Although the necropolis has been known for centuries, it is only recently that a team led by archaeologist Birol Can of Uşak University has begun to systematically investigate the unexplored tombs. In 2021, the team documented around 400 burials dug into the canyon walls. According to Can, the chambers were initially built as single rooms and some were expanded over the generations to make room for sarcophagi holding additional family members. Some eventually held as many as 30 burials. Coins and pottery fragments found in the tombs, as well as the…

A cache of 41 concave Celtic gold coins has been discovered in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany. The coins have no markings, but numismatist Marjanko Pileki? of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation estimates they were minted between 125 and 30 B.c. They are known as “rainbow cups.” According to Pileki?, the nickname dates to around the eighteenth century and derives from the fact that the coins were frequently found by farmers after being revealed by rainfall. Popular lore held that the coins appeared where a rainbow touched the earth—and some believed they were lucky tokens with healing properties. This is the largest hoard of Celtic gold objects to have been found in Brandenburg, which is several hundred miles from areas that are known to have been occupied by…

While excavating the Roman amphitheater in western Anatolia’s ancient city of Pergamon, researchers from the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), the Technical University of Berlin, and the University of Zurich uncovered two blocks of seats inscribed with the names of ancient spectators angling for a prime viewing experience. The amphitheater was built in the second century a.d. and could accommodate about 25,000 people. Most of the seats were simple steps made from a cheap, whitish volcanic stone called tufa. The inscribed seats, however, were carved from grayish-black volcanic andesite, which was more expensive. They also had high backs that would have made for a more comfortable day at the arena. Some names inscribed on these blocks are Greek. Others are Roman names written in Greek letters, such as Λυκιος for the…

THE PANTHEON OF EGYPTIAN GODS is filled with mighty human-animal hybrid deities such as Horus, the falcon-headed god of kingship; Anubis, the jackal-headed god of mummification; and the warrior goddess Sekhmet, a divine lioness who possessed healing powers. Ancient priests and scribes left behind millions of textual references to these gods, and their names and titles fill many modern scholarly volumes. But the ancient Egyptians also acknowledged another group of divine humananimal hybrids, magical creatures that scholars call demons. These were supernatural beings that took many animal forms and were thought to live at the threshold of the divine and real worlds, and to be able to move between them if called upon by either gods or humans. Egyptologists know very little about these entities, though it is clear that…