Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2024 i ARCHAEOLOGY

Regular readers of this magazine will be familiar with the idea that archaeologists often interpret sites and artifacts as having had ritual significance to people of the past. Scholars often joke among themselves that, when confronted with a puzzling feature of the archaeological record, they can be perhaps overly hasty to invoke ritual as a catchall interpretation. But when you enjoy the stories in this issue, you’ll find abundant examples of discoveries that show that spiritual beliefs and the rituals they inspired were, in fact, an integral part of people’s lives. You’ll read about the Parthenon, where the Athenians worshipped their patron goddess Athena, and about the scientist who has pinpointed the exact pigment ancient artists applied to its spectacular sacred sculptures. Often people’s rituals invoked supernatural beings, such as…

At some point, you inevitably want to repaint your dorm room, apartment, or house. You visit the hardware store, where you’re confronted with a dizzying array of colors with names like Tippy Toes and Lilting Laughter—these are real names from well-known paint companies—whose relation to actual hues is, like the meaning of the paintings in a famous Pompeian villa, a mystery. After carrying paint chips around for days and taping them on the wall, you finally pick a color. But then you have to decide whether to do the painting yourself, which will consume much more time than you have, and probably won’t end up looking great. A professional will likely do a better job in far less time, but it will cost you. All things considered, though, it’s probably…

Archaeologists have unearthed the unusual tomb of an Egyptian dignitary who was interred in the necropolis at Abusir around 2,500 years ago. The ornately decorated burial chamber, which was found at the bottom of a 45-foot-deep shaft, belonged to a man named Djehutyemhat, who served as a royal scribe. Although the grave’s artifacts were looted, the room’s rich decoration was preserved. The walls are covered with depictions of gods and textual passages intended to aid the deceased’s transition to the afterlife, and the ceiling has a carved scene of the sun god’s journey across the sky. An image of Imentet, goddess of the West, who served as Djehutyemhat’s guide and symbolic mother, was carved inside his sarcophagus. The scribe also had another layer of protection. A set of magical spells…

A pair of tiger shark teeth uncovered in separate caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are the oldest known examples of shark teeth employed as cutting implements. Based on the contexts in which the teeth were excavated, archaeologists Michelle Langley and Adam Brumm of Griffith University believe they are between 5,000 and 7,000 years old and were used by members of the hunter-gatherer Toalean culture, who lived in south-western Sulawesi at the time. Microscopic examination revealed that both artifacts are worn in ways consistent with piercing, cutting, and scraping flesh and bone. The team also detected traces of plant fiber in holes that had been drilled into the roots of the teeth as well as adhesive on the roots. They believe thread and glue secured the blades in hafts—a…

Excavations in the English town of Rendlesham by archaeologists from the Suffolk County Council have confirmed its status as an important Anglo-Saxon royal center between the sixth and eighth centuries A.D. The site is located near the princely burials of Sutton Hoo and is mentioned in the Venerable Bede’s eighth-century A.D. Ecclesiastical History of the English People as a residence of East Anglian kings. The recent discovery of a monumental hall and royal compound has convinced archaeologists that Rendlesham was indeed a seat of early Angle kings, and may have been the largest and wealthiest settlement in England at the time. The timber hall measures 75 feet long and 33 feet wide. It would have been used by rulers for feasting, administering justice, entertaining diplomatic envoys, and distributing gifts. The…

THE TAŞ TEPELER, or Stone Mounds, in southeastern Turkey’s şanlıurfa Province arc roughly 125 miles along the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, overlooking the Harran Plain and the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates. The region features plateaus amid modest mountains. Scorching summers and mild winters with little rain barely sustain wild lentils, wheat, barley, and chickpeas, alongside other plant species adapted to the semiarid steppe environment. Farmers cultivate crops of pistachios, which are known locally as “green gold.” The plain’s few native animals, including several species of gazelle, are legally protected, but conservationists struggle to safeguard them from poaching, climate change, and urban expansion. In villages dotted across the plain, residents face challenges, too, their lives intertwined with seasonal agricultural rhythms and subject to the vagaries of swiftly…

Rising from the middle of Lake Cocibolca—also known as Lake Nicaragua—the largest lake in Central America, dumbbell-shaped Ometepe Island is formed by two volcanoes joined by a narrow isthmus. The twin peaks of Volcán Concepción and Volcán Maderas are often covered in thick clouds. But on a clear day, the view to the east from the top of either volcano takes in thick jungle that extends some 100 miles all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, a narrow strip of fertile plains separates Lake Cocibolca and the Pacific Ocean. South lies Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, divided from the rest of the country by the Gulf of Nicoya. For thousands of years, this region, known as Greater Nicoya to modern scholars, served as a natural crossroads for cultures…

Evidence that many sculptures from antiquity were not the bright white marble that people imagine today but were originally painted in various colors that have worn away over the millennia has been amassing for decades. Researchers have now found the first traces of paint on the marble sculptures held at the British Museum that came from the Parthenon, the temple to Athena that was built on the Athenian Acropolis in the fifth century B.C. A team led by Giovanni Verri, a conservation scientist at the Art Institute of Chicago, used a technique called visible-induced luminescence imaging to document extensive traces of Egyptian blue, a pigment containing lime, copper, and silicon, on the surface of some of the sculptures. This involved exposing them to red or green light, which causes even…

Deep inside Cova Dones, a cave in the province of Valencia in Spain, archaeologists have found more than 100 paintings and engravings, some of which they have dated to almost 25,000 years ago. The artworks depict geometric motifs and animals including deer, aurochs, and horses. Claw marks on the cave walls, some of which are scratched into the artwork, belong to a species of cave bear that went extinct around 24,000 years ago. The style of the incised and painted figures is similar to artwork in other Iberian caves that is known to have been made more than 20,000 years ago. A team of researchers led by archaeologist Aitor Ruiz-Redondo of the University of Zaragoza dated the paintings and engravings based on these stylistic features and the presence of the…

At the site of Barranco Gómez in eastern Spain, a team led by archaeologist Inés Domingo of the University of Barcelona recently discovered a 9,000-year-old Neolithic rock art depiction of a high-flying honey hunter. The panel, made in what scholars call the Levantine rock art tradition, shows a person with seemingly no fear of heights using a 25-foot-tall rope ladder attached to a cliff in pursuit of a large beehive. The artist painted the scene realistically, depicting individual loops of the ladder compressing under the climber’s weight. “We were impressed by the precise execution of the scene and the realism of the action depicted,” says Domingo. “The details of the type of ladder used and the safety measures implemented to secure the rope to the wall are truly exceptional.” She…

Perched on the Mutluca Plateau in southwestern Turkey’s Muǧla Province, the medieval walled city of Beçin was built on the ruins of a site whose history began thousands of years before. Based on the discovery of walls beneath the fortified inner citadel, archaeologists believe that a permanent settlement existed there by at least the fourth century B.C., during the Classical period, when the site was part of the Greek-controlled region of Caria. The settlement was continuously occupied throughout the subsequent Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. In the 1260s, a Muslim emir named Menteşe, who had founded an eponymous principality, conquered Caria. Beçin likely fell to the principality during the reign of Menteşe’s son and successor, Mesud Bey, who solidified control of the southwestern Anatolian coast. After Mesud’s death in 1319,…

In 2021, in the modern village of Sayburç, archaeologist Eylem Özdoǧan of Istanbul University discovered a rare Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 12,000 to 10,200 years ago) relief including detailed depictions of humans and animals on a large stone bench inside a 36-foot-diameter circular building. The bench is carved into the limestone bedrock and features a panel that is 12 feet long and about two and a half feet high. The panel includes five figures represented side by side. An image of a bull and a man are carved in low relief, and another man, in high relief, is flanked by low-relief leopards. The first man, shown from the side, has six fingers on his left hand and holds a slingshot or rattle in his right. The other man wears a necklace…

Mohenjo-Daro, located in southeastern Pakistan, is best known as the largest settlement of the Indus civilization, which dominated parts of what are now Pakistan and India 4,500 years ago. However, the site also has a rich Buddhist history, the clearest evidence of which is a huge stupa that sits atop the settlement’s Bronze Age ruins. Recently, workers attempting to preserve parts of the site that were damaged by devastating floods in 2022 spotted a partially broken terracotta pot on the western side of the stupa. Inside, archaeologists found hundreds of ancient copper coins—more than 10 pounds in total—dating to the Kushan Empire (ca. A.D. 50–250). (See “Breaking the Code of the Kushan Kings,” on page 50.) “It’s the first time that such a huge number of coins have been found…

For the ancient Romans, both rich and poor, their panoply of gods and robust mythology were part of everyday life. Images in a newly discovered tomb in the city of Giugliano, just outside Naples in southern Italy, suggest that at least one wealthy Roman wanted to be surrounded by gods and myths in death, too. While carrying out excavations before a new city water pipe was laid, archaeologists uncovered an undisturbed tomb dating to between 194 B.C. and A.D. 27. “There had never been any excavations here, and it was only because I found some ceramic fragments on the surface that I decided to expand the excavation area,” says Simona Formola, head archaeologist of the Archaeological Superintendency for the Metropolitan Area of Naples. “After weeks of work, we found the…

ENGLAND: The Cerne Abbas Giant has towered over the Dorset countryside for centuries, yet experts continue to debate when and why the 180-foot-tall figure was carved into the chalky hillside. New evidence indicates the giant was created between A.D. 700 and 1100. Scholars also now suggest it depicts the semidivine hero Hercules with a club in his right hand and that his characteristic lion skin was once shown draped over his left arm. The widely visible site was probably used as a muster station for Saxon armies assembled to fend off invading Vikings. COLORADO: Archaeologists have recorded rock art high above Castle Rock Pueblo on the Mesa Verde Plateau. The petroglyphs were found in a cliffside location 2,400 feet above houses built into a canyon wall. The oldest petroglyphs date…

FOR MORE THAN 1,000 years, worshippers have made the grueling journey across the barren Arabian Desert along well-worn pilgrimage routes to the Islamic holy city of Mecca. One such route, a roughly 1,000-mile, 37-day trek, began with the Darb al-Hajj al-Masri, a road that wound from Cairo across the Sinai Peninsula to Aqaba in Jordan. The route then continued south through western Saudi Arabia’s Hijaz region to Mecca. This path was heavily trodden from at least the seventh century A.D. until the nineteenth century, when the British took control of Egypt and closed it. In 1996, a hiking guide in the Negev Desert in southern Israel discovered an array of artifacts at what was once a campsite next to the Darb al-Hajj al-Masri between the city of Eilat and the…

IN THE ALMOSI Gorge in the Hissar Mountains of western Tajikistan, a 20-foot-tall, pyramid-shaped boulder rests in a meadow about 10,000 feet above sea level. The meadow is not on any commonly traversed route across the mountains, and it’s likely that over the course of the last 2,000 years, very few people have made note of a series of signs carved into the boulder’s face. Consisting of simple hooked characters, trident shapes, and flowing S-shaped lines, the signs are part of inscriptions that would have been legible to people living under the Kushan Empire, a multiethnic state that rose to power in Central Asia in the first century A.D. But the people who wrote the inscriptions were working in a literary tradition that did not endure. The last person who…

ADVOCATE How does the AIA work to prevent the illicit export and trafficking of cultural heritage? Through widespread collaboration, international diplomacy, public awareness campaigns, intelligence gathering, and engagement with organizations and communities around the world who are the stewards of cultural heritage. For example, when the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) reviews requests for import restrictions submitted by foreign governments, considers proposals to extend existing agreements and emergency actions, carries out reviews of current import restrictions, and reports on its findings and recommendations to the U.S. Department of State, the AIA springs into action as advocates for diplomatic, legal, and international initiatives to preserve the archaeological record. In September 2023, AIA Vice President for Cultural Heritage Ömür Harmanşah moderated a panel titled “Heritage and Justice: A Global Perspective” during…