Stories tagged archeology
Dig here for treasure: The former site of two outhouses in Ventura, Calif., is proving to be a hot spot for finding historical artifacts. But it's not the most desireable place to be digging.
Photo courtesy Dave Bullock (eecue)It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Archeologists in Ventura, Calif., digging on the spot where a couple of outhouses were stationed some 130 years ago, are making some amazing discoveries…as long as they can tolerate the smell.
Here’s a quick rundown of what they’ve found: a pistol, bowie knife, whiskey flasks, a set of false teeth, two dog skulls and a blade for shearing sheep.
You might be able to label this case as CSI: Outhouse.
"It might be an early crime scene," project archaeologist John Foster is quoted in USA Today. "It looks like the two dogs were decapitated. Then whoever did it dumped the skulls and the blade, thinking the women probably wouldn't be looking too hard into the bottom of the privy."
Archeologists were called in to checkout the scene before the site was to be prepared for a condo development. The property has had a host of previous uses, including a school bus barn and Ventura County’s first courthouse/jail/hospital.
While the finds have been exciting, the project has had its drawbacks, archeologists report.
"The further you go down, the stronger the smell," archaeologist Marisa Solorzano says. "But it's not that bad. These privies are archaeological gold mines."
One person’s gold mine is another person’s pile of, oh well, you get what I mean.
Or to put it another way for you Trekkies: these archeaologists are boldly going where many have gone before!
Tags : Does everyone remember Otzi the Iceman? The little frozen mummy they found in the Alps, back in the early Nineties? Of course you do. How could you forget something like that?
Otzi, at about 5300 years old, bears the distinction of being one of the oldest natural mummies in the world. Also, a five feet, five inches, and eighty-four pounds, he is one of the smallest people I am afraid of. And not just because he’s dead.
And the award for "most hardcore death" goes to...: That's right, to Otzi the Iceman for dying high on a mountain, covered in tattoos and the blood of his enemies, and shot though the shoulder with an arrow. We envy you, but only slightly.
New research has finally put to rest (as it were) the question of Otzi’a death. It turns out that Otzi died as he lived: on a mountain, and totally hardcore. I will now list the evidence for this conclusion, in order of increasing bad-assness.
1) Otzi dressed all in leather. His cloak was made of woven grass, but his belt, vest, leggings, loincloth, and shoes were all leather. We know that’s what tough people wear.
2) Otzi wore a bearskin hat. I would never mess with anyone in a bearskin hat. Bears don’t give up their skin easily.
3) Otzi carried around a prehistoric medicine kit. Maybe this isn’t that hardcore, but it seems like a good idea. He had a string of two kinds of polypore mushrooms, which have antibacterial properties. Way to think ahead, Otzi!
4) Otzi had 57 tattoos. No elaboration needed.
5) Otzi carried an axe, a knife, a quiver of bone-tipped arrows, and a longbow. For comparison, I usually carry around my house keys, and sometimes a pen. John Rambo and Otzi probably shopped at the same stores, come to think of it.
5) The blood of four non-Otzi people was found on Otzi’s cloak. Whoa! After DNA analysis revealed this, some people began to speculate that Otzi may have been part of a raiding party. After baby showers, these are the roughest, toughest kind of parties around.
6) A recently constructed 3D model of Otzi’s body shows that he died of blood loss after getting shot with an arrow under his left collar bone. Previous examinations had revealed a wound beneath a matching tear in Otzi’s (leather) vest, inside of which was lodged an arrowhead, but the new CT scans clearly show that the arrow had torn an artery, which would have caused severe bleeding, shock, and eventually death by heart attack. A large haematoma, or a collection of blood from internal bleeding, was also revealed, which might suggest that the arrow was pulled out of the wound, shortly before death. The chances of surviving this sort of wound, even today, would be around 40%.
Wow. My hat goes off to you, little iceman.
There have been some cool shows about the iceman, but even wikipedia’s article is pretty interesting.
And here’s an article about the recent research on Otzi’s body.
The ancient rain god Tlaloc: The Toltecs and Aztecs appear to have sacrificed children to him in hopes he would send them rain.Construction workers north of Mexico City have uncovered the one thousand year-old remains of two dozen children, the apparent victims of sacrifice to an ancient rain god.
Archeological estimations have dated the bones from 950 AD to 1150 AD, a time during the reign of the Toltec, a civilization that preceded the Aztec. The 24 skeletons were found in a single grave, laid out in the same east-facing position, with a figurine of the rain god Tlaloc. They appear to have been decapitated in a ritualistic way.
“You can see evidence of incisions which make us think they possibly used sharp-edged instruments to decapitate them”, said Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History .
"To try and explain why there are 24 bodies grouped in the same place, well, the only way is to think that there was a human sacrifice," he said.
The Toltec were a war-like civilization that dominated a region ranging from the Southwestern United States to the Gulf of Mexico and into Central America until about the late 12th century. They are known for sacrificing adult humans, usually prisoners captured from other parts of Mexico. But this seems to be the first evidence in the Toltec culture of the sacrifice of children.
The grisly site was discovered in the Toltec’s ancient capital Tula, about 80 kilometers north of present day Mexico City.
LINKS and Further Info
MSNBC story
Sci-Tech Today story
Yahoo News story
Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian culutures
This artifact was the first of the about 50 found near Walker, Minnesota.: Photo courtesy Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program.During a routine survey of a road construction site near Walker, Minnesota in 2005, archeologists discovered a flake of stone that appeared to have been intentionally chipped from a larger rock. Over the next couple of months digging continued at the site, and some 50 artifacts, thought to possibly be crude stone tools used for chopping, cutting, or scraping, were found.
Initial studies on the stones indicate they are between 13,000 and 15,000 years old. This is potentially significant, as humans are not thought to have populated the Americas until 9,000 years ago.
(Listen to an MPR story on the discovery from January.)
Could humans have lived in Minnesota 13,000 years ago?
If the artifacts are 13,000 year old stone tools, it would be the first indication that humans lived in North America during the Pleistocene – from 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago. Some researchers have suggested that the part of Minnesota where these artifacts were found may have been an "oasis" at the time—an area free of ice cover, with an access route to the southeast making human habitation possible.
Features of this stone might suggest that it could have been a crude knife.: Photo courtesy Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program.Not everyone agrees
Not everyone who has had a chance to study the artifacts agrees that they are ancient stone tools. Several Minnesota state archeologists argue the stones are the result of natural causes such as glacial movement and flowing water. They argue that Minnesota 13,000 years would have been extremely cold and covered by glaciers and therefore too inhospitable a location for humans to live, and that insufficient time has been spent accurately dating the artifacts.
This has not changed the minds of the archaeologists who originally made the finds. They argue that the analysis of the artifacts is still in too early of a stage to make a definitive decision on their authenticity. They plan further excavation at the site this summer and hope to uncover more artifacts to further solidify their claim.
(Listen to an MPR story from February on whether the artifacts are in fact stone tools.)
Archaeologist have discovered the remains of an ancient marketplace in southern Athens. The ruins date from 300 to 500 BC.
Archaeologists have discovered several new tombs near the pyramids of Saqqara. The tombs -- of doctors, dentists, scribes, and even a butler -- give a fuller picture of life in ancient Egypt.
Scientists in Italy have uncovered a pair of 5,000-year-old skeletons, a young man and woman locked in an embrace. This is the oldest example known of a couple buried together. Ironically, it was discovered near the city of Mantua, which many centuries later would play a key role in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Stonehenge: Photo courtesy NASAArcheologists have announced the discovery of what they think may be the primitive homes of the mysterious builders of Stonehenge on the West Salisbury plains within walking distance of the famous monolith circle.
So far, eight huts have been unearthed, already making the excavation the largest concentration of prehistoric huts discovered in Britain. But Mike Parker Pearson, of Sheffield University thinks it’s just the beginning, and that maybe hundreds of hearth sites may exist in the region. Radar analysis of the landscape suggests the settlement is huge.
"The whole valley appears full of houses," Parker Pearson said. “Our dates for the building of Stonehenge are identical to the dates for this very large settlement.”
Carbon dating of the settlement dates it to the middle Neolithic Age about 4500 years ago, the same time the huge sarsens and bluestones of Stonehenge were being put in place.
Each of the huts uncovered so far measure about 5m (16ft) square, and was made of timber surrounding a central hearth. The archeologists found rubbish dating back to 2600 years B.C. covering the clay floors of the houses.
"It is the richest - by that I mean the filthiest - site of this period known in Britain," Professor Parker Pearson said. "We've never seen such quantities of pottery and animal bone and flint."
Parker Pearson believes the region was used for funereal purposes, as well as for some kind of ceremonial midwinter gathering site for prehistoric revelers.
The ancient village is located about 1.75 miles northeast of the famous stone circle, near Durrington Walls a large 500 meter (nearly a 1/3 mile) in diameter circular earthwork. Another henge of a sort is also nearby, but this one was made of wooden poles stuck in the ground in a circular formation. Known as Woodhenge, Parker Pearson believes it is linked in ritual to its more famous stone cousin. Both henges are aligned with astronomical events, but the events are complementary. Stonehenge is lined up with the sunrise of the midwinter solstice, while the timber circle at Durrington lined up with the sunset of the midwinter solstice.
Pig teeth found at the village site seem to support Parker Pearson’s theory of a midwinter festival.
"One of the things we can tell from the pig teeth we've looked at is that most of them have been slaughtered at nine months. And we think they are farrowing in Spring," he said.
"It's likely there's a midwinter cull and that ties in with our midwinter solstice alignments at Durrington and Stonehenge."
Durrington’s purpose, he speculates, was for celebration of life, while Stonehenge served as a memorial and cemetery. After feasting, Parker Pearson believes the dead were deposited in the River Avon and sent downstream to Stonehenge, where a select few were cremated and buried.
More Info and Links
Stonehenge Guide
Stonehenge Settlement Found (National Geographic)
Vast settlement of huts linked to Stonehenge (Guardian)
More on Stonehenge
Stonehenge didn’t stand alone (National Geographic)
The green dot indicates the location of Hamuokar: Map by planiglobe.com
Hamoukar in northeast Syria is one of the oldest cities in the world. Recent excavations have shed light on how it began… and how it ended.
Archaeologists have discovered a large field of obsidian near the city. Obsidian was used for making stone tools – in fact, researchers found evidence of tool manufacture right there on the site. Hamoukar was probably settled to take advantage of this natural resource. This goes against previous theories, which held that all early cities were founded on agriculture, and that Hamoukar was settled by farmers from the south.
Scientists also found evidence of the city’s demise. A fierce battle in 3500 BC leveled the city. Warriors at that time used clay stones in slings, and researchers uncovered evidence that the people of Hamoukar abandoned their usual jobs to make as much ammunition as possible. But it was to no avail: the city fell, and the southern city of Babylon became the region’s greatest power – forever changing the course of history.
To learn more about the Hamoukar excavations, go here,
To learn more about the battle that ended Hamoukar, go here.
Antikythera mechanism: Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
Two thousand year-old computer found a century ago in a sunken Roman cargo ship, is finally revealing some of its secrets. The device, known as the Antikythera mechanism, has intrigued and baffled scientists ever since its discovery, but now because of advanced technology, its purpose is becoming clearer.
In 1900, Elias Stadiatos, a Greek sponge diver, came upon the wreck of a Roman vessel just off the coast of the small island of Antikythera between island of Crete and Greece. Stadiatos was more interested in the bronze statues, pottery, furniture, and jewelry that littered the wreck site. But what proved most valuable were a few corroded and encrusted green lumps, the remains of a very intricate mechanical device.
Initially housed in a small wooden container about the size of a shoebox, the Antikythera mechanism was constructed of dozens of internal bronze gear wheels and external dials marked with Greek inscriptions, and operated with a hand-crank. Derek Price, a science historian at Yale University studied the device extensively back in the 1960s.
Price concluded it was an astronomical computer capable of calculating the position of the sun and moon in the Zodiac on any given date.
But other scientists and academics were skeptical since nothing else approaching the complexity of the mechanism’s technology was known until over a thousand years later when geared clocks began to appear during the Middle Ages.
However, recent analysis by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project not only reinforces Price’s theory of an ancient and advanced Greek mechanical technology, but it seems the mechanism is even more complex than even Price had realized.
Comprised of an international team of Greek, American, and British scientists, the project used specialized imaging and x-ray scanning technology to analyze the more than eighty fragments. The results of their study appeared in the journal Nature .
"We have used the latest technology available to understand this mechanism, yet the technological quality in this mechanism puts us to shame," said project leader Mike Edmunds, professor of astronomy at Cardiff University in Wales. "If the ancient Greeks made this, what else could they do?"
Using a 7.5 ton Hewlett-Packard scanner, and 3D x-ray equipment from the British firm of X-Tek, Edmunds and his team were able to read more than double the inscriptions on the mechanism, and decipher many more of its secrets.
"It was a calendar of the moon and sun, it predicted the possibility of eclipses, it showed the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, and we believe also it may have shown the position of some of the planets, possibly just Venus and Mercury," Edmunds said.
It could predict a solar eclipse to a precise hour and day, and would have been useful for calculating planting and harvesting times and calendars for religious festivals.
The Antikythera mechanism’s eighty-two surviving fragments date back to around 120 B.C. Scientists speculate it was built on the island of Rhodes , which had a long tradition in astronomy and applied mechanics. It’s also thought the Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, who lived on Rhodes at the time, may have been involved in its design.
The Roman wreck, from where the device was salvaged, is believed to have been sailing from the island of Rhodes, when it sank sometime in the first century B.C.
“We will not yet be able to answer the question of what the mechanism was for, although now we know what the mechanism did,” Edmunds said.
LINKS
New York Times
Telegraph
Antikythera Mechanism Research Project
Economist (2002 article)
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