Posts Tagged ‘Archeology’

Enigmatic 2,000 Years-Old Carved Stone Owl Pipes Of The Mound Builders A Mystery To Archaeologists

Posted: December 21, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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In the early 1900s, an archaeologist, William Mills, dug up a treasure-trove of carved stone pipes that had been buried almost 2,000 years earlier.

Mills was the first to dig the Native American site, called Tremper Mound, in southern Ohio. And when he inspected the pipes, he made a reasonable – but untested – assumption. The pipes looked as if they had been carved from local stone, and so he said they were. That assumption, first published in 1916, has been repeated in scientific publications to this day. But according to a new analysis, Mills was wrong.

In a new study, the first to actually test the stone pipes and pipestone from quarries across the upper Midwest, researchers conclude that those who buried the pipes in Tremper Mound got most of their pipestone – and perhaps even the finished, carved pipes – from Illinois.

The researchers spent nearly a decade on the new research. They first collected the mineralogical signatures of stone found in traditional pipestone quarries in Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Ohio. Then they compared the material found in those quarries to the mineralogical makeup of the artifacts left behind by the people of Tremper Mound.

Less than 20 percent of the 111 Tremper Mound pipes they tested were made from local Ohio stone. About 65 percent were carved from flint clay found only in northern Illinois and 18 percent were made of a stone called catlinite – from Minnesota.

The researchers are still puzzling over how most of these materials made it to Ohio from Illinois, and are baffled by another new discovery.Pipes from a site only about 40 miles north of Tremper Mound, an elaborate cluster of immense mounds known as Mound City, were carved almost entirely from local stone.Mound City was inhabited at about the same time or shortly after Tremper Mound, and the pipes found there are stylistically very similar to the Tremper pipes.

The researchers describe their findings in a paper in American Antiquity.

These results should remind archaeologists that things are not as simple as they sometimes appear, said Thomas Emerson, the principal investigator on the study and the director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS) at the University of Illinois.

“This is how mythology becomes encased in science,” he said.

The study also confirms that the people who produced these pipestone artifacts, known today as members of the Hopewell tradition, were more diverse and varied in their cultural practices than scientists once appreciated, Emerson said.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

The Hopewell people, who lived in the region from about 100 B.C. to roughly A.D. 400, have long been the subject of speculation, as the artifacts they left behind and the manner in which these goods were disposed of are not easily understood. Those living in southeastern Ohio, especially, seemed to be “conspicuous consumers and connoisseurs of the exotic,” Emerson said.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

The Hopewell people from that area collected “massive assemblages of obsidian from Wyoming, mica from the Appalachians, and caches of elaborately carved pipes, ” Emerson said. They also collected shells from the Gulf Coast, along with the skulls of exotic animals (an alligator, for instance).

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

“Strange animals, strange minerals, strange things were really a focus,” he said.

Most of the carved stone pipes from that era have been found in Ohio, where very large caches often containing more than 100 pipes were ritually broken, burned and buried, Emerson said. The same style of pipes are found in Illinois, but many fewer have been uncovered in Illinois to date, he said, and they are dispersed, not heaped together in giant hordes as in Ohio.

There is evidence of stone carving at the Illinois sources where the stone was gathered, but none at Tremper Mound, suggesting that the Illinois stone was carved into pipes before it was transported to Ohio.

The team used a variety of techniques to analyze the material in the quarries and the artifacts. One method, called X-ray diffraction (XRD), produces a distinct signal that reflects the proportion of minerals in different types of stone. The stone must be pulverized, however, to subject it to XRD.

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Location where the owl pipes were discovered.

To analyze the intact pipes, the researchers used a non-destructive portable technology, called PIMA, which illuminates a specimen with short-wavelength infrared radiation and records the refracted (unabsorbed) wavelengths, allowing investigators to identify the minerals present. They verified the accuracy of the PIMA by comparing its results to those obtained with XRD on quarry specimens and broken pipes.

The new findings should challenge archaeologists to look more carefully at the evidence left behind by the Hopewell people, Emerson said.

“This study really says to the archaeological community, you need to go back to the drawing board,” he said. “You’ve been telling stories for decades that are based on essentially misinformation.”

© MessageToEagle.com

First Harbor of Ancient Rome Rediscovered

Posted: December 15, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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Archaeologists have unearthed the great ancient monuments of Ostia, but the location of the harbour which supplied Rome with wheat remained to be discovered. Thanks to sedimentary cores, this ” lost ” harbour has eventually been located northwest of the city of Ostia, on the left bank of the mouth of the Tiber. Stratigraphy has revealed that at its foundation, between the 4th and 2nd century BC, the basin was deeper than 6.5 m, the depth of a seaport.

This research was carried out by a French-Italian team of the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée (CNRS / Université Lumière Lyon 2), the Ecole Française de Rome and Speciale per i Beni Soprintendenza Archeologici di Roma — Sede di Ostia* and will be published in the Chroniques des Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome in December 2012.

According to ancient texts, Ostia was founded by Ancus Marcius, the 4th king of Rome. This new settlement is supposed to have aimed three goals: to give Rome an outlet to the sea, to ensure its supply of wheat and salt and finally, to prevent an enemy fleet to ascend the Tiber. Archeological excavations showed that the original urban core (castrum) dates back to the turn of the 4th and 3th centuries BC. Major ancient buildings and main roads were progressively revealed, but the location of the Ostia river mouth harbour remained unknown to this day. For some, it was considered as lost forever. Since the Renaissance, many attempts to locate the harbour of Ostia were undertaken without success. It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that Italian archaeologists defined an area north-west of the city, near the Imperial Palace. At the turn of the century, archaeologists confirmed the probable location of the basin, in that zone, by using geomagnetic instruments. However there was still no consensus on the exact location of the port and the debate was still alive.

A French-Italian team led by Jean-Philippe Goiran, CNRS researcher, has tried to definitely verify the hypothetical location of the harbour, by using a new geological corer. This technology solves the problem of groundwater which makes this area rather difficult for archeologists to excavate beyond 2 m deep.

Two sediment cores have been extracted, showing a complete 12 m depth stratigraphy and the evolution of the harbour zone in 3 steps:

1 — The deepest stratum, before the foundation of Ostia, indicates that the sea was present in that area in the early 1st millennium BC.

2 — A middle layer, rich in grey silty-clay sediments, shows a typical harbour facies. According to calculations, the basin had a depth of 6.5 m at the beginning of its operation (dated between the 4th and 2d centuries BC). Previously considered as a river harbour that can only accommodate low draft boats, Ostia actually enjoyed a deep basin capable of receiving deep draft marine ships.

3 — Finally, the most recent stratum, composed of massive alluvium accumulations, shows the abandonment of the basin during the Roman imperial period. With radiocarbon dates, it is possible to deduce that a succession of major Tiber floods episodes of the Tiber finally came to seal the harbour of Ostia between the 2nd century BC and the 1st quarter of the 1st century AD (and this despite possible phases of dredging). At that time, the depth of the basin was less than 1 m and made any navigation impossible. It was then abandoned in favor of a new harbour complex built 3 km north of the Tiber mouth, called Portus. This alluvium layer fits with the geographer Strabo’s text (58 BC — 21/25 AD) who indicated the sealing of the harbour basin by sediments of the Tiber at that time (Geographica, 231-232).

The discovery of the river mouth harbour of Ostia, north of the city and west of the Imperial Palace, will help better understand the links between Ostia, its harbour and the ex-nihilo settling of Portus, initiated in 42 AD and completed in 64 AD under the reign of Nero. This gigantic 200 ha wide complex became the harbour of Rome and the largest ever built by the Romans in the Mediterranean.

Between the abandonment of the port of Ostia and the construction of Portus, researchers estimate that nearly 25 years have passed. Rome was the capital of the ancient Roman world and the first city to reach one million inhabitants. So how was it supplied with wheat during that period? The question arises now researchers.

*This work was also carried out in collaboration with the Maison Méditerranéenne des Sciences de l’Homme (CNRS / Aix-Marseille Université), the Universita Roma 3, the Institut Universitaire de France and received the support of the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche).

Science News

Ciudad Perdida: Uncovering Ancient Secrets Of The Enigmatic “Lost City”

Posted: December 15, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Monuments, News
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Hidden in the middle of the jungle, archaeologists are trying to uncover ancient secrets of Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City.

It is a place that has remained unknown to most of the outside world for centauries and even today, very few people are aware of its existence.

Ciudad Perdida, Spanish for “Lost City,” is one of Colombia’s most spectacular cultural heritage sites.

The “Lost City ” was inhabited by the Tayrona people until the end of the 16th century and tucked away within the lush jungles of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta not far from the Colombian coastline.

Ciudad Perdida, is made up of hundreds of stone terraces and rings, which archaeologists believe were used as foundations for temples, dwellings and plazas.

 

Ciudad Perdida is situated atop a mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a UNESCO-inscribed Biosphere Reserve. Photo: poirpom/flickr

 

Although the Tayrona built more than 250 towns across a 2,000 square mile area, few are as large or as impressive as Ciudad Perdida, which is believed to have been a regional center of political, social and economic power, home to around 3,000 people.

 

After diseases introduced by the Spanish forced the Tayrona to abandon the city, it was forgotten until 1975, when looters accidentally rediscovered the site in their search for pre-Columbian treasures.It was taken over in 1976 by the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), which began clearing forest and researching the site.

In 2009, GHF began working in partnership with ICANH to preserve Ciudad Perdida’s ancient features and to engage the local communities as major stakeholders in the site’s sustainable development.

In August this year, the growing global interest in Ciudad Perdida provided the lead story for CCTV’s Americas Now, an international broadcast news magazine.

 

View of the center area of Ciudad Perdida (“Lost City”) in north-eastern Colombia. Image credit: Wanderingstan

The program followed a tour group led by Dr. Santiago Giraldo, Director of GHF’s Colombia Heritage Program, as they trekked to the Lost City. Along the way, they met members of the Kogi indigenous tribe – descendants of the Tayrona – who are helped by the Tayrona Foundation for Archaeological and Environmental Research (FIAAT), which Dr. Giraldo helped to establish.

“What we would like, with the indigenous community and the peasant community, is to keep things at a manageable level, so that they have better livelihoods, but it does not get out of hand,” Dr. Giraldo said.

 

A boulder with carved markings, believed to be a map of the area around Ciudad Perdida. Image credit: http://flickrhivemind.net

Among those in the tour group featured on Americas Now was Dr. Barra O’Dannabhain, an archaeologist from the University College Cork in Ireland.

It was his first visit to the site, which he called one of the most impressive he’s ever seen. He insisted on the need to conserve it.

 

Ciudad Perdida has remained unknown to the outside world for a very long time. Image credit: Rutacol

“This has a relevance beyond Colombia,” he said, “because the story of Ciudad Perdida is of a vibrant, impressive culture that was wiped out by contact with Europeans…

We owe it to the dead generations, and also to their descendants who still inhabit the area today, to tell more about the story of what happened there.”

MessageToEagle.com based on information provided by Global Heritage Fund

Atlantis Found: Giant Sphinxes, Pyramids In Bermuda Triangle

Posted: December 14, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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Perhaps eclipsing the discoveries of Troy and King Tut’s tomb is the discovery of Atlantis. Now, two daring scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, claim they’ve found it. They discovered the submerged ruins of the ancient city off the shores of Cuba. In the distant past the region was dry land, but now only the island of Cuba remains above water. The ancient city is 600 feet below the ocean and the team of researchers led by Weinzweig and Zalitzki are convinced it is Atlantis—the city lost for more than 10,000 years.

Atlantis found in Bermuda Triangle

Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean. The site of the ancient city—that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures—amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

According to a report by arclein of Terra Forming Terra, Cuban Subsea Pyramid Complex, the evidence points to the city being simultaneously inundated with rising waters and the land sinking into the sea. This correlates exactly with the Atlantis legend.

The disaster may have occurred at the end of the last Ice Age. As the Arctic icecap catastrophically melted it caused sea levels to rise quickly around the world, especially affecting the Northern Hemisphere. Coast lines changed; land was lost; islands (even island continents) disappeared.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote of lost Atlantis

At the end of last Ice Age sea levels were nearly 400 feet lower than present day levels. Once the waters began to rise, they rose swiftly. Conceivably, no technology then, or now, could have saved Atlantis from its watery grave. The evidence that land in what’s now the Caribbean also sank into the sea concurrently seems pretty certain.

Arclein observes: “At the time uplifted portions of the Mid Atlantic Ridge subsided also including Lyonese and the home islands and land mass around the Azores. Even if that had not happened, this subsidence was amply large enough.

‘Atlantis The Lost Continent’ [Image: MGM Studios]

“This would have produced an orthogonal pressure forcing subsidence to either East or West. Since the ridge between Cuba and Yucatan is the natural point of weakness between the Gulf subsidence basin and the Caribbean subsidence basin, it naturally subsided deeply. The driver for all this was the hydrostatic changes brought about by both the original crustal shift of 12,900 years ago that I have called the Pleistocene Nonconformity and the slow uplift of the Hudson Bay Basin brought about by the ending of the Ice Age.”

Cuban missile crisis stops research

According to journalist Luis Mariano Fernandez the city was first discovered decades ago, but all access to it was stopped during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

An artist reconstruction of the city of Atlantis

“The U.S. government discovered the alleged place during the Cuban missile crisis in the sixties, Nuclear submarines cruising in the Gulf (in deep sea) met pyramid structures. They immediately shut down the site and took control of him and the objects, in order that it will not come to Russians hands.”

The science team of deep ocean experts, archaeologists and oceanographers found ruins of ancient buildings 600 feet below the ocean. They say the city is Atlantis.

Look carefully, in the muky water a giant pyramid is visible [Image: LMF]

Pyramids and sphinxes bigger than Egypt’s

Evidence that the island of Cuba is the vestige of a once mighty culture is supported by Zalitzki’s discovery on the island of extremely ancient symbols and pictograms identical to those seen on the underwater structures.

A second giant pyramid photographed by the ROV [Image: LMF]

Using exploration submersibles, they discovered amazingly huge pyramid structures similar to (but larger than) the pyramids in Giza, Egypt. They estimate the Atlantis pyramids are constructed with stones weighing many hundreds of tons.

Robotic Ocean Vehicle (ROV) being lowered to site [Image: LMF]

Incredibly the ancient city also has magnificent sphinxes and “stones that arranged like Stonehenge, and a written language engraved on the stones,” reports Fernandez.

Crystal Atlantean pyramid also found in the Triangle

Another giant pyramid capped with what looks like a crystal was discovered by divers in the Bermuda Triangle [See: Giant Crystal Pyramid Discovered In Bermuda Triangle]

The gigantic structure, also perhaps larger than the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and initially identified by a doctor in the 1960s, has been independently verified by diving teams from France and the U.S.

A discovery that rewrites world history

Could such a discovery change Mankind’s view of history? Yes, it could change everything.

Fernandez writes, “It has confirmed that the stones were cut, carved and polished to make them fit together and thus form larger structures. On the strange inscriptions, some of them similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics, very little is known, except that they are very abundant and found in almost all parts of the field. They have also appeared symbols and drawings whose meaning is unknown.”

The exploration of Atlantis, called Project Exploramar, is expanding to discover more of the mysteries of the mega-city.

Speaking with a scientist about the possibility that the ruins are indeed Atlantis, Fernandez reports the expert replied:

“…in the Yucatan cultures today is possible that what still remains of the aborigines of those places perhaps the Olmecs or some very primitive civilization of Yucatan, the northern part of Central America—originated according to them on an island that sank by a cataclysm. This island is called Atlanticú.”

That too fits the stories about the sudden demise of the wondrous Atlantis.

Atlanticú. Atlantis. The aboriginal natives still call it that in their history.

Fernandez interviews Pauline Zalitzki about Atlantis [Image: LMF]

During an interview about the exploration of the mega-city, Fernandez asked lead scientist Pauline Zalitzki about the civilaztion that built it.

“When we published the first news of this finding,” she said, “the University of Veracruz was interested in our work and we had recorded images of these structures on the seabed. Specifically, the Institute of Anthropology of the University excavations invited me. They were doing [studies] on parts and ruins of the Olmec civilization.

Sonar images of mega-structures on the seabed [Image: LMF]

“When they saw these submarine images [they] found similarities and parallels with the ruins found in these excavations that the Institute was undertaking.

Another image of an Atlantean mega-structure [Image: LMF]

“The Olmecs and other native peoples all have primary morphology marking the arrival of this continent. This mean coming from the direction of Cuba, and had to occur in a very large earthquake where their land sank. Morphologies indicate that they belong to three families who were saved. One of these families came to the coast of Veracruz, which are supposedly the Olmec. Others came to Central America and traveled to the Pacific coast, and these families created the civilization of the Americas as we know it today, because they distributed all their knowledge.

“When these anthropologists saw underwater images of this city, and saw some stone monoliths, some symbol, and inscriptions, they identified with Olmec motifs. They were very surprised.”

The Olmecs devolved from the survivors of Atlantis, a much superior culture destroyed aft the end of the Ice Age flooding. The world was reshaped and a super-civilization destroyed, remembered for millennia only in legend and a passing refernce by the philosopher Plato.

But Atlantis was real, is real: scientists Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki have found it.

Terrence Aym

Some Nazca Lines are a Labyrinth, New Study Shows

Posted: December 10, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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A five-year study by British archaeologists sheds new light on the enigmatic drawings created by the Nazca people between 100 BC and CE 700 in the Peruvian desert.

This aerial view shows the southern part of the Nazca labyrinth, including the central mound and the spiral that marks the outer end (Clive Ruggles)

The Nazca Lines are located in the arid Peruvian coastal plain some 250 miles south of Lima. They have attracted a host of theories purporting to explain them ever since they were discovered during the 1920s – notably the bizarre ideas of Erich Von Daniken who supposed they were made by visiting extra-terrestrials.

British archaeologists Dr Nicholas Saunders of the University of Bristol and Prof Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester combined the experience and knowledge gained by walking the lines (they walked more than 900 miles of desert in southern Peru, tracing the lines and geometric figures), studying the layers of superimposed designs, photographing the associated pottery and using satellite digital mapping into the most detailed such study to date. The results have been published in the journal Antiquity.

In the midst of the study area is a unique labyrinth originally discovered by Prof Ruggles when he spent a few days on the Nazca desert back in 1984. Its existence came as a complete surprise.

“When I set out along the labyrinth from its center, I didn’t have the slightest idea of its true nature,” Prof Ruggles explained. “Only gradually did I realize that here was a figure set out on a huge scale and still traceable, that it was clearly intended for walking, and that I was almost certainly the first person to have recognized it for what it was, and walked it from end to end, for some 1500 years. Factors beyond my control brought the 1984 expedition to an abrupt halt and it was only 20 years later that I eventually had the opportunity to return to Nazca, relocate the figure and study it fully.”

Invisible in its entirety to the naked eye, the only way of knowing its existence is to walk its 2.7 miles (4.4 km) length through disorienting direction changes which ended, or began, inside a spiral formation.

“The labyrinth is completely hidden in the landscape, which is flat and virtually featureless. As you walk it, only the path stretching ahead of you is visible at any given point. Similarly, if you map it from the air its form makes no sense at all.”

“But if you walk it, discovering it as you go, you have a set of experiences that in many respects would have been the same for anyone walking it in the past. The ancient Nazca peoples created the geoglyphs, and used them, by walking on the ground. Sharing some of those experiences by walking the lines ourselves is an important source of information that complements the hard scientific and archaeological evidence and can really aid our attempts to make anthropological sense of it.”

The arid conditions have ensured the remarkable preservation of Nazca’s fragile geoglyphs for a millennium and a half. Nonetheless, segments of nearly all of the lines and figures – including the labyrinth – have been washed away by flash floods that occurred from time to time in the past. And, of course, people through the ages have walked across the desert plateau to cross from one valley to another.

The archaeologists have studied the integrity of many lines and figures within the study area.

“Meandering and well-worn trans-desert pathways served functional purposes but they are quite different from the arrow-straight lines and geometric shapes which seem more likely to have had a spiritual and ritual purpose. It may be, we suggest, that the real importance of some of these desert drawings was in their creation rather than any subsequent physical use,” Dr Saunders said.

This ground shot is taken along the innermost pathway of the labyrinth directly towards the central mound. This line widens out towards its terminus, creating a false perspective that makes it appear parallel as it stretches away into the distance (Clive Ruggles)

Certainly, the pristine state and well-preserved edges of the labyrinth suggest that it was never walked by more than a few people in single file. In fact, the survival of many geoglyphs seems remarkable given the proximity of the area to the pilgrimage center of Cahuachi, in the nearby Nazca valley, and the fact that people carried on walking across the pampa during the ensuing centuries right up to modern times.

Even if the labyrinth was not unique when it was built, it may well be the only such construction whose integrity has been preserved to the extent that it still can be recognized in today’s landscape.

“Excavations commonly uncover objects undisturbed for centuries and even millennia. But it is hard to conceive many places on the planet were you could still discover a human construction that has lain hidden on the surface of the ground for as long as 1500 years, simply by walking along it and seeing where your feet take you,” Prof Ruggles said.

_______

Bibliographic information: Clive Ruggles and Nicholas J. Saunders. 2012. Desert labyrinth: lines, landscape and meaning at Nazca, Peru. Antiquity, vol. 86, no. 334, pp. 1126–1140

Published: Dec 10th, 2012

 

Fit for a King: Largest Egyptian Sarcophagus Identified

Posted: December 9, 2012 by phaedrap1 in Monuments, News
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sarcophagus of ancient egyptian pharaoh
The mummy of Merneptah was encased in a series of four sarcophagi, set one within the other. After his tomb was robbed, more than 3,000 years ago, he was reburied elsewhere and his two outer sarcophagi boxes were broken up.
CREDIT: General Antiquites Egyptiennes du Musee du Caire: The Royal Mummies Le Caire, 1912, public domain

The largest ancient Egyptian sarcophagus has been identified in a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, say archaeologists who are re-assembling the giant box that was reduced to fragments more than 3,000 years ago.

Made of red granite, the royal sarcophagus was built for Merneptah, an Egyptian pharaoh who lived more than 3,200 years ago. A warrior king, he defeated the Libyans and a group called the “Sea Peoples” in a great battle.

He also waged a campaign in the Levant attacking, among others, a group he called “Israel” (the first mention of the people). When he died, his mummy was enclosed in a series of four stone sarcophagi, one nestled within the other.

Archaeologists are re-assembling the outermost of these nested sarcophagi, its size dwarfing the researchers working on it. It is more than 13 feet (4 meters) long, 7 feet (2.3 m) wide and towers more than 8 feet (2.5 m) above the ground. It was originally quite colorful and has a lid that is still intact. [See Photos of Pharaoh’s Sarcophagus]

sarcophagus of ancient egyptian pharaoh
The lid of the second sarcophagus bearing an image of Merneptah. This would have been completely enclosed by the outer sarcophagus box and lid.
CREDIT: Photo courtesy Wikimedia

“This as far as I know is about the largest of any of the royal sarcophagi,” said project director Edwin Brock, a research associate at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, in an interview with LiveScience.

Brock explained the four sarcophagi would probably have been brought inside the tomb already nested together, with the king’s mummy inside.

Holes in the entrance shaft to the tomb indicate a pulley system of sorts, with ropes and wooden beams, used to bring the sarcophagi in. When the workers got to the burial chamber they found they couldn’t get the sarcophagi box through the door. Ultimately, they had to destroy the chamber’s door jams and build new ones.

“I always like to wonder about the conversation that might have taken place between the tomb builders and the people from the quarry,” said Brock in a presentation he gave recently at an Egyptology symposium in Toronto. “This study has shown a lot of interesting little human aspects about ancient Egypt [that] perhaps makes them look less godlike.”

sarcophagus of ancient egyptian pharaoh
Archaeologist Lyla Pinch Brock at work reconstructing a giant outer sarcophagus box belonging to Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah.
CREDIT: Photo courtesy Edwin Brock

When he first examined fragments from Merneptah’s tomb in the 1980s, they were “piled up in no particular order” in a side chamber. Even when put together, the fragments made up just one-third of the box, meaning researchers had to reconstruct the rest.

Brock’s efforts got a boost with the launch of a full reconstruction project (affiliated with the Royal Ontario Museum) that started in March 2011.  (Merneptah’s tomb has been recently re-opened to the public.)

The four sarcophagi

Not only was the pharaoh’s outer sarcophagus huge but the fact that he used four of them, made of stone, is unusual. “Merneptah’s unique in having been provided with four stone sarcophagi to enclose his mummified coffined remains,” said Brock in his presentation. [The 10 Weirdest Ways We Deal With the Dead]

Within the outer sarcophagus was a second granite sarcophagus box with a cartouche-shaped oval lid that depicts Merneptah. Within that was a third sarcophagus that was taken out and reused in antiquity by another ruler named Psusennes I. Within this was a fourth sarcophagus, made of travertine (a form of limestone), that originally held the mummy of Merneptah.

Only a few fragments of this last box survive today; the mummy itself was reburied in antiquity after the tomb was robbed more than 3,000 years ago. It was after this robbery that the outer sarcophagus box, and the second box within it, were broken apart (the lids for both boxes being kept intact). They were destroyed not only for their parts but also to help get at the third box (that was reused by Psusennes).

Fire was used in breaking apart the outer sarcophagus box.

“Scorch marks, spalling [splinters] and circular cracking on various locations of the interior and exterior of the box attest to the use of fire to heat parts of the box, followed by rapid cooling with water to weaken the granite,” writes Brock in his symposium abstract, adding that dolerite hammer stones also appear to have been used.

Why so big?

Why Merneptah built himself such a giant sarcophagus is unknown. Other pharaohs used multiple sarcophagi, although none, it appears, with an outer box as big as this.

Brock points out that Merneptah’s father, Ramesses II, and grandfather, Seti I, both great builders, were apparently each buried in one travertine sarcophagus.

The decorations on Merneptah’s different sarcophagi offer a clue as to why he built four of them. They contain illustrations “from two compositions that describe the sun god’s journey at night, one is called the ‘Book of Gates’ and one is called the ‘Amduat,'” Brock said. These books are divided into 12 sections, or “hours.”

sarcophagus of ancient egyptian pharaoh
This scene depicts hour five of the “Amduat,” a book that also chronicles the sun god’s journey at night. In this section he passes through the cavern of a god named Sokar. When re-assembling the box archaeologists had to temporarily leave an opening that allowed them to work on the interior.
CREDIT: Photo courtesy Edwin Brock

He notes that the same hours tend to be repeated on the box and lids of Merneptah’s sarcophagi. One motif the king appears particularly fond of is the opening scenes of the “Book of Gates,” including one depicting a realm that exists before the sun god enters the netherworld, according to Egyptologist Erik Hornung’s book “The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife” (Cornell University Press, 1999, translation from German). “Upon his entry into the realm of the dead, the sun god is greeted not by individual deities but by the collective of the dead, who are designated the ‘gods of the west’ and located in the western mountain range,” Hornung writes.

For the king repeating scenes like this over and over may have been important, it’s “as though they’re trying to enclose the [king’s] body with these magical shells that have power of resurrection,” Brock said.

The research was presented at a Toronto symposium that ran from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2 and was organized by the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and the Royal Ontario Museum’s Friends of Ancient Egypt.

LiveScience

Owen Jarus

 

Archaeologists Discover Shipwrecks, Ancient Harbor On Coast of Israel

Posted: December 5, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2012) — Archaeologists from the University of Rhode Island, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the University of Louisville have discovered the remains of a fleet of early-19th century ships and ancient harbor structures from the Hellenistic period (third to first century B.C.) at the city of Akko, one of the major ancient ports of the eastern Mediterranean. The findings shed light on a period of history that is little known and point to how and where additional remains may be found.

The discoveries were presented on November 15 and 17 in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research by URI assistant professors Bridget Buxton and William Krieger on behalf of the Israel Coast Exploration project.

According to Buxton, three of the four well-preserved shipwrecks found off the coast south of Akko were first detected using a sub-bottom profiler in 2011. Later, storms stripped off several meters of inshore sediments and temporarily revealed the wrecks, as well as an additional large vessel. The wrecks are now reburied.

During the brief time the shipwrecks were exposed, the Israel Antiquities Authority investigated one of them: a 32 meter vessel which still preserved its brass gudgeon (rudder socket) and many small artifacts, such as plates, a candlestick, and even a cooking pot with bones in it. Laboratory analyses completed this summer by the IAA revealed that the ship’s wood came from Turkey. The team believes these ships may have belonged to the Egyptian navy under Admiral Osman Nurredin Bey, whose ships were severely damaged in his attempt to capture Akko in the Egyptian-Ottoman War of 1831. The town eventually fell to Egyptian land forces under Ibrahim Pasha in 1832.

“These ships have occasionally been exposed and buried again by storms since we found them,” Buxton said. “We’re in a race against time to find other ships in the area and learn from them before storms totally dislodge or destroy them.”

Although shipwrecks from the 1800s are not the highest priorities in a region where civilization goes back thousands of years, Buxton is excited by the discovery for what it tells her about where much older ships may be found.

“Like many underwater archaeologists I’m very interested in finding a well-preserved example of an ancient multi-decked warship from the Hellenistic age,” said Buxton. “These ships were incredible pieces of technology, but we don’t know much about their design because no hulls have been found. However, a combination of unusual environmental and historical factors leads us to believe we have a chance of finding the remains of one of these ships off the northern coast of Israel.”

Buxton believes that the ships they are looking for are likely buried in the coastal sediment, which has built up over the centuries through natural processes. However, time is not on their side. “That protective silt is now being stripped away,” she said. “And it’s being stripped away a lot faster than it was originally dumped, by a combination of development, environmental changes, and the effects of the Aswan Dam.” The Nile River has historically deposited large quantities of silt in the area, but the dam has significantly reduced the flow of silt.

The archaeologists found the ships and another early modern vessel within Akko’s modern harbor while testing their equipment in preparation for an ongoing survey out in deeper water. The sub-bottom profiler detects anomalies below the sea floor. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Buxton said. “We found so many targets to explore that we didn’t have time to check all of them, but even just having information about where things are helps Koby (Jacob Sharvit, director of the IAA Maritime Antiquities Unit) know where to look after any big storms.”

One line of buried targets detected off the southern seawall of old Akko is particularly suggestive. Continuing excavations in this area over the summer revealed an alignment between these targets and a newly-discovered slipway and shipshed structure, which continued out under the sea floor 25 meters from the Ottoman city wall. The feature resembles other naval shipsheds found in places such as Athens where they were used to haul up ancient warships. The excavation project was initially undertaken to strengthen the eroding sea wall, but it also revealed Hellenistic masonry, pottery vessels, an ancient mooring stone, and a stone quay 1.3 meters below the modern sea level. The possibility that much more of the Hellenistic port lies well-preserved under the sea floor is exciting for the archaeologists, because it means that shipwrecks from earlier centuries that have so far not been found at Akko may simply be buried deeper down in the sediment.

“We’ve got fragmentary historic records for this area in the Hellenistic period, and now we’ve found a very important feature from the ancient harbor. Ancient shipwrecks are another piece of the puzzle that will help us to rewrite the story of this region at a critical time in Mediterranean history,” she said.

Located on the northern coast of Israel, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Akko is one of the few cities in the Mediterranean with more than 5,000 years of maritime history. Also known as Acre, Ake and Ptolemais, its port was an important waypoint for the Phoenicians, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans and other ancient maritime empires. In the Hellenistic period, it was bitterly fought over by the rival empires of Egypt and Syria.

“Understanding the history and archaeology of Akko’s port is crucial to understanding the broader issues of maritime connectivity and the great power struggles that defined the history of the Eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic Age,” Buxton said.

Mongolia and the Altai Mountains: Origins of Genetic Blending Between Europeans and Asians

Posted: November 16, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News, Science
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A group of researchers led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered the first scientific evidence of genetic blending between Europeans and Asians in the remains of ancient Scythian warriors living over 2,000 years ago in the Altai region of Mongolia. Contrary to what was believed until now, the results published in PLoS ONEindicate that this blending was not due to an eastward migration of Europeans, but to a demographic expansion of local Central Asian populations, thanks to the technological improvements the Scythian culture brought with them.

The Altai is a mountain range in Central Asia occupying territories of Russia and Kazakhstan to the west and of Mongolia and China to the east. Historically, the Central Asian steppes have been a corridor for Asian and European populations, resulting in the region’s large diversity in population today. In ancient times however the Altai Mountains, located in the middle of the steppes, represented an important barrier for the coexistence and mixture of the populations living on each side. And so they lived isolated during millennia: Europeans on the western side and Asians on the eastern side.

The research conducted by researchers from the UAB, the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC) sheds new light on when and how this Eurasian genetic blending took place.

At the UAB palaeogenetic laboratory researchers analysed mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother, it allows us to trace our ancestors) extracted from the bones and teeth of 19 skeletons from the Bronze Age (7th to 10th century BCE) and from the Iron Age (2nd to 7th century BCE) from the Mongolian Altai Mountains. The remains were extracted from the tombs discovered seven years ago, in which the skeletons of Scythian warriors were discovered and which represented the first scientific evidence of this culture in East Asia.

The results obtained demonstrate that the population from the Iron Age, corresponding to the time when the Scythian culture resided in the Altai Mountains, had a perfect blend (50%) of European and Asian mitochondrial DNA lineages or sequences. The discovery is relevant, taking into account that previous populations showed no signs of lineage mixture: the DNA analysed in the tombs located in Russia and Kazakhstan belong to European lineages, whereas DNA from the eastern part, in Mongolia, contain Asian lineages.

“The results provide exceptionally valuable information about how and when the population diversity found today in Central Asian steppes appeared. They point to the possibility that this occurred in Altai over 2,000 years ago between the local population on both sides of the mountain range, coinciding with the expansion of the Scythian culture, which came from the west,” explains Assumpció Malgosa, professor of Biological Anthropology at UAB and coordinator of the research.

Studies conducted until now on ancient DNA samples from the Altai region already indicated that the Scythians were the first large population to be a mixture between Europeans and Asians. However, the only populations to be studied were those on the western part of the Eurasian steppes, suggesting that this mixture was due to population migrations from Europe to the east.

The current research is the first to offer scientific evidence of this population mixture on the eastern side of the Altai and indicates that the contact between European and Asian lineages occurred before the Iron Age when populations were present on both sides of the mountain. The study suggests that the Asian population adopted the Scythian culture, technologically and socially more advanced, and this made them improve demographically by favouring their expansion and contact with Europeans.

The idea poses a new hypothesis on the origin of today’s population diversity in Central Asia and allows for a better understanding of the demographic processes which took place.

Frozen Scythian Warrior Tombs

From 2005 to 2007, UAB researchers worked jointly with French and Mongolian researchers in a European project to excavate Scythian tombs in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains. In the three excavation campaigns carried out over twenty tombs were excavated. Many of them were frozen and contained mummified human remains of warriors buried with their possessions and horses. This was the first time Scythian warrior tombs had been discovered in Mongolia, since all other tombs previously found had been located on the western side of Altai.

The Scythians were an Indo-European people dedicated to nomadic pasturing and horse breeding. They crossed the Eurasian steppes from the Caspian Sea until reaching the Altai Mountains during the 2nd and 7th century BCE. The Scythians are known most of all thanks to ancient texts written by the Greek historian Herodotus.

Science Daily, November 12, 2012

Egyptian princess’s tomb found near Cairo

Posted: November 3, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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CAIRO (AP) — Czech archaeologists have unearthed the 4,500-year-old tomb of a Pharaonic princess south of Cairo, in a finding that suggests other undiscovered tombs may be in the area, an official from Egypt’s antiquities ministry said Saturday.

Mohammed El-Bialy, who heads the Egyptian and Greco-Roman Antiquities department at the Antiquities Ministry, said that Princess Shert Nebti’s burial site is surrounded by the tombs of four high officials from the Fifth Dynasty dating to around 2,500 BC in the Abu Sir complex near the famed step pyramid of Saqqara.

“Discoveries are ongoing” at Abu Sir, El-Bialy said, adding that the excavation was in a “very early stage” and that the site was closed to the public.

Inscriptions on the four limestone pillars of the Princess’ tomb indicate that she is the daughter of King Men Salbo.

“She is the daughter of the king, but only her tomb is there, surrounded by the four officials, so the question is, are we going to discover other tombs around hers in the near future? We don’t know anything about her father, the king, or her mother, but hope that future discoveries will answer these questions,” El-Bialy said.

On Friday, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said that the antechamber to the princess’ tomb includes four limestone columns and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The current excavation has also unearthed an antechamber containing the sarcophagi of the four officials and statues of men, women, and a child, he said in a statement.

The Czech team’s discovery marks the “start of a new chapter” in the history of the burial sites of Abu Sir and Saqqara, Ibrahim added.

The archaeologists working at the site are from the Czech Institute of Egyptology, which is funded by the Charles University of Prague. Their excavation began this month.

The discovery comes weeks after the Egyptian government reopened a pyramid and a complex of tombs that had been closed for restoration work for a decade.

Egypt’s vital tourism industry has suffered from the country’s internal unrest in the wake of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak. A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is currently in Egypt for negotiations over a $4.8 billion loan aimed at bolstering the country’s ailing economy.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Saxon find in Lyminge has historians partying like it’s 599

Posted: October 31, 2012 by phaedrap1 in News
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Remains of great hall, the first unearthed in 30 years, dug up on Kent village green

 

The foundations of a spectacular Anglo-Saxon feasting hall, a place where a king and his warriors would have gathered for days of drinking and eating – as vividly described in the poem Beowulf – have been found inches below the village green of Lyminge in Kent.

There was one last celebration by the light of flickering flames at the site, 1,300 years after the hall was abandoned, as archaeologists marked the find by picking out the outline of the hall in candles, lighting up the end-of-excavation party. Heaps of animal bones buried in pits around the edge of the hall bore testimony to many epic parties of the past.

The unexpected find, by a team from the University of Reading funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and working with local archaeologists and villagers, is exceptionally rare. Digging under the curious gaze of drinkers in the garden of the Coach and Horses pub a few metres away, it is the first great hall from the period to be discovered in more than 30 years.

At 21 metres by 8.5 metres, it would have been the most imposing structure for miles, large enough to hold at least 60 people. Beowulf, the most famous of all surviving Anglo-Saxon poems, describes the hero coming to just such a hall, Heorot – “the timbered hall / splendid and ornamented with gold. / The building in which that powerful man held court / Was the foremost of halls under heaven; / Its radiance shone over many lands.”

The director of the Lyminge excavations, Gabor Thomas, said: “This would undoubtedly have been the scene of many Beowulfy type activities, great assemblies for feasts that lasted for days, much drinking and story-telling, rich gifts like arm rings being presented, all of that. There could have been no more visible sign of wealth and status than raising a hall like this.”

The royal family and retinue would have visited sporadically. “This is before centralised tax collecting and coinage, too early for royal palaces as such,” Thomas said. “To keep control you had to keep on the move, stopping at significant places, literally feeding off the land, off the rich food offerings that would be brought everywhere the king arrived.”

Thomas believes the hall marks a crucial transition, the last flicker of the ancient pagan ways before the site was abandoned, after the hall had stood for perhaps no more than a generation.

A rare piece of beautifully decorated and gilded horse harness, broken in antiquity, was found in the foundations. It is the first such find from a domestic setting – similar examples are isolated finds by metal detectors, or from graves – and helps date the hall to the late sixth or early seventh century.

“The horse harness decoration is very significant,” Thomas said. “It’s not just a wonderful find, but evidence of the status of the people who used this site – the ability to own and upkeep a horse was the mark of the warrior aristocracy.”

Other finds include pieces of jewellery, bone combs, and a remarkably well preserved manicure set – three little bronze rods, probably for cleaning fingernails or ears, strung on to a piece of wire. The site also yielded quantities of glass, some evidently scavenged by the Anglo-Saxons from nearby Roman sites and melted down to make glass bead jewellery.

Earlier excavations at various sites in the village, including the graveyard of the village church, which is said to have been founded in AD633 and to be the original burial place of St Ethelburga, uncovered evidence of thousands of years of habitation. The village is only a few miles from the Eurotunnel terminal, but is still surrounded by rich farmland, and remarkably isolated in a tangle of narrow country roads, hills and valleys.

Last summer, when the archaeologists moved on to the village green, which has been open land for almost 1,000 years, ground-penetrating radar suggested some structures lay beneath – but there was no hint of anything as significant as the hall.

The timbers are long gone, either rotted away or removed for reuse, but the outline of the huge building was clearly traced by post holes and the slots for planks laid horizontally to form the walls. It had a partitioned space at one end, either a sleeping place or a private chamber for the most aristocratic.

There is evidence that the building was at least damaged, if not destroyed, by fire – a common fate for timber buildings centred around open hearths – but Gabor believes the hall was deliberately abandoned as the tribe, as with the other Anglo-Saxons in Kent, turned to Christianity. The settlement was soon abandoned, too, and a new village grew higher on the hill around the new church – another lofty building, grander than any of its neighbours, which Thomas believes took on the role of the old pagan hall as the place for gatherings and celebrations. The archaeologists will return to Lyminge next summer. “There’s more of this story,” Thomas said.

Maev Kennedy

guardian.co.uk,

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