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Archaeology

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AndyinPA
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Re: Archaeology

#76

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... -humanmade
When a series of deep pits were discovered near the world heritage site of Stonehenge last year, archaeologists excitedly described it as the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain – only for some colleagues to dismiss the pits as mere natural features.

Now scientific tests have proved that those gaping pits, each aligned to form a circle spanning 1.2 miles (2km) in diameter, were definitely human-made, dug into the sacred landscape almost 4,500 years ago.

The structure appears to have been a boundary guiding people to a sacred area, because Durrington Walls, one of Britain’s largest henge monuments, is located precisely at its centre. The site is 1.9 miles north-east of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, near Amesbury in Wiltshire.
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Re: Archaeology

#77

Post by Uninformed »

“Roman mosaic and villa complex found in Rutland farmer's field”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-59391650

“The mosaic, which forms the floor of what was thought to be a dining or entertaining area of the villa, measures 11m x 7m (36ft x 23ft).
Mosaics were regularly used in private and public buildings across the Roman Empire, and often featured famous figures from mythology.
However, the Rutland mosaic is thought to be unique in the UK as it features Achilles and his battle with Hector at the conclusion of the Trojan War.”
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Re: Archaeology

#78

Post by RTH10260 »

Denisovans: 200,000 Year Old Human Fossils Unearthed in SIberia
Ron Jefferson Nov 30, 2021 02:10 AM EST

Scientists have recently unearthed the oldest fossils of a mysterious human lineage known only as of the Denisovans. Dating to 200,000 years ago, these bones were found together with stone artifacts that link to the extinct modern human relative.

Neanderthals, one of the last humans before modern humans, were once widespread across Western Asia and Europe for a long time, from 400,000 years ago. According to the Smithsonian, things changed when Homo sapiens, the earliest members of our species, migrated 45,000 years ago from Africa to Europe. 5,000 years later, Neanderthals went extinct.

Although it's difficult to say why neanderthals vanished from the face of the Earth, scientists hypothesized that although Neanderthals were specialized to hunt, during the Ice Age, the animals themselves disappeared, making the neanderthals vulnerable to starvation.

Likewise, homo sapiens had a competitive edge over neanderthals due to their long-distance trade network that safely guarded them during climate change when preferred food was not available. Additionally, homo sapiens had technologies that aided them in hunting and adjusting to the many changes that occurred during the era that neanderthals did not.

Denisovans were identified for the first time only a decade ago. The extinct branch of humans is the closest known relatives of modern humans at par with Neanderthals. Analysis of the DNA extracted from the recent Denisovan fossil discovery suggests that the species may have once been widespread across Asia, the islands of Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Additionally, the team discovered that at least two distinct groups of the Denisovans have interbred with ancestors of modern humans, reports ScienceAlert.

Up until recently, scientists were only able to uncover half a dozen Denisovan fossils-5 in the Denisova Cave, Siberia, while 1 in a holy site in China.

Today researchers have discovered yet another 3 Denisova fossils from the same Denisova cave in Siberia. In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, titled "The earliest Denisovans and their cultural adaptation," scientists estimate that the recently uncovered bones date back to 200,000 years ago, making it the oldest Denisovans ever found. Prior to this, it was believed that the earliest Denisovans were roughly 122,000-194,000 years old.

Researchers examined more than 3,700 bone scraps recovered from the Denisova Cave. The team searched for proteins that are specific to Denisovans based on prior DNA research on the extinct lineage.

The stone tools unearthed along with the fossils have no direct counterparts in Central and North Asia. However, the tools bear resemblances with items found in Israel dated to between 250,000-400,000 years ago, a period notoriously known for the major shifts in human technology like routine use of fire.


https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/3 ... iberia.htm
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Re: Archaeology

#79

Post by Foggy »

Forefathers of Ivan Denisovich, I reckon. :smoking:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Archaeology

#80

Post by Foggy »

The stone tools unearthed along with the fossils have no direct counterparts in Central and North Asia.
Probably thumb drives, Bluetooth ear buds, iPhone 17s, and like that. :idea:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Archaeology

#81

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Foggy wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:58 pm
The stone tools unearthed along with the fossils have no direct counterparts in Central and North Asia.
Probably thumb drives, Bluetooth ear buds, iPhone 17s, and like that. :idea:
Pay attention! They were very primitive: they had phonographs with wax cylinders, gas lighting and paper tape readers on their teletypes.
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Re: Archaeology

#82

Post by johnpcapitalist »

Sam the Centipede wrote: Thu Dec 02, 2021 5:39 pm
Foggy wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:58 pm
The stone tools unearthed along with the fossils have no direct counterparts in Central and North Asia.
Probably thumb drives, Bluetooth ear buds, iPhone 17s, and like that. :idea:
Pay attention! They were very primitive: they had phonographs with wax cylinders, gas lighting and paper tape readers on their teletypes.
By way of contrast, advanced civilizations used teletype machine tape made of Tyvek instead of paper, because it didn't wear through and break as quickly at the folds where you folded it up for easy carrying.
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Re: Archaeology

#83

Post by Maybenaut »

5-level or 8-level baudot code?
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Re: Archaeology

#84

Post by RTH10260 »

English Teenager Finds Bronze Age Ax Using a Metal Detector
On her third day out with a metal detector, Milly Hardwick, 13, found a hoard of items from more than 3,000 years ago. “We were just laughing our heads off,” she said.

By Jenny Gross
Dec. 3, 2021

LONDON — In the United States, when metal detectors hit it big, it’s usually by finding familiar riches: lost engagement rings, expensive jewelry or coins of untold value. In Britain, the biggest successes often involve discoveries of treasures from ancient eras — like the 3,000-year-old ax that a teenager unearthed in eastern England in September.

The 13-year-old, Milly Hardwick, said that she, her father and her grandfather had been out in a field with metal detectors for several hours on a Sunday in Royston, England, and had not found a single item. Then, just after a lunch of sandwiches and cookies, they tried a different part of the field, where an organized dig was taking place. After about 20 minutes of searching, Milly said she heard the high-pitched beeping noise — “a lovely-sounding signal” — that indicates a possible find.

Her father rushed over and started digging. About 10 minutes later, he pulled out an item that resembled part of an ax, he said.




https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/worl ... r-axe.html
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Re: Archaeology

#85

Post by Foggy »

Off Topic
Here in Rawly we have a new place, Epic Axe, where you can drink beer and throw sharpened weapons around. I kid you not.

https://epic-axe.com/

:boxing:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Archaeology

#86

Post by PaulG »

RTH10260 wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 8:10 am
English Teenager Finds Bronze Age Ax Using a Metal Detector
On her third day out with a metal detector, Milly Hardwick, 13, found a hoard of items from more than 3,000 years ago. “We were just laughing our heads off,” she said.

:snippity:
they tried a different part of the field, where an organized dig was taking place. After about 20 minutes of searching, Milly said she heard the high-pitched beeping noise — “a lovely-sounding signal” — that indicates a possible find.

Her father rushed over and started digging. About 10 minutes later, he pulled out an item that resembled part of an ax, he said.




https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/worl ... r-axe.html
What does "where an organized dig was taking place"? Somebody was doing an excavation for research and they rushed over and started digging?

ETA Looking at Smithsonian mag they got 20 pieces out then archeologists excavated the site the next day. 65 pieces all told.
Hardwick and her father turned the find over to the local coroner’s office, which is responsible for determining if it qualifies as treasure. Next, reports BBC News, the cache will head to the British Museum, which manages archaeological finds made by the English public through its Portable Antiquities Scheme. In accordance with the United Kingdom’s 1996 Treasure Act, a museum may decide to the purchase the artifacts after they’ve been assessed and valued. If offered any money for the hoard, the young metal detectorist plans to split the proceeds with the field’s owner.
I assume the coroner notified the local archeologists who performed the "organized dig" after.
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Re: Archaeology

#87

Post by Atticus Finch »

Foggy wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 6:56 pm Forefathers of Ivan Denisovich, I reckon. :smoking:
You mean Denisovich the Menace, comrade? :hammerandsickle:
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Re: Archaeology

#88

Post by Kriselda Gray »

Off Topic
Foggy wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 2:11 pm Here in Rawly we have a new place, Epic Axe, where you can drink beer and throw sharpened weapons around. I kid you not.

https://epic-axe.com/

:boxing:
Sounds like the perfect Heathen hangout! LOL :)
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Re: Archaeology

#89

Post by Volkonski »

Discovered these on YouTube about a week ago. There are dozens of them. Very interesting if you are interested in the history of the British Isles. They do digs looking for remains from the Bronze Age all the way to the late medieval period.

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Re: Archaeology

#90

Post by AndyinPA »

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... stolen-art
An American hedge-fund billionaire has surrendered 180 looted and illegally smuggled antiquities valued at $70m and been handed an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring other relics as part of an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Michael Steinhardt, one of the world’s largest collectors of ancient art, “displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artefacts”, the district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said on Monday.

The lifetime ban marks the dramatic culmination of an international investigation that began officially in 2017.

The DA’s office said its inquiry found “compelling evidence” that the antiquities were stolen from 11 countries, and that at least 171 passed through traffickers before being bought by Steinhardt.
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Re: Archaeology

#91

Post by RTH10260 »

An Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculation Machine Reveals New Secrets
Scientists have a new understanding of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism that challenges assumptions about ancient technology

January 1, 2022
AUTHOR
Tony Freeth is a member of the University College London Anti-kythera Research Team. A mathematician and an award-winning filmmaker, Freeth has conducted research on the Antikythera mechanism and promoted it through films and presentations since 2000. Credit: Nick Higgins

In 1900 diver Elias Stadiatis, clad in a copper and brass helmet and a heavy canvas suit, emerged from the sea shaking in fear and mumbling about a “heap of dead naked people.” He was among a group of Greek divers from the Eastern Mediterranean island of Symi who were searching for natural sponges. They had sheltered from a violent storm near the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and mainland Greece. When the storm subsided, they dived for sponges and chanced on a shipwreck full of Greek treasures—the most significant wreck from the ancient world to have been found up to that point. The “dead naked people” were marble sculptures scattered on the seafloor, along with many other artifacts. Soon after, their discovery prompted the first major underwater archaeological dig in history.

One object recovered from the site, a lump the size of a large dictionary, initially escaped notice amid more exciting finds. Months later, however, at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, the lump broke apart, revealing bronze precision gearwheels the size of coins. According to historical knowledge at the time, gears like these should not have appeared in ancient Greece, or anywhere else in the world, until many centuries after the shipwreck. The find generated huge controversy.

The lump is known as the Antikythera mechanism, an extraordinary object that has befuddled historians and scientists for more than 120 years. Over the decades the original mass split into 82 fragments, leaving a fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzle for researchers to put back together. The device appears to be a geared astronomical calculation machine of immense complexity. Today we have a reasonable grasp of some of its workings, but there are still unsolved mysteries. We know it is at least as old as the shipwreck it was found in, which has been dated to between 60 and 70 B.C.E., but other evidence suggests it may have been made around 200 B.C.E.

In March 2021 my group at University College London, known as the UCL Antikythera Research Team, published a new analysis of the machine. The team includes me (a mathematician and filmmaker); Adam Wojcik (a materials scientist); Lindsay MacDonald (an imaging scientist); Myrto Georgakopoulou (an archaeometallurgist); and two graduate students, David Higgon (a horologist) and Aris Dacanalis (a physicist). Our paper posits a new explanation for the gearing on the front of the mechanism, where the evidence had previously been unresolved. We now have an even better appreciation for the sophistication of the device—an understanding that challenges many of our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.




https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... w-secrets/
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Re: Archaeology

#92

Post by AndyinPA »

Very cool!
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Re: Archaeology

#93

Post by AndyinPA »

Image

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... oway-hoard
When the Galloway hoard was unearthed from a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it offered the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. But one of the artefacts paled in comparison with treasures such as a gold bird-shaped pin and a silver-gilt vessel because it was within a pouch that was mangled and misshapen after almost 1,000 years in the ground.

Now that pouch has been removed and its contents restored, revealing an extraordinary Roman rock crystal jar wrapped in exquisite layers of gold thread by the finest medieval craftsman in the late eighth or early ninth century.

About 5cm high, it may once have held a perfume or other prized potion used to anoint kings, or in religious ceremonies. It had been carefully wrapped in a silk-lined leather pouch, reflecting its significance.
Gorgeous!
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Re: Archaeology

#94

Post by notorial dissent »

Incredible, absolutely gorgeous. Do wonder what it originally looked like as they think it ws part of a presentation piece.
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Re: Archaeology

#95

Post by MsDaisy »

Large Roman fort built by Caligula discovered near Amsterdam
Fortified camp for thousands of soldiers thought to have been used by Emperor Claudius during conquest of Britain in AD43
A large Roman fort believed to have played a key role in the successful invasion of Britain in AD43 has been discovered on the Dutch coast.

A Roman legion of “several thousand” battle-ready soldiers was stationed in Velsen, 20 miles from Amsterdam, on the banks of the Oer-IJ, a tributary of the Rhine, research suggests.

Dr Arjen Bosman, the archaeologist behind the findings, said the evidence pointed to Velsen, or Flevum in Latin, having been the empire’s most northernly castra (fortress) built to keep a Germanic tribe, known as the Chauci, at bay as the invading Roman forces prepared to cross from Boulogne in France to England’s southern beaches.

The fortified camp appears to have been established by Emperor Caligula (AD12 to AD41) in preparation for his failed attempt to take Britannia in about AD40, but was then successfully developed and exploited by his successor, Claudius, for his own invasion in AD43.

Bosman said: “We know for sure Caligula was in the Netherlands as there are markings on wooden wine barrels with the initials of the emperor burnt in, suggesting that these came from the imperial court.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... -amsterdam
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Re: Archaeology

#96

Post by Volkonski »

:mad: :mad: :mad:



Texoma's Homepage
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Park rangers are looking for the vandals who destroyed ancient petroglyphs, rock etchings or carvings, at Big Bend National Park last month.

Image
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Re: Archaeology

#97

Post by AndyinPA »

:mad:

The first time we went to the National Petrified Forest was in the 70s. We went back about ten years ago, and were shocked at how little is left. :mad:
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Re: Archaeology

#98

Post by RTH10260 »

Row erupts over wreck in US waters identified as Captain Cook’s Endeavour
Rhode Island archaelogists denounce Australian National Maritime Museum announcement as ‘premature’ and driven by ‘Australian emotions or politics’

Tory Shepherd and AAP
Thu 3 Feb 2022 03.31 GMT

A 22-year partnership between US and Australian researchers to identify James Cook’s ship the Endeavour has descended into a row after the Australian Maritime Museum announced the discovery.

The museum’s chief executive, Kevin Sumption, announced on Thursday he was satisfied that a shipwreck in waters off Rhode Island in the US was “the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history”.

But the museum’s US partner organisation, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (Rimap), said the claim the Endeavour had been identified was a breach of contract, and blamed “Australian emotions or politics” for the “premature” announcement.

The museum responded that it was not in breach of any commitments, and that Sumption was “confident” the wreck was the Endeavour.

Cook sailed the ship around the South Pacific before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770. It was scuttled in Newport Harbor by British forces in 1778, during the American War of Independence.

Since 1999 maritime archaeologists have been investigating several 18th-century shipwrecks in the area.



https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... ode-island
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Re: Archaeology

#99

Post by RTH10260 »

A 2,700-Year-Old Figurine Revives a Weighty Mystery
A bronze statuette recovered from a river in Germany may have been part of an early Scandinavian weight system, some archaeologists believe.

By Franz Lidz
Feb. 15, 2022

Two summers ago, while snorkeling in the marshy streams of the Tollense River on Germany’s Baltic coast, a 51-year-old truck driver named Ronald Borgwardt made a startling discovery.

Poking around in the peat, he picked up a six-inch-tall bronze figurine with an egg-shaped head, looped arms, knobby breasts and a nose that would make an anteater envious.

The statuette, sporting a belt and a neck ring, was only the second of its kind unearthed in Germany, though the 13th found near the Baltic Sea. The first turned up around 1840. All are similar in shape and proportion.

“The most recent statuette poses an archaeological riddle,” said Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist and head of research at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage, in Germany. “What was it, how did it get there and what was it used for?”

Remarkably, 24 years earlier, while paddling through the same swamp, Mr. Borgwardt’s father had spied a bunch of bones jutting from a bank. He fetched his son and together they scavenged in the muck. Among their finds were a human arm bone pierced by a flint arrowhead, and a two-and-a-half-foot-long wooden club that resembled a Louisville Slugger.

More exploration of the area yielded the skeletons of a half-dozen horses, scores of military artifacts and the remains of more than 140 individuals, most of them men between the ages of 20 and 40 who showed signs of blunt trauma. Virtually all the relics have been traced to around 1,250 B.C., suggesting that they stemmed from a violent episode that may have played out over a single day.




https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/scie ... trade.html?
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Re: Archaeology

#100

Post by Notaperson »

Lavish Roman mosaic is biggest found in London for 50 years
The largest expanse of Roman mosaic found in London for more than half a century has been unearthed at a site believed to have been a venue for high-ranking officials to lounge in while being served food and drink.

Dating from the late second century to the early third century, the mosaic’s flowers and geometric patterns were a thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime find, said Antonietta Lerz, of the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ur9PxWBsmY

Check out the pics at the link. An amazing find.
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