Archaeological News - General

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4,000-year-old Egyptian Statue in UK Museum Moves on its Own

24 June 2013

"An ancient Egyptian statue has left staff at Manchester Museum puzzled after it started slowly rotating inside its glass case. The 10ins (25cm) high stone statue, which dates back to 1,800 BC and was donated to the museum by a private collector in 1933, has been caught moving on time lapse video."

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http://youtu.be/AbXEHu27qUI

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Ancient Technology for Metal Coatings 2,000 Years Ago Can't Be Matched Even Today

"July 24, 2013 — Artists and craftsmen more than 2,000 years ago developed thin-film coating technology unrivaled even by today's standards for producing DVDs, solar cells, electronic devices and other products. Understanding these sophisticated metal-plating techniques from ancient times, described in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research, could help preserve priceless artistic and other treasures from the past.

Gabriel Maria Ingo and colleagues point out that scientists have made good progress in understanding the chemistry of many ancient artistic and other artifacts -- crucial to preserve them for future generations. Big gaps in knowledge remained, however, about how gilders in the Dark Ages and other periods applied such lustrous, impressively uniform films of gold or silver to intricate objects. Ingo's team set out to apply the newest analytical techniques to uncover the ancients' artistic secrets."

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Archaeologists Excavate Ancient Roman Capital in Macedonia

Thu, Jul 25, 2013

"Although the ancient site known as Stobi in central Macedonia has been the subject of numerous excavations and research over the past century, only 15- 20 percent of its remains have been uncovered. Since 2008, however, renewed excavations under the auspices of the Balkan Heritage Foundation have been busy opening a new window on an ancient Roman city that, for a time, was a major center of trade and commerce.

Now, a team of archaeologists, students and volunteers will be returning to the site in August of 2013 to continue unearthing the northern residential section of the city, near a center that has already yielded such remains as a large theater, a city wall, a forum, a synagogue, a baptistry and a water supply system. During recent excavation seasons archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a necropolis (in use from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD) and an ancient temple dated to the 2nd and 3rd centuries  AD.  Write the project directors about their plans: "The excavations in 2011 and 2012 were focused on the Northern Residential Area of Ancient Stobi, inhabited from the Late Hellenistic till the Late Roman period. Further excavations at the same area are planned for next season in conjunction with the efforts of the National Institute (NI) Stobi in order to preserve and display this part of the site. The layers to be studied in 2013 mainly include the Roman and Late Roman periods of the existing ancient neighborhood."*"

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* www.bhfieldschool.org

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A Toast to Our Fermented Past: Case Studies in the Experimental Archaeology of Alcoholic Beverages

Posted on July 16, 2013 by jennfitz

By: Kevin M. Cullen

"Archaeologists and historians are constantly in pursuit of the tangible human past, whether it is in the form of material culture or primary written sources. This direct evidence of the past can still leave us disconnected from the full context in which the technology or writings were employed. Therefore, one exciting field of research is experimental archaeology, in which the past literally comes alive though the step-by-step recreation process of an ancient technology, method, or even recipe. Thus, in an effort to make that intangible past more meaningful for the general public, in 2008 I began a brewing series in Milwaukee called Ale Through The Ages at Discovery World a nonprofit cultural institution located on the shores of Lake Michigan. Relying on published data of ancient fermented beverages (Patrick McGovern, Delwan Samuel, Jeremy Geller, etc.), independent research, and the methods of experimental archaeology, to date we have recreated over thirty ancient and traditional fermented beverages from around the world. More than a thousand people have attended these brewing programs, where participants are treated to a geographical, archaeological, botanical, chemical, and cultural overview of the recipe being recreated. People then add the necessary ingredients to the brew at designated times and return two or so weeks later for bottling and sampling."

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Ancient Artefact Gets a Good Bake

18 hours ago

"An information technology academic's love of ancient languages and cultures has resulted in the preservation of a 4000 year-old artefact.

Dr Larry Stillman, from the Caulfield School of Information Technology at Monash University, usually spends his time researching the social effects of IT in community organisations.
His passion and original training however, is for the languages and cultures of ancient Mesopotamia which he studied for many years in Jerusalem and at Harvard University.

Through his work in this area, Dr Stillman has come to own a tablet written in the ancient Sumerian language in cuneiform, a wedge shaped writing that was done with a stylus on soft clay."

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Excavating One of the Nazis' First Concentration Camps

A nearly forgotten camp, built right after Hitler took power, served as a place to develop new torture methods and train people who later ran camps all around Europe.

MICHAEL SCATURROAUG 21 2013, 9:11 AM ET

"BERLIN - Berlin's Tempelhof airport is remembered today as the site of the Air Lift, the effort by Britain and the United States to fly in food and supplies to West Berlin during a year-long Soviet blockade starting in 1948. But a decade earlier, it was the site of unspeakable atrocities at one of the Nazis' earliest concentration camps -- and a husband-and-wife archeologist team has begun an excavation at the site to shed light on its troubled past.

Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck began their dig at the Columbia Concentration Camp earlier this year. Though most of their previous work had brought them to the Middle East and Turkey, they decided to explore the Tempelhof site two years ago after taking up professorships at Berlin's Free University.

"We learned about this 'history' that Tempelhof had at a conference," Pollock told me. "The consensus was that excavations should be done some time soon, since a lot of development of the site is planned over the coming decade."

The Nazis created Columbia in 1933 from what had been a military jail. The site came to house political prisoners and forced laborers for the airline Lufthansa and plane builder Weserflug -- one of the companies that eventually became European aerospace giant EADS"

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ONE MUMMY – MANY COFFINS

Article created on Friday, August 23, 2013

"Boxes and other forms of containers are technologies that arise at given points of time in various cultures. Everybody knows the ancient Egyptian practice of mummifying their dead. What is perhaps less known is that they placed the mummies inside layer upon layer of coffins says Anders Bettum, Egyptologist at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo.

A similar idea can be found with Russian dolls, Chinese boxes and even Norwegian poetry traditions.

“The Egyptian coffin sets are based on the same principle that we can observe with Chinese boxes and Russian nested matryoshka dolls, where objects are nested inside each other to constitute a complete ensemble,” he says.

Ancient Egyptian history encompasses a period of nearly three thousand years, up to the Roman conquest in the year 30 BCE. Today, museums all over the world possess mummies or coffins that have contained mummies of more or less prominent men and women.

The child king Tutankhamun (1334-24 BCE) was buried in as many as eight coffins, according to Bettum.

“For men and women who were members of the ancient Egyptian elite at that time, three or four coffins were not unusual,” he adds."

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This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers

Researchers have finally found out why the jade-green cup appears red when lit from behind

By Zeeya Merali

Smithsonian magazine, September 2013

"The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a super­sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints.

The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind—a property that puzzled scientists for decades after the museum acquired the cup in the 1950s. The mystery wasn’t solved until 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers: They’d impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt. The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what they were doing—“an amazing feat,” says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of University College London."

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GENETIC LINK SHOWN BETWEEN INDIAN SUBCONTINENT AND MESOPOTAMIA

Article created on Thursday, September 26, 2013

"The continuing debate regarding the origins of people inhabiting ancient Mesopotamia during the region’s long history led the authors of a new report published in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE to attempt an isolation and analysis of mtDNA sequences from the area.

Origins of populations

Ancient DNA methodology was applied to analyse sequences extracted from freshly unearthed remains (teeth) of 4 individuals deeply deposited in the slightly alkaline soil of  Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa) and Tell Masaikh (ancient Kar-Assurnasirpal) – Syrian archaeological sites, both in the middle Euphrates valley.

Research was also carried out by another team (Sołtysiak et al 2013) examining fifty-nine dental non-metric traits on a sample of teeth from 350 human skeletons excavated at three sites in the lower middle Euphrates valley. This showed a stable population until after the Mongolian invasion which resulted in a large depopulation of northern Mesopotamia in the 13th century CE. The final major change occurred during the 17th century with Bedouin tribes arriving from the Arabian Peninsula."

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New Information is Discovered About the Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews

13 hours ago

"Professor Martin Richards, of the Archaeogenetics Research Group at the University of Huddersfield, has published a paper uncovering new information about how Ashkenazi Jewish men moved into Europe from the Middle East, and their marriage practices with European women.

The origins of Ashkenazi Jews – that is, Jews with recent ancestry in central and Eastern Europe – is a long-standing controversy. It is usually assumed that their ancestors migrated into Europe from Palestine in the first century AD, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, with some intermarriage with Europeans later on. But some have argued that they have a mainly European ancestry, and arose by conversion to Judaism of indigenous Europeans, especially in Italy. Others have even argued that they were largely assimilated in the North Caucasus during the time of the Khazar Empire, whose rulers turned to Judaism around of the tenth century AD."

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Restored Roman Catacomb Frescoes Add to Debate on Women Priests

By PHILIP PULLELLA, Reuters

November 20, 2013 7:48pm

ROME - "Proponents of a female priesthood say frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla prove there were women priests in early Christianity. The Vatican says such assertions are sensationalist "fairy tales."

The catacombs, on Rome's Via Salaria, have been fully reopened after a five-year project that included laser technology to clean some of the ancient frescoes and a new museum to house restored marble fragments of sarcophagi.

Art lovers and the curious around the world who cannot get to Rome can join the debate by using a virtual visit to the underground labyrinth by Google Maps, a first-time venture mixing antiquity and modern high technology.

Built as Christian burial sites between the second and fifth centuries and meandering underground for 13 km (8 miles) over several levels, the Catacombs of Priscilla contain frescoes of women that have provoked academic debate for many years.

One, in a room called the "Cubiculum of the Veiled Woman," shows a woman whose arms are outstretched like those of a priest saying Mass. She wears what the catacombs' Italian website calls "a rich liturgical garment." The word "liturgical" does not appear in the English version."

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Also @ BBC News

20 November 2013 Last updated at 18:23 GMT

Rome Ancient Frescoes Reignite Debate Over Women Priests

"The re-opening of a labyrinth of catacombs in Rome has reignited a debate over women priests in early Christianity.

Women's groups say frescoes on the walls at the Catacombs of Priscilla are evidence that women occupied the role of priests in ancient times.

A major clean-up operation which that five years has revealed the images in greater clarity.

But the Vatican has dismissed them as pure "fable, a legend."

The catacombs - discovered in the 16th Century - are famous for housing the oldest known image of the Madonna and Child dating from around 230-240 AD.

They were originally built as Christian burial sites between the Second and Fifth Centuries and stretch 13km (8 miles) over several levels.

But two rooms in particular have been a source of lively debate for years."

 

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ANCIENT GLASS ILLUMINATES ANCIENT SOCIETIES

Article created on Wednesday, November 20, 2013

"From small glass vessels and glass jewellery of the ancient world to the later mass production of containers after the invention of glass-blowing and the production of cathedral and church windows, glass objects have been used for a variety of functions for at least 4,500 years.

Today it is an everyday material we take for granted, but now the secrets of how we came to benefit from the many uses of the most unique of substances are revealed in a new book by Professor Julian Henderson from the University of Nottingham.

Versatile composite material

The illustrated Cambridge University Press volume, ‘Ancient Glass’, is the first monograph of this versatile composite material to combine forensic techniques of investigation from both the sciences and the humanities.

The book examines why and how glass came to be invented in the Bronze Age and reveals the ritual, social, economic and political contexts of its development across the world up to the 17th century.

The investigations also include a detailed scientific exploration of the provenances of ancient glass using isotopic evidence for the first production of late Bronze Age glass and its trade in the Mediterranean."

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Inscriptions Everywhere! Magical Medieval Crypt Holds 7 Male Mummies

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | December 17, 2013 12:16pm ET

"A 900-year-old medieval crypt, containing seven naturally mummified bodies and walls covered with inscriptions, has been excavated in a monastery at Old Dongola, the capital of a lost medieval kingdom that flourished in the Nile Valley.

Old Dongola is located in modern-day Sudan, and 900 years ago, it was the capital of Makuria, a Christian kingdom that lived in peace with its Islamic neighbor to the north.

One of the mummies in the crypt (scientists aren't certain which one) is believed to be that of Archbishop Georgios, probably the most powerful religious leader in the kingdom. His epitaph was found nearby and says that he died in A.D. 1113 at the age of 82. [The Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]
 
Magical inscriptions

The inscriptions on the walls of the crypt, inscribed with black ink on a thin layer of whitewash (paint), were written in Greek and Sahidic Coptic. They include excerpts from the gospels of Luke, John, Mark and Matthew, magical names and signs and a prayer given by the Virgin Mary, at the end of which death appears to her "in the form of a rooster." After Mary dies, according to the text, she ascends to heaven with Jesus."

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Money Talks When Ancient Antioch Meets Google Earth

UC research puts a high-tech spin on studying the ancient world in a project that could affect how historians analyze data. WATCH as Google Earth zooms along the boundaries of ancient Antioch in 30 seconds.

Date: 1/2/2014 9:45:00 AM

"There's a map of an ancient Syrian trade route that shows how one city's political sway extended farther than once thought.

This map isn't a time-worn and mysterious etching on a stone tablet. Turns out it's easily found on a different type of tablet – the kind with apps.

With the swipe of a finger, the University of Cincinnati's Kristina Neumann can zoom along the boundaries of ancient Antioch during the beginning of Roman takeover thanks to the modern cartography of Google Earth software. The simplicity with which she flicks across the Middle Eastern landscape belies the depth of information available at her fingertips and the effort that's gone into her research.

"I trace the process of change by working with historical proxies, in this case coins," says Neumann, a doctoral candidate in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences Department of Classics. "I created my own database from previously published excavation reports and lists of coin hoards, and imported it to Google Earth. My criteria are so detailed that I can see all the coins for a particular emperor or of a particular material."

She hopes this visual, interactive way of presenting the ancient world inspires other historians to get more creative in today's "there's an app for that" world."

 

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Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR)

Top 10 Archaeological Finds in 2013

Take a look at the year's most important Biblical archaeology discoveries

Noah Wiener • 01/06/2014

"As we ring in the New Year, archaeologists are already eyeing the calendar to prepare for next summer’s field season. Here at the Biblical Archaeology Society, we are looking forward to sharing a new year of archaeological finds with our online community in 2014. The New Year is a time to reflect, and we’ve put together a list of the top ten Biblical archaeology finds from 2013. We would love to hear which archaeology finds were most interesting for our readers, so please share your thoughts in the comments section below."

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NGSBA Archaeology

ISSN 2227-9008

"NGSBA Archaeology is our platform for presenting the results of our fieldwork. The contents consist mainly of reports on salvage archaeology projects conducted by Y.G. Archaeology under NGSBA oversight. But from time to time reports of our community archaeology and research projects will also be published. We will also accept field reports of projects executed by other organizations. The journal is peer reviewed, edited by David Ilan, the director of the NGSBA, and is overseen by a board of editors. It will appear more or less annually—depending on the quantity of material available for publication—in print and digital form. The digital version can be downloaded from our website for free."

Link

Link to Download:

Volume I (2012) - 6Mb

Volume II (2013) - 105Mb

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50 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically

A web-exclusive supplement to Lawrence Mykytiuk's “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible” feature in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR

Lawrence Mykytiuk • 03/03/2014

"In “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible,” in the March/April 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Purdue University scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk lists 50 figures from the Hebrew Bible that have been confirmed archaeologically. The 50-person chart in BAR includes Israelite kings and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as lesser-known figures.

Mykytiuk writes that “at least 50 people mentioned in the Bible have been identified in the archaeological record. Their names appear in inscriptions written during the period described by the Bible and in most instances during or quite close to the lifetime of the person identified.” The extensive Biblical and archaeological documentation supporting the BAR study is published here in a web-exclusive collection of endnotes detailing the Biblical references and inscriptions referring to each of the 50 figures."

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THE REAL FLOOD: SUBMERGED PREHISTORY

Article created on Thursday, April 10, 2014

"As a specialist in prehistoric underwater archaeology, Dr Jonathan Benjamin looks at rising sea levels differently from most people and his fascination with this global phenomenon began when as a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University he came across the work of the Danish archaeologists Anders Fischer and Søren H Anderson.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Fischer and Anderson recovered some of the most well preserved material ever seen from sites such as the 6,500-year-old settlement at Tybrind Vig.

This was the first submerged settlement excavated in Denmark and from 1977 was the scene of intensive archaeological activity. Lying 300m from the present shoreline and beneath 3 metres of water, divers excavated sensationally well-preserved artefacts from the Ertebølle Culture. This included dugout boats and decorated wooden paddles, and gave unprecedented insight into the everyday lives of the prehistoric societies of Northern Europe."

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Cold War Spy-Satellite Images Unveil Lost Cities

Cold War reconnaissance photos triple the number of known archaeology sites across the Middle East

By Dan Vergano
National Geographic
PUBLISHED APRIL 25, 2014

"A study of Cold War spy-satellite photos has tripled the number of known archaeological sites across the Middle East, revealing thousands of ancient cities, roads, canals, and other ruins.

In recent decades archaeologists have often used declassified satellite images to spot archaeological sites in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. (Related: "'Lost' New England Revealed By High Tech Archaeology.")

But the new Corona Atlas of the Middle East, unveiled Thursday at the Society for American Archaeology's annual meeting, moves spy-satellite science to a new level. Surveying land from Egypt to Iran—and encompassing the Fertile Crescent, the renowned cradle of civilization and location of some of humanity's earliest cities—the atlas reveals numerous sites that had been lost to history.

"Some of these sites are gigantic, and they were completely unknown," says atlas-team archaeologist Jesse Casana of the University of Arkansas, who presented the results. "We can see all kinds of things—ancient roads and canals. The images provide a very comprehensive picture."

The team had started with a list of roughly 4,500 known archaeological sites across the Middle East, says Casana. The spy-satellite images revealed another 10,000 that had previously been unknown."

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Gardens of the Middle East

Niki Gamm

The Middle East has long had a tradition of ornate gardens, but certain differences are found when comparing Ottoman and Safavid gardens

June 21, 2014

"Few people know how ancient the word paradise is, that it has been traced to the Achaemenid dynasty that ruled the Middle East from the 8th century to the 4th century BC over an area that stretched from the Balkans to the Indus River Valley. The word is found in the Avestan and Median languages as pairidaēza – and means “walled garden.” This is hardly surprising because when nomadic groups settled down and began raising crops, it would be practical to erect fences to keep wild animals out and prevent them from eating the crops. Only later would these gardens taken on the aspect of a place in which to spend one’s leisure time.

Legends abound about the gardens of the Middle East, including the description of the Garden of Eden in the Jewish Old Testament, which has been speculatively located in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (present day Iraq). Persian gardens are known to have existed as long ago as 4,000 BC. The Egyptians had gardens, especially around their temples, and probably these included herbs used for healing purposes. They also had private gardens. The ancient Greeks in contrast don’t seem to have been very interested in gardens, although they counted the Hanging Gardens of Babylon among the seven wonders of the ancient world. That is, the Greeks became interested in gardens after Alexander the Great conquered Persia, although we know Greek medical practitioners and physicians were keenly investigating the properties of herbs and other plants."

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UK Researcher Uses New Technology to Preserve Ancient Artifact

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 3, 2014) — "This July, a University of Kentucky professor is headed back to Lichfield Cathedral in England to continue a labor of love: digitizing the nearly 1,300-year-old St. Chad Gospels.

William Endres, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, has already captured multispectral and historical images of the St. Chad Gospels and rendered the manuscript in 3-D in 2010. However, he recently received a grant from the West Semitic Research Project to digitize the precious relic using a new technology called Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI).

To learn more, visit a podcast by Endres and a video that explains the process of 3-D rendering.

Endres said RTI was a necessary step in helping to preserve the priceless artifact. The manuscript has a long and turbulent history. The jeweled binding was likely torn off by marauding Vikings, and the delicate vellum pages have become warped over the years from water damage and ambient moisture. "Vellum absorbs water much more quickly than pigments; so as vellum expands, it puts stress on the pigments. When stress is placed on pigments, they crack. Once they crack sufficiently, chips of pigment break free," said Endres."

 

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'Evil Eye' Box and Other Ancient Treasures Found in Nile River Cemetery

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | August 12, 2014 08:14am ET

"A 2,000-year-old cemetery with several underground tombs has been discovered near the Nile River in Sudan.

Archaeologists excavated several of the underground tombs, finding artifacts such as a silver ring, engraved with an image of a god, and a faience box, decorated with large eyes, which a researcher believes protected against the evil eye.

Villagers discovered the cemetery accidently in 2002 while digging a ditch near the modern-day village of Dangeil, and archaeological excavations have been ongoing since then. The finds were reported recently in a new book.

The cemetery dates back to a time when a kingdom called Kush flourished in Sudan. Based in the ancient city of Meroe (just south of Dangeil) Kush controlled a vast territory; its northern border stretched to Roman-controlled Egypt. At times, it was ruled by a queen."

 

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Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi

 

ANE Placemarks for Google Earth

 

"A preliminary set of placemarks (ANE.kmz) for Google Earth of a selection of the most important archaeological sites in the Ancient Near East can be downloaded here (as an alternative try right-click or ctrl-click).

 

ANE.kmz works with Google Earth, which has to be downloaded (free at earth.google.com). When opened inside Google Earth, ANE.kmz gives, to the left, an alphabetic list of ancient sites and, to the right, on the satellite photo the same sites marked. For the moment, there are some 2500 sites with modern names; among them some 400 have ancient names. Additions of more sites are planned."

 

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Fall 09012014, Cover Stories, Daily News

 

Kingdom of Kush Iron Industry Works Discovered

 

Mon, Sep 15, 2014

 

"New techniques developed at the University of Brighton to help archaeologists ‘see’ underground are starting to unlock the industrial secrets of an ancient civilisation.

 

The UCL Qatar research, investigating the iron industries of the Kingdom of Kush in Sudan, is attempting to identify 2000-year-old iron production workshops.

 

Working with colleagues from UCL Qatar, Dr Chris Carey, University of Brighton Senior Lecturer, has applied novel methods that have enabled archaeologists to map structures and deposits deep underground."

 

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By Mike Markowitz October 20, 2014

 

Small Change: The Tiniest Ancient Coins

 

CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: By Mike Markowitz

 

“Parva Ne Pereant”

 

"In 2014 the British Royal Mint issued a gold proof 50p coin only 8 mm in diameter*, weighing in at 1/40 Troy ounce (0.8 grams.) This is the smallest coin the UK has ever struck and surely one of the smallest modern coins. For comparison, the smallest coin the US Mint has ever produced–the US gold dollar, struck in several designs from 1849 to 1889–weighed 1.672 grams and measured 12.7 to 14.3 mm."

 

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