All posts by Archaeology World Team

NORTH AMERICA, UAE, WORLD

Long Lost Early Colonial Fort Discovered in Maryland

Long Lost Early Colonial Fort Discovered in Maryland

According to a Washington Post report, archaeologist Travis Parno, archaeological geophysicist Tim Horsley, and their colleagues at Historic St. Mary’s City announced the discovery of the undisturbed outline of the palisaded fort at St. Mary’s, which was erected in southern Maryland by English colonists in 1634.  Maryland archaeologist Travis Parno was at a board game convention in Philadelphia, sitting at a table surrounded by thousands of other enthusiasts when he got a text message. He was supposed to be on vacation, taking a break from his search for the legendary fort at St. Mary’s, the first permanent English settlement in Maryland and one of the earliest in what would become the United States.

Back at St. Mary’s, archaeological geophysicist Tim Horsley had been scanning a site a half-mile from St. Mary’s River with ground-penetrating radar that could detect the outlines of ancient buildings. The text message interrupting Parno’s vacation was from Horsley. It said: “I think we found it.”

On Monday, Historic St. Mary’s City announced that Parno, director of research for the organization, and Horsley had indeed found the outlines of the palisaded fort that was erected in Southern Maryland by white settlers in 1634. Horsley’s scans had revealed the imprint of post holes that formed a large rectangle with a semicircular bastion at one corner. The scans also showed evidence of what appeared to be dwellings inside the fort, including several that may have been Native American. Excavation later turned up evidence of the brick cellar of a guardhouse or storehouse, the trigger guard for a musket, and a quartzite arrowhead that was 4,500 years old.

Dig on the site of the original fort at St. Mary’s.
Recreation of a 17th century building at Historic St. Mary’s City.

“This is our moment,” Parno said. “This is the earliest colonial archaeological site in Maryland. This is it.”

William M. Kelso, the archaeologist who in 1994 discovered the lost fort at Jamestown, Va., said the discovery is “extremely significant because St. Mary’s is sort of a sister colony … [and] it’s another page to the story, to chapter one.”

Archaeologists had been seeking the St. Mary’s fort since the 1930s. The site today is in an empty meadow where the wind blows off the river and the shadows of soaring turkey buzzards drift over the landscape. It is owned by Historic St. Mary’s City and is about the size of a football field. Much like the famous Jamestown fort, which marked the first permanent English settlement in what would become the United States, its exact location had been lost. The original 150 colonists, including many English Catholics fleeing Protestant persecution back home, had arrived at St. Mary’s on two ships, the Ark and the Dove, in late March 1634, Parno said.

Modern recreation of the Dove.

They were preceded by the English settlers at such places as Jamestown in 1607, Plymouth in 1620, and Massachusetts Bay in 1630. The Maryland group included a Jesuit priest, Father Andrew White; the colony’s first governor, Leonard Calvert; and Mathias de Sousa, an indentured servant of African and Portuguese descent who later served in the legislative assembly of freemen.

“I found a most convenient harbor, and the pleasant country lying on each side of it,” Calvert wrote to his business partner, Richard Lechford, on May 30, 1634.

“On the east side of it we have seated ourselves, within one-half mile of the river,” he wrote. They had erected “a pallizado of one hundred and twenty yards square” with four bastions equipped with small artillery pieces.

The palisade was probably 12- to 14-feet high.

White reported: “Our Towne we call St. Maries … [It] abounds not alone with profit but also with pleasure.”

But like Jamestown, the settlement at St. Mary’s was later abandoned. The capital moved to Annapolis in the 1690s, and the site was left undisturbed and ripe for archaeology. St. Mary’s has produced stunning archaeological finds in the past. It was Maryland’s first capital and home to the first State House. In 1990, experts exhumed three lead-lined coffins containing the remains of Maryland colonial governor Philip Calvert, who died in 1683, his first wife, Anne, and Calvert’s 6-month-old son. Anne’s coffin contained sprigs of the memorial herb rosemary, bits of a silk ribbon that may have been used to bind her wrists for burial — and much of her hair. The baby had suffered from the childhood disease rickets and probably scurvy.

Calvert family coffins discovered in 1990.

The search for the fort had continued through the 1980s and ’90s with inconclusive results. The quest was put on hold for many years as St. Mary’s focused on other projects. Parno resumed the hunt in 2017, and his find was deemed conclusive in late 2019. The plan had been to announce the discovery last year, but the coronavirus pandemic brought that to a halt. Last summer, though, using coronavirus safety protocols, Parno was able to return to the site and uncover the top of what may be the cellar of a building inside the fort.

Parno noted that the site marks not only a turning point in Maryland’s colonial history. It also marked a massive moment of change for the native peoples of this region,” he said.

“Archaeology in this area shows us people have been here for at least 10,000 years. White wrote that the colonists, “to avoid all occasion of dislike, and colour of wrong,” purchased from the local Yaocomaco Indians the land for 30 miles around, paying with axes, hoes, cloth, and hatchets. The Yaocomaco Indians tolerated the newcomers, he wrote, because the Indians had enemies: The “Sasquasahannockes … [who] come sometimes upon them, and waste and spoile them and their country.”

And the archaeology hinted that the fort may have been built around several existing native dwellings, Parno said.

The Yaocomaco people lived on both sides of the St. Mary’s River. The arrangement was that they would be allowed to stay on the east side with the colonists until the Indians’ crops there were harvested. Then they would move to the west side.

“Some few Indians are here to stay by us till next yeare,” Father White wrote. “Then the land is wholy to be ours alone.”

It’s not clear if, for a time, the colonists and the Yaocomaco lived together in the fort, according to the Historic St. Mary’s City website. “But it is likely that their residences were … in relative proximity to one another.” And an Indian dwelling that had been vacated would have provided good shelter for weary colonists.

“You come off this ship after months, and you need a place to lay your head, and you want something that’s covered and warm,” Parno said.

One day this month, tiny pink flags marking the outline of the fort fluttered in the breeze as Parno’s team methodically scraped away soil at the site. After Horsley’s scan found the fort’s outline in 2018, Parno said he verified it with excavation in 2019. He found that there had been a three-foot-deep trench where the colonists had stood the timbers for the palisade. Inside the trench, the wood had left telltale stains in the soil. “It was clear as day,” Parno said.

Long Lost Early Colonial Fort Discovered in Maryland
A conjectural drawing of the 1634 fort at the St. Mary’s settlement in Maryland.

But he had been surprised when the work revealed that the outline of the fort didn’t match Calvert’s 1634 description of it. Instead of the large square palisade with bastions at the four corners that Calvert described, the team found a smaller, rectangular fort with one bastion. The discrepancy may be because Calvert was describing plans for the fort before it was completed, according to Historic St. Mary’s.

As Parno walked the site this month, fellow archaeologist Stephanie Stevens paused with her shovel. She had done archaeology at the site in 2017. “We had always heard about: ‘There’s this fort somewhere, but we don’t know where it is.’ All these different things,” she said.

Then one-day Parno summoned the team, showed the scan of the fort’s outline, and said, “We found it.”

Archaeologist Travis Parno at his dig on the site of the original fort at St. Mary’s.

“That was amazing,” she said.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Giant Face of Ucanha: Huge Sculpted Mayan Mask Found in Mexico

Giant Face of Ucanha: Huge Sculpted Mayan Mask Found in Mexico

A giant Mayan mask as tall as a person has been revealed at an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatán. 

Giant Face of Ucanha: Huge Sculpted Mayan Mask Found in Mexico
The stucco mask of Ucanha being worked on by archaeologists

The mask, which depicts the face of an unknown deity or elite person, was sculpted from the building material stucco and dates back to a period in Maya history known as the Late Preclassic (about 300 B.C. — A.D. 250), according to the news outlet Novedades Yucatán.

The discovery was made in 2017 at the archaeological site of Ucanha, near the modern-day city of Motul, and since then researchers with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have worked painstakingly to restore it.

View of the giant stucco face, or Mayan mask, in situ. The face was discovered in the Yucatán Peninsula near the village of Ucanha

Stucco masks like this one “represent the faces of individuals with particular features that can be associated with deities or with characters of prominent social status,” INAH said in a statement.  

The mask is a stucco relief, a type of brightly-colored painted sculpture carved from a background of stucco. The Maya typically placed these masks around stairways with pyramidal bases, according to the statement.

Archaeologists have found similar reliefs in Acanceh and Izamal, but this is the first in Ucanha. The discovery is part of ongoing research into Mayan mounds found at the site. 

The mask was temporarily reburied after its discovery so that the structure was protected until it could be properly studied and preserved.

Samples taken from the structure revealed deterioration and it was re-excavated in 2018 so that archaeologists could restore it. 

During the restoration and conservation process, archaeologists reinforced fragile parts of the mask.

They also moved sections that had been displaced overtime back to their original positions. They also cleaned the surfaces to highlight the mask’s patterns and colors. 

The archaeologists completed the work in 2019, before reburying the mask for a final time. INAH said the goal of these efforts is to ensure the long-term preservation of the mask at the site, which does not have legal protection.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

3,000-Year-Old Artifacts Unearthed in Southwestern China

3,000-Year-Old Artifacts Unearthed in Southwestern China

CNN reports that more than 500 artifacts have been found in six sacrificial pits at Sanxingdui, a Bronze Age site in southwestern China discovered in the 1920s and thought to have belonged to the independent Shu state, which was conquered in 316 B.C. 

Weighing about 280 grams (0.6 pounds) and estimated to be made from 84% gold, the ceremonial mask is one of over 500 items unearthed from six newly discovered “sacrificial pits,” according to the country’s National Cultural Heritage Administration.

The finds were made at Sanxingdui, a 4.6-square-mile area outside the provincial capital of Chengdu. Some experts say the items may shine further light on the ancient Shu state, a kingdom that ruled in the western Sichuan basin until it was conquered in 316 BC.

A bronze item recently unearthed from a sacrificial pit at the Sanxingdui archaeological site

In addition to the gold mask, archaeologists uncovered bronzes, gold foils, and artifacts made from ivory, jade, and bone. The six pits, of which the largest has a footprint of 19 square meters (205 square feet), also yielded an as-yet-unopened wooden box and a bronze vessel with owl-shaped patterning.

More than 50,000 ancient artifacts have been found at Sanxingdui since the 1920s when a local farmer accidentally came upon a number of relics at the site.

A major breakthrough occurred in 1986, with the discovery of two ceremonial pits containing over 1,000 items, including elaborate and well-preserved bronze masks.

3,000-Year-Old Artifacts Unearthed in Southwestern China
A gold decoration was among more than 500 other items recently unearthed from the site.

After a long hiatus in excavations, a third pit was then found in late 2019, leading to the discovery of a further five last year. Experts believe the pits were used for sacrificial purposes, explaining why many of the items contained were ritually burned as they were dropped in and buried.

Independent civilization

Sanxingdui is believed to have sat at the heart of the Shu state, which historians know relatively little about due to scant written records.

Discoveries made at the site date back to the 12th and 11th centuries BC, and many of the items are now on display at an on-site museum.
The site has revolutionized experts’ understanding of how civilization developed in ancient China.

In particular, evidence of a unique Shu culture suggests that the kingdom developed independently of neighboring societies in the Yellow River Valley, which was traditionally considered to be the cradle of Chinese civilization.

An archaeologist pictured working at one of the pits earlier this month.

The deputy director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, Song Xinchao, told state-run press agency Xinhua that the latest finds “enrich and deepen our understanding of the Sanxingdui culture.”

The discovery of silk fibers and the remains of textiles may also expand our understanding of the Shu.

Head of the excavation team and chief of the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, Tang Fei, said in a press conference that the discovery indicates that the kingdom “was one of the important origins of silk in ancient China,” according to Xinhua.

A bronze head and mask uncovered from Sanxingdui in 1986 when the first sacrificial pits were found at the site.

Though not yet recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Sanxingdui is on the organization’s “tentative list” for possible future inclusion.

Along with other Shu archaeological sites, it is credited by the UN agency as “an outstanding representative of the Bronze Age Civilization of China, East Asia, and even the world.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Ancient Bishop’s Palace Hidden Underneath Man’s Garden

Ancient Bishop’s Palace Hidden Underneath Man’s Garden

When Charles Pole, a retired bank official living in the remote English town of Wiveliscombe, had no idea what was buried in his back garden when he hired a crew for a construction project.

Builders found the ruins beneath 81-year-old Charles Pole’s back garden.

“I live on my own in a house in Palace Gardens and I’m disabled, so I was having a bungalow built in the garden for myself and plan[ned] to sell the house,” the 81-year-old tells the Somerset County Gazette’s Phil Hill.

Then, an unexpected find thwarted these plans: Builders stumbled onto wall foundations and the remains of floors suspected to be part of Bishops Palace, a 13th-century building long thought to be lost.

“The … remains are clearly of medieval date and represent two phases of development on the site,” a spokesperson for the South West Heritage Trust tells the Gazette.

Historical records show that a palace was located in the area, and a 14th-century gateway to the complex remains standing today. But until now, researchers had been unsure where the rest of the palace’s remains were hidden.

“[W]hat we didn’t know is where the buildings would have been in relation to that gateway,” Bob Croft, Somerset County archaeologist for the South West Heritage Trust, tells BBC News.

“They’ve often been thought of as being much further to the east where we knew there were a big barn and a big open space, but this is the first time we’ve actually got stone foundations discovered.”

Per the Somerset Record Society, the original stone-and-thatch palace buildings were probably constructed soon after 1256, when a royal charter granted the bishop of Bath and Wells the right to hunt in the area.

The 14th-century gateway to the palace complex is still standing.

“It seems unlikely that the bishop would have gone to the length of obtaining a license to hunt game without at the same time providing both himself and his retinue with a lodging that befitted that office and catered for such a pastime,” the society explains.

The palace was one of several residences used by local bishops through at least the 16th century. According to the Gazette, Bishops John de Drokensford (1309–29) and Ralph of Shrewsbury (1329–63) both oversaw building projects at the site. Archaeologists have also discovered fragments of pottery dated to the 12th century.

The bishop’s palace has been linked to Bishop John Drokensford right, and Ralph of Shrewsbury left.

As Jordan King writes for Metro, high-ranking officials in the medieval church often had palaces consisting of several structures, with the whole estate sometimes enclosed by a moat.

Gatehouse, a geographical dictionary of medieval castles in the British Isles, notes that Bishops Palace was in ruins by the 18th century, with a workhouse erected on part of the site in 1735. But drawings from the 19th century show that parts of the palace were still identifiable at that point.

An 1883 source describes the remains of the manor house as “represented by some walls, just sufficiently good to be roofed in and used as a wood house or garden storage.”

Croft tells BBC News that over the centuries, workers probably repurposed stones from the castle’s walls for other local buildings.

Archaeologists have now finished recording their findings and are figuring out how to preserve the structure’s foundations. Despite the significance of the discovery, the find hasn’t been all good news for Pole. When the builders found the ruins, they had to stop their work.

“It was exciting to hear the site contains something of real significance, but the cost of the investigation is going to cost me around £15,000 ($20,850) and has delayed the bungalow,” he tells the Gazette.

WORLD

Scientists Find 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brain

Scientists Find 500-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Brain

The discovery of new evidence supports the previous speculation on 520 million-year-old human-old brain systems, provoking thoughts about the nature of brains, life, and intelligence in the cosmos.

Soft, squishy, and delicate; brain and nervous system tissues maybe some of the worst candidates for preservation in the fossil record.

In past years the best examples of the ancient brain and nerve structures have come from creatures trapped and preserved in amber that was a couple of hundred million years old. But a few years ago paleontologists claimed to have found evidence of brain structures in the fossil of a 520-million-year-old arthropod – a shrimp-like critter.

3-inch, 520-million-year-old fossil of Fuxianhuia protensa. Insert shows dark features associated with putative ‘brain‘ structure like that in modern organisms

That one sample was intriguing but not entirely convincing. Now a new study by Ma et al., reported in Current Biology (and a companion paper in Philosophical Transactions) has followed up with 7 more examples, together with lab work illustrating how the fossilization process may have happened in order to create the features seen today.

The three-part brain systems may be similar to those in modern insects, arachnids, crabs, and lobsters, and appear to be preserved as thin films of carbon or iron oxide-based mineral discoloration.

This is a remarkable discovery. The 520-million-year-old fossils come from the Cambrian period, the time in Earth’s history where life seems to have undergone a number of profound transitions. That includes the ‘Cambrian explosion’ in multicellular diversity and the first discoverable remains of animal ancestral phyla.

Exactly why these brains (dense collections of nerve cells and nerve networks) evolved at this time is open to speculation. But some researchers propose that the advent of multi-cellular life which had senses and complex body movements and contractions, including those positioned around feeding systems, would gain clear efficiency advantages with specialized and speedy nerve-like cells.

Connecting and localizing these cells via nets and clumps would offer further gains, especially as novelties like hunting (and evading hunters) began to pop up in larger and larger-bodied creatures.

The bottom line is that the basic biological structures of brains emerged at least half a billion years ago, seemingly very soon after the emergence of truly complex multi-cellular life.

Modern human brains may be very different than those of ancient arthropod brains, but the evolutionary ‘attractor’ for specialized neural networks manifested itself a long time ago.

And this raises some interesting thoughts and questions on the nature of life elsewhere in the universe and its potential complexity and intelligence.

The fact that brain structures may have arisen relatively fast once larger, complex-celled, life evolved on Earth does not by itself immediately tell us that this is likely to be a universal phenomenon.

In the same way, the apparently early origins of life on Earth doesn’t tell us much about the odds elsewhere – a sample size of one gives limited constraints. However, unlike the origins of life – for which we currently have no definitive theory – for brains, we have some relatively straightforward ideas (as above) about the how and the why of their development.

It could be that the smear-like remains of 520-million-year-old arthropod brains are pointing towards a cosmos full of neural nets.

Exactly how complex those nets are, and whether higher intelligence has emerged in any of them, is unknown, but the odds may be shifting in favor of some interesting possibilities.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Chinese Skeletons Found in Ancient Peruvian Pyramid

Chinese Skeletons Found in Ancient Peruvian Pyramid

Archaeologists exploring Peru’s pre-Colombian past recently unearthed a glimpse of a less prominent chapter in the Andean country’s history – the remains of 16 Chinese labourers from around the turn of the last century.

The bodies, thought to be those of indentured workers brought to Peru to replace slave labour, were found buried at the top of an adobe pyramid first used by the ancient Ichma people, Roxana Gomez, the lead archaeologist of the site, said in a statement.

Peru was one of the biggest destinations for Chinese labour in Latin America in the 20th century, a market that thrived after slavery was abolished in the country in 1854.

Chinese laborers in Peru circa 1900

The Chinese found at the Bellavista pyramid in Lima were buried in the late 1800s and early 1900s and had likely picked cotton at a nearby plantation in “very difficult” conditions, said Gomez.

In a possible sign of how the Chinese gradually emerged from dire poverty in Peru, the first 11 bodies were shrouded in cloth and placed in the ground, while the last five wore blue-green jackets and were buried in wooden coffins, Gomez said.

“In one Chinese coffin, an opium pipe and a small ceramic vessel were included in the funerary ensemble,” said Gomez.

Chinese labourers in the 20th century were generally not allowed to be buried at Lima’s Catholic cemeteries, forcing them to improvise burial sites, according to Peru’s Culture Ministry.

The remains of Chinese labourers were previously found in Lima at other adobe pyramids known as “huacas.” Built by the indigenous societies that once ruled much of Peru’s Pacific coast, huacas were used as administrative and religious centres where members of the elite were often buried with gold objects, ceramics or human sacrifices.

Gomez said the huacas had a sacred association that might have made them attractive places for burial by Chinese labourers.

The Bellavista Huaca was occupied by Ichma starting in about 1000 A.D. and was later annexed by the Incan empire until the arrival of Spanish conquerors who deemed huacas blasphemous.

Italian immigrants later kept vineyards at the base of the site, Gomez added.

“The best way to understand our history is as a continuum of different cultures,” said Gomez.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Over 3000-year-old ancient bronze figurine of bull uncovered in southern Greece

Over 3000-year-old ancient bronze figurine of bull uncovered in southern Greece

Following heavy rain near the ancient site of Olympia, a bronze figurine of a bull estimated to be at least 2,500 years old was discovered in Greece. Burn marks on the statuette suggest it may have been one of the thousands of offerings to the Greek god Zeus.

Over 3000-year-old ancient bronze figurine of bull uncovered in southern Greece
The small bull statuette is believed to have been offered to the god Zeus during a sacrifice

The discovery of the small, intact item was made by archaeologists near a temple, Greece’s culture ministry said. An archaeologist spotted one of the bull’s horns sticking out of the mud after a downpour, it added.

The item was immediately transferred to a laboratory for examination. Initial testing has indicated that the bull idol, which was found last month, dates from the Geometric period – about 1050BC to 700BC – of Greek art, the culture ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Animals such as bulls are believed to have been worshipped because of their importance at the time

Animals such as bulls and horses are believed to have been worshipped over that period because of their importance for human survival.

Like other animal and human figurines, the bull discovered near the temple of Zeus was likely to have been offered by believers during a sacrifice, which would explain the burn marks and “sediments removed during its purification”, the ministry added.

The site of Olympia in Greece is the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site Traced to Colonial-Era Philadelphia

Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site Traced to Colonial-Era Philadelphia

Researchers long stumped by the mysterious history of an 18th-century ship uncovered at the World Trade Center have finally discovered its origins — thanks to tree rings, according to a new study.

Ship Found 20 Feet Below World Trade Center Site Traced to Colonial-Era Philadelphia
The ship was uncovered in 2010, while workers were excavating the World Trade Center site.

The massive wooden ship — the skeleton of which was unexpectedly discovered 25 feet below street level in the muddy excavation of the World Trade Center site in 2010 — has now been traced to Colonial-era Philadelphia, with a history linked to Independence Hall, according to a new report from scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Scientists say the wood from the vessel was chopped in 1773 from a forest of white oak trees in Philadelphia, the same type of trees used to build Independence Hall, where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were signed.

Columbia scientists were able to link the growth rings found in the old wood of the ship with a previously taken sample of wood from Independence Hall, researchers said.

Tree rings are like “barcodes” that create unique patterns, allowing for dating, said Neil Pederson, Columbia tree ring scientist and co-author of the study.

Archaeologists dismantle the remains of an 18th-century ship at the World Trade Center construction site.

While the majority of the boat was made from white oak, a sample from the keel of the ship was the key to narrowing down its history.

“The keel was actually made from hickory, which was only found in the Eastern United States or Eastern Asia, which meant we could really narrow down our search — East Asia wasn’t really a possibility,” Pederson said. “That discovery really put me in a good mood — and put us in a good geographic zone.”

The ship’s 32-foot hull was carefully dug out of the muck in July 2010, exhaustively documented, disassembled, and sent off for preservation at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. Some timber samples, however, were sent to Columbia for analysis.

Historians believe the vessel was likely a merchant ship, in the Dutch style of a Hudson River sloop. It likely traveled along the Atlantic, bringing wood and food down to the West Indies and returning with sugar, salt, molasses, and rum.

The ship suffered an infestation of Teredo worms while in the Caribbean, which likely ate away at its wood and led to its demise after about 20 to 30 years on the water. It’s believed that by 1797, the boat was buried in the landfill used to extend Manhattan’s shoreline westward.

Hundreds of artifacts were found in and around the boat, including ceramics, musket balls, a buckle, a British button, a coin, animal bones, dozens of shoes, and a human hair with a single louse on it.

The ship remains at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, and researchers say it’s possible it may eventually be reassembled.