Fingerprints on Early Bronze Age Pottery Studied in Israel
According to the text, some 4700 years ago, people were responsible in great part for pottery making in Tell es-Safi in central Israel, which was known as the biblical town of Gath, Ramat Gan, ISRAEL — Kent D. Fowler and the colleague from Bar-Ilan University and Don Maeir said.
Fingerprints of the index and middle fingers, right hand, made 4,700 years ago on the bottom of a storage vessel in Gath
Crafted of wet clay into “snakes” and enrouled and smoothed to the desired shape, the pots would have been covered with fingerprints, unless they had been wiped away by the potter with a rag before the pot was baked in a kiln.
Forensic scientist Lior Nedivi said that women usually have smaller fingertips than men, with denser fingerprint ridges.
The site of Tell es-Safi – aka Gath – was settled from about 7,000 years ago, during the Late Prehistoric period, on the western edge of the Judean foothills, with a strategically convenient view of Israel’s southern coastal plain.
By the Early Bronze Age, when this pottery was made, the village had become one of several fortified urban centers in the region and was probably Canaanite.
And, as seems to be the rule in human society, there was a division of labor – as attested by the marks the potters left on some vessels.
“These are the fingerprints of 4,700-year-old people! Right there to see. To connect with. It is very intimate. It does freak me out a bit, but I get over it and I just think it would have been nice to meet them,” Prof. Fowler says.
Gath Archaeological Project, Tel es-Safi
The division of labor is a fundamental organizing principle in human societies, Fowler explains, but potting as a genderized occupation in antiquity can’t be taken for granted. Actual archaeological evidence is of the essence.
In the Levant, the Pottery Neolithic Period began about 8,500 years ago.
Over in Mesopotamia, it seems more females than males were involved in the earliest pottery manufacture, but that changed with the establishment of state institutions. “In most cases in antiquity, once things become centralized, women are marginalized,” Maeir says.
Yet in the Neolithic settlement of Boncuklu Hoyuk in Anatolia, and in somewhat less ancient Arizona, figurines seem to have been made chiefly by women.
“If the researchers’ analysis is correct, which is potentially problematic, then figurine production would have aligned with the other responsibilities in that society,” Fowler tells Ancientorigin.
“Perhaps women were responsible for the conduct of private and domestic ritual practices, much like women in Maya society, whereas men were responsible for the conduct of ritual practices in the public sphere.”
Gath is chiefly known as a Philistine city famed as the home of the legendary Goliath, anecdotally slain by a pre-monarchic David, but that would have been in about the 11th century B.C.E. – a millennium later than the pottery reported here when it seems the men were potting. But how actually did the archaeologists deduce the gender of the fingerprints?
Jar fragment with multiple prints: Arrow shows the direction of marks left by the fabric used to wipe the inside of the pot, Gath
Human Figure Detected on 14,000-year-old Burial Slab in Israel
HAIFA, ISRAEL—According to researchers Danny Rosenberg, György Lengyel, Dani Nadel, and Rivka Chasan of the University of Haifa have found an engraving on a Natufian burial slab discovered in northern Israel’s Raqefet Cave.
The human figure on a Natufian burial slab: Actual and illustration
The researchers suggest the image resembles a dancing shaman, or perhaps a person dressed as an animal, or even a lizard, and that Natufian burial rites may have been more complex than previously thought.
The stone, which was carried up a cliff and into the cave, was found covering the remains of several people who died between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago.
The picture on the slab is an extremely rare example of a recognizable human figure made by Natufians, the researchers say.
According to scholars, Danny Rosenberg, Györgie Lengyel, and Dani Nadel and researchers, Rivka Chasan, in their recent paper in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, the Natufian culture exists from around 15,000 to about 11,700 years ago and extend from Sinai in south-northern Syria and east into Jordanian desert.
The protracted period of transition from Paleolithic hunter-gatherer society to Neolithic agriculture that started around 15,000 years ago in the Mediterranean region is dubbed the Natufian period.
Small nomadic groups gave way to complex sedentary or semi-sedentary communities that existed on the threshold of an agricultural society.
At some sites, archaeologists tend to agree that the Natufians actually settled year-round in hamlets. As they settled and began to farm (and had dogs), the Natufians established what may be the earliest distinct cemeteries, where communities buried at least some of their dead.
At least some others who were dearly departed were relegated to beneath the floor of the home or laid to rest nearby.
The incised slab with the humanoid image in Raqefet Cave: front, back and profile
But it seems that when they did bury their dead, Natufian mortuary practices were elaborate.
Their funerals may have featured gathering and feasting, and – going by the newly found crude depiction – dancing.
The figure on the slab could plausibly be a shaman with an exposed penis or be dressed up as an animal, in which case the protuberance could be a tail.
Or maybe it was a lizard. In time, hopefully, more slabs will be found and examination with advanced technology will shed new light on this intriguing phenomenon, the researchers add.
Kneeling Decapitated Skeleton was Ancient Chinese Sacrifice Victim
HENAN PROVINCE, CHINA—According to AncientOrigins report, archaeologists from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Jiyuan Municipal Cultural Relics.
The undated file photo shows a stove unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.
The team has uncovered a headless human skeleton in a pit at central China’s Chaizhuang site, which dates to the late Shang Dynasty (1600–1050 B.C.)
The remains were found facing north in a kneeling position with hands crossed in front, suggesting that the person had been beheaded as a human sacrifice.
Archeologists found a large number of tombs from the Late Shang Dynasty, providing evidence for the study of ancient social and ceremonial rituals, in the excavation of the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan.
The bone remains found at the site suggest that the human sacrifice was beheaded, facing north and kneeling in the pit with his hands crossed in front of him.
The undated file photo shows a relic unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.
“This well-preserved human bone is shaped like the oracle bone inscription of the character ‘Kan,'” said Liang Fawei, head of the Chaizhuang site excavation project.
Liang said according to the study on records of oracle bone inscriptions unearthed in Yin Ruins, sacrificial culture prevailed in the Shang Dynasty and hieroglyphs such as “She,” “Shi,” “Tan” and “Kan” were used to describe sacrificial activities of different rituals.
Among them, the word “Kan” depicts the way of offering sacrifices of people or livestock in pits.
Oracle bone inscriptions, or Jiaguwen, are an ancient Chinese language named for their inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones.
They are a primitive form of Chinese characters and the oldest fully-developed characters in China.
The undated file photo shows human bones remains in kneeling position unearthed from the Chaizhuang site in Jiyuan, central China’s Henan Province.
Previously, the remains of human sacrifice discovered were mostly in a lying posture.
Experts assumed that the sacrificial method recorded in the hieroglyph “Kan” suggests burial in an upright position, which must have been a more prevailing burial than that in a lying position.
Archaeologists from the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Jiyuan Municipal Cultural Relics Team have excavated 6,000 square meters of the site since 2019.
Their survey found the ancient Chaizhuang settlement covers 300,000 square meters.
Semi-crypt-type houses, wells, ash pits, roads, and fireworks have been found at the site, along with a trove of relics including pottery, stone, bone, mussel, and jade artifacts.
MACAU, CHINA— Reports that a cannon was uncovered during construction work in the Inner Harbor area of the city of Macau, which is located on coastal islands in the South China Sea.
Ming Dynasty officials leased the area to Portuguese traders in the mid-sixteenth century A.D.
The region then became a Portuguese colony in 1887 until 1999 when it was transferred to China.
Officials from the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the Municipal Affairs Bureau, and the Customs Service are investigating the site and examining the cannon.
The statement says that the cannon was dug up last afternoon during construction work for a sewer project in the Inner Harbor district, close to the car park.
The project has been temporarily suspended following the find. According to information provided by workers at the scene, the cannon was accidentally dug out by an excavator at about 4:15 p.m.
Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) officials, as well as Customs Service and PSP officers, arrived at the scene to investigate.
The statement said the old cannon was possibly a “cultural relic.”
This photo provided by a reader to local media outlets yesterday shows a construction worker with the old cannon dug out by an excavator on a construction site in the Inner Harbour area yesterday.
SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA—Reports that 141 statue fragments were uncovered in Angkor Wat by Apsara Authority workers who were installing an irrigation system.
The statue fragments are thought to make up 21 Buddha statues, although no heads have been recovered.
“The statues were buried and mixed up with some modern items, including a metal door frame, glass shrapnel, a bicycle bell and rim, and even plastic bags,” said project manager Srun Tech, who thinks the statues were buried in the 1960s or 1970s.
More than 100 remnants of Buddha statues were uncovered by archaeological experts in Siem Reap province’s Angkor Wat area
The Apsara Authority said yesterday that more than 100 remains of statues of Buddha were discovered by archeological experts from Angkor Wat Province in Siem Reap.
Srun Tech, manager of the Apsara Authority’s excavation project at Angkor Wat temple, said the artifacts were discovered accidentally on Saturday by the Apsara Authority’s working team, who were implementing an irrigation system management project in the area.
An excavation operation has since unearthed 141 remnants of Buddha figurines, equivalent to 21 whole statues.
“We have mostly found Buddha statues – 21, so far. The statues were buried and mixed up with some modern items, including metal door frame, glass shrapnel, bicycle bell, and rim and even plastic bags. were mostly broken, with no heads attached, prompting the archaeologists to suspect the missing parts could have been buried deeper.
Judging by the way the statues were orderly buried, Mr. Tech said the artifacts may have been buried intentionally to avoid being detected by other people.
“The recent discovery underscores the fact that the Angkor Wat is still an important target for further research,” he said.
I’m Sokrithy, head of Conservation of Monuments in the Angkor Park Department, said as of yesterday, the Apsara Authority’s working group has excavated 40 centimeters of land at the site.
The excavation work will continue to be carried out, including further studies on the era from when the statues were made and the purpose behind the burying of the relics.
In late March, the Apsara Authority’s working team also discovered a wooden structure of more than 1,000 years of age and a Ganesh statue in the middle of the Angkor Wat temple’s northern pond while experts were restoring the pond.
Archaeologists find a treasure trove of Assyrian kings discovered in ISIS excavated tunnels
The historically hidden Palace of the Assyrian Kings was revealed when the terrorist group blew up the tomb of the prophet Jonah for ideological reasons.
Two months were spent investigating the tunnels dug by ISIS under the destroyed tomb. The tunnels were found to lead to the military palace founded by Assyrian King Sennacherib in the 7th century BC.
The archeologist who led research on the site, Prof. Peter Miglus, said that Sennacherib’s gold may have been discovered by ISIS.
He said: “We can presume many very valuable objects must now be on the black market.”
The archaeologists found gold objects littered within the tunnels that were discarded by ISIS.
Within this rabbit warren of tunnels dug by the terrorists, the German scientists discovered archaeological treasures, including a 2,000-year-old, 55 meter (180 ft.) long, “throne room”, which was associated with the military palace.
The temple and its carvings date to the final period of the once vast Assyrian empire which dominated Mesopotamia. The great city of Nineveh was once the largest in the world.
This 40 ton statue was one of a two flanking the entrance to the throne room of King Sargon II. A protective spirit known as a lamassu, it is shown as a composite being with the head of a human, the body and ears of a bull, and the wings of a bird.
A 2018 article in The Guardian said the initial discovery was “a rare piece of good news in the context of so much deliberate destruction and looting by Isis of pre-Islamic archaeology.”
British Museum archaeologists worked with Iraq archaeologist, Saleh Noman, who was in the first group of Iraqi archaeologists trained in London to survey and rescue war damaged archaeology.
Stairs to the podium in the throne room of the palace.
The Iraq Museum’s Iraq Emergency Heritage Management Training Scheme began in 2015 to help combat the many threats to the country’s archaeology, and Sebastien Rey, lead archaeologist at the Iraq Emergency Heritage Management Programme at the British Museum, told The Guardian that the “reliefs are unique with features which we have not seen anywhere else.”
What’s more, he said the archaeologists are incredibly brave working in “extreme danger”, with the mudbrick in danger of collapse at any time.
Wall panel with a palace inscription of the Assyrian king Asarhaddon (680-669 BC).
In December 2016, a U.S. led coalition backed thousands of Iraqi and Kurdish troops in a massive military operation to take back Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, and government forces eventually drove ISIS militants from the area around the Nebi Yunus shrine.
The first local archaeologists on the scene reported that ISIS had dug tunnels deep beneath the holy site searching for treasures and artifacts to sell on the black market.
Then they discovered the treasure tunnels led straight to a previously undiscovered and untouched palace.
In 2018 archaeologist Layla Salih told The Telegraph she could only “imagine how much Daesh [Arabic term for ISIS] discovered down there before we got here.”
At first sight, it does appear extreme to blow up a mosque and to tunnel hundreds of meters into stone, it is certainly not acceptable, but consider the numbers: in 2017 The Middle-East Observer reported that at The Unesco conference in Paris the deputy Iraqi culture minister, Qais Rashid, said, “in the Mosul region alone at least 66 archaeological sites had been destroyed by ISIS,” and that Muslim and Christian places of worship had suffered “massive destruction”, and thousands of manuscripts had been looted.
Mr. Rashid’s analysis suggested ISIS was funding its acts by smuggling oil (up to $1.645m a day), kidnapping (at least $20m last year), people trafficking, extortion, robbery and last – but not least – “the sale of antiquities.” For example, the sale of looted items from al-Nabuk, west of Damascus, is reported to have earned ISIS $36m.
A battery around 200 BC found by the German Archaeologist in 1938.
It was in 1938, while working in Khujut Rabu, just outside Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, that German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig unearthed a five-inch-long (13 cm) clay jar containing a copper cylinder that encased an iron rod.
The vessel showed signs of corrosion, and early tests revealed that an acidic agent, such as vinegar or wine had been present.
They are commonly considered to have been intentionally designed to produce an electric charge.
“They are a one-off. As far as we know, nobody else has found anything like these. They are odd things; they are one of life’s enigmas.”
Form and Function:
Railway construction in Baghdad in 1936, uncovered a copper cylinder with a rod of iron amongst other finds from the Parthian period. In 1938, these were identified as primitive electric cells by Dr. Wilhelm Konig, then the director of the Baghdad museum laboratory, who related the discovery to other similar finds (Iraqi cylinders, rods and asphalt stoppers, all corroded as if by some acid, and a few slender Iron and Bronze rods found with them). He concluded that their purpose was for electroplating gold and Silver jewellery.
The ancient battery in the Baghdad Museum
The Object he first found (left), was a 6-inch high pot of bright yellow clay containing a cylinder of sheet-copper 5 inches by 1.5 inches. The edge of the copper cylinder was soldered with a lead-tin alloy comparable to today’s solder. The bottom of the cylinder was capped with a crimped-in copper disc and sealed with bitumen or asphalt. Another insulating layer of Asphalt sealed the top and also held in place an iron rod suspended into the centre of the copper cylinder.
Batteries dated to around 200 BC Could have been used in gilding
Two separate experiments with replicas of the cells have produced a 0.5-Volt current for as long as 18 days from each battery, using an electrolyte 5% solution of Vinegar, wine or copper-sulfate, sulphuric acid, and citric acid, all available at the time. (One replica produced 0.87-Volts).
From the BBC News Article
Most sources date the batteries to around 200 BC – in the Parthian era, circa 250 BC to AD 225. Skilled warriors, the Parthians were not noted for their scientific achievements.
“Although this collection of objects is usually dated as Parthian, the grounds for this are unclear,” says Dr St John Simpson, also from the department of the ancient Near East at the British Museum.
“The pot itself is Sassanian. This discrepancy presumably lies either in a misidentification of the age of the ceramic vessel, or the site at which they were found.”
From the same Article, these prophetic words of wisdom:
‘War can destroy more than people, an army or a leader. Culture, tradition, and history also lie in the firing line. Iraq has a rich national heritage. The Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel are said to have been sited in this ancient land. In any war, there is a chance that priceless treasures will be lost forever, articles such as the “ancient battery” that resides defenseless in the museum of Baghdad’.
Unfortunately, the Baghdad batteries are now lost to us following the looting of the Baghdad museum in 2003.
This article appeared in the Guardian: Thursday, April 22 2004.
The situation in Iraq makes the fate of the 8,000 or so artefacts still missing from the National Museum of Baghdad ever more uncertain. Among them is an unassuming looking, 13cm long clay jar that represents one of archaeology’s greatest puzzles – the Baghdad battery. The enigmatic vessel was unearthed by the German archaeologist Wilhelm Koenig in the late 1930s, either in the National Museum or in a grave at Khujut Rabu, a Parthian site near Baghdad (accounts differ). The corroded earthenware jar contained a copper cylinder, which itself encased an iron rod, all sealed with asphalt. Koenig recognised it as a battery and identified several more specimens from fragments found in the region.
He theorised that several batteries would have been strung together, to increase their output, and used to electroplate precious objects. Koenig’s ideas were rejected by his peers and, with the onset of the second world war, subsequently forgotten.
Following the war, the fresh analysis revealed signs of corrosion by an acidic substance, perhaps vinegar or wine. An American engineer, Willard Gray, filled a replica jar with grape juice and was able to produce 1.5-2 volts of power. Then, in the late 1970s, a German team used a string of replica batteries successfully to electroplate a thin layer of silver.
About a dozen such jars were held in Baghdad’s National Museum. Although their exact age is uncertain, they’re thought to date from the Sassanian period, approximately AD 225-640. While it’s now largely accepted that the jars are indeed batteries, their purpose remains unknown. What were our ancestors doing with (admittedly, tiny) electric charges, 1,000 years before the first twitchings of our modern electrical age?
Certainly, the batteries would have been highly-valued objects: several were needed to provide even a small amount of power. The electroplating theory remains a strong contender, while a medical function has also been suggested – the Ancient Greeks, for example, are known to have used electric eels to numb pain.
Of particular interest in relation to the Baghdad Batteries is the suggestion that they were used in order to electroplate Copper Vases with silver, which were also once to be found in the Baghdad museum. They had been excavated from Sumerian sites in southern Iraq, dating 2,500 -2,000 BC.
Paul T. Keyser of the University of Alberta in Canada has come up with an alternative suggestion. Writing in the prestigious archaeological Journal of Near Eastern Studies, he claims that these batteries were used as an analgesic. He points out that there is evidence that electric eels were used to numb an area of pain or to anaesthetize it for medical treatment. The electric battery could have provided a less messy and more readily available method of analgesic.
Of course, the 1.5 volts that would have been generated by such a device would not do much to deaden a patch of skin, so the next conclusion was that these ancient people must have discovered how to link up several batteries in series to produce a higher voltage.
‘The Chinese had developed acupuncture by this time, and still use acupuncture combined with an electric current. This may explain the presence of needle-like objects found with some of the batteries’
Bronze Age cemetery discovered in West Bank village – Middle East Monitor
On April 6, the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of a prehistoric cemetery dating back to the Bronze Age in the Hindaza region near Bethlehem.
The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of a Bronze Age cemetery in Hindaza area, east of the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem on 6 April 2020
IMAN AT-TITI Director of the Antiquities Department of the Governorate of Bethlehem “The discovery of this cemetery is one of the most important in this region.
During the Bronze Age, some accessories were buried together with the deceased, in the belief that they could be used in the afterlife.
The metal that was commonly used at that time was bronze. We can see here some of the daggers and metal weapons that were commonly used in that period.
The findings also include a number of jars, and large and small bowls.”
The team of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has carefully documented all the archaeological materials found in the cemetery, including jars, daggers and bones, which will increase the scientific and historical heritage of this region.
Regarding the excavation methods used and the material found, Iman At-Titi, director of the Department of Antiquities of the Governorate of Bethlehem, explains IMAN AT-TITI Director of the Antiquities Department of the Governorate of Bethlehem.
“As archaeologists, we study more than one material… like ceramics, for example.
Pottery in the Bronze Age has several particular characteristics, related to the components of the mixture or the method of manufacture, or even its origin.
According to the data available to us, we can estimate the dating of ceramics.
There are materials for which we can also use methods such as Carbon 14, which is used to determine the archaeological age of ancient objects.”
The discovery of this Bronze Age cemetery is an important archaeological discovery, which brings to light a very ancient period in the history of the Region.
