Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

Dozens of bronze ornaments: necklaces, bracelets, greaves, decorative pins, as well as numerous human bones, were discovered in the Chełmno district (Kujawy-Pomerania Province). According to archaeologists, these are the remains of sacrificial rituals from 2,500 years ago.

Today, the site of the discovery is a drained peat bog transformed into a farmland, but in the 6th century BCE it was a lake.

The discovery was made in the Chełmno Lake District by members of the Kujawy-Pomerania History Seekers Group, who conducted searches with metal detectors, with the permission of the Kujawy-Pomerania Province Conservator of Monuments in Toruń.

After being alerted by a group of detectorists, excavations led by Wojciech Sosnowski from the Office of Conservator of Monuments in Toruń began in January. They were carried out by researchers from the Institute of Archaeology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the services of the Wda Landscape Park.

Sosnowski told PAP: “In the 6th century BCE, in the early Iron Age, ritual ceremonies were held here periodically.”

In addition to valuable items lying loosely in the ground, probably displaced as a result of ploughing, the researchers also found three deposits. These accumulations of monuments have remained in the same place since they were deposited 2.5 thousand years ago.

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

Sosnowski told PAP: “In the 6th century BCE, in the early Iron Age, ritual ceremonies were held here periodically.”

In addition to valuable items lying loosely in the ground, probably displaced as a result of ploughing, the researchers also found three deposits. These accumulations of monuments have remained in the same place since they were deposited 2.5 thousand years ago.

According to the researchers, most of the items discovered during the research project are whole or damaged ornaments: necklaces, bracelets, greaves, pins with spiral heads, probably made for ceremonial purposes.

Dr. Jacek Gackowski from the Institute of Archaeology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, who analysed the artefacts said: “A particularly impressive object is a necklace consisting of many delicate metal and probably glass elements, decorated with a series of pendants in the shape of fish tails.”

The researchers also discovered metal parts of horse harnesses and a large number of other items. Among them there are very rarely preserved products made of organic raw materials – fabrics, antler tools in bronze sheet fittings and pieces of rope.

Most of the artefacts, according to the researchers, should be associated with the Lusatian culture. Several dozen kilometres further to the south-east, its representatives lived in the now famous fortified settlement in Biskupin. However, there are also objects that are foreign to this area and should be associated with the Scythian civilization and its influences from the area of today’s Ukraine.

Dr. Gackowski said: “This includes temple rings – unique objects of great scientific value, because they are – so far and in such numbers – the northernmost artefacts of this type discovered in Europe.”

The researchers were surprised to find many human bones among dozens of artefacts. This suggests that it was a place where sacrifices were probably made in prehistory, and not only of valuable items.

Why were people sacrificed? According to the researchers, this was related to the period of migrations and, probably, invasions.

Gackowski said: “It was a time of growing unrest related to the penetration of groups of nomads coming from the Pontic Steppe, probably Scythians or the Neuri, into Central and Eastern Europe.

“These people, probably in order to delay the rapid changes associated with the appearance of new neighbours with a completely different organization, appearance and vision of the world, began to practice various rituals treatments. They tried to secure their existence and give ritual resistance to the imminent, as it turned out, inevitable changes.”

To date, archaeologists have collected over a hundred human bone fragments. All the remains were on the surface of a freshly ploughed field.

 “At the moment, it is difficult to estimate how many people we are dealing with. It will be determined by a thorough anthropological analysis,” said Mateusz Sosnowski, an archaeologist from the Wda Landscape Park, who participated in the field work.

For security reasons and fear of robbery, archaeologists have not yet revealed the exact location of the discovery.

The custom of sinking bronze products during that period is known from other areas of Europe. Treasures from the period are also discovered in Poland, but according to scientists analysing the collection, this is the first place in Poland where people were also sacrificed.

The community described by scientists as the Lusatian culture inhabited the Vistula and Oder river basins, as well as the areas of Saxony, Brandenburg, northern Bohemia and Lusatia. Its economy was mainly based on farming and breeding horned cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. 

In the beginning of the Iron Age, in addition to open settlements, forts also appeared (existing from the 8th to the 6th century BCE), considered tribal centres or places of refuge during unrest. The bronze artefacts and offerings discovered by detectorists and archaeologists come from that period.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles
A written name and the imprint of a woman’s sandal have been found on tiles recovered from a 3rd Century tile factory at Priors Hall Park, near Corby

Markings found in Roman tiles have shown workers were “more of a mixture” of people than first thought. The imprint of a woman’s sandal and a written name were found on items recovered from a 3rd Century tile factory at Priors Hall Park, Corby.

Experts said they showed workers were not just young male slaves but “literate men and women in nice shoes”.

Nick Gilmour, from Oxford Archaeology, said the marks showed it was “not clear cut” who the Roman workers were. Archaeologists have been working on-and-off at the Northamptonshire site for about 12 years, ahead of a development of more than 5,000 homes.

Several tile kilns were among the items excavated at the Priors Hall Park development in Corby

The Little Weldon Roman villa had first been uncovered in the 18th Century, but in 2011 during a geophysical survey a second Roman villa was revealed.

Oxford Archaeology took on the excavations in 2019 when Urban & Civic took over the development. They uncovered a temple/mausoleum that was turned into a pottery, brick and tile manufacturing centre sometime in the later 3rd to early 4th Century, to make building materials for Roman villas.

The latest findings come from the analysis of recovered material, including six tonnes of discarded tiles which are now being recorded. Mr Gilmour said Romans in the area were producing tonnes of tiles weekly to distribute around a network.

The industrial site was used to make materials for building Roman villas

While many are just basic tiles, “maybe one in 10,000 is really interesting”, including a “big thick tile” in which somebody had used their finger to trace letters in it, he said.

Individual tilers would often mark about one in every few they produced with a signature, so they could get paid for what survived the kiln. But these tile signatures were usually patterns and symbols which showed that workers were not high status.

The latest findings come from the analysis of thousands of recovered tiles

Mr Gilmour said the latest find was “really unusual” because it reads “Potentius fecit”, which translates as “Potentius made me”, or as some linguists would say, “I was made by Potentius”.

“They have actually written their name with their finger,” he said.

“It demonstrates that the tiler was literate – perhaps surprising for someone who was in a role usually carried out by an indentured servant… so they were higher status than we thought.”

He said his team had tried to find other examples of this kind of signature, but had not yet seen one.

“It’s not definitely the only example, but we have asked a lot of experts in the field so we are close to convinced there isn’t another one,” he said.

“The irony is the reason that we have got it is because it failed, it wasn’t even vaguely flat and wasn’t used on a villa or it wouldn’t have been in the tile rubbish tip.

“So he might have been literate, but he was maybe not so good a tiler.”

The indentations on another tile are believed to be the imprint of nails on the bottom of a woman’s sandal

Tilers also used to check every few tiles with their feet by tapping them lightly, to see if they were dry and ready to be fired. A second terra cotta coloured tile with small indentations is believed to be the imprint of nails on the bottom of a woman’s sandal, as it showed a very narrow foot shape.

“It looks like women were working in the tilery as well, so it’s not as clear cut as we thought,” Mr Gilmour said.

“The workers were not just young male slaves – these markings show there were literate men and women in nice shoes as well, so it was more of a mixture.

“There was definitely still a hierarchy… the man in the villa would have been in charge, but who the workers were is not clear cut.”

He added that the footprints of animals and imprints of leaves found in the tiles would also be studied, to find out whether the work was seasonal and what the environment was like.

Items found during excavation give an insight into Roman workers’ lives, archaeologists said

Mr Gilmour added that the finds in Corby showed the “possible scale” of the tile industry. During a second phase of work in 2021, they found an intact Roman road that shows how Corby joined up with surrounding settlements.

“It’s not uncommon to find a kiln next to a villa, but it would be a small one just for making tiles for the one villa,” he said.

“But at Corby they were producing tiles to sell to a wide area, which is a much more modern idea.

“The next step is scientifically examining them under a microscope to look at what’s in the clay, so that longer term we can see where they were moving them to.

“Was it two or three miles or across [the now] county or further?”

Priors Hall Park is a development of more than 5,000 new homes in Corby
EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Elephant Bones Suggest Neanderthals Gathered in Large Groups

Elephant Bones Suggest Neanderthals Gathered in Large Groups

Large groups of Neanderthals gathered to hunt, butcher, and eat elephants more than 125,000 years ago.

On the muddy shores of a lake in east-central Germany, Neanderthals gathered some 125,000 years ago to butcher massive elephants. With sharp stone tools, they harvested up to 4 tons of flesh from each animal, according to a new study that is casting these ancient human relatives in a new light.

The degree of organization required to carry out the butchery—and the sheer quantity of food it provided—suggests Neanderthals could form much larger social groups than previously thought.

The find comes from a trove of animal bones and stone tools uncovered in the 1980s by coal miners near the town of Neumark-Nord. Beginning in 1985, archaeologists spent a decade observing the mining work, recovering animal bones and stone tools from a sprawling site.

Dating to a relatively warm period in Europe known as the Eemian interglacial, 75,000 years before modern humans arrived in Western Europe, the discoveries include the bones and tusks of more than 70 mostly adult male straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species almost twice the size of modern African elephants that stood nearly 4 meters tall at the shoulder. Most had been left in dozens of piles along the ancient lakeshore over the course of about 300 years.

“We wondered, ‘What the hell are 70 elephants doing there?’” says Lutz Kindler, an archaeozoologist at the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center.

To find out, he and his colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, also an archaeozoologist at MONREPOS, spent months examining the 3400 elephant bones, which are now stored in a warehouse. Some weighed dozens of kilograms and required a forklift to move. Under a microscope, Gaudzinski-Windheuser says, nearly every bone showed signs of butchery.

Although scientists have long known Neanderthals were capable hunters, these cutmarks “seem to be the first evidence of large-scale elephant hunting,” says April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria who was not involved with the research.

Gouges and scratches on nearly every bone show the hunters were thorough. “They really went for every scrap of meat and fat,” says University of Leiden archaeologist and study co-author Wil Roebroeks. The bones hadn’t been gnawed by scavengers like wolves or hyenas, suggesting nothing was left for them.

The meat from a single elephant would have been enough to feed 350 people for a week, or 100 people for a month, the researchers calculate. In the past, Neanderthals were thought to live in small, highly mobile groups of about 20 individuals at most, but the elephant bounty suggests far bigger groups—big enough to slaughter and process an entire elephant and big enough to consume it—once lived near the site, the researchers report today in Science Advances.

“This is really hard and time-consuming work,” Kindler says. “Why would you slaughter the whole elephant if you’re going to waste half the portions?”

Archaeozoologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser examines an elephant bone with a portable microscope.

The elephants provided ideal samples for this work, the authors noted. At ancient sites featuring hundreds of slaughtered horses or gazelle, there’s no way to know for sure whether all the animals were killed at the same time. “If you find 100 butchered horses, you don’t know if it was one event or 20,” Roebroeks says. “With an elephant, it’s clear Neanderthals were able to deal with a huge amount of food in one go.”

The researchers “make a good case these huge food packages mean much larger groups,” says University of Reading archaeologist Annemieke Milks, who was not involved in the research. “Maybe it’s a large, seasonal gathering, or they’re storing food—or both.”

Nowell agrees, adding that felling an elephant must have required careful orchestration. The hunters likely singled out adult males, which roam alone without the protection of a female-led herd. “It would necessitate a high level of competence in sequencing and planning out the hunt and coordinating everybody.”

That doesn’t mean Neanderthals always lived and worked in large groups. But the results, like other recent findings, show these human ancestors were more sophisticated than once assumed, capable of adapting their behavior to a wide variety of environments and climates. “If one regional group of Neanderthals was capable of such behavior, other groups elsewhere surely would have been capable, too,” says retired University of Nevada, Reno, archaeologist Gary Haynes. “This lets us imagine Neanderthals as more like modern humans rather than as humanoid brutes, as they once were interpreted.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

An artificial intelligence (AI) bot was developed by linguists at the Institute for Assyriology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany to assist in putting together and deciphering illegible fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. It’s been dubbed “the Fragmentarium.”

Enrique Jiménez, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures at the Institute of Assyriology, is leading a team digitizing every surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet. Since 2018, the team has processed over 22,000 text fragments.

The team created the Fragmentarium, a groundbreaking database that automates the assembly of text fragments. The team worked with the Iraq Museum and the British Museum to photograph thousands of fragments.

This new AI program, which operates on both systematic and automated methods, has already identified hundreds of new manuscripts.

Furthermore, it matches up old text fragments, including pieces from the most recent tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which is considered the first work of literature in the world.

Professor Enrique Jimenez. Photo: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

This ancient Mesopotamian odyssey was written in the Akkadian language in 130 BC and tells the story of Gilgamesh, a ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state Uruk (Iraq).

According to the researchers, the oldest known version of the epic, which was written in cuneiform characters on clay tablets over 4,000 years ago, is “significantly younger” than this recently discovered version of the ancient Epic. It is very interesting, remarks Jiménez, that people were still copying Gilgamesh at this late period.

“There’s so much work to do in the study of Babylonian literature. The new texts we’re discovering are helping us understand the literature and culture of Babylon as a whole,” said Enrique Jiménez.

He plans to publish the Fragmentarium, along with a digital version of the Epic of Gilgamesh—the first containing all transcriptions of cuneiform fragments that are currently known—In February 2023.

“Everybody will be able to play around with the Fragmentarium. There are thousands of fragments that have not yet been identified,” says Jiménez.

Around 200 academics from around the world have used the online platform for their research projects since the project began.

EUROPE, WORLD

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

Anglo-Saxon monasteries were more resilient to Viking attacks than previously thought, archaeologists have concluded. Lyminge, a monastery in Kent, was on the front line of long-running Viking hostility which ended in the victories of Alfred the Great.

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

The monastery endured repeated attacks, but resisted collapse for almost a century, through effective defensive strategies put in place by ecclesiastical and secular rulers of Kent, University of Reading archaeologists say.

The new evidence is presented after a detailed examination of archaeological and historical evidence by Dr Gabor Thomas, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading.

“The image of ruthless Viking raiders slaughtering helpless monks and nuns is based on written records, but a re-examination of the evidence show the monasteries had more resilience than we might expect,” Dr Thomas said.

Despite being located in a region of Kent which bore the full brunt of Viking raids in the later 8th and early 9th centuries, the evidence suggests that the monastic community at Lyminge not only survived these attacks but recovered more completely than historians previously thought, Dr Thomas concludes in research, published today (30 January 2023) in the journal Archaeologia. 

During archaeological excavations between 2007-15 and 2019, archaeologists uncovered the main elements of the monastery, including the stone chapel at its heart surrounded by a wide swathe of wooden buildings and other structures where the monastic brethren and their dependents lived out their daily lives. Radiocarbon dating of butchered animal bones discarded as rubbish indicates that this occupation persisted for nearly two centuries following the monastery’s establishment in the second half of the 7th century. 

Historical records held at nearby Canterbury Cathedral show that after a raid in 804 CE, the monastic community at Lyminge was granted asylum within the relative safety of the walled refuge of Canterbury, a former Roman town and the administrative and ecclesiastical capital of Anglo-Saxon Kent.

But evidence from Dr Thomas’s dig shows the monks not only returned to re-establish their settlement at Lyminge, but continued living and building for several decades over the course of the 9th century. Dateable artefacts such as silver coins discovered at the site provided Dr Thomas with an insight into the re-establishment of the monastic community.

Dr Thomas said: “This research paints a more complex picture of the experience of monasteries during these troubled times, they were more resilient than the ‘sitting duck’ image portrayed in popular accounts of Viking raiding based on recorded historical events such as the iconic Viking raid on the island monastery of Lindisfarne in AD 793.

“However, the resilience of the monastery was subsequently stretched beyond breaking point. 

“By the end of the 9th century, at a time when Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great was engaged in a widescale conflict with invading Viking armies, the site of the monastery appears to have been completely abandoned. 

“This was most likely due to sustained long-term pressure from Viking armies who are known to have been active in south-eastern Kent in the 880s and 890s. 

“Settled life was only eventually restored in Lyminge during the 10th century, but under the authority of the Archbishops of Canterbury who had acquired the lands formerly belonging to the monastery.”

The latest research article is based on the results of over a decade of archaeological research at Lyminge, directed by Dr Thomas. The village was first established by Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century.

Thomas, G. (2023) In the shadow of saints: the long durée of Lyminge, Kent, as a sacred Christian landscape, is published today (30 January 2023) in the Society of Antiquaries online open access journalArchaeologia: 

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Tudor Pendant Recovered in English Field

Tudor Pendant Recovered in English Field

Tudor Pendant Recovered in English Field
Charlie Clarke, pictured, says he will use the payment for the pendant and chain, now in the British Museum, to fund his son’s education.

Charlie Clarke had been metal detecting for just six months when he stumbled across what he calls his “once in a lifetime – no, once in 30 lifetimes”, find. He was exploring a Warwickshire field, turning up “junk” and about to call it a day, when a clear beep on his detector led him to dig to the depth of his elbow. What he saw there caused him to shriek “like a little schoolgirl, to be honest. My voice went pretty high-pitched”.

What the Birmingham cafe owner had discovered was a huge and quite spectacular early Tudor pendant and chain, made in gold and enamel and bearing the initials and symbols of Henry VIII and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

When Rachel King, curator of Renaissance Europe at the British Museum, first heard about the discovery, she had to sit down. Nothing of this size and importance from the Renaissance period had been found in Britain for more than 25 years, she said.

A Tudor chain associated with Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon found in Warwickshire by Charlie Clarke while metal detecting.

The heart-shaped pendant, attached to a chain of 75 links and made of 300 grams of 24-carat gold, is decorated with a bush bearing the Tudor rose and a pomegranate, Katherine’s symbol, and on the reverse the initials H and K. Ribbon motifs carry the legend TOVS and IORS, which King called “a beautiful early English Franglais pun” on the French word “toujours” and “all yours”.

Despite initially seeming almost too good to be true, said King, careful scientific analysis has proved the pendant to be genuine. What experts have not been able to uncover, however, despite scouring inventories and pictures of the time, is to establish a personal link to Henry or Katherine.

“Nonetheless, its quality is such that it was certainly either commissioned by or somehow related to a member of the higher nobility or a high-ranking courtier.”

One hypothesis, based on careful analysis of its iconography and other historical records, is that the pendant may have been commissioned to be worn or even given as a prize at one of the major tournaments of which Henry was so fond, around the time of the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Though its size suggests it would only fit a woman, it may not have been meant to be worn at all.

Nothing remotely similar survives from the period, said King. “In the British Museum, we’ve got the largest collection of objects from the early Tudor periods in precious metal; none of them are anything like this.”

But what on earth was it doing in Warwickshire? On that, she said, they were still “feeling their way”. “We don’t know why it was in Warwickshire and who had it there. At least not yet.”

Discovered before the start of the pandemic, the pendant was unveiled at the launch of the annual reports of Treasure Act for 2020 and the Portable Antiquities Scheme for 2021.

A total of 45,581 archaeological finds were recorded in that period, of which 1,085 are classed as treasure – 96% were found by detectorists, most on cultivated land.

The Tudor pendant has not yet been valued but is certain to be worth a highly significant sum which Clarke will split with the landowner of the field. He said it meant his four-year-old son, also called Charlie, would have “the best education possible”. “That’s all it’s really about. Birmingham is a bit of a rough place, and I think any parent … would want the best education for their children.”

Inevitably, Charlie wants to be a treasure hunter when he is older, says his dad. “He wants to go to the jungle and find a box of pirate treasure. At that age, it must be so intriguing.

“People say it’s like winning the lottery; it’s not. People actually win the lottery. When was the last time a crown jewel was unearthed?”

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Underground Roman Aqueduct Explored Near Naples

Underground Roman Aqueduct Explored Near Naples

Underground Roman Aqueduct Explored Near Naples
Speleologists explore the Aqua Augusta, a Roman aqueduct that was previously the least-documented aqueduct in the Roman world.

Forty years ago, when children in Naples were playing in caves and tunnels under the hill of Posillipo in Italy, they didn’t know their playground was actually a Roman aqueduct. When they shared their memories with archaeological authorities recently, it kicked off an exploration of one of the longest, most mysterious examples of ancient water infrastructure in the Roman world.

Rome’s famous aqueducts supplied water for baths, drinking, public fountains and more. Built during a period of about half a millennium (roughly 300 B.C. to A.D. 200), aqueducts around the former Roman Empire are highly recognizable today thanks to their multitiered arched structure. But this marvel of ancient architecture represents only a small fraction of the actual water system; the vast majority of the infrastructure is still underground.

Outside of Rome, subterranean aqueducts and their paths are much less understood. This knowledge gap included the newly investigated Aqua Augusta, also called the Serino aqueduct, which was built between 30 B.C. and 20 B.C. to connect luxury villas and suburban outposts in the Bay of Naples.

Circling Naples and running down to the ancient vacation destination of Pompeii, the Aqua Augusta is known to have covered at least 87 miles (140 kilometers), bringing water to people all along the coast as well as inland.

But the complex Aqua Augusta has barely been explored by researchers, making it the least-documented aqueduct in the Roman world. New discoveries earlier this month by the Cocceius Association, a nonprofit group that engages in speleo-archaeological work, are bringing this fascinating aqueduct to light.

This Roman aqueduct found in Naples supplied water to ancient luxury villas.
Local children used to play in this Roman aqueduct, but experts learned about it only recently.

Thanks to reports from locals who used to explore the tunnels as kids, association members found a branch of the aqueduct that carried drinking water to the hill of Posillipo and to the crescent-shaped island of Nisida. So far, around 2,100 feet (650 meters) of the excellently preserved aqueduct has been found, making it the longest known segment of the Aqua Augusta.

Graziano Ferrari, president of the Cocceius Association, told Live Science in an email that “the Augusta channel runs quite near to the surface, so the inner air is good, and strong breezes often run in the passages.” Exploring the aqueduct requires considerable caving experience, though.

Speleologists’ most difficult challenge in exploring the tunnel was to circumvent the tangle of thorns at one entrance. 

“Luckily, the caving suits are quite thornproof,” he said. “After succeeding in entering the channel, we met normal caving challenges — some sections where you have to crawl on all fours or squeeze through.” 

In a new report, Ferrari and Cocceius Association Vice President Raffaella Lamagna( list several scientific studies that can be done now that this stretch of aqueduct has been found. Specifically, they will be able to calculate the ancient water flow with high precision, to learn more about the eruptive sequences that formed the hill of Posillipo, and to study the mineral deposits on the walls of the aqueduct.

The present entrance of the aqueduct, with two people for scale.
Sinter (mineral deposits) building up on the side walls of the aqueduct, marking ancient water levels.

Rabun Taylor, a professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the report, told Live Science in an email that the newly discovered aqueduct section is interesting because it is “actually a byway that served elite Roman villas, not a city. Multiple demands on this single water source stretched it very thin, requiring careful maintenance and strict rationing.” 

Taylor, an expert on Roman aqueducts, also said the new find “may be able to tell us a lot about the local climate over hundreds of years when the water was flowing.”

This insight is possible thanks to a thick deposit of lime, a calcium-rich mineral that “accumulates annually like tree rings and can be analyzed isotopically as a proxy for temperature and rainfall,” he explained. 

Ferrari, Lamagna and other members of the Cocceius Association plan to analyze the construction of the aqueduct as well, to determine the methods used and the presence of water control structures.

“We believe that there are ample prospects for defining a research and exploration plan for this important discovery, which adds a significant element to the knowledge of the ancient population” living in the Bay of Naples, they wrote in the report.

Source:https://www.livescience.com/

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Did Neanderthals Keep Hunting Trophies?

Did Neanderthals Keep Hunting Trophies?

Did Neanderthals Keep Hunting Trophies?
Steppe bison cranium from Level 3.

A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions across Spain, working with one colleague from Portugal and another from Austria, has discovered a large number of animal skulls placed by Neanderthals in a Spanish cave more than 40,000 years ago.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the group describes the site where the skulls were found, their condition and theories about why the skulls were placed in the cave.

The Cueva Des-Cubierta cave located in the Madrid Region of Spain was first discovered in 1978. Since that time, archaeologists have visited and studied the multilevel cave because it became clear that Neanderthal groups used the site for conducting rituals.

Bones and tools have been found in the cave, as have the remains of a Neanderthal child. In this new study, the researchers climbed to the third level of the cave to see if Neanderthals had used it, as well.

The researchers found multiple animal bones scattered on the floor in addition to an assortment of large herbivore skulls. The researchers found that the skulls had been carefully removed from the bodies and had been “worked” in different ways using tools and, in some cases, fire.

A common theme among the skulls was the display of prominent features, such as horns. Most of the skulls had once belonged to bison or aurochs, extinct cows. But they also found the skulls of five male deer (with antlers) and two rhinoceroses.

The discovery of the rhinoceroses was a major surprise, and the researchers chose to name one of them Rosendo, after the famous Spanish rock star.

Gneiss anvil under an aurochs cranium.

The team notes that finding such a collection of skulls suggests that the Neanderthal groups that brought them into the cave had something in mind besides food.

The skulls were large and heavy and would have provided little nourishment, suggesting their presence in the cave served some other purpose. The researchers suggest they may have represented hunting trophies.