Category Archives: WORLD

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

400 Million Year Old Hammer discovered In Texas The London

400 Million Year Old Hammer discovered In Texas The London

This curious artefact was found in London, Texas, USA in 1934. The hammer was embedded in the rock and has been many theories about its origin, and most importantly its incredible age.

So how did the hammer end up being stuck in the rock? Well, to finish the hammer inside the rock it had to be built before the rock was formed and which was several million years ago.

After their discovery and all the questions raised by the hammer, the researchers decided to abandon the unbelievable discovery at the Somervell Museum in Texas.

The internal handle underwent the process of carbonization based on studies by the Metallurgical Institute of Columbia and the hammerhead was built with iron purity only achievable with modern-day technology.

According to analysis, the head of the hammer consists of 97 pure iron, 2 per cent chlorine and 1 per cent sulfur. Surprisingly researchers also found that the iron had undergone a process of purification and hardening, typical of the metallurgy of the twentieth century.

According to analysis, the rock encasing of the hammer was dated to the Ordovician era, more than 400 million years ago.

The portion of stone surrounding the hammerhead also presented abnormalities, seeming to have merged with some type of sheath covering the hammer. According to geologists, the slow process of petrification dates back hundreds of millions of years.

This has led several ufologists and ancient astronaut theorists to a quick deduction of the context of the incredible discovery leading them to assume not only that there was a human civilization before the historical process of petrification in Texas, but that this ancient civilization already possessed the necessary technology for the fabrication of a hammer with modern features.

Evidence suggesting that the iron from the hammer might have originated from a meteorite is not a possibility according to researchers. The chemical analysis of the artefact also detected certain amounts of potassium, silicon, chlorine, calcium and sulfur.

Thus, this composition contradicts the hypothesis postulated that the hammerhead belonged to the fragment of a meteorite since the bodies of our solar system do not have that type of chemical composition.

Researchers also believe, that since the head of the hammer was found embedded into the rock, it suggests that the embedding process was performed under different atmospheric conditions to the current, different atmospheric pressure, more similar to those in the remote past.

Against the remote possibility that a meteorite with extremely rare and bizarre chemical composition and exceptional morphology, got caught, in prehistoric times, onto a piece of wood just as the head of the discovered hammer imprisons its handle, some researchers and ancient astronaut theorists point toward the fact that our planet was inhabited in ancient times, by civilizations with advanced technical and technological capacity, of which today we only have legends and items like this one who were trapped in the rock. 

Unfortunately, some scientists do not agree with the theory that an ancient civilization created the hammer, and claim that it was only a metallurgical technique that had been eventually abandoned.

This extraordinary artefact belongs to the list of many other mysterious objects that have been discovered across the globe, and just like the Russian “microchip” or the 300 million-year-old screw, this item has caused debate among researchers and historians who are divided into groups, supporting and denying the possibility that the human race is much older than previously thought.

Whether this artefact is indeed a hammer dating back hundreds of millions of years, is something that will fuel debate among supporters of the ancient astronaut theory and conventional archaeologists, who both have provided arguments explaining the origin and age of the hammer.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Egypt breakthrough: How 2,000-year-old mystery was solved after ‘lost labyrinth’ discovery

Egypt breakthrough: How 2,000-year-old mystery was solved after ‘lost labyrinth’ discovery

The discovery was made in Dahshur, an archaeological site 90km south of Cairo, where the tattered remains of Pharaoh Amenemhat III’s Black Pyramid can be seen today. The huge mortuary temple that originally stood adjacent to this pyramid is believed to have formed the basis of the complex of buildings with galleries and courtyards called a “labyrinth” by famed ancient Greek historian Herodotus.

With no visible remains, the story was thought to simply be a legend passed down by generations until Egyptologist Flinders Petrie uncovered its “foundations” in the 1800s, leading experts to theories the labyrinth was demolished under the reign of Ptolemy II and used to build the nearby city of Shedyt to honour his wife Arsinoe. But, in 2008, archaeologists working on the Mataha Expedition made a stunning find below the sands, researcher Ben Van Kerkwyk revealed on his YouTube channel ‘UnchartedX’ earlier this year.

He said in January: “It is a rare thing for ancient historical mysteries to ever be fully resolved.

“Great enigmas like the pyramids of Egypt seem to somehow resist the passage of time, unchanging as it flows around them like boulders in the river of history.

“Occasionally our civilisation makes some small incremental progress, a new tomb is found or some object discovered destined to become yet another piece in a museum.

The Black Pyramid is located in Dashu

“12 years ago, in 2008, a momentous discovery was made beneath the sands of Egypt, this wasn’t some small incremental step, but represented rather a huge leap forward – an opportunity for historical exploration and learning – the likes of which we have not witnessed in a century.

“The great lost labyrinth of ancient Egypt had been found.”

Mr Van Kerkwyk went on to detail what the area may have looked like some 2,000 years ago.

He added: “This was a gigantic and mythical structure, said by some to have surpassed the achievements of the pyramids, a huge array of thousands of underground halls, temples and chambers, dwarfing all known Egyptian temple sites several times over.

“This structure was visited and witnessed first-hand by the great historians of millennia past, yet ultimately, was lost to the sands of the desert and its physical presence remained unknown for more than 2,000 years.

A huge labyrinth is believed to be below the sand

“Unknown until 12 years ago, the discovery was suppressed and today the incredible potential of this site is being slowly and irrevocably destroyed by both inaction by authorities and by the water table in the area that’s rising.

“Compared with Giza or any of the other well-known ancient Egyptian sites, there really isn’t a lot to immediately take in.”

Mr Van Kerkwyk detailed how Mr Petrie first stumbled across the find.

He added: “Some fragments of once-mighty granite columns carved in palm or lotus shapes along with other small fragments of ancient stonework are left lying in a small, open-air museum.

“The site is dominated by the remains of the pyramid of Amenemhat III with only the mud-brick internal structure remaining to see.

Possible location of the tunnels

“The remains of the labyrinth have been discovered in the sandy areas to the south of the pyramid.

“The first to find any real evidence of this was the great Flinders Petrie, who, in the late 1800s, discovered the remains of a huge stone foundation, more than 300 metres broad around four metres beneath the sand.

“He concluded that this was the remnants of the foundations for the labyrinth, with the structure itself being long since quarried and destroyed.”

Archaeologists found evidence of a huge structure hiding below the sand in 2008, but Mr Van Kerkwyk said the area has never been excavated.

The monuments cannot be seen today
There are few ancient remains visible

He continued: “However, new evidence collected in modern times is challenging his conclusion and it now seems likely that what Petrie found was not the foundation, but instead was part of the ceiling or roof.

“These same areas were scanned in 2008, using ground-penetrating radar, by the Mataha Expedition, a collaboration between Egyptian authorities, the Ghent University of Belgium and funded by contemporary artist Louis De Cordier.

“The results of this expedition clearly indicate the presence of grid-like and ordered structures deep beneath the sand in levels much deeper than Petrie ever excavated.

“Although this expedition was conducted with the full cooperation and permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the official results and conclusion of this legitimate scientific study have never been released.”

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

2,000-year-old Roman street unearthed in Turkey’s Diyarbakır

2,000-year-old Roman street unearthed in Turkey’s Diyarbakır

A 2,000-year-old street from the Roman period has been discovered in southeastern Turkey. The historic city of Diyarbakır, situated in southeastern Turkey, is home to innumerable ancient wonders and relics from throughout history.

Archaeological workers continue efforts to unearth a Roman-era street at the ancient Amida Höyük site in Diyarbakır, Turkey.

Currently, excavation to unearth the historical Roman street is being carried out in Amida Höyük, a mound known as the heart of Diyarbakır province while also being the historical Roman name of the city, along with Amed which was what it was called in the Assyrian period and modern-day Kurdish.

Amida Höyük was home to many civilizations such as the Hurri-Mitannis, Urartians, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Tigranes the Great’s Kingdom of Armenia, Romans, Sassanids, Byzantines, Umayyads, Abbasids, Safavids, Ayyubid dynasty, Marwanids, Seljuks, Artuqids and Ottomans.

Professor Irfan Yıldız from Dicle University is leading the excavation amid strict measures against the coronavirus pandemic.

“Very interesting data continues to come from the west side of the mound we excavated. The street texture and structure of the period has started to emerge,” Yıldız said.

Yıldız noted that over the period of a year they expect to unearth many historical artefacts in the excavation.

Yildiz said by 2022 tourists using the Roman street will be able to visit the historical region of Içkale and be able to see streets from the Roman, Ottoman and Republican periods.

Diyarbakır was historically situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress.

Tigris was one half of the word “Mesopotamia” which translates to “between the rivers” in ancient Greek, a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that helped humanity thrive but also plunged it into some of the bloodiest wars of history.

Many small and large-scale states and empires were built upon the soil which offered plentiful natural resources essential for survival.

The city was conquered by Muslims in 639, only a few years following the conquest of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which stands as the holiest city of Islam.

Today, Diyarbakır is home to the Hevsel Gardens which have been used for agricultural purposes for more than 8,000 years, the Great (Ulu) Mosque, one of the oldest mosques of Anatolia and the Malabadi bridge built during the Artuqid period in the 12th century.

Meanwhile, it is also home to the Hasuni Cave city where pre-historic people lived during the early years of Christianity, and the Zerzevan Castle, which is a Roman military facility containing the temple of Mithraism, a mysterious religion.

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Original 15th-Century Castle Wall Found in Tokyo

Original 15th-Century Castle Wall Found in Tokyo

The Mainichi reports that a 400-year-old stone wall standing about 13 feet tall has been uncovered at Edo Castle, which was constructed in the mid-fifteenth century A.D. by Ōta Dōkan, a samurai warrior-poet who eventually became a Buddhist monk.

The historic remnants were excavated at the spot where Sannomaru Shozokan (Museum of the Imperial Collections) is undergoing renovation work, in the East Garden of the Imperial Palace, in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.

The stone walls are not thought to have been repaired since they were first built at the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1867). An official at the Chiyoda Ward Government said the finding “allows us to examine stone wall construction techniques at the time.”

Original 15th-Century Castle Wall Found in Tokyo
Stone walls from the Edo Castle, thought to be about 400-years-old, are seen at a construction site in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward

According to the ward government, the stone walls were found near the Imperial Palace’s Otemon Gate.

They run about 16 meters north to south and measure about 4 meters high — or about seven steps. It seems they were part of the stone wall for the water-filled moat, and a band-shaped white line for indicating the water flow at the time remains on its surface. It is believed water went up to the stone walls’ fourth to fifth steps.

Researchers assume the whole stone walls were buried by the mid-1600s, based on the loss of its top, the condition of soil on the structure, and drawings from the time.

The field excavation survey was conducted from November to December 2020. Researchers are examining and analyzing the excavated relics and soil and will summarize the results in the future. The stone walls will be covered with soil again afterwards.

Stone walls from the Edo Castle, thought to be about 400-years-old, are seen at a construction site in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward

Sannomaru Shozokan is set to greatly expand its storage and exhibition areas and had aimed to open fully to the public in 2025, but the effects of the excavation survey mean a year’s delay is now expected.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

17th-Century Mourning Ring Unearthed on the Isle of Man

17th-Century Mourning Ring Unearthed on the Isle of Man

Manx Radio reports that a metal detectorist on the Isle of Man uncovered a piece of jewellery identified as a Stuart-period mourning ring made of crystal and gold inlaid with black enamel at the time of the English Civil Wars (1642–51) and will soon go on view at a local museum.

The accessory, which is inscribed with the initials “JD”—or possibly “ID”—is a mourning ring of the type given out at funerals during the Stuart period (1603–1714). Its sloping sides are adorned with engravings of leaves inlaid with black enamel.

“The ring is small and quite delicate in form, but of a high quality and intact,” says Allison Fox, an archaeologist at Manx National Heritage, in a statement. “The quality suggests that it was made for, or on behalf of, an individual of high status.”

17th-Century Mourning Ring Unearthed on the Isle of Man
James Stanley supported the Stuart monarchy during the English Civil Wars, which pitted Royalists against Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians.

Though Fox points out that researchers may never be able to definitively determine the ring’s origins, she says that it could have been connected with the Stanley family, which ruled as the Lords of Man for more than 300 years.

“The initials JD may refer to James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby and Lord of Man, a supporter of the Royalist cause in the Civil War,” adds Fox in the statement. “Letters and documents from the time show that he signed his name as J Derby, so the initials JD would be appropriate for him.”

As the Isle of Man’s legislature, Tynwald, notes on its website, Henry IV granted the island to Sir John Stanley I in 1405.

In exchange for their continued possession of the island, the crown demanded that the Stanleys remain loyal and send two falcons to all future kings of England upon their coronations. John’s grandson Thomas—stepfather to Henry VII, the kingdom’s first Tudor monarch—received the title of Earl of Derby in 1485, and the family continued to rule under that title for centuries.

After James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby was executed in 1651, his wife, Charlotte, worked to preserve his memory.

James Stanley, who was also known as Baron Strange for part of his life, became a Royalist commander in service of Charles I, and later Charles II, during the English Civil Wars, which pitted supporters of the monarchy against Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces.

In 1651, Cromwell’s men captured and executed James. His eldest son, Charles, succeeded him. After James’ death, reports BBC News, his wife, Charlotte, worked to ensure that he was not forgotten.

Metal detectorist Lee Morgan discovered the ring while exploring the south side of the island, which is a British dependency located off the northwest coast of England, last December.

The exact location is being kept secret to protect the site. (That same month, noted BBC News in February, a retired police officer on the Isle of Man unearthed a cache of 1,000-year-old Viking jewellery.)

Morgan, for his part, has previously unearthed two other treasure troves: In 2013, he found a horde of silver coins from the 1300s, and in 2019, he discovered a silver ingot dated to between 950 and 1075, during the island’s Viking period.

The Isle of Man’s coroner of inquests, Jayne Hughes, has declared the Stuart ring treasure under the United Kingdom’s Treasure Act. (Current guidelines define treasure very narrowly, but as Caroline Davies wrote for the Guardian in December 2020, the U.K. government is working to expand these parameters to better protect the country’s national heritage items.)

Per the statement, authorities will display the jewellery at the Manx Museum before sending it to the Treasure Valuation Committee, which meets at the British Museum, for review.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Florida sinkhole discovery suggests humans lived in America 14,500 years ago

Florida sinkhole discovery suggests humans lived in America 14,500 years ago

A stone knife, mastodon bones and fossilized dung Discovered in an underwater sinkhole show that humans lived in north Florida about 14,500 years ago, according to new research that recommends the colonization of the Americas was far more complex than originally believed.

Archaeologists have known about the sinkhole in the Aucilla River, south of Tallahassee, for years. But they recently dived back into the hole to excavate what they call clear proof that ancient mankind spread throughout the Americas about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Almost 200ft wide and 35ft deep, the sinkhole was “as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all”, according to Jessi Halligan, lead diving researcher and a professor at Florida State University at Tallahassee. Halligan dived into the hole 126 times through the course of her research, wearing a headlamp as well as diving gear.

Neil Puckett, from Texas A&M University, surfaces with a limb bone of a juvenile mastodon at a sinkhole in a limestone bedrock site near Tallahassee, Florida.

In the hole, the divers discovered stone tools including an inch-wide, several inch-long stone knife and a “biface” – a stone flaked sharp on both sides. The artefacts were found close to mastodon bones; re-examination of a tusk pulled from the hole confirmed that long grooves in the bone were made by individuals, presumably when they removed it from the skull and pulled meat from its base.

“Each tusk this size would have had more than 15lbs of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity,” said Daniel Fisher, a palaeontologist at the University of Michigan who was a member of a group that once removed a tusk from a mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.

Of the “biface” tool, Halligan told Smithsonian magazine: “There is definitely no way it is not made by people. There is no way that’s a natural artefact in any shape or form.”

When ancient people butchered or scavenged the mastodon, the sinkhole was a shallow pond: a watering hole for men, mastodons, buffalo, bears and apparently dogs. The researchers discovered bones that appear to be canine, suggesting dogs trailed the humans, either as companions or competitors for scraps. The discovery makes the sinkhole the earliest documented site for humans in the south-eastern United States. The specialists published their findings in the journal Science Advances on Friday, writing that the artefacts show “much better” evidence of early humans than previous work at the site.

“The proof from the Page-Ladson site is a major leap forward in shaping a new view of the peopling of the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age,” said Mike Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University.

“In the archaeological network, there’s still a terrific amount of resistance to the idea that individuals were here before Clovis,” he added, referring to the so-called “Clovis people”, a group long thought the first band of humans in the United Nation of America.

Divers investigate the Page-Ladson archaeological site in Florida

Waters said that the watering hole would have made for “easy pickings” for people looking to corner prey. Halligan suggested the ancient hunter-gatherers may have been the first regular nomads of the east coast, travelling south in the winter.

“They were very smart about local plants and local animals and migration patterns,” she said. “This is a big deal. So how could they live? This has opened up a whole new line of inquiry for us as researchers as we try to understand the settlement of the Americas.”

Humans are thought to have crossed into the Americas amid the Ice Age, when land-linked Siberia to Alaska, but the timing of the crossing is an issue of a long dispute. In the 1930s, archaeologists Discovered distinctive spearheads among mammoth bones near Clovis, New Mexico. For decades the Clovis individuals were considered the first to colonize the Americas, around 13,000 years ago. 1000 Clovis spearheads have been found around North America and as far south as Venezuela.

But in the last two decades, archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil, human DNA by way of faeces in a cave in Oregon, evidence of humans in coastal Chile as long as 14,800 years ago, and spearheads in Texas that could date human arrival in the Americas to 15,500 years ago. Most of the manmade artefacts Discovered in these disparate sites lack the signatures of the Clovis people. At the Florida site, the researchers examined twigs in fossilized mastodon dung to date the bones and artefacts, finding them to be about 14,550 years old. The timing casts the Bering Strait theory into doubt, Halligan said: the ice-free land bridge was only open for a few thousand years.

“So the ice-free corridor is not our answer for how the Americas were initially colonized,” she told the Smithsonian.

“The logical way individuals could have come to Florida by 14,600 years ago is if their ancestors entered the Americas by boat along the Pacific Coast,” Waters told Discovery News.

“They could have travelled by boat to central Mexico, crossed and come along the Gulf Coast. They could have entered the Americas via the Columbia River and then travelled inland to the Mississippi waterway and followed it down and entered the Gulf Coast, eventually making their way to Florida.”

Mastodon remains have been found as far north as Kentucky, she said. Fisher added that the discovery that “humans and megafauna coexisted for at least 2,000 years” casts doubt on another theory: that the Clovis hunters quickly made mammoths and mastodons wiped out as they launched a “blitzkrieg” across the continent.

“That means that anyway humans and mastodons interacted, it took at least 2 millennia for the process of extinction to run to completion,” he said at a press conference. The main reason the giant mammals went extinct, he said, was probably the warming atmosphere. Several anthropologists not affiliated with the research said it added to the mounting evidence of a complex, many-staged migration into the Americas.

“I think this paper is a triumph for underwater archaeology and yet another nail in the coffin of the Clovis-first theory,” Jon Erlandson, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, disclosed to Nature magazine.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” archaeologist Michael Faught, one of the reviewers of the research, told National Geographic. “It’s unassailable.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists discover a medieval skeleton with his boots still on in London

Archaeologists discover a medieval skeleton with his boots still on in London

Archaeologists excavating a site along with the Thames Tideway Tunnel—a massive pipeline nicknamed London’s “super sewer”—have revealed the skeleton of a medieval man who literally died with his boots on.

“It’s extremely rare to discover any boots from the late 15th century, let alone a skeleton still wearing them,” says Beth Richardson of the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).

“And these are very unusual boots for the period—thigh boots, with the tops, turned down. They would have been expensive, and how this man came to own them is a mystery. Were they secondhand? Did he steal them? We don’t know.”

Unearthing skeletons amid major construction projects is not unusual in London, where throughout the centuries land has been reused countless times and many burial grounds have been built over and forgotten.

However, archaeologists noticed right away that this skeleton was different. The position of the body—face down, right arm over the head, left arm bent back on itself—suggests that the man was not deliberately buried.

It is also unlikely that he would have been laid to rest in leather boots, which were expensive and highly prized.  In light of those clues, archaeologists believe the man died accidentally and his body was never recuperated, although the cause of death is unclear.

Perhaps he fell into the river and could not swim. Or possibly he became trapped in the tidal mud and drowned.

Sailor, fisherman, or “mudlarker”?

500 years ago this stretch of the Thames—2 miles or so downstream from the Tower of London—was a bustling maritime neighbourhood of wharves and warehouses, workshops and taverns.

The river was flanked by the Bermondsey Wall, a medieval earthwork about fifteen feet high built to protect riverbank property from tidal surges.

Given the neighbourhood, the booted man may have been a sailor or a fisherman, a possibility reinforced by physical clues.

Pronounced grooves in his teeth may have been caused by repeatedly clenching a rope. Or perhaps he was a “mudlarker,” a slang term for those who scavenge along the Thames muddy shore at low tide.

Grooves in the teeth of the booted man

The man’s wader-like thigh boots would have been ideal for such work.

The boots discovered on the skeleton of a medieval man during Tideway excavations

“We know he was very powerfully built,” says Niamh Carty, an osteologist, or skeletal specialist, at MOLA.

“The muscle attachments on his chest and shoulder are very noticeable. The muscles were built by doing lots of heavy, repetitive work over a long period of time.”

It was work that took a physical toll. Albeit only in his early thirties, the booted man suffered from osteoarthritis, and vertebrae in his back had already begun to fuse as the result of years of bending and lifting.

Wounds to his left hip suggest he walked with a limp, and his nose had been broken at least once. There is evidence of blunt force trauma on his forehead that had healed before he died.

“He did not have an easy life,” says Carty. “Early thirties was middle age back then, but even so, his biological age was older.”

The examination is continuing. Isotope investigation will shed light on where the man grew up, whether he was an immigrant or a native Londoner, and what kind of diet he had.

“His family never had any answers or a grave,” says Carty. “What we are doing is an act of remembrance. We’re allowing his story to finally be told.”

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Shackled Skeletons Unearthed in Greece Could Be Remains of Slaughtered Rebels

Shackled Skeletons Unearthed in Greece Could Be Remains of Slaughtered Rebels

Phaleron is a small town just four miles south of Athens that most visitors are unaware of. In addition to being a port of Athens in classical times, Phaleron has one of the largest cemeteries ever excavated in Greece, with over 1,500 skeletons. Phaleron, which dates from the 8th to 5th centuries BC, is critical for our understanding of the growth of the Greek city-state. And, in particular, for comprehending the associated brutality and subjugation.

Shackled Skeletons Unearthed in Greece Could Be Remains of Slaughtered Rebels
Mass burial of 12 individuals with their hands tied at their backs, from 8th-5th BC Phaleron, Greece

People were forced face-down into a pit with their hands shackled behind their backs in two mass burials at Phaleron. An international team of archaeologists is cleaning, documenting, and examining the Phaleron skeletons to learn more about these deviant burials and their relationship to the Greek state formation.

Excavation at the site began nearly a century ago, with a mass grave – often referred to as containing the “captives of Phaleron” because of the presence of metal handcuffs – excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service.

But large-scale excavation of almost an acre of Phaleron was carried out between 2012-2016 by the Department of Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, led by archaeologist Stella Chrysoulaki.

The modern excavation garnered massive publicity in Greece because of its scale and funding from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, but little news has trickled out in the English-language media.

An archaeological excavation was careful and detailed, with conservators on-site and with several skeletons removed in blocks for future micro-excavation. Digitization of the archaeological field records, photographs, and maps is done, but this is just the beginning for the skeletons themselves, whose preservation and analysis has to be done by specialists in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology.

Example of a prone burial from 8th-5th BC Phaleron. The prone position and limb disorder indicate some sort of deviant burial

There is significant variation in how people were buried at Phaleron. Most were interred in simple pit graves, but nearly one-third are infants and children in large jars, about 5% are cremations complete with funeral pyres, and there are a few stone-lined cist graves. One individual was even buried in a wooden boat used as a coffin – the fact that this lasted nearly three millennia shows that preservation at the site is remarkably good.

The shackled skeletons, easily the most compelling remains from Phaleron, have received researchers’ attention for decades, as they are among the very few instances of shackled deaths in the ancient world and could indicate punishment, slavery, or a death sentence. But the study of these “captives” has to take place within the context of the entire cemetery, and analyzing 1,500 skeletons is a massive task.

Taking the lead on the Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project are bioarchaeologist Jane Buikstra, founding director of the Center for Bioarchaeological Research at Arizona State University, and geoarchaeologist Panagiotis Karkanas, director of the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Their immediate goal for the skeletons showcases the crucial link between the excavation of human skeletons and analysis: curation.

Burial in an 8th-5th century BC cemetery at Phaleron, Greece. The burial preserves metal shackles at the wrists, a deviant form of burial

Before the 1,500 skeletons can be made available for researchers to study, each set of remains needs to be cleaned, the bones inventoried, their age-at-death and sex estimated, and basic pathologies recorded. Setting up a database of this magnitude takes time and effort, as does correlating the skeletons with their archaeological context, and it takes significant funding too. That’s where the bottleneck is at the moment. Buikstra has a grant for approximately half the funds for curation of the skeletons but needs a match for the project to move forward.

In the long-term, though, Buikstra is sure that the Phaleron skeletons will give us a window into a critical time in ancient Greek history, just before the rise of the city-state. The research team has four main objectives following the conservation of the skeletons:

Overview of part of the Phaleron cemetery, showing the diversity of burial practices in the 8th-5th c BC

1) To thoroughly investigate the shackled and other deviant burials, including the individuals tossed into mass graves. Are they a casualty of the political upheaval that preceded the rise of Athenian democracy?

2) To study the burials of children, made primarily in pots, to learn more about infancy and childhood in the ancient world. Since children don’t often make it into the historical record, studying their skeletons helps reveal their brief lives.

3) To learn more about people’s diet at this ancient port city, and to find out if its inhabitants succumbed to diseases easily passed through sailors and other travellers from distant lands.

4) To go beyond the analysis of elite individuals buried with elaborate grave goods by focusing on the more simple burials, to shed light on all social classes of ancient Athens.

Buikstra and her team plan to make the project accessible through a website sponsored by the Ephoreia of Piraeus, Western Attica, and the Islands, Ministry of Culture, Greece, and the ASCSA. This website will also include summary blog posts, photos, and preliminary results. Public talks around the U.S. are planned, as well as Wiener Laboratory open-house, school, and museum events in Athens.

Making the database available to researchers around the world is also part of Buikstra’s plan. This will allow bioarchaeologists to use cutting-edge analytical methods, such as ancient DNA and isotope chemistry, in order to tell the important stories of the people of ancient Phaleron.