Early Neolithic Cremation Burial in Israel Examined
Ancient people in the Near East had begun the practice of intentionally cremating their dead by the beginning of the 7th millennium BC.
According to a study published on August 12, 2020, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fanny Bocquentin of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and colleagues.
Excavations at the Neolithic site of Beisamoun in Northern Israel have uncovered an ancient cremation pit containing the remains of a corpse that appears to have been intentionally incinerated as part of a funerary practice.
Picture of bones in situ: A. Segment of the axial skeleton: ribs and vertebrae exposed in the middle of the structure. B. Right coxal in situ; preserved almost complete by a piece of collapsed mud wall (see Fig 2D). C. Four right pedal proximal phalanges found directly under the right coxal.
These remains were directly dated to between 7013-6700 BC, making them the oldest known example of cremation in the Near East.
The remains comprise most of one skeleton of a young adult. The bones show evidence of having been heated to temperatures of over 500°C shortly after death, and they sit inside a pit that appears to have been constructed with an open top and strong insulating walls.
Microscopic plant remains found inside the pyre-pit is likely leftover from the fuel for the fire.
This evidence leads the authors to identify this as an intentional cremation of a fresh corpse, as opposed to the burning of dry remains or a tragic fire accident.
This early cremation comes at an important period of transition in funerary practices in this region of the world. Old traditions were on the way out, such as the removal of the cranium of the dead and the burial of the dead within the settlement, while practices like cremation were new.
This change in the funeral procedure might also signify a transition in rituals surrounding death and the significance of the deceased within society.
Further examination of other possible cremation sites in the region will help elucidate this important cultural shift.
The Beisamoun pyre fields, where the cremated burial was discovered, during the crepuscular hours.
Bocquentin says: “The funerary treatment involved in situ cremations within a pyre-pit of a young adult individual who previously survived from a flint projectile injury— the inventory of bones and their relative position strongly supports the deposit of an articulated corpse and not dislocated bones.” She adds, “This is a redefinition of the place of the dead in the village and in society.”
A team of German and Peruvian archaeologists says they have discovered the oldest known monument in Peru: a 5,500-year-old ceremonial plaza near Peru’s north-central coast.
Carbon dating of material from the site revealed it was built between 3500 BC and 3000 BC, Peter Fuchs, a German archaeologist who headed the excavation team.
A circular plaza built 5,500 years ago has been discovered in Peru, and archaeologists involved in the dig, carbon dating shows it is one of the oldest structures ever found in the Americas.
A circular plaza unearthed at the ruins of Sechin Bajo, 230 miles north of Lima, may have been a site for gatherings and ceremonies, archaeologists say.
“It’s an impressive find, the scientific and archaeology communities are very happy,” said Cesar Perez, the scientist at Peru’s National Institute of Culture who supervised the project. “This could redesign the history of the country.”
Prior to the discovery at Sechin Bajo, archaeologists considered the ancient Peruvian citadel of Caral to be one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, at about 5,000 years.
Scientists say Caral, located a few hour’s drives from Sechin Bajo, was one of six places in the world — along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, and Mesoamerica — where humans started living in cities five thousand years ago.
“The dating done by the German archaeologists puts it at about 5,500 years, but other parts could be older depending on what else is found,” Perez said.
Earlier finds near Sechin Bajo had been dated at 3,600 years.
“They had a highly-developed understanding of architecture and construction. This can clearly be seen in the fact that the materials they used survived for so long,” Peter Fuchs, one of the archaeologists, told the El Comercio newspaper.
The social gathering space that Fuchs and his colleagues found was built with rocks and adobe bricks.
Hundreds of archaeological sites cover Peru, and many ruins were built by cultures that preceded the powerful Incan empire, which reached its peak in the 16th century, just before Spanish conquerors arrived in what is now Peru.
500,000-Year-Old Earliest European Bone Tools Found In UK
The earliest known bone tools in European archeological history, archaeologists claim, were found. The implements come from the renowned Boxgrove site in West Sussex, which was excavated in the 1980s and 90s.
One of the oldest organic tools in the world. A bone hammer used to make the fine flint bifaces from Boxgrove. The bone shows scraping marks used to prepare the bone as well as pitting left behind from its use in making flint tools
The bone tools came from a horse that humans butchered at the site for its meat. Flakes of stone in piles around the animal suggest at least eight individuals were making large flint knives for the job.
Researchers also found evidence that other people were present nearby – perhaps younger or older members of a community – shedding light on the social structure of our ancient relatives.
There’s nothing quite like Boxgrove elsewhere in Britain: during excavations, archaeologists uncovered hundreds of stone tools, along with animal bones, that dated to 500,000 years ago.
They were made by the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor for modern humans and Neanderthals. Researchers found a shin bone belonging to one of them – it’s the oldest human bone known from Britain.
A photograph of the Horse Butchery Site, Boxgrove, under excavation in 1990.
Project lead, Dr. Matthew Pope, from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, said: “This was an exceptionally rare opportunity to examine a site pretty much as it had been left behind by an extinct population after they had gathered to totally process the carcass of a dead horse on the edge of a coastal marshland.
“Incredibly, we’ve been able to get as close as we can to witnessing the minute-by-minute movement and behaviours of a single apparently tight-knit group of early humans: a community of people, young and old, working together in a co-operative and highly social way.”
The researchers were able to reconstruct the precise type of stone tool that had been made from the chippings left at the site. However, humans must have taken the tools with them – as they had not been recovered.
At the inter-tidal marshland, which was on what would have been Britain’s southern coastline, there was a nearby cliff that was starting to degrade, producing good rocks for knapping – the process of creating stone tools. Silt from the sea had also built up here, forming an area of grassland.
“Grassland means herbivores and herbivores mean food,” explained Dr. Pope. Dr. Pope added that it was still unclear how the horse ended up in this landscape.
“Horses are highly sociable animals and it’s reasonable to assume it was part of a herd, either attracted to the foreshore for freshwater, or for seaweed or salt licks. For whatever reason, this horse – isolated from the herd – ends up dying there,” Dr. Pope told BBC News.
“Possibly it was hunted – though we have no proof of that – and it’s sat right next to an intertidal creek. The tide was quite low so it’s possible for the humans to get around it. But shortly after, high tide comes in and starts to cover the site in fine, powdery silt and clay. It’s so low energy that everything is left as it was when the hominins moved away from the site.”
The horse provided more than just-food. Analysis of the bones by Simon Parfitt, from the University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology, and Dr. Silvia Bello, from London’s Natural History Museum, found that several bones had been used as tools called re-touchers.
Left: A small knapping scatter relating to the reshaping of a biface, preserving the imprint of an early human knee in the shards of waste flint, 1989. Right: A small refit group that preserves the complete reshaping of a tool, presumably during its use in butchering the horse.
Simon Parfitt said: “These are some of the earliest non-stone tools found in the archaeological record of human evolution. They would have been essential for manufacturing the finely made flint knives found in the wider Boxgrove landscape.”
Dr. Bello added: “The finding provides evidence that early human cultures understood the properties of different organic materials and how tools could be made to improve the manufacture of other tools.
She explained that “it provides further evidence that early human populations at Boxgrove were cognitively, social and culturally sophisticated”.
The researchers believe other members of the group – which could have numbered 30 to 40 people – were nearby. They might have joined the hunting party to butcher the horse carcass. This might explain how it was so completely torn apart: the Boxgrove humans even smashed up the bones to get at the marrow and liquid grease.
Dr. Pope said that, far from being an activity for a handful of individuals in a hunting party, butchering could have been a highly social event for these ancient humans. The project has primarily been funded by Historic England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council with support from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the Natural History Museum and the British Museum.
The detailed findings have been published in a book called The Horse Butchery Site.
Volunteers Spot Iron Age Hillfort in Southern England
According to a BBC News report, volunteers with the Beacons of the Past project identified the possible site of an Iron Age hillfort covered with trees and foliage in lidar images of the southern Chiltern Hills, a chalk escarpment stretching 45 miles across southern England.
From digital survey images, last year and the hillfort was verified on 6 August. It is thought the circular site dates from the early Iron Age in England, between 800BC and 500BC.
Work will take place to preserve the site.
Dr Ed Peveler pictured by the iron age hillfort in the southern Chiltern Hills
The remains of the hillfort include a 9m-wide (30ft) bank and an external ditch that is 7m (23ft) wide.
Its perimeter is more than 500m (1,640ft) in length and it is thought it would have covered 7.5 acres (3 hectares).
Despite the name, hillforts are often neither on a hill nor used as forts. Archaeologists believe they may have been used as defended settlements, production sites, or stock enclosures.
The new site in the southern Chilterns was first identified through images from a large scale LiDAR scan of the area. LiDAR technology can penetrate foliage that might hide archaeological sites, using laser pulses.
Beacons of the Past’s trained volunteers, known as “citizen scientists”, helped look through LiDAR data to help identify sites.
The exact location of the hillfort has not been disclosed to protect the site and the landowner’s privacy.
An example of LiDAR technology identifying a different hillfort in the Chiltern Hills.
Work will take place to preserve what remains of the hillfort, but there are no plans to excavate the site at present.
Project manager and archaeologist Dr Wendy Morrison said: “Although one can never be certain of the age of a prehistoric earthwork without excavating for dating evidence, visual inspection of the rampart and ditch, paired with its location, dominating views in the landscape, give me the confidence to say this is very likely to be an Early Iron Age univallate hillfort.”
Beacons of the Past is a National Lottery Heritage Fund project hosted by the Chilterns Conservation Board.
At the ancient Tepe Ashraf in Isfahan, a team of Iranian archeologists found what they call the second Parthian era skeleton (247 BC – 224 CE) hoping to offer new insights on the history of the central Iranian city.
Led by senior archeologist Alireza Jafari-Zand, the team uncovered the remains of the first ‘Parthian lady’ last month in a place they believe is likely to be an ancient cemetery.
“At a distance of 10 meters from the body of [the first] Parthian lady, we found the burial [place] of a teenage girl. She is buried in the form of an open arch and on the ground.
Skeleton of another ‘Parthian lady’ discovered in Isfahan
Evidence shows that the body belonged to a teenager of about 12 to 13 years old with a height of about 160, but unfortunately the skeleton is damaged due to high humidity,” Jafari-Zand said on Tuesday.
Talking about the new discovery, he explained “It is clear from the burial that the tomb was designed [based on a special ritual]. Next to this corpse, there was a platform on which the remains of a large broken jar and a part of a horse’s spinal cord were placed.”
However, he proposed a hypothesis that the tombs were probably opened in very distant history, IRNA reported.
“Around the burial of this teenaged Parthian girl, a stone hedge was erected and a platform was set up. Remnants of this type of platform had already been found in the Parthian lady’s grave and a blue-colored jug was placed on it.
The archaeologist believes that due to the confusion of architectural evidence and objects of these two tombs, the tombs were probably opened in very distant history,’ he explained.
Earlier this year, an ancient burial containing the remains of a horse — estimated to be four years old was found near a place where a giant jar-tomb was unearthed weeks ago, which researchers believe could shed new light on ancient human life in Isfahan.
“Tepe Ashraf is the second place after the Tepe Sialk (in Isfahan province) that has yielded the discovery of such jar tombs that offers valuable clues to uncover the obscure history of pre-Islamic Isfahan,” according to the archaeologist.
Excavations at Tepe Ashraf initially began in 2010 when Jafari-Zand announced his team found evidence at the site suggesting that the Sassanid site had also been used during the Buyid dynasty (945–1055).
“We stumbled upon a reconstructed part in the ruins of the castle, which suggests that the structure had been used during the Buyid dynasty.”
The Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 CE), also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran.
The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures.
At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran.
Cahokia: The largest and most complex ancient archaeological site you probably didn’t hear of
I’m standing at the center of what was once the greatest civilization between the deserts of Mexico and the North American Arctic—America’s first city and arguably American Indians’ finest achievement—and I just can’t get past the four-lane gash that cuts through this historic site.
Instead of imagining the thousands of people who once teemed on the grand plaza here, I keep returning to the fact that Cahokia Mounds in Illinois is one of only eight cultural World Heritage sites in the United States, and it’s got a billboard for Joe’s Carpet King smack in the middle of it.
But I suppose Cahokia is lucky. Less than ten miles to the west, the ancient Indian mounds that gave St. Louis the nickname Mound City in the 1800s were almost completely leveled by the turn of the century.
Today only one survives, along with some photographs and a little dogleg road named Mound Street.
The relentless development of the 20th century took its own toll on Cahokia: Horseradish farmers razed its second-biggest mound for fill-in 1931, and the site has variously been home to a gambling hall, a housing subdivision, an airfield, and (adding insult to injury) a pornographic drive-in.
But most of its central features survived, and nearly all of those survivors are now protected.
Cahokia Mounds may not be aesthetically pristine, but at 4,000 acres (2,200 of which are preserved as a state historic site), it is the largest archaeological site in the United States, and it has changed our picture of what Indian life was like on this continent before Europeans arrived.
Cahokia was the apogee, and perhaps the origin, of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture—a collection of agricultural communities that reached across the American Midwest and Southeast starting before A.D. 1000 and peaking around the 13th century.
The idea that American Indians could have built something resembling a city was so foreign to European settlers, that when they encountered the mounds of Cahokia—the largest of which is a ten-story earthen colossus composed of more than 22 million cubic feet of soil—they commonly thought they must have been the work of a foreign civilization: Phoenicians or Vikings or perhaps a lost tribe of Israel.
Even now, the idea of an Indian city runs so contrary to American notions of Indian life that we can’t seem to absorb it, and perhaps it’s this cognitive dissonance that has led us to collectively ignore Cahokia’s very existence. Have you ever heard of Cahokia? In casual conversation, I’ve found almost no one outside the St. Louis area who has.
Researchers believe that Cahokia was home to around fifteen thousand people although they estimate that the regional population was home to around forty-thousand people; researchers even believe that Cahokia could have been the world’s biggest metropolis of its time.
The center of the ancient city was the Monk’s mound, the home of the city’s ruling priest was located at the top of the mound in a temple that was made of wood.
A ten-story behemoth known as Monks Mound is the centerpiece of the 2,200 acre Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Eighty surviving mounds dot this cultural World Heritage site; some were used as building platforms, some for burials.
The social structure of ancient Cahokia was very similar to the rule of ancient Mayan society and/or the ancient Egyptian culture; a graded aristocracy and a proletariat of slaves.
The decline of Cahokia was very sudden, by 1300 the city was abandoned and the society declined completely; like many ancient cultures such as the Maya in the Yucatan region, archaeologists believe that the prevailing factors that contributed to the fall of Cahokia were overexploitation of their natural resources, the construction of the great mound, droughts and overpopulation.
Very similar to the factors that caused the demise of the great Maya civilization.
Argentinian farmer Discovered a prehistoric giant Armadillo shell
The resting place of ancient armadillos that roamed the earth some 20,000 years ago has been discovered in Argentina. A farmer stumbled upon the graveyard containing fossilized shells of four massive Glyptodonts, with the largest being the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
The remains were discovered in a dried-out riverbed near the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires – at first, only two were spotted, but two more were found while paleontologists excavated the site.
Researchers believe the group consists of two adults and two young animals, but further testing will determine the cause of death, sex, and weight of the remains.
The resting place of ancient armadillos that roamed the earth some 20,000 years ago has been discovered in Argentina. A farmer stumbled upon the graveyard containing fossilized shells of four massive Glyptodonts, with the largest being the size of a Volkswagen Beetle
Juan de Dios Sota made the discovery while taking his cows out to graze near a river, Metro reported. He noticed two strange formations in a dried-out river bed and after taking a closer look, he knew he had stumbled upon something amazing and notified officials.
Pablo Messineo, one of the archaeologists at the scene, said: ‘We went there expecting to find two glyptodonts when the excavation started and then two more were found!’
‘It is the first time there have been four animals like this on the same site.’
‘Most of them were facing the same direction as they were walking towards something.’
Glyptodonts are the early ancestors of our modern armadillos that lived mostly across North and South America during the Pleistocene epoch. The creatures were encased from head to tail in thick, protective armour resembling in shape the shell of a turtle but composed of bony plates much like the covering of an armadillo.
The body shell alone was as long as 5 feet and as thick as two inches. It used its tail as a weapon – like a club – as the tip had a bony knob at the end that was sometimes spiked.
The group discovered in Argentina are believed to be two adults and two young animals, but experts are set to conduct further testing to determine the age, sex, and cause of death for each of the fossilized Glyptodonts.
The fossils were discovered in a riverbed by a farmer who was simply taking his cows out to graze
The body shell alone was as long as 5 feet and as thick as two inches. It used its tail as a weapon – like a club – as the tip had a bony knob at the end that was sometimes spiked (pictured)
A separate fossilized shell was discovered in 2015 by another farmer in Argentina. After popping out for some fresh air, farmer Jose Antonio Nievas stumbled across what experts said are the remains of a prehistoric giant. The 3 feet long shell discovered on a riverbank near a local farm may be from a glyptodont – a prehistoric kind of giant armadillo.
While there is a chance the shell is a hoax because it hasn’t been studied directly by experts, Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum, London, told MailOnline: ‘I think it is quite likely this is genuine.’
‘The shell looks like a genuine glyptodont shell, and the hole is ‘wear and tear’, not where the head or tail went,’ he explained.
Glyptodonts are the early ancestors of our modern armadillos that lived mostly across North and South America during the Pleistocene epoch
At first, Mr. Nievas thought the black scaly shell was a dinosaur egg when he saw it in the mud, his wife Reina Coronel said. But a paleontologist who studied the pictures later said it belonged to an ancient ancestor of the armadillo.
Alejandro Kramarz of the Bernadino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum exclaimed: ‘There is no doubt that it looks like a glyptodont.’
Nievas told television channel Todo Noticias he found the shell partly covered in mud and started to dig around it. Various experts who saw television pictures of the object also said it is likely to be a glyptodont shell.
Professor Lister explained it’s common to find fossils buried in the bank of streams and rivers because flowing water gradually erodes the bank to expose ancient shells and bones.
‘The finder would first have spotted a small area of the shell exposed in the stream bank and then by digging, exposed the whole thing,’ he said.
‘This scenario is supported by the green staining on the shell, just in the area where it might first have been exposed to the stream, even with a kind of ‘tide mark’ on it.
‘It would be an ingenious hoaxer who would construct such a thing.’
The creatures were encased from head to tail in thick, protective armor resembling in shape the shell of a turtle but composed of bony plates much like the covering of an armadillo
Medieval Bridges, Artifacts Found in a Polish Lake
POZNAŃ, POLAND—According to a report in The First News, archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University and the Museum of the First Piast at Lednica used photogrammetry to map the bottom of west-central Poland’s Lake Lednica, which is located between the city of Gniezno, site of the country’s first capital, and Poznań, the seat of the country’s first Christian bishop.
A 10th-century sword which is decorated with a cross and has the remains of its leather scabbard was discovered along with artifacts dating back to the times of the first Piast by archaeologists exploring Lednica Lake, between Poznań and Gniezno.
Scientists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the Museum of the First Piast at Lednica have conducted research in and around the lake since 1982, though the first works were done there in the fifties.
The 10th-century sword complete with the remains of a leather scabbard is likely to have belonged to someone of status and power.
Ostrów Lednicki was an important point on the early Piast dynasty Poland’s map, located between the first capital in Gniezno and Poznań, where the first bishop in the country had his seat.
Head of the University’s Centre for Underwater Archaeology professor Andrzej Pydyn said: “This is probably the richest season in a dozen years. Not only because of the number of objects, but also their value and the context in which they were found.”
The researchers focused on the area near two bridges connecting islands Ostrów Lednicki, Ledniczka, and the shore, found in 2017.
The younger bridge dates back to the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, while the older to the beginning of the 10th. The wood used for its construction was cut down in the years 913 and 914.
The bridges are a marvel on their own – measuring several hundred meters, they were an incredible undertaking at that time.
Underneath the bridges’ remnants, the archaeologists uncovered 21 objects, including the early medieval ornamented sword and two axes, other weapons such as arrowheads and crossbow bolts from the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as a sickle from that period.
Professor Pydyn said: “The most spectacular finding of this research season is the eighth sword found in Lednica Lake, the first in 20 years. But also the spearhead, axes, including the encrusted axe, probably one of the more spectacular ones found here.”
The notable 10th-century sword and axe couldn’t belong to a regular warrior and point to people of the importance of travelling to Ostrów Lednicki. The axe, similar in style to Scandinavian ones, was inlaid with silver and adorned.
The sword was decorated with a cross, a common European trope, but a rare find considering the place and time when it was made. Other findings include ceramics and animal bones.
Using photogrammetry (measuring and scanning the place to create a model), the researchers mapped the bottom of the lake and even 1.5 meters below it and created a detailed 3D model of the area.
The method led to another discovery, which provided new information on the settlement’s role and size. The most valuable seems to be the remains of the shore fortifications, most probably made of solid oak beams.
The finds date back to the times of Duke Mieszko I.
The age of one of them has already been determined by the dendrochronological method. The tree was cut down in 980, during the reign of Duke Mieszko I, the first documented ruler of Poland.
Professor Pydyn said: “They shed completely new light on what took place in this area. Actually, we are becoming certain, that the entire area of settlements around Ostrów Lednicki was important not only in the times of Mieszko I but also for his father or grandfather.”
