To the south of the causeway of King Unas in Saqqara necropolis, the archaeological mission of the Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University, headed by Ola El-Aguizy, stumbled upon the sarcophagus of Ptahemwia from the reign of King Ramses II, whose tomb was discovered last year in Saqqara.
Mostafa Waziry, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Ptahemwia holds several titles, including the royal scribe, the great overseer of the cattle in the temple of Ramses II, the head of the treasury, and the one responsible for the offerings of all gods of Lower and Upper Egypt.
Waziri said the entrance to the shaft of the tomb at the centre of the peristyle court measured 2.2 X 2.1 m. The subterranean burial chamber opened on the west side of the shaft at the depth of 7 m.
It led to a square room measuring 4.2 X 4.5 m, leading to two other rooms on the western and the southern sides.
These two rooms were completely empty. In the main room, he added, a cut in the floor on the north side was noticed, leading to stairs that led to the burial chamber proper which measured 4.6 X 3.7 m.
El-Aguizy explained that the sarcophagus was uncovered on the west side of the burial chamber. It was directed south-north with an anthropoid lid showing the facial features of the deceased with crossed arms on the chest holding the Djed symbol of the deity Osiris and the Tyet symbol of the goddess Isis.
The sarcophagus is decorated with the usual inscriptions found on New Kingdom sarcophagi, with the bearded head of the owner, the sky-goddess Nut seated on the chest extending her wings.
Engraved on the lid and body of the sarcophagus is the name of Ptahemwia and his titles, representations of the four sons of Horus, and the prayers accompanying them all around the body of the sarcophagus.
“The lid of the sarcophagus was broken diagonally, and the missing part was found in the corner of the chamber. It has been restored to its original position. The sarcophagus was empty except for some residue of tar from the mummification on the bottom of the sarcophagus,” El-Aguizy pointed out.
Beads show that European trade in the African interior used Indigenous routes
Tiny glass beads discovered in mountain caves about 25 miles from the shores of Lake Malawi in eastern-central Africa provide evidence that European trade in the continent’s hinterland was built on Indigenous trade routes from the coast to the interior that had existed for centuries, according to a study co-authored by Yale anthropologist Jessica Thompson.
Two of 29 glass beads were discovered at archaeological sites in Malawi. An analysis showed that all but one were made in Europe. Many of the beads, like the tiny one on the right, were less than 2 millimetres in diameter.
The beads also are artefacts from a period in the 19th century when heightened European political and economic interest in the region influenced trade between Indian Ocean merchants and communities in the African interior, Thompson said.
The study, published in the journal African Archaeological Review, is based on a collection of 29 glass beads excavated at three sites in the Kasitu Valley in northern Malawi, more than 400 miles from the eastern coast, from 2016 to 2019.
An analysis of the beads’ elemental composition showed that all but one of them were manufactured in Europe using glass recipes that were in fashion around the mid-19th century. The exception had a composition typical of glass beads produced in South Asia from the 15th to the 17th century.
The beads’ provenance indicates that people in the region were either directly or indirectly trading with Europeans before the latter group had established a presence in what is now Malawi during the second half of the 19th century.
This commerce was most likely associated with heightened trade in commodities such as gum copal — a resin used in the varnish industry — and ivory that was prized in Europe and North America.
It also likely involved the capture and transport of enslaved people, who were taken in chains to spice plantations in Zanzibar and other Indian Ocean islands, Thompson said.
“It’s a dark story,” said Thompson, assistant professor of anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the paper’s senior author. “Indian Ocean traders had access to European goods, like these little beads, that they could exchange for things in high demand in distant places — a story of exploitation deep into Africa that continues today. And in the mid-1800s, there was still a slave trade across eastern Africa that would persist for several more decades.”
Thompson is a paleoanthropologist whose research typically concerns much older human groups. But as she was working with colleagues at sites in Malawi searching for Stone Age artefacts, glass beads began showing up in their 1-millimetre sieves. (All but one of the beads have a diameter of less than 5 millimetres. The smallest were less than 2 millimetres in diameter.)
“Some were so tiny that we didn’t know that we were looking at beads when we first found them,” she said. “They just look like little brightly coloured specks.”
Thompson and her other co-authors teamed with Laure Dussubieux, a senior research scientist at the Field Museum in Chicago, who analyzed the beads’ composition using a technique called laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Essentially, the beads were zapped with a high-energy laser to determine their elemental makeup without damaging them, Thompson said.
It was the first time this technique was applied to glass beads excavated in Malawi, where thousands of glass beads have been discovered at dozens of sites since 1966.
The researchers used the beads’ chemical compositions to identify their origins. For example, five red-on-white beads in the study contained high concentrations of arsenic, which was used in European recipes during the 19th century to make glass opaque. These beads likely were produced in Venice, which was the centre of 19th-century Europe’s bead-making industry, according to the study. They were manufactured around the time the Scottish missionary David Livingstone was creating maps of the African interior and encouraging people in Britain to take a greater interest in eastern-central Africa. (The British eventually established governance in Malawi, which became an independent country in 1964).
A single bead yielded from one of the sites was the only example in the collection with a non-European origin. Its composition is consistent with beads produced in Chaul, a former town on the Maharashtra coast of India, from the 15th to the 17th century, meaning it likely arrived in the eastern African interior hundreds of years before the European beads, the researchers concluded.
Two cowrie shells, which were abundant in the Indian Ocean and used as currency and jewellery, were discovered at a fourth site that bore no glass beads. Radiocarbon dating determined that the shells were between 1341 and 1150 years old, which suggests that the glass beads of European and Indian origin arrived at inland communities via long-established trade networks, Thompson said.
“This tells you that people were already trading through very complex routes from the Indian Ocean, over mountains and around lakes to inland communities at least 1,000 years before Europeans began documenting their experiences in the region,” she said. “Newcomers to Africa were exploiting trade routes created through long-term Indigenous interactions.”
“It’s not simply a story of Europeans arriving and distributing their goods to people in the African interior,” she added. “The people living there had been trading for centuries for Indian Ocean goods, via established and productive pathways. Our work shows how archaeology and artefacts can reveal important information that would stay hidden if you only relied on written accounts.”
Menno Welling of Amsterdam University of the Arts and Potiphar Kaliba of Malawi’s Department of Museums and Monuments are co-authors of the study.
Several small and large stone tools were found during excavations
Over the years rock carvings of a previously unknown civilisation have been found in India’s western state of Maharashtra. Now, a cave in the same region is promising to shed more light on the creators of these prehistoric artworks and their lives. The BBC Marathi’s Mayuresh Konnur reports.
The cave, located around 10km (six miles) away from Koloshi village in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra, was discovered by a group of researchers last year. Excavations earlier this year revealed several stone tools in the cave that date back tens of thousands of years.
“Nowhere in the world can we find rock art of this kind,” says Dr Tejas Garge, who heads Maharashtra’s archaeology department. Archaeologists believe these artefacts can help us find out more about the way our ancestors lived.
Two rounds of excavations were conducted in the cave
The cave, which is situated in a secluded forest in Sindhudurg, was discovered by researchers who were studying rock carvings in nearby areas.
Excavation work was conducted in two rounds, during which archaeologists dug two trenches inside the cave. Several big and small stone tools dating back to the Mesolithic period – also called the middle stone age – have been found.
“The microliths, or the small stone tools, date back to around 10,000 years, whereas the larger tools could be around 20,000 years old,” says Rutivij Apte, who has been researching the Konkan petroglyphs and was part of the excavation team.
Dr Parth Chauhan, an archaeologist, says chemical processes are used to analyse any residue that might be present on the edges of the artefacts. This can help determine what the object was used for.
“It will take a couple of months to find out the exact time period these stone tools belong to. But right now, we can say that these artefacts are between 10,000 to 48,000 years old.”
Microliths – small stone tools – were discovered inside the cave
Maharashtra’s laterite-rich Konkan plateau where this cave was discovered is also a treasure trove of prehistoric art. In the past explorers have discovered rock carvings of animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs hidden under layers of soil in several villages here.
So far, 1700 petroglyphs – or rock carvings – have been found at 132 locations in 76 villages in Sindhudurg and the nearby Ratnagiri district.
Several petroglyphs – rock carvings – have been found in Maharashtra’s Konkan region
Saili Palande Datar, a Pune-based art historian and writer, says these carvings offer great insights into the life and habits of prehistoric man.
She gives the example of an iconic rock carving of a human figure found near Barsu village in the Ratnagiri district.
The carving is embossed on a rock and seems to be of a male figure who is holding what appears to be tigers and other wild animals in both hands.
“There is an amazing sense of symmetry in this carving, which points to a high level of skill. The picture also depicts the relationship man shared with animals,” Ms Datar says.
He says that seals of the Harappan civilisation – one of the oldest civilisations in human history that flourished in the Indian subcontinent – also depict the close relationship man shared with animals.
“The seals have images of large animals like tigers and buffaloes and of man hunting animals,” she says.
Experts say that mysteries around these prehistoric rock carvings are far from being solved, but a Unesco tag – natural and cultural landmarks from around the world are singled out for their “outstanding universal value” to humanity – can help preserve them for generations.
Eight rock carving sites in the Konkan region are already a part of Unesco’s tentative list of World Heritage sites, which is the first step towards getting the tag for any culturally-significant site.
Researchers Return to Age of Exploration Shipwreck
New excavations have coaxed more secrets from Gribshunden, the flagship of the Danish-Norwegian King Hans which mysteriously sank in 1495 off the coast of Ronneby, Sweden.
The wreck is internationally significant as the world’s best-preserved ship from the Age of Exploration – a proxy for the vessels of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama.
During August and September, a scientific team from Lund University, Blekinge Museum, and the Danish Viking Ship Museum excavated portions of the wreck.
Recovered artefacts include artillery, handguns, and major components of the steering gear and stern castle. 3D models of key structural components have allowed the first digital reconstructions of the ship.
Digital scanning
“No other ship from the time of exploration has survived this intact,” says scientific leader Brendan Foley from Lund University. “Gribshunden delivers new insights into those voyages. We now understand the actual size and layout of those ships that changed the world. And more, we glimpse how this vessel operated as King Hans’ floating castle.”
Lund University PhD candidate Paola Derudas and Viking Ship Museum specialist Mikkel Thomsen combined 3D models of the artillery, rudder, tiller, and keel to recreate the sterncastle.
This is the section of the ship the king and noblemen likely occupied, in addition to gunners and steersmen. Comparisons of this tightly confined section with medieval castles on land suggest that hierarchical divisions of space must have been relaxed while the king was at sea.
Maritime archaeologist Mikkel Thomsen from the Danish Viking ship Museum
In the bow of the ship, 3D models of the stem post and hawse pieces (through which the anchor lines passed) provide clues about the forecastle’s functions of crew accommodation, ship handling, and fortification. Oddly, no artillery has been found there. Was it salvaged after 1495, or were the ship’s guns mounted only in the rear half of the vessel?
King Hans’ ambition was to unify the entire Nordic region under his crown. In this pursuit, Gribshunden was essentially for new technology. The vessel was among the first warships built specifically to carry artillery. Hans personally voyaged on the ship throughout his realm and beyond: to Norway, Gotland, and Sweden.
The ship was his administrative centre for months at a time, while simultaneously displaying regal power at each port of call. Often the ship was the centre of a squadron or fleet: in 1486, more than 600 Danish noblemen and senior clergy on dozens of ships accompanied Hans to Norway, where he established a new mint.
On Gribshunden’s final voyage, it led another squadron toward a political summit in Kalmar, Sweden, where Hans expected to be elected king of Sweden and fulfil his vision of a Scandinavian union. The ship was loaded with prestigious goods to impress the Swedish council, and many of those items await archaeological discovery.
“Another big puzzle remains: what really caused Gribshunden to sink?”, Foley asks. “Medieval documents state there was fire and an explosion, but we have not seen any signs of that. Maybe next year’s excavation will provide evidence of the catastrophe”, he concludes.
Archaeologists from the Decentralized Culture Directorate in Cusco (DDC Cusco) have discovered samples of cave art in a sector of the Qhapaq Ñan or Great Inca Trail that crosses the Archaeological Park of Machu Picchu in Peru.
This information was provided by Francisco Huarcaya, the person responsible for the sector of the Inca Trail that crosses the aforementioned park.
Huarcaya reported that said discovery occurred in early September this year at the 87th kilometre of the railway that leads to the Inca citadel, on the left side of the Vilcanota River.
Said samples consist of a set of images painted on different parts of a huge rock and represent figures of camelids and the sun —the most important deity for the Inca civilization.
Abstract graphics and other graphics with geometric shapes have been identified as well.
“There are other images that cannot be identified due to geological problems and rock wear caused by long exposure to sun, wind, rain, and water filtration,” he noted.
The archaeologist explained that this cave art was associated with a funerary context and the cult of the apus (guardian deities in the form of mountains), such as the Huacayhuilca and Casamentuyoc mountains, as well as the Huilcamayo River —considered sacred and located near the area.
In addition to said evidence of cave art, archaeologists found human bones of a skull and a femur, which were exposed to the surface and partially covered by brush.
New Dates Offer Insight Into Ice Age Occupation of the Philippines
Archaeologists from UP Diliman (UPD) and the National Museum, and leaders and members of the indigenous Pala’wan community unearthed new discoveries dating back to the last glacial maximum (LGM) or at the height of the last ice age at Pilanduk Cave in Palawan.
The research Tropical island adaptations in Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Maximum: evidence from Palawan presented new data from the re-excavation of Pilanduk Cave such as “evidence for specialized deer hunting and freshwater mollusc foraging, LGM fossils for the tiger and remains of other native mammal and reptile fauna of Palawan,” UPD archaeologist Janine Ochoa, PhD, said in an UPDate Online email interview.
Ochoa, an assistant professor of anthropology at the UPD Department of Anthropology, is the co-principal investigator and lead author of the research article.
She said the research also found “new radiocarbon dates that securely place the age of human occupation of Pilanduk Cave at the LGM/Last Ice Age at ca. 20,000-25,000 years ago,” and “evidence for shifting foraging behaviours (ecological and behavioural flexibility) of modern humans occupying changing tropical environments (climate and environmental changes) across ca. 40,000 years on Palawan Island.”
The 2016 Archaeological Team.
Together with co-principal investigator Ame Garong, PhD, of the National Museum, the research team re-excavated the site in October 2016.
“We conducted the analysis of the archaeological material (vertebrate fossils, mollusc/shell remains, lithics/stone tools) from 2017 up to 2020,” Ochoa said.
Pilanduk Cave is known to be an important late Pleistocene archaeological site in the Philippines. It is part of the ancestral domain of the Pala’wan community in Maasin, Quezon Municipality in Palawan with Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title No. RO4-QUE-O110-143.
Ochoa and the team pursued the re-excavation of Pilanduk Cave to further the previous research conducted by Jonathan Kress and the National Museum in 1969-1970.
She said, “There has been a need to verify the dates reported by Kress, due to the limited stratigraphic data available for Pilanduk, and the limitations of the radiocarbon dating method at the time of Kress’s excavation in the 1970s particularly for dating mollusc remains.”
According to Ochoa, the site has a large and well-preserved archaeological assemblage of faunal material, which are vertebrate remains and shells/molluscs, as well as lithic materials or stone tool assemblage.
Panoramic view of Pilanduk Cave.
“In fact, it has the best preserved LGM archaeological record from any site in the Philippine archipelago. There are not many LGM sites in the Philippines because many are likely submerged underwater when the coastlines and the sea levels were much lower during the LGM,” she said.
The research has been released online and is published in Antiquity, an international archaeology journal. It will come out in the October 2022 issue and can be viewed at https://www.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.88.
In a related development, Kress, who led the first archaeological research of Pilanduk Cave in the 1970s passed away on Aug. 6. His colleagues, led by Ochoa, issued the following statement with his passing:
A tiger’s foot bone was recovered during the October 2016 excavation.
“The archaeological work in Pilanduk Cave would not have been possible without the previous research of Jonathan Kress, who led the first excavation of the site in 1970. Jonathan passed away on 6 August 2022. The Pilanduk and Ille Cave teams remember him most fondly, especially for his joie de vivre and enthusiasm for field work, stone tools, and molluscs. He would share and recall the local names of various shell taxa, which were taught to him by the indigenous team he worked with. Engaging with students was important for him and he regaled us with exciting and adventurous stories about Palawan in the 1970s. We remember Jonathan as gentle, kind, patient, and full of wisdom.”
CT Scans Reveal Gnarly, 1,000-Year-Old Mummies Were Murdered
A 3D CT scan of the skull of one of the South American mummies in the new study.
Around 1,000 years ago, two men in South America were likely murdered in cold blood — one getting stabbed in the back and the other experiencing severe neck trauma, according to a new analysis of their mummified remains.
Behaving more like detectives than academics, a research team scanned three mummified bodies from Chile and Peru in South America to look for clues on how the individuals died. One male victim was hit on the head and stabbed in the back, while another male was likely killed after receiving “massive trauma” to the neck, which included dislocation, the researchers revealed.
The study adds to evidence of violence in prehistoric human societies and highlights how mummified remains can hold secrets that are lost when only bones are preserved. Both the stabbing and the cervical rotational trauma of the dislocated neck would have escaped detection in skeletons, the authors wrote in the study.
“The types of trauma we found would not have been detectable if these human remains had been mere skeletons,” study co-author Andreas Nerlich, a professor in the department of pathology at Munich Clinic Bogenhausen in Germany, said in a statement(opens in new tab).
Human bodies can be naturally mummified in dry, cold or other extreme environments, as these environments interfere with the process of decay that normally destroys soft tissues and organs. In this case, researchers studied mummies that were preserved in the very dry environments of South America and were held by museums in Germany and Switzerland.
Radiocarbon dating revealed that the mummies were between 740 and 1,120 years old, meaning they predated the colonial Spanish period.
One male mummy likely came from the Arica culture in what is now northern Chile. He was buried alongside fishing tools, so the researchers determined he likely came from a fishing community.
The two other mummies, a male and female, likely came from the Arequipa region in what is now southwestern Peru and were buried wearing materials made out of cotton and hair from llamas or alpacas, as well as viscachas, which are rodents in the chinchilla family.
The researchers used computed tomography (CT) scans to create virtual 3D reconstructions of the bodies, which revealed previously hidden details about their deaths. While the female died of natural causes, both of the male mummies died from extreme intentional violence, according to the research.
Other mummified remains may also have histories waiting to be revealed through modern scanning and reconstruction techniques. “There are dozens of South American mummies which might profit from a similar investigation as done here,” Nerlich said.
The study was published online on Sept. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
Egypt recovered on Sunday two ancient Egyptian statues that were smuggled to Belgium, as the country continues intensive efforts to retrieve thousands of artefacts found in the unlawful possession of museums and individuals around the world.
Assistant Foreign Minister for Cultural Relations Omar Selim (L) and General Supervisor of the Repatriation Antiquities Department Shaaban Abdel-Gawad during the hand-over of two ancient statues retrieved from Belgium.
The two pieces are a wooden, painted figurine statue of a standing man resting on a pedestal and a wooden ushabti figurine.
The first piece dates back to the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC), the other to the Late Period (664-332 BC), a statement by the ministry read.
In 2016, the two pieces were seized by the Belgian authorities at an exhibition for selling antiquities after investigations concluded the exhibition owner did not possess their ownership documents, the statement added.
The two pieces were handed over by Assistant Foreign Minister for Cultural Relations Omar Selim to the Repatriation Antiquities Department (RAD) at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the presence of General Supervisor of the RAD Shaaban Abdel-Gawad and a representative of the Ministry of Interior.
Egypt is set to repatriate 16 artefacts that were stolen and smuggled out of the country after they were recovered by the authorities in the United States as part of their investigations into a major case of international trafficking in Egyptian antiquities.
In June, New York prosecutors announced seizing five Egyptian artefacts worth more than $3 million from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of an investigation into international trafficking in Egyptian antiquities involving Jean-Luc Martinez, the former president of the Louvre, who was charged in May with complicity in fraud.
In recent years, Egypt toughened penalties for unlawful possession or smuggling of artefacts.
Last year, parliament amended the law on protecting antiquities to stipulate that those illegally possessing or selling antiquities face imprisonment and a fine of EGP 1 million to EGP 10 million.
Egypt has succeeded in recovering 5,000 artefacts from the US, 115 from France, and 36 from Spain in recent years.
