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.”
A cache of 14th-Century Coins Discovered in the Czech Republic
Kladruby Abbey
PLZEŇ, CZECH REPUBLIC—Radio Prague International reports that hundreds of fourteenth-century coins were discovered in the western Czech Republic, near the Kladruby Monastery, by a couple out for a walk.
“As they were walking through the forest, they spotted a few coins, two made of gold and one of silver, lying on the ground,” explained archaeologist Milan Metlička of the Museum of West Bohemia.
The West Bohemian Museum in Plzeň confirmed hundreds of 14th century silver and gold coins have been found. The cache, discovered in a forest near the Kladruby Monastery in Tachov area, is believed to be one of the largest uncovered troves of gold coins on Czech Republic territory.
The chance discovery occurred already in March, during the coronavirus lockdown, but it was not until this Monday that the museum announced the find to the public.
The coins were stumbled upon by a young couple who went on a walk through the forest near the West Bohemian town of Stříbro.
Milan Metlička is an archaeologist from the Museum of West Bohemia in Plzeň:
“As they were walking through the forest, they spotted a few coins, two made of gold and one of silver, lying on the ground. They were probably dug up by some forest animals, most likely by wild pigs.
“There was a large stone protruding from the ground. When they pulled it out, they saw a large amount of gold and silver coins underneath and they immediately called us to announce the discovery.”
Among the coins are gold ducats bearing the image of the Czech King and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, Albrecht of Austria, and Rupert of the Palatinate as well as ducats from the Hanseatic city of Lübeck.
“It also contains 343 silver groschen mostly minted in Bohemia during the reign of Charles IV and several groshen bearing the image of John of Bohemia, the Duke of Luxembourg.
“The discovery of the silver groshen is not that unusual. But such a large trove of gold coins is really unique. No such discovery was made in the country in the past 50 years.”
Archaeologists believe the coins were buried in the ground in the late 1370s. While the reason why someone hid the treasure is likely to remain unknown, it was most likely linked to the nearby Monastery in Kladruby.
“The monastery was located on a strategic medieval trade route between Prague and Nürnberg. And since the discovery was made not far from there and close to the royal town of Stříbro, it is very likely that it is somehow connected to it.”
Museum of West Bohemia in Plzeň,
According to Mr. Metlička, it is hard to express the value of the find in terms of money, but the nominal value of the gold coins, which weigh over 325 grams, is at least CZK 420,000.
“With the silver coins, it is more complicated, because they also contain copper, which reduced their value. However, the historic value of the silver coins could be around CZK 180,000 and the value of the gold coins could range between CZK three and four million.”
The coins are expected to go on display in the Museum of West Bohemia in Plzeň at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year after they have been restored and catalogued.
Buried temple in Turkey Built During 12,000 B.C almost 7,500 years older than Egyptian Pyramids
The 12,000-year-old site in south-east Turkey is being considered for Unesco World Heritage listing
Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey has been billed as the oldest temple in the world at about 12,000 years of age. It is many millennia older than Stonehenge or Egypt’s great pyramids, built in the pre-pottery Neolithic period before writing or the wheel. But should Göbekli Tepe, which became a Unesco World Heritage Site, also be regarded as the world’s oldest piece of architecture?
Archaeologists are fascinated by Göbekli Tepe, an artificial mound spread across eight hectares at the top end of the Fertile Crescent near the present-day city of Sanliurfa. It features a series of circular sunken structures that had been occupied for a thousand years before they were back-filled and abandoned.
Construction techniques vary but in the most elaborate there is a ring of T-shaped monolithic columns with a pair of larger, carved T-columns at the center up to five meters tall.
These not only supported a roof (for at least some of their life) but also represented abstracted human figures that were part of a belief system that is not yet understood. They are sculptural as well as structural, with animal figures in relief.
A column with a carving of a dog—the first domesticated animal
The largest circle is 17m by 25m but geotechnical surveys suggest there are bigger structures waiting to be unearthed. The earliest limestone monoliths were quarried locally but stones were later transported long distances.
The communal effort involved in this endeavour must have involved hundreds of people at a period when most social groups had no more than 25 members.
Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers, apparently, before the Agricultural Revolution when fully permanent settlements came into being with plant cultivation and animal herding.
Rather than architecture being the product of organised societies, as has long been thought, there is new thinking that, in fact, it may have been the organisation needed to build on such a scale that helped usher in agriculture and settled society.
Archaeological definitions of architecture tend to be broader than those of design professionals; it includes structures that create artificial space with, say, mud bricks, smoothed floors and right-angles.
Architects tend to separate building—a simple vernacular shelter assembled out of utility—from architecture, in which conscious design that goes beyond the utilitarian comes into play.
Moritz Kinzel, an archaeologist and architect based at Copenhagen University who is working on the site, says: “Building becomes architecture not just because it is monumental but because of technical solutions and perceptions of space—it has a mindset.” Göbekli Tepe also goes beyond the human scale. He reminds us, however, that the domestic and the ritual cannot be separated to the degree they are today, and that older houses with ritual components have been discovered at sites in Jordan and the southern Levant.
Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers, apparently before the Agricultural Revolution
Kinzel argues that the design experimentation found at Göbekli Tepe should encourage us to avoid chicken-and-egg arguments about the primacy of architecture or agriculture. Instead, the site illustrates a cusp period, with architecture emerging alongside more complex organizations that produced surpluses and gradually shifted from gathering wild crops to farming.
Some of the earliest domesticated wheat was found in the area and the Göbekli Tepe stones feature depictions of dogs—the first animal to be domesticated by humans.
It was a trial and error period, an age of architectural and societal experiment at the beginnings of the Agricultural Revolution rather than one preceding the other.
“Permanent buildings do not necessarily reflect permanent settlements,” Kinzel says, suggesting seasonal use at Göbekli Tepe.
The construction process of the monumental structures may have triggered [people] staying longer, forcing them to invent new ways of dealing with arising new challenges.”
Current thinking is that Göbekli Tepe may not have been solely a cult center but had other social and economic functions such as feasting, exchanging goods and finding partners, and other activities that promoted a common social identity. The architecture may mark the beginnings of class society and patriarchy.
Noting the functional as well as the aesthetic purpose of Göbekli Tepe’s T-columns, an architectural researcher who works with Kinzel, Dietmar Kurapkat from the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg, Germany, has written: “It is no exaggeration to label these… buildings with the term architecture.”
Evidence of a 12,000 year old civilization – almost 7,000 years older than Mesopotamia’s fertile crescent – is unearthed in the Turkish countryside, known as Göbekli Tepe. It took archaeologists 13 years to uncover only 5% of the buried city.
7,500-years-old “Armenian Stonehenge” discovered at Carahunge (the Armenian Stonehenge)
Opposing research institutes have agreed to set aside their disputes over the nature of the so-called ‘Armenian Stonehenge’ to solve its mysteries for once and for all.
Made up of 223 stones, Carahunge has been argued to predate Wiltshire’s Stonehenge by 2,500 years — but its purpose has long been a bone of contention.
Although some archaeologists have argued that the prehistoric site was used as an astronomical observatory, others contend it was just a conventional settlement.
Opposing research institutes have agreed to set aside their disputes over the nature of the so-called ‘Armenian Stonehenge’, pictured, to solve its mysteries for once and for all
Made up of 223 stones, Carahunge has been argued to predate Wiltshire’s Stonehenge by 2,500 years — but its purpose has long been a bone of contention
Members of the Bnorran Historic-Cultural NGO and the Armenian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography co-signed an agreement on July 30 to collaborate in plumbing the mysteries of Carahunge, which lies near Sisian, in Armenia’s Syunik Province.
For the former group of researchers, the archaeological site — which some experts claim is 7,500 years old — represents the earliest-known observatory.
‘We think Carahunge — where more than 200 stones are located, with 80 having holes in them — is an ancient astronomical observatory,’ Bnorran board member Arevik Sargsyan told Armenpress.
This idea is partly based on the work of the physicist Paris Herouni, who had argued that the ancient complex dated back to around 5,500 BC.
Some of the stones, he suggested, had been deliberately positioned in order to align with Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation of Cygnus, along with the positions of the sun and the moon at certain times in the year.
‘According to another opinion, Carahunge isn’t an astronomical observatory,’ Ms. Sargsyan said.
For them, she added, ‘it is simply an ancient site, a settlement, which has a status of a mausoleum.’
In this theory, the stones form the structural remains of a city wall, in which the rocks supported piles of rubble and loam that have since been removed from the site.
This is the opinion held by researchers at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, who have long disagreed with the astronomical interpretation of Ms. Sargsyan and her associates.
Not a single astronomical tool has been unearthed from the Carahunge site, institute director Pavel Avetisyan and archaeological expedition team leader Ashot Piliposyan reportedly told Armenpress.
Furthermore, they noted, some of the holes in the stones — which are often cited as evidence in support of the site- have been an astronomical observatory — are located on the lower parts of the basalt rocks and thus do not even point at the stars.
Although some archaeologists have argued that the prehistoric site was used as an astronomical observatory, others contend it was just a conventional settlement
For members of the Bnorran Historic-Cultural NGO, the archaeological site — which some experts claim is 7,500 years old — represents the earliest-known observatory
Holes in the stones are often cited as evidence in support of the site having been an astronomical observatory, but some are located on the lower parts of the basalt rocks and thus do not even point at the stars
For the moment, both academic groups have agreed on a temporary suspension of their excavations and research at the Carahunge site.
Investigations will resume once a jointly-held seminar of experts from various disciplines — including archaeologists, astronomers, and ethnographers — has been held to determine a shared research plan for the ancient stone feature.
‘It requires studies in all aspects,’ said Dr. Piliposyan, who argues that the site is unique across the whole Transcaucasia region
‘We discussed many issues during the signing of the agreement, we even considered that maybe in the future it will be possible to build a museum near the monument to display all materials regarding the ancient site.’
Investigations will resume once a jointly-held seminar of experts from various disciplines — including archaeologists, astronomers and ethnographers — has been held to determine a shared research plan for the ancient stone feature
