Unku found in Caleta Vitor Bay. Top: sides A and B from the wearer’s point of view (photographs by Paola Salgado); bottom: illustration of the tapestry tunic from the weaver’s position and viewpoint (illustration by Paola Salgado).
A new study co-authored by a George Washington University research professor examines the Inka Empire’s (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inca Empire) instruments of culture and control through a well-preserved article of clothing discovered in a centuries-old Chilean cemetery.
Researchers excavating the burial site along Caleta Vítor Bay in northern Chile found a tunic, or unku (see above), which would have been worn by a man who commanded respect and prestige in the Inka Empire.
Unkus were largely standardized attire meeting technical and stylistic specifications imposed by imperial authorities.
The Caleta Vítor unku, however, goes beyond the strict mandates handed down by Inka leaders.
While the artisans who fashioned this unku clearly adhered to imperial design standards, they also included subtle cultural tributes unique to their provincial homeland.
Whoever wove the Caleta Vítor unku lived hundreds of miles south of the Inka capital of Cusco in an area absorbed into the Inka Empire in the late 15th century.
The weaver employed the techniques and unique style and imagery of an indigenous culture that existed long before the Inka conquest, creating a tangible symbol of provincial life in pre-colonial South America.
“It represents a study of a rare example of an excavated Inka unku tunic, whose context and technical features are providing an unprecedented understanding of imperial Inka influence in the provinces,” Jeffrey Splitstoser, an assistant research professor of anthropology at GW and a co-author of the study, said.
Roman soldier’s 1,900-year-old payslip uncovered in Masada
During excavations at Masada, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities (IAA) uncovered a papyrus payslip dated to 72 BC belonging to a Roman soldier.
Masada is a rugged crag in the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Herod, the first-century BCE Judean king best known for constructing Jerusalem’s Temple Mount complex, built a fortress and palace on the mountain.
Jewish rebels entrenched themselves at Masada a century later, from 66 to 74 CE, during the Jewish Revolt against Rome. A Roman army besieged the last holdouts nearly four years after the fall of Jerusalem.
The only historical account of the conflict is Josephus Flavius, who claims that the Jewish rebels all committed mass suicide before Roman troops stormed the battlements. However, archaeologists dispute that account’s historical accuracy.
The IAA discovered a detailed military paycheck (one of only three legionary paychecks discovered throughout the Roman Empire) issued to a Roman legionary soldier during the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 72.
The paycheck is one of 14 Latin scrolls found at Masada by archaeologists – 13 of which was written on papyrus, and one on parchment paper.
An aerial view of Masada Mountain in the desert near the Dead Sea.
Although the papyrus was damaged over time and therefore very fragmentary, it contains valuable information about the management of the Roman army and the status of the soldiers.
The document provides a detailed summary of a Roman soldier’s salary over two pay periods (out of three he would receive annually), including the various deductions that he was charged. The army supplied the soldiers with basic equipment, but, as today, some soldiers chose to add and upgrade their equipment.
“This soldier’s paycheck included deductions for boots and a linen tunic, and even for barley fodder for his horse,” says Dr. Oren Ableman, senior curator-researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority Dead Sea Scrolls Unit.
“Surprisingly, the details indicate that the deductions almost exceeded the soldier’s salary. Whilst this document provides only a glimpse into a single soldier’s expenses in a specific year, it is clear that in the light of the nature and risks of the job, the soldiers did not stay in the army only for the salary.
According to Dr. Ableman, “The soldiers may have been allowed to loot on military campaigns. Other possible suggestions arise from reviewing the different historical texts preserved in the Israel Antiquities Authority Dead Sea Scrolls Laboratory.
For example, a document discovered in the Cave of Letters in Nahal Hever from the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE) sheds some light on some side hustles Roman soldiers used to earn extra cash.
This document is a loan deed signed between a Roman soldier and a Jewish resident, the soldier charging the resident with interest higher than was legal.
This document reinforces the understanding that the Roman soldiers’ salaries may have been augmented by additional sources of income, making service in the Roman army far more lucrative.”
Climate Model Suggests Timeline for Migration to North America
The icy landscape of Chukotka, Russia. During the last ice age, the Bering Land Bridge between Asia and North America emerged, allowing humans to cross over.
During the last ice age, the coastal route from Asia to North America was so treacherous, humans likely crossed over only during two-time windows, when environmental factors were more favorable for the long and dangerous journey, a new study finds.
The first window lasted from 24,500 to 22,000 years ago, and the other spanned from 16,400 to 14,800 years ago, according to the study, published Feb. 6 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
During these periods, winter sea ice cover and sea ice-free summers would have likely given these travelers access to a diverse marine buffet, as well as ways to safely travel along the North Pacific coast, the researchers said.
There are two main scenarios explaining how people may have first migrated to the New World. The older idea suggested that people made this journey on land when Beringia — the land bridge that once connected Asia with North America — was relatively ice-free. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that travelers used watercraft along the Pacific coasts of Asia, Beringia, and North America before 15,000 years ago, when giant ice sheets would have made an overland journey extraordinarily difficult.
To see how viable the coastal route may have been for migration at different times, scientists analyzed how changes in climate over the past 45,000 years might have influenced sea ice, glacier extent, ocean current strength, and food supplies on land and sea.
The researchers developed climate models based on new data on sea ice variations and previously collected sediment samples from the Gulf of Alaska holding details about sea ice, sea surface temperatures, salinity and debris carried on ice. Their models revealed the two time windows — the first 2,500-year-long window and the second 1,600-year-long span — for year-round coastal migration, which would have enabled a favorable coastal route when the inland route was blocked.
During those two windows, summer kelp forests would have helped keep travelers fed. Sea ice during the winter during those periods also may have supported migration; when stuck on the shoreline, sea ice can be relatively flat and stable, so ancient hunters could have walked on it and captured seals, whales and other prey to survive those winters, the researchers noted.
“Rather than being an obstacle, we suggest that sea ice may have partly facilitated movement and subsistence in this region,” study first author Summer Praetorius, a paleoceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey, in Menlo Park, California, told Live Science.
Other times during the past 45,000 years were likely less friendly to coastal migration. For instance, a giant pulse of meltwater drained into the Pacific between about 18,500 and 16,000 years ago; this huge pulse came from the edges of the giant ice sheet that once covered most of northeastern North America, and would have more than doubled the average strength of the northward ocean currents along Alaska. This, in turn, would have made boat travel heading south along the Pacific coast more difficult.
The melting glaciers at this time also would have led giant icebergs to regularly calve into the ocean, posing a major hazard to coastal migration.
“At present we know more about the ice-free corridor — the timing of its opening and the timing of when it became viable for human migration,” Michael Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who did not take part in this research, told Live Science. “This paper is a good step in doing the same for the coastal migration route.”
In the future, the researchers would like to “look into how marine ecosystems were changing in response to past climate variations to better understand what resources were available to coastal people at different times,” Praetorius said. She also wants to learn more about any brief warming spells a few centuries to millennia long that happened around Beringia, to see if they were linked to specific periods of migration.
“It is becoming clear that people entered the Americas by traversing the coast,” Waters said. “They took the coastal migration hypothesis to the next level. Well done.”
An unlucky medieval woman underwent at least two skull surgeries in Longobard Italy
A detailed examination of the skull of a woman who lived at the medieval settlement of Castel Trosino in central Italy more than 1,300 years ago revealed that this middle-aged woman had undergone not once, but at least twice, invasive surgical procedures.
Macroscopic, microscopic, and computed tomography analyses of a skull found near Ascoli Piceno revealed signs of at least two surgical operations.
The study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, was carried out by an international and multidisciplinary team coordinated by Sapienza University in Rome.
A new international study, coordinated by Sapienza in collaboration with Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge, the Universities of Aix-Marseille and Caen in France and University of Washington, reveals the existence of drillings in the skull of a Longobard woman, found in the cemetery of Castel Trosino, near Ascoli Piceno, central Italy.
Macroscopic, microscopic and computed tomography (CT) analyses revealed signs of at least two operations performed on the skull, including a cross-shaped surgery, shortly before the woman’s death.
Furthermore, thanks to a new high-resolution biochemical investigation method applied to one of the preserved teeth, specific changes in the woman’s diet and mobility from early life to adulthood were reconstructed.
This allowed the researchers to identify changes in her diet and environment throughout her life and to highlight the care and interest provided to her by the community.
“We found,” says Ileana Micarelli of the University of Cambridge, a former postdoctoral fellow at Sapienza and first author of the study, “that the woman had survived several surgeries, having undergone long-term surgical therapy, which consisted of a series of successive drillings.”
Molding and casting process of skull CT1953 which included evidence of medieval brain surgery. Photo: https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.3202
“The last surgery”, concludes Giorgio Manzi of the Department of Environmental Biology, “appears to have taken place shortly before the individual’s death.
There are no lesions suggesting the presence of trauma, tumours, congenital diseases or other pathologies. Moreover, although it is intriguing to consider the possibility of a ritual or judicial motive, no osteological or historical evidence supports such hypotheses.”
The specific surgical techniques used involved the scraping of bone from the cranium as part of trepanation, a medical treatment. This type of treatment was discussed in European medieval literature, and some records date back even further.
However, this is the first time that scientists have been able to prove that an Early Medieval skull was subjected to these dangerous procedures.
The discovery of the rare evidence of a drilling operation paves the way for future studies on the reasons and methods of treatment, as well as the caring role of the community towards the sick during the Middle Ages.
The medieval cemetery at Castel Trosino, known as the Longobard Necropolis, was first excavated in the nineteenth century. Only 19 skulls were discovered in good enough condition to be examined.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and other researchers have continued to examine these Early Medieval Period remain in order to learn as much as they can about the health, physical characteristics, and lifestyles of the people who lived in central Italy between 568 and 774 AD when the necropolis was in use.
Archaeologists in northern Mexico shed new light on ancient Huastec burial and construction practices
Recent excavations at a site in the state of Tamaulipas included analysis of large earthen mounds that were used for burials and everyday activities.
A carved green quartz earring found inside a mound at the El Naranjo site
Archaeologists in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, have identified remnants of a human settlement active more than a millennium ago that shed light on the pre-Columbian Huastec civilisation.
The foundations of four large earthen mounds were found at the archaeological site known as El Naranjo, and served not only as burial grounds but also places for daily activities, according to an announcement last week by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Researchers say it is one of the most important findings in the region in recent decades due to the volume of recovered material.
“Without a doubt, they were dynamic spaces,” archaeologist Esteban Ávalos says. “In addition to what is related to human burials, we propose that there were daily activities. This is based on the discovery of hearths, not very stylised ceramics, grinding stones and projectile points.”
An earring of carved shell found inside a mound at the El Naranjo site
The ancient Huastec civilisation occupied land stretching across what is now six Mexican states and constructed substructure mounds for activity that have been identified at archaeological sites including Vista Hermosa and Platanito.
At El Naranjo, archaeologists have so far excavated two of the four mounds, which held a dozen human interments. The smaller, measuring 20 metres in diameter and named Mound 4, revealed multiple burials of adults adorned with earrings made of green quartz and shells, some carved in the shape of flowers.
At the larger mound, measuring 30 metres in diameter and named Mound 1, researchers identified several other burials in addition to the discrete grave of one adult within a limestone structure.
“We can see that they practised both single-individual and multiple-type burials, and that they were buried in different positions—some more frequent than others, such as the dorsal flexed position or the flexed decubitus position,” Ávalos says. “Also that the objects that accompanied them are rare materials in the region, and that they were worked with great care and detail.”
Remains excavated from one of the mounds at the El Naranjo site in northern Mexico
Archaeologists are especially interested in the architecture of the mounds. They were made of alternating layers of earth, limestone and basalt and suggest a specialisation of labour and use of materials. “[The discovery] allows us to characterise and know in-depth the construction systems of this type of earthen construction with stone masonry, which have been little-studied from the architectural point of view,” Ávalos says.
“This contributes to understanding social organisation, resource management and habitability solutions in response to the environment.” He adds that the foundations are similar to those of earthen houses known as Bajareque houses that people in Ocampo and the surrounding areas are currently building, demonstrating the “permanence of traditional knowledge”.
Excavation of the site has been underway as part of the ongoing construction of a superhighway linking the municipalities of Mante and Tula in Tamaulipas.
Archaeologists and physical anthropology experts are studying the recovered remains to further understand the complexity of settlement life at El Naranjo. “We are expected to obtain accurate data about cultural affiliation, age, sex, nutrition and disease,” Ávalos says.
The excavation site in Nyayanga where hundreds of stone tools dating to roughly 2.9 million years ago were found
Archaeologists in Kenya have dug up some of the oldest stone tools ever used by ancient humans, dating back around 2.9 million years.
It is evidence that the tools were used by other branches of early humans, not just the ancestors of Homo Sapiens.
The tools were used to butcher hippos and pound plant materials like tubers and fruit, the researchers said.
Two big fossil teeth found at the site belong to an extinct human cousin, known as Paranthropus.
Scientists had previously thought that Oldowan tools, a kind of simple stone implement, were only used by ancestors of Homo Sapiens, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives.
However, no Homo Sapien fossils were found at the excavation site in Nyayanga on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya.
Instead, there were two teeth – stout molars – from the Paranthropus genus that had combined ape-like and human-like traits, along with 330 stone tools.
The two Paranthropus teeth that were recovered from the Nyayanga site in Kenya. The left upper molar (top) was found on the surface, the left lower molar (bottom) was excavated
“Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.”
“The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools. Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology,” said anthropologist Thomas Plummer of Queens College in New York City, lead author of the research published in the journal Science.
The latest find of the Oldowan tools show that they were a significant upgrade in sophistication compared to earlier crude stone tools dated to as early as 3.3 million years old, before the emergence of the Homo genus, researchers said.
Other hominins existing at the time included the genus Australopithecus, known for the famous even-older fossil “Lucy” which was found in 1974 in northern Ethiopia.
The analysis of wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools found at the site showed that they had been used to cut, scrape and pound both animals and plants
Lasers reveal ruins of the 5th-century fortress in the Spanish forest
An image from lidar scans reveals the vast scale of the early medieval fortress beneath the forest at Castro Valente in Spain’s northwestern Galicia region.
Archaeologists in Spain got the surprise of a lifetime when they discovered the ruins of a powerful fifth-century fortress surrounded by a huge defensive wall in a dense forest, instead of the Iron Age fort they had been looking for, they reported in a new study.
The team found the stronghold on a hilltop in northwestern Spain by using lidar — light detection and ranging — to peer beneath a forest covering the ruins. This technique, which bounces hundreds of thousands of laser pulses every second off the landscape from an aircraft flying overhead, revealed an early medieval fortress covering about 25 acres (10 hectares), with 30 towers and a defensive wall about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 kilometers) long.
The fortress seems to have been built in the first half of the fifth century A.D., possibly on top of an earlier Iron Age hilltop fort, to defend against Germanic invaders after Roman control of the region had collapsed, study author Mário Fernández-Pereiro, an archaeologist at University College London and the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), told Live Science.
The site, called Castro Valente (“Brave Fort”), is in the Galicia region’s Padrón district, about 16 miles (16 km) southwest of the city of Santiago de Compostela.
Hilltop fortress
Archaeologists first thought the ruins at Castro Valente were from a Celtic hilltop fort built sometime between the ninth and second centuries B.C., but they found construction techniques not used at that time.
Locals thought Castro Valente had been built after the about ninth century B.C. by a Celtic people, called the “Callaeci” in Latin, who lived in Galicia at that time.
Another Celtic tribe, called the Astures, lived to the east in what’s now the Spanish region of Asturias, while others, called the Lusitani, lived to the south in what’s now Portugal.
Until they were subsumed by the expanding Roman Empire in the first century B.C., the Callaeci and the Astures formed the “Castro culture” of fortified hilltop settlements — and modern-day Galicia is filled with their ruins, according to the December 2022 study, published in Cuadernos de Arqueología de la Universidad de Navarra (Archaeological Journal of the University of Navarra).
When Fernández-Pereiro and José Carlos Sánchez-Pardo, also a USC archaeologist and co-author of the study, began researching the site, they also thought Castro Valente was a fortified Celtic settlement. But they soon found evidence that the buried structure was much larger than they expected and that parts of it were built with methods not used in the Iron Age.
The archaeological excavations “continued to provide data that point us towards a time of post-Roman occupation, presumably in the first half of the 5th century,” Fernánandez-Pereiro said in an email.
Germanic invaders
Archaeologists now think the ruins are from a fortress built after the collapse of Roman rule in the region in the fifth century A.D. to defend local people from Germanic invaders.
The fortress’s layout, construction and fragments of pottery found there suggest it was built after the Roman Empire lost control of the region in about the early fifth century A.D., when Spain was overrun by Germanic invaders. Galicia fell to the Suevi people (also spelled Suebi), who originated in the Elbe River region of what’s now Germany and the Czech Republic, and the fortress seems to have been built by local people for their defense at that time, Fernández-Pereiro said.
“We understand that the local powers of Galicia needed a tool to reaffirm and control the territory in the midst of this transition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,” he said.
But the fortress seems to have been abandoned roughly 200 years later, possibly because it was no longer needed, Fernández-Pereiro said. Future research may reveal more about it, as well as protect it from development, such as forest roads and wind farms. The team plans to regularly update their Facebook page, CastelosnoAire, as research progresses.
Ken Dark, an archaeologist at King’s College London who wasn’t involved in the study, told Live Science that the fifth-century Castro Valente site seemed to be based on the reuse of a Celtic fort — something that was also seen in Britain after the collapse of Roman rule.
In the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., many Britons from what are now Wales and Cornwall fled the Anglo-Saxon invasion by immigrating to Galicia, alongside the more famous migration of Britons to what’s now known as Brittany in western France, he said.
“It is fascinating to find a site like this in a region strongly associated with Britain during Late Antiquity,” Dark said.
A trove of spices from around the world found on sunken fifteenth-century Norse ship
Black pepper from the Gribshunden shipwreck. Plant parts of black pepper: a–c) different views of peppercorns, d) stalk segments, some with unripe berries of pepper.
A pair of archaeologists with Lund University in Sweden has found “a treasure trove” of plants aboard a sunken 15th-century Norse ship. Mikael Larsson and Brendan Foley describe their findings in PLOS ONE.
In 1495, Danish King Hans docked his ship Gribshunden off the coast of Sweden in preparation for a meeting with Swedish ruler, Sten Sture the Elder. His plan was to broker a deal that would give him control over Sweden as he had done with Norway, creating a united Nordic kingdom.
Unfortunately for Hans and many of his crew, the ship caught fire and sank. To give himself the upper hand, the King had filled his ship with both warriors and goods worthy of a rich and powerful man.
The loss of the ship led to a change in plans—Hans attacked Sweden soon thereafter and conquered the country instead of negotiating for it. But the sinking of the ship also created a motherlode of artifacts for modern historians to study.
The wreck of the ship was found in the 1960s and was studied by marine archaeologists in the years thereafter, but not very thoroughly.
The new study was launched in 2019 and continued through 2021.
The team found that most of the expected artifacts had already been found in earlier expeditions, but something important had been overlooked—containers holding well-preserved plant material—more than 3,000 specimens.
Saffron from the Gribshunden shipwreck site. Plant parts of saffron: a–c) stigmas, d) petri dish showing a portion of the recovered saffron stigmas.
The researchers found spices such as nutmeg, cloves, mustard and dill. They also found samples of other plant material, such as saffron and ginger, peppercorns and almonds.
Some of the spices would have come from as far away as Indonesia, suggesting that King Hans had developed an advanced trade network.
The researchers also found snack items, such as dried blackberries, raspberries, grapes and flax, each find showing just how rich and powerful Hans had become. The researchers also found one non-edible plant, henbane, which, in the past, was used for medicinal purposes.
The researchers note that the plant specimens were in excellent condition due to the unique conditions of the site where the ship was found, a part of the Baltic Sea that is cold and low in salinity.
