Archaeology – Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler

Movie Review: ‘The Dig’, on Netflix.

Although it was released to a small number of movie theaters in the UK your best chance of seeing ‘The Dig’, the story of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the UK in 1939, is via the streaming service Netflix. In these days of the Covid-19 pandemic many film production companies are either holding on to their products until things return to normal, such as the next James Bond movie, or skipping the theaters to go directly to TV like Godzilla versus Kong. With the latter generally appearing on a subscription movie service like Netflix.

Poster for ‘The Dig’ on Netflix. (Credit: Netflix)

What long-term effect the pandemic is going to have on the movie industry can only be guessed at present. Movie theater corporations have been badly hurt by the loss of revenue due to the pandemic with Regal theaters declaring bankruptcy while AMC is barely holding on. If theaters in general disappear what will happen to the big, and costly blockbuster movies that Hollywood has come to depend on? It’s a good question as to whether a big budget Avengers movie could even make a profit if it’s only going to be seen in people’s homes? Only time will tell us what the answer will be. But for now we do still have movies to watch and review and this review is about ‘The Dig’.

The story of ‘The Dig’ begins as it did in real life, with landowner Edith Pretty, played by actress Carey Mulligan, on whose large property in Suffolk England are a number of earthen mounds that she suspects are archaeological sites. Local landmarks, the mounds even have a name that dates back centuries, Sutton Hoo, a name that in old English roughly translates as southern farmstead hill.

The site of Sutton Hoo as it is today, restored to about as it was in 1939. The ship burial mound is center top. (Credit: history.furman.edu)

Like many members of the English gentry at that time Edith had read about Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Wondering what may be hidden in her mounds Misses Pretty, Edith was a widow as the story begins, contacts with a local amateur archaeologist named Basil Brown, played by Ralph Fiennes, to excavate the largest of the mounds, one that she has a feeling about.

The real Edith Pretty (l) and as portrayed by actress Kate Mulligan (r). (Credit: The Telegraph)

The real Basil Brown (l) and as portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes. (Credit: Heritage.suffolk.gov.uk and Yorkshire Evening Post)

What Basil discovers is the remains of a long wooden ship similar to a Viking dragon ship. He realizes that the mound is a ship burial, an entire ancient ship used as a platform, a coffin in a sense, for the burial of a Viking king or powerful noble. Such burials are known both from historical records as well as archaeological sites in Scandinavia.

Artists impression of a ship burial. Obviously the departed was a person of great consequence and yes we do know of at least one woman who was so interred. (Credit: Pinterest)

Photograph of the excavation at Sutton Hoo. The remaining wood was so decayed that it could not be removed and really it was more of an impression in the soil than anything else. (Credit: Current Archaeology)

When the ship is about a third excavated and the nature of the find becomes news across the country a professional archaeologist named Charles Phillips from the British Museum arrives to take over. That’s one of the themes of ‘The Dig’, British snobbery. Throughout the first half of the movie anytime Brown wishes to talk to Misses Pretty he has to wait outside while the butler goes to get her, he’s hired help after all. And of course anyone with a university degree should be the one giving the orders rather than someone whom is really only a farmer playing at archaeologist.

By this time however Edith has come to trust Basil and since the mounds are on her land a truce is arranged where professional and amateur work together to complete the dig. As artifacts are discovered it soon becomes obvious that the burial is too old to be Viking. It’s Anglo-Saxon, straight out of the deepest part of the Dark Ages. Artifact after artifact is unearthed from the mound as Basil and the team from London occasionally glance nervously skyward where warplanes are roaring overhead.

A gold shoulder clasp from Sutton Hoo. This is just one part of the treasure discovered. (Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s the second theme of ‘The Dig’ because the excavation of Sutton Hoo took place in the late summer of 1939 as Europe was preparing to plunge into the bloodiest war in history. The professionals know that once the war starts, and in the movie no one has any doubt that the war will soon start, they’ll be ordered to stop their work and so the excavation continues with an air of impeding disaster.

Sutton Hoo was the grave of a warlord, as evidenced by his sword. The fact that the burial site was excavated right at the beginning of WW2 is a testament to our violent nature. (Credit: YouTube)

The team does finish in time however and an inquest decides that the treasure belongs to Edith who decides to donate it to the British Museum where she feels that the greatest number of people will be able see it. Indeed, today the Sutton Hoo treasure has an entire room at the British Museum. And to anyone who may not be familiar with Sutton Hoo treasures I heartily recommend checking out the museum’s site. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/galleries/sutton-hoo-and-europe

The Sutton Hoo helmet (l) and a modern reconstruction (r) shown at the British Museum. (Credit: Wikipedia)

I’m certain that by now you can tell that I’m giving ‘The Dig’ a big thumb’s up. The acting is impeccable and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Most of all the story, the story of how the English people regained a large part of their history is both interesting as well as important.

A few last remarks. Although the body had long ago decayed away, it is thought that the person buried in the mound was probably King Rӕdwald of East Anglia or perhaps his son. Regardless of who it was, by being buried in such spectacular fashion he left us a great deal of evidence of the world in which he lived.

A map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as they would have been at the time of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. (Credit: Totally Timelines)

And the treasures of Sutton Hoo spent the war safely buried at an underground station in London. It wasn’t until nine years later that the British Museum first exhibited the treasure, with no mention being made of the role of Basil Brown in the discovery. After all, an amateur could not possibly have made England’s greatest archaeological discovery. But archaeology has a way of correcting for the prejudges of the past and today Basil Brown’s name is prominently displayed right next to that of Edith Pretty in the exhibit of the treasures of ‘The Dig’.

Destruction of Archaeology sites around the World could forever erase the last traces of long ago cultures.

It is often said that history is written by the winners. Over the past 100 years or so however many of the discoveries made by the science of archaeology have provided a more balanced view of human history, shining a light on some of the forgotten peoples from the past.

For those cultures whose written records are lost, if they ever existed, archaeology is the only means we have to learn anything about them. (Credit: Phys.org)

To recover that knowledge it is of course important that there still be archaeological locations and artifacts from the distant past that can be excavated and studied. However oftentimes throughout history the remains of the past have suffered because of the needs of succeeding generations. One prime example of this would be the city of Troy, which was rebuilt, time and time again during the classical period. Each new layer of habitation causing damage to the earlier layers beneath it.

The city of Troy actually consists of at least nine cities built one on top of the other. Homer’s Troy was either layer 6 or 7 and much of the evidence was destroyed when the later layers were built on top of them. (Credit: www.troyexcavations.com)

Of course those people of ancient times could be forgiven for not preserving the past, what few resources they had were needed just to keep them alive. It’s really only been in the last 200 years or so that human society has been able to afford archaeological research of any kind. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that archaeology and economic progress no longer come into any kind conflict.

One very significant such conflict recently became big news in the land down under. It is thought that the first humans to reach Australia may have done so as much as 50,000 years ago and that the aboriginal population there remained in almost complete isolation until the late 18th century.

The first humans reached Australia about 50,000 years ago (KYA means Thousand Years Ago). They spread out quickly and within 10,000 years the entire continent was inhabited. (Credit: The Conversation)

That long period of isolation makes Australia a very important labouratory for the study of human societies and how they change and develop over time. Unfortunately the aboriginal population in Australia never grew very large nor did they ever develop cities or settlements of any kind. That makes any archaeological remains in Australia both very rare, and very valuable.

The musical instrument the didgeridoo is a well known symbol of Australian aboriginal culture. (Credit: Pinterest)

Which is why the destruction of two caves in Juukan George in the remote Pilbara region of western Australia by the mining company Rio Tinto is such a tragedy. Initial surveys of the caves over the last few years had found several traces of human activity, stone and bone tools along with other animal remains and even a lock of human hair. When dated the artifacts were found to be about 46,000 years old making them some of the earliest evidence for human habitation in Australia.

The two caves at Juukan George. Looks exactly like the sort of place a stone age culture would occupy but we’ll never know the extent of the occupation thanks to the mining company Rio Tinto whose engineers you can already see working in the upper background. (Credit: Jacobin)

None of that mattered to Rio Tinto, there was iron ore in the hills that contained the caves and they wanted it, and they wanted it now. So it was that in May of 2020 the two caves were blasted out of existence in order to clear the way for mining operations. Just another example of short sighted corporate greed leading to the loss of something that can never be replaced.

I dare say that this was the attitude of the corporate executives at Rio Tinto when they destroyed the Juukan caves. (Credit: Robert Steveson)

Not that Rio Tinto did anything illegal. The company had a 2013 agreement from the government of western Australia giving them permission to mine the site and in the days leading up to the detonation they gathered all of their corporate lawyers in case the Puutu Kunti Kurrama or some other indigenous people’s organization tried to obtain a judge’s injunction in an effort to stop the blasting operation.

Like a great wound in Mother Earth modern mining operations are so destructive of the local environment that the damage can last for decades. (Credit: New York Post)

Unfortunately it was only after the destruction at Juukan George that the protests and questions from government officials began. A month after the caves were destroyed Rio Tinto was forced to publish an apology for their cultural banditry. Since that time the company’s board of directors have forced out the CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques and his top two assistants. In typical corporate fashion the trio had their yearly bonuses taken away BUT they reached an amicable departure settlement with the company, which I bet was worth more than the bonuses.

Protesters rally outside the Rio Tinto office after the destruction of Australian Indigenous sacred sites in Perth, June 9, 2020. Rio Tinto chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques will leave the Anglo-Australian mining giant by March over the destruction of the sacred sites, the company said on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. (Richard Wainwright/AAP Image via AP)

In the words of Rio Tinto’s chairman Simon Thompson, “…what happened at Juukan was wrong.” To try to recover something of the company’s image he and the other Rio Tinto stockholders have agreed to help promote the preservation of other aboriginal heritage sites in the future.

But I’ll bet you they are still taking that iron ore from Juukan George!

P.S. News has just been released that the people of the Island of Bougainville in the nation of Papua New Guinea are accusing the Rio Tinto Corporation of releasing poisons such as mercury into the rivers of the island from an abandoned copper and gold mine. The residents of Bougainville maintain that they have suffered from the environmental policies of Rio Tinto for years but since the mine has stopped production the company has made no attempt to clean up the site or prevent a possible disaster happening to the people of Bougainville.

The Rio Tinto gold and copper mine on Bougainville, now abandoned. Why isn’t the company required to restore the site to something like it’s original state. Instead it was simply left to leak dangerous elements like mercury into the local water systems. (Credit: Mining .com)

Why does this news about Rio Tinto not surprise me?

Did social inequality begin during the Bronze Age? New results from archeology in Germany may point toward an answer.

“All animals are equal,” George Orwell declared in his novel ‘Animal Farm, “But some animals are more equal than others!”

Is Social inequality a necessary condition of having a society? (Credit: George Orwell)

The question of when and how did social inequality arise in human populations has been asked ever since we humans began to live in large societies. Now let me be clear here, I’m talking about social inequality, the kind of inequality where a small but recognizable portion of a human population dominates and forces obedience from the greater part of their society for periods of time longer than a single human lifespan.

We can see the beginnings of this inequality in the social behavior of our closest relatives. In a troop of chimpanzees or gorillas the alpha male and his close companions push the rest of the group around establishing a easily recognizable pecking order. However it is rare for that dominance to be passed directly to the son of the alpha male. Strength, not pedigree is the key to being on top in such primitive societies.

Amongst our primate relatives the Alpha Male maintains his position through violence and intimidation. (Credit: The Conscious Resistance)

The opinion of most anthropologists is that long term social inequality requires material wealth. Objects such as tools or pottery but most importantly weapons that an alpha male can pass on to his son(s) giving them an advantage over the other members of their tribe. Eventually the ability to pass on the ownership of flocks of domesticated animals or land itself will bring with it the establishment of actual economic classes, rich and poor.

Now Stone Age societies are known to have possessed a degree of material wealth in the form of stone and bone tools and in later periods even pottery. However stone tools and pottery break quite easily and are of little permanent value.

Stone Age Tools can vary greatly and be quite useful. However they usually don’t last very long requiring constant replacement. (Credit: Peter Ghiringhelli)

Metal makes all the difference. Metal tools can last for many years with care and a metal weapon will not only keep its edge far longer than a stone one but can even be resharpened when it does become dull! The long-term value of metal objects appears to have been a real game changer in the evolution of human civilization.

Bronze Age Weapons can last for decades and be passed down father to son helping to concentrate power within a family or clan. (Credit: Monaghan County Council)

Therefore, the argument from anthropologists goes, the first evidence for the development of social inequality should be found in the Bronze ages. The question is therefore; does the evidence of the archeological record support that argument?

There is a wealth of data from the Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean that seems to confirm this hypothesis. The pharoses of Egypt were treated as god-kings who could command tens of thousands of commoners to build their massive pyramid tombs while the Hittite and Mycenaean Greek Kings lived in enormous palaces surrounded by the common folk who laboured for them.

But what about the rest of the world, is there any evidence for the rise of social inequality in the rest of Bronze Age Europe for example? It’s that question that makes the recent study of the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze age site in the Lech Valley in Germany so interesting.

Authored by Alissa Mittnik and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History along with Philipp Stockhammer from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, the study makes extensive use of the latest archaeological techniques, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis and isotope analysis of tooth enamel along with more traditional methods.

The Bronze Age sites in the Lech valley consist of several large homesteads, numerous smaller farms and critically, several cemeteries. Those cemeteries yielded the remains of 104 individuals that were radiocarbon dated to a period between 2800 and 1300 BCE, spanning the late Neolithic to early Bronze Age.

The excavation of a Bronze Age grave in the Lech Valley of Germany. (Credit: Alamy Stock Photo)

The presence of a wide assortment of grave goods in some of the graves allowed the identification of upper class versus lower class individuals according to criteria employed since the beginning of archeology. For example the presence of bronze daggers or axes in a male grave, or metal jewelry in a female grave would indicate a member of the warrior elite while few or no grave goods is indicative of a servant or serf.

Some of the Bronze tools and weapons unearthed in Germany. (Credit: K. Massy)

Once a set of remains had been classified as to its social status DNA extracted from teeth or bone was used to determine their family relations. The researchers discovered that the upper class warrior individuals had no family relationships at all to those of the lower class. At the same time they were able to establish father to son sequences within the upper class that could last as long as five generations. Also, isotope analysis of chemicals extracted from the tooth enamel of both the high-class males and all lower class individuals showed that they were all native to the Lech valley.

A finely made Bronze Age dagger. (Credit: K. Massy)

The surprise of the study however turned out to be the examinations of the high-class female remains. Genetically the high-class women showed no relationship to either the high class or lower class men! In addition when the tooth enamel of the high-class women was chemically examined it was found that they were foreign born, some coming from as far away as modern Czechoslovakia, more than 500 kilometers away. The implication is that these women were brought to the Lech valley to be wives for the high-class men while the daughters of the high class were sent elsewhere to marry.

High class women also had elaborate grave goods buried with them. Here is a decorative pin found in the grave of one foreign woman. Credit: K. Massy)

This cultural tradition of aristocratic families sending their daughters to marry into families at great distances is believed to have served two purposes. First it prevented inbreeding within the upper class while at the same time it helped to establish cultural and even trading links with other communities. While such nuptial customs are well established for the late Bronze and through the Iron Age into the Roman period this study provides the first comprehensive support for the existence of these traditions at the very beginning of the Bronze Age.

One Artists impression of life in Bronze Age Germany. (Credit: Philipp Stockhammer)

With every new excavation, with every new technique developed to examine the finds unearthed the science of Archaeology is discovering more and more about the beginnings of human civilization. This includes the story of when and how human social classes first developed.

Who were the Philistines of the bible, modern DNA measurements may hold the answer.

The ancient writers of the bible liked to portray all of their neighbors in a very negative way but undoubtedly the people they called the Philistines received more than their share of bed press. According to the bible the Philistines lived along the Mediterranean coast just to the east of the central highlands where the Hebrew people resided. Here they built five city-states, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath.

Map of Ancient Canaan showing the region ruled by the Philistines (Credit: Crystalinks)

So who were the Philistines, the original Hebrew word Philištim simply means ‘people of Plešt’ whoever or whatever Plešt may have been. In the Bible however the Philistines are always treated as somehow different from the Canaanites or Moabites or Egyptians who were the Semitic neighbors of the Hebrews. Philistine names, like Goliath or Delilah, and the customs recorded in the bible also point to a non-Semitic origin.

In the bible the Philistines are depicted as being continually at war with the Hebrews (Credit: Facts and Details)

The first clues to the origin of the Philistines were discovered during the early archaeological expeditions to Egypt in the 1840s. It was the Egyptologists Edward Hincks and William Osborn jr. who published the history of the Pharaoh Ramesses III and his battles with a ‘sea peoples’ that were also known by the name of Peleset (Philistines???). According to Egyptian inscriptions Ramesses III defeated these Peleset in a naval battle in the River Nile as well as a land battle along the eastern Mediterranean not far from the city of Gaza!! The inscriptions go on to state that Ramesses III later settled his captives in a series of ‘strongholds’.

Inscription of Ramesses III defeating the ‘Sea People” (Credit: TheTorah.Com)

Captive Philistines as illustrated by the Egyptians (Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)

There are those who doubt that theory however stating that the similarity of names is hardly conclusive evidence. At the same time there is little archaeological support for a large-scale settlement of people in the region around Gaza in the 11th century BCE. Some scholars point to the use of the term ‘allophyloi’ (of another tribe) in the Greek translation of the bible, the septuagint to indicate that the Philistines were simply ‘non-Hebrews’, any enemies of the Hebrews. However the bible’s own descriptions clearly seem to refer to a definite ethnic group living in a definite place.

None of which gets us any loser to answering the question, who were the Philistines? If they weren’t Semites like the Hebrews or Egyptians or Canaanites, who were they linguistically and culturally? Where did they come from?

Based upon the clues in the bible and the Egyptian inscriptions the leading hypothesis is that the ‘sea peoples’ came mostly from the area around the Aegean Sea including Crete, Cyprus, the western coast of modern Turkey as well as Greece itself! The idea that a large force of bronze age Greeks might have invaded the southeastern Mediterranean coast fits also in with the well attested destruction of the Mycenaean cites at that time.

How can we ever know? That was three thousand ago and the records from that time are incomplete and not conclusive. Yes there is some archeological evidence such as the discovery at Ashkelon of Late Helladic IIIc Mycenaean pottery but the pottery could have come via trade. The evidence may lean toward an Aegean origin but how can we be sure?

Examples of Philistine Pottery that resembles that of Pottery from the Aegean (Credit: Bible Odyssey)

Perhaps the modern science of DNA testing can give us the answer. After all, we’ve all seen the ads telling us how DNA can reveal our ancestry. And remember how DNA was used to prove that the body found in a parking lot was actually England’s King Richard III. Couldn’t the same techniques be employed on skeletons from the right area and time period by archeologists?

In fact scientists have now done just that. In 2016 archeologists working at Ashkelon announced that they had discovered the first known Philistine cemetery, the culmination of 30 years of digging. The team, led by co-director Daniel Master of Wheaton College unearthed the remains of at least 108 individuals from which DNA was successfully removed from ten. The results of the DNA analysis clearly showed that the people buried in the cemetery were not related to any of the local ethnic groups but instead showed a strong European, probably a southern European relationship.

Archaeologists at work at the Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon (credit: National Geographic)

So it appears as if the hypotheses about an Aegean origin for the people know in the bible as Philistines was true. Goliath and Delilah may have been the descendants of Odysseus or Agamemnon or some of the other well-known characters of the Greek heroic age.

Think about that for a moment, could the ‘sea peoples’ have brought with them the stories that would become the later Greek myths. We could speculate that the Philistines told their stories about Hercules and the Hebrews responded by imagining stories of their strongman Samson. After all the first of Hercules twelve labours is strangling the Nemean lion whose hide was so tough no weapon could pierce it, while in the bible Samson’s first feat of strength is strangling a lion with his bare hands!!

Hercules slaying the Nemean Lion (Credit: Theoi Greek Mythology)

Could the story of Yahweh testing Abraham by demanding the sacrifice of Isaac, and then stopping the ritual once he was sure of Abraham’s faith, be the Hebrew answer to the Greek tale of the Goddess Artemis’s demand that Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to her!

Iphigenia and Isaac being prepared for Sacrifice (Credit: PD)

We may never know the answer to these questions, cultural cross connections leave few traces in the archeological record. One thing we can be certain of however is that since this is the Middle East the DNA results would quickly become politicized!

In fact Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already used the results to declare that since the Philistines came from Europe then the modern Palestinians have no claim to any of the lands of the Middle East. He is of course assuming that the Latin word Palaestina is the same as the Greek word Philistinoi which maybe true but is a subject of considerable contention among scholars.

I suppose the only thing we can really be sure of is that David didn’t defeat Goliath; they’re still fighting it out!!!

No matter what you’ve heard this war ain’t over yet!!!! (Credit: Leadership Platform)

Archaeologists succeed in locating the exact Quarry from which the Bluestones at Stonehenge Came.

The stone circle known as Stonehenge is an icon of prehistoric Europe and Britain in particular. Stonehenge is certainly not the only stone circle in the British Isles; there are over 900 of them. Nor is it the largest, in terms of area the circle at Avebury, 25 kilometers to the north is so large there is a town inside it. In fact it’s not even the best preserved, the nearby Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire or Long Meg and her Daughters in Cumberland are in much better condition. Still Stonehenge was without doubt the most complex and sophisticated of all of the Late Stone / early Bronze Age structures in Britain.

The Rollright Stones are another Stone Circle in the British Isles (Credit: Megalithic Portal)

Long Meg and her Daughter Stone Circle (Credit: Ancient Origins)

One of the reasons for the complex, almost bewildering structure at Stonehenge is due to the simple fact that the monument was built and then rebuilt time and again over a period of nearly 1500 years. Trying to determine which stones were put where when and which were moved to where they are now, and from where, is a very difficult task that archaeologists have been working on now for centuries. The consensus is that Stonehenge was constructed in three basic stages beginning about 3100BCE, that’s 500 years before the first Egyptian Pyramid:

Stonehenge 1: in 3100BCE: The first construction at the site of Stonehenge consisted of a circular ditch and mound with two entrances at the Northeast and South. The mound was built from the material removed to make the ditch and just inside the ditch a further ring of 56 holes were dug. The purpose of these holes appears to have been to erect either timber posts or perhaps an initial set of bluestones. If bluestones were used at this stage Stonehenge would have resembled many of the other stone circles such as the Rollright Stones.

Stonehenge as it would have appeared in Stage 1. (Credit: Stone-Circles.org.uk)

Stonehenge 2: 3000BCE: The evidence from this period indicates that several wooden structures were erected, one at the Northeast entrance and a larger one within the enclosure. There is other evidence that during this time Stonehenge became a repository for the cremated remains of many individuals.

Stonehenge 3: Starting 2600BCE (About the same time as the Great Pyramids). It was during this stage, which experts divide into 5 phases, that the familiar stone ring of sarsen stones and the 5 huge Trilithons, also made of sarsen were erected. Also during this time the arrangement of the bluestones was altered, bringing most of them inside the sarsen stone ring.

Stonehenge as it would have looked at the completion of Stage 3 (Credit: Stone-Circles.org.uk)

The above is only a brief, very brief description of the construction of Stonehenge but just as amazing are the details of how the stones ever got to Stonehenge! The huge sarsen stones, some weighing nearly 50,000 kg, came from a quarry on the Marlborough Downs about 40km to the north while the bluestones can only have come from the western part of Whales, an estimated 240km away from Stonehenge!

In a recent paper a team of archaeologists led by Mike Parker Pearson of the University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology have now claimed to have identified the actual quarries in the Preseli Hills of western Whales from which the bluestones came. Of the 43 bluestone pillars at Stonehenge, 27 are a type known as ‘spotted dolerite’ due to white specks of material throughout the stone. Using chemical analysis, along with a lot of legwork, the team has identified a location known as Carn Goedog as the likely source of the spotted dolerite stones. The remaining bluestones, technically known as rhyolite, were also traced to another nearby quarry called Craig Rhos-Y-felin.

Location in Whales from where the Stonehenge Bluestones came (Credit: The Daily Mail)

Having identified the probable quarries from which the bluestones came the archaeologists then proceeded to carry out excavations to see if any artifacts could be found after all these millennia. They soon discovered large numbers of stone hammers and wedges all of which dated to the same time period as the first construction at Stonehenge. Interestingly, the stone tools were made of a material known as mudstone which is considerably softer than the bluestones they were quarrying. The implication is that the ancient Britains were more worried about any damage to the bluestones than they were to their tools. Also excavated were the remains of manmade platforms to aid in lowering the stones and loading them into sledges for transport.

Excavation at the Bluestone Quarry (Credit: UCL)

Transporting the massive stones all the way to Stonehenge must have been a tremendous effort for the primitive technology of the time. It has always been assumed that the bluestones were pulled to the nearby shoreline and then rafted along the southern coast of Whales, up the River Severn and all the way to within a few kilometers of Stonehenge. However they were transported the fact remains that stone age tribes hundreds of miles apart must have cooperated in mining them, moving them and erecting them.

Possible Theories about the Routes the Bluestones may have taken to Stonehenge (Credit: Sarsen.org)

Which leaves the question why? Why did those Stone Age Britains put so much effort into building Stonehenge and the other megalithic structures that dot the countryside? Was their function religious, astronomical, both? That will have to wait for another post.

If you’d like to learn more about Stonehenge and the other stone circles of the British Isles check out the links below.

https://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/stone-circles/article_stonecircles.htm

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/history-and-stories/history/

People often confuse Archaeology and Paleontology. Here are a couple of News Stories that can Illustrate the Difference.

Watching or reading the news you will occasionally come across stories where even a well educated journalist seems to be baffled about whether the topic of the story is Paleontology or Archaeology. After all, both sciences deal with the past, both dig up their evidence from the ground and it seems like much of that evidence consists of bones. Not only that, but there is without doubt a small but very important region of overlap between the two disciplines. So it’s easy to understand how non-experts can get confused.

The big difference between the two sciences is us, human beings. Archaeology deals with the human past, not only human remains but the remains of our activity. Material objects, anything from small tools to entire buildings are just as important to Archaeology as are human bones.

Unfortunately this is most people’s idea of an Archaeologist (Credit: Paramount Pictures)

The subjects of Paleontology on the other hand are all of the creatures that ever lived on this Earth, right back to the very earliest living cell. In some sense therefore Archaeology is a subset of Paleontology. We are still living creatures after all. However the enormous range of material objects left by humans is so large and so unlike the remains of other living things that the two sciences operate in two completely different ways.

The first story I’d like to discuss illustrates this difference by showing how much archaeologists can learn from an ‘artifact’, a tool made thousands of years ago. In this case the tool is a stone spear point made by the earliest inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere in the region now known as Texas.

Pre-Clovis Spear Point found at the Friedkin Site (Credit: Sci News)

The Debra L. Friedkin archaeological site outside of Salado Texas has been excavated by researchers from Texas A&M University for more than a dozen years now. The remains here are some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in the Americas dating back some 15,500 years. These remains predate the classic Clovis remains first found in nearby New Mexico.

Some of the Stone Tools found at the Friedkin Site (Credit: Texas A&M University)

That makes the Friedkin site very important because for decades the Clovis culture, first described in the 1920s from digs outside of the town of Clovis New Mexico, were thought to be the remains of original people who came to the Americas about 13,000 years ago. In the years that followed numerous sites in both North and South America were found that produced artifacts consistent with Clovis culture.

Over the last twenty years however a few sites have been discovered that date several thousand years older than the Clovis sites. So far however these sites have only produced a small number of artifacts, making it difficult to determine whether or not these people were earlier examples of the Clovis culture, or do they represent an entirely new, unknown people.

Texas A&M Professor Michael Waters thinks that the Friedkin site can provide that answer, and in his opinion they are an entirely new people. The artifacts discovered by Professor Waters and his team even include the earliest known stone spearheads, see image above.

“The dream has always been to find diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points that can be recognized as older than Clovis and this is what we have at the Friedkin site.” Waters says. Whether or not other Archaeologists will accept Professor Waters’s conclusions remains to be seen but with each piece of evidence the answer becomes clearer.

Now in that story we were only talking about artifacts, that is objects manufactured by human beings. In this next story the evidence will consist solely of the actual remains of living creatures. So that means this story comes from the science of Paleontology. Also, where the story from Texas dealt with evidence that was fifteen thousand years old, the evidence in this story is over 400 million years old!

Unfortunately this is most people’s idea of a Paleontologist (Credit: Universal Pictures)

The first animals to possess a backbone and an internal skeleton, the first vertebrates that is were fish, although very strange looking fish they were. The earliest fossils date from about 480 million years ago but such fossils are few in number and show little diversity. Vertebrates were a small, not very successful group of animals. About 60 million years later however the fossil record explodes with numerous new species of fish suddenly appearing.

Cephalaspis lyelli, an early jawless fish (Credit: Art.com)

In their search for the explanation of how this explosion of vertebrates happened Paleontologists have looked to find out where this explosion happened. That is, did the diversification of fishes occur in the open ocean or perhaps it occurred around the ancient coral reefs of that period.

Now a new study proposes a different solution. Paleontologists Lauren Sallan of the University of Pennsylvania and Ivan J. Sansom of the University of Birmingham have generated a database of 2,728 specimens of fossil fish from around 420 million years ago. In particular the database records the environmental conditions of where the fossil animal lived.

“The Nice thing about the fossil record,” according to Sallan. “Is that we often find fishes in the context of where they lived. The rock that holds them tells us what their environment looked like, whether it was reef, shallow water, deep water, a riverbed or a lake.”

What Professors Sallan and Sansom have found is that the explosion of fish species occurred in the shallow waters right up near the shore, between the reefs and the beach. In this environment these early fish acquired adaptations, such as bottom dwelling, that later enabled them to fit into niches in both the coral reefs and deeper more open waters.

Living near the shoreline also allowed fishes to adapt to freshwater more quickly and more successfully than other major groups of animals such as the arthropods and mollusks. And there was one more adaptation that that occurred at this time which gave these early vertebrates a distinct advantage. This was when fish first acquired jaws!

Jaws gave fish a big advantage. Osteolepis, and early jawed fish. (Credit: Pininterest)

So there you have it. Two examples of new research, one from the science of Archaeology, the study of humanity’s past, the other Paleontology, the study of life’s past.

Archaeology News for June 2018, better precision for Carbon 14 dating in the Middle East and a Spectacular find whose date could be effected.

Starting in the 1950s the science of Archaeology was revolutionized by the use of radioactive carbon-14 as a means of giving precise, hard dates to objects discovered during archaeological digs. Like any measuring tool however, carbon-14 (¹⁴C) dating has been, and continues to be improved in order to make its measurements more accurate, more precise and more reliable. Now a new study from researchers at Cornell and Oxford Universities seeks to further improve the accuracy of ¹⁴C dating for the Middle Eastern region by comparing it to the dates obtained by examinations of tree rings.

To understand the significance of the study let me take a few minutes to describe what ¹⁴C is and how we use it to date things. If you remember from you high school chemistry all atoms are made up of particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. The protons and neutrons reside in the very center of the atom, which is called the nucleus while the electrons fly around the nucleus. In a neutral atom the number of protons and electrons is equal and it is that number that determines what kind of atom, what chemical element it is. For example an atom of carbon has six protons and six electrons.

The number of neutrons can vary, but if the nucleus has too few, or too many neutrons it will be radioactively unstable. For carbon the stable number of neutrons is either six, making carbon-12 (¹²C) which makes up almost 99% of the cosmic abundance, or seven making carbon-13 (¹³C) at a little over 1%.

With eight neutrons carbon-14, (¹⁴C) is radioactive with a half-life of 5568 years. This means that if you had a thousand atoms of ¹⁴C in 5568 years you would only have 500 atoms of ¹⁴C left. Then in another 5568 years (11136 years total) you would only have 250 atoms of ¹⁴C. This having goes on every 5568 years until the ¹⁴C is gone. The image below shows the decay of a ¹⁴C atom.

The Decay of Carbon -14 (Credit: Science Blogs)

But if ¹⁴C shrinks by half in just a few thousand years, how is there is any left? After all the Earth is billions of years old isn’t it? Shouldn’t the ¹⁴C be all gone by now?

It would have, if not for the solar wind striking the top of our atmosphere which produces a small amount of ¹⁴C all of the time. This trace of ¹⁴C drifts down into the lower atmosphere where it is absorbed into plants during photosynthesis. The image below shows the reaction that produces ¹⁴C.

The Production of Carbon-14 (Credit: Science Blogs)

Animals, like us, then eat the plants so some radioactive ¹⁴C gets absorbed into our bodies. (That’s right, you are radioactive. Well a little bit!) The ratio of ¹⁴C to ¹²C can be measured. When the animal or plant dies the ¹⁴C begins to decay, half of it disappearing every 5568 years. If you measure the ratio ¹⁴C/¹²C in organic material you can calculate how long it’s been dead! This was what scientists first thought 70 years ago.

Turns out it wasn’t quite that easy. You may also remember from high school that the Sun has an eleven year Sunspot cycle and that cycle, along with other factors alter the amount of ¹⁴C produced each year leading to some small inaccuracies. Because of this scientists have done a lot of work over the years in order to develop calibration factors that improve both the accuracy and precision of ¹²C dating.

The new study is one such attempt at a better calibration. The study consisted of taking samples from tree rings of a historically known date. For example if a building in Jerusalem is documented to have been built in 1830, wood used in its construction would have been cut down in 1829 and if you count in 100 rings from the last ring you then have material from the year 1729. Measuring the age of that material using ¹⁴C and by comparing that date to 1729 you get a calibration of ¹⁴C dating in Jerusalem.

That’s a part of the issue, the study from Cornell have found discrepancies between ¹⁴C dates in the Middle East and similar studies in other parts of the northern hemisphere. The researchers have found an average of a 19-year variation over the period 1610 to 1940CE. They speculate that the reason could be tied to the fact that the growing season for agriculture in the Middle East is actually during the winter rather than the summer as in Europe and Asia. The question is however, if the dates from 400 years ago are off by 19 years what about the date of something from say 3,000 years ago?

That would be nice to know because as it happens a very important find has recently been dug up at the archaeological site Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel. The find is a 5cm tall figure of the head of a man, see image below. The head is made of a glass like material called faience and is almost certainly that of a high noble if not a king.

Figurine of head of a biblical King? (Credit: Fox News)

The find has been ¹⁴C dated to the 9th century BCE when a village called Abil al-Qamh was the crossroads of three biblical kingdoms, Tyre, the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus and Israel itself. In fact Abil al-Qamh is mentioned several times in the bible and based on the ¹⁴C date it has been suggested that the figurine may in fact be that of the well-known biblical king Ahab or that of his son Jehu. However it is just as likely that the head could be that of the Aramean king Ben Hadad or king Ithobaal of Tyre. Each of these men are mentioned in the bible so a definite identification as any one of them would be a discovery of historical as well as archaeological importance.

New Archaeological Evidence of Pre-Columbian Civilization in the Southern Amazon Basin.

As little as forty years ago it was thought that civilization in the Americas before the time of Columbus was limited to the Mexico/Central America region (The Maya and Aztecs) and the Andean Mountains of Peru (Inca). We’ve learned a lot since then. In North America archaeologists have re-discovered the civilizations of the canyon dwellers of the southwest known as the Anasazi as well as the Mound Builders of the Mississippi and Ohio River basins. Numerous sites belonging to these cultures have been extensively studied revealing large population centers with a high material culture. The images below show some of the remaining structures build by these lost cultures.

Mississippi Mount Builders, Cahokia (Credit: Pinterest)

Clift Dwellings of the Anasiazi (Credit: Ancient Origins)

Today however I’d like to talk about some of the recent discoveries that are being made in uncovering the lost civilization that existed along the many branches of the Amazon River between 1200-1550 CE. Today the Amazon is best known as a region of dense, uninhabited, almost untouched jungle with only a few Stone Age tribes scattered through it. The image below shows the typical view of the Amazon rainforest.

Everybody’s idea of the Amazon (Credit: Amazon Trips)

The earliest descriptions we have of the Amazon region comes from the journal of a Dominican priest named Gaspar de Carvajal written in the years 1541-42 CE. De Carvajal had joined a band of conquistadors led by Gonzalo Pizarro, the brother of Francisco Pizarro the conqueror of the Inca. Pizarro was of course looking for the fabled city of El Dorado, the city of gold. (Hey his brother had found one so I guess Gonzalo thought that he could as well.)

According to de Carvajal what the conquistadors found as that traveled down the world’s greatest river were countless villages and even major cities crowding along the riverbanks. In his journal de Carvajal describes the people of the Amazon as prosperous and well fed, although possessing little of the gold the conquistadors sought.

Subsequent explorers found next to nothing of the peoples that de Carvajal had claimed to have seen. The Amazon that they found was a jungle largely untouched by human beings. Historians dismissed de Carvajal for making up most of his tales. That there was no Amazon civilization they were certain.

We now know that what must have happened was that de Carvajal and the other Spaniards had brought with them diseases that the native population had no immunity to, mainly measles and smallpox. These diseases are deadly enough to the Europeans who had lived with them for centuries but to the native people the death toll was catastrophic.

Within twenty years of de Carvajal’s journey the cities and villages he had written about no longer existed, an estimated 90% of the people who had lived in them were dead. Without human beings to clear and cultivate the land the vegetation took over, concealing what remained of all of those cities and villages. Later explorers saw only the jungle, the civilization of the Amazon was truly lost.

Until now that is. Over the last twenty years Archaeologists studying the Amazon region have found an enormous amount of evidence backing up the claims of de Carvajal. Earthen mounds and ditched enclosures, the remains of what were once villages and towns have been found almost everywhere they are looked for. The image below shows an artist’s reconstruction of one of the villages / cities discovered in the Amazon flood plain.

Reconstructed Amazon Village (Credit: Nature)

Now Archaeologists are also beginning to discover the remains of human habitation in parts of the Amazon basin that de Carvajal never came anywhere near. In a recent paper scientists have described dozens of geometric earthworks along with other signs of large scale human occupation south of the Amazon floodplain, a region known as the Southern Rim of the Amazon (SRA).

According to lead author Jonas De Souza of the University of Exeter in the UK, “The more we survey the more we realize that different parts of the (Amazon) basin were more settled than we thought.”

Making extensive use of satellite and aerial images De Souza and his colleagues have found 81 Pre-Columbian sites in the SRA ranging in size from small hamlets to large fortified sites. The archaeologists have also visited 24 of the sites to verify that they are Pre-Columbian and are currently excavating one site. The images below show some of the aerial images of the sites.

Ancient Amazon Village? (Credit: Guardian)

Based on the evidence gather so far the sites studied in the SRA area are similar to, but different enough from the sites closer to the Amazon itself to indicate that the new sites may belong to a separate and hitherto completely unknown culture.

All too often in the course of human history people and cultures have disappeared leaving no trace of their ever having existed. Today archaeology is recovering some of the stories of these lost civilizations.