Archaeology

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Stunning Kins.

--A

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Ancient skeleton sits among art

Vilhonneur - An ancient cave, discovered in western France in December, contains a rare find: a 27 000-year-old human skeleton in a painted room and a drawing of a human face.

It was only the second time a body from this period has been found placed in such a way with cave paintings, said experts on Friday, after months of studying the cave.

A single painted face found in the cave also could be among the oldest graphic representations of a human face, said Jean-Yves Baratin, archaeology curator for the Poitou-Charentes region of France.

According to the country's culture ministry, the state took over ownership of the cave in the Vilhonneur forest on May 12.

Cavers were exploring part of a grotto once used to dispose of animal carcasses when they discovered the cave, which dates to the upper Paleolithic period about 25 000 years ago.

The skeleton also dates from the same period.

Human hand imprinted on wall

The cave's discovery was announced in February, but it was not until Friday that precise information about some of the finds was divulged.

Baratin underscored the significance of the human skeleton been placed on the ground inside a decorated room.

The other instance in which a body was found in a decorated cave is in the hamlet of Cussac, a grotto that experts have said was as important for engravings as paintings are for the famed Lascaux caves.

The Vilhonneur cave features a series of paintings, including one in which a human hand is imprinted on a wall by adding colour around it.

The Lascaux Cave in Montignac, in the southwest Dordogne region, has long been considered one of the finest examples of cave paintings.

That art dates 13 000 years, making the Vilhonneur art much older.

Another cave, Chauvet, was discovered in the mid-1990s in southeast France.

It features 300 examples of Paleolithic animal art, some dating back 31 000 years.

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

New Mexico's Chaco Canyon: A Place of Kings and Palaces?
BOULDER, Colo., June 5 (AScribe Newswire) -- Kings living in palaces may have ruled New Mexico's Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago, causing Pueblo people to reject the brawny, top-down politics in the centuries that followed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist.

University of Colorado Museum anthropology Curator Steve Lekson, who has studied Chaco Canyon for several decades, said one argument for royalty comes from the rich, crypt-style burials of two men discovered deep in a Chaco Canyon "great house" known as Pueblo Bonito several decades ago. They were interred about A.D. 1050 with a wealth of burial goods in Pueblo Bonito, a 600-room, four-story structure that was considered to be the center of the Chaco world, he said.

Archaeologists have long been in awe of the manpower required to build Chaco's elaborate structures and road systems, which required laborious masonry work, extended excavation and the transport of staggering amounts of lumber from forests 50 miles distant, he said. The scale of the architecture and backbreaking work undertaken for several centuries suggests a powerful centralized authority, said Lekson, curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum.

"I don't think Chaco was a big happy barn-raising," said Lekson, chief editor of "The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh Century Pueblo Regional Center," published in April 2006 by the School of American Research Press in Santa Fe, N.M. "Things were probably quite a bit grimmer than some have imagined."

"Kingship" developed in Mesoamerica about 2,000 years before Chaco, Lekson said, and kings quickly became a constant on the political landscape. "It's not remarkable that there were small-scale kings and states at Chaco in A.D. 1100," he said. "What is remarkable is that it took the Southwest so long to get around to it."

Located in northern New Mexico, Chaco Canyon was the hub of the Pueblo culture from about A.D. 850 to 1150 and is believed to have held political sway over an area twice the size of present-day Ohio. A center of ceremony and trade, the canyon is marked by 11 great houses oriented in solar, lunar and cardinal directions with roads that appear to have connected Chaco to outlying Pueblo communities.

Researchers have long pondered how Chaco rulers wielded control over outlying Pueblo communities in present day Utah, Arizona and Colorado, he said. Such "outliers," located up to 150 miles away, would have required that visitors from Chaco walk up to eight days straight in order to reach them, said Lekson, who is also a CU-Boulder anthropology professor.

The answer may lie in the clarity of the Southwestern skies, the open landscape and the broad vistas that created an efficient "line-of-site" system, he said. "Chaco people could see Farview House at Mesa Verde, for example, and Farview could see Chaco," he said. "I think similar linkages will be found between Chaco and the most distant outliers in all directions in the coming years."'

The roads, some as wide as four-lane highways, may have been used for ceremonial pilgrimages by priests and their followers, Lekson said. "They also could have been used by troops, tax collectors and inquisitors," he said.

Funded by the National Park Service and CU-Boulder, the new book is a collaboration of more than 30 years of fieldwork by hundreds of researchers and students, many of whom participated in a massive NPS Chaco excavation from 1971 to 1982. Scores of academics met around the Southwest during the past several years, discussing the most recent research and latest theories regarding Chaco for the book.

The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon explores the natural environment and architecture, as well as Chaco's economy, politics, history and regional influences. The authors also look at outside cultural influences from all directions, including ties to Mesoamerica, said Lekson. Twenty authors contributed to the book, including Lekson, CU Museum Director Linda Cordell, CU-Boulder anthropology doctoral student Derek Hamilton and Richard Wilshusen, who received his doctorate from CU-Boulder.

Lekson estimates that 95 percent of the Chaco people lived in small pueblos, while an elite 5 percent lived in the great houses. Pueblo Bonito and the other Chaco great houses were "tall, empty monuments" that could have been used for a variety of activities, from ceremonies and storage to inns and even slave cells, he said.

The culture's architecture and settlement patterns changed dramatically in the region about 1300, when sites begin to look more like modern Pueblos.

"Chaco has been characterized in oral histories as a wonderful, awful place where people got power over other people," Lekson said. "Later Pueblo cultures in the region did not develop from Chaco, but rather represent a reaction against it, with people distancing themselves from a bad experience."

- - - -

CONTACT: Steve Lekson, 303-492-6671, lekson@colorado.edu

Jim Scott, CU-Boulder News Service, 303-492-3114

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photo available; contact Jim Scott.

[lucimay]

hey...

nice pieces you guys, Av and Kins! thanks!



wish i could see that Vilhonneur site!

[Cheval]

Scientists Discover 300-Mile-Wide Crater
By MICHAEL CASEY, AP

BANGKOK, Thailand (June - A massive crater in Antarctica may have been caused by a meteor that wiped out more than 90 percent of the species on Earth 250 million years ago, a geologist said.

The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath a sheet of ice and was discovered by scientists using satellite data, Ohio State University geologist Ralph von Frese said Wednesday.

Von Frese said the satellite data suggests the crater could date back about 250 million years to the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died, paving the way for dinosaurs to rise to prominence.

The crater was found in what's known as the Wilkes Land region of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
"This is a strong candidate for the cause of the extinction," von Frese told The Associated Press by phone from Ohio. "This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time."

Similar claims were made in 2004 when a team led by Luann Becker of the University of California reported that a crater off the northwest coast of Australia showed evidence of a large meteor impact at the time of the early extinction. That team relied heavily on core samples provided by an oil company drilling in the region as evidence for its findings.

The prevailing theory holds that the Permian-Triassic extinction was caused by a series of volcanic eruptions over thousands of years that buried what is now Siberia in molten rock and released tons of toxic gases into the atmosphere, changing the Earth's climate.

Von Frese - who announced his findings last month at an American Geophysical Union meeting in Baltimore - acknowledged his discovery lacks hard evidence. He said he wants to visit Antarctica to hunt for rocks at the base of the ice along the coast that could be dated.
"There is skepticism and people are asking where is the other evidence and where are the rocks," he said. "You do want to have other evidence. The strongest evidence would be rocks from the event, including meteorite fragments."

Von Frese's findings so far rely on data from a NASA satellite that can measure fluctuations in gravity fields beneath the ice. The data revealed a large area where the Earth's denser mantle layer bounced up into the planet's crust. This is what would happen in reaction to such a big impact - the planetary equivalent of a bump on the head, von Frese said.

When the scientists overlaid their gravity image with airborne radar images of the ground beneath the ice, they discovered imprints of lumps and ridges from the meteor that indicated impact. Von Frese has spent years studying similar impacts on the moon.

The crater's size and location, von Frese said, also indicated that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating a tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.
Approximately 100 million years ago, Australia split from Gondwana and began drifting away from what is now Antarctica, pushed by the expansion of a rift valley into the eastern Indian Ocean, von Frese said.

articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060608015609990004&id=20050316173209990011

[[Syl]]

Etruscan Expert Announces Historic Discovery At Ancient Site

Digging on a remote hilltop in Italy, a Florida State University classics professor and her students have unearthed artifacts that dramatically reshape our knowledge of the religious practices of an ancient people, the Etruscans.

"We are excavating a monumental Etruscan building evidently dating to the final years of Etruscan civilization," said Nancy Thomson de Grummond, the M. Lynette Thompson Professor of Classics at FSU and director of the university's archaeology programs in Italy. Within the building, de Grummond's team located in early June what appears to be a sacrificial pit and a sanctuary -- finds remarkable for the wealth of items they are yielding that appear to have been used in religious rituals.

Nearly every summer since 1983, de Grummond has taken groups of FSU students into Italy's Tuscany region to participate in archaeological digs at Cetamura del Chianti, a site once inhabited by the Etruscans and ancient Romans. In the final days of this year's program, de Grummond and her students unearthed what she calls "the most thrilling" find she has seen in 23 years at Cetamura.

She explained that the Etruscans, who once ruled most of the Italian peninsula, were conquered and absorbed by the Romans in the second and first centuries B.C.E. ("Before the Common Era"). Prior to that time, however, they were a highly advanced civilization that constructed roads, buildings and sewer systems and developed the first true cities in Europe. They also built large, complex religious sanctuaries -- which may have been the purpose served, in part, by the Cetamura structure.

"The building has a highly irregular plan, with stone foundations 3 or 4 feet thick," she said. "One wing of the building is about 60 feet long, flanking a space that has walls running at right angles. Some walls run on a diagonal to the grid, or are curved. There are paved areas alternating with beaten earth floors and what I believe to be a large courtyard in the middle. Some of the foundations are so heavy and thick that they could easily have supported multistoried elements.

Within the building's courtyard, de Grummond said, is a freestanding sandstone platform that likely served as an altar. A few feet away, she and her students unearthed "the most fascinating find of all -- a pit filled with burnt offerings for the gods.

"In all, the pit contained approximately 10 vessels, some miniature and thus clearly intended only as gifts for the gods," de Grummond said. "On the other hand, several of the vessels were quite large, including one storage vessel, probably for grain, and a huge pitcher, probably for wine. There also were little cups for drinking and a bowl for eating, as well as a small beaker of the type that holds oil or spices. All of these vessels were ceramic, some ritually broken and but with most or all of the fragments buried together in the pit. Further, most of the pots seem to be locally made rather than imported. They were offering to the gods their own special creations.

"We should be able to restore these vases and have quite a splendid array of Etruscan pottery dating from a single moment and a particular place in their history," de Grummond said.

Also of great interest to de Grummond was the discovery of some 10 iron nails deposited in the pit, all in an excellent state of preservation.

"These reflect what we know from ancient texts in Latin that note that the Etruscans treated nails as sacred, and regarded them as symbolizing inexorable fate," she said. "They had a ritual practice in regard to their deity Nurtia in which they would hammer a nail into the wall of the temple each year as a tribute to the goddess. We cannot yet be sure about the cultic significance of the nails of Cetamura, but they may well relate to the passage of time and thus to the sacred calendar of the Etruscans."

One of de Grummond's students also unearthed an Etruscan inscription on a shard of pottery that contained the name of a little-known Etruscan god, Lurs.

"Almost nothing is known about Lurs, but we may have at Cetamura some very rare evidence about his worship," she said.

De Grummond is a leading scholar on the religious practices of the Etruscans, a people whose culture profoundly influenced the ancient Romans and Greeks. "The Religion of the Etruscans," a book written and edited by de Grummond and Erika Simon, another expert in classical archaeology who served as the Langford Family Eminent Scholar in Classics at FSU in 1999, was published last spring. De Grummond soon will release another book, "Etruscan Myth, Sacred History and Legend."

De Grummond said she hopes to continue excavating the Cetamura sacred area, and building on nearly a quarter-century of knowledge that she has gathered there.

"It is a bit eerie to have excavated something so central to my own lifelong interest in the myth, religion and rituals of the Etruscans," she said. "Without a doubt, this is one of the most exciting of the discoveries I have experienced."

[Kinslaughterer]

Hello all, I've just gotten back from my summer field work. Spent a while at Chaco Canyon, a week or so in Utah recording ruins, about a month in Colorado doing the same, went up to Mesa Verde for a few days just for fun, and did a little general sight-seeing too.

I must say it was absolutely fantastic, of course I've got over a thousand photos of various sites and fieldwork so in the next few days I'll try in post a few here. I highly recommend taking a vacation in SW Colorado in the Cortez-Durango-Telluride area. I could have given up my current life and just stayed there wandering the countryside.

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Nice to have you back though Kins. Look forward to the pics.

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

s108.photobucket.com/albums/n3/jasonclovis/

Here are a few pictures. As a go through them I'll continue to add some. Unfortunately I can't add any excavation photos until the final report is published but I do have quite a few scenic shots.

[Avatar]

Some great pics Kins. Love the one of the square tower house.

Look forward to more...and of the excavation too when you can.

--A

[balon!]

So I've got a question Kin.

My brother and I are ametur rockhounds and normally just focus on precious and semi-precious stones, but occasionally come across something more interesting. We even found the remains of some abandoned camping spot and got a good floding shovel and buck knife out of it. We're kind of scavangers.

Anyways, what sort of trouble can we get in should we come across any sort of artifacts from your line of work, and take them withou reporting? I haven't had any luck yet (dang! ) but wanted to be prepared in case I do.

[Cheval]

I go camping quite a bit and I'm kinda suprised at what is hidden within forests,
near rivers, or in caves around central Forida.
Some interesting limerock formations, stalagetites (sp?),
or Indian artifacts and shark teeth.
(I once had in my fishtank three shark teeth that were over 4 inches long)

Yes, it would be nice to know what I should be prepared for.

[balon!]

I go camping quite a bit and I'm kinda suprised at what is hidden within forests,
near rivers, or in caves around central Forida.
Some interesting limerock formations, stalagetites (sp?),
or Indian artifacts and shark teeth.
(I once had in my fishtank three shark teeth that were over 4 inches long)

Yes, it would be nice to know what I should be prepared for.

Once I stopped in a field and found a two-fist sized chuck on yellow leaded glass! It must have weighed about the same as a bowling ball!

Anyways. Back to topic.

[stonemaybe]

Anyone know anything about fossils? I found these

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/album_cat.php?cat_id=14

near where I live. That's my fingertip in the pic to give you an idea of size. They're perfect five pointed stars, some thicker (sort of , more stacked) that others.

Have you ever tried looking up fossils online? There are MILLIONS of sites!

[balon!]

They almost look like Lucky Charms cereal!

[Kinslaughterer]

Hey this Doriendor Corishev seems like my kinda place...none of those damn politics or religion.

[Kinslaughterer]

So I've got a question Kin.

My brother and I are ametur rockhounds and normally just focus on precious and semi-precious stones, but occasionally come across something more interesting. We even found the remains of some abandoned camping spot and got a good floding shovel and buck knife out of it. We're kind of scavangers.

Anyways, what sort of trouble can we get in should we come across any sort of artifacts from your line of work, and take them withou reporting? I haven't had any luck yet (dang! ) but wanted to be prepared in case I do.

Well, that depends entirely on where you find said artifacts. If you happen to be on private land that belongs to you then whatever you find is yours. However if you are on public land like say a national forest then the fine would likely be pretty steep. Its generally a heavy fine at first but if you're caught a second time you'll see the inside of a prison.

Out here in the Southwest there are families of looters and pothunters many who are essentially career criminals. Ideally don't take anything from any state or federal property or any Native American reservation (in the case of the latter its best to call the police yourself, it may be the only way you get off the res alive).

If you find something seemingly by itself then you are considered a collector rather than a looter under the law. Coming across a chert projectile point out by the river is safe to keep.

Check out the National Park Service website (nps.gov) and look up NAGPRA, ARPA, and NHPA. The last is particularly relevant (National Historic Preservation Act).

[balon!]

So really it all comes down to the severity.

A single point would be fine, but should I be lucky enough to stumple across a cave full of clovis points and wall paintings, I should just report the thing.

Got it.

I'll be sure to cruise those sites. Information is the only solid defense.

Thanks Kin!

[Kinslaughterer]

Headless Bodies Hold Secrets to Pacific Migration

Archaeologists working on the Pacific islands of Vanuatu have found the region's oldest cemetery, and it's filled with a slew of headless bodies.

The peculiar 3,000-year-old skeletons belong to the Lapita people, the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Their DNA could shed light on how the many remote island specks surrounding Vanuatu were colonized, the researchers say.


"Both Vanuatu and Western Polynesia were first settled by the Lapita culture but their populations are somewhat different genetically and this has not yet been explained," said dig leader Matthew Spriggs, an archaeologist with the Australian National University.


The Vanuatu burials--which include mismatching bodies and heads of individuals from different corners of the Pacific Islands--could help explain how everyone eventually ended up where they did, he said.


Heads removed after death


A total of 70 headless bodies, along with seven skulls and some rare pots, have been found at the site in Vanuatu over several dig seasons. The work was led by Spriggs, Stuart Bedford of the Australian National University and Ralph Regenvanu of the Vanuatu National Museum.


Thirty-five bodies, buried in various manners, were discovered just recently.

But rather than a ritual sacrifice or some other gruesome custom that might explain the separated heads and bodies, the deceased were all laid to rest initially with their skulls firmly attached, Spriggs said.


The head was believed to be the seat of the soul and so was often dug up after burial when the flesh had rotted away and kept either in skull shrines or in the house as a treasured memento of the person," he told LiveScience.




Curiously, though, none of the skulls belonged to the bodies with which they were buried, tests showed.

"Some curated heads, shiny through handling, had been placed on the chest of one individual some time after his burial--they may have been his descendants," said Spriggs. "Needless to say, he had no head either."


Voyagers from across the sea?


Many skulls and bodies that were found might even have belonged to individuals from islands other than Vanuatu, according to the preliminary DNA testing.


"At present we don't have enough background data to enable us to say where someone came from in the Pacific, only that they didn't come from the island where they were found," Spriggs said. "Currently, 4 of about 18 individuals tested so far show signs of having been born elsewhere."


Those DNA results and more on the way mean that scientists could soon understand just how the Lapita people got to Vanuatu and what route they took from there on to populate islands like Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. Many historians believe they originally made the journey from Southeast Asia, but that is in dispute.


It's a connect-the-dots picture that gets clearer with every new Lapita specimen that is found and tested, Spriggs said.


"We are interested to know whether the DNA (that) we might be able to extract from the skeletons matches common Polynesian DNA patterns or is more like that of the people of Vanuatu today," said Spriggs

.

[Kinslaughterer]

Viking woman had roots near the Black Sea
The bones of one of the women found in one of Norway's most famous Viking graves suggest her ancestors came from the area around the Black Sea.

The woman herself was "Norwegian," claims Professor Per Holck at the University of Oslo, who has conducted analyses of DNA material taken from her bones.

But Holck says that while she came from the area that today is Norway, her forefathers may have lived n the Black Sea region.

Holck, attached to the anthropological division of the university's anatomy institute (Anatomisk institutt), isn't willing to reveal more details pending publication of an article in the British magazine "European Archaeology" later this year.

He told newspaper Aftenposten, though, that he's recommending the woman's bones be retrieved for further study. They were first found in 1904, when the Oseberg Viking ship was excavated, and analysed by the university.

The analysis data was withheld, however, and the woman's remains were returned to the Oseberg burial mound in 1947. Holck has only worked with the DNA extracted at the time, and he thinks they should be reexamined.

He worries, however, that her bones may have been damaged during the past 60 years. If the remains are intact, he said, it would probably be possible to take more DNA tests that could reveal more about the woman and another female's bones also extracted from the Oseberg site