Posts tagged archaeology
Posts tagged archaeology
The world’s oldest dated rune stone, a landmark discovery revealed in 2023, is just one piece of a larger, nearly 2,000-year-old slab, new research has found. Now, scientists in Norway are working to reassemble the ancient puzzle, a process that’s starting to shed light on who carved the mysterious runic writing and what the words mean.
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Archaeologists who originally unearthed the oldest known rune stone in 2021 while investigating an ancient grave site in eastern Norway found the large piece covered with traces of runes. But as the fieldwork continued, the researchers uncovered additional sandstone fragments, some bearing similar runic inscriptions, in other nearby graves.
The broken pieces appeared to fit together, with some of the runic script from one stone continuing onto another, and the scientists realized the fragments were all once part of a single stone. The research team published the new findings in the February 3 issue of the journal Antiquity.
Excited to find out that someone broke the tablet because some kid just wrote something vulgar on it
At first whiff, it sounds repulsive: sniff the essence of an ancient corpse.
But researchers who indulged their curiosity in the name of science found that well-preserved Egyptian mummies actually smell pretty good.
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“Woody,” “spicy” and “sweet” were the leading descriptions from what sounded more like a wine tasting than a mummy sniffing exercise. Floral notes were also detected, which could be from pine and juniper resins used in embalming.
Would I huff a mummy? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Speaking of brains, here’s Issy Ronald for CNN:
Ancient humans living in Europe may have scooped out the brains of their dead enemies and eaten them, a new study suggests.
In the study, published last week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers examined the bones of at least 10 people from the Magdalenian culture who lived in Europe 11,000–17,000 years ago.
Using imaging techniques, the team of researchers from institutes in France, Spain and Poland identified types of marks and cuts “associated with the removal of the marrow in the long bones and the brain in the skulls.”
[loud slurping noises]
Lara Pacillo with a news release from the University of Adelaide:
Researchers have discovered what may be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin.
The Ségognole 3 rock shelter, known since the 1980s for its artistic engravings of two horses in a Late Palaeolithic style on either side of a female pubic figuration, has now been revealed to contain a miniature representation of the surrounding landscape.
Nerds were making scale models even 13,000 years ago
A recent study led by Dr. Balázs Tihanyi and his colleagues, published in PLOS ONE, has led to the positive identification of the first-known female burial with weapons in the 10th-century Carpathian Basin, Hungary.
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The individual SH-63 was found within the Sárrétudvari–Hízóföld cemetery, which is the largest 10th-century-CE cemetery in Hungary and contains a large number of burials containing weapons and horse-riding equipment. It was in use during the Hungarian Conquest period, in which many mounted archers conducted and fought battles across Europe.
Despite not having many particularly “wealthy” grave goods, the burial of SH-63 was unique for its grave goods composition, says Dr. Tihanyi. “Male burials often contained functional items, such as simple jewelry (e.g., penannular hair rings and bracelets), clothing fittings (e.g., belt buckles), and tools (e.g., fire-lighting kits and knives). Their most distinctive grave goods included weapons, usually archery equipment, with two graves containing sabers and one grave containing an axe.
She’s killed before and will kill again
Sloths weren’t always slow-moving, furry tree-dwellers. Their prehistoric ancestors were huge — up to 4 tons (3.6 metric tons) — and when startled, they brandished immense claws.
For a long time, scientists believed the first humans to arrive in the Americas soon killed off these giant ground sloths through hunting, along with many other massive animals like mastodons, saber-toothed cats and dire wolves that once roamed North and South America.
But new research from several sites is starting to suggest that people came to the Americas earlier — perhaps far earlier — than once thought. These findings hint at a remarkably different life for these early Americans, one in which they may have spent millennia sharing prehistoric savannas and wetlands with enormous beasts.
Damn I can’t believe I was born too late to be friends with both a giant sloth and a mastodon simultaneously, this timeline well and truly sucks ass
Archaeologists Dr. Wim van Neer, Dr. Bea De Cupere, and Dr. Renée Friedman have published a study on the earliest evidence of horn modification in livestock in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The researchers found the oldest physical evidence of livestock horn modification and the first evidence of such for sheep. Discovered at the elite burial complex in Hierakonpolis, Upper Egypt (ca. 3700 BC), six sheep showed evidence of deformation, adding to the history of horn modification in Africa, which has been primarily restricted to cattle.
“This is the earliest physical evidence for horn modification in livestock. The practice also existed in cattle but is, for that early period, only attested by depictions in rock art,” says Dr. van Neer.
Hell yeah I love modifying sheep. I’m modifying a sheep right now actually
Italian authorities have recovered precious 3rd century B.C. artefacts from an Etruscan necropolis looted by a couple of bungling tomb raiders in Umbria who stumbled across the haul on their land.
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The Carabinieri caught up with them after they posted pictures of their discovery on the internet in the hope of finding buyers, triggering investigations that included phone wiretaps, stakeouts and air surveillance drones.
Police finally swooped on the suspects after one of them posted on Facebook a picture of himself with a looted artefact, Cantone said.
They’re so real for that
Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian Magazine:
A tiny house full of exquisite frescos has been discovered in the ancient city of Pompeii. While the home is modest in size, researchers say that its decorations—including erotic scenes—are equal to those of much larger nearby residences.
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The newly discovered structure is called the House of Phaedra, named for a well-preserved painting of the mythological Hippolytus and Phaedra on its wall. In Euripides’ ancient Greek tragedy Hippolytus, Phaedra, the wife of hero Theseus, falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus. In the fresco, Phaedra sits draped in cloth, while Hippolytus stands before her.
Other frescos show the sensual embrace of a satyr (a half-man, half-goat) and a nymph (a maiden goddess). Another wall painting likely depicts the goddess Venus with her beau Adonis, according to the park. One painted scene, though damaged, appears to illustrate the Judgment of Paris.
My new goal is to figure out how to slip the parenthetical “including erotic scenes” into as many future posts as possible—including erotic scenes.
Traversed centuries ago by camel-back traders, two long-lost medieval cities that once thrived along the ancient Silk Road have been uncovered by drones sent searching for their secrets.
For centuries, these abandoned cities lay hidden beneath the mountains of Central Asia. But new research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reveals two fortified settlements that were once perched along a key crossroad of silk trade routes.
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Using modern drone mapping technology known as LiDAR — light detection and ranging equipment — the team of archaeologists found that the two cities, Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, were once bustling urban centers despite their isolation and elevation.
It’s fun getting reminded sometimes that, despite rapid transit and the internet making it seem small, the Earth is actually quite large, so large we can just lose whole-ass cities for centuries