archaeologicalnews:

Archaeologists have found an ancient fish trap near Esperance, the first to be recorded in the area, which is believed to have been used up to 1000 years ago.

The trap is made up of a series of rocks placed across a tidal creek east of the south coast town and would have been supported by wooden stakes and covered in netting to catch passing fish.

A research team uncovered the fish trap while surveying the area.

Doc Reynolds, a traditional owner of the area and chairman of the Gabbie Kylie Foundation which organised the expedition, said the site was well known among indigenous people. 

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archaicwonder:

Caherconnell

Caherconnell (Cathair Chonaill) is a well-preserved, Early Middle Age Celtic stone ringfort in County Clare, Ireland. It lies about 1 km south of the Poulnabrone dolmen (a neolithic portal tomb). This fort and other sites like it would have been used from 500 to 1500 CE.

It is believed by archaeologists to be the royal dun (fort) of Guaire Aidne mac Colmáin, the legendary king of Connacht and progenitor of the clan. King Guaire ruled at the height of Ui Fiachrach Aidne power in south Connacht.

In the annals of the Battle of Carn Conaill 649 CE, it says that in this battle King Guaire was put to flight by the high-king Diarmait of Brega. Diarmait was the aggressor in this war and the saga Cath Cairnd Chonaill details this affair. Diarmait won the support of the monastery of Clonmacnoise and refused the request of Cummian (abbot of Clonfert) for a truce, who had been sent by Guaire to ask for one. However, Guaire was able to turn his defeat into a moral victory when upon submitting to Diarmait he outdid the high-king with his generosity to the poor. Diarmait thus granted him a peace treaty and friendship.

Perhaps this is where the legend of King Guaire’s generosity comes from. As the lore goes, he used to help out a local beggar frequently while he was alive. When King Guaire died, this beggar went to the king’s grave and said “King Guaire, even you cannot help me now”. Undeterred by his own death, the King reached a skeletal hand up from the grave and dropped several gold coins at the beggar’s feet.

(This legend, in modern times, is falsely attributed to nearby Dunguaire Castle. The castle wasn’t built until ca. 1520 CE, King Guaire died in 663 CE.)

There’s more about King Guaire, Caherconnell and Dunguaire Castle here in my previous post.

source

archaeologicalnews:

MEXICO CITY.- The finding of 47 human burials from the XVI century, in the recently opened Archaeological Zone of San Miguelito in Quintana Roo, reveal the last moments of the pre-hispanic era of this ancient Mayan settlement of the east coast, which was characterized by hunger and crisis,…

These interments were discovered inside 11 housing buildings which were excavated by archaeologists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH – Conaculta). Thirty of these burials correspond to infants between the ages of three and six who died because of malnutrition and acute anemia.

The archaeologist Sandra Elizalde, who is responsible for the investigation project of this particular site (in the hotel zone of Cancun), reported that “the study indicates that there was a high infant mortality index, derived of the bad health conditions and malnutrition of a very impoverished population of the XVI century.” 

Read more.

ophelia-ailehpo:

“An anthropological introduction to YouTube”

Everyone should watch this and think about how the world is changing.

I love how he addresses aesthetic arrest, you rarely think about how the internet has changed how you even look at people, can you imagine if people behaved in real life as they do online? I think life would be much more candid and real.

iranicapictura:

Naqsh-e Rustam, Fars Province, Iran - Achamenid Necropolis - Tomb of Darius I the Great, Xerxes (Kurosh), Artaxerxes (Ardeshir), Darius II, 550-330 BCE - Courtesy Homa Nasab for MUSEUMVIEWS

Please join Iranica Pictura onFacebook,Pinterest&Tumblr

ancientart:

Roman Mosaic of Duck Facing Left in Vines, Hammam-Lif Synagogue, Tunisia.

triglifos-y-metopas:

Town Mosaics, faience and ivory plaques.

Palace of Knossos, Crete, Greece

18th century B.C.E. (Middle Minoan)

[Heraklion Archaeological Museum]

“Part of my program of research is to convince people that they should stop distinguishing cultural and biological evolution as separate in that way. We want to think of it all as biological evolution. “

…

OW CULTURE DROVE HUMAN EVOLUTION

[JOSEPH HENRICH:] The main questions I’ve been asking myself over the last couple years are broadly about how culture drove human evolution. Think back to when humans first got the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution—and by this I mean the ability for ideas to accumulate over generations, to get an increasingly complex tool starting from something simple. One generation adds a few things to it, the next generation adds a few more things, and the next generation, until it’s so complex that no one in the first generation could have invented it. This was a really important line in human evolution, and we’ve begun to pursue this idea called the cultural brain hypothesis—this is the idea that the real driver in the expansion of human brains was this growing cumulative body of cultural information, so that what our brains increasingly got good at was the ability to acquire information, store, process and retransmit this non genetic body of information.

We’ve begun to pursue this idea called the cultural brain hypothesis—the idea that the real driver in the expansion of human brains was this growing cumulative body of cultural information.

paperdroids:

Stonehenge just gets weirder and weirder. If you’re like me and don’t know much more about it than that it’s a mystery relic made up of a bunch of rocks stacked and standing in a manner that seems humanly impossible, you might not see much of the significance of this new discovery, but bear with me.

Researchers recently conducted a laser scan of the site and discovered 71 Bronze Age-era axe heads there, which were carved sometime between 1750 and 1500 B.C.E. The carvings there indicate that there is extensive stonework on virtually each stone in the formation. The study also revealed traces of what might be an old dagger, and that’s great because, well, daggers are cool. By tracking the style of carvings on different areas of the stones all around and looking at where the variations occur, researchers were able to determine that the builders and users of Stonehenge likely arranged the stones and the carvings to align with each solstice.

Thirty years of putting together an 800-year-old coffin uncovered evidence of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

Edwin C. Brock, a Canadian archaeologist, has worked since 1982 to put the physical and informational fragments of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah’s sarcophagus — his marble coffin — back together. Now Brock is coming to share his findings with the University of Memphis.

The Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology is co-hosting the seventh annual William J. Murnane Memorial Lecture with the Department of History and the Tennessee Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt.

Brock worked for many years in the Valley of the Kings, located on the west bank of the Nile River, where tombs of pharaohs and nobles from the 16th to the 11th century BC were placed.

What sparked his interest in Merneptah was the way the pharaoh was buried. Merneptah was the only pharaoh to have four sarcophagi, each one inside the other like a nesting doll, making the Egyptian king a rare discovery.

“This was the most interesting king,” Brock said. “He was unlike the other kings who had more than one or two sarcophagi — he had four set one inside the other.”

The highlights of Brock’s illustrated lecture include his evidence for the methods of lowering the granite sarcophagi into the tomb and how the sarcophagi were later destroyed.

“I worked for quite some time on this, so it’s nice seeing it all come together,” Brock said.

The lecture will take place tonight in the University Center Fountain View Room, room 360, at 7 p.m. with a reception at 6:15 p.m.

Nov 13: Preservation of archaeological sites and monuments could bring economic prosperity to the region, said speakers at the inaugural session of a three-day international conference here on Tuesday.

“We treasure the belongings of our grandparents but do not care to preserve cultural heritage of our ancestors,” said Dr Nasim Khan, director of Institute of Archaeology and Social Anthropology. He said that common man should know that it was important to preserve the archaeological wealth of the region.

The conference titled ‘Latest archaeological investigations in Pakistan’ has been organised by the Institute of Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Peshawar in collaboration with Higher Education Commission and Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to mark the 50th anniversary of establishment of archaeology department at Peshawar varsity.

Around 100 delegates from Pakistan, Malaysia and Central Asia are participating in the conference.

Malaysian High Commissioner in Pakistan Dr Hasrul Sani Mujtaba was chief guest at the inaugural session of the conference.“Pakistan is endowed with rich archaeological and cultural heritage, which, if explored and utilized to its optimum potential, can change the fortune of this country,” he said.

The Italian Archaeological Mission on Wednesday discovered an ancient cemetery dating back thousands of years at Odigram, Swat — a site experts believe was built between 1500 BC to 500 BC.

The site was home to unique ancient graves, pottery, ornaments made of bronze and copper, spindles and hairpins — a discovery made under the framework of the Archaeology Community Tourism (ACT) project.

A total of 23 graves have been excavated at the site that seems to be an ancient cemetery, indicating that they belonged to the Pre-Buddhist era.

Despite the Syrian war, archaeologists are hard at work at the site of an ancient city called Karkemish. The strategic city’s historical importance is long known to scholars because of references in ancient texts. Despite the dangers, archaeologists say they felt secure during a 10-week season of excavation on the Turkish side of Karkemish.

Few archaeological sites seem as entwined with conflict, ancient and modern, as the city of Karkemish. The scene of a battle mentioned in the Bible, it lies smack on the border between Turkey and Syria, where civil war rages today. Twenty-first century Turkish sentries occupy an acropolis dating back more than 5,000 years, and the ruins were recently demined. Visible from crumbling, earthen ramparts, a Syrian rebel flag flies in a town that regime forces fled just months ago.

What is the oldest debate in Australian science? Probably, the argument over what caused extinction of our Pleistocene megafauna – the diprotodons, giant kangaroos, marsupial tapirs, über-echidnas and other big and bizarre creatures that used to live here.

In 1877 the great English anatomist Sir Richard Owen suggested that these big animals had been driven extinct by “the hostile agency of man”. That is, hunting did it, in a process we now call overkill. Other people responded that climate change must have been the cause, and it was on.

A string of recent studies from a wide range of disciplines – geochronology, palaeoecology, palaeontology, and ecological modelling – have supported Owen’s opinion. But the argument continues. Why?

archaeologicalnews:

There’s no accounting for taste—a truism that extends even to the earliest humans. By 3.5 million years ago, some early hominins in the Central African nation of Chad had already developed their own distinct tastes—literally. Three members of the genus Australopithecus—close cousins of the famed Lucy—had a yen for grass and sedges, according to a new study published online (Nov.12) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The shift suggests that hominins adapted their diet to living in more open terrain, as our ancestors did at some point, earlier than thought.

The earliest members of the human family walked upright, but they still looked more like apes than humans—with chimp-size brains and small, hairy bodies. Then, “around 3.5 million years ago, at least in Central Africa, the hominin diet shifted from an ape fruit diet to a grass/sedges diet,” says paleontologist Michel Brunet of the Collège de France in Paris, whose team discovered the fossils.

Read more.

alesiakaye:

Controversial wildlife photographer tracks potential archaeological treasures.

The rocks at Carmel River State Beach are a bit like cumulus clouds: Lighting, angle and imagination can reveal different pictures in their shapes. 


But Pacific Grove-based wildlife photographer Ivan Eberle thinks one particular hunk of granite is too symmetrical to have been sculpted by wind and waves. He describes it as “Sphinx-like,” and its horned visage—complete with a deep, round eye socket—is uncanny. 


Eberle isn’t an archaeologist, and he knows that without an official State Parks assessment, his Sphinx idea is just a hunch. But he suspects it, and other sites deep in Monterey County’s wilderness, merit closer inspection.


…

Monterey County Weekly

classicalcivilisation:

Resources from the Guardian website on teaching Archaeology, provided by the Young Archaeologist’s Club - everything from writing in hieroglyphics to what life was like in Roman London. 

sagansense:

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save a few archaeologists and paleontologists. But documentary filmmaker, WernerHerzog, has been given limited access, and now we get to go inside examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. He asks questions to various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like and trying to build a bridge from the past to the present.

This film is absolutely incredible. Breathtaking. I can’t recall saying that about many films & documentaries I’ve viewed over my life, but this film literally held me speechless, filled my eyes with tears & swelled me up with…awe. My breathing slowed simply due to the mesmerizing wonders of our planet, our past, continually revealed to us by nature along with instinctive, human curiosity & discovery. To further boost this film & it’s importance on human culture alongside our anthropologic & archaeologic history, read on for a 2011 NY Times review of the film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams:

Herzog Finds His Inner Cave Man
What a gift Werner Herzog offers with “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” an inside look at the astonishing Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc — and in 3-D too. In southern France, about 400 miles from Paris, the limestone cave contains a wealth of early paintings, perhaps from as long ago as 32,000 years. Here, amid gleaming stalactites and stalagmites and a carpet of animal bones, beautiful images of horses gallop on walls alongside bison and a ghostly menagerie of cave lions, cave bears and woolly mammoths. Multiple red palm prints of an early artist adorn one wall, as if to announce the birth of the first auteur.

Surely there were other, previous artists — those who first picked up a bit of charcoal, say, and scraped it on a stone — but the Chauvet paintings are among the earliest known. The cave was discovered in December 1994 by three French cavers, Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire. Following an air current coming from the cliff, they dug and crawled their way into the cave, which had been sealed tight for some 20,000 years. After finally making their way to an enormous chamber, Ms. Deschamps held up her lamp and, seeing an image of a mammoth, cried out, “They were here,” a glorious moment of discovery that closed the distance between our lost human past and our present.

The French government soon took custody of the cave, and ordinary visitors were barred to protect it, as Mr. Herzog explains in his distinctive voice-over, from the kind of damage done to other prehistoric caverns. Being not remotely ordinary, he persuaded the government to allow him and a tiny crew to join the researchers who visit the cave to plumb its secrets. A late-act revelation in the movie that a Chauvet attraction is in the works suggests that tourist dollars might explain why he was allowed in. The cave is already a regional attraction (there is an exhibition nearby), and certainly the movie is a fabulous bit of advertising that may even help France’s bid to have Chauvet designated a Unesco World Heritage site.

Whatever the reason, it’s a blast to be inside the cave, to see these images, within 3-D grabbing reach. As the smooth-handed director of photography Peter Zeitlinger wields the camera, Mr. Herzog walks and even crawls for your viewing pleasure. He’s an agreeable, sometimes characteristically funny guide, whether showing you the paintings or talking with the men and women who study them. As evident from his other documentaries, like “Encounters at the End of the World,” set in Antarctica, he also has a talent for tapping into the poetry of the human soul, finding people who range freely in this world and others, like the circus performer turned anthropologist here who night after night dreamed of lions after visiting the cave.

Much like this anthropologist and Ms. Deschamps, the explorer who cried out, “They were here” on seeing a painted mammoth, many of the researchers in the documentary seem deeply moved by the cave. In some ways they are communing with the dead, summoning up the eternally lost. For his part, Mr. Herzog uses the paintings to riff on the origin of art, at one point connecting overlapping images of horses — some of which, with their open mouths, convey a sense of movement — to cinema itself. At times he drifts away from the cave, tagging along, for instance, with a perfumer who tries to sniff out caves and isn’t half as interesting as those anthropologists who dream of, and happily live with, these uncommon ghosts.

In archaeology circles there has been debate on whether the earliest Chauvet paintings date from 32,000 to 30,000 BP (or “before present,” in the charming parlance of archaeology) or are actually somewhat younger. Whatever the case, even one of the critics of the earlier dating, a German archaeologist, Christian Züchner, has agreed on their beauty, enthusing in one 2001 paper that, “Even if Chauvet Cave is not as old as assumed it remains one of the outstanding highlights of cave art!” Mr. Herzog doesn’t address the conflict, which partly turns on whether the radiocarbon dating was sufficient, but then again, he isn’t a journalist. As the wistful title of the documentary indicates, he moves in a realm beyond empiricism, in a world of dreams and stories.

It takes a big subject to upstage Mr. Herzog, an often brilliant filmmaker of fiction and nonfiction who has mellowed into a borderline self-parodying figure, disarming (and famous) enough for a guest turn on “The Simpsons.” The cave largely keeps his more indulgently shticky side in check, save for a needlessly obfuscating coda set in a freaky research center where albino crocodiles swim in the runoff from nuclear reactor plants. “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is certainly an imperfect reverie. The 3-D is sometimes less than transporting, and the chanting voices in the composer Ernst Reijseger’s new-agey score tended to remind me of my last spa massage. Yet what a small price to pay for such time traveling!

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
Written, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog; director of photography, Peter Zeitlinger; edited by Joe Bini and Maya Hawke; music by Ernst Reijseger; produced by Erik Nelson and Adrienne Ciuffo; released by Sundance Selects. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. This film is rated G. (In New York: in 3-D at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village; in 2D at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, 1886 Broadway, between 62nd and 63rd Streets.

P.S.If you’ve never heard of Werner Herzog, you can view a live interview of him being shot in the gut by a sniper during a live interview. Just one of the many examples of his audacious badassery.

EXTRA CREDIT: Herzog on the Obscenity of the Jungle/Nature

alchemetric:

Lalibela is in Ethiopia and they do not know who constructed it.  The story goes that the angels helped the ancients build it at night.

archaicwonder:

Rochester Castle by Dion Hitchcock on Flickr.

Built after the Norman Conquest of England, the 12th-century castle keep is one of the best preserved in England or France. Rochester was a strategically important royal castle built on the site of a Roman town at the junction of the River Medway and Watling Street, a Roman road.

The Normans introduced castles to England in the 11th century and their construction, in the wake of the conquest of 1066, helped the Normans secure their new English territory. According to the Domesday Book of 1086, the Bishop of Rochester was given land valued at 17s 4d in Aylesford, Kent, in compensation for land that became the site of Rochester Castle. Of the 48 castles mentioned in the survey, Rochester is the only one for which property-owners were reimbursed when their land was taken to build the castle.