archaeologistsdontdigdinosaurs:

MEXICO CITY.- In a pharmaceutical company’s premises, located in the municipal district of Miguel Hidalgo of Mexico City, specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Conaculta) recovered two burials that are over 500 years old, as well as other ceramic remains. Given the possibility that there could be more pre Hispanic element findings in the area, INAH elaborated an archaeological salvage project that will take place in said area. The findings in the pharmaceutical company’s property, in the Granada residential area, where registered after the company’s workers dug a ditch of 80 centimeters [31.5 inches] wide, 10 meters [32.80 feet] long and 2 meters [6.56 feet] deep in the piece of land where they will build another corporate building. These discoveries were responsibly reported to INAH by the company, which allowed the finding to be handled by personnel of the Archaeological Salvage and Physical Anthropology Offices. 

unauthentic:

Why American’s are the Weirdest People in the World

An article on why everything we know about human nature and social norms is not complete.  Widely accepted psychological and cultural studies have been primarily conducted on Westerners thus not fully representing the international human population.  This has lead to biased views of human nature and cognition.  

While this seems obvious for anyone studying culture or, you know, people, this kind of large scale research rocks the foundations of many theories and schools of thought within psychology, international relations, and disciplines within the social sciences.  

thepeoplesrecord:

Racist anthropologist publishes more problematic racist nonsense; other anthropologists outraged
March 3, 2013

It became one of the fiercest scientific arguments in recent times: are the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon rainforest a symbol of how to live in peace and harmony with nature or remnants of humanity’s brutal early history?

Now a debate that has divided anthropologists, journalists, human rights campaigners and even governments has been given a fresh burst of life by the publication of a lengthy memoir by outspoken US anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon.

Chagnon has spent decades studying and living with the Yanomami (also known as the Yanomamö) and wrote the best-selling – and hugely controversial – Yanomamö: The Fierce People. In that book, which came out in 1968, he portrayed the 20,000-strong tribe, who live in isolated jungle homelands in Venezuela and Brazil, as a warlike group whose members fought and battled each other in near-constant duels and raids. He described Yanomami communities as prone to violence, with warriors who killed rivals far more likely to win wives and produce children.

His analysis was criticised as a reductive presentation of human behaviour, seen as primarily driven by a desire to mate and eliminate rivals. Opponents of that view believed the Yanomami were still pursuing a lifestyle dating from mankind’s early past, when people lived mostly peacefully in smaller communities, free from modern sources of stress and far more in equilibrium with their surroundings.

Chagnon’s new 500-page book, Noble Savages, is set to reignite the argument. In it he launches an impassioned defence both of his work and life among the Yanomami and an equally spirited attack on his critics and fellow scientists. The book’s subtitle perhaps sums up his attitude to both groups: “My life among two dangerous tribes – the Yanomamö and the anthropologists.”

Chagnon describes life in the rainforest spent constructing villages, hunting for food, and, as shamans take powerful hallucinogens, bloody raids on rival groups. “The most inexplicable thing to me in all of this was that they were fighting over women… I anticipated scepticism when I reported this after I returned to my university,” he wrote. He was not wrong. His research created a huge storm and accusations that it allowed Amazonian tribes to be depicted by governments and outside interests as bloodthirsty savages who deserved to lose their land to the developers.

Chagnon defends himself from that charge, using much of the book to attack fellow scientists’ conclusions and saying that too many anthropologists are ignoring the pursuit of pure research in favour of becoming activists for the civil rights of their subjects.

“In the past 20 or so years the field of cultural anthropology in the United States has come precipitously close to abandoning the very notion of science,” he writes.

But Noble Savages has prompted a fresh wave of attacks on Chagnon. Last week a group of prominent anthropologists who have worked with the Yanomami issued a joint statement.

“We absolutely disagree with Napoleon Chagnon’s public characterisation of the Yanomamö as a fierce, violent and archaic people,” they said. “We also deplore how Chagnon’s work has been used throughout the years – and could still be used – by governments to deny the Yanomamö their land and cultural rights.”

One of the signatories, Professor Gale Goodwin Gomez of Rhode Island College, who has also spent several decades studying the tribe, told theObserver she was dismayed that Chagnon had published a new book. “This is just another attempt to grab attention. I have lived in Yanomamö villages and have never needed a weapon,” she said.

Human rights organisation Survival International, which campaigns on behalf of indigenous peoples, has also attacked Chagnon. “Chagnon’s work is frequently used by writers… who want to portray tribal peoples as ‘brutal savages’ far more violent than ‘us’,” said Survival’s director, Stephen Corry.

The group also published a statement from Davi Kopenawa, spokesman for a Yanomami group in Brazil, that was critical of Chagnon’s core conclusions. “For us, we Yanomamö who live in the forest, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon is not our friend. He does not say good things, he doesn’t transmit good words. He talks about the Yanomamö but his words are only hostile,” he said.

Source

I hate that this is even framed as a debate. Publishers should be more responsible with the work they publish; there’s no excuse for racist anthropologists. 

anthrocentric:

Biometric Evidence that Sexual Selection Has Shaped the Hominin Face [PLOSone]

Abstract: We consider sex differences in human facial morphology in the context of developmental change. We show that at puberty, the height of the upper face, between the lip and the brow, develops differently in males and females, and that these differences are not explicable in terms of sex differences in body size. We find the same dimorphism in the faces of human ancestors. We propose that the relative shortening in men and lengthening in women of the anterior upper face at puberty is the mechanistic consequence of extreme maxillary rotation during ontogeny. A link between this developmental model and sexual dimorphism is made for the first time, and provides a new set of morphological criteria to sex human crania. This finding has important implications for the role of sexual selection in the evolution of anthropoid faces and for theories of human facial attractiveness.

archaeology:

Syrian family takes refuge in an ancient Roman tomb

Like countless other Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war, Sami was eager to escape the bombs and artillery shells falling on his village. But instead of taking his family to another country, he simply brought them underground.

For the past seven months, the family has lived in a chamber cut into the rock of the Jebel al-Zawiya hills, its walls etched with arabesques and alcoves.

Sami, a 32-year-old stonecutter, believes that his new home is a Roman shrine. Its design in fact suggests it may be a tomb.

Across northern Syria, rebels, soldiers and civilians are making use of the country’s wealth of ancient and medieval remains for protection. The structures are built of thick stone that has already withstood the ravages of centuries. They are often located in strategic spots overlooking towns and roads.

More here,

theolduvaigorge:

Dating Speleothems:  Palaeoclimate, Palaeoenvironment and Evolutionary Anthropology

• Speleothem records have been used by palaeoarchaeologists and palaeoanthropologists to provide climatic and environmental contexts for human evolution events such as morphological change and taxa disperal, to situate undated fossils in a geochronological time frame and to associate climatic episodes with cultural change.
• Three synopses of research outlining ways in which speleothems can be used in human evolutionary studies are provided below:

1.    De Ruiter et al. (2009) provide a context for seven fossils from the site of Cooper’s D  (South Africa) by examining uranium-lead (U-Pb) ages for speleothems associated with Australopithecus robustus. They place the fossils between 1,5 and 1,5 Ma. Although Au. robustus is well represented in African fossil-bearing sites, the geochronological age of the specimens has been unclear for those that derive from cave infills. Direct dating of cave infills in South Africa remains a significant problem for palaeoanthropologists because unlike in East Africa, there are no volcanic ash layers for K-Ar or Ar/Ar dating.

Dating has often been based on faunal assemblages. Unfortunately, these dates have large error margins and rely on the selection of an appropriate nuclide uptake model that also leaves samples more susceptible to diagenisis. Moreover, biostratigraphic dating rests on assumptions of continent-wide and contemporaneous evolutionary events and is further limited by problems regarding refugia and late surviving populations. For this reason, among others, speleothems provide more constraining dates as they record palaeomagnetic signals and can be compared to global magnetostratigraphy.  However, only relative dates can be garnered from this method and direct dating of the fossils themselves is often impossible.

New methods have been developed for dating fossil-bearing deposits. “[C]osmogenic nuclides of 10Be and 26Al trapped in quartz grains record the time of burial of the crystals and can thus be used to date clastic cave sediments… the in situ decay of 238U trapped in speleothem calcite to 206Pb can be used to date the formation of these layers…and where flowstone layers are intercalated with fossil bearing clastic sediments, provide age brackets for the faunal material” (de Ruiter et al. 2009:502). Unfortunately, neither of these methods are without their problems. They have not produced complementary ages for a single deposit. Speleothems are not always sufficiently closely associated with fossil bearing sediments. Furthermore, there are issues with U-Pb dating of carbonates.

Despite these problems, the Cooper’s D West eastern and western extent deposits were sampled for U-Pb dating. They are part of a well-preserved stratigraphy of basal stalagmites overlain by clastic sediments with at least a single major flowstone layer. In order to obtain accurate dates, the concentration and distribution of uranium in the samples was ascertained. The U-Pb dates for the flowstones and the detailed stratigraphy together suggest a series of events that lead to the formation, infilling and erosion of the cave sediments. Before the opening of the cave to external sediments and fossils, drip water formed the stalagmites and flowstones. Thereafter aridity stopped speleothems growth and the surface began to weather creating fissures in the cave roof. Through these fissures sediments and fossils were introduced to the eastern and western sides of the cave.

It was determined that the Cooper’s deposits formed quickly during brief periods when the cave was open to the external environment. This occurs in other regions that have been dated more precisely and so the authors believe “that a specific set of environment conditions must have prevailed in order for clastic sediment deposition to occur” (de Ruiter et al. 2009:513). From these data, hypotheses concerning a more stable environment in a proposed South Africa refugium can be tested and would allow researchers to examine environmental factors behind hominin evolution.

2.   Early anatomically modern humans (AMH) evolved in Africa ~200-150 ka and are believed to have left the continent in several waves, the first of which occurred 130-100 ka in a movement north toward the Levant. Researchers have debated the climatic conditions that prevailed during this migration event. Palaeoanthropological and archaeological evidence from northern Israel suggest that a migratory event occurred 130-110 ky. Vaks et al. (2007) dated speleothems from the central and southern Negev (Israel) at the margin of the Saharan-Arabian Desert using high precision multicollector-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry U-Th methods.

Migration routes from Africa to early AMH archaeological sites in the Levant converge in the arid to hyper-arid Negev, Sinai and southern Jordan deserts.  Vaks and colleagues found in their study of speleothems that formed from above ground wadi channels, that wet episodes in the location under discussion were brief but significant. Brief episodes of humidity occurred in the Negev 140-110 ka and are synchronous with increased monsoonal intensity in the southern Arabian Peninsula and Sahara. The retreat of the desert barrier between the Levant and central Africa, most notably in the Sinai-Negev land bridge, may have formed a climate-induced window for AMH to disperse from Africa. 

Pollen records corroborate the speleothem data by providing evidence that a significant vegetation cover developed in this region at the time of the dispersal. Such conditions would have provided a habitable environment for early modern humans across the desert belt and would also have facilitated expansion from the Nile Delta. Supporting this hypothesis are early AMH remains dating to this period that have been found at the Israeli sites of Qafzeh and Skhul.

3.   Bar-Matthews and colleagues (2010) analysed the first climate record from the south coast of South Africa that is sufficiently continuous and which has a high enough resolve to compare archaeological evidence of AMH behavioural modernity with periods of climatic and environmental fluctuation. The authors found correlations with short and rapid climatic events that weren’t recorded by lake cores in Africa. Their analysis provides evidence that during a particularly dynamic period of AMH cultural evolution there also occurred a rapidly fluctuating environment.

South Africa is the location of much early human archaeology and palaeoanthropology. Unfortunately, long and continuous climate and environmental records have not been available for this region. Bar-Matthews et al. (2010) endeavoured on a multi-proxy study 90-50 ka, which includes a significant portion of the Interglacial to glacial transition, in order to develop a record to compare the local environmental and climatic history with modern human behaviour.

The research location, at Crevice Cave, Pinnacle Point, is a particularly useful place because links with Antarctic ice cores and deep sea cores can be examined as can comparisons with regional climate, environment and biodiversity in relation to sea surface temperatures. Pinnacle Point is also situated at an intersection of rainfall and vegetation systems that differ in isotopic character which is ideal for studying temporal changes in rainful and vegetation as speleothems record such isotopic shifts.

Bar-Matthews et al. (2010) sought to compare modern human technological advancement in order to identify if climatic and environmental contexts are correlated with behavioural modernity. By noting that failure to modify technology in the face of climate change has been suggested to reflect non-modernity, they look at the Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort assemblages, which are believed to be early evidence of modernity and correlate them with climatic and environmental change. These assemblages provide evidence of the adoption of fine bone tool manufacture, refined bifaces, backed blades, bladelets, laceolates and pigments—usually ochre and sometimes engraved.  Both the Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort assemblages record a change in raw material procurement choices and a shift to a preference for fine-grained materials such as silcrete that some suggest is evidence for modern exchange systems.

The researchers noted several coincidences between the archaeological record and climate and environment change as recorded by the speleothems they analysed.  At Pinnacle Point site 5-6, during the span of Still Bay (~72-71 ka) and Howieson’s Poort (~65-60 ka) there is evidence for a shift from quartzite to silcrete raw material that corresponds with a shift from winter rain-C3 grass to stronger summer rain-C4 grasses. From ~72-71 ka they document short and abrupt climate change that correlates with an anomaly in the EDML ice core.

There is climatic and environmental instability from ~72 to 63 ka, a period in which the Still Bay is found and in which Howieson’s Poort begins. They found what they refer to as an intriguing record that documents a high amplitude climatic and environmental event ~72 ka. “The short span of the Still Bay and its overlap with a high amplitude environmental change suggests a rapid technological innovation in response to a punctuated shift in climate and environment, a response highly consistent with the abilities of behaviorally modern humans” (Bar-Matthews et al. 2010:2143).

Selected references:

• Bar-Matthews, M., Marean, C.W., Jacobs, Z., Karkanas, P., Fisher, E.C., Herries, A.I.R., Brown, K., Williams, H.M., Bernatchez, J., Ayalon, A. and Nilssen, P.J. 2010. ”A high resolution and continuous isotopic speleothem record of paleoclimate and paleoenvironment from 90 to 53 ka from Pinnacle Point on the south coast of South Africa,” Quaternary Science Reviews 29(17/18): 2131-2145.
• Frumkin, A., Bar-Yosef, O. and Scharcz, H.P. 2011. “Possible paleohydrologic and paleoclimatic effects on hominin migration and occupation of the Levantine Middle Paleolithic,” Journal of Human Evolution 60: 437-451.
• Vaks, A., Bar-Matthews, M., Mattews, A., Halicz, L. and Frumkin, A. 2007. “Desert speleothems reveal climatic window for African exodus of early modern humans,” Geology 35(9): 831-834.
• Woodhead, J. and Pickering, R. 2012. “Beyond 500 ka: Progress and prospects in the U-Pb chronology of speleothems, and their application to studies in palaeoclimate, human evolution, biodiversity and tectonics,” Chemical Geology 322/323(5): 290-299.
• Top and third images: Woodhead and Pickering, 2012.
• Centre image: Bar-Matthews et al., 2010.
• Bottom image: Maslin and Trauth, 2009.

culturalsecurity:

Herod Exhibit Digs Up Controversy

More than four years in the making, the largest exhibition ever staged by Israel’s national museum, dedicated to the life of King Herod, has generated unprecedented excitement both at home and abroad.

Entitled “Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey”, the exhibition follows in the footsteps of Herod’s funeral cortege 2,000 years ago, when his body was carried from the royal winter palace near Jericho to his resting place on a man-made hill close to Bethlehem.

The exhibition was made possible by the discovery in 2007 of what is assumed to be Herod’s tomb at the hill fort of Herodium. An Israeli archeologist, Ehud Netzer, found the burial chamber after a search that began 35 years earlier.

More than 250 artefacts excavated from the two sites, weighing 30 tons in total and including three elaborately decorated limestone sarcophagi and a bath carved from a single slab of stone, have been brought to the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem for the nine-month show. Read more

For similar news stories visit  http://culturalsecurity.net/newssummary.htm

archaeologistsdontdigdinosaurs:

A little face peering up from a clod of frozen mud in Denmark has proved to be a unique find: the only known 3D Viking representation of a valkyrie.

The figurine, believed to date from about AD800, was found in December and has gone straight from conservation to display in the National Museum in Copenhagen. It will then be included in the exhibition on the Viking age that opens there in June and at the British Museum in 2014.

The legends of the valkyries – the ominous companions of the god Odin who descend on battlefields to choose which warriors will die – have been among the most enduring in Scandinavian folklore and literature. Later images, often inspired by Wagner’s music, tend to be romantic creatures with flowing locks and voluptuous bodies.

The thumb-sized figurine is made of gilded silver, with some black niello inlay decoration. The valkyrie is sturdily dressed, armed with a double-sided Viking sword and a round shield, her hair neatly twisted into a long ponytail forming a loop, suggesting it may have been worn as a pendant.

Four views of the valkyrie, the only 3D depiction from the Viking era known to exist Photograph: Asger Kjærgaard/Odense Bys Museer
Small, flat images of striding women, believed to represent valkyrie, have been found on many Danish Viking sites, but nothing like this figurine. Its survival is something of a miracle: the lower legs and feet are missing, and it was found among fragments of scrap metal, so somebody may have started to chop it up to be melted down to extract its silver content.

Mogens Bo Henriksen, an archaeologist and curator at the Odense city museum, on Funen island near the find site, described the figurine as “unique” and said: “There can hardly be any doubt that the figure depicts one of Odin’s valkyries as we know them from the sagas as well as from Swedish picture stones from the time around AD700,” he said.

The figurine was found at the end of December by Morten Skovsby, who was learning how to use a metal detector with three amateur archaeologists near the village of Hårby.

Henriksen hopes that after the figurine’s travels – during which it will be displayed near the largest Viking ship ever found – it will return to be exhibited in Odense.