British design studio «Splinter Works» will present an exclusive series of tables the «Stiletto» on the Decorex Show in London.
The given unusual table possesses the refined form and oak's material. The furniture similar to a female stiletto will be perfect for unusual atrium's.
Design studio «RHE» has created unusual interior design for new branch of the lighting shop «Atrium» (London).
As the detailed 3 month excavation of Shakespeare’s Curtain Theatre comes to a close and development of >The Stage gets underway, recent discoveries are poised to completely transform our understanding of the evolution of Elizabethan theatres.
After further careful excavation, it has now been confirmed that the rectangular theatre was purpose built for performance and entertainment, and housed a long, rectangular stage with evidence of an unusual passageway running beneath it.
The early stages of the dig confirmed that the theatre was not the polygonal structure we had anticipated, but this latest set of discoveries give us more detail about this early Elizabethan theatre. The discovery of an oblong stage which is far longer than expected and the mysterious passageway offers a tantalising glimpse into the secrets that are still to be uncovered. The MOLA teams is now embarking on post-excavation work to further explore the relationship between the unusual shape of the stage, the production and staging and the mysterious backstage areas.
Discovering that the theatre was purpose built tells us this was not a repurposed space with a stage added, it was a place where people came to be immersed in entertainment. It had timber galleries with mid and upper areas for those who could afford to spend a little more, and a courtyard made from compacted gravel for those with less to spend.
Throughout findings, archaeologists have also been able to tell that The Curtain Theatre is one of earliest Elizabethan playhouses where people actually paid money to see performances and be entertained. We know this because fragments of ceramic money boxes have been found. These fragments are a really exciting find because the pots would have been used to collect the entry fees from theatregoers and then been taken to an office to be smashed and the money counted. This office was known as the ‘box office’, which is actually the origin of the term we still use today!
The excavation team also found glass beads and pins, these are small but fascinating finds that can offer us a glimpse backstage, as they may have come from actors’ costumes. They also unearthed drinking vessels and clay pipes, which relate to the making merry of revelling theatregoers and actors.
We now know so much more about the theatre than ever before and these discoveries offer a rare and exciting opportunity to explore the new questions they pose.
For now, the excavated remains of the Curtain Theatre, which takes its name from Curtain Road, have been carefully covered over with a protective membrane and a special type of pH neutral sand, while construction of The Stage, a new £750m mixed-use development backed by a consortium led by Cain Hoy and designed by architects Perkins+Will, continues.
A display of the finds will sit alongside the theatre remains as part of a cultural and visitor centre at the heart of the completed development, which will also feature 33,000 sq ft of retail, over 200,000 sq ft of office space, more than 400 homes, and over an acre of vibrant public space including a performance area and a park.
Source: Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) [November 11, 2016]
For the second year running a project led by University of Leicester archaeologists has been nominated in the Current Archaeology Awards, this year in the category >'Rescue Project of the Year'.
The project, ‘Buried between Road and River: Investigating a Roman cemetery in Leicester’ (reported on in Current Archaeology Issue 319), investigated part of a large Roman cemetery in Leicester’s West End. Between 2010 and 2015, archaeologists from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) carried out a series of excavations at the former ‘Equity Shoes’ factory on Western Road as part of its ongoing redevelopment.
83 skeletons were discovered, dating from the 2nd century AD through to the 4th century. Many were buried with grave goods or exhibit burial customs not previously seen in Leicester, and tantalisingly, a number possibly have African ancestry, the first evidence ever found for Leicester’s ‘migrant’ population. The project is giving archaeologists a wealth of exciting new insights into life in the Roman town, whose inhabitants were perhaps as diverse and multicultural as those who reside in the modern city.
The research being funded by Jamie Lewis Residential is part of the site’s redevelopment. Excavation and analysis of the skeletal assemblage is being carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS), York Osteoarchaeology Ltd., the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) and the British Geological Survey (BGS).
Mathew Morris, project supervisor for ULAS said: “Until recently, burial practices in Leicester’s Roman cemeteries were poorly understood. Now, this excavation is providing a wealth of exciting new insights into the Roman town’s diverse population.
"Five individuals have cranial features that suggest they might have African or mixed ancestry. We are carrying out stable isotopes analysis to see if they were born in Britain or elsewhere in the Roman Empire. So far, two appear to have been born in Britain, one in the Pennines area and one in the Leicester area.
"Analysis is ongoing and the information gained from the study will provide fascinating new insights into the lives of the people living in Roman Leicester. Projects like this can only come about through successful collaboration between developers such as Jamie Lewis and archaeologists, and the notable results of our research highlight how important this process is for British archaeology, as demonstrated by our nomination for this award."
The results of the competition are decided on a public vote which has now opened and can be accessed from the Current Archaeology Awards webpage >www.archaeology.co.uk/vote
Voting will be open until Monday 6 February 2017, and the winners will be announced at Current Archaeology Live! 2017, held at the University of London’s Senate House on 24-25 February.
The nomination is the fourth for the University of Leicester in the past five years. In 2013 the University was awarded ‘Research Project of the Year’ for the Grey Friars Project and the discovery of Richard III. The following year Dr Richard Buckley, Lead Archaeologist on the Greyfriars Project, was awarded ‘Archaeologist of the Year’ and in 2016 the School of Archaeology and Ancient History’s summer fieldschool at Burrough Hill Iron Age Hillfort was nominated for ‘Research Project of the Year’.
One of the highlights of the recent excavations was a simple grave which had been dug into mudstone on the west bank of the River Soar. Buried in the grave were the remains of a middle-aged man wearing an elaborately decorated belt in a style that would have been worn by a late Roman soldier or civil servant during the second half of the 4th century or the early 5th century AD. Belts like this are rare and this is the first occurrence of such a find in Roman Leicester.
Source: University of Leicester [December 01, 2016]
An international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has discovered a new species of fossil in England -- and identified it as an ancient parasitic intruder.
The fossil species found in 425-million year old rocks in Herefordshire, in the Welsh borderland, is described as 'exceptionally well preserved.' The specimens range from about 1 to 4 millimeters long.
The fossil species -- a 'tongue worm', which has a worm-like body and a head and two pairs of limbs -- is actually a parasite whose representatives today live internally in the respiratory system of a host, which it enters when it is eaten.
The new fossil, which was originally entirely soft-bodied, is the first fossil tongue worm species to be found associated with its host, which in this case is a species of ostracod -- a group of micro-arthropods (crabs, spiders and insects are also arthropods) with two shells that are joined at a hinge.
Professor David Siveter, of the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester made the discovery working alongside researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Imperial College London and Yale, USA. Their research is published in the journal Current Biology and was supported by The Natural Environmental Research Council, together with the Leverhulme Trust, the John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Professor Siveter said: "This discovery is important not only because examples of parasites are exceptionally rare in the fossil record, but also because the possible host of fossil tongue worms -- and the origin of the lifestyle of tongue worms -- has been the subject of much debate.
"This discovery affirms that tongue worms were 'external' parasites on marine invertebrate animals at least 425 million years ago; it also suggests that tongue worms likely found their way into land-based environments and associated hosts in parallel with the movement of vertebrates onto the land by some 125 million years later."
Professor Siveter said tongue worms -- technically termed pentastomids -- are in fact not worms at all; they are an unusual group of tiny and widespread parasitic arthropods. Their fossils are exceptionally rare and until now are known only from a handful of isolated juvenile specimens.
Today they are known from about 140 species, nearly all of which are parasitic on vertebrate animals, particularly reptiles and including humans. Some of the fossil tongue worm specimens occur inside the shell, near the eggs of the ostracod; others are attached to the external surface of its shell, a unique position for any fossil or living tongue worm.
Professor Siveter added: "The tongue worm and its host lived in a sea that 425 million years ago -- during the Silurian period of geological time -- covered much of southern Britain, which was positioned then in warm southerly subtropical latitudes. The animals died and were preserved when a volcanic ash rained down upon them. The new species has been named Invavita piratica, which means an 'ancient intruder' and 'piracy', referring to its parasitic lifestyle in the sea."
The fossils have been reconstructed as virtual fossils by 3D computer modelling.
Source: University of Leicester [May 21, 2015]
The Museo Civico Archeologico is hosting Egypt. Millennia of Splendour. Beneath the two towers, the splendour of a civilisation that lasted thousands of years and has always fascinated the entire world, has sprung back to life: the Egypt of the pyramids, pharaohs and multiform gods, but also that of sensational discoveries, captivating archaeology, passionate collecting and rigorous scholarship.
The exhibition ‘Egypt’, which is being held at the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna, is not just an exposition of high visual and scientific impact, but also an unprecedented international enterprise: the Egyptian collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands – among the top ten in the world – and that of the Bologna museum – among the most important in Italy for the quantity, quality and state of conservation of its collections – have been brought together in an exhibition space measuring around 1,700 metres, filled with art and history.
500 finds, dating from the Pre-Dynastic Period to the Roman Period, gave been brought from the Netherlands to the Bologna museum. And, together with the masterpieces from Leiden and Bologna, the exhibition also includes important loans from the Museo Egizio in Turin and the Museo Egizio in Florence, creating a network of the most important Italian museums.
For the first time, the masterpieces of the two collections are being displayed side by side, including the Stele of Aku (Twelfth–Thirteenth Dynasty, 1976–1648 BC), the ‘major domo of the divine offering’, with a prayer describing the otherworldly existence of the deceased in a tripartite world divided into sky, earth and the beyond; gold items attributed to General Djehuty, who led the Egyptian troops to victory in the Near East for the great conqueror Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC); the statues of Maya, superintendent of the royal treasury of Tutankhamen, and Merit, a chantress of the god Amun, (Eighteenth Dynasty, reigns of Tutankhamen and Horemheb, 1333–1292 BC), the most important masterpieces in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden have left the Netherlands for the first time for the Bologna exhibition; and, among the numerous objects attesting to the refined lifestyle of the most wealthy Egyptians, a Mirror Handle (1292 BC) in the shape of a young woman holding a small bird in her hand.
Lastly, for the first time 200 years after the discovery of his tomb in Saqqara, the exhibition offers the unique and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the important Reliefs of Horemheb reunited: Horemheb was the head commander of the Egyptian army during the reign of Tutankhamen, then rising to become the final sovereign of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from 1319 to 1292 BC and the reliefs are divided between the collections in Leiden, Bologna and Florence.
Thousands of years of the history of a unique civilisation revealed in a major exhibition that brings together masterpieces from important world collections and tells of the pyramids and pharaohs, the great captains and priests, the gods and other divinities, and the people that made Egyptian history and that, thanks to discoveries, archaeology and collecting, never stop enchanting, revealing, intriguing, fascinating and charming generation after generation.
The Seven Exhibition Sections
The Pre-Dynastic and Archaic Periods – At the Origins of History: The transition from raw material to form, from the oral tradition to the written one and from prehistory to history was a fundamental moment for Egyptian civilisation. The Leiden collection is rich in materials documenting the central role played by nature during this long cultural and artistic evolution.
The exhibition opens with a selection of these objects, which are strikingly modern in style, including a vase from the Naqada IID Period (named for a site in Upper Egypt and datable between 3375 and 3325 BC) decorated with ostriches, hills and water motifs. The scene depicted on this vase takes us back to an Egypt characterised by a flourishing landscape later changed over time by climatic changes. Ostriches, here painted red, along with elephants, crocodiles, rhinoceros and other wild animals were common in the Nile region at the time.
The Old Kingdom – A Political/Religious Model Destined for Success and its Weaknesses: The historic period of the Old Kingdom (from the Third to the Sixth Dynasty, roughly between 2700 and 2192 BC) is known for the pyramids and for the consolidation of a bureaucracy at the apex of which stood an absolute sovereign, considered a god on earth and lord of all of Egypt.
This definition of State and its worldly and otherworldly rules, which were highly elitist, are well documented by funerary objects, of which the Leiden museum has a particularly rich collection, including a calcite (alabaster) table for offerings.
Offerings to the deceased were a fundamental part of the funerary ritual, ensuring life after death. The uniqueness of this table, which belonged to a high state official named Defdj, lies in its circular shape, which was unusual, as well as the repetition of the concept of the offering as indicated by the inscription, the sculpted receptacles and, most importantly, the central depiction corresponding to the hieroglyph hotep (offering), or a table upon which one places a loaf of bread.
The Middle Kingdom – The God Osiris and a New Perspective on Life in the Afterworld: The end of the Old Kingdom and the period of political breakdown that followed it led to major changes in Egyptian society, within which the individual had greater responsibility for his own destiny, including in the afterworld. Any Egyptian with the means to build a tomb complete with a sufficient funerary assemblage could now aspire to eternal life. The god Osiris, lord of the afterworld, became Egypt’s most popular divinity.
Many steles now in Leiden and Bologna came from his temple in Abydos, one of Egypt’s most important cult centres. Among them is that of Aku, major domo of the divine offering, who dedicated the stele to Min-Hor-nekht, the form of the ithyphallic god Min worshipped in the city of Abydos. Aku’s prayer to the god describes an otherworldly existence in a tripartite world: the sky, where the deceased were transfigured into stars, the earth, where the tomb was the fundamental point of passage from life to death, and the beyond, where Osiris granted the deceased eternal life.
From the Middle to the New Kingdom – Territorial Control at Home and Abroad: The defeat of the Hyksos, ‘princes from foreign lands’ who invaded and governed northern Egypt for a few generations, marked the beginning of the New Kingdom. An extremely aggressive foreign policy enriched Egypt, and this was one of its periods of greatest splendour. The social class of professional warriors rose to the top of the state hierarchy and spawned a number of ruling dynasties.
The wealth and prestige of these soldiers was also expressed in the production of sophisticated objects, including the gold items attributed to Djehuty, a general under the pharaoh Thutmose III. The Egyptian goldsmith’s art has survived in works of high artistic and economic value, an example being the pectoral element on view in the exhibition.
This piece is a sophisticated exemplar attributed to the tomb of General Djehuty, the man to whom the sovereign Thutmose III entrusted control of his foreign territories. Representing a blue lotus flower, a symbol of rebirth and regeneration, it must have served as the central element of an elaborate pectoral. The scroll engraved on the back suggests that the piece was given personally by Thutmose III.
The Saqqara Necropolis of the New Kingdom: The Leiden and Bologna museums can be considered ‘twins’ in a certain sense, since they house two important groups of antiquities from Saqqara, one of the necropolises of the city of Memphis. During the New Kingdom, this early Egyptian capital returned to its role as a strategic centre for the expansionist policy of the sovereigns of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
This is seen in the funerary monuments of high state officials who held administrative, religious and military roles, including the tombs of the superintendent of Tutankhamen’s royal treasury, Maya, and his wife, Merit, chantress of Amun, and that of Horemheb, head commander of Tutankhamen’s army and the pharaoh’s crown prince.
The statues of Maya and Merit arrived in the Netherlands in 1829 as part of the collection of Giovanni d’Anastasi. More than a century and a half would pass before, in 1986, a British/Dutch archaeological expedition identified the tomb from which they came, southeast of the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. These statues, which are the greatest masterpieces in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, left the Dutch museum for the first time to be displayed in the exhibition.
It should be noted that, when the Egypt Exploration Society of London and the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden began excavation work southeast of the Djoser pyramid in 1975, the goal was to find the tomb of Maya and Merit. It was therefore a great surprise when they instead discovered the burial of General Horemheb, who had capped off his stunning career by becoming the last sovereign of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
His tomb, which has a temple structure, is characterised by a pylon entrance, three large courts and three cult chapels facing onto the innermost court, which has a peristyle structure. This court is where most of the reliefs preserved in Leiden and Bologna were found, narrating Horemheb’s most important military feats against the populations bordering Egypt: the Asians, Libyans and Nubians.
The New Kingdom – Prosperity after the Conquest: Refined furnishings, musical instruments, table games and jewellery: these are just a few of the luxury goods attesting to the widespread prosperity enjoyed in Egypt as a result of the expansionist policy of the sovereigns of the New Kingdom. Through these sophisticated objects, it is possible to conjure up moments of everyday life, imagining what it was like living inside a royal palace or the residence of a high official. One example in the exhibition is a mirror handle in the graceful, sensual shape of a young women holding a small bird in her hand.
Egypt in the First Millennium: In the first millennium BC, Egypt was characterised by the increasingly clear weakness of its central power to the advantage of local governors who gave themselves the role of ruling dynasts. The loss of political and territorial power weakened Egypt’s defence capacity at its borders, opening the way for Nubian, Assyrian and Persian invasions. The temples remained strong centres of power, and managed a sizeable portion of the economy and the transmission of knowledge, taking on the role of a political intermediary between the ruling power and the devout populace.
Many of the masterpieces on view in the exhibition were part of the funerary assemblages of priests and came from important temple areas. Among them is the sarcophagus of Peftjauneith, which represents the likeness of the god Osiris, wrapped in a linen shroud and with a green face evoking the concept of rebirth. The refined decoration of this sarcophagus confirms the high rank of its owner (the superintendent of the possessions of a temple in Lower Egypt) in the temple sphere. Of particular note is the interior scene of the sky goddess Nut swallowing the sun every evening (to the west) to then give birth to it in the morning (to the east).
Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC ended the ‘pharaonic’ phase of Egyptian history. The period of Greek domination was begun by his successors, the Ptolemies, the last of whom was the renowned Cleopatra VII.
The golden decline of Egypt would continue for many more centuries, beyond the Roman conquest in 31 BC up to Arab domination in the sixth century AD.
The dialogue between old and new, local and foreign that distinguished the Greco-Roman period brought a return to high artistic achievements, including the celebrated Fayum portraits, exquisite examples of which from the Leiden collection are on view in the exhibition
Source: Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna [October 19, 2015]
Consider the engineering marvel that is your foot. Be it hairy or homely, without its solid support you'd be hard-pressed to walk or jump normally.
Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, have identified a change in gene expression between humans and primates that may have helped give us this edge when it comes to walking upright. And they did it by studying a tiny fish called the threespine stickleback that has evolved radically different skeletal structures to match environments around the world.
"It's somewhat unusual to have a research project that spans from fish all the way to humans, but it's clear that tweaking the expression levels of molecules called bone morphogenetic proteins can result in significant changes not just in the skeletal armor of the stickleback, but also in the hind-limb development of humans and primates," said David Kingsley, PhD, professor of developmental biology at Stanford. "This change is likely part of the reason why we've evolved from having a grasping hind foot like a chimp to a weight-bearing structure that allows us to walk on two legs."
Kingsley, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, is the senior author of a paper describing the work that will be >published in Cell. The lead author is former Stanford postdoctoral scholar Vahan Indjeian, PhD, now head of a research group at Imperial College London.
Adapting to different environments
The threespine stickleback is remarkable in that it has evolved to have many different body structures to equip it for life in different parts of the world. It sports an exterior of bony plates and spines that act as armor to protect it from predators. In marine environments, the plates are large and thick; in freshwater, the fish have evolved to have smaller, lighter-weight plates, perhaps to enhance buoyancy, increase body flexibility and better slip out of the grasp of large, hungry insects. Kingsley and his colleagues wanted to identify the regions of the fish's genome responsible for the skeletal differences that have evolved in natural populations.
The researchers identified the area of the genome responsible for controlling armor plate size, and then looked for differences there in 11 pairs of marine and freshwater fish with varying armor-plate sizes. They homed in on a region that includes the gene for a bone morphogenetic protein family member called GDF6. Due to changes in the regulatory DNA sequence near this gene, freshwater sticklebacks express higher levels of GDF6, while their saltwater cousins express less. Strikingly, marine fish genetically engineered to contain the regulatory sequence of freshwater fish expressed higher levels of GDF6 and developed smaller armor plates, the researchers found.
Regulatory regions in humans vs. chimps
Kingsley and his colleagues wondered whether changes in GDF6 expression levels might also have contributed to critical skeletal modifications during human evolution. The possibility was not as far-fetched as it might seem. Other studies by evolutionary biologists, including Kingsley, have shown that small changes in the regulatory regions of key developmental genes can have profound effects in many vertebrates.
They began by working with colleagues in the laboratory of Gill Bejerano, PhD, Stanford associate professor of developmental biology, of computer science and of pediatrics, to compare differences in the genomes of chimps and humans. In previous surveys, they found over 500 places in which humans have lost regulatory regions that are conserved from chimps and many other mammals. Two of these occur near the GDF6 gene. They homed in on one in particular.
"This regulatory information was shared through about 100 million years of evolution," said Kingsley. "And yet, surprisingly, this region is missing in humans."
To learn more about what the GDF6 regulatory region might be controlling, the researchers used the chimp regulatory DNA to control the production of a protein that is easy to visualize in mice. Laboratory mice with the chimp regulatory DNA coupled to the reporter protein strongly and specifically expressed the protein in their hind limbs, but not their forelimbs, and in their lateral toes, but not the big toes of the hind limbs. Mice genetically engineered to lack the ability to produce GDF6 in any part of their bodies had skull bones that were smaller than normal and their toes were shorter than those of their peers. Together, these findings gave the researchers a clue that GDF6 might play a critical role in limb development and evolution.
The big toe: an explanation
The fact that humans are missing the hind-limb-regulatory region probably means that we express less of the gene in our legs and feet during development, but comparable amounts in our nascent arms, hands and skulls. Loss of this particular regulatory sequence would also shorten lateral toes but not the first toe of feet. This may help explain why the big toe is aligned with other short, lateral toes in humans. Such a modification would create a more sturdy foot with which to walk upright.
"These bone morphogenetic proteins are strong signals for bone and cartilage growth in all types of animals," said Kingsley.
"You can evolve new skeletal structures by changing where and when the signals are expressed, and it's very satisfying to see similar regulatory principles in action whether you are changing the armor of a stickleback, or changing specific hind-limb structures during human evolution."
Author: Krista Conger | Source: Stanford University Medical Center [January 07, 2016]
It is an archaeological enigma which last week a team of experts professed to have resolved: if and how the ‘bluestones’ at Stonehenge were excavated and transported from Pembrokeshire by our prehistoric ancestors.
The team of archaeologists and geologists – led academics from University College, London, said they definitively confirmed two sites in the Preseli Hills – Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin - had been quarried for two types of stone.
It was suggested the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire.
But the assertions on how the stones were removed and transported, apparently leaving evidence so-called “engineering features,” have been branded “all wrong” by another team of earth scientists, in a conflicting report published today.
In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Archaeology in Wales journal, Dr Brian John, Dr Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes say there are “no traces of human intervention in any of the features that have made the archaeologists so excited”.
The group does not accept the idea of a Neolithic quarry in the Preseli Hills and says the supposed signs of ‘quarrying’ by humans at Craig Rhos-y-Felin were entirely natural.
They also believe that the archaeologists behind the report may have inadvertently created certain features during five years of “highly selective sediment removal”.
“This site has been described by lead archaeologist Prof Mike Parker Pearson as ‘the Pompeii of prehistoric stone quarries’ and has caused great excitement in archaeological circles,” says the report.
“The selection of this rocky crag near the village of Brynberian for excavation in 2011-2015 was triggered by the discovery by geologists Richard Bevins and Rob Ixer that some of the stone fragments in the soil at Stonehenge were quite precisely matched to an unusual type of foliated rhyolite found in the crag.
“This led the archaeologists to conclude that there must have been a Neolithic quarry here, worked for the specific purpose of cutting out monoliths for the bluestone settings at Stonehenge.”
But Dr John is increasingly convinced that the rhyolite debris at Stonehenge comes from glacial erratics which were eroded from the Rhosyfelin rocky crag almost half a million years ago by the overriding Irish Sea Glacier and then transported eastwards by ice towards Salisbury Plain.
In his paper written with Dr Dyfed Elis-Gruffydd and John Downes, he says: “It is suggested, on the basis of careful examinations of this site, that certain of the “man made features” described have been created by the archaeologists themselves through a process of selective sediment and clast removal.
“An expectation or conviction that ‘engineering features’ would be found has perhaps led to the unconscious fashioning of archaeological artifices.
“While there appears to be no landform, rock mechanics or sedimentary evidence that this was a Neolithic quarry site devoted to the extraction of bluestone orthostats destined for use at Stonehenge, or for any other purpose, we would accept the possibility that there may have been temporary Mesolithic, Neolithic or later camp sites here over a very long period of time, as in many other sheltered and wooded locations in north Pembrokeshire.”
Commenting on the research paper published last week, Dr Brian John added: “The new geological work at Rhosyfelin and Stonehenge is an interesting piece of ‘rock provenencing’ – but it tells us nothing at all about how monoliths or smaller rock fragments from West Wales found their way to Stonehenge.
“We are sure that the archaeologists have convinced themselves that the glacial transport of erratics was impossible. We are not sure where they got that idea from.
“On the contrary, there is substantial evidence in favour of glacial transport and zero evidence in support of the human transport theory. We accept that there might have been a camp site at Rhosyfelin, used intermittently by hunters over several millennia. But there is no quarry.
“We think the archaeologists have been so keen on telling a good story here that they have ignored or misinterpreted the evidence in front of them.
“That’s very careless. They now need to undertake a complete reassessment of the material they have collected.”
Further excavations of the quarries are planned for 2016.
Author: Rachael Misstear | Source: Wales Online [December 14, 2015]
Scientists working off west Africa in the Cape Verde Islands have found evidence that the sudden collapse of a volcano there tens of thousands of years ago generated an ocean tsunami that dwarfed anything ever seen by humans. The researchers say an 800-foot wave engulfed an island more than 30 miles away. The study could revive a simmering controversy over whether sudden giant collapses present a realistic hazard today around volcanic islands, or even along more distant continental coasts. The study appears today in the journal Science Advances.
"Our point is that flank collapses can happen extremely fast and catastrophically, and therefore are capable of triggering giant tsunamis," said lead author Ricardo Ramalho, who did the research as a postdoctoral associate at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where he is now an adjunct scientist. "They probably don't happen very often. But we need to take this into account when we think about the hazard potential of these kinds of volcanic features."
The apparent collapse occurred some 73,000 years ago at the Fogo volcano, one of the world's largest and most active island volcanoes. Nowadays, it towers 2,829 meters (9,300 feet) above sea level, and erupts about every 20 years, most recently last fall. Santiago Island, where the wave apparently hit, is now home to some 250,000 people.
There is no dispute that volcanic flanks present a hazard; at least eight smaller collapses have occurred in Alaska, Japan and elsewhere in the last several hundred years, and some have generated deadly tsunamis. But many scientists doubt whether big volcanoes can collapse with the suddenness that the new study suggests. Rather, they envision landslides coming in gradual stages, generating multiple, smaller tsunamis. A 2011 French study also looked at the Fogo collapse, suggesting that it took place somewhere between 124,000-65,000 years ago; but that study says it involved more than one landslide. The French researchers estimate that the resulting multiple waves would have reached only 45 feet--even at that, enough to do plenty of harm today.
A handful of previous other studies have proposed much larger prehistoric collapses and resulting megatsunamis, in the Hawaiian islands, at Italy's Mt. Etna, and the Indian Ocean's Reunion Island. But critics have said these examples are too few and the evidence too thin. The new study adds a new possible example; it says the estimated 160 cubic kilometers (40 cubic miles) of rock that Fogo lost during the collapse was dropped all at once, resulting in the 800-foot wave. By comparison, the biggest known recent tsunamis, which devastated the Indian Ocean's coasts in 2004 and eastern Japan in 2011, reached only about 100 feet. (Like most other well documented tsunamis, these were generated by movements of undersea earthquake faults--not volcanic collapses.)
Santiago Island lies 55 kilometers (34 miles) from Fogo. Several years ago, Ramalho and colleagues were working on Santiago when they spotted unusual boulders lying as far as 2,000 feet inland and nearly 650 feet above sea level. Some are as big as delivery vans, and they are utterly unlike the young volcanic terrain on which they lie. Rather, they match marine-type rocks that ring the island's shoreline: limestones, conglomerates and submarine basalts. Some weigh up to 770 tons. The only realistic explanation the scientists could come up with: A gigantic wave must have ripped them from the shoreline and lofted them up. They derived the size of the wave by calculating the energy it would have taken to accomplish this feat.
To date the event, in the lab Ramalho and Lamont-Doherty geochemist Gisela Winckler measured isotopes of the element helium embedded near the boulders' surfaces. Such isotopes change depending on how long a rock has been lying in the open, exposed to cosmic rays. The analyses centered around 73,000 years--well within the earlier French estimate of a smaller event. The analysis "provides the link between the collapse and impact, which you can make only if you have both dates," said Winckler.
Tsunami expert Bill McGuire, a professor emeritus at University College London who was not involved in the research, said the study "provides robust evidence of megatsunami formation [and] confirms that when volcanoes collapse, they can do so extremely rapidly." Based on his own work, McGuire s says that such megatsunamis probably come only once every 10,000 years. "Nonetheless," he said, "the scale of such events, as the Fogo study testifies, and their potentially devastating impact, makes them a clear and serious hazard in ocean basins that host active volcanoes."
Ramalho cautions that the study should not be taken as a red flag that another big collapse is imminent here or elsewhere. "It doesn't mean every collapse happens catastrophically," he said. "But it's maybe not as rare as we thought."
In the early 2000s, other researchers started publishing evidence that the Cape Verdes could generate large tsunamis. Others have argued that Spain's Canary Islands have already done so. Simon Day, a senior researcher at University College London has sparked repeated controversy by warning that any future eruption of the Canary Islands' active Cumbre Vieja volcano could set off a flank collapse that might form an initial wave 3,000 feet high. This, he says, could erase more than nearby islands. Such a wave might still be 300 feet high when it reached west Africa an hour or so later he says, and would still be 150 feet high along the coasts of North and South America. So far, such studies have raised mainly tsunamis of publicity, and vigorous objections from other scientists that such events are improbable. A 2013 study of deep-sea sediments by the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre suggests that the Canaries have probably mostly seen gradual collapses.
Part of the controversy hangs not only on the physics of the collapses themselves, but on how efficiently resulting waves could travel. In 1792, part of Japan's Mount Unzen collapsed, hitting a series of nearby bays with waves as high as 300 feet, and killing some 15,000 people. On July 9, 1958, an earthquake shook 90 million tons of rock into Alaska's isolated Lituya Bay; this created an astounding 1,724-foot-high wave, the largest ever recorded. Two fishermen who happened to be in their boat that day were carried clear over a nearby forest; miraculously, they survived.
These events, however, occurred in confined spaces. In the open ocean, waves created by landslides are generally thought to lose energy quickly, and thus to pose mainly a regional hazard. However, this is based largely on modeling, not real-world experience, so no one really knows how fast a killer wave might decay into a harmless ripple. In any case, most scientists are more concerned with tsunamis generated by undersea earthquakes, which are more common. When seabed faults slip, as they did in 2004 and 2011, they shove massive amounts of water upward. In deep water, this shows up as a mere swell at the surface; but when the swell reaches shallower coastal areas, its energy concentrates into in a smaller volume of water, and it rears up dramatically. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed 230,000 people in 14 countries; the 2011 Tohoku event killed nearly 20,000 in Japan, and has caused a long-term nuclear disaster.
James Hunt, a tsunami expert at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre who was not involved in the study, said the research makes it clear that "even modest landslides could produce high-amplitude anomalous tsunami waves on opposing island coastlines." The question, he said, "is whether these translate into hazardous events in the far field, which is debatable."
When Fogo erupted last year, Ramalho and other geologists rushed in to observe. Lava flows (since calmed down) displaced some 1,200 people, and destroyed buildings including a new volcano visitors' center. "Right now, people in Cape Verde have a lot more to worry about, like rebuilding their livelihoods after the last eruption," said Ramalho. "But Fogo may collapse again one day, so we need to be vigilant."
Source: The Earth Institute at Columbia University [October 02, 2015]
A gruesome discovery in eastern France casts new light on violent conflicts that took lives — and sometimes just limbs — around 6,000 years ago.
Excavations of a 2-meter-deep circular pit in Bergheim revealed seven human skeletons plus a skull section from an infant strewn atop the remains of seven human arms, say anthropologist Fanny Chenal of Antea Archéologie in Habsheim, France, and her colleagues.
Two men, one woman and four children were killed, probably in a raid or other violent encounter, the researchers report in the December Antiquity. Their bodies were piled in a pit that already contained a collection of left arms hacked off by axes or other sharp implements. Scattered hand bones at the bottom of the pit suggest that hands from the severed limbs had been deliberately cut into pieces.
It’s unclear who the arms belonged to. All the Bergheim skeletons have both their arms except for a man with skull damage caused by violent blows. His skeleton lacks a left arm, the researchers say. They have been unable to determine whether that arm ended up in the pit.
Chenal’s group doesn’t know whether attackers targeted victims’ left arms for a particular reason. The arms could have been taken as war trophies, the team speculates.
Radiocarbon dating of two bones indicates that individuals in the Bergheim pit lived roughly 6,000 years ago. From 6,500 to 5,500 years ago, during what’s known as the Neolithic period, one of the many ways of disposing of the dead in farming communities throughout Central and Western Europe was in circular pits.
Discoveries of human and nonhuman bones, as well as pottery, in these pits go back more than a century. The Bergheim pit provides the first evidence that people killed and mutilated in raids or battles were sometimes buried in circular pits, too, says study coauthor Bruno Boulestin, an anthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France.
Unusual deposits in Neolithic circular pits, such as attack victims and severed limbs at Bergheim, “may have been more common than previously expected,” says biological anthropologist Silvia Bello of the Natural History Museum in London, who did not participate in the new study. She suspects, for instance, that closer inspection of human bones previously found in circular pits elsewhere in Europe will reveal additional instances of violent deaths from a time when armed conflicts occurred between some communities.
Bergheim’s brutalized victims spice up attempts to make sense of Neolithic circular pits. Many researchers regard these pits as remnants of storage silos that were put to other uses, possibly as receptacles for the bodies of people deemed unworthy of formal burials.
Others argue that a large proportion of pits were dug as graves for high-ranking individuals, whose servants or relatives were killed to accompany them. Or, slaves might have been killed and put in pits as displays of wealth or as sacrifices to gods.
Of 60 circular pits excavated in Bergheim in 2012 in advance of a construction project, 14 contained human bones. The researchers found skeletons or isolated bones of at least one to five individuals in each of 13 pits. The final pit contained the bodies and limbs described in the new paper.
Joints of severed arms and skeletons in that pit were well-preserved, indicating that all had been placed there at or around the same time with a minimum amount of jostling disturbance. The pit also contained remains of a piece of jewelry made with a mussel’s valve, a stone arrowhead, a fragment of a pig’s jaw and two hare skeletons. The skeleton of a woman who had been put in the pit later lay on top of a sediment layer encasing those finds.
Neither that woman nor human remains in the other Bergheim pits showed signs of violent death or limb loss.
Author: Bruce Bower | Source: Science News [December 12, 2015]
Have you held the sword? Have you felt its weight? Have you felt how sharp and strong the blade is?
A deadly weapon and symbol of power -- jewellery for a man, with magical properties. The sword gave power to the warrior, but the warrior's strength could also be transferred to the sword. That is how they were bound together: man and weapon, warrior and sword.
This sword was found in Langeid in Bygland in Setesdal in 2011. It is a truly unique sword from the late Viking Age, embellished with gold, inscriptions and other ornamentation. The discovery of the sword has not been published until now, when it is being displayed for the first time in the exhibition 'Take It Personally' at the Historical Museum in Oslo.
The sword must have belonged to a wealthy man in the late Viking Age. But who was he and what magic inscriptions are set into the decoration -- in gold? Was the owner of the sword in the Danish King Canute's army when it attacked England in 1014-15?
"We just gaped"
In the summer of 2011, archaeologists from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo discovered a Viking burial ground in Langeid in Setesdal in southern Norway. In one of the graves they made a startling discovery.
"Even before we began the excavation of this grave, I realised it was something quite special. The grave was so big and looked different from the other 20 graves in the burial ground. In each of the four corners of the grave there were post holes," said excavation leader Camilla Cecilie Wenn of the Museum of Cultural History.
The post holes reveal that there was a roof over the grave, which is a sign that the grave had a prominent place in the burial ground. But when they dug down in the coffin in the bottom of the grave, there were few traces of gifts for the afterlife, only two small fragments of silver coins. The coins were from northern Europe; one was probably from the German Viking Age, judging by how it was embossed, while the other was a penny minted under Ethelred II in England dating from the period 978-1016.
"But when we went on digging outside the coffin, our eyes really popped. Along both sides, something metal appeared, but it was hard to see what it was. Suddenly a lump of earth fell to one side so that the object became clearer. Our pulses raced when we realised it was the hilt of a sword! And on the other side of the coffin, the metal turned out to be a big battle-axe. Although the weapons were covered in rust when we found them, we realised straight away that they were special and unusual. Were they put there to protect the dead person from enemies, or to display power?"
Dating of charcoal from one of the post holes shows that the grave is from around the year 1030, at the very end of the Viking Age. "And that fits in well with the discovery of the English coin."
The sword
The sword must have belonged to a wealthy man who lived in the late Viking Age. The sword is 94 cm long; although the iron blade has rusted, the handle is well preserved. It is wrapped with silver thread and the hilt and pommel at the top are covered in silver with details in gold, edged with a copper alloy thread," said project leader Zanette Glørstad.
"When we examined the sword more closely, we also found remnants of wood and leather on the blade. They must be remains from a sheath to put the sword in," explained curator Vegard Vike. He has had the challenging task of cleaning up the handle and preserving the sword.
The sword is decorated with large spirals, various combinations of letters and cross-like ornaments. The letters are probably Latin, but what the letter combinations meant is still a mystery.
"At the top of the pommel, we can also clearly see a picture of a hand holding a cross. That's unique and we don't know of any similar findings on other swords from the Viking Age. Both the hand and the letters indicate that the sword was deliberately decorated with Christian symbolism. But how did such a sword end up in a pagan burial ground in Norway? The design of the sword, the symbols and the precious metal used all make it perfectly clear that this was a magnificent treasure, probably produced abroad and brought back to Norway by a very prominent man," added Camilla Cecilie Weenn.
"The way swords are referred to in the sagas suggests that the sword is an important bearer of the identity of the warrior. A sword reveals the warrior's social status, his position of power and his strength. The sagas also tell us that gold had a special symbolic value in Norse society. In Norse literature gold represented power and potency.
Gold is rarely found in archaeological material from Viking Period and then too, it stood for power and potency. This indicates that gold had considerable economic and symbolic value. Based on the descriptions in the literature, we can say that the sword was the male jewellery par excellence of the Viking Age," said Hanne Lovise Aannestad, the author of a recent article on ornate swords from the days of the Vikings.
'Magic'
The sagas emphasise the importance of the ornate sword. Swords could have hilts of gold with ornamentation and magical runes. The mythical sagas tell of magical swords forged by dwarfs. The creation of myths around the art of the blacksmith and the making of high-quality swords may be related to the fact that few people mastered the art. The production of metal objects of high quality may have been a form of hidden knowledge unavailable to most people. This gave the objects a magical aura.
"In Mediaeval literature, swords are referred to as aesthetic, powerful and magical objects. The many similarities between the descriptions of swords in Norse and Mediaeval literature suggest that the splendour of the sword in the latter had roots in the Viking notions of the symbolic power, magic and ritual aspects of the ornate sword. The Viking Age was a period of great social upheaval. At times like that, certain symbolic objects may play an important role in negotiating social positions. There is much to suggest that these magnificent swords were such objects, reflecting the status and power of the warrior and his clan," said Hanne Lovise.
The battle-axe
The axe found in the same grave has no gold decoration. But the shaft is coated with brass and it may well have flashed like gold when the sun shone. Such shaft coatings are very rare in Norway. But a number of similar battle-axes have been found in the River Thames in London. That makes the axe particularly interesting. Dating of the axe from Langeid shows that it belongs to the same period as the axes found in the Thames. There was a long series of battles along the Thames in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Canute led their armies against the English king in the battle for the English throne. Even the Norwegian king Olav (Haraldsson) the Holy was involved in the attack on London in 1009. The men under the Danish King were from all over Scandinavia. Did the axes get lost in the Thames during the numerous skirmishes, or did the victors throw them in the river?
Did the sword belong to a Viking from King Canute's army?
Further down the Setesdal Valley we find a runic stone, which says: "Arnstein raised this stone in memory of Bjor his son. He found death when Canute "went after" England. God is one." (Translated from the Old Norse). The text probably refers to King Canute's attacks on England in 1013-14. It is likely that the stone was erected just after the incursions, by a father whose son never came back home. A written source from the 12th century states that King Canute's closest army had to meet certain requirements. Soldiers had to honour the king, had to belong to the leading families in society and also had to provide their own gilded axes and sword hilts.
The Langeid sword would no doubt have been approved by King Canute, probably also the axe. The sword was made outside Norway and an Anglo-Saxon origin is quite possible. The axe is very similar to those found in the Thames, especially in its brass coating. The grave with the sword also contained the only coin found in Langeid from the Anglo-Saxon region, which increases the possibility that the dead man had a particular connection to the events in England.
"It's quite possible that the dead man was one of King Canute's hand-picked men for the battles with King Ethelred of England. Seen in connection with the runic stone further down the valley, it is tempting to suggest that it is Bjor himself who was brought home and buried here. Another possibility is that his father Arnstein only got his son's magnificent weapons back and that, precisely for that reason, he decided to erect a runic stone for his son as a substitute for a grave. When Arnstein himself died, his son's glorious weapons were laid in his grave. The death of his son must have been very tough on an old man. Perhaps their relatives honoured both Arnstein and Bjor by letting Arnstein be buried with the weapons with such a heroic history," said Zanette Glørstad.
The runic stone dates from the same period as the final phase of the burial ground and testifies that Christianity is about to take root in Norwegian society. It is the oldest runic stone in Norway that refers to Christianity. Could this also explain why the weapons were placed outside the coffin? In a transitional period, people may have chosen to use both pagan and Christian elements in a funeral. The Langeid grave is from one of the last pagan funerals we know of from Norway and marks both the greatness and the end of the Viking Age.
"Take it personally"
Ever since the summer of 2011, the sword found in Langeid has been unpublished. Its display today has been made possible by the meticulous work and research of conservators and archaeologists at the Museum of Cultural History. Finally, it can be seen by the public and is displayed in the exhibition called "Take it personally" -- an exhibition of personal jewellery and adornment over time and space in the Historical Museum in Oslo.
Source: University of Museum of Cultural History Oslo [July 14, 2015]
Scientists have discovered macabre fossil evidence suggesting that 300 million-year-old sharks ate their own young, as fossil poop of adult Orthacanthus sharks contained the tiny teeth of juveniles. These fearsome marine predators used protected coastal lagoons to rear their babies, but it seems they also resorted to cannibalising them when other food sources became scarce.
Three hundred million years ago, Europe and North America lay on the equator and were covered by steamy jungles (the remains of which are now compacted into coal seams). The top predators of these so-called "Coal Forests" were not land animals, but huge sharks that hunted in the oily waters of coastal swamps.
The fossil evidence for shark cannibalism comes from distinctive spiral-shaped coprolites (fossil poop) found in the Minto Coalfield of New Brunswick, Canada. The poop is known to have been excreted by Orthacanthus because this shark had a special corkscrew rectum that makes identification easy. The poop is packed full of the teeth of juvenile Orthacanthus, confirming that these sharks fed on their own babies. This is called "fillial cannibalism".
PhD candidate in the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Aodhan O Gogain, made the extraordinary discovery. His findings have just been >published in the journal Palaeontology. He said: "Orthacanthus was a three-metre-long xenacanth shark with a dorsal spine, an eel-like body, and tricusped teeth. There is already evidence from fossilised stomach contents that ancient sharks like Orthacanthus preyed on amphibians and other fish, but this is the first evidence that these sharks also ate the young of their own species."
Professor Mike Benton, University of Bristol, is a co-author of the study. He said: "As palaeontologists cannot observe predator-prey relationships directly in the way that a zoologist can, they have to use other methods to interpret ancient food webs. One method is by probing the contents of coprolites [fossil poop] as we have done here."
Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, Royal Holloway University of London is another co-author. He said: "We don't know why Orthacanthus resorted to eating its own young. However, the Carboniferous Period was a time when marine fishes were starting to colonise freshwater swamps in large numbers. It's possible that Orthacanthus used inland waterways as protected nurseries to rear its babies, but then consumed them as food when other resources became scarce."
Aodhan O Gogain added: "Orthacanthus was probably a bit like the modern day bull shark, in that it was able to migrate backwards and forwards between coastal swamps and shallow seas. This unusual ecological adaptation may have played an important role in the colonisation of inland freshwater environments."
The Minto Coalfield in Canada, where the fossils were discovered, is of considerable historical importance, being the first place in North America where settlers mined coal in the early 17th Century.
Source: University of Bristol [August 11, 2016]
New research suggests that the dodo, an extinct bird whose name has entered popular culture as a symbol of stupidity, was actually fairly smart. The work, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, finds that the overall size of the dodo's brain in relation to its body size was on par with its closest living relatives: pigeons--birds whose ability to be trained implies a moderate level of intelligence. The researchers also discovered that the dodo had an enlarged olfactory bulb -- the part of the brain responsible for smelling -- an uncharacteristic trait for birds, which usually concentrate their brainpower into eyesight.
The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a large, flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They were last seen in 1662.
"When the island was discovered in the late 1500s, the dodos living there had no fear of humans and they were herded onto boats and used as fresh meat for sailors," said Eugenia Gold, the lead author of the paper, a research associate and recent graduate of the American Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate School, and an instructor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. "Because of that behavior and invasive species that were introduced to the island, they disappeared in less than 100 years after humans arrived. Today, they are almost exclusively known for becoming extinct, and I think that's why we've given them this reputation of being dumb."
Even though the birds have become an example of oddity, obsolescence, stupidity, and extinction, and have been featured in popular stories ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Ice Age, most aspects of the dodo's biology are still unknown. This is partly because dodo specimens are extremely rare, having disappeared during the nascent stage of natural history collections.
To examine the brain of the dodo, Gold tracked down a well-preserved skull from the collections of the Natural History Museum, London, and imaged it there with high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning. In the American Museum of Natural History's Microscopy and Imaging Facility, she also CT-scanned the skulls of seven species of pigeons -- ranging from the common pigeon found on city streets, Columba livia, to more exotic varieties. Out of these scans, Gold built virtual brain endocasts to determine the overall brain size as well as the size of various structures. Gold's colleagues at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and National Museum of Scotland sent her the endocast for the dodo's closest relative, the extinct island-dwelling bird Rodrigues solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria).
When comparing the size of the birds' brains to their body sizes, Gold and collaborators found that the dodo was "right on the line."
"It's not impressively large or impressively small -- it's exactly the size you would predict it to be for its body size," Gold said. "So if you take brain size as a proxy for intelligence, dodos probably had a similar intelligence level to pigeons. Of course, there's more to intelligence than just overall brain size, but this gives us a basic measure."
The study also revealed that both the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire, which recently was driven to extinction by human activity, had large and differentiated olfactory bulbs. In general, birds depend much more on sight rather than smell to navigate through their world, and as a result, they tend to have larger optic lobes than olfactory bulbs. The authors suggest that, because dodos and solitaires were ground-dwellers, they relied on smell to find food, which might have included fruit, small land vertebrates, and marine animals like shellfish.
"It is really amazing what new technologies can bring to old museum specimens," said co-author Mark Norell, Macaulay Curator of Paleontology and Chair of the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. "This really underscores the need for the maintenance and growth of natural history collections, because who knows what's next."
The researchers also discovered an unusual curvature of the dodo's semicircular canal -- the balance organs located in the ear. But as of yet, there's not a good hypothesis for this atypical feature.
Source: American Museum of Natural History [February 23, 2016]
Archaeologists have uncovered a 2000-year-old tomb believed to contain a wealthy father and son who were artisan weavers by trade and walked with the same “pigeon-toed” feet.
The men were laid to rest in an Iron Age stone cist close to the National Trust for Scotland’s (NTS) House of the Binns near Linlithgow.
One skeleton belonged to a man aged around 40 when he died between 92BC-65AD, while his relative was around 20 when he died some time later, 44BC-79AD, and his body was pushed in alongside him.
Skeletal analysis shows both men stood around 5ft 5in tall and suffered from worn teeth associated with weaving.
They also shared an unusual anomaly of the muscle attachment in the upper leg, which would have caused their legs to rotate inwards and made them walk with their toes turned in – pigeon-toed.
The older man was buried clutching an oval-shaped iron brooch to his left shoulder. Experts say it showed “incredibly rare” evidence of thread from his cloak.
NTS archaeologist Daniel Rhodes said the discovery was “exciting in its rarity”.
He said: “The first skeleton was an adult male, aged around 40 years, with wear on his teeth which suggests he may have been a weaver.
“The younger man was around 20 years old. They were intentionally buried in the same place and when you look at the date range they could be father and son.
“The younger man also suffered from worn teeth, and they both shared the same family leg deformity. There is no sign of disease so it probably didn’t cause severe damage or disability in life, but they may have been pigeon-toed.”
The House of the Binns is a 17th-century laird’s house overlooking the Forth, and home to the Dalyell family for 400 years.
The house was built in 1612 by Thomas Dalyell, an Edinburgh merchant who made his fortune at the court of King James VI and I in London. The Dalyell family gifted the house and surrounding parkland to the NTS in 1944, retaining the right of the family to live there.
The wider property contains archaeological remains pre-dating the establishment of the house and surrounding parkland. Iron Age burials are rare in Scotland, and ones with grave goods even rarer. Just 50 accompanied burials are known.
Mr Rhodes added: “There has always been folklore about Binns Hill being the site of a hill fort. The fact that there is this kind of status burial found at the foot of the hill, there must have been other activity going on in this period. It’s an absolutely perfect spot.”
Author: George Mair | Source: Edinburgh News [March 29, 2015]
The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research published today in Nature.
Previous epochs began and ended due to factors including meteorite strikes, sustained volcanic eruptions and the shifting of the continents. Human actions are now changing the planet, but are we really a geological force of nature driving Earth into a new epoch that will last millions of years?
Scientists at UCL have concluded that humans have become a geological power and suggest that human actions have produced a new geological epoch.
Defining an epoch requires two main criteria to be met. Long-lasting changes to the Earth must be documented. Scientists must also pinpoint and date a global environmental change that has been captured in natural material, such as rocks, ancient ice or sediment from the ocean floor. Such a marker -- like the chemical signature left by the meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs -- is called a golden spike.
The study authors systematically compared the major environmental impacts of human activity over the past 50,000 years against these two formal requirements. Just two dates met the criteria: 1610, when the collision of the New and Old Worlds a century earlier was first felt globally; and 1964, associated with the fallout from nuclear weapons tests. The researchers conclude that 1610 is the stronger candidate.
The scientists say the 1492 arrival of Europeans in the Americas, and subsequent global trade, moved species to new continents and oceans, resulting in a global re-ordering of life on Earth. This rapid, repeated, cross-ocean exchange of species is without precedent in Earth's history.
They argue that the joining of the two hemispheres is an unambiguous event after which the impacts of human activity became global and set Earth on a new trajectory. The first fossil pollen of maize, a Latin American species, appears in marine sediment in Europe in 1600, becoming common over subsequent centuries. This irreversible exchange of species satisfies the first criteria for dating an epoch -- long-term changes to Earth.
The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike
The researchers also found a golden spike that can be dated to the same time: a pronounced dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide centred on 1610 and captured in Antarctic ice-core records. The drop occurred as a direct result of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. Colonisation of the New World led to the deaths of about 50 million indigenous people, most within a few decades of the 16th century due to smallpox. The abrupt near-cessation of farming across the continent and the subsequent re-growth of Latin American forests and other vegetation removed enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce a drop in CO2. Thus, the second requirement of a golden spike marker is met.
The researchers have named the 1610 dip in carbon dioxide the 'Orbis Spike'. They chose the Latin word for 'world' because this golden spike was caused by once-disconnected peoples becoming globally linked.
Lead author, Dr Simon Lewis (UCL Geography and University of Leeds), said: "In a hundred thousand years scientists will look at the environmental record and know something remarkable happened in the second half of the second millennium. They will be in no doubt that these global changes to Earth were caused by their own species. Today we can say when those changes began and why. The Anthropocene probably began when species jumped continents, starting when the Old World met the New. We humans are now a geological power in our own right -- as Earth-changing as a meteorite strike."
He added: "Historically, the collision of the Old and New Worlds marks the beginning of the modern world. Many historians regard agricultural imports into Europe from the vast new lands of the Americas, alongside the availability of coal, as the two essential precursors of the Industrial Revolution, which in turn unleashed further waves of global environmental changes. Geologically, this boundary also marks Earth's last globally synchronous cool moment before the onset of the long-term global warmth of the Anthropocene."
The authors also considered the merits of dating the Anthropocene to 1964, which saw a peak in radioactive fallout following nuclear weapons testing. This marker is seen in many geological deposits, and by the 1960s human impact on the Earth was large. However, the researchers note that while nuclear war could dramatically alter Earth, so far it has not. While the fallout from nuclear bomb tests is a very good marker, the testing of nuclear weapons has not been -- in geological terms -- an Earth-changing event.
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century, has most commonly been suggested as the start of the Anthropocene. This linked a clear turning point in human history, and the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use is a long-term global environmental change of critical importance. However, the researchers did not find a golden spike at that time because most effects were local, while the global exponential rise in carbon dioxide was too smooth an increase to form a precisely dated marker.
The authors' new paper ends by highlighting some implications of formally defining the Anthropocene.
Co-author, geologist Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Geography) said: "A more wide-spread recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth will have implications for our philosophical, social, economic and political views of our environment. But we should not despair, because the power that humans wield is unlike any other force of nature, it is reflexive and therefore can be used, withdrawn or modified. The first stage of solving our damaging relationship with our environment is recognising it."
An official decision on whether to formally recognise the Anthropocene, including when it began, will be initiated by a recommendation of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy, due in 2016.
Source: University College London [March 11, 2015]
An unidentified fossilised bone in a museum has revealed the size of a fearsome abelisaur and may have solved a hundred-year old puzzle.
Alessandro Chiarenza, a PhD student from Imperial College London, last year stumbled across a fossilised femur bone, left forgotten in a drawer, during his visit to the Museum of Geology and Palaeontology in Palermo Italy. He and a colleague Andrea Cau, a researcher from the University of Bologna, got permission from the museum to analyse the femur. They discovered that the bone was from a dinosaur called abelisaur, which roamed the Earth around 95 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period.
Abelisauridae were a group of predatory, carnivorous dinosaurs, characterised by extremely small forelimbs, a short deep face, small razor sharp teeth, and powerful muscular hind limbs. Scientists suspect they were also covered in fluffy feathers. The abelisaur in today's study would have lived in North Africa, which at that time was a lush savannah criss-crossed by rivers and mangrove swamps. This ancient tropical world would have provided the abelisaur with an ideal habitat for hunting aquatic animals like turtles, crocodiles, large fish and other dinosaurs.
By studying the bone, the team deduced that this abelisaur may have been nine metres long and weighed between one and two tonnes, making it potentially one of the largest abelisaurs ever found. This is helping researchers to determine the maximum sizes that these dinosaurs may have reached during their peak.
Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, co-author of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial, said: "Smaller abelisaur fossils have been previously found by palaeontologists, but this find shows how truly huge these flesh eating predators had become. Their appearance may have looked a bit odd as they were probably covered in feathers with tiny, useless forelimbs, but make no mistake they were fearsome killers in their time."
The fossil originated from a sedimentary outcrop in Morocco called the Kem Kem Beds, which are well known for the unusual abundance of giant predatory dinosaur fossils. This phenomenon is called Stromer's Riddle, in honour the German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer, who first identified this abundance in 1912. Since then scientists have been asking how abelisaurs and five other groupings of predatory dinosaurs could have co-existed in this region at the same time, without hunting each other into extinction.
Now the researchers in today's study suggest that these predatory dinosaur groups may not have co-existed so closely together. They believe that the harsh and changing geology of the region mixed the fossil fragment records together, destroying its chronological ordering in the Kem Kem beds, and giving the illusion that the abelisaurs and their predatory cousins shared the same terrain at the same time. Similar studies of fossil beds in nearby Tunisia, for example, show that creatures like abelisaurs were inland hunters, while other predators like the fish eating spinosaurs probably lived near mangroves and rivers.
Chiarenza added: "This fossil find, along with the accumulated wealth of previous studies, is helping to solve the question of whether abelisaurs may have co-existed with a range of other predators in the same region. Rather than sharing the same environment, which the jumbled up fossil records may be leading us to believe, we think these creatures probably lived far away from one another in different types of environments."
Fossilised femora are useful for palaeontologists to study because they can determine the overall size of the dinosaur. This is because femora are attached to the thigh and tail muscles and have scars, or bumps, which tell palaeontologists where the ligaments and muscles were attached to the bone and how big those muscles and ligaments would have been.
Andrea Cau, co-author from the University of Bologna, said: "While palaeontologists usually venture to remote and inaccessible locations, like the deserts of Mongolia or the Badlands of Montana, our study shows how museums still play an important role in preserving specimens of primary scientific value, in which sometimes the most unexpected surprises can be discovered. As Stephen Gould, an influential palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, once said, sometimes the greatest discoveries are made in museum drawers."
The study is published in the journal Peer J. Chiarenza did the underpinning analysis with Cau while at the University of Bologna.
The next step will see the team looking for more complete remains from these predatory dinosaurs trying to better understand their environment and evolutionary history.
Author: Colin Smith | Source: Imperial College London [February 29, 2016]
