https://phys.org/science-news/archaeology-fossils en-us The latest news on archaeology, archaeological research and archaeological advancements. Humans are no strangers to kicking back with a cool pint of beer. The Ancient Egyptians, for example, had a hankering for beer that was a little bit tart, almost like a modern-day gose, a lemony beer from Germany. Homer, the Ancient Greek poet, spoke of a beverage called κυκέων (pronounced "kee-kay-own), which was a mixture of grape wine and fermented grains. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-beer.html Archaeology Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:06:02 EDT news646578361 New University of Otago—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka research has uncovered the unlikely location of one of the earliest securely dated sites of sweet potato (kūmara) cultivation in Polynesia. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-unexpected-discovery-early-sweet-potato.html Archaeology Thu, 26 Sep 2024 12:06:14 EDT news646571170 A multidisciplinary research team led by the Archaeometry research group of the University of Tübingen and the GEA research group of the University of Granada made a surprising discovery in the megalithic necropolis of Panoría (Granada, Spain): twice as many women as men were buried, a bias that is even more pronounced among the juvenile population, where the ratio is 10 females for every male. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-women-men-megalithic-necropolis-panora.html Archaeology Wed, 25 Sep 2024 11:50:02 EDT news646483801 The skeletal remains of a senior officer of Sir John Franklin's 1845 Northwest Passage expedition have been identified by researchers from the University of Waterloo and Lakehead University using DNA and genealogical analyses. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-dna-analysis-senior-officer-franklin.html Archaeology Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:20:27 EDT news646406419 Archaeologists analyzed thirteenth century BC bronze and flint arrowheads from the Tollense Valley, north-east Germany, uncovering the earliest evidence for large-scale interregional conflict in Europe. The Tollense Valley in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is well-known as the site of a large conflict dating to c. 1250 BC. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeologists-southern-army-fought-europe.html Archaeology Tue, 24 Sep 2024 12:40:01 EDT news646400058 Archaeologists have analyzed textiles from the ancient city of Huacas de Moche, Peru, showing how the population's cultural traditions survived in the face of external influence. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-year-textiles-reveal-cultural-resilience.html Archaeology Tue, 24 Sep 2024 12:40:01 EDT news646400045 In 2019, historian Lukas Rieppel published a book about the history of dinosaur fossils and their excavation in the late 1800s to create museum displays. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-fossil-native-exploring-depths-untold.html Archaeology Social Sciences Tue, 24 Sep 2024 12:31:39 EDT news646399893 A small team of archaeologists at Yamagata University, working with a colleague from Université Paris, and a pair of AI researchers from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, used an AI model to find more geoglyphs on the floor of Peru's Nazca Desert. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeologists-ai-hundreds-geoglyphs-peru.html Archaeology Tue, 24 Sep 2024 10:29:37 EDT news646392570 Archaeological fieldwork in Morocco has discovered the earliest previously unknown farming society from a poorly understood period of northwest African prehistory. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-previously-unknown-neolithic-society-morocco.html Archaeology Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:10:01 EDT news646321861 At the turn of the first millennium AD, an unknown group of people lived in the inland Isalo massif of southern Madagascar. Here, they built vast terraces and carved large stone chambers and small hollow rock niches. The architecture is unlike anything else found in Madagascar or the adjacent East African coast. Who built these structures, when they arrived, and why was unknown. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-enigmatic-archaeological-site-madagascar-built.html Archaeology Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:30:01 EDT news646304356 Researchers have reconstructed the oldest human genomes ever found in South Africa from two people who lived around 10,000 years ago, allowing a better understanding of how the region was populated, an author of the study said Sunday. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-decode-oldest-human-dna-south.html Archaeology Sun, 22 Sep 2024 12:01:28 EDT news646225281 As anyone who's spent time in the saddle knows, riding a horse can be hard on your body. But can it change the way your skeleton looks? https://phys.org/news/2024-09-scientists-explore-horseback-human-skeletons.html Archaeology Sun, 22 Sep 2024 07:06:23 EDT news646207570 A new way of looking at tooth enamel could give scientists a path to deeper understanding of the health of human populations, from the ancient to the modern. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-proteins-tooth-enamel-window-ancient.html Archaeology Thu, 19 Sep 2024 15:07:04 EDT news645977221 As Russian missile strikes and heavy assaults by ground troops pace deadly attacks on Ukraine, a new report by University of Virginia researchers reveals another destructive facet of Russia's invasion. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-document-russian-destruction-ukrainian-archaeological.html Archaeology Political science Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:42:04 EDT news645975722 A team of researchers from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) have analyzed human remains from the Oakhurst rock shelter in southernmost Africa and reconstructed the genomes of thirteen individuals, who died between 1,300 and 10,000 years ago, including the oldest human genome from South Africa to date. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-year-human-dna-insights-south.html Archaeology Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:06:16 EDT news645966373 A mysterious tusked animal depicted in South African rock art might portray an ancient species preserved as fossils in the same region, according to a study published September 18, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Julien Benoit of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-south-african-art-possibly-extinct.html Archaeology Wed, 18 Sep 2024 14:00:02 EDT news645867781 Jamestown, Virginia, was founded in 1607 and was the first English permanent settlement in America. It has been the subject of many archaeological and historical analyses, including a recent study by Prof. Markus M. Key and Rebecca K. Rossi, which set out to determine the provenance of Jamestown's black "marble" knight's tombstone. What they determined was unexpected, says Prof. Key. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-reveals-america-oldest-tombstone-belgium.html Archaeology Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:40:01 EDT news645784785 From 22 July to 19 August 2024, a team of researchers from the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) and the University of Trier investigated the remains of the late Republican city of Fregellae in present-day Italy to better understand the social and economic fabric of the region before and after its destruction in 125 BCE. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeological-excavation-ancient-fregellae-reveals.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Sep 2024 12:20:26 EDT news645794419 Egyptian temples were not only colorful, but also gleamed in glistening gold. Columns, gates and obelisks have been covered in gold since the beginning of the Pharaonic Period. Researchers also know from textual sources that some of the buildings were gilded. In most cases, these were overlays of thicker metal foils made of gilded copper. Their traces can only be seen today as holes in the walls. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-temple-edfu-reveals-inscriptions-gold.html Archaeology Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:31:58 EDT news645719508 In an article recently published in Latin American Antiquity, Dr. Jill Mollenhauer argues that the Gulf Lowland Olmec, one of Mesoamerica's earliest major civilizations, sometimes incorporated aesthetic and ritual practices associated with their rock art into their sculptures. She argues that this allowed Olmec elites to harness the spiritual and natural potency of the wild and sacred landscape and bring it into the domestic and urban centers, where it legitimized their political power. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-olmec-elite-legitimize-political-power.html Archaeology Mon, 16 Sep 2024 07:30:01 EDT news645450474 Conservationists at Persepolis, Iran's most iconic ancient site, are waging a delicate battle against an unlikely adversary: tiny but persistent lichens eroding the millennia-old monuments. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-stone-eaters-threaten-iran-ancient.html Archaeology Mon, 16 Sep 2024 04:31:33 EDT news645679887 Two recent studies have cast doubt on a popular theory that the ancient residents of Easter Island suffered a societal collapse because they overexploited their natural resources, an event often labeled one of history's first "ecocides". https://phys.org/news/2024-09-ecocide-easter-island.html Archaeology Sun, 15 Sep 2024 09:40:01 EDT news645280392 A new study posits a very surprising answer to one of history's great mysteries—what killed off the Neanderthals? https://phys.org/news/2024-09-lack-death-neanderthals.html Archaeology Sat, 14 Sep 2024 09:30:01 EDT news645280196 An ambitious high-tech search in Michigan's Lake Superior so far has turned up no sign of a plane that crashed in 1968, killing three people who were on a scientific research trip. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-high-tech-plane-michigan-lake.html Archaeology Thu, 12 Sep 2024 15:20:02 EDT news645372950 New research shows Ice Age teens from 25,000 years ago went through similar puberty stages as modern-day adolescents. In a study published today in the Journal of Human Evolution of the timing of puberty in Pleistocene teens, researchers are addressing a knowledge gap about how early humans grew up. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-reveals-reality-puberty-ice-age.html Archaeology Thu, 12 Sep 2024 13:44:06 EDT news645367437 A US dive team has discovered the wreck of a French steamship, Le Lyonnais, that sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1856 after a "hit-and-run" collision with an American sailing vessel, claiming 114 lives. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-french-steamship-sank-atlantic.html Archaeology Thu, 12 Sep 2024 04:08:22 EDT news645332897 The earliest humans to settle the Great Lakes region likely returned to a campsite in southwest Michigan for several years in a row, according to a University of Michigan study. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-clovis-people-great-lakes-annually.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:30:12 EDT news645291002 Rapa Nui or Te Pito o Te Henua (the navel of the world), also known as Easter Island, is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. Located in the Pacific, it lies over 1,900 km east of the closest inhabited Polynesian island and 3,700 km west of South America. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-ancient-dna-rapa-nui-easter.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Sep 2024 11:00:01 EDT news645265141 A fossilized Neanderthal discovered in a cave system in the Rhône Valley, France, represents an ancient and previously undescribed lineage that diverged from other currently known Neanderthals around 100,000 years ago and remained genetically isolated for more than 50,000 years. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeologists-ancient-neanderthal-lineage-isolated.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Sep 2024 11:00:01 EDT news645262142 Reports continue to emerge of the alleged looting of tens of thousands of artifacts from the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-qa-looting-sudan-national-museum.html Archaeology Tue, 10 Sep 2024 15:58:04 EDT news645202681