The recent discovery of vestiges of early Montevideo's colonial-era defense system has provided an opportunity to enhance and integrate a past that was buried under the Old City into the current urban landscape, Uruguayan archaeologist Veronica De Leon said in an interview with EFE.

A worker digging out the remains of a fortification, from an early colonial-era defense system, in Montevideo, Uruguay [Credit: EPA-EFE/Municipality of Montevideo]

De Leon, who has studied the impact of public works in the Old City, found the remains of fortifications that have not yet been assessed by the National Heritage Commission.

The most recent find involved the San Carlos Battery, an artillery emplacement near the port of Montevideo, but De Leon said other historical vestiges of colonial Montevideo have been found in the city's oldest district in recent years.

One includes remnants of the colonial city's fortifications found in 2017 during work on sidewalks around Plaza Zabala, named in memory of the Spanish colonial outpost's founder and first governor, Bruno Mauricio de Zabala.

"Last year, we started monitoring public works at Plaza Zabala and by late August some walls were found," the archaeologist said. "We were able to identify the remains as a portion of the colonial fort in Montevideo that was completed around December 1725."

Near the Taranco Palace, located across from Plaza Zabala, other structures found could have been part of the colonial governors residence built after 1740.

View of the remains of a fortification, from an early colonial-era defense system, in Montevideo, Uruguay [Credit: EPA-EFE/Municipality of Montevideo]

"(There) have been other finds outside what was then the walled city, like the colonial water fountain located where the annex of the Executive Tower, the current presidential office building, is now," De Leon said.

The artillery emplacements found recently, like the rest of the fortifications, underwent numerous upgrades over the decades until they were dismantled by on government orders in 1829, four years after the country became independent Uruguay.

"There are different reports and documents that refer to those (upgrades), including the bastions at the Ciudadela, the high-walled fortification built around the Old City in 1741 that comprises some segments of stone wall and others with earthen levees," the archaeologist said.

The Ciudadela became a produce market, the fortifications were demolished and the stones were later used in other buildings.

This explains why in the area where the San Carlos Battery was found there were also vestiges of a cistern along with houses built during the 19th century after the network of walled fortifications was dismantled.

Author: Alejandro Prieto | Source: EFE-EPA [March 11, 2018]

A team of Peruvian archaeologists has found a 1,300-year-old pre-Hispanic cemetery near Lima's main zoo, a researcher said Friday.

Credit: Diffusion

"We have found three human burials that belong to the pre-Inca culture of Lima with an antiquity of 1,300 years," Lucenida Carrión, head of the Directorate of Archaeology of the Parque de Las Leyendas, told AFP.

The human remains, including two skulls belonging to the Peruvian culture (100-650 AD), were shown to the press by the researchers.

Credit: Diffusion

Carrión explained that the remains were found at the end of February in the 'huaca' or pre-Hispanic sanctuary 'El Rosal' in the district of San Miguel, on the coast of Lima.

The remains, which belong to two adults and one child, were found more than a metre deep. In addition, archaeologists found an oven for ceramics, earthenware vessels and two 'piruros' or spindle whorls.

Credit: Diffusion

The archaeologist explained that one of the adults was found lying face down, while the child, who was about three years old, was lying on his right side with bent legs.

"At the moment we are also excavating a third adult burial, some of the bones of which can be seen protruding from the earth," she said.

Credit: Diffusion

La Huaca El Rosal is located in the northeast corner of Peru's main zoo, Parque de Las Leyendas.

The objects found in this park contain traces of three civilizations and are located in the archaeological complex of Maranga.


According to the archaeologist, the inhabitants of the Lima culture built the first structures in Huaca El Rosal.

In 2016, adobe walls and mud floors were discovered in the lower part of the huaca, and the walls of an oven between 400 and 500 AD.

"These findings are contemporary with the nine human burials found between 2016 and 2017," Carrión noted.

Source: El Pais [March 10, 2018]

An unexpected discovery by a fossil hunter diving a quarter-mile off Manasota Key near Venice, Florida, has led to a groundbreaking archaeological project that could change everything scientists thought they knew about offshore archaeology. The Manasota Key Offshore (MKO) site will help archaeologists understand how Florida’s indigenous people lived, and what their environment was like over 7,000 years ago.

Credit: Ivor Mollema/Florida Department of State

The Discovery

An amateur diver first reported possible human remains in the waters just off Manasota Key to the Bureau of Archaeological Research (BAR) in June 2016. Through non-invasive underwater survey and investigation techniques, including magnetometry, sub-bottom profiling, and side-scan sonar, BAR’s underwater archaeologists soon documented evidence of a prehistoric Native American burial site in what appears to have been a freshwater peat-bottomed pond thousands of years ago.

Credit: Ivor Mollema/Florida Department of State

Ongoing archaeological investigation revealed multiple discrete areas containing peat, worked wooden stakes that were used in burial practice, and the remains of multiple individuals. Radiocarbon dating of two stakes dated them to more than 7,200 years old, during the time referred to as the “Archaic Period." When this site was in use, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were about 30 feet below their current level. Given the site’s depth today – under about 21 feet of water – the pond sat on dry land some nine feet above sea level at this time.


Florida’s archaeological record already includes evidence of Archaic Period pond burials at several sites, including the well-known Windover site in Titusville and Little Salt Spring in Sarasota County. What makes Mansota Key Offshore site remarkable is its location, and the evidence collected through non-invasive remote sensing techniques that will allow scientists to recreate the prehistoric environment – including evidence of ancient springs and rivers.

Globally Significant, Transformative for Florida

The Manasota Key Offshore site represents the first example in the Americas of offshore preservation of the Archaic Period paleoenvironment, including a prehistoric burial site that survived sea level rise since the last ice age. The implications for learning more about how Archaic peoples lived in Florida, the effects of sea-level change on the prehistoric landscape, and the intersection of the two are vast and exciting. Reconstructing the ancient landscape of the area may provide crucial insight into the circumstances that allowed this delicate site to be preserved. This information can be applied to other submerged areas to better understand the effects of sea-level rise on underwater archaeological sites throughout the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Florida Department of State [February 28, 2018]

A team of scientists including researchers from Washington State University has shown for the first time that nicotine residue can be extracted from plaque, also known as "dental calculus," on the teeth of ancient tobacco users.

This is a 1945 picture of a Yokuts Native American woman smoking a pipe [Credit: Clifford Relander]

Their research provides a new method for determining who was consuming tobacco in the ancient world and could help trace the use of tobacco and other intoxicating plants further back into prehistory.

"The ability to identify nicotine and other plant-based drugs in ancient dental plaque could help us answer longstanding questions about the consumption of intoxicants by ancient humans," said Shannon Tushingham, a WSU assistant professor of anthropology and co-author of a new study on the research in Journal of Archaeological Science Reports. "For example, it could help us determine whether all members of society used tobacco, or only adults, or only males or females."

A new source of information

Tracing the ancient spread of tobacco in the Americas has traditionally relied on the presence of pipes, charred tobacco seeds and the analysis of hair and fecal matter. However, these items are rare in the archeological record and are hard to link to particular individuals. As a result, tobacco use has been difficult to document archeologically.

On the other hand, dental plaque adheres to the surfaces of teeth and mineralizes over time, preserving a wide range of substances that are in the mouth. It is easy to link to particular individuals because it can be removed directly from teeth.

Nevertheless, dental plaque was largely ignored by archaeologists until recently.

However, using modern and highly sensitive instrumentation, scientists have found they can detect and characterize trace amounts of a wide variety of compounds, including proteins, bacterial DNA, starch grains and other plant fibers in dental plaque.

Because nicotine is detectable in the dental plaque of contemporary smokers, Tushingham and her collaborators wanted to find out if it also preserved in plaque taken from people who lived long ago.

She and David Gang, a professor in the WSU Institute of Biological Chemistry, Korey Brownstein, a graduate student in the WSU Molecular Plant Sciences Program, and Jelmer Eerkens, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, collaborated with members from the Ohlone tribe in San Francisco Bay to extract plaque from the teeth of eight individuals, buried between 6,000 and 300 years ago, and analyze it for nicotine.

Using ordinary dental picks, Eerkens and his team at UC Davis extracted the dental plaque from the ancient teeth and then sent it to Tushingham and Gang's labs at WSU for analysis. The WSU researchers used liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to test the samples for nicotine and other plant-based drugs like caffeine and atropine, a muscle-relaxant.

Among the samples they analyzed, two tested positive for nicotine, demonstrating for the first time that the drug can survive in detectable amounts in ancient plaque. One of these individuals, an adult man, was also buried with a pipe. A surprise came from the molar of an older woman, which also tested positive for nicotine.

"While we can't make any broad conclusions with this single case, her age, sex, and use of tobacco is intriguing," Eerkens said. "She was probably past child-bearing age, and likely a grandmother. This supports recent research suggesting that younger adult women in traditional societies avoid plant toxins like nicotine to protect infants from harmful biochemicals, but that older women can consume these intoxicants as needed or desired."

While the researchers did not detect evidence of any other plant-based drugs in this particular study, they believe dental plaque could be used help trace the use and spread of other intoxicants as well.

"We think a wide variety of plant-based, intoxicating chemicals could be detected in ancient dental plaque," Brownstein said. "It really opens up a lot of interesting avenues of discovery."

Author: Will Ferguson | Source: Washington State University [February 27, 2018]

Chris Rodning, the Paul and Debra Gibbons Professor in the Tulane School of Liberal Arts’ Department of Anthropology, unravels early entanglements between Native Americans and European explorers, revealing how their interactions shaped the history of the American South.

An image taken in June 2017 by a camera mounted on a drone displays the exposed remnants of Fort San Juan. Excavations of this area of the site will be continued in June 2018 [Credit: Ryan Wallace]

“Native Americans’ responses to Spanish explorers and colonists form an important part of the story behind the history of European colonialism in North America,” said Rodning, who conducts archaeological research at Fort San Juan — the earliest known permanent European settlement in the interior United States, located near Morganton, North Carolina.

Since 2001, Rodning has collaborated with David Moore, an anthropology professor from Warren Wilson College, and Rob Beck, an associate professor of anthropology from the University of Michigan, to excavate the site.

“In 2013, we identified the archaeological footprint of the fort,” said Rodning, noting that the team has since focused on learning how the structure was built and where it was located in relation to a nearby Native American settlement called Joara.

In 1540, the conquistador Hernando de Soto traversed this part of western North Carolina.

“He threatened communities with violence, demanded food and sometimes attacked when they did not comply with his demands. He also pressed Native Americans into service as porters to carry supplies for his men,” said Rodning.

Hannah Hoover, a Tulane senior double majoring in anthropology and classical studies, digs dirt from excavation squares at the Fort San Juan site and throws it up to sifters to screen the dirt in search of artifacts [Credit: Christopher Rodning]

One generation after de Soto’s expedition, Spanish explorer Juan Pardo arrived with another group of soldiers and established Fort San Juan in 1566.

“When Pardo marched inland, the town of Joara was a much more powerful town than it had been 26 years previously,” said Rodning — possibly because of Joara’s previous interactions with de Soto.

At first, an alliance formed between Pardo and the people of Joara, but in 1568, warriors from Joara sacked the fort and burned the compound.

“Architectural materials and designs of burned houses at the site demonstrate evidence of the typical Native American style of architectural design and construction, but some wooden fragments also indicate that they were cut and shaped with metal tools. The significance of that is Native Americans didn’t have those types of metal tools,” said Rodning.

Rodning said that it’s likely that Native Americans gained access to these new tools from Spanish soldiers, or that Spanish soldiers participated in the construction and maintenance of houses where the men garrisoned at Fort San Juan lived.

Rodning said his team remains committed to the project in hopes of understanding how early moments and subsequent episodes of Spanish contact changed Native American communities in this region.

University Press of Florida published the group’s findings in a book called Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site in 2016.

Source: Tulane University [February 27, 2018]

The idea of binding and reshaping a baby's head may make today's parents cringe, but for families in the Andes between 1100-1450, cranial modification was all the rage.

Starting around 1300, high-ranking members of a pre-Inca population increasingly had their heads bound into a narrow, elongated shape during infancy [Credit: M. Velasco/Current Anthropology 2018]

Like Chinese foot binding, the practice may have been a marker of group identity. Its period of popularity in what is now Peru, before the expansion of the Inca empire, was marked by political upheaval, ecological stress and the emergence of new cultural practices. In a study published in Current Anthropology, Matthew Velasco, assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell University, explores how head-shaping practices may have enabled political solidarity while furthering social inequality in the region.

Velasco analyzed hundreds of human skeletal remains from multiple tombs in the Colca Valley of highland Peru and discovered that before 1300 most people did not have modified heads. He found that the number of individuals with cranial modifications increased over time, from 39.2 percent to 73.7 percent during the later portion of the Late Intermediate Period.

Above-ground tombs at the cemetery site of Yuraq Qaqa (Colca Valley, Peru) [Credit: David Rodriguez Sotomayo]

Skeletal samples of two major ethnic groups showed that the Collaguas employed methods to make their heads assume a longer, narrower shape, while the Cavanas sought to make their heads wide and squat. Eventually, the elongated head shape of the Collaguas became the predominant style of modification in the upper Colca Valley. According to Velasco, this shift toward embodying a shared identity may have strengthened ties between groups engaged in protracted conflict with outsiders, including the Incas.

"The increased homogeny of head shapes suggests that modification practices contributed to the creation of a new collective identity and may have exacerbated emerging social differences," Velasco said. "Head shape would be an obvious signifier of affiliation and could have encouraged unity among elites and increased cooperation in politics."

About 300 years before the Inca arrived, low-ranking members of the Collagua people sometimes had their heads flattened at the back during infancy (left). More often, their heads were not modified (right) [Credit: M. Velasco/Current Anthropology 2018]

Whether head modification conferred distinct privileges and higher status is unclear, but Velasco found bio-archaeological evidence that modified females possessed greater access to diverse food options and were less likely to encounter violence. Cranial modification thus appears to be a factor in societal inequality, Velasco said.

One explanation for the cranial modifications is offered by a 16th-century Spanish colonial document Velasco examined, which described groups molding skulls into the shape of the volcano from their origin myth. "If this is true, then cranial modification reflects a deeply religious worldview and was fundamental to a person's being and existence, and not simply a fashion statement," Velasco said.

Author: Linda B. Glaser | Source: Cornell University [February 21, 2018]

With the help of airborne laser mapping technology, a team of archaeologists, led by University of Arizona professor Takeshi Inomata, is exploring on a larger scale than ever before the history and spread of settlement at the ancient Maya site of Ceibal in Guatemala.

On the left is an aerial image of an area of Ceibal. On the right is the same area, as mapped by LiDAR [Credit: Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona]

In a new paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, Inomata and his colleagues explain how they commissioned the use of LiDAR, or light detection and ranging, technology to map a significantly larger area of Ceibal than ever before recorded.

LiDAR provides highly accurate, detailed 3-D maps of ground surface topography. Over the course of just a few days at Ceibal, a small airplane, equipped with lasers powerful enough to peer through the dense jungle canopy, soared above the site, mapping -- with a less than 10-centimeter margin of error -- the shape, size and location of ancient Maya pyramids, platforms, ceremonial centers, roads, water reservoirs and other structures previously undocumented by archaeologists.

The resulting map covers 470 square kilometers that would have been extremely challenging for archaeologists to reach on foot, and includes the locations of more than 15,000 ancient Maya architectural remains. Previously, archaeologists had information on only about 8 square kilometers and fewer than 1,000 structures in the area.

"This kind of understanding was really unthinkable some years ago, and now suddenly we can have all these data," Inomata said. "The scale is completely different."

Inomata and his colleagues used the LiDAR data to reconstruct a timeline of growth and change at Ceibal, building upon what they already knew from previous excavations about when different styles of structures appeared between about 1,000 B.C. and A.D. 950.

At the top is an aerial image of a reconstructed temple at Ceibal. At the bottom is the same area, mapped by thousands of individual laser points [Credit: Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona]

"What we tried to do here was to set up a systematic method of analyzing this LiDAR data over a wide area, and then translate it into an interpretation of temporal sequences and social change," said Inomata, a professor and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice in the UA School of Anthropology.

Combining LiDAR and excavation data then allowed the archaeologists to reconstruct settlement patterns over a long period of time.

"Looking at the LiDAR image, you can see the specific types of architecture -- pyramids, long structures -- and we know from our excavations what time period they're from. So just looking at the shape of the structures, we can see this network of communities and ceremonial centers from specific periods," Inomata said.

Lasers Let Humans Explore Challenging Terrain

Mapping an archaeological site in a densely vegetated area such as the Guatemalan jungle is a daunting task -- one traditionally done on foot. Because of the challenging terrain, only about 1.9 square kilometers of Ceibal had been completely mapped previously -- by Harvard archaeologists in the 1960s -- while about 6 more kilometers were surveyed with less detail.

It was in that small area that Inomata and his colleagues have been conducting archaeological excavations for the last 13 years.

UA archaeologist Takeshi Inomata during an excavation at Ceibal [Credit: Takeshi Inomata/University of Arizona]

Since joining the growing number of researchers who have used the LiDAR surveying method to help with interpretation of archaeological sites, Inomata and his team have gained access to data that would have been nearly impossible to obtain through on-foot surveys. The LiDAR survey, which was conducted by the University of Houston's National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, even found a few things that the original on-the-ground mapping done in the 1960s missed.

"The maps that Harvard made were incredibly accurate, considering they were all ground survey, but with LiDAR we found a lot more buildings than were on the map previously, and their locations are very accurate," said paper co-author Melissa Burham, a UA graduate student in anthropology.

As a growing number of researchers turn to the LiDAR surveying method to aid in the interpretation of archaeological sites, Inomata and his team hope their colleagues in the field may follow a similar process to what they used at Ceibal, which they plan to apply again in their regional survey in the state of Tabasco in Mexico, where they will begin work in February.

"In archaeology, excavation is always important, but you can't excavate everything, so you look for patterns on a smaller scale that you can extrapolate over a larger region," said Burham, who co-authored the paper along with Inomata, UA anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and researchers from Guatemala and Japan. "That's really what this paper aims to do. This can help other people understand growth at other Maya centers and help with dating methods."

Source: University of Arizona [February 21, 2018]

Geophysicists have obtained detailed three-dimensional images of a dangerous megathrust fault west of Costa Rica where two plates of the Earth's crust collide. The images reveal features of the fault surface, including long grooves or corrugations, that may determine how the fault will slip in an earthquake.

Perspective view of the shallow megathrust looking seaward towards the trench; the frontal prism has been cut away. The color scales indicate depth below seafloor, and grey denotes the seafloor [Credit: Edwards et al., 2018]

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, focused on the Costa Rica subduction zone where the Cocos plate slowly dives beneath the overriding Caribbean plate. Variations in texture seen in different portions of the fault surface may explain why Costa Rica has complex, patchy earthquakes that do not seem to slip to shallow depths, unlike some other megathrust faults, said first author Joel Edwards, a Ph.D. candidate in Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

"Our new imagery shows large variability in the conditions along the megathrust, which may be linked to a number of earthquake phenomena we observe in the region," Edwards said.

Megathrusts, the huge continuous faults found in subduction zones, are responsible for Earth's largest earthquakes. Megathrust earthquakes can generate destructive tsunamis and are a serious hazard facing communities located near subduction zones. Understanding the mechanisms at work along these faults is vital for disaster management around the globe.

Edwards worked with a team of geophysicists at UC Santa Cruz, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Texas-Austin, and McGill University to obtain 3-dimensional imagery of the fault interface using cutting-edge acoustic imaging technology. The long grooves, or corrugations, they observed along the interface are similar in size to those found along the base of fast-flowing glaciers and along some ocean ridges. The images also showed varying amounts of smoothness and corrugations on different portions of the fault.

"This study produced an unprecedented view of the megathrust. Such 3-D information is critical to our ability to better understand megathrust faults and associated hazards worldwide," said coauthor Jared Kluesner, a geophysicist at the USGS in Santa Cruz.

The acoustic dataset was collected in spring 2011 on the academic research vessel Marcus G. Langseth. The ship towed an array of underwater microphones and sound sources behind it as it made a series of overlapping loops over the area of the fault. The data were processed over the next 2 years and have since been used in a number of studies looking at different aspects of the subduction zone process. This particular study focused on the interface between the sliding plates, which serves as a record of slip and slip processes.

"The 3-D site selection was really good and the resulting acoustic dataset showed extraordinary detail," said Edwards, noting that coauthor Emily Brodsky, professor of Earth and planetary sciences, was the first to recognize the corrugations. Such features had been observed in exposed faults on land, but never before in a fault deep beneath the surface.

"I had an early rendition of the interface that vaguely showed long grooves, and during my qualifying exam, Brodsky saw them and asked, 'are those corrugations!?' I didn't know, but I knew they were real features. Slip-derived corrugations was a really neat hypothesis, and we dug into it after that," he said.

The area in this study had long been a target for drilling into the megathrust by the Costa Rica Seismic Project (CRISP). Coauthor Eli Silver, professor emeritus of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and others in the CRISP program decided to pursue a 3-D seismic study, which must precede any deep drilling, and the project was funded by the National Science Foundation in 2009. "At present, two drilling expeditions have been accomplished with shallower targets, and, though not yet scheduled, we are hopeful that the deep drilling will occur," Silver said.

Researchers hope to use similar imaging techniques on other subduction zones, such as the Cascadia margin along the northern U.S. west coast, where there is a long history of large megathrust earthquakes and related tsunamis. "Conducting this type of 3-D study along the Cascadia margin could provide us with key information along the megathrust, a plate boundary that poses a substantial hazard risk to the U.S. west coast," Kluesner said.

Author: Tim Stephens | Source: University of California - Santa Cruz [February 12, 2018]

A fossilized trackway on public lands in Lake County, Oregon, may reveal clues about the ancient family dynamics of Columbian mammoths.

Footprints of mammoths, dated to 43,000 years ago, are seen in a portion of a trackway that was uncovered by researchers  in 2017 in an ancient dry lake bed in Lake County, Oregon [Credit: Greg Shine, Bureau of Land Management]

Recently excavated by a team from the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History, the Bureau of Land Management and the University of Louisiana, the trackway includes 117 footprints thought to represent a number of adults as well as juvenile and infant mammoths.

Discovered by Museum of Natural and Cultural History paleontologist Greg Retallack during a 2014 class field trip on fossils at the UO, the Ice Age trackway is the focus of a new study appearing online ahead of print in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Retallack returned to the site with the study's coauthors, including UO science librarian Dean Walton, in 2017. The team zeroed in on a 20-footprint track, dating to roughly 43,000 years ago, that exhibited some intriguing features.

"These prints were especially close together, and those on the right were more deeply impressed than those on the left-as if an adult mammoth had been limping," said Retallack, also a professor in the UO Department of Earth Sciences and the study's lead author.

Mammoth trackway at Fossil Lake [Credit: Greg Shine, Bureau of Land Management]

But, as the study reveals, the limping animal wasn't alone: Two sets of smaller footprints appeared to be approaching and retreating from the limper's trackway.

"These juveniles may have been interacting with an injured adult female, returning to her repeatedly throughout the journey, possibly out of concern for her slow progress," Retallack said. "Such behavior has been observed with wounded adults in modern, matriarchal herds of African elephants."

The tracks were made in a layer of volcanic soil at Fossil Lake, a site first excavated by UO science professor Thomas Condon in 1876 and today administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

"America's public lands are some of the world's greatest outdoor laboratories. Localities such as this mammoth tracksite are unique parts of America's heritage and indicate that there are many special sites still to be discovered," said study co-author Brent Breithaupt, a paleontologist in the Wyoming State Office of the Bureau of Land Management.

Panoramic view with mammoth trackway in foreground [Credit: Greg Shine, Bureau of Land Management]

Specimens from the 1876 Fossil Lake excavation-along with the rest of Condon's extensive assemblage of fossils and geologic specimens-were donated to UO in the early 1900s and form the core of the museum's Condon Fossil Collection, now under Retallack's direction and boasting upwards of 50,000 fossil specimens.

Last month a new state law went into effect, making the UO museum Oregon's default repository for fossils found on state lands. The museum is also a designated repository for artifacts and paleontological specimens collected from BLM-administered lands in Oregon, ensuring they are available to future generations for education and research.

As part of the 2017 study, Neffra Matthews of the BLM's National Operations Center in Denver, helped survey, map and document the trackway using photogrammetry, which helps scientists perform accurate measurements based on land-based or aerial photographs.

"There is a vast storehouse of natural history found on BLM-managed land, and it's exciting to work with researchers like Professor Retallack in capturing 3D data on fragile paleontological resources," she said.


Retallack said that trace fossils such as trackways can provide unique insights into natural history.

"Tracks sometimes tell more about ancient creatures than their bones, particularly when it comes to their behavior," he said. "It's amazing to see this kind of interaction preserved in the fossil record."

Elephants once roamed across much of North America. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) were common in Canada and Alaska. Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) occupied the region that became Washington state to South Dakota and south into Mexico. Most mammoths went extinct about 11,500 years ago, but some isolated Arctic island populations of woolly mammoth persisted until 4,000 years ago.

Source: University of Oregon [February 12, 2018]

Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed three 19th-century mummies of Chinese immigrants. The bodies were found inside their wooden coffins by workers of Calidda, a natural gas distributor in Lima and Callao.

Archaeologist Sulema Zelaya shows a 19th century mummy of a Chinese immigrant inside a wooden coffin [Credit: Guadalupe Pardo, Reuters]

The mummies were buried less than a metre (3.2 feet) deep in the Lima district of Carabayllo. Their coffins contained traditional Chinese artifacts, such as lighters and pipes to smoke opium.

The coffins contained traditional Chinese artifacts, such as lighters and pipes to smoke opium [Credit: Guadalupe Pardo, Reuters]

Archaeologists believe the mummies belonged to immigrants from the first wave of Chinese who travelled to Peru in the mid-19th century to work in the country's booming sugar and cotton industries.


The three mummies were found on Jan. 22, 2018, as Calidda employees worked to install new natural gas pipelines.


Archaeologist Cecilia Camargo, in charge of the excavation and conservation of these bodies, believes more remains of Chinese immigrants will be found in the area.

Source: Reuters [February 06, 2018]

The migration of the dinosaurs across the globe was so rapid that it may have contributed to their demise, new research has found.

Credit: J Scott Applewhite/AP

A study by University of Reading scientists for the first time reveals the paths taken by the dinosaurs as they expanded out of South America during their rise to world dominance. The research shows that the speed of this expansion meant that the dinosaurs quickly became cosmopolitan and subsequently ran out of land. This lack of space then seriously impeded their ability to produce new species.

The work, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, links to a previous Reading study that revealed the dinosaurs were in decline as a species 50 million years before the asteroid strike that finally wiped them out.

Ciara O'Donovan, evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading and lead author of the study, said: "Fossil evidence has shown us where the dinosaurs started out and where they died, but there is an important middle period that little was known about. Our research fills this gap in prehistory by revealing how the dinosaurs spread, how fast they moved and what directions they moved in through time.

"The dinosaurs exploded out of South America in a frenzy of movement to cover the planet. It was during this time that diverse forms evolved and eventually led to species such as the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, Archaeopteryx (the earliest bird) and the gigantic, long necked Diplodocus. This honeymoon period could not last forever though, and the dinosaurs eventually filled every available habitat on Earth.

"There was nowhere new for species to move to, which may have prevented new species from arising, contributing to the dinosaurs' pre-asteroid decline. In essence, they were perhaps too successful for their own good."

'Blank Canvas'

Fossil evidence shows dinosaurs originated in the late Triassic Period (around 230 million years ago) in South America, which was then part of the huge land mass called Pangea. This closely followed the world's largest extinction event that wiped out almost all of life on Earth.

The scientists developed a novel, statistical method to uncover where every dinosaur species' ancestors existed, in three dimensional space, on the globe. By doing this they were able to demonstrate that the dinosaurs spread unchecked across the huge available space, at a rate of 1,000km/million years. They dominated every terrestrial habitat, across all the continents as they drifted apart, over the course of 170 million years.

This saturation of the Earth caused the dinosaurs to become increasingly specialised to live in their existing environment, resulting in a fundamental change in the way they evolved and produced new species. This curbed their progress and left them vulnerable to future changes in the environment, such as those caused by the asteroid strike.

Dr. Chris Venditti, evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading and co-author of the paper, said: "Early dinosaurs had a blank canvas and spread quickly across the devastated Earth, taking up every opportunity in their path. Virtually every door was open to them as there was no competition from other species.

"The inability of the dinosaurs to adapt rapidly enough as the Earth became full may explain why they were in decline prior to the asteroid strike, and why they were so susceptible to almost total extinction when it hit."

Source: University of Reading [February 06, 2018]

Nearly a dozen human skeletons arranged in a circular formation have been discovered in an ancient Mexican pit in Tlalpan village. The surprising discovery was made by a group of archaeologists, who found the ancient burial site hiding four feet under a building that housed classrooms and dorms for priests.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

This site, located to the south of present-day Mexico City, had 10 human skeletons interlocked with each other in an extremely strange manner.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

Discovering centuries-old skeletons in a hidden burial site is not something new but these bodies, more than 2500 years old, were found lying on their sides and their arm bones were arranged in a spiral formation.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

The discovery is not only the first of its kind but also points to some kind of ritualistic burial where people could have been intertwined in death, according to a statement from the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

"There was one individual over the other, for example: The head of the individual on the chest of the other, the hands of one individual under the other's back, the baby on the body of another," Jimena Rivera Jimena, who found the skeletons, told Mexican website Noticieros Televisa.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

So far, the group analysing the remains has found that two of them were females while one was a male. While they are still working on the discovery, it has been confirmed that most of them were adolescents, with two young ones, a three- to five-year-old child and a one-month-old baby.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

The exact cause of their death remains unclear but the archaeologists have noticed some deformities on their skull and teeth, which appeared intentional.

Credit: Mauricio Marat, INAH

Cranial deformities have previously been spotted in the remains of Mesoamericans in the past. It was done for a range of reasons such as for representing group affiliation or social status. Archaeologists also found ancient clay pots, ceramic spheres, stones and bowls inside the grave.


Tlalpan, the village linked to this burial, dates back to Mexico's pre-classical period (between 700BC to 200BC) and is believed to have thrived for about 500 years.

Source: The International Business Times [February 02, 2018]

The steamy jungles of northern Guatemala don't reveal secrets easily. For centuries, the overgrown landscape has protected most of the remains of the Maya who once tamed it—yielding slowly to modern scientists seeking to learn more about the ancient civilization known for its sophisticated hieroglyphic script, art, architecture and mathematics.

Maya structures are scattered across the jungle in this LiDAR image taken over northern Guatemala [Credit: Wild Blue Media/National Geographic]

The Maya civilization began to emerge about 3,000 years ago, and reached its peak during the Classic Period, from about A.D. 250-900. Now, technology that allows for digital deforestation has uncovered thousands of new Maya structures previously undetected beneath smothering vegetation. For archaeologists like Thomas Garrison, assistant professor of anthropology at Ithaca College, the findings have done far more than recast notions of the size and density of the Central American society.

"Frankly, it's turning our discipline on its head," he said.

Garrison helped orchestrate the 2016 aerial survey these revelations stem from. The findings and the technology behind them—LiDAR (light detection and ranging)—will be the focus of a new National Geographic documentary to premiere on Feb. 6 at 9 p.m. EST titled "Lost Treasures of the Maya Snake King." The documentary will follow a NatGeo explorer as he treks deep in the jungle to seek out a pyramid detected in the survey.

Garrison appears in the documentary commenting on the LiDAR mapping and its results. The program will also feature custom-designed images of many of the newly revealed structures, as translated from the data.

Laser Show in the Jungle

LiDAR is a method of mapping from the sky: An airplane-mounted device sends a constant pulse of laser light across a swath of terrain; precise measurements of how long it takes the emitted breams to bounce off surfaces are taken and translated into topographic data.

A comparison of LiDAR data showing the ancient Maya site of El Zotz covered in trees (left), and with the trees digitally removed [Credit: Ithaca College]

The laser pierces through the smallest gaps in the vegetation to record the lay of the land below with remarkable accuracy. The resulting data can be tweaked to filter out the trees, thus offering an unencumbered view of everything else on the surface.

The technology is a boon for surveys in jungles like those in lowland Guatemala, where dense canopy hinders other methods of aerial survey and thick undergrowth can conceal the relationship even between known structures.

"In that kind of environment where you can't see [a few feet in front of yourself], it's very hard to piece that all together," Garrison said. In a swampy area of rolling hillocks rising from the muck, for example: "You have this idea that there's some little stuff on the hills, but the LiDAR lets you see it in its totality."

The survey of 2,100-square kilometers encompassed several major Maya sites, including the largest at Tikal, and El Zotz, where Garrison focuses his research. The LiDAR mapping revealed over 60,000 previously unknown structures in total, from unknown pyramids, palace structures, terraced fields, roadways, defensive walls and towers, and houses. Archaeologists are realizing that the ancient population centers they've spent decades studying are much bigger than they speculated.

"Everyone is seeing larger, denser sites. Everyone," Garrison said. "There's a spectrum to it, for sure, but that's a universal: everyone has missed settlement in their [previous] mapping."

The new LiDAR survey revealed 60,000 structures scattered across the jungle over northern Guatemala [Credit: Wild Blue Media/National Geographic]

Especially telling to Garrison are newly revealed agricultural features that would be necessary to support the lowland Maya population during their centuries of civilization—population estimates have now expanded from a few million to 10-20 million—and defensive structures that suggest warfare was far more prevalent than previously known.

Only the Beginning

The LiDAR survey is a collaboration between archaeologists from the U.S., Europe and Guatemala, and the Fundación PACUNAM (Patrimonio Cultural y Natural Maya), a Guatemalan philanthropic and cultural heritage preservation organization.

Garrison serves as one of the archaeology advisors to the project, and was fundamental in lobbying for the survey, which is now the single largest ever conducted in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. Fundraising is already taking place for a second LiDAR survey of similar size, he said.


The LiDAR findings are only the beginning. There is still much to discover about the rise, peak and fall of the Maya civilization. The LiDAR data points to new areas where those answers may be found through fieldwork and excavation.

"That's the challenge now. Now we have so much data," Garrison said. "How do we handle it and how do we move forward with it? We've still got to get to those places, we've still got to check them out.

"It's difficult to convey how exciting this time is for us."

Author: Stephen Shoemaker | Source: Ithaca College [February 02, 2018]

On a ho-hum day some 12,800 years ago, the Earth had emerged from another ice age. Things were warming up, and the glaciers had retreated. Out of nowhere, the sky was lit with fireballs. This was followed by shock waves.

New research shows that some 12,800 years ago, an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth's land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires [Credit: University of Kansas]

Fires rushed across the landscape, and dust clogged the sky, cutting off the sunlight. As the climate rapidly cooled, plants died, food sources were snuffed out, and the glaciers advanced again. Ocean currents shifted, setting the climate into a colder, almost "ice age" state that lasted an additional thousand years.

Finally, the climate began to warm again, and people again emerged into a world with fewer large animals and a human culture in North America that left behind completely different kinds of spear points.

This is the story supported by a massive study of geochemical and isotopic markers just published in the Journal of Geology.

The results are so massive that the study had to be split into two papers. "Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago" is divided into "Part I: Ice Cores and Glaciers" and "Part 2: Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments."

The paper's 24 authors include KU Emeritus Professor of Physics & Astronomy Adrian Melott and Professor Brian Thomas, a 2005 doctoral graduate from KU, now at Washburn University.

"The work includes measurements made at more than 170 different sites across the world," Melott said.

The KU researcher and his colleagues believe the data suggests the disaster was touched off when Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating comet that was roughly 62 miles in diameter -- the remnants of which persist within our solar system to this day.

"The hypothesis is that a large comet fragmented and the chunks impacted the Earth, causing this disaster," said Melott. "A number of different chemical signatures -- carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia and others -- all seem to indicate that an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth's land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires."

According to Melott, analysis of pollen suggests pine forests were probably burned off to be replaced by poplar, which is a species that colonizes cleared areas.

Indeed, the authors posit the cosmic impact could have touched off the Younger Dryas cool episode, biomass burning, late Pleistocene extinctions of larger species and "human cultural shifts and population declines."

"Computations suggest that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects," Melott said. "The impact hypothesis is still a hypothesis, but this study provides a massive amount of evidence, which we argue can only be all explained by a major cosmic impact."

Source: University of Kansas [February 01, 2018]

Archaeologists are a little like forensic investigators: They scour the remains of past societies, looking for clues in pottery, tools and bones about how people lived, and how they died.

University of Washington researchers re-created ancient projectile points to test their effectiveness. From left to right: stone, microblade and bone tips [Credit: Janice Wood]

And just as detectives might re-create the scene of a crime, University of Washington archaeologists have re-created the weapons used by hunter-gatherers in the post-Ice Age Arctic some 14,000 years ago. Looking for clues as to how those early people advanced their own technology, researchers also considered what that might tell us about human migration, ancient climates and the fate of some animal species.

In an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Janice Wood, recent UW anthropology graduate, and Ben Fitzhugh, a UW professor of anthropology, show how they reconstructed prehistoric projectiles and points from ancient sites in what is now Alaska and studied the qualities that would make for a lethal hunting weapon.

The UW team chose to study hunting weapons from the time of the earliest archaeological record in Alaska (around 10,000 to 14,000 years ago), a time that is less understood archaeologically, and when different kinds of projectile points were in use. Team members designed a pair of experiments to test the effectiveness of the different point types. By examining and testing different points in this way, the team has come to a new understanding about the technological choices people made in ancient times.

"The hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago were more sophisticated than we give them credit for," Fitzhugh said. "We haven't thought of hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene as having that kind of sophistication, but they clearly did for the things that they had to manage in their daily lives, such as hunting game. They had a very comprehensive understanding of different tools, and the best tools for different prey and shot conditions."

Prior research has focused on the flight ballistics of the hunting weapons in general, and no prior study has looked specifically at the ballistics of tools used in Siberia and the Arctic regions of North America just after the Ice Age. In addition to foraging for plants and berries (when available), nomadic groups hunted caribou, reindeer and other animals for food, typically with spears or darts (thrown from atlatl boards). Without preservation of the wood shafts, these tools are mainly differentiated in the archaeological record by their stone and bone points. But it was not known how effective different kinds of points were in causing lethal injury to prey.

Nor is it known, definitively, whether different types of points were associated with only certain groups of people, or whether with the same groups used certain point types to specialize on particular kinds of game or hunting practices. It is generally accepted that different point types were developed in Africa and Eurasia and brought to Alaska before the end of the Ice Age. These included rudimentary points made of sharpened bone, antler or ivory; more intricate, flaked stone tips popularly familiar as "arrowheads"; and a composite point made of bone or antler with razor blade-like stone microblades embedded around the edges.

The three likely were invented at separate times but remained in use during the same period because each presumably had its own advantages, Wood said. Learning how they functioned informs what we know about prehistoric hunters and the repercussions of their practices.

So Wood traveled to the area around Fairbanks, Alaska, and crafted 30 projectile points, 10 of each kind. She tried to stay as true to the original materials and manufacturing processes as possible, using poplar projectiles, and birch tar as an adhesive to affix the points to the tips of the projectiles. While ancient Alaskans used atlatls (a kind of throwing board), Wood used a maple recurve bow to shoot the arrows for greater control and precision.

- For the bone tip, modeled on a 12,000-year-old ivory point from an Alaskan archaeological site, Wood used a multipurpose tool to grind a commercially purchased cow bone;

- For the stone tip, she used a hammerstone to strike obsidian into flakes, then shaped them into points modeled on those found at another site in Alaska from 13,000 years ago;

- And for the composite microblade tip -- modeled microblade technologies seen in Alaska since at least 13,000 years ago and a rare, preserved grooved antler point from a more recent Alaskan site used more than 8,000 years ago -- Wood used a saw and sandpaper to grind a caribou antler to a point. She then used the multipurpose tool to gouge out a groove around its perimeter, into which she inserted obsidian microblades.

Wood then tested how well each point could penetrate and damage two different targets: blocks of ballistic gelatin (a clear synthetic gelatin meant to mimic animal muscle tissue) and a fresh reindeer carcass, purchased from a local farm. Wood conducted her trials over seven hours on a December day, with an average outdoor temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Wood's field trial, the composite microblade points were more effective than simple stone or bone on smaller prey, showing the greatest versatility and ability to cause incapacitating damage no matter where they struck the animal's body. But the stone and bone points had their own strengths: Bone points penetrated deeply but created narrower wounds, suggesting their potential for puncturing and stunning larger prey (such as bison or mammoth); the stone points could have cut wider wounds, especially on large prey (moose or bison), resulting in a quicker kill.

Wood said the findings show that hunters during this period were sophisticated enough to recognize the best point to use, and when. Hunters worked in groups; they needed to complete successful hunts, in the least amount of time, and avoid risk to themselves.

"We have shown how each point has its own performance strengths," she said. Bone points punctured effectively, flaked stone created a greater incision, and the microblade was best for lacerated wounds. "It has to do with the animal itself; animals react differently to different wounds. And it would have been important to these nomadic hunters to bring the animal down efficiently. They were hunting for food."

Weapon use can shed light on the movement of people and animals as humans spread across the globe and how ecosystems changed before, during and after the ice ages.

"The findings of our paper have relevance to the understanding of ballistic properties affecting hunting success anywhere in the world people lived during the 99 percent of human history that falls between the invention of stone tools more than 3 million years ago in Africa and the origins of agriculture," Fitzhugh said.

It could also inform debates on whether human hunting practices directly led to the extinction of some species. The team's findings and other research show that our ancestors were thinking about effectiveness and efficiency, Wood said, which may have influenced which animals they targeted. An animal that was easier to kill may have been targeted more often, which could, along with changing climates, explain why animals such as the horse disappeared from the Arctic. A shot to the lung was lethal for early equines, Wood said, but a caribou could keep going.

"I see this line of research as looking at the capacity of the human brain to come up with innovations that ultimately changed the course of human history," she said. "This reveals the human capacity to invent in extreme circumstances, to figure out a need and a way to meet that need that made it easier to eat and minimized the risk."

Upon completion of the experiment, the bones were sterilized for future study of projectile impact marks.

Author: Kim Eckart | Source: University of Washington [January 31, 2018]