Past Horizons

The reefs surrounding the Gilbert Islands (Republic of Kiribati, Central Pacific), like many other island locations throughout the world, have undergone rapid and intensive environmental changes over the past 100 years.

One such change has been the reduction of the number of shark species present in their waters, even though sharks play an important part in the economy and culture of the Gilbertese.

Detail of FMNH 99071 showing the teeth of Carcharhinus obscurus attached using braided cord. (Credit: Drew J, Philipp C, Westneat MW

Two species of sharks previously unreported in both the historic records or contemporary studies were discovered in a new analysis of weapons made from shark teeth used by 19th century islanders. The find was reported in a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Joshua Drew from Columbia University and colleagues from the Field Museum of Natural History.

Using the novel data source of shark tooth weapons of the Gilbertese Islanders housed in natural history museums, they were able to show that two species of shark, the Spot-tail (Carcharhinus sorrah) and the Dusky (C. obscurus), were both present in the islands during the last half of the 19th century but not reported in any historical literature or contemporary ichthyological surveys of the region.

Analysed 120 weapons

For the current study, the researchers analysed a collection of 120 of these weapons from the Field Museum of Natural History, including some that resemble clubs, daggers, lances, spears and swords. They identified eight species of sharks based on the teeth used in these weapons, two of which have never been reported from these waters, in either historical surveys or contemporary analysis. Both these species are currently common in other areas, so while it is possible that they may still be living undiscovered in the GIlberts, it is more likely that the local populations have been driven to extinction.

Gilbertese shark tooth weapon (FMNH 99071). (Credit: Drew J, Philipp C, Westneat MW (2013)

Given the importance of these species to the ecology of the Gilbert Island reefs and to the culture of the Gilbertese people, documenting the shifts in fauna represents an important step toward restoring the ecological and cultural diversity of the area.

The combined data from weapons, literature, and museum collections shows how an increase in the diversity of sampling allows us to better explore the oceans.

Carcharhinus obscurus , via Wikimedia Commons

Source: PLOSone

More Information

• Drew J, Philipp C, Westneat MW (2013) Shark Tooth Weapons from the 19th Century Reflect Shifting Baselines in Central Pacific Predator Assemblies. PLoS ONE 8(4): e59855. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059855

• Kiribati National Tourism Office

Cite this article

PLOSone. Shark tooth weapons reveal lost species. Past Horizons. April 05 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/shark-tooth-weapons-reveal-lost-species For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

PAPA International offers a brief history of aerial photography, from the first time a camera took flight, until it developed into a business, with very practical applications.

The first known aerial photograph was taken in 1858 by French photographer and balloonist, Gaspar Felix Tournachon, known as “Nadar”. In 1855 he had patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying, but it took him 3 years of experimenting before he successfully produced the very first aerial photograph. It was a view of the French village of Petit-Becetre taken from a tethered hot-air balloon, 80 meters above the ground. This was no mean feat, given the complexity of the early collodion photographic process, which required a complete darkroom to be carried in the basket of the balloon!

Unfortunately, Nadar’s earliest photographs no longer survive, and the oldest aerial photograph known to be still in existence is James Wallace Black’s image of Boston from a hot-air balloon, taken in 1860. Following the development of the dry-plate process, it was no longer necessary carry so much equipment, and the first free flight balloon photo mission was carried out by Triboulet over Paris in 1879.

PAPA International, The Professional Aerial Photographers’ Association, is a professional trade organization, whose members are aerial photographers throughout the world.

Read on and learn about what happened next – papainternational.org

 

Friday 5 April 2013, marks the 90th anniversary of the death of the Egyptologist Lord Canarvon and the start of the mysterious curse of Tutankhamen, but author and University of Manchester Egyptologist Dr Joyce Tyldesley points out the real story is far from sinister.

She argues that an exclusive media deal coupled with the subsequent reliance on non-expert comment helped fuel rumours of a curse. Although she also notes that the curse of Tutankhamen is now far more famous than both the original Egyptian king and the men who first unearthed his treasure laden tomb.

It was in November 1922 when the Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team, including Lord Carnarvon, first entered the tomb of Tutankhamen. Their discovery received worldwide media attention, but an exclusive deal with The Times left scores of journalists sitting in the dust outside with nothing to see and no one to interview.

Consequently newspapers turned to all sorts of “experts” to comment on the tomb, including popular fiction authors like Arthur Conan Doyle. Most prominent of all was the popular novelist Marie Corelli, whose comments regarding the health of Lord Carnarvon helped to ignite rumours of a curse.

The curse begins George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, at Howard Carter’s home on the Theban west bank [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsIn a report in The Express on 24 March 1923 about Lord Carnarvon’s health Marie Corelli wrote: “I cannot but think that some risks are run by breaking into the last rest of a king of Egypt whose tomb is specially and solemnly guarded, and robbing him of possessions. This is why I ask: was it a mosquito bite that has so seriously infected Lord Canarvon?”

When, just a few days later Lord Carnarvon succumbed to his illness, Marie Corelli was hailed as a clairvoyant and a legend was born.

Dr Tyldesley remarks: “Finally the world’s press had a story they could publish without deferring to The Times; a human tragedy far more compelling than the disappointingly slow-moving events at the tomb. As with all celebrity deaths, the story rapidly gathered its own momentum and soon there were reports of sinister goings on. At the very moment of Carnarvon’s death all the lights in Cairo had been mysteriously extinguished and at his English home Carnarvon’s dog, Susie, let out a great howl and died.”

However, as Dr Tyldesley makes clear in her book, ‘Tutankhamen’s Curse: The Developing History of an Egyptian king’, a power cut in Cairo is far from unusual and given the time differences rather than dying simultaneously, Susie actually died four hours after her master.

But never letting the facts get in the way of a good story the press continued with the line that Carnarvon had succumbed to an ancient curse. It was Marie Corelli again who brought this to life with her phrase “death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb of a Pharaoh” and it was soon accepted that this or a slight variation was carved either over the entrance to Tutankhamen’s tomb or somewhere inside it.

However no evidence of this inscription has ever been found and Dr Tyldesley says it’s highly unlikely Tutankhamen would have felt the need to have one inscribed on his tomb.

“In a land where only about 5% of the population was literate it seems unlikely that those tempted to rob could actually read any warning. Instead it was widely accepted that the dead had the power to interfere with the living.”

Not letting facts get in the way of a good story

But the absence of any concrete proof did nothing to quell the rumours. As the years went on more deaths were attributed to the curse including Prince Ali Kemal Fahmy Bey who had visited the tomb – he was shot by his wife in 1923, Georges Bénédite the Head of the Department of Antiquities at the Louvre Museum who died in 1926 after seeing the tomb and in 1934 Albert Lythgoe the Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York who had seen the open sarcophagus of Tutankhamen a decade before.

Right up until the 1970s deaths were being ascribed to the curse including among the flight crew that brought Tutankhamen’s 1972 exhibition to London.

However, Howard Carter himself found it necessary time and time again to report that Tutankhamen’s tomb contained no biological booby traps, poisons or curse. In fact, of those who had first crept into the Burial Chamber, only Lord Canarvon had died prematurely.

Curse of the Pharaohs – 1957 film card So what of the death that sparked a legend?

It’s widely believed that Lord Canarvon died from blood poisoning after accidently cutting a mosquito bite whilst shaving. He was after all 57 years old at a time when the average male life expectancy at birth in the UK was just that. His health had also been severely weakened by a near-fatal car crash in Germany in 1901.

Other popular theories include the suggestion that Carnarvon might have been infected by a bite from a mosquito which had itself been contaminated by drinking Tutankhamen’s embalming fluids. This was first put forward by the Daily Mail and gained in popularity when the mummy’s autopsy revealed the scar on Tutankhamen’s face which was widely accepted as a mosquito bite linking Tutankhamen to Carnarvon. Unfortunately this theory doesn’t stand up as there were no mosquitoes in the dry Valley of the Kings before the Aswan dam was built in the 1960s.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the first to suggest that poisonous spores may have been included in the tomb. But this seems extremely unlikely given that ancient Egyptian medicine did not understand the causes of illnesses and sicknesses were attributed to malevolent spirits.

A suggestion he could have been poisoned by inhaling ancient and toxic bat guano that was heaped on the tomb floor can be ruled out as no bats had penetrated the sealed tomb.

And finally, the idea that Carnarvon might have been killed by radiation within the tombs has become increasingly popular. However, there is no evidence to support this theory.

So why has the concept of Tutankhamen’s curse persisted? Dr Tyldesley concludes:

“It’s a testament to the popularity of the occult that the modern legend of Tutankhamen’s curse continues to be believed even today. However, it’s not really surprising that this aspect of the story has lasted. Given the choice between focussing on the pretty average life of King Tut, a tomb they weren’t allowed to see and a relatively uneventful death, journalists can’t be blamed for wanting to write about a mysterious ancient curse; no matter how unlikely its existence really is.”

Deaths popularly attributed to Tutankhamun’s ‘curse’:

• Lord Carnarvon, financial backer of the excavation team who was present at the tomb’s opening, died on April 5, 1923 after a mosquito bite became infected; he died 4 months, and 7 days after the opening of the tomb.
• George Jay Gould I, a visitor to the tomb, died in the French Riviera on May 16, 1923 after he developed a fever following his visit.
• Egypt’s Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey died July 10, 1923: shot dead by his wife.
• Colonel The Hon. Aubrey Herbert, MP, Carnarvon’s half-brother, became completely blind and died 26 September 1923 from blood poisoning related to a dental procedure intended to restore his eyesight.
• Woolf Joel, a South African millionaire and visitor to the tomb, died November 13, 1923: shot dead in Johannesburg by blackmailer Baron Kurt von Veltheim whose real name was Karl Frederic Moritz Kurtze.
• Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, a radiologist who x-rayed Tutankhamun’s mummy, died January 15, 1924 from a mysterious illness.
• Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of Sudan, died November 19, 1924: assassinated while driving through Cairo.
• A. C. Mace, a member of Carter’s excavation team, died in 1928 from arsenic poisoning
• The Hon. Mervyn Herbert, Carnarvon’s half brother and the aforementioned Aubrey Herbert’s full brother, died May 26, 1929, reportedly from “malarial pneumonia”.
• Captain The Hon. Richard Bethell, Carter’s personal secretary, died November 15, 1929: found smothered in his bed.
• Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron Westbury, father of the above, died February 20, 1930; he supposedly threw himself off his seventh floor apartment.
• Howard Carter opened the tomb on February 16, 1923, and died well over a decade later on March 2, 1939; however, some have still attributed his death to the ‘curse’.

Source: University of Manchester

More Information

• “The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-speaking World”, Jasmine Day, 2006, Routledge
• Egyptology Online @ Manchester

Cite this article

University of Manchester. Curse of Tutankhamen – 90 years on. Past Horizons. April 05, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/curse-of-tutankhamen-90-years-on For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

 

Archaeologists digging near a spa in southern Israel have uncovered Byzantine-era remains that include a large wine-press and a unique clay lantern decorated with crosses looking like a miniature church

The stone remnants of what must have been a significant wine-making apparatus include compartments for storing grapes, a treading floor, and pits for collecting liquid, all spread over an area of more than 100 yards. It would have been in use about 1,500 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement Thursday.

Read more on www.timesofisrael.com

The Botocudo, a population indigenous to southeastern Brazil,

Indigenous people that lived in southeastern Brazil in the late 1800s shared some genetic sequences with Polynesians, an analysis of their remains shows. The finding offers some support for the possibility that Pacific islanders traded with South America thousands of years ago, but researchers say that the distinctive DNA sequences, or haplogroups, may have entered the genomes of the native Brazilians through the slave trade during the nineteenth century.

Most scientists agree that humans arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago, probably via the Bering land bridge linking northeastern Asia with what is now Alaska.

But the precise timing and the number of ‘migration waves’ is unclear, owing largely to variations in early Americans’ physical features, says Sérgio Pena, a molecular geneticist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Read the full article on nature.com

By Fernando Contreras Rodrigo and Cristina Bravo Asensio

The archaeological site of Sanisera is located on the northern coast of Menorca, three kilometres south of the Cape of Cavalleria, in the port of Sanitja and within the territory of Santa Teresa.

Aerial view of the port of Sanitja and location of archaeological site. Image: The Sanisera Field School

Ongoing archaeological excavations have shown that Roman Sanisera was occupied in the Late Republican period and throughout the Early Empire period. Its population prospered from the 4th century AD and especially during the Vandal occupation and beginning of Byzantine rule. Later, from the 7th century AD Sanisera gradually decayed until it became de-populated around the beginning of the 9th century AD.

In the early Eighties excavations were carried out in the central part of the city and during this time, several burials and the remains of an Early Christian basilica were found. In the mid nineties several systematic surveys identified six necropolii containing cist tombs, which surround the perimeter of the city and may date from between the 4th to the 6th centuries AD.

The most recent excavations took place between 2008 and 2012 in an area to the west of the Port of Sanitja and very close to the shoreline, successfully locating two previously unknown buildings (10 & 11).

Building 10 is a rectilinear structure with a total floor space of approximately 600 m².  It is made up of 18 rooms, including two kitchens (with a preserved hearth and in situ millstone as well as three cisterns), a metal foundry (with a small circular furnace and several pits), bedrooms (with small corner hearths) and even a latrine.

This building seems to have been built and occupied during the Late Empire period as an extension of the urban planning of Sanisera towards its northern limits.

Incense burner of Tanit – Enamelled Belt buckle – Sestertius of Empress Sabina

Some interesting finds from the land levelling layer includes a Punic-Ebussitan incense burner which represents the goddess Tanit and from the latest period of occupation, Islamic green glaze ceramics and two silver coins (dírhams) dating to 812 and 825.

Ivory sheet with a central cross design – Silver dirham (AD 825)

The second structure (Building 11), located at the south eastern portion of the excavated area has a semicircular apse on its western end, giving it a basilica like layout. Both the stratigraphic sequence along with the artefacts found within the structure shows an occupation span very similar to that of Building 10. However, it appears that this structure, unlike Building 10, has been remodelled six times over several centuries and has had various uses.

The phases that have been analysed in depth are its last three; those dating from the middle of the 3rd century AD until the end of the port of Sanitja’s occupation in the 9th century AD. In its fourth phase in the Late Empire period (middle of the 3rd century AD and during most of the 4th century AD) this structure seems to have functioned as a house and had incorporated part of the earlier walls into its design. In its final pre- Islamic phase as the city was losing its importance (between the early 7th until 9th century AD) it also functioned as a dwelling. However, it is its penultimate phase that is the most interesting.

Early Christian basilica of Sanisera (5th and 6th centuries AD) Religious function

The building undertook a major transformation during Sanitja’s period of prosperity (during the Vandal occupation and beginning of Byzantine rule in Menorca) and took on a basilical layout.

The stratigraphic sequence revealed pottery and 32 Vandal coins, all of which helped establish occupation from the mid 5th to mid 6th century AD.

Its re-modelling involved the construction of some new walls and blocking up of old entrances. However, it also incorporated parts of the pre-existing structure and was transformed into a basilica composed of five separate rooms which related to a flagstone paved central nave and an apse at the west end (Room 10), two side naves that shared similar dimensions (Rooms11&12) and two other spaces (Rooms 13&14) to the east.

The usual layout for a Christian basilica places the apse at the eastern end, but more unusually this one is on the west. However, there are many examples that do not follow the standard model, including the Spanish basilicas of Begastri, San Vicente Martir (Córdoba) or Marialba (Léon), all of them following a north-south orientation.

A baptistry

Room 11 of the basilica contains some interesting features which indicate that it performed a special function. Its entrance way is monumental (the largest in the whole building) and is made up of large squared sandstone blocks of a higher quality than anywhere else in the structure.

The wall on its northern side contains painted wall plaster in red and yellow ochre hues and along with further evidence of paint work in Room 13, this is the only decoration that has been found.

The third important feature of this room is a centrally located rectangular pit that follows a north-south orientation and is crossed by a second shorter pit oriented east-west. This feature is considered to be the baptismal font.

Baptismal font located in the centre of Room 11 – (sketch of layout) Ecclesiastical complex

The initial hypothesis is that both buildings belonged to the same ecclesiastical complex and consisted of a building for religious worship along with an associated ecclesiastical community house and pilgrim’s refuge. It is also thought that there is a connection with the funerary complex (Necropolis 04), located just 65 metres to the west, but outside the city limits. In 2012 excavations began at this site and so far a total of 15 tombs have been studied, all of them containing an average of 4 – 5 individuals.

The Early Christian basilica that was excavated in the eighties and the six Late Roman necropolii which surround the port city are also interesting elements that highlight the “sacred” nature of Sanitja in times when pilgrimage routes could have existed to the island of Menorca.

Ecclesiastical complexes proliferated in different areas of the Mediterranean between the 5th and 6th centuries AD, and many of them show clear similarities to the one at the port of Sanitja. After the Fall of Rome the church was becoming increasingly powerful and pilgrimage started to play an important function in Early Christian life.

Source: Sanisera Field School

Bibliography

• ALCAIDE, S. 2011: Arquitectura Cristiana Balear en la Antigüedad Tardía (Tesis Doctoral). Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica. Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Tarragona.

• ALONSO, A.1983: “Las Estancias Absidiadas en las Villae Romanas de Extremadura”, Nora: Revista de arte, geografía e historia, 4, 199-206.

• CASANOVAS, M. A. 2005: Historia de Menorca. Palma de Mallorca.

• CABALLERO, L.; ULBERT, T.1975: La Basílica Paleocristiana de Casa Herrera en las cercanías de Mérida (Badajoz), Madrid.

• CHAVARRÍA, A. 2007: El final de las Villae en Hispania. (Siglos IV-VII d.C.), Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive, Turnhout.

• MAROT, T. 1997: “Aproximación a la circulación monetaria en la península ibérica y las islas baleares durante los siglos V y VI: la incidencia de las emisiones vándalas y bizantinas”, Revue Numismatique, Volumen 6, Número 152, 157 – 190.

• SÁNCHEZ, I. 2009: “Arquitectura sacra de época tardía en Hispalis. Algunas reflexiones”, Archivo Español de Arqueología, Vol. 28, 255-274.

• VIZCAÍNO, J. 2009: La Presencia Bizantina en Hispania (Siglos VI-VII). La Documentación Arqueológica, Murcia.

More Information

• Archaeology Digs 2013. The Sanisera Field School offers 16 different courses in Europe focusing on the survey and excavation of the Roman city of Sanisera, bioarchaeology and maritime archaeology. Students gain fieldwork experience in both archaeology and biological anthropology.

Cite this article

Sanisera Field School. Excavating an Early Christian basilica at Sanisera. Past Horizons. April 04, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/Excavating an Early Christian basilica at Sanisera For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

David Lentz  from the University of Cincinnati focuses on Cerén, a farming village that was smothered under several metres of volcanic ash in the late sixth century.

Lentz will present his research, “The Lost World of the Zapotitan Valley: Cerén and its Paleoecological Context,” at the 78th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held on 3-7 April 2013 in Honolulu. More than 3,000 scientists from around the world attend the event to learn about research covering a broad range of topics and time periods.

Cerén, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Joya de Cerén, was discovered in El Salvador in the late 1970s when a governmental construction project unearthed what turned out to be ancient ceramic pottery and other clay structures. The initial archaeological excavation was directed by Payson Sheets, a faculty member at the University of Colorado and a friend of Lentz.

Ridged and furrowed land, believed to be a maize field. Photo provided by David Lentz, University of Cincinnati. Remarkably well preserved

Cerén is sometimes called “the Pompeii of Central America,” and much like that doomed ancient Roman city, the wreckage of Cerén was remarkably well preserved by its volcanic burial shroud.

“What this meant for me, is this site had all these plant remains lying on the ground,” Lentz says. “Not only do we find these plant remains well preserved, but we find them where the people left them more than a thousand years ago, and that is really extraordinary.”

Lentz specializes in paleoethnobotany and often in his work – including at other Maya sites – he’s left to interpret complex meaning from splinters of charred wood and hard nut fragments. The Mayas’ tropical environment, which isn’t conducive to preserving plant remains, doesn’t make things any easier.

But the situation was different at Cerén. The village’s sudden and complete ruin sealed it under layers of preservative ash. So Lentz’s research there is still challenging but in an unfamiliar way.

“It was tricky because we kept encountering things we’d never encountered before at a Maya site,” Lentz says. “They were just invisible because of the lack of preservation.”

A few examples of what Lentz and his team have discovered at Cerén:

• Large quantities of a root crop (malanga, a relative of taro) that previously had not been associated with Maya agriculture. They found another “invisible” crop of manioc alongside the more anticipated fields of maize, and they found grasses no longer in existence on the modern-day El Salvador landscape.

• The first discovery of a Maya kitchen, complete with intensively planted household garden. “We could tell what was planted around the houses,” Lentz says. “This is fabulous because people have long debated how the Maya did all this. Now we have a real example.”

• A household with more than 70 ceramic pots, many used to store beans, peppers and other plant matter. Having that many vessels in one home was an unusual discovery for what is thought to be a small, farming village.

• Large plots of neatly rowed land, evidence of ridge and furrow agriculture. Lentz also posits that the people of Cerén surrounded their homes with orchard trees. These discoveries seemingly debunk the common theory that the Maya employed a slash-and-burn agriculture method.

• A raised, paved pathway called a “sacbe,” which was used by the Maya for ceremonial and commercial purposes. Lentz plans additional research on the sacbe to see what other significant discoveries could be made by following the path.

Mayas effectively implemented systems of agriculture and arboriculture

From these new discoveries come many lessons, a lot of them ecological. Lentz has studied how the Mayas effectively implemented systems of agriculture and arboriculture. He is intrigued by what made these methods successful, considering the Maya population was much denser than what exists on the modern landscape.

What is thought to be a Maya shaman’s house at Cerén. Photo provided by David Lentz, University of Cincinnati.

His findings at Cerén give him new pieces to plug into the Maya puzzle. Furthermore, they help us understand how humankind affects the natural world.

“Cerén is regarded internationally as one of the treasures of the world,” Lentz says. “What’s been found there gives you a real idea of what things were like in the past and how humans have modified things. I think what we’re learning there is revolutionising our concept of the ancient past in Mesoamerica.”

Source: The University of Cincinnati

More Information

• SAA 78th Annual Meeting
• Joya de Cerén Archaeological Site

Cite this article

The University of Cincinnati. Volcanic burial ground allows detailed insight into Maya crops. Past Horizons. April 03, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/volcanic-burial-ground-allows-detailed-insight-into-maya-crops For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

In the middle of the Bronze Age, around 1000 BCE, the quantity of metal artefacts traded in the Baltic Sea region increased dramatically. Around that same time, a new type of monument appeared along the coasts; stones set on edge and arranged in the form of ships, built by the maritime culture involved in that same metal trade.

A wide maritime network

These Bronze Age maritime groups were part of a network that extended across large parts of northern Europe and with links further to the south: a network maintained due to the increasing dependence on bronze and other important raw materials as a means of social status and cultural dependency.

Archaeologists have long assumed that bronze was imported to Scandinavia from the south, and recent analyses has now confirmed this hypothesis. However, the people who conducted the trade and formed the networks are rarely addressed, not to mention the locations of where they met.

‘One reason why the meeting places of the Bronze Age are not discussed very often is that we have been unable to find them. Which is in contrast to the trading centres of the [later] Viking Age, which have been easy to locate due to the wealth of archaeological material that was left behind,’ says the author of the thesis Joakim Wehlin from the University of Gothenburg and Gotland University.

In his thesis, Wehlin analysed the entirety of archaeological material from the stone ships and also the placement of these monuments within the landscape of Gotland. The thesis offers a new and extensive account of the stone ships and suggests that the importance of the Baltic Sea during the Scandinavian Bronze Age, not least as a waterway, has been underestimated in previous research.

The stone ships can be found across the whole Baltic Sea region; especially on the larger islands with a significant cluster on Gotland. The ships have long been thought to have served as graves and for this reason they have been viewed as vessels intended to take the deceased into the afterlife.

Skeppssättning (Stone ship), Gnisvärd, Gotland Image: Roine Johansson (Flickr, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) The site as a meeting place

‘My study shows a different picture,“  says Wehlin

“It seems the whole body was typically not buried within the ship, and a significant percentage of stone ships have no graves within them at all. Instead, they sometimes show remains of other types of activities. So with the absence of the dead, the traces of the living begin to appear.’

Wehlin suggests that the stone ships and the activities that may have taken place around them point to a people who were focused on maritime trade and connections. Details in the ship monuments indicate that they were built not so much as spectral ships, but as representations of real vessels.

Wehlin feels that the stone ships can even give clues about the ship-building techniques and structural dimensions and this provides further insight into the ships that sailed the Baltic Sea during the Bronze Age.

This period in prehistory shows the ship as a dominant element of the visual culture; carved in stone, decorated on bronze artefacts or built as stone constructions. The ships visualised in different media seem to refer to factual ships and the variety could indicate different functional ships.

Early trading ports

Using terrain analysis, Wehlin has located what he feels are a number of potential meeting places – which could even be described as early trading ports.

In one part of the study area in the north-east of Gotland the water system consists of the Hörsne River which later becomes the Gothem River (the largest river in Gotland). The river runs north-east through the wetlands of Lina bog, and continues to its mouth at Åminne and the Bay of Vitviken into the Baltic Sea.

The Lina bog was – prior to the draining campaign in 1947 – the largest on Gotland. This area appears as a maritime landscape with a large inland wetland, bogs, river-systems, river-mouth, coast and sea situated within a rich Bronze Age landscape. The area might well have been important as a communication hub between the east and west coast one that continued into historic times.

Wehlin believes that it is no coincidence that one of the largest clusters of ship settings, almost 15 % of the total number of such monuments, appears in this region.

He suggests that people who were part of a maritime institution; boat builders, seafarers, people with knowledge and skills required for overseas journeys, such as navigation, trade etc., might have had a special place in the society. If so, they may be connected to the ship setting tradition.  These features can be seen as a primary instrument for collective identification, akin to the rock-carving sites in Bohuslän. The burials that are present near these sites become secondary activities related to the power of place.

Source: University of Gothenburg

More Information

• Approaching the Gotlandic Bronze Age from Sea. Future possibilities from a maritime perspective by Joakim Wehlin,

• Published in: Martinsson-Wallin, H. (2010). Baltic Prehistoric Interactions and Transformations: The Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Gotland University Press 5. s. 89-109. Bronze Age Gotland

Cite this article

University of Gothenburg. Investigating Bronze Age stone ships on Gotland. Past Horizons. April 01, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/04/2013/investigating-bronze-age-stone-ships-on-gotland For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

See on Scoop.it – Archaeology News

The monastery attracted so many students and monks from around greater India that its administration built an annex to house the seekers of enlightenment coming to meditate there, archaeologists at Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) have discovered.

Another notable finding was that the main compound of the monastery, located in present-day Badal Pur, is at least 300 years older than archaeologists previously estimated. The main compound, which consists of 55 “monk cells”, was excavated between 2005 and 2012.

See on tribune.com.pk

Initial funding has been secured for an ambitious archaeological project to uncover a lost 17th century town in Northern Ireland.

The site beside Dunluce Castle (above)  on the scenic Causeway Coast has been hailed as potentially the region’s own “little Pompeii”.

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has now provided more than £300,000 for an excavation project and signalled the potential for a total package of £4 million.

The ruins of the castle have stood on the rocky coastal outcrop near Bushmills in north Antrim for centuries but it was only four years ago that archaeologists re-discovered a lost settlement beside the landmark.

Established in 1608 by the first Earl of Antrim, Randal MacDonnell, the town was destroyed in the uprising of 1641 and was eventually abandoned in 1680.

Read more about this fascinating project on belfasttelegraph.co.uk

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Preservation of a body is an interesting phenomenon, whether it be the evanescent embalming at a funeral home to prevent the body from decaying at the wake, or preservation for hundreds of years as is the case with Rosalia Lombardo in the Palermo catacombs.

Embalming is a three-fold process of sanitation, presentation and presentation. While the process has ancient roots and is found throughout the world, the modern technique was not possible until the Civil War, when the high number of bodies needing to be shipped over distances necessitated research and led to Dr. Thomas Holmes discovering a method of arterial preservation.

This was later improved in 1867, the August Wilhelm von Hofmann discovered formaldehyde. Primarily it involves the replacement of fluids and blood with chemicals to prevent putrefaction.

Displaying the Famous Political Dead – Katy Meyers

Read the full article on bonesdontlie.wordpress.com

The Sasanian Persian siege that destroyed Roman-held Dura-Europos, Syria, ca. 256 C.E. left some of the best evidence ever recovered for the nature and practices of ancient warfare.

Perhaps the most dramatic of the archaeological deposits, excavated in the early 1930s, were those resulting from the mining duel around Tower 19 on the city’s western wall, during which at least 19 Roman soldiers and one Sasanian became entombed.

Recent reanalysis of the excavation archive suggested that the mine evidence still held one unrecognized deadly secret: the Roman soldiers who perished there had not, as Robert du Mesnil du Buisson (the original excavator) believed, died by the sword or by fire but had been deliberately gassed by the Sasanian attackers.

This article discusses the implications of this conclusion for our understanding of early Sasanian military capabilities and reviews the question of possible re-excavation in search of the casualties of Tower 19, whose remains were neither studied nor retained.

 

| American Journal of Archaeology

Read the full free article from 2011 here on www.ajaonline.org

Learn more about this site;

• http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Archaeology/dura_europos.htm
• http://www.le.ac.uk/ar/stj/dura.htm
• http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/dura_europos/

 

Cambridge Archaeological Unit is leading an excavation at the site being developed for a new Cambridge University campus. The archaeologists have uncovered a remarkable landscape including five separate cemeteries, two funerary monuments, two Roman roads, Bronze Age ring-ditch ‘circles’ and thousands of finds including some 30 cremation urns, 25 skeletons, a spearhead and an array of brooches.

Excavation of a 1st/2nd century Roman cremation. © C.A.U. Photos by Dave Webb The layers of time

They believe the site was first occupied 3,500 years ago and while pockets of Iron Age settlement have been identified (c. 600BC–AD50), most evident is the Middle Bronze Age.

Remains from this period date to between 1500–1200 BC and aside from sub-rectangular ditched enclosures, the excavations have uncovered a series of ring-ditches. Associated with cremation burials, these relate to marking the land with monuments to the ancestors. It is probable that the area saw activity in earlier periods, but the Middle Bronze Age would have seen the first substantive settlement when presumably tree-cover was cleared (which will be established through the study of pollen evidence).

The vast archaeological exposure of the gravel ridge, flanked by heavy claylands, runs up through the north west Cambridge lands.

Aerial view of the excavation site. © C.A.U. Photo by Paul Bailey, SkyHIgh

The full extent of the excavated area will stretch across a swathe of both geographic location and human/archaeological time. Its southeastern end coincides with the Traveller’s Rest Pit Quarry, where in the early years of the last century Burkitt and Marr, both of the University of Cambridge, studied the gravel beds and collected quantities of Palaeolithic flint implements. Nineteenth century quarrying in adjacent fields also yielded a number of rich Roman funerary remains.

A large number of burial grounds

The excavation’s northwestern end will lie opposite Girton College, where in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a major Anglo-Saxon cemetery had been uncovered and excavated. Relevant to the current site-work, the cemetery included Roman burials and sculptural fragments, including a lion’s head recovered from a pit.

It is believed that the dig will uncover a landscape larger than Roman Cambridge itself and will reveal a complex network of communities and road alignments that will provide insights into the nature of the landscape.

Archaeologists believe the countryside was lattice-like, criss-crossed with roads and trackways that linked up its many farms and settlements.

Christopher Evans, head of the archaeological unit leading the dig said:

“This scale and scope of excavation work has not been attempted before [in this area]. For more than a millennium, the landscape of the site has been uninterrupted farmland.

“We have discovered that vibrant prehistoric settlements inhabited the land and settlements grew with complexity in the Roman age.”  

Pushing the time-frame nearer the present, at the northern end of the site-area the team found, entirely unexpectedly, the zigzagging lines of WWII military practice trenches. When examining Luftwaffe aerial photographs it was clear that the Germans were well aware of  the existence of the trenches as they have been clearly marked on the 1940s images.

120,000 cubic metres of topsoil have been moved so far and the excavation area covers 14 of the 150-hectare development site for north west Cambridge, it is clear there is still much to find and more to learn in this landmark project.

Gallery of the excavation so far.

Source: University of Cambridge / Cambridge Archaeological Unit.

More Information Cambridge Archaeological Unit.

Cite this article

Cambridge Archaeological Unit. Layers of time uncovered: Bronze Age to World War II. Past Horizons. March 26, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/layers-of-time-uncovered-bronze-age-to-world-war-ii) For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet.

An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them.

Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based on analysis of more than 800,000 painted ceramic and more than 4,800 obsidian artefacts dating from A.D. 1200-1450, uncovered from more than 700 sites in the western Southwest, in what is now Arizona and western New Mexico.

Barbara Mills, director, UA School of Anthropology Social network analysis

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Mills, director of the UA School of Anthropology, worked with collaborators at Archeology Southwest in Tucson to compile a database of more than 4.3 million ceramic artefacts and more than 4,800 obsidian artefacts, from which they drew for the study.

They then applied formal social network analysis to see what material culture could teach them about how social networks shifted and evolved during a period that saw large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and coalescence of populations into large villages.

Dramatic changes

Their findings illustrate dramatic changes in social networks in the Southwest over the 250-year period between A.D. 1200 and 1450. They found, for example, that while a large social network in the southern part of the Southwest grew very large and then collapsed, networks in the northern part of the Southwest became more fragmented but persisted over time.

“Network scientists often talk about how increasingly connected networks become, or the ‘small world’ effect, but our study shows that this isn’t always the case,” said Mills, who led the study with co-principal investigator and UA alumnus Jeffery Clark, of Archaeology Southwest.

“Our long-term study shows that there are cycles of growth and collapse in social networks when we look at them over centuries,” Mills said. “Highly connected worlds can become highly fragmented.”

Maintaining relationships

Another important finding was that early social networks do not appear to have been as restricted as expected by settlements’ physical distance from one another. Researchers found that similar types of painted pottery were being created and used in villages as far as 250 kilometres apart, suggesting people were maintaining relationships across relatively large geographic expanses, despite the only mode of transportation being walking.

“They were making, using and discarding very similar kinds of assemblages over these very large spaces, which means that a lot of their daily practices were the same,” Mills said. “That doesn’t come about by chance; it has to come about by interaction – the kind of interaction where it’s not just a simple exchange but where people are learning how to make and how to use and ultimately discard different kinds of pottery.”

“That really shocked us, this idea that you can have such long distance connections. In the pre-Hispanic Southwest they had no real vehicles, they had no beasts of burden, so they had to share information by walking,” she said.

The application of formal social network analysis – which focuses on the relationships among nodes, such as individuals, household or settlements – is relatively new in the field of archaeology, which has traditionally focused more on specific attributes of those nodes, such as their size or function.

The UA study shows how social network analysis can be applied to a database of material culture to illustrate changes in network structures over time.

“We already knew about demographic changes – where people were living and where migration was happening – but what we didn’t know was how that changed social networks,” Mills said. “We’re so used to looking traditionally at distributions of pottery and other objects based on their occurrence in space, but to see how social relationships are created out of these distributions is what network analysis can help with.”

Important implications

One of Mills’s collaborators on the project was Ronald Breiger, renowned network analysis expert and a UA professor of sociology, with affiliations in statistics and government and public policy, who says being able to apply network analysis to archaeology has important implications for his field.

“Barbara (Mills) and her group are pioneers in bringing the social network perspective to archaeology and into ancient societies,” said Breiger, who worked with Mills along with collaborators from the UA School of Anthropology; Archaeology Southwest; the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Hendrix College; the University of Colorado, Boulder; the Santa Fe Institute; and Archaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

“What archaeology has to offer for a study of networks is a focus on very long-term dynamics and applications to societies that aren’t necessarily Western, so that’s broadening to the community of social network researchers,” Breiger said. “The coming together of social network and spatial analysis and the use of material objects to talk about culture is very much at the forefront of where I see the field of social network analysis moving.”

Going forward, Mills hopes to use the same types of analyses to study even older social networks.

“We have a basis for building on, and we’re hoping to get even greater time depth. We’d like to extend it back in time 400 years earlier,” she said. “The implications are we can see things at a spatial scale that we’ve never been able to look at before in a systematic way. It changes our picture of the Southwest.”

Source: University of Arizona

More Information

• Barbara J. Mills et al, Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest, PNAS March 25, 2013 201219966

Cite this article

University of Arizona. Study traces cycles of growth and collapse in social networks. Past Horizons. March 27, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/study-traces-cycles-of-growth-and-collapse-in-social-networks For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

 

Restoration workers discover nine secret crypts hidden under the ruins of Coventry’s bombed cathedral.

Work has been taking place after a crack appeared in part of the 14th Century ruins, in September 2011.

It was already known there were two crypts, but Dr Jonathan Foyle, the chief executive of the World Monuments Fund, which is overseeing the work, said it was like finding a “subterranean wonderland”.

It is thought the crypts were originally used as burial places for the nobility. Some contain human bones, which are thought to have been cleared from the cemetery which was built on for the new cathedral.

Read more on www.bbc.co.uk

Three ball game courts, two terraced buildings and even a 1,000 year old residential area have all been revealed in the El Tajín archaeological zone in Veracruz, Mexico.

Archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have used the latest remote sensing technology to investigate pre-Hispanic sites for the first in time in the country.

In addition to locating these remains that were hidden by vegetation, the use of this new technology will help determine the condition of the site as a whole.

Lidar image showing approach to ball court. Image: INAH Years of exploration

Dr. Guadalupe Zetina Gutiérrez, the principal researcher at El Tajín and a remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) specialist, reported that two years of exploration using this technology has resulted in these exciting new finds, which now require archaeological excavation.

The addition of the three newly discovered ball game courts increases the number of this type of structure in El Tajin from 17 to 20. “This number could increase even more” he remarked, “as we are working on the digital model of each sector of the site in turn, this discovery represents only those detected in the southern and northern sectors.”

All the ball courts so far located on the site vary both in dimension and characteristics; and in the case of the three new examples this is also true.

With an accuracy of up to 5cm technology, LiDAR can create an accurate digital model of the site that can then be analysed using GIS software.

Zetina Gutierrez explained that they were also able to locate two terraces consisting of platforms of around 10 to 12 metres in height, in the upper part of the old city, from where there would have been a panoramic view of El Tajín.

Comparison between the pyramid of the niches and one of the Terraces. Image: INAH New era for technology

The archaeologist is extremely excited at the discovery of a new residential area in the western part of the nucleus of El Tajín and commented that previously searching for new elements of architecture such as this was a huge investment of time, labour and materials.

The INAH specialists also used a total of 60,000 thermographic images to identify cracks and structural problems on the monuments but no major damage was found.

LiDAR image of Terrace. Image: INAH

New technology has not only served to make a three-dimensional survey of El Tajín and an inventory of the structures that exist, but has also supplied new data to inform the direction  of conservation.

Zetina Gutiérrez  concluded that this was a new era for archaeology in Mexico.

Source: National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)

El Tajín is open to the public and became a World Heritage Site in 1992.

More Information

• El Tajín, Abode of the Dead ( Archaeology Magazine)
• El Tajin, Pre-Hispanic City (UNESCO)
• Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia

Cite this article

National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). New technology reveals  El Tajin’s hidden ball courts. Past Horizons. March 26, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/new-technology-reveals-el-tajins-many-hidden-buildings For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

New research into Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken port-city that served as the gateway to Egypt in the first millennium BC, was examined at a recent international conference at the University of Oxford. The port city, situated 6.5 kilometres off today’s coastline, was one of the biggest commercial hubs in the Mediterranean before the founding of Alexandria.

The Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford is collaborating on the project with the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM) in cooperation with Egypt’s Ministry of State for Antiquities.

An archaeologist measures the feet of a colossal red granite statue at the site of Thonis-Heracleion in Aboukir Bay.©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation, photo: Christoph Gerigk Port of entry

This obligatory port of entry, known as ‘Thonis’ by the Egyptians and ‘Heracleion’ by the Greeks, was where seagoing ships are thought to have unloaded their cargoes to have them assessed by temple officials and taxes extracted before transferring them to Egyptian ships that went upriver. In the ports of the city, divers and researchers are currently examining 64 Egyptian ships, dating between the eighth and second centuries BC, many of which appear to have been deliberately sunk. Researchers say the ships were found beautifully preserved, in the mud of the sea-bed. With 700 examples of different types of ancient anchor, the researchers believe this represents the largest nautical collection from the ancient world.

“The survey has revealed an enormous submerged landscape with the remains of at least two major ancient settlements within a part of the Nile delta that was criss-crossed with natural and artificial waterways,” said Dr Damian Robinson, Director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Dr Robinson, who is overseeing the excavation of one of the submerged ships known as Ship 43, has discovered that the Egyptians had a unique shipbuilding style. He is also examining why the boats appear to have been deliberately sunk close to the port.

Several ship graveyards

“One of the key questions is why several ship graveyards were created about one mile from the mouth of the River Nile. Ship 43 appears to be part of a large cluster of at least ten other vessels in a large ship graveyard,” explained Dr Robinson. “This might not have been simple abandonment, but a means of blocking enemy ships from gaining entrance to the port-city. Seductive as this interpretation is, however, we must also consider whether these boats were sunk simply to use them for land reclamation purposes.”

The stele of Thonis-Heracleion (1.90m) had been ordered by Pharaoh Nectanebo I (378-362 BC) and is almost identical to the stele of Naukratis in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. The place where it was supposed to be erected is explicitly mentioned: Thonis-Heracleion.©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation, photo: Christoph Gerigk Maritime trade in the ancient world

The port and its harbour basins also contain a collection of customs decrees, trading weights, and evidence of coin production. The material culture, for example, coin weights, was also discussed at the conference, placing this into the wider narrative of how maritime trade worked in the ancient world.

Elsbeth van der Wilt, from the University of Oxford, said: “Thonis-Heracleion played an important role in the network of long-distance trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, since the city would have been the first stop for foreign merchants at the Egyptian border. Excavations in the harbour basins yielded an interesting group of lead weights, likely to have been used by both temple officials and merchants in the payment of taxes and the purchasing of goods. Amongst these are an important group of Athenian weights. They are a significant archaeological find because it is the first time that weights like these have been identified during excavations in Egypt.”

300 statuettes and amulets

Another Oxford researcher, Sanda Heinz, is analysing more than 300 statuettes and amulets from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods, including Egyptian and Greek subjects. The majority depict Egyptian deities such as Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus. “The statuettes and amulets are generally in excellent condition,” she said. “The statuettes allow us to examine their belief system and at the same time have wider economic implications. These figures were mass-produced at a scale hitherto unmatched in previous periods. Our findings suggest they were made primarily for Egyptians; however, there is evidence to show that some foreigners also bought them and dedicated them in temples abroad.”

Franck Goddio, Director of the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology and Visiting Senior Lecturer in Maritime Archaeology at the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, commented: “The discoveries we have made in Thonis-Heracleion since 2000 thanks to the work of a multidisciplinary team and the support of the Hilti Foundation are encouraging. Charts of the city’s monuments, ports and channels are taking shape more clearly and further crucial information is gathered each year.”

Source: University of Oxford

NB. All photographs in this article are ©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation and require full permissions for use. Contact: Katrin.wollgast@salaction.de More Information

• The Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology
• European Institute of Underwater Archaeology
• Hilti Foundation

Cite this article

University of Oxford. Research sheds light on ancient Egyptian port and ship graveyard. March 26, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/research-sheds-light-on-ancient-egyptian-port-and-ship-graveyard For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

Recent years have seen the emergence of scholarship on the history of archaeology and receptions of the classical past.

Neither of these trends has fully engaged with the visual evidence, particularly that of photography, or with the material form of the archive itself.

Using archival photographs taken at the site of Dura-Europos from 1928 to 1937, this article explores how the study of archaeological photographs and archaeological archives can contribute to our understanding of the history and epistemology of archaeology.

Read and download the whole free article here on ajaonline.org

Descriptions of the preparation of ancient Egyptian mummies that appear in both scientific and popular literature are derived largely from accounts by the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.

A different story to the ancient texts Egyptian mummy in the Vatican Museum. Image: Joshua Sherurcij via Wikimedia Commons

According to the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians used cedar oil enemas to remove the stomach and intestines of poorer individuals, with only the elite affording manual evisceration. However, an investigation by researchers from the University of Western Ontario suggests a very different reality to the process.

This new research, based on a detailed examination of 150 ancient mummies from the 5th Dynasty (2494 BCE ) to the Roman and Coptic periods of the first centuries CE, has been published in the February issue of HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology.

Three modes

Herodotus described three modes of embalming ranging from:

• the rich were eviscerated via a slit through the side of the abdomen with an obsidian blade, through which organs were removed.
• the less well off had their insides removed with cedar oil that was pumped into the body cavity.
• the poorest clients had their intestines flushed out with an enema.

In addition, Herodotus claimed the brain was always removed during the embalming process and other accounts suggest the heart was always left in place within the body.

Comparing empirical data to historical record

Using published descriptions in the literature for 150 mummies and 3D reconstructions from computed tomography data for 7 mummies, this study compares empirical data with classical descriptions of evisceration, organ treatment and body cavity treatment.

The researchers realised that although there is a  rich quantity of data available from these sources, there is a tendency to focus on modern and classical stereotypes of the mummification process.

If the classical and contemporary accounts by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus were correct, then the above three modes for different classes of people should be adhered to. In addition, the heart should be present in the overwhelming majority of eviscerated mummies, at least in the Late and Ptolemaic periods within which these authors wrote.

A different story

The team found that rich and poor alike most commonly had the transabdominal slit performed, although for the elites evisceration was sometimes performed through a slit in the anus. Given the proportions of elite to common mummification, they also found a very low indication that cedar oil enemas were used.

The removal of the heart seems also to coincide only with a transitional period when the middle classes gained access to mummification, so getting to keep the heart may have become a status symbol after that point as only a quarter of the mummies examined had the heart left in place.

And, whereas Herodotus had suggested mummies underwent brain removal, the researchers found that a fifth of the brains were actually left inside the skull. Almost all the others had been pulled out through the nose.

CT scan and reconstruction of Lady Hudson, showing (A) the pelvic packing and damaged thorax (note the coffin boards visible beneath the thoracic cavity); and (B) the linen packing in the pelvis with the small pool of resin on it hinting at a transabdominal evisceration. Greater variety of practice over time and geographic location

In spite of the lack of detail present in descriptions of mummies throughout much of the literature, there is substantial evidence for a largely unappreciated variability in the mummification tradition and indeed for much of the study, there is a direct contradiction from the classical descriptions.

To be fair to Herodotus and Diodorus, it is possible that they reported on what they saw at a particular mummification workshop and at a particular point in time and therefore could not have appreciated the full range of variation in the practice throughout Egypt over the course of three millennia.

Source:  HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology

More Information

• A.D. Wade, A.J. Nelson Radiological evaluation of the evisceration tradition in ancient Egyptian mummies HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology, Volume 64, Issue 1, February 2013, Pages 1–28
• Egyptian Way of Mummification According to Herodotus

Cite this article

HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology. Our Title. Past Horizons. March 25, 2013, from http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2013/how-to-eviscerate-an-egyptian-mummy-the-truth-revealed For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

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