Indholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2020 i ARCHAEOLOGY

In this issue, longtime readers of ARCHAEOLOGY may notice subtle but, we feel, significant changes to two of our most popular sections. Rest assured that the depth and diversity of the magazine’s coverage will remain the same, but you will now find our news section, formerly known as From the Trenches, under the title Digs & Discoveries. And readers who enjoy our global map pinpointing recent finds can now locate World Roundup under the name Around the World. Since we introduced maps in many of our articles a little less than a year ago, dozens of readers have shared with us how much this has enriched their experience of the magazine, and we believe referring to this section as Around the World expresses this cartographic emphasis. The impetus behind Digs…

WHAT MAKES A WITCH? “Searching for the Witches’ Tower” (November/December 2019) rightly identifies the role of King James I in promoting the eradication of witchcraft in seventeenth-century England, but does not mention the impact of the King James Version of the Hebrew Bible. The Bible’s publication at about the same time as the 1612 Lancashire witchcraft trials replaced the Hebrew words for idolaters, mediums, sorcerers, and ghost whisperers with the English word “witch.” In Hebrew, there was no such word as “witch.” Early Greek and Latin translations of the Hebrew also did not use the word “witch.” An example of this usage can be found in 1 Samuel, chapter 28, in which the King James Bible has Saul going to the witch of Endor to contact the spirit of Samuel,…

A monumental Minoan building surrounding a 110-foot-long courtyard has been uncovered at Sissi on the northern coast of Crete. Built around 1700 b.c. and featuring finely plastered floors, the structure is similar in size and grandeur to a number of palaces on the island dating to the same period. However, it lacks many typical features of these complexes, including storage rooms, administrative materials, and industrial areas. Archaeologists with the Belgian School at Athens, in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lassithi, did find a range of ritual paraphernalia at the site, offering a clue to what it was used for. “This building was really focused on its central court,” says excavation director Jan Driessen of the Catholic University of Louvain. “It’s quite clear that religious ceremonies took place there.”…

Artifacts recovered from a 16,000-year-old site near the Columbia River in western Idaho are revealing that the first people to migrate to the Americas came from northeastern Asia. The site, called Cooper’s Ferry, is one of only a few known to pre-date the Clovis culture—hunter-gatherers who lived across North America around 12,000 years ago and were, until recently, believed to have been the first settlers of the continent. Stone tools found at Cooper’s Ferry belong to the Western Stemmed Tradition, a tool type that, according to research by an international team of scholars, resembles stone tools made by hunter-gatherers who lived in northeast Asia during the same period. This type of tool appears at Paleolithic sites along the Pacific coast of North America. The presence of the tools, combined with…

THE ABANDONED INCA CITY of Huanuco Pampa sprawls across a bleak plateau in the Andes some 12,000 feet above sea level. Its miles of stone ruins, remains of structures built by the Inca at the height of their empire, rise above waves of overgrown golden ichu grass. Huanuco Pampa is “the most completely preserved of the cities built by the Inca,” wrote the late Craig Morris of the American Museum of Natural History, who excavated the site for more than 20 years beginning in 1964. It may lack the sublime setting of Machu Picchu or the imperial grandeur of the Inca capital at Cuzco, but Huanuco Pampa bears witness like no other site to the twin conquests that convulsed the central Andes within less than a century—the Inca state’s subjugation…

As a longtime ARCHAEOLOGY subscriber, I am delighted to introduce myself to you as the incoming president of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), the organization that publishes this magazine. The AIA is the oldest and largest archaeological organization in North America, made up of professional archaeologists and lay enthusiasts who belong to more than 100 affiliated local societies across the United States and Canada. One of these societies is likely located near you. There, you can meet archaeologists and hear them talk about their work through the AIA’s lecture program, which sponsors more than 200 events every year. One of my ambitions as president is to tap this deep well of expertise and make it accessible to an even broader audience via podcasts and other media. I caught the…

While excavating a mound in southeastern Bulgaria, archaeologists uncovered the third-century a.d. brick grave of a man aged 35 to 40. Among the objects buried with him were a tool used to scrape oil from the skin known as a strigil and a finely crafted copper alloy vessel called a balsamarium. This container is thought to have held skin-cleansing oils or balms used after exercise and during bathing, explains archaeologist Daniela Agre of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Balsamaria were especially trendy in the eastern Roman provinces of Thrace, Moesia, and Pannonia, though they were not produced locally. The vessel was fashioned in the shape of a man’s head covered in a tight, spotted feline-skin cap that may have been intended to evoke the Nemean lion slain by Hercules. “We…

The Orkneyinga Saga, a thirteenth-century narrative history of the Norse earldoms of the Orkney Islands, in present-day Scotland, names Westness, a settlement along the coast of the island of Rousay, as the home of the chieftain Sigurd. Archaeologists working in the area have uncovered a Viking hall dating to sometime between the tenth and twelfth centuries at a farmstead called Skaill—the Norse word for “hall.” The stone building, which appears to be more than 40 feet long, is oriented down the sloping landscape toward the sea. Stone benches line the sides of its interior, where the team also found Norse artifacts such as steatite vessels, a bone spindle whorl, and a fragment of a carved bone comb. Skaill was likely the site of a dwelling of a chieftain or earl,…

Road construction in northern Israel has led to the excavation of a 5,000-year-old city called En Esur that would have been one of the region’s largest settlements at a time when the world’s first cities were taking shape. Thousands of volunteers overseen by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists have worked for more than two years to uncover 10 acres of the city and a wide array of artifacts. Archaeologist Yitzhak Paz estimates that only about a tenth of the city has thus far been excavated. En Esur may have been home to about 6,000 people living in a highly organized community with densely packed residences, grain silos, public buildings, burial caves, and a network of streets.…

When Gudea rebuilt the Eninnu temple to the god Ningirsu at a new location in Girsu, he defied a longstanding Sumerian tradition of constructing temple after temple to a given god at the same spot. British Museum archaeologist Sebastien Rey and his team believe that the Mound of the Palais, where Gudea built his Eninnu, was originally the site of a temple to Ningirsu’s wife, the goddess Bau. Further, the researchers think that the new Eninnu temple contained a shrine to Bau. Gudea’s decision, they suggest, mirrored his own trajectory. He had married into a powerful family and obtained his position by connection with his father-in-law, Ur-Bau, who preceded him as ruler of Girsu. “There is a parallel between myth and Gudea’s personal circumstances,” says archaeologist Ashley Pooley, a supervisor…

OFFICERS President Jodi Magness First Vice President Laetitia La Follette Vice President for Outreach and Education Ethel Scully Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs Thomas Tartaron Vice President for Cultural Heritage Elizabeth S. Greene Vice President for Societies Connie Rodriguez Treasurer David Seigle Chief Operating Officer Kevin Quinlan GOVERNING BOARD Elie Abemayor David Adam Deborah Arnold Jeanne Bailey David Boochever Thomas Carpenter Jane Carter, ex officio Arthur Cassanos Larry Cripe Joshua Gates Elizabeth M. Greene Julie Herzig Desnick James Jansson Lisa Kealhofer Morag Kersel Mark Lawall Thomas Levy Gary Linn Jarrett A. Lobell, ex officio Kathleen Lynch Richard MacDonald Tina Mayland H. Bruce McEver Barbara Meyer Sarah Parcak Kevin Quinlan, ex officio Laura Rich Kim Shelton Thomas Sienkewic Monica L. Smith Maria Vecchiotti Michael Wiseman John Yarmick Past President…

MALINALCO, MEXICO The town of Malinalco, just over two hours southwest of Mexico City by car, is home to two historic sites that may seem to represent distinct worlds. The first is a complex built by the Aztecs between 1476, when they conquered the region, and 1519, when the Spanish arrived. The complex’s main temple, named Cuauhcalli, or “House of the Eagles,” was built directly into a hillside. It is the only example of such rock-cut architecture in the Aztec world, and one of only a handful in the Americas. The other site is the Augustinian monastery of San Cristobál, now called Divino Salvador, which was built in 1540 and is still in use today. The monastery features vivid murals of biblical scenes that were painted by subjugated Aztecs shortly…

A cache of artifacts found beneath the central plaza at the site of Paso del Macho in the northern part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula may have been an offering made when the settlement was founded between 900 and 800 b.c. It contains some of the earliest evidence of Maya fertility rituals. Archaeologist Evan Parker of Tulane University, a leader of the ongoing excavation, which is conducted in cooperation with Millsaps College, says that more than 30 artifacts made of greenstone, including small stones that symbolize maize sprouting from the underworld, represent events in the story of the maize god’s birth. This myth was a central part of Maya fertility and rainmaking rituals. The cache also contains several pots painted with images associated with fertility, along with spoons, clamshell pendants, and…

While exploring a group of tombs in Haman in southeastern South Korea, archaeologists uncovered a fifth-century a.d. ceremonial earthenware vessel depicting a backward-looking deer, earthenware artifacts in the form of a house and a boat, and other goods. Researchers believe the deer vessel was used as part of a funeral ritual and then buried along with the deceased. A flame-stitch pattern covering the deer’s leg is typical of earthenware from the Gaya Confederacy, an alliance of territories in southern Korea between the first and sixth centuries a.d. Archaeologists also found armor, helmets, and horse fittings that led them to believe the tombs belonged to Gaya leaders.…

Large amounts of animal bone found in a ditch on the outskirts of a Romano-British settlement near Ipplepen, in southwest England, might point to the operations of a third-century a.d. butchery. Most of the bone came from the feet and heads of cattle likely butchered on-site, which suggests the prime cuts of meat were sold and consumed elsewhere. Burned limestone thrown in with the bone could be evidence of the production of lime, which was often used to process hides to make leather. This, along with butchery marks on some bones that resulted from removing the hides, may indicate that tanners also worked at the site. Despite Ipplepen’s location on the western edge of the Roman Empire, explains University of Exeter archaeologist Stephen Rippon, imported tableware and amphoras, which contained…

archaeological.org EXCAVATE • EDUCATE • ADVOCATE GLOBAL CELEBRATION OF ARCHAEOLOGY GETS BIGGER EACH YEAR Since its inception in 2011, International Archaeology Day (IAD) has grown in terms of events, attendance, collaborating organizations, and participating countries. IAD 2019 was the largest celebration to date. We estimate that over 250,000 people attended more than 1,200 public events organized by 500 collaborating organizations in over two dozen countries. IAD is an affirmation of the global interest in archaeology. The diversity of events is a testament to the creativity and passion of the many individuals and organizations committed to informing and educating the public. IAD has something for everyone, whether it is a visit to the 2,000-year-old archaeological site of Sungai Batu in Malaysia or a crash course in forensic archaeology in Rome. To…