Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2022 från ARCHAEOLOGY

Very few ancient artifacts signed by their makers survive, leaving archaeologists to wonder at the identities of the people who made the objects they study. Although we may not know the names of the people who created the artifacts featured in this issue—with one remarkable exception—each item is an example of an ancient individual’s mastery of their craft. There is the second-century A.D. artist who painted the portrait on the cover, whose skill in depicting a Greco-Egyptian woman named Isidora for the artwork that would adorn her coffin is evident in the details of her facial features and jewelry. In the article “At Face Value,” modern imaging techniques will help take you inside the workshops of mummy portrait painters, whose meticulous control of their materials and techniques allowed them to…

In the early 1960s, archaeologists from around the world descended on the Upper Nile Valley. They were scrambling to excavate ahead of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, which would submerge dozens of archaeological sites, including a 13,400-year-old cemetery called Jebel Sahaba, by the decade’s end. The cemetery, in what is now northern Sudan, was found to contain the skeletons of 61 men, women, and children. While excavating their remains, the late archaeologist Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University noticed unmistakable signs of violence—broken bones, smashed skulls, and stone projectiles embedded in the people’s bones or lying near their bodies. He concluded that they were victims of a battle or massacre. At the time, the idea of organized warfare in the distant past was revolutionary. “Prevailing archaeological doctrine in…

While installing lights in front of Memorial Church, a 1907 structure that stands on the site of a timber frame church first constructed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1617, archaeologists uncovered a layer of charcoal and fire-reddened earth. They have now determined that this is evidence of a blaze that consumed the church on September 19, 1676, during Bacon’s Rebellion. As part of this uprising against the Virginia colonial government led by wealthy landowner Nathaniel Bacon, Virginians of all social classes demanded the right to expand into territory that was already inhabited by Native Americans, violated treaties with Native groups, and set fire to Jamestown, which was the colony’s capital. While other fires are known to have caused damage at Jamestown during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, Jamestown Rediscovery…

Small bronze figurines of women clad in armor and bearing weapons that date to the Viking Age have traditionally been seen as representations of Valkyries, the female warriors of Norse mythology who determined whether human combatants lived or died. Analysis of some of the 7,000 fragments of ceramic molds discovered at the site of Ribe in southwestern Denmark that were used to make these figurines, however, suggests that they actually depict human participants in ritual ceremonies. Using high-resolution laser scans of the ceramic fragments, researchers led by Pieterjan Deckers, an archaeologist now at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, fashioned 3-D models of the complete molds that were used to create the figurines in the first few decades of the ninth century A.D. In addition to the armed women, these include a…

The city of Pompeii was part of a thriving coastal region when it was destroyed by the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Entire farms, villages, and grand private estates on the Bay of Naples were buried under a thick layer of ash and debris. Among them were luxurious villas built by some of Rome’s most prominent families in the town of Oplontis, which is located in the modern city of Torre Annunziata, three miles west of Pompeii. The best preserved and most thoroughly studied of these is called Villa A, or Villa Poppaea. The 75,000-square-foot property is named for the second wife of the Roman emperor Nero (r. A.D. 54–68), Poppaea Sabina, who may have once owned it. Built around 50 B.C. on a high bluff looking out to…

JUST STEPS FROM THE walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, Tel Aviv University archaeologist Yuval Gadot stands in a deep pit and peers at two massive and finely dressed limestone pillars framing a doorway. More than 2,500 years ago, they marked the entry into a large two-story building in a prestigious area of the bustling city. Stepping across the threshold, Gadot points at a rough stone surface bordered with soil that has an eerie yellow hue. When the building burned, “the earth was heated to such a high temperature that it turned the ground into a yellow crust,” he says. The fire that swept through the structure in August 586 B.C., when a Babylonian army invaded the doomed city, also collapsed the second floor, sending plaster, stone, and timbers crashing down.…

There is perhaps no place on Earth that better symbolizes the majesty of a world unmarred by human encroachment than the Galapagos Islands. The remote archipelago lies along the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean, more than 600 miles off South America. The islands are relatively recent volcanic formations, the youngest of which, Fernandina, emerged from the seafloor only 700,000 years ago. As a result of an exceptional set of environmental, biological, and geological conditions, the Galapagos are home to a unique ecosystem of flora and fauna, including swimming iguanas, flightless cormorants, and giant tortoises. And, of course, it was a visit to the Galapagos in 1835 by the young British geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin that inspired his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species, which forever changed not…

Archaeologists in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have unearthed brick structures in the town of Maligaimedu that are thought to be traces of the Chola Empire, which ruled the region around 1,000 years ago. “We believe the remains to be the palace of the Chola kings,” says R. Sivanantham, director of the Tamil Nadu archaeology department. He adds that the palace was likely built by King Rajendra Chola (r. ca. 1014–1044), who established the site as the Chola capital in 1025. The researchers have uncovered building foundations, a Chola period copper coin, glass beads, and bangles. They have also found a range of ceramics, including Chinese ware that provides evidence of a long-distance trade network.…

Several dozen silver artifacts have been discovered on a forested riverbank in the vicinity of Old Ryazan in southwestern Russia. This new find joins a number of other treasure hoards previously unearthed in the area that were stowed away in advance of a 1237 invasion by the Mongols. However, based on the style of the jewelry in this hoard—which includes 14 bracelets, eight torcs, five rings, and a bead, as well as four hryvnias, or silver ingots used as money—researchers believe it dates to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. At that time, there were no settlements close by, though a road that led from the city of Old Ryazan, which was a major trading site, passed within a half mile or so. According to Igor Strikalov, an archaeologist…

At the sprawling villa of Civita Giuliana just north of Pompeii, archaeologists unearthed a nearly intact four-wheeled chariot, the first of its kind to be found in the Roman world. The chariot, which could seat one or two people, was discovered in a portico adjoining a stable where researchers uncovered the remains of three horses in 2018. The chariot is extremely fragile, so archaeologists digitally documented it before dismantling it into 112 pieces, which they brought to a lab for further analysis and restoration. They also made plaster casts of impressions left by decayed organic material, including the chariot’s wooden steering shaft and ropes that linked mechanical elements of its ironclad wheels. Researchers believe the chariot is a pilentum, a type of vehicle known only from ancient sources that mention…

UTAH: Tobacco use by early inhabitants of North America may date to 9,000 years earlier than previously thought. Among the material gathered from a 12,300-year-old hearth and campsite in the Great Salt Lake Desert, archaeologists identified several charred wild tobacco seeds. These were likely remnants of plants harvested from a highland landscape several miles away. It is not yet known whether the tobacco leaves were smoked or rolled into a ball and chewed before the seeds were spit out. MEXICO: While investigating a cenote, or freshwater sinkhole, at a site called San Andrés in the Yucatán rain forest, a team of divers located a well-preserved 5-foot-long Maya canoe. The craft was hidden in an underwater cave around 15 feet below surface level. Likely dating to between A.D. 830 and 950,…

A LITTLE PAST MIDNIGHT on March 17, 2021, art historian Zhao Liguang was awoken by a phone call from the Xi’an Institute of Cultural Heritage. A 1,200-year-old stela inscribed with characters by the eminent Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618–906) calligrapher Liu Gongquan had just been brought to the institute, and officials there wanted Zhao to examine it immediately. When Zhao arrived shortly after receiving the call, he saw that the huge stone tablet was broken into three parts. It had originally measured about nine feet by three feet and was topped with a decorative dragon-head figure. The tablet was of a type known as a spirit way stela, a large, inscribed stone erected along ritual roads, or spirit ways, that lead to tombs belonging to high-level officials. It had been unearthed…

A cave carved by human hands out of a sandstone cliff above a tributary of the River Trent in Derbyshire, England, may have been occupied as early as the seventh century A.D. Edmund Simons, an archaeologist at the Royal Agricultural University, recently led a team that found that the Romanesque doors of the three-room cave are very similar to those found in other medieval buildings. Moreover, a rock-cut pillar in the cave is of a style found in many Anglo-Saxon structures, including a seventh-century A.D. crypt in nearby Repton. This raises the possibility that the cave may have been built to imitate the crypt, or possibly even by the same architect. Legend holds the cave was once inhabited by a ninth-century A.D. saint named Hardulph, who has been identified with…

A Maya ceremonial pyramid and courtyard complex at Tikal, in present-day Guatemala, was hidden by jungle until its recent discovery during a lidar survey. Researchers believe the complex may once have been a hub for connections between Tikal and the massive metropolis of Teotihuacan, more than 600 miles away, near Mexico City. Upon examining the lidar scans of the Tikal complex, archaeologists noticed that it closely resembles the structure known as la Ciudadela, or the Citadel, at Teotihuacan. Archaeologist Edwin Román Ramírez of the Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage says that the complex at Tikal is even oriented similarly to the one at Teotihuacan. The Maya renovated the Tikal complex’s structures periodically starting around A.D. 250, possibly as its relationship with Teotihuacan changed. Textual and iconographic sources suggest…

The genetic origins of modern Japanese people have traditionally been traced to two populations: Jomon hunter-gatherers and Yayoi farmers. New research has identified evidence of a third ancestral strand, dating to the imperial Kofun period (A.D. 300–700), when the modern Japanese state began to take shape. A team led by geneticist Shigeki Nakagome of Trinity College Dublin analyzed 12 newly sequenced genomes—nine from the Jomon and three from the Kofun period. The team also studied five previously published genomes—three from Jomon and two from Yayoi individuals. Their findings show that the emergence of the Jomon lineage dates to around 20,000 years ago, when a land bridge connected the Korean Peninsula to Japan. Around 17,000 years ago, sea levels rose, submerging the land bridge and isolating the Jomon from continental Asia…

A settlement that was buried beneath the sand for thousands of years—and eluded archaeologists for centuries—is believed to be one of the largest ancient Egyptian cities ever unearthed. The site was discovered by a stroke of good luck when archaeologists began searching for the mortuary temple of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun (r. ca. 1336–1327 B.C.) along the west bank of the Nile in Luxor. What they found instead was a well-preserved urban settlement filled with houses, streets, and walls, some of which still stand 10 feet tall. Hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate the city was called tehn Aten, or “dazzling” Aten, and that it was founded by Tutankhamun’s grandfather Amenhotep III (r. ca. 1390–1352 B.C.). “I call this the ‘Golden City’ because it dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, which was…

IN THE VILLAGE OF GONGDONG outside the central Chinese city of Xi’an, construction projects have kept archaeologists busy since the summer of 2020. Thus far, more than 100 ancient tombs have been uncovered in the area, some dating to as early as the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220). Last June, a team of archaeologists from the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology unearthed a large Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618–906) family tomb at Gongdong. Classical Chinese culture flourished during the Tang Dynasty, and elite tombs dating to that period are known for their intricate stone- and brickwork and are often filled with numerous artifacts. The newly discovered tomb, belonging to a military commander named Yuan Daqian and his wife, Luo Wanshun, was no different. Archaeologists found more than 100 ceramic vessels and figurines…