World Roundup, May/June 2008 - Archaeology Magazine Archive


World Roundup	Volume 61 Number 3, May/June 2008
by Samir S. Patel

Africa

Western Sahara
At the isolated site of Devil's Mountain, U.N. peacekeepers in this disputed region defaced 3,000- to 6,000-year-old rock art depicting giraffes, buffaloes, and elephants. Among the spray-painting vandals: a Croatian, a Russian, and an Egyptian.

(Courtesy Nick Brooks)

Asia & the Pacific

China
In a 2,500-year-old tomb, Chinese archaeologists found 47 coffins and 650 relics, including a beautifully preserved black, gold, and red wooden sword. It is the earliest Chinese tomb to have so many burials, and it is thought that the textiles there, including the country's oldest example of picture-weaving brocade, will rewrite the history of Chinese fabrics.

(Courtesy Xu Changqing)

Tonga
Recently studied pottery sherds place the first Polynesian settlement in Tonga, rather than Samoa, which was once thought to be the birthplace of the culture. The finds at the site of Nukuleka suggest the Lapita people first came here almost 3,000 years ago from Fiji. The culture developed and had spread to Samoa before colonizing French Polynesia and other eastern island chains 1,500 years later.

(Courtesy David Burle)

Europe

Czech Republic
A metal detectorist died in his Prague apartment when he fell asleep with a lit cigarette, leaving a puzzling and frustrating legacy to local archaeologists--3,300 artifacts from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages, including jewelry, weapons, a pile of Roman brooches, and a 6,000-year-old spiral pendant. Receipts for large sums of money show that the dead man was not just a hobbyist, but an illegal antiquities dealer.

(Courtesy M. Frouz/National Geographic Česko)

United Kingdom
Archaeologists may have found the first evidence of the existence of druids, a class of Celtic priests. One of several graves dating from A.D. 40 to 60 contained a wine warmer, divining rods, surgical instruments, a strainer bowl for brewing tea, and the carefully laid-out pieces of a board game, suggesting the cremated inhabitant was some kind of healer or magician--perhaps an actual druid.

(Courtesy Colchester Archaeological Trust)

Middle East

Afghanistan
In the Bamiyan Valley--near the stone Buddhas notoriously destroyed by the Taliban in 2001--an international team of conservators has identified the world's first known oil painting, dating to A.D. 650, at least 100 years before the medium shows up in Europe. Using high-tech analyses, they determined that the various Buddhist images found on cave walls of this Silk Road site contain paint layers with a drying oil binder and resin layers for glazing.

(Courtesy Afghanistan:National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo)

North America

Oregon
December storms washed away up to 30 feet of beach, revealing two 19th-century cannons and three shipwrecks that quickly became tourist attractions. So many people--1,400 each weekend--arrived to look at the wreck of the 223-foot steamer George L. Olson, beached in 1944, that archaeologists had to post signs asking visitors to stay away.

(Courtesy Steve Samuels, Bureau of Land Management)

Mexico
The Sacred Cenote, a sinkhole at Chichén Itzá, had a 14-foot layer of blue gunk at its bottom. New research shows it gets its color from Maya blue, an almost indestructible pigment. By examining a bowl found in the cenote, researchers surmised that the ancient Maya created the pigment as part of human sacrifice ceremonies, by burning copal incense with a mineral, palygorskite, and a little indigo. The Maya painted objects or human sacrifices before tossing them in the cenote.

(Photo by John Weinstein; Courtesy of The Field Museum)

South America
Guyana
The first known outbreak of syphilis in Europe occurred in 1495--suspiciously close to Christopher Columbus's first return from the New World. Some experts speculate he brought the disease, or a related one, back with him. According to a genetic analysis of 26 kinds of treponema (the family of bacteria to which syphillis belongs), its closest relative is a South American strain that causes a disease called yaws. The data support the idea that Columbus and his men brought back more than tales and kidnapped natives.
(Courtesy CDC/Dr. David Cox)

Peru
Civilization here didn't lag behind the Near East or Egypt. Proof comes from a newly discovered ceremonial plaza on the coast that dates back 5,500 years. The 46-foot circular structure at Sechin Bajo is the oldest known monument in the Americas, 500 years older than the continent's oldest city, Peru's Caral.