Two pieces of a 3,000-year-old monumental gate complex from the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina have been unearthed at Tell Tayinat, which is located in southeastern Turkey. The first piece is the head and waist portion of a colossal statue depicting a bearded man with curly hair. It has inlaid eyes of white and black stone. The back of the sculpture is covered with a hieroglyphic text recording the deeds of King Suppiluliuma. The second sculpture is a column base bearing a winged bull and a sphinx. The gate complex was probably destroyed, buried, and paved over by the Assyrians, who conquered the region in 738 B.C.

Artifacts from South Africa’s Border Cave indicate that modern tool use began 44,000 years ago, or 20,000 years earlier than previously thought. The artifacts include ostrich eggshell beads, points made of bone that could have been shot as arrows from bows, wooden digging sticks, a lump of pitch, a lump of beeswax, worked pig tusks, and notched bones that may have been used for counting. Some of the points were coated with a poison made from castor beans. “Such bone points could have penetrated thick hides, but the lack of ‘knock-down’ power means the use of poison probably was a requirement for successful kills,” explained Paola Villa of the University of Colorado.

The tomb of a young Maya man has been discovered in Mexico, at the city of Uxul. He had been buried with nine ceramic vessels and plates, one of which bears a date that corresponds to the year 711 A.D. “We feel that the person that was buried there is a son of a local ruler, someone who was not in direct line to the throne,” said Kai Delvendahl of the University of Bonn. The tomb did not contain royal status items, such as jade jewelry. The style of the ceramics suggests a connection to the ruling dynasty of Calakmul, a regional center.  There are additional photos of the site and the excavation.

Israeli archaeologists report that they have found a small stone seal bearing an image of a large animal with a cat-like tail attacking a human figure at the site of Beit Shemesh, which sits near the Philistine border. The seal dates to the eleventh century B.C. and could point to the development of the biblical story of Samson and the lion.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, July 31, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.