Archaeology news and discussion thread

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weatheriscool
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Archaeology news and discussion thread

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A thread on the advancements and tools of the field. ;)

DIY digital archaeology: New methods for visualizing small objects and artifacts
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-diy-digit ... izing.html
by Max Planck Society

The ability to visually represent artifacts, whether inorganics like stone, ceramic and metal, or organics such as bone and plant material, has always been of great importance to the field of anthropology and archaeology. For researchers, educators, students and the public, the ability to see the past, not only read about it, offers invaluable insights into the production of cultural materials and the populations who made and used them.

Digital photography is the most commonly used method of visual representation, but despite its speed and efficiency, it often fails to faithfully represent the artifact being studied. In recent years, 3D scanning has emerged as an alternative source of high-quality visualizations, but the cost of the equipment and the time needed to produce a model are often prohibitive.

Now, a paper published in PLOS ONE presents two new methods for producing high-resolution visualizations of small artifacts, each achievable with basic software and equipment. Using expertise from fields which include archaeological science, computer graphics and video game development, the methods are designed to allow anyone to produce high-quality images and models with minimal effort and cost.
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Lidar Exposes the Remnants of Overgrown Ancient Civilization in the Amazon
By Devin Coldewey
May 27, 2022

Extract:
(TechCrunch) It’s Friday and the world is falling apart, so let’s just take a short mental health break with some interesting news out of the field of archaeology, where tech is enabling some fascinating new discoveries. A new lidar-powered analysis of land in the Amazon basin has provided evidence of a previously unknown urban center of “mind blowing” complexity.

…finding bumps on the ground under the canopy of a rainforest is far from easy, so in 2019 they (the German Archaeological Institute) set out to scan the area by helicopter, using lidar to reconstruct the contours of the surface below the trees. This technique has proved highly fruitful recently, with whole Mayan cities and even a kilometer-long artificial earthwork uncovered that way.

Lidar beams pass between the leaves and branches, bouncing back to provide a surprisingly detailed look at the height of the ground beneath. And more than ever this data can be quickly collected and analyzed to produce a 3D point cloud easily inspected for hidden structures.

As in so many domains, tech is an enabler ([Heiko] Prümers [of the German Archaeological Institute] estimated it might have taken 400 years of digs to unearth all the things they found using lidar) but can never replace the hard work and expertise that humans bring to the equation.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/27/lidar ... e-amazon/

You can read the full paper published in Nature here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04780-4

Here is a video that runs just under six minutes on the subject:
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Museum Discovers Its "Replica" Sword Is Actually 3,000 Years Old
by James Felton
January 23, 2023

Introduction:
(IFL Science) For nearly 100 years, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has held a sword, thought to be a well-made replica of a Bronze Age weapon. A new analysis, however, has indicated that the sword looks quite authentic because it is, having been made around 3,000 years ago.

While preparing for an exhibition on the first kings of Europe, taking place in March, Hungarian archaeologists working with the Field Museum asked for a closer look at a replica sword held by the museum. The sword, found in the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary in the 1930s, was then analyzed by the archaeologists and museum scientists using an X-ray fluorescence detector.

To do this, scientists first expose the materials they are studying to X-rays in order to ionize them.

"If the energy of this radiation is sufficient then it will interact with the atoms' inner shell electrons causing them to be kicked out. Almost immediately, a relaxation process takes place where one of the outer shell electrons falls into the inner shell," materials scientist Maido Merisalu, aka Captain Corrosion, explains in a YouTube video (see below).

Conclusion:
Though the sword is around 3,000 years older than originally thought, the team found out too late to include it in the First Kings of Europe exhibition, and will instead be displaying it in the main hall as a preview of the exhibition. They speculate that the sword may have been placed in the Danube as part of an ancient ritual, perhaps to commemorate a lost loved one or a battle.
Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/museum-disc ... old-67206

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Mysterious Medieval City in Africa Had a Genius System to Survive Drought
by Carly Cassella
January 31, 2023

Extract:
(Science Alert) Great Zimbabwe was the first major city in southern Africa, home to an estimated 18,000 people at its peak. Yet no one really knows why it now lies in ruins.

A team of researchers from Denmark, South Africa, England, and Zimbabwe argue that a series of large, circular depressions known as 'dhaka' pits, found around the city, were not used for digging up clay, as experts once thought, but for capturing water.

The new perspective of Great Zimbabwe's dhaka pits was made possible by using airborne laser scanning to survey the major features of the site, even in places with thick vegetation.

These findings were then complemented by ground surveys and conversations with local communities, who must also conserve water in the arid region.
Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/mysteriou ... e-drought

Edit:
Remote sensing
Airborne laser scanning (ALS) and photographic survey mapped archaeological and hydrological features at and around Great Zimbabwe. ALS is ideal for this purpose, as it provides a detailed record of topography and is invaluable for investigating ancient urban areas (Stott et al., 2018), even when the ground is obscured by dense vegetation....(A) digital terrain model was used to derive visualisations that emphasise subtle, localised topographic changes, allowing detection of smaller archaeological features and structures such as collapsed walls, building foundations and cultivation fields... (M)odels were used in conjunction with high resolution colour orthophotography co-collected with the ALS data to identify and characterize archaeological features.

The digital terrain model was also used to perform surface hydrological analyses using SAGA software package (Gruber and Peckham, 2009, Olaya and Conrad, 2009), with emphasis on defining catchments and finding closed depressions that could be used to identify probable dhaka pits. The approximate volume of these pits was (then) calculated .
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... ia%3Dihub
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Egypt Unveils Newly Discovered Chamber Inside Great Pyramid
March 2, 2023

Introduction:
CAIRO (AP via Courthouse News) — Egypt’s antiquities authorities on Thursday unveiled a newly discovered, sealed-off chamber inside one of the Great Pyramids at Giza, just outside of Cairo, that dates back some 4,500 years ago.

The corridor — on the northern side of the Pyramid of Khufu — was discovered using modern scanning technology. It measures 9 meters (nearly 30 feet) in length and is 2 meters (over 6 feet) wide, perched above the main entrance of the pyramid.

Archaeologists do not know what the function was of the chamber, which is not accessible from the outside. In 2017, scientists announced the discovery of another sealed-off corridor, a 30-meter chamber — or about 98 feet — also inside the Pyramid of Khufu.

Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass and the country’s Minister for Tourism Ahmed Eissa, announced the discovery Thursday at an unveiling ceremony outside the pyramid. The Scan Pyramids project, an international program that uses scans to look at unexplored sections of the ancient structure, was credited for the find.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/egypt-u ... -pyramid/
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Archaeologists Map Hidden NT Landscape Where First Australians Lived More than 60,000 Years Ago
May 4, 2023

Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Scientists at Flinders University have used sub-surface imaging and aerial surveys to see through floodplains in the Red Lily Lagoon area of West Arnhem Land in Northern Australia.

These ground-breaking methods showed how this important landscape in the Northern Territory was altered as sea levels rose about 8,000 years ago.

Their discovery shows that the ocean had reached this, now inland region, which has important implications for understanding the archaeological record of Madjedbebe—the oldest archaeological site in Australia.

The findings also provide a new way to understand the rock art in the region, which is recognised globally for its significance and distinctive style.

By examining how sediments now buried beneath the flood plains changed as sea levels rose, the researchers can see how the transformation of Red Lily Lagoon had resulted in the growth of mangroves that have supported animal and marine life in a region where ancient Indigenous rock art is located. This transformation has, in turn, fostered an environment that has inspired the subjects and animals in the ancient rock art.

Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/988348

For the article in Plos One that presents findings of the Flinders University team: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/arti ... e.0283006
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New Dating Technique Employs Ancient Mesopotamian Bricks
by Matthew D. Howland, Lisa Tauxe, Shai Gordin, and Erez Ben-Yosef
December 18, 2023

Introduction:
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Significance

Reconstructing the behavior of Earth’s magnetic field during archaeological periods is crucial for both achieving a better understanding of the field and related natural phenomena and for providing a basis for absolute dating archaeological materials. Here, we analyzed inscribed baked bricks from Mesopotamia from the 3rd–1st millennia BCE, which are well-dated based on their association with well-known regional kings. Providing well-dated and highly precise archaeomagnetic intensity data for the region, our results 1) demonstrate the potential of this archaeomagnetic analysis of baked bricks; 2) facilitate a better understanding of the field, including insights regarding the Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic Anomaly; and 3) provide a basis for archaeomagnetic dating in a key region in the history of complex societies.

Abstract

This study presents 32 high-resolution geomagnetic intensity data points from Mesopotamia, spanning the 3rd to the 1st millennia BCE. These data contribute to rectifying geographic disparities in the resolution of the global archaeointensity curve that have hampered our understanding of geomagnetic field dynamics and the viability of applying archaeomagnetism as a method of absolute dating of archaeological objects. A lack of precise and well-dated intensity data in the region has also limited our ability to identify short-term fluctuations in the geomagnetic field, such as the Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic Anomaly (LIAA), a period of high field intensity from ca. 1050 to 550 BCE. This phenomenon has hitherto not been well-demonstrated in Mesopotamia, contrary to predictions from regional geomagnetic models. To address these issues, this study presents precise archaeomagnetic results from 32 inscribed baked bricks, tightly dated to the reigns of 12 Mesopotamian kings through interpretation of their inscriptions. Results confirm the presence of the high field values of the LIAA in Mesopotamia during the first millennium BCE and drastically increase the resolution of the archaeointensity curve for the 3rd–1st millennia BCE. This research establishes a baseline for the use of archaeomagnetic analysis as an absolute dating technique for archaeological materials from Mesopotamia.
Read more here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313361120
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