Monday May 14, 2012
An article in PNAS published on May 14, 2012, describes a fundamental reassessment of the Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian site of Abri Castanet, in the Dordogne region of France, which pushes the date of its artwork back to among the earliest known in the world, about 37,000 years ago.
Cave entrance of Abri Castanet; photo by Père Igor
Abri Castanet was first excavated by pioneer French archaeologist Denis Peyrony in the early decades of the 20th century, and then reopened in the 1990s by Jean Pelegrin and Randall White. Peyrony was convinced that he had identified two separate occupations--an Early Aurignacian one and a Middle Aurignacian one--and in the Middle Aurignacian level he discovered evidence of cave art, specifically animal and abstract vulvar (female sexual organs) representations carved into fragments of the ceiling.
What White's latest research has shown, at least according to the excavators, is that the site has no Middle Aurignacian component to it: all of the artifacts and art date instead to the Early Aurignacian. Abri Castanet's art work is thus similarly dated to that of the marvelous paintings of Chauvet Cave, also in the Dordogne in the Ardache Ardèche valley of France, and, if White and his team are correct, Abri Castanet's art is among the earliest known cave art in the world.
Friday May 11, 2012
A fascinating report in Science today, and featured in an upcoming issue of National Geographic, is that of a newly discovered mural including astronomical tables at the classic Maya site of Xultún.
Trees grow atop a newly discovered mound over a house built by the ancient Maya that contains the rendering of an ancient figure, possibly the town scribe. The research is supported by the National Geographic Society. Photo by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic
Xultún was a regional capital in the Peten of Guatemala, with an occupation that dates between ca AD 200-800: and on the walls of one of its rooms are painted a list of the movements of heavenly bodies. This story obviously required a photo essay.
For this project, I was thrilled to be able to enlist my former contributing writer Nicoletta Maestri, a student of Maya archaeology completing her PhD who has visited the region on at least one occasion. Our report is based on the Science article, and other materials gleaned from external research. We have not seen the National Geographic article, although most of the photos used in the essay were taken by Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic.
By the way, my favorite thing about this article is that there is evidence that the scribes wrote and corrected their tables over generations, as their observations grew more acute.
Some news items featuring this report:
Thursday May 10, 2012
New DNA evidence published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this week supports the domestication of horses as having occurred one time, somewhere in the western steppe region of Eurasia, somewhere in what is today Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan.
Przewalski's Horse (Equus ferus przewalskii). Pictured are Przewalski's horses, the closest wild relative of the domestic horse ancestor. image courtesy of Vera Warmuth
That's pretty much what the archaeological evidence has been saying for some time, at sites such as Krasni Yar, Botai and Kozhai I in Kazakhstan: that horses were domesticated by pastoralist nomads in the steppe societies perhaps as long ago as 5000 BC. But the new evidence certainly adds conviction to what we've been saying.
Warmuth V, Eriksson A, Bower MA, Barker G, Barrett E, Hanks BK, Li S, Lomitashvili D, Ochir-Goryaeva M, Sizonov GV et al. 2012. Reconstructing the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early edition.
Monday May 7, 2012
In one of the Time Team programs I reviewed last week, the team investigated a Roman mansio--the Empire's version of a way station or roadside hotel.
Mansio ruins in Staffordshire, UK. Alun Salt
I've always been intrigued by these kinds of archaeological sites--probably because I spent all too many years of my archaeological career staying in motels and hotels within a few miles of whatever investigation I was working on.
Ruins of an Inca Tampu at Ingapirca, Peru Julia Rubinic
For whatever reason, the Time Team videos prodded me to find out what scholars have written about way stations in the great road systems of the world: the Roman Road mansio, the Inca Trail tampu, and the Silk Road caravansary. Their similarities and differences make for fascinating investigations.
Dogubayazit Caravansary in Turkey. Charlie Phillips
Anybody else up for a road trip?
