Scientists unearth forgotten children of the past

One of the team of scientists analyzing hair under the microscope
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of York

Scientists have unearthed a story of forgotten children of the past, providing the first direct evidence of the lives of early nineteenth-century ‘pauper apprentices'.

A team from the University of York in collaboration with Durham University and volunteer researchers at Washburn Heritage Centre, examined human remains from a rural churchyard cemetery in the village of Fewston, North Yorkshire. 

Analysis

The analysis discovered the skeletal remains of over 150 individuals, including an unusually large proportion of children aged between eight and 20 years. 

Early analysis immediately identified the children as being distinctive from the locals, showing signs of stunted growth and malnutrition, as well as evidence of diseases associated with hazardous labor. 

The team of scientists, working together with local historians, have been able to piece together the story of these forgotten children, transported from workhouses in London and indentured to work long hours in the mills of the North of England. They were used as an expendable and cheap source of labor.

Impact of poverty

The scientific analysis combined many different approaches and provides a direct and compelling testimony of the impact of poverty and factory labor on children’s growth, health and mortality in the past.

Professor Michelle Alexander, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, who was a senior author of the study, said: “We undertook chemical analysis of the bones to study diet and found that the apprentices had a lack of animal protein in the diet compared to the locals, more on a level with the victims of the Great Irish Famine.”

Examination of the bones and teeth also highlighted the large numbers of pathologies, including tuberculosis and respiratory disease associated with millwork, diseases of deprivation, such as rickets, and the delayed growth of the children.

Hardships

Professor Rebecca Gowland, from Durham’s Department of Archaeology, said: “This is the first bioarcheological evidence for pauper apprentices in the past and it unequivocally highlights the toll placed on their developing bodies. 

“To see direct evidence, written in the bones, of the hardships these children had faced was very moving. It was important to the scientists and the local community that these findings could provide a testimony of their short lives."

The remains have now been reburied in a ceremony that involved contributions from the local community, volunteer researchers, scientists and descendants of those excavated. 

Industrial past

Sally Robinson from the Washburn Heritage Centre, Yorkshire, who led the team of local volunteers said: “It's easy to forget that the Washburn valley had an industrial past given the beauty of the reservoirs that visitors see today. 

“It was important to us to find out about the children who worked in the mills. They were overlooked in life and treated as a commodity - but we hope we have done them some justice by telling their stories and creating a lasting commemoration.”

Artwork inspired by the analysis and an exhibition are now on permanent display at the Washburn Heritage Centre. 

Excavation

Malin Holst, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, said: "This project was very rewarding, as we worked closely with the Fewston community and descendants of the dead from the initial excavation to the publication. 

“We researched the named individuals in depth and obtained photos, birth and death certificates, psychiatric records and personal diaries. 

“This, together with our scientific research provided an insight into the daily lives of this cemetery population - the stone masons, farmers, housewives, laborers and the pauper apprentices who worked in the mills.”

Funding: The research, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Published in journal: PLOS ONE

Source/Credit: University of York

Reference Number: arch051823_01

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South Africa’s desert-like interior may have been more inviting to our human ancestors

Illustration Credit: Scientific Frontline

Lining the Cape of South Africa and its southern coast are long chains of caves that nearly 200,000 years ago were surrounded by a lush landscape and plentiful food.

During a glacial phase that lasted between 195,000 to 123,000 years ago, these caves served as refuge to a group of humans that some researchers think were the only people to survive this ice age, called Marine Isotope Stage Six, or MIS6. And in this coastal region, a lot of archaeological research has taken place. Of less interest to archaeologists has been the interior of South Africa, which was thought to be an uninhabited, inhospitable place during at least two waves of ice ages, MIS3 and 2.

Now, a study has shown that the region might have been more fertile and temperate during these two glacial periods than previously thought, and that the region likely played host to human populations living around a series of paleolakes. The study, led by University of Michigan archaeologist Brian Stewart, provides a more comprehensive timeline of the age and stages of these lakes, and shows human fingerprints across the region. The research, funded by the National Geographic Society, is published in the journal PNAS.

‘Spectacular’ new find: Roman military camps in desert found by Oxford archaeologists using Google Earth

An aerial view of the western camp
Photo Credit: APAAME

Three new Roman fortified camps have been identified across northern Arabia by a remote sensing survey by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.  Their paper, published today in the journal Antiquity, reports the discovery may be evidence of a probable undocumented military campaign across south east Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

The camps were identified using satellite images. According to the research team, they may have been part of a previously undiscovered Roman military campaign linked to the Roman takeover of the Nabataean Kingdom in AD 106 CE, a civilization centered on the world-famous city of Petra, located in Jordan.

"These camps are a spectacular new find and an important new insight into Roman campaigning in Arabia."

Dr Mike Bishop

Dr Michael Fradley, who led the research and first identified the camps on Google Earth, suggests there is little doubt about the date of the camps. He says, ‘We are almost certain they were built by the Roman army, given the typical playing card shape of the enclosures with opposing entrances along each side. The only notable difference between them is that the westernmost camp is significantly larger than the two camps to the east.’

Prolonged droughts likely spelled the end for Indus megacities

A section through the Dharamjali stalagmite that the authors studied. 
Photo Credit: Alena Giesche

The beginning of this arid period — starting at around 4,200 years ago and lasting for over two centuries — coincides with the reorganization of the metropolis-building Indus Civilization, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India.

The research identified three protracted droughts — each lasting between 25 and 90 years — during this arid period. “We find clear evidence that this interval was not a short-term crisis but a progressive transformation of the environmental conditions in which Indus people lived,” said study co-author Prof Cameron Petrie, from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

The researchers charted historic rainfall by examining growth layers in a stalagmite collected from a cave near Pithoragarh, India. By measuring a range of environmental tracers — including oxygen, carbon and calcium isotopes — they obtained a reconstruction showing relative rainfall at seasonal resolution. They also used high-precision Uranium-series dating to get a handle on the age and duration of the droughts.

“Multiple lines of evidence allow us to piece together the nature of these droughts from different angles — and confirm they are in agreement,” said lead author of the research Alena Giesche, who conducted the research as part of her PhD in Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

Chicken breeding in Japan dates back to fourth century BCE

Red junglefowl, the species from which the chicken was domesticated
Photo Credit: Masaki Eda

Conclusive evidence of chicken breeding in the Yayoi period of Japan has been discovered from the Karako-Kagi site.

The chicken is one of the most common domesticated animals, with a current estimated population of over 33 billion individuals. They are reared for their meat and eggs, and may be kept as pets.

The chicken is believed to have been domesticated in Southeast Asia about 3500 years ago, following which they were carried to all corners of the world. The exact date of introduction of chicken breeding to Japan is under debate, as there are no historical records and archeological evidence is inconclusive.

Professor Masaki Eda at the Hokkaido University Museum led a team to uncover the earliest conclusive evidence of chicken breeding in Japan. The findings, which show chickens were bred in the Karako-Kagi site, a settlement from the Yayoi period [5th century BCE to around 2nd century BCE], were published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences.

Ancient DNA reveals entwined African and Asian ancestry along the Swahili coast of eastern Africa

Rice researchers Mary Prendergast and Jeffrey Fleisher.
Photo Credit: Brandon Martin.

A new genetic study of medieval people who lived along the Indian Ocean coast of eastern Africa — an area often called the “Swahili coast” for its language and culture — revealed that they had both African and Persian ancestry.

The results suggest that maritime trade connections long recognized by archaeologists based on imported goods and architectural influences fostered relationships between Asian merchants and African traders and their families.

“Entwined African and Asian genetic roots of medieval peoples of the Swahili coast” was published today in Nature. It examines genetic ancestry and cultural influences in eastern Africa by using DNA from the skeletal remains of 80 individuals who were buried in six medieval and early modern coastal towns in Kenya and Tanzania dating to the years 1250-1800 and an inland town in Kenya dating to after 1650.

Analysis of the genetic data enabled scientists to estimate that people of African and Persian ancestry began to have children together around the year 1000, centuries before the burials themselves.

Does the artificial watercourse in the Hessian Ried have a Roman past?

At a site visit in the Hessian Ried
(from left): Prof. Andreas Vött, University of Mainz, Prof. Markus Scholz, Goethe University, Dr. Thomas Becker and Prof. Udo Recker, both State Service for Heritage Protection and Management Hesse.
Photo Credit: Lars Görze, State Service for Heritage Protection and Management Hesse

The Landgraben, the body of water between the German cities of Groß-Gerau and Trebur, flows into the Rhine northwest of Astheim. Its name goes back to Count Georg I (1547-1596) of Hesse-Darmstadt, to whom the origin of this artificial watercourse has been attributed until now. Archaeologists, however, suspect the waterway had a different genesis. A team from the State Service for Heritage Protection and Management Hesse and the universities of Frankfurt, Mainz and Kiel can now use the DFG's funding to research the Roman past. 

Following archaeological investigations in the Hessian Ried, initial indications show the canal may have been dug much earlier than previously estimated: It is thought the Roman military created the artificial body of water during the conquest and development of the Ried, located on the right bank of the Rhine, in the 1st century AD. The land ditch, which merged into today's Schwarzbach stream near Trebur, probably served to supply materials and goods to the Roman fort and its nearby civilian settlement in Groß-Gerau. With the new funds in hand, further research is now getting underway. 

Red Deer Natural Habitat Recreated Over the Past 50,000 Years

During the period of global cooling (33,000 years ago), the range of the species declined and reached a minimum of around
Photo Credit: Alexis B

The natural habitat of the European Red deer over the last 50,000 years has been recreated and described by a team of scientists from Russia, Poland, Ukraine, the UK and Italy. An article summarizing the research has been published in The Journal of Archaeological Science.

The details of how reindeer ecology changed with climate warming during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition allow an assessment of the species' adaptive capacity. As reindeer have been widespread in Europe for tens of thousands of years, the data can be used for the study of human life and diet in this part of the world since the Late Pleistocene.

"At the beginning of the study period, the European Red deer tended to feed on plants inherent to open landscapes such as tundra, steppe, and meadows. During this stage, particularly with the maximum cold snap, 26-19 thousand years ago, the Red deer, as well as their ungulate neighbors (the reindeer and horses), were affected by prolonged low temperatures and lack of nutrients. The exception included some territories of modern Spain and Italy," says Pavel Kosintsev, Head Specialist of the UrFU Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Ural Branch), and co-author of the article.

23,000-year-old human genome from southern Spain decoded

Human tooth recovered Cueva de Malalmuerzo
Photo Credit: Pedro Cantalejo

A new study reports on genomic data from a 23,000-year-old individual who lived in what was probably the warmest place in Europe at the peak of the last Ice Age. The oldest human genome recovered from the southern tip of Spain adds an important piece of the puzzle to the genetic history of Europe.

An international team of researchers has analyzed ancient human DNA from several archaeological sites in Andalucía in southern Spain. The study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, reports on the oldest genome to date from Cueva del Malalmuerzo in southern Spain, as well as the 7,000 to 5,000-year-old genomes of early farmers from other well-known sites, such as Cueva de Ardales. The researchers describe their findings in the article ‘A 23,000-year-old southern-Iberian individual links human groups that lived in Western Europe before and after the Last Glacial Maximum’ in the Journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The Iberian Peninsula plays an important role in the reconstruction of human population history. As a geographic cul-de-sac in the southwest of Europe, it is on one hand considered a refuge during the last Ice Age with its drastic temperature fluctuations. On the other hand, it may have been one of the starting points for the recolonization of Europe after the glacial maximum. Indeed, previous studies had reported on the genomic profiles of 13,000 to 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from the Iberian Peninsula and provided evidence for the survival and continuation of a much older Paleolithic lineage that has been replaced in other parts of Europe and is no longer detectable. 

Steel Was Already Used in Europe 2900 Years Ago

Using geochemical analyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel.
Photo Credits: Rafael Ferreiro Mählmann (A), Bastian Asmus (B), Ralph Araque Gonzalez (C-E)

A study by an international and interdisciplinary team headed by Freiburg archaeologist Dr. Ralph Araque Gonzalez from the Faculty of Humanities has proven that steel tools were already in use in Europe around 2900 years ago. Using geochemical analyses, the researchers were able to prove that stone stelae on the Iberian Peninsula that date back to the Final Bronze Age feature complex engravings that could only have been done using tempered steel. This was backed up by metallographic analyses of an iron chisel from the same period and region (Rocha do Vigio, Portugal, ca. 900 BCE) that showed the necessary carbon content to be proper steel. The result was also confirmed experimentally by undertaking trials with chisels made of various materials: only the chisel made of tempered steel was suitably capable of engraving the stone. 

Until recently it was assumed that it was not possible to produce suitable quality steel in the Early Iron Age and certainly not in the Final Bronze Age, and that it only came to be widespread in Europe under the Roman Empire. “The chisel from Rocha do Vigio and the context where it was found show that iron metallurgy including the production and tempering of steel were probably indigenous developments of decentralized small communities in Iberia, and not due to the influence of later colonization processes. This also has consequences for the archaeological assessment of iron metallurgy and quartzite sculptures in other regions of the world,” explains Araque Gonzalez. The study ‘Stone-working and the earliest steel in Iberia: Scientific analyses and experimental replications of final bronze age stelae and tools’ has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

New Study Shows Archery Appeared in Europe Thousands of Years Earlier than Previously Thought

Laure Metz making experimental bow and arrow shots with arrows armed with Neronian light points.
 Photo Credit: Ludovic Slimak

The use of bow-and-arrow technology gave humans an edge over Neanderthal neighbors in hunting game

A new study published in Science Advances contextualizes the traditions and technological knowledge of early, pioneering Homo sapiens. The study demonstrates the mastery of archery by modern populations and extends the evidence of archery in Europe back by about 40,000 years.

The researchers analyzed lithic artifacts from a cave in Mediterranean France called Grotte Mandrin, which reveals the oldest occupation of modern humans on the European continent. The study focuses on a very rich level, attributed to the Neronian culture, and testifies to Homo sapiens occupations dating back 54,000 years, interposed between numerous Neanderthal occupations in the cave before and after the modern humans. That’s roughly 10,000 years earlier than what had been previously believed to be the earliest occupation of modern humans in Europe.

The research was directed by Laure Metz, an associated researcher at UMR 7269 (UMR LAMPEA, CNRS, Aix-Marseille University), and Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher (UMR 5608 TRACES, Toulouse Jean Jaurès University). Metz is a UConn-affiliated researcher and former post-doctoral researcher in the UConn Department of Anthropology Deep History Lab led by Professor Christian Tryon.

Hidden from the Romans: 200 tons of silver on the shores of the river Lahn

"Tractor Tracks".
The excavations in Bad Ems were initiated by J. Eigenbrod, who spotted suspicious traces in the field from his high seat. The traces constitute changes in the vegetation, indicating ground interventions, in this case the ditches of the Roman camp on the "Ehrlich"
Photo Credit: H.-J. du Roi

In their search for silver ore, the Romans established two military camps in the Bad Ems area near Koblenz in the 1st century AD. This is the result of research carried out as part of a teaching excavation that spanned several years and was carried out by Goethe University's Department of Archaeology and History of the Roman Provinces in cooperation with the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Several surprising findings were made during the process. For one, the exciting research story earned young archaeologist Frederic Auth first place at the Wiesbaden Science Slam. 

When Prof. Markus Scholz, who teaches archaeology and the history of Roman provinces at Goethe University, returned to Bad Ems toward the end of the excavation work, he was astonished: After all, all the photos sent by his colleague Frederic Auth showed but a few pieces of wood. Not surprisingly, Scholz was ill-prepared for what he saw next: a wooden defense construction consisting of sharpened wooden stakes, designed to prevent the enemy's approach. The martial-looking structure was intended to deter enemies from attacking the camp. Such installations – comparable, if you will, to modern barbed wire – are referenced to in literature from the time. Caesar, for instance, mentioned them. But to date, none had been found. The damp soil of the Blöskopf area obviously provided the ideal conditions: The wooden spikes, which probably extended throughout the entire downward tapering ditch around the camp, were found to be well preserved. 

New study suggests Mayas utilized market-based economics

Obsidian collections from the site of Q'umarkaj and the surrounding region.
Photo Credit: Rachel Horowitz

More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought.

That’s according to a new study in Latin American Antiquity that shows the ruling K’iche’ elite took a hands-off approach when it came to managing the procurement and trade of obsidian by people outside their region of central control.

In these areas, access to nearby sources of obsidian, a glasslike rock used to make tools and weapons, was managed by local people through independent and diverse acquisition networks. Over time, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system that is in many ways suggestive of contemporary market-based economies.

“Scholars have generally assumed that the obsidian trade was managed by Maya rulers, but our research shows that this wasn’t the case at least in this area,” said Rachel Horowitz, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington State University. “People seem to have had a good deal of economic freedom including being able to go to places similar to the supermarkets we have today to buy and sell goods from craftsmen.”

Precise solar observations fed millions in ancient Mexico

Rising sun Mount Tlaloc in Mexico.
Photo Credit: Ben Meissner

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

Before the Spanish arrival in 1519, the Basin of Mexico’s agricultural system fed a population that was extraordinarily large for the time. Whereas Seville, the largest urban center in Spain, had a population of fewer than 50,000, the Basin, now known as Mexico City, was home to as many as 3 million people.

To feed so many people in a region with a dry spring and summer monsoons required advanced understanding of when seasonal variations in weather would arrive. Planting too early, or too late, could have proved disastrous. The failure of any calendar to adjust for leap-year fluctuations could also have led to crop failure.

Though colonial chroniclers documented the use of a calendar, it was not previously understood how the Mexica, or Aztecs, were able to achieve such accuracy. New UC Riverside research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates how they did it. They used the mountains of the Basin as a solar observatory, keeping track of the sunrise against the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“We concluded they must have stood at a single spot, looking eastwards from one day to another, to tell the time of year by watching the rising sun,” said Exequiel Ezcurra, distinguished UCR professor of ecology who led the research.

1,700-year-old spider monkey remains discovered in Teotihuacán, Mexico

Complete skeletal remains of a 1,700 year-old female spider monkey found in Teotihuacán, Mexico.
 Photo Credit: courtesy of Nawa Sugiyama

The complete skeletal remains of a spider monkey — seen as an exotic curiosity in pre-Hispanic Mexico — grants researchers new evidence regarding social-political ties between two ancient powerhouses: Teotihuacán and Maya Indigenous rulers.

The discovery was made by Nawa Sugiyama, a UC Riverside anthropological archaeologist, and a team of archaeologists and anthropologists who since 2015 have been excavating at Plaza of Columns Complex, in Teotihuacán, Mexico. The remains of other animals were also discovered, as well as thousands of Maya-style mural fragments and over 14,000 ceramic sherds from a grand feast. These pieces are more than 1,700 years old.

The spider monkey is the earliest evidence of primate captivity, translocation, and gift diplomacy between Teotihuacán and the Maya. Details of the discovery will be published in the journal PNAS. "This finding allows researchers to piece evidence of high diplomacy interactions and debunks previous beliefs that Maya presence in Teotihuacán was restricted to migrant communities," said Sugiyama, who led the research.

UiB scientists discover 80 000-year-old bone tools

80 000 Year Bone Tools: From left to right: experimental debarking in Africa, the bone tool tip after use, Francesco d'Errico taking replicas in the field of an experimental bone tool.
Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Photo Credit: UiB, SapienCE

Until the beginning of this century, the production of fully worked bone tools was considered an innovation introduced in Europe around 40,000 years ago by modern humans. Research carried out over the last two decades has led to the discovery of bone tools in several regions of Africa, some of which could date back 100,000 years. But these early bone tools are rare and non-standardized in shape.

Key cultural innovations

The discovery of 23 bone tools from the Sibudu rock shelter, Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa, all with a flattened ogival-shaped end, found in archaeological layers dated to between 80 000 and 60 000 years ago, changes the picture.

“Our new study documents the technology and function of the earliest fully shaped bone tools from this region. The discovery of these tools contributes to a better understanding of when and how these innovations arose, and what they were used for,” Francesco d’Errico says. He is the lead author on the paper just published in Scientific Reports.

d’Errico is part of the SapienCE team at the University of Bergen. The SapienCE Centre of Excellence, funded by Norwegian Research Council, consists of an interdisciplinary team of world leading scientists. The aim for SapienCE is to improve our understanding of how and when Homo sapiens evolved into who we are today.

Previously unknown monumental temple discovered near the Tempio Grande in Vulci

Archaeologists and other colleagues uncover the walls of the Etruscan temple in Vulci.
Photo Credit: Mariachiara Franceschini

Archeologists from the universities of Freiburg and Mainz identify one of the largest known sacred buildings of the Etruscans

An interdisciplinary team headed by archeologists Dr. Mariachiara Franceschini of the University of Freiburg and Paul P. Pasieka of the University of Mainz has discovered a previously unknown Etruscan temple in the ancient city of Vulci, which lies in the Italian region of Latium. The building, which is 45 meters by 35 meters, is situated west of the Tempio Grande, a sacred building which was excavated back in the 1950s. Initial examination of the strata of the foundation of the northeast corner of the temple and the objects they found there led the researchers to date the construction of the temple towards the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century BCE. “The new temple is roughly the same size and on a similar alignment as the neighboring Tempio Grande, and was built at roughly the same Archaic time,” explains Franceschini. “This duplication of monumental buildings in an Etruscan city is rare, and indicates an exceptional finding,” adds Pasieka. The team discovered the temple when working on the Vulci Cityscape project, which was launched in 2020 and aimed to research the settlement strategies and urbanistic structures of the city of Vulci. Vulci was one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan federation and in pre-Roman times was one of the most important urban centers in what is now Italy.

Old Bone Links Lost American Parrot to Ancient Indigenous Bird Trade

A thick-billed parrot.
Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

For centuries, Indigenous communities in the American Southwest imported colorful parrots from Mexico. But according to a study led by The University of Texas at Austin, some parrots may have been captured locally and not brought from afar.

The research challenges the assumption that all parrot remains found in American Southwest archaeological sites have their origins in Mexico. It also presents an important reminder: The ecology of the past can be very different from what we see today.

“When we deal with natural history, we can constrain ourselves by relying on the present too much,” said the study’s author, John Moretti, a doctoral candidate at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “These bones can give us kind of a baseline view of the animal life of the ecosystems that surrounded us before huge fundamental changes that continue today began.”

The study was published in print in the September issue of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

A 10,000-Year-Old Infant Burial Provides Insights Into the Use of Baby Carriers and Family Heirlooms in Prehistory

 Team of researchers including Claudine Gravel-Miguel from Arizona State University, Jamie Hodgkins from the University of Colorado Denver work at the excavation of Arma Veirana.
Credit: University of Colorado Denver

If you’ve taken care of an infant, you know how important it is to find ways to multitask. And, when time is short and your to-do list is long, humans find ways to be resourceful—something caregivers have apparently been doing for a very, very long time.

The authors of a new article published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory argue that they have found evidence of the use of baby carriers 10,000 years ago at the Arma Veirana site in Liguria, Italy. The research, led by Arizona State University’s Claudine Gravel-Miguel, PhD, also includes the University of Colorado Denver’s Jamie Hodgkins, PhD, an Associate Professor of Anthropology, and a co-principal investigator on the excavation of Arma Veirana.

Because material used to make the first baby carriers is not preserved well in the archaeological record and because prehistoric baby burials are very uncommon, evidence for prehistoric baby carriers is extremely rare. The site—which includes the oldest documented burial of a female infant in Europe, a 40- to 50-days-old baby, nicknamed Neve—has both. Researchers used innovative analytical methods to extract hard-to-obtain information about perforated shell beads found at the site.

Stone spheres could be from Ancient Greek board game

Groups of spheres from Akrotiri
Credit: Konstantinos Trimmis

Archaeologists from the University of Bristol have suggested that mysterious stone spheres found at various ancient settlements across the Aegean and Mediterranean could be playing pieces from one of the earliest ever board games.

There has been quite a lot of speculation around these spheres found at sites on Santorini, Crete, Cyprus, and other Greek Islands with theories around their use including being for some sort of sling stones, tossing balls, counting/record-keeping system or as counters/pawns.

Previous research by the same team from the University of Bristol indicated that there was variability in sphere size within specific clusters and collections of spheres. Following on from this the team wanted to explore potential patterning within these sphere concentrations, to help give an insight into their potential use.

The latest study published this week in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports by Drs Christianne Fernée and Konstantinos Trimmis from the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology examined common features on 700 stones – which range from around 4,500 to 3,600 years old – found at the Bronze Age town of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini.