https://phys.org/science-news/archaeology-fossils en-us The latest news on archaeology, archaeological research and archaeological advancements. It's said that a dog is a man's best friend, but the wild dingo is much maligned in Australia. This may not always have been the case though, with new research led by experts at The Australian National University and The University of Western Australia suggesting that dingoes were buried—and even domesticated—by First Nations people prior to European colonization. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-dingoes-almost-human-status-pre-colonial-australia.html Archaeology Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:14:03 EDT news617030041 It's a familiar story to many of us: In prehistoric times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Women were not physically capable of hunting because their anatomy was different from men. And because men were hunters, they drove human evolution. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-prehistoric-gender-roles-women-hunters.html Archaeology Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:07:04 EDT news617029621 Did you know the change rattling in your pocket is similar to coins used in ancient Greece? https://phys.org/news/2023-10-museum-ancient-greek-coins.html Archaeology Thu, 19 Oct 2023 16:58:34 EDT news616953511 A team of scientists from the Universities of Granada and Cambridge, as well as the Government of Catalonia, have identified the oldest pieces of Baltic amber ever found on the Iberian Peninsula, revealing that this luxury material used in jewelry and handicrafts around the world was already being imported more than 5,000 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-oldest-pieces-baltic-amber-iberian.html Archaeology Thu, 19 Oct 2023 11:45:10 EDT news616934708 More than 500,000 years ago, our human ancestors used large, stone tools known as "Acheulean handaxes," to cut meat and wood, and dig for tubers. Often made from flint, these prehistoric oval and pear-shaped tools are flaked on both sides and have a pointed end. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-15th-century-french-depicts-ancient.html Archaeology Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:10:06 EDT news616842602 In the karstic caves of Puerto Rico, cave art paints the rock walls. Previous research has assigned ages to this art based on the ages of nearby archaeological artifacts within the caves, but these ages are relative and may not reflect the true timing of the art creation. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-dating-cave-art-reveals-history.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:35:20 EDT news616779316 For thousands of years, beavers had a big influence on the Dutch ecosystem and the people that lived there. This is the conclusion of research by archaeologist Nathalie Brusgaard. The rodents were used for food, clothing and tools, and created a landscape hospitable to many other species. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-beavers-big-people-stone-age.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 14:21:46 EDT news616771301 For many people seaweed holds a reputation as a superfood, heralded for its health benefits and sustainability, but it appears our European ancestors were ahead of the game and were consuming the nutrient-rich plant for thousands of years. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reveals-european-ancestors-ate-seaweed.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 11:00:01 EDT news616756210 How much can the written records of ancient civilizations tell us about the animals they lived alongside? Published in Environmental Archaeology, Our latest research, based on the venomous snakes described in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, suggests more than you might think. A much more diverse range of snakes than we'd imagined lived in the land of the pharaohs—which also explains why these Egyptian authors were so preoccupied with treating snakebites! https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ancient-egypt-venomous-snakes-country.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:28:51 EDT news616757329 Pioneering early farmers who arrived on the Baltic coast 6,000 years ago may have taken up fishing after observing indigenous hunter-gatherer communities, a major new study has found. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-early-neolithic-farmers-baltic-coast.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 09:07:35 EDT news616752446 A piece of rock with mysterious markings that lay largely unstudied for 4,000 years is now being hailed as a "treasure map" for archaeologists, who are using it to hunt for ancient sites around north-western France. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-bronze-age-treasure.html Archaeology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 03:59:20 EDT news616733955 A study by UAB researchers describes the productive forces of the Chalcolithic communities of the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula as being very diverse, both in the type of tasks performed and in intensity, with a high degree of cooperation and no apparent signs of dependence between the different types of settlements or of political centralization. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-non-exploitative-economy-favored-splendor-iberian.html Archaeology Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:24:13 EDT news616688650 New research from the University of Liverpool's Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, together with the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick, has used gold impurities in silver coins and lead pollution in Greenland ice to show that the Romans were early pioneers of recycling. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-romans-early-recycling.html Archaeology Mon, 16 Oct 2023 14:02:09 EDT news616683727 With its low quantities of rain and soaring high temperatures, the Sahara Desert is often regarded as one of the most extreme and least habitable environments on Earth. While the Sahara was periodically much greener in the distant past, an ancient society living in a climate very similar to today's found a way to harvest water in the seemingly dry Sahara—thriving until the water ran out. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ancient-society-sahara-rose-fell.html Archaeology Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:22:37 EDT news616432954 Rats in the kitchen. Typically that implies issues with cleanliness and safety. But in medieval Japan, having rats in the kitchen could suggest an entirely different meaning. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scroll-depicting-rat-banquet-important.html Archaeology Social Sciences Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:39:04 EDT news616423141 Archaeologists have used 3D scanning to investigate inscriptions carved on two groups of Danish runestones, revealing that four stones were likely made in dedication to a powerful Viking Queen. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-runestones-reveal-power-viking-queen.html Archaeology Fri, 13 Oct 2023 11:13:55 EDT news616414430 The fact that Neanderthals were able to make a fire and use it, among other things, for cooking, demonstrates their intelligence. "This confirms our observations and theories from previous studies," explains Diego Angelucci, archaeologist at the University of Trento and co-author of the study. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-neanderthal-cuisine-excavations-reveal-neanderthals.html Archaeology Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:41:50 EDT news616408905 An international team of geoscientists, archaeologists and anthropologists has found evidence that strongly suggests an infant jawbone found in the Ethiopian highlands came from a Homo erectus child. In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group conducted multiple tests to learn the true nature of the fossil. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-reexamination-ancient-jawbone-ethiopia-homo.html Archaeology Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:50:50 EDT news616405845 For years, art historian Ana Howie had been intrigued by Anthony van Dyck's striking 1632 portrait of Italian noblewoman Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo—and was not satisfied with scholarly understandings of the work. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-key-van-dyck-portrait-captures.html Archaeology Social Sciences Thu, 12 Oct 2023 16:52:02 EDT news616348321 Neanderthals hunted cave lions and used the skin of this dangerous carnivore, a new study has shown for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-neanderthals-dangerous-cave-lions.html Archaeology Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:19:45 EDT news616331982 New imaging and scientific investigations by a team including a King's College London academic has found traces of the original paint used to decorate the Parthenon Sculptures, revealing they were once in fact brightly colored. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-scientific-analysis-reveals-true-parthenon.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Oct 2023 15:32:03 EDT news616257122 DNA analysis of mummified poop reveals two pre-Columbian Caribbean cultures ate a wide variety of plants, like maize, sweet potato, and peanuts—and tobacco and cotton traces were detected too, according to a study published October 11, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jelissa Reynoso-García from the University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-mummified-poop-reveals-pre-columbian-cultures.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:00:02 EDT news616237168 With brushes and trowels, Indigenous Colombians are unearthing traces in the jungle of a tragic period in history, when their ancestors were violently supplanted by colonists from Spain. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-colombian-jungle-americas-colonial.html Archaeology Wed, 11 Oct 2023 04:24:39 EDT news616217069 : More and more articles are popping up about the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence for researching documents in the oldest scripts, from translating ancient texts, to filling in missing parts of clay tablets. But are we better off leaving the deciphering of ancient texts to computers from now on? https://phys.org/news/2023-10-artificial-intelligence-clay-tablets.html Archaeology Tue, 10 Oct 2023 15:40:03 EDT news616171202 The development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and the Middle East led to a substantial increase in violence between inhabitants. Laws, centralized administration, trade and culture then caused the ratio of violent deaths to fall back again in the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3,300 to 1,500 BCE). This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Barcelona and Warsaw. Their results were published in Nature Human Behaviour. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-cranial-traumas-cities-built-violence.html Archaeology Tue, 10 Oct 2023 11:09:02 EDT news616154941 Look back at the chronicle of global pandemics, and the flu pandemic of 1918 stands out as an anomaly for one reason: According to the history books, it struck healthy adults in their prime just as often, if not more so, than the weak or sickly. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-skeletal-debunk-myth-flu-pandemic.html Archaeology Mon, 09 Oct 2023 16:59:29 EDT news616089560 A German-Austrian team led by archaeologist Christiana Köhler from the University of Vienna is investigating the tomb of Queen Meret-Neith in Abydos, Egypt. She was the most powerful woman in the period around 3,000 BC. Recent excavations prove her special historical significance: the researchers found 5,000-year-old wine and other grave goods. This fuels speculation that Meret-Neith was the first pharaoh of ancient Egypt and predecessor of the later Queen Hatshepsut. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-archaeologists-year-old-wine-tomb-meret-neith.html Archaeology Mon, 09 Oct 2023 16:25:58 EDT news616087553 To most people, complex technologies separate modern humans from their ancestors who lived in the Stone Age, thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. In today's fast changing world, older technologies, even those from a few years ago, are often described dismissively as "Stone Age." https://phys.org/news/2023-10-discovery-half-million-year-old-wooden-wrong-underestimate.html Archaeology Mon, 09 Oct 2023 12:46:54 EDT news616074410 When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans reached the North American interior no earlier than around 14,000 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-humans-america-years-earlier-thought.html Archaeology Sun, 08 Oct 2023 07:40:01 EDT news615818438 About 7,000 years ago, a small group of people sat around a fire, next to a small lake in what is now the Nefud Desert of northern Saudi Arabia. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-stone-age-herders-heavy-tools.html Archaeology Sat, 07 Oct 2023 12:40:01 EDT news615728337