Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  We’ve queued up for you four top news stories that came out this past week on Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

Archaeological evidence shows that people have lived in Washington, D.C., for thousands of years.  Evidence from a cave in Italy shows that Neanderthals could dive for clams.  Fire damage to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has stimulated archaeological research on the manner of its construction 800 years ago. And a massive metal production site in Iron Age Dubai reflects 3000-year-old recycling practices.

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And now, here’s Laura Pettigrew with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day.

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from January 12th to the 18th, 2020.  

We begin this week in the U.S. Capitol, where archaeologists continue to uncover evidence of Native American habitation.

When former President Gerald Ford decided to add an outdoor swimming pool to the White House, National Park Service archaeologists routinely examined the site of the excavation.  There they found artifacts, including quartz projectile points, showing evidence of an indigenous presence dating back millennia.

Very little is known about the earliest Native Americans in Washington, D.C., from about 12,000 to 16,000 years ago, according to Dr. Ruth Trocolli, City Archaeologist of the District of Columbia.  She said that the District developed far too quickly for archaeological sites to be identified today.

The modern-day boundaries of the District include the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, which provided water and abundant resources even during the Ice Age.  According to Dr. Trocolli, this place was a major draw for the area’s indigenous people.

She postulates that the regional population would gather in the Spring to catch and process the voluminous fish runs of their time, most likely by drying, and would participate in feasts, weddings, funerals and spiritual ceremonies.

As reported by the Voice of America News, at the time Europeans first began exploring the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River region, three Native American confederacies were dominant:  the Piscataway (piss-CAT- a-way) centered in southern Maryland, the Susquehannock in Pennsylvania, and the Powhatan in Virginia.

Allied with the Piscataway, the people who lived in today’s District of Columbia area were known as the Nacotchtank (nah-COTCH-tahnk), as was their settlement, which comprised up to five villages.

About a thousand years ago, the Native Americans in Washington transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farming.  Nineteenth Century archaeologist Samuel Proudfit surmised that the Nacotchtank may have used the flat land around the U.S. Capital building as a field for interplanting corn, beans and squash, known by many tribes as the “three sisters.”

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of quarries in Rock Creek Park, a 1,755-acre wooded area that bisects the District.  Nacotchtank workers moved cut stone to nearby work areas where they worked it into arrow points, knives, axes, and cooking vessels. 

Just blocks from the White House, archaeologists in the 1980s found a burial pit containing the cremated remains of an adult woman dating to at least 1,200 years ago.  She was buried with a comb carved from a deer antler, a wooden head and textiles woven from grass.

A half century after the arrival of European settlers, the population of Nacotchtank was in full decline.  Some moved to nearby Analostan Island, now known as Roosevelt Island.   Others died from disease or merged with the larger Piscataway tribe.  Some may have been sold into slavery, and still others likely married and assimilated into colonial culture. 

Our second story takes us to Italy’s mid-western coast, where reanalysis of cave artifacts has shown that Neanderthals could not only swim, but could also dive up to four meters, or 13 feet, to harvest clams.

The reexamined artifacts were found in Moscerini, a large cave located at the base of a limestone cliff on the south-eastern flank of a small coastal promontory

Archaeological investigation of the grotto began 70 years ago, but the cavern mouth was buried by road construction in the 1970s.

As published in PLOS One, a peer reviewed open access scientific journal, the reanalysis of previous archaeological finds shows strong evidence of systematic use of clam shell scrapers by Neanderthals.  

According to Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Boulder, researchers believe that the harvest of the clams was to obtain a specific species used to make scraping tools.  All of the finds were made from one species: the smooth clam, Callista chione (chee-OH-nay).

Neanderthals are believed to have consumed mussels, which live in tightly clustered colonies easily harvested at low tide.  Clams, however, are harder to gather as they burrow in the sandy sea floor and generally are visible only by a protruding siphon, a long tube-like structure most commonly used for breathing, locomotion, feeding, and reproduction. 

The shell tools, shaped with stone hammers, were found throughout multiple archaeological layers dating from 106,000 to 74,000 years ago, predating the known arrival of modern humans to the area.

Most of the shell tools had slightly abraded exteriors and were opaque, as if sanded down over time.  These, Villa and his colleagues concluded, were found on the beach.  However, the rest were larger, shiny, and smooth.  The archaeologists believe these had to have been gathered directly from the seafloor, alive.

An additional finding at Moscerini adds to evidence that the Neanderthals also collected pumice.  The archaeologists explained that these rough-textured volcanic rocks were used to sharpen the clam shell tools.  The pumice likely was ejected by Campanian volcanoes erupting to the south of Moscerini.  Full of air bubbles, pumice floats on seawater and would have washed up on the beach.

And now we’re off to Paris, where an international and interdisciplinary team of scientists is working to analyze as many facets of the burned Notre Dame cathedral as possible to determine how the cathedral was constructed and how to save it.  The April 15, 2019, blaze destroyed the cathedral’s roof and spire, and the intense heat and massive amount of water used to fight the fire damaged parts of the masonry.  

Little documentation exists for the building process of the cathedral, which began in 1163 and continued for about 200 years.  Olivier de Châlus, who spent four years supervising the guides that show tourists around the cathedral, is working to complete a Ph.D. thesis on the unrecorded methods of the cathedral’s construction — including how builders decided the size of columns or the height of flying buttresses and how they lifted 100-kilogram stones  more than 60 meters from the ground. 

Following the fire, archaeologist Maxime L’Héritier of Université Paris and art historian Arnaud Ybert of the University of Western Brittany in Quimper, France, formed the association of scientists that is coordinating work among specialists in various disciplines to share knowledge and advocate for scientific study of the building. 

L’Héritier, who studies ancient metals, seeks to learn more about how iron was used in the structure, including its integration into the stone walls and the carpentry that held up the roof.  Renovations in the 19th century added iron to the structure.  However, the researchers will be searching for medieval iron placed during the original construction.

Philippe Dillmann, an archaeometallurgist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, notes that, Medieval or not, the iron could reveal how hot the fire was.  As fire temperatures rose, the corrosion on the iron transformed from typical rust into more unusual compounds that could aid the scientists in determining how much the heat weakened the limestone that makes up the bulk of the cathedral’s structure.  

Lise Leroux, a geologist and expert in the conservation of stone from the Historical Monuments Research Laboratory, is helping to determine which limestone blocks need to be replaced.  As the fire raged, the intense heat and the deluge of water from firefighting efforts caused cracking and other damage in the stones.  When the church’s spire collapsed, it punched gaping holes in the vaulted limestone ceiling.

The charred remnants of the wooden frame of the roof also tell a story.  The oak trees that comprised them grew during a hot spell in Europe known as the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from the 11th century to the early 14th century.  Studying that wood could reveal details about that natural warming — such as how often droughts occurred — and may lead to a better understanding of what to expect from modern-day climate change, according to Alexa Dufraisse (doo-PHRASE) a scientist who studies tree rings within charred wood. 

At present, access to the building is limited due to toxic lead dust contamination from the burning of the cathedral’s lead roof.  Extremely high temperatures from the fire caused the lead to aerosolize into small particles that billowed into the air and settled as dust in the ruins as well as adjacent areas.

In our last story, archaeologists have discovered evidence that ancient people living in the area of what is now Dubai on the Arabian Peninsula practiced recycling methods around 3,000 years ago.

The Polish Press Agency’s English Language portal, The First News, reported that a team of researchers found around 2,600 copper, bronze and iron objects at Saruq Al Hadid that incorporated broken parts from ceramic vessels.

Karol Juchniewicz (judge-NEW-its), head of the research from the Polish archaeological firm, ArcheoConsultant, said that a few thousand years ago, the inhabitants implemented recycling.  Rather than being thrown away, ceramics were slightly modified and used as tools, weapons, decorations, jewelry, and iconic or magical items, such as figurines of snakes. 

Previous research has revealed that people had been making metal objects at Saruq Al Hadid since around 4,000 years ago.  The site was discovered in 2002 by the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammad bin Rashid al Maktoum.  Flying in a helicopter above the Rub al-Khali desert, he observed an unusual pattern in the sand dunes and numerous black stones dotted between the dunes.

Scientists later discovered that the stones were made from slag — a by-product in the metal smelting process.  According to researchers, the large number of black slag stones indicates that production of metal at the site took place on a huge scale.

In ancient times, the area may have been an oasis with abundant vegetation and possibly lakes.  Juchniewicz believes that this is the only explanation for the location of metal production furnaces in a place that is today a vast desert. 

Saruq Al Hadid is one of the most important Iron Age sites in the Arabian Peninsula and flourished between 1100 and 600 B.C.

According to the Saruq Al Hadid Museum, thousands of objects have been found by researchers at the site, expanding our knowledge of industrial activity, trade and everyday life in Iron Age Arabia.  These objects include clay seals, with illustrations showing that the people here were linked to many of the most important regions of the ancient world, including those in Mesopotamia, Syria, India, and Egypt.

That wraps up the news for this week! 

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web at www.archaeologica.org, where all the news is history!

I'm Laura Pettigrew and I'll see you next week!