Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  While we’re all hunkering down together, let’s review 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!

Preserved fiber string from France demonstrates Neanderthal capabilities that no longer are so surprising.  A site southwest of Mexico City documents that Spanish conquerors relied on native people and indigenous technology to make important metal objects like cannons.  A German Bronze Age monument now looks increasingly like Stonehenge. And the excavation of Neolithic pottery now is helping to push back the prehistoric occupation of London by about 3000 years.

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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 April 5th through the 11th, 2020.

We lead off with something pretty amazing. Twisted plant fibers found stuck to an ancient stone tool from a French cave site suggest that Neanderthals knew how to make string.  The discovery adds new evidence that these human relatives were more mentally sophisticated than often alleged.  

The tool in question is made of flint and dates back approximately 41,000 to 52,000 years ago.  It comes from Middle Paleolithic deposits in the Abri du Maras cave site, in the Rhone valley of southeastern France.

As reported in the journal Nature, the tiny cord fragment was found stuck to a Levallois [le-VAL-wah] flake and was excavated carefully and immediately preserved so as to prevent contamination.  Optical light microscopy on the flake and its adhesion revealed the intentional twisting of the fiber, which confirmed previous suspicions from other flakes, which had also revealed fiber adhesions but none large enough to prove they were deliberately manipulated fiber.  The previously found bits didn’t show enough twisting or plying to make it clear that the cave occupants were making cord or string.    

According to lead researcher Bruce Hardy, a paleoanthropologist from Kenyon College in Ohio, this is another nail in the coffin of the idea that Neanderthals were stupid.  Neanderthals existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and in very tough Ice Age climates in Europe and many other regions of the Old World, before they began disappearing approximately 40,000 years ago.

The new find is the oldest piece of string or rope ever found. Before this, the oldest known discovery was a cord fragment from 19,000 years ago, excavated in Israel.

The find of this 3-play cord fragment and the other smaller fragments was possible because of their adhesion to stone blades. The stone tools created a microenvironment that protected the organic matter from decomposing as is more typical in sites this old.  Very few organic materials have been found from Paleolithic times, and this absence tends to diminish our understanding of what must have been a more complex culture than just the typical popular image of Neanderthals hunkered over stone tools and wooden clubs.  It’s possible that the cord fragments were what was used to attach finely flaked stone to shaped wood in order to make better tools. 

Whatever the precise use here, the twisted cord, made from the fibrous inner bark of a tree, shows that Neanderthals had the knowledge and skills of fiber making, one of the most fundamental human technologies used in ancient times and still essential today for clothing, rope, bags, nets, mats, boats, and more.  Understanding and use of twisted fibers implies the skill to make complex, multi-component technology, as well as an understanding of the pairs, sets, and numbers needed first to twist the cord one way, then ply it with others the opposite way, in order to build up its strength.  Added to recent evidence of birch bark tar, art, and shell beads, the idea that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans is becoming increasingly untenable.

Now we travel to the Mexican state of Guerrero, in the Sierra Madre mountains along the Pacific seacoast, nearly 100 miles southwest of the capital of Mexico City.  Here, archaeologists from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been excavating a complicated mountain mining town where the Spanish conquerors allied with indigenous metalworkers to make weapons for the conquerors by borrowing local copper-smelting techniques.

When the Spanish invaders arrived in the Americas, their superior steel weapons and brass cannons were an important key to their victories.  But in at least one crucial respect, the Spaniards were quite dependent on an older indigenous technology.  The invaders needed copper for their artillery, as well as for coins, kettles, and pans, but they lacked the skills for producing copper.  Spain at that time had not produced copper domestically for centuries, relying instead on imports from central Europe. 

In Mesoamerica, far from their European source, they turned to local miners and smelters to produce this essential metal.  Those skilled workers, in turn, were able to bargain for exemption from the taxes levied on the other indigenous people.

Now, research from a mining site called El Manchón, in the mountains above the seacoast, has revealed how this system worked and continued, for two centuries or more.  

As reported by MIT News, the research combines excavation on more than four centuries worth of archaeological features, as well as laboratory analysis on the metal slag and scraps found, as well as archival investigations in Spain, Portugal and Mexico. 

According to the project directors, Dorothy Hosler, professor of archeology and ancient technology at MIT, and Johan Garcia Zaidua, a researcher at the University of Porto, in Portugal, El Manchón initially displayed no evidence of Spanish presence.  The site comprised three steep sectors, two of which displayed long house foundations, some with interior rooms and religious sanctuaries, patios, and a configuration that was conceptually Mesoamerican but unrelated to any known ethnic groups such as the Aztec, who had established their rule over this region by the early 1400s AD. 

Between the two building areas was an area with mounds of slag, the nonmetallic material that separates out during smelting from the pure metal, which floats to the surface.

According to Hosler, the historical records show how urgently the Spanish invaders came to need copper and tin to make the bronze for their cannons and other armaments, as well as coins for commerce and utensils like pots and pans.  The site’s archaeology showed that indigenous people already had been smelting copper at this settlement for several hundred years, mostly to make ritual or ceremonial materials such as bells and amulets.  These artisans were highly skilled and had been producing complex alloys including copper-silver, copper-arsenic, and copper-tin for hundreds of years.  

The indigenous craftspeople worked on a small scale, using blowpipes and crucibles to smelt the copper and other ores.  To step up to a larger output, the Spanish introduced some European technology into the process.  Evidence for this came from an enigmatic feature comprising two parallel courses of stones leading toward a large cake of slag in the smelting area.   The archaeologists identified this as the remains of a previously undocumented hybrid type of closed furnace design, powered by a modified hand-held European bellows.  

This type of hybrid device was known from a museum example, but this was the first time actual remains of such furnaces were found.

El Manchon was occupied from about 1240 to 1680, with possible earlier and later use.

Excavation at the site lasted four field seasons before work had to be suspended because of local drug cartel activity.  

Reconstructing the details of the metallurgy there took a combination of the excavation evidence, analysis of the ore and slags, plus the archival work to show the interdependence of the two technologies and people in this remote outpost.

Earlier studies of the composition of the slag at the site, by Hosler and some of her students, revealed that it formed at a temperature of 1150 degrees Celsius, which could not have been achieved with just the blowpipe system and would have required bellows.  According to Hosler, that helps to confirm the continued operation of the site long into the colonial period.

Documents sent back to Spain in the early colonial period described the availability of the locally produced copper, and the colonists’ successful tests of using it to cast bronze artillery pieces.  Documents also described the bargains made by the indigenous producers to gain economic privileges for their people, based on their specialized metallurgical knowledge.

The new research has been published in the journal, Latin American Antiquity. 

We go now to Germany, where an approximately 4000 year old site is set to be excavated this month to learn more about Early Bronze Age life.  The site is Pömmelte south of the city of Magdeburg, and features a ring-shaped sanctuary made of earthen walls, ditches and wooden pillars.

Similar to that of its famous cousin, Stonehenge, Pömmelte may have been home to some similar rituals.  In the past two seasons of excavation, archaeologists from the state office for monument conservation and the University of Halle have discovered numerous features showing the extent of the settlements here, and hope to finish excavating the site this season.

According to Franziska Knoll, an archaeologist associated with the University, they hope to add to the tally of 37 longhouses that already have been found.  At approximately 29,000 square meters or 34,684 square yards, Pömmelte may have been the largest settlement in Europe for this epoch.

As reported by Deutsche Welle online, archaeologists believe that the completed excavation of the site will provide some insight into the religious and social culture of the Unetice [oo-NET-ikah], an Early Bronze Age people believed to have created the Nebra Sky Disk.  

Aerial photography suggests that a grave complex approximately 6000 years old is associated with the Baalberge culture just outside the Pömmelte complex to the south.  Aerial photography is also the reason that the Pömmelte site was discovered - revealing seven concentric rings, the largest of which is approximately 115 meters or 126 yards in diameter.

The site appears to have been occupied by various cultures since the late Neolithic Period and into the Early Bronze Age.  For that reason, the comparison of this site to Stonehenge in southern England is natural, as they would both have been built or significantly modified by representatives from the Bell Beaker culture.  Artifacts at Pömmelte show a clear development of the Unetice culture from Bell Beaker.

The ring complex is associated with the sun rising in particular marked spots during mid-February and late October or early November.  Even though the site lacks massive stones, it is a good comparison culturally to Stonehenge in its function.

The rings were reconstructed in 2016 to give visitors an idea of the scale of the complex.  According to Knoll, the acoustics in the center of the ring are excellent.

Because of its comparison to Stonehenge, archaeologists from the University of Halle have been working closely with archaeologists from the University of Southampton.

We end this week in London, where a new discovery just 15 meters outside the historic London city limits shows that the city may have begun its life as a site for social and religious rituals.  The new finds in Shoreditch push back the date for London’s origins from the 1st century AD to more than 3000 years earlier.

As reported by The Independent, the main evidence comes from 436 fragments of early Neolithic pottery that appear to have come from 25 to 35 pots, mainly for cooking.  Analysis from the University of Bristol suggests two basic types of pot usage, one for processing milk, and the other for making meat stews.

Evidence indicates that the sherds found would likely have been part of a much larger group of sherds indicating a larger number of ceramic vessels.  Other sites in Britain with such sherds have been identified as ritual ceremonial sites, where large scale feasting took place.  In such rituals, pots holding food offerings would have been placed in ditches, and it is in such ditches that the 436 sherds have been found at the Shoreditch site.

Other neolithic sherds have come to light elsewhere in London, such as in pits on Ludgate Hill, Tower Hill, and even near Cornhill.  Neolithic flint and stone axes also have been found on the Thames foreshore.  In the 1840s, dredgers for London Bridge found a Late Bronze Age shield, and since then, other ritual deposition of weapons have been found in the Thames.

Unfortunately, urban expansion from Roman times onward has largely obliterated evidence of prehistoric sites.  Sites like the new one in Shoreditch are the key to filling in the prehistoric gaps in London’s history.

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!