Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Thanks for joining us for another weekly installment of 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!

Industrial development in India threatens a vast array of archaeological sites.  Excavation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, may confirm the existence of mass graves from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.  A Bronze Age burial in Kazakhstan pushes back the earliest date for horse riding. And an underwater archaeological survey along the west coast of Australia has revealed two prehistoric sites.

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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 Audio News July 12th through July 18th, 2020.

Leading off this week’s coverage, we go to India, where industrial development and modernization under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is eradicating archaeological sites at an astonishing pace.  As reported at undark.org, Modi’s administration has been improving infrastructure widely across India, with dams, irrigation canals, rail corridors, highways, and roads.  As in any country, this construction poses the risk of permanent damage to existing or undiscovered sites in many archaeologically significant areas.

In Karnataka state, several known archaeological sites that were discovered in the 1960s by Katragadda Paddayya, who is now an emeritus professor at Deccan College in Pune [Poo-nay], are already completely submerged under rice fields, preventing further investigation.  Those particular sites were significant in part for Paddaya’s discovery of evidence of the earliest stone tool production facility ever found in India.  That stone tool manufacturing is thought to be two hundred to three hundred fifty thousand years old.  Other known sites in this region could be even older, perhaps containing important clues to the early human history in and around this region.  This ancient complex is now lost to agricultural use.

The tensions between the push for increased development and the needs of researchers to preserve them often leads to years of litigation under India’s complex antiquities laws.  To resolve this, the Modi administration has proposed new legislation, and in some cases ignored existing protections, in order to keep construction moving forward.

Looting and vandalism are equal threats, which have plagued archaeological research in the region for decades.  Some of these cases involve the direct theft of antiquities, while others appear to reflect a local ambivalence to the protection and undisturbed preservation of the land.

According to Shanti Pappu, founder of the Sharma Center for Heritage Education, most sites that are currently under excavation must be monitored or guarded against theft, looting and other disturbances when researchers are not present.  To help avoid the need for this protection at their digs, some of the local workers who have been hired by researchers have started community outreach programs, aiming to educate local residents about the importance of maintaining the record of their collective heritage through the preservation process.

This local, grass-roots conservation effort, however, contrasts starkly with current national government policies promoting economic growth and expansion across the country at the expense of its heritage of ancient sites. 

We go next to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the United States, where a grim reminder of horrific acts of violence committed by white Americans against fellow citizens of color is being excavated.  Almost a century after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre killed up to several hundred black citizens, investigators are excavating the mass graves that may hold their remains.

As reported by National Public Radio, researchers used ground penetrating radar to identify two areas that may be mass graves hastily constructed nearly one hundred years ago in the aftermath of the destruction.

The massacre began May 31, 1921, when hundreds of armed white men surrounded the Greenwood District, a bustling black business and residential neighborhood in the segregated city.  The attackers looted and burned entire blocks, firing guns indiscriminately and preventing rescue teams from entering. 

According to the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, which includes descendants of victims as well as historians, currently 35 African American homicide victims are confirmed as a result of the violence.  Others estimate that several hundred people likely perished in the slaughter.  The discrepancy in fatality figures appears to stem in part from the limited access to information that relatives of victims would have had for several days immediately following the rioting, during a period of martial law imposed over the city.

Years of investigation, based on newspaper accounts and photographs from the time, have followed.  The growing consensus is that a mass interment may have taken place at one two or even four locations.

Now, using ground penetrating radar, researchers have identified two separate areas that may be mass graves.  The larger of the two measures thirty by twenty five feet, estimated to contain the remains of as many as one hundred adult individuals. 

As with much of the “Jim Crow” South of the time, Tulsa was segregated along racial lines.  During the days following the 1921 massacre, black survivors would have been held under armed guard, likely unable to identify victims or make contact with missing family.

That opportunity may now finally come. 

Another group, the 1921 Mass Graves Investigation Public Oversight Committee, will review the recent findings.  Their recommendations could include further geophysical surveys, and potentially excavation, exhumation and identification efforts would follow.

The Tulsa Massacre was one of a number of racially-motivated attacks of that time in the United States.  

As its centennial approaches, Americans still have issues to resolve, regarding race, human rights and economic equality.  Not coincidentally, the Tulsa massacre occurred during a period when many Americans were facing hardship and disruption from a global flu pandemic, following economic disruption after World War I. 

In Kazakhstan, a rare joint study by researchers from Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States has found evidence of horsemanship, specifically the riding of horses, that moves estimates for the origin of the practice back at least several hundred years.

The research begins with a burial site in the Republic of Kazakhstan, near the city of Lisakovsk, in the site system known as Novoilinovsky-2.  As reported by the science website, Phys.org, research at this site dates back several decades, and had already revealed evidence that the people buried there bred horses for food.  

The new evidence, such as tack and bridles, indicate that the horses were also used for riding, and for pulling loads.  The people belonged to the Andronovo Culture, which developed distinctive skills in animal husbandry and is widely considered associated with early Indo-Iranian languages, ancestral to modern Farsi in Iran and Hindi in India.

In new excavations, researchers unearthed the skeletal remains of two mature horses, one female and one male, interred together side by side, along with riding equipment.

Experts on hand at the excavation site included Pavel Kosintsev, a paleozoologist from the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and senior researcher Igor Chechushkov, of the South Ural State University in Kazakhstan, who analyzed laboratory results on the horses’ remains and other artifacts found at the site. 

According to Chechushkov, the analysis indicates that the Andronovo peoples in the area were riding horses in 1600 BC, which is some 700 years before the previously accepted date.

Radiocarbon analysis showed the mare was about eighteen years old, and the stallion around twenty.

Other researchers focused on making a three-dimensional model of the burial site to understand the burial process and context.

A team of U.S. scientists carried out that part of the research, with researchers from the University of Minnesota as well as the University of Colorado.  

According to Dr. William Taylor, of the University of Colorado, the results reveal new insights into the relationships between Andronovo horses and riders.

It appears that the horses were killed in order to be buried with their riders, indicating an elevated social status of the rider, if not greener pastures for the steed.

We note that horse domestication itself goes back at least to 3500 BC with the Botai Culture in Kazakhstan.  The earliest horse-drawn chariots, dating around 2000 BC, are known from burials of the Central-Asian Sintashta Culture, slightly earlier and geographically adjacent to Andronovo, and also associated with early Indo-Iranian languages.

Excavations at Novoilinovsky-2 are continuing.  The new research was published in The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

In our last story for this week, we take you to the shores of Australia, where researchers have found new evidence of human occupation in areas now submerged beneath rising sea levels.  This story was reported at the website Inverse.com, and originally appeared in the journal, PLOS ONE.

Beginning in 2016, a group of scientists began participating in the Deep History of Sea Country Project, aiming to document Aboriginal sites off the Pilbara coast of Western Australia.  They included archaeologists, rock art specialists, geologists, and divers, and together were funded by collaboration between the Australian Research Council and the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation.

It is estimated that rising sea levels cover over two million square kilometers of land area around Australia, enveloping what once would have been livable acreage.

Researchers used existing land records along with navigational charts to narrow their choices for potential underwater exploration.  

Then they launched drones, laser scanners and towable high-resolution sonar devices to zero in on areas of particular interest in the seabed.  Divers searched underwater, down to depths of fourteen meters.

These efforts led to the discovery of two significant archaeological sites found on the Dampier Archipelago.  Each contained stone cutting tools and other evidence of human occupation.  Divers found a submerged freshwater spring at the deeper of the two, in what is known as Flying Foam Passage.

At the shallower site, which lies at two meters depth, divers recovered hundreds of stone flakes and a variety of tools, including grinding stones. 

Most current understanding of human activity in this region is based on discoveries on what is now dry land.  However, prehistoric sea levels would have varied dramatically, dropping as much as eighty meters below current levels.  During these periods, the receding seas would have exposed many habitable areas to the peoples who arrived here originally by crossing the open sea.

Radiocarbon dates at the newly discovered sites suggest they became submerged about seven thousand years ago.

Researchers are confident that additional prehistoric Aboriginal sites exist offshore.  However, industrial development, such as pipelines, harbors and dredging, could completely destroy these undiscovered historical records.

Australian laws currently offer few protections for these sites. 

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!