Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Here you go with another weekly batch of top news stories that appeared on Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

After extensive looting, salvage excavations are uncovering a late Roman border watchtower in Bulgaria.  A chance discovery shows that Ancestral Puebloans in New Mexico used deep caves as water sources during droughts.  An early document discovered in Japan shows how the shoguns demanded strict behavioral rules to prevent strife between clans.  And the race is on in Norway to excavate a rare Viking longship burial before the fungi consume it completely.

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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 November 15th to the 21st, 2020.

Our first story this week comes from Bulgaria, where archaeologists have unearthed part of a tower fort occupied from the late Roman to the early Byzantine era.  The tower is what was called a burgus [BUR-guss], a structural form commonly built during the later Roman empire for frontier defense.  

The new burgus find was located during salvage excavations following extensive looting in the fortress of Pomodiana [POH-moh-dee-AN-a], an extensive Late Roman to Early Byzantine period fortress on the south bank of the Danube River, in what is today northwestern Bulgaria.  

The lower Danube marks the current boundary between Bulgaria and Romania, and was increasingly fortified during Rome’s later period control over the region.  Not much is known, however, about the specific type of burgus built along the Danube.  Originally, the burgus was a square, two-story tall watchtower surrounded by a ditch and palisade defense system.  Burgus towers were often built along major roads and borders, with troops stationed inside to keep watch and control movement of goods and traffic.  In some cases, as at Pomodiana, the tower and walls were expanded and elaborated to create a much larger fortress, with the burgus tower functioning much like a later medieval keep within heavy walls. 

As reported by Archaeology-in-Bulgaria.com, the Pomodiana Fortress was occupied from the 1st to 6th centuries AD and is located near the town of Stanevo, in northwest Bulgaria, not far from the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Almus.

The fortress remains had not seen much research but were relatively well preserved up until November 2019, when looters used a bulldozer to rip through the ancient ruins for three full days before the police intervened.

In 2020, archaeologists from national and local museums mounted a salvage excavation to determine the extent of the damage.  During these first full-fledged excavations of Pomodiana, the team exposed much of its outer fortress wall as well as the ruins of its fortress tower, which was located in the middle of the fortress, like a keep.

This excavation discovered many artifacts, such as coins, pottery and agricultural tools, as well as three Roman fibulas dated to the 1st century AD, signifying an early Roman military presence. 

According to team co-leaders Vladislav Zhivkov, from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia, and Valeri Stoichkov, from the Lom Museum of History, the fortress was mentioned in three ancient sources, and is part of a larger push to document and learn from ancient sites in the region before treasure-hunters and looters destroy them. 

For our next story, we turn to the arid badlands of western New Mexico, in the southwestern United States, where geoscientists are learning more about how ancient peoples exploited underground caverns to harvest precious water during droughts.  

As reported by the science website, Phys.org, complex cultures evolved in the arid landscape of modern-day western New Mexico, with unique architecture, regional trade and political systems.  But surviving in what Spanish explorers would later name El Malpais [el MAHL-pah-EES], or the "bad lands," required ingenuity.  

Now, an international geosciences team led by the University of South Florida is explaining how the Ancestral Puebloans survived devastating droughts by traveling deep into the caves to melt ancient ice as a water resource.

South Florida geosciences Professor Bogdan Onac went into an ice-laden lava tube under the El Malpais National Monument for samples, intending to reconstruct ancient climate changes.  His team, which included colleagues from the National Park Service, the University of Minnesota and a research institute from Romania, found evidence that earlier people had also ventured deep into the cave in search of the ice. 

The ancestral Puebloans left large charcoal deposits, along with a potsherd, suggesting they traveled into these tunnels and created small fires to melt and harvest fresh, drinkable water from the ancient ice. 

This new discovery provides the earliest directly dated proof of water harvesting within the lava tubes of the Southwest.

The cave, which is 171 meters long and about 14 meters in depth, contains an ice block that appears to be a remnant of a much larger ice deposit that once filled most of the cave's deepest section.  

In years with normal temperatures, melted seasonal ice left small temporary pools near the entrance. However, in periods of drought, evidence shows that ancient peoples worked their way to the back of the caves to collect water.

The results show that between AD 150 and 950, water gatherers came into the cave during five drought periods.

The droughts during this time period are believed to have influenced settlement and subsistence strategies, agricultural intensification, demographic trends, and migration of the complex Ancestral Puebloan societies that once inhabited the American Southwest.  

According to Onac, the new research illuminates one of many human-environment interactions in the Southwest at a time when climate change forced people to find water resources in unexpected places.  

The geological conditions that supported the discovery, however, are themselves both a product of the current changing climate, and under threat from it as well, as warming both exposes and destroys potential evidence. 

The National Science Foundation has awarded the team funding to continue the research in the lava tubes before the geological evidence disappears.

Our third story takes us to Japan, where researchers from Kumamoto University have discovered an early Edo period document with a strict code of conduct for workers.  The Hosokawa clan code of conduct was for vassals sent to work on a national project rebuilding Sunpu Castle.  The thirteen articles delegate full authority to the vassals to lead construction and prevent conflicts with other clans.  It is the second original code of conduct document related to the Sunpu Castle reconstruction effort to be discovered.

During the Edo period, from AD 1603 to 1867, the Japanese central government mobilized feudal lords from all over the country to build and repair important castles and carry out extensive infrastructure development.  These national projects acted to prevent clans from accumulating wealth by forcing them to send out materials and men, thereby establishing a system of control in the territory.  Sunpu Castle, located in central Japan in Shizuoka Prefecture, was an important base for the first shogun of the Edo Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu [EE-ay-AH-su].  Clans were mobilized from all over Japan for a series of restoration projects starting in 1608.

As reported by the science website, Phys.org, the document was issued on January 8th, 1608, and spelled out the Hosokawa clan code of conduct during reconstruction as well as on their journey from Kokura, now northern Kyushu, to the castle site.  The code identifies those with authority over the crew, and prohibits any fighting within the clan, or with workers from other clans. 

Anyone fighting, including supporters, were to be punished, usually by death.  Merely watching another clan's fight was a punishable offense. 

Alcohol use was strictly regulated.  Trips to town required a permit.  Meetings with people from other clans or the shogunate were forbidden, as were baths in another clan's facilities, and sumo wrestling. 

According to Professor Tsuguharu Inaba, who discovered the document and was part of the Eiseibunko [AY-say-BUN-ko] Research Center team at Kumamoto University that deciphered it, this is only the third document discovered that relates to the reconstruction of Sunpu Castle.

The other two also are clan codes of conduct.  Similarities in the three means that each clan was likely presented with a general code of conduct framework by the shogunate.  

Several of the clans had been involved in a major civil war only seven years previously.  The nationwide rebuilding project, along with the strict conduct codes, shows that the shogunate was trying to eliminate the seeds of civil war by reconciling clans through the national project. 

The new document was made public for the first time on the 4th of November at the Kumamoto University Library Online Exhibition of Rare and Valuable Materials.

We end this week in Norway, where archaeologists are exhuming a rare Viking ship burial in hopes of uncovering the secrets within.

Now present only as tiny fragments under the turf, the wooden long ship originally measured 20 meters, or 65 feet, long.  The dig team is hurrying to get some answers before the remains are entirely consumed by microscopic fungi.

This is the first Viking ship dig in more than a century.  The last was in 1904, when the Oseberg longship was excavated, not far away on the other side of the Oslo Fjord, which proved to hold the remains of two women.

According to the head of the dig, Camilla Cecilie Wenn of the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, it’s a rare thing to excavate a burial ship.

As reported by the science website, Phys.org, geological radar equipment detected  the contours of the longship in 2018, as experts searched the known Viking ritual and burial site.

When the first test digs revealed the ship's advanced state of decomposition, the decision was made to excavate it quickly.

So far, only parts of the keel have been dug out in reasonable condition.

Analysis has determined that the ship was probably raised onto dry land in the ninth century, placed in a pit and buried under a mound of earth as a final resting place.

Clearly, whoever was buried in a ship was important.  But it isn’t yet known whether this was a king, queen, or Viking nobleman, known as a jarl [YARL].  The answer may lie in the bones or objects yet to be found—weapons, jewels, vessels, tools, et cetera—that are typical in graves from the Viking Age, from the mid-eighth to the mid-11th century.

The site has been disturbed several times, accelerating the ship's disintegration and reducing the chance of finding relics.  In the late 1800s, leveling for farmland destroyed the entire upper hull and damaged what is believed to have been the funeral chamber.

So far, archaeologists have found only iron rivets used for the boat's assembly, as well as a few large bones, most likely horse or cattle.

It's possible that the precious burial offerings may have been plundered long ago by other Vikings, either for their value, or to bolster their legitimacy by displaying them.

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!