Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to hand off a whole new 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!

An important battlefield from the American Revolutionary War is now identified in South Carolina.  Fragments of another ancient biblical scroll have turned up in a cliffside cave on the Palestinian West Bank.  A new computer simulation and mathematical model was published and a film released with the latest exciting reconstruction of the 2000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first computer   And an early Bronze Age burial in southeastern Spain seems to show that women wielded great power in the ancient Argaric Culture.

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Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from Archaeologica for the week of March 14th through the 20th, 2021.

The Battle of Beaufort at Port Royal Island pitted British forces against revolutionaries led by Colonel William Moultrie.  The small force had already helped drive the British from Charleston’s harbor, a key control point for the British fleet.  The battle represents the first serious land battle of the war in South Carolina, and the first American victory. 

New fieldwork, led by Daniel Battle of the South Carolina American Revolution Preservation Alliance, has located the exact site of the fight, allowing the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust to secure part of it for future historic interpretation.

As reported by the Charleston, South Carolina, Post and Courier, the old battlefield straddles a highway, with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort occupying a big chunk of the historic site.  The portion on the other side of the highway, which includes a former factory, is now protected by a conservation easement held by the Battleground Trust. 

The first two years of the Revolutionary War were almost entirely fought in the North.  However, by 1778, a large British force from Florida began moving up the coast, first taking Savannah, then searching for a deep-water port they could control.  

Resistance was light until they came to Port Royal.

There, the British force of about 250 men under Brigadier General Augustine Provost, ran up against Moultrie and a more significant obstacle.  Moultrie’s force was larger, and also had three cannons.

When the smoke cleared, 40 British soldiers were dead or wounded, while eight Americans were killed and 22 wounded.

The colonial forces typically followed a form of guerrilla warfare, relying on surprise and seeking geographical advantage: for example, in the woods or on high ground.  This was the first time the locals faced off with British regulars in a set-piece battle.  And they won.

Battle began his search for the site three years ago, using records of the roads from the late 1700s to locate the site.  Confirmation came from typical battlefield debris from the period, including musket and canister shot.  

Battle recreated lead-shot explosions from canisters in a successful effort to match materials and refine the team’s understanding of the weapons used.  A careful examination of the debris field suggests the British and Americans stood about 250 yards apart when the first shots were fired.

Some heroes amongst the colonial infantry were several Black people, including Jim Capers, a 36-year-old enslaved man who had labored on a plantation near Bull’s Island, then served throughout the American Revolution as a drum major, conveying military commands, troop movements, and other signals during battle.  After the war, Capers returned to Christ Church Parish and found freedom.  He moved with his wife to Alabama, where he died in 1853 at age 110.

According to Battle, a monument to Capers on the battle site is one of his hopes, to help people learn more about the diversity among those who fought in the American Revolution.

Our next story comes from the Palestinian West Bank, where archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have discovered dozens of parchment fragments of a Biblical scroll written in Greek and bearing portions of the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, including the books of Zechariah and Nahum [NAY-hum].

As reported by Sci-News.com online, the new fragments come from the Judean Desert in the West Bank, from a site near the top of a cliff, called the Cave of Horror, where archaeologists in the 1960s found 40 human skeletons.

The cave can be reached only by a precarious rappel down the sheer cliff.

According to Hananya Hizmi, head staff officer in the Archaeology Department at the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria, the fragment includes 11 lines from Zechariah, as well as verses from Nahum.

The scroll was written between 200 BC and AD 100, by two different scribes.

Comparison of the text in the newly discovered fragments to other versions, including the well-known Masoretic text, shows numerous differences.  These yield new insight on transmission of the Biblical text up until the days of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, documenting the changes that occurred over time until reaching us in the modern version.  That revolt by the Jewish population against the Romans took place between AD 132 and 136, and resulted in what has been called a genocide, after which Jews were barred from entering Jerusalem.  Archaeologists speculate that the scroll was hidden in the cave during that period.

Another exciting aspect of the scroll fragment is that despite most of the text being in Greek, the name of God appears in ancient Hebrew script, known from the times of the First Temple in Jerusalem.

Our third story takes us to University College London, where scientists have finally achieved a computer model of the 2,000-year-old device called the Antikythera Mechanism that's believed to be the world's first computer.

Discovered in 1901 in a Roman-era shipwreck, the fragments of the shoebox-size contraption, once filled with gears and used to predict the movements of heavenly bodies, have both baffled and amazed generations of researchers.

As reported by the science website, Livescience.com, the fragments are only one third of the original device.  The Antikythera Mechanism, built around 150 to 100 BC, would have been a highly sophisticated hand-powered gearbox capable of accurately predicting the motions of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks, as well as the sun, the phases of the moon and the solar and lunar eclipses.  All were displayed relative to the timings of ancient festivals, such as the Olympic Games.

It’s taken years of painstaking research to replicate the mechanism that drove the astonishing device, and the calculations used in its design, from the battered and corroded brass fragments discovered in the wreck.

The University College London team, led by mathematician Tony Freeth, published their results on March 12 in the open-access journal, Scientific Reports.  Tony Freeth’s late brother, Martin Freeth, is the director of a companion film called “The Antikythera Cosmos.”

The reconstruction challenges all our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.

According to co-author Adam Wojcik [VOY-chick], a materials scientist at UCL, the distance between this device's complexity and others made at the same time is infinite.  The intricate gears that made up the device's mechanism are finer and more intricate than those in a grandfather clock, but the only other gears discovered from the same era are the much larger ones that went into things like ballistas, or large crossbows, and catapults.

This sophistication brings up a lot of questions about the manufacturing process that could have made such a uniquely intricate contraption, as well as why it was discovered as the only known device of its kind on an ancient sunken ship off the island of Antikythera.

Experimental archaeology helps answer these questions. 

The model draws on all of the past research on the device, including inscriptions found on the mechanism and a mathematical model of how the planets moved that was first devised by the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides.  This led to a computer model for a mechanism of overlapping gears that fit inside a compartment just barely 1 inch deep, or 2.5 centimeters.

Their model recreates each gear and rotating dial to show how the planets, the sun and the moon move across the zodiac on the front face and the phases of the moon and eclipses on the back.  It replicates the now-outdated ancient Greek model that all of the heavens revolved around the Earth.

Now that the computer model has been made, the researchers want to make physical versions, first using modern techniques so they can check that the device works, and then employing the techniques that could have been used by the ancient Greeks. 

Mysteries also remain as to whether the ancient Greeks used similar techniques to make other, yet-to-be-discovered, devices or whether copies of the Antikythera Mechanism are waiting to be found.

A film about the Antikythera Mechanism, called “The Antikythera Mechanism: Decoding an Ancient Greek Mystery,” is available for viewing on The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org.  Tony and Martin Freeth were Keynote speakers at the 2016 edition of The Archaeology Channel International Film Festival.  

In our last story, we go to Spain, where the grave of a couple buried 3,700 years ago suggests that in their culture, women wielded considerable power. 

The adult woman and man were buried together at the hilltop citadel site called La Almoloya, in southeastern Spain.  Their tomb was an ovoid jar beneath the floor of a grand hall associated with the El Argar Culture of the Early Bronze Age.  The Argaric culture controlled an area about the size of modern Belgium, from 2200 to 1500 BC.

The 29 high-value objects in the tomb show that the couple were Argaric elites, and the woman was likely the more important of the two.  

As reported in The New York Times, based on the research just published in the journal, Antiquity, this raises questions about the Argaric power structure and adds yet more evidence to the debate about the status and roles of women in prehistoric Europe.

The woman died in her 20s, possibly of tuberculosis, and had been born with several anomalies, such as a shortened, fused spine and a stunted left thumb.

Her ornaments included silver spiral hair fasteners, silver earlobe plugs with hoops through them, a silver bracelet, and a silver ring still on her finger.  More silver decorated a ceramic pot and wooden awl.

On her head was a finely worked diadem, also silver, with a hanging disc in the front.  Only six such diadems have been discovered in Argaric graves.

According to Cristina Rihuete Herrada, an archaeologist and professor of prehistory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and one of the discoverers of the burial, both the shimmering appearance of the woman, and the clinking sound she made as she moved, would have emphasized her status and power.

The man, who died in his 30s, had his own fineries of silver, copper and gold, including gold ear plugs, a silver ring, and a dagger of copper and silver.

The Argarics were an early state society, contemporaneous with the Minoans of Crete and the Unetice [YUN -a-teech-uh] of Central Europe.  Their rulers were aided by a bureaucracy, their complex settlement system included urban centers with monumental structures, and as wide variance in grave goods attests, they had divisions of labor and status. 

These systems have long been considered patriarchal, but the double burial at La Almoloya and other Argaric graves are making archaeologists reconsider.  This woman clearly had a type of power, but did she wield it?  Was it actual or purely symbolic?  Did she share it with the man, or did their power lie in different realms?

Their burial was beneath the floor of a great hall that would have held 50 people, facing a podium, suggesting that the room had political or ritual functions. 

Genetic matches show that the couple had at least one child together, an infant found buried below another building. 

According to Rihuete Herrada, patterns of grave goods across many Argaric burials suggest that women and men held power in different realms.  The swords found with men could suggest that they enforced government decisions, but the diadems, found only with women, may mark them as rulers.

Emerging research from various European sites has prompted a new look at female power during the Bronze Age.  In several parts of Bronze Age Europe, females might have played a much bigger role than once thought in multiple realms of power, including decision-making and the long-distance networking that built these powerful societies.  

More about the El Argar Civilization is covered in a film, called “El Argar: A Forgotten Civilization,” on our new subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service.  You can find that at heritagetac.org. 

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!