Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew.  Rick Pettigrew is on vacation, so I’ll be telling you about four of the best stories posted on Archaeologica.org this past week!

 Here are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of July 18th through the 24th, 2021.  

Our first story this week brings us to Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage has announced the discovery a 2,550-year-old inscription in the name of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. 

Nabonidus ruled from 555 to 539 BC, at a time when the Babylonian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. As reported by Live Science, the inscription was found on a basalt stone in the city of Al Hait, in the Hail region of northern Saudi Arabia. During ancient times, the region was known as Fadak, and it contains many known archaeological sites, including water installations, fortresses, and rock art. Records show Nabonidus chose to live in the city of Tayma, now a part of Saudi Arabia, for an extended period of time beginning around 543 BC. 

The newly found inscription depicts an image of King Nabonidus alongside images of a snake, a flower, and a crescent moon.

Below the engravings are approximately twenty six lines of cuneiform text, which are still being deciphered.

 In its statement the Commission noted this is the longest cuneiform inscription ever found in Saudi Arabia.

 Researchers are hopeful that the complete translation of this inscription will offer new information about the king’s life leading up to the fall of the Babylonian Empire.

At the end of Nabonidus' reign, the Babylonian Empire came under attack by the Persian Empire, which was led by King Cyrus the Great. Babylon itself was captured by the Persians in 539 BC, and the Babylonian empire collapsed soon afterwards.   For now, the fate of Nabonidus after the collapse remains a mystery. 

Our second story of the week brings us to Denmark, where researchers examining food remnants from the gut of a 2,400-year-old body found in a bog now believe they may have found evidence of human sacrifice.

The research is described in detail in a paper recently published by the journal Antiquity.  As reported at NBC News.com, researchers at Denmark’s Silkeborg Museum were studying the body of Tollund Man, which was first discovered in a Danish bog over 70 years ago. The low oxygen levels, chilly temperatures, and acidic waters found in bog environments create prime conditions for preserving archaeological remains. 

These properties were also known by Iron Age peoples, and there is substantial evidence that many bodies and artifacts were placed in these environments deliberately. 

In fact, Tollund Man was so well-preserved at the time the body was discovered that authorities believed it to be the victim of a relatively recent murder, rather than the corpse of a person dating back to the Iron Age.

The remarkable level of preservation in his case has allowed for significant study of the circumstances of the man’s death.It took archaeologists to determine that the body had been hanged using plaited animal hide prior to being carefully placed in its final resting position. 

Analyses of gut contents can offer insights into the preparation and composition of meals, and on general health and hygiene.

Lead researcher Nina Nielsen noted that original examinations from the 1950’s were focused only on the best-preserved grains and seeds found within the intestinal tract. New analyses of plant macrofossils, pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, steroid markers and proteins found in the gut looked at the full content of materials contained within the intestines.

Pale persicaria seeds, considered a weed by the Iron Age communities in the region, were present in the samples.   

This detail suggests that some threshing waste was fed to Tollund Man shortly before his death. This might be indicative of a society suffering significant food shortages, or of a ritual meal prior to his sacrificial offering.  

The abundance of seeds from wild plants found in this and other bog bodies suggests that such seeds were only used on special occasions such as ritual or sacrificial observances. 

Our next story takes us to Italy, where the remnants of a Roman road discovered under a Venice lagoon suggests that much of the area, prior to rising sea levels, was once dry land.

As reported by Live Science.com, a study published by researchers from the Institute of Marine Science announced the discovery of the road’s remnants in the Treporti channel along the northern part of Venice’s outer lagoon.Their findings were recently published by the journal Scientific Reports. 

The study gives new insight into the history of human habitation in the area.  The city of Venice has no known mentions in Roman-era records, and is believed to have been founded during the medieval period, when much of the lagoon was accessible by land.   Because this road dates back centuries prior to the city’s accepted founding date, it is believed that a small network of settlements or of small towns existed during the Roman period.

This is further supported by the presence of roof tiles, bricks and pottery.The road was well constructed, with 9-foot structures comprising a foundation, and containing smooth stones very similar to Roman basoli stones, which were commonly used to pave Roman roads.   

The team also found a group of submerged structures hidden around 30 feet beneath the road.  Covering roughly an area of a basketball court, these could be the remains of an ancient dock. 

Researchers believe the road linked the potential dock and settlements in this area to other docks, and that additional roads connected towns in what is now the southern part of the lagoon to Altinum, a Roman trading center in the north.   

For now, the age of the discovered road remains uncertain pending further investigations.  

The team hopes to further explore the ruins in their efforts to expand knowledge of the area’s history and cultural heritage. 

Our final story this week brings us to North America, where a team of anthropologists, geographers, and earth scientists from Canada, the United States, and France are collaborating to explore what archaeology can tell us about past climate changes and humans’ relationships with our environment.

As reported by Eurekalert.org, University of Montréal anthropologist and lead author Ariane Burke argues for a new discipline called "the archeology of climate change." The team recently published their work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 

The proposed discipline takes elements from archaeology, geography, and earth science to conduct a multidisciplinary examination of clues from the paleoclimatic record regarding human resilience in the wake of climate changes and natural disasters. 

The researchers hope to identify a range of climatic challenges faced by people in the past, approaches they took to facing such adversity, and their degree of success in adapting to such challenges.  

One instance of major climatic change in ancient human history was the rapid warming of the earth which took place between 14,700 and 12,700 years ago.   

By exploring the archaeology of climate change, Burke and team hope to uncover clues 

about how different human communities responded to this period of drastic climatic 

change.  

The researchers believe that there are a number of lessons modern humans might learn from our ancient counterparts.   

These might include employing more traditional farming practices, thus transforming industrial farming practices and reshaping resource uses. 

For example, many of the farming practices used by traditional and indigenous farmers preserve both water and crop diversity in the global food chain by taking advantage of seasonal and local varieties. 

Archaeological evidence suggests that returning to indigenous practices of multi-cropping agriculture and locally scaled farming methods could enhance food security in the future.  

Another example includes looking to the knowledge systems of the indigenous peoples of the Canadian Arctic, whose deep understanding of the local environment informed broader planning for change in habitat and food sources.   

While the archeology of climate change is still a nascent field, there is much to learn from its interdisciplinary approach and findings to secure humanity’s continued survival. 

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!