Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Here we go once again with the latest 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!

Micronesian islanders apparently made significant changes to their food production system in response to environmental changes they themselves had caused.  A newly discovered neighborhood in the Maya city of Tikal shows that the far-away city of Teotihuacan in highland Mexico had more longstanding influence there than previously realized.  Authors of a DNA study believe they have solved the mystery about where the Etruscans came from.  And the famous Vinland Map at Yale turns out to be a forgery..

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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 for the week of September 26 through October 2nd, 2021.

Our first story this week comes from Micronesia, where interdisciplinary data suggest that early peoples took innovative approaches to resources management and sustainability in the wake of human-driven environmental change.

The data focus on tropical island archipelagoes including Palau, and point to human impacts on marine ecology beginning with occupation and development around 3,000 years ago.

As reported by Phys.org, these impacts included run-off from agricultural fields which affected fish populations, one of ancient Palau's most important food sources.  The archaeological data indicate that, after the first inhabitants settled in the interiors of its largest islands, they cleared forested areas and built earthen terraces to support agriculture.  Then, in a move that has long confused archaeologists, those communities gradually abandoned the interior regions in favor of areas along the coastal margins.  Beginning about 1,200 years ago, they built villages and established taro gardens surrounded by mangrove forests as a buffer to the ocean waters.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details the work of a team of interdisciplinary researchers trying to better understand this shift.

Scott Fitzpatrick is a University of Oregon professor of anthropology, and associate director for research at the university’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History.  He coauthored the study.

Scott and co-author Christina Giovas, an archaeologist at Canada's Simon Fraser University, turned to environmental and historical data in hopes of learning more about what drove this migration and related changes. 

They first examined geologic core sample data from the region, which revealed an increase in erosion as the earliest agriculture took hold in the island interiors.  The erosion would have contributed to increased runoff, affecting the surrounding marine environment.  Fitzpatrick reported that the core samples offered some possible insight into both the coastal settlement pattern and new food production strategies established in the coastal villages.

To dig deeper, the authors looked to the recent past, focusing on Palauan taro cultivation as a possible clue.  Historically, Palauan communities have situated taro gardens behind mangroves, partly because mangroves offer ideal conditions for taro cultivation, but also because they effectively trap sediment and prevent its runoff into the ocean.

Based on the paleoecological and archaeological data, it appears that this unique, integrated agricultural system may have originated in ancient Palau and could have emerged specifically because of its mitigating effects.

The authors contrasted their findings for Palau with similar data from the Caribbean that suggested a different pattern, one where overfishing and agricultural intensification may have created an unsustainable feedback loop several centuries or even millennia ago.

University of Oregon co-author Fitzpatrick noted that the study demonstrates the value of an interdisciplinary approach when examining the complex human-environmental interactions in the deep past.

Next, we go to Central America, where scientists since the 1950s have been excavating the ruins of Tikal, an ancient Maya city in modern-day Guatemala.  However, a startling recent discovery by the Pacunam Lidar Initiative has ancient Mesoamerican scholars and others across the globe wondering whether we know Tikal as well as we think we do. 

As reported by ScienceDaily.com, Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, and Thomas Garrison, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Texas at Austin, are part of the research team.  They are using light detection and ranging software, or lidar, to uncover more at the site.

In an area just a short walk away from Tikal's center, they’ve discovered a neighborhood of ruined buildings that had been designed to look like those in Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wa-KAWN), the largest and most powerful city in the ancient Americas. 

According to Houston, their lidar analysis, coupled with a subsequent excavation by a team of Guatemalan archaeologists, has prompted new insights about Teotihuacan's influence on Maya civilization.  The analysis shows without a doubt that there was a different level of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan than previously understood. 

The results, including lidar images and a summary of excavation findings, were published in the September 28th edition of the journal, Antiquity. 

As reported by Houston, excavations following the lidar work confirmed that some buildings were constructed with mud plaster, rather than traditional Maya limestone.  The structures were designed to be smaller replicas of the buildings that make up Teotihuacan's citadel, down to the intricate cornices and terraces and the specific 15.5-degree east-of-north orientation of that complex's platforms. 

Tikal and Teotihuacan were radically different cities in several important aspects.  Tikal, a Maya city, was populous but relatively small in scale, while Teotihuacan could be seen as a true empire. 

Although little is known about the people who founded and governed Teotihuacan, it's clear that their influence extended far beyond their metropolitan center.

Anthropologists have known for decades that inhabitants of the two cities were in contact and often traded with one another for centuries before Teotihuacan apparently conquered Tikal around the year AD 378. 

Ample evidence also suggests that, between the second and sixth centuries AD, Maya elites and scribes lived in Teotihuacan.  Some of these individuals brought back elements of that empire's culture and materials to Tikal. 

The research consortium's latest lidar findings and excavations prove that the imperial power in modern-day Mexico did more than just trade with and culturally influence the smaller city of Tikal before eventually conquering it.

This demonstrates that, before European colonization of the Americas, empires and kingdoms of disproportionate influence and strength interacted with smaller civilizations in ways that left a mark on their cultures and societies.

Our third story takes us to Europe, where new genetic analysis may have finally revealed that the mysterious Etruscans originated in Eastern Europe.

For centuries, the Etruscans thrived in Italy before the rise of Rome.  These people spoke a now extinct, non-Indo-European language remarkably different from other languages used in the region. 

It turns out the enigmatic Etruscans were local to the area, with nearly identical genetics to their Latin-speaking neighbors.

As reported by the news site, LiveScience.com, the new research appeared in a recent edition of the journal, Science Advances. 

This finding contradicts earlier proposals that the Etruscans came from somewhere different from their Latin-speaking neighbors.  Both peoples appear to be migrants from the Pontic-Caspian steppe—a long, thin stretch of land stretching from the north Black Sea around Ukraine to the north Caspian Sea in Russia. 

After arriving in Italy during the Bronze Age, the early speakers of Etruscan settled and assimilated speakers of other languages to their own culture as they flourished into a great civilization.

The Etruscans built cities as sophisticated as those of the ancient Greeks, and created trading networks as lucrative as the Phoenicians.  Over time, they amassed vast wealth rivaling that of even ancient Egypt.  As the first known superpower of the western Mediterranean, the Etruscan civilization had a brilliance matched only by the mystery surrounding its language and its origins. 

Scientists in the reported study collected ancient genomic information from the remains of 82 individuals who lived between 2,800 and 1,000 years ago across 12 archaeological sites in central and southern Italy. 

After comparing DNA from those 82 individuals with that of other ancient and modern peoples, the scientists discovered that, despite significant differences in customs and language, the Etruscans and their Latin neighbors shared a genetic profile with each other.  The study authors conclude that the Etruscans and Latin speakers had the same geographic origin.

Archaeologists have long known that the Etruscans influenced later Rome’s religious rituals, metalworking, gladiatorial combat, and the innovations in architecture and engineering, which transformed Rome from a once crude settlement into a great city. 

After these early Etruscans settled in northern and eastern Italy, their gene pool remained relatively stable across both the Iron Age and the absorption of the Etruscan civilization into the Roman Republic. After the beginning of the Roman Empire, a new set of genes appears to reflect mass migrations of new people.  This genetic shift clearly depicts the role of  Rome in the large-scale displacement of people in a time of enhanced socioeconomic and geographic mobility.

The authors of the study plan to carry out a broader genetic study to pin down the details of the sources and mixture of DNA in the region.  And we should point out that a sample of 82 individuals over a span of 1800 years might not be enough to conclude that the Etruscan language came in from Eastern Europe.  Despite the authors’ assertions,  the mystery of Etruscan origins might not actually have been solved.

We end this week in Connecticut, where an interdisciplinary research project undertaken by archivists, conservators, and conservation scientists has proven once and for all that a map acquired by Yale University under dubious circumstances is in fact a fake. 

New technical analysis dates Yale’s so-called “Vinland Map” to at least the 1920s—instead of from the 1440s, as was originally claimed.

Raymond Clemens, curator of early books and manuscripts at the university’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which houses the map, issued a statement acknowledging the forgery.

Acquired by Yale and publicized to great fanfare in 1965, the document was supposedly dated to mid-15th century Europe.  Most notably, it showed part of the coast of North America, seemingly presenting medieval Scandinavians, and not Christopher Columbus, as the true European discoverers of the New World.  In 1966, just months after it was publicized, scholars pointed out inconsistencies with other medieval sources, and began raising questions about where the map had been stored for the past 500 years.  Its provenance was repeatedly in question, including during the acquisition process.  

A study conducted in the early 1970s strongly hinted at problems with the original dating of the map to medieval Europe.  However, outside researchers challenged that finding with concerns about the small sample size of ink that was tested, as well as possible sample contamination. 

Debates over the map’s authenticity continued for decades, prompting Yale and others to conduct a series of largely inconclusive tests.  Despite all these potential red flags, curators at Yale worked closely with colleagues at the British Museum to determine the map’s authenticity. 

At that time, they dated the map to the 1440s based primarily on the handwriting style and the age of the parchment on which it was written.

This time around, experts used a technique called X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to examine the ink used across the entirety of the map. Their analysis showed definitively that the ink contained titanium, which became commonly available only in the 1920s.  Scans also revealed a note on the back of the parchment that was intentionally altered.

The people of early medieval Scandinavia, popularly called Vikings, were constant travelers.  Their known presence in North America was short-lived and confined mostly to Newfoundland.

Not long after the map was published, archaeologists uncovered an 11th-century Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, confirming Vikings had traveled from Iceland to Greenland to the Canadian east coast. 

However, this map had suggested that knowledge of Western lands was reasonably common in Scandinavia and central Europe.  That idea has lost a main pillar of its support.

That wraps up the news for this week!

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