Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew with a preview of 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!

A South African cave has given up the first child’s skull of the archaic human species, Homo naledi.  Elaborate Roman villas are still visible in the shallow waters near Naples.  The first complete Maya canoe has come to light from the depths of a Yucatan cenote.  Development plans for an island in Boston Harbor have prompted a demand by a local Native American tribe for an archaeological survey to find the graves of their murdered ancestors.

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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 October 31st through November 6th, 2021.

In our first story, we go to South Africa to learn about the first discovered skull of a child of the archaic human species, Homo naledi [NAH-leh-dee].  An international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, reconstructed the partial skull from fragments found northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. 

In two separate papers in the open access journal, PaleoAnthropology, the team of 21 researchers from 13 universities details the skull and the location where it was found.  

As reported by the online science news site, EurekAlert, the skull was found in the Rising Star cave system, where the first Homo naledi remains came to light in 2015. 

According to Professor Lee Berger of Witwatersrand University and the National Geographic Society, Homo naledi remains one of the most enigmatic ancient human relatives ever found.  Naledi is clearly a primitive species, but they coexisted with modern humans in Africa.  This complicates our understanding of who amongst these multiple human relatives might have been involved in inventing stone tool cultures and ritual practices.

Almost 2000 individual fragments of Homo naledi, representing more than two dozen individuals at all life stages, have come from Rising Star, making it the richest site for hominin fossils in Africa.  This also makes naledi one of the best-represented ancient hominin species, but that hasn’t resolved the issue of where Homo naledi belongs in the human evolutionary lineage. 

The skull of the naledi child was recovered in 2017, and no other remains of its body were found.  The child was about four to six years old when he or she died almost 250,000 years ago.  The team named the child “Leti” [LEH-tee] after the Setswana word “letimela” meaning “the lost one.”  Leti’s skull comprises 28 skull fragments and six teeth.  When reconstructed, the skull shows the frontal orbits, the top of the skull and some dentition. 

The discovery of a hominin child skull is both a valuable and rare find, as juvenile remains tend to be thin and fragile.  Skull and tooth remains from a young individual help archeologists understand the growth and development of a species.

The date of Leti’s remains is yet to be established, but other fossils of Homo naledi found in the nearby Dinaledi Chamber date to between 335 and 241 thousand years ago.  

Since its discovery, the Rising Star cave system has become one of the most prolific sites of discovery for hominin fossils in the world.  According to Berger, work is continuing throughout the cave system.   

Next we go to the Bay of Naples, where the underwater remains of the ancient Roman town of Baiae (BAY-ah) have become a popular underwater park as well as an ongoing excavation site.

As reported by The Guardian, underwater archaeologist Enrico Gallochio [gal-O-keeo] has been discovering remains of elaborately decorated Roman villas every year since he became park manager.  Baiae was a resort town for the Roman aristocracy in the gulf of Pozzuoli [POH-tzoo-OH-lee], close to Naples.  Only four meters, or less than 20 feet, below the surface of the water, brightly tiled mosaic floors of the pleasure villas are now becoming visible again. 

The mosaics date from the third century AD, but few people other than local fishermen and divers had any idea how much lay beneath the waters until the 1940s, when a pilot flying low over the bay on a clear day saw the sunken ghost town.  He took aerial photos that clearly outlined the shape of walls, marble columns, roads, breakwaters and elaborate pavements.

Since then, archaeologists have found dozens of antiques, most recently a huge marble column.  According to Gallochio, Baiae was a place where the rich and powerful went to enjoy the balmy climate: holding parties, drinking wine, eating oysters, and relaxing.

Baiae was built on the slopes of the Campi Flegrei [CAHM-pi fleg-RAY-ee] supervolcano, which produces natural hot springs.  This was the original attraction of Baiae. It was a spa town where Romans came seeking cures for illness in the hot springs.  Hadrian died in Baiae, where he might have come seeking a final cure.

Other Roman emperors who had vacation homes in Baiae include Augustus, Nero and Caligula.  Some of the ruins of the villa belonging to Julius Caesar are on display at the Campi Flegrei archaeological museum.  By the fourth century, much of the town began to sink as a result of bradyseism [BRAY-dee-SIGH-zm], a slow quiet upward or downward movement of the earth's crust.  The phenomenon affected the entire gulf area, and much of the nearby commercial town of Pozzuoli also ended up underwater.

The first maps of the site weren’t attempted until 1959, when scuba-diving equipment became more reliable.  The first significant dig was in the early 1980s and discovered a nymphaeum [nym-FAY-um], a room filled with marble statues, commissioned by Emperor Claudius.  Replicas of the statues stand on the seabed today; the originals are on display in a museum.

Other discoveries include ancient baths, fountains and fishponds where homeowners raised moray eels for the gourmet trade.

The 437-acre undersea site has been a protected marine area since 2002.  Before that, many relics were looted and sold overseas. Today the site is tightly monitored by closed-circuit cameras, and a dive squad from Italy’s art police carries out regular checks.

Tourists can explore the ruins by snorkeling or scuba-diving with a registered guide. Park authorities are also considering letting visitors view the ruins from glass-bottom boats.

Our third story takes us again underwater, this time on the Yucatan Peninsula.  In a cenote [se-NO-tay], or sinkhole, near the famous Maya city of Chichen Itza [chee-CHEN-eet-SAW], archaeologists surveying in advance of construction found a well-preserved wooden canoe.  

As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History found the wooden canoe during construction of the Maya Train, a railway being developed to connect tourist sites in the region.

The canoe is just over five feet long and two and a half feet wide.  Ancient Maya people may have used it to gather water from the cenote or to deposit offerings there.

Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe between AD 830 and 950.  Experts at Sorbonne University in Paris are using dendrochronology, a dating method based on tree rings, to pinpoint the boat’s exact age.  Archaeologists previously have found fragments of similar boats in Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo [KEEN-ta-na ROW], but this is the first complete canoe found in the Maya area.

The underwater archaeology team made the discovery while investigating a cenote along the railroad route.  The researchers found a cave about 15 feet below the current water level at a spot that marked the pool’s surface centuries ago.  The canoe was inside the cave along with a ceremonial knife, wall paintings and fragments of 40 pottery vessels that probably were broken as part of ritual events.

According to team member Helena Barba Meinecke, the canoe was made around the end of the Maya Classic Period, which is often called the golden age of Maya civilization.  During that time, from AD 250 to 900, about 40 cities flourished and were home to between two and ten million people.

Chichén Itzá itself was home to around 35,000 people at its peak.  The founders of the city, in about AD 550, may have chosen the site because of its cenotes and other limestone formations, which provided easy access to water in an otherwise dry region.

We end this week in Boston, where Native American communities worry construction on an island in Boston Harbor could destroy graves and other links to a millennia-old history, including a seventeenth-century genocide.

As reported by the online magazine, Atlas Obscura, the City of Boston plans to build a new viaduct and addiction treatment center on Boston Harbor’s Long Island.

According to Kenneth White, chairman of the Chaubunagungamaug [chaw-bun-ah-GUNG-ah-maug] Nipmuck tribe, part of a Native American population that has lived in the region for thousands of years, Long Island holds the remains of a genocide.  In October 1675, European colonists imprisoned hundreds of Native Americans from this and other tribes on Long Island and its neighbor, Deer Island.  Many of the people forcibly held there died during the harsh New England winter that followed.

The Chaubunagungamaug Nipmucks want Boston to survey Long Island for potential graves before rebuilding the bridge or starting any new construction.

According to John Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs, the island would have served Native Americans as a gathering place for meetings and religious ceremonies.  

In the decades leading up to 1675, European arrivals claimed the inner harbor islands for themselves and prohibited Native Americans from accessing the land or its resources. 

In June 1675, after years of rising tension, the bloody conflict between Native Americans and colonists known as King Philip’s War or Metacom’s Rebellion erupted, engulfing much of New England in violence for three years.  A few months after its start, colonists exiled hundreds of Native Americans to Long and Deer Islands.  According to Gary McCann, a policy consultant for the Nipmuck tribe, historical records suggest hundreds of members of the Massachusett and Nipmuck tribes were imprisoned on the island.  About half the people sent there died.

According to Peters, tribal elders in the 1970s still recounted the atrocities their ancestors experienced on the islands centuries earlier. 

Early in the 21st century, Long Island gained a new notoriety when it inspired the setting for Dennis Lehane’s thriller Shutter Island.

As the city considers building an addiction treatment center on Long Island, the Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck tribe is fighting for an environmental assessment of the island, which could reveal graves from the 1670s.  According to Boston Public Works spokesman Chris Coakley, the city’s plans will not affect any burial sites that may be present.  The tribe thinks the city needs more information to make that assessment and to ensure their ancestors who died on the island are recognized and honored.  

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!