Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew, and here are the top news stories that appeared this past week on Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

New research weighs against the standard notion that the ancient Greeks practiced infanticide.  Cave excavation in the Haida Gwai archipelago off the northern coast of British Columbia has revealed North America’s oldest known domestic dog.  An infant burial in an Italian cave shows that people there more than 10,000 years ago cared for the infant as a real person.  And a new compilation of data on the distribution of certain architectural features unique to Scotland appears to show that Scotland and England were culturally different even before the Romans arrived on the scene.

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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 December 12th through the 18th, 2021.

Our first story this week features a new study that challenges long held assumptions surrounding infanticide in ancient Greece.  It has been widely accepted that it was common practice in ancient Greece for infants born with disabilities or perceived weakness to be killed or abandoned. 

This common notion originates with ancient Greek writings, most notably those written by the Greek scholar Plutarch [PLOO-tark], around the first century AD.  His accounts describe infanticidal practices among ancient Greeks, especially the Spartans.  For generations, these assumptions have colored perceptions of ancient Greece and, in some cases, have been used as a precedent to justify unethical eugenics and ethnic cleansing.

As reported by Science.org, a new study published in the journal Hesperia argues that a review of archaeological and literary evidence does not support infanticide as a widespread practice in ancient Greece.

The author of the paper, Debby Sneed of California State University, Long Beach, notes that Plutarch was writing about events that took place 700 years before his lifetime.  Plutarch’s own account even mentions a Spartan king who was unusually short and “impaired in his legs.” A Greek doctor writing around 400 BC advised contemporary physicians on how to aid adults “who are weasel-armed from birth.”  These accounts suggest that babies born visibly different still had an opportunity to live to adulthood as productive members of society.

According to Sneed, archaeological evidence supports this interpretation: numerous remains of infants with profound health problems display signs that they were cared for beyond their first weeks of life. 

In 1931, excavators in Athens uncovered the skeletal remains of more than 400 babies.  In a 2018 analysis, archaeologists found that the infants were nearly all just a few days old when they died, consistent with expected patterns of high infant mortality in the ancient world, rather than selective infanticide.   

Additionally, excavations across Greece have unearthed terracotta figurines and small, globular ceramic bottles with spouts, some with infant tooth marks.  The specialized feeding bottles are primarily found only in the graves of infants and young children.  Considering their relative rarity, Sneed argues that these bottles could have been used for children with cleft palates or other disabilities that made nourishment difficult.  

The figurines depict adults utilizing the bottles with their young, but some also portray adults with deformities, including individuals with severe cleft palates.  According to Sneed, the combined textual and archaeological evidence demonstrates a community level investment in the survival of infants born with anomalous limbs or disabilities.  

However, not every scholar is convinced.  According to Christian Laes of the University of Manchester, ethnographic examples from other societies show babies were abandoned or killed regularly if families could not afford to raise them.  Societal discomfort or shame, he suggests, might help explain why a common practice might not be mentioned in more ancient sources.

It is also possible that, even if infants with disability were not killed, they may have been left in public places to be picked up and raised by others more able or willing than their parents.

Our next story takes us to British Colombia, where archaeologists have discovered a variety of artifacts and remains in coastal caves.

As reported by Hakai Magazine and reprinted by Smithsonian Magazine, the discoveries in the Haida [HIGH-da] Gwaii Archipelago off Canada’s northwest coast include the earliest discovered remains of a domesticated dog in the Western Hemisphere. 

According to Daryl Fedje [FED-jee], an archaeologist at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia and lead author of the study, caves are magnets for animals and people.  However, unlike in other parts of the world where caves have yielded many archaeological insights, cave excavations aren’t common in British Columbia. 

In excavating three caves on Haida Gwaii, the team found a hearth, stone tools and resharpening flakes.  Among the animal bones collected from the caves are the remains of brown bears and deer.  Both species appear to have disappeared from the archipelago around 11,700 years ago—although deer were later reintroduced.  While brown bears are common on the British Columbia mainland, this is the first evidence they were ever on Haida Gwaii. 

By far the most striking of the animal remains was a tooth.  Using DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating, the team determined it came from a domestic dog that lived 13,100 years ago.  This is the oldest evidence of domestic dogs ever reported in the Americas.  According to Quentin Mackie, an archaeologist with the University of Victoria in British Columbia, dogs are an indicator of human presence.  This find extends the length of human occupation of Haida Gwaii by 2,000 years.

The digs were conducted in collaboration with the Haida Nation of indigenous Americans.  Skil Hiilans Allan Davidson, a Haida hereditary chief and archaeologist who took part in the excavations, emphasizes that artifacts and animal remains are more than just ancient discoveries.  According to Davidson, Haida people have lived on and cared for Haida Gwaii for thousands of years.  His nation’s oral histories recount the Haida people’s deep history in this region that western archaeology is only now uncovering.

Our third story takes us to Italy, where archaeologists have found the earliest known burial of a female infant in Europe.  

As reported by the Smithsonian Magazine, the baby has been named “Neve” [NAY-vay]in honor of a nearby river and was 40 to 50 days old when she died about 10,000 years ago.  Neve’s remains were wrapped in a shroud adorned with more than 60 beads and four pendants made of shells.  Uncovered nearby was a Eurasian eagle-owl talon thought to be a gift for the infant girl. 

According to lead author and University of Colorado archaeologist Jamie Hodgkins, the number of Mesolithic period burials found between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago is very low.  Finding the bones of babies from prehistoric or ancient times is rare due to their extreme fragility, reports Tom Metcalf of National Geographic.  The already rare discovery is especially unusual because the remains were well enough preserved to extract DNA. 

The location of Neve’s grave is in the mountains of Liguria [ li-GOOR-ee-uh ], a region in northwestern Italy.  Researchers began studying the cave in 2015 after looters exposed late Ice Age tools there.  Signs of activity in the cave date back more than 50,000 years, to a time when its inhabitants would most likely have been Neanderthals.  Archaeologists found boar and elk bones that showed signs of butchering, as well as charred animal fat.  After digging deeper into the cave in 2017, the team found the infant’s burial site, and in 2018 they fully excavated her grave. 

Tests conducted on the infant’s teeth revealed details of her short life.  According to the study, carbon and nitrogen analysis found that, before she was born, her mother ate a land-based diet.  Neve experienced stress in the womb that led her teeth to temporarily stop growing.  The ornaments buried with Neve were made with care and show signs of prolonged wear, suggesting they were passed down from other members of the community.  The decorated nature of Neve’s burial indicates significant emotional investment in the infant.  

As the team argues in the journal Scientific Reports, the burial reflects the infant’s treatment as a full person by an early Mesolithic hunter-gatherer culture, with the items buried alongside her as an acknowledgment of that personhood.   Researchers compared the find to the remains of two infants buried at Upward Sun River in Alaska some 11,500 years ago and discovered in 2013.  In both cases, the infants appear to have been recognized as people in their own right.

We end the week in Scotland, where a new study of Iron Age settlements illustrates that the people of prehistoric Scotland and England were culturally divergent long before Roman arrival in Britain. 

As reported by Heritage Daily, the study of Iron Age settlements shows that certain architectural features were nearly exclusive to Scotland and not common in England between the second and fourth centuries BC.  These distinctive differences in the archaeological record are significant because they show this divergence occurred long before the Roman frontier zone may have severed societies.  The features involved in the study include stone towers called brochs [broks] and duns, wooden house platforms in lakes called crannogs, and underground structures known as souterrains [SOO-ter-rains].

According to archaeologist Ronan Toolis, Director of GUARD Archaeology, the archaeological divergence does not equate with the line of Hadrian’s Wall, but instead more closely with the Anglo-Scottish border.  The distributions of these distinctive settlement patterns are found across Scotland, but not in northern England or farther south. 

This may in part explain why the Romans failed to absorb Scotland into their empire despite three major military campaigns.  This failure is often attributed to the changing political and military priorities of Rome, but it may owe more to the nature of Iron Age society in Scotland. 

Archaeologists are beginning to recognize that Iron Age Scottish society was anarchic in nature –lacking institutionalized leadership.  This is unlike the tribal kingdoms the Romans encountered in what is modern day England, which were more easily co-opted by Roman power and influence. 

Hadrian’s Wall and Roman influence are often blamed for the divergence between Scotland and England, but this new archaeological evidence suggests that Hadrian’s Wall was not a cause but instead an effect of existing cultural differences between the peoples of what later became Scotland and England.  

This cultural divergence continued into the medieval period.  Clear evidence for the adoption of aspects of Roman culture does not appear in Scotland until the fifth century AD, when latinized names of native inhabitants and Christian symbology are found inscribed on stones in southern Scotland.  

These adoptions of small pieces of Roman culture occurred long after Rome abandoned Britain, and medieval Scottish communities likely participated on their own terms.  The adoption of separate cultural trajectories led to the distinct formations of the two kingdoms, entirely independently of Hadrian’s Wall.

That wraps up the news for this week!

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I’m Laura Pettigrew and I’ll see you next week!