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!

Excavators in China came across a royal tomb more than 3000 years old containing the bones of ritually sacrificed warriors and horses. An aerial survey in Saudi Arabia surprisingly reveals a network of roadways four millennia old, lined with tombs and connecting oases .  A high-tech analysis of food residue in pottery fragments reveals that the very diverse West African cuisine dates back as early as 4500 years ago.  And a new genetic study shows that ancient Mesopotamians bred a hybrid horse-like animal to pull war-wagons 500 years before the first horses came into use..

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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 January 16th through 22nd, 2022. 

Our first story this week takes us to the city of Anyang [ahn-YAHNG] in the Henan [huh-NAHN] province of central China, where the 3,000 year old tombs of a wealthy clan have revealed the remains of ritually sacrificed warriors and warhorses that were likely buried alive. 

As reported by Livescience.com, the compound of tombs came to light less than two miles from the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site of Yinxu [YIN–shoo] in modern Anyang’s city center.  The ruins in and around the site are from the ancient city of Yin, the capital of the Shang dynasty, which ruled between 1600 and 1046 BC and is the earliest recorded Chinese dynasty. 

Excavations at the site began about two years ago by Anyang archaeologists.  So far, excavators have uncovered the foundations of 18 buildings, and 24 tombs and burial pits that hold the remains of warhorses, six chariots and the bodies of warriors that served the high-status clan.

A Penn State study notes that, during the time of the Shang dynasty, sacrificing servants, soldiers, and animals by burying them alive was an established practice at the funerals of high-status people. 

According to the government's Xinhua [SHIN-waa] news agency, some of the warriors wore hats covered in strings of shells, while the horses wore decorated bronzeware with gold veneer on their foreheads.  

Kong Deming, the director of the city's Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, considers the cluster of tombs rare among the many discoveries found in the ancient city.   The evidence reflects extraordinary status and power for this clan. 

Archaeologists believe the site was a key living center for a clan known as Ce [Ts-uh]. The people of the Ce clan were also buried there, as indicated by intricately made bronze vessels inscribed with the Chinese character “Ce” in some of the tombs. 

According to Kong, the “Ce” clan emblem appears on many of the bronze artifacts unearthed at Yinxu as well as in oracle bone inscriptions found at Yinxu.  Oracle bone inscriptions written on turtle shells and animal bones and their remnants represent the earliest discovered form of Chinese writing. 

Although grave robbers have disturbed one of the largest tombs, other tombs contained artifacts made from jade, stone, bone and shell and hint at the clan’s wealth and high status. 

Archaeologists now hope to uncover more about the social status of the clan, their division of labor and their relationship with the Shang royal family.  According to National Geographic, the Shang dynasty ruled parts of China's Yellow River valley, a region commonly considered the cradle of Chinese civilization, until 1046 BC, when it was overthrown by the Zhao [ jj – OW ] dynasty.  Traditional Chinese history does mention earlier dynasties, and the Shang dynasty is the first supported by archaeological evidence. 

Our next story takes us to Saudi Arabia, where archaeologists from The University of Western Australia have discovered a network of lost roadways, marked by human graves, that connected oases settlements as early as 4,500 years ago.

Dr. Matthew Dalton, from The University of Western Australia’s School of Humanities, did the fieldwork under the Saudi Royal Commission for Al-‘Ula [ALL–oo-LA]

As reported on the UWA website, the research team discovered  roadways using satellite imagery, helicopter-based aerial photography, ground survey, and excavation to locate and analyze the funerary avenues.

According to Dalton, the people who lived on the Arabian Peninsula in the Early to Middle Bronze Age built long-distance corridors linking oases and pastures, bordered by thousands of elaborate burial monuments.  

The team located avenues over an area of 160,000 square km in their primary study areas of Al-‘Ula and Khaybar [KHY-ber] counties in Saudi Arabia.  They recorded more than 17,800 pendant-shaped tombs, of which around 11,000 formed parts of funerary avenues.  The networks were most concentrated around and between perennial water sources, with the direction of the avenues indicating that populations used them to travel between major oases;  including those of Khaybar, Al-‘Ula and Tayma [TAI–ma].  

The study found that the highest concentrations of human graves on these avenues were near the most significant oases.  Smaller avenues, most likely used to move livestock into nearby seasonal pastures, fade into the landscapes surrounding the oases

According to Dalton, the high concentration of Bronze Age tombs around certain oases suggests that populations had already begun to settle more permanently in these favorable locations at this time. 

Project Director Dr. Hugh Thomas, also from University of Western Australia’s School of Humanities, believes the research published by Dr. Dalton and his team has the potential to change our understanding of the early history of the Middle East. 

According to Thomas, the project helps demonstrate that in ancient times, economic and social connections existed between oases settlements earlier than previously believed, and that the Arabian Peninsula was characterized by a rich and dynamic occupational landscape. 

Our third story this week looks at collaborative research conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Bristol and Goethe [GER–teh] University Frankfurt, studying the origins of West African cuisine.  

As reported in Newswise.com, West African cuisine is recognized for its unique ingredients, flavors and the addition of a diverse range of plant foods, including indigenous vegetables like eggplant, pumpkin, and okra, as well as a variety of green leafy vegetables that are rarely used outside of the African continent, such as leaves from the amaranth, roselle and baobab [BAY-oh-BAB] plants. 

At the same time, examining the historical origin of vegetables and leafy greens is often challenging, as they are less likely to survive over the archaeological timescale.  

The Nok people lived around the first millennium BC, in what is today central Nigeria. 

The acidic soils at the Nok archaeological site have not preserved organic materials such as animal bone and plant remains well.  Despite these challenges, the researchers sought to examine the remains of Nok cooking vessels less disturbed by the environmental conditions. 

The Bristol team conducted analysis of over 450 prehistoric pot fragments to determine what foods these people cooked. 

According to Professor Katharina Neumann of Goethe University, director of archaeo-botanical research on the Nok Project, the charred remains of nutshells and seeds preserved in the archaeological sediments represent only a small portion of the food consumed in the past.  The research team anticipated that chemical analysis could offer further interpretations of ancient Nok food preparation.  The researchers used lipid biomarkers and stable isotope analyses to reveal the primary groups of lipid profiles extracted from the ancient pots.  

Results showed that over one-third of these materials comprised highly diverse and complex biomarker distributions, indicating the processing of various plant types, including leafy plants, grasses, legumes, root vegetables, and tubers such as yams.

In particular, evidence of the preparation of yams supports data on the long use and subsequent domestication of yams in West Africa around 2500 BC.  This points to considerable time depth for West African cuisine.  

Dr. Julie Dunne, from the University of Bristol’s Organic Geochemistry Unit, led the research published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.  Dunne reports that the research exposes the complexity of prehistoric plant processing and consumption in West Africa.

According to Dunne, these highly complex and unusual plant lipid profiles are the most diverse seen globally in archaeological pottery to date.

The combined archaeological evidence, as well as historical accounts of food preparation, allow researchers to gain a more holistic picture of past and present food practices. 

Our final story ends our week in Syria, where a new genetic study shows that ancient Mesopotamians were the first known bioengineers of a hybrid animal species. The study sheds light on the genetic origins of a highly valued, horse-like hybrid used to pull wagons 4,500 years ago.

The remains of over twenty-five animals, now identified to be an animal known as a kunga [coon – GAH], were first discovered in 2006 by archaeologists in Umm el-Marra [OOM – el-ma-RA ], a royal tomb in northern Syria.

According to Eva-Maria Geigl, a genomicist at the Institute Jacques Monod in Paris, researchers agreed that the skeletons looked like an equine species, but with unusual and perplexing proportions. 

The remains did not fit the measurements of donkeys and they did not fit the measurements of the local Syrian wild asses.  Additionally, horses would not be introduced to the region for another 500 years.  

The discovery correlated with ancient Mesopotamian text and art of animals called kungas being used to haul war wagons into battle and parades.  Their descriptions in ancient sources mention that kungas were highly prized and expensive equine creatures.

As reported by LiveScience.com, new DNA analysis from the unearthed animal bones resolves a longstanding mystery surrounding the animal’s genetic identity.  It revealed that kungas were strong, fast hybrids of a female domestic donkey and a now-extinct male Syrian wild ass.

Geigl reports that the value of kungas in ancient Mesopotamia could be explained by the challenging method of breeding them.  Like other hybrid animals, such as mules, each kunga was sterile. 

Therefore, each individual kunga had to be produced by capturing a male wild ass and breeding it with a domesticated female donkey.  Wild asses could run faster than donkeys and were impossible to tame, making this process both difficult and dangerous. 

Researchers suspected that they were some sort of hybrid donkey, but assumed Syrian wild asses were much too small to be bred to produce the powerful kungas.  However, by comparing genomes of more recent specimens with an ancient skeleton, researchers found that the ancient wild ass was much larger in antiquity, and due to environmental pressures, the species had become smaller in recent times. 

According to a 2020 study in the journal Science Advances, historians believe that the Sumerians were the first to breed kungas as early as 2500 BC.  Later cultures of the region, such as the Assyrians, continued to breed and sell kungas for centuries. 

Study co-author Jill Weber, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, was the first to note the unique dental wear on the remains while excavating the site ten years ago. 

According to Weber, the remains from Tell Umm el-Marra were kungas as indicated by marks left on their teeth from bit harnesses.  Weber notes that kungas could run faster than horses, and the practice of using them to pull war wagons continued after the introduction of domesticated horses into Mesopotamia around 2000 BC. 

However, according to Geigl, the last kungas eventually died out and breeding declined, possibly because domesticated horses were easier to breed. 

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! Also, be sure to check out our new subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

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