Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew.  Get ready for 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!

Food remains from a late Ice Age camp in Israel paint a picture of unusual abundance. A meta-study of research on early human ancestors raises questions about the role of meat-eating in human evolution.  Ground-penetrating radar shows that the very early earthworks at the pre-agricultural Poverty Point site in Louisiana have a more complex construction history than we imagined.  And archaeologists in the UK are racing to recover perishable artifacts from peat bogs drying out as a result of climate change.

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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 23rd through the 29th, 2022. 

Our first story this week takes us to Israel, where researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that at least some ancient inhabitants of the region thrived during the last Ice Age.

As reported by Phys.org, the site, known as Ohalo II, was occupied at the end of the last Ice Age between 23,500 and 22,500 years ago. 

The site lies near the southern end of the Sea of Galilee and was discovered in 1989 after a drought dropped the water level by several meters.  This allowed excavations from 1989 to 1991, and again from 1998 to 2001.

Ohalo II covers more than 2000 square meters.  Structures found at the site include six oval-shaped brush huts, several open-air hearths, the burial of an adult male, and various refuse heaps.  Many organic and inorganic remains gave insight into the lifestyle of fisher-hunter-gatherers during that period.

Researchers analyzed 22,000 animal bones, including those from gazelles, deer, hares, and foxes, and reviewed previous documentation surrounding the charred plant remains, flint tools and cereal grains also found at the site. 

They found that the ancient inhabitants of this region had a robust diet and consequently a lifestyle very different from people at most other sites from the time.

The last Ice Age apparently had minimal effects on the Upper Jordan Valley, which allowed these ancient people to harvest ample quantities of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish.

The analysis suggests a very diverse diet, underscoring the variability of the climate change effects brought about by the last Ice Age. 

Our next story focuses on new research that questions whether meat was as important to early human evolution as is often claimed.  Summaries of human evolution often claim that when meat became important in the diet of our ancestor, Homo erectus, this stimulated key anatomical developments such as a larger brain and body size.  This argument, often summarized as “meat made us modern,” has now been refuted by a quantitative analysis of the actual counts from nearly 60 different locations spanning the period from before and after the appearance of Homo erectus. 

As reported by a press release from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Dr. W. Andrew Barr, an assistant professor of anthropology at the George Washington University, and the lead author of the new study, finds that the story has been skewed by the much larger research focus on Homo erectus sites.

Certainly, these sites show significant direct evidence of Homo erectus eating meat.  However, evidence for meat eating comes from previous hominins as well.  So was Homo erectus eating more meat than previous species, so much more that it could drive major changes in human evolution? 

To answer this question, Barr’s team compiled published data from nine major research areas in eastern Africa.  The review drew on evidence from 59 site levels before and after Homo erectus, dating from 2.6 to 1.2 million years ago. 

They used several metrics to track hominin meat eating, including the number of zooarchaeological sites preserving animal bones that have cut marks made by stone tools, the total count of animal bones with cut marks across sites, and the number of separately reported stratigraphic levels.

The results found no substantial increase in the relative amount of evidence for meat eating after the appearance of Homo erectus.  The raw numbers of modified bones increased strongly after the first appearance of Homo erectus, but so did the amount of data overall.   The parallel between the rise in sites, and the rise in modified bones, suggests that intensive sampling may be the cause of the apparent increase in meat eating.

Accounting for variation in sampling effort over time leaves no sign of a sustained increase in meat eating after the appearance of Home erectus.

According to Briana Pobiner, a research scientist in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and co-author on the paper, this new study changes our understanding of the role of meat eating in human evolution.  It shows how important it is that we continue to ask big questions, constantly testing our hypotheses against the data, while also continuing to uncover and analyze new evidence.  If an increase in meat eating did not cause an increase in hominin brain size, then we need to reconsider other hypotheses for the change, such as increases in plant food quantities and diversity, and the beginnings of controlled use of fire to increase nutrient availability through cooking.  

The new research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Our third story this week takes us to Poverty Point, a World Heritage Site in northeastern Louisiana, where new research has uncovered insights into the very early ceremonial mound and ridge complex at this site.

As reported by Heritage Daily, the project was carried out jointly by the University of Louisiana at Monroe and Minnesota State University at Moorhead, with funding from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service.

Poverty Point is named after a 19th-century plantation and has been something of a mystery since Euro-American explorers first described it in the 1830s.  The site covers hundreds of acres with a sprawling complex of earthen mounds and parallel curved earthen ridges, built between 1800 and 1200 BC.  The builders lived centuries before agriculture reached North America, and thus carried out this extremely organized mound-building on a diet based in fishing, hunting and gathering, which might have allowed them to work on the structures only seasonally.  

The Poverty Point Culture people inhabited stretches of the lower Mississippi Valley and the adjacent Gulf Coast.  More than 100 sites have been attributed to the Poverty Point Culture.

Previous studies have determined that the builders of the complex leveled the landscape east of the curved parallel ridges to create a central plaza.  The new study used ground penetrating radar technology to focus on the central plaza area, in combination with other techniques such as analyzing soil samples, screening for artifacts and lowering a geophysical sensor down cored holes.

The ground penetrating radar found 2,000 reflectors, which are objects or soil disturbances that reflect the radar signals.  These results were compared to previous tests, and several targets were tested by coring holes, screening the removed soil for artifacts, and sampling the soil down the core holes. 

According to the research director Diana Greenlee, the Poverty Point site archaeologist and an adjunct professor at University of Louisiana, the results show that the plaza contains a number of distinct earthworks.  A subtle high spot in the plaza, the West Plaza Rise, was not a natural rise, but a purposely elevated feature within the plaza fill with unique soil properties, differing from any of the other known earthworks at the site. 

According to Greenlee, much more research remains to be done, because the new study demonstrates that the plaza at Poverty Point has a more elaborate construction history than was previously known.

We end this week in the United Kingdom, where archaeologists are racing to assess and prevent the damage ahead as climate change dries out wetland soils that have been protecting thousands of buried sites. 

As reported by the BBC, British peat bogs have yielded unique artifacts such as a Roman toilet seat, the world's oldest boxing glove and the oldest letter handwritten by a woman.  

As climate change dries out these wetlands, it could destroy our ability to continue learning about our past from perishable artifacts.

According to UK archaeologists, about 22,500 historic and prehistoric sites are at risk.

Waterlogged soils cover about ten percent of the UK.  These soils contain very little oxygen, so organic materials like wood, leather and textiles do not rot.  They can survive for thousands of years, preserved by the stable anoxic chemistry of the soil.

When the soils dry, oxygen can enter the system, kick-starting the process of decomposition. Once that happens, artifacts crumble away quickly.

Excavating these potentially huge sites could cost hundreds of millions of pounds and take decades, by which time they may have been badly damaged.

According to the trustees of Magna, a Roman fort alongside Hadrian's Wall, the warning is clear, even  as they kick off celebrations for the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of construction of the wall.

The land at Magna has subsided by up to a meter in some places in the past decade.  

According to Dr. Andrew Birley, the chief archaeologist at the site, it means this historical time capsule is at risk, because only a tiny part of the site has been excavated so far.

Vindolanda, another fort a few miles along the Wall, gives an idea of what could lie hidden.  Digs at Vindolanda have uncovered the world's oldest boxing gloves, so well-preserved that you can still see the imprint of the boxer's knuckles on one; more Roman footwear than at any other site in the world; and a handwritten message in which Claudia Severa, the wife of the commanding officer of a nearby fort, invites her friend Lepidina to her birthday party on 11 September about nineteen hundred years ago. 

Claudia’s letter reads: "Oh, how much I want you at my birthday party, you'll make the day so much more fun.  I do so hope you can make it.  Goodbye, sister, my dearest soul."

Day-to-day objects like this provide a unique connection to the lives of ordinary people in ancient times.

According to Birley, efforts to try to work out what is happening underground at Magna Fort include digging boreholes and using electronic equipment to measure the water flow and temperature every hour.  At Teesside University, Dr. Gillian Taylor is analyzing the chemicals from the soil cores to understand the processes at work.

Other sites at immediate risk include Palaeolithic pathways up to twelve thousand years old, Bronze Age burial sites, and many more.

Peatlands represent a small part of Britain’s landscape, but hold an outsized potential to tell the story of the past.  While an archaeologist working at a dry site might find ten percent of what was once there, at a peatland site they may find as much as ninety percent of the material culture.

According to Birley, losing places like this doesn’t just mean losing this direct connection to the daily lives of the people who lived in Britain 2000 years ago; it also means the loss of ecological history. 

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!