Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  We’re happy to welcome you for the latest batch of 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!

In a sad development, archaeologists in Alberta, Canada, used ground-penetrating radar and drones to locate 169 possible graves at a First Nations residential school.  A British archaeologist published a detailed explanation for how Stonehenge was used as a calendar.  The mummified bodies of eight children are interpreted as evidence for child sacrifice in ancient Peru.  And a study of the stone out of which the Venus of Willendorf was carved 30,000 years ago indicates that its probable source is in northern Italy.

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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 February 27th through March 5th, 2022. 

We begin the week in Alberta, Canada, where 169 potential graves have been found using ground-penetrating radar and drones at the site of a former First Nations residential school.

According to Sydney Halcrow, chief of the Kapawe'no First Nation in central Alberta, the discovery of the graves validates school survivors’ allegations of abuse, along with deaths from negligence. 

As reported by the CBC, the defunct Grouard Mission Indian Residential School, also known as St. Bernard’s Residential School, was run by the Roman Catholic Church from 1894 to 1961.  During those 65 years, thousands of indigenous children were removed from their families, often forcibly, and subjected to religious indoctrination and hard labor at the facility.  Hundreds of them did not return home. 

According to Kisha Supernant, the project lead, who directs the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta, the new evidence of 169 potential graves of children at the Grouard Mission was established using ground-penetrating radar and a specialized drone. 

Research focusing around the school compound found 54 potential graves in an area around the church, a former nun’s residence and an old root cellar.  An additional 115 were identified in the community cemetery.

Again according to Supernant, the parish burial records indicate that children who died while living at the school were buried in unmarked graves

Additional data come from a missing children registry at the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, the archival repository for the complete history and legacy of the Canadian residential school system, which listed some of the same names provided by the church.  

According to Supernant, who is Metis [MAY-tee], some of her own family members are in the records of those who died at the school, and no one has been held accountable for their deaths.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard testimony from survivors about serious sexual and physical abuse, manual labor and the spread of illness at the school.  The commission documented the stories from survivors and issued a final report in 2015, with a record of 10 student deaths at St. Bernard.

According to Rita Evans, a survivor who went to the school for four years, the schedule emphasized religious instruction and daily labor, with little time for academic subjects.

The Indian residential school system worked to suppress Indigenous culture and language.  An estimated 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children attended residential schools nationally.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented at least 4,100 deaths. 

Kapawe'no First Nation plans to continue with more searches for potential graves of children who never returned home.   

Based on testimony from survivors, search areas will include a nearby Anglican church and a spot where Indigenous agents and the Northwest Mounted Police had structures.

According to Grand Chief Arthur Noskey, of the Treaty Eight First Nations, each grave found painfully reopens a wound that has never healed, but it is important for the world to see that these tragic institutions were not schools, and that healing will not come without answers.  

We go now to southern England, where a new study proposes the details of how Stonehenge functioned as a solar year calendar. 

The new research is based on the number and positioning of the stones that make up the site, as well as comparisons with other ancient calendar systems that might have influenced the builders.

The use of Stonehenge as a kind of calendar has long been widely accepted, based on the positioning of the stones and their alignment with the solstices.  

As reported by Sciencealert.com, the goal of the new research was to add detail to this interpretation.

The team led by Timothy Darvill, professor of archaeology from Bournemouth University in England, built on a previous study showing that most of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge came from the same source, which means they were likely put up at the same time to work together. 

According to Darvill, the proposed calendar works in a straightforward way.  Each of the thirty stones in the large sarsen circle represents a day within a month, itself divided into three periods  of ten days, similar to our modern seven-day weeks. 

The five trilithon stones in the center of the circle represent an intercalary month, because during some years an extra day had to be added to balance out the calendar with Earth's full span of revolutions around the Sun.  The four station stones outside the Sarsen Circle, according to Darvill, would have been markers to track this until a leap year.

As a solar calendar, the winter and summer solstices could be viewed through the same pairs of stones each year as a way of checking errors.

If the Sun were ever in the wrong place on the solstices, then the ancient people of Wiltshire would have known that they'd gone wrong somewhere in calculating the year.

The new study found no arrangements within Stonehenge that could match the twelve months of each year, but suggested that some of the missing or moved stones on the site were responsible for keeping track of these.  What is clear is that the architecture of Stonehenge has been split into two halves to match the two solstices.

Further questions might be answered by continued artifact analysis and DNA work.   For now, the recognition of Stonehenge as a working calendar gives us a better idea of how the people of the time lived and celebrated.

The research is published in the journal Antiquity.

Our third story takes us to Peru, where the sacrificial remains of eight mummified children were found in the tomb of an elite nobleman in a pre-Incan city. 

As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, archaeologists in Peru found the mummified bodies of the eight children in a grave from about 1,000 to 1200 years ago at the Cajamarquilla [KAH - hah-mahr-KEE-yah]archaeological complex, about fifteen miles east of Lima, Peru.  The burial was for a high-ranking person, about 25 to 30 years old at the time of his death.  The bones of twelve adults who were not mummified, along with llama-like animals, were found just outside the tomb.

According to team leaders Pieter Van Dalen Luna and Yomira Silvia Huamán, of the National University of San Marcos, who excavated the tomb last November, the wealthy local might have been a trader.   His tomb was located near the city’s center, indicating an important social status.  Caretakers had mummified the individual with care and in accordance with common funerary practices in southern Peru during that era.

The children could have been close relatives.  Their careful placement in different parts of the entrance of the tomb suggests they were sacrificed to accompany the nobleman to the next world.

According to Van Dalen Luna, human sacrifices as part of funeral rituals for elite individuals in pre-Incan cultures was common, as Andean cultures believed that people didn’t disappear after death, but simply transitioned into a parallel world. 

Radiocarbon dating of organic materials from the grave placed it in the period from AD 800 to 1200.   Further radiocarbon analysis is planned, as well as DNA and other chemical testing.

We end this week in Austria, where new research sheds light on the mysterious origins of the famed Venus of Willendorf. 

The 11-centimeter tall figurine was found in 1908 near the village of Willendorf in the Wachau Valley of Austria and depicts a woman with exaggerated female characteristics.  The figurine is carved from oolite, a granular limestone not found in or around Willendorf.

As reported by Sciencedaily.com, the new study finds a strong probability that the stone came from northern Italy, indicating travel by early modern humans around the Alps 30,000 years ago.  

The research team, led by anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna, used high-resolution tomographic images to examine the mineral structure of the figurine’s interior for the first time.  The Venus of Willendorf is unique in being carved from oolite.  Other Venus figurines are mainly made of ivory or bone, or less commonly, other kinds of stone.  

The tomographic data identified different densities and grain sizes in the oolite rock.  Among the grains, the analysts also found small remnants of shells and six very dense, larger limonite grains.  

According to Weber, the limonite grains explain several previously mysterious small dimples on the surface of the Venus, because they are the same diameter as the grains.  The pits are likely where harder limonite pieces broke out during the carving process.  Weber adds that in the case of the Venus figurine’s navel, the creator possibly made it a feature out of necessity after a limonite piece chipped out too easily.  

To identify the source of the stone, the researchers measured thousands of grains from other sites with image-processing programs.  None of the samples within a 200-kilometer radius of Willendorf even remotely matched. 

However, a statistically indistinguishable match came from samples from northern Italy near Lake Garda.  This means that people brought the raw material, or the Venus figurine, across the Alps into the Danube region, probably by traveling around the southeastern edge of the Alps.  Directly crossing through the Alps is also possible, but around 30,000 years ago the climate might not have allowed that.  

A far less likely, but still possible, second origin was also identified: eastern Ukraine.  Samples collected there are not a clean fit like those from Italy, but are still far closer in composition than any of the thousands of other samples tested. 

This is interesting, since Venus figurines of later age have been found in nearby southern Russia, with a style similar to the Willendorf Venus.  A supporting link comes from genetic studies showing close relationships between the people of Central and Eastern Europe at this time.

The results appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

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!