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A new study of ancient indigenous DNA from Uruguay surprisingly reveals connections with ancient people in Panama and eastern Brazil, but not to indigenous people in the Amazon today.  A study of animal bones from medieval archaeological sites in Estonia shows that people there ate chicken, liked cockfights and hunted with hawks.  Excavators in Sardinia have come across two huge stone sculptures of warriors with shields, adding to the inventory of 3000-year-old sculptures found at the Nuragic necropolis. And researchers in an underground chamber in southern Turkey have exposed art on the walls depicting a procession of deities of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, some of them unidentified, dating to the ninth century BC.

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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 from Archaeologica for the week of May 8th through the 14th, 2022.

Our first story this week comes from scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the University of the Republic, in Montevideo, Uruguay, who teamed up to sequence the genome of the Indigenous people of ancient Uruguay. 

As reported by the science website Labmanager.com, the research is the first instance of whole genome sequences of ancient Uruguayans, providing a genetic snapshot of Indigenous populations of the region before they were decimated by a series of European military campaigns.

According to co-author John Lindo, an Emory assistant professor of anthropology specializing in ancient DNA, the results show that the ancient Uruguayans had an ancestry that has not been previously detected in South America.  This contributes to the idea of South America as a place where multi-regional diversity existed, instead of the monolithic idea of a single Native American race across North and South America.

The analyses drew on a DNA sample of a man who lived about 800 years ago, and another from a woman who lived 1,500 years ago, both well before the arrival of Europeans.  Co-author Gonzalo Figueiro, a biological anthropologist at the University of the Republic, collected these samples from an archaeological site in eastern Uruguay.

The results showed a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama and eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians.  These findings support the hypothesis proposed by some archaeologists that several separate migrations brought people into South America, including one that led to the Amazonian populations and another that led to the populations along the east coast. 

Uruguay lies on the Atlantic coast south of Brazil, and archaeological evidence for human settlement in the area goes back more than 10,000 years.  European colonizers made initial contact in the early 1500s. 

During the 1800s, the colonizers launched a series of military campaigns to exterminate the native peoples, culminating in what is known as the Massacre at Salsipuedes Creek, in 1831, which targeted what the Europeans called the Charrúa (char-OO-uh), a term applied broadly to the remnants of many hunter-gatherer groups in the region.

The new work allows modern-day Uruguayans to potentially link themselves genetically to populations that existed in the region before European colonizers arrived.  The team plans to gather more DNA samples from ancient archaeological sites from all over Uruguay, which would allow people living in the country today to explore a possible genetic connection.

DNA sequencing has rarely been conducted in South America because the warm climate and humidity reduce the amount of usable DNA available for such studies.  Still, the work is important, and according to Lindo, if you are descended from people Indigenous to the Americas, you may be able to learn that some chunk of your genome is Native American, but with few ancient DNA references available, it’s hard to trace a direct lineage.

By collaborating closely with Indigenous communities and local archaeologists, Lindo hopes to use advanced DNA sequencing techniques to build a free, online portal with increasing numbers of ancient DNA references from the Americas, to help people gain access and the opportunity to explore their ancestry.

The new research appears in PNAS Nexus.

Next we go to Estonia, where a zoo-archaeologist is showing how medieval Estonians trained hunting hawks and organized cockfights. 

Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains recovered from archaeological sites, such as human settlements, graves and fortresses. 

According to Freydis Ehrlich (AIR-lick), a junior researcher at the Institute of History and Archaeology at the University of Tartu, her dissertation study of bird remains has revealed the many uses for birds, including for food and ritualistic practices dating from the Viking Age to the Early Modern Age—around the tenth to eighteenth centuries AD.

As reported by the Estonian news site Err.ee, Ehrlich analyzed specimens from the city and fortress of Viljandi (vil-YAWN-dee), as well as from other parts of Estonia.  She found some thirty species of birds, including several species of ducks, black grouses, western capercaillies, swans, Eurasian cranes, chickens, owls, doves, and hawks. 

The results revealed new evidence for the arrival of domestic birds—like chicken and geese—into the area of present-day Estonia.  Chickens, it turns out, have been in Estonia for at least two thousand years, but the earliest finds are very rare, and come from graves, suggesting they were a rare luxury good rather than a common food source.  

By Viking times, however, chickens become the most common bird species across archaeological sites.  Geese and ducks are also prominent, and it’s suspected that the beginning of their domestication is not precisely dated, but written sources suggest an arrival at the end of the Middle Ages, which is much later than chickens.

It was unclear whether the geese and ducks were caught in the wild or domesticated.

Estonians may have used specially trained hunting hawks to capture wild birds and smaller mammals.  According to Ehrlich, taking hatchlings from the nest and raising and teaching them to hunt was a time-consuming activity practiced mainly by the social elite. 

Eagles were not used for hunting in Estonia, but eagle talons were used for ornaments and pendants.

Evidence of cockfighting is seen in cases where the spurs of cocks were cut off in a particular way.  According to Ehrlich, sources suggest that the removed spur was replaced by an artificial one made of metal or bone and designed for fighting purposes.  Cockfighting may have been one of the main reasons for domesticating the chicken.

Our third story takes us to Sardinia, where new giant statue fragments have been found at a site famous for its monumental sculptures found in the 1970s.

As reported by the Italian news site Ansa.it, the new finds come from statues of two powerful warriors that would have stood at more than 6 feet tall.  Fragments found include two torsos, a large flexible shield that covered the stomach and protected one arm, one head, legs, and other body parts.  

The find came just days after new excavations began at the Monte Prama Nuragic [MOHN-teh PRAH-ma noor-AHG-ic] necropolis at Cabras, in the western part of the island.  The Nuragic culture of Sardinia began during the Bronze Age and lasted into early Roman times, or from about the 18th century BC until around 238 BC.  

Distinctive Nuragic features include the more-than-life-size sculptures, various megalithic tomb types, and scores of Nuraghi [noor-AHG-ee], which are large conical towers or fortresses that still dot the landscape of Sardinia today.   

The new remains of giant sculptures join the many previously found renditions of warriors and boxers that have already come from this Sardinian archaeological site.

According to Monica Stochino, the Italian culture ministry’s superintendent for southern Sardinia, the discovery bodes well for more surprises in the coming weeks.

The new excavation, which began on April 4, has confirmed that the necropolis stretches southwards, and has a major road along the tombs, probably used for bringing in those buried here, or for ritual visits to the necropolis.

An interdisciplinary team is working to learn more about this special cemetery from 3,000 years ago.  The necropolis was apparently reserved almost exclusively for young men, with the 170 tombs discovered so far holding almost no elderly men, no children, and almost no women. 

The two new giant sculptures add to the inventory of over 30 statues of boxers, wrestlers, warriors, and archers found in the 1970s when the site was first discovered.

According to Alessandro Usai, the scientific director of the excavation since 2014, the team hopes to determine the meaning of the many colossal stone sculptures depicting fighters.  Were they placed in the necropolis to guard it?  Do they represent those buried here, or heroes, or ancestors, or simply symbolize the community using the burial ground?   

The new boxer sculptures are of the style known as Cavalupo, defined by a distinctive curved shield that wraps around the body.  Other Cavalupo types came to light in 2014, not far away from the new dig.  The Cavalupo style is named after a famous bronze statuette, now in the Etruscan Museum in Villa Giulia in Rome, that was originally found in an Etruscan tomb in the Cavalupo burial ground in Vulci [VOOL-chee], Italy. 

The current dig is part of a larger project that will also restore the finds recovered between 2014 and 2016, and put them all on display in the museum at Cabras, the region’s largest city.      

In our last story, we go to southern Turkey, where a bungled looting scheme exposed an underground set of rooms which may have been used for worship during the Iron Age.

As reported by Livescience.com, the complex has yet to be fully investigated, due to the structural instability of the building that stands above it.

Rare rock art drawings on the underground room’s walls show a procession of Assyrian deities, along with some inscriptions in the local Aramaic language.  The combination reveals how the culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which began in Mesopotamia, had spread into Anatolia. 

According to Selim Ferruh Adali, an associate professor of ancient history at the Social Sciences University of Ankara, the find reveals how Assyrian hegemony was enforced during the early phases of the empire’s expansion. 

Authorities found out about the site in 2017, after looters discovered it beneath a house in a Turkish village and tried to exploit it.  Police discovered the plot and were able to access the underground art works via an artificial opening created by the looters. 

Archaeologists from the nearby Şanlıurfa [shan-lee-OOR-fah] Archaeological Museum mapped the underground complex carved out of the limestone bedrock, including an entrance chamber, and two galleries.  They dated it back to the early Neo-Assyrian period, around the ninth century BC. 

The intricate carvings of one wall panel depict a procession of deities dating to the time when the Neo-Assyrian Empire expanded into what is now Turkey.  The mix of influences in the work suggests that the Assyrian elite used art to express their power over the local Luwian and Aramaic-speaking peoples.  

The panel depicts a procession of gods from the Assyrian pantheon of deities, but the style of their depiction is that of the region known as Aram, which extends into today’s Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.  Several also have Aramaic inscriptions next to them.

According to archaeologists, four of the eight deities on the panel cannot be identified.  The Aramaic inscriptions label three of the gods.  The four known deities are Hadad, the storm, rain and thunder god; his consort Atargatis, a goddess of fertility and protection; the moon god Sîn; and the sun god Šamaš [SHAH-mahsh].  

Atargatis was the principal goddess in Syria at this time, and this is the earliest known depiction of her in Turkey.

The deities on the wall panel suggest that it was the site for a regional fertility cult of Syro-Anatolian and Aramaean deities, with rituals possibly overseen by early Neo-Assyrian authorities. 

One inscription might refer to Mukīn-abūa, who was a Neo-Assyrian official living during the reign of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari the Third, which lasted from 811 to 783 BC.  Mukīn-abūa was in charge of the region, and might have used this complex to garner support and cooperation from locals.

The team suspects further excavations will uncover more areas of the underground complex and possibly yield more examples of artwork, as only a small part of the whole site has been explored.  

The study was published online in the journal Antiquity. 

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!