Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Another batch of fascinating news stories appeared on Archaeologica this past week!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

A gold funeral mask from an ancient tomb in China is sparking lots of questions about where the idea of gold masks actually came from.  A very ambitious new study of Anglo-Saxon genetics is generating a detailed picture of just how the fifth-century arrivals in England melded with the local population.  The remarkable find of a dugout canoe on the bottom of a Wisconsin lake doesn’t change our understanding of ancient technology, but it instills great pride among the local Native Americans. And a 7000-year-old structure, called a roundel, found near Prague adds important new data toward understanding just how Neolithic people used such structures.

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And now, here’s Laura Kennedy 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 Kennedy, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of September 18th through the 24th, 2022. 

We begin this week in central China, where a gold funeral mask, thought to be more than 3,000 years old, has been discovered in a tomb in the city of Zhengzhou [ juhng – JO ]. 

As reported by live science, the mask is large enough to cover the entire face of an adult.  It is one of the oldest gold objects ever found in central China.  Contemporary objects tend to be crafted from bronze or jade, so this discovery raises questions about possible trade links to other early Chinese states where gold was more common.

The tomb dates to the Shang [Shong] Dynasty, which ruled in the Yellow River valley from approximately 1600 to 1046 BC and covers an area of more than 100,000 square feet.  It contains more than 200 other artifacts, including ornate objects of bronze and jade, such as daggers, axes, wine vessels, smoking pipes, and goblets.  Archaeologists also found plaques inlaid with turquoise and coins made from shells.

According to Chen Lüsheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Zhengzhou tomb is a significant find for research into the burial rituals of the Shang Dynasty, and it may even provide new insight into the origins of Chinese civilization.

The funeral mask is older than the gold funeral mask found last year in the Sanxingdui [ san – sing – DWEE]  Ruins, an archaeological site in China's southwestern Sichuan province attributed to the Shu kingdom.

The Shu kingdom in the southwest is traditionally dated as later than the Shang Dynasty in central China.  However, the two states may have existed at the same time, and archaeologists hope to establish links between them.

The Sanxingdui mask had detailed facial features, but archaeologists said it was attached to a wooden post or mannequin, rather than to an actual dead body.  Such masks and other gold artifacts are relatively common at the Sanxingdui Ruins site, but they are rare at Shang Dynasty sites.  It is uncertain whether the younger Sanxingdui mask and the newfound Shang mask have any connection.

According to archaeologist Ruiliang Liu, a curator of the Early China Collection at the British Museum in London, Bronze Age China was dominated by ritual vessels of jade and bronze, while gold and silver were associated with the pastoralist cultures of the steppe.

The gold may have been found in relatively small amounts within Shang territory, but it may have been brought from farther away as an exotic metal, which could indicate that a trade network existed during the Shang period between the Yellow River valley and gold-producing regions, such as the Yangtze River valley farther south.

Liu also noted that very few Shang Dynasty archaeological sites near Zhengzhou have been excavated because a large modern city sits above most of it.

Our next story this week brings us to the British Isles, where new genetic research provides a deeper understanding of the migration patterns of Anglo-Saxons into England. 

As reported by EurekAlert!, new genetic results show that around 75 percent of the population in eastern and southern England was made up of migrant families whose ancestors originated from European regions bordering the North Sea, including what is known today as The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.  These families interbred with the existing population of Britain, but this integration varied from region to region.

According to study lead author Joscha Gretzinger, this study provides insights into both population scale trends of migration and genetics, as well as how it played out in smaller communities and families.  Using published genetic data from more than 4,000 ancient and 10,000 present-day Europeans, Gretzinger and colleagues identified subtle genetic differences between the closely related groups inhabiting the ancient North Sea region.

Upon arrival, the migrants intermixed with the local population.  In one case, in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery from Buckland near Dover, researchers were able to reconstruct a family tree across at least four generations and identify the point in time when migrants and locals intermarried.  This family showed a large degree of interaction between the two gene pools. 

The interdisciplinary team comprising over 70 authors was able to integrate archaeological data with these new genetic results, which revealed that women of immigrant origin were buried with artifacts more often than women of local origin, especially considering items such as brooches [BROH-tchez] and beads.  Intriguingly, men with weapons were found to have both genetic origins equally often.

According to Duncan Sayer, an archaeologist from the University of Central Lancashire and a lead author of the study, there is considerable difference in the level of integration seen in different communities. 

Our third story this week brings us to the Great Lakes Region of the United States, where archaeologists have retrieved a 3000-year-old canoe from Lake Mendota. 

As reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, archaeologist Tamara Thomsen found the canoe by chance while teaching a scuba diving class in May.  Surprisingly, it is the second time Thomsen has found an ancient canoe this way. 

Carbon dating has dated the canoe to 1000 BC. Archaeologists have assumed that Native Americans of this region used canoes for thousands of years, but this discovery provides proof of the longevity of this practice.  

According to archaeologist Amy Roesbrough, the sophisticated design of the canoe suggests that it was not a first attempt, and that this technology was in use even earlier than 3,000 years ago.

The canoe itself is in a series of pieces.  Underwater, the dive team slid a plastic bed tarp under it.  The crew then attached inflatable bags to the tarp and pumped in air, allowing the whole apparatus to float to the surface.

The canoe is currently the consistency of wet cardboard, reports Thomsen.  As archaeologists did with the previous canoe, it'll sit for two years in a vat of chemicals meant to replace the water in the cells of the wood with a type of preservative.

The retrieval has been of particular interest to the native Ho-Chunk nation, who were closely involved in the process of bringing the canoe to shore, 

Archaeologists hope for more to find in Lake Mendota, perhaps the submerged remains of a village.

Our final story this week comes from Central Europe, where archaeologists have found the remains of a 7,000-year-old structure. 

As reported by ScienceAlert, archaeologists near Prague have excavated a circular structure of a kind known as a roundel. 

The roundel is about 180 feet in diameter and was likely built by the Stroked Pottery culture, which flourished between 4900 and 4400 BC.

Researchers first learned about the roundel's existence in the 1980s, when construction workers were laying gas and water pipelines, but the current dig has revealed the entire structure for the first time.

The team has recovered pottery fragments, animal bones and stone tools.

Carbon dating organic remains from this roundel excavation could help the team pinpoint the date of the structure's construction and possibly link it with a Neolithic settlement discovered nearby.

The people who made Stroked Pottery ware are known for building other roundels in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic.  Their sedentary farming villages—located at the intersection of contemporary Poland, eastern Germany, and the northern Czech Republic— consisted of longhouses, which were large, rectangular structures that held 20 to 30 people each.

Roundels were not well known ancient features until a few decades ago when aerial and drone photography became a key part of the archaeological tool kit.

According to Jaroslav Řídký, a spokesperson for the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, archaeologists now understand that roundels are the oldest evidence of architecture in the whole of Europe.

Viewed from above, roundels comprise one or more wide, circular ditches with several gaps that functioned as entrances.  The inner part of each roundel was likely lined with wooden poles, perhaps with mud plastering the gaps.

Hundreds of these circular earthworks have turned up throughout central Europe, but they all date to a span of just two or three centuries.  While their popularity in the late Neolithic is clear, their function is still in question.

In 1991, the earliest known roundel was found in Germany, also corresponding to the Stroked Pottery culture.  Called the Goseck Circle, it is 246 feet in diameter and has a double wooden palisade and three entrances.

According to a 2012 study in the journal Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, because two of the entrances correspond with sunrise and sunset during the winter and summer solstices, one interpretation of the Goseck Circle is that it functioned as an observatory or calendar of sorts.

It is also likely that roundels were built for gatherings of many people, perhaps to celebrate community events.  However, little is known about the people themselves, as very few burials have been found that could provide more information about their lives seven millennia ago.

After three centuries of popularity, roundels suddenly disappeared from the archaeological record around 4600 BC.  Archaeologists do not yet know why the people abandoned their roundels.

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 Kennedy and I’ll see you next week!