Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I'm Laura Kennedy.  Rick Pettigrew is away on assignment with our tour of Iran, so I’ll be telling you about four of the best stories posted online this past week by our partner, Archaeologica.org!  Here are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from October 9th through 15th, 2022.

Our first story this week comes from Lima, Peru, where energy company workers discovered dozens of ancient tombs during the construction of a gas pipeline, according to the project’s archaeologists, in the latest find from that South American country’s rich ancient past.

As reported by Reuters, the oldest burials date back eight centuries and likely belong to Peru’s Huaura culture, while others likely date to the Chancay culture from around 600 years ago. 

According to project archaeologist Cecilia Camargo, the remains found in the dry sandy soil of Peru’s Carabayllo district, about 50 miles north of Lima, were of both adults and children and were found inside burial bundles.  Some of the tombs also included pottery as well as small clay figurines, possibly representing goddesses.

Camargo is employed by the local gas distribution company, Calidda, which employs its own archaeologists due the frequency of ancient discoveries whenever a project involves digging.  In this latest discovery, human hair was found along with various bones.

While best known for the picturesque mountain-top Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, which draws millions of tourists every year, Peru was home to various pre-Hispanic cultures that thrived in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, mainly along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.

According to Camargo, these people were buried with unique offerings, such as the goddess figurines that may have been meant to accompany the deceased along their journey to the afterworld.

Next, we go to Taiwan, where a team from Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam unearthed skeletal remains that might be from a legendary early people who disappeared from the island thousands of years ago.

As reported by the science news site Phys.org, the 6,000-year-old skull and femur bones come from a cave in a mountainous part of Taiwan.  The island has long offered stories, passed down through the generations, about a tribe of short, dark-skinned people that once lived in mountainous parts of the island.  But until now, no physical evidence of them had been found.  

In this new effort, the researchers found a skull and leg bones in a cave that have been dated back to approximately 6,000 years ago—a time before the ancestors of people now alive on the island arrived.

In studying DNA from the skull, the researchers found it close to African samples from around the same time period.  But they also found that its size and shape resemble those of Negritos, who lived in parts of what is now South Africa and in the Philippines.  Study of bones left behind in those areas showed them to be quite short, indicating small body size.  Femur bones found near the skull were from the same person as the skull, a young woman.  The researchers estimate she stood approximately 1.3 meters tall.

The researchers suggest their findings confirm the existence of the lore-described ancient people on Taiwan, but they don’t explain what might have happened to them.  They were evidently gone by the time other early Austronesian groups began arriving.  The researchers also note that mention of small, dark-skinned people is found in documents from the Qin Dynasty.  All but one of the 16 Austronesian groups living in Taiwan today have stories of small, dark-skinned people who once lived in the mountains.  Such tales differ, however, between groups, the researchers note, with some believing that the earlier people were ancestors of theirs.  Others see them as former enemies.  One group claim to have killed off the last of the ancient people 1,000 years ago.

The new find is reported in the journal World Archaeology.

Our third story takes us to Armenia, where an international research team has used plant DNA to show how the Paleolithic people who lived in a cave used the area’s wild plants.

The team extracted and analyzed plant DNA from the sediments of the Armenian cave known as Aghitu-3, which was occupied about 40,000 to 25,000 years ago.  The analysis showed traces of numerous plant species that the cave’s inhabitants may have used for medicine, dye, and making string or yarn.

The cave was excavated by the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and several German institutions, including the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt.

As reported by the science news site phys.org, the Aghitu-3 is one of many basalt caves in the highlands of southern Armenia.  It measures 11 meters deep, 18 meters wide, and 6 meters high and is one of very few caves in Armenia containing Upper Paleolithic materials.  The cave sediments show from 39,000 to 24,000 years ago.

Excavations uncovered stone artifacts, animal remains, bones, tools, shell beads, and charcoal from campfires.  The plants people used for food, including seeds, leaves, fruits, and roots, are rarely preserved.

However, the research team extracted plant DNA from the cave sediments and the results show that more genetic material from plants ended up in the sediments during periods of heavy human use of the cave.  This suggests that people collected and brought plants back to the cave for use. 

A total of 43 plant Orders showed up in the DNA, including plants with medicinal properties, plants used as food and flavoring, plants for dyes and fibers, and even one that could have been used as mosquito repellent.  Finding DNA from dye and fiber plants suggests that people were making thread or twine for sewing, or to string beads.

According to the researchers, analyzing plant DNA from sediments is an exciting new tool for studying human behavior in prehistoric times.

These new research results appear in the Journal of Human Evolution.

We end the week in Iraq, where archaeologists used high-resolution drone photos to map the details of the ancient southern Mesopotamian city of Lagash.  They discovered that it was made up of a series of islands connected by waterways and bridges.  Around 5000 years ago, this early city lay in marshy lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

According to archaeologist Emily Hammer, of the University of Pennsylvania, the discovery of these islands and their different occupation patterns shows that southern Mesopotamian cities were not all laid out around temple and administrative districts inside a city wall, but rather, evolved in diverse ways.  

As reported by ScienceNews.org, Lagash had no geographical or ritual center.  Each of the marsh islands developed distinctive economic practices and structures.  For instance, waterways or canals crisscrossed one marsh island, where fishing and collection of reeds for construction may have predominated.

Two other Lagash marsh islands display evidence of having been bordered by gated walls that enclosed carefully laid out city streets and areas with large kilns, suggesting these sectors were built in stages, with pottery making as one of the major activities. 

Drone photographs of what were probably harbors on each marsh island suggest that boat travel connected city sectors.  Remains of what may have been footbridges appear in and adjacent to waterways between marsh islands, a possibility that further excavations may explore.

Lagash, which formed the core of one of the world’s earliest states, was founded between about 4,900 and 4,600 years ago.  Residents abandoned the site, now known as Tel al-Hiba, around 3,600 years ago.  The site was first excavated more than 40 years ago.

Previous studies showed many southern Mesopotamian cities were built on raised mounds in marshes, with Lagash joining together as many as 33 marsh islands.

According to Hammer, drone photos provide a more detailed look at Lagash’s buried structures than is possible with satellite images.   Guided by initial remote-sensing data gathered from ground level, a drone spent six weeks in 2019 taking high-resolution photographs of much of the site’s surface.  Soil moisture and salt absorption from recent heavy rains helped the drone’s technology detect remnants of buildings, walls, streets, waterways and other city features buried near ground level.

Drone data enabled Hammer to narrow down densely inhabited parts of the ancient city to three islands, which may have been part of delta channels extending toward the Persian Gulf.  A smaller, fourth island was dominated by a large temple.

According to University of Chicago archaeologist Augusta McMahon, one of three field co-directors for the ongoing excavations at the site, some islands had settlements that look planned, while others are arranged more haphazardly.  This could reflect multiple waves of immigration into Lagash between 4,600 and 4,350 years ago. 

Artifacts suggest the arrivals included people from both nearby and distant villages, mobile herders looking to settle down, and slave laborers captured from neighboring city-states.  The building density indicates that tens of thousands of people lived there during the city’s peak.

Nearby cities continued to thrive for a thousand years or more after Lagash’s abandonment, so that Lagash may provide a rare opportunity to see what other ancient cities in the region looked like earlier in time.

These research results will appear in the December issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

That wraps up our 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!