Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to hand off our top news stories from this past week of Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

Melting ice in British Columbia has revealed many perishable artifacts and evidence of obsidian quarrying.  A tomb found in western Norway may be the earliest evidence of the first farmers in that region.  A remarkably well preserved mosaic depicting a lion came to light on the floor of an ancient theater in Turkey.  And a multidisciplinary study in Australia aims to determine to what extent Aboriginal people practiced plant cultivation.

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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 November 12th through the 18th, 2023.

We begin the week in Canada, where archaeologists have been surveying the retreat of glacial ice, recovering dozens of perishable artifacts amid thousands of obsidian tools and fragments. 

As reported by heritagedaily.com, the survey team found more than fifty artifacts of bark, wood, antler, bone, and hide from melted ice fields in Mount Edziza Provincial Park in British Columbia.

The organic artifacts, such as spear and arrow shafts, were made mainly of wood, as well as stone points.  These artifacts, with their stone points, reveal that hunting occurred in the area.  The survey team also found intricately carved sticks, walking staffs and stitched containers.  Most of the wood found showed marks from being worked or used. 

Other items were made from animals, such as a boot crafted from stitched hide, and tools carved from antler and bone.  Unmodified bones also were found, but may be natural remains from animals that died there. 

Perishable materials, such as hide and wood, decay rapidly after melting ice exposes them.  Because of this, researchers used satellite imagery, followed by surface inspections, to locate perishable artifact sites for recovery and controlled conservation.

Carbon dating of thirteen artifacts dated the sites from six thousand nine hundred years ago to one thousand five hundred years ago.  This wide time span shows that people traveled and worked across and near the ice for millennia. 

The perishable artifacts were only part of the cultural remains recorded.  Each ice patch site lies on a landscape littered with millions of obsidian nodules, flakes, cores, preforms, and various tools.  This suggests that the wood and bone tools may have been part of ancient quarrying and stone-working activities.  

Finding stone tools alongside perishable organic remains is rare, particularly in an upland quarry region.  The results help reveal the region’s early cultural adaptations and suggest obsidian mining in Mount Edziza was a major activity.  

The Mount Edziza area is in the territory of the indigenous Tahltan Nation, and the archaeological survey collaborated with a longstanding Tahltan youth program.  By working with archaeologists, the Tahltan youth deepen their awareness of their history, develop a foundation for decisions that affect their people and land, and learn about potential careers by working alongside many professionals.  

A report on the new survey appears in the Journal of Field Archaeology. 

Next we go to Norway, where construction work uncovered a tomb from four thousand years ago with the remains of five people, tiny shell beads, and a stone tool called a blade sickle. The tomb’s style and the blade sickle are unique finds for this area, suggesting the remains may belong to some of the first farmers in the region.

As reported by livescience.com, the stone-lined tomb is part of a site found in southwestern Norway in the town of Selje, on the coast of the North Sea.  Archaeologists from the University Museum of Bergen have been excavating the site since April, uncovering traces of prehistoric dwellings and trash heaps full of animal bones.  

The burials are in two chambers of a cist tomb measuring five feet by ten feet and nearly three feet deep.  Carbon dating places the burials at the end of the Neolithic period, between 2140 and 2000 BC.  The remains included those of an elderly man with arthritis, a two-year-old toddler, a young woman, and two other individuals whose remains were shoved aside into a loose pile during later burials. 

Agriculture began in the Middle East eight thousand years earlier, but only slowly reached Norway to replace the nomadic hunting and fishing lifestyle.  Archaeologists have worked to pinpoint the time and location of Norway’s first farmers for a long time.   Selje provides strong evidence of early agriculture in western Norway, and even a lead on where they came from.

According to Yvonne Dahl, a member of the University of Bergen archaeology team, Late Neolithic people in the Selje area typically buried their dead in rock shelters.  Cist graves are more common in eastern Norway, where agriculture was already common. 

The stone cist funeral tradition appears earlier on the Jutland peninsula of Denmark.  Archaeologists wonder if agriculture spread to Norway and Sweden as farmers moved.   However, the Selje people may have independently decided to adopt both farming and the cist tomb tradition. 

Selje’s coastal location could have attracted new settlers, or travelers with new tools and ideas.  Planned DNA testing of the Selje skeletons may be able to confirm whether they were migrants to the west with farming knowledge gained in the east, or a local group of people who switched to farming.   These tests will also confirm whether the people in the tomb are biologically related to one another. 

Our third story takes us to Turkey, where excavators have uncovered a beautifully preserved mosaic floor depicting a lion.  The find came from an ongoing dig at the ancient city of Prusias ad Hypium [PROO-see-ahs ad HIP-ee-um], in Düzce [DOO-zhyeh] province, east of Istanbul. 

The ancient city of Prusias ad Hypium was founded in the third century BC and then became part of the kingdom of Bithynia.  It was added into Roman territories around AD 75.   

According to AnatolianArchaeology.net, major structures that have been mapped and excavated over the past one hundred and fifty years include a Hellenistic era theater, a Roman era bridge, an aqueduct, city walls, a monumental gate, a colonnaded street, and a necropolis.   The theater, known locally as the Forty Steps, was likely built after 100 BC during the late Hellenistic period with elements added later during the reign of the Roman Empire.

Excavators discovered the lion mosaic above the theater, in a rectangular room measuring about fourteen by twenty feet.  The interior walls featured a marble veneer, set in thick mortar.  A small platform stood at the north end, perhaps to elevate a statue or a priest.  Aside from this platform, the entire floor displayed small mosaic stones, or tesserae [TESS-uh-ree] in white, blue, yellow, green, and brown.

The perimeter of the floor features larger and more colorful tesserae to make intricate geometric patterns that frame the center picture.  The central scene depicts two lions looking at a pine tree.  Drums and a pan flute hang from the branches of the tree.  

According to experts at the Konuralp Museum, in the provincial capital of Düzce, the art and construction show the room was used by a late Roman cult of Dionysus. 

We end the week in Australia, where a new multidisciplinary research project aims to identify better research methods on prehistoric Aboriginal food systems.  Debate has long existed about the role of farmed food versus foraged food in Aboriginal diets.  According to the new research, one of the main problems with answering this question has been an inadequate and biased investigation methodology.   

As reported by Phys.org, the University of Queensland-led research team suspects that, in a rapidly changing climate, the key to a more sustainable food future for Australia may be to understand ancient food production systems better. 

The project is called "Testing the Dark Emu Hypothesis," a nod to the hypothesis that Aborigines practiced multiple forms of agriculture and aquaculture that have gone unrecognized.  The project employs bioarchaeology, archaeobotany, palynology, and ethnobotany.

According to Michael Westaway, a bioarchaeologist at University of Queensland, they’re working in partnership with indigenous communities to challenge existing perspectives.  Aboriginal people are key to gaining insights into how their people developed sustainable food production systems.

The evidence found in western Queensland includes the largest foraging tool quarries in the world, where the Mithaka people made grinding stones for processing seeds.

Excavations in traditional Aboriginal huts called gunyahs that housed people year-round produced remnants of burned and carbonized seeds.  Archaeobotanists are now examining these to identify the species.

Pollen cores from ancient lakebeds allowed the team to reconstruct how the surrounding vegetation had changed over time.

According to Westaway, ethnohistory shows that Aboriginal people prepared for floods by burning surrounding riverine plains to increase the productivity of the landscape.  Identifying carbon peaks in the cores from the lakebeds shows the timing of the burnings.

The record shows domestication of landscapes, not just species.  The research team has also studied plant genetics, including drought resistance.

Robert Henry, a University of Queensland Professor of Innovation in Agriculture, has been examining contemporary flora and how humans might have altered plants there over time.  This reveals changes in seed size and plant edibility.

The researchers hope to identify practices in the past that are useful for the future.  New ways of using native flora in a more sustainable way would support new industry.

The new research appears in the journal Archaeology of Food and Foodways.

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 growing subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

I’m Laura Kennedy and I’ll see you next week!