Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to deliver 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!

Excavators in southern Turkey came across a trove of stamped clay seal impressions in an ancient Roman archive building.  A new study of baboon DNA from Egypt appears to confirm the location of the ancient trading destination of Punt.  Very old human DNA from California points to an ancient migration of hunter-gatherers from Mexico.  And what was previously thought to be a temple in the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu turns out to be a sophisticated hydraulic structure for delivering precious irrigation water.

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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 19th through the 25th, 2023

Our first story this week comes from Turkey, where archaeologists have discovered more than two thousand clay seal impressions.  Officials used these sealings to close legal documents made of papyrus and parchment. 

As reported by livescience.com, the Asia Minor Research team discovered the stamp collection during excavation at Doliche [DAHL-ik], an ancient Roman city located near present-day Gaziantep [Gaz-YAHN-tep] in southern Turkey.  Doliche was founded as a Hellenistic colony during the second century BC and later annexed by the Roman Empire in AD 72.

The artifacts came to light inside the lower foundations of the former city archive building.

The seals range in diameter from five to twenty millimeters, each containing an impression of a god, religious symbol, or inscription.

According to Michael Blomer, professor of archaeology at the University of Münster in Germany, the clay tokens were folded around strings that closed legal documents and letters, then pressed with a stamp in order to seal the documents.

The larger of the stamped clay lumps show impressions of official city seals, while the smaller seals are more likely from private individuals. 

The analysis of the images could lend insight to the cultural affiliations of the people living in Doliche.  According to Blomer, the images of the official city seals have a direct urban connection.  They show their most important deities such as Jupiter Dolichenus, the main god of the city.

The private seals show a more diverse array of images and symbols, providing insights into people’s religious environment.  Gods, mythical figures or rare private portraits indicate a strong Greco-Roman influence.

Blomer and his team had already found four thousand similar seals at the same site.  The sheer volume of seals reveals that this former archive building held thousands of documents.

The documents that the seals enclosed were destroyed in a major fire in AD 253, probably by the Persian king Shapur the Great, who in AD 260 defeated and captured the Roman emperor Valerian and his army of 70,000 men..

The former archive building was made of limestone and measures eight by twenty-five meters.  It was used between the mid-second and third century AD.  Only a few archive structures from the Roman Empire have been identified thus far.

Archaeologists hope that the excavation of the Doliche archive will shed light on the appearance and organization of this type of public architecture as well as ancient administrative practices.  

Next we head south to Egypt, where a new DNA study from an ancient baboon mummy reveals the probable location of the ancient trading port of Punt.   

As reported by LiveScience.com, according to the study, ancient Egyptians traded with people in present day Eritrea to bring baboons to their temples.

In ancient Egyptian culture, baboons were associated with the god Babi [Baa-BEE], the god of the underworld, and the deity Thoth [THOWTH] who was sometimes depicted with the head of a baboon.  The Egyptians mummified baboons as offerings to their gods.

However, baboons have never naturally occurred in Egypt according to Gisela Kopp, a geneticist at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the leader of a new study on baboon DNA.

Ancient Egyptian documents mentioned a port city of Punt as a trading partner and source of luxury goods, but researchers have never identified it confidently on a map.  

In 2020, Nathaniel Dominy, a primatologist at Dartmouth College, used molecules from ancient baboon mummy teeth to reveal their diet and discovered that they originated from present day Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia between 1550 and 1070 BC.  This was the first evidence for the general location of Punt.

A new study used DNA to determine a more precise location for Punt.

Kopp and her associates narrowed down that location by first extracting DNA from a mummified baboon dating between 800 and 540 BC.  They then compared that DNA to the genetics of 14 baboons from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose origins were known.

According to Kopp, these DNA data gave a more precise location than the previous methods of discerning diet. 

The data revealed that the baboon was most closely related to populations from current-day Eritrea, close to the ancient port of Adulis, which was in today’s Eritrean city of Zula.  This DNA dates the first evidence of trade with Adulis a couple of centuries earlier than previously thought.

According to Kopp, the earlier Punt was similar in location to where Adulis was later established. 

Historical records from around 300 BC mention Adulis as a place of trade—especially of wild animals— suggesting Adulis and Punt might have been at the same location.  The 2020 study showed that ancient Egyptians were trading with Punt as early as 1550 BC.  This new study suggests that they were still trading in the area 1,000 years later. 

Now we head west to California, where a new genetic study suggests that prehistoric migrants from present-day Mexico spread Uto-Aztecan languages to California earlier than previously thought.

As reported by LiveScience.com, indigenous peoples from Mexico likely migrated to California—bringing their languages with them—around 5,200 years ago.  These migrants would have been hunter-gatherers, not the maize farmers of 1,000 years later.

To reach this conclusion, researchers led by Nathan Nakatsuka, a population geneticist and a postdoctoral fellow at the New York Genome Center, studied ancient DNA extracted from the teeth and bones of 79 ancient people found at archaeological sites in central and southern California.  These remains were dated between 7,400 and 200 years ago. 

They also extracted ancient DNA from the remains of forty people from sites in northwest and central California, which were dated to between 2,900 and 500 years ago.

By comparing the ancient genomes, the researchers found evidence for increased migration from northern Mexico into southern and central California about 5,200 years ago.

The research challenges the idea that languages from prehistoric Mexico like Paiute, Nahuatl, Hopi, and Shoshoni, spread due to maize farming technologies 4,300 years ago.  The new study indicates that such languages may have been spread instead by a migration of hunter-gatherers much earlier.

According to lead author Nakatsuka, the dating and location of this genetic material is important for understanding the Uto-Aztecan migration.  Although not all questions are answered, the study provided evidence of a substantial migration to California much earlier than previously thought.

Nakatsuka said that an important part of the study was obtaining ancient DNA while ensuring that Indigenous customs, including burial practices, were respected.  From the beginning of the study, they involved Indigenous groups and relied on them to guide the research and questions to be answered.

According to Robert Hard, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, the remains of many of the individuals analyzed in the study have been curated in museums in the United States and Mexico for many decades.  Now, with advances in ancient DNA technology, these individuals are being given a voice through this research to help write their history. 

And finally, we head to southern Iraq, where archaeologists with the British Museum’s Girsu Project have discovered the true function of a mysterious structure in the ancient city of Girsu.

As reported by Arkeonews, the Sumerian structure that was previously thought to be a uniquely-shaped temple has now been identified as a 4,000-year-old flume that was used to deliver water to distant locations for agriculture.  

Sumer was a civilization heavily reliant on water.  Sumerians were the first to tell early versions of the Biblical flood story.  They created advanced irrigation systems which directed water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers into canals that watered fields, providing the food required to sustain urban life.  

When their vital canals began to dry up, the Sumerians devised a solution using technologies that archaeologists previously thought didn’t appear until the eighteenth century AD.

The flume, or channel, is formed by two symmetrical mud-brick structures about 130 feet long, 33 feet wide, and walls 11 feet high arranged in two opposing curves bending outwards.  Dr. Sébastien Rey, an archaeologist and the project’s leader in Iraq, called it an “anti-drought machine.” 

The structure was located on a 12-mile-long canal.  Because the device spans a body of water, it is being called the world’s oldest known bridge, de-throning the Caravan Bridge of ancient Edessa which was constructed much later, around 850 BC.

The latest research reveals that the structure that channeled a 100-foot-wide canal into a 13-foot-wide passage would have created what is known as the Venturi effect, referring to the increase in velocity of liquids as they pass through a constricted passage.  This is something that wasn’t theorized by scientists until the late eighteenth century. 

According to Dr. Rey, inscribed stone tablets from the area speak of a water crisis and one last desperate attempt to save themselves.  It is believed the structure was built by the final generations living in Girsu in a last attempt to save their home from becoming unlivable.

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.