Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew with a list of 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!

A thorough study of skeletal remains in Cambridge, England, reveals a lot about the lives of ordinary people in medieval times.  New excavation and DNA analysis bring out fresh details about a 9000-year-old Mesolithic burial of a shaman woman and infant in Germany.  Several kinds of evidence suggest that the Maya used water plants to purify the water in their critically important reservoirs.  And a better understanding of carved trees at Indigenous burial sites is made possible by involving Aboriginal Australians in the analysis and description of these sites.

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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 26th through December 2nd, 2023.

We begin this week in Cambridge, England, where new research has revealed the lives of ordinary folk during the medieval period.

As reported by phys.org, archaeologists from the University of Cambridge analyzed close to 500 skeletal remains dated between the 11th and 15th centuries.  The samples came from burial grounds across the city, excavated from various  digs dating back to the 1970s.  

Researchers analyzed DNA, diets, activities, and bodily traumas to create osteobiographies of regular townsfolk, scholars, friars, and merchants.

According to lead researcher Professor John Robb from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, an osteobiography uses all available evidence to reconstruct an ancient person’s life. 

Creating osteobiographies of ordinary folk rather than elites allows researchers to learn about the majority of a population, not just those already documented in historical resources.  Full osteobiographies from the project, called “After the Plague,” are available on the department's new website, aftertheplague.org.

The project used a statistical analysis of likely names drawn from written records of the period to create pseudonyms for the people studied.  For example, number 730 was dubbed Edmund.  Analysis of his remains tells of a man who suffered from leprosy, but contrary to stereotypes, lived within a community and was buried in a rare wooden coffin.  Number 335, or Anne, hobbled on a shortened right leg due to repeated injuries.

Some of the research focused specifically on inhabitants of the hospital of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1195.  This institution housed around a dozen poor and infirm inmates at any given time.  Selection criteria for these people, who received bed and board for life, would have been a mix of material need, piety and local politics.

Molecular, bone and DNA data from remains in the hospital’s main cemetery show that inmates tended to be an inch shorter on average than townsfolk, were more likely to die younger, and showed signs of childhoods blighted by hunger and disease.  Interestingly, they also displayed lower rates of bodily trauma, suggesting life in the hospital reduced physical hardship.

Radiocarbon dating allowed researchers to pinpoint subjects who likely died of bubonic plague, or the Black Death, which hit Cambridge between 1348 and 1349 and killed forty to sixty percent of the population.

However, the study indicated that the bigger threats to life during the medieval period were chronic ailments like tuberculosis and everyday diseases such as measles, whooping cough and gastrointestinal infections.

Next we head to Germany, where new excavation and genetic research add insight into one of the most outstanding burial finds of the Mesolithic in central Europe.

In 1934, construction work at the spa gardens of Bad Dürrenberg uncovered the double burial of an adult woman and an infant dating from about 7000 to 6800 BC.  As reported by phys.org, genetic research has now revealed not only the appearance of the woman, but her relationship to the infant.

The woman was buried in a basketlike structure in a seated position surrounded by an assortment of equipment including flint artifacts, solid rock tools and red ochre.  The burial pit also held artifacts that were probably head and body ornaments, such as animal bones, antlers and partly pierced animal teeth.  

Because of these items, as well as unusual features discovered on the skeleton, archaeologists believe the burial to be that of a shaman [SHAY -man].

The woman’s skeleton displayed anomalies on her skull and vertebrae.  Researchers hypothesize that one of them caused a blockage to a blood vessel which could have created a nystagmus [nuh-STAG-mus], an involuntary movement of the eyeballs.  This unusual feature—especially if initiated on purpose—might have been perceived as uncanny and may have established or reinforced her role as a shaman.

The woman, who would have been 30 to 40 years old at her death, had a relatively dark complexion, dark, straight hair and blue eyes—common features among Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from western Europe.  She was average height, about 1.55 meters tall, or about five feet one inch.  However, her skeleton lacked distinct muscle attachments commonly found in hunter-gatherers, especially on the lower extremities;

Genetic testing on the remains of the infant revealed it to be a boy.

In order to determine the relationship between woman and child, scientists used a newly developed method of scanning the genome data for the presence, amount and length of shared tracts in the genome.  These "identity-by-descent" tracts enable the detection of biological relatedness up to the tenth degree. 

Researchers found the degree of relatedness between the pair to be equivalent to four or five generations apart.  If a direct line is assumed, this would make the adult female the potential great-great-great-grandmother of the boy. Other possibilities are that the pair could be first cousins once or twice removed, or the female could be the great-grand-aunt of the boy.

Our third story takes us to Central America, where a new study of ancient Maya water purification practices could hold a key to the future of clean water.

As reported by theartnewspaper.com, archaeological records of sophisticated reservoir systems across Central America reveal how the Maya coped with annual dry seasons.  In a new study, Lisa Lucero, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, suggests that thousands of years ago the Maya used aquatic plants to purify their reservoir water.

According to Lucero, water lilies inspired her research.  The presence of water lilies indicates clean water.  However, because they are sensitive plants that cannot grow unless the water is already clean, Lucero suspected there had to be other aquatic plants at work.

The focus of Lucero’s research was in the southern lowlands of Central America,  where water was particularly critical.  In spite of heavy rainfall, the region has little surface water because of the porosity of the limestone bedrock.  Therefore, people would have had to store rainwater to survive the annual dry seasons, as well as storms and drought.

Since none of the biggest cities, like Tikal in Guatemala and Caracol in Belize, were built near rivers or lakes, reservoirs would have been necessary for human survival.  

For her research, Lucero used published cases and insights from Maya associates in Belize; evidence from excavations, which included sediment cores and settlement maps; and the imagery and iconography of Maya visual culture.  

She also spoke with civil engineers and considered how modern constructed wetlands exploit natural processes and the microbial assemblages in vegetation and soil to treat dirty water.

Lucero concluded that the ancient reservoirs operated as constructed wetlands and used aquatic plants to clean water.  The high biodiversity of aquatic plant life in the seasonal swamps and wetlands of Central America today suggests that such an environment would also have thrived thousands of years ago.

In light of modern-day climate change and devastating global events, ancient Maya knowledge about maintaining reservoirs without the use of chemical- and fossil fuel-based products could be key to supporting clean water systems today.

And finally, we head to southeastern Australia, where a new Wiradjuri (weer AD joo ree)-led study provides new understanding of ancient symbolic expression exemplified by the marara (muh RAR uh), or carved trees that mark ancestral burial sites.

As reported by phys.org, researchers have worked with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to combine traditional cultural knowledge and archaeological methods.  The resulting new understanding of these sacred locations is both culturally and scientifically informed. 

Marara are trees from which a large slab of bark has been removed, then intricately carved with muyalaang (MOO yah lahng) into the fresh tree surface.  These marara marked the dhabuganha (DAH boo gehn ah), or burials, of distinguished Wiradjuri men.  This was a traditional cultural practice with deep roots.

Today, a diminishing number of marara remain and most dhabuganha are no longer visible due to erosion and modern land-use practices.

Researchers used ground-penetrating radar where a dhabuganha was no longer visible, yet was marked by a marara.  The radar allowed them to non-invasively analyze and map changes in soil, which helped refine their understanding of the resting places of burial sites of Wiradjuri men of high standing.  They then created a 3D model of the marara.

Yuranigh’s Grave is a public tourist site near Molong (MOH long).  It contains a marara and dhabuganha for Yuranigh, a Wiradjuri man of high standing who accompanied explorer Thomas Mitchell on his inland expeditions during the 19th century.  Mitchell valued Yuranigh so much that, upon his death, he added a European headstone to the dhabuganha which was already surrounded by several traditionally carved marara.

Interviews with Wiradjuri Elders stress that marara should not be understood as merely artistic objects.  They are sacred locations with specific cultural meaning.  

The muyalaang speak to the different clan groups and their stories.  According to Wiradjuri belief, they also show a path between the earth and the sky world, where Baiame (BY uh may), the Wiradjuri Creator or Sky Spirit, lives.

Additionally, elders explain that marara and dhabuganha should not be understood as individual locations or isolated sites.   Instead, they encourage us to look beyond what we perceive in physical form to understand the different ways of seeing the world around us.

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!