Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew with our four 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 new study of a site in Argentina shows that the horse became part of Patagonian Indigenous culture much earlier than previously understood.  New research shows that the Neolithic people of mega-sites in Ukraine and Moldova got their protein primarily from peas rather than from meat.  Examination of the huge now-submerged continental shelf area off northwest Australia makes it likely that the area was an important focus of Aboriginal settlement for many millennia.  And a group of terracotta figurines that came to light in Pompeii show a fond dedication to the goddess Cybele..

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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 December 24th through the 30th, 2023.  

Our first story this week takes us to Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, where new research shows how horses brought by Spanish settlers were adopted by the region’s indigenous people.  

As reported by the journal Science Advances, new analysis of archaeological data shows that the use of horses for hunting, transportation and food led to widespread economic and social transformations in Indigenous culture.  Historic records don’t document much of this change, because Europeans did not settle Patagonia or write detailed accounts of the region until the 1800s.  By then, native groups already were using the horse extensively, maintaining herds of impressive size. 

Detailed analysis of horse bones from an archaeological site in southern Patagonia has now helped fill in the details of when and how the horse was adopted.  The new study used direct radiocarbon dating of horse remains, along with osteology, DNA sequencing and isotope analysis.  The results suggest that the emergence of horse-based ways of life was early, rapid and largely independent of European control.  

For the new study, an international team led by archaeologists in the US and Argentina analyzed horse bones and other artifacts from the Chorrillo [cho-REE-yo] Grande One site, along the Rio Gallegos [ga-YAY-gohs] in southern Argentina.  Chorillo Grande One was a campsite occupied by the Aonik’enk, also known as the Tehuelche.  The campsite included many bones, not just horse but also native game animals such as rhea and guanaco [gwan-AH-ko] , as well as metal ornaments and fragments of pottery, a rare find for the region.

Archaeozoological and biomolecular methods were applied to the horse remains.  Residue analysis confirmed the use of one pottery vessel for cooking a fatty animal, not a horse but probably a guanaco.  Isotope analysis shows that the horse remains found had grown up in the cold grasslands of the region as part of Indigenous herds.  

Radiocarbon dating of the equine bones places them before AD 1800, and in one case before AD 1700.  This is decades before the first Spanish written records observing horses in the region.  

According to William Taylor, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of anthropology and curator of archaeology in the Museum of Natural History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, horses saved time immediately upon their introduction in hunting, traveling and transporting goods.   

Horses also served as food and a source of hides.  People at Chorillo Grande were eating mares, which is very rare in horse-keeping cultures, because breeding the mares is the only way to maintain and increase the herd.  Historical records from the 1800s reported that the Aonik’enk preferred mare’s meat and mare’s blood in both cooking and rituals, partly because of greater tenderness, taste and fat.  The researchers hypothesize that either the mares were killed and eaten only rarely, on ceremonial occasions, or that the Aonik’enk herds were so huge, they could kill breeding stock without affecting herd size.  

We now head to the Black Sea region, where a new study reveals that Copper Age settlements grew to large sizes, on a predominantly vegetarian diet.

The mega-settlements of the Trypillia Culture emerged around 6,000 years ago in what is now Ukraine and Moldova.  These were the largest settlements of their time, the oldest mega-sites in Europe, and hundreds of years earlier than the famous cities of Mesopotamia, such as Ur.  Up to 15,000 people lived in each of these settlements, and researchers have long wondered how such dense settlements got their food.

As reported by arkeonews.net, the answers come from a new study by scientists from Kiel University in Germany.  The people of the Trypillia society developed extremely sophisticated food and pasture management systems, and ate mostly grain and peas.

Peas are high in protein, allowing early Trypillia farmers to thrive on a mainly meatless diet.  They also provide essential amino acids.

These societies were based on agriculture and stockbreeding practices that developed around 4800 BC in the forest steppe north of the Black Sea.  By about 4150 BC, the Trypillians created huge planned settlements.  These semicircular settlements spread across areas up to 320 hectares, the size of several hundred football fields. 

The settlements were tightly planned.  Their circular or semicircular layout allowed each neighborhood equal access to a large public open space. 

Due to the size of the settlements, daily life in them was comparable to that of other agricultural towns.  The people were mainly farmers.  To discover how such large groups of people maintained their food supply with only Neolithic technology, the team of archaeologists spent ten years determining the carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of hundreds of samples of bone, both human and animal.

They concluded that a large proportion of the cattle and sheep were kept in fenced pastures, with their manure used to intensively fertilize multiple crops, especially peas.   

The pea straw was probably used to feed the livestock in the pastures.  Thanks to this balanced cycle of crop and livestock production, the people of the mega-sites were able to eat sufficiently and healthily until their decline around 3000 BC.  

Because hunger was clearly not the cause of the decline, researchers believe it arose from social tensions, possibly as a result of increasing social inequality in the huge settlements. This may have led to people deserting the huge Trypillian settlements.

The study was published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Next we go to the continental shelf off northwestern Australia, where a new study reveals that during the Pleistocene, the exposed land was occupied, possibly by the first migrants into Australia. 

Continental shelf archaeology in many parts of the world shows prehistoric use when these lands were above water.  Now a detailed study of the continental shelf along Australia’s northwest coast shows that this area also was a geographically complex, richly resourced area, supporting a population that may have been moving across a huge archipelago leading from Indonesia to Australia.

As reported by phys.org, the newly published study details a landscape unlike any found on the continent of Australia today. 

The continental shelf that connected the Kimberley and western Arnhem Land was a vast habitable realm covering nearly 390,000 square kilometers.  

This was likely a single cultural zone, as shown by similarities in ground stone axe technology, rock art styles, and other artifacts from sites in the Kimberly and Arnhem Land, as well as on surviving islands between them.

Mounting archaeological evidence points to signs of occupation for many thousands of years before sea levels rose above it, around 18,000 BC.  

To characterize how the Northwest Shelf landscapes looked through the last 65,000 years of human history, Australian researchers projected past sea levels onto high-resolution maps of the ocean floor.

Low sea levels in the last ice age exposed a vast archipelago of islands between 70,000 and 61,000 years ago, which remained stable for around 9,000 years.  The rich ecosystems of these islands may have served as the stepping stones for migration into Australia.

In a mosaic of environments, the most striking feature was the Malita inland sea, which would have existed from 27,000 to 17,000 years ago, with a surface area greater than 18,000 square kilometers. 

As for population, ecological modeling reveals the now-drowned Northwest Shelf could have supported up to a half million people at various times over the last 65,000 years.  The population would have peaked at the height of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, when the entire shelf was dry land.  

The findings are supported by new genetic research, and also by oral histories of Aboriginal people from all around the coastal margin, thought to have been passed down for over 10,000 years.

The report appears in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

We end the year in Pompeii, where recent excavations have unearthed thirteen terra-cotta figurines depicting elements of the cult of the goddess Cybele [SIH-bu-lee].

As reported by arkeonews.net, the figurines are about fifteen centimeters high and were found in a building that is being excavated next to the House of Leda and the Swan, a wealthy man’s residence known for mosaics depicting such mythological scenes.  

Pompeii was a thriving Roman city near present-day Naples, Italy, known for its burial under ash during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.  The volcanic ash that preserved its remains and excavations since the 1700s has exposed many areas of the city, offering a poignant snapshot of life in classical times.

The newly discovered sculptures were discovered standing upright, probably once placed on a shelf inside the home.  The room in which they were found, possibly the atrium of a house, also featured ornate decorations on the walls, indicating the importance of these figures to the inhabitants.

Some of the statuettes are human figures, while others show a chicken head and a pine cone.

According to archaeologists, the figurines may be associated with Cybele and Attis, telling the story of the mother goddess’s tragic love for a mortal.

Cybele was the most powerful goddess in Phrygia, a large region of western Turkey.  Cybele was associated with fertility, abundance and nature.  She fell in love with the mortal, Attis, in an ultimately disastrous relationship that ended with Attis castrating himself and dying.  Heartbroken, Cybele asked Zeus to grant him eternal life, which took the form of Attis becoming the pine tree.

The worship of Attis and Cybele made its way from Anatolia to Greece, and then Rome, and involved sometimes wild celebrations evoking the cycle of nature, loss, rebirth, and life after death.

The discovered statues bear a striking resemblance to figures often found in Christmas nativity scenes, which are of course a much later development, not appearing until more than a millennium after Pompeii was destroyed.  

The find of the group of figurines, however, provides new understanding of the influences and traditions that may have shaped early representations of nativity scenes.

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!