Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to introduce four fascinating 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!

Further examination of a hoard of precious Bronze Age artifacts found in Spain in 1963 shows that it includes iron from a meteorite that fell to earth a million years ago.  A hollowed-out animal thigh bone from the Roman Period in The Netherlands turns out to contain a mass of seeds from the hallucinogenic and poisonous black henbane plant.  A DNA study on skeletons in Denmark reveals evidence of two episodes of mass migration and sudden population replacement over the past 7300 years.   And rainforest caves in Colombia tell the story of the first human use of the Amazon Basin beginning some 13,000 years ago.

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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 February 4th through the 10th, 2024.

We begin this week in Spain, where new analysis has revealed that one of the greatest Bronze Age gold hoards ever discovered contains extraterrestrial metal.

The Treasure of Villena [vee-YAY-nuh] was discovered in a gravel pit in the province of Alicante [ah-lee-CAHN-tay] in 1963.  It includes bottles, bowls and bracelets exquisitely crafted of gold, silver, amber, and iron.  Together, the items reflect the culture of people who lived in the Bronze Age, between 1400 and 1200 BC.

As reported by Live Science, when the dazzling cache came to light, researchers noticed that two of the iron objects looked unusual.  The metal was dark, shiny in some areas, and covered with a cracked-looking oxide.  Sixty years later, researchers used mass spectrometry to test the artifacts. The technique, which measures the mass-to-charge ratio of molecules, revealed that the iron came from a meteorite that fell to Earth some one million years ago.  

Two of the objects, a C-shaped bracelet and a hollow sphere covered in gold sheeting — possibly the pommel of a sword hilt — contained this iron.  The objects are the first meteoritic iron artifacts discovered on the Iberian Peninsula.  

Since no kingdoms existed on the Peninsula at this time, researcher Ignacio Montero Ruiz [eeg-NAH-see-oh Mon-TEY-ro Roo-EEZ] of Spain's Institute of History believes that this was hidden treasure that belonged to an entire community.  He points out that both gold and iron had great symbolic and social value during this period.

The total weight of the Tesoro de Villena [tay-SORE-oh] hoard is almost ten kilograms, nine of them 23.5 karat gold.  Copies of the treasures have been made to be shown in exhibitions, while the originals are permanently conserved in an armored showcase at the Archaeological Museum in Villena, Spain.

Next we travel to the Netherlands, the site of a Roman period settlement where archaeologists made a sinister find.  As reported by Live Science, they encountered a hollowed-out piece of animal thigh bone containing hundreds of tiny seeds from the black henbane, a highly poisonous and hallucinogenic plant from the nightshade family.  

According to a study in the journal Antiquity, henbane has long been prized for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.  This find is the first evidence of the plant being used in the Roman Empire, although its seeds have been discovered at archaeologist sites across Europe dating to 5500 BC.  

Because henbane grows like a weed, its presence could be natural.  This is the first known instance of henbane seeds being deliberately stored for later use.

The seeds from the Roman outpost of Houten-Castellum [HOO-ten kah-STELL-oom], a 2,000-year-old farmstead near present-day Utrecht [OO-treykt], were clearly intentionally collected.  The nearly three-inch bone vessel had been sealed with a plug of black birch bark—a clue that it was different from the 86,000 other animal bones at the site.  

Later, while cleaning the bones in the lab, a colleague accidentally dislodged the plug, spilling hundreds of tiny black seeds.  Until that moment, sticky tar and waterlogged soil had preserved the vial's contents for centuries.

According to study lead author Maaike Groot [mah -EE-keh GROHT], a zooarchaeologist at the Free University of Berlin, earlier Classical literature mentions the use of black henbane during the Roman period, though strictly for medicinal purposes.  

While small amounts could be used to relieve pain and help with difficult pregnancies, too much could be dangerous.  Roman author Plutarch warned that it could lead to "alienation of the mind or madness" and Pliny the Elder counseled physicians to avoid its use altogether.

The bone object appeared with other objects in a muddy pit dated between AD 70 and 100.  Their placement suggests they might have been part of a settlement abandonment offering.

Our third story takes us to Denmark, and is a follow-up to our story about the origins of western Europeans in the January 21st edition of the Audio News. 

An extensive study has challenged beliefs about the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies in Scandinavia 5,900 years ago.  It reveals that — far from a peaceful coexistence and intermingling of groups — Scandinavia's newly arriving farmers slaughtered the existing population.

The study, conducted by a large international research team including Lund University in Sweden, was recently published in the journal Nature.  DNA from skeletal parts and teeth of prehistoric people offers conclusive evidence of two almost total population turnovers in Denmark over the past 7,300 years.  

As reported by ScienceDaily, local gatherers, hunters and fishers were wiped out within a few generations by an agrarian population with a different origin and appearance.  The slaughter, which involved both violence and new pathogens from livestock, produced a rapid and almost complete population replacement.

A thousand years later, the Yamnaya, a large-bodied, semi-nomadic livestock herding people from the steppes of southern Russia, wiped out the farmer population using the same approach.  Today, the dominant genetic profile in Denmark is a mix of Yamnaya and Eastern European Neolithic people.  The DNA profile of the earlier farmer population has, essentially, been erased.

According to Anne Birgitte Nielsen, a lead researcher who contributed quantitative pollen data showing how local vegetation changed in connection with population changes, the results can help today's Scandinavian people better understand their ancestry.  The study will also improve knowledge of how certain hereditary diseases develop.

Our final story takes us to northwest Colombia, where researchers from the University of Exeter have gained new insights into the shallow cave homes in the dense rainforests of the Amazon Basin.  These rock shelters were occupied by some of the first human societies to settle in the Basin some 13,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene era.

As reported by Heritage Daily, the study focused on two rock shelters in the Serranía La Lindosa [sera-NEE-uh  la  leen-DOSE-ah] region on the edges of the Amazon and Orinoco [or -ee- NOH-ko] basins.  Analysis of soil sediments inside and outside the shelters revealed not only materials used for food growing and preparation, but signs of occasional abandonment over many millennia.

The study, published in the Quaternary Science Reviews, calls South America "the last terra incognita" — other than Antarctica — to be colonized by Homo sapiens.  Within that land, the densely forested Amazon biome is perhaps the least understood and most difficult to study.

José Iriarte [ee-ree-AR-tay], Professor of Archaeology at Exeter, says the team's results firmly establish that the human occupation of Serranía La Lindosa began about 12,600 years ago, continuing until the 17th century.

Researchers note that the shelters not only offered protection, but clear vantage points for surveying the surrounding area.  They're now studying the millennia-old artifacts inside, from stone tools and ceramics to animal bones and plant remnants, for more insight into these ancient cave dwellers.

The most evocative aspect of the shelters is the array of vibrant ochre paintings by their earliest inhabitants.  Aiming to capture the world around them, these works turn the caves into art-filled sacred spaces.

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!