Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew, to hand off our four top 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 soundscape analysis at Chaco Canyon reveals that conch shell calls could have been heard by most of the large prehistoric community.  Plant DNA beneath a Maya ballcourt suggests that a ritual ceremony took place there.  Facial reconstruction of a skull from Shanidar Cave allows us to look into the eyes of a Neanderthal woman.  An analysis of human remains from a Moroccan cave reveals that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers there had a largely plant-based diet.

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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 April 28th through May 4th, 2024.

We begin the week at Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico, where archaeologists have uncovered conch [KONK] shell trumpets that the ancient Pueblo used to communicate.  Archaeologists postulate that the locale was once a thriving community housing thousands of people from AD 1050 to 1130.  

Over 100 great-house communities surround Chaco Canyon.  The great house sits at the center of these communities.  The team wanted to determine if these great houses served as a pattern for community organization including landscape, community layout and sound.  

Archaeologists used the “soundshed analysis” method to digitally model the sound of a conch shell trumpet as it was blasted at a great house in relation to the features of the surrounding area. Soundshed analysis computes how far sound travels from a point.  It considers factors like the type of sound and environmental conditions including elevation and surrounding noises. 

They learned that when somebody blew the conch shell trumpet, the sound would have reached most of the community.  This suggests that using the conch shells helped bind communities together.  Ancient Puebloans may have structured their communities and lands around the sound of trumpets.  It’s possible the sound was even used to signal communal activities like religious ceremonies.  Even now, conch shell trumpets are still used in Pueblo ritual practices. 

According to Professor and lead author Ruth Van Dyke from Binghamton University, the conch shell trumpets may function similarly to a church bell calling Catholics to Mass.   Professor Van Dyke also observes that soundscapes are significant in understanding past experiences, landscapes and environments, particularly in understanding ancient social interactions.

The Chaco Canyon soundscape offers a way for archaeologists to understand the ancient world’s sense of place.  It also provides a valuable resource for helping government personnel and legislators develop good land management practices that take the auditory environment into account..

Next, we travel to Mexico, where researchers excavating an ancient ball court in the Maya city of Yaxnohcah unearthed traces of several plants used in religious or medicinal contexts [YAKS-nee-cah].  One specific plant is noted for its hallucinogenic properties. 

As reported by the Newsweek website, the latest findings offer insight into the rituals of the ancient Maya.  Prior teams have uncovered ritual deposits at Maya archaeological sites, but the plants are rarely preserved.  The tropical climate of the Maya region is very poor for plant preservation.  

The team of American, Canadian and Mexican researchers used an environmental DNA analysis to identify the 2,000-year-old plant types.  They include a vine from the morning glory family, chili peppers, the jool tree, and the lancewood plant.  All four have medicinal properties, and it’s likely that all four plants were bundled together.  The excavators recovered no plant parts or pollen, but examined plant DNA that still remained in the soil.

One plant, the morning glory vine, produces hallucinogenic compounds.  The Maya knew it as xtabentum [shtah-ben-TOON], but we know it as Ipomoea [eye-poh-MEE-ah] corymbosa.  The use of this plant in Maya culture is still unclear.  It’s likely that it was used in divination rituals, the practice of seeking knowledge about the future through interaction with spirits. 

Chili peppers also were used in divination rituals.  The ancient Maya used chili peppers as a healing plant to treat all kinds of illnesses, and they may have also been used in ceremonial offerings to ward off disease.  

The lancewood plant has oily leaves that can be used as a compound to open up blood vessels. The leaves also work as an anesthetic and antibiotic agent.  The jool tree also had multiples uses.  The Maya used its leaves to wrap food bundles for ceremonies, the bark to make twine for their baskets, and the entire plant to treat snake bites.  

According to study author Eric Tepe, a botanist from the University of Cincinnati, these four plants were important to the Maya.  Finding these plants together in a concentrated sample is significant and indicates that this collection was intentional. 

It’s also significant that researchers found the plant remains beneath a ball court.  The plant deposit lay below a 3-foot-high platform made of stone and earth.  Maya ball courts and ceremonial centers often occupied important, central locations.  Perhaps the Maya used the plants as a ceremonial offering during the construction of the ball court to appease the gods and ensure their blessing for its future use.  

Our third story highlights a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, from which scientists have recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman.  A team led by the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores excavated the female skull in 2018 inside Shanidar Cave, where other Neanderthals were laid to rest.  The team nicknamed the skull “Shanidar Z.”

As reported by The University of Cambridge, a team of archaeologists and conservators reconstructed Shanidar Z’s flattened face from hundreds of bone fragments.  Netflix recorded the reconstruction process through the new documentary titled “Secrets of the Neanderthals.” 

According to Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, the skulls of Neanderthals and humans look very different.  The skulls of Neanderthals had large brow ridges, nonexistent chins, and a projected midface with a prominent nose.  

When archaeologists found Shanidar Z, her head had been crushed.  It’s likely this happened from a postmortem rockfall that occurred after her brain decomposed and before her skull was filled with sediment.  Sediment deposited over tens of thousands of years also contributed to a flattened skull, pancaked into a layer only around two centimeters thick.  

The team meticulously exposed her remains, which were only the top half of a skeleton.  To strengthen the remains and the surrounding sediment, the researchers used a glue-like consolidant.  Lead conservator Dr. Lucia Lopez-Polin reconstructed over 200 skull fragments to regain the original shape.  This included the upper and lower jaws.  

The reconstruction process can be compared to piecing together a 3D puzzle.  A single fragment can take two weeks to reconstruct.  The reconstruction process involved cleaning each skull fragment and reading glue and consolidant to stabilize the skull.  The conservators used forensic science to analyze whether the remains had been purposefully interred and how the teeth had come loose from the jaw.

The analysis suggests that Shanidar Z was about five feet tall and in her mid-forties, a long lifespan for a Neanderthal.  She was uncovered among a cluster of other bodies interred around the same time behind a large vertical boulder.  The appearance of many remains in that place suggests that the rock served to identify a site for repeated burials. 

According to Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, the remains suggest that Shanidar Neanderthals thought about death and its aftereffects similarly to the way humans do.  It also suggests that Neanderthals like Shanidar Z were much more sophisticated and thoughtful than archaeologists previously believed.

We end our week in a cave in Taforalt [TAFF-or-alt], Morocco, where a study concludes that the diet of Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers largely included plant-based foods.  

As reported by Max Planck Gesellschaft [guh-SEL-shaft], a study conducted by an international team of scientists from Germany, France and Morocco examined the diet of the individuals associated with the Iberomaurasian [eye-BEER-o-ma-ROO-shun] culture around 15,000 years ago.  Using a multi-isotopic approach, the team conducted zinc and strontium analysis on dental enamel.  They also used a carbon, nitrogen and sulfur approach on collagen as well as an amino acid analysis on human and faunal remains.  

The team concluded that the hunter-gatherer diet included a substantial portion of plants belonging to Mediterranean species.  Archaeobotanical remains found at the site include acorns, pine nuts and wild pulses.

The study also indicates that plants were introduced to infant diets, possibly as a method of weaning.  This challenges the previous belief that humans living before the beginning of agricultural societies ate a diet heavily based on meat.  This also raises questions about possible North African plant domestication in the early Holocene..

According to Zineb Moubtahij [MOB-ta-heezh], first author of the study, this study offers insight into the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups and illustrates the complexity of human subsistence strategies in different regions.  It’s crucial to understand these patterns, as they can provide insight into the story of human evolution. 

This happens to be the first study to use zinc isotopes preserved in enamel to understand the diet of ancient African populations.  North Africa is a hub for understanding human evolution and modern human migration.  These isotopes are invaluable as a tool to understand the human diet in depth and over long expanses of time.  The researchers hope to learn more about early human dietary patterns and the ability to adapt to different environments. 

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

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