Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew, to share with you 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!

Archaeologists in the Pyrenees of northern Spain have uncovered a badly burnt Iron Age village probably destroyed by Hannibal’s troops in the Second Punic War.  Excavators at Tagua Tagua Lake in central Chile reported on a Late Pleistocene camp site where people butchered and feasted on an ancient kind of elephant.  Isotope analysis shows that horses sacrificed in Lithuania and Russia in Medieval times came all the way from places as far away as Sweden.  And modern Greek soldiers tried out replicated Bronze Age armor to show that it actually worked in real combat.

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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 May 19 through the 25th, 2024.

We begin this week in the midst of the Pyrenees mountain range in Spain, where archaeologists have unearthed evidence of a forgotten moment in Hannibal's war between Carthage and Rome. 

As reported by Cosmos Magazine, a team was studying the Iron Age site of Tossal de Baltarga (TOH-sal day bal-TAR-guh), where a residential complex and hill fort for the local Cerretani (CHAIR-eh-TAHN-ee) community had been located.  The settlement was burned to the ground around the end of the third century BC.

At this time, the Pyrenees were involved in the Second Punic War and the march of Hannibal's troops and his elephants toward Rome.  The violent destruction of the hill fort was likely connected to the war.

While the fort does not seem to have had defensive walls, it would have commanded an excellent view over the river and key travel routes.  The preservation of organic remains during its sudden destruction allowed the team to get a detailed picture of life there.

Dr. Oriol Olesti Vila (oriole olestee VEE la) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona was the lead author of the study, which was published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.  Since its known that Hannibal passed the Pyrenees during his battle against the local tribes, probably including the Cerretani, Dr. Vila believes this hill fort may be one of the best existing remains of his expedition.  

The fire in the two-story building was so intense that the roof, support beams and upper floor caved in.  Valuables that survived the fall included an iron pickaxe and a gold earring secreted in a small pot.  

While no human remains were found, four sheep, a goat and a horse perished, crowded into a small pen.  Olesti Vila notes that the team's reconstruction points to a sudden destruction, when there was no time to free the animals crammed into a tight enclosure.

The site was eventually re-occupied and garrisoned by the Romans.  The later occupants, possibly remembering the conflagration, built new defenses—including an imposing watchtower.

Next, we travel to central Chile, where an excavation has revealed an ancient hunter-gatherer camp dating to a brief time span in the Late Pleistocene, between 12,440 and 12,550 years ago.  Chile’s Tagua Tagua (TAH-gwa TAH-gwa) Lake region is known for some of the earliest known settlements in the Americas.

As reported by Phys.org, early hunter-gatherers often returned to the site, labeled Taguatagua 3, to hunt ancient elephants.  The research team was led by Rafael Labarca, an archaeologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.  

Fossil evidence at the site indicates that this was a temporary camp created to process the huge carcass of the gomphothere (GOM foh theer), an extinct, long-jawed relative of elephants that was about the same size as a modern African elephant.  

Gomphotheres were widespread across Afro-Eurasia and North America during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs.  They dispersed into South America during the Pleistocene migration of land and freshwater fauna from North America to South America.

The massive beasts at the Tagua Tagua Lake site were completely de-fleshed — multiple groups took part in the butchering — and the stripped meat was transported to the temporary camp for consumption and drying.  While the butchering took just a few hours, the activity around the carcass could have extended to over a week due to significant occasions like feasts and marriages.

Other activities at the site included hide and bone preparation; frog, bird and plant processing and eating; and red ochre pigment grinding.  Botanical and eggshell remains indicate that the site was visited during the dry season.

Evidence at such sites indicates that plants also played a major role for hunter-gatherers in terms of food, construction and medicinal uses.  Analysis of stone tools points not only to meat butchering and hide and bone preparation, but also to decorative piercing and engraving aas well as plant processing.

According to Labarca, abundant, diverse and predictable resources made the lake a recurrent hunting, scavenging and meeting ground during the Late Pleistocene.  Several highly mobile bands would have met there on a regular basis, establishing separated but similar temporary camps.  

While ethnographic data suggest that elephant hunting and scavenging were not necessarily communal tasks, the vast amount of meat produced was an ideal excuse for activities designed to generate or reinforce social relations when population density was low.

Our third story takes us to Russia and Lithuania, where an analysis of horse remains found at Late Viking Period burial sites has revealed a far-reaching trade network.  The animals were not locally procured, but brought over 900 miles across the Baltic Sea from Scandinavia to be sacrificed for funeral rituals.

As reported by Phys.org, the Vikings transported the horses via extensive trade networks that stretched from Iceland, Britain and Ireland in the West all the way to the Byzantine and Arab empires in the East.  

The research team used strontium isotope analysis to trace the horses’ journeys, studying the hard enamel of teeth from 74 horses.  Through analyzing the chemicals from the soil, water and plants the animals interacted with during their lifetimes, the archaeologists were able to pinpoint their regions of origin.

The presence of a trader's weight, an essential item in their line of work, in one horse’s grave reflects the importance of horses in these vibrant trade networks.

Equine sacrifices served as symbolic public rites across pagan prehistoric Europe up until the fourteenth century.  While they were buried separately from humans in many Baltic cemeteries, numerous examples show horses overlain with cremated human remains.

According to study lead author Dr. Katherine French, formerly of Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion, her team's research disproves earlier interpretations that local stallions were exclusively chosen for sacrifice.  

Their research also uncovered a surprise: genetic analysis showing that a third of the sacrificial horses were female.  The unexpected presence of mares seems to indicate the prestige of an animal coming from afar was more important than its sex.

According to study co-author Dr. Richard Madgwick, although they were obtaining sacrificial horses overseas from their increasingly Christian neighbors, the pagan Baltic tribes resisted converting to the spreading religion.  Choosing this source was likely a statement signaling their commitment to their ways of life.

Finally, we arrive in Lamia, Greece, where thirteen Greek Marines have set out to prove that Bronze Age body armor wasn't just for ceremonial use. 

As reported by Newsweek, a near-complete suit of armor originally came to light in 1960 near Dendra, a village in the southern part of the country.  Archaeologists linked it to the Mycenaeans, who inhabited the Greek mainland some 3,000 years ago.

The suit is thought to be the best-preserved example of full-body armor from the Mycenaean era.  Whether it would have been used for ceremonial purposes rather than battle, however, has long been debated.

The team, which included individuals from the University of Thessaly, University of Birmingham, and Porto University, began by creating an eleven-hour combat simulation protocol.  It blended information from Homer's epic Trojan War poem, The Iliad, with modern physiological and biometeorological knowledge of battle conditions, activities and tactics.  

Volunteer Marines from the Hellenic Armed Forces underwent rigorous training.  Over two days, they studied Late Bronze Age combat protection equipment and technology, correct and safe use of weaponry, and combat fighting techniques from the simulation protocol.  

The warriors wore a close replica of the Dendra armor.  They carried replica Mycenaean cruciform swords of the type found in the Dendra tomb and replica spears similar to those described in The Iliad.  Two Iliad-based encounters also involved a medium-sized stone and a composite recurve bow.  

The team even developed a numerical model simulating the thermoregulatory system of an elite Late Bronze Age warrior wearing Dendra-type armor. 

Based on the replica armor’s flexibility, resilience and comfortable weight, the team concluded that the Mycenaean armor found at Dendra was, in fact, suitable for extended use in battle.  

The suit’s performance also indicated that Mycenaean warriors may have been some of the best equipped in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age.  Their impact on the region was potentially due in part to their military technology, armor included.

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!