Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I'm Laura Kennedy.  Rick Pettigrew is away on our tour of Brittany, so I'll be telling you about four of the best stories posted online this past week on our archaeology news website, Archaeologica.org!  Here are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from September 1st through the 7th, 2024. 

Our first story this week comes from Scotland, where scientists have ruled out Mainland Orkney, a Scottish archipelago, as the origin for Stonehenge's Altar Stone.  

Cambrian News reported, archaeologists considered Orkney as a likely origin for the Altar Stone because of its geological features and Neolithic monuments.  Scientists from Aberystwyth [a-br-IS-twuhth] University and other UK and Australian scientists determined that the Altar Stone originated in northeastern Scotland, but the exact location is still unknown.

The construction of Stonehenge started 5,000 years ago.  The site would continue to be modified over the next two millennia.  

It is possible that the builders positioned the Altar Stone during the second construction phase, from 2620 to 2480 BC, but the exact timing is unclear. 

The Altar Stone is unusual in many ways vis-a-vis other stones at Stonehenge, including the bluestones and the sarsens.  It weighs six tons, more than the bluestones and less than the sarsens.  It was previously grouped with the bluestones, but its composition, a different grey-green sandstone material, differs from theirs.  The stone is also placed in an almost central location, outside the Bluestone Circle and the Bluestone Horseshoe. 

Published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the study compared some of Orkney's monuments that were similar in size and rock type to the Altar Stone.  These included five exposed rocks at the Stones of Stenness [STANE-is], and seven stones from the Ring of Brodgar.  These comparisons showed that the Altar Stone had not come from Orkney. 

According to Professor Richard Bevins, of Aberystwyth University, the lead author, ruling out specific areas in Scotland is helping researchers understand the true source of the Altar Stone.  This research, using chemical analysis and dating techniques, is challenging previous notions about the Altar Stone's origin.  

The Altar Stone still presents many mysteries.  However, as sites continue to be ruled out, archaeologists are getting closer to solving these mysteries.

More information on this story can be found in the journal Nature.

Next, we go to the island of Pantelleria [pantelle-RI-a] near Sicily, where archaeologists have discovered 27 Roman silver coins in the Acropolis of Santa Teresa and San Marco. 

As reported by LBV Magazine, Thomas Schafer of the University of Tubingen [TOO-buhng-uhn] led a team of archaeologists in a project to excavate and restore the site.  During this effort, they discovered the tesoretto, or treasure, of coins.

According to Schafer, San Marco is an important archaeological site that has hosted excavations for 25 years.  It is one of only 5 places in Italy with a comitium, a meeting space for Roman decurions -- Roman cavalry officers commanding cavalry squadrons. 

The site has also yielded several artifacts.  In 2010, archaeologists uncovered 107 silver coins, or denarii.  Researchers several years earlier also discovered imperial busts, depicting Caesar, Agrippina and Titus. 

The team found some of the coins in the soil after rain had moved them, and tracked down the rest of the coins underneath a rock.  The archaeologists then cleaned and inventoried the coins. 

All the coins are silver denarii from Rome.  Researchers have dated the coins to between 94 and 74 BC, during the era of the Roman Republic.  The previously-discovered denarii date to the same period. 

Schafer has proposed that the coins were hidden in an effort to protect them from pirates.  During the Roman Republic, pirates in the Mediterranean carried out many raids against coastal towns.  Because of this, the Roman Senate ordered Pompey the Great to fight the pirates and destroy their ships.  He did so successfully.

According to Francesco Paolo Scarpinato, an advisor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, the find is important, not only due to its intrinsic value for archaeology, but also for providing insights into Rome's Republic-era trade and political relations. 

Felice Crescente, director of the Archaeological Park of Selinunte, the Caves of Cusa, and Pantelleria [pantelle-RI-a], added that these coins can tell a story that helps to link together historical figures and events.

Our third story takes us to Germany, where an interdisciplinary team has developed a new model for examining how climate likely influenced early modern human dispersal across Europe.  

As reported by Phys dot org, the research team, from the University of Cologne's Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, and Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, collaborated on the "Our Way Model."  

They found that the dispersal of human populations across Europe was enacted in four phases during the Aurignacian [AW-rig- NAY-shuhn] period, approximately 43,000 to 32,000 years ago.

During this dispersal, warmer interglacial periods interrupted the cool, dry climate of the late Last Glacial, or "Ice Age", period.  Humans were likely able and encouraged to migrate because of climate, technological progress and social structure evolution. 

Previous continental-scale models of longitudinal human dispersal were based upon diffusion-reaction equations.  These equations show slow, continuous dispersal based on a gradually-growing population.  Agent-based models, such as those used in this study, are different.  They are suitable for smaller-scale modeling, and can reflect group or even individual motivations.

The new model is based around the team's assumptions that complex processes of advance, retreat, and resettlement due to climate changes, and human adaptations to them, shaped early European settlement.  

The model simulates these complex processes in a two-step manner. 

Step one models Human Existence Potential or HEP, the likelihood of successful human endurance under given climatic and environmental conditions.  This step uses known paleoclimate data.  Step two models how HEP constrains human population dynamics. 

This machine learning model applies Aurignacian climate constraints to spatial and temporal HEP patterns.  The model's estimates use simulated data from the Global Climate model, and oxygen isotope data from ice cores in Greenland. 

The model's first phase shows slow expansion, from the Levant into the Balkans.  The next, more-rapid dispersal-phase shows expansion reaching into western Europe, by a population estimated at about 60,000.  The third phase shows population decline in numbers, density, and area occupied.  A prolonged cold period caused this decline.  The final phase showed population recovery, as humans dispersed into the Iberian Peninsula and the British isles. 

After the last phase, some areas of settled human populations evince better adaptation to cold climates.  This allowed for further expansion, into colder regions.

According to Dr. Isabell Schmidt of the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, the new modeling approach is advantageous due to difficulties of regional studies in capturing all of the factors potentially involved in human dispersal.

The team intends to continue work on the model, by testing its underlying assumptions regarding the role of cultural evolution in human dispersal

. 

The paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Our final story this week turns to Kingston, New York, where activists excavated and renovated a cemetery for enslaved people.  They hope to turn this site into a memorial.

As reported by Newsweek, students from State University of New York at New Paltz led the renovations.  They're part of a nonprofit group called Harambee Kingston.  Archaeologists, historians and community advocates are supporting their work.

According to Tyrone Wilson, Harambee Kingston founder, the cemetery holds stories of unimaginable hardship.  His organization intends to preserve the legacies of enslaved people buried there, and to redress past-historical disrespect for such victims. 

The cemetery is now named the Pine Street African Burial Ground.  From the mid-eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, it provided a final resting place for enslaved African Americans.  During that period, enslaved people weren't allowed burial in church cemetery consecrated ground.  Instead, they were relegated to burial grounds such as this one, on the outskirts of town.

This cemetery was in use until 1878.  It was later covered over, and ultimately converted to residential lawns.  Joseph Diamond, an associate professor of anthropology at New Paltz, discovered the site while conducting an archaeological survey. 

The nonprofit group purchased the site in 2019.  Through the last 3 summers, they have excavated there.  So far, they've discovered remains of 27 individuals, with possible identities determined only for 3 of them.

The only legible headstone in the cemetery displays the name of Caesar Smith, who died in 1839, after his manumission.  Historical records indicate that the cemetery might also hold remains of a man named Sam and of a teenage girl named Devon.

According to Antoinette Jackson, professor of anthropology and founder of The Black Cemetery Network, this burial site is just one of many such around the country that have been covered over and repurposed. 

New York itself has other instances of such finds.  Although the southern states are the ones notorious for slavery, New York state had one of the largest northern enslaved populations in the eighteenth century.  The African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan opened in 1991.  A 2008 renovation project in Newburgh, New York uncovered 100-plus enslaved-people's remains. 

The organization hopes that DNA analysis of remains will reveal more about the lives of those buried in this cemetery.  That analysis might enable identification of living descendants.  

For the future, Harambee Kingston hopes to raise a million dollars to make this a memorial site, including a tall grave marker. 

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 video-streaming platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

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