Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew, to tell you about 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 study of mollusks from shell-ring villages along the southeastern American coast shows that they are quite early and mark a period of rising sea level.  Jade artifacts from a Neolithic site in Inner Mongolia show early trade between two different Chinese societies.  A longhouse excavated in southeastern Poland represents the earliest farming culture in that region.  And an Iron Age burial mound in southern Siberia may be an early representation of the Scythians known from a later time in southern Ukraine.

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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 October 6th through the 12th, 2024.

Our first story this week comes from the Atlantic Coast of the southeastern United States, where archaeologists have established that the earliest known Native American villages, marked by distinctive rings of shell debris, existed along the coast for over 1,000 years beginning 5000 years ago.

As reported by Heritage Daily, these widespread coastal villages were occupied year-round in the Eastern Woodlands of North America despite large-scale environmental changes.   Using sea-level modeling and isotope geochemistry on mollusks, a multidisciplinary group of American study authors determined that the fluctuating growth of these early fishing villages varied with the rising and lowering of the sea levels.  These fluctuations greatly impacted the productivity of oyster reefs along the Atlantic Coast.  

Archaeologists now believe that these Native American villages date from 5000 to 3800 BP.  Shell-ring archaeological sites are distinctive landmarks in this part of the United States. They contain curved piles of mollusk shells along with early ceramics, animal remains, and artifacts.  It’s likely that these deposits built up around and beside houses.  Over time, a ring-shaped midden formed from a combination of everyday activities and ceremonial feasting.  

A high-resolution dating program allowed the researchers to order these shell-ring villages in sequential time. Their research demonstrates that shell-ring villagers frequently left and come back to the same place.  Some portion of the population resided at any given shell ring site year-round.  The early coastal villagers harvested the bulk of their oysters during the colder months, while clams served them consistently throughout the year.  

It's very likely that the way people collected the mollusks was proprietary.  Kin groups or other networks may have owned, controlled, or monitored access to certain harvesting areas.  Diverse harvesting may also have promoted reef productivity and sustainability in the face of harvesting challenges.

Based on global research, the transition to village life and the adaptation to that life were two key shifts in human history.  Studies like this are important in understanding the complex relationship between humans and their environment, and how strongly the environment shapes the human experience.

This study was published in Scientific Reports.

Next, we travel to Inner Mongolia, where archaeologists have uncovered more than a hundred Neolithic jade artifacts.  The discovery also reveals evidence of long-distance trade between two ancient Chinese civilizations.  

As reported by ARTnews, the artifacts uncovered at the Yuanbaoshan archaeological site in China’s Chifeng city are linked to two different cultures.  The Hongshan Neolithic culture was a strong presence in Inner Mongolia and the nearby provinces of Liaoning and Hebei during the Stone Age.  The Hongshan made some of the earliest known jade objects in the world—usually used in burial rituals.  

Researchers also uncovered jade headgear belonging to a far-off culture, now part of the present-day province of Anhui. About 4,000 years ago, this culture moved south due to a shift in climate.  Researchers believe it traded goods with the Hongshan over long distances.

Three 5000-year-old jade dragons of different colors and sizes stood out among the artifacts uncovered at the Yuanbaosha site.  The largest is emerald green and about the size of a human hand.  According to the Xinhua news agency, it is the largest dragon of its kind to be uncovered in northern China. 

The human remains and pottery unearthed at Yuanbaoshan led the researchers to conclude that the three jade dragons most likely belonged to the Hongshan Culture.  Out of more than a thousand Hongshan Culture sites excavated, this burial mound is the largest of its kind to be uncovered in Inner Mongolia.  

Clearly, Hongshan Culture had a strong influence on the early development of Chinese civilization.  In one example, researchers have found evidence that feng shui [fung SHWEE], an ancient form of geomancy that claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their environments, was practiced at some of the sites in this region.

Our third story takes us to the village of Sandomierz-Mokoszyn (SAN doe meerz MOCK-oh-shin), in southeastern Poland, where archaeologists have uncovered the earliest example of a Neolithic longhouse in the Sandomierz Upland.

As reported by Heritage Daily, the original aim of the excavation was to find evidence of a community linked to the Funnelbeaker culture that existed between 4300 and 2800 BC.  However, archaeologists also uncovered an earlier Neolithic settlement from the Linear Pottery culture, which thrived from around 5500 to 4500 BC. 

The Linear Pottery Culture was a significant early phase in the movement of Central and Western European farming people up the Danube from the Balkans and ultimately Anatolia.  This movement links the earliest farmers from the east to those who arrived in France approximately 7,000 years ago.  

The name, “Linear Pottery Culture,” comes from the linear decoration used on ceramic vessels that were often filled with ceramic paste.  The team found remnants of a longhouse approximately six meters wide by over twenty meters long.  Aligned along a north-south axis, it was built using a post-and-beam technique.

According to Dr. Hab. Florek, this structure is the first of its kind uncovered in the Sandomierz Upland.  Previously, houses like this were found in other parts of Poland, and the culture itself migrated from the middle Danube River valley, on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains to the south.  The discovery of this longhouse suggests the existence of a permanent settlement here in the early Neolithic period, and indicates continuous occupancy of this area for thousands of years.  

Pits surrounding the longhouse were the source of the clay that made the walls.  Other finds, like decorated ceramics, flint tools and two pits containing objects of imported obsidian, also surrounded the structure.  

The team also uncovered a fragment of a Neolithic vessel from the Lublin-Volhynia (LOO-bleen vol-EEN-ee-yah) culture, indicating another phase of settlement activity.  

This longhouse underlines the role of the Linear Pottery Culture in transitioning post-Ice Age Europeans from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a settled and permanent agricultural one.  

The pottery vessels it created are also significant.  They were not only used in a practical way for food storage, but also served as mediums of artistic and cultural expression.

Our last story this week takes us to southern Siberia, where archaeologists uncovered the remains of at least eighteen horses and one human from a burial mound nearly 3,000 years old.  The burial is strikingly similar to the funerary practices of Scythian [SIH-thee-an] royalty of the fifth century BC. 

As reported by LiveScience, the kurgan, or burial mound, in Tuva, a Russian republic in southern Siberia, dates to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.  It’s one of the earliest known examples of Scythian-like burial practices.  

Part of the excavation's contents included horse-riding gear and artifacts decorated with animals.  Some horse skeletons still had brass bits lodged between their teeth.  Archaeologists also found the remains of a woman.  

Little is actually known about the Scythian culture of southern Ukraine and Russia, which, while thriving, spoke an Iranian language but left no written record.  It was the people who encountered them, like Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote about their burial rituals and reported that they had migrated from Central Asia, the homeland of many Iranian groups.  While the accuracy of some of Herodotus’ work has been questioned, some details are archaeologically verifiable, including human and horse sacrifices.

According to Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, the Scythians and their horse-riding culture have sparked people’s curiosity since Herodotus’ day.  The historian described gutting and stuffing horses, then propping the sacrificed humans and horses up with wood to look like they were circling the burial mound.  

To uncover evidence of early Scythian influence, archaeologists selected the easternmost known burial mound that resembled Scythian kurgans.  This is in what is known as the Siberian Valley of the Kings, a valley containing thousands of other burial mounds.

Radiocarbon dating from the horse bones and underlying larch log construction helped the team narrow down the construction date of the burial mound to the late ninth century BC.  This makes it one of the oldest known burial mounds to display Scythian burial practices, so it might be an early Scythian site.

The ritual arrangement of animal and human remains shows deeper connections between southern Siberia and the Scythians of the Pontic-Caspian steppe than was previously assumed, and it supports the idea that they migrated a long distance toward the west.

This study was published in the journal Antiquity.

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!