Archaeology
Category archives for Archaeology
Tuberculosis Detected in Bones from 9 kya Israeli Neolithic Site
Posted by Greg Laden on October 9, 2009 A team of archaeologists working offshore from Haifa, Israel in the Mediterranean has discovered both direct and indirect evidence of human tuberculosis. This is important because, if confirmed, the TB cases date to 3,000 years earlier than expected: The disease should not be in skeletons this old. Also, this research seems to indicate that Tuberculosis…
The Hurricane Lantern Effect
Posted by Greg Laden on October 7, 2009 This is for all your nascent researchers about to head off to remote places to engage in your very first fieldwork, and for all you eco-tourists or educational travelers about to embark on a trip through strange lands afar.
Primitive Cultures are Simple, Civilization is Complex (A falsehood) III
Posted by Greg Laden on September 23, 2009 This is the third of three parts of this particular falsehood. (Here is the previous part)
Explaining the Spread of Agriculture into Europe
Posted by Greg Laden on August 31, 2009 The practice of growing food and keeping livestock was invented numerous times throughout the world. One ‘center’ of agriculture is said to be the Middle East. Despite the fact that calling the Middle East a “center” in this context is a gross oversimplification, it is true that agriculture was practiced in Anatolia and the Levant…
The Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival
Posted by Greg Laden on August 12, 2009 Four Stone Hearth is the Anthropology Blog Carnival. The main page for the carnival is here. The previous carnival was held at A Hot Cup of Joe, and the next edition will be at Natures/Cultures blog. The current edition of the Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival is ….. HERE, below the fold. Please visit…
Reading Human Nature
Posted by Greg Laden on July 26, 2009 “Human nature” is an interesting topic. People will argue over the definition of human nature, but regardless of what people think or say, it is reasonable to assume that all humans share a psychological and developmental framework to the extent that any two people raised in the same background will ‘turn out’ similar with respect…
The Origins of the Evil Eye and Horticultural Fertility Cults?
Posted by Greg Laden on July 21, 2009 It has become axiomatic that the use of adornment by humans is some sort of symbolic act, and thus is linked to the human symbolic and linguistic mind. The human symbolic and linguistic mind is the trait that we axiomatically believe to be the derived human feature … the cladistic apomorphy that makes us human…
A True Ghost Story Part 5: The Grave on the Hill
Posted by Greg Laden on July 17, 2009 … continued … One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
A true ghost story. Part I: A City of Death and Misery
Posted by Greg Laden on July 13, 2009 Everything I’m about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it may span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
FBI Nabs Pot Hunters (Archaeology)
Posted by Greg Laden on June 17, 2009 Last week, federal agents swooped in on 23 of the 24 people indicted on charges of stealing archaeological artifacts from public land and Indian reservations in the Southwest. But after a 60-year-old physician committed suicide over the weekend, Utah senators are saying the raid was overkill. The arrests were made following a two-year operation codenamed…
New theory on Earth’s Magnetic Field: Theory interesting, reporting botched
Posted by Greg Laden on June 15, 2009 This is one of those science stories that is on one hand fairly simple, and on the other hand fairly complex, where the interface between simplicity and complexity causes little balls of misunderstanding to come flying out of the mix like pieces of raw pizza dough if the guy making the pizza was the Tasmanian…
Oldest Evidence of Leprosy Found in India
Posted by Greg Laden on May 26, 2009 It is funny how people play with history. If we talk about an important “first” that is viewed in a positive light … the origin of beer for instance … the slightest evidence will be used by the people of a given region to claim primacy. Also, since Africa almost always gets the shaft in…
Possible Cleopatra Tomb?
Posted by Greg Laden on April 26, 2009 A tomb in Egypt, on the sea coast, is being investigated by Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass, who claims it is the final resting place of Cleopatra and her main squeeze, Mark Antony. One of the pieces of evidence used to make this claim is a mask with a cleft chin, just like Richard Burton’s. It…
Ancient Documents On Line
Posted by Greg Laden on April 23, 2009 The World Digital Library has released the first in a new set of ancient documents. I’m very excited that this includes quite a bit of Sumerian material, because that is what I’ve been reading lately.
Four Stone Hearth: The Blog Carnival …
Posted by Greg Laden on April 9, 2009 … is here, at Quiche Moraine. Please go and visit this blog carnival, then visit all the sites pointed to by the blog carnival, read them, submit them all to social networking sites, enter them in blogspheric contests, and so on and so forth. Because that’s how we do things in The Blogosphere . I’ll…
Scotland Police Totally Screw The Pooch
Posted by Greg Laden on March 18, 2009 Police officers in northern Scotland have been accused of vandalising a Bronze Age site through ignorance after they removed bones and textiles from the 4,000-year-old burial chamber, apparently because they thought they were investigating a crime scene. The burial chamber, or cist, was discovered intact, in a field near Oykel Bridge in Sutherland. The area…
Palaeowomaen: Barbara Isaac, Women in The Field, and The Throwing Hypothesis
Posted by Greg Laden on March 12, 2009 
The following post has been slightly revised in response to commentary below and elsewhere. I thank all those who commented for the helpful critique. The question of diversity in science, and more specifically, success for women, is often discussed in relation to bench or lab oriented fields. If you read the blogs that cover this…
“Who you two? I five … “
Posted by Greg Laden on March 4, 2009 And with this, a five year old catapulted back in time, say 10,000 years in West Asia or Southern Europe, encountering two people, would make perfectly intelligible sentence that wold be understood by all. Assuming all the people who were listening were at least reasonably savvy about language and a little patient. This is because…
Two chimps walked into a bar …
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 … and made a real mess of the place when one of them spotted the jar of pickles on the counter. They fought over it until one of them had almost all the pickles and the other one had a number of bruises and a tiny fragment of one pickle that the other chimp dropped…
Great Moments in Human Evolution: The Invention of Chipped Stone Tools
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 Or not. Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make the initial appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record…
How to build Stonehenge
Posted by Greg Laden on February 8, 2009 First I thought: “… noooo..” Then, I thought: “hmmmmmm.” Hat Tip Miss Cellania.
For the love of ancient chocolate
Posted by Greg Laden on February 7, 2009 A fresh look at ornate 1000-year-old vases from New Mexico’s canyons has unearthed a surprise: They were used as mugs to drink chocolate. The findings are the first record of the food in North America, long before its introduction in colonial times. They also reveal that chocolate was an expensive delicacy enjoyed by few during…
Unhealthy Diet in Ancient Near East
Posted by Greg Laden on January 16, 2009 This is an old story being resurrected wiht new data: Biblical diet ‘unhealthy’ A new study into the diet of ancient Israel has revealed that far from being ‘the land of milk and honey’, its inhabitants suffered from the lack of a balanced diet.
The Greg Layer
Posted by Greg Laden on January 12, 2009 The previous story, about the Volcanic eruption of the Rwenzori Mountains a few kilometers from our camp (“Fire on the Mountain“), actually occurred AFTER the story I’m about to tell. But I’m telling them out of sequence as a matter of character development. (The complexity of the real life situation significantly exceeds the complexity of…
The Fantastic Mystery of the Younger Dryas
Posted by Greg Laden on January 11, 2009 One of the most interesting and exciting stories in science is that of the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a climate event that had important effects on human history, and that has been reasonably linked to some of our most important cultural changes, and ultimately some evolutionary changes as well. That is one reason…
New Primate Research
Posted by Greg Laden on January 11, 2009 I have had a lot of students of whom I’m very proud because of their accomplishments both in research and generally. One of these students is Mark Foster, who is one of a very small number of undergraduates to engage in significant research at some of the key East African chimpanzee research sites. Unfortunately for…
The Story of Stories: The Siege of Mugombane
Posted by Greg Laden on January 9, 2009 I think of her now as the Tea Lady, because she was drinking tea when I met her and had an English accent to go along with her English colonial outfit. She was one of the first native white South Africans I had met on my very first trip to that country. And now the…
Neanderthals at the end of their days
Posted by Greg Laden on December 13, 2008 What was Neanderthal-Modern Human interaction really like? Fifty four teeth (some of which are fragments) and nine other bones dating to about 40-43,000 years ago represent the “most recent, and largest, sample of southern Iberian late Neanderthals currently known.” These and some closely related remains may indicate that these Middle Paleolithic holdouts were kissing cousins…
What a gneiss picture
Posted by Greg Laden on December 1, 2008 This is my best bud Stephanie relaxing in her rock. I have a whole series of photographs of Stephanie inside rocks. I think it is utterly hilarious that in an entirely unrelated stream of events, a friend of hers (whom I do not know) asked her to model for a photography class she was taking,…
Oldest nuclear family seems to have been murdered
Posted by Greg Laden on November 18, 2008 The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany. Writing in the journal PNAS, researchers say the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and…
, which is now available for the 
