Posted on 12/09/2022 5:45:53 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The Yangtze No. 2 Ancient Shipwreck, the largest wooden shipwreck discovered underwater in China to date, was recently lifted out of the waters off Hengsha Island in Shanghai's Chongming district.
The 150-year-old "time capsule" carries rich historical information. It marks another milestone achievement in China's underwater archaeology and provides valuable evidentiary materials for the studies of China's maritime civilization and for the mutual exchanges among civilizations in ancient times.
The Yangtze No. 2 Ancient Shipwreck is one of the largest and best-preserved wooden shipwrecks discovered underwater in China and even the world at large and carrying the richest cultural relics.
Based on its age and size, the shipwreck is presumably a large junk, a kind of ancient Chinese sailing ship. It was the first time that this specific type of ship was discovered in the waters in the coastal areas of China.
The shipwreck was detected in 2015 during a key underwater survey carried out by the Shanghai Research and Protection Center of Cultural Relics and other relevant departments with the sonar technology.
After seven years of underwater archaeological survey, it has been confirmed that this shipwreck dates back to the reign of Emperor Tongzhi (1862-1875) in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It is 38.1 meters in length and 9.9 meters in width, and has 31 cabins.
A number of unbroken or reparable cultural relics of different types in the Yangtze No. 2 Ancient Shipwreck have been lifted out of water.
In the cabins, archaeologists found porcelains produced in China's Jingdezhen, and many other cultural relics were discovered around the shipwreck, including clayware, hookahs made in Vietnam and wood buckets.
(Excerpt) Read more at en.people.cn ...
Sr-Nd isotope baseline in Silk Road regions enables archaeological plant-ash glass provenance | Liu Jia | Chinese Academy of Sciences | December 6, 2022Archaeologists frequently utilize radiogenic Sr and Nd as isotopic tools where the baseline determination is in indispensable need. In many Silk Road regions, the construction of Sr-Nd baseline is blocked by severe deficiency of available data.
LV and collaborators investigated the bioavailable Sr and detrital Nd signatures along the Silk Road. They divided these regions into several major isotopic zones and proposed the likely isotopic compositional ranges of each zone, which eventually constituted the general Sr-Nd isotope baseline framework.
To validate the benefits of the Sr-Nd isotope baseline, researchers applied it into two provenance cases of plant-ash glass. Using the integrative Sr-Nd isotope approach, they discovered that northern Mesopotamia supplied raw materials for glass-making for a long period. In addition, they found that plant-ash glass has multiple origins including Central Asia and Mesopotamia. The two cases further confirmed the huge potential of Sr-Nd analyses in archaeology.
This progress supplements the lack of reference isotope baseline, and provides guidance for the future refinement. This study reveals the circulation pattern of Islamic plant-ash glass and its raw material sources, thus contributing to the research on cultural communications through ancient glass and ceramics in Silk Road regions.
~1870 - that’s not that old!
Tons of stuff exists from that time.
No, I’ve got stuff around the house older than this.
I read the last three words as Martian Silk Road
My house is older than that.
Me too!
Strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) provide valuable information to help reconstruct past mobility. For the analysis of archaeological tooth enamel to provide a direct assessment of mobility, a comparison to the baseline 87Sr/86Sr in a region is required. In this study, a large-scale 87Sr/86Sr baseline of Portugal is created based on 151 paired plant and soil leachate samples combined with previously published data (20 additional plant and 33 additional soil leachate sites). Spatial patterns of 87Sr/86Sr are evident, following Portugal's geology and terrain, with higher 87Sr/86Sr in the granite dominated north and further inland. Influences from sea spray are observed along the coastal regions of the country.
Neodymium isotopic composition (εNd) has enjoyed widespread use as a palaeotracer, principally because it behaves quasi-conservatively in the modern ocean. However, recent bottom water εNd reconstructions from the eastern North Atlantic are difficult to interpret under assumptions of conservative behaviour. The observation that this apparent departure from conservative behaviour increases with enhanced ice-rafted debris (IRD) fluxes has resulted in the suggestion that IRD leads to the overprinting of bottom water εNd through reversible scavenging. In this study, a simple water column model successfully reproduces εNd reconstructions from the eastern North Atlantic at the Last Glacial Maximum and Heinrich Stadial 1, and demonstrates that the changes in scavenging intensity required for good model-data fit is in good agreement with changes in the observed IRD flux.
Love this stuff. Shame that I don't have time to reacquaint myself with current research.
Thanks!
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