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Researchers have analysed the oldest obsidian bracelet ever identified, discovered in the 1990s at the site of Asikli Höyük, Turkey. A high level of technical expertise Using high-tech methods developed by LTDS to study the bracelet's surface and micro-topographic features, the researchers have revealed the astounding technical expertise of craftsmen in the eighth millennium BCE. Their skills were highly sophisticated for this period in late prehistory, and on a par with today's polishing techniques. This work is published in the December 2011 issue of Journal of Archaeological Science, and sheds new light on Neolithic societies. Dated to 7500 BCE, the...

10 Strange Archaeological Finds Straight Out Of A Horror Story Scattered under the ground beneath our feet are the remains of history. There are little pieces of the lives of people who lived before us that give us little glimpses into who they were—the things they held dear, the homes they lived in, and the bones of their decaying bodies. But life thousands of years ago wasn’t always gentle and easy. Sometimes, when these remains are uncovered, the stories they reveal are brutal and violent—and sometimes, they’re pulled straight out of a horror story. 10 A Pit Of Amputated Arms10b-amputated-arm-bones-from-pit...

Amber and other unusual materials such as jade, obsidian and rock crystal have attracted interest as raw materials for the manufacture of decorative items since Late Prehistory and, indeed, amber retains a high value in present-day jewellery. 'Baltic' amber from Scandinavia is often cited as a key material circulating in prehistoric Europe, but in a new study published today in PLOS ONE researchers have found that amber from Sicily was travelling around the Western Mediterranean as early as the 4th Millennium BC - at least 2,000 years before the arrival of any Baltic amber in Iberia... "Interestingly, the first amber...

A team working at the Shimao archaeological site in Shaanxi province made the discovery during a recent excavation of the city’s Neolithic ruins, which are thought to date back to about 2,000BC, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday. “The beast-face patterns found in Shimao might have had a significant influence on the motifs of China’s Bronze Age,” Sun Zhouyong, president of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, said in the report. Researchers unearthed about 30 carvings at the site with designs similar to those found on the elaborately decorated bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1600-256BC). While most...

Barrow Clump has a remarkably long history of human activity. The Bronze Age burial mound built on an even older Neolithic settlement, was reused as an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. It had already been damaged by ploughing, but permission to excavate a listed site was granted because of damage by more recent trouble makers -- badgers which were burrowing out the entire site, and kicking out human bones as they dug. This year's excavation was just beside the burial mound -- "the badgers are happily back in residence in the barrow now" Osgood said -- carried out in scorching heat and clay...

The largest Neolithic house in Britain was built in Scotland around 6,000 years ago... Two halls which were used as houses and likely home to large numbers of people have been discovered in Carnoustie, Angus. The site is far larger and older than previously thought with archaeological work shedding new light on some of Scotland's earliest communities. Analysis shows food was processed and consumed in the halls with pottery made and used there. It is possible that animals were also kept in part of the building. The larger of the two halls is the largest Neolithic hall ever found in...

Coinciding with the Pit Grave culture (4200-3600 years before our era), coming from Southern Europe, the Neolithic communities of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula started a ceremonial activity related to the sacrifice and burial of dogs. The high amount of cases that are recorded in Catalonia suggests it was a general practice and it proves the tight relationship between humans and these animals, which, apart from being buried next to them, were fed a similar diet to humans'... The study analyses the remains of twenty-six dogs found in funerary structures from four sites and necropolises of the Barcelona region, and has...

...the origin of these artworks is shrouded in mystery. Nobody is quite sure what the artists used for paint or binder, how the pigmentation has been preserved for so long, and -- most controversial of all -- exactly when the images were made... Today we get a unique insight into this question thanks to the work of Clodoaldo Roldán at the University of Valencia in Spain and colleagues... One way to date ancient artifacts is with carbon dating. But this works only with pigments that have a biological origin, and with the exception of black, most of them do not....

Ancient DNA Reveals Lack Of Continuity Between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers And Contemporary Scandinavians September 24, 2009. Summary The driving force behind the transition from a foraging to a farming lifestyle in prehistoric Europe (Neolithization) has been debated for more than a century [1] , [2] and [3] . Of particular interest is whether population replacement or cultural exchange was responsible [3] , [4] and [5] . Scandinavia holds a unique place in this debate, for it maintained one of the last major hunter-gatherer complexes in Neolithic Europe, the Pitted Ware culture [6]. Intriguingly, these late hunter-gatherers existed in parallel to early...

The Neolithic is a key period in the history of the European settlement. Although archaeological and present-day genetic data suggest several hypotheses regarding the human migration patterns at this period, validation of these hypotheses with the use of ancient genetic data has been limited. In this context, we studied DNA extracted from 53 individuals buried in a necropolis used by a French local community 5,000 y ago. The relatively good DNA preservation of the samples allowed us to obtain autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and/or mtDNA data for 29 of the 53 samples studied. From these datasets, we established close parental relationships within...

The islands of Polynesia were first inhabited around 3,000 years ago, but where these people came from has long been a hot topic of debate amongst scientists. The most commonly accepted view, based on archaeological and linguistic evidence as well as genetic studies, is that Pacific islanders were the latter part of a migration south and eastwards from Taiwan which began around 4,000 years ago. But the Leeds research -- published February 3 in The American Journal of Human Genetics -- has found that the link to Taiwan does not stand up to scrutiny. In fact, the DNA of current...

Research led by the University of Leeds has discovered genetic evidence that overturns existing theories about human migration into Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) - taking the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years. Prevailing theory suggests that the present-day populations of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) originate largely from a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago - the so-called "Out of Taiwan" model. However an international research team, led by the UK’s first Professor of Archaeogenetics, Martin Richards, has shown that a substantial fraction of their mitochondrial DNA lineages (inherited...

Full Headline: Return of the death mound: Neolithic-style tombs are back in fashion after 5,000 years as Britain runs out of space to bury the dead These stunning images show the Milky Way etched across the night sky over a Neolithic burial barrow, which will open this weekend as part of a Stone Age tradition being resurrected across Britain. The Soulton Long Barrow in Shropshire is only the third of its kind to be opened in modern times. The burial chamber is based on ancient solution to the lack of burial space in Britain used by our Neolithic ancestors almost...

In the early 1960s, archaeologist James Mellaart uncovered a mural at Çatalhöyük, the world's largest and best-preserved Neolithic site, which he interpreted to represent a volcanic eruption. Fifty years later, scientific tests done on pumice at the nearby volcano Hasan Dag confirm that there was, in fact, an eruption between 9,500 and 8,400 years ago -- a timespan including the era that the mural was likely painted. ...In an Archaeology Odyssey article, Michael Balter, author of The Goddess and the Bull, wrote: "One painting, he [Mellart] thought, seemed to represent a town plan of the Neolithic village, with an erupting...

Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate. There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here — just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes. Yet there’s always been something — something just below the surface.

Animal fat on ancient pottery reveals a nearly catastrophic period of human prehistory -- A bit more than 8000 years ago, the world suddenly cooled, leading to much drier summers for much of the Northern Hemisphere. The impact on early farmers must have been extreme, yet archaeologists know little about how they endured. Now, the remains of animal fat on broken pottery from one of the world’s oldest and most unusual protocities -- known as Çatalhöyük -- is finally giving scientists a window into these ancient peoples’ close call with catastrophe... Today, Çatalhöyük is just a series of dusty, sun-baked...

The Mesolithic, a transitional period that lasted from circa 11,000 to 5,000 years ago (between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic), ends with the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry and the concurrent arrival of new genetic material from the Middle East. The arrival of the Neolithic farmers, with their carbohydrate-based and domesticated animal diet, along with food-borne pathogens and the inherent metabolic /immunological challenges can be reflected in genetic adaptations of post- Mesolithic populations.Pre-Neolithic genetic material The individual at the centre of the study belongs to a group prior to this influx of new genetic material.“The biggest surprise was to discover...

Monte Kronio rises 1,300 feet above the geothermally active landscape of southwestern Sicily. Hidden in its bowels is a labyrinthine system of caves, filled with hot sulfuric vapors. At lower levels, these caves average 99 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity. Human sweat cannot evaporate and heat stroke can result in less than 20 minutes of exposure to these underground conditions. Nonetheless, people have been visiting the caves of Monte Kronio since as far back as 8,000 years ago. They’ve left behind vessels from the Copper Age (early sixth to early third millennium B.C.) as well as various sizes of...

Researchers mapped the arrival routes of pottery and people representing the Corded Ware Culture complex (c. 2900-2300 BCE) into the Nordic countries by identifying the areas where the pottery was made. Corded Ware pottery was very different from earlier Stone Age pottery. It represented a new technology and style, and as a new innovation, used crushed ceramics -- or broken pottery -- mixed in with the clay. Finland, Estonia and Sweden had at least five different manufacturing areas for Corded Ware pottery which engaged in active pottery trade across the Baltic Sea approximately 5000 years ago. Häme in Southern Finland...

The last time anyone looked on Dawn's face was 9,000 years ago. Now the teenager can be seen again, after scientists reconstructed her face to show what people looked like in the Mesolithic period, around 7,000 BC. And, according to the experts, this included more 'masculine features' – for both men and women. It's thought that Dawn (known as Avgi, in Greek) was around 15-18 years old when she died.