Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[mongers]

The royal mummies are being paraded through Cairo to the new Egyptian Museum. Should start in about half an hour

edit - trying to find live streams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHuJIj9SfRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwuduZxFiWg

Thanks for the links Mal, i'll give them a try.

[Maladict]

I guess no-one is in a hurry after 40 centuries, but this is worse than a world cup draw.

[Tonitrus]

We probably haven't seen many mummies paraded through a world capital since the fall of the USSR. 

[jimmy olsen]

Neat

https://greekreporter.com/2021/04/04/ancient-city-on-greek-islet-reveals-fascinating-secrets-in-new-dig/

Archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Thessaly discovered yet more important artifacts on Vryokastraki, the small rocky islet near the Greek island of Kythnos, once home to a significant ancient city in the early Byzantine period.

[jimmy olsen]

Stone Slab in France Identified as 4,000-Year-Old Map
https://www.archaeology.org/news/9580-210407-bronze-age-map?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[The Brain]

Stone Slab in France Identified as 4,000-Year-Old Map
https://www.archaeology.org/news/9580-210407-bronze-age-map?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

They probably shivered with antici... pation!

[Valmy]

Stone Slab in France Identified as 4,000-Year-Old Map
https://www.archaeology.org/news/9580-210407-bronze-age-map?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

France had a thriving tourist industry even then.

[jimmy olsen]

Egyptology find of the century!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/lost-golden-city-ancient-egypt-aten-discovered?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1617929793

Archaeologists have hailed the discovery of what is believed to be the largest ancient city found in Egypt, buried under sand for millennia, which experts said was one of the most important finds since the unearthing of Tutankhamun's tomb.

The famed Egyptologist Zahi Hawass announced the discovery of the "lost golden city", saying the site was uncovered near Luxor, home of the Valley of the Kings.

"The Egyptian mission under Dr Zahi Hawass found the city that was lost under the sands," the archeology team said. "The city is 3,000 years old, dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, and continued to be used by Tutankhamun and Ay."

It called the find the largest ancient city, known as Aten, ever uncovered in Egypt.

Betsy Bryan, Professor of Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, said the find was the "second most important archeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun", according to the team's statement.

Items of jewellery such as rings have been unearthed, along with coloured pottery vessels, scarab beetle amulets and mud bricks bearing the seals of Amenhotep III.

Hawass, a former antiquities minister, said: "Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it."

The team began excavations in September 2020, between the temples of Ramses III and Amenhotep III near Luxor, 500km (300 miles) south of the capital, Cairo.

"Within weeks, to the team's great surprise, formations of mud bricks began to appear in all directions," the statement read. "What they unearthed was the site of a large city in a good condition of preservation, with almost complete walls, and with rooms filled with tools of daily life."

After seven months of excavations, several neighbourhoods have been uncovered, including a bakery complete with ovens and storage pottery, as well as administrative and residential districts.

Amenhotep III inherited an empire that stretched from the Euphrates to Sudan, archaeologists say, and died around 1354 BC.

He ruled for nearly four decades, a reign known for its opulence and the grandeur of its monuments, including the Colossi of Memnon – two massive stone statues near Luxor that represent him and his wife.

"The archaeological layers have laid untouched for thousands of years, left by the ancient residents as if it were yesterday," the team's statement said.

Bryan said the city "will give us a rare glimpse into the life of the Ancient Egyptians at the time where the empire was at his wealthiest".

The team said it was optimistic that further important finds would be revealed, noting it had discovered groups of tombs it reached through "stairs carved into the rock", a similar construction to those found in the Valley of the Kings.

"The mission expects to uncover untouched tombs filled with treasures," the statement added.

After years of political instability linked to a popular revolt in 2011, which dealt a severe blow to Egypt's key tourism sector, the country is seeking to bring back visitors, in particular by promoting its ancient heritage.

Last week, Egypt transported the mummified remains of 18 ancient kings and four queens across Cairo from the Egyptian Museum to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, a procession dubbed the "Pharaohs' Golden Parade".

Among the 22 bodies were those of Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiye.

[jimmy olsen]

Etruscan Sarcophagus from the 4th century BC, found in Tarquinia, Italy. It is decorated with paintings of a battle between Greeks and Amazons. The decorations are a very rare example of ancient painting, in tempera on stone. (National Archaeological Museum, Florence, Italy)

https://twitter.com/ATomasi__/status/1380556108830543872

[jimmy olsen]

I didn't know that the mass grave of the Sacred Band of Thebes was found in the 19th century. A new book on these guys is coming out.

https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1384804559227428869

[jimmy olsen]

Very cool.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210316-the-legendary-fabric-that-no-one-knows-how-to-make

Dhaka muslin is making a comeback

[Sheilbh]

I love stories like this (and will watch Fake or Fortune re-runs whenever I find them):
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/apr/23/damn-this-is-a-caravaggio-the-inside-story-of-an-old-master-found-in-spain

Also it's nice to have a story about art in Spain that doesn't involve hilarious cultural vandalism

[jimmy olsen]

Bronze age find in Sweden

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56943432

[The Brain]

Sweet!

[jimmy olsen]

Neat.

Pictures can be found here.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-neolithic-cattle-cult-build-these-sprawling-structures-180977629/

Did a Neolithic Cattle Cult Build These Sprawling Structures in Saudi Arabia?
The roughly 7,000-year-old mustatils, or rectangular monuments, predate both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids

By Livia Gershon
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
APRIL 30, 2021
46
Thousands of monuments scattered across northwestern Saudi Arabia may represent the earliest known large-scale ritual sites in the world, predating Stonehenge by millennia.

First discovered in the 1970s, the more than 7,000-year-old rectangular structures, known as mustatils, have long been overlooked. Now, research published in the journal Antiquity offers new insights on the monuments, suggesting they may have been used by a widespread Neolithic cattle cult.


"We think people created these structures for ritual purposes in the Neolithic, which involved offering sacrifices of wild and domestic animals to an unknown deity/deities," lead author Hugh Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia, tells the Art Newspaper's Garry Shaw. "Due to the monumental size of some of these buildings, this would have required considerable effort, so it is highly likely that larger communities or groups of people came together to build them. This suggests significant social organization and a common goal or belief."

Thomas and his colleagues focused on a type of mustatil known as "gates." (These open-air structures derive their name from their appearance, which resembles a fence gate when seen from above, per the study.) When the researchers searched for the monuments using satellite imaging and helicopters, they found more than 1,000 spread across 77,000 square miles—twice as many as previously thought to exist in the area, according to New Scientist's Ibrahim Sawal. The team then conducted more research on the ground.

Made of sandstone blocks, the mustatils range in length from around 65 to 2,000 feet. Most feature a long courtyard with a "head" at one end, sometimes with distinct chambers, and one or more entrances at the other. As the Art Newspaper notes, many of these chambers contain standing stones.

Some mustatils have a dividing wall running down their side. In a number of instances, ancient humans used stones to block doorways between the courtyard and head, perhaps showing that the sites were no longer active.


"These thousands of mustatils really show the creation of a monumental landscape," says Huw Groucutt, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the study, to Tom Metcalfe of NBC News. "They show that this part of the world is far from the eternal empty desert that people often imagine, but rather somewhere that remarkable human cultural developments have taken place."

Some observers had previously argued that mustatils functioned as pens or traps for animals, reports Ruth Schuster for Haaretz. But the new study shows that the walls, which stood about four feet tall, weren't high enough to contain many animals.

Instead, evidence suggests that the structures hosted ritual activity. In the central chamber of one monument, the researchers found many cow bones, as well as the bones of sheep, goats and gazelles. Given the lack of evidence that people lived at the site, or disposed of the remains of meals there, the authors posit that the bones were probably part of ritual offerings. Radiocarbon analyis dated the bones to between 5300 and 5000 B.C., making them around 2,000 years older than Stonehenge or the earliest Egyptian pyramids.

"You don't get a full understanding of the scale of the structures until you're there," Thomas tells New Scientist.


The researchers note that cattle played a key role in the lives of pastoral residents of the region, which was much more fertile 7,000 years ago than it is today. Previous studies have documented rock art with scenes of cattle herding in the area. Scholars have also identified cattle cults in the southern Arabian Peninsula, though the paper notes that the mustatils in northwestern Saudi Arabia predate these groups by 900 years.

The mustatils would have been prominent features in the Neolithic landscape. Their builders often constructed them on hills with the heads at the highest point. Many were located close to platform structures shaped like the letter "I," which may have played a role in their ritual use, reports Haaretz.

"What excites me most about these structures is their size and widespread distribution, and the fact that they are almost identical in terms of form," co-author Melissa A. Kennedy, also an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia, tells the Art Newspaper. "This suggests a common religious belief may have been held over a huge part of northwest Arabia during the Late Neolithic, a feature that is so far unparalleled anywhere in the world."