Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[Josquius]

Huh?  Which star is supposed to be missing?

>Careful measurements with the Gaia space telescope and others show the stars of the Pleiades are slowly moving in the sky. One star, Pleione, is now so close to the star Atlas they look like a single star to the naked eye.

But if we take what we know about the movement of the stars and rewind 100,000 years, Pleione was further from Atlas and would have been easily visible to the naked eye. So 100,000 years ago, most people really would have seen seven stars in the cluster.


It's pretty cool stuff. Fascinating delve into pre history via an unorthodox angle.

[The Brain]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

Nope, it just shows the building work was done at that time; it might have taken place sometime after the settlement was established, more towards the end of it's occupation or indeed perhaps at the very start of it's development, but there's no evidence for when it took place within the history of the outpost.

I thought they were there for only 1-2 years?

The book I'm reading by Neil Price says that "new environmental work at the site suggests the Norse occupation, whether intermittent or not, may have lasted for up to a century".

[jimmy olsen]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

Nope, it just shows the building work was done at that time; it might have taken place sometime after the settlement was established, more towards the end of it's occupation or indeed perhaps at the very start of it's development, but there's no evidence for when it took place within the history of the outpost.

I thought they were there for only 1-2 years?

The book I'm reading by Neil Price says that "new environmental work at the site suggests the Norse occupation, whether intermittent or not, may have lasted for up to a century".

Wow! Did not know that

[The Brain]

A radioactive spike has been dated in some of the wood used by the vikings in New Foundland. That spike happened  in 993 and the wood was cut 28 years later.

So the settlement was made exactly 1000 years ago

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-solar-storm-pinpoints-viking-settlement-americas-exactly-1000-years-ago

Nope, it just shows the building work was done at that time; it might have taken place sometime after the settlement was established, more towards the end of it's occupation or indeed perhaps at the very start of it's development, but there's no evidence for when it took place within the history of the outpost.

I thought they were there for only 1-2 years?

The book I'm reading by Neil Price says that "new environmental work at the site suggests the Norse occupation, whether intermittent or not, may have lasted for up to a century".

Wow! Did not know that

Tbf it doesn't sound like they have Proof(tm). But intermittent use over a long period of time makes sense. It seems likely that Greenlanders routinely travelled to North America (probably various sites) for centuries, among other things for logging. In 1347 a ship travelling home to Greenland with timber from North America was blown off course and ended up in Iceland (and in written record).

[Josquius]

The trouble I have with talk of prolonged norse habitation is the question of why their numbers remained so small and their presense there relegated to myth status for many centuries whilst the Greenland norse habitation was both bigger and better known (these two likely related).
Logically it doesn't make sense to remain in Greenland whilst you've this much better land a not too huge voyage away. Yet they did.
If native resistance was a big problem you'd think even that would be better recorded.
So many mysteries.

[Sheilbh]

I think there was an In Our Time that touched on this and the academic said it seemed to be growing resistance from indigenous residents, but also that the presence in Vinland appears to have basically been summer lodgings rather than anything permanent.

And there weren't many Norse in Greenland either so it was I suppose increasingly small fractions.

[viper37]

I thought they were there for only 1-2 years?
1 or 2 decades, IIRC.

[viper37]

Logically it doesn't make sense to remain in Greenland whilst you've this much better land a not too huge voyage away. Yet they did.
If native resistance was a big problem you'd think even that would be better recorded.
So many mysteries.

you say that only because you've never seen Newfoundland. 
Seriously, I believe Greenland was a lot less cold back then.  Probably a climate good enough for sheeps and a few bovines along the coast.  And a lot of seals, walrus, whales and other marine mammals, easier to access than in Newfoundland, I mean, in larger quantities.  To hunt for wales and seal from Newfoundland, the Norse settlers would have needed to establish themselves on the southern tip of the island.  From there, they could have also fished for cod.
Remember they also had a colony on Baffin Island (Helluland). 

They were looking for ivory, from walrus, more than arable lands.

[viper37]

The trouble I have with talk of prolonged norse habitation is the question of why their numbers remained so small and their presense there relegated to myth status for many centuries whilst the Greenland norse habitation was both bigger and better known (these two likely related).
Logically it doesn't make sense to remain in Greenland whilst you've this much better land a not too huge voyage away. Yet they did.
If native resistance was a big problem you'd think even that would be better recorded.
So many mysteries.

the Greenland colony was about 5000 individuals.  But their numbers dwindled over time.  They probably didn't have the resources to support families of 8-9 children.

[Jacob]

Human head carvings and phallus-shaped pillars discovered at 11,000-year-old site in Turkey

Archaeologists in Turkey have found evidence that an 11,000-year-old prehistoric site was used for a ceremonial parade through a building containing phallus-shaped pillars and a carving of a human head. 

Called Karahantepe, the site is located in southern Turkey, east of Şanlıurfa, and has a series of buildings that date back to long before writing was invented. Within the remains of the buildings, archaeologists found carvings of human heads, snakes and a fox, as well as several interestingly shaped pillars.

For instance, the archaeologists discovered 11 pillars near a carving of a human head. "All pillars are erected and shaped like a phallus," Necmi Karul, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Istanbul University, wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi.

https://www.livescience.com/human-head-carving-pillars-turkey-karahantepe

[PDH]

Hell, if dick-pics weren't the first images made then I would be disappointed.

[Malthus]

Very interesting - so Gobelke Tepe had contemporary structures. I guess that should not be surprising.

Both appear to have been ceremonially buried.

The researcher is wise not to attempt to comment on what the iconography could mean - with singleton structures like this, that would be pure guesswork. Unless they are very lucky, there is likely to be no evidence other than the structure itself as to its meaning or purpose - a sacred procession is already a risky guess.

[jimmy olsen]

Very interesting - so Gobelke Tepe had contemporary structures. I guess that should not be surprising.

Both appear to have been ceremonially buried.

The researcher is wise not to attempt to comment on what the iconography could mean - with singleton structures like this, that would be pure guesswork. Unless they are very lucky, there is likely to be no evidence other than the structure itself as to its meaning or purpose - a sacred procession is already a risky guess.

Not that far away from Gobelke Tepe, could have been built by the same people.

[Sheilbh]

Fascinating find of a huge tannery at Fountains Abbey:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/oct/25/archaeologists-find-missing-link-history-fountains-abbey

Surprising because it's a well examined site, but also the tannery is apparently of almost "industrial scale" and actually pretty close to the main monastery which I think emphasise the role of abbeys as hubs of production in the Medieval period.

Also an opportunity to share a picture of Fointains Abbey which is one of the beautiful sites in the country


But it is interesting how, especially in England because of the unpleasantness, our image of abbeys and their role in society is so shaped by the ruins they left, which is just what survived and obviously the grandest stony buildings (church, chapter house, cloister etc). It's a bit like the misconception of white/plain classical sculpture.

[The Minsky Moment]

Haven't read the book, but the claims in the article appear intent on kicking the shit out of a bunch of straw men.

No kidding.  Maybe he read Macauley once and then stopped before reading this?

As for Graeber, I still haven't read his big book (Debt) because of my inability to get past the intensely cringey opening passage, where he describes a conversation he had with an attractive young woman at a garden party, which begins with him boasting to her about how he "almostly completely destroy[ed] the IMF" (?!) and then proceeds to mansplain to her about international finance for the next hour.