Archaeology news

• 3-D model of 18th century slave ship brings a harrowing story to life

  25-07-2019 20:30
  A 3-D model of an 18th century slave ship, which captures the cramped, dirty and stifling conditions experienced by enslaved Africans, has been launched as a new digital teaching tool.The 3D ship in full sail [Credit: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database]The idea of creating a digital slave ship came from Lancaster University lecturer and historian of the Atlantic World Dr. Nicholas Radburn.He worked with a team of scholars and...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full li
  
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• Pottery related to unknown culture was found in Ecuador

  25-07-2019 19:24
  Archaeologists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Institute of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS (Russia), Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) (Ecuador), and Tohoku University (Japan) found shards of ceramic vessels referred to the cultural sediments of early periods of Real Alto site. Findings date back to 4640 - 4460 BC, this period borders with Valdivia, one of the oldest pottery-featured cultures in North and...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website fo
  
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• White-tailed deer were predominant in pre-Columbian Panama feasts

  25-07-2019 19:23
  In pre-Columbian times, the white-tailed deer was among the most abundant and frequently consumed mammals in Panama. It was also an icon, represented on thousands of clay vessels. Through an analysis of deer remains in refuse piles at the Sitio Sierra archaeological site, researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) discovered signs of "feasting behavior" associated with this animal. Their findings were published...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for fu
  
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• The road to Scandinavia's Bronze Age: Trade routes, metal provenance, and mixing

  25-07-2019 19:23
  The geographic origins of the metals in Scandinavian mixed-metal artifacts reveal a crucial dependency on British and continental European trading sources during the beginnings of the Nordic Bronze Age, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Heide W. Nørgaard from Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues.British-developed bronze flat-axe from Selchausdal, northwest Zealand (NM B5310, photo: Nørgaard)....[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my we
  
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• The climate is warming faster than it has in the last 2,000 years

  25-07-2019 19:23
  Many people have a clear picture of the "Little Ice Age" (from approx. 1300 to 1850). It's characterized by paintings showing people skating on Dutch canals and glaciers advancing far into the alpine valleys. That it was extraordinarily cool in Europe for several centuries is proven by a large number of temperature reconstructions using tree rings, for example, not just by historical paintings.Modern global warming is a global...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links,
  
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• How black holes shape galaxies

  25-07-2019 19:23
  Data from ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has revealed how supermassive black holes shape their host galaxies with powerful winds that sweep away interstellar matter.Artist's impression showing how ultrafast winds blowing from a supermassive black holeinteract with interstellar matter in the host galaxy, clearing its central regions from gas[Credit: ESA/ATG medialab]In a new study, scientists analysed eight years of XMM-Newton...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full lin
  
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• Cold, dry planets could have a lot of hurricanes

  25-07-2019 19:23
  Nearly every atmospheric science textbook ever written will say that hurricanes are an inherently wet phenomenon -- they use warm, moist air for fuel. But according to new simulations, the storms can also form in very cold, dry climates.Dust storms on Mars could behave similarly to dry cyclones[Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems]A climate as cold and dry as the one in the study is unlikely to ever become the norm on...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links,
  
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• Changes in human diet shed light on human evolution

  25-07-2019 19:23
  A shift in diet has long been seen as one of the critical adaptations that distinguishes our own genus Homo from earlier human ancestors. The timing and context of this dietary shift, however, has been hotly debated. A recent study by Columbian College of Arts and Sciences researchers finds that this change in the human diet reflects a behavioral shift approximately 1.65 million years ago.David Patterson holds a hippopotamus tooth at...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full
  
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• Scientists discover new chemistry that may help explain the origins of cellular life

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Before life began on Earth, the environment likely contained a massive number of chemicals that reacted with each other more or less randomly, and it is unclear how things as complex as cells could have emerged from such chemical chaos. Now, a team led by Tony Z. Jia of the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kuhan Chandru of the National University of Malaysia, has shown that simple α-hydroxy...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website fo
  
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• How did Africa's grasslands get started?

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Between 10 million and 6 million years ago, vegetation across much of the world underwent a transformation, as warmth-adapted grasses displaced previously dominant plants, shrubs and trees. The new grasses carried out the chemical reactions required for photosynthesis in a distinct new way. Scientists have labelled this new process the C4 pathway. In East Africa, the changeover coincided with the evolution of mammal lineages that we...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full
  
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• Cosmic pearls: Fossil clams in Florida contain evidence of ancient meteorite

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Researchers picking through the contents of fossil clams from a Sarasota County quarry found dozens of tiny glass beads, likely the calling cards of an ancient meteorite.Researchers found 83 tiny glassy spheres inside fossil clams from a Florida quarry. Testing suggests
   they are evidence of one or more undocumented meteorite impacts in Florida's distant past[Credit: Kristen Grace, Florida Museum]Analysis of the beads...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links
  
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• Climate changes faster than animals adapt

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Climate change can threaten species and extinctions can impact ecosystem health. It is therefore of vital importance to assess to which degree animals can respond to changing environmental conditions -- for example by shifting the timing of breeding -- and whether these shifts enable the persistence of populations in the long run. To answer these questions an international team of 64 researchers led by Viktoriia Radchuk, Alexandre...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full li
  
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• Astronomers make first calculations of magnetic activity in 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Gas-giant planets orbiting close to other stars have powerful magnetic fields, many times stronger than our own Jupiter, according to a new study by a team of astrophysicists. It is the first time the strength of these fields has been calculated from observations.This illustration shows a hot Jupiter orbiting so close to a red dwarf star that the magnetic fields of both interact,producing activity on the star. Astrophysicists have...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full li
  
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• Archaeology student finds exceptionally rare fragment from Roman bottle

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Peter Moore discovered a fragment from a 1,800 year-old glass fish at the National Trust's Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire.The fragment above an artist’s impression of how the fish bottle would have looked[Credit: National Trust/Rod Kirkpatrick/F Stop Press]The shard of intricately decorated glass is so rare it took experts from around the world two years to identify it.Wealth and influencePeter discovered the fragment...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full
  
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• Archaeological evidence verifies long-doubted medieval accounts of First Crusade

  25-07-2019 19:22
  The University of North Carolina at Charlotte-led archaeological dig on Jerusalem's Mount Zion has been going on for over a decade, looking at an area where there were no known ruins of major temples, churches or palaces, but nonetheless sacred land where three millennia of struggle and culture has long lain buried, evidence in layer upon layer of significant historical events.This earpiece, perhaps of Egyptian manufacture, is...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links,
  
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• Algae living inside fungi: How land plants first evolved

  25-07-2019 19:22
  Scientists think that green algae are plants water-living ancestors, but we are not sure how the transition to land plants happened.Credit: Michigan State UniversityNew research from Michigan State University, and published in the journal eLife, presents evidence that algae could have piggybacked on fungi to leave the water and to colonize the land, over 500 million years ago."Fungi are found all over the planet. They create...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, o
  
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• 10 million star puzzle

  25-07-2019 19:22
  When observed with the unaided eye, Omega Centauri, the object in this image, appears as a fuzzy, faint star. But the blue orb we see here is, in fact, a collection of stars—10 million of them. You cannot count them all, but in this sharp, beautiful image you can see a few of the numerous pinpoints of bright light that make up this unique cluster.Credit: ESA/CESAR/Wouter van ReevenThe image was taken by Wouter van Reeven, a software...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for
  
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• What gives meteorites their shape? New research uncovers a 'Goldilocks' answer

  25-07-2019 19:21
  Meteoroids coming from outer space are randomly shaped, but many of these, which land on earth as meteorites, are found to be carved into cones. Scientists have now figured out how the physics of flight in the atmosphere leads to this transformation.Meteoroids coming from outer space are randomly shaped, but many of these, which land on earth asmeteorites, are found to be carved into cones. To explore the forces that produce...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, o
  
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• The early days of the Milky Way revealed

  25-07-2019 19:21
  The universe 13,000 million years ago was very different from the universe we know today. It is understood that stars were forming at a very rapid rate, forming the first dwarf galaxies, whose mergers gave rise to the more massive present-day galaxies, including our own. However the exact chain of the events which produced the Milky Way was not known until now.The Milky Way ~ 10 Billion years ago (above) and as it is today (below)...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full li
  
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• Astronomers map vast void in our cosmic neighbourhood

  25-07-2019 19:21
  An astronomer from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and an international team published a new study that reveals more of the vast cosmic structure surrounding our Milky Way galaxy.A smoothed rendition of the structure surrounding the Local Void. Our Milky Way galaxy lies at the origin of thered-green-blue orientation arrows (each 200 million lightyears in length). We are at a boundarybetween a large, low density...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links
  
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