Wasous

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned what it said were illegal excavation works by US, French and Turkish troops as well as their local allies in areas of Syria under their control, including ancient sites at Manbij, Afrin, Idlib, Hasaka, and Raqqa.

Credit: FARS News Agency

Speaking to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a ministry official said that there had been an increase in excavation work, looting, and theft of ancient cultural artifacts.

"These actions represent a new war crime added to the crimes committed against the Syrian people and Syrian heritage", the official said. According to Damascus, the looting of Syria's historical treasures is part of a deliberate plot by terrorist organizations and their backers to rob the Syrian people of their past and destroy the country's civilizational and cultural heritage.

The Foreign Ministry called on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to condemn the alleged violations and expose those who stand behind them.

Syria is home to some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, and contains cultural artifacts from numerous ancient empires. Amid the war in Syria archeologists worldwide have looked on in horror as terrorists looted and destroyed priceless artifacts in areas under their control.

The Foreign Ministry statement follows remarks by Mahmoud Hammoud, director general of Syria's museums and antiquities, alleging that the US, France, and Kurdish militias were carrying out illegal excavations in northern Syria in areas under their control, including "archeological tombs in the eastern side of Manbij".

"We hope that the Syrian Army will return peace and security to all those areas soon because it's the only force capable of protecting our heritage", Hammoud stressed.

The Syrian government has devoted considerable resources to the search for looted artifacts, and is working with international authorities to recover treasures illegally smuggled abroad by criminal enterprises during the terrorist occupation. In late October, authorities reopened the National Museum of Damascus, touting it as a symbolic "political, cultural, and economic victory", a symbol of the return to normal life and defiance of efforts by terrorists to loot and destroy the country's treasures. In September, authorities began a major project to restore the Krak de Chevaliers, an 11th century castle in Homs.

Source: FARS News Agency [December 11, 2018]

Khirki is crowded, with narrow roads and tall buildings bundled together like Lego bricks stacked precariously. Smack in the middle of this chaos is Khirki Mosque, a 14th century fortress-like structure built during the Tughlaq dynasty.

The style of writing on the coins indicates that they might be from the Lodi dynasty [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

The mosque is fenced in by high compound walls and the uneven ground is lower than the houses that surround the structure. It is deathly quiet inside, with its myriad archways partially lit by Delhi’s smoggy sunlight. Standing there, it is easy to imagine a priest, or a trader, furtively hurrying along the walls of the mosque to find a spot to bury treasure.

Treasure is what the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) found two months ago in this complex — a hoard of small copper coins vaguely resembling those bite-sized Britannia biscuits from the 90s.

A team from ASI’s conservation wing was levelling the ground in early September as part of ongoing conservation work when one of the workers’ pickaxes landed on a mud pot. Work was halted and ASI archaeologists were called.

The office was abuzz when they learned about the discovery, says N.K. Pathak, superintending archaeologist, ASI-Delhi circle. “As soon as the coins were discovered, there was a big halla. For archaeologists, discoveries like this are always exciting, no matter the value. Everyone said, Khazana mil gaya!” he says, laughing.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: Varun Shiv Kapur/WikiCommons]

The discovery of these coins is what those in the field call a ‘chance discovery’, as opposed to a planned dig. The mosque is also the site of an earlier discovery of 63 coins in 2003, which was also a chance discovery. There is a possibility that both sets of coins might be from the same era.

Preliminary investigations of the 254 coins reveal that they are from Delhi’s medieval period — 13th to 16th century — the latter part straddling the early modern period. Proper identification can happen only after they are cleaned and studied, says Pathak. “However, some of the coins belong to the reign of Islam Shah Suri.”

Islam Shah Suri is the son of Sher Shah Suri, who founded the Sur dynasty and ruled Delhi for seven years from 1538 to 1545. “Most Islamic coins have inscriptions (what we call legends) on them — the name of the ruler and their father’s name. In this case, some of the coins had ‘Islam Shah Suri, son of Sher Shah Suri’ inscribed on them,” says Shahmoon Ahmad, Assistant Archaeologist, ASI-Lucknow circle, who will be studying the coins further.

Notably, it was Sher Shah who introduced the precursors to the modern rupee and paise — the silver rupaiya and the copper paisa. The gold coins issued by the Sur dynasty were called mohurs. “Discoveries of gold and silver coins are rather rare. Copper coins are not that much of a surprise,” says Pathak.

That’s because copper coins were reused by the general populace; the gold and the silver ones had to be re-minted with the names of current rulers, adds Ahmad.

He suspects that this might be true for this hoard as well. There are several paleographic indications — the style of writing — that indicate that some of the coins might be from the Lodi dynasty, which fell less than two decades before Islam Shah’s reign.

Khirki Mosque, Main (South) Entrance Gate [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

However, any discovery, even something as small as a copper coin hoard, is quite significant. “The monument is of the Tughlaq period, but the coins are from the Lodi and the Sur periods. Once we date the coins, we can establish that people used money regularly from the earliest date on the coin to the latest,” says Ahmad.

Interestingly, the fact that there are coins from two different dynasties might mean that this was not the hoard of a single person. “It could be the savings of one or two generations of a family,” he adds.

These coins can also establish other things. “They tell us this area was populated, the jurisdiction of the particular ruler, the prosperity of his rule, the money usage patterns, and so on,” says Pathak.

The coins also show that the mosque was in use during the reign of that particular ruler.

If they were indeed minted during the time of Islam Shah, it would mean the mosque was in use even 200 years after it was built.

More than half a millennium later, however, the Khirki Mosque is in bad shape. The buildings that flout ASI’s 100-metre-rule is the least of the concerns. There are broken pillars, loose bricks, decaying stones, a decades-old bat infestation, and more. The boundary wall around the monument came up only in 2003, according to an earlier report in The Hindu.

Khirki Mosque, interior [Credit: V.V. Krishnan/The Hindu]

Conservation work, which began roughly mid-August, started with clearing the debris to bring the lower plinth of the monument to an even level, says deputy superintending archaeologist, Sanjay Kumar Singh. “It was also to make the movement of water on the ground smoother, especially in the monsoon. So work began with levelling the ground,” he says.

When the coins were found, the area around the discovery was carefully cordoned off, while all the debris and mud excavated so far were sieved thoroughly for more surprises from the past. “There is possibility to get anything, even pot shards, at any important site in Delhi. Workers, supervisors, and other staff are trained to be vigilant. We tell them this work is different from what the Public Works Department might do,” says Pathak.

Conservation work will go on for another six months, during which time the broken pillars and the decayed chajja stones will be replaced. “We will also undertake ‘pointing and underpinning’ work to fix the loose bricks and mortar. We will be using the lime mortar mix that was originally used,” adds Pathak.

Detailed information on the coins, however, will roll in before work on the monument is finished. “We will first send them to the science branch for cleaning, after which our numismatics branch will come in to decipher the writing. It will take three to four months,” says Pathak.

What are the possibilities of finding more antiquities here? “That’s just it,” he says. “You can never predict what you can find in Delhi and when. What is beneath the earth, you never know.”

Author: Janane Venkatraman | Source: The Hindu [December 10, 2018]

Archaeologists at the archaeology research institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have unveiled the details of a deluxe carriage unearthed in a cemetery dating back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BC) in north China's Hebei Province.

Credit: Xinhua

According to the archaeologists, the carriage is 142.5 cm wide, 106 cm in length and has two wheels with a diameter of 140 centimeters and 38 spokes each. The large volume of the carriage is rare for those that date back to the times before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), said Li Cunxin, an associate researcher.

The archaeologists also found many exquisite patterns painted on the surface of the carriage and a pair of beast-shaped metal badges embedded into the carriage that have gold foil decorations stuck to them, which still hold their shine even after being underground for such a long period of time.

Credit: Xinhua

Researchers speculated that the occupant of the cemetery was high up in the social pecking order and could be at the level of a tribal leader.


The archaeological team is currently trying to further unveil the details of the carriage via various technologies before fully restoring the finding in the future.

Source: Xinhua [December 10, 2018]

Polish archaeologists have discovered dozens of iron and bronze artefacts including a sword and decorative buckles in a nearly 2000 years old Germanic cemetery, archaeologist Krzysztof Socha from the Kostrzyn Fortress Museum reported to PAP.

Credit: Krzysztof Socha/Muzeum Twierdzy Kostrzyn

The cemetery is located in Gorzów poviat (county), though archaeologists have not revealed the exact location of the newly discovered cemetery to prevent its destruction by treasure hunters who search fields and forests with metal detectors. Socha emphasises that he was surprised by the large number of discovered metal objects. Archaeologists have also found numerous fragments of burned human bones.

"After preliminary research, which we carried out in November, I believe that we are dealing with a huge, perhaps even several-hectare cemetery from the first centuries of our era", says Socha. Three complete graves were discovered during the excavations; the remains of the dead had been cremated. In one case, they were originally in a ceramic urn, in the other two they were poured into pits dug in the ground.

Credit: Krzysztof Socha/Muzeum Twierdzy Kostrzyn

Socha added that the necropolis has been largely destroyed by forest management - the forest was planted in this place nearly half a century ago. "We do not know if there had been a forest here before, but during the excavations we recorded traces of very deep ploughing, which could have contributed to the degradation of the ancient burials", he said. But according to the archaeologist, there had been many more graves. This is evidenced by artefacts chaotically scattered just below the surface.

"The first complete graves probably belonged to warriors because we found weapons in the graves, including a ritually bent metal sword, spear heads and shield bosses. We are also finding metal elements of clothing such as belt buckles and other adornments in the area. This shows that the cemetery belonged to the entire community - probably women, men and children", said Socha.

Credit: Dariusz de Lorm/Stowarzyszenie Tempelburg

Researchers are now waiting for the anthropological analyses of the bones which will determine the sex of the deceased.

Archaeologists believe that the cemetery belonged to a Germanic community. "Here, the influence of the Goths and Vandals clashed with influences from the Elbe", says Socha adding that this conclusion can be drawn from various artefacts. He emphasises that this is one of the few cemeteries of this type in western Poland.

Credit: Krzysztof Socha/Muzeum Twierdzy Kostrzyn

The ancient cemetery was discovered in April 2018 when several artefacts, including metal shield bosses, were revealed in the roots of felled trees following a violent storm.

Archaeologists are preparing an exhibition of artefacts that will be opened next year in the Kostrzyn Fortress Museum.

Author: Szymon Zdziebłowski | Source: PAP - Science in Poland [December 10, 2018]

Archaeologists have made an "unparalleled" discovery in East Yorkshire of a chariot buried with two horses, which look as if they "were leaping upwards out of the grave."

The chariot with its ponies [Credit: David Keys]

The pair had been carefully positioned in the Iron Age grave at Pocklington with their back legs bent and hooves just off the ground - ready to spring into the next life.

The chariot - with a man aged in his late 40 upwards in a fetal position inside - had also been buried upright, as though the vehicle was ready to roll on "into any future life."

Archaeologists say the horses may have originally been buried with their heads sticking out of the grave, although when found they were headless.

The discovery comes just a year after another Iron Age chariot and two well-preserved horses were discovered on another building site in the town, David Wilson Homes’ Pavilion Square development.

The horses were buried with a "highly regarded member of the community" who was in his late 40s or older, whose head was surrounded by the bones of six piglets, believed to be an offering, along with a well-preserved shield and a highly decorative brooch.

East Yorkshire is known for its chariot burials but Paula Ware from MAP Archaeological Practice said the type of burial rite had “no British parallel."

The excavation of an Iron Age chariot burial near Pocklington, Yorkshire [Credit: David Keys]

She said: "We couldn't tell how they were placed in the grave. Both were still upright and they were placed as though in motion as if they were leaping out of the grave. It looked as though their skulls were removed centuries ago.

"Possibly the heads were coming out of the graves. Did they go in alive who knows? There's no evidence of a ramp. This is a new burial rite which has never been seen before.

"How spectacular this is - and what time and effort must have gone into it and the people who must have taken part in this burial process, digging this 4.7m by 3.9m grave.

"There is more pig bone in this burial than there has been seen in burials across the Wolds.

"He is honoured with at least six piglets - normally there would be a quarter of a jaw. He was someone so significant."

Nearby was another amazing find - a young man aged 17 to 25 - who had been "ritually speared" with 10 iron and bone spears.

The excavation of the remains of a speared Iron Age man near Pocklington, Yorkshire [Credit: David Keys]

He had suffered blunt force trauma indicative of being in a conflict. It has been suggested by other experts following similar discoveries that it could be a ritual to ensure the corpse remained dead.

But Ms Ware believes it was to release the youngster's spirit, and was a sign of respect from the community.

Ms Ware said: "We will never know because there was no written word and we can only speculate." Simon Usher, managing director at Persimmon Homes Yorkshire, said: “Everyone has been absolutely thrilled by the finds.

"Keeping the news under wraps while the excavation was completed has been a real challenge, but so important to ensure the integrity of the site.”

Author: Alex Wood | Source: The Yorkshire Post [December 09, 2018]

The Center for Archaeology of Montenegro began a series of rescue excavations in the ancient city of Doclea near Podgorica, one of the most important historical monuments in Montenegro, after an ancient villa was destroyed during the construction of a railway line.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

During the course of the excavations the foundations of several temples were found, evidently belonging to the Illyrian Docleati tribe on which territory the city was built.

According to the archaeologists, coins found at the site date it to the reign of the Illyrian King Ballaios and Queen Teuta of the Ardiaei tribe who ruled in the mid-second century BC.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

"This area has an obvious antiquity where various ancient cultures are intertwined," said Milos Zivanovich, an archaeologist from the Center for Archaeology, who is heading the rescue excavation.

"The purpose of these excavations is to fully reveal the layout of the city and to understand how it evolved through time," Zivanovich added.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

In Roman times the city of Doclea was strategically situated near the crossings of several main roads on a plateau bordered on three sides by the Zeta, Moraca and Siralija Rivers.

The foundation of the city is related to the Roman effort to urbanize the newly established province of Dalmatia in the beginning of the first century AD. It quickly became an important trading center and was given the status of municipium during the Flavian Age along with other Dalmatian cities.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

The Romans enforced the city’s protection through mighty 2.5 m - thick walls, towers, battlements and fortified bridges across the rivers. The city itself is built according to the classical urban grid plan, with a typically square-shaped forum with a colonnaded porticoes that run the length of the space at its heart.

The East-West Via Principalis features the most important city buildings which are still preserved today: the triumphal arch dedicated to Emperor Gallienus, the temple & the statue of Roma, the temple of Diana, a palace, as well as the spacious and richly decorated city baths.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

The city flourished as a capital city of the Late Roman province of Praevalitana (3rd - 5th centuries AD). The Early Christians churches and the large episcopal basilica dated to this period are located in the eastern urban and suburban areas both intra and extra murum.

The bishop of Doclea, Evandros is mentioned among the participants of the 4th Ecumenical Council held in Halkidon 451.

Credit: Balkan Heritage Field School

The city’s urban life declined after the Ostrogoths sacked Doclea in AD 490. It was devastated further during the earthquake of AD 518.

Doclea never recovered its glory and during the following turbulent period of Avar and Slavic invasions, the city was finally abandoned.

Source: Tirana Times & The Balkan Heritage Field School [December 08, 2018]

Archaeologists excavating in the village of Hozelec in northern Slovakia have unearthed a unique trove of jewellery believed to date from the Middle to Late Bronze Age.

Credit: TASR/Oliver Ondráš

Matúš Hudák, archaeologist of Spiš Museum in Spišská Nová Ves, said that small fragments of bronze spirals, funnel-shaped pins and three bronze discs had been recovered.

The funnel-like objects are somewhat unusual in that they are made of a white metal which may be due to a higher tin to bronze ratio of the alloy or possibly the result of 'etching' with organic acid or heating at high temperatures.

Credit: TASR/Oliver Ondráš

“It is proof of advanced metallurgic technologies that people did not often use and it is unique,” Hložek pointed out.

The remains of leather were also found attached to the spirals, funnels and discs suggesting that the items had been buried in a leather pouch. Three bronze disk-like objects appear to have been sewn at the top of the pouch and were likely used to keep it closed.

Credit: TASR/Oliver Ondráš

The finds were transported to the Technical Museum in Brno, where they underwent laboratory examination followed by intensive conservation work.

The organic remains were radiocarbon dated to approximately 3,000 years ago.

Credit: TASR/Oliver Ondráš

In addition to the jewellery, artefacts from later times were also discovered at the site, including Celtic buckles, a spade, and horseshoes from the Middle Ages, a 1616 solidus coin, a link chain, a copper hook, knives and other objects that were probably accidentally lost.

Source: The Slovak Spectator [December 07, 2018]

Early in human history, people were willing to make enormous sacrifices in order to satisfy their deities. Some cave dwellers even cut off their own fingers, according to new research.

These are examples of negative hand images with missing fingers on calcite draperies in Cosquer Cave, located in Calanque de Morgiou, France [Credit: Jean Clottes]

It was a mystery archaeologists couldn’t figure out for decades. Cave paintings nearly 27,000 years old sometimes depicted hands with missing fingers — but why?

A team of anthropologists and archaeologists from British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University now believe humans in the Upper Palaeolithic era amputated their fingers in religious rituals and that the incredibly painful experience might have helped groups of humans form intensely strong bonds.

Master’s student Brea McCauley and supervisors David Maxwell and Mark Collard combed through records dating back to the 1600s for examples of researchers and travellers who noted the practice of finger amputation.

McCauley, who led the team, was surprised to find examples of finger amputation on every continent humans inhabit.

“We did not expect, in the slightest, to find 121 societies that engaged in finger amputation,” McCauley said in an interview.

Closwer view of hand images in Cosquer Cave [Credit: Fanny Broadcast/ Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images]

In one instance, a cave in France featured hand paintings from 50 different individuals, including men, women and children. Many had fingers missing.

The team posited that finger amputation was likely done as either a sign of mourning or as a sacrifice in order to appeal to a deity for assistance. And the ritual may have helped, but likely not in the way early humans thought.

Group amputations of people’s fingers in a highly ritualized practice probably had the “side effect” of creating powerful bonds among participants, said Collard, an archaeology professor at SFU.

Existing research suggests deeply uncomfortable experiences can in fact make people more loyal to others who share the same trauma, explained McCauley.

“These rituals that might be painful or might cause emotional distress create really strong communities. They bind people as though they are family,” she said.

“So that means they are really likely to look out for one another and that means they might be hostile to other groups because they are so bounded inward.”

While these rituals were happening during the Upper Palaeolithic era, modern humans spread across much of the world and out competed neanderthals.

The research is published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology.

Author: Wanyee Li | Source: The Star Vancouver [December 07, 2018]

The archaeological mission working in the archaeological site of al-Khalwa area, Fayoum, has uncovered a burial shaft, located to the east of the Prince Waji’s tomb dating back to the Middle Kingdom, Ministry of Antiquities announced on Thursday.

Credit: Egypt. Ministry of Antiquities

Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri said that al-Khalwa, located at southern Fayoum, contains a cemetery dating back to the Middle Kingdom era, namely Amenemhat III era (1842-1799 BC).

He added that the cemetery has the tomb of Prince Waji, the ruler of Fayoum in the Middle Kingdom, as well as the tomb of his mother "Nabat Mout", which lies to the east of it.

Meanwhile, Head of the archaeological mission Ayman Ashmawy said that the shaft contains three burial chambers, in which the mission found the upper part of a statue (40 cm height) made from sandstone of a person holding his hand on his chest along with the middle part of a basalt statue (30 cm height).

Credit: Egypt. Ministry of Antiquities

The mission also discovered inside the three burial chambers a number of pottery vessels and three heads of Canopian vessels, but some of them were broken into pieces.

Ashmawy pointed out that these chambers were likely to have been looted in ancient times and reused for burial in later eras.

Hani Abul Azm, the head of the Central Administration for Antiquities of upper Egypt, remarked that Waji's tomb was carved in rock and was discovered by the Italian mission of the University of Pisa in 1981 through the archaeological survey project in the area.

Credit: Egypt. Ministry of Antiquities

He added that the mission found a limestone statue inside the tomb, on which the name of the prince was written, a part of a wooden coffin and a pottery vessel. He explained that the statue is currently kept inside the museum store of Kom Oshim, Fayoum.

“The ceiling of the tomb was completely collapsed, maybe due to a massive earthquake in ancient times or the weight of the roof stones,” said Sayed Al Shoura, General Director of Antiquities Sector.

He said that Italian mission has built a new ceiling to protect the tomb’s inscriptions under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Source: Egypt Today [December 07, 2018]

A piece of pottery with an engraving of a smiling female figure was recently unearthed in Ishikawa Prefecture, located in the Chūbu region on Honshu island, that is believed to date back more than 1,100 years.

A female figure is seen engraved on a piece of earthenware in Nonoichi, Ishikawa Prefecture [Credit: Chikako Numata]

The artefact was found in the city's Suematsu district on the site of a ruined Buddhist temple, which experts believe was founded in the second half of the seventh century during the Asuka Period (592-710), the Nonoichi City Board of Education recently announced.

The Suematsu temple ruins are designated as a “historic site” by the central government.

The earthenware is believed to be a fragment of a “gato” (earthen pagoda) pottery work made sometime around the ninth century, education board officials said. It is the first pictorial clay pagoda to have been unearthed in Japan.

Some experts believe the figure represents a celestial nymph who serves the Miroku Bosatsu (Maitreya Bodhisattva), a Buddhist deity. The finding could provide insight into the extent of the spread of Buddhism in ancient times and aspects of the cult of earthen pagodas.

Drawing of the female figure [Credit: Nonoichi City Board of Education]

The artefact, with a plate-like shape measuring 19 centimetres tall, 9.5 cm wide and 1.5 cm thick, is believed to belong to the first tier (ground floor) of an earthen pagoda. A female figure, measuring about 17 cm tall and 7 cm wide, was found engraved with a pointed tool on the front face of the first tier.

The long-haired and smiling figure holds a “hossu,” a ritual implement with bundled hair, in her hand. She wears a long dress called a “mo”, with vertical stripes and shoes with upward-bent tips.

“The smiling figure looks lovely,” said Keiji Matsumura, director-general of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in the city of Nara. “The artefact is valuable evidence of one specific aspect of the cult of earthen pagodas, which relates to a desire to go to Maitreya’s Pure Land. It also shows that the cult of Maitreya had penetrated the Hokuriku region.”

Author: Chikako Numata | Source: The Asahi Shimbun [December 06, 2018]

An ancient coffin burial has been found in Jubji, a historical site in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province.

Credit: Mehir

Preliminary speculations suggest that the coffin may date back to the Parthian era (247 BC–224 CE).

A team of Iranian archaeologists discovered the object while conducting a rescue operation in Jubji, Mehr reported on Sunday.

Source: Tehran Times [December 06, 2018]

The Department of Antiquities, Ministry of Communications and Works, announced the completion of the 6th season of excavations in the framework of the Agios Sozomenos Excavations and Survey Project (ASESP) at the localities Ampelia and Nikolides, under the direction of the Curator of Antiquities Dr. Despina Pilides.

Stone basin at the Ampelia site, Agios Sozomenos [Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]

This excavation season lasted from 10 September-26 October 2018. This year the aim was to further investigate the pithos storage house on the small hillock at Ampelia, its extent and chronology as well as investigate the plan, chronology and nature of the monumental fortification at Nikolides.

Agios Sozomenos-Ampelia

Excavation continued on the east side of the building found last year, to establish whether it extended down the slope of the hillock. The cobbled courtyard, part of which was uncovered last year did indeed extend further, possibly enclosed within a very disturbed wall on the east side. The cobbled floor extended further to the south. It seems that this floor was renewed, as in some places where this was not preserved, another quite well preserved cobbled floor was found below, with strewn pithos sherds on it, some decorated with wavy lines left in situ.

The pebbles of the earlier floor were set in a layer of plaster, which was then covered with another layer of plaster in which the pebbles of the new floor were set. In some places a thin layer of yellowish brown soil was found below the later floor. The extent of the floor on the south part was lost as a result of recent cultivation activities. The same activities caused the destruction of the architecture on the east side, although it seems that the building extended on this side as well. The north wall of Room 1 (the Pithos room) was not preserved and excavation on the north side, down the slope again proved fruitless.

On the west side, traces of a floor were found as well as a layer of ashes, possibly from the fire destruction noted last year, as well as strewn burnt stones, possibly remains of a wall. Only pithos and storage jar sherds were retrieved. Some crevices in the bedrock seem to continue the ones noted last year. The same layer of ashes and remains of a burnt floor of plaster were noted on the SW part of the building.

Cobbled courtyard at the Ampelia site, Agios Sozomenos [Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]

A broken pithos was found fallen on top of a stone basin, sunk in the floor. Inside the basin, of roughly oval shape, there were small sherds of a White Slip I bowl with a perforation, sherds from a Base Ring juglet, fragments of a Plain Ware plate and Black Slip sherds. A large storage jar with a wide fairly tall neck and a horizontal incised band on the shoulder and horizontal handles was found as well as a thumb-grip handle, most probably from another pithos.

A soft fill inside the basin contained a cylindrical perforated stone weight, a triangular stone weight, a clay weight with a central perforation and a flat grinder of diabase. The bottom layer inside the basin was darker in colour and was sampled in the hope that it may provide evidence for the activities conducted. On one side of the basin facing north, there was a perforation but if it was a drain hole, there was no outlet as it was sunk in the bedrock. A layer of packed mud around the basin was removed to reveal stones in situ that may have held the basin in place, on the south side these were placed upright. A burnt White Slip bowl, some cooking ware sherds, Plain Ware and Red slip sherds were collected in this area. At a short distance to the south another small circular pit was found, possibly for holding another storage jar in place.

Further excavation on the west side revealed a fragment of a possible wall but nothing else was preserved. A large saddle quern of diabase, a gaming stone with depressions, a pounder and large quantities of pithos sherds indicate agrarian activities.  The house must have been consisting of at least three adjacent rooms, next to the storage room and a large courtyard to the south.

Nikolides

The large building stones, some of them worked, which were redeposited to the east of the tower and hampered our work, were removed by mechanical means and retained, so as to be utilized for the study of the volume of the stone material used for the construction of the fortifications. The aim was to establish the way that the circuit wall joined the tower. Below this debris, a soft sandy fill was removed to reveal the plaster floor below, made directly on bedrock. The plaster floor was only partly preserved and, at parts, it seems to have been laid on top of a pebbly reddish substratum. No finds were recovered except for a few sherds of Black Slip or Red Slip.

Stone built tower at the Nikolides site, Agios Sozomenos [Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]

A cavity in the bedrock was excavated close to the circuit wall, which seems to have been made at a stage, however, because it cut through the floor of the entrance between the tower and the circuit wall, as supported by some Plain White sherds from an amphora found inside. The circuit wall was revealed for some distance, running parallel to the ashlar wall of the tower. The outer face of the circuit wall was also dressed with rectangular ashlar stones, perhaps to be in uniformity with the tower. The tower was built on top of the bedrock, which was used as a foundation; in the cases where it was uneven, small stones were used to level it to a straight line and the ashlar stones were placed on top. Only small sherds of Red Polished ware, some cooking pot sherds and the flat base of a miniature juglet were found.

Excavation continued on the line of the circuit wall, to trace its outline and see how it joined with the tower. Huge destruction was caused by bulldozing as the cavities in the stone rubble have shown, that required laborious removal of the shifted ashlars and stones of about 0.5 m. depth until a staircase of large ashlars (1.20mx0.45m) was revealed leading from the interior of the fort onto the tower. Smaller sized ashlars were placed on either side to form a floor surface.

A large worked stone with projections was found, possibly at the point of the entrance from the circuit wall into the area in front of the tower, and in the adjacent trench there were two postholes, possibly for the support of a doorway; further work is, however, necessary in order to clarify the construction at this point. As already noted last season, very little cultural material was retrieved consisting of small quantities of ceramics and no objects, a fact that needs to be taken into consideration in the interpretation of the evidence, as it is also a characteristic of the settlement (Tzirpoulos and Ampelia).

Even though excavation is slow and laborious, it is now evident that we have a monumental fort, erected initially, towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age, with an addition  of a formidable tower of fine construction, possibly in the early part of the Late Bronze Age; it is a fort of strategic importance overseeing the entire valley in all directions and a construction that could not have been built without organized labour and substantial control of resources.

Source: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus [December 06, 2018]

A team of researchers from France, Sweden, and Denmark have identified a new strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes plague, in DNA extracted from 5,000-year-old human remains. Their analyses, published in the journal Cell, suggest that this strain is the closest ever identified to the genetic origin of plague. Their work also suggests that plague may have been spread among Neolithic European settlements by traders, contributing to the settlements' decline at the dawn of the Bronze Age.

The remains of a 20-year old woman (Gokhem2) from around 4900 BP that was killed by the first plague pandemic. She was one of the victims of a plague pandemic  that likely lead to the decline of the Neolithic societies in Europe [Credit: Karl-Göran Sjögren/University of Gothenburg]

"Plague is maybe one of the deadliest bacteria that has ever existed for humans. And if you think of the word 'plague,' it can mean this infection by Y. pestis, but because of the trauma plague has caused in our history, it's also come to refer more generally to any epidemic. The kind of analyses we do here let us go back through time and look at how this pathogen that's had such a huge effect on us evolved," says senior author Simon Rasmussen, a metagenomics researcher at the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen.

To better understand the evolutionary history of the plague, Rasmussen and his colleagues trawled through publicly available genetic data from ancient humans, screening for sequences similar to more modern plague strains. They found a strain they had never seen before in the genetic material of a 20-year-old woman who died approximately 5,000 years ago in Sweden. The strain had the same genes that make the pneumonic plague deadly today and traces of it were also found in another individual at the same grave site -- suggesting that the young woman did likely die of the disease.

This strain of the plague is the oldest that's ever been discovered. But what makes it particularly interesting is that, by comparing it to other strains, the researchers were able to determine that it's also the most basal -- meaning that it's the closest strain we have to the genetic origin of Y. pestis. It likely diverged from other strains around 5,700 years ago, while the plague that was common in the Bronze Age and the plague that is the ancestor of the strains in existence today diverged 5,300 and 5,100 years ago, respectively. This suggests that there were multiple strains of plague in existence at the end of the Neolithic period.

Rasmussen also believes that this finding offers a new theory about how plague spreads. Massive human migrations from the Eurasian steppe down into Europe are known to have occurred around 5,000 years ago, but how these cultures were able to displace the Neolithic farming culture that was present in Europe at the time is still debated. Previous researchers have suggested that the invaders brought the plague with them, wiping out the large settlements of Stone Age farmers when they arrived.

How researchers believe the plague spread [Credit: Gothenburg University]

But if the strain of plague the researchers found in the Swedish woman diverged from the rest of Y. pestis 5,700 years ago, that means it likely evolved before these migrations began and around the time that the Neolithic European settlements were already starting to collapse.

At the time, mega-settlements of 10,000-20,000 inhabitants were becoming common in Europe, which made job specialization, new technology, and trade possible. But they also may have been the breeding ground for plague. "These mega-settlements were the largest settlements in Europe at that time, ten times bigger than anything else. They had people, animals, and stored food close together, and, likely, very poor sanitation. That's the textbook example of what you need to evolve new pathogens," says Rasmussen.

"We think our data fit. If plague evolved in the mega-settlements, then when people started dying from it, the settlements would have been abandoned and destroyed. This is exactly what was observed in these settlements after 5,500 years ago. Plague would also have started migrating along all the trade routes made possible by wheeled transport, which had rapidly expanded throughout Europe in this period," he says.

Eventually, he suggests, the plague would have arrived through these trade interactions at the small settlement in Sweden where the woman his team studied lived. Rasmussen argues that the woman's own DNA also provides further evidence for this theory -- she isn't genetically related to the people who invaded Europe from the Eurasian steppe, supporting the idea that this strain of plague arrived before the mass migrations did. The archaeology also supports this hypothesis, as there were still no signs of the invaders by the time she died.

Some of the remains examined [Credit: Karl-Göran Sjögren/ University of Gothenburg]

Of course, there are some limitations to what the data from this study can tell us. Most importantly, the researchers have not yet identified the plague in individuals from the mega-settlements where it may have evolved. "We haven't really found the smoking gun, but it's partly because we haven't looked yet. And we'd really like to do that, because if we could find plague in those settlements, that would be strong support for this theory," says Rasmussen.

Regardless, he believes that this study is a step toward understanding how plague -- and other pathogens -- became deadly. "We often think that these superpathogens have always been around, but that's not the case," he says. "Plague evolved from an organism that was relatively harmless. More recently, the same thing happened with smallpox, malaria, Ebola, and Zika. This process is very dynamic -- and it keeps happening. I think it's really interesting to try to understand how we go from something harmless to something extremely virulent."

Source: Cell Press [December 06, 2018]