Archaeology · 04. October 2017

Historic Environment Scotland has partnered with the Glasgow School of Art to create an app that lets users take a virtual tour of Maeshowe, a massive chamber tomb, older than Stonehenge, and central to the Orkney archaeological complex. Orkney is an archipelago just north of Scotland and its islands are home to some of the most stunning archaeology in Western Europe. The core archaeological sites, consisting of henges, settlements, and burials, are collectively known as “the Heart of...

Archaeology · 14. June 2017

Researchers have directly dated rock art from southern Africa, producing the first radiocarbon dates for rock art from Botswana and Lesotho, adding to a pool of dates obtained from rock art sites in South Africa, and creating a new protocol for directly dating ancient rock art images. The research group included Adelphine Bonneau from the Université du Québec à Montréal, as well as scientists from the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Oxford, and Cranfield University. To obtain...

Evolution · 05. May 2017

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have extracted ancient hominin DNA from soil. The research team collaborated with archaeologists excavating cave sites located in Belgium, Croatia, France, Russia, and Spain. The team collected sediment samples from seven different sites previously known to have been occupied by human ancestors. The samples, which were deposited between 14,000 and 550,000 years ago, contained DNA from numerous animals to include a woolly...

Archaeology · 21. February 2017

Researchers (Kennett et al.) from various institutions* have tested ancient DNA (aDNA) from human remains recovered from Chaco Canyon’s Pueblo Bonito and in so doing have identified an “elite matriline” that lasted from AD 800 to 1130. The group, which published their findings in Nature Communications, analyzed the mitochondrial genomes of nine individuals found in a high status burial context. The group also utilized high precision radio carbon dating methods (AMS 14C) to determine the...