Tag: archaeology
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Video for ESCONI February 2024 – General Meeting, Topic: “Photographing Rock Art in Illinois and Missouri: A visual journey into the sacred, the unknown, and the creation of the universe”
The ESCONI February 2024 General Meeting was held on Friday, February 9th, 2024. The topic was “Photographing Rock Art in Illinois and Missouri: A visual journey into the sacred, the unknown, and the creation of the universe”. It was presented by Mike Chervinko. Mike is author of “Prehistoric and Natural Wonders of Southern Illinois”. The…
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PBS Eons: The Hazy Evolution of Cannabis
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the origin of Cannabis. How did such a strange plant like cannabis come to be in the first place? When and where did we first domesticate it? And why oh why does it get us high?
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Ancient Foxes Lived and Died Alongside Humans
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about domesticated foxes. A paper in the Royal Society Open Science describes evidence that foxes lived among people of early South American communities. “It appears to have been intentionally buried within this human cemetery,” said Ophélie Lebrasseur, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Oxford and an…
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A Stunningly Well-Preserved 600-Year-Old Gauntlet Is Found in Switzerland
The New York Times has an article about the discovery of medieval armor in Switzerland. The stunningly preserved gauntlet dates to the 14th century. It was found near Kyburg Castle, northeast of Zurich. Excavators made the discovery in 2022 prior to construction work that would have destroyed any artifacts at the site, which was a…
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Archaeologists Discover 1,700-Year-Old Jade Mask Inside the Tomb of a Maya King
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about the discovery in a Mayan mask in Guatemala. The jade artifact dates to about 350 C.E and is made of jade. The site near Chochkitam, Guatemala is a Mayan tomb, which also held rare mollusk shells, carvings, and other funeral offerings. The archaeological site, known as Chochkitam, is located…
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How Archaeologists Are Unearthing the Secrets of the Bahamas’ First Inhabitants
Smithsonian Magazine has a piece about the first inhabitants of the Bahamas. Until recently, not much was known of the Lukku-Cairi, who settled in the Bahamas around 700 C.E. The name Lukki-Caira means “people of the islands”. They are now referred to as the Lucayans and were part of a greater Caribbean civilization called the…
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PBS Eons: When Did We Stop Being Naked?
PBS Eons has a new episode. Where and when did we start wearing clothes? Of course, the ancient Egyptians were probably not the first people to ever wear clothing, but we haven’t found any clothes older than the Tarkhan Dress. So how can we figure out when we first started wearing clothes? Well, it turns…
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Stone by Ancient Stone, Mexico Recovers Its Lost Treasure
The New York Times has a story about how Mexico is working to restore and preserve its cultural heritage. American officials are helping to track down and restore stolen antiquities from Mexico and restore the items to their rightful owners. Many of the artifacts, stolen years ago, sell to collectors for upwards of a million…
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Inside The Ancient City Of Baiae, The Notorious Roman Party Town That Now Sits On The Ocean Floor
allthatsinteresting.com has a story about the Roman city of Baiae. Located about 150 miles south of Rome, it was a resort town for wealth Romans. Much of it is under water now, but the ancient Roman relics preserved there give us clues to its hedonistic past. The exact date of Baiae’s construction is still a…
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Stone tools and camel tooth suggest people were in the Pacific Northwest more than 18,000 years ago
LiveScience has a story about some new discoveries of human artifacts in the Pacific Northwest. Archaeologists made the discoveries at the site of Rimrock Draw in Oregon. They have been excavating a stone shelter there for the last few years. More details can be found in a synopsis prepared by Patrick O’Grady of the Museum…
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A Historic Discovery: Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Known Projectile Points in the Americas
SciTechDaily has a story about some Oregon State University archaeologists that have found the oldest projectile points in North America. The researchers were working at a site known as Cooper’s Ferry. The points have been dated to about 15,700 years, which is about 3,000 years older than Clovis points found throughout North America. The research…
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Scientists Discover an Unexpected Danger Lurking in Ancient Mayan Cities
SciTechDaily has a story about an unexpected discovery in some Mayan ruins. It shouldn’t be surprising that pollution isn’t a modern invention. The Romans used lead extensively and maybe have suffered lead poisoning. Now, some researchers at the Australian Catholic University have discovered mercury pollution in some of the cities of the Mayan civilization in…
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For years, experts said a Roman emperor wasn’t real. Scientists say a coin could prove otherwise
USA Today has an interesting story about some Roman coins. The four coins were discovered in 1713 in what is now Romania. They depict three different people – one shows Emperor Gordian II and two show Emperor Phillip. The fourth coin is problematic as it bears the visage of Sponsian. Although there are other Sponsian…
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NYT: Unearthing a Maya Civilization That ‘Punched Above Its Weight’
The NY Times has a story about the discovery about 2,500 year old Mayan ruins. The ruins were found just three years ago near Chiapas, Mexico in a pasture. The researchers, Dr. Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer have been collaborating in the remote areas of historical Mesoamerica since the late 1990’s. They worked together on…
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Glacier Archaeologists Find a 1300-Year-Old Arrow in Melting Ice
The Archaeologist has a piece about the discovery of a 1300 year old arrow. The arrow was found during a research project on the Langfonne ice patch in the Jutunheimen Mountains in Norway. It dates to the Late Neolithic Age from about 2400 to 1750 BC. The Langfonne ice patch has shrunk 30% in the…
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New Mexico mammoths among best evidence for early humans in North America
Phys.org has a story about early humans in North America. It’s long been thought that humans arrived in North America about 12,000 maybe 15000 years ago. There has been some spare evidence of a much earlier arrival, which was often played off as incorrect dating or just incorrect evidence. Now a team from the University…
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Researchers Have Discovered a Previously Unknown Roman City ‘of Monumental Proportions’ in Northern Spain
artnet has a story about the discovery of a large unknown Roman city in Spain. An entire Roman city has been discovered by Archaeologists from the University of Zaragoza in Spain. The location is just outside the small town of Artieda in Aragon. The remains include stunning motifs of shells, scallops and seahorses. Hopefully, we…
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Archaeologists Begin First-Ever Excavation of Tomb Linked to King Arthur
Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article about Arthur’s Stone. Researchers hope to find clues to who used the chambered tomb, was it the actual Neolithic Britons? According to popular lore, Arthur’s Stone, a roughly 5,000-year-old tomb in the West Midlands of England, boasts ties to King Arthur, the mythical leader of Camelot. One legend holds that Arthur found…
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CBC Quirks & Quarks: Black Death origins, chicken domestication, the life of a mastodon…
CBC’s Quirks & Quarks podcast has some interesting stories this week. Origins of the Black Death… it didn’t come from where everyone expected A team of historians, archeologists and geneticists, including Philip Slavin from Stirling University in Scotland, has identified what they believe to be ground zero in the medieval bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black…
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PBS Eons: The Curious Case of the Cave Lion
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about large cats from ancient Eurasia. A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?
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Construction Workers Uncover Massive 800-Year-Old Aztec Dwelling in Mexico City
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about an accidental archaeological find in Mexico City. Construction workers unearthed the remains of a large house while renovating an electrical substation. The structure, which measures about 4300 square feet, dates to the late Postclassic period maybe 800 years ago. It is fairly common to uncover Aztec ruins in Mexico…
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Amateur Archaeologist Stumbles Onto Trove of Coins Dated to Constantine the Great’s Reign
The clay pot contained 1,290 Roman coins. Archäologie Baselland The Smithsonian Magazine website has an interesting story about the discovery of some Roman coins in Switzerland. Dating to the time of Emperor Constantine (306 to 337 CE), the coins were found with a metal detector by amateur archaeologist Daniel Ludin. He made his discovery in September…
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New Book: “Origin, A Genetic History of the Americas” by Jennifer Raff
Back in December 2020, Dr. Jennifer Raff of the University of Kansas spoke to in our General Meeting. Her program was titled “What Genetics Tells Us About the Peopling of the Americas”. It was an interesting look into what genetics can tell us about the settlement of North America. Now, she has a new book out,…
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Graves of dozens of kings from the time of King Arthur uncovered in Britain
LiveScience has an interesting piece about the discovery of the graves of early British royalty. The graves date to the period between the fifth and seventh centuries and provide archaeological evidence from a little-understood period of British history. The new study by Ken Dark, an emeritus professor of archaeology and history at the University of…
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Throwback Thursday #99: Western Electric Magazine Rockhounds
This is Throwback Thursday #99. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! William Allaway was one of the founders of ESCONI. He served as the first Chairman/President of ESCONI from…
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PBS Eons: How Horses Went from Food to Friends
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the domestication of horses. Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it…
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ESCONI February 2022 General Meeting – February 11th, 2022 at 8:00 PM via Zoom – “Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology in the First National Park”
The ESCONI February 2022 General Meeting will be on February 11th, 2022 at 8:00 PM via Zoom. The talk will be presented by Dr. Douglas MacDonald from the University of Montana, The title of his presentation is “Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology in the First National Park”. An article in the January 2021 edition of…
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Facial reconstruction shows powerful Bronze Age woman’s serene expression and huge earrings
Live Science has a story about some facial reconstruction performed on a Bronze Age woman’s skull. Researchers in Spain, discovered the remains of the woman in 2014. She was buried with lavish jewelry – including a diadem, beaded necklaces, silver-crafted rings, bracelets, spiral hairpieces and earplugs with spirals, as well as a silver-rimmed drinking pot…
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Found in a Candy Tin: One of the First Coins Struck in Colonial North America
The Cool Finds column at Smithsonian Magazine has a story about a remarkable find. A one shilling coin minted in 1652 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was found in a candy tin. One of 40 known to exist, it was sold at auction for $351,912. A silver coin minted in colonial Boston in 1652 has sold for…
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Century-Old Levi’s Jeans Discovered in Abandoned Mine
Over on yahoo!life, there’s a story about a discovery in an old abandoned silver mine in a ghost town in California. The ghost town is called “Cerro Gordo”. Brent Underwood is living there and working to restore it to its past glory. His Youtube channel “Ghost Town Living” documents his progress over the last 18…
