Archaeology

Archaeologists are closer to solving the mystery of missing Stuarts Town

Published

10 months ago

February 7, 2023

Archaeologists are one step closer to solving the mystery of Stuarts Town, the missing 17th century Scottish settlement in Port Royal, South Carolina, United States.

Stuarts Town was an initiative by the Carolina Company, founded to secure colonies in America that were exempt from English trade restrictions, and as a venture to boost Scotland’s struggling economy.

Stuarts Town was also meant to serve as a refuge for presbyterians facing religious persecution in Scotland, due to new restrictive liturgy introduced by Charles II.

On a reconnaissance trip to the South Carolina region in 1682, a site at Port Royal was chosen and settled in 1684, squeezed between the English colony of Charlestown and the Spanish colonialists of Northern Florida.

Spanish privateers attacked the colony in 1686, killing all the town’s livestock and burning all the structures to the ground. With Stuarts Town abandoned, the Carolina Company was unable to raise new revenue from investors and their initiative in the New World was dead.

The exact location for Stuarts Town has since been lost, with the generally accepted theory previously pointing to Spanish Point, a piece of land that juts into the Beaufort River about 3 miles north of the Port Royal Sound.

However, archaeologists from the University of South Carolina (USC), believe that the town is located further north where downtown present-day Beaufort is located.

This is partly based on an 18th century land deed which the researchers believe was misinterpreted, instead suggesting the document points to Beaufort and not Spanish Point.

Excavations by the USC team on 11 properties in Beaufort have found shards of what is likely 17th century pottery.

Although no evidence of structures have yet been identified, the ceramic evidence suggests that the team are one step closer to finding Stuarts Town in Beaufort, especially when you consider that no comparable evidence has been found in Spanish Point.

Header Image Credit – NYPL’S Public Domain Archive

Archaeology

Clusters of ancient qanats discovered in Diyala

Published

8 hours ago

December 2, 2023

An archaeological survey has identified three clusters of ancient qanats in the Diyala Province of Iraq.

A qanat, also known as a kārīz, is a system for transporting water from an aquifer or water well over long distances in hot dry climates without losing water to evaporation.

Qanats use a sequence of vertical shafts resembling wells, linked by a gently inclined tunnel that serves as a conduit for channelling water. Qanats efficiently transport substantial volumes of underground water to the surface without requiring pumps.

The water naturally flows downhill by gravity, with the endpoint positioned at a lower level than the origin. When the qanat is still below ground, the water is drawn to the surface via water wells or animal driven Persian wells.

Image Credit : State Board of Antiquities & Heritage

Some Qanats are divided into an underground network of smaller canals known as kariz, functioning similarly to qanats by staying beneath the surface to prevent contamination and evaporation. In certain instances, water from a qanat is stored in a reservoir, usually with nighttime flow reserved for daytime usage.

The technology for qanat’s first emerged in ancient Iran around 3,000-years-ago and slowly spread westward and eastward.

A recent survey within the Diyala Province has discovered three clusters of qanats stretching between the areas of Jalulaa and Kortaba. Initial studies dates the clusters to around AD 1000, a period known as the “Iranian Intermezzo”, when parts of the region were governed by a number of minor Iranian emirates.

The first cluster consists of 25 wells on a linear alignment connected to an adjacent 10 metre deep water channel. The second cluster also has 25 wells and is connected to a 13 km long hand dug channel, while the third cluster consists of 9 wells connected to water canals dug on both sides.

Header Image Credit : State Board of Antiquities & Heritage

Archaeology

16,800-year-old Palaeolithic dwelling found in La Garma cave

Published

1 day ago

December 1, 2023

Archaeologists have discovered a 16,800-year-old Palaeolithic dwelling in the La Garma cave complex, located in the municipality of Ribamontán al Monte in Spain’s Cantabria province.

The La Garma cave complex is a parietal art-bearing paleoanthropological cave system on the southern side of the La Garma Hill.

The cave complex is noted for one of the best preserved floors from the Palaeolithic period, containing more than 4,000 fossils and more than 500 graphical units.

A project led by Pablo Arias and Roberto Ontañón from the University of Cantabria has recently announced the discovery of a Palaeolithic dwelling within the cave system, described as “one of the best preserved Palaeolithic dwellings in the world.”

The dwelling is an oval space and is delimited by an alignment of stone blocks and stalagmites that supported a fixed structure of sticks and skins leaning against the cave wall. The total area of the space is around 5 square metres that centred on a camp fire.

Archaeologists also found vestiges of various daily activities associated with Magdalenian hunters and gatherers at the dwelling, including evidence of stone manufacturing, bone and antler instruments, and the working of fur.

In total, over 4,614 objects have been documented, such as dear, horse and bison bones, 600 pieces of flint, needles and a protoharpoon, shells of marine mollusks, as well as numerous pendants worn by the cave dwelling inhabitants.

Additionally, the researchers also found a number of decorated bones, including a remarkable pierced aurochs phalanx engraved with a depiction of both the animal itself and a human face—a distinctive artefact unique to the European Palaeolithic era.

Due to the national importance of the discovery, the team used innovative non-intrusive techniques in their study of the dwelling. This includes continuous tomography of the soils, 3D cartography, the molecular and genetic analysis of soils and Palaeolithic objects, mass spectrometry, and hyperspectral imaging.

Header Image Credit : University of Cantabria