Archaeology
New discoveries near ancient Mogollon city
Archaeologists from Brigham Young University (BYU) have been excavating a farming hamlet called San Diego near the Mogollon city of Casas Grandes, also called Paquimé, both located in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Casas Grandes is attributed to the Mogollon culture, one of the major prehistoric Southwestern cultural divisions of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico.
The culture emerged during the archaic period around AD 200, with construction at Casa Grandes occurring between AD 1130 and AD 1300. The initial settlement started as a group of 20 or more single storey house clusters, each with a plaza and enclosing wall.
After being burned around AD 1340, Casas Grandes was rebuilt with multi-story apartment buildings built of adobe, I-shaped Mesoamerican ballcourts, stone-faced platforms, effigy mounds, and a market area.
About 350 other, smaller settlement sites have been found in the Casas Grandes area of influence which extends around 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the city.
For the past 10 years, BYU researchers have studied a lesser-known time, the Viejo period, which predates the main era of Casas Grandes at the site of San Diego. In 2019, they uncovered the floor of the largest known communal structure from the Viejo period, a 9-metre-diameter building large enough to house 30 to 40 people.
Recent excavations at San Diego have found 1,000-year-old artefacts, consisting of ceramics, hammer stones, maize kernels, and a shell bead transported 250 miles from the Pacific Ocean, suggesting long distance interactions between the people of Casas Grandes and faraway cultures.
The team has employed some advanced technology to document their discoveries, including robotic surveying instruments that map artefacts with millimetre-level precision, survey-grade GPS, and unmanned aerial systems that take images of the site from the sky.
Professor Mike Searcy from BYU said: “Every shovel full of dirt that we pull out is providing new data on the ancient people who thrived in the desert.
The new excavations have enabled the researchers to learn about the resilience and ingenuity of the people living at the San Diego site, including the settlement’s organised building efforts to construct the communal structure.
Header Image – Casas Grandes – Image Credit : HJPD – CC BY-SA 3.0
A new study published in the journal Antiquity has revealed hundreds of previously unrecorded monuments at Baltinglass in County Wicklow, Ireland.
The Baltinglass area (known as ‘Ireland’s Hillfort Capital’) has a high density of Early Neolithic and Late Bronze Age monuments, however, very little evidence has been recorded that dates from the Middle Neolithic period.
According to Dr James O’Driscoll from the University of Aberdeen, the ancient landscape around Baltinglass was incredibly important to the Early Neolithic people, however, the lack of Middle Neolithic evidence suggests that this importance was lost until the Late Bronze Age.
Using advanced LiDAR technology, archaeologists have created detailed three-dimensional models, revealing hundreds of ancient sites that that been destroyed by thousands of years of ploughing.
Image Credit : Antiquity
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), is a method of remote sensing using light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth. The differences in the laser return times and wavelengths can be used to compile a 3-D digital map of the landscape.
The most significant discovery from the survey is a cluster of five cursus monuments, the largest example found in both Britain and Ireland. The purpose of such monuments are speculative, but some theories propose that they were used in rituals connected with ancestor veneration, that they follow astronomical alignments, or that they served as buffer zones between ceremonial and occupation landscapes.
Image Credit : Antiquity
According to the study authors: “These five cursus monuments are clearly aligned with burial monuments in the landscape, as well as the rising and setting sun during major solar events such as the solstice.”
“This may have symbolised the ascent of the dead into the heavens and their perceived rebirth, with the cursus physically setting out the final route of the dead, where they left the land of the living and joined the ancestors beyond the visible horizon,” said Dr O’Driscoll.
Header Image Credit : Antiquity
Sources : Antiquity | Exploring the Baltinglass cursus complex: routes for the dead? – James O’Driscoll. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.39
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
Archaeologist from NIKU are using a revolutionary new GPR robot to explore a Viking Age site in Norway’s Sandefjord municipality.
The robot has been developed as part of a collaboration between AutoAgri, Guideline Geo/MÅLÅ, and NIKU, and uses the I-Series autonomous implement carrier model fitted with the latest high-resolution, multi-channel ground-penetrating radar system.
GPR is a geophysical method that uses radar pulses to image the subsurface. It is a non-intrusive method of surveying archaeological features and patterning beneath the subsurface.
Initial testing of the robot was conducted in Trøndelag Vinnan in Stjørdal municipality, which according to the researchers has demonstrated increased efficiency and provides accurate mapping solutions.
Image Credit : Erich Nau, NIKU
The new robot system has an antenna that produces a much higher resolution than traditional georadar systems, which for the first time can be interpreted in real time.
According to Erich Nau from NIKU, previous systems had to be driven around archaeological sites, however, the new GPR robot only needs a short hour to map the driving route, then the robot does the rest on its own.
The robot is being used as part of a new study of a Viking Age trading post at Heimdalsjordet near the Gokstadhaugen ship burial in Sandefjord.
The non-intrusive approach will provide a detailed picture of the subsurface that previous surveys could have missed, such as traces of longhouses, land plots, roads, wharves and burials.
“This collaboration gives us a unique opportunity to explore and understand our historical landscape with new and advanced technology. We look forward to uncovering new discoveries that can give us valuable insight into our rich cultural heritage,” says Petra Schneidhofer, archaeologist in Vestfold county municipality.
Header Image Credit : Jani Causevic, NIKU
Sources : NIKU
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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