Archaeology
Archaeologists use muography to reveal hidden chamber in Naples
A team of archaeologists have used muography to reveal a hidden chamber in the necropolis of Neapolis in Naples, Italy.
Neapolis was a Greek city founded during the 3rd century BC, whose remains are located around 10 metres beneath the current street level in the Sanità neighbourhood of present-day Naples.
The city emerged as an important trading centre in Magna Graecia and the Mediterranean, but would eventually be absorbed into the expanding Roman Republic around 327 BC.
The study was conducted by the University of Naples Federico II and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), in collaboration with the University of Nagoya (Japan).
The team applied muography, a technique that uses cosmic ray muons to generate three-dimensional images of volumes using information contained in the Coulomb scattering of the muons.
Since muons are much more deeply penetrating than X-rays, muon tomography can be used to image through much thicker material than x-ray based tomography such as CT scanning.
Several detectors capable of detecting muons were placed underground in the highly populated “Sanità” district at a depth of 18 metres to measure the muon flux over several weeks.
Measurements of the differential flux in a wide angular range have enabled the researchers to produce a radiographic image of the upper layers that has revealed known and unknown structures beneath the ground surface.
One of the most interesting structures is an inaccessible hidden chamber from the Hellenistic period, which according to the researchers likely contains a burial.
“From the number of muons that arrive at the detector from different directions, it is possible to estimate the density of the material they have passed through,” said lead author Valeri Tioukov, a researcher at the INFN of Naples. “We found an excess in the data that can only be explained by the presence of a new burial chamber.”
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32626-0
Header Image Credit : Tioukov, V., Morishima, K., Leggieri, C. et al
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
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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
This content was originally published on www.heritagedaily.com – © 2023 – HeritageDaily
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