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Bones found in New Orleans' French Quarter

Construction crews made an historic find in New Orleans' French Quarter when they were building a pool at a condo building and came across several graves. Archaeologists believe the bodies belong to some of the area's first settlers.

Construction crews found the grave site when digging a new pool. The straight sides of this hole are the sides of wooden coffins [Credit: WWL/CNN]

Everyone once in a while, construction crews will dig up humans bones in the French Quarter - like in a tucked-away courtyard.

"That's a piece of one, then you see the side of the wood, see the one in the corner that's the side of one. That's still there," construction foreman Glenn Angelo said.

The first graveyard for the city was located in the area, from Toulouse to Saint Peter. Angelo said the old, unearthed coffins aren't the coffins of today - just simply made.

"They look like a side of a Cyprus tree. Real rough. Really crude, basic, very narrow," he said.

"Basically, the closer you get to the river the more likely you're going to find old things and the older the things are likely to be," archaeologist Jill Yakubik said.

Yakubik with Earth Search headed up a team of archaeologists and anthropologists that helped excavate the site for four weeks this past summer.

"In the surrounding area around New Orleans, it's not unusual to find graveyards," she said.

Yakubik confirmed that a total of 15 coffins were removed from the north rampart site. She said it's where the colony's first cemetery was located, pre-dating the City of New Orleans.

"There also have been instances where there have been established cemeteries that have been forgotten, either family cemeteries or cemeteries that went into disuse over time," she said.

Once Yakubik and her team confirmed the remains at the construction site were human, a state law required the property owner to apply to have them removed.

"No burials can be excavated without a permit," Yakubik said.

Some of the remains are being stored and analyzes at Louisiana State University, and other items are being washed, processed and analyzed inside a lab where Yakubik and her team hope to uncover some of the city's lost secrets.

"It's pretty neat uncovering something from the 1700s."

Source: KFVS [November 11, 2011]

Ancient petroglyph in Keewenaw Penninsula vandalised

Four thousand years ago ancient peoples gathered on the shores of the Great Lakes. The waters from melting glaciers made the beaches many feet above the current level of Lake Superior.

Raven on female figure destroyed [Credit: Jo Lorichan]

On the cliffs of the Keewenaw Penninsula a long lava extrusion sticks out on this ancient shoreline. Scatterred across the rock are lithic carvings of unknown antiquity.

Some are of superb quality while others challenge the beliefs of 20th Century archaeology.

Modern diffussionist studies suggest evidence that presents differring views of man's past accomplishments.

Often primitives were thought unable to achieve some task, only to prove a better understanding than modern man of the complexities involved.

Prejudices based on race, religion, or culture can blind us to the inherent abilities of all humans throughout time and around the world.

Photo of petroglyph as it originally was [Credit: Judy Johnson]

Viewing others through the lens of one own's culture can distort the reality of what is going on.

This could be the reason for criminal acts taking place at one site in the area. A figure referred to as 'the Birdwoman' consisted of an anthropomorphic female shape with the recognizable figure of a crow standing atop the neck.

Jeff Savage, curator of the Fon du Lac Tribal museum, is certain the triangluar figure represents a woman, while Old World epigraphers identify the distinctive design as Tanit, a Carthaginian war goddess known in other ancient cultures as Ishtar and Astarte.

Other shapes; a hand, crossed circle, and various straight and curved lines, in close proximity, were untouched. The bird, as shown in the second picture, was completely destroyed.

Author: Charles Bruns | Source: Examiner [November 10, 2011]

Archaeological finds in northern Minnesota may rewrite history

Exciting archaeological finds recently near northern Minnesota’s Knife Lake may rewrite the books on how long human beings have lived not only in Minnesota, but much of North America.

Paleo-Indians enjoyed some really good hunting [Credits: Wikipedia]

Knife Lake straddles the border between Canada and Minnesota, with Quetoco Provincial Park to the north, and the famous Boundary Waters on the U.S. side. Professor Mark Muniz of St. Cloud State and fellow researches have been digging around there, and what they have found is fairly amazing if their dating holds up.

Flint-stone tools found in this area which may date from 11,000 to 12,500 years ago would indicate all kinds of things – including the fact that the glacier that once existed in this area may have receded earlier than thought, or at least that this area became inhabitable much earlier than thought possible.

If there were Paleo-Indians in the Knife River area between 11,000 and 12.500 years ago, that would be hundreds, if not thousands of years after other humans first left signs of inhabiting the southern part of Minnesota.

The Knife River area was covered by glacier during the previous global ice age. The glaciers began to recede starting some 15,000 years ago. But the melted ice left behind a massive ancient inland sea, which is called Lake Agassiz today. The area where the Knife Lake artifacts have been uncovered should have been covered with water, or at least not recovered enough from being scourered by the receding glacier

Even so, to find evidence that Paleo-Indians were making stone tools here, and most likely living and hunting, is really pushing the limits of when this was thought possible. The flint-stone tools found by Muniz will now undergo intense, high-tech dating procedures – although the style of the tools themselves already indicate they may be far older than 10,000 years.

Author: Ken Korczak | Source: Examiner [October 04, 2011]

Texas drought reveals historic treasures

All across Texas, the bones of history lie in watery graves. From the ribs of sunken ships to the grave sites of prehistoric Texans, uncounted treasures abound beneath the surface of rivers and lakes. For state archaeologists, these sites are untapped treasures — hard to reach but relatively protected.

A ship in deep South Texas periodically appears above the water. Many other sunken ships could be seen again as Texas' rivers and lakes dry up [Credit: The Texas Historical Commission/Texas Historical Commission]

But now, with the state in the grip of devastating drought, such sites are emerging from receding waters and — for the first time in years, experts worry — becoming vulnerable to looters and vandals.

Since midsummer, the Texas Historical Commission, which oversees such locations, has on average learned of a newly exposed site each month, said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the agency's archaeology director.

Among the sites are four cemeteries, including an apparent slave burial ground in Navarro County, southeast of Dallas. In Central Texas, fishermen recovered a human skull thought to be thousands of years old.

An unspecified number of additional sites have emerged from waters overseen by the Lower Colorado River Authority. An agency spokeswoman refused to discuss details, saying that even divulging the number of newly exposed sites could induce the unscrupulous to search out and pilfer them.

East Texas waterways shroud dozens of sunken vessels, from early Texas ferries to steamboats and World War I-era cargo ships. While most of these craft probably remain underwater, their appearance above water could occur at any time, said state nautical archaeologist Amy Borgens.

Such sites, most of which were submerged before Texans became appreciative of archaeological treasures, can be vital in helping researchers fill the gaps of state history, Mercado-Allinger said.

“In many ways, this is the only way we can learn about these times and the people who came before us,” she said. “I would hope that people who might encounter any archeological sites ... would consider the damage they might do.”

Mercado-Allinger urged those making such discoveries, which are protected under the Texas Antiquities Code, to contact the historical commission's Austin office. Looting or vandalizing such sites can bring penalties of up to 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine per offense.

Thus far, the historical commission has received no definitive reports of sites being looted or damaged. Under normal circumstances, they would be safely submerged. But with most of the state in the throes of what the U.S. Drought Monitor calls an “exceptional” drought, which is the worst category in its five-level rating system, that situation is likely to change.

Water levels of East Texas rivers are well below normal; earlier this year, the Neches was at its lowest point in 90 years.

Borgens said that as many as 300 shipwrecks litter Texas rivers and river mouths. Only 13 have been investigated. While many of the vessels likely were stripped of machinery and artifacts before they sank, a few could provide tantalizing clues to an era when commerce moved by water.

“Many of these are significant because their construction was unique or they were built regionally,” she said.

They also can shed light on now-vanished communities they served.

“It's kind of both an opportunity and a misfortune,” Mercado-Allinger said of receding levels on lakes and rivers. “It does give us an opportunity to view these resources, but we don't have the (financial) resources to deal with them. The historical commission is working with other partners out there to help accomplish these tasks.”

At a very basic level, she said, her agency is trying to facilitate exhumations from submerged graveyards, with reburial of occupants in perpetual care cemeteries.

“It all depends on how much is exposed, where it's exposed and what's happening to it,” she said. “It may be that one option is just to let the water cover them again.”

Author: Allan Turner | Source: My San Antonio [November 06, 2011]

16th century Spanish artifacts unearthed in Georgia, USA

Under a former Native American village in Georgia, deep inside what's now the U.S., archaeologists say they've found 16th-century jewelry and other Spanish artifacts.

Glass beads found during Glass Site dig in southern Georgia [Credit: Dan Schultz, Fernbank Museum of Natural History]

The discovery suggests an expedition led by conquistador Hernando de Soto ventured far off its presumed course—which took the men from Florida to Missouri—and engaged in ceremonies in a thatched, pyramid-like temple.

The discovery could redraw the map of de Soto's 1539-41 march into North America, where he hoped to replicate Spain's overthrow of the Inca Empire in South America. There, the conquistador had served at the side of leader Francisco Pizarro.

A continent and five centuries away, an excavation organized by Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History found buried glass beads, iron tools, and brass and silver ornaments dating to the mid-1500s. The southern-Georgia location—where they'd been searching for a 17th-century Spanish mission—came to be called the Glass Site.

"For an Indian in the South 500 years ago, things like glass beads and iron tools might as well have been iPhones," said project leader Dennis Blanton, an independent archaeologist who until recently was Fernbank's staff archaeologist.

"These were things that were just astonishing to them. They were made of materials that were unknown and were sometimes in brilliant blue and red colors that were unmatched in the native world."

Blanton called the finding a "stunning surprise." Prior to the discovery, it had been generally accepted that de Soto and his men had crossed a river about 100 miles (160 kilometers) upstream of the site, but archaeologists hadn't suspect that the expedition had ventured so far south and east.

The trove of items—all of which could fit into a shoe box – represents the largest collection of early 16th-century Spanish artifacts ever found in the U.S. interior outside of Florida, according to Blanton, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

Quid Pro Quo?

Excavations by Blanton's team suggest a large building with a thatched, pyramid-shaped roof once stood at the Glass Site. The structure was surrounded by a ditch, contained a large central hearth, and may have served as an important ceremonial center or temple.

The concentration of Spanish artifacts at the Glass Site suggests de Soto may have participated in a gift-exchange ceremony with the town's chief and other leaders. It's not known what the Spaniards would have received in return, but they commonly asked for food, information, free passage, baggage carriers, and perhaps female company, Blanton said.

By comparing the archaeological results with journal accounts by the Spanish party, Blanton and his team think the Glass Site was an important village in a province ruled by the Ichisi Indians. The team also believes de Soto and his men stayed there between March 30 and April 2, 1540, according to journals.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

De Soto's party consisted of more than 600 men and hundreds of pigs and horses—animals that many of the Indians had never seen before.

"There are accounts in the chronicles of how Indians at first imagined the mounted men to constitute a single creature," Blanton said.

To encourage cooperation among the Indians and avoid conflict, de Soto sometimes claimed to be a god.

"De Soto took advantage of the fact that the Indians revered the sun and even at Ichisi made the claim to be descended from it," Blanton said.

By 1540 rumors of an "alien people" had already spread among Native Americans in southeastern North America, but few Indians would have encountered any Europeans in the flesh, he said.

"A de Soto encounter would have been for most, if not all, of the people at the Glass Site a wholly new—and undoubtedly startling—experience," Blanton said.

The fact that there is no evidence of mass killing or vandalism at the Glass Site suggests de Soto and his men were treated well during their stay, he added. And in fact Spanish journal records say the Spaniards were lavished with food and hospitality at an Ichisi village, which Blanton suspects was the Glass Site settlement.

This wasn't always the case.

"The Spaniards often treated the Natives very badly, and when the local people did not accede to their demands, de Soto would usually take the local leader hostage until he got his way," said Jeffrey Mitchem, a de Soto scholar with the Arkansas Archeological Survey, who was not involved in the discoveries.

"Usually their demands for food and young women wore out their welcome very quickly," Mitchem said, "so the natives were almost always trying to make them leave as rapidly as possible."

"Even More Spectacular" Than Thought?

Mitchem agreed that the discoveries support the idea that de Soto and his men camped for several days at the Glass Site.

"Many of the specific types of artifacts that have been found at [Glass Site] are the same types recovered from other sites that were contacted by the Hernando de Soto expedition," he said.

The new discoveries will not only help refine de Soto's expedition route, but could also provide valuable insight into how American Indian groups were organized in particular areas.

"As we identify specific Native American towns or villages described in the narratives, we can then look at what the Spanish narratives tell us about the political situation in those specific areas," Mitchem said.

The team has also explored another Georgia Indian site, called Deer Run, but the case for a de Soto encounter there is less conclusive, Blanton said.

While a visit by de Soto's party is the most likely explanation for the artifacts found at the Glass Site, Blanton says there may be another explanation: that the items were left by deserters of the lost Spanish colony of Ayllon. The settlement is known only from writings, and some scholars have proposed it was located on the Georgia coast.

Though it's unlikely that the bead site harbored lost colonists, Blanton said, "if that proves to be true, then the Glass Site record is arguably even more spectacular."

Author: Ker Than | Source: National Geographic News [November 01, 2011]

Flashback: Archaeologists begin recovery of ancient Mayan city in Mexico

Mexican archaeologists have begun the recovery of a great Mayan city buried under tons of earth and jungle in the archaeological area of Ichkabal on the Yucatan peninsula.

Previous archaeological digs in Ichkabal indicated the existence at this site of a vast Mayan settlement comprising many buildings, of which the biggest is some 200 meters (656 feet) wide at the base and 46 meters (151 feet) high [Credit: INAH]

According to a report in the Latin American Herald Tribune, previous archaeological digs in Ichkabal indicated the existence at this site of a vast Mayan settlement comprising many buildings, of which the biggest is some 200 meters (656 feet) wide at the base and 46 meters (151 feet) high.

"This is a city whose construction began in preclassic times, 250 years before Christ," according to the National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH).

The director of the INAH center in Quintana Roo state, Adriana Velazquez, said that while no architectural details are visible on the surface and all that can be seen are mounds covered by "the exuberant vegetation" of the area, their characteristics seem to indicate Peten-style constructions.

The specialist said that everything suggests that hidden here under the ground, the trees and jungle growth is a city covering about 30 square kilometers (11 1/2 square miles) whose study will add important archaeological information to what we know about the ancient Maya civilization.

"The site was undoubtedly the seat of an important political establishment, since in early cities rulers always attempted to validate their power with great construction projects, such as those detected here," said Velazquez.

The site was discovered in 1995 by a local inhabitant, who revealed the existence of pre-Colombian vestiges to archaeologists Luz Evelia Campana and Javier Lopez Camacho, who then toured the southern part of the state to take note of those remains.

A team of archaeologists is currently excavating two of the chief structures and the work is expected to be expanded to include minor structures in order to observe the city's development and the function of the different buildings.

The authorities said that access to the excavations is currently restricted, although in two years, the site is expected to be opened to tourism, once the first stage of the work of recovery and restoration has been concluded.

Source: Banderas News [April 2009]

North America's first settlers didn't dawdle

Scientists here are rewriting an early chapter of the history books that describes how and when humans first set foot on North American soil, based on clues extracted from the blood of their San Antonio descendants.

Beringia [Credit: National Park Service]

Experts agree — based on genetic evidence, bones, artifacts and the study of languages — that the ancestors of American Indians came from Northeast Asia thousands of years ago, crossing the frozen Bering land bridge, probably in pursuit of wild game.

In recent years, some experts have speculated they stopped and settled on that land mass, known as Beringia, for perhaps 15,000 years — a long span of time when four distinct ancestral groups genetically drifted away from their relatives back in Asia. Some think their path to the Americas might have been blocked by glaciers until a great thaw.

The idea of that long pause was based both on genetic studies and archaeological finds, including evidence of human settlements on the Asian side dating to about 30,000 years ago.

But in a new paper, scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute argue that new genetic evidence shows those ancient explorers didn't camp out on the land bridge for 15,000 years as believed. Instead, it was less than 5,000 years — and it's possible they barely stopped at all.

“Beringia was more like a bus stop than a homeland,” said John Blangero, a co-author of the paper and director of the AT and T Genomics Computing Center at Texas Biomed.

“If they stopped, it was very brief — less than 5,000 years,” agreed Satish Kumar, a geneticist at Texas Biomed and lead author of the paper. “Otherwise it is kind of a continuous movement to America. They were diverging from Siberian-Asian ancestors, coming to America.”

Their evidence comes from genetic material found within mitochondria — tiny bodies within cells that generate energy, like power plants.

Unlike regular DNA, mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother and changes mainly through normal mutations from generation to generation. Scientists have calculated how often those mutations take place, making it possible to mark time from them like rings on a tree.

Kumar and Blangero didn't set out to rewrite history books. Instead they were studying the mitochondrial DNA of hundreds of Mexican American volunteers in the San Antonio Family Heart Study to learn more about the genetic origins of diabetes and obesity. Many scientists have speculated that the high rate of diabetes in Mexican Americans is linked to their blood ties to American Indians, who have even higher diabetes rates.

Kumar identified American Indian portions of the DNA from 215 local volunteers and combined that information with records of DNA collected by other researchers from American Indians and Asians. From those he could create timelines, following each group through the years as new families branched off from old ones and spread into North, Central and South America.

Exactly when each of the four groups crossed into the Americas isn't clear — probably between 16,000 and 20,000 years ago at the end of a period called the Last Glacial Maximum, the researchers said. But three estimates for mutation rates have been put forward by scientists, and Kumar ran all of them for this study — coming up with a range of dates. All of them showed a stop in Beringia of less than 5,000 years.

Kumar, an expert in mitochondrial DNA, had done similar work in years past, helping to trace the roots of Australian aboriginal tribes from India through southern Asia.

Author: Don Finley | Source: My San Antonio [November 05, 2011]