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Archaeological discoveries, breakthroughs and theories

Stone inscribed with Ogham script found in Coventry!

A teacher was tidying his overgrown garden when he discovered the rock.

mottled brown stone with engraved script of straight lines
The ogham stone is 11cm long and weighs 139g.

Graham Senior washed the find and contacted an archaeologist relative, who suggested he get in touch with the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

Katherine Forsyth, professor of Celtic Studies at the University of Glasgow [...] confirmed that it was an ogham script, that of an early style, which most likely dates to the fifth to sixth century but possibly as early as the fourth century.

[Archaeologist Teresa] Gilmore said such stones were “very rare and have generally been found in Ireland or Scotland … so to find them in the Midlands is actually unusual.”

She suggested it could be linked to people coming over from Ireland or to early medieval monasteries in the area. “You would have had monks and clerics moving between the different monasteries.”

Mr Senior has donated the stone to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. It will feature in the forthcoming Collecting Coventry exhibition, which opens on 11 May.

Teacher finds stone with ancient ogham writing from Ireland in Coventry garden
 

Soldier graffiti found on castle door in ‘astonishing discovery’​


More than 50 etchings from soldiers have been discovered on an English castle door in an “astonishing discovery,” including graffiti of what could depict the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte being hanged.



The door was only recently discovered in Dover Castle, in southeast England./..



 
I watched a fascinating documentary last week on Channel 5 of all places about a recent technological breakthrough in trying to read the Herculaneum script rolls. For those unaware of them, as I was until last week, they are 2,000 year-old rolled up script rolls that were carbonised during the infamous Vesubius eruption that destroyed said town as well as nearby Pompeii.

The rolls, hundreds of them, were found a few decades ago during the excavation of what was the largest and most opulent villa in the settlement, and are thought to contain many works of ancient philosophy, literature and history long lost to mankind. The problem has been that whenever someone has tried to unroll one of them, however carefully, they have invariably disintegrated and only a few scraps with legible text could be salvaged.

But now for the very first time, a team from the US, using an extremely advanced type of X-ray machine combined with AI learning software programmed to interpret and decipher the extremely complex and distorted x-ray readings, has for the first time been able to read a page of one of the petrified script rolls in their current rolled up state. The team now hopes they have cracked the problem and will in time be able to extract the information from all the surviving scripts.

Very fucking cool indeed, and the documentary on C5 is well worth checking. Here’s some more info about the breakthrough

 
Was reading this story on neanderthal art: Neanderthals: The oldest art in the world wasn't made by humans and the author has a book out: Homo Sapiens Rediscovered
Published late last year and not read it but the write-up suggests it might come at the question from the angle you mention: "He focuses in particular on behaviour, using archaeological evidence to bring an intimate perspective on lives as they were lived in the almost unimaginably distant past."
More Neanderthal stuff, this time on their language (or lack of it):


I'm not really sure about this new "Neanderthals didn't have metaphors" thing. Surely art of any kind implies a capacity for metaphor ("Ceci n'est pas un pipe", etc.)?
 
I watched a fascinating documentary last week on Channel 5 of all places about a recent technological breakthrough in trying to read the Herculaneum script rolls. For those unaware of them, as I was until last week, they are 2,000 year-old rolled up script rolls that were carbonised during the infamous Vesubius eruption that destroyed said town as well as nearby Pompeii.

The rolls, hundreds of them, were found a few decades ago during the excavation of what was the largest and most opulent villa in the settlement, and are thought to contain many works of ancient philosophy, literature and history long lost to mankind. The problem has been that whenever someone has tried to unroll one of them, however carefully, they have invariably disintegrated and only a few scraps with legible text could be salvaged.

But now for the very first time, a team from the US, using an extremely advanced type of X-ray machine combined with AI learning software programmed to interpret and decipher the extremely complex and distorted x-ray readings, has for the first time been able to read a page of one of the petrified script rolls in their current rolled up state. The team now hopes they have cracked the problem and will in time be able to extract the information from all the surviving scripts.

Very fucking cool indeed, and the documentary on C5 is well worth checking. Here’s some more info about the breakthrough

scanning costs are v. high but not impossible money high. I know some are hoping to turn up the gospel of st paul.
 
All they'll probably find in the currently-excavated scrolls is stuff by the library's philosopher-in-residence who was a relative nobody. But there's potentially far more still buried. Probably the villa's show-off collection of literature etc. It's got the potential to completely revolutionise classical history.

Transporting them without destroying them takes a a great deal of care, and the x-ray synchrotron needed for scanning is the kind of high-demand "national lab" machine you can't really monopolise. To read them en masse, they're going to need to build scanning facilities right next to the dig.

Project masterplan:
 
this is a feather in their cap!



Amateur Historians Heard Tales of a Lost Tudor Palace. Then, They Dug It Up.

In a small English village, a group of dedicated locals has unearthed the remains of a long-vanished palace that had been home to Henry VIII’s grandmother.
 
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Scientists have discovered a 50,000-year-old herpes virus – and perhaps how modern humans came to rule the world
Opinion. Archaeology. Jonathan Kennedy. Thu 30 May 2024
Less than a decade ago, the American anthropologist James C Scott described infectious diseases as the “loudest silence” in the prehistoric archaeological record. Epidemics must have devastated human societies in the distant past and changed the course of history, but, Scott lamented, the artefacts left behind reveal nothing about them.
Over the last few years, the silence has been shattered by pioneering research that analyses microbial DNA extracted from very old human skeletons. The latest example of this is a groundbreaking study that identified three viruses in 50,000-year-old Neanderthal bones. These pathogens still afflict modern humans: adenovirus, herpesvirus and papillomavirus cause the common cold, cold sores, and genital warts and cancer, respectively. The discovery may help us resolve the greatest mystery of the Palaeolithic era: what caused the extinction of Neanderthals.
 
Good article on three of the lines of evidence that point to Africa as the birthplace of humans: linguistic diversity, fossils, and genetics.

 
There are thousands of species of birds living on Earth today–anywhere from around 10,000 to as many as 18,000, depending on how you define “species.” The fossil record suggests that almost all of this feathered, flying diversity emerged in the aftermath of the last major extinction 66 million years ago, when an asteroid rocked the planet and drove the non-avian dinosaurs extinct. Only a few birds–chicken, ostrich, and duck-like creatures–made it across the extinction line, giving rise to the dizzying array of modern birds: From songbirds to corvids to parrots.




 
Not sure if this exactly counts, but here's an FT article on Bennett Bacon's analysis of markings found with Ice Age paintings: he reckons they mark lunar months between winter and mating seasons.

Did a furniture carver in Crouch End crack the code to early human writing?​

A doughty citizen scientist is convinced the dots and ‘squiggles’ made among the animals in cave paintings are more than what they seem

paywall busted

(Betteridge's law of headlines noted)
 
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