Cambodia Requests Return of Artifacts Acquired After 1970

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Cambodian officials have requested the return of Khmer objects acquired by American museums after 1970, when many artifacts were stolen during the chaos of civil war. As many as six 1,000-year-old Hindu statues from the temple of Prasat Chen are thought to be in the United States. Two of those statues, known as the Kneeling Attendants, were held at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are due to be returned to Cambodia next month. “If other museums are confronted with the kind of evidence that the Met was provided, I believe the Met’s actions will serve as an appropriate example for them to follow,” said Stephen K. Urice of the University of Miami School of Law. Sotheby’s has possession of another statue, the mythic warrior known as Duryodhanna, which was withdrawn from auction in 2011 after a Cambodia objected to the sale. 

Sea Island Slave Cabin Moves to New Museum

EDISTO ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA—A slave cabin dating from the 1850s has been dismantled and transported to the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African-American History in Washington, D.C. The cabin is one of two to have survived at the Point of Pines Plantation in South Carolina, and was occupied, without electricity or heat, until the 1980s, when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. “The sea island history is so rich and multigenerational. This history has been tucked away,” said Nancy Bercaw, curator of the new museum, which will open in 2015.

Historic Iron Forge Investigated

PIGEON FORGE, TENNESSEE—Iron Forge, the original iron forge in the city of Pigeon Forge, was built on the Little Pigeon River in 1817. A team of archaeologists spent a day investigating the site. “There’s iron ore all along the ridge up there by Middle Creek Road, and they would just bring that down here and put it in the forge,” said archaeologist and blacksmith Alan Longmire of the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The team identified the location of the forge’s furnace, water wheel, where water drained, and wooden artifacts, including the beam on which the water wheel turned. The information will be combined into a map of the site. Further excavation will require additional funding.

Are Dogs and Humans Evolutionary Partners?

BEIJING, CHINA—Geneticist Guo-dong Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his team analyzed the DNA of four gray wolves, three indigenous Chinese dogs, a German shepherd, a Belgian Malinois, and a Tibetan mastiff. Their results indicate that gray wolves split from Chinese dogs some 32,000 years ago. They then compared corresponding genes in dogs and humans, and found that domestic dogs and their human partners experienced similar changes in digestion, metabolism, and brain chemistry as they evolved together. “As domestication is often associated with large increases in population density and crowded living conditions, these ‘unfavorable’ environments might be the selective pressure that drove the rewiring of both species,” the team wrote.

Direct Evidence: Projectiles are at Least 90,000 Years Old

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA—Archaeologist Corey O’Driscoll has developed a method of determining if wounds on bones were made by spears thrown from a distance. Indirect evidence from examining stone point, suggests that humans living in Africa began hurling weapons as early as 500,000 years ago, but this evidence is often disputed. To solve this problem, O’Driscoll and a colleague knapped flint spear and arrow points modeled after Middle Stone Age technology from Africa. They then threw the replica spears and fired the replica arrows at lamb and cow carcasses, defleshed the bones, and compared the marks on the bones with a reference collection of butchered animal bones. O’Driscoll found that the butchering marks and the projectile impact marks have clear differences when viewed with a microscope, including traces of stone left in the projectile point wounds. He and Jessica Thompson of the University of Queensland then examined three animal bones from Pinnacle Point Cave in South Africa. Using the new diagnostic criteria, they identified projectile impact marks on all three bones, two of which are between 91,000 and 98,000 years old—the oldest direct evidence for the use of projectile weapons.

New Zealand’s Earliest Inhabitants

OTAGO, NEW ZEALAND—A new study of three groups of skeletons discovered in a cemetery at Wairau Bar suggests that the first group may have come from Polynesia to colonize New Zealand some 700 years ago. The ratio of isotopes in their bones are similar to those found in the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. The later groups of individuals probably grew up while covering a large area of New Zealand. “This is consistent with other archaeological evidence that the first settlers in New Zealand were highly mobile. That members of Groups 2 and 3 were still buried back at Wairau suggests that this village may have fulfilled both a ceremonial and home base function,” said Hallie Buckley of the University of Otago. Traditionally, Maori are buried in their ancestral lands.

China’s First Farmers

BEIJING, CHINA—An analysis of 5,000-year-old grinding stones suggests that agriculture may have begun in southern China before the arrival of domesticated rice. Huw Barton of the University of Leicester and Xiaoyan Yang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the preserved starch granules represented freshwater chestnuts, lotus root, fern root, and palms. “The presence of at least two, possibly three species of starch producing palms, bananas, and various roots, raises the intriguing possibility that these plants may have been planted nearby the settlement,” said Barton. The presence of palm could explain the slow transition to rice as a staple food in the region.

The Nile River’s Fertile Gifts

ORLANDO, FLORIDA—The number of births for the Kellis community living at Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis 1,800 years ago probably peaked in March and April, indicating that most conceptions took place in July and August, during the annual flooding of the Nile River. “Even though this was a Christian community, we know that they were still practicing, or having these social beliefs of, fertility being at its highest in the months of July and August,” said Lana Williams of the University of Central Florida. Her team examined the well-preserved remains found in 765 graves, including remains of individuals who died between 18 and 45 weeks after conception. This information was combined with the month of death, determined from the position of the graves, which were oriented toward the rising sun. They found that the death rate of women of childbearing age and infants was greatest in March and April.

The Bored Viking

OSLO, NORWAY—Outlines of a left foot and a right foot have been found in the floorboards of the Gokstad Ship, which was discovered in 1880 and is housed at the Viking Ship Museum. The ship had been buried in a grave, but its floorboards were not in place, so researchers don’t know if the carvings had been near one another while the ship was at sea. “My guess is that some time or another a person was bored and simply traced his foot with his knife. It’s a kind of an ‘I was here’ message,” said museum staffer Hanne Lovise Aannestad.

Were Neanderthals Capable of Abstract Thought?

BARCELONA, SPAIN—Archaeologists are working on obtaining new dates for the prehistoric paintings in Spain’s El Castillo Cave by measuring the rate of decay of uranium atoms in the calcite covering the artwork. The oldest of the paintings is thought to be at least 40,800 years old, about the same time that the first modern humans are thought to have entered Western Europe. The new dates could show that that paintings are even older, indicating that they were created by Neanderthals, who occupied the region for some 200,000 years before the arrival of Homo sapiens. Meanwhile, scholars continue to debate the complexity of Neanderthal cultural behavior, and whether or not it was copied from their Homo sapiens cousins. João Zilhão of the University of Barcelona thinks that Neanderthals and modern humans were “cognitive equals.” His goal is “to date pigments in these paintings to an age that is clearly and to everyone’s satisfaction beyond the range of modern humans in Europe,” he explained.

Bone Find Reveals Site of Lost Saxon Church

WALLINGFORD, ENGLAND—Construction workers uncovered a medieval skeleton at a home in southern England. The bones have helped archaeologists pinpoint the location of St. Lucian’s, a Saxon church and one of the oldest in the town. “St. Lucian’s Church pre-dates the Norman Conquest, so this is an exciting discovery,” said Judy Dewey, curator of the Wallingford Museum. The bones have been reburied in the home’s garden.

Possible Mi’kmaq Site in Path of Proposed Dam Upgrade

GASPEREAU LAKE, NOVA SCOTIA—Archaeological research and local tradition suggest that an ancestral Mi’kmaq burial ground rests in an area slated for an upgrade to a dam on Gaspereau Lake. The Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq Chiefs has asked Nova Scotia Power for an independent engineering assessment of the proposed work because they would like the work to be carried out further downstream, away from the possible burials. “The proposed work is a requirement under the national dam-safety standards to ensure public safety. At the same time, we are doing all we can to ensure archaeologically significant sites are protected,” responded Dave McGregor of Nova Scotia Power.  

Salvage Excavations Conducted at Oregon Trail Site

EVANSVILLE, WYOMING—Archaeologists and volunteers have until Sunday evening to conduct salvage excavations at the site of Camp Payne, which guarded Reshaw’s Bridge, an Oregon Trail river crossing, during the 1850s and 1860s. “This is the first military post in this area,” said Carolyn Buff of the Wyoming Archaeological Society. The land has been sold by the town and will be turned into a housing development. “We’re going to do absolutely everything we can until Sunday evening, and we have to call it good,” added Wyoming State Archaeologist Mark Miller.