Possible Medieval Helmet Recovered Off Sicily’s Coast

PALERMO, ITALY—The Miami Herald reports that a helmet thought to have been worn by an infantryman during the late medieval period or the early Renaissance has been found on the ocean floor off the southeastern coast of Sicily by researchers from the Superintendency of the Sea. The helmet is oval in shape with a ridge along its bottom edge and a crest across the top, in a style known as a cabasset, or a capacete in Spanish and Portuguese. It is not clear if the artifact was part of a shipwreck, or if it was lost on its own by a soldier at sea. The divers plan to return to the site for further investigation of the area. To read about a Byzantine shipwreck discovered off the Sicilian coast, go to "Shipping Stone."

Hominins Quarried Stone Near Animal Migration Routes

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—According to a Live Science report, a new study suggests that hominins who lived in what is now the Upper Galilee used local quarries to make tools for hunting and butchering elephants that visited nearby water sources between about two million and 500,000 years ago. Meir Finkel of Tel Aviv University said that elephants follow the same routes to reliable water sources because they each consume more than 100 gallons of it daily. Finkel and his colleagues examined such migration routes used by ancient elephants, based upon the landscape of the Upper Galilee and fossils analyzed in an earlier study, and determined that they corresponded with local hominin quarries. These quarries were also within walking distance of several Paleolithic sites, the researchers noted. But killing, butchering, and preserving such a large animal is a dangerous undertaking that draws other predators. The job would have had to have been completed quickly. Large quantities of suitable cutting tools would have been prepared in advance of the hunt, explained Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University. “It was tradition: For hundreds of thousands of years, the elephants wandered along the same route, while humans produced stone tools nearby,” he concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Archaeologies. To read about the discovery of the remains of a mammoth that was butchered some 14,500 years ago in what is now Illinois, go to "America, in the Beginning: Schaefer and Hebior Kill Sites."

Roman and Medieval Artifacts Found at Slovakia Site

RIMAVSKÁ SOBOTA, SLOVAKIA—The Slovak Spectator reports that traces of a medieval settlement have been uncovered in south-central Slovakia. Archaeologists suggest the settlement may be Kľačany, known from a document dated to 1557. Kľačany had been in decline and is thought to have been abandoned due to Turkish raids. The excavation has also unearthed evidence that the site was occupied during the Roman era, such as furnaces for drying mud ore, metallurgical debris, and other semi-finished industrial products. A new industrial park will be constructed on the site. To read about excavations of an unusual mass grave in Vráble, Slovakia, go to "Neolithic Mass Grave Mystery."

Violent Wounds Examined on 2,500-Year-Old Bones From Peru

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—According to a statement released by the São Paulo Research Foundation, the skeletons of 67 individuals who were buried in a cemetery in Peru’s Supe Valley of the Central Andes between 500 and 400 B.C., shortly after the time of the collapse of the Chavín culture, have been analyzed. Bioarchaeologist Luis Pezo-Lanfranco said that 80 percent of the adults and adolescents in the study had traumatic injuries, including wounds to the skull, face, and chest, with no signs of survival or healing. Such wounds had also been inflicted upon children, he added. “Our hypothesis is that a group of strangers came to the community and committed the murders,” Pezo-Lanfranco explained. “After the aggressors left, the murder victims were buried by their own people with the usual funeral rites, as suggested by the burial patterns.” Some of the remains also showed signs of healed wounds, indicating that the individuals had previously survived a violent encounter. Meanwhile, the overall condition of the bones suggests that the people experienced physical stresses and infectious diseases, perhaps brought on by increased competition and a resulting shortage of resources during the turbulent period of the collapse. To read about a culture in the Supe Valley that is often considered the first city-building civilization in the Americas, go to "Around the World: Peru."

Face of China’s Emperor Wu Reconstructed

SHANGHAI, CHINA—Live Science reports that researchers led by Pianpian Wei and Shaoqing Wen of Fundan University created a digital 3-D facial approximation of Emperor Wu, who ruled China’s Northern Zhou Dynasty from A.D. 560 to 578, when he died at the age of 36. The reconstruction is based on analysis of the emperor’s skeletal remains and a DNA sample taken from his nearly complete skull, which were discovered in his tomb in northwestern China in 1996. The image depicts Emperor Wu with brown eyes, black hair, and a darker complexion resembling Northern and Eastern Asians. The DNA analysis also suggests that he was a member of the Xianbei, a nomadic group that migrated southward into Mongolia and northern China, where they mixed with people who were ethnically Han. Additionally, the researchers determined through the DNA analysis that Emperor Wu had an increased risk of stroke. Historic records described Wu as having drooping eyelids, an abnormal gait, and aphasia, or the inability to understand or express speech, which are all potential symptoms of stroke. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Current Biology. To read about excavations in Sichuan Province that uncovered the lost treasury of a seventeenth-century warlord, go to "China's River of Gold."

3,000-Year-Old Beads from England's Must Farm Studied

PETERBOROUGH, ENGLAND—According to a BBC News report, an analysis of beads unearthed at Must Farm suggests that most of the glass was made in what is now Iran, while the glass for one bead is thought to have come from Egypt. The site, which is located in eastern England, consists of the remains of about 10 circular houses that stood on stilts in a river before they were destroyed by fire some 3,000 years ago. Beads made of amber, shale, siltstone, faience, and tin were among the many artifacts preserved in the river’s silt. “Some of the beads must have been got from northern Britain and possibly even Ireland, while the glass came from a very, very long way across the sea," said archaeologist Alison Sheridan. The amber bead may have been made from material imported from Scandinavia, she added. “But there is also the faience bead, the only one known from this late Bronze Age period in Britain, while the tin bead is incredibly rare, as it doesn’t usually survive, it tends to oxidize,” Sheridan commented. To read about a study of the provenance of ancient gold jewelry uncovered in Ireland, go to "Bronze Age Ireland's Taste in Gold."

Medieval Castle and Moat Uncovered in France

VANNES, FRANCE—A castle, a moat, and a bridge have been uncovered in northwestern France, according to a CBS News report. Researchers from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research found the 600-year-old fortress, built by the Duke of Brittany Jean IV, underneath the courtyard of Château Lagorce. The structure measured about 140 feet long and 55 feet wide. Traces of staircases suggest that it may have been three or four stories tall. Coins dated to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, jewelry, pots, pans, and fragments of wooden bowls and barrels were recovered in a system of latrines and pipes. A mill powered by water flowing through a canal under the castle was also found. Once the flowing water had turned the mill wheel, it was released into the moat through a grated opening in the mill room. To read about excavations of a medieval cemetery in northwestern France, go to "Buried With Care."

Bronze Age Microbiome Analyzed

DUBLIN, IRELAND—According to a statement released by Oxford University Press USA, Lara Cassidy of Trinity College Dublin and her colleagues analyzed the oral microbiome of a man whose 4,000-year-old remains were discovered in a cave in southwestern Ireland. The remains of other people who had been buried in the cave showed advanced dental decay, but two teeth taken from this particular man showed no evidence of dental carries. Evidence of the bacterium S. mutans, which is the primary cause of dental decay, was detected on the root of one of his teeth, however. Cassidy and her colleagues noted that other species of streptococcal bacteria usually found in ancient biofilms were absent from the sample, yet it contained two different strains of T. forsythia, a bacteria involved in gum disease. “These strains from a single ancient mouth were more genetically different from one another than any pair of modern strains in our dataset, despite these modern samples deriving from Europe, Japan, and the USA,” said team member Iseult Jackson. “This is interesting because a loss of biodiversity can have negative impacts on the oral environment and human health,” she explained. The researchers also determined that these disease-causing bacteria have changed dramatically over time, likely through a shift to more sugar in the human diet. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Molecular Biology and Evolution. For more, go to "Worlds Within Us."