Feature Channels: Archaeology and Anthropology

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Will the year 2012 spell the end of life on Earth as we know it? Columbia Pictures’ upcoming disaster movie "2012" suggests that it will. Based loosely on interpretations of the Mayan long count calendar, which ends its 5,125-year cycle on December 21, 2012, the movie’s trailer features the tagline, “Mankind’s earliest civilization warned us this day was coming.” But judging by the track records of other ancient apocalyptic traditions, we probably have nothing to worry about, says Allen Kerkeslager, Ph.D., associate professor of theology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

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Research examining microscopic marks on the teeth of the “Lucy” species Australopithecus afarensis suggests that the ancient hominid ate a different diet than the tooth enamel, size and shape suggest, say a University of Arkansas researcher and his colleagues.

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A scientific analysis of a recently discovered adapiform, an ancient primate, reveals that the fossil, called Afradapis, is not on the evolutionary lineage of anthropoids (Old World Monkeys and higher primates, including humans) but instead more closely to lemurs and lorises.

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In January, Williams College Professor of Chemistry Anne Skinner, along with six Williams students, will visit the headwaters of the Blue Nile to conduct archeological research. The project is part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.

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New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages. Researchers are making high-quality electronic images of nearly 700 Aramaic administrative documents that were incised or written in ink on clay tablets.

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Two Native American Music Award winners highlight this year’s Moundville Native American Festival, from Wednesday, Oct. 7 to Saturday, Oct. 10, at Moundville Archaeological Park.

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Fabric and textile artist Jay McGirt is sewing thousands of feathers onto a piece of burlap. The piece of decorated fabric, when completed, will stretch across the top of a Native American palanquin.

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A gemstone engraved with the portrait of Alexander the Great was uncovered at Tel Dor during excavations by an archaeological team directed by Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of the University of Haifa and Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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An ancient treasure comprising three figurines of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which was buried underground for over 1,500 years, was uncovered by researchers of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

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Stone tools and rare animal bones found by Indiana U. underwater archaeologists in a water-filled cave in the Dominican Republic could offer clues to the earliest inhabitants of the region and the animals they encountered.

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Massive burning of forests for agriculture thousands of years ago may have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to alter global climate and usher in a warming trend that continues today, according to a new study that appears online Aug. 17 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

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Evidence that early modern humans living on the coast of Africa employed pyrotechnology in their stone tool manufacturing process is being reported by researchers, including three from the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, in the Aug. 14 issue of Science.

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This scholarly work examines a most central subject matter in the study of colonial Mesoamerica: indigenous social memory. This region of Southern North America was occupied during the pre-Columbian era by a variety of peoples with common cultural elements. Megged provides monumental insight of the indigenous social memory of these peoples.

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A statistical analysis reveals distinct patterns in ancient Indus symbols, and creates a hypothetical model for the as-yet-unknown language.

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A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.

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Freshwater fish are an important part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became an important part of the year-round diet for early humans. A new study by an international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows it may have happened in China as far back as 40,000 years ago.

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USC archaelogists to probe origins of ancient artifacts at Argonne National Laboratory.

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Thanks to the skills of artists who work on cold case investigations, people have a chance to see what a mummy may have looked like in real life. Working independently, a forensic artist and a police artist prepared the images, which depict an engaging woman in her late 20s as she would have looked in 800 B.C. Both artists produced strikingly similar images.

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Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to better understand how people settled and interacted in the inhospitable Kuril Islands.

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Aspects of knowing about a parent's or grandparent's Holocaust experiences and traumas are transmitted to other members of the family through unspoken and sometimes unintentional behaviors in the home. This leads to a "knowledge" and presence of the Holocaust that, despite remaining unspoken, contributes to the life experiences and constitutes the personality of the person exposed to it.

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An artificial underground cave, one of the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa's Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was one of its kind. Various engravings were uncovered in the cave, including cross markings.

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More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.

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Archaeologists from the University of South Carolina have located two large cannon from a sunken Confederate gunboat in the Pee Dee River and have identified where the Mars Bluff Naval Yard once stood on the east side of the river in Marion County, S.C.

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A wealth of material that documents the ancient Middle East has become available through a new, free online service at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The material comes from the extensive collection at the institute, which is a major publisher of important academic books on the languages, history and cultures of the ancient Middle East.

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The Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) 2009 Archaeology Field School will conduct excavations at the site that includes Madam C.J. Walker's home and the neighboring store and Walker Company office that Walker first rented when she moved to Indianapolis in the early 1900s.

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An international team of paleoanthropologists, anatomists and archeologists, led by William L. Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University,have published the first scientific analysis of the foot of Homo floresiensis, the fossil found in Indonesia in 2003 and popularly referred to as the "Hobbit." Their findings are reported in the May 7 issue of Nature.

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Prototype cast of a "˜Hobbit' skeleton was publicly displayed for the first time ever at Stony Brook University's 7th Annual Human Evolution Symposium on Tuesday, April 21, courtesy of the National Research and Development Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia. World-Renowned Anthropologist Richard Leakey convened top researchers to separate fact from myth of "˜Flo,' the Enigmatic "˜Hobbit.'

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Scholars are using modern technology to digitally record thousands of tablets that, as they are being pieced together, tell an unusually detailed story of the Persian Empire. These ancient tablets from the palaces of Persepolis include pieces of language and art from the center of the empire, all made when it extended from India to the Mediterranean.

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Scholars have recently question whether ancient Indus inscriptions code for language. American and Indian scientists used statistics to show that the 4,500-year-old Indus symbols' pattern follows that of other spoken languages.

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The first recipient of a new fellowship linking the University of Chicago and Cambridge University will study the only remaining records of a little known empire whose capital has been buried for years under Aleppo, a city in Syria. He will also examine previously unread documents if the famous Hammurabian code copied ideas from an earlier civilization.

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Researchers at the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional archaeological discovery in the Jordan valley: Enormous "foot-shaped" enclosures identified with the biblical "gilgal" stone structures. "The 'foot' structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot."

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A University of Illinois at Chicago biblical scholar will co-host "Who Was Jesus?," a new Discovery Channel documentary series that explores the life of Jesus and life in the first century.

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Maize was domesticated from its wild ancestor more than 8700 years according to biological evidence uncovered by researchers in the Mexico's Central Balsas River Valley. This is the earliest dated evidence -- by 1200 years -- for the presence and use of domesticated maize.

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World-renowned anthropologist Richard Leakey convenes top researchers to discuss "˜Flo,' the Enigmatic "˜Hobbit'.

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The adage that dead men tell no tales has long been disproved by archaeology.

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Kirstin C. Erickson, a University of Arkansas anthropologist, is the first scholar to examine the ways in which Yaqui women's social and sacred use of the home space is "integral to Yaquiness," the sense of ethnic identity and connection with the past.

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Two anthropologists from Western Illinois University will meet with residents of three Illinois river counties - - Hancock, Henderson and Mercer - - who were seriously affected by the 2008 floods and are willing to share their insights, in an effort to improve disaster response.

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Ancient Egyptians may be best known for building pyramids, but internationally renowned maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward wants the world to know that they were pretty good sailors, too.

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The George Washington University professor Brian Richmond and his colleagues have discovered a set of 1.5 million-year-old human ancestor footprints in Kenya that show the earliest direct evidence of a modern human style of upright walking called bipedalism.

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Greg Retallack picked up his first fossil as a 6-year-old on a beach in Coledale, Australia. The fossil-- a clam shell -- sparked a lifelong passion for collecting all over the world. Retallack, a University of Oregon geology professor, recently donated most of it to the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

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Contrary to the TV sitcom where the wife experiencing strong labor pains screams at her husband to stay away from her, women rarely give birth alone. Assisted birth has likely been around for millennia, possibly dating as far back as 5 million years ago when our ancestors first began walking upright, according to University of Delaware paleoanthropologist Karen Rosenberg.

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Using radio signals instead of shovels, a physics faculty member from Ithaca College, along with local archeologists, has found evidence of additional 1,300-year-old pit houses five miles from the Las Vegas Strip. This recent find promises to give archaeologists new insights into how people who once lived in the Southwest transitioned from a foraging society to a sedentary one. Satellite Uplink available on campus.

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University of Arkansas anthropology professor Peter Ungar spends hours crouched in forests in remote locations studying monkeys; he uses dental techniques to create molds of teeth; and he uses modern-day technology to study the wear and tear on those teeth to look at what modern-day primates eat "“ and for clues as to what our ancient human ancestors actually ate.

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In an unusual intersection of materials science and anthropology, researchers from NIST and The George Washington University have applied materials-science-based mathematical models to help shed light on the dietary habits of some of mankind's prehistoric relatives.

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As the debate rages on about whether Homo floresiensis "“ so called "Hobbit" "“ fossils discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 represent a separate human species, researchers currently in the process of describing and analyzing the remains will all be in the same place at once to advance the discussion on Tuesday, April 21, during the 7th Annual Human Evolution Symposium at Stony Brook University.

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The facial structure of an ancient relative of modern humans may have evolved to allow them to eat large, hard nuts and seeds as part of a survival strategy, according to a new study by an international team of researchers that includes Florida State University's Dennis E. Slice.

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New research conducted in part by researchers at The George Washington University has led to novel insights into how feeding and dietary adaptations may have shaped the evolution of the earliest humans.

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This is a revised version of a feature story that was issued Jan. 20. University of North Dakota anthropologist Frank Cuozzo and his colleagues are studying threats posed to the local ringtailed lemur population of a remote region in southern Madagascar. What they've found is that overgrazing by cattle herds has decimated the supply of soft fruits and other palatable lemur delights outside of a lemur conservation zone. This has forced the lemurs high into the trees above the degraded areas to feed on the tough pods of the fruit from the tamarind tree. The change in diet has been too rapid for the lemurs' bodies to adapt, causing intense tooth wear and severe oral infections that impact their overall health.

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When scientific results correlate with a topic of great popular controversy, there is potential for an exciting story--such as the one that will be told Feb. 18 by Anthropology Professor Tom Levy at the University of California, San Diego Social Sciences Supper Club.

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University of North Dakota anthropologist Frank Cuozzo and his colleagues are interested in threats to the local ringtail lemur population in remote southern Madagascar. What they've found is that overgrazing by cattle herds has decimated the supply of soft fruits and other palatable lemur delights outside of the conservation zone. This forces the lemurs high into the trees above the grassland to feed on the tough pods of the fruit from the tamarind tree.