An ivory comb with a Canaanite inscription discovered at Tel Lachish marks a significant milestone in the history of writing.

Archaeologists are puzzled by a large, shallow structure found beneath the Giza pyramids, measuring 10 meters wide by 15 meters long and less than 2 meters deep.

Prehistoric tools unearthed in Maryland suggest that humans arrived in the Americas 7,000 years earlier than previously believed, with evidence from Parsons Island challenging the widely-accepted habitation date of 15,000 years ago.

Bruce D. Lowery and colleagues have frequently visited Parsons Island, which is rapidly eroding due to rising sea levels, uncovering artifacts that continue to spark debate, though definitive proof is still elusive.

Researcher James Feathers notes that widespread acceptance of such findings sometimes depends on generational shifts in academic thinking.

A company best known for playful filters has leveraged augmented reality to let museum visitors experience historical artworks in innovative ways, exemplified by digitally re-creating artifacts like the Elgin Marbles.

The British Museum collaborated with Snap to virtually install the Elgin Marbles, using AR to surpass physical limitations and offer new educational experiences.

One expert predicts that in the future, creating AR museum installations will become a mainstream career, allowing greater public access to cultural heritage.

Excavations continued through harsh winter conditions in Colonial Williamsburg, where archaeologists aimed to uncover the layout of an early 18th-century garden, and learned about historical resourcefulness during droughts in the 1730s.

At the First Baptist Church dig site, a coin was found below brickwork near the 1818 church's foundation, with the church having stood through destruction and rebuilding in the 19th century.

Artifacts uncovered include wine bottles, some bearing the John Custis seal, and a large sea turtle shell assumed to have been food, with all finds stored for research and display.

Plans are underway to construct a new archaeological facility, pending fundraising success.

Discussions about the independent origins of democracy in the Americas highlight how archaeological re-examination using new ideas and methods can yield fresh insights.

Case studies suggest cave dwellings provide lessons for modern sustainable design, underscoring the relevance of past practices.

In St. Vincent, Vincent Reid is mapping petroglyphs and heritage sites, emphasizing public awareness and preservation, though some petroglyphs are found on private land.

Attila the Hun likely attacked Rome to save his people from starvation, and after his death in 453, internal strife followed, affecting his historical reputation.

A recently published study in the Journal of Roman Archaeology offers new perspectives on Attila’s actions.

A South Carolina archaeology intern learned that the future of the discipline depends on engaging the public, encouraging broader participation and interpretation of findings.

A treasure valued at half a million dollars was recently found inside a sperm whale.

In the mountains of Sochi, 14 new dolmens were discovered in the largely forgotten village of Shkhafit, which locals still remember well.

The dolmen in a village yard is considered one of Sochi's wonders and serves as evidence of an ancient culture with spiritual significance.

Researchers believe the dolmens emitted strong energy and played a role in rituals symbolizing death and spiritual rebirth.

Shamans reportedly used the dolmens as portals for communicating with spirits or retrieving the souls of the sick.

The megaliths' unique and diverse locations may correspond to astronomical events such as the winter or summer solstice.

Researcher Mikhail Kudin plans further expeditions to these dolmens to uncover their mysteries.

The discovery of these structures has triggered debate among experts about the possibility of a highly developed ancient civilization in the region.

In Sweden, archaeologists unearthed a treasure trove of over 30,000 artifacts, including a 15th-century gold ring engraved with Christ.

These finds contribute to understanding various social classes and the historical effects of events like the Kalmar War on Swedish cities.

In Egypt, archaeologists uncovered the upper half of a statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II at Hermopolis, complementing its lower half found a century earlier.

Gehad was invited to lead a team of field explorers in Hermopolis, and the statue may remain on site or be displayed in a museum.

Some artifacts, composed of sand or degraded limestone, present preservation challenges, as noted by Trnka-Amrain.

The origin and function of the mysterious Solovetsky labyrinths raise questions about a possible shared civilization in Northern Europe.

There is ongoing debate about the origins and cultural significance of stone “mustache” mounds built by nomads in the steppes.

These mounds were organized structures associated with ritual activities and the assertion of territorial rights through burial practices.

Contrary to popular belief, some mounds were not primarily built to hide graves from robbers but reflected ritual traditions.

Burial traditions sometimes excluded individuals who died outside established nomadic territories.

Legends such as those about Genghis Khan are recalled in connection with secretive burial practices.

While some mound types included niches for ritual purposes, mound sites still offer significant archaeological information despite disturbance.

Artifacts found outside their context can be admired aesthetically but yield limited knowledge.

Stone “mustache” mounds are characteristic of Kazakhstan, while in other regions mounds are built of earth and are less visible over time.

Some burial complexes consist of several mounds aligned in chains, sometimes including both animal and occasional human remains.

Archaeologists have observed the orientation of these mounds toward the east or southeast, aligning with the sunrise.

Recent breakthroughs also include partial deciphering of an ancient charred scroll, offering new insights into history.

The mission of archaeology is to study and reconstruct ancient and medieval periods, especially those only faintly remembered today.

Israel is accused of destroying the present and threatening the future in Gaza.

Demonstrations advocate not only for Palestinian liberation and dignity, but also spark movements seeking humanity’s broader liberation from oppressive global systems.

There is debate on the potential connection between government reactions and popular street movements.

The long-term effects of current events are expected to resemble ripples spreading for decades, with more results likely to unfold.

Abu Dhabi Tourism supports preserving the heritage of clay architecture.

Archaeologists have discovered rock sculptures in the Saudi desert dating back over 7,000 years.

Researchers, as published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, consider the site to exemplify an ancient historical era in which northern Saudi Arabian shepherds carved large stone monuments.

Evidence shows these sculptures were created with stone tools no later than the 6th millennium BC.

A European study recommends promoting peaceful coexistence and religious freedoms in Mosul.

This study suggests that restoring agriculture in Nineveh should form part of reconstruction efforts.

Authorities in northern cities have arrested individuals caught illegally excavating for buried treasures, revealing surprising findings after police investigations.

Political leadership and editorial boards discuss themes of loyalty, inclusion, and the challenges of mass political support in times of crisis.

Some parties’ opponents predict imminent collapse or deep divisions within, especially if threatened election boycotts occur.

There is skepticism about the sincerity of election boycott threats, as such decisions often shift dates and are not always implemented.

Certain ideas suggest that erasing the legacy of any regime should entail leaving behind greater value, not just removing names or symbols associated with them.

Complete removal of all past influences is seen as impossible; rather, reform should focus on addressing errors within government practices, not removing monuments.

Repeated acts of monument removal in various places highlight poor civic education, where citizens may not distinguish between what should be preserved collectively.

Appointments to high government offices are often controlled by established power networks, limiting genuine choice by political leaders.

Questions are raised regarding Iraq’s needs and the difficulty of truly discarding unproductive elements from governance or society.

The Ukrainian example of discarding someone into a container is cited as an insult, but done within rules as part of a civil society.

All articles reflect only the opinions of their authors.

Users are informed about privacy policies and cookie usage on the website.

In Medenine, Zarzis, sponge fishing is practiced, with winter storms bringing marine plants to the surface.

The sponges are harvested using a tool with three iron prongs, and "Rapid" sponges along with kamaki jersey are regarded as the finest varieties.

A bronze head with a gold mask is displayed in the new museum of Sanxingdui, attracting tourists who stop to watch in front of a bronze statue.

Xu Danyang explained that the soil layers at the site hold important clues to dating and understanding how the ruins formed.

Pit 4 at the site was divided into a grid of 30 × 30 cm squares, with archaeologists lying on the ground for a week and excavating to a depth of just 10 cm.

Excavation efforts resumed after stopping at the pit.

Li Huiqing, a member of the post-90s archaeological team, joined the excavation at Sanxingdui, where work in the "sacrificial pits" is nearing completion.

Her first dig was at Moon Bay, seeking evidence of the daily lives and production activities of the ancient Shu people.

An ivory comb with a Canaanite inscription discovered at Tel Lachish marks a significant milestone in the history of writing.

Title:

Content: Wednesday, November 9th | 15 Heshvan 5783

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November 9, 2022 3:35 pm

First Canaanite Sentence Found in Israel on Ancient ‘Lice’ Comb

by Algemeiner Staff

An ivory comb with Canaanite inscription found at Tel Lachish. Photo: Dafna Gazit/Israel Antiquities Authority

The first Canaanite sentence found in Israel has been located on a small ivory comb used to remove lice, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said Tuesday.

The Canaanites were an ancient religious community during the Bronze Age and the first centuries AD

The inscription is dated to about 1700 BCE and relies on 17 “archaic” Canaanite letters, “from the first stage of the invention of the alphabet script,” the university stated.

It reads, “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

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The comb initially had teeth on both sides, though these broke off from the base at some point in history. One side had six teeth for smoothing knots, while the other had 14 finer teeth for clearing lice and their eggs. The expensive foreign material was made from, ivory, indicating that it was likely a luxury good and that even members of the higher social classes were affected by lice.

The comb was found at Tel Lachish, east of the modern-day southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, by a team from Hebrew University and Southern Adventist University in Tennessee in 2017, though the lettering was only noted in 2022 by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu of Hebrew University.

Previous Canaanite inscriptions found in Israel have included only a few words. “This is the first sentence ever found in the Canaanite language in Israel,” said Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the university’s Institute of Archaeology.

The Canaanite inscription “is direct evidence for the use of the alphabet in daily activities some 3700 years ago,” he said. “This is a landmark in the history of the human ability to write.”

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Archaeologists are puzzled by a large, shallow structure found beneath the Giza pyramids, measuring 10 meters wide by 15 meters long and less than 2 meters deep.

Title:

Content: Archaeologists perplexed by large ‘anomaly’ found buried under Giza pyramids

Researchers say they can’t determine material causing the anomaly

Vishwam Sankaran
Monday 20 May 2024 05:40
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Archaeologists have stumbled upon what they described as a large “anomaly” buried under the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt.

Researchers used new tools like ground-penetrating radar to assess the area under the Western Cemetery in Giza to see if anything undiscovered was buried there.

They discovered a pair of underground structures – one shallow, the other deep – beneath a royal graveyard near the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid.

The archaeologists described the structures as an anomaly because their density differs from that of the surrounding ground.

They believe the structures are man-made due to their shape and suspect that they were backfilled after construction.

“The Western Cemetery at Giza is known as an important burial place of members of the royal family and high-class officers,” the archeologists wrote, adding that an initial survey by ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography revealed “an anomaly in the north of the survey site”.

“The area of the anomaly could be established approximately, but the structure and the location were unclear.”

The shallow structure measures 10m wide by 15m long and is less than under 2m deep.

The researchers suspect that it was built to support the construction of the larger, deeper structure which is about 5m at its shallowest point and 10m at its deepest.

Such an anomaly, the researchers said, may have been caused either by a mixture of sand and gravel or by “sparse spacing with air voids.”

“It may have been an entrance to the deeper structure,” they said.

“We believe that the continuity of the shallow structure and the deep large structure is important. From the survey results, we cannot determine the material causing the anomaly, but it may be a large subsurface archaeological structure.”

They hope a careful excavation of the site could help determine the nature of these structures.

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Prehistoric tools unearthed in Maryland suggest that humans arrived in the Americas 7,000 years earlier than previously believed, with evidence from Parsons Island challenging the widely-accepted habitation date of 15,000 years ago.

Title:

Content: Prehistoric Tools Found In Maryland Suggest Humans Came To America 7,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought

Published May 24, 2024

Geologist Darrin Lowery published his findings from Parsons Island in a 260-page manuscript online, which has drawn criticism from academics who would have preferred Lowery publish in a peer-reviewed journal.

Darrin LoweryThe eroding shoreline of Parsons Island is revealing thousands of years of hidden human history.

For years, scientists have hotly debated when, exactly, humans first arrived in the Americas. But now, a scientist affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution believes he has uncovered evidence in Maryland that could set the record straight, once and for all.

Darrin Lowery, a coastal geologist, has made 93 scientific visits to Parsons Island in the Chesapeake Bay, where he and his team have uncovered 286 artifacts from the earliest days of humanity’s settlement in North America. The oldest of these items was embedded in charcoal that dates back 22,000 years — 7,000 years earlier than humans were previously thought to have been in America.

Lowery’s research was backed up by similar finds in New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, which seemed to insinuate human settlement between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. And if Lowery’s findings are accurate, these discoveries could rewrite American prehistory as we know it.

Artifacts From Parsons Island Point To Early Human Inhabitants

As The Baltimore Sun reports, modern scientists mostly agree that humans inhabited the Americas as early as 15,000 years ago. But over the course of the past decade, Lowery and a group of cohorts have made frequent trips to Maryland’s Parsons Island, which is rapidly eroding as sea levels rise.

This rapid erosion means researchers have limited time to find artifacts on the island, but it’s also part of the reason researchers are so fascinated with the area in the first place.

Archaeologist Sebastien Lacombe, who visited Parsons Island in 2017, offered this explanation.

“The visit reinforced my will to invest my time into this time period, because it’s a very fragile record,” he said. “It’s at risk of disappearing, and we’re at risk of [allowing] these sites and artifacts to lose their meaning forever.”

Darrin LoweryA comparison of Clovis and pre-Clovis artifacts.

For Lowery, the shorelines of the Chesapeake Bay have been a fascination since childhood. At the age of nine, he found what he believes was a Clovis point — an artifact that was at the time believed to have come from the first Americans — in his backyard on Tilghman Island.

He would, of course, go on to become a geologist; and this field of study brought him to Parsons Island.

In 2010, Lowery published an article in Quaternary Science Reviews in which he described layers of windblown silt deposited at Maryland’s Miles Point between 13,000 and 41,000 years ago — but Lowery lamented the “unconformity” of the sediment layers. Thousands of years of history, he said, were missing.

That’s when Lowery discovered a black streak of sediment coming from Parsons Island, which he believed could fill in those missing years. With the permission of the Corckran family, who owns the 78-acre Parsons Island, Lowery began his research, hoping to unveil a complete geological timeline from Parsons Island’s sediment.

Then, in 2013, he made an even more stunning discovery. Embedded in a crumbling wall, Lowery and his team found a leaf-shaped prehistoric stone tool. After dating the surrounding sediment, they realized that it was more than 20,000 years old.

Darrin LoweryIn-situ bifate found in the sediment layer.

Over the next 10 years, Lowery and his team would make more than 90 trips back to the island, collecting 286 artifacts in total from the coastline.

Of course, 20,000 years ago, this area wasn’t a coastline at all. Much of the region would have been covered in a sheet of ice, with the tools themselves likely dating back to the “last glacial maximum,” the most recent of the five ice ages.

“This was a swale, where water was collecting,” Lowery said, picturing the prehistoric landscape. “You’ve got a dune. It’s got sedges and small trees on it that are windblown and all contorted, and then behind it you’ve got a little pond.”

The pond, he believes, would likely have attracted animals such as bison, musk oxen, and llamas — and the presence of their fossilized molars along the shore seems to provide evidence for this. And where there were animals to be hunted, humans were likely to follow.

Darrin LoweryFellow researcher Dr. John Wah examining the eroding shoreline.

Parsons Island isn’t the only “pre-Clovis” site to have been discovered in recent years, but most others have faced their own forms of controversy. Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, for example, was excavated by archaeologist James Adovasio in 1973 and dates back 16,000 years. At the time, however, others in the field cast significant doubt on the find, and it is still heavily criticized today.

Another archaeologist, Tom Dillehay, said part of the issue stems from the “Clovis police,” a group of scientific gatekeepers who seem to reject any pre-Clovis sites, with or without good reason. That only started to change in 1997 with a site in Chile called Monte Verde, when a group of respected archaeologists declared it authentic. Dillehay, however, had begun working at the Monte Verde site decades earlier.

“It took about 25 to 30 years for Monte Verde to be accepted,” Dillehay said. “We went through hell.”

Now, Lowery’s discoveries at Parsons Island are facing their own controversy and criticism — largely because Lowery did not have his findings peer-reviewed.

The Controversy Surrounding Darrin Lowery’s Discoveries

Whereas archaeological and geological research similar to that being conducted at Parsons Island would normally be published in an academic journal after thorough review from scientific peers, Lowery presented the results of his study in a 260-page manuscript published online.

This move alone has garnered criticism from some in the scientific community, who refuse to accept the findings as currently presented.

Lowery, for his part, seems to think that going through the peer-review process would simply allow other scientists to dismiss evidence that doesn’t support the leading paradigm. He also said that “life’s too short” to go about formally publishing the study, saying this particular component of academic science is “the dumbest game I’ve ever played.”

Lowery isn’t alone in his belief. Stuart Fiedel, an independent archaeologist in western Massachusetts, told The Baltimore Sun, “There are people I know in the field who will not pay any attention to [Lowery’s research], because it has not been peer-reviewed, which I think is kind of sticking your head in the sand… It’s there. We can’t act as [if] nothing’s been found there.”

Darrin LoweryMiocene-age gompthere teeth found at Parsons Island.

David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University, falls squarely in the other camp, saying he will not discuss Lowery’s claims “until they go through the wringer of peer review and get published.”

Then there’s the issue of the site’s rapid erosion, which brings its own complications. Many of the artifacts Lowery found were only collected after they’d fallen out of the bluff, which obscures their place in the geological timeline. Nine objects were found in situ, but even then only three could be dated using charcoal found nearby.

None of these are quite the smoking gun that would satisfy skeptics. Still, Lowery is determined to keep excavating the area, which he views as his “swan song.” Perhaps he will find the rock-solid evidence he needs to convince his critics.

Or perhaps, as fellow researcher James Feathers, who dated samples from Parsons Island, said: “Sometimes you have to wait for people to die off” and for old prejudices to fade to make way for new ideas.

After reading about Darrin Lowery’s controversial discoveries at Parsons Island, learn the answer to the question “How old is America?” Or, learn about castoroides, the giant beavers that roamed the world during the Ice Age.

author
author
A staff writer for All That's Interesting, Austin Harvey has also had work published with Discover Magazine, Giddy, and Lucid covering topics on mental health, sexual health, history, and sociology. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Point Park University.
editor
editor
Maggie Donahue is an assistant editor at All That's Interesting. She has a Master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree in creative writing and film studies from Johns Hopkins University. Before landing at ATI, she covered arts and culture at The A.V. Club and Colorado Public Radio and also wrote for Longreads. She is interested in stories about scientific discoveries, pop culture, the weird corners of history, unexplained phenomena, nature, and the outdoors.
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Harvey, Austin. "Prehistoric Tools Found In Maryland Suggest Humans Came To America 7,000 Years Earlier Than Previously Thought." AllThatsInteresting.com, May 24, 2024, https://allthatsinteresting.com/parsons-island-tools. Accessed May 25, 2024.

Bruce D. Lowery and colleagues have frequently visited Parsons Island, which is rapidly eroding due to rising sea levels, uncovering artifacts that continue to spark debate, though definitive proof is still elusive.

Researcher James Feathers notes that widespread acceptance of such findings sometimes depends on generational shifts in academic thinking.

A company best known for playful filters has leveraged augmented reality to let museum visitors experience historical artworks in innovative ways, exemplified by digitally re-creating artifacts like the Elgin Marbles.

Title:

Content: News, Views and More

Could Snapchat have a solution to the Elgin Marbles dispute? | Science and technology news

The developers of the popular app that most people associate with wearing silly filters specialize in culture and art, offering museum visitors new ways to experience history in some of the world's most famous museums and galleries.

From Tom Acres, technology reporter

Saturday 2 December 2023, 2:50am, UK

Rishi Sunak is known for loving technology. So could it offer him a way out of his unpleasant diplomatic dispute with Greece over the Elgin Marbles?

Augmented Reality (AR) is exciting Snap think it could.

The developers of the app that most people associate with wearing silly filters specialize in culture and art, offering visitors new ways to experience history in some of the world's most famous museums and galleries.

Snaps AR has been used to reinvent exhibitions Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, Miami's trendy Art Basel fair, London's Design Museum and most recently the legendary Louvre in Paris.

The museum's Egyptian Antiquities Department now offers 3D reconstructions of long-lost works of art and other historical monuments, viewable via QR codes or the Snapchat camera on mobile phones.

If it's good enough for the Louvre, could it be good enough for the British Museum and enable the return of the Elgin Marbles? Greece?

Read more:
What are the Elgin Marbles and why are they in the British Museum?

What is the Elgin Marbles dispute about?

History in your hands

“We started conversations,” jokes Donatien Bozon, head of Snap’s AR studio in Paris.

Its 14-person team was founded last year with a mission to bring AR to arts, culture and education and prove that Snapchat's technology can go far beyond giving your friends virtual dog-ears.

Cultural institutions expressed interest in tapping into the app's 750 million user audience and offering new experiences to regular visitors – all without requiring additional physical space.

“We felt confident that we could leverage not just the front camera of the phone,” he says, pointing to Snapchat’s common use case as a selfie-driven messaging app, “but also the back camera.”

“You can expand the world,” he adds. “And it opens up so many possibilities.”

Also in the Louvre is a digital twin of the 222-ton granite Luxor Obelisks. Built during the reign of Ramses II for the Egyptian Luxor Temple, one was later moved to the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

However, a spot in the Louvre's courtyard was originally considered. And so, in its own attempt to rewrite history, the museum worked with Snap to “remove the constraints of physics” and have one installed virtually.

Point your phone's camera at the spot where it might have been standing and this is how it appears.

Picture:
A Luxor obelisk stands in the Louvre and uses augmented reality technology. Image: Snap

Where tradition meets technology

Not that AR could ever really replace the original.

“It’s in the name,” says Bozon. “It enhances the experience, not replaces it.”

Probably not a truly satisfactory solution to the Elgin-Marbles dispute.

But the British Museum has dabbled in AR. Aimed primarily at children, it allows guests using Samsung tablets to take AR-controlled tours of the Roman Empire and Parthenon.

The British Library has also used the technology for your own exhibitionsas some of the world's oldest institutions are proud of their traditions and try to keep up with the times.

Qi Pan, director of computer vision at Snap, says AR allows them to “do things that weren’t possible before.”

Its London team is responsible for how the company's technology actually works, both on phones and in a hypothetical future where millions of us walk around wearing futuristic glasses.

“Nowadays, a lot of AR happens on mobile devices, where we are limited by the view of a small rectangle,” he says.

“With AR glasses you can see it directly in the world around you.”

Unfortunately, as this is a limited version of the story, this content is not available.

Open the full version

Accessible artwork

Despite previous attempts with such lenses from people like Google And Snap yourself Pan is confident that AR is on the cusp of a “hardware paradigm shift” as it has failed to achieve mainstream breakthrough.

Apple's upcoming mixed reality headset might prove him right, although at a price of £2,800 probably not.

The appeal of AR artworks, for now, lies in their accessibility — not just to users who only need a phone to experience them, but also to the creators behind what they see.

By teaching himself how to create AR art at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, British artist Doddz managed to earn a six-figure salary after struggling at school.

Traditionalists may cry foul, but his success seems to be evidence of a new interpretation of artwork that people can view and take with them wherever they go.

Bozon says, “Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have bet that being a YouTuber was a real job.”

“In ten years, building in AR will be a real job for thousands of people.”

Let's hope the series of marbles is over by then.

The British Museum collaborated with Snap to virtually install the Elgin Marbles, using AR to surpass physical limitations and offer new educational experiences.

One expert predicts that in the future, creating AR museum installations will become a mainstream career, allowing greater public access to cultural heritage.

Excavations continued through harsh winter conditions in Colonial Williamsburg, where archaeologists aimed to uncover the layout of an early 18th-century garden, and learned about historical resourcefulness during droughts in the 1730s.

Title:

Content: January was a cold and snowy month in Colonial Williamsburg, but the wintry weather didn’t prevent archaeologists from digging in the colonial capital. Three archaeological digs are ongoing, at Custis Square, First Baptist Church and the Magazine.

On Feb. 11, I met with Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of archaeology, to discuss his excavations, discoveries and how various types of weather affect digging. Gary’s team has been working in Williamsburg for three years, so they’ve dealt with all kinds of weather.

Their greatest weather-related challenge this winter was removing ice from the tarps, which cover the dig site at night and during days when it rains or snows. “Ice slabs on tarps are heavy,” remarked Cheyenne Johnson, an archaeology field technician, who is pictured above holding a large chunk of ice.

But staying warm while digging in winter is also a challenge. “Wearing lots of layers and using hand warmers helps,” Gary said.

So far, low temperatures haven’t slowed down excavations this winter, because the ground hasn’t frozen beyond a thin surface crust. It takes severe cold to freeze the ground in a dig site more than an inch or two. As a result, the excavations have continued without delays from frozen soil.

Rain and snow will stop the digging, however. During storms, the archaeologists move indoors to catch up on paperwork and clean artifacts. But, if the rain is heavy, water seeps through the ground, under the tarps, and can create a muddy mess in the dig site.

Of course, summer heat waves pose another weather-related challenge for the archaeologists, but they manage through sultry days with plenty of liquids. When I asked Gary about his favorite season for digging, he paused for a few seconds then said, “Fall is my favorite season.” Williamsburg, with its fall color, is beautiful.

Custis Square

The first archaeological site I visited on Feb. 11 was Custis Square. The weather was sunny and mild, with temperatures approaching 60 degrees. It was perfect digging weather, and Gary’s team of archaeology field technicians was busy scraping dirt to expose ground features and artifacts. Their excavation is focused on an early 18th-century garden site that Virginia plantation owner and statesman that John Custis IV planted.

Custis, who owned an estate in Williamsburg during the early-to-mid-1700s, stated that his garden was second to none in Virginia. He worked with Peter Collinson of London on a trans-Atlantic plant exchange for their gardens. Custis sent eastern Virginia plants to London and received European garden plants from Collinson. The correspondence between Custis and Collinson, titled “Brothers of the Spade,” was published in the 20th century.

The archaeological dig at Custis Square aims to map the garden perimeter, locate the garden-related postholes and discover walkways. Gary said current gardens in Colonial Williamsburg are interpretations of what gardens are thought to have resembled in colonial times but may be based more on later-era gardens. He hopes his effort will reveal the design and organization of an early 18th-century garden in Williamsburg. And letters between Custis and Collinson hold clues to what plants grew in the garden.

Gary mentioned there was drought in the 1730s and that enslaved men would draw water from wells during the day and water the plants in the Custis garden at night. At the time, gardeners thought plants needed cool water, not sun-heated water. Thus, the enslaved men worked long hours, day and night, to maintain the garden throughout the dry summer months.

Many of the excavated postholes within the Custis Square dig site are filled with water. Gary said pumps are used to remove the water from postholes, but often water returns, seeping back from groundwater. Meanwhile, above the postholes, archaeologists use spray bottles of water to moisten dry soil since moist soil shows ground features much better than dry soil.

Digging will continue at the site for an additional two years, thanks to funding by the Jacqueline B. Mars Charitable Trust.

First Baptist Church

From the Custis Square site, Gary and I walked to the dig site at the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg. It’s the location of one of the earliest African American churches in the colonies, organized by free and enslaved worshipers in 1776. Gary’s excavation focuses on locating the foundations of two church buildings from 1818 and 1856.

Gary mentioned his team excavated an 1817 one-cent coin, which confirms they’ve located the first church foundation constructed in 1818. The coin was found beneath a section of brick near the foundation.

The church that was built in 1818 was destroyed by a tornado in 1834 but was later rebuilt in 1856. The 1856 church was more expansive than the first church, and its foundation is visible in the dig site, outlined by brick and soil features, which is evident in the photo above.

The second church stood until 1955 but was torn down and later covered by a parking lot. Recently, the parking lot was removed, and Gary’s excavation is helping to rediscover information about one of the earliest African American churches in the United States.

The Magazine

Williamsburg’s Magazine, in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg, was a short walk from the First Baptist Church site.

Gary escorted me inside the walls of the Magazine, where I could view the digging. Gary mentioned that only a few cannonballs and musket balls had been excavated on the site, surprising because the octagonal building was constructed in 1715 to store gunpowder and arms for military purposes.

Most of the artifacts excavated within the walls of the Magazine are from a civilian occupation and are not military-related. However, one of the more exciting discoveries was clay roof tiles. Initially, the building was thought to have wooden shingles, like many other colonial dwellings. But the excavation proves that nonflammable clay tiles were used on the roof of the Magazine.

Two other discoveries at the Magazine are of interest. First, postholes excavated near the Magazine had been dug at an angle, indicating there may have been a wooden building surrounding the Magazine, perhaps like a lean-to structure.

In addition, the excavated foundation of the original brick wall that surrounded the Magazine was not buried deep into the ground, indicating the wall may not have been as high as the existing wall, which was built in the 1930s. Gary said the first wall may have been only about six feet tall.

Gary hopes the results of his excavation will prove how the Magazine was built and utilized, spanning the years from 1715 to the present day.

Archaeology lab

Our last stop was the archaeology lab in Colonial Williamsburg. Lab work, such as cleaning and documenting artifacts, is time-consuming but essential for archaeology. And when it rains or snows, field archaeologists report to the lab to help with the tedious work.

The lab also stores and displays artifacts dug in the Williamsburg area since the 1930s. The number of artifacts, bottles and pottery in the lab is impressive.

The most remarkable artifact on display is a well-preserved English helmet from the early 1600s that was excavated in the Martin’s Hundred, an early 17th-century plantation located on the north shore of the James River. A photo of the helmet is displayed below.

Dozens of dug wine bottles, and some marked with the John Custis seal, are also stored in the lab. In addition, the lab has a Madeira wine decanter dug at Wetherburn’s Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg. Madeira wine, produced on the Portuguese Madeira Islands, was a favorite in the colonies.

The most unusual artifact on display is a large sea turtle shell dug in the Martin’s Hundred. Why was a sea turtle in a 17th-century plantation? According to Gary, “we can assume it was food.”

“Many of the artifacts currently curated in the lab will be displayed in the new Campbell Archaeology Center, a new facility that will house our labs, collections space, and public programming space,” wrote Gary in an email, after my visit. Gary and his team are currently raising funds for the new facility, which he hopes to break ground on construction in the next couple of years.

Gary said they will also have a dedicated gallery to the archaeological materials in the Art Museum. The first exhibit, which they expect to open in 2023, will look at the global footprint of 18th-century life in Williamsburg, highlighting the origins of many of the artifacts.

At the First Baptist Church dig site, a coin was found below brickwork near the 1818 church's foundation, with the church having stood through destruction and rebuilding in the 19th century.

Artifacts uncovered include wine bottles, some bearing the John Custis seal, and a large sea turtle shell assumed to have been food, with all finds stored for research and display.

Plans are underway to construct a new archaeological facility, pending fundraising success.

Discussions about the independent origins of democracy in the Americas highlight how archaeological re-examination using new ideas and methods can yield fresh insights.

Title:

Content:
Did democracy have a separate origin in the Americas?

Democracy is widely understood to have arisen in the Mediterranean world about 2,500 years ago before spreading through cultural contact to other parts of the globe. But new research from the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology, together with its partners in the Muscogee Nation, indicates that inhabitants of the Americas may have been practicing democratic-style collective governance at least a millennium before European contact.

According to a new paper published in the journal American Antiquity, artifacts from the Cold Springs site in central Georgia indicate the presence of a "council house" on the site, which was occupied about 1,500 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Still in use today by descendants of those early American communities, council houses were large, circular structures that could accommodate hundreds, even thousands of participants in ritualized gatherings that involved collective decision making.

The Iroquois Confederacy, a league of five Indigenous nations residing in what would become the northeastern United States, has been held up as an example of an early American democracy. However some archaeologists date the emergence of the Iroquois Confederacy as late as the mid-15th century, just a few decades before European contact. Based on the analysis of the Cold Springs materials, the UGA team suggests that democratic institutions associated with collective governance arose much earlier in time.

"The key takeaway is that these kinds of democratic institutions were very long lived and existed—perhaps for millennia—before European arrival," said Victor Thompson, Distinguished Research Professor and director of the Laboratory of Archaeology. "That's a really on Native governance in this region than most archaeologists have."

Historically, Thompson said, the interpretation of council houses has been tied to that of earthen platform mounds; concentric circles of post holes, the telltale archaeological evidence for council houses, often have been found near or on top of platform mounds. Over the centuries since European arrival, a consensus emerged that, up until about 1,000 years ago, mounds and houses were purely ceremonial in purpose and constructed by largely egalitarian peoples, but at one point they suddenly transformed into political structures dominated by the village "chief."

"[The predominant view holds that] prior to 1,000 A.D., platform mounds are communal and they're built by these societies that don't have chiefs or anything like that," Thompson said. "But as soon as 1,000 A.D. hits, everyone has a chief, and the chief lives on top of the platform. Very convenient. Our new work adds more depth to this perspective and sheds light on the fact that while different positions existed in these governmental structures it is vastly more complicated, and democratic, than the traditional models posed by archaeologists since the 1970s."

Indeed, ever since Spanish explorers reported the first eyewitness accounts, indigenous American cultures have been portrayed as chiefdoms, led by autocratic-style individuals imbued with significant power over their people. However, according to UGA's tribal partners, this view conflicts with the forms of collective governance they still practice today and which, tradition has taught them, long predate the arrival of Europeans.

"We still have a National Council in our council house, which meets within it and passes national laws—it's been this way for hundreds of generations," said Turner Hunt, preservation officer for Muscogee (Creek) Nation and a co-author on the paper. "[The idea of chiefdoms] is a nuisance, and it's a grand narrative that's been very hard to overcome."

Today the Cold Springs site lies partially submerged by Lake Oconee, a human-made reservoir about 75 miles east of Atlanta. The site was excavated in the early 1970s prior to completion of the dam on the Oconee River that created the lake. For their current research, Thompson and his colleagues reexamined artifacts from that dig that have been in the Laboratory of Archaeology's collections for nearly 50 years.

"That's the beauty of museum collections," Thompson said. "They've just been sitting there, and they can tell you so much. All it really takes is new ideas, new methods, to be able to go back and look at these collections again."

The researchers performed new on the existing physical artifacts—44 new dates in all, which make Cold Springs now one of the best-dated early mound sites in the Southeast. The testing placed primary occupation of the site between A.D. 500 and 700, with construction of the council house beginning sometime around 500 A.D. As Thompson and his colleagues sifted through artifacts and other evidence, they stayed in continual contact with their Muscogee partners in Oklahoma.

"We were meeting on Zoom and looking at pictures of post holes—tons of pictures of post holes," said RaeLynn Butler, manager of the Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the Muscogee Nation. "Our major contributions were to digest the information and provide the and perspectives as tribal people that helped bring to this research some much-needed context of our social organization and traditional forms of government."

At the end of the day, both Hunt and Butler said, they hope to emphasize that sites like Cold Springs are not removed from contemporary society in a way similar to Stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt. They are not relics of long-dead cultures with only historical or archaeological relevance.

"This is a paper about Ancestral Muskogean institutions, but there is a living, active culture that is directly connected to it," Hunt said. "We believe our governments, our , have been practicing this way of life for thousands of years. We are connected to these people through the way we still conduct ourselves today."

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New evidence challenges Euro-centric narrative of early colonization

More information: Victor D. Thompson et al, The Early Materialization of Democratic Institutions among the Ancestral Muskogean of the American Southeast, American Antiquity (2022). DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2022.31
Journal information: American Antiquity

Citation: Did democracy have a separate origin in the Americas? (2022, June 15) retrieved 15 June 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-06-democracy-americas.html
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Case studies suggest cave dwellings provide lessons for modern sustainable design, underscoring the relevance of past practices.

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Content: Lessons of Troglodyte Living: What Caves Can Teach Us About Sustainable Design

Lessons of Troglodyte Living: What Caves Can Teach Us About Sustainable Design

Contemporary architecture's approach to space is fairly linear: enveloping a specified volume within some form of material construct. But if we take a look at humanity's first intentional dwellings, it becomes clear that they were much less premeditated.

Rather than manmade areas to be furnished with pride, our earliest homes were naturally occurring cave lairs that offered hunter-gatherers temporary protection from the elements and potential predators. It wasn't until the appearance of agriculture that our ancestors took permanent, built residences. To this day, troglodytism — or cave living — continues to be connected to ideas of societal disassociation and a hermetic desire to exist outside of orthodox architectural norms. And yet, from Northern China to Western France and Central Turkey, hundreds of millions of people still choose to spend their lives at least partially underground.

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We take a look at examples of troglodyte architecture from around the globe and explore what this vernacular way of life can teach us about sustainably designing our future.

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From Underground Slum to European Capital of Culture: Matera, the Subterranean City of Caves

According to recent archaeological discoveries, humanity first started making use of caves as long as 1.8 million years ago. Primarily occupied during winter or other adverse weather conditions, these initial dwellings were short-term shelters that offered natural protection and a safe environment that minimized the risk of wildfires. They were also sites of artistry. As Bernard Rudofsky observes in The Prodigious Builders:

The creature whom we label, carelessly, a caveman (a vulgarism that usually stands for upper paleolithic man), was actually an outdoor type, hyperbolically husky, sweaty in an artistic way... his painterly vision was Michelangelesque — a preference for the entanglement of supple, albeit brutish, bodies. Indeed, there is nothing facetious about calling Lascaux the Sistine Chapel of prehistory; the famous caves, it has been inferred, were shrines rather than ordinary dwellings.

The wall paintings of the French cave in question, Lascaux, though predated by its arguably more well-known Spanish counterpart, are indeed early signs of a trend that would take hold throughout the history of troglodyte architecture: the idea of caves as sacred spaces and areas for quiet, solitary reflection. This is as true for Greek mythology as it is for the Indian Bhaja Caves, a group of 22 rock-cut Buddhist prayer rooms located in Maharashtra's Pune District. Though wildly different in terms of architectural finesse and forethought, the more primitive crypts and grottos of Ancient Greece still enclose their visitors with the same sense of otherworldly calm inspired by Bhaja's chaitya hall.

What both have in common with other manmade cave structures around the world is that they are often transformed through what we now recognize as vernacular means of design. By employing an area's local topography and materials to their advantage, early builders would adapt preexisting cavities to suit their specific needs or dig holes into the ground to create examples of troglodyte living — increasing individual well-being and establishing a symbiotic relationship with the environment.

Even today, there are several advantages to this type of architecture: the earth's thermal masses are natural insulators and make heating as well as cooling almost completely unnecessary in temperate climates. Taking advantage of naturally occurring structures is much more efficient than the modern building process of creating them from scratch, and upkeep is minimal in comparison. In a 2006 study that dealt with the Chinese cave dwellings in the country's Shaanxi province (which, to this day, houses over 30 million people), researcher Jiang Lu found that the underground habitats were in line with much of contemporary sustainable design principles that urge for a minimal impact on the environment.

There are, of course, downsides to cavernous living: the lack of ventilation and natural light can have disastrous impacts on individual and collective health, as exemplified by the Italian village of Matera. The area’s Sassi caves were used as a natural shelter from the harsh climate as early as 10,000 BC, but led to collective illness and poverty down the line — causing the 16,000-strong population to be evicted in a 1950s government program.

And yet, there are urban planning lessons to be taken from a look at our ancestral abodes. A recent exhibition at New York City's Noguchi Museum entitled In Praise of Caves resurrects examples of Mexican Organic architecture that argue for a return to the cave as a sustainable, safe, and low-cost alternative to contemporary buildings.

Most notable among them is the work of Mexican architect and public official Carlos Lazo, who oversaw Mexican state infrastructure projects from 1952–55. His Cuevas Civilizadas project dug 110 low-income homes into a canyon wall in the Belénde las Flores neighborhood of Mexico City. Though unfinished due to the architect's untimely death at 41, the project is a prime example of a kind of hybrid troglodyte architecture that could help solve many of our contemporary and future housing issues.

As explained by the museum's Senior Curator Dakin Hart:

(It) was essentially a public housing project idea... to build very efficient, but very modern homes that didn't require a lot of maintenance, and didn't require a lot of expense in upkeep for working people.

Along with contemporary examples like Spain's Granada cave homes, China's sunken courtyard residences, or Tunisia's troglodyte structures, Lazo's revived work proposes an alternative to global architectural trends that, in addition to its vernacular design principles, underlines the importance of connecting with nature as a source of lasting comfort. "It's about happiness in the end", Hart elaborates. "Putting space into boxes hasn't made us content — so what if the answer lies in the ground itself?" Despite the prejudice tied to the idea of living surrounded by naked rock, a reevaluation of troglodyte architecture may thus be well overdue. Rather than looking to the skies for the designs of our future — whether it'd be in the shape of a flying car or dizzying high-rise — gazing down (and inward) may create architectural solutions much better suited to a world threatened by climate change and war.

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Cite: Claire Brodka. "Lessons of Troglodyte Living: What Caves Can Teach Us About Sustainable Design" 08 Feb 2023. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/996063/lessons-of-troglodyte-living-what-caves-can-teach-us-about-sustainable-design> ISSN 0719-8884

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In St. Vincent, Vincent Reid is mapping petroglyphs and heritage sites, emphasizing public awareness and preservation, though some petroglyphs are found on private land.

Title:

Content: Vincentians are being urged to familiarise themselves with the locations of the nation’s petroglyphs and other heritage sites.

 The call comes from Vincent Reid, who has been commissioned by the St. Vincent and the Grenadines National Trust to map all historical sites in St. Vincent.

“It pains me as a Vincentian to know that a lot of these things go largely unnoticed; people hardly pay any attention to them,” said Vincent Reid, who has been commissioned by the St. Vincent and the Grenadines National Trust to map all historical sites in St. Vincent. The current project is funded by UNESCO through the Post Disaster Needs Assessment under the Heritage Emergency Fund Project whereby the SVGNT is coordinating the effort.

So far, Reid has mapped 54 sites, including petroglyphs; buildings; natural features, such as Rabacca; salt ponds, historical structures, such as the Orange Hill and Fitz Hughes Aqueducts, and stone pillars in the schoolyards in Fitz Hughes and Evesham.

“People hardly pay any attention to them but they are there and they tell a story. They say to us this is where you came from,” Reid said on Saturday during an activity to clean volcanic ash from the “cup holes’ at 13 Stones Petroglyph in Petit Bordel.

“I want people to be aware of the petroglyphs, to be aware of our historical and cultural heritage sites, and to understand that they speak to us,” Reid said.

“They tell us that there was someone before us. They were our forefathers. They were there before us and it is important that we respect and try to preserve what they left as a record of their existence,” Reid said.

He said that respecting historical sites is akin to All Souls and All Saints observances on November 1 and 2, in memory of departed loved ones.

“That’s you showing respect for them, for their memory. These people came before us and left a record of their passing and we need to respect that.”

Reid said:

“Vincentians need to get on board and look at these cultural heritage sites, these petroglyphs and all these other buildings that speak of our first existence, of our history, and respect them and have pride in knowing where they are, what they mean and do everything that they can to preserve it.

“Get up, Vincentians; it is time enough that we do this, it is time enough that we look at where we’ve come from. It always paves the road to where we are going.”

He said that petroglyphs are public property but some occur on private land.

“But the private owners [of the land] are aware of them and know that they belong to the nation and not to them specifically.”

Reid said that there are petroglyphs in Colonarie and Buccament Bay that are on private property whose owners have protected the artefacts but have not tried to restrict public access to the sites.

Reid explained the importance of petroglyphs:

“They are records of the people who came before us. In some cases, they are ceremonial sites. In other cases, they are calendars, they are work stones, they are boundaries, and they send messages.  We may not necessarily understand the language but they are there, deeply incised in the rocks and we know they were made by someone way before our time.”

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Attila the Hun likely attacked Rome to save his people from starvation, and after his death in 453, internal strife followed, affecting his historical reputation.

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Content: Categories
Science

Attila The Hun Attacked Rome to Save His People From Starvation,

It seems the Huns may not have been the cut-throat barbarians who had an “infinite thirst for gold”, as suggested by some classical historians.

A new study reconstructing climate data from tree rings suggests these semi-nomadic people were compelled to raid and invade the eastern Roman provinces because of sheer hunger.

According to the natural archive recorded in the growth lines of oak trees from the Czech Republic and Bavaria, the early fifth century on Great Hungarian plain was marked by a series of very dry summers.

Between the years 420 and 450 CE, people living on the Eurasian steppes would have experienced a tumultuous climate, archaeologists from the University of Cambridge say.

Such times of drought would have forced Hun communities to switch back and forth between farming in a fixed spot and herding animals to lusher pastures.

Indeed, the teeth of ancient human remains found on the Great Hungarian steppes suggest the Huns experienced several changes of diets within their lifetimes. They seem to have quickly adapted to whatever food sources were most available. And this, in turn, might have triggered a shift in societal roles.

“If resource scarcity became too extreme, settled populations may have been forced to move, diversify their subsistence practices, and switch between farming and mobile animal herding,” explains archaeologist Susanne Hakenbeck.

“These could have been important insurance strategies during a climatic downturn.”

Attila the Hun, who came to power in the 430s, is often blamed for triggering the worst of the warfare. During his reign, Roman historians say the Hun leader made increasing demands for their gold and land with regular raids on their city-states.

But while Attila is often framed as a greedy leader, hell-bent on sucking the Roman empire dry, it’s important to note that his attacks on the eastern frontier occurred during a time of increasing aridity in the Carpathian Basin.

Initially, relationships between the Huns and Romans were mutually beneficial, but their collaborations broke down in the 440s. In years of drought, when grazing land was scarce, experts think Hun herders might have been forced to become Hun harassers.

This ragtag bunch would have probably raided the livestock of their neighbors, relying on a warlord or warrior king to bring them together and negotiate monetary demands.

“If the dating of these events is reliable, then the most devastating Hunnic incursions, in 447, 451, and 452 CE, happened during extremely dry summers,” researchers from Cambridge write.

“This raises the question of whether altered environmental affordances provoked adaptations to subsistence, economy, and perhaps even social organization.”

Concrete archaeological evidence is needed to actually confirm this hypothesis, but the timing is suspicious and worth investigating further. If the authors are right, Attila’s violence towards the Roman empire may have been a last-ditch attempt to keep his own people alive.

Roman records from this time note, for instance, that Attila once demanded a strip of land from the empire along the Danube river. While this could be interpreted as an act of violent avarice, floodplains are also great places for sheep, camels, or horses to graze.

Rather than attacking Roman provinces primarily for gold, researchers suspect Attila’s raids were made to acquire food and livestock during times of drought.

Under his reign, the Huns successfully invaded Gaul and northern Italy, ultimately capturing the city of Milan. The sudden death of Attila in the year 453, however, led to a fight for power among his sons. The very next year, the Huns were defeated for good.

As always, history was written by the victors. Largely due to Roman descriptions, the Huns became known as ugly and angry people, who were unnecessarily violent and greedy.

While the study agrees that some of these ancient people did change their social and political organization to focus on at times violent raiding, the new findings reveal this was likely instigated as a matter of survival for them.

That negative image still exists to this day. Yet, in many ways, tree rings are a more objective record than human ones, and these natural lines are now helping researchers better understand the story of the Huns.

“Climate alters what environments can provide and this can lead people to make decisions that affect their economy, and their social and political organization,” Hakenbeck says.

“Such decisions are not straightforwardly rational, nor are their consequences necessarily successful in the long term.

“This example from history shows that people respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways, and that short-term solutions can have negative consequences in the long term.”

The study was published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

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A recently published study in the Journal of Roman Archaeology offers new perspectives on Attila’s actions.

A South Carolina archaeology intern learned that the future of the discipline depends on engaging the public, encouraging broader participation and interpretation of findings.

Title:

Content: Making Archaeology for Everyone

Written by Gabi Daniels, SCDNR Archaeology Intern, 2023.

When you initially hear the term ‘archaeologist’ you may think of brave adventurers wielding whips and big hats working to uncovering ancient artifacts made of gold and precious gemstones. However, this common misconception is often a by-product of popular media and a lacking educational structure for archaeology and anthropology in our schools.

So, how do we go about trying to eliminate this misunderstanding? Public archaeology! During my six-week internship with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) Archaeology team, I became well acquainted with the idea of public archaeology and how the future of our field relies on it.

Public archaeology refers to the outreach and education of archaeology to the general population. Archaeology at its fundamental level is for people, as everything we unearth and interpret weaves a larger tapestry of human history. This directly coincides with how we all understand our own heritages and how we understand people who have a different background than we do. By educating the public to archaeology and how it can be significant to their own lives, we can give a voice to histories which have been lost to time and facilitate an environment of open dialogue about our pasts.

Often, though, this can be a rather daunting task. Archaeology is full of jargon, data, and scientific processes that are not simple to understand unless you are another PhD in the field. This, however, makes public archaeology even more vital! Knowledge of community members is fundamental when interpreting sites and artifacts. It is important for us to break down these barriers with public archaeology to make our work more accessible.

But how exactly do you engage the public with archaeology? Well, luckily for us, there are just about an endless number of opportunities!

SCDNR archaeologist Lelia Rice introduced my cohort of interns to how public archaeology can be utilized with students and young children. She initially began the demonstration of her work with an activity called ‘Pottery Re-fit’ which tasked children with decorating a small garden pot, smashing it, and meticulously piecing it back together with Elmer’s glue just like an archaeologist might.

Activities such as this one engages a student by allowing them to be creative but also introduces them to how an archaeologist would think—letting them become a mini archaeologist! As I decorated my own pot during the exercise, I found myself appreciating the work and craftsmanship of potters and the patience of archaeologists even more than I had before.

Furthermore, I also volunteered one day to participate in the agency’s engagement program for children in which we handed out mini excavation units. These units consisted of crumbly plaster blocks with one or two sherds of pottery inside. It was wonderful to work with the children as they (somewhat) carefully dug away at the plaster and pulled out sherds. From there, we encouraged them to imagine how the different pieces might have fit together and what kind of vessel it may have come from. This activity sparked a lot of questions as well as excitement, and it was wonderful to be able to see the parents and guardians light up just as much as the kids! I was especially exhilarated by how the kids would theorize whether or not they had discovered a piece of a bowl or cup.

Hopefully, as public archaeology is entering the spotlight more than ever now, we can all continue working to engage the public and create a better environment for people to be involved in their own histories and the histories of the global population through material culture.

This story originally appeared on the South Carolina Wild blog.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on South Carolina Wild are solely those of the authors, and do not reflect official policies, positions, or endorsements of activity or products by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

A treasure valued at half a million dollars was recently found inside a sperm whale.

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Content: Culturologya.rf
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Around the world: How recently inside a sperm whale found a treasure for half a million “green ”
Archaeologists often find treasures consisting of ancient artifacts, jewelry, art objects.
Such findings are not particularly surprising to anyone.
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In the mountains of Sochi, 14 new dolmens were discovered in the largely forgotten village of Shkhafit, which locals still remember well.

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Content: Society
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7 September 2021 7: 00
Turned to a giant stone: what secrets keep 14 new dolmens found in the mountains of Sochi
New megaliths a researcher found during the expedition, and they do not give him peace of mind
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
The village of Shkhafit was lost in the Lazarevsky district of Sochi, but the locals know it well.
And tourists rush here when they learn that in one of the private houses there is a unique "sightseeing object" - dolmen.
In the thirties of the last century, land plots were distributed to the residents of the village of Shkhafit.
One of them was in a beautiful place, but “with one burden ” – a dolmen towered in the middle of the plot.
At all times and until now, scientists argue about the origin of these megaliths, expressing different hypotheses - mystical, historical and even cosmic.
Many were afraid to live next door to the dolmen, and the Bowes family took this plot, built a house next to the dolmen, and then made their yard a tourist attraction.
The dolmen in the yard is one of the wonders of Sochi.
In 1974, it was included in the state register of historical monuments and is protected by the state.
And for the Bowes dolmen family, a “native landmark ”, and also a family relic.
Entire generations grew up next to this monument of the Ancient World.
Dolmen in the courtyard of the house
- I live all my life near the dolmen and, of course, in my childhood I knew little about this mysterious structure on our site, which was once allocated to my great-grandfather Ismail Bowes, - says the hostess of the house Dakhanef Gvashev. - Naturally, the dolmen always somehow attracted, excited the imagination.
The real mystery of the dolmens is still not solved - this is the mystery of centuries.
It is known that the dolmen are a cult building of ancient people who lived in these places.
Dolmens were located on the geological faults of the earth's crust.
According to researchers, such structures have a strong energy.
Does this energy affect you?
Sometimes, when too many people come to the house, you feel a certain fatigue.
However, in the morning the atmosphere in the yard seems to be cleared, - says Dakhanef Gvasheva. - I do not want to say anything, but somehow one of our relatives dolmen helped to recover from a serious illness.
He lay on it, and it was over.
As for me personally, I am closer to the hypothesis that dolmens are the entrance to parallel worlds.
This world does not yet manifest itself, but sometimes a faint glow appears over our dolmen.
For an excursion to the dolmen, the Dakhanef Gvashev family takes money.
Children up to 7 years - free of charge, all others - 50 rubles per person.
But, however, in the Lazarevsky district of Sochi, the “Shkhafi dolmen ” is far from the only one.
In the mountains there are entire clusters of megaliths, some found only a few months ago.
And you can get to them completely for free.
Michael Kudin next to the dolmen he found.
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
Mikhail Kudin has been studying the history of dolmens in the Caucasus and the Krasnodar Territory for many years.
Mikhail is a freelance researcher of the Adyghe Republican Institute of Humanitarian Studies named after Kerashev, and worked as the head of the guard of the Lazarevskaya fire department of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Now he retired and all his free time devoted to the study of dolmens. - In early summer, we with fellow enthusiasts conducted another expedition to the area of   the tract Makopse and the Kuyuk River, where they found dolmens, - says Mikhail Kudin. - In this area, ancient trails passed, and dolmens, most likely, played the role of "navigational indicators", as if protecting the trail from evil spirits.
Another cluster of dolmens, the researcher learned purely by chance.
About the mysterious megaliths told local hunters.
Together with enthusiastic friends, he conducted an expedition, during which 14 previously unknown dolmens were found and recorded.
For the Black Sea coast, such a number of dolmens in one place is a unique fact.
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
- Although in our region, of course, there are clusters of dolmens in larger numbers, but they have long been known, - says the man. - But the new "dolmen group", which we discovered at the beginning of this summer, was almost unknown.
Of course, megaliths have many mysteries, but there are also facts that are difficult to explain from the standpoint of our time.
For example, several cosmonauts, when they were on vacation in Lazarevsky in the sanatorium "Chemitokvadzh", were led to the famous dolmen on Mount Godlik.
Doctors took a blood test before visiting the dolmen and after.
Upon returning to the sanatorium in the physical condition of the cosmonauts noted changes.
In particular, an inexplicable increase in blood glucose.
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
Mikhail Kudin himself graduated from the radio technical school, he conducts the first physical measurements in the areas of “newly discovered dolmens ” personally and with knowledge of the matter.
- Near the dolmens, I always experience strange sensations, - says Mikhail. - Sometimes, it does not fit in my head, how ancient people could "put on reins" such grandiose stone blocks.
Personally, I adhere to the hypothesis that dolmens are a kind of entrance into another world, into another dimension.
My point is that the dolmens were used for initiation rites.
Many ancient tribes had such rites of passage to a different state.
A person as if symbolically died, was “on the other side ”, where all his past was cut off, and he was born a new person.
A boy died, a shaman priest was born.
Through the dolmen, he could travel to another dimension and time.
And when the shaman needed to communicate with the spirits, to ask for something from them, to return the soul of a sick person, he used this portal.
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
It is known that all dolmens stand in the places of geological faults, the so-called “thrust zones of the planet ”.
Measurements in these places show that there is a different magnetic field, which was recorded by Kudin instruments during numerous expeditions to the local dolmens.
- Our Lazarev dolmens have a very unusual location for megaliths, - says Mikhail Kudin. - As a rule, dolmens look down the slope of the mountain - towards the river, water.
And here the location of megaliths is very diverse.
Some look at each other.
Nearby there is also a "menhir" - this is a separately installed stone.
And four dolmens with their entrances are directed directly at him.
It definitely means something, I still have to figure it out.
By the way, according to Mikhail Kudin, the ancient people ’ s worldview was all-encompassing, and each dolmen symbolized the center of the world, where all the ends and beginnings of existence converged.
For the ancients, celestial directions were very important.
- Many facts speak about the significant celestial direction of the Lazarev dolmens.
Most often, these megaliths are aimed at sunrise, sunset, the culmination of celestial bodies, the state of the equinox and other significant astronomical dates, - says Mikhail. - This may have been the day of the construction of the dolmen or the day of the death of the person who was buried in it.
You know, it is also noteworthy that of the approximately three thousand dolmens that have been discovered in the Caucasus, only seven are directed towards the invisible sun sector.
The sun rises from the north-east and sets in the north-west.
But there remains a significant sector, about 90 degrees, where neither the sun nor the moon rise.
The dolmens are not directed there for some reason.
This fact may indicate that the location of megaliths associated with celestial landmarks.
In the near future, Mikhail Kudin, together with fellow enthusiasts, is going to measure the exact heights of mountain slopes in the area where the dolmens are located.
Photo: Mikhail Kudin archive
- The fact is that in a mountainous area, due to the slopes of the mountains, the sunrise and sunset occurs later or earlier.
Therefore, it is necessary to know the exact angular height of the mountain slopes in order to definitely say in which direction these monuments are directed, - the scientist says. - Perhaps some of them "fix" the winter or summer equinox.
Mikhail Kudin is going to arrange another expedition to the dolmens he found in order to once again try to solve their mystery.

The dolmen in a village yard is considered one of Sochi's wonders and serves as evidence of an ancient culture with spiritual significance.

Researchers believe the dolmens emitted strong energy and played a role in rituals symbolizing death and spiritual rebirth.

Shamans reportedly used the dolmens as portals for communicating with spirits or retrieving the souls of the sick.

The megaliths' unique and diverse locations may correspond to astronomical events such as the winter or summer solstice.

Researcher Mikhail Kudin plans further expeditions to these dolmens to uncover their mysteries.

The discovery of these structures has triggered debate among experts about the possibility of a highly developed ancient civilization in the region.

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Content: Encyclopedia of Techniques
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The discovered objects caused heated disputes between experts because they acted as direct evidence of the existence of a highly developed civilization.
Not so long ago, a group of archaeologists found some interesting artifacts.
The objects found caused heated discussions among experts because they are direct evidence of the existence of a highly developed civilization.
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In Sweden, archaeologists unearthed a treasure trove of over 30,000 artifacts, including a 15th-century gold ring engraved with Christ.

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Content: 8 March 2024, Friday, 17: 39
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In Sweden, found a treasure with more than 30,000 unique artifacts
Among the most interesting finds is a gold ring of the 15th century engraved with Christ.
During recent archaeological research in the Swedish city of Kalmar, a sensational discovery took place - a treasure trove of more than 30,000 antiquities.
The project, which lasted two years under the direction of Magnus Stibeus of the State Historical Museum, discovered not only the ruins of buildings, underground rooms and streets, but also a huge number of artifacts.
This large-scale study allows us to look into the life of different segments of the population of the past – merchants, artisans, civil servants, parishioners, both rich and low-income citizens.
Among the most interesting finds is a 15th century gold ring engraved with Christ, probably a female ring.
Similar rings have occurred in Northern Finland, Ostergetland and Uppland, which indicates fascinating historical connections of the time.
This is reported by Heritage Daily.
No less valuable is the identification of a rare glass alsengemet - a small glass stone associated with the church context.
In the XIII-XIV centuries, such amulets were used by pilgrims.
The Alsengemet found in Kalmar has three delicately carved figures, making it an unusual and especially valuable find.
In addition to the relics, archaeologists discovered traces of the Kalmar War of 1611 between Danish-Norway and Sweden over trade routes and tolls.
Burnt estates, cannonballs, musket balls and swords testify to the attack of Danish-Norwegian troops on the city.
This discovery helps to understand the life of different segments of the population and the impact of historical events, such as the Kalmar War, on the city.
The Golden Ring and especially the Alsengemet give a vivid insight into the cultural and religious practices of the time.
As researchers continue to analyze and document artifacts, the potential for new discoveries and understanding of the history of Kalmar remains high.
This archaeological project not only enriches knowledge of the past, but also demonstrates the importance of preserving and studying antiquities.
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These finds contribute to understanding various social classes and the historical effects of events like the Kalmar War on Swedish cities.

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Content: 8 March 2024, Friday, 17: 39
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Shem Shem,
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In Sweden, found a treasure with more than 30,000 unique artifacts
Among the most interesting finds is a gold ring of the 15th century engraved with Christ.
During recent archaeological research in the Swedish city of Kalmar, a sensational discovery took place - a treasure trove of more than 30,000 antiquities.
The project, which lasted two years under the direction of Magnus Stibeus of the State Historical Museum, discovered not only the ruins of buildings, underground rooms and streets, but also a huge number of artifacts.
This large-scale study allows us to look into the life of different segments of the population of the past – merchants, artisans, civil servants, parishioners, both rich and low-income citizens.
Among the most interesting finds is a 15th century gold ring engraved with Christ, probably a female ring.
Similar rings have occurred in Northern Finland, Ostergetland and Uppland, which indicates fascinating historical connections of the time.
This is reported by Heritage Daily.
No less valuable is the identification of a rare glass alsengemet - a small glass stone associated with the church context.
In the XIII-XIV centuries, such amulets were used by pilgrims.
The Alsengemet found in Kalmar has three delicately carved figures, making it an unusual and especially valuable find.
In addition to the relics, archaeologists discovered traces of the Kalmar War of 1611 between Danish-Norway and Sweden over trade routes and tolls.
Burnt estates, cannonballs, musket balls and swords testify to the attack of Danish-Norwegian troops on the city.
This discovery helps to understand the life of different segments of the population and the impact of historical events, such as the Kalmar War, on the city.
The Golden Ring and especially the Alsengemet give a vivid insight into the cultural and religious practices of the time.
As researchers continue to analyze and document artifacts, the potential for new discoveries and understanding of the history of Kalmar remains high.
This archaeological project not only enriches knowledge of the past, but also demonstrates the importance of preserving and studying antiquities.
Write a comment
Also follow Charter97.org accounts in social networks

In Egypt, archaeologists uncovered the upper half of a statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II at Hermopolis, complementing its lower half found a century earlier.

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Content: In Egypt, archaeologists have unearthed the upper half of the statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II, the bottom of which was found almost a hundred years ago
The discovery was made during the study of the ruins of the ancient city of Hermopolis
CAIRO.
A team of scientists led by a researcher of classical literature from the University of California, Boulder, excavated the upper part of a huge ancient statue of the pharaoh Ramesses II, the lower half of which was discovered in 1930, according to the online publication Phys.org.
Ramesses II was immortalized in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias.
In 1930, German archaeologist Günther Röder excavated the lower half of a huge statue depicting Pharaoh Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, the ruler of Egypt who reigned around 12 centuries BC.
Almost a century later, an Egyptian-American archaeological team led by Yvona Trnka-Amrain, an assistant professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, discovered the top of a huge statue while exploring the ruins of the ancient city of Hermopolis, about 150 miles south of Cairo.
The top half, 12.5 feet long, depicts a seated pharaoh wearing a double crown and a headgear topped with a royal cobra.
The researchers determined that at the time of construction, the complete statue was about 23 feet tall.
“We knew it might be there, but we didn ’ t specifically look for it, ” says Trnka-Amrain, who collaborated with Basem Gehad, an archaeologist at Egypt ’ s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Trnka-Amrain, papyrus specialist, PhD.
After completing her dissertation at Harvard University, she researched a "virtually lost Greek novel" about the pharaoh.
She has sought to conduct research in Egypt since studying papyri at Oxford University as a graduate student.
In 2022, Gehad offered her access to a papyrus study that turned out to include 98 lines containing "substantial passages" from the two lost works of the Greek playwright Euripides.
Soon, Trnka-Amrain invited CU Boulder Classics professor John Hibert, a specialist in tragedy, to further investigate this unusual find.
After they met, Gehad asked her to lead a group of field explorers in Hermopolis.
Gehad submitted a proposal and obtained all the necessary permits to begin work on the facility.
It was the first major excavation at the site since the British Museum in the 1980s.
“Hermopolis is the second most productive place for finding Greek papyri, ” says Trnka-Amrein. –“ In addition to research, our goal is to preserve this place and make it a viable part of the Egyptian economy. ”
Trnka-Amrain was in the United States awaiting the birth of a child when the sculpture was found upside down in January.
She and her fellow explorers were delighted, but they had to temper the excitement in anticipation of further excavations.
“One of the problems with Hermopolis is that it is near the Nile River.
After the construction of the Aswan Low Dam, the groundwater level became a huge problem.
There was no guarantee that the stone would be all right.
Sometimes sandstone is found.
But, in fact, it ’ s just sand or degraded limestone, ” says Trnka-Amrain.
Additional excavations have shown that the Pharaoh ’ s face is remarkably well preserved.
The team even found traces of ancient blue and yellow pigment, which can be analyzed to better understand the period of time and circumstances of the creation of the statue.
“It would be very interesting to do a scientific analysis of the pigment, ” says Trnka-Amrain, noting that soil mixed with paint will also be scrutinized for“ clues to the history of Egypt. ”
Ramesses II is one of the few Egyptian pharaohs widely known to non-specialists in the Western world.
He was the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley ’ s famous poem “Ozymandias ”, played by Yul Brynner in Cecil B. DeMille ’ s film“ The Ten Commandments ” and voiced by actor Rafe Fiennes in the animated film “The Prince of Egypt ”.
The lower half of the statue remained in place, and Gehad presented a proposal to reunite the two parts, which Trnka-Amrain expects will be approved.
It is not known what will happen to the re-assembled statue, but it is likely to remain in place or be placed in a museum, she says.
Meanwhile, a team of researchers is continuing an intensive study of the statue, and Trnka-Amrain hopes they will publish an article about their work sometime this year.
Trnka-Amrain says he hopes to attract more CU Boulder graduate students to the project.
“I came to the University of California after receiving my PhD because the Department of Classical Literature is a really beautiful place where everyone is ready to think outside the box; it is less canonical than the typical departments of classical literature, ” she says.
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Gehad was invited to lead a team of field explorers in Hermopolis, and the statue may remain on site or be displayed in a museum.

Some artifacts, composed of sand or degraded limestone, present preservation challenges, as noted by Trnka-Amrain.

The origin and function of the mysterious Solovetsky labyrinths raise questions about a possible shared civilization in Northern Europe.

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Content: History and archaeology: The mystery of the mysterious Solovetsky labyrinths, or was there a common civilization for Northern Europe
Ancient labyrinths laid out of stones are scattered in large numbers along the coast of the White Sea.
These mysterious megalithic figures are like part of some plan that we, modern people, do not know.
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There is ongoing debate about the origins and cultural significance of stone “mustache” mounds built by nomads in the steppes.

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“This is our territory, our ancestors lie here ”: why nomads erected“ mustache ” mounds
Siberian archaeologist Grishin told about the discovery of mysterious “mounds with whiskers ”
In the autumn of 2022, scientists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences published an article about the discovery of new burial mounds of a relatively rare species in Western Siberia.
From their central structure depart two long earthen ramparts, so that from above the structure resembles a mustache or a giant claw.
Gazeta.Ru spoke with one of the authors of this study, senior researcher, candidate of historical sciences Artem Grishin.
He told, when in the world there were mounds, why they were built by ancient nomads and what are “mounds with mustaches ”.
— Kurgans were erected by many peoples for thousands of years, starting from antiquity to the late Middle Ages.
Who was the first person to create such a funeral?
- Such structures are known from an era earlier than antiquity - at least from the time of the Neolithic and Eneolithic.
The prototype of the mound is an earthen hill of more modest size - that is, the simplest gravestone structure, which probably appeared in the Neanderthals of the Paleolithic.
At the same time, a wide variety of ritual actions also arose.
Gradually, a small mound in some cultures evolved into large structures.
It is worth mentioning that “kurgan ” is an archaeological term.
Under it are hidden the remains of heterogeneous structures, different in internal structure and in appearance.
If we talk about our Siberian region, then in it the mounds of the era from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages are also completely different.
For example, small Neolithic mounds often appeared as multi-act burials, which gradually changed during the funeral of new people.
We see it as a single low hill.
— As I understand it, most of the mounds in our country are associated either with the Scythians or with the medieval Turkic population, which borrowed them from the Scythians?
- Most likely, it is, but I am not ready to vouch for statistical accuracy, since there are still mounds of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age.
Siberian tombstone mounds really were created mainly by nomads, but, again, despite the similarity of appearance, the Scythians they are alone in internal structure, and the medieval population others.
For example, during the construction of some “royal ” Scythian mounds, a central burial was performed before the embankment was created, then a wooden multi-chamber structure was created inside the designated circle, the ritual site.
Ritual objects, sacrifices and other human graves were placed in this structure, then the complex was closed - the mound was filled.
Buildings of another tradition, including the “ordinary ” Scythian mounds, look much more modest.
So, often during the construction of medieval Turkic complexes, the allocated territory was limited by a circular moat and one passage was left.
Inside the moat, funeral rites were performed and the complex was closed.
Medieval mounds are not so complex and relatively small, the ritual also becomes more modest.
And if the basis of the burial mounds of the Scythians are wooden or stone structures, then they are not inside the medieval ones.
At the same time, geography also dictated the rules of construction.
For example, in our region there is no stone, and therefore in some cases, in particular, for mounds of the early Iron Age, it is known that the embankments initially had the appearance of a truncated pyramid formed from large blocks of turf, taken somewhere on the side, in humid areas.
That is, it is erroneous to consider the mounds as if they were dumped in a pile of earth, this is an organized space.
It reaches modern people in the form of a hill, sometimes barely distinguishable and inexpressive, but the task of the archaeologist is to understand the structure of its ritual space.
— The barrows of nomads of the steppes of Eurasia are similar in many respects.
What is the meaning of these peoples invested in the construction of large burial mounds?
– The main goal was to create a landmark in the steppe, visible from afar, but its meaning is twofold.
On the one hand, the mound marked the place where the representative of the family was buried, and it was there that the family periodically came to commemorate him.
On the other hand, this is the marking of the territory, the way of land development by a group of people – “this is our territory, where we roam, our ancestors lie here. ”
The fact that a relative is buried there is in many ways a source of the right to this territory.
And this can be seen in the ethnographic data on much more modern nomadic peoples, who either recently moved away from traditional farming, or left a corresponding trace in written sources.
For the above reasons, the sites of the mounds are linked to the places of seasonal nomads of the population.
Sometimes even the family did not bury a person if he died outside the area of   permanent nomadism.
They reached their places and erected a mound there, an additional complex of rituals, for example, mummification, which is present in the Scythian burial tradition, could be associated with this.
- The grave visible in the steppe has a serious disadvantage - it is robbed.
This is a worldwide trend, and many, such as the ancient Egyptians, tried to prevent it.
How did the nomads fight the robbery of the graves of their relatives?
- It is clear that the easiest way to protect the grave from robbery is not to erect a mound.
In this regard, we can recall the legend of the burial of Genghis Khan.
So that his grave was not plundered, the circumstances and the place of burial were classified, up to the killing of the performers.
And until now, no one knows where this politician is buried – precisely because they took measures, buried without a mound or other external structure.
But when the mound was still erected, a number of actions were performed during the ritual, which symbolically closed the grave, including from the penetration of robbers.
It is clear that these measures act only in the minds of people, and a person from another culture does not read these symbols and calmly acts as he wants, even without knowing about the “magical protection ”.
In some cases, the bottom of the grave pit was masked.
Roughly speaking, it looks like a bottom, but in fact it is a layer of soil, specially laid on top of the burial chamber, which is located below.
There were poboi - burial pits with a small niche in one of the side walls, but they are associated not with protection from robbers, but with the features of the ritual.
However, a person from another culture, a later inhabitant of the territory, could climb into such a grave, do not understand and count that he was deceived.
Despite the above, on the territory of our country, the mounds were robbed almost by one person, some of them many times.
As a rule, they rob the central part - even the funnel remains there.
But this does not mean that the mound is lost for archeology, you can extract a lot of information from it.
Only a complete study of the embankment can give reliable scientific data on it.
Special damage is done by black archaeologists, modern grave robbers.
They hunt for notable metal things, but even if they offer them to a museum, science is useless.
Modern archaeology understands the find only when it is in context, regardless of material value, and carefully records all observations.
The layer in which it lies, the terrain and the archaeological context are important, only then does it begin to “speak ”.
A thing taken out of context can be admired if it is beautifully made, but nothing more.
It was silent, as was the monument from which it was taken.
— How were the mounds with “mustaches ” found in the Kulundinskaya steppe, which you talk about in a recently published article?
- Initially, our colleagues from the regional service of protection of monuments suggested that they exist in this territory, in the interfluve of the Ob and Irtysh.
Initially, scientists doubted that they had found this type of structure.
Their closest analogues are in Kazakhstan, more than 300 kilometers from our territory.
In addition, the “mounds with whiskers ” of Kazakhstan are made of stone, and we do not have stone in the region.
Therefore, our mounds are dirt, which is why these days are barely noticeable on the ground.
They rise no more than 20-30 centimeters.
- How did they get noticed?
- In the service of protection of archaeological sites there is such a procedure - certification, during which a specialist travels to a certain area and checks the condition of known objects and looks for new ones.
During such an event, the specialist of the service Oleg Valerievich Sofeykov and went to these embankments.
He saw them, or rather, felt with his feet a “mustache ” 30 centimeters high and a width of one and a half meters.
The situation is complicated by the fact that these mounds are in a flooded floodplain overgrown with high grass.
Therefore, Oleg Valerievich was not sure that he discovered the "mustache" of the mound, it was difficult to distinguish them from the natural elevation - and this despite the fact that the two mound itself, from which the "mustache" depart, were known before, even stood guard.
So the first mounds “with whiskers ” in our region were opened in the early 2000s, but this fact was not officially recorded.
Now there are many other possibilities, for example, the decoding of space images, which we took advantage of.
However, even from space, swirling soil mounds are not visible well, you have to go through many photos of different years and seasons.
— How many mustache mounds have already been opened in your region?
- In space images, we found about 20 such structures.
For six of them made accurate topographic plans – that is, went there, photographed, measured, put on guard.
We determined the exact location, fixed the appearance, but the excavations were not carried out.
We visited four more, but due to vegetation or water we could not remove the topographic plan.
- Who built these mounds in Kulund?
– Versions vary, but, most likely, this is the Turkic-speaking medieval population, with the advent of which “mounds with mustaches ” and appeared.
In general, this type of monuments is very common in the territory from the Irtysh to the Southern Trans-Urals along the steppe strip, in total there are more than 600.
The time of their creation is determined in different ways: from the era of the early Iron Age to the Middle Ages.
Accordingly, there are several versions of the bearers of this tradition.
Having discovered monuments of this type on the territory of the Kulunda steppe, we expanded their range to the northeast by 300 kilometers.
Does this mean that there was one of the points of the route of the nomads?
- Most likely, this was the end point of the seasonal nomadic cycle, according to our Ural colleagues, it was visited in the summer.
I must say, the Kulunda steppe was used by the Kazakh population for nomadic cattle grazing until the 20th century.
This was prevented only by Russian settlers, who drew the boundaries of land plots, which reduced distant nomads to naught.
— What is the shape of the “mound with mustache ”?
— In Kulund, the central structure is an earthen platform.
Sometimes there are several, located in a chain.
It is the platform, not the mound, round when viewed from above.
The height is different, but above 50-60 centimeters we have not yet fixed.
From the central structures, as a rule, in the east direction, arcuate shafts are erected - "whiskers" with a length of several tens of meters to 100-200 meters.
It's like a claw on top.
What was this place intended for?
– Not only the site, but the entire complex of structures.
Initially, it was believed that they were burial mounds, and the "mustache" marked the boundary of the site for burial and memorial rituals.
Part of the "mustache" or mounds with "mustache" is on the territory of earlier burial grounds.
However, then the complexes began to be excavated, and it turned out that in the central embankments are not so common burials of people.
There are few finds at all - that is why it is so difficult to identify the builders, the time of construction and the purpose.
Mainly detect ceramic vessels installed in additional pits.
There are traces of the sacrifice of domestic animals: sometimes the whole skeleton, sometimes parts of the carcass, sometimes individual bones.
Most often it is the bones of a horse, a ram.
There was a big fire in some places.
Burials of people in monuments of this type are rare.
I would even say that if an ordinary mound without a grave is a rarity and, as a rule, a consequence of a robbery, then this is not the case for “mustache mounds ”.
So, most likely, the mounds of this type were not tombstones at all.
Sometimes they were attached to an ancient (already for the builders of the mound) grave in order to symbolically appropriate a foreign ancestor, that is, to mark the territory.
This happens very often in traditional culture.
The people who lived before you become your ancestor when you go there.
Probably, the builders of the “mound with mustache ” did not even know anything about the buried and his people, only the fact that this is an ancient grave.
Accordingly, after almost a hundred years of studying mounds of this type, a theory arose that this is not a burial complex, but a ritual platform for large tribal or intertribal holidays.
Maybe calendars.
Let me remind you that these complexes are mainly oriented to the east and to the southeast, where the sun rises at our latitude.
Probably, these complexes visited periodically.
Unfortunately, nothing more precise can be said yet, but there are a lot of assumptions.
Carrying out mass rituals there would explain the scope of the mustache.
Our Ural colleagues estimated the labor costs for their construction: it turned out that this required the work of an average nomadic collective (dozens of people) for several weeks.
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These mounds were organized structures associated with ritual activities and the assertion of territorial rights through burial practices.

Contrary to popular belief, some mounds were not primarily built to hide graves from robbers but reflected ritual traditions.

Burial traditions sometimes excluded individuals who died outside established nomadic territories.

Legends such as those about Genghis Khan are recalled in connection with secretive burial practices.

While some mound types included niches for ritual purposes, mound sites still offer significant archaeological information despite disturbance.

Artifacts found outside their context can be admired aesthetically but yield limited knowledge.

Stone “mustache” mounds are characteristic of Kazakhstan, while in other regions mounds are built of earth and are less visible over time.

Some burial complexes consist of several mounds aligned in chains, sometimes including both animal and occasional human remains.

Archaeologists have observed the orientation of these mounds toward the east or southeast, aligning with the sunrise.

Recent breakthroughs also include partial deciphering of an ancient charred scroll, offering new insights into history.

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Content: Scientists managed to decipher part of the text of the ancient blackened scrolls
14.10.2023, 0: 50, Misc
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Scientists were able to decipher part of the text of one of the ancient charred scrolls, opening a door to the past.
This unique breakthrough opens up opportunities for a deeper exploration of the historical events and cultural aspects of these ancient civilizations.
The ancient charred scrolls are of immeasurable value, as they allow us to penetrate a lost world to which we have limited access.
The importance of this discovery lies in the fact that the deciphering of the text is connected with our understanding of the history and culture of those times.
To trace the history of mankind is a huge challenge, as there are often not enough archaeological finds and documents to get a complete picture of the past.
Most of the information about those times was inappropriately written on scrolls, which over time either collapsed or were lost, which makes deciphering the text of the ancient scrolls a real feat.
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The mission of archaeology is to study and reconstruct ancient and medieval periods, especially those only faintly remembered today.

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Content: smi.today
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The scale of predatory excavations in recent years has increased tenfold
The task of archaeology is to study the ancient and medieval history of the Far East, to restore the periods that have sunk in.
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Israel is accused of destroying the present and threatening the future in Gaza.

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Content: The War on Gaza and the Issue of Humanity ’ s Liberation
With nervous nerves and troubled souls, I claim that millions, especially in the Arab and Islamic world, are following the events of the revenge massacre, primitive and brutal on Gaza, that besieged enclave, which has become necessary to describe as a campaign of genocide or ethnic cleansing and a new Nakba project. Israel is destroying the present and trying to kill the future.
Since this war is revealing, as we have said before, perhaps the first thing I have revealed is the depth of the feeling of humiliation and oppression felt by the Arab and Islamic masses towards the Zionist entity, and the longing for victory, pride and dignity. The sources of their identification, whether national or religious, or even purely human, or a mixture of all these, lie deep in the souls of these masses under the rubble of dullness and repeated frustrations, even those whose governments have made peace agreements (or are in the process of doing so), and perhaps especially those masses, who have watched with indifference the efforts of these regimes and their accelerated steps towards normalization. Closer and warmer with the Zionist entity and the growing bet on it, as an entry point to the corridors of Congress and the White House and then American satisfaction and support and little by little influence and ability to influence it.
Then came the flood of Al-Aqsa to reveal not to us and the masses, but to the regimes themselves and to Israel and the West how fragile these arrangements are, they are built in the air, not based on any solid ground and could not take root, despite decades of systematic corruption of consciousness by authoritarian regimes. Attempts to normalize or integrate the Zionist entity into this authentic Levantine Arab environment, regardless of the motives of this rejection identity in what we will not address here, and it is enough to determine its firm existence and its active role.
Demonstrations not only aim at the liberation and dignity of the Palestinian people, but also open the way for the resurgence of a movement for the liberation of humanity from a world order that crushes human beings, but professionally, remotely and behind the scenes.
In the past, when we wrote about this instinctive, or “visceral ” rejection, we were accused of exaggeration, utopia and romantic ideas, but now, in the midst of manifestations of solidarity despite the repression of regimes, and far from proving the correctness of our views and avenging our convictions, we see the overwhelming practical evidence of the sincerity of our premises.
Since the outbreak of the battles, I have been convinced, and I am still more convinced, day by day, that this tour is established and will shape the features of the coming era, and indeed inaugurates it, just as it has left deep scars and wounds in the psyche of our peoples and in the Arab collective consciousness, and that we will discuss its results for years to come. From the calculations of the loss of life, how much the resistance will suffer from the losses and how the formula of the settlement (which I know is temporary and is bound to explode in another round of conflict inevitably), I think it is necessary to draw attention to the broader humanitarian and cosmic impact that the resistance has had, mostly without calculation or planning, such as any explosion or volcano that it cannot predict its effects and the expansion of its circles.
We have seen and heard the bias of the Western media towards Israel in covering the events and adopting its narrative, but the observer does not see it dealing with the Palestinian martyrs as human beings or victims, but only numbers, and many of us have commented on the terrible, shocking and miserable professional fall of this media, which many of us until yesterday praised and cited on our decadent and exposed media, just as we have seen how Western governments rushed to condemn and support unconditional. The Zionist Jan, Blinken even rushed through Arab capitals after Israel, where Arab presidents (Sisi is a prime example) did not show what was expected of them, but each looking for his interests and issuing inescapable statements in front of an angry and agitated audience eagerly waiting for the storm to pass.
We have seen mass demonstrations in the capitals of Western countries, even though they are against official positions, and despite the ban in the case of France, for example, in a blatant assault on freedoms, in a country that pays lip service to them as if they were his daughter or his own property.
Is there a link between the reaction of these regimes and street movements?
This is the most important conclusion and the fundamental question in my opinion, and one of the most dazzling Sunni revelations of the Great Flood.
Life in our modern world is full of details, and the media with its powerful means and infiltration increases the complexity of things, and add a misty yield by faking awareness of the chaos of ideas, and perhaps the great niqab of the flood of Al-Aqsa is that it cured the structure of the relations of states and Western capitalism, removed all impurities and crowds and noise, and left only what is basic, and old in fact, The left (and its wider movement in fact) for its brilliance, and for our rulers ’ panting behind the West, they have been ignoring it: Israel is nothing but a piece of the West.
It is an advanced fortress that does not differ much from the Crusader kingdoms, and thus protects not only their interests, but the entire set of arrangements that shape the economic and international relations that shape our world today, including the sovereignty and control of capital. These capitalists enrich themselves by fueling conflicts and talking about human rights, and they make their financial surpluses from deadly arms sales.
These demonstrations not only aim at the liberation and dignity of the Palestinian people, but they also open the way for the resurgence of a movement for the liberation of humanity from a world order that crushes man, but professionally and remotely behind a curtain, until such a battle comes and reveals its ugliness, injustice and bloodshed.
The flood of Al-Aqsa exposed the falsehood and hypocrisy of these Western regimes, and that world in which capital controls and draws its maps and policies with rivers of blood, and exposed the Western media with its blatant bias, and exposed the wasting and recklessness of Arab regimes, and revealed that the peoples, despite impoverishment, even starvation, neglect and marginalization, are still fine and pure and original.
But we haven ’ t seen it all yet, and as a rock thrown into a stagnant pool, we will see the aftershocks and effects of the Great Flood for decades to come, and other results will unfold, albeit for the rest.
Egyptian Writer
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Demonstrations advocate not only for Palestinian liberation and dignity, but also spark movements seeking humanity’s broader liberation from oppressive global systems.

There is debate on the potential connection between government reactions and popular street movements.

The long-term effects of current events are expected to resemble ripples spreading for decades, with more results likely to unfold.

Abu Dhabi Tourism supports preserving the heritage of clay architecture.

Title:

Content: Gulf News / UAE News
Abu Dhabi Tourism supports the preservation of the heritage of clay architecture
Abu Dhabi - Saif Al Yazid - The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi led a series of successful training programmes and partnerships in 2023, as part of its mission to preserve, disseminate and promote the emirate ’ s cultural and heritage heritage.
In this context, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi has collaborated with the So-Hath Foundation for Building Craftsmen to implement a training program in the field of mud construction for its workers entitled “Re-learning ”.
This program has helped 42 artisans of different levels and experience to hone their conservation skills to preserve the clay heritage sites in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.
This training program supports the strategic objectives of the Department by enhancing the expertise, skills and knowledge of artisans working in the field of preserving and preserving the heritage of clay architecture in the region.
The program, which included several lectures and workshops, contributed to the creation of three guidebooks for the preservation of cultural heritage in four languages: Arabic, English, Urdu and Hindi, which include the principles, techniques and traditions of clay construction.
Jaber Al Marri, Director of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi ’ s Historical Environment Department, said: “Preserving historic buildings and training craftsmen is critical to protecting our emirate ’ s cultural heritage and urban heritage. We are committed to working with partners to support and nurture artisans, workers and professionals through training programmes that ensure the transfer of traditional building practices and the sustainability of clay heritage. ”
In 2023, the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi collaborated with Dabbagh Architecture, the architectural design studio in the United Arab Emirates, to design a special installation for the second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which concluded in March 2024.
The artwork, “From Dust to Dust, ” explores the close relationship between memory and material elements, and is constructed using clay blocks without any structural supports.
The creation of this work was based on the experience and skills acquired by the Department's craftsmen from the clay construction training programme.
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Archaeologists have discovered rock sculptures in the Saudi desert dating back over 7,000 years.

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Content: Rock beauty sculptures in Saudi desert date back more than 7,000 years
The authors of the study, details of which have been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, see this site as an example of “an era in ancient history in which the shepherds of northern Saudi Arabia were rotting on rocks and making huge stone structures. ”
Rock carvings of camels and other camels discovered in northern Saudi Arabia date back at least 7,000 years, much older than previously thought at the time they were unveiled a few years ago, according to an international study.
These 21 outstanding sculptures, engraved in three rock outcrops in the Al Jawf Desert, represent a true size beauty.
In 2018, archaeologists estimated it to date back to the beginning of earlier eras, due to similarities with other sculptures at the nearby site of Petra in Jordan dating back to the Nabataean civilization (169 BC – 106 AD).
A research program launched in the context of a collaboration between the Saudi Ministry of Culture, the German Max Planck Institute for Science and Human History and the National Institute for Scientific Research in France, relied on a range of scientific techniques such as tool mark analysis, rock erosion analysis and radiocarbon screening to accurately date these works, especially as their condition has deteriorated sharply over the years, according to a statement issued by the Max Planck Institute.
The scientists concluded that some of these sculptures were engraved in the sixth millennium before our era, by stone tools in the middle of Savannah, where trees and lakes were scattered, later turned into desert.
All this data coincides with the fact that the sculptures were made using stone tools, at the latest during the 6th millennium BC.
The authors of the study, details of which are published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, see this site as an example of “an era in ancient history in which pastoralist groups in northern Saudi Arabia flocked to rocks and made huge stone structures. ”
The effort to create these rock sculptures may have required the laying of scaffolding and the bringing of stone tools from 15 kilometers away, and required collective work that could be part of an annual ritual for a Neolithic community.
There may be considerable symbolism in some camel sculptures, which have implications for a breeding cycle linked in turn to those of wet and dry seasons.
Scholars consider this site to have been particularly symbolic for its inhabitants and have not yet determined what it is, with multiple interventions over a long period of time to refine the sculptures.
Lead author of the research, Maria Ganyan of the Max Planck Institute, said: “Neolithic groups have regularly returned to the site, demonstrating that its symbolism has lasted for several generations.
Source: French + Websites
About this story
In a new study, Professor Esposito offers a multi-dimensional treatment of the explained root causes of both extremism and Islamophobia, by examining the cultural construct supporting radical discourses.
20 / 6 / 2021
This article deals with the phenomenon of graffiti in our Arab-Islamic heritage; it monitors, through the ages, the manifestations of its use in the lives of people, from the disclosure of the potential of the soul in the texts of literature and the inscriptions of memories to the field of politics and episodes of mysticism.
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Researchers, as published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, consider the site to exemplify an ancient historical era in which northern Saudi Arabian shepherds carved large stone monuments.

Evidence shows these sculptures were created with stone tools no later than the 6th millennium BC.

A European study recommends promoting peaceful coexistence and religious freedoms in Mosul.

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Content: European study advises attention to peaceful coexistence and religious freedoms in Mosul
Translated by Hamed Ahmed
A European study called for attention to culture, peaceful coexistence and religious freedoms within the reconstruction efforts of Mosul, stressing the importance of restoring the ability of social components to return to the practice of their activities.
According to a Swedish study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on post-war reconstruction efforts in Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, “promoting and reviving the aspect of culture, agriculture, social coexistence and the practice of religious customs among the different communities of the people of Mosul is very necessary and must be focused on in conjunction with the reconstruction of buildings, houses and infrastructure of the city. ”
“Considering the unprecedented rate of destruction, it will take many years and huge resources before Nineveh and its people can recover from the painful experience of what they experienced during the occupation of Daesh terrorist gangs, ” she added.
“Massive reconstruction and reconciliation efforts are needed to address the cumulative social, cultural and economic impacts on different ethnic and religious communities in Nineveh. ”
“Post-war reconstruction efforts should not focus solely on the aspect of physical reconstruction and the re-establishment of economic architecture. ”
“Efforts should also attach equal importance to restoring the ability of the social components to return to their cultural and religious activities and traditions and to reform and restore the relations of coexistence and social integration, ” she said.
“This trend in Nineveh may call for the restoration of agricultural activities as an integral part of reconstruction efforts, ” the study said.
She pointed out that "these efforts are of both economic and cultural importance and at the same time carry implications for internal societal coexistence."
“The restoration of agricultural activities is important to address other current challenges such as the impacts of climate change and water scarcity. ”
According to the study, 216 individuals, including tribal leaders, civil society activists, farmers, villagers and displaced people, were surveyed on the extent to which different cultural, religious, economic and agricultural aspects of the Nineveh Plain interact to help rehabilitate economic and living activities, restore cultural and religious practices and promote community harmony.
She stressed that "the survey included interviews of 892 farmers and villagers in Hamdaniya, Talkef and Bashiqa," follow-up, that "the conclusions showed that farmers made strenuous efforts to recover agricultural activities because of the lack of financial resources to enable them to buy materials that support agriculture such as equipment, seeds and fertilizers."
The study went on to say that "the decline of rain and drought added to them have a limited ability to introduce irrigation systems, in an area where agriculture depends on rain for irrigation has been lost, resulting in a significant decline in the financial income of the people with economic difficulties."
“Restoring people ’ s ability to integrate into cultural and religious practices is vital for the post-war era, ” she said.
The study continues, "The conclusions showed that the ability to integrate cultural and religious practices have a great connection with the identity of people and their sense of belonging to their region and to Iraq in general, for many people is a motivation to return to their areas after the stage of displacement."
“Issues related to identity, religion and culture are vital to efforts to promote community harmony and ease internal tensions between different communities in Nineveh, ” she said.
“The restoration of agricultural activity and the re-establishment of religious and cultural practices are key areas requiring assistance, and in these efforts it is necessary to recognize the strong links between the economy and culture and between agricultural activities and cultural dimensions. ”
Focusing heavily on the cultural and social importance of agricultural practices allows reconstruction agents to identify effective ways to address multiple aspects of local needs and pave the way for the restoration of life in Nineveh.
She stressed that “these findings in the Nineveh Plain and the trends and concerns of local people can be harnessed to support post-war reconstruction efforts, which include taking into account the needs of the affected people in order to restore their living standards in accordance with the facts on the ground and restore their ability to integrate with their cultural and religious practices and strengthen cooperation and community coexistence. ”
“Reconstruction efforts should be seen as an opportunity to address problems and issues that are not directly related to the war but are vital to strengthening the recovery side, as well as an opportunity to promote resilience and tolerance over the long term. ”
The study continued, "A three-year occupation period under the control of ISIS left deep wounds in the province of Nineveh."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions forced to leave their homes to seek refuge elsewhere inside or outside Iraq.
The study continues, “These conditions have caused the destruction of the living conditions of communities and communities, the effects of which are still present today. ”
She added that "joint estimates of the World Bank and the Iraqi government estimated the cost of the destruction of historic religious buildings to the extent of 56.2 billion Iraqi dinars ($47 million)."
"The destruction of religious monuments has caused deep sadness and suffering for local people because of its symbol stuck in their minds and representing their identity and belonging," the study said.
About: Swedish Institute of Peace
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This study suggests that restoring agriculture in Nineveh should form part of reconstruction efforts.

Authorities in northern cities have arrested individuals caught illegally excavating for buried treasures, revealing surprising findings after police investigations.

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Content: Accidents
The search for treasure...
The crimes of enrichment
Gangs in the grip of security led by jurists and cadres and witches re-controversy about the truth of buried valuables stories immersed in the strangeness revealed by research and investigations initiated by the judicial police with suspects who were finally stopped in the cities of the north, caught in the case of flagrante excavation and excavation of buried treasures, and showed interesting facts Read More »
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Political leadership and editorial boards discuss themes of loyalty, inclusion, and the challenges of mass political support in times of crisis.

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Content: Political sweeping and before it cleansing and fogging and dropping idols and loyalty to the homeland and the inclusion of all joints and differences
Jassar Saleh Mufti
Sources familiar with the movement within the Islamic Dawa Party said that the current leadership has so far failed to reunite itself, in light of its lack of a plan or project that can be relied on to attract public support, specifically from the young segments.
The Lebanese newspaper “Al-Akhbar ” said in its issue today, quoting those sources, that the leadership of the party was faced with three options“ bitter dreams, and will lead in one way or another, in the end, to the decline of the party star. ”
The first of these options is to call for the election of a new leadership, including members of the Shura Council (50) and the Political Council (11), provided that these 61 are young people, while historic leaders retire, advisers are retained, and then the reform process begins.
But this proposal collided with the possibility of the failure of the new leadership to promote itself, and the possibility that it will take years to achieve a breakthrough interaction in the Iraqi street.
The second option was to postpone the conference, so that the current leadership could mature its vision for the future of the party and its mechanisms of work, but the problem that emerged in this context was the possibility of failure of the stakeholders to produce a “draft vision ”, which means that the party will automatically enter a“ clinical death ”, in light of its inability to produce new leadership on the one hand, and crystallize its project on the other.
As for the third option, in which the “call ” seems to be proceeding, it is the convening of the General Conference before the middle of this year, although“ the date has not been set yet, because the preparations for it need more time, ” in the words of one of the party leaders.
According to the newspaper's information as in its report, the leadership of the "call" is expected to re-elect itself, with limited change in a number of sites in favor of young faces at the expense of current faces.
The congress will be followed by a workshop on reforms of the party ’ s organizational structure, and a paper outlining the party ’ s vision and project.
The information indicates that the latter scenario was developed after consulting regional parties that advised to maintain the unity of Dawa, which was also recommended by the circles of the supreme religious authority (Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani), which prefer to keep the map of political parties in its current form, especially within the Shiite House...
It can no longer be complicated. ”
In the midst of this, and in light of the party ’ s lack of a broad mass base that can rally around it in its ordeal believing in its principles, and not in its ability to secure jobs for those who want them, the opponents of the “call ” bet that the moment of the last“ split back ” is near.
A bet based on a number of factors, starting from the loss of the party ’ s position as prime minister, which it has monopolized for 13 years, through suspicions about its leaders regarding involvement in corruption and its generalization, to the failure of the party to promote itself on the one hand, and the formation of its historical leaders parallel parties on its banks, eat of its popularity, and invest in its street.
A few weeks ago, satellite channels and various social media circulated a scene of a lawmaker accused of corruption, trying to escape the large crowds, which were chasing him near the parliament building, and after he was arrested by the angry, he was carried and put in a garbage container.
Regardless of what this (Ukrainian) MP did, he certainly did not come to do what some of the Iraqi politicians, who sit in the chairs of responsibility and governance at the top of the pyramid?
Where the order reached some of them to be a tool of the external agenda, which wanted and want to flood Iraq with chaos and instability, and resolve sectarianism, but they were a tool of terrorism Daeshi and before him the base, by providing political and legal cover for killers and criminals, taking advantage of their access to the customary or legal immunity granted to those in the legislative or executive power.. Incubators of domestic or imported terrorism (if you will).
This is through material, moral and media support for all tendencies hostile to the political process in Iraq after the US occupation, and what happened in the sit-in squares and platforms, which preceded the Iraqi June setback in 2013.
And supported by the senior leaders of the parties in the provinces of the Sunni Arabs, to conclusive evidence of what I say, where the aforementioned squares and their platforms, which are notorious and notorious, turned into a headquarters and a corridor for the dispersion of horizons and preachers of Satan, and even to kill innocent soldiers unarmed of weapons, and under the sight and hearing of the crowds present, and amid the cries of (Takbir) Daeshi. And prepared in advance in the corridors of the intelligence of regional countries brother and friend of Iraq, to bring down the political process in it, and turn back the clock.
But by the grace of God, and the fatwas of the great references, and the energy of the honorable people of the popular crowd and the security forces, disappointed and lost their bets, and the magic turned on the magician.
The process of political sweeping must start preparing for it from now, coinciding with the liberation and cleansing of the occupied territories from ISIS.
By showing the facts and holding accountable the wrongdoer, the negligent, the corrupt, the thief and the forger, in every detail of the Iraqi state and under any title held by this violator of the law, regardless of his religion, nationality and doctrine, terrorism is not the only one that brought us to what we are in political, economic and social crises.
But it was part of a large series of mistakes, which accumulated and magnified and produced calamities and impurities on this wounded country, especially the system of (quotas), which we have suffered since the fall of the previous regime until now.
It is a call to the people of the areas hit and occupied by terrorism, in Mosul, Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala.. To tell those who elected them and brought them to the top of the political pyramid: Stop the conspiracies, intrigues and false pretensions, which brought Iraq, especially your provinces and their inhabitants to what happened and is being destroyed and ruined. To tell the leaders there that we are part of Iraq, and that the preservation of the rights of the smaller country does not prevent the granting and preservation of the rights of the larger country.
And that they should treat their partners in the homeland as a partnership of brotherhood in destiny, not as the partnership of the merchant who threatens to break the partnership at all times, and for what reason?
Remember that a tree, no matter how high or large, is fixed by its roots, not by the length of its branches or the abundance of its fruits.
It is an invitation to the people of the center and the south to tell their leaders and representatives: Expose the corrupt and the theft of public money, expel them from their positions and jobs that you gave them, and clean your parties of some ignorant climbers and parasites who abused or abused parties that had the honor of fighting injustice and dictatorship.
It is a call for all the Iraqi people to be loyal to the blood and souls of the martyrs, which flowed every day over the holy land, the land of Iraq, to defend it and liberate it from the desecration of terrorism.
Is there a responder??
Before we look at the political sweepers that abound these days, it was necessary to consider the sweepers themselves and the extent of their ability to sweepers that they promise once they win the elections and become prime minister.
The sweep promised by its current advocates will be limited to removing the vestiges of the ruling party, the National Congress alone.
Of course, this process of sweeping will only be carried out by those who will take over the reins of power from the competing parties, and thus qualify him to sweep what he deems necessary from the ruling party, and keep what he wants.
These parties calling for sweeping others, it is regrettable that they did not reach a conclusive opinion on the way to reach power, which is not possible to achieve except through the next elections, as these parties are still in a state of continuous “rot and rot ”, whether they will accept to contest those elections or boycott them?
Every morning there is a new opinion for these parties.
The latest, the memorandum sent to the Presidency of the Republic, demanding the postponement of the elections until next November, the amendment of laws related to freedoms, the formation of a national government, and the restructuring of the National Elections Commission, and then gave the Presidency one week to respond to their demands or they will work on « Hijwa or Dbaybina », boycott the elections.
We ask these parties what is new in these demands that they have been demanding from time to time, especially the idea of the national government, which did not find the least amount of acceptance, let alone respond to any official of the National Congress, and some of them described the demand as an attempt to reach power without effort is to run elections to despair of winning them?
Therefore, we are determined from now on not to pay attention to this memorandum by the Presidency of the Republic, which will be seen as a game to waste time, which the President of the Republic, the candidate of the National Congress for the presidency, is investing in his readiness to compete in the elections, and will not waste him in words and demands that are impossible to achieve.
Moreover, the preparations for the elections have gone a long way, and have cost everyone a great deal of effort and money, which is difficult to replace or obtain again, especially for the same parties calling for the postponement of the elections, which complain to the bricks of the earth of their impotence, poverty and lack of power.
Then how do they expect that the National Elections Commission will be dissolved now, and has been patient on their part since its formation and announcement and throughout the previous period, until they discover today the lack of impartiality and bias of the National Conference that formed it, discovered « Yadoop » now and then they saw the call to dissolve and reconstitute it, without explaining who will reconstitute if not the same National Conference?
What we admire is the continued threat of these parties to boycott the elections, as if someone would care about it after it was repeated more than once and without taking action.
These parties, called more than one name, Juba parties or the parties of the alliance or the parties of the national consensus, which are still running behind the mirage, demanding all impossibilities, some of them have gone out on them and become exposed, especially as the parties that have gone out of importance so that any action they threaten in case of failure to respond to their demands will be worthless in the absence of solidarity of the parties that reject them, especially the popular movement. She calls for this, after her candidate for the presidency of the Republic has made all those strides in his readiness to run.
As long as there are large parties, such as the Popular Movement, which will not accept the boycott, or the Popular Congress, which explicitly announced that it will not boycott the elections, the threat of boycott by the alliance will become useless, but will be in the interest of the National Congress, as we have said before, because the competition will decrease, especially when competitors with heavy weight such as the National Umma Party candidate.
This is, of course, assuming that the Juba parties will indeed boycott the elections, despite their reputation for saying what they do not do, if their demands sent to the presidency of the Republic, which of course are not and will not be answered, and we fear that the decision to boycott from the end of this week, the date that was set to be taken, will move to a new date, as we are used to each time.
These parties in all this « Jihaja » talk about the idea of   sweeping the effects of the Salvation Government, although the sweep of the impact of any government must be through the election fund, so that the party gains the seats that qualify him to sit on the seats of power after the removal of his predecessor, and not otherwise, although we reject the use of the word sweeping from its basis, because it is used to get rid of dirt, and we will not make any of any of any of any of any governments no Although there is political dirt that deserves to be swept away, such as corruption, nepotism, injustice and others, the generalization of the act without discrimination greatly harmed the idea.
We heard the subject of sweeping the monuments of the regimes for the first time in 1985 after the fall of the May regime, when Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi launched the idea of sweeping the monuments of May then, and began to implement it after he came to power.
Unfortunately, the synagogue practiced by Mr. Sadiq al-Mahdi did not exceed the removal of the foundation stone of some of the buildings built by May, which is considered one of the most distinctive effects left by May, such as the Friendship Hall in Khartoum, under whose roof he continued to announce his call to remove the effects of May, as well as the People ’ s Assembly in Omdurman and many others.
We said then that to erase the effects of any system, if this idea is accepted, is only to leave what is more valuable than it and not to remove the name of the person who made it.
Monuments in all parts of the world are one of the most important things that must be preserved, without any tampering with it either in its form or content, so that this helps in the process of recording the history of the country and sequencing it without interruption for the sake of future generations.
The positive history of the country is not required to be recorded and overcome the negative, so as not to create gaps in that history.
If May has its mistakes, which it has like any other system of government, it does not mean that the May era of the history of the country removed that mistake, but it is required to reverse its mistakes with all the honesty and honesty required, at the same time that its positives are reflected with all honesty and honesty as well.
We have not heard of the removal of the effects of any judgment by those who follow it, except for those of us who are accustomed to the creation of adversity.
In the context of the removal of the monuments of May, some have tried to change the names of some places that bear their name, and to name them others, and this attempt is considered a political theft that should not be practiced.
But the Sudanese people, who do not miss such plots, insisted on using the real name despite the nose of change.
Moreover, the removal of any trace of the effects of May means misleading the new generation, which has not lived with it and therefore does not know the facts, and has the right to know all that surrounded it negatively or positively, and when some facts were hidden from him after their removal, what he knows of the history of Sudan and the march of governance in it becomes wrong.
The call for removal also included people who worked for, or collaborated with, the system.
Their removal was similar to the referral for the public interest practiced by the current Salvation Government, but it is amazing that the same people who were swept within the ruins of May and thrown into the dustbin of history are the same people who were used by Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi, the owner of the idea of   sweeping, and placed at the top of his institutions in the Umma Party.
Therefore, we do not find any justification to return to this slogan, was it on the part of Imam Sadiq al-Mahdi or those who took in his tradition from others, vacuuming the regime is impossible to achieve as long as the rule of that regime or Fasrat, vacuuming means removal, which is not possible to do any of the vacuums of the world.
Mr. Sadiq al-Mahdi spent most of his years of rule preoccupied with sweeping the effects of May, and did not succeed until the third democracy was completely swept by the coup of June 1989.
Therefore, we did not hope that His Excellency would repeat the same series to become the sweeping of the effects of the rescue, among the priorities of his electoral programs, although he was excluded from sweeping bridges, bridges, dams and roads of course.
And the question becomes, what will be swept away by the effects that do not include all of this?
I do not believe that it is possible to remove the effects of a rule that has been in power for two decades and more, and wherever the citizen turns, he finds a trace of its effects.
Therefore, it is desirable that the idea of   removing errors become in the style of government and some of its practices, and that everyone move away from this story of removal of monuments.
In the style of government, discrimination among citizens must be eliminated because of loyalty to the party, for example, or preference of kin over others.
The success of any party in achieving justice among citizens alone is enough.
We say this because there are some of the leaders of the other parties have started to raise the same slogan, sweeping the traces of the National Conference, and before these parties sink in the face of that slogan, we hope that they will overcome it and talk about others, as the days have proved its failure and futility.
I believe that the attempt to sweep the effects of the regimes is what encouraged some to sabotage everything that these regimes do, as this is in the field of sweeping their effects.
I was surprised today that there are “vases ” with some seedlings intended to beautify one of Bahri ’ s main streets.
Someone smashed it.
Despite the ugliness of these vases, their unsuitability for decoration, and their entitlement to removal, the one who did the smashing of them is more ugly than he did.
Such an act may be repeated in other places and for other things, and it contains conclusive evidence of the misery of our civic education, where the citizen does not distinguish between what belongs to the government and what belongs to him - as a citizen - must be preserved.
Those who sabotage on the grounds that doing so helps to remove the ruling regime, do not know that they will be the ones who will pay the cost of repairing what they sabotage and from their own money, not the money of the government, and these sabotage operations will not affect the system of government.
Surprisingly, all traces of interest and value were made during the totalitarian era, from the government of November 58, through May 69, to June 89, while none of the governments are found in the democratic era.
This may be due to the fact that military governments, especially those of May and June, continued to govern for a long time, enabling them to implement all their plans and programs, while democratic governments were too short to implement any of their programs or plans.
This may be true to some extent, but it does not negate the fact that partisan governments often waste time in political squabbling among themselves and in how to erase the effects of the military rule that preceded them until they are overrun by another.
Why should any government not seek to build on what its predecessor has built, and stop the story of erasing the traces of the other to start again, which has prevented us from catching up with the world, as long as we do not take a step forward without following it back.
Amebia, whales, black scorpions, dung beetles, the power of militias, the power of political Islam, the power of assassinations and repression, the representative of the petty bourgeois class that lives on the oppression of the masses and plunder their wealth, and it kills in cold blood peaceful demonstrators.
This authority is terrified of the masses, terrified of its revolutionary will with patience, steadfastness and the perpetuation of the uprising, terrified of losing its privileges, influence and corruption, it relied on the hardened criminals of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and mocked all their repressive organs of the security of the Popular Mobilization Forces, militias and national security headed by Faleh al-Fayyad, who is the actual coordinator between the Popular Mobilization Committee. And tried through stupid plays media escalation and military skirmishes with the United States of America and show its defense of the so-called national sovereignty when Soleimani and the engineer were killed and raised the banner of the exit of foreign forces at a time when their representatives in parliament chanted Soleimani, who killed what killed through his snipers dozens of peaceful demonstrators, and cut off the Internet in the past night and this morning As a new attempt to suppress the protests, and all those efforts to distort and distort the demonstrations and thus strike and suppress them.
This dirty power has shown that its real enemy is not America or foreign forces, but the masses that are hungry for freedom, the peaceful masses that have demanded nothing more than a decent life free of poverty and want, confronting them with live bullets, poison gas, snipers and silencers.
The power of the ruling militias in Iraq imposed itself on the masses of Iraq by the strength of their militias, and that their legitimacy is falsified par excellence, and tries to continue through killings, kidnappings, assassinations, fabricating political plays and blatant labor.
This authority is the third party that the criminal Adel Abdul Mahdi talked about in the bloodshed of the masses, and all its leaders must be brought to trial on charges of killing peaceful demonstrators in addition to dissolving their gangs under any name.
All the forces of the political process talk about the constitution, and boast of addressing the masses that they should not violate the constitution while their militias kill, kidnap and assassinate and there is no deterrent to them without asking whether they commit crimes recommended by the constitution!
Their defense of the Constitution is their defense of their fake and criminal power, a power that without killing and silencing will not last a day.
Such power must be swept away from society; without it, society will take a step towards security, stability, freedom and prosperity.
The alternative to this power is the establishment of a provisional government that guarantees freedom, security and equality.
You will be swept away, scavenged, sterilized, and replaced with his coat, and before him trim his nails and cut his tail, even if it is a cover for him, but this is the creation of God!!!
The religious establishment in Najaf closed its doors, widened its voice, distanced itself and rebuked the leaders of the deep state on more than one occasion.
The deep state is a group of interests that do not care what the homeland and the citizen suffer..?
Many suspicions of corruption gnawed the body of Iraq carried out by the deep state is to impose its will with a piece of paper imposed on Prime Minister Brother Mustafa?
The underdog on his own?
a piece of paper to turn the table because the prime minister & apos; s office is taking a cut
Appointments in important, essential and sovereign positions are imposed on the prime minister with a piece of paper from the leaders of the deep state.
When will we be free from the domination and influence of the leaders of the deep state who slaughtered Iraq by imposing their will..
solution from my point of view.
Is the liberation of minds from the influence of leaders of blocs and corrupt political parties and the dissolution of parliament and sweep the leaders of parties and political blocs corrupt and without exception..!?
The Republican presidential system of government and a courageous independent national leader who leads Iraq.
It is the best solution in imposing the prestige of the state and the rule of law, silencing mouths and freedom of opinion.
The imposition of the will of the state, the rule of law, the dissolution of parliament and a presidential system of government requires a popular movement, the liberation of minds and a massive popular revolution that obeys the corrupt political class and their deep state and the political impasse that cracked our heads.
They say, “Beware of women who talk about honor a lot, ” and by the same measure we should be wary of those who raise their voices high in love of the homeland and the fight against corruption.
The people have always threatened with warning the traitors and the fallen to throw them one day in the dustbin of history when history writes about these people and their treacherous attitudes.
Of course, the writing of history and reference to the biography of men remained dependent on the hands of the victor and those who have power and the scepter and sit on the throne and dictate what he wants from the descriptions of those rulers through pens and writings and praises of the sultans to whiten the faces of those blackened by treason, mercenarism and selling the destinies of peoples. Involved in corruption.
In Ukraine, a corrupt politician and money manipulator threw a lawmaker from the party of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych into a garbage container. * ^ * ^ * * On Tuesday, Ukrainian demonstrators threw Vitaly Gorabsky, a lawmaker from the Party of the Regions, into a garbage container during a rally in front of the parliament in Kiev.
The demonstrators grabbed “Gorabski ”, while leaving the parliament building, and threw him in a garbage container they brought in front of the building, and the demonstrators prevented the exit of“ Gorabski ” from the container briefly, accusing him of causing bloodshed in the country, “for having played a leading role in the issuance of many controversial laws during the period of the previous government. ”
The demonstrators, who belong to the Union of Freedom for All Ukrainians and other nationalist movements, demanded to announce the content of a law granting special status to some cities in the east of the country, as well as the passage of a law punishing members of the former Ukrainian government.
I wonder how much we need in Iraq.
This is what must be done in all our parliamentarians and officials, starting from the top of the pyramid of al-Qaeda and without exception, and recover all the money stolen by them and use the International Interpol agency for that!!!!
And then to prison because they did to us double what this guy did to the Ukrainians.
This is the lesson of the Iraqi parliamentarian all corrupt and corrupt and servants of corruption, injustice and tyranny by using parliamentary immunity as well as their domination over the goods of the country by using influence and exploiting all public places and getting bribes or entering into projects with a share if you want to get the license...
Even if we get a chance to throw them away, where are the trash cans?
When the Ukrainians threw him into the container, they insulted him the most because they were civilized and everything had its rules.
But we, our parliamentarians, our government and all the layers of our society, rich and poor, are cutting the streets
Our main cities and garbage accumulated on the sides, but in the alleys it happened and there is no embarrassment and do not see containers only in the neighborhoods “high-end ” buildings, but the residents of the city, and in this sense, the containers we have a prestige and parliament do not deserve it, and even decorated with plastic packages of all colors have become part of the decor of our neighborhoods and do not want to be spoiled by one, especially parliamentarians And it rots because the landfill is relatively cleaner than them.
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Some parties’ opponents predict imminent collapse or deep divisions within, especially if threatened election boycotts occur.

There is skepticism about the sincerity of election boycott threats, as such decisions often shift dates and are not always implemented.

Certain ideas suggest that erasing the legacy of any regime should entail leaving behind greater value, not just removing names or symbols associated with them.

Complete removal of all past influences is seen as impossible; rather, reform should focus on addressing errors within government practices, not removing monuments.

Repeated acts of monument removal in various places highlight poor civic education, where citizens may not distinguish between what should be preserved collectively.

Appointments to high government offices are often controlled by established power networks, limiting genuine choice by political leaders.

Questions are raised regarding Iraq’s needs and the difficulty of truly discarding unproductive elements from governance or society.

The Ukrainian example of discarding someone into a container is cited as an insult, but done within rules as part of a civil society.

All articles reflect only the opinions of their authors.

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In Medenine, Zarzis, sponge fishing is practiced, with winter storms bringing marine plants to the surface.

Title:

Content: Medenine: Sponge fishing in Zarzis..
Exceptional natural heritage employing local skills looking to be inscribed on UNESCO ’ s World Heritage List
< img src = http: / / www.babnet.net / images / 2b / 6454eafadbed20.83535933 _ mnglkofjpeqhi.jpg width = 100 align = left border = 0 >
For at least a century, Zarzis has been known for sponge fishing to be associated with it and became known as its capital, where its sailors mastered unique skills in fishing, and created exquisite techniques in the collection that they transmitted through time from family to family and to sailors outside Zarzis.
Sponge represents an important source of income for the people of Zarzis and part of the cultural heritage of the city, which is valued and preserved by the components of civil society, and to push for recognition of its exceptional and unique value not only locally or nationally but internationally by working to inscribe it on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The preparation of a coordination composition begins work and research from them.
Researchers, historians, experienced and skilled sailors and families raised on the value of sponges and a strong connection to this natural heritage present strongly in the popular imagination participated in the work of the symposium.
Sponges in Zarzis have a long history, where the region attracted foreign sailors since 1875 such as the Maltese and Italians and the transfer of turbidity methods of fishing for sponges to other destinations they were traveling to in search of sponges, including Kerkennah in Sfax, Tripoli and Zawara in Libya, according to the seasons of his hunting and places of winter or summer.
"..."
According to the sailors of Zarzis, the sponge fishing is divided into two seasons, the first season extends from November to March, during which the sailors of the old fishing sponge on the coasts of Zarzis and Tripoli, an important season in terms of production. The marine plants that cover the sponge in the depths and float to the surface by the storms of winter. Taha.
The second season of sponge fishing, extends the entire summer from June to September, and the boats of the sailors of Zarzis old groups to the coasts of the islands of Kerkennah when the marine plants, which the sailors indicate the presence of the sponge, reach the height of their growth.
The sailors of Zarzis classify the types of sponges into Hijami, Gurqani, Girjabi and Kmaki jerjese with white roots, while the traditional methods of fishing are diving without air supply, and the diver is burdened with an iron piece in the water for between two and three minutes more depth exceeding 30 meters and then floats on the surface carrying the sponge.
The fishing tools are limited to some traditional means of the method of three-prong or kakoshla, which is a column or rod with 3 prongs and a mirror diameter of 30 cm and length of 40 cm. Sponge fishing is carried by sailors with a length of 7 meters. It has three iron fangs with which it pulls out the sponge.
He used the method of fishing sponge diving by compressed air or hookah in 1960, and is diving in the depths of the sea to extract the sponge after a search and determine its location and then cut it with a knife and put in a cage, which requires a boat with a motor between 9 and 13 meters on board a device that provides the diver with compressed air, and a diving dress enables the diver to stay in the depths of the sea up to two hours Up to 40 meters.
And to catch sponge in Zarzis social and spiritual value, where it is sung by the turbidity and they said a lot about him as "the scavenger o the navigator o the scavenger o the farmer and the scavenger o the scavenger o the sea", and they also said, "I Akkaria said salt white gold ideal of the finest quality and dried yellow gold they get by the sea." It is the sponge and the Rapid is one of the finest types of sponge along with the kamaki jersey.
The house of the Bajarzis family is almost without a sponge to decorate it, and the piece of natural blotting (without input) was once a valuable gift for newborns and used to wash the body of the newborn.
As for the culture, the sponge is an important cultural product through the International Sponge Festival, which celebrates this year its 52nd edition in confirmation of the heritage and value of this heritage in Zarzis, the capital of the sponge and the Ziatine, where the festival renews the presence of sponge excellence in all its paragraphs, from a marine exit embodying the process of sponge fishing, to a sponge exhibition, and intellectual seminars not only discussed the historical side of sponge fishing. It also foresees and stimulates the valuation of sponge economically through research in its uses and value medically, cosmetic and other uses through manufacturing industries in several fields.
The components of civil society in Zarzis began to pay attention to the sponge to work on its inclusion in the national heritage and the UNESCO World Heritage List, as well as carrying several other ideas for properties rich in the heritage of Zarzis and able to be unique and unique as a human heritage, such as Lake Biban or models of traditional dress and traditional dishes Akkar.
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The sponges are harvested using a tool with three iron prongs, and "Rapid" sponges along with kamaki jersey are regarded as the finest varieties.

A bronze head with a gold mask is displayed in the new museum of Sanxingdui, attracting tourists who stop to watch in front of a bronze statue.

Title:

Content: People 's Daily Online > > Economy and Technology
(Youth Party)
Sanxingdui archeological front line of young people
Our reporter Li Changyu Wang Mingfeng
September 03, 2023 08: 23 | Source: People's Daily - People's Daily
Small number
A bronze head with a gold mask in the new museum of Sanxingdui.
Photo by Xinhua reporter Liu Kun
On July 26, the new Sanxingdui Museum opened.
The mysterious golden mask, the strange shape of the tortoiseshell grid, and the complex shape of the bronze bird foot statue... not long ago, the half-hidden in the soil of the Sanxingdui "heavy instrument" stunning appearance, the size of the huge, complex structure, the strange shape, amazing.
In 1986, the discovery of the Sanxingdui "sacrificial pit" once "awakened the world."
After more than 30 years, from 2020, the Sanxingdui site launched the excavation of six newly discovered "sacrificial pits", and more than 15,000 cultural relics such as ivory, bronze, gold and jade were newly unearthed, which once again made a sensation in the world.
In the Sanxingdui archaeological line, after 90 picked up the girder.
Nearly 200 people participated in the excavation of the Sanxingdui Archaeological Sacrifice Area, of which more than 150 are post-90s.
While inheriting old skills from the archeological predecessors, they skillfully applied new technologies and grew into talents in the field of archaeology, becoming witnesses, participants and promoters of "archaeology with Chinese characteristics, Chinese style and Chinese style".
Excavation:
Not leaving out any historical details.
The new Sanxingdui Museum is full of tourists.
In front of a bronze statue of the statue, tourists stopped to watch.
The exaggerated shapes and strange decorations of portraits bring people's thoughts back to the ancient Shu civilization thousands of years ago.
Speaking of the bronze statue, Xu Danyang, a member of the post-90s archaeology team of the Sanxingdui Institute of Archaeology of Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, was talking about an old friend.
The bronze statue, which was unearthed in the "sacrificial pit" at No. 4, was excavated by his hand.
As the "pit head" responsible for the excavation and cleaning of pit No. 4, Xu Danyang spent most of the year soaking in this pit of about 8 square meters, and every corner and corner here was dug out by him and his colleagues with a small shovel.
"Archaeological excavations are not 'excavation' for most of the time, but 'excavation'." Xu Danyang said that the soil layer contains rich information, which is an important basis for inferring the formation date and process of the ruins. "Every inch of soil should be carefully screened, and no historical details should be missed."
In order to restore as much as possible the formation process of the "sacrificial pit", at the time of the excavation, the No. 4 pit was divided into a small square of 30 × 30 cm, and everyone counted the grid, lying on the ground for a week, and only dug 10 cm deep.
Xu Danyang said that in the process of cleaning up, experts in soil environment, geology and other fields were also invited to participate in the "consultation", and even invited fire experts from the fire brigade to study whether the ashes were burned in the pit from the perspective of the fire site. Burning out of the pit again.
This process allowed him to gain a lot of interdisciplinary knowledge.
"At the excavation site, ordinary earth blocks will be bagged, numbered, and stored in a warehouse known as the 'future space'." Xu Danyang said, these small earth blocks may be wrapped in the truth of history, waiting for people to peel off layer by layer.
Of course, the most exciting part of the excavation is the moment when the artifacts are unearthed.
"At first, the statue was superimposed by ivory and other artifacts, but from a patch of copper green revealed in the gap, it was a bronze artifact," said Xu Danyang, who was not aware of the fact that the artifact was covered with copper rust when it was first unearthed. It was a bronze figure, thought to be a bird-shaped device.
But as the cleaning continued, Xu Danyang suddenly found that the exposed parts were a bit like the tip of a person's nose, and then, the eyes were also exposed, cleaning up along with the characteristics of the human body, and saw the ears and chin.
It was not until all of them were cleaned up that Xu Danyang discovered that the bronze figure was very different from the previous one: the face was more realistic, and the figure was staggered with V-shaped lines, feather crowns, and dovetail lines, which were new artifacts that had not been seen before.
"I am very excited and have a feeling of witnessing history," Xu Danyang said.
In Sanxingdui, not all archaeologists have the luck to catch up with the "sacrificial pit" excavation of such a big event.
Li Huiqing, also a member of the post-90s archaeological team, came to Sanxingdui, where the field excavation work of the "sacrificial pits" has come to an end.
The first excavation she participated in was to search for the remains of the production and life of the ancient Shu people in Moon Bay not far away.
In Li Huiqing's view, compared with the excavation of the eye-catching "sacrificial pits", the pace of work in Moon Bay is the norm for most archeologists: Dotting, laying, digging soil layers, drawing, writing work logs... The work in the fields is orderly, but there is no lack of joy.
Once, she unearthed a "bird's head spoon" pottery products, although it is nothing compared to the "heavy ware" of the "sacrificial pit", but this "strange, lovely love" artifact dug up by hand also made her happy for a long time.
"There are still many places to be excavated in Sanxingdui, and if we continue to do so, we may not be finished in this lifetime," Xu said.
As a first-line young archaeologist, he is "both looking forward and full of confidence."
Protection:
Experience the charm of scientific and technological archaeology
Unlike most of the previous archaeological excavation methods of "first excavation and later protection", a major feature of the Sanxingdui "sacrificial pit" archaeological excavation is that the protection of cultural relics is front-facing, while excavating and protecting.
In order to protect cultural relics simultaneously, the Sanxingdui Archaeological Research Institute has created an exploratory working chamber, which is equipped with a small frequency conversion environment control system and a high-pressure micro-fog humidification system.
At the same time, the excavation site also housed a row of cultural protection work "huts" full of scientific and technological elements, equipped with emergency detection and analysis room, organic cultural relics emergency protection room, inorganic cultural relics emergency protection room, etc., unearthed cultural relics can be protected and studied in the first time.
The soil environment has a great impact on the preservation of cultural relics.
Every 10 cm excavation, Xiao Qing and colleagues will do a scan and soil sample extraction, on-site detection of soil density, pH, water content and other parameters, for the subsequent extraction and protection of cultural relics to make a decision basis.
The most difficult thing is the rescue protection of unearthed ivory. "At this time, you can not work slowly, you must race with time," Xiao Qing said.
The ancient Shu people sacrificed to the gods, and ivory was one of the most precious sacrifices.
After thousands of years of burial in a humid environment, the ivory is full of water, although the appearance is still a whole root, but it is as soft as a biscuit, and it is easy to break.
Among the ivory and with the surrounding bronze artifacts and other artifacts are often interlaced and squeezed together, extraction and protection are very difficult.
"Some ivory laminated together, the most difficult to extract." Xiao Qing said, the first to use wire with cotton thread, gauze through the gap to find a good fixed stress point; and then to wrap a layer of cling film for ivory, "one side lock the water in the ivory to prevent shortening, while isolating external pollution." Then the gauze and cotton thread that passed through the ivory are tightly tied to the polymer bandage, so that the ivory can be extracted intact.
"When I took out a complete ivory for the first time, I felt like I was holding a newborn child, excited and happy," Xiao said.
This ivory extraction and protection not only uses traditional methods, but also uses new technologies such as polymer bandages for the first time, which in his view is a perfect integration of traditional crafts and modern technology.
If the whole ivory extraction test is careful, then the extraction of ivory fragments test is patience.
In the excavation of Pit No. 5, Xiao Qing's colleague Li Sifan, who is also a post-90s cultural protection worker, discovered that unlike other "sacrificial pits", there are few large objects unearthed in the small pit, which is only about 3 square meters.
"Some of the pieces are less than one centimeter long, but they are carved with exquisite patterns such as clouds and thunder, which makes it very difficult to clean and extract them," Li said.
When you successfully extract the tusks and put them under a microscope and look at the lines that are thinner than the hair, it feels like all the effort is worth it.
What makes Li Sifan feel deeply is the charm of scientific and technological archaeology.
For example, the use of 3D printing technology for large-scale bronze cultural relics to wear a silicone film made of "soft Hedgehog armor", so that it can be extracted from the excavation to avoid damage; isotope tracing technology, for the study of the source of cultural relics to open a wider perspective... "
Repair:
Let the relics shine.
During the excavation, a large gold mask was discovered in Pit 5.
The restoration of the golden mask has caused heated discussion on the Internet.
Although he is just in his early 30s this year, Lu Haizi is a veteran of gold restoration and research.
Before coming to Sanxingdui, Lu Haizi was responsible for the cultural relics protection and restoration site of Jiangkou sinking silver ruins, and participated in the orthopedic work of Jiangkou water goldware. At the end of 2020, the gold residue was found during the exploration of Sanxingdui No. 4 pit. Lu Haizi received a notice from the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology to do the site.
"The restoration of cultural relics is a long process, and a lot of cleaning and research work needs to be done before the restoration can be carried out."
Lu Haizi said that after extracting the gold artifacts, the first thing to do is to sample and analyze the soil and the attachments on the gold artifacts, and then draw a map of the diseases of the cultural relics according to the damaged condition.
"Sanxingdui gold tools are very damaged, and it is basically impossible to completely determine the original shape when they are first unearthed."
Lu Haizi said that he still remembers that when the gold mask of Pit 5 was first discovered, it was crushed by mud to form a piece less than two centimeters thick and was quietly buried in the pit.
Before the arrival of experts from the National Museum, he carried out relevant preparatory work for several days, extracted the relevant components of the gold mask for testing, judged the feasibility of orthopedic, and provided basic data and technical support for the later work.
From the beginning of the orthotics to the complete unfolding of the gold mask, it took about a week for Lu Haizi and the experts of the restoration team.
"Some wrinkles may be left in the original production and processing, it can not be flattened, and it is necessary to retain its most primitive information from the perspective of archaeology." Lu Haizi said, "Looking at the gold mask from a lump of knots gradually stretch out, slowly reveal the mouth, nose, eyes, cultural relics regain their charming brilliance, pride in the heart. I feel like I'm alive."
At the Sanxingdui Museum Cultural Relics Restoration Center, about 1.5 kilometers from the site of the sacrificial area, Yang Ping, a young cultural relics restorer, is carrying out the cleaning and restoration work of cultural relics and other cultural relics under the leadership of Master Guo Hanzhong.
Yang Ping said that the restoration of cultural relics should not be rushed, before the restoration of sufficient research, to develop a perfect plan, "today anxious to repair the defective parts, who knows if the completed part, in a few years will not be unearthed original goods?" Yang Ping, for example, this time from the No. 8 pit "top snake body bronze statue" and 1986 No. 2 pit unearthed a "bronze bird foot statue" It is a relatively complete collection that spans more than 30 years.
In Yang Ping's view, the restoration of cultural relics is a delicate work of art, which requires great patience, impatience and impatience.
In the Sanxingdui Museum, he is most admired by Master Guo Hanzhong, who has been engaged in the restoration of cultural relics for nearly 40 years, and has been awarded the title of "National Craftsman".
"I have been engaged in the restoration of cultural relics for more than 10 years, and I deeply understand that every cultural relics can not be copied and irreplaceable.
Yang Ping said that the most important thing for him now is to continue to train his skills and let the Sanxingdui relics bloom in the best condition through his hands in the future, so that visitors to the museum can better appreciate the brilliant bronze culture created by the ancient Shu ancestors and feel the diversity and long history of Chinese civilization.
"Archaeology is a job that needs to endure loneliness," said Xu Danyang, who was lucky to catch up with the golden age of Sanxingdui archaeology. The arrival of this golden age can not be separated from the thunder rain of the station of Sanxingdui ruins, and the restoration of cultural relics of Sanxingdui Museum. Responsibility, perseverance and love, overcoming all kinds of difficulties, and constantly exploring the unknown, Sanxingdui civilization will be displayed in front of the world.
"As a young archaeologist, we should learn from these old people, be patient, keep the original heart, and sit on the cold bench." Xu Danyang said that the current exploration of the Sanxingdui site is far from over, he will devote himself to the archaeological research of Sanxingdui, and contribute to the exploration of the rich connotation of Chinese civilization.
Layout Design: Shen Yiying
People 's Daily (05 / 09 / 2023)
(Editor: Qiao Yiqiong, Chen Jian)
Public Number ： People 's Network Finance
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Xu Danyang explained that the soil layers at the site hold important clues to dating and understanding how the ruins formed.

Pit 4 at the site was divided into a grid of 30 × 30 cm squares, with archaeologists lying on the ground for a week and excavating to a depth of just 10 cm.

Excavation efforts resumed after stopping at the pit.

Li Huiqing, a member of the post-90s archaeological team, joined the excavation at Sanxingdui, where work in the "sacrificial pits" is nearing completion.

Her first dig was at Moon Bay, seeking evidence of the daily lives and production activities of the ancient Shu people.