Little is known about the origins of manikins--small anatomical sculptures thought to be used by doctors four centuries ago--but now advanced imaging techniques have offered a revealing glimpse inside these captivating ivory dolls. Researchers using micro-CT successfully identified the material composition and components of several ancient ivory manikins, according to a new study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
This is an ivory figurine reclining on its 'bed' with all organs placed inside [Credit: Fides R. Schwartz, RSNA]
Ivory manikins are typically thought to have been carved in Germany in the late 17th century. They are reclining human figurines, 4-8 inches long, generally female, which open to reveal removable organs and sometimes a fetus attached with a fabric "umbilical" cord. The manikins have intricately carved features, and some even have pillows beneath their heads. It is believed that they were used for the study of medical anatomy or perhaps as a teaching aid for pregnancy and childbirth. By the 18th century, they had been replaced by more realistic teaching tools, such as wax models and cadavers. The manikins then became objects of curiosity and luxury status symbols in private collections.
Duke University in Durham, N.C., holds the world's largest collection of manikins (22 out of 180 known manikins worldwide). Most of the manikins in the Duke collection were purchased in the 1930s and 1940s by Duke thoracic surgeon Josiah Trent, M.D., and his wife Mary Duke Biddle Trent, prior to the 1989 ivory trade ban. The researchers noted that after being donated to the university by Trent's granddaughters, the manikins have spent most of their time in archival storage boxes or behind display glass, as they are too fragile for regular handling.
"They are usually stored in a library vault and occasionally rotated into a special display unit in the Duke Medical Library for visitors to appreciate," said Fides R. Schwartz, M.D., research fellow in the Department of Radiology at Duke.
Non-destructive imaging with X-rays and CT has been used in the past to examine fragile artwork and ancient artifacts. Imaging of relics has been extremely beneficial to the fields of archaeology and paleopathology--the study of ancient diseases.
This is an Ivory manikin after removal of the abdominal and chest wall, ribs, and part of the uterus. Internal organs such as the lungs, intestines, as well as a fetus inside the uterus are visible [Credit: Fides R. Schwartz, RSNA]
Micro-CT is an imaging technique with greatly increased resolution, compared to standard CT. It not only allows visualization of internal features, it noninvasively provides volumetric information about an object's microstructure.
Dr. Schwartz and colleagues hoped that through micro-CT imaging they could determine the ivory type used in the Duke manikins, discover any repairs or alterations that were not visible to the naked eye, and allow a more precise estimation of their age.
"The advantage of micro-CT in the evaluation of these manikins enables us to analyze the microstructure of the material used," she said. "Specifically, it allows us to distinguish between 'true' ivory obtained from elephants or mammoths and 'imitation' ivory, such as deer antler or whale bone."
The research team scanned all 22 manikins with micro-CT and found that 20 out of the 22 manikins were composed of true ivory alone, though materials like antler might have been less expensive in that time. They discovered that one manikin was made entirely of antler bone, and one manikin contained both ivory and whale bone components.
Micro-CT initial scan data. The internal organs and fetus inside the uterus are visible, similar to a photograph [Credit: Fides R. Schwartz, RSNA]
Metallic components were found in four of the manikins, and fibers in two. Twelve manikins contained hinging mechanisms or internal repairs with ivory pins, and one manikin contained a long detachable pin disguised as a hairpiece.
The most established trade routes in the 17th and 18th centuries sourced ivory from Africa, leading the researchers to believe that since nearly all of the manikins were made from true ivory, it is likely that the ivory obtained to craft the manikins was acquired from the African region.
"This may assist in further narrowing down the most probable production period for the manikins," Dr. Schwartz said. "Once historical trade routes are more thoroughly understood, it might become clear that the German region of origin had access to elephant ivory only for a limited time during the 17th and 18th century, for example, from 1650 to 1700 A.D."
Additionally, identifying non-ivory components in the manikins may provide more accessibility to carbon dating, allowing the researchers to more accurately estimate the age of some of the manikins without damage to the fragile pieces.
The researchers also hope to acquire 3D scans to create digital renderings and enable subsequent 3D printed models.
"This is potentially valuable to scientific, historic and artistic communities, as it would allow display and further study of these objects while protecting the fragile originals," Dr. Schwartz said. "Digitizing and 3D printing them will give visitors more access and opportunity to interact with the manikins and may also allow investigators to learn more about their history."
Using drone technology, a team of UF researchers has uncovered how an ancient Florida village played a pivotal role in pre-Columbian geopolitics.
A drone equipped with Light Detection and Ranging quickly collected architectural details and topographic data about he Raleigh Island settlement with unprecedented resolution. The images revealed rings made of oyster shells surrounding 37 residences [Credit: University of Florida]
In research led by anthropology Ph.D. student Terry Barbour, the team discovered that the settlement on Raleigh Island, located on the northern Gulf coast of Florida around 900–1200 AD, operated as a major producer of beads made from seashells. The beads, used in rituals at the time, were highly prized in communities as far from the coast as the lower Midwest.
"In form, scale and purpose, the Raleigh Island settlement has no parallel in the archaeological record of the American Southeast," said Ken Sassaman, Barbour's advisor and the co-creator of the study. Sassaman is the Hyatt and Cici Brown Professor of Florida Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology.
The researchers used drones to survey the ancient settlement in a fraction of the time traditional methods would have taken. Working with UF partners at the GatorEye Unmanned Flying Laboratory, the team equipped the drone with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanners that quickly collected architectural details and topographic data with unprecedented resolution.
The LiDAR shed light on how the settlement—a complex of at least 37 residential spaces surrounded by 4-meter-tall ridges of oyster shells—was organized to make beads in the very place where shells were found. In several of the living spaces, the researchers' excavations uncovered ample evidence of large-scale bead production.
The Raleigh Island settlement is one of the few coastal communities where such extensive craft production has been found.
"What we have here is a settlement at the source of this raw material at the time when marine shell was starting to become a heavily demanded social item," Barbour said. "The fact we have strong evidence of bead manufacture at a site with equally impressive architecture to guide us in understanding how production was organized socially makes this place really special, and as of now the only place like it we are aware of."
The U.S. ambassador to Italy has returned to Italian officials the head of a statue stolen from an archaeological site in Rome in 1968.
Credit: Carabinieri dei Beni Culturali
Ambassador Lewis Eisenberg handed over the marble head of the mythical figure Pan to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini Thursday on the 50th anniversary of a Carabinieri unit dedicated to the recovery of cultural artifacts.
Carabinieri special investigators spotted the marble head in a California auction catalog in 2016 and notified their U.S. counterparts.
U.S. attache Armando Astorga said the piece entered the United States in the mid-2000s, after spending many years in private hands in Europe.
So far, the investigation has not determined the original thief.
U.S. Homeland Security Investigations has repatriated some 12,000 items to over 35 countries since 2007.
A total of 1,783 Achaemenid-era clay tablets, which were on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago since 1935, have been returned home.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
The fourth batch of the Achaemenid objects, composed of 1783 clay tablets, entered the country from the Oriental Institute after 84 years, CHTN reported.
They are part of thousands of clay tablets and related fragments, which were kept at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
The artifacts were recuperated with great deal of efforts made by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts and the presidential office for legal affairs, tourism minister Ali-Asghar Mounesan said.
The tablets were handed over to the National Museum of Iran, where they are supposed to be put on show as of tomorrow.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
“These treasured documents decipher an important segment of recorded history of Achaemenids during the reign of Darius I (Darius the Great who reigned from 522 to 486 BC),” said Jebrael Nokandeh, director of the National Museum of Iran.
Last December, Mounesan announced that over 11,000 flawless [Achaemenid-era] clay tablets and a large number of fragments of their kind will be back home.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
“Of the cited number, 1784 clay tablets have been endorsed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in order to be shipped to Iran, in the first stage… and they are currently being packed by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,” Mounesan said.
In February 2018, and following years of ups and downs, the fate of those ancient Persian artifacts, was left in the hands of a U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Iran.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
Archaeologists affiliated with the University of Chicago discovered the tablets in 1930s while excavating in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire. However, the institute has resumed work in collaboration with colleagues in Iran, and the return of the tablets is part of a broadening of contacts between scholars in the two countries, said Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.
The tablets reveal economic, social and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) and the larger Near Eastern region in the fifth century BC.
Credit: Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage
Darius I (born 550 BC—died 486), king of Persia in 522–486 BC, one of the greatest rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, who was noted for his administrative genius and for his great building projects. Darius attempted several times to conquer Greece; his fleet was destroyed by a storm in 492, and the Athenians defeated his army at Marathon in 490.
The Achaemenid [Persian] Empire was the largest and most durable empire of its time. The empire stretched from Ethiopia, through Egypt, to Greece, to Anatolia (modern Turkey), Central Asia and to India.
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, opening new avenues for understanding one of the most spectacular achievements of the ancient world. On view from November 6, 2019, through May 24, 2020, the exhibition features 180 objects that bring to life the synthesis of masterful craftsmanship and ancient beliefs that transformed clay, minerals, and organic materials—seen as magically potent substances—into this powerful monument.
Reconstructed panel of bricks with a striding lion Neo-Babylonian Period; Processional Way, El-Kasr Mound, Babylon, Iraq [Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A Wonder to Behold demonstrates how the master craftspeople who designed and built the Ishtar Gate and its affiliated Processional Way were not simply skilled technicians—though they were certainly that— but also artists, historians, and ritual practitioners known as “experts” (ummanu). They were believed capable of creating artworks that manifested divine powers on Earth, and the Ishtar Gate, offering entry into the imperial city of Babylon, was designed to be one such magically activated monument.
A Wonder to Behold has been organized by ISAW and co-curated by its Associate Director of Exhibitions and Gallery Curator, Clare Fitzgerald, PhD, with guest curators Anastasia Amrhein, an art historian specializing in the ancient Middle East (University of Pennsylvania), and Elizabeth Knott, PhD, a historian specializing in the textual and visual remains of the ancient Middle East (NYU).
Dr. Fitzgerald states, “ISAW is thrilled to present A Wonder to Behold, which follows the transformation of commonplace, if sacred, materials as they journey from the brickyards to one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world, a divinely protected and ritualized entryway to the inner city of Babylon. In so doing, the exhibition opens a window onto both ancient beliefs and superb artistic skills, and expands our understanding of the critical role of craftspeople in the ancient Middle East. ISAW is grateful to Anastasia Amrhein and Elizabeth Knott, who have brought their deep knowledge to this exhibition.”
Built over the course of King Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign (r. 604–562 BCE), the Ishtar Gate (named in honor of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar) was at the epicenter of a major empire that extended from presentday Iran to Egypt. In its final and most spectacular phase, the monument was built with brilliantly glazed bricks, molded in relief to depict hundreds of dragons, lions, and bulls—all set against a background the color of lapis lazuli. At once providing access to and protecting the heart of the sacred imperial city, these creatures inspired both admiration and apprehension.
By the late 19th century, it appeared that all that was left of the Gate were glittering fragments of colorful glazed brick scattered among the rubble of collapsed clay architecture. But between 1899 and 1917, German-led excavations not only studied the glazed remains of the towering Ishtar Gate, but also excavated its molded (unglazed) foundations, which extended deep into the earth. Archaeologist Robert Koldewey sent almost 800 crates of fragments to Berlin, with the permission of the Ottoman, and later the Iraqi governments. Once there, the colorful remains were cleaned, stabilized, and sorted, then assembled piece by piece, creating first whole bricks and subsequently panels of brightly colored raised-relief beasts. These reconstructed ancient remains were joined with modern blue bricks to create a monumental reconstruction (albeit at a slightly smaller scale) of the Ishtar Gate and its affiliated Processional Way at Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Collection, housed in the Pergamon Museum.
Today, a multi-national process of excavation, reconstruction, and conservation of the Ishtar Gate continues, both on-site and at various institutions. The monument may be experienced not only in Berlin, but also at Babylon, Iraq—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—where earlier phases of the Gate still stand and visitors can experience its true scale and relationship to the ancient city.
The objects on view in A Wonder to Behold are on loan from a variety of international and domestic collections including the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, notably, the Vorderasiatisches Museum. Together, they provide a vivid picture of the making of the Ishtar Gate, shedding light on the people who created it and the materials they engaged with and transformed.
The exhibition opens with an introduction to the gateway as revealed through its discovery and reconstruction. A variety of archival drawings, photographs, and objects demonstrate the immense complexity of this undertaking. A 1901 watercolor by archaeologist Walter Andrae, for example, shows the Babylonian system of fitters’ marks that he deciphered, revealing the painstaking process through which the monument was created. This process began by marking out the design on a wall of unadorned bricks, and continued with the molding, glazing, and baking of each individual brick before fitting them together, a task that is something like designing and assembling an intricate puzzle.
The Ishtar Gate and Processional Way represent the epitome of major developments in molding and glazing technologies that had taken place over the preceding centuries, enlivening architecture by bringing color and dimension to otherwise unadorned mud brick buildings. A reconstructed panel on view here shows one of the 120 molded and glazed lions that paraded out from the Gate and down the Processional Way. Believed to be powerful beings associated with the king’s role as protector of his people, the beasts are depicted in bold relief, projecting into the space of the viewer as they intimidated unwelcome visitors while protecting the inhabitants of the city.
Other objects illustrate the links between the world of the gods and the Ishtar Gate through an exploration of the religious meaning of lions, bulls, and mushussu-dragons. These include an Assyro-Babylonian cylinder seal showing the fierce goddess Ishtar, who helped protect the city from enemies, with her lion, and a marble bowl dating from 2900–2600 BCE that demonstrates the continuity and ritual significance of the repeating bull image—which also appears on the facade of the Ishtar Gate—and its ritual significance, already understood to be ancient in Nebuchadnezzar II’s time.
The material components of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way—clay and a glass-like glaze composed of ground stones and metal oxides—were endowed with metaphysical and magical qualities. The exhibition examines these substances, including their origins, sometimes in far-flung places; the techniques with which they were produced and worked; and the powerful cultural and religious beliefs attached to them.
Endowed with vital power in the ancient Middle East, clay was viewed as the stuff of creation and tied closely to the gods: ancient texts asserted that the first gods and first humans were created of clay. Clay was often used to create figures believed to be imbued with life and capable of acting on their creator’s behalf. As highlighted by a mold for a female figurine here, artists in the ancient Middle East did not share the modern emphasis on the new, but frequently replicated more or less identical images, each thought to be as powerful as the next. As such, molds like this one were understood as authoritative image sources, originally passed down to humanity from the gods.
A Wonder to Behold also includes a fragment of a baked clay plaque with a striding lion reminiscent of those on the Processional Way. This piece, which dates from late 3rd–early 2nd millennium BCE, shows the longevity of lion imagery created from molded clay. Figures like these, which were believed to be capable of effecting change in the lived world, were not restricted to monumental or public contexts, but could also be found in domestic houses and shrines. Although their exact purpose is unknown, they may have protected the household from dangers such as illness and misfortune, as well as from demons, or they may have been directed to perform more specific magical tasks.
A brick from Babylon containing the cuneiform inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II illustrates clay’s inherent malleability and receptivity to touch. After being molded, bricks like these, which were used in official constructions, were stamped with the king’s inscription and laid out to dry in the sun or sometimes baked in a kiln. While this brick was still soft, it was also impressed with the paw of a wandering dog—a humble, everyday touch that gives us a direct, affective point of access to the ancient world.
A cuneiform tablet from the Middle Babylonian Period (ca. 1300–1200 BCE) records a recipe for making red glass that highlights the secret alchemical knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern craftspeople, while an Egyptian glass vessel from ca. 1400–1300 BCE showcases the range of brilliant colors that these experts were able to achieve. In fact, human-made materials were believed to be as powerful as naturally occurring ones, their brilliance and shine no less meaningful. The recipes for manufacturing these magical substances, which prescribed specific rituals to ensure a successful outcome, were closely held.
An ancient gilded coffin valued at about $4 million that was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art was returned to Egypt in a repatriation ceremony Wednesday after prosecutors determined that it had been looted from the country.
Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The coffin was the centerpiece of the Met’s exhibit “Nedjemankh and His Gilded Coffin,” which opened in July 2018.
“Coming as we do from all over the world, New Yorkers place a strong value on cultural heritage, and our office takes pride in our work to vigorously protect it,” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance said at the ceremony attended by Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Hassan Shoukry.
“Returning stolen cultural treasures to their countries of origin is at the core of our mission to stop the trafficking of stolen antiquities. I am honored to repatriate this extraordinary artifact back to the people of Egypt,” he added.
The District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit — headed by Assistant DA Matthew Bogdano – and officials from Homeland Security Investigations followed a paper trail that raised several red flags about the coffin’s provenance.
Credit: WikiCommons
The forged May 1971 export license bore the stamp “AR Egypt,” referring to the Arab Republic — but at the time, the Arab Republic didn’t exist. The country was the United Arab Republic until September 1971, Vance explained.
In a joint probe with authorities in Egypt, Germany and France, officials executed a search warrant at the Met, which cooperated and handed over the ornate, mummy-shaped coffin, Vance said.
The coffin — which was crafted in Egypt in the first century BC — once contained the remains of Nedjemankh, a high-ranking priest of the Egyptian ram god Heryshef of Herakleopolis.
The coffin’s surface is decorated with scenes and texts in gesso relief that the museum has said were intended to guide Nedjemankh on his spiritual journey from death to eternal life, according to The Art Newspaper.
It was stolen from the Minya region of Egypt after the country’s 2011 revolution and smuggled to the United Arab Emirates.
It was later transported to Germany, where it was restored, and then to France, where it was sold by a Paris art dealer to the famed Fifth Avenue art museum in July 2017.
The museum has emphasized that all of the Met’s acquisitions undergo “a rigorous vetting process” that follows a 1970 UNESCO treaty, federal and state laws and the Association of Art Museum Directors’ guidelines, the news outlet reported.
“Today we are celebrating the return of one of our national treasures,” Shoukry said Wednesday. “It is not the protection of our heritage, but the protection of mankind’s heritage.”
In the ninth to seventh centuries B.C., the Assyrians, based in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), forged a great empire that extended at its height from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and parts of Turkey in the west, through Iraq to the mountains of Iran and Armenia in the east. To glorify their reigns, the Assyrian rulers built majestic palaces adorned with relief sculptures that portray the king as a mighty warrior and hunter, and confront visitors with imposing images of winged bulls, demons and other mythological guardians.
Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq, on view at the Getty Villa October 2, 2019 to September 5, 2022, presents a selection of these famous relief sculptures as a special loan from the British Museum in London. Among the greatest masterpieces of Mesopotamian art, the Assyrian reliefs have, since their discovery in the mid-19th century, fascinated viewers with their vivid depictions of warfare, hunting, building works, mythology, rituals, banqueting and other aspects of Assyrian court life. Often bearing cuneiform inscriptions, some scenes show characters, events and places known from the Old Testament and ancient Greek authors. Together they represent the richest body of narrative art and iconography to have survived from the ancient Near East.
“The British Museum possesses the largest and most important collection of Assyrian reliefs in the world. The fourteen panels on view at the Getty Villa create a compelling overview of the subjects, styles, and artistic achievements of Assyria’s sculptors, including outstanding masterpieces such as the ‘Banquet Scene’ of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, reviled as ‘Sardanapalus’ in the Old Testament,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
“At the time of their discovery, taste in Britain—and Europe generally—hewed strongly to classical models, by which standard some saw these Assyrian monuments as unrefined; but this attitude soon subsided, and they are now universally appreciated as artistic achievements of great visual and emotional power. In our own day the historical and cultural importance of these sculptures has increased with the tragic destruction by ISIS of many of the reliefs that remained in Iraq. We hope therefore that this display will raise awareness of the need to protect major heritage sites that remain at peril around the world.”
The Assyrian heartland lay astride the Tigris River in Mesopotamia, in what is today northern Iraq. The reliefs in this exhibition come from the palaces of kings Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.) and Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.) at Kalhu (Nimrud), Sargon II (722–705 B.C.) at Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), and the last great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668–627 B.C.) at Nineveh.
In the mid-eighth century B.C. the Assyrian Empire expanded westward to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and Egypt, coming into contact with the Greeks in Phoenicia, on Cyprus, and along the southern coast of Anatolia (Turkey), as well as in trading colonies in northern Syria.
Assyrian palaces were imposing complexes that served both as residences for kings and their families and as the venues for official diplomatic and ceremonial functions. The most important rooms within the palaces were decorated with reliefs. Scenes in the throne room and reception halls typically emphasized the king’s military prowess and his status as the all-powerful ruler, sometimes in graphically brutal terms. The king’s private quarters could include beneficent mythological creatures, rituals, and other themes. The hunt was one of the most frequently depicted royal activities, symbolizing the king’s supreme power over the most fearsome enemies.
The British adventurer Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), who led the excavations at Nineveh and Kalhu (modern Nimrud), published two series of folio-sized illustrations documenting his discoveries under the title The Monuments of Nineveh (1849-1853). Both series are on display in the exhibition, the complete sets of images being accessible on an iPad in the gallery. A number of reliefs on view in the exhibition were excavated by Layard in 1845-51.
This is the second long-term loan exhibition in the gallery devoted to The Classical World in Context, a new gallery at the Getty Villa highlighting cultures that influenced and interacted with the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome.
The exhibition will remain on view for three years, during which it will coincide with upcoming exhibitions on ancient Mesopotamia (March 18 – July 27, 2020), drawn from the collections of the Musee du Louvre, and ancient Persia’s relationship with the classical world (2021).
Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq is curated by Timothy Potts, director at the J. Paul Getty Museum, with assistance from Sara E. Cole, assistant curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The real Jurassic Park was as an ancient landscape home to a vast desert covered mostly in sand dunes as far as the eye could see, where dinosaurs and small mammals roamed southern Utah. The Navajo Sandstone is known for its beautiful red and tan crossbedded sandstones that grace many of the national parks and monuments in the southwest USA--for example Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion national parks.
Navajo Sandstone from the Moab area [Credit: Stephen T. Hasiotis]
The sands were deposited in dunes within the largest known sand sea (erg) in Earth's history during the Early Jurassic. These deposits show a record of desertification--the process by which fertile lands become desert. How did this landscape lose its water bodies, vegetation, and animals? How long did desertification take to happen? How long did it last? What amount of time is actually represented by these deposits? Understanding the timing, scale, and duration of this significant period in Earth's history is challenging, and many questions are unanswered due to the lack of age constraints in these deposits.
A new study by Parrish et al., published in Geology, has determined numerical ages from several calcium carbonate (i.e., carbonates, CaCO3) rock layers that represent lake deposits that once occupied interdune areas, which served as watering holes for a variety of dinosaurs and small theraspids (relatives of mammals). These carbonates were age dated using the radiometric method of uranium-lead (U-Pb), providing ages of 200.5 ± 1.5 million years (Ma) and 195.0 ± 7.7 Ma.
These age dates show that in eastern Utah parts of the Navajo desert are much older than previously thought, and together with age dates from Arizona show that the giant sand sea became younger to the south. The lake and associated spring deposits also show that this vast desert, at times, had a wetter climate and more active hydrologic cycle than had been previously assumed.
This work demonstrates that the desertification process is complex, and that age dates from carbonates and correlation of rock layers will help answer major questions of how desertification takes place in continental interiors.
This study has societal relevance because the history of hydroclimate (i.e., groundwater and climate) change recorded in the Navajo desert deposits can serve as a model for modern marginal environments that may be impacted by desertification from a warming climate.
With the projected rise in global temperature, regions in marginal zones are anticipated to become even more vulnerable to desertification. That is, these zones will become part of the growing desert regions. Particularly vulnerable areas are found in Africa and Asia, areas with large population densities that are already exceeding the capacity to supply food and water. By studying how the Navajo erg evolved, we can provide important insights into rates of modern desertification.
Stone tools and other artifacts unearthed from an archeological dig at the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho suggest that people lived in the area 16,000 years ago, more than a thousand years earlier than scientists previously thought. The artifacts would be considered among the earliest evidence of people in North America.
Cooper's Ferry Site 2013 Area A looking east [Credit: Loren Davis]
The findings, published in Science, add weight to the hypothesis that initial human migration to the Americas followed a Pacific coastal route rather than through the opening of an inland ice-free corridor, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and the study's lead author.
"The Cooper's Ferry site is located along the Salmon River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin. Early peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they could easily walk and paddle in to North America," Davis said. "Essentially, the Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast migration route.
"The timing and position of the Cooper's Ferry site is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an early Pacific coastal migration."
Davis first began studying Cooper's Ferry as an archaeologist for the BLM in the 1990s. After joining the Oregon State faculty, he partnered with the BLM to establish a summer archaeological field school there, bringing undergraduate and graduate students from Oregon State and elsewhere for eight weeks each summer from 2009 to 2018 to help with the research.
The site includes two dig areas; the published findings are about artifacts found in area A. In the lower part of that area, researchers uncovered several hundred artifacts, including stone tools; charcoal; fire-cracked rock; and bone fragments likely from medium- to large-bodied animals, Davis said. They also found evidence of a fire hearth, a food processing station and other pits created as part of domestic activities at the site.
Over the last two summers, the team of students and researchers reached the lower layers of the site, which, as expected, contained some of the oldest artifacts uncovered, Davis said. He worked with a team of researchers at Oxford University, who were able to successfully radiocarbon date a number of the animal bone fragments.
The results showed many artifacts from the lowest layers are associated with dates in the range of 15,000 to 16,000 years old.
Overview of Cooper's Ferry [Credit: Loren Davis]
"Prior to getting these radiocarbon ages, the oldest things we'd found dated mostly in the 13,000-year range, and the earliest evidence of people in the Americas had been dated to just before 14,000 years old in a handful of other sites," Davis said. "When I first saw that the lower archaeological layer contained radiocarbon ages older than 14,000 years, I was stunned but skeptical and needed to see those numbers repeated over and over just to be sure they're right. So we ran more radiocarbon dates, and the lower layer consistently dated between 14,000-16,000 years old."
The dates from the oldest artifacts challenge the long-held "Clovis First" theory of early migration to the Americas, which suggested that people crossed from Siberia into North America and traveled down through an opening in the ice sheet near the present-day Dakotas. The ice-free corridor is hypothesized to have opened as early as 14,800 years ago, well after the date of the oldest artifacts found at Cooper's Ferry, Davis said.
"Now we have good evidence that people were in Idaho before that corridor opened," he said. "This evidence leads us to conclude that early peoples moved south of continental ice sheets along the Pacific coast."
Davis's team also found tooth fragments from an extinct form of horse known to have lived in North America at the end of the last glacial period. These tooth fragments, along with the radiocarbon dating, show that Cooper's Ferry is the oldest radiocarbon-dated site in North America that includes artifacts associated with the bones of extinct animals, Davis said.
Possible early American Pacific coastal migration route [Credit: Teresa Hall, Oregon State University]
The oldest artifacts uncovered at Cooper's Ferry also are very similar in form to older artifacts found in northeastern Asia, and particularly, Japan, Davis said. He is now collaborating with Japanese researchers to do further comparisons of artifacts from Japan, Russia and Cooper's Ferry. He is also awaiting carbon-dating information from artifacts from a second dig location at the Cooper's Ferry site.
"We have 10 years' worth of excavated artifacts and samples to analyze," Davis said. "We anticipate we'll make other exciting discoveries as we continue to study the artifacts and samples from our excavations."
In the farmlands of the Mississippi River Valley, earth is continuously cleared and leveled—a result of the region's booming agriculture industry. But beneath the soil lies an important piece of American history, one a Florida State University anthropology professor is working to piece together.
Excavations at the Carson site [Credit: FSU]
In 2007, a planned farming operation at what's known as the Carson site uncovered evidence of a once large Native American village and monumental center located in the Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi. FSU Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jayur Madhussudan Mehta has spent years investigating the site and teasing out details of Native American life in the 13th century.
In a new paper published in North American Archaeologist, Mehta, who worked for the State of Mississippi when the site was first discovered, lays out how large earthen mounds found in old villages like the one at the Carson site played a central role in Native American societies in what is now the southeastern United States.
"I propose that people came together as communities to build mounds and monuments, and that was a way of making a community," Mehta said. "When that collective work becomes appropriated, or taken over by someone or a small, elite group of people, this monument no longer represents community, or an egalitarian ethos. Rather, it represents a hierarchal relationship between elites and commoners, between people who have control over this monument and live on top of it, and those who live below it."
The Carson site is about one mile long and was first occupied by Native Americans from the St. Louis region who migrated downriver and established a settlement. Over the following centuries, the site's occupants built earthen mounds, constructed a village and began harvesting corn. Today, the surrounding region is largely used for agricultural purposes. A farming endeavor initially planned for the Carson site ultimately prompted the research excavation.
"The farming operation, through the course of moving 3 to 4 feet of soil off the surface, uncovered a village with houses and burials," Mehta said. "I became involved as a representative of the state of Mississippi to consult with Native American groups, remove disturbed burials, and to work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the University of Mississippi, the University of Alabama and other universities to study the site."
Mehta's research offers insight into the purpose of Mound D, the Carson site's largest mound by volume. The building of Mound D by non-elites may have provided social and ideological benefits, as well as protection from raiding, warfare, and subsistence buffers through organized food storage. The elevation of the landform also protected the site from flooding.
He believes the actual construction process of the large earthen mounds and their role in social and political relationships explain a lot about societal hierarchies and communities formed in early settlements.
In the 1800s, for example, it was common for people—especially the wealthy—to build homes atop the mounds. The landscape in the area was otherwise flat and people were aware of what they were building on. However, settlers at the time widely ignored the historical significance of Native American artifacts.
"Early settlers in the Mississippi River Valley did not think of Native American villages as a part of their collective history," Mehta said. "They were thinking about colonization, owning their own land by displacing indigenous people and building their own empires and states."
As part of the Carson Mounds Archaeological Project, excavations were conducted from 2012 to 2015, and researchers used ground-penetrating radar and a gradiometer to look for remains of ancient buildings. At "Mound D," where Mehta's research was focused, the use of this technology was met with little success. A subsequent decision to remove large amounts of poison ivy from the mound site ultimately led to discovery of the first artifacts.
Further excavations uncovered several buildings, some superimposed on each other. Teams took more than 80 sediment cores across the Carson landscape, excavated several trenches and used radiocarbon dating to analyze the approximate age of the samples.
Mehta hopes research such as this helps shift people's mindset when they hear the term American history and understand the need to preserve Native American heritage sites and artifacts that are part of the nation's collective cultural past.
"American history begins 15,000 years ago when the first Native Americans crossed over from Siberia into the New World," Mehta said. "These places deserve our attention, our efforts and preservation, just as much as we would strive to preserve colonial Williamsburg or Jamestown."
When it comes to historical fashion, nothing stands out more than an item woven with shiny metal threads. These threads have been woven into textiles since ancient times and have been used by cultures around the world. However, the historical record has limited insight into how these materials were made, and conservation efforts limit scientists' ability to obtain samples because many methods are destructive.
This colourized microscopy image of an 18th century metal thread reveals it is made of a piece of metal wrapped around a silk core; inset shows relative amounts of silver and gold/silver alloy. Scale bar = 100 microns [Credit: Aleksandra Popowich & Edward Vicenzi]
The researchers reported their progress toward a new, less damaging methodology for analyzing metal threads at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2019 National Meeting & Exposition. ACS.
"This project began when we were asked to investigate the metal threads of a 14th century Italian textile using a proteomics-based approach," says Caroline Solazzo, Ph.D., who is one of the project's principal investigators. Her team published a study last year characterizing the protein-containing membranes and adhesives in the threads of this artifact, which were made from animal products such as cow hide and pig intestine. Now, the team is reporting on their investigation into the exact composition of metal fibers of this and other historical objects.
"Conservation science is a unique area of chemistry research," says Aleksandra Popowich, Ph.D., who is presenting the work at the meeting. "We are using microscopy techniques that allow us to build a 3D view of the threads, so we can see things like layering and micro-structure that give us insight into when and how the fibers were made." Both Solazzo and Popowich are researchers at the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute, a center for specialized technical collections research and conservation of artistic, anthropological, biological and historical artifacts.
While decorative metal threads have been a subject of historical research interest for decades, studies to determine their manufacture and makeup have relied on cross-section analysis to view the internal metal structure. The current study, however, was driven by the desire to maintain the integrity of artifacts.
For this particular work, Popowich and her Smithsonian colleagues Thomas Lam, Ph.D., and Edward Vicenzi, Ph.D., obtained 30 samples from the Fashion Institute of Technology. The samples originated from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and some of them were nearly 1,000 years old. The types of threads were diverse; some were strips of metal, others were strips of paper wrapped around fibers. Many of the pieces were religious textiles, such as vestments, demonstrating the cultural and historical importance of metal threadwork.
To get a closer look, the researchers developed a strategy that combined energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and correlated micro X-ray fluorescence. Together, the methods provided a high-resolution map of the threads' elemental composition and thickness. These techniques only required a few micrograms of material, leaving most of the threads intact for future conservation efforts.
The resulting surface images and cross-sections showed that most threads had a combination of gold, silver and sometimes copper or zinc, creating a layered structure that highlighted the intricacy of the craftsmanship. The researchers learned that some thread-making techniques vary by culture, but other methods did not change much over time. For example, data from two French threads, one from the 16th century and one from the 18th century, showed that the process of rolling super-thin metal wires and wrapping them around a core material was largely unchanged between those years. In addition, the measurements taken using this method align with historic sources and data from computer simulations.
With this pilot investigation completed, the researchers plan to further develop this strategy to the point where they do not need to destroy a piece of the sample at all. This advance could open up the list of artifacts for study to include those that are too culturally important to damage for the sake of research. Such a method could also expand their work to include other materials, such as gilt leather, tapestries or gilded furniture.
Between 2500 BCE and 300 CE, a series of kingdoms flourished in what is today the Sudanese Nile Valley, a region known in antiquity as Kush and by modern scholars as Nubia. Ruling from the capitals of Kerma (2400–1550 BCE), Napata (800–300 BCE), and Meroe (300 BCE–300 CE), Nubian kings and queens controlled vast empires and trade networks, rivalling—and even for a brief time conquering—their more famous neighbors, the Egyptians.
Winged Isis gold pectoral, Nubian, Napatan Period, reign of Amaninatakelebte, 538–519 BCE [Credit: Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition]
The Nubians left behind the remains of cities, temples, palaces, and pyramids, and their artists and craftspeople produced magnificent jewelry, pottery, metalwork, furniture, and sculpture. Yet today many people are unaware that these great civilizations even existed.
The Museum of Fine Arts played a key role in bringing ancient Nubia to light, undertaking excavations at ancient Nubian sites in southern Egypt and northern Sudan between 1910 and 1930. As a result, the MFA’s collection of ancient Nubian art is the largest and most important outside Khartoum, and represents a major resource for scholars of ancient Nubia today.
Granite statue of King Senkamanisken, Nubian, Napatan Period, reign of Senkamanisken, 643–623 BCE [Credit: Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition]
Ancient Nubia Now features more than 400 highlights from the collection, many never before exhibited. Among the highlights are the exquisite jewels of Nubia’s queens, the nearly lifesize statue of Senkamanisken from the sacred mountain of Gebel Barkal, the army of funerary figurines from the tomb of King Taharqa, the gold and silver treasure of King Aspelta, and the stele of King Tanyidamani, bearing the longest known inscription in the still untranslated Meroitic language and script.
Precious objects imported from Egypt and the Mediterranean world shed light on Nubia’s role as a leader in foreign commerce. Along with introducing visitors to the breadth, innovation and technical mastery of Nubian art, Ancient Nubia Now explores the reasons for which Nubia remains unfamiliar to most Americans, including a shortage of written documentation from antiquity, the prejudices of early excavators, and propaganda from its neighbor and rival Egypt.
Sandstone block from a coffin bench, Nubian, Meroitic Period, early 2nd century BCE. Findspot: Sudan, Meroe, Pyramid Beg. N. 8, burial chamber [Credit: Harvard University - Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition]
At the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery (Gallery LG31), from October 13, 2019 til January 20, 2020.
About 35 million years ago, an asteroid hit the ocean off the East Coast of North America. Its impact formed a 25-mile diameter crater that now lies buried beneath the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary in Virginia and Maryland. From this impact, the nearby area experienced fires, earthquakes, falling molten glass droplets, an air blast and a devastating tsunami.
The 21 shocked and unshocked zircon crystals dated in this study were separated from this ~30 cubic centimeters of unconsolidated late Eocene sediment obtained from Ocean Drilling Project site 1073, hole A [Credit: Biren/ASU]
While the resulting "Chesapeake Bay impact crater" is now completely buried, it was discovered in the early 1990s by scientific drilling. It now ranks as the largest known impact crater in the U.S., and the 15th largest on Earth.
When the asteroid hit, it also produced an impact ejecta layer, which includes tektites (natural glass formed from debris during meteorite impacts) and shocked zircon crystals which were thrown out of the impact area.
Scientists refer to this layer as the "North American tektite strewn field," which covers a region of roughly 4 million square miles, about 10 times the size of Texas. Some ejecta landed on land while the rest immediately cooled on contact with seawater and then sank to the ocean floor.
A team of researchers, including Arizona State University School of Earth and Space Exploration scientist and lead author Marc Biren, along with co-authors Jo-Anne Wartho, Matthijs Van Soest and Kip Hodges, has obtained drilling samples from the Ocean Drilling Project site 1073 and dated them with the "uranium-thorium-helium technique" for the first time.
An asteroid struck the East Coast of North America 35 million years ago. Ejected material from the impact site was distributed over an area of at least four million square miles. Researchers have found clear traces of the impact and dated them for the first time using the uranium-thorium-helium technique. ODP 1073 on the map refers to the ocean drilling project site where the sample material for this study was collected [Credit: GEBCO world map 2014]
"Determining accurate and precise ages of impact events is vital in our understanding of the Earth's history," Biren said. "In recent years, for example, the scientific community has realized the importance of impact events on Earth's geological and biological history, including the 65 million years old dinosaur mass extinction event that is linked to the large Chicxulub impact crater."
The team studied zircon crystals in particular because they preserve evidence of shock metamorphism, which is caused by shock pressures and high temperatures associated with impact events. The dated crystals were tiny, about the thickness of a human hair.
"Key to our investigation were zircon -- or to be more precise: zirconium silicate -- crystals that we found in the oceanic sediments of a borehole, which is located almost 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of the impact site, in the Atlantic Ocean," says co-author Wartho, who began the study when she was a lab manager at the Mass Spectrometry Lab at ASU.
The location of the crater in Chesapeake Bay. It is now completely covered by younger sediments, but was discovered in the early 1990s by marine geophysical surveys and subsequent drilling. It is the largest known impact crater in the U.S. and the 15th-largest on Earth [Credit: Powars et al. 2015, Christoph Kersten/GEOMAR]
For this study, Biren worked with co-authors Wartho (now working at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel), Van Soest and Hodges to prepare samples for analysis and to date zircon crystals with the uranium-thorium-helium dating method. Biren then identified and processed shocked zircon fragments for imaging and chemical analysis with an electron microprobe.
"This research adds a tool for investigators dating terrestrial impact structures," Biren said. "Our results demonstrate the uranium-thorium-helium dating method's viability for use in similar cases, where shocked materials were ejected away from the crater and then allowed to cool quickly, especially in cases where the sample size is small."
