* Ancient board-games and a compass-rose unearthed in Iran

* One million artifacts acquired by US museum

* Alpine task force formed to salvage prehistoric treasures
* Did Romans 'tide up' Stonehenge?
* Exploring mesolithic times of British moorland life
* Exploring rock art in South Africa
* Salt Knowe - Orkney's Silbury Hill?
* Earliest Mixtec cremations found in Mexico
* Neolithic Marathon and The Sarsen Trail 2008

Ancient board-games and a compass-rose unearthed in Iran

An ancient four-pointed compass-rose showing directions of 'four

cardinal points' and a number of board-games carved on rocks have been

discovered in the Iranian island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf. The

relics were studied and their ancient origins identified by Dr Reza
Moradi Ghiasabadi. "The engravings are between 2000 and 3000 years
old. The first discovered carving is located beside an ancient road
which is a four-pointed compass-rose showing directions of four
cardinal points within a square-shape with rounded angles setting,
50x50cm in diameters. Some sections of the compass-rose have been
damaged, apparently as the result of a cracks in the rock," said
Ghiasabadi. "the compass-rose's lines have been placed in a position
to determine the cardinal points, which have only two degrees of error

from the true position," he added.

The remaining carvings which are board-games were discovered in
the northwest of the island. The board-games are in a mixture of
circular and oblong shape settings, in various diameters, some 4cm and

some in 10cm in circumference. All these carvings engraved over the

rocky-ground's flat surfaces. Thes are located on the hinterland at
the top of the cliff overlooking the waters of the Persian Gulf.
Archaeologists had previously discovered wooden game boards at
the 5200-year-old Burnt City, near the city of Zabol in Sistan-
Baluchestan Province, and a similar game board made of stone in
Kermanshah. The Khark game boards have been created in different
shapes and are something like modern backgammon boards, Moradi
Ghiasabadi stated. He has identified seven types of ancient game board

on the island so far.

Archaeologists have always believed the oldest settlement on the
island dates back to Parthian dynastic era (248 BCE-224 CE), but as
the result of a discovery in November 2007 history of the island was
re-written, as the archaeologists have discovered an inscription in
Old-Persian cuneiform, dated to the Achaemenid dynasty (550-330 BCE).
Since its discovery, the rock-inscription has been left unprotected in

its original place at the mercy of looters, vandals, and harsh weather.

Source: CAIS (19 April 2008), Tehran Times (20 April 2008)
http://tinyurl.com/5hhesf
http://tinyurl.com/6ygbhd

One million artifacts acquired by US museum

Howard Sargent was one of New Hampshire (USA) eminent archaeologists.

Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner, which had a collection of
about 2,000 American Indian artifacts, recently acquired Sargent's
collection. All 1 million pieces. The museum became the court-
appointed successor to the collection after the nonprofit that
controlled it was dissolved over mismanagement. During the next
several months, board members and volunteers will sort through the
many boxes to prepare an exhibit for the public scheduled to open
September 19.
Sargent's collection is valuable for its vastness and
documentation, said State Archaeologist Richard Boisvert. It includes
Sargent's field notes and artifacts from 66 sites in New Hampshire
covering more than 12,000 years of prehistoric life in New Hampshire.
Some of the pieces, like an almost-translucent quartz arrowhead or an
intricately etched clay pot, are tangible relics. Other pieces - bags
of soil, chips of rock or containers of plant and bone remains - won't

likely be on display but could draw attention from graduate students

and researchers. "It isn't just the artifacts, it's the records that
go with the artifacts that make it so valuable," Boisvert said.
For years, the artifacts remained away from the public eye in a
state building on Airport Road in Concord. Now, Mount Kearsarge Indian

Museum's Executive Director Krista Katz and others face the welcome
task of sorting through the collection and determining what will be
displayed from the museum's collection of canoes, beaded garments,
baskets and birch-bark containers. There are 900 boxes in all. Of
those, 160 boxes containing artifacts from the important Smyth dig
near Amoskeag Falls are headed to the Manchester Historic Association
on permanent loan. The rest fill Katz's office, the museum library,
and a just-built storage area.
Boisvert, the state archaeologist, was a sophomore in high school
when he met Sargent. Sargent was digging the Hunter site in Claremont,

a deep dig that revealed layers of civilization, and Boisvert

convinced him to let him help.
He said Sargent, then a professor at Franklin Pierce College, had an
'overgrown sense of responsibility' to history. He was an
archaeologist in a time when there was little grant money available
for digs and even less for preserving and analyzing what was found.
His home became his storage, he said. Bud Thompson said Sargent's wife

told him once that he considered the Warner museum 'his museum.' "I'm
sure he's smiling," Thompson said.

Source: Concord Monitor (18 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/6c58s5

Alpine task force formed to salvage prehistoric treasures

Prehistoric treasures unearthed in the Alps as melting glaciers recede

are under threat from looters who are removing many of them. Such is
the concern for the newly revealed objects - which include weapons,
clothing and tools - that a task force of archaeologists,
anthropologists, mountain climbers and Alpine rescue teams has been
formed in an attempt to salvage them. Franco Nicolis, an archaeologist

from Trento (Italy), said: "We must be ready to intervene as if we

were dealing with a public calamity." He said that mountain climbers
and hikers would be asked to report any finds to the task force rather

than removing them. The initiative, which will ensure that items are
preserved before they can deteriorate, is being organised by the
superintendency of archaeology at Trento and the Stelvio National Park.
The most spectacular Alpine find so far is Oetzi the Iceman, also

known as Similaun Man or Frozen Fritz - the well-preserved,

mummified body of a hunter or shepherd in his forties, who died in
about 3300 BCE and was found in 1991. More recent finds include
prehistoric bronze arrowheads, clothing and shoes at Schnidejoch in
the Swiss Alps and Roman and mediaeval treasures found at Vedrete di
Riete and Vioz in the Italian Alps.
Archaeologists say that errors were made, which 'must not be
repeated' as more discoveries are made. Oetzi was dug out with ice-
axes and hikers were allowed to touch the corpse and take tools and
fragments of clothing as souvenirs.
Professor Nicolis, an expert on the Copper Age, said that careful
study of such finds could produce priceless information. Professor
Nicolis said it was vital that scientists moved quickly to conserve
such objects, observing that if Oetzi had been found 'even a few days
later than he was' the damage to the remains would have been
irreparable.

Source: Times Online (17 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/55jhwz

Did Romans 'tide up' Stonehenge?

As reported last week, after a gap of some forty four years,

Stonehenge is once again being excavated. The excavations are being
conducted by Geoffrey Wainwright (ex-English Heritage) and Tim Darvill

(Bournemouth University), following up their research into the sources

of the blue stones in the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire: but as

they are being funded by the BBC TimeWatch programme, they are being
carried out with the maximum publicity. What they are looking for is
evidence for the dating of the arrival of the bluestones at Stonehenge.
The bluestones story is a complicated one, as the present circle
of bluestones is not in the original position. There is a circle of
bluestone pits known as the Q and R holes, where it is assumed that
the stones were originally set before they were put in their current
position. However there is no good dating evidence for the Q and R
holes, so the present excavations aim to uncover the base of one of
the bluestone holes in the hopes that they may find an antler-pick for

radiocarbon dating.
However the most surprising discoveries so far have been Roman.
In a small pit containing a small bluestone in the corner of the
trench, itself cut into the main socket of one of the uprights, they
found a Roman coin. Even more alarming, was the excavation of the
large pit in the centre of the excavation, where right near the bottom

they found a very small piece of what was indubitably Roman pottery.
Was there a major reordering of the site in the Roman period? As
Geoffrey Wainwright said, their small trench looked like an urban
excavation, there were so many intercutting pits.
Were the Romans rather like English Heritage, people who abhor
untidiness, and when they came to Stonehenge, they found a somewhat
decrepit monument in need of tender loving care, and said "Oh these
wretched druids, they never look after their ancient monuments
properly we had better send along a gang to tidy it up and pay due

respects to whatever gods were originally worshipped there"? But just

how extensive was this tidying up? How much of the plan of Stonehenge
that has come to us is due to Roman interference? This is still a
mistery, but maybe the current excavation will bring some additional
clues.

Source: Current Archaeology (April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/5hu74y

Exploring mesolithic times of British moorland life

The second phase of a project to find out more about what life was
like on the North York Moors (England) thousands of years ago is about

to get under way. The North East Yorkshire Mesolithic project will
investigate areas on the Moors, along the coast and in the Tees Valley

which were previously inhabited by Mesolithic people to get a more

detailed picture of how people lived during the period from 10,000 to
4,000 BCE.
With funding from English Heritage, the project is a partnership
between the North York Moors National Park Authority and Tees
Archaeology. Specialists from Durham University will also be involved,

analysing pollen grains to put together a picture of what the

Mesolithic environment was like. Research from the project will be
used to raise the awareness and understanding of visitors to the
national park of this distant and little-known period in time.
Mags Waughman, the National Park Authoritys archaeological
conservation officer, said: "This is an exciting project which will
give us a much clearer picture about the Mesolithic period a time
between the end of the last ice age and the appearance of early
farming when the population was nomadic and lived by hunting and
gathering wild foods. An initial stage of work gathering all the
currently known evidence for the Mesolithic period was completed in
2006. Using this information, the second stage starting now will
investigate some of the areas which we know were occupied by
Mesolithic people to increase our knowledge of what their life was
like."
The national park's archaeology volunteers are also helping out
and will be shown how to recognise Mesolithic flint tools and identify
Mesolithic sites from the scatters of flint which are sometimes to be
found eroding out of moorland footpaths. Once trained, they will be
out on the moors through the summer and autumn, looking for and
recording evidence for new sites.

Source: Whitby Gazette (11 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/6jewk5

Exploring rock art in South Africa

The Western Cape's rich rock art heritage has been further enhanced
with the discovery of two new sites in the Cedarberg mountains area
depicting ancient Khoisan 'rain making' imagery Zimbabwean
archaeologist Siyakha Mguni has been searching the Cedarberg mountain
range in the Western Cape area for rock art imagery. The images relate

to 'rain making' imagery that bushmen (Khoisin) may have used when
they gathered to call or welcome rain, hundreds if not thousands of
years ago.
The region known as Bushmans Kloof is renowned for it's rock-art
legacy of an estimated 130 documented bushman rock art sites and it's
dedication to preserving this heritage. Mguni says over the past 15
months he has been walking systematically from north to south
documenting and accessing about 110 rock art sites in the region and
thinks he has only covered about 65 percent of the area so far. He
says they have come to understand more and more about the rock art in
the area and also the likelihood of finding something new is high and
is quite exciting.
Mguni says he is particularly interested as these paintings were
of a style that is usually associated with rock art in another region
of the Drakensberge mountain range in South Africa. The figures are
nearly all of men, and closer inspection shows that the heads of the
men were of antelope which the bushmen associated with water and
rainfall. Professor John Parkington from the University of Cape Town
says that the rock art could be anywhere from a few hundred years old
to twenty five thousand years old. Being the resident archaeologist at

Bushmans Kloof has given Mguni the opportunity to share his skills and

experience with hundreds of tourists who come to visit the area every
year.

Sources: Associated Press, MSN (11 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/6lras4
Salt Knowe - Orkney's Silbury Hill?

A combination of modern research and antiquarian 'excavation' looks

like confirming that a massive mound to the west of the Ring o'
Brodgar (Orkney, Scotland) was not a chambered cairn. Salt Knowe lies
at the end of a track to the south-west of the stone circle, near the
shore of the Stenness loch. Thought to date from between 2500 BCE to
1500 BCE, the mound is perhaps the most striking landscape feature in
the area. A Bronze Age burial cist, which is still visible, was found
cut into the flattened top of the knowe.
The mound's sheer size, which is matched only by Maeshowe, led to

the suggestion that it might house a similar chambered cairn. However,

recent scans of the knowe by Orkney College Geophysics Unit, using

ground-penetrating radar, have shown that it appears to be nothing
more than a massive mound of earth, with no central structure. This
discovery ties in with a letter written to The Orcadian in 1861 by the

antiquarian James Farrer. Farrer, who was responsible for excavating

Maeshowe, also had a look at the mounds around the Ring of Brodgar. In

his letter he wrote: "Certain it is that no stones of large dimensions

are found at any depth in either of the tumuli. In each of them I have

made an excavation, and find remains of animal, but no human bones; in

each also the bones are chiefly in the upper part of the mound. The
workmen have in both instances penetrated the subsoil, to the depth of

22 feet from the top and over an area of nine feet square in the
tumulus"
Farrer's investigation has intrigued local archaeologist Nick
Card of ORCA, who has long wondered about the significance of the
mound. Nick said: "His findings, or rather lack of them, would seem to

support the theory that it is neither a Bronze Age barrow or chambered

tomb, as I had suspected, and may be the Orkney equivalent of Silbury

Hill. Once again this emphasises the close links between these areas
4,500 years ago. At least one other similar mound has been recognised
in Scotland at Dunragit in Dumfriesshire, in association with another
Neolithic ritual complex."
 Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, is the largest man-made mound in
Europe. The latest theory on the monument was that it was a ceremonial

mound something confirmed by the lack of domestic, or indeed

ritual,
debris in the vicinity. Embedded in the chalk were large sarsen stones

similar to those at Stonehenge. So rather than being a burial

chamber, Silbury, it is suggested, was a massive 'symbolic mausoleum'.

Do we have the same situation at Salt Knowe? Was the mound erected to
match the shape and dimensions of the nearby Maeshowe? But instead of
being constructed as a house of the dead, was Salt Knowe a dwelling
for the ancestors? Given the idea that the stone circle may have
represented the dead, it's an intriguing possibility.

Source: Orkneyjar (10 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/5b2473

Earliest Mixtec cremations found in Mexico

An ancient burial site in Mexico contains evidence that Mixtec Indians

conducted funerary rituals involving cremation as far back as 3,000

years ago. The find represents the earliest known hints that Mixtecs
used this burial practice, which was later reserved for Mixtec kings
and Aztec emperors, according to researchers who excavated the site.
Evidence from the site also suggests that a class of elite leaders
emerged among the Mixtecs as early as 1100 BCE. In addition, the
burials hold clues that dogs were an important part of the diet of
Mixtec elite.
"The Mixtec area is one area where civilization emerged," said
lead study author William Duncan, an anthropologist at St. John Fisher

College in Rochester, New York. "This [burial ceremony] is one part of

that emergence." Duncan and colleagues excavated two graves in the

ancient Mixtec village of Tayata, which is in the state of Oaxaca
along Mexico's southern Pacific coast. The corpses were placed into
the graves, burned, and then buried near a dwelling that was probably
their home. One set of remains is thought to belong to a young woman
who was between 18 and 25 years old. The team was unable to determine
the gender of the other person, but they think that this individual
could have been between 15 and 25 years old.
Co-author Heather Lapham, a zooarchaeologist at Southern Illinois
University in Carbondale, said the team also found bones of dogs,
deer, and fishindications that the residents ate well and thus
probably were of a higher social status. In fact, Lapham said, the
excavation revealed that dogs were 'a major component of their diet.'
According to co-author Andrew Balkansky, also of Southern Illinois,
the Mixtecs may have believed that ritual cremation of bodies would
release the souls of the deceased. "The idea was that, basically,
you'd have someone's soul ascend to the heavens in the smoke,"
Balkansky said. The cremation also could have been part of the ritual
belief that elite dead are transformed into gods, he said. Such
cremation ceremonies were not conducted at other Mixtec grave sites
from around the same timeanother indication that the people buried
in
the Tayata graves were considered elite. The scientists could not
determine the cause of death of the two young people, lead author
Duncan said, but they probably were not killed as part a sacrificial
ritual.

Source: National Geographic News (9 April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/6yesc3

Neolithic Marathon and The Sarsen Trail 2008

This year the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust celebrates the 20th anniversary

of the Sarsen Trail, and to mark this milestone is encouraging us to

take part in the 'Walk for Wildlife Week' which precedes the Trail,
Saturday 26th April to Sunday 4th May.
The Week will culminate with the Sarsen Trail and Neolithic
Marathon on Sunday 4th May. The Sarsen Trail and Neolithic Marathon is

a 26-mile sponsored walk and run between the two World Heritage Sites
of Avebury and Stonehenge, with shorter courses available to those who

prefer shorter distances. The route offers some of the most

spectacular view across Wiltshire's undulating downland. Part of the
route is also of major historical importance as it traces the
approximate trail along which the Sarsen stones were dragged to build
Stonehenge in the Neolithic times.
The event is the Trust's most important annual fundraiser. Over
1,700 walkers and 400 runners from across the UK and from abroad, 100
dogs, and 250 staff and volunteers took part in last year's event
raising over 60,000, money that will be used to help protect
Wiltshire's wildlife and environment and safeguard its natural
heritage for future generations. There are frequent water stations
along the route and once you've reached Stonehenge, you can lie back
and enjoy a well-earned massage or feast on a hog roast.
The Marathon starts at Avebury at 10.30am on Sunday 4th May 2008.

The half marathon starts at Charlton Clumps on Salisbury Plain at

11am. More info at www.wiltshirewildlife.org

Source: Wiltshire Wildlife Trust (April 2008)

http://tinyurl.com/5hyfqw