archaeology magazine

July/August 2009www.archaeology.org A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America January/February 2011

Saving Buddhist Heritage

in Afghanistan

PLUS: Lost Viking Fortress,Colonial Coffeehouse, Greek Warfare, Pocahontas

Top 10 Discoveries of the Year

Australia’sPainted History

The Artifacts of Illegal Immigration

M O T H E R NA T U R E’SB E S T K E P T S E C R E T

Be one with the captivating. Be one with this Caribbean gateway to the Maya world. Be one with this Hemisphere’s largest barrier reef. As one of the last unspoiled places, you’ll feel an intimate connection to authentic experiences in Belize. All just a two-hour flight from the U.S., in the only English-speaking country of Central America. Call 800-624-0686 or visit TravelBelize.org/arch. And just be, in Belize.

18 18 Mining AMining Afghanistanfghanistan’s Past’s PastWill economic pressure destroy Will economic pressure destroy

the country’s Buddhist heritage? the country’s Buddhist heritage?

BY BY ANDREWANDREW LAWLERLAWLER

24 24 Top 10 DiscoveriesTop 10 Discoveries of 2010of 2010

ARCHAEOLOGYRCHAEOLOGY’s editors reveal the ’s editors reveal the

year’s most compelling storiesyear’s most compelling stories

32 32 Reading the RocksReading the RocksAboriginal Australia’s painted historyAboriginal Australia’s painted history

BY SAMIR S. PATELBY SAMIR S. PATEL

38 38 Th e Fight for Th e Fight for Ancient SicilyAncient Sicily

Rewriting one of the ancient world’s Rewriting one of the ancient world’s

most dramatic battlefield accountsmost dramatic battlefield accounts

BY JOHN W. I. LEE BY JOHN W. I. LEE

42 42 Th e Journey to El NorteTh e Journey to El NorteHow archaeologists are How archaeologists are

documenting the silent migration documenting the silent migration

that is transforming Americathat is transforming America

BY HEATHER PRINGLE BY HEATHER PRINGLE

CONTENTSJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011

VOLUME 64, NUMBER 1

features

38 Specialists conserve and analyze remains from the more than 2,000 graves found at ancient Himera in Sicily, site of a famed battle in 480 B.C.

1

Cover: Aboriginal X-ray depictions

of kangaroos from the central panel

at Djulirri in northern Australia

ARCHAEOLOGY • January/February 20112

departments

■ More from this Issue: See a video tour of the rock art at Djulirri in northern Australia, and visit another site nearby with more painted surprises.

■ Column: Heather Pringle discusses new thinking on the collapse of civilizations. Perhaps they didn’t disappear, but just reinvented themselves.

on the web www.archaeology.org■ Interactive Digs: Read about the latest

discoveries at the Minoan site of Zominthos in central Crete.

■ Archaeological News from around the world—updated by 1 p.m. ET every weekday. And sign up for our e-Update so you don’t miss a thing.

32

4 In this Issue

6 From the President

8 Letters

9 From the TrenchesRoman helmet pokes holes in England’s

antiquities scheme, King Herod’s theater box,

remote Anasazi towers, and a lost Viking city

12 ReviewsThe Olmec go Hollywood and pictures

from the spirit world

14 World RoundupRoman Britain murder mystery, fi rst feast,

Paleo-fl atbread, the Young Man of Chan Hol,

earliest mountaineers, a 300-year-old watch,

and more

16 InsiderWho owns the dead? A controversial

amendment to federal repatriation law

complicates the relationship between

Native Americans and archaeologists

49 Letter from VirginiaHow archaeology helped reconstruct

a long-lost eighteenth-century coffeehouse

in Colonial Williamsburg

72 ArtifactA model home—complete with family dog—

from a Han Dynasty tomb

24

4242

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Primary Sources

The item that you see here is, quite obviously, a backpack. But it is also a primary source, an artifact found in situ. It is like millions of other objects left behind, through the millennia, by people who have tried to cross from a place

that has become undesirable, to one that might possibly offer more. In “The Journey to El Norte” (page 42), contributing editor Heather Pringle visits with archaeologist Jason De Leon to see the work he is doing in the Arizona desert to document what is

a contemporary pattern of mass migration, before the record of it disappears.

Accounts of events by historians are sometimes incomplete. In “Th e Fight for Ancient Sicily” (page

38), John W. I. Lee follows the work of archaeolo-gist Stefano Vassallo who has been excavating the Sicilian site of ancient Himera, searching for the precise location of a famed battle between the Greeks and Carthaginians. Historians’ accounts

have varied and Vassallo’s work is beginning to off er a detailed view of living, fi ghting, and

dying in 480 b.c.In order to preserve a site for future study,

archaeologists seldom excavate all of it. But in the case of Mes Aynak in Afghanistan—

which provides an essential record of ancient Buddhism in that country—they are hoping to

uncover as much as they can before it is destroyed for the copper that lies beneath it. For “Mining Afghanistan’s Past”

(page 18), we sent Andrew Lawler to Afghanistan to document the work being done by French archaeologist Philippe Marquis in one of the world’s most dangerous places.

Th e struggle for who should decide what happens to the artifacts and remains of Native Americans continues. In “Who Owns the Dead?” (page 16), Julian Smith fi lls us in on a new amendment to federal repatriation law and examines the underlying cultural values that shape the relationships among museums, Native Americans, and archaeologists.

Th e question of who owns history also comes into play in “Reading the Rocks” (page 32), by Senior Editor Samir Patel. Patel traveled to the remote northern coast of Aus-tralia, to visit an extraordinary Aboriginal rock art site that has paintings dating from 15,000 years ago through the 1950s and constitutes the Aboriginal Australians’ account of their history, including their record of contact with the world beyond their shores.

And, of course, we bring you the always popular “Top 10 Discoveries” (page 24). We guarantee at least a few surprises.

IN THIS ISSUE

Editor in Chief

Claudia ValentinoAIA Online Editorial Director

Mark Rose Executive Editor Deputy Editor

Jarrett A. Lobell Eric A. Powell

Senior Editors AIA Online Senior Editor

Samir S. Patel Eti Bonn-Muller Zach Zorich

Design Director Editorial Assistant Ken Feisel Malin Grunberg Banyasz

Contributing Editors

Roger Atwood, Paul Bahn, Bob Brier, Andrew Curry, Blake Edgar, Brian Fagan,

David Freidel, Tom Gidwitz, Stephen H. Lekson, Jerald T. Milanich,

Jennifer Pinkowski, Heather Pringle, Angela M. H. Schuster, Neil Asher Silberman

Correspondents

Athens: Yannis N. StavrakakisBangkok: Karen Coates

Islamabad: Massoud AnsariIsrael: Mati Milstein

Naples: Marco MerolaParis: Bernadette ArnaudRome: Roberto Bartoloni,

Giovanni LattanziWashington, D.C.: Sandra Scham

Publisher

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Susan Pollock, Jeremy A. Sabloff , Kenneth B. Tankersley

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Claudia ValentinoEditor in Chief

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(page 18), we sent Andrew Lawler to AfghanFrench archaeologist Philippe Marquis in on

Th e struggle for who should decide what haAmericans continues In“Who Owns the De

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No job is more important to me than safeguarding the past, and I’m honored to have served as president of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) for the last four years. In my last column in Archaeology, I have the distinct

honor of introducing my successor, Elizabeth Bartman. Th e last four years have been diffi cult for archaeologists, as the fi scal crisis and the

continuing confl icts in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the discipline—including the AIA—to be both fl exible and vigilant. Despite these challenges, we at the AIA have strengthened our connections in other countries, especially Germany, Russia, and China, as part of an attempt to form a “United Nations” of archae-ologists, and our new site preservation grants have been awarded to projects in eight countries. Elizabeth, or Liz, as you’ll come to know her, will continue these initiatives, and I know her energy and wisdom will be boons to the AIA.

Some of you may already know Liz from her dynamic, wide-ranging AIA lectures, including “Egypt, Rome, and the Concept of Universal History,” “Th e Industry of Sculptural Restoration in

Eighteenth-Century Rome,” and “Challenging the Masculinist Ideal: Sexy Boys in Roman Art.” Others of you may have consulted her magisterial study of Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus (Portraits of Liva: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome), or her groundbreaking research on the archaeology of battle or ethnicity in Roman portraiture. She has served as an energetic president of the AIA’s New York Society, an exhibition review editor for the American Journal of Archaeology, and a trustee of the Etruscan Foundation. I was fortunate to have had Liz as a colleague in graduate school at Columbia University, where we compared notes from our latest excavations—I at Aph-rodisias, she at Carthage and the Athenian Agora. For the last four years, during which she served as AIA fi rst vice-president, I relied heavily on her counsel and guidance.

Liz says she is “an archaeologist of the storeroom”—meaning she examines the familiar for greater insight. Th at instinct will serve her well as she leads the AIA. She will take a clear-eyed look at all we do and we will be better for it. I leave you with sadness but with the knowledge that the AIA is in excellent hands.


A Warm Welcome to the AIA’s New President

FROM THE PRESIDENT

C. Brian RosePresident, Archaeological Institute of America

Archaeological Institute of America

Located at Boston University

OFFICERSPresident

C. Brian Rose

First Vice President

Elizabeth Bartman

Vice President for Education and Outreach

Mat Saunders

Vice President for Professional Responsibilities

Sebastian Heath

Vice President for Publications

Jenifer Neils

Vice President for Societies

Alexandra Cleworth

Treasurer

Brian J. Heidtke

Chief Executive Officer

Peter Herdrich

Chief Operating Officer

Kevin Quinlan

GOVERNING BOARDSusan Alcock

Michael AmblerCarla Antonaccio

Cathleen AschBarbara BarlettaDavid Boochever

Laura ChildsLawrence Coben

Julie Herzig DesnickMitchell Eitel

William FitzhughHarrison Ford

John HaleSebastian Heath

Lillian JoyceJeffrey Lamia

Robert LittmanElizabeth Macaulay-Lewis

Peter MageeShilpi MehtaHelen Nagy

Naomi Norman, ex officioEleanor PowersLynn QuigleyDan Rahimi

Paul RissmanAnn Santen

William SaturnoGlenn SchwartzDavid C. Seigle

Chen ShenDouglas Tilden

Claudia Valentino, ex officio Ashley White

John J. Yarmick

Past President

Jane C. Waldbaum

Trustees Emeriti

Norma KershawCharles S. LaFollette

General Counsel

Mitchell Eitel, Esq,Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP

Archaeological Institute of America656 Beacon Street • Boston, MA 02215-2006

www.archaeological.org

Elizabeth Bartman and C. Brian Rose catch up at the AIA’s recent gala in New York.

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LETTERS

Keeping Frothy Chocolate Alive“Th e Power of Chocolate” (Novem-ber/December) told how the Maya and Aztecs cherished the foam atop their chocolate drinks. Such a drink is still made in the Zapotec region of Mexico. Tejate is a traditional cacao beverage made with a special meth-od that produces foam—they even have a tejate celebration every year at San Andres Huayapan.

Earl Neller

Ellensburg, WA

As I read “Th e Power of Chocolate,” I realized that ancient chocolate preparation techniques are very much alive in modern Nicaragua. A frothy drink made of ground cacao and ground corn known as pinole is com-monly served at restaurants all over the country. Frothing is important because the ground cacao and corn have a tendency to settle to the bot-tom. Th e traditional way to drink pinole is in a jicaro, a thin gourd ves-sel that bears a striking resemblance to the cylindrical drinking vessels in the article. While many ancient techniques have been lost, traditional preparation practices in the Nicara-guan diet and national psyche endure.

Zac Steele

Philadelphia, PA

“Th e Power of Chocolate” states that Neil Judd found the 111 cylinder jars at Pueblo Bonito in the 1920s. We work as seasonal rangers at Chaco Culture National Historical Park and conduct daily tours at Pueblo Bonito. We tell our visitors that it was George Pepper and Richard Wetherill, of the Hyde Exploring Expedition under the

ARCHAEOLOGY welcomes mail from readers. Please address your comments to ARCHAEOLOGY, 36-36 33rd Street, Long Island City, NY 11106, fax 718-472-3051, or e-mail letters@arch a eology.org. The editors reserve the right to edit submitted material. Vol ume precludes our acknowledging individual letters.

auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, who unearthed the jars back in 1896.

Clif and Jane Taylor

Kensington, CA

Deputy Editor Eric A. Powell responds: Th ank you for writing in and pointing out the error. While the Smithsonian’s Judd did excavate some cylinder jars at Chaco Canyon in the 1920s, it was Pepper and Wetherill who uncovered the extraordinary cache of 111 jars.

Taino Culture LivesI was very disturbed at the assertion that the Taino people no longer exist in “Uncovering the Arawaks” (Sep-tember/October). Th is is an aff ront to many Puerto Rican and Domini-can people who identify themselves as Taino and practice Taino cultural traditions. Th ough Europeans have considered them to be extinct, native peoples can still “exist” culturally without true proof of bloodline.

Jo Lynne Harline

Ogden, UT

English Pet PeeveIn “World Roundup” (November/December), you imply that fondness for household pets in England was a post-seventeenth-century development. However, in the sixteenth century, the Lisle Letters document a great fond-ness for dogs and talking parrots. An English nobleman, Lord Leonard Grey, kept tame deer as pets. Th is

“morally suspect” fondness for pets surely did not erupt from nowhere.

Marybeth Lavrakas

Chapel Hill, NC

Finger Bowls: Not What You Think“World Roundup” noted that a tomb in Guatemala featured bowls containing human fi ngers and teeth, “which might have been symbolic food off erings.” Food off erings? Th ey seem more like a public display of grief arranged by the chief mourners. I am interested to know which fi ngers they were: important thumbs or less essential pinkies, and if they belonged to relatives of the deceased. Th ank you for a lively and illuminating magazine.

Jean Corkill

Prunedale, CA

Senior Editor Samir S. Patel replies: For more information on the Guatemalan tomb, see our coverage of it as one of the Top 10 discoveries of the year (page 26). Th e bowls that contained the fi ngers and teeth appear to have been wrapped in some kind of vegetal matter (as sacred foods sometimes are), and it is possible that all the fi ngers came from a single individual, according to archaeologist Stephen Houston of Brown University. Th e ritual signifi cance of the bowls is not completely understood, but it is clear that the burial involved elaborate and probably painful rituals.

In 1896, the Hyde Expedition excavated these cylinder jars in Chaco Canyon.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE WORLD OF ARCHAEOLOGY

www.archaeology.org 9

L ast May, a 24-year-old man in northern England with a handheld metal detector found the remains of a stunning bronze-and-tin

Roman helmet dating to the first or second centurya.d. Within days, he had brought 40-some pieces of the artifact—called the “Crosby Garrett helmet” after the village near where it was found—to Christie’s auction house in London. There, restorers began reassembling the helmet, preparing it for sale, even reattaching a rare figurine of a winged griffin that would have perched on the peak of the cap and had broken off.

Word of the fi nd soon reached Tullie House Museum in Carlisle, 35 miles north of Crosby Garrett. Within a month, museum offi cials raised more than $2.5 million to buy the piece at auction, far above the artifact’s high estimate of $477,600, and close to the museum’s entire annual budget. But when the helmet went on sale in October, a Britain-based collector outbid the museum, paying $3.6 million. As a result, the British public may never see one of the most extraordinary Roman artifacts found on their soil.

Ralph Jackson, the British Museum’s chief curator of Romano-British collec-tions, saw the helmet under restoration at Christie’s. “You look at the folds of hair, the eyes, the eff ect of the tinning on the face, and you can see it’s an example of top-quality workmanship. And the face has a chillingly serene expression that makes you know that this is someone who’s going to kill you,” he says.

Th e case has shocked the British museum world. It has also revealed a gaping hole in the country’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), by which people who fi nd artifacts made of gold, silver, and other precious materi-als are required to off er them to a museum at fair market value. Th e law strongly urges metal detectorists and deal-ers to report all types of archaeological fi nds, but it does not require them to do so. (Th e auction house had volun-tarily reported the helmet to PAS authorities.) Further-

Heads Won, Tales Lost

more, the law doesn’t apply to objects made of base metal or bronze, no

matter how noteworthy. Th ese shortcomings made the sale of the

helmet possible. “To have it bought by a U.K.

private buyer was the worst possible outcome. It’s a great loss that everyone very much

regrets,” says Roger Bland, a British Museum archaeologist

and director of the PAS. Th e sale was an especially bitter pill

for Tullie House, whose “Keep It in Cumbria” campaign to buy the helmet had kicked off with a $1.6 mil-

lion pledge from the government-funded National Heritage Memorial Fund. “Natu-

rally this has been very disappointing, but we’re moving forward with several options we would like

to pursue with the buyer, including a temporary exhibi-tion or creating a replica,” says Andrew Mackay, Tullie House’s senior curator. “So far we have received no reply.”

Th e anonymous fi nder—who, along with the owner of the land on which the helmet was found, is now a millionaire—has shown authorities the artifact’s exact fi nd spot on a remote hillside, and archaeologists plan to excavate soon, according to Sally Worrell, a PAS offi cer in London. “But we’re trying not to publicize the fi nd spot too much, for obvious reasons,” she adds.

—Roger Atwood

A rare Roman bronze helmet was

found in northern England by a man

using a metal detec-tor. It was sold at Christie’s auction

house several months later.

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FROM THE TRENCHES


In the fi rst century b.c., thousands of guests came to be wined, dined, and entertained in a massive palace and burial complex built by King Herod south of Bethlehem. Hebrew

University archaeologist Ehud Netzer calls it “Herod’s Country Club.” But where would the VIPs have sat to watch the dramatic and comedic productions staged for them? According to Netzer,

Ask Utah State Archaeologist Kevin Jones what his favorite overlooked site is and he’ll tell you that, without a doubt, it is Cave Towers.

The site Cave Towers, also referred to as Mule Canyon Towers, is named for seven large Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloan, stone towers that were built around A.D. 1200 at the head

of a deep gorge on Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah. Rising amid piñyon and juniper, the towers may have been defensive works, perhaps associated with dwellings built into nearby cliffs. Jones says the site has an unusual power to engage visitors’ imaginations, and that should you visit, you will fi nd yourself wondering just who these people were, and why they chose to build towers around this remote gorge.

Luxury Box Seating

Keep in mind Cave Towers is an extremely fragile site. The towers need stabilization and there are no signs or paths at the site. Jones cautions visitors not to lean on the masonry and, of course, never take any artifacts. Other places of interest Jones says Hovenweep National Monument, some 40 miles from Cave Towers, is one place not to miss. The park protects six prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan–era villages spread over a 20-mile expanse of mesa tops and canyons along the Utah-Colorado border. Another place not to miss is the nearby Edge of the Cedars State Park, the site of an Ancestral Puebloan ruin and a museum that has an excellent collection of pottery.

While you’re there Cave Towers is 20 miles from the towns of Blanding and Bluff, where there are several hotels. If you fi nd yourself in downtown Bluff, says Jones, you must treat yourself to a meal at the San Juan River Kitchen, which has an organic garden and serves meat that is hormone- and antibiotic-free, a big surprise in a town as small as this. —MALIN BANYASZ

who has been excavating a section of the site since 2006, the lavishly decorated theater box he recently uncovered above a semicircular theater stage and rows of bench seating would have been the ideal vantage point.

Wall paintings such as those that decorate the royal box have never before been discovered in this region. Depicting natural landscapes, nautical scenes, animals, and the Nile, they are most similar to paintings found at Pompeii that date to the late fi rst century b.c. Netzer believes they were painted by Italian artists brought in specially for the job.

—Mati Milstein

Archaeologists working south of Bethlehem on the site of King Herod’s

palace and entertainment complex have uncovered an

elaborately painted

theater box.


The remains of the legendary Viking fortress Linn Duachaill have been

discovered in northeastern Ireland, 45 miles north of Dublin. “Historians and archaeologists have been trying to locate Linn Duachaill for more than 200 years,” says Eamonn Kelly, Keeper of Antiquities with the National Museum of Ireland, who led a lengthy research and targeted excavation effort that resulted in the discovery of the infamous Viking base.

Linn Duachaill was founded in a.d. 841, the same year as Viking Dublin. Th e fortress was used as a center by the Vikings to trade goods, organize attacks against inland Irish monasteries, and send captured Irish slaves abroad. For more than 70 years, Linn Duachaill rivaled Dublin as the preeminent Viking holding on the east coast of Ireland before it was eventually abandoned.

Th e discovery of Linn Duachaill will fi nally allow archeologists to compare the actual site with medieval documents. Th e names of leaders of the garrison are recorded, along with extensive accounts of attacks they carried out. Th e site is often referred

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…and much more!Scotland • Turkey • Italy • Greece

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English Pub Crawl • Sudan • India

JOURney into the heart of History

ETHIOPIA& the Easter Festivities

With Professor Neal SobaniaApril 12 - 26, 2011

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April 24 - May 11, 2011

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to as a longphort, a term used to describe a fortifi cation built by the Vikings to protect their ships.

A defensive rampart has already been excavated at the site and exam-ples of Viking silver and ecclesiastical

metalwork looted from native Irish sites have also been recovered. “We are excited to learn what insights into medieval times Linn Duachaill will reveal,” says Kelly.

—Erin Mullally

Ireland’s Viking Fortress

REVIEWS

12

For more than 40 years, David Grant Noble has been using a camera to capture the meaning and emotion of the archaeological sites of the American

Southwest. In the Places of the Spirits (School for Advanced Research Press, $60.00 cloth, $30.00 paper) is a collection

of very fine black-and-white photographs with accompa-nying text that offers an intimate view of these ruins.

The book is divided into two parts. The first treats archaeological sites, including the ruins of Kiet Siel and Canyon de Chelly, as well as a variety of rock art sites, as

artistic subjects. These are not the typical sun-bleached shots of the ancient Southwest, but are rather a tonal investigation of ruins and artifacts best examined slowly. Noble’s accompanying text offers a blended narrative that touches on the archaeology, ethnography, and spiritual experience of the areas. The tone, again, is quiet.

In the book’s second part Noble’s photographs bring us closer to the present with shots of archae-ologists excavating the remains of Pueblo Grande, an enormous site that was in the path of a new expressway being constructed in Phoenix in 1990. Noble documented the excavations, but also became fascinated with the modern people living in the parks and on abandoned pieces of land that were about to be paved. The book moves naturally from past to present, but I couldn’t help wishing for more photographs of the excavations. Noble’s work succeeds, however, because he is equally comfortable working in both worlds.

—Zach Zorich

The Olmec of Mexico may be the Etruscans of ancient Mesoamerica. Much as the Romans overshadowed the Etruscans, the Olmec have long lacked a place in the popular imagination on par with

the Aztecs and Maya. But “Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through January 9 and at the de Young Museum in San Francisco starting February 19, might change that. The show reveals that the Olmec civilization, which flourished on the tropical Gulf Coast of Mexico for a thousand years ending about 400 b.c., also achieved greatness in some of its enormous ceremonial works.

The exhibition is the biggest of three concurrent shows that opened LACMA’s airy and adaptable new Resnick Exhibition Pavilion. The six-foot-tall Colossal Head #5 from the ancient city of San Lorenzo greets visitors with an arresting sneer. At the other end of the long, spacious main gallery is its counterpart, with a face like a smiling Buddha’s. Its benign

BOOKS

Pictures from the Spirit World

EXHIBITIONS

Spotlight on the OlmecThe site of La Venta near Mexico’s Gulf Coast has produced some spectacular

Olmec artifacts, including a funeral offering of green stone figurines (below), and one of

the famous colossal heads (right).

The cliff houses at Betatakin in northeastern Arizona were built in Å 1267 and abandoned by 1300.


visage, we’re told, didn’t save the head from having its nose smashed off—mutilations were a common fate for the statuary of deposed Olmec royals.

Cutting through the otherworld-liness of much of what we see in this show are moments of connec-tion between then and now, notably “El Bebe,” a squalling green-stone infant shown in a squint-eyed, gape-mouthed howl familiar to parents throughout the ages. But a ceremonial array of 16 coneheaded figures could feed a UFO enthusiast’s fantasies of ancient visitations. Few works any-where could top two large, nearly

identical, serene kneeling male fig-ures that evoke the great statuary of ancient Egypt—but whose sweeping curved lines would appeal to a mod-ernist sculptor.

The exhibition’s organizational groupings and wall text allow it to passably serve two masters—the aesthetic presentation together with some archaeological context. How-ever, two large replicas of post-Olmec murals could have usefully been replaced with archaeological elements such as photographs of artifacts in situ and detailed maps showing how key finds were arrayed at the three main Olmec capitals uncovered since the mid-1800s. But “Olmec: Colos-sal Masterworks” combines serious-ness of educational purpose with an immense appreciation of the beauty in these astonishing ancient works. —Mike Boehm

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MEXICO: The Young

Man of Chan

Hol was

interred in a

cave in the

Yucatán

more than

10,000

years ago,

and there he

stayed, even

as sea levels

rose and the

cave flooded. Three years ago,

divers found his remains 1,800

feet in. After studying them in

situ, archaeologists have methodi-

cally removed the bones, some of

the oldest in North America, for

conservation and additional study.

Physical anthropologists hope

they will provide insight into the

peopling of the Americas.

SCOTLAND: Talk about Old

World craftsmanship. This

pocket watch was found

in the 1990s on the

wreck of the Swan,

a ship that sank in

1653 during the English

Civil War. It is covered

with rock-like encrusta-

tions, but X-ray computed

tomography—the same process used to

peer into the famous Antikythera

Mechanism—has now revealed a beauti-

fully preserved interior. Steel parts cor-

roded away, but

the intact brass

holds remarkable

details, including a

maker’s mark. Nice

work, “Niccholas

Higginson of

Westminster.”

PERU: Some of the tattoos

on a 1,000-year-old female

Chiribayan mummy might

have been more than decora-

tion. In addition to designs

on her limbs, she had 12

overlapping rings tattooed

on her nape. While most of

the markings were made with

straight carbon soot, the

ones on the neck were done

with partially burned plant

matter. That and the fact that

the neck designs are close to

acupuncture points suggest

they might have been

applied to relieve muscle or

nerve pain.

ENGLAND: At Vindolanda, a Roman

frontier town, archaeologists found

a mystery from the third century A.D.

In a shallow grave in the town’s bar-

racks were the remains of a girl just

eight to 10 years

old. In Roman

times, burials

were done out-

side settle-

ments, so the

find suggests

someone com-

mitted a crimi-

nal act and then

colluded with

other men in the

barracks—the

Fourth Cohort

of Gauls—

to bury the

evidence.

ITALY: Once thought to be almost

exclusively meat-eaters, Paleolithic

people in Europe may have munched

on flatbread as well. Grinding stones

—from Italy, Russia, and the Czech

Republic—are embedded with starch

grains, suggesting that 30,000 years

ago people processed roots from

cattails and ferns into flour, a food

option for lean hunting times. The

find pushes the first use of flour back

by 10,000 years and suggests that

women played a role in food produc-

tion at the time. Researchers report

that simple bread made with cattail

flour doesn’t taste so bad.

SWITZERLAND:

In dreams, a

door is sup-

posed to

represent

opportunity or a

passage to a new

phase in life. The one

that archaeologists

found under a new parking

garage for Zürich’s opera

house represents clever design

and a surprising level of preserva-

tion. The 5,000-year-old poplar door, in

amazing condition for being one of the oldest

in Europe, has a sophisticated joinery

design—unusual and rarely found in wood-

work from the period.

ut Old

. This

und

ish

d

ta-

ND:

or a

new

The one

logists

a new parking

ürich’s opera

ents clever design

i l l f

15

By Samir S. Patel

PALAU: When humans hunt or har-

vest an animal, individuals of that

species often get smaller. Think of a

heavily fished lake—few

fish survive to grow to

full size. Human pres-

ence might have had

the opposite

effect on the

humped conch, a

small sea snail

that has been

eaten for thou-

sands of years.

As human pop-

ulation has

grown, the aver-

age size of the

conchs has—in defi-

ance of convention-

al wisdom—crept

upward. This might be caused by

human activity and agriculture add-

ing nutrients to the water.

ISRAEL: Wedding reception.

Thanksgiving. Natufian burial cere-

mony. Archaeologists found what

they believe is the earliest clear evi-

dence for feasting. A concentration

of butchered tortoises and wild cattle

at a mortuary site suggest that the

Natufians 12,000 years ago celebrat-

ed the burial of the dead with large

communal meals. The behavior marks

a critical turning point in human cul-

ture, as the Natufians began the tran-

sition from the isolation and wariness

of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the

interdependence and sedentism of

an agricultural community.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Archaeologists

have found the earliest high-altitude

settlements of modern humans, 1.2

miles up in the chilly Ivane Valley.

People used the five camps around

49,000 years ago, leaving behind

stone tools and charred nutshells and

bones. They may have lived there, as

opposed to more temperate areas on

the coast, to take advantage of abun-

dant high-altitude food resources.

But they

would have

needed

some well-

developed

survival skills

to thrive

and avoid

hypothermia.

INDIA: Many studies have looked at

bioturbation—how plants and ani-

mals alter archaeological sites—but

rarely in ground saturated by mon-

soons. Researchers working on

Paleolithic sites noticed that water

buffalo leave deep, lasting footprints

in mud. So they set up an experi-

ment, creating and placing their own

stone tools, wetting the ground, and

leading buffalo across it. They found

the hooves could push artifacts

down by eight inches—thousands of

years in the archaeological record in

some places—and noted patterns

that can help determine if other

sites have been disturbed by lum-

bering bovines.

e—few

ow to

pres-

had

efi-

on-

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In 1888, Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, traveled to British Columbia to survey

tribes in the region and to build up his collection of Native American skulls, in some cases by digging in historic cemeteries. In June of that year, the man who would go on to become famous as the most promi-nent advocate of anthropology as a tool against racism wrote, “It is most unpleasant work to steal bones from a grave, but what is the use, someone has to do it.…” In those days, even the most forward-thinking archae-ologists and anthropologists didn’t hesitate to ship off boxes of recently buried Native American bones to gather dust on the shelves of distant museums. “It’s ironic,” says archae-ologist Sonya Atalay of Indiana Uni-versity. “As anthropologists, we know how much can be learned about a culture from looking at how they treat the dead.”

In 1990, to redress more than a century of scientifi c indiff erence to Native American rights and spiritual beliefs, both houses of Congress unanimously passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Th e law codifi ed how federally funded researchers and museums handle human remains and funerary objects, and required that bones and artifacts be returned to descendant communities that could demonstrate a link to them. By most accounts, the law was a positive example of the political art of compromise, giving tribes a new voice in the world of science and fostering new relationships between archaeologists and Native Americans.


INSIDERBy Julian Smith

NAGPRA was passed because a broad consensus developed that the time had come for federally funded institutions to begin a respectful handover of the 157,000 Native American and Native Hawaiian individuals, as well as several million funerary objects, that lay in their collections. Th e law required all 623 of these institutions to inventory their collections and consult with federally recognized tribes with which the remains might be culturally linked. If the tribes chose, they could then request any affi liated remains and objects be repatriated, or handed over.

NAGPRA struck a delicate balance between two potentially divergent world views. On one side were scientists, curators, and educators who saw the artifacts and bones as a unique source of scientifi c data and historic information. On the other were native tribes troubled by the way the remains of not just distant ancestors but family members were being treated. More extreme positions on both sides included those Native Americans who felt anything short of reburial was sacrilege, and scholars who predicted entire disciplines would be paralyzed by paperwork.

Th e law was aimed at the sizeable middle ground. “Everyone had to give a little, but it really was a com-promise, especially at the grass-roots level,” says Vin Steponaitis of the University of North Carolina, who helped draft the law. Native Ameri-cans compromised on the idea of universal repatriation, and scholars eventually agreed to consider return-

(Continued on page 58)

Who Owns the Dead? A controversial amendment to federal repatriation law complicates the relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists

But this year the law was amend-ed to apply even to the remains of ancient people that cannot be clearly identifi ed with a descendent com-munity. Many archaeologists are outraged because remains that are thousands of years old will now be vulnerable to repatriation to tribes that have no scientifi cally demon-

strable link to them. For their part, some Native Americans, including scientists, are concerned that the new rule applies only to remains and doesn’t require funerary artifacts to be handed over as well.

Th e ensuing uproar has cast a shadow over the law’s fi rst two decades of measured success, and has cast NAGPRA into new relief, forcing archaeologists and Native Americans alike to revisit what the original legislation got wrong and what it got right, and to consider what the future holds.

Franz Boas, perhaps America’s most influential anthropologist, admitted his excavations in the late 19th century felt

akin to grave robbery.

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One decade after the world witnessed the deliberate dynamiting of Afghani-stan’s Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban, another Afghan heritage site is

under threat. But this time the danger comes from mining interests bent on getting at what’s underneath the site of Mes Aynak. Th is dense cluster of richly appointed Buddhist stupas, chapels, monastic quarters, storerooms, and a host of surrounding ancient settlements faces total destruction. Mes Aynak means “little copper well,” and it sits on top of the world’s second largest copper deposit. With the blessing of the Afghan government and a nod from the United States, a Chinese min-ing company intends to begin extracting the metal and provide this desperately poor coun-try with much-needed revenue. Th e mining will almost certainly require demolition of the dozen or more ancient sites covering fi ve square miles. What will be sacrifi ced is noth-ing less than a major part of Afghanistan’s Buddhist history. But French archaeologist Philippe Marquis is determined not to let that happen.

In the early centuries a.d., the people of what are now modern Afghanistan and Pakistan played a critical role in dis-

seminating Buddhism. Rich kings patronized monasteries and artisans produced some of the fi rst, fi nest, and largest Buddhist sculp-tures and paintings known. In the second cen-tury a.d., Kanishka, the ruler of the Kushan empire, centered in Afghanistan and Pakistan,


Mining Afghanistan’s PastWill economic pressure destroy the country’s Buddhist heritage?

by Andrew Lawler


adopted Buddhism. He also held a major council to codify its practices. Images of Buddha, infl uenced by Greco-Roman sculptural traditions, proliferated.

Th e Afghan Buddhist monasteries were not the isolated retreats they appear to be today. Monastics were sent as far as eastern India for training and also to bring Buddhist teachings to China and southeast Asia. When Bud-dhism became China’s offi cial religion, Chinese pilgrims fl ocked to the centers of devotion and learning in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Th ese monasteries had a major infl uence on Central Asia and China,” says John Huntington, an art historian at Th e Ohio State University.

University of Michigan historian Stewart Gordon helped launch an eff ort to create a database of all known Afghan Buddhist monasteries that existed during the period from a.d. 200 to 1200 to provide a fuller picture of this little-known era. “All of us thought that the monasteries were strung along trade routes like pearls on a string, because traders were the primary patrons,”

The ancient Buddhist monastic complex of Tepe Kafiriat lies atop the world’s

second largest copper deposit. A Chinese mining company, whose workers’ camp

can be seen here, plans to begin extracting copper at the site. As a consequence,

the monastery and many other Afghan Buddhist sites will be destroyed.


as much as 2,500 acres. Marquis says that there are six to eight sites over seven square miles. During a brief campaign in 2009, archaeolo-gists excavated 10 percent of Gol Hamid. Th ough the Chinese do not allow access to the compound now, archaeologists did fi nd a well-preserved building with barrel-vaulted chapels, monks’ cells, and storerooms dating from the fi fth to seventh centuries a.d. Painted clay statues, including a sleeping Bud-dha and two armored soldiers, were shipped to the National Museum in Kabul for conservation. Th e site then was covered up.

But these fi nds can’t compare to what is coming out of the ground just up the road. Marked by com-manding fortress-like towers and walls, the site of Tepe Kafi riat (“Mound of the Unbelievers”) was

once a thriving community of Buddhist monks in the cen-turies preceding the rise of Islam in the seventh century a.d. Ketab Khan Faizi, director of excavations for the Afghan Institute of Archaeology, and his team began work in late 2009, braving the autumn cold to uncover the delicate terra-cotta statues and fi nely worked wall paintings. Much had been stolen or destroyed by looters who repeatedly raided the site after the American-led off ensive of 2001. Faizi says that some 18 Institute offi cials and 90 local workers have been digging since late 2009 to expose a rectangular platform—some 260 feet long by 115 feet wide—on top of a stone wall that still reaches as high as 25 feet. Th e platform, which is divided into three distinct areas, has rounded towers on each

says Gordon. But what he and his colleagues found instead were huge clusters of wealthy institutions. In Afghanistan, the centers are found in Balkh, Bamiyan, and Hadda near Jalalabad. Recent excavations at Mes Aynak, whose great prosper-ity may have come from granting mining rights to the region’s rulers to support their building programs and operations, reveal that this site was one of these important monastic centers, a fact unknown until now.

On a map, getting to Mes Aynak looks like an easy half-hour drive from

the center of Kabul. But this is no normal commute. Stopping along the way at any one of the small vil-lages in the fertile valley along the Logar River is not an option, since the ethnic Pashtuns of this region are sympathetic to the Taliban. And there have been sporadic rocket attacks on Kabul from this area. Turning off the main paved road onto a bumpy track, there is a vil-lage half-ruined by the heavy fl oods that also devastated Pakistan in the summer of 2010, and the fi rst of a series of heavily guarded security posts. To protect the investment of China Metallurgical Group, the Afghan government has deployed nearly 2,000 soldiers to guard the copper treasure of Mes Aynak. Every 500 yards along the rough road is a concrete guardhouse. Two concentric high fences that follow the harsh terrain encircle the perimeter of a vast area. A platoon of Afghan soldiers stands at attention on a parade ground at one of several forbidding roadblocks. Mes Aynak is one of the most heavily guarded archaeological sites on Earth.

At the center of this fenced area is a narrow pass between two steep and barren hills. On one side is a high-walled com-pound for Chinese mine workers that also encloses the Bud-dhist monastery called Gol Hamid. At the high point of the pass looms the mound of Tepe Kafi riat, the largest monastic complex. Just beyond is the small modern village of Baba Wali, which likely sits on another ancient settlement. Cling-ing to the spine of the adjacent hill is another mound that may have been a mining community. And beyond this are at least a half-dozen tells. Th e entire archaeological site covers

Philippe Marquis, head of the French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan, is a key player in the effort to preserve the monastic complex at Mes Aynak.

The great wealth of the Buddhist monasteries in this region likely came from copper

mining. Even the rocks that litter the sites show evidence of the area’s mineral wealth.

www.archaeology.org

its volume, archaeologists may be able to calculate how much wood or charcoal was necessary to produce ancient cop-per here. Looking out over the relentlessly dry and barren landscape, it’s hard to imagine where the fuel to power the furnaces could have come from. Is it possible that deforesta-tion of the hills may have brought the boom times to a halt? It is not clear when copper production at Mes Aynak began or ended. Marquis also questions how a sophisticated copper mining operation evolved. “How did they get the technical know how?” Marquis muses. “Perhaps the Chinese brought it,” he chuckles.

In an attempt to drum up support for excavat-ing Mes Aynak before its slated destruction, Marquis recently visited Xian in central China, once the country’s

capital, at the far end of the ancient Silk Road. Buddhism,

end, which are a common feature of forts and caravansaries of the region, but unusual in a monastery.

A pilgrim arriving at Tepe Kafi riat would fi rst have climbed wide steps to reach the southern terrace, an open courtyard where eight stupas—ceremonial structures typi-cally containing Buddhist relics—surround one large one. Each stupa is covered in an elaborate fretwork of dark-gray stone, and several once had seated Buddhas on small podi-ums. In front of the main stupa, a pair of large feet is all that remain of a lost Buddha that had stood nearly 10 feet tall.

Beyond the courtyard, at the center of the rectangle, is a chapel that may have had bright wall paintings and been lined with statues in various states of repose and meditation. Some sacred paintings survive, among the only ones left in Afghanistan in the wake of the destruction at Bamiyan. At one end of the chapel, the remains of a 25-foot-long sleep-ing Buddha are covered with protective plastic. Once there were statues everywhere, but many other fi gures have been plundered. Much remains hidden in lower levels in this part of the mound. During the most recent months of digging, Faizi’s team has uncovered stone and wood statue fragments, gold and silver coins, and clay Buddha heads. One bodhisat-tva sits next to the representation of a proud donor, who may have been a prince or wealthy merchant who wanted to be associated with this fi gure of a saint. “Th is is a spectacular intact fi nd,” says Huntington, noting that images of donors and gods are not typically found together, or are often sepa-rated by archaeologists during removal.

Behind the chapel is a small plaza, which Marquis specu-lates may have been roofed with beams held up by standing Buddha columns. Beyond it is a maze of monks’ cells, with arched doorways and windows that now overlook the Chi-nese mining camp. Adjacent is a section devoted to storing food and supplies for the winters that begin early here. As of fall 2010, only half of Tepe Kafi riat’s upper levels had been exposed.

Mes Aynak’s fate has always been tied to copper. Above the modern village of Baba Wali, which is also slated for destruction, there is another mound.

Unlike the two monasteries, this site appears to be strictly secular. Th ere are no Buddhas here, only practical buildings and storage facilities. “Th is may have been the center of min-ing,” explains Marquis. Here the rocks themselves have the telltale bluish-gray cast of copper and the hillside is littered with thousands of pieces of ancient slag from copper process-ing. In the 1970s, Russian engineers had dug deep swaths into the dirt and rock on the ridge above Baba Wali in preparation for mining operations that were cut short by the 1979 Soviet invasion. Sturdy stone walls are visible in the cuts, a sign of activity likely related to ancient mining operations.

Th e slag itself raises intriguing questions. By estimating

The unusually fine masonry walls surrounding Tepe Kafiriat confirm the wealth and

importance of this Buddhist monastic site.


require generators, more permanent shelters, and reliable and secure transportation to and from Kabul, says Marquis. Bringing in foreign specialists is a priority as well. Most of the statues and wall paintings are in fragile condition and require immediate removal and conservation by experts. And many, particularly those of unfi red clay, may not survive the jarring trip through Kabul’s potholed streets. Helicopters may be the best way to transport them to the museum. Even the chemicals required for the conservation work must be fl own into Afghanistan.

A deluge of material is National Museum Director Omara Khan Masoudi’s personal nightmare. From his offi ce on the outskirts of Kabul, Masoudi is preparing for a meet-ing with U.S. embassy offi cials to discuss Mes Aynak. He is also still attempting to restore and modernize the country’s premier museum, which was badly damaged during the civil war that raged from the time of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 until the Taliban won control of Afghanistan in 1996. Th e Taliban subsequently smashed many of the statues left behind. Originally designed as an administrative offi ce, the building lacks adequate security systems, climate control,

after all, reached China from Afghanistan via this route. In the meantime, the French mission is paying for a detailed topographic survey of the area to pinpoint heritage sites. Th e World Bank intends to provide funding for an overall assessment and an excavation plan. Omar Sultan, Afghani-stan’s deputy minister of information and culture, says his offi ce and the Afghan Ministry of Mines are hammering out an agreement giving archaeologists extended access to the gated site. And according to Brendan Cassar, UNESCO’s cultural heritage offi cer in Kabul, in September of 2010, the Karzai government formally asked UNESCO to assist in coordinating the huge eff ort. For now, time may be on the archaeologists’ side. Via a combination of quiet negotiation and public criticism, Marquis and Afghan archaeologists have won a reprieve for Mes Aynak.

“We will have three years to excavate the site,” says Sul-tan. Th e matter is deeply personal for Sultan, who trained as an archaeologist and who does his job without taking pay. He was with the joint Afghan-Soviet team that fi rst surveyed the site in 1976. Archaeologists agree that three years may not be enough to excavate a site of this scale and importance. “I will do the best I can,” says Sultan, “to save my country’s heritage.”

Th e Afghan archaeologists working at Mes Aynak live simply in white canvas tents, but long-term excavations will

In addition to its impressive architecture, the monastery of Tepe Kafiriat contains startling 5th-century Å sculptures,

including this representation of a bodhisattva.


ancient Buddhist complex. But those intent on saving Mes Aynak argue that the long-term value of what they recover will ultimately be worth it.

There are other factors in play that may delay Mes Aynak’s destruction. Th ese days, there is no sign of activity in the Chinese workers’ camp. Th ere

is still no power plant, no smelter, and, most importantly, no railroad to transport the tons of copper ore over the Hindu Kush to China. Th ough the Afghan government is counting on near-term revenues from the mine, the eff ort seems likely to stall in the midst of a world economic crisis. According to another Afghan offi cial who asked to remain unnamed, recent publicity about the Buddhist remains at Mes Aynak spooked the Chinese company, which, though owned by the Beijing government, is traded on the Hong Kong stock market.

Th e drama at this site is likely to be repeated at other locations in Afghanistan. An iron ore concentration near Bamiyan is slated for development, as is a silver mine near the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul. Both are located close to archaeological sites yet to be fully surveyed, much less exca-vated. According to Marquis, what takes place here at Mes Aynak could set a standard for future mineral exploitation.

But to make use of the three-year window, the Afghan government and international organizations must come

up with as much as $15 million just to excavate—an immense sum in this cash-strapped country and nearly three times what has been spent on stabilizing the remains of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the damaged wall paintings in adjacent caves. Th ere is no place yet to conserve the thousands of delicate statues and other artifacts certain to come out of the ground at Mes Aynak, no facility in which to store them safely once they are restored, and no certainty that special-ists will even be able to visit a site that is off -limits to most foreign visitors because of local unrest. Heritage offi cials such as Cassar, who believes Mes Aynak will be one of the most important archaeologi-cal sites ever dug in Afghanistan, remain locked in their compounds, unable to visit the very sites they are there to protect. But Marquis remains undaunted, and is almost buoyant about the possibilities Mes Aynak off ers to engage the world in Afghanistan’s battle to save its past. “Th is is a global issue,” Marquis says. “You can’t replace the Bamiyan Buddhas. And you don’t need to destroy Mes Aynak.” ■

Andrew Lawler is a contributing editor to Archaeology.

and storage and conservation facilities. “Last week, they sent eight boxes from Mes Aynak,” he says dolefully. “We can’t accept the artifacts. We just don’t have the space.” Masoudi recalls that in the 1970s, an Italian team excavated a massive Buddhist monastery near the eastern city of Ghazni that produced huge quantities of high-quality statuary. “Mes Aynak will produce three or four times as many artifacts,” Masoudi predicts. He is pushing to construct a conservation and storage facility on the site, followed by a museum to exhibit some of the fi nds.

An international eff ort to excavate and preserve Mes Aynak could also breathe new life into Afghanistan’s tiny archaeological community and stop the organized looting that is as much a part of the Afghan economy as poppy cultivation. “For the past 30 years, there have been no real excavations here,” Marquis says. “And now we have a new generation.” At the side of a nearby mound, nine archae-ology students from the University of Kabul are getting their hands dirty for the fi rst time. Some wear city clothes, button-down shirts, slacks, and black shoes. Marquis hopes to bring a total of six student teams here for three-day, and, eventually, one-week stints. One team is all female, though he says their families are unlikely to allow them to leave Kabul. It may seem fruitless in a country with a resurgent Taliban, a weak government, and increasing violence and corruption to be training archaeologists while attempting to rescue an

This 5th-century Å painting from Tepe Kafiriat illustrating a scene from the life of Buddha is one of very few surviving frescoes that once decorated monasteries across Afghanistan.


Decades from now people may remember 2010 for the BP oil spill, the Tea Party, and the iPad. But for our money, it’s a lock people will still be excited about the year’s most

remarkable archaeological discoveries, which we explore (along with one “undiscovery”) in the following pages.

Th is was the year we learned that looters led archaeologists to spectacular and unparalleled royal tombs in both Turkey and Guatemala. An unexpected fi nd brought us closer to Pocahontas, and an underwater archaeological survey in the high Canadian Arctic located the ill-fated HMS Investigator, abandoned in 1853.

Archaeologists weren’t just busy in the fi eld, though. A number of

breakthroughs happened in the lab, too. A new radiocarbon dating technique was perfected this year that will allow scientists to date artifacts without harming them. Laboratory analysis of the bones of a close relative of Lucy revealed

how early hominins walked. And anthropologists in Germany announced startling news about the Neanderthal genome that might send you scrambling to submit your own DNA for sequencing.

For the third year, we also highlight fi ve threatened sites that remind us of how fragile the archaeological record is. Th ey include an ancient city in Iraq that is eroding into the Tigris and a painted cave in Egypt that’s being slowly destroyed by well-meaning tourists.

But it’s not all bad news out there. One of the most alarming stories this year out of the American Southwest was the news that as part of a cost-cutting measure the Arizona state government closed Homolovi Ruins State Park. Th e closing raised fears that the park’s signifi cant cluster of Ancestral Puebloan villages dating from a.d. 1260 to 1400 would be left more vulnerable to looters. But at press time we learned the Hopi Tribe signed an agreement with the state to reopen the park. An innovative government-tribal partnership will allow the descendants of the people who once lived at Homolovi Ruins to safeguard its future. —Th e Editors


Turkish authorities have arrested looters who are suspected of tunneling their way

into one of antiquity’s most intriguing tombs. Th e looters reached the underground cham-ber, which lies below a temple to Zeus near the town of Milas, by digging in from a nearby house and an adjacent barn. Scholars believe the tomb belonged to Hecatom-nus, the fourth-century b.c. ruler of Caria, a kingdom in what is now south-western Turkey. Hecatomnus was the father of Mausolus, who was buried in the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. (Th e architectural term mausoleum is derived from the Carian ruler’s name.)

Th e tomb’s walls are decorated in col-ored frescos that are in need of immediate conservation. Th e chamber held an elabo-rately carved marble sarcophagus with a relief of a bearded, reclining man, believed to depict Hecatomnus. According to journalist Özgen Acar, who has followed the illicit antiq-uities trade in Turkey for decades, the looters fi rst entered the tomb in the spring of 2008 and were looking for a buyer for the sarcopha-gus this summer when the authorities moved in. Police arrested 10 suspected looters in a raid in August. At press time, fi ve of the defendants remained in jail awaiting court proceedings. It’s

likely the looters had already sold artifacts from the tomb on the black market—shelves in the chamber are now empty.

Acar believes that while the drilling equipment they used to tunnel into the site may have been

sophisticated, the looters were not profes-sionals. “Th ey didn’t have any expertise,” says Acar. “Th ey were locals.” But Turkey’s Culture

Minister Ertugrul Gunay believes other-wise. “Th is is not an ordinary treasure hunt. It’s very organized and it’s obvious that they received economic and sci-

entifi c help,” he told the Anatolia News Agency, adding that Turkey would inves-tigate the suspects’ foreign connections.

Due to the ongoing police investiga-tion, details about both the case and the discovery are still incomplete. But there is little doubt that the tomb is potentially of great importance for understanding the art and craftsmanship of the Carians, the greatest example of which was the

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Created by the fi nest architects and sculptors of the

day, parts of the mausoleum stood until the late fi fteenth century. A statue of Mausolus in the British Museum (left) seems to bear a family resemblance to the bearded man depicted on the sarcophagus.

—Matthew Brunwasser

The Tomb of Hecatomnus ■ Milas, Turkey

the skeletons of four infants, the skulls of two older children, textiles, carvings, and an array of ceramics, including a tamale bowl depicting a peccary (below).

Based on the position, wealth, and date of the tomb (a.d. 350), researchers believe the king may have been the founder of a dynasty. Th e tomb is located in a palatial

complex high above the central part of the ancient city, next to a spectacular stuccoed pyramid

that would have been visible for miles around. “We’re looking at the way in which the Maya create dynasties,” says Houston. “You do it with a loud crash of cymbals.”

Th e discovery also shows that even sites hit hard by looters have much to off er. “It’s

just a miracle this thing wasn’t looted,” says Houston.

—Samir S. Patel


Paleolithic Tools ■ Plakias, Crete

A research team led by Thomas Strasser of Providence

College and Eleni Panagopoulou of the Greek Ministry

of Culture announced the discovery of stone tools at two

sites on the island of Crete that are between 130,000 and

700,000 years old. The tools resemble those made by

Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus, showing

that one of these early human ancestors boated

across at least 40 miles of open sea to reach

the island, the earliest indirect evidence of

seafaring. “If hominins could move around

the Mediterranean before 130,000 years

ago, they could cross other bodies of water

as well,” says team member Curtis Runnels

of Boston University, who helped analyze

the tools. “When similar finds on other

islands are confirmed, the door will be

opened to the re-evaluation of every

assumption we have made about early

hominin migrations.” —Zach Zorich

Royal Tomb ■ El Zotz, Guatemala

Adeep looters’ trench led archaeologists to a series of amazing, macabre fi nds beneath the El Diablo

pyramid at the modest Maya city of El Zotz. Th ey discovered, just 10 feet beyond where the looters had stopped digging, increasingly bizarre caches, including bowls containing severed fi ngers, teeth, and a partially cremated infant. “Th ere was mounting evidence of weirdness there,” says Stephen Houston of Brown University, who co-led the excavation with Edwin Roman of the Universities of Texas and San Carlos of Guatemala.

Th e off erings were adjacent to an Early Classic Maya tomb containing the remains of a king dressed as a ritual dancer, complete with a belt adorned with shell “bells” and mammal teeth. “Th is guy would have made quite a racket,” says Houston. He was buried with

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HMS Investigator ■ Banks Island, Canada

They found the old British ship exactly where it was

supposed to be. It hadn’t drifted out to sea, been salvaged

by American whalers, or broken up by waves, as various

theories had suggested. HMS Investigator—the first ship to sail

the westernmost leg of the Northwest Passage—was found

last July in Canada’s Mercy Bay under 30 feet of water, but

otherwise right where its crew left it in 1853.

The crew, abandoning the ship when it became trapped in

pack ice, spent three winters in the area before being rescued

and returning to Britain, which made them the first people to

travel the passage (by ship, foot, and sled) from end to end.

Given the remote location outside Canada’s Aulavik National

Park, the ease of the discovery was quite unexpected.

Early Pyramids ■ Jaen, Peru

Peru’s towering burial mounds, with their underground chambers and layers upon

layers of history, had long been thought to be a distinctive feature of the country’s arid coast.

But the discovery of two ancient pyramid complexes near the town of Jaen, on the western edge of the Amazon lowlands, shows that monumental architecture had spread across the Andes and well into the jungle thousands of years before the Spaniards arrived. Th e largest mound, over an acre at its base, was overgrown with vegetation and used by modern townspeople as a dump and latrine before Peruvian archaeologist Quirino Olivera, of the Friends of the Museum of Sipán, began excavating there. He soon found evidence of construction on a massive scale—walls up to three feet thick, ramps, and signs of successive building phases stretching back at least 2,800 years.

“People had assumed monumental architecture never reached the jungle. Th is discovery shows it did,” says Olivera. “To build these structures, people must have had knowledge of engineering and design, and a large, stable work force. Until now, it was assumed they lived in huts made of tree trunks and leaves.”

At the same pyramid he found the tomb of

a high-status man who, at his burial around 800 b.c., was decked out with the shells of some 180 land snails. A layer of snails covered the man’s torso, and more shells adorned his head and limbs. Th e man was probably a healer or priest of some kind, says Olivera. He found marine mollusk shells in another tomb nearby, testament to the busy trade ties from the coast over the Andes to the jungle. Th e fi nds suggest that, along with sophisticated architecture, complex worship had spread far from the coast centuries before once believed.

—Roger Atwood

“We came prepared to search for

16 hours a day for two straight weeks,”

says Ryan Harris, an underwater

archaeologist with Parks Canada who

led the team. “We actually found the

ship in just under three minutes.”

Harris used side-scan sonar towed

from a 19-foot inflatable boat to locate

the well-preserved wreck. At the

same time, two more archaeologists

documented the remains of the crew’s

caches (believed to have influenced

the material culture of the local Inuvialuit people) and located

the graves of three unlucky seamen who died of scurvy before

rescuers arrived.

The crew of Investigator never found the two lost British

ships, Erebus and Terror, they were sent to find. Harris plans to

return to Mercy Bay with

dive gear in summer 2011

to take a closer look at

Investigator. And to keep

an eye out for whatever

else might be in those

Arctic waters.

—Krista West

Child Burials ■ Carthage, Tunisia

A team led by University of Pittsburgh physical anthro-pologist Jeff rey Schwartz has refuted the long-held

claim that the Carthaginians carried out large-scale child sacrifi ce from the eighth to second centuries b.c. Th e researchers announced their results this year after spend-ing decades examining the cremated remains of 540 children from 348 burial urns excavated in the Tophet (below), a cemetery outside Carthage’s main burial ground.

Schwartz determined that about half the children were prenatal or would not have survived more than a few days beyond birth, and the rest died between one month and several years after birth. Only a very few children were between fi ve and six years old, the age at which they begin to be buried in the main cemetery. Th e mortality rates

This past year will always be

remembered as the year we found

out that the Neanderthals survived and

they are us. Following years of tantalizing

announcements from the Max Planck

Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology

in Leipzig, a research group led by

genetic anthropologist Svante Pääbo

completed a first-draft DNA sequence of

a Neanderthal. Although this sequence

includes only 60 percent of the

Neanderthal genome, it does provide

some interesting insights into the biology

of this distinctive human species. The

sequence showed that variations in just one gene might

account for the differences in the shape of the skull, rib cage,

and shoulder joint between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Decoding the Neanderthal Genome ■ Leipzig, GermanyA major insight came when researchers

compared the Neanderthal DNA to the

DNA of three modern people (one French,

one Han Chinese, and one Polynesian).

The team found that all three had

inherited between 1 and 4 percent of

their DNA from Neanderthals. They also

compared the Neanderthal sequence to

two African individuals (one Yoruba and

one San) and found no indication that they

had inherited genes from Neanderthals,

who are known to have evolved outside

Africa. The research supports the idea that

Neanderthals interbred with Homo sapiens

between 100,000 and 80,000 years ago as our anatomically

modern ancestors left Africa and spread across the globe.

—Zach Zorich

represented in the cemetery are consistent with prenatal and infant mortality fi gures found in present-day societies. “Th ere is a credible medically and biologically consistent explanation of the Tophet burials that off ers an alternative to sacrifi ce,” says Schwartz. “While it is possible that the Carthaginians may have occasionally sacrifi ced humans, as did their contemporaries, the extreme youth of the Tophet burials suggests [the cemetery] was not only for the sacrifi ced, but also for the unborn and very young, however they died. And since at least 20 percent of them weren’t even born when they were buried, they clearly weren’t sacrifi ced.”

Schwartz also has another type of evidence to support his claim that the Tophet children died of natural causes.

“In many societies newborns and very young children are not treated as indi-viduals as older children and adults are,” he says, suggesting that they wouldn’t be considered appropriate for sacrifi ce. A clue that the Carthaginians didn’t view these children as distinct entities comes from Schwartz’s analysis, which shows that in many urns, there are remains of several diff erent individuals. “Th ere can be four or fi ve of the same right or left cranial bone in the same urn, but there would not be enough other bones to reconstruct the same number of indi-viduals,” says Schwartz. “Th e remains of multiple children were gathered up, perhaps even from diff erent cremations, and sometimes mixed in with charcoal from the small branches of olive trees used for the funeral pyre.” —Jarrett A. Lobell

in North America. Led by Bill Kelso, Historic

Jamestowne’s director of archaeology, the team

exposed five deep postholes spaced 12 feet

apart. Records indicate the wooden church,

built in 1608, was 60 feet long. “It didn’t take a

mathematical genius to figure out

that we had found it,” says Kelso.

The most prominent building

at Jamestown, “the church would

have been a statement about how

important the colonists considered

religion,” says Kelso. Several

notable events in the colony’s early

history took place there, including

Pocahontas’s 1614 marriage to

tobacco farmer John Rolfe. Kelso

also found that at least six high-

status colonists were buried in the

church’s chancel, an area near the

altar where important rites would

have been performed. “Now we can

actually point to the spot where

Pocahontas got married,” says

Kelso. “How often does something

like that happen in archaeology?”

—Eric A. Powell

29

“Kadanuumuu” ■ Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia

For the last 35 years, the short-legged “Lucy” skeleton has led some scientists to argue that Australopithecus

afarensis didn’t stand fully upright or walk like modern humans, and instead got around by “knuckle-walking” like apes. Now, the discovery of a 3.6-million-year-old beanpole on the Ethiopian plains—christened “Kadanuu-muu,” or “Big Man” in the Afar language—puts that tired debate to rest. Th e new fossil demonstrates these early human ancestors were fully bipedal.

Many dozens of A. afarensis fossils have been uncov-ered since Lucy was discovered in 1974, but none as complete as this one. Kadanuumuu’s forearm was fi rst extracted from a hunk of mudstone in February 2005, and subsequent expeditions uncovered an entire knee, part of a pelvis, and well preserved sections of the thorax.

“We have the clavicle, a fi rst rib, a scapula, and the humerus,” says physical anthropologist Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the co-leaders on the dig. “Th at enables us to say some-thing about how [Kadanuumuu] was using its arm, and it was clearly not using it the way an ape uses it. It fi nally takes knuckle-walking off the table.” At fi ve and a half feet tall, Kadanuumuu would also have towered two feet over Lucy, lending support to the view that there was a high degree of sexual dimorphism in the species.

—Brendan Borrell

1608 Church ■ Jamestown, Virginia

Archaeologists searching for a men’s

barracks at Jamestown, Virginia, site

of the first permanent English colony in

the New World, have found instead the

remains of the earliest Protestant church

Kadanuumuu (right) would have towered

over Lucy (below).

www.archaeology.org

Pocahontas


Undiscovery of the YearClovis Comet ■ North America

It’s commonly believed that North America’s Clovis culture came to an end around 12,900 years ago, when their characteristic spear points

disappeared from the archaeological record. At the same time a number of large animal species such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers became extinct. In 2006, a team led by geologist Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put forth a theory that a comet struck the Earth around this time, engulfi ng the continent in forest fi res and caus-ing the mass extinctions as well as the demise of the Clovis culture. Th ey deduced this from the existence of a one-millimeter-thick soil layer at sev-eral Clovis sites that contains a high concentration of particles that appear to have extraterrestrial origins.

Th is year archaeologists Vance Holliday of the University of Arizona and David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University off ered a point-by-point refutation of this premise, saying that evidence of the extraterrestrial particles does not show up at many Clovis sites, and that a careful exami-nation of the archaeological record shows that the population in North America did not drop at the time of the purported comet impact. As for the Clovis culture itself, Holliday and Meltzer think a new interpretation of radiocarbon dates indicates the people gradually stopped making the spear points they are associated with and simply began making another kind. Perhaps they didn’t disappear at all. — Zach Zorich

Precisely dating archaeological artifacts is not as easy or

harmless as it might seem. The most common method,

radiocarbon dating, requires that a piece of an organic object

be destroyed—washed with a strong

acid and base at high temperature to

remove impurities, and then set aflame.

The resulting release of carbon dioxide

is fed to an accelerator mass spec-

trometer, which measures the decay

of radioactive carbon 14—the more the

carbon 14 has decayed, the older the

object is.

Over the past 20 years, chemist

Marvin Rowe of Texas A&M Univer-

sity has developed a nondestructive

method for carbon dioxide extraction.

In his process, an object is placed in a

vacuum chamber and a supercritical

fluid—a hybrid gas/liquid—is applied

as a solvent (as in dry cleaning). Next,

Rowe passes plasma—an “electrically

excited ionized gas”—over the artifact,

which selectively strips carbon from

the sample. “It’s essentially like slowly

burning the sample, so we can just

oxidize a little off the surface and collect that carbon dioxide,”

explains Rowe. This year he further refined the method so it

will work on objects coated in sticky hydrocarbons, such as

the resins that cover Egyptian mummy gauze.

Nondestructive Radiocarbon Dating ■ College Station, TexasThus far, he’s dated samples of wood, charcoal, animal skin,

bone from a mummy, and ostrich eggshell. “Everything so

far that we’ve tried to do with the nondestructive technique

has agreed statistically with regular

radiocarbon dating,” Rowe says, “and

you basically don’t see any change in

the sample.”

R. E. Taylor, a radiocarbon expert

at the University of California, River-

side, says Rowe’s technique may have

limitations, as items older than 10,000

years will have impurities that the

technique may not be able to purge.

Archaeologists, meanwhile, are hail-

ing the discovery as one of the most

important in decades, particularly for

issues surrounding the repatriation of

human remains from Native American

burials, which modern tribes don’t

want to see harmed.

Rowe’s refinement of carbon

dioxide extraction dovetails with an

update to the radiocarbon calibration

curve, which increases the accuracy

of radiocarbon dating by accounting

for past fluctuations in carbon 14. According to researchers at

Queen’s University of Belfast, the new curve doubles the accu-

racy of dating as well as the age of artifacts on which it can be

used, from 25,000 to 50,000 years. —Nikhil Swaminathan

A 1,350-year-old Egyptian weaving

before dating...

...and after

Artist’s rendition of a comet striking the earth.

Sites Under ThreatHunter-Gatherer Landscape ■ California

Construction of vast solar farms

in the deserts of south-eastern California is threatening to perma-nently erase prehistoric Native American sites. Critics charge that while the need for new sources of renewable energy is a clear national priority, the rush to build solar infrastructure in order to qualify for tax breaks has led to inadequate archaeological testing and evaluation of sites in the way of planned solar arrays. Th e region’s famous Blythe Geoglyphs, still a destination for Native American pilgrims, will not be directly aff ected by the development, but the rich archaeological landscape of which they are a part will be altered forever.

Underwater Shipwrecks ■ Massachusetts Bay

Historic shipwrecks all over the world

are severely damaged by bottom trawling, a fi shing method that involves hauling huge nets across the ocean fl oor. In the Stellwa-gen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, nearly all known shipwrecks have been

damaged by fi shing, including the coal schooner Paul Palmer, which sank in 1913 and is on the National Reg-ister of Historic Places. Not only does the initial impact of trawl gear damage the vessels, but the nets can become entangled with the sites, making it dangerous for archae-ologists to work there. Federal offi cials are considering a proposal to create a heritage preserve around certain ship-wrecks to prevent damage from fi shing.

Allianoi ■ Turkey

A reservoir created by a new hydro-

electric dam in west-ern Turkey will soon permanently fl ood the ruins of the Roman-era bath complex of Allianoi. International proposals to relocate Allianoi’s thermal spa

or erect a wall protecting the entire site have been ignored by the government, which chose instead to cover the remains in sand. Scholars, however, worry this measure won’t adequately protect the site’s well-preserved second-century a.d. architecture.

Cave of the Swimmers ■ Egypt

The Neolithic rock art at the Cave of the Swimmers, made popular by the 1996 fi lm Th e English Patient,

is being admired to death by tourists who feel compelled to touch the 10,000-year-old paintings. Visitors are

also coming in such numbers that their breath and perspiration have altered the cave’s climate, causing severe deterioration of the artwork. Th e site is one of many in Egypt’s remote deserts that are being compromised by unsupervised visits. Th e Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Ministry of the Environment have begun outreach programs to the desert drivers who ferry visitors to the sites. Offi cials hope the drivers can encourage tourists to behave appropriately around fragile archaeological remains.

Ashur ■ Iraq

A section of the Assyrian capi-

tal of Ashur in cen-tral Iraq is gradually eroding into the Tigris River. Dating to 2500 b.c., the site, now known as Qalah Sharqat, or “Earthern Castle,” was partially exca-vated in the early twentieth century. But since then no signifi cant archaeological work has been done on this important Mesopotamian city. Press reports indicate local antiquities offi cials are trying to raise funds to build a wall to protect the site from the river.


Ronald Lamilami fi rst came to Djulirri ( JUH-lih-ree) in the early 1960s, when he was three years old. On foot and by canoe, his father, Lazarus, showed him the route that their Aboriginal ancestors had used for thousands of years, following food and shelter inland from Australia’s north coast. Each wet season, those ancestors spent several months at Djulirri, a well-concealed rock shelter in a horseshoe-shaped

valley. “I remember paintings on rocks,” Lamilami says. In 2010, Lamilami sits in the passenger seat of an off -road vehicle driven by archaeolo-

gist and rock art specialist Paul S. C. Taçon of Griffi th University in Gold Coast, Austra-lia. Th e narrow track through Lamilami’s clan estate isn’t so much rutted as corrugated, and Taçon’s strategy is to keep up his speed and skip across the surface, except when it winds around fallen trees or through soft, sandy washes. Th e Aborigines here have six seasons—it is the end of Wurreng (the early dry) and the start of Gurrung (the hot dry). During any of the wetter seasons, the road would be waterlogged and impassable.

Th e landscape of stringybark eucalyptus, pandanus palms, and spiky spinifex grass is studded with sandstone outcrops that form part of the Wellington Range on the edge of the Arnhem Land plateau. Th is is the remote hump on Australia’s back, the tip of the Northern Territory, a place of ghost stories, sandfl ies, burning brush, termite mounds, and saltwater crocodiles. Before long the road peters out, so Taçon and Lami-lami proceed on foot.

Australia’s native people fi rst arrived on the continent around 50,000 years ago. Before English colonization, which began in the 1780s, the Aborigines were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, a diverse collection of regional cultures that spoke some 200 diff erent languages. Among their most enduring shared cultural traditions, practiced for tens of thousands of years, is rock art. All over the continent Aboriginal groups created engravings, drawings, stencils, and paintings using natural pigments mixed with spit, animal fat, or tree resin. Th eir works served as everything from signposts to teaching aids to painted histories, and there are at least 5,000 rock art sites in the Wellington Range alone. But there’s nothing in Arnhem Land, Australia, or the rest of the world, quite like Djulirri.

Lamilami and Taçon make an unusual pair. Lamilami is short, stout, and dark—his

face and body made entirely of curves. Taçon is tall, with hooded gray eyes, a white beard, and the pallor of someone who knows his way around a tube of sunblock.

Joined by Australian National University archaeologist Peter Veth, some graduate students, and a two-man fi lm crew, they tromp through the underbrush for 30

minutes before Lamilami stops to call out to his ancestors in Maung, his native language: “Strangers are approaching, but they’re friends, so please could

you keep the wild things away while they’re here?” Taçon then guides the group, his voice so slow and soft that it’s sometimes drowned out by

rustling grass, to a small slot canyon. Th ey duck under a low arch and squeeze between boulders to

reach the shelter, a large open space weathered deep into the cliff face. On its back wall is Djulirri’s central panel—more than 160 feet long

and 10 feet high. First one sees the colors, a complex tableau of reds and yellows and black and white that looks almost abstract but rewards

close study. A large, recently painted red-and-white emu dominates one end of the composition, and from behind it peek at least four kangaroos,

hundreds or even thousands of years old, painted in the anatomically reveal-


text and photographsby Samir S. Patel

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Griffith University rock art expert Paul S. C. Taçon and Aboriginal elder Ronald Lamilami discuss indigenous

rock art traditions in the rock shelter at Djulirri, which features 1,100 separate

paintings, including the overlapping spirit figure and kangaroo above them.

ing “X-ray” manner that shows muscles, organs, and bones. Detailed fi sh and plants lie behind white stick fi gures acting out various scenes, such as a boxing match. A panel of ships—from modern ocean liners to WWI destroyers to British tall ships—dominates one area, but a wider view shows that they’re painted atop a massive crocodile and sea turtle. Th ere are paintings of a bicycle, a dugong hunt, and pipe-smoking Europeans. On the ceiling is a twisted, malevolent spirit fi gure.

Th ere are 1,100 paintings on this panel alone—and certainly more that have been washed away or painted over—in 20 discernable layers, dating from 15,000 to just 50 years ago. It’s hard to argue with Taçon’s take: Djulirri is among the top handful of rock art sites in the world, and in its layers of pigments and stained rock is an abundance of information about Aboriginal culture and how it dealt with the sweeping changes of the last few centuries.

Th e initial English colonization of Australia was followed by the mission period, which severed many native people from their seasonal rhythms. Lamilami was educated in a mission school, where traditional ceremonies were considered sinful and restricted to brief bush holidays. He lost touch with places like this—a common affl iction of his generation, when traditional knowledge was overwrit-


Th is time, Taçon has brought Lamilami to show him art beyond the central panel. Seemingly around every corner in the maze of sandstone that surrounds the valley are more paintings—a fl ying fox, more tall ships, extinct animals, a stencil of a boomerang. In less than fi ve acres, there are 52 panels containing 3,000 pieces, making it the largest painted rock art site in Australia. Some of these panels include unique pieces, such as stencils of singing honeyeaters, birds no longer common in Arnhem Land, and what might be a Th ylacoleo, or marsupial lion, thought to be extinct for 30,000 years. (If that’s, in fact, what it is, the time lines for extinction and/or Australian rock art will need to be rethought.) Poignant and Chaloupka never saw the full extent of the complex. “I’m quite convinced I’m the fi rst non-indigenous person to see some of those things,” says Taçon. “I just couldn’t believe my eyes. In some ways, I still can’t. Maybe that’s why I keep bringing other people back here—for them to pinch me and confi rm I’m not dreaming.”

Walking through Djulirri is much like touring the gal-leries, alcoves, halls, and great rooms of a massive outdoor museum. But in practice, it seems to have functioned more

ten by Western thought, and his culture slowly became the province of archaeology.

Djulirri had been documented and photographed before, during brief visits from Anglo-Swedish photographer Axel Poignant and Australian rock art expert George Chaloupka in the 1950s and 1970s, respectively, but neither conducted detailed studies and the location was lost until 1998. At that time, archaeologist Daryl Guse was conducting a survey of culturally signifi cant sites in the region before mining compa-nies came in to look for uranium deposits. He and Leonard Lamilami, a ranger and one of Ronald’s sons, rediscovered the shelter on the southern side of the family’s traditional land. Eventually, in 2007, they brought Ronald back, and the next year Taçon and Sally K. May, of the Rock Art Research Centre at Australian National University, began a detailed study, documenting and photographing the art for comparison with the historical record and examples from other parts of the country. “Th e last visit [before 2007] was with my dad,” says the elder Lamilami. “When I came back, my dad wasn’t here with me, but I had my son. So I was my dad and my son was me.”

1

2

1 This detailed red-and-white emu may be the most recently painted work at Djulirri. Thought to be just 50 years old, it lies atop a number of X-ray depictions of kangaroos. These paintings, hundreds or perhaps thousands of years old, are akin to scientific diagrams, displaying muscles, organs, nerves, and bones. The presence of kangaroos, which are no longer common in the area, indicates the climate was once drier.

Djulirri, Arnhem Land, AustraliaThe central panel at Djulirri spans 160 feet and 15,000 years of Aboriginal history, up to and including contact with Europeans. This section of it contains many of these post-contact works, offering insights into the Aboriginal experience during this time of great change.

2 After contact with Europeans, paintings at many sites take on a rushed quality, as indigenous people were pulled away from their traditions. This collection of white figures acts out a variety of scenes, including a boxing match and a man climbing a long pole, perhaps to reach inaccessible sites for painting. Despite the disruptions, the Aborigines tried to maintain their traditions of art and documentation.


And between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago the art diversifi ed and fl ourished. Large naturalistic paintings of human fi gures emerged, stick fi gures were used to depict larger scenes such as battles, and the paintings of animals showed a growing interest in anatomy—the X-ray depictions.

“Th at suggests to me they were keen naturalists,” says Taçon, “scientists who made the equivalent of scientifi c draw-ings. Th ey were interested in forms of record-keeping that we attribute to advanced civilizations.”

Th e fi rst images of mythological beings, such as the “Rainbow Serpent” or the spirit fi gure on Djulirri’s ceiling, appeared at this time, as well as stylized, sexualized depic-tions of women. Th e art also refl ects environmental changes. Early paintings of kangaroos and stencils of honeyeaters—neither common in the area today—suggest a drier climate, and then give way to fi sh, illustrating a wetter climate and the emergence of freshwater wetlands. Art also became highly regional, as environmental changes pressed groups together and motivated them to distinguish themselves.

“It’s through the rock art record that we can see changes in their material culture, changes in their spiritual culture,

like a library or newspaper—a chronicle of Arnhem Land’s native people and what mattered to them over the last 15,000 years. “All the stories are here in the rock art,” says Lamilami. “Each year, a new concept would be drawn—what happened the year before that. It’s a time lapse.” Th e art refl ects envi-ronmental shifts, cultural developments, and the catastrophic disruption that came with contact from the outside world. Other rock art sites, such as Lascaux in France, capture only a narrow period of time, and even the deepest archaeological deposits aren’t willful creations like this. Djulirri might be the longest continuously updated human record in the world.

The rock art of Arnhem Land allows researchers to track the Aboriginal approach to their world over thousands of years. Th e oldest art dates to between

13,000 and 15,000 years ago, and is characterized by large, naturalistic depictions of signifi cant animals, such as a large yellow snake on Djulirri’s main panel. Th en the artists began what is called the dynamic fi gure phase (9,000 to 12,000 years ago), which featured stylized depictions of humans and animals in action scenes, suggesting a shift toward narrative.

3

4

3 Painted over many older works, this portion of the panel features depictions of several 20th-century vehicles, including sailing vessels, a World War I destroyer with guns, a biplane from the same period, and a modern ocean liner. Forms of transportation are common motifs in contact-period artwork. To Aborigines, ships were both intimidating symbols and sources of novel goods.

4 This painting of a British tall ship is an X-ray depiction, showing the vessel’s interior and cargo holds. It is a representation of a new subject in a traditional way, and it also shows that the Aborigines knew these vessels intimately, perhaps from working in them. The arm above the ship belongs to a crocodile (spanning the page), and behind the ship’s rigging on the left is the head of a massive sea turtle.


and foods. Some of these paintings, such as the British tall ship high on the central panel, are X-ray depictions, with remarkable internal detail. Th is shows more than a simple interest in the ships; it says something about the nature of Aboriginal interaction with the new arriv-als. Th ey were familiar with the ship’s inner workings—either from being shown them or working in the holds—and illustrated this in a way that was already part of their artistic practice. “Th ey took the most interesting bits of the new happenings and incorporated them into their long-standing traditions,” says Taçon. “Th e new is grafted onto the old.”

Th e Aboriginal depictions of Europeans themselves are just as telling. At Djulirri, as at sites all over the country, Europeans are most

often depicted with comically tall hats and large pipes, and very distinctively shown with their hands on their hips—a domineering posture that would have been entirely foreign to the natives (and that Lamilami recalls from his child-hood). Contact rock art that depicted traditional subjects was also infl uenced by the new arrivals. For example, the large crocodile and another one like it at a nearby site called Malarrak may have been painted to express and strengthen identity and attachment to country in a time of great change, according to Guse.

“I think of them as rock documents,” says Alistair Paterson, an archaeologist from the University of Western Australia. Paterson is studying the engraved contact rock art of a region called the Pilbara for comparison with Djulirri and contact art in other parts of the country, as part of a larger project

changes in their society, as well as responses to changes in their environment,” says Taçon.

Th e greatest of all these changes was contact with the outside world, which impacted every facet of Aboriginal life. Following a time of great detail and sophistication in the art, the contact period brought crude, more rushed artistry. Th e art has been called “casual paintings,” doodles that lack the value of the more sophisticated traditional work. “We’re trying to show they have extreme value, not just in terms of aesthetics, but in that they’re loaded with information,” says Taçon. Th ey present, according to him and his colleagues, a previously unacknowledged, alternate native history.

Th e Wellington Range in general, and Djulirri specifi cally, off er a great opportunity to study rock art from this crucial period of change. “It’s actually the most dense and varied area for contact-period rock art anywhere in the world, let alone Australia,” says Taçon. “Th ere’s nothing else like it.”

Contact rock art consists of depictions of both traditional and introduced sub-jects, such as ships, knives, and monkeys, and even bicycles, planes, and Winchester rifl es (as an X-ray, bullet in breach). At Djulirri, as at other sites, ships are a common subject. Th ey were the largest physical manifestations of the new arriv-als, both imposing and sources of goods

Stylized, sexualized paintings of women adorn a hard-to-reach ceiling next to Djulirri’s central panel.

Archaeologist Peter Veth, Ronald Lamilami, and Paul Taçon discuss a

mysterious painting at Djulirri. It might depict a Thylacoleo, or marsupial lion,

thought to be extinct for 30,000 years.

www.archaeology.org

haps not widely—that the Aborig-ines had early contact with the Macassans, Indonesian seafarers from the Dutch company town of Macassar (now Makassar) on South Sulawesi. Th e Macassans had a clear linguistic and cultural impact on the Aborigines, who adopted Macassan words and technologies, including the dugout canoe. But the precise date of their earliest visits hasn’t been nailed down—could they have had regular contact with Aborigines well before the Europeans arrived?

Th e study of rock art would seem an unlikely candidate for set-

tling this question—it is usually nearly impossible to date. For this reason—and because rock art is often subject to whimsical interpretations—some archaeologists aren’t particularly keen on it. But this is another way in which Djulirri is unique. High up in one corner of the central panel is a depiction of an Indonesian prau, a vessel with a distinctive tripod mast and square sails. With the prau is another piece, an 11-foot-long snake rendered, connect-the-dots-style, in small plugs of beeswax, a form native to part of northern Australia. Some of the beeswax lies directly atop the prau’s painted lines, and can be radiocarbon dated to provide at least a minimum age for the arrival of Macassans on Australian shores. “We want to use rock art as data—historical data, archaeological data,” says Taçon.

(continued on page 68)

called “Picturing Change.” “We start to get an indigenous counterpoint to a fairly white perspective of a frontier of contact and confl ict. Maybe it’s trying to make sense of things in a period of greater change than people had experienced in 40,000 years.”

When the English first arrived in the late eighteenth century, they

considered the Aborigines to be an isolated, lost culture of primitives. However, Taçon and others believe that interaction between the outside world and the Aborigines of Arnhem Land was quite long-lived, rather ami-cable, and began much earlier than was previously thought, and they’re looking to the rock art to prove it.

Over the last 1,000 years and perhaps longer, the seas of Southeast Asia have been home to a tradition of maritime trade to rival that of the Mediter-ranean. Northern Australia seems to have been left out of this picture prior to the arrival of the English, even though the Dutch, who had a strong colonial presence in Indone-sia, made maps of the coast more than 100 years earlier. But there are tantalizing hints that there was interaction between Aborigines and outsiders much, much earlier. Th e canines that would eventually become dingos, for example, were introduced to Australia around 4,000 years ago. Rock art believed to be up to 2,000 years old has patterns—such as hatching and lozenges—strongly reminiscent of Asian fabric. Th e oral tradition—some combination of history and myth—speaks of the “Baijini,” a people who came from the north. A Portuguese jar found in Darwin Harbor might date to around 1500. Excavations at rock shelters show that there was a surge in population in the Welling-ton Range around 600 years ago—as if some new development were drawing people closer to the coast.

“It may well be that small groups of people were arriving on Australia’s northern shores sporadically for thou-sands or even tens of thousands of years, but archaeologically or geneti-cally we just don’t have the technology to pick that up,” says Taçon.

It is already known—though per-

The men on this steamship at Djulirri have the domineering, hands-on-

hips posture that often distinguishes Europeans in Aboriginal art. A loading

ramp is visible at right.

This painting of an Indonesian prau, a vessel with a distinctive tripod mast, was datable because of the later beeswax works that sit atop it.

It was one of the ancient world’s greatest battles, pitting a Carthaginian army commanded by the general Hamilcar against a Greek alliance for control of the island of Sicily. After a fi erce struggle in 480 b.c. on a coastal plain out-side the Sicilian city of Himera, with heavy losses on both sides, the Greeks eventually won the day. As the years passed, the Battle of Himera assumed legendary proportions. Some Greeks would even claim it had occurred on the

same day as one of the famous battles of Th ermopylae and Salamis, crucial contests that led to the defeat of the Persian invasion of Greece, also in 480 b.c., and two of the most celebrated events in Greek history.

Nonetheless, for such a momentous battle, Himera has long been something of a mystery. Th e ancient accounts of the battle, by the fi fth-century b.c. historian Hero-dotus and the fi rst-century b.c. historian Diodorus Siculus (“the Sicilian”), are biased, confusing, and incomplete. Archaeology, however, is beginning to change things. For the past decade, Stefano Vassallo of the Archaeological Superintendency of Palermo has been working at the site of ancient Himera. His discoveries have helped pinpoint the battle’s precise location, clarifi ed the ancient historians’ accounts, and unearth new evidence of how classical Greek soldiers fought and died.

Beginning in the middle of the eighth century b.c., when the Greeks founded their fi rst colonies on the island and the Carthaginians arrived from North Africa to establish their presence there, Sicily was a prize that both Greeks and

Carthaginians coveted. Th e Greek city of Himera, founded around 648 b.c., was a key point in this rivalry. Himera commanded the sea-lanes along the north coast of Sicily as well as a major land route leading south across the island. In the fi rst decades of the fi fth century b.c., the competition to dominate Sicily intensifi ed. Gelon of Syracuse and Th eron of Akragas, both rulers of Greek cities on the island, formed an alliance not only to counter the power of Carthage, but also to gain control of Himera from their fellow Greeks. Th ey soon achieved their goal and exiled the city’s Greek ruler, who then appealed to Carthage for help. Seeing an opportunity to seize the upper hand in the struggle for Sicily, the Carthaginian leader Hamilcar mobilized his forces. Th e stage was set for the battle of Himera.

Th e fullest account of what happened next comes from Diodorus Siculus. Th e his-torian claims that Hamilcar sailed from Carthage with a huge army of some 300,000 troops, but a more realistic fi gure is probably around 20,000. Along the way, Hamilcar’s

38

Rewriting one of the ancient world’s most dramatic battlefi eld accounts

by John W. I. Lee

The Fight for

ANCIENT SICILY

Th e Carthaginians…say that [they] fought with the Greeks in Sicily from dawn until late in the day… and that during this time Hamilcar remained in camp and made sacrifi ces for good omens, off ering entire carcasses on a great pyre. Th en, seeing his troops routed as he was pouring libations on the sacrifi ces, he cast himself into the fi re. Th us he was completely consumed by fi re and disappeared. —Herodotus ..

Although the Greeks received reinforcements, they were still outnumbered. In the end, they got lucky. According to Diodorus, scouts from Gelon’s camp intercepted a letter to Hamilcar from allies who promised to send cavalry to replace the losses he had suff ered at sea. Gelon ordered some of his own cavalry to impersonate Hamilcar’s arriving allies. Th ey would bluff their way into Hamilcar’s seaside camp and then wreak havoc. Th e ruse worked. At sunrise the disguised Greek cavalry rode up to the Carthaginian camp, where unsuspecting sentries let them in. Galloping across the camp, Gelon’s horsemen killed Hamilcar (although the historian Herodotus says Hamilcar killed himself ) and set fi re to the ships drawn up on the beach. At that signal, Gelon advanced from Himera to meet the Carthaginians in pitched battle.

Scholars have long questioned Diodorus’ description of these events, but in 2008 Vassallo’s team began to excavate part of Himera’s western necropolis, just outside the city

fl eet ran into a storm that sank the transports carrying his horses and chariots. Undeterred, the general set up a forti-fi ed seaside camp on the shore west of Himera to protect his remaining ships and built walls to block the western land approaches to the city. Th e outnumbered Greek defenders sallied out from the city to protect Himera’s territory, only to lose the fi rst skirmishes.

Before Vassallo began his excavations, scholars had been unable to pinpoint the location of these clashes. In 2007, however, he uncovered the northwestern corner of the city’s fortifi cation wall. He also found evidence that the coastline had shifted since ancient times, as silt carried from the streams above Himera broadened the plain. Th ese two discoveries clarify Diodorus’ account. Th e fi ghting must have occurred in the coastal plain between the wall and the ancient shoreline, which in the fi fth century b.c. was closer to the city than it is today.

Archaeologists uncovered the remains of dozens of soldiers who fought in the Battle of

Himera. Evidence for mass burials of war dead is extremely rare in the ancient Greek world.

these could be the remains of men killed in the battle of 480 b.c., which would be highly signifi cant for reconstructing the Battle of Himera. Th eir placement in the western necropolis strongly suggests that the main clash between the Greek and Carthaginian armies took place near the western walls of the city. Since bodies are heavy to move, it’s likely they were buried in the cemetery closest to the battlefi eld, especially if there were many dead to dispose of. (In contrast, Himera’s eastern necropolis on the far side of the

city, which Vassallo had previously excavated, contains no communal graves.) Vassallo also has a hypothesis about the soldiers’ origins. Th ey were probably not Carthaginians, for the defeated enemy would have received little respect. Dead Himeran soldiers would likely have been collected by their families for burial. Instead, Vassallo believes many or all of the dead were allied Greeks from Syracuse or Akragas. Th ese warriors, who died far from home, could not be taken back to their native soil for burial. Instead, they were honored in Himera’s cemetery for their role in defending the city.

The bones of Himera have more stories to tell. For all that has been written about Greek warfare by poets and historians from Homer to Herodotus and

Diodorus, ancient literature tends to focus on generals and rulers rather than on how ordinary soldiers fought and died. Until Vassallo’s excavations, only a handful of mass graves from Greek battles—such as those at Chaeronea, where

wall, in preparation for a new rail line connecting Palermo and Messina. Th e excavations revealed 18 very rare horse burials dating to the early fi fth century b.c. Th ese burials remind us of Diodo-rus’ account of the cavalry stratagem the Greeks used against Hamilcar. Were these perhaps the mounts of the horse-men who bluff ed their way into the Carthaginian camp?

At first the Carthaginian troops fought hard, but as news of Hamilcar’s death spread, they lost heart. Many were cut down as they fl ed, while others found refuge in a nearby stronghold only to surrender due to lack of water. Diodo-rus claims 150,000 Carthaginians were killed, although the historian almost certainly exaggerated this number to make the Greek victory more impressive. Th e Carthaginians soon sought peace. In addition to surrendering their claim to Himera, they paid reparations of 2,000 talents, enough money to support an army of 10,000 men for three years. Th ey also agreed to build two temples, one of which may be the Temple of Victory still visible at Himera today.

In the summer of 2009, Vassallo and his team con-tinued excavating in Himera’s western necropolis. By the end of the fi eld season, they had uncovered more

than 2,000 graves dating from the mid-sixth to the late fi fth centuries b.c. What most attracted Vassallo’s attention were seven communal graves, dating to the early fi fth century b.c., containing at least 65 skeletons in total. Th e dead, who were interred in a respectful and orderly manner, were all males over the age of 18.

At fi rst Vassallo thought he might have found victims of an epidemic, but seeing that the bodies were all male and that many displayed signs of violent trauma convinced him otherwise. Given the date of the graves, Vassallo realized that

Archaeologist Stefano Vassallo (below) has been excavating the site of ancient Himera for many years.

This soldier’s remains (right) were found with a spearblade still embedded in his left side.

Buried near the soldiers were the remains of 18 horses that likely died during the battle, including this one that still has a bronze ring from its harness in its mouth.


the men fell in hand-to-hand combat or in an exchange of missiles, while advancing or in fl ight. Th e arrowheads and spearheads uncovered with the men can also provide other important evidence. Ancient soldiers typically employed the distinctive weapons of their home regions, so archaeologists may be able to discover who killed the men buried at Himera by studying the projectiles embedded in their remains.

Although they won the fi rst battle of Himera, the Greeks would not have the upper hand forever. In 409 b.c. Hamilcar’s grandson Hannibal returned to Himera, bent on revenge. After a desperate siege the city was sacked and destroyed forever. In the western necropolis, Vassallo has discovered another mass grave, dating to the late fi fth century b.c., which contains 59 burials. He believes these may be

the graves of the Himerans who fell protecting their city against this later Carthaginian assault.

Vassallo is careful to emphasize that more study of the skeletal remains, grave artifacts, and topography is required before definitive conclu-sions can be drawn. Nonetheless, it is already clear that his recent discover-ies will be of major importance for understanding the history of ancient Himera, the decisive battles that took place there, and the lives and deaths of the ordinary Greek soldiers who fought to defend the city. ■

John W. I. Lee is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research specialty is classical Greek warfare.

Philip of Macedon defeated the Greeks in 338 b.c.—had been found. Th ese graves were explored before the develop-ment of modern archaeological and forensic techniques.

In contrast, Vassallo’s team worked with an on-site group of anthropologists, architects, and conservators to docu-ment, process, and study their discoveries. Th anks to their careful methods, the Himera graves may represent the best archaeological source yet found for classical Greek warfare. Further analysis of Himera’s battle dead promises to off er much about the soldiers’ ages, health, and nutrition. It may even be possible to identify the men’s military specialties by looking for bone abnormalities. Archers, for example, tend to develop asymmetrical bone growths on their right shoul-der joints and left elbows. Hoplites, the armored spearmen who constituted the main infantry forces of Greek armies, carried large round shields weighing up to 14 pounds on their left arms. Th e burden of carrying such a shield may have left skeletal traces.

Studying Himera’s dead is also revealing the gruesome realities of ancient warfare. Initial analysis shows that some men suff ered impact trauma to their skulls, while the bones of oth-ers display evidence of sword cuts and arrow strikes. In several cases, soldiers were buried with iron spearheads lodged in their bodies. One man still carries the weapon that killed him stuck between his vertebrae. Analysis of the types and locations of these injuries may help determine whether

Scholars analyzing the bones from Himera’s soldiers hope to learn

more about Greek warfare, such as the extent of stress injuries caused by carrying heavy bronze-covered shields, as depicted on this black-

figure vase found at the site.

In addition to the soldiers’ graves, Vassallo’s team has uncovered more than 2,000 burials dating from the sixth to

fifth century ı in Himera’s massive necropolis.

On a sweltering June morning, Jason De Leon shrugs off his pack in a rugged gorge in Arizona’s Coronado National Forest. He hunches down over a scattering of water bottles, checking for dates, and asks a student to take the site’s GPS coordinates. Above his head, along the rock face, travelers have transformed a small, secluded hollow into a shrine lined with off erings: rosaries, crucifi xes, candles, scapulars,

and small pictures of saints, each bearing a printed prayer in Spanish. “Take care of me in dangerous places,” reads one card. “Protect me from thieves and in evil times,” entreats another. Nearby, a small engraved plastic pendant off ers a more direct prayer: “Th e other side, Tucson, Arizona, 2010.”

Th e shrine, says De Leon, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, is archaeological evidence of a large and nearly invisible migration. Over the past decade,

millions of migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries have risked their lives attempting to cross the waterless expanses of the Sonoran Desert to secretly enter the United States. Th e Department of Homeland Security estimates that 10.8 million illegal migrants were living in the U.S. in 2009. Although this is down from 11.6 million in 2008, these migrants are following a trend that has persisted throughout human history. People move to the place where they can make the best living possible. Last year alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities apprehended some 540,000 would-be migrants along the Southwest border. Statistics gathered by the U.S. Border Patrol and local coroners’ offi ces suggest that this migration route is growing more dangerous.

Already De Leon’s growing database is providing answers. By mapping and dating migrant sites, his team has revealed a strong correlation between recent American govern-ment policies and the increasing perils faced by migrants. As the Border Patrol has stepped up its surveillance along the Southwest border, migrants are crossing through ever more isolated and dangerous terrain in hopes of avoiding capture. “It’s getting harder and harder to cross all the time,” says De Leon. “Th e migrants are having to walk longer and go into more remote areas.”

Understanding the process of making the journey across the border has been diffi cult because researchers are unable to accompany the migrants on their trips. But two years ago, De Leon decided to look at the issue in a new way—through archaeology. Trekking remote corners of what Border Patrol offi cials call the Tucson Sector (262 miles of border running west from the New Mexico state line to the Yuma county line), De Leon and a small team are now mapping and dating migrant sites, analyzing artifacts, and gathering detailed eth-nographic data on the journey from those who were apprehended. “Th ere are just so many myths about what is going on out there in the desert,” says De Leon. “Th is is a scientifi c attempt to ground the process in reality, to get as complete a picture as possible.”

Archaeologists not affi liated with the project call De Leon’s work in the desert both impressive and groundbreaking. “He hasn’t drawn a conclusion for which he now wishes to gather data,” says Fred Limp, an archaeologist at the University of Arkansas, Fayette-ville, and president-elect of the Society for American Archaeology. “He’s really trying to understand this migration and the sites he’s got.”

In a shallow ravine just a few miles outside the small town of Arivaca in southern Ari-zona, De Leon surveys a site his team has named Buster’s Wash. All along the ground, as


The Journey to

El NorteHow archaeologists

are documenting the silent migration that is transforming America

by Heather Pringle

In a secluded part of the Arizona wilderness, illegal immigrants have made a shrine where they pray for safety on their journey into the United States. Among the artifacts they leave behind are prayer cards (above), which honor the Virgin of Guadalupe and Santo Toribio Romo, the saint who watches over migrants.

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44

they track in order to determine which trails are active, which aren’t, and where water is most needed.

Th e Samaritans’ bottles often end up in the migrant rest sites, and therefore the bottles would tell archaeologists where the migrants had been and when they had been there. As De Leon walked some of the sites on that initial trip, he spotted other important temporal clues—dated bus tick-ets, deportation slips, time-stamped photographs. All this information, he realized, would help an archaeological team study changes in the migrants’ routes and behavior over time, something no one had ever done before.

At Buster’s Wash just outside Arivaca, the heat pours down like molten metal. Mopping his brow with a handkerchief, De Leon reaches for his water

bottle. As migrant sites go, Buster’s Wash is small enough that De Leon asks the team to collect everything lying on the ground—a 100 percent sample that eff ectively erases the site and goes against accepted archaeological protocols.

far as the eye can see, is a tangle of trash: water bottles, jeans, T-shirts, photos, children’s toys, toothbrushes, pill packets, hair-gel jars, and—more than any other item—backpacks. It’s one of thousands of such sites in the Southwest where migrants led by human smugglers known as coyotes rested on their journey northward. Most Arizona residents, says De Leon, see these sites as garbage dumps.

But De Leon sees the trash heaps diff erently—as archaeo-logical sites packed with data. So the 33-year-old archaeolo-gist and his students are scouring the backcountry around Arivaca, recording these sites and collecting artifacts before local citizens clean them up.

De Leon is the grandson of an undocumented Mexican migrant, but he fi rst became interested in the archaeology of illegal immigration during

the 2007 excavation of an Olmec site in Mexico where he was working as a graduate student. All the local workmen, he explains, “had either migrated at one point, or were get-ting ready to migrate. So I began talking to them about the things that had happened.” Th e workmen’s stories stuck with De Leon. So he began looking around for a way to study this migration.

Archaeologist friends had told him about all the refuse in the Sonoran Desert. Intrigued, De Leon contacted a local humani-tarian group, Samaritan Patrol, in Tucson, and arranged to accompany volunteer Bob Kee on a hike. Th e migrants, Kee told him, are never able to carry enough water to see them through a crossing. So the Samaritans and other groups leave bottled water along high-traffi c routes, hoping to save lives. Th ey also scrawl the date and GPS coordinates of the drop site on the sides of the bottles—data

Migrants stop at sites such as Buster’s Wash to change clothes and discard any evidence of their illegal border crossings.

De Leon’s team maps the location of each artifact left behind by migrants as they stop to

rest on their way to the U.S.


be migrants. “People know that when they try to cross the border, they are going to get apprehended,” she says.

What De Leon’s research provides is a nuanced picture of the migrants’ response to this strategy. Before the stepped-up border surveillance, most

migrants crossed through border cities—a relatively safe proposition. But after 2001, says De Leon, the U.S. govern-ment greatly boosted the number of Border Patrol agents in the cities along the Mexican border, eff ectively sealing

off the old urban routes. So migrants began crossing, instead, through the Sonoran Desert. And De Leon has discovered a disturbing trend in his

data: the more recent the migrant site is, the smaller and more remote it tends to be. To evade detection by drones and virtual fences, coyotes are leading smaller parties through increasingly

isolated and dangerous terrain. “Now these guys are scaling rock cliff s,” says De Leon. “And it hasn’t always been like that. It used to be much easier.”

Randall McGuire, a Binghamton University archaeologist who has worked along the Southwest border since 1985, says this data fi ts well with hundreds of conversations he has had with returned migrants in northern Mexico. “In 1985,” says McGuire, “people had to walk just a few hours to get across the border. In 2006, people were walking for three days through the Sonoran Desert. Now, due to increased enforce-ment, they are walking fi ve days. And there’s just no physical way to carry water enough for even a three-day trip.”

Colleen Agle says that the Border Patrol is doing everything it can to assist migrants who fall into trouble on these long treks. It has specially trained Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue teams for medical emergen-cies in the desert and has placed them in every sector along

the Southwest border. “Th eir entire mission is to go out and save people, particularly during the hot summer months,” Agle says.

Increasingly, says De Leon, evi-dence shows the ways in which the migrants are adapting to the perils. In sites dated to 2007, De Leon found an abundance of high-heeled shoes, blow-dryers, and other heavy, bulky items, suggesting that the trekkers had little idea of the type of journey they were taking. But few of these items are found at later sites. By 2009, migrants were carrying little extra weight and were dressing in more suitable clothing, including hiking

“My rationale for doing this,” he says, “is if we don’t take it, someone else will, and it will go straight into the trash.” He is more selective, however, at larger sites, taking only essential data: clothing that indicates the gender of migrants, new types of gear that reveal shifting patterns in migrant behavior, and backpacks that yield a rough count of the number of migrants at a site. “I think one backpack equals one person,” De Leon says. He looks around. “I’d say there’s a couple of thousand here.”

Th e site brims with telling details about the journey. In places strewn with empty food tins and black plastic sheets used for bedding, people clearly slept for a few hours and prepared simple meals of tortillas and refried beans. “Here you see a full range of things,” says De Leon, “because it’s close to a road.” At smaller sites next to cattle tanks, they stopped briefl y to fi ll up their water bottles. But at Buster’s Wash, he says, migrants changed out of dirty travel clothes and into something clean. Th ey combed and fi xed their hair, brushed their teeth, and discarded torn and stained packs that could mark them as migrants. Th en they waited in the wash for someone to come pick them up and drive them into Tucson.

Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Ameri-can government has more than doubled its budget for border protection and immigration enforcement,

from $7.5 billion to $17 billion, and tripled the number of Border Patrol agents. It has constructed nearly 150 miles of steel fencing and concrete vehicle barriers along the Mexican border, largely in urban areas, purchased drones for aerial surveillance, and built a virtual fence—a string of towers bristling with radar, thermal imaging, and other sensor technologies—to detect migrants moving along 28 miles of the Arizona border. “We’ve got more technology than ever before watching the border,” says Agent Colleen Agle, a public information offi cer in the Tuc-son Sector of the Border Patrol. And in her view, the increased surveillance has deterred large numbers of would-

The U.S. Border Patrol is increasing its use of technology such as radar and

thermal imaging to apprehend people crossing the border illegally.

Nearly everyone who makes an illegal border crossing carries a backpack. De Leon’s team counts them to estimate the number of people who occupied the sites he studies.


more than a quarter of a century, Loureido and her husband, Juan Francisco, have strung meager funds together to keep the facility open. It’s a modest operation, but the shelter is immaculate, with clean bunks and bedding, scrubbed-out toilets, and a hot meal for newly deported migrants, each of whom is allowed to stay three days.

“Tonight is relatively quiet,” says Loureido. As a rule, American authorities deport migrants to the nearest Mexi-can border city. But during the summer, they fl y those they catch to Mexico City, 1,000 miles to the south, as an addi-tional deterrent to a future crossing attempt. Tonight, just 30 to 40 migrants have arrived at the shelter, a far cry from the 250 or so who typically crowd into its beds. But it’s still early, only 10 p.m., and American authorities have a habit of deporting people in the early morning hours, a dangerous time of day to drop off exhausted migrants in crime-ridden Nogales. De Leon suspects that this is a deliberate strategy—one more deterrent to a future crossing.

Th e migrants, who are unwilling to divulge their names to a journalist, have varying reasons for undertaking the journey to the United States. “Some people do this for money, some do it to buy a big car,” says a small man with dark shadows under his eyes and a rueful smile. “But I have a large family to support in Mexico and that’s a burden I will have to carry all

my life.” To make more money for his family, he explains, he followed a sister to Wisconsin where she had opened a small restaurant. Living there quietly, he managed to escape detection until he was apprehended on a driving charge and subsequently deported. Last week, he says, he attempted to cross the desert, an experience he found terrifying. “Unless you’ve tried to do it,” he says grimly, “you’ll never know what it’s like out there. But I have to try again. I have three kids in the United States.”

boots and camoufl age gear. Moreover, many were dispensing with clear plastic water bottles that could refl ect the head-lights of Border Patrol trucks. A year or so ago, they began carrying a new type of plastic water bottle manufactured in Mexico: it’s solid black, to help them hide at night.

For De Leon, the artifacts clearly reveal how migrants and their Mexican suppliers are constantly adapting to the harsh new realities of the journey to El Norte. “I think everyone knows that this is going to be a really bad experience,” he says. “But a lot of people are wondering, ‘How can I be smarter during the whole process?’”

Th e whole notion of regarding and classifying water bottles and blow dryers as archaeological artifacts can initially seem like something of a stretch. But, in fact, the evidence of mass migrations, in more traditional terms, can reside in the artifacts that are brought along and shared. Th e clash and blending of cultures is often documented by fi nding the blending of artifact styles—from that of the local inhabit-ants and that of the migratory population. To document this current migration we need to look at artifacts from our own time.

While De Leon’s work in the Sonoran Desert exposes the deadly consequences of sealing off the old urban migration routes, it does not reveal

much about the experiences of individual migrants. To record these experiences, De Leon has been traveling to the Mexi-can border town of Nogales to interview newly returned deportees. On a quiet summer evening there, he chats with Hilda Irene Loureido, one of the founders of Albergue San Juan Bosco, a former church turned migrant shelter. For

White water bottles are easily seen at night, so migrants often put covers on them. Some

bottlers have begun manufacturing black bottles to appeal to migrants.

Outfitting migrants for their journeys through the desert has become a booming business in towns on the Mexican side of the border.


jobs much harder to fi nd north of the border and probably given many would-be migrants pause. According to the Department of Homeland Security, a combination of the declining economy and tougher enforcement eff orts has caused the number of illegal migrants apprehended by the Border Patrol to drop from 1,189,000 in 2005 to 724,000 in 2008. But even so, the prospect of a new life in the United States remains attractive. “It goes beyond the wages they can earn [here],” says Topel. “Th ey can probably get decent educations for their kids. Th ey get access to health care, and even just with emergency rooms, it’s probably much better than what they can get back home in a poverty-stricken Mexican village.”

For those who have studied earlier waves of migration to the United States, the situation sounds all too familiar. Stephen Brighton, an archaeologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, has been examining the massive nineteenth-century Irish migration to the United States.

Between 1845 and 1850, explains Brighton, blighted crops of potatoes left tenant farmers with few options except selling off their livestock to support their families. With no livestock, the farmers ended up destitute and facing a choice between starving in Ireland or migrating to America. Most of the Irish who landed on American shores at that time were desperately poor and uneducated—much like the Mexican migrants of today. “Th ere are a lot of parallels,” says Brighton.

But as these Irish immigrants sank roots in American society, their descendants prospered and became part of the essential fabric of American life. De Leon thinks the very same thing will happen to the undocumented Mexican migrants of today. “At some point, Mexican-Americans will want to say to their children, this is what I went through. Th is is how I got here,” he says. And when that day fi nally comes, the backpacks, the clothing, the children’s toys col-lected from Buster’s Wash, will preserve this shadowy history of migration, reminding the future of what has been. ■

Heather Pringle is a contributing editor at Archaeology.

First-time migrants, says De Leon, often make arrange-ments ahead of time with known coyotes in their home vil-lages in Mexico and Central America, paying thousands of dollars for a crossing. But those who have been apprehended and deported sometimes head back out on their own or hire cut-rate smugglers operating out of Mexican border towns. Th e migrants making the journey again prepare as best they can, shopping in Nogales’s small street kiosks lined with spe-cialized gear—camoufl age packs, dark clothing, and bottles of Electrolít, the Mexican equivalent to Gatorade.

Some migrants barely make it out of the border towns before criminals known as bajadores descend on them, demanding their money and often physically and sexually assaulting them. “Th ey lined us up and had us fi ll a plastic bag with all of our valuables,” one migrant told De Leon. “Th ey had cuernos de chivos (literally translated as “goat’s horns,” an expression meaning “machine guns”). It was clear the coyote knew this was going to happen.” For others, the most harrowing ordeal begins farther north. Th e coyotes insist that migrants move as quickly as possible, and to keep their exhausted charges on the march, they hand out ephedrine-based pills. Th e drug boosts the metabolism and heart rates of the slowest walkers, but the end result is dehydration, prompting migrants to empty the water bottles they are carrying.

For the lucky ones who make it through the desert, how-ever, there is little freedom from worry. Th e Border Patrol has a large and visible presence in most Southwest cities. “If you ask the migrants where they are going, it’s never Tucson or Los Angeles,” says De Leon. “It’s always Eugene, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; or Sheboygan, Wisconsin.” Th ere, many gravitate to jobs in rendering plants and other undesir-able work in the food processing industry that pays $11 to $14 dollars an hour.

Th e hope of fi nding employment remains a powerful incentive for migration, particularly among rural Mexicans whose family incomes have been devastated in recent years by forces beyond their control. In 1994, Mexico entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada. Th e treaty permitted American farmers to ship cheap, federally subsidized corn and wheat into the Mexican market.

All this has left rural Mexicans poorer than ever. Many of their homes fail to meet even minimum standards of sanita-tion, according to statistics compiled by the World Bank and other nongovernmental organizations, and their children spend fewer than four years in school. Many young Latin Americans feel as if they have little to lose by attempting to migrate to the United States.

Th e fi nancial downturn that began in 2007, says Robert Topel, an economist at the University of Chicago, has made

Migrants who are caught by the U.S. Border Patrol are sometimes deported in the early morning hours

and dropped off in border towns such as Nogales. Migrant safe houses have sprung up there.

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Architectural historian Edward Chappell moves slowly through the empty

attic of the Charlton Coff eehouse, inspecting thick wooden rafters and admiring modern workmanship that draws on techniques and traditions that go back more than 250 years. Th e wood-frame house is one of some 500 reconstructed eighteenth-century buildings in the historic district of Colonial Williamsburg, the seat of Virginia’s government from 1699 to

1780, and now famous for the his-torical reenactments that have drawn generations of road-tripping families.

As director of architectural and archaeological research at Williams-burg, Chappell oversaw the recon-struction of the Coff eehouse, which was torn down in the late nineteenth century. It is the fi rst major structure to be rebuilt on the district’s main Duke of Gloucester Street in 50 years, and went up in an era of new fi delity to historical accuracy. Inten-


sive archaeological and architectural investigations began at the site in 1996 and produced an extraordinary amount of data about the structure, in large part thanks to modern tech-niques like the use of microscopy to reveal the smallest of details.

The hum of the crowd of tourists outside waiting their turn to enter the house is

just barely audible in the attic, a war-ren of small rooms that won’t be

This Old Colonial CoffeehouseReconstructing a long-lost eighteenth-century building in Williamsburg

by Eric A. Powell

LETTER FROM VIRGINIA


where politically active Virginians gathered to engage in caff eine-fueled conversation and debate. Coff eehouses were extremely popular in England at the time as gathering places for men of all social ranks (about 2,000 were in business in London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). But Charlton seems to have catered to an upper-class crowd. Both Th omas Jeff erson and George Washington record visits to a Williamsburg coff eehouse in the 1760s, and it seems likely this was the establishment they patronized.

Th e Coff eehouse’s big moment, however, came when it served as the scene for the colony’s most vivid demonstration of resistance to taxa-tion without representation. In 1765, the British Crown levied a direct tax on printed materials in the colonies. Th e so-called Stamp Act required that these materials, from attorneys’ licenses to pamphlets, be produced on offi cial stamped paper, which was much more expensive than untaxed paper. Th e act met with outrage, and distributors of the stamps in the col-onies were not greeted warmly. Vir-ginia’s Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier wrote that on October 30, 1765, an angry crowd chased Virgin-ia stamp distributor George Mercer down Duke of Gloucester Street,

To the Coff ee house, in the porch of which I had seated my self with many of the Council and the Speaker who had posted him self between the Crowd and my self. … After some little time, a Cry was heard ‘let us rush in’ upon this we,

ready for visitors any time soon. It’s a kind of ghostly space, and the level of the build-ing historians know the least about. Archaeologists and historians have been able to discover a great deal about the Coffeehouse’s genteel first floor, where in the 1760s proprietor Richard Charlton served his guests coffee, tea, chocolate, and a rich array of food amid furnishings aimed at creating as refined an atmosphere as possible this far from London.

Th e dense archaeological deposits around the building also allow them to reimagine the world of the cellar, where slaves and possibly Native Americans would have spent hours cooking for Charlton’s clients. But it’s hard to say what happened here in the cramped quarters of the attic. It’s possible Charlton let rooms out here to travelers or longer-term guests, or perhaps to representatives who came to the capital for legislative sessions. “We’re on the margins of gentility up here,” Chappell says in a soft Virginia drawl as he descends a winding stair-case to the richly appointed world of the Coff eehouse below.

Sitting above a small ravine just a few yards from the capitol, the building

that eventually became Charlton’s Coff eehouse was fi rst described in a 1750 deed as a “Store house.” In 1755, records indicate a merchant named John Mitchelson was using it as a shop, possibly selling furniture. By 1765, a recently arrived immigrant from northern England, Richard Charlton, a wigmaker by trade, had transformed the building into a bustling coff eehouse, a place

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Architectural historians Edward Chappell (right)

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Chappell squeezes him-self against a wall on the fi rst fl oor of the Coff eehouse

to allow a swarm of tourists to follow an interpreter from the elegant front parlors into the sparer back rooms. Once the crowd is gone, he explains that after the Amistead House was moved, investigation of the Cof-feehouse focused on two fronts, archaeological and architectural.

It turned out that the original building had not been so much demolished as deconstructed and recycled. Wooden elements like rafters, doors, and shutters were either used in the Amistead House, or taken to the basement for stor-age. “Recyclers and packrats are very helpful to us,” says Chappell. “Th e parts they salvaged and saved turned our job into a giant puzzle.” Dendrochronological analysis shows the oldest wood was cut during the winter of 1749–50, confi rming the date of the building’s original construction. Much of the original brick foundation also survived, while other bricks were recycled to construct walls and a new chimney. Th e team used microscopic analy-sis to discover starch paste or glue between layers of paint in a surviving original section of the structure. Th e glue suggests the Coff eehouse was wallpapered. “We’d rather fi nd the paper,” says Chappell, “but fi nding this glue in an almost archaeological context makes it pretty likely they used wallpaper to enhance the status of the space during the period the building was a coff eehouse.” Now richly textured wallpaper created with eighteenth-century techniques decorates some of the rooms on the main fl oor.

Th e architectural details hidden in the Armistead House greatly aided the actual physical reconstruc-tion of the Coff eehouse (which fi nally happened in 2009 as a result of a donation from the Mars Foun-dation). Th ese elements made it clear that the structure was a one-and-a-half-story frame building with

that were at the Top of the Steps know-ing the advantage our Situation gave us to repell those who should attempt to mount them, advanced to the Edge of the Steps. … Th e Crowd did not yet disperse, it was growing dark and I did not think it safe to leave Mr. Mercer behind me. … We accordingly walked side by side through the thickest of the people who did not molest us; tho’ there was some little murmurs.

It’s a scene that begs to be reen-acted and one that had repercus-sions throughout Williamsburg society. Th e Coff eehouse is known to have been the site of violent political quarrels after this incident, some involving members of the Mer-cer family, who fought with those who questioned their patriotism. As a place that catered to politically engaged Virginians unburdened by the expectations of proper behavior that existed in the capitol, churches, and other offi cial buildings, it’s pos-sible the Coff eehouse was a place where discord and ungentlemanly behavior may have been frequent, despite Charlton’s best eff orts to cre-ate a sophisticated environment.

By 1770s, the Coff eehouse had been sold and was once again a store. Th e capital moved to Richmond in 1781, and Williamsburg entered a long period of slow decline that saw it transformed from an impor-

tant political center to an obscure county seat. In 1890, the former Coff eehouse, now dilapidated, was demolished to make way for a Victorian home, known as the Armistead House after its owner. Th at building was still standing in the 1920s when John D. Rockefeller began to purchase property in Wil-liamsburg with the aim of protect-ing the town and transforming the historic district into a destination for heritage-minded tourists. Today, Colonial Williamsburg is maintained by a private foundation that seeks to preserve the town as it was in the mid-eighteenth century, when the Coff eehouse would have been one of the capital’s most active gathering places. Over the years, the founda-tion has also developed a robust program in historical archaeology, thanks in large part to the leadership of pioneering British archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume, who began work in Williamsburg in the 1950s.

When the Amistead House was moved to a new location in 1996, the Coff eehouse became the latest site on the foundation’s 301 acres to receive the kind of detailed, years-long archaeological attention that has become the rule since Hume’s excavations made Colonial Wil-liamsburg the country’s premiere laboratory for historical archaeology.

Actors at Colonial Williamsburg reenact a moment from 1765 when an angry mob pursued a government agent to the porch of the Coffeehouse.

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Large amounts of the unglazed, plain earthenware known as colonoware were also found in the trash. And yet there is also evidence for at least one fancy glass pyramid used for serving desserts. “I think the artifacts suggest a person who is piecing together a genteel environment for customers, but with a real concern for cost,” says Chappell. “It’s an interesting look at the balancing act of the economy of

genteel trade.”In addition to the

ceramics, archae-ologists recovered copious numbers of wine bottles,

and some 30,000 animal bones that were deposited during the period

Charlton operated the Coff eehouse.

Joanne Bowen, Wil-liamsburg’s zooarchaeolo-

gist, found that the bones showed the guests at the Coff eehouse were eating meals that refl ected their elite status. She discovered that there was more variety of fi sh, birds, and mammals at the Coff eehouse than at any other elite site in Williamsburg at the time, and that the clients consumed mut-ton and lamb, which were relatively rare, as well as calf ’s head, an elite dish that seems to have been a house favorite. Most intriguingly, Bowen identifi ed a peacock ulna and femur among the bones. Th e femur seemed to have been butchered, which sug-gests the peacock was cooked for some prosperous Coff eehouse guest.

high-style fi nishes, but archaeology was also able to fi ll in some details.

As Chappell exits the building by the front door he takes a moment to point out the dimensions of the eight-foot-deep porch made famous by the Stamp Act protest. “We know its size because excavations revealed the porch’s brick footings,” he says. “Th ey also found an ‘ash shadow’ in the front of the house that was cre-ated over the years as soot was swept off the porch into the front yard.” Th is layer of soot allowed the archi-tects to piece together the porch’s dimensions.

But archaeology may have come in most

handy by showing how Charlton furnished his coff eehouse. Luckily for research-ers, Charlton left plenty of evidence for this by keeping an enormous trash dump in the backyard that extended 40 feet from the rear of the house. Of the some 70,000 artifacts originally excavated from this mid-den, Chappell thinks a large number of ceramics were the most important. Th e evidence from sherds shows that Charlton’s customers probably drank mostly tea, and that he was not using high-status serving pieces that were in vogue at the time. “He was using relatively old-fashioned ceramics,” says Chapell, like blue-and-white dishes known as delftware.

A room in the Coffeehouse is decorated with

wallpaper, evidence of which was

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glamour of the Coff eehouse, the people who were the establishment’s backbone, is missing for now.

Recent excavations in the ravine next to the Coff eehouse led by

Williamsburg archaeologist Mark Kostro have revealed a rich array of mid-eighteenth century artifacts, including rare examples of Spanish olive jars. Th e collection is still being studied in the lab and there are plans to continue excavating in the back of the Coff eehouse in the near future, especially along the western boundary, to investigate

how Charlton maintained his property line.

Now that the reconstruction is completed the Coff eehouse is being visited by hundreds of tourists a day, but archaeologists are still trying to fi ll in the blanks about the landscape surrounding the building. Th is focus on the context of colonial lives is characteristic of the approach of modern architects and archaeolo-gists at Williamsburg, who are now busy aiding the reconstruction of the colonial Armoury, a block west of the Coff eehouse.

Th e pace of reconstruction at Colonial Williamsburg is much slower than it was in the early days. “It has been more selective and more tightly linked to good archae-ology since 1980,” says Chappell. As the Coff eehouse shows, careful archaeological work and architec-tural research means even the most casual visitors today have a chance to experience the past in increasingly vivid detail, right down to the wall-paper. “Our predecessors would have scraped through paint on wood-work, and would never have found the evidence for glue and wallpaper,” says Chappell. “We’re able to use microscopes and discover evidence for things that would have been missed only a generation ago.” ■

Eric A. Powell is deputy editor at Archaeology.

In eighteenth-century Virginia, pea-cock would have been considered the height of fi ne cuisine.

Other fi nds off er tantalizing hints of how gentlemen may have amused themselves at the Coff eehouse beyond reading newspapers and debating the fi ner points of Virginia politics. In the midden, archaeolo-gists recovered a human fi nger with a copper wire though it, as well as several human vertebrae with marks that could be dissection traces. Th is suggests that a human skeleton might have been on display at the Coff eehouse at some point, per-haps used as a visual aid for a lec-ture, which were popular among the upper class at the time.

Among the artifacts in the back-yard was a small furnace and 17 crucibles containing traces of silver, gold, and copper, which suggests the presence of someone who assessed the metal content of coins. Finally, a large number of wig curlers means that Richard Charlton likely never entirely retired from the wigmaking game, and perhaps ran a wig busi-ness out of the back of the Coff ee-house to supplement his income.

To enter the cellar, Chappell walks down a steep grade in back of the

building that would have been a topographical nightmare for the owners. Construction of the build-ing that became the Coff eehouse caused massive erosion of soil into the nearby ravine. Excavations have shown that the owners erected a retaining wall in an attempt to con-trol the runoff .

Before entering the cellar, Chap-pell points out its casement win-dows, which have diamond-shaped panes of glass held in place with lead frames. Th ese frames date to the 1750s, and were recovered during the course of excavations, he says, shaking his head at the improbable level of detail.

Excavations showed that the ceil-ing of the cellar was well over six feet

tall during the Coff eehouse period, enough room for it to be a viable liv-ing and work space in the eighteenth century. “Th e main fl oor is like the stage,” says Chapelle as he examines the reconstructed cellar’s fi replace. “It represents gentility for rent or sale. Th is is the backstage, where servants and slaves would have made

coff ee and done the work to keep the business going, and where they would probably have lived.” After the Revolution, working areas and living quarters became separate, but before then, servants and slaves usually lived where they worked.

Th ough unmistakably direct evi-dence of life in the Coff eehouse’s cel-lar is not plentiful, it’s likely the ser-vants or slaves who labored here ate off some of the colonoware found in the midden. Excavation also revealed a partition that separated the cellar into multiple rooms.

Sometime in the future, Chappell would like to see an in-depth plan for interpretation of the cellar devel-oped. Visitors are now allowed into the space on a limited basis, mainly to cope with overfl ow from the main fl oor of the Coff eehouse. And Wil-liamsburg’s curators have outfi tted the basement with period kitchen equipment, so it has a distinct eighteenth-century feel. But a sense of what life was like for those who worked here beneath the provincial

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Nearly 50 wig curlers were found in the deposits behind the Coffeehouse.

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Under the new rule, institu-tions that receive federal money must try to link the

CUI in their collections with tribes whose ancestors lived where the arti-facts were found, with the ultimate intention of turning them over. Any tribe whose historic territory passes the test can claim ownership, even without the sort of demonstrable cultural connection the original law required.

Few people dispute the new rule streamlines the CUI repatriation process. About 9,000 CUI had already been affi liated or repatriated before the ruling, but that required 82 separate agreements between

tribes and museums, each individually approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Th e whole process could take up to a year or two. Now the process for CUI is the same as it has always been under NAGPRA for affi liated remains: after reaching an agreement with a tribe, researchers publish a notice in the Federal Register, wait 30 days for any counterclaims, and then are free to hand them over.

Among scientists, the most vocal response to the rule came in a num-ber of letters to the Secretary of the Interior signed by members of the National Academy of Sciences, the Society for American Archaeology, the American Association of Muse-ums, and other major institutions. Among other things, the letters call the rule a “tragic” choice that “favors speed and effi ciency…at the expense of accuracy” and will result in “an incalculable loss to science.”

ing the remains of individuals even if they could not be personally identi-fi ed. At a minimum, institutions and tribal communities sat down together to determine the fi nal disposition of the thousands of artifacts and remains covered by the law.

By 2009, museums and federal agencies had affi liated and/or returned the remains of roughly 40,000 individuals and a million funerary objects. It was a start, but a slow one, in part because the process was still driven almost entirely by the collection-holders, who have the fi nal say in questions of cultural affi liation as long as they consult with tribes and follow the correct procedures. (Affi liation is established by a preponderance of evidence including geographical, biological, and anthropological data and kinship, folklore and oral history.) Tribes can take disputes to a review committee established under the law, but it has no enforcement authority.

James Riding In, a professor of American Indian studies at Arizona State University and a NAGPRA consultant for the Pawnee Nation and other tribes, says leaving museums and agencies at the wheel was “one of the fatal fl aws of NAGPRA.” In 20 years, only a quarter of all the human remains have been culturally affi liated or repatriated. “To me that’s a very dismal record.”

Now, with the 2010 amendment in play, the even bigger question is the fate of the 115,000 culturally unidentifi able human remains (CUI) that haven’t been connected with a particular group under NAGPRA’s detailed guidelines. In March, after years of consultation with museums, tribes, and the review committee, and multiple drafts and rounds of comments, the Department of the Interior (DOI) published the controversial fi nal rule.

“Th e new ruling is reopening all the old wounds that were beginning to heal,” says anthropologist John O’Shea of the University of Michigan, a former NAGPRA coordinator. “It has undone a lot of good.”


(Continued from page 16)

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Th e concern is that shifting a large fraction of CUI to tribes, who will likely rebury them, could mean losing an enormous amount of untapped data held in the bones and artifacts, especially as new research techniques are developed. Since NAGPRA’s passage, techniques such as DNA and stable isotope analysis have come into widespread use, off ering radically new ways to study prehistoric peoples. Tribes have also used scientifi c data from remains to establish land claims, fi ght for water or hunting rights, protect sacred sites, and petition for federal recognition—and thus NAGPRA protection. One letter signed by 41 members of the National Academy of Sciences warned that as a result of the new rule North America’s indigenous cultures could become “one of the world’s least known and least understood populations,” while others around the world continue to yield more and more information.

Steponaitis maintains that the new amendment goes far beyond what Congress authorized the DOI to do under NAGPRA. “Issuing a rule on such thin legal ice is an invitation to litigation,” he says, pointing out that one of the worst things to happen under NAGPRA was the legal fi ght over Kennewick Man. Th e 9,200-year-old skeleton, called “Th e Ancient One” by native groups, was discovered in Washington State in 1996. At issue was whether scientists or Native Americans could take possession of his remains. Scientists won the right to study the remains, but sacrifi ced plenty of good will in the process. “Litigation brings out the worst in everyone,” Steponaitis says.

Since tribes no longer have to show a cultural link to the unidentifi ed remains, but instead a less precise geographical relationship, “anybody can potentially make a claim,” says O’Shea. He maintains this puts universities and other collection-holders in the awkward position of having to decide which of multiple claims is most valid—and exposes them to new legal risks. “It’s returning us to the pre-NAGPRA days, with everyone distrusting everyone else.” Once remains are affi liated and

reburied, he says, they might as well never have existed. “It’s like destroying the evidence in a cold-case crime.”

Even though the rule applies only to remains found on current or historical tribal territory, says Keith Kintigh of Arizona State University, its defi nition of aboriginal land is so drastically expanded over the original law’s that “it eff ectively applies to all culturally unidentifi able human

remains in museums.” Th is could mean soaring consultation and inventory costs in an already strained economy.

Fundamentally, says Steponaitis, the rule could destroy the delicate balance Congress designed into the original law. “It represents a purely tribal point of view and tilts the play-ing fi eld so much that the outcome is essentially foreordained. No real negotiation is possible.”

Kintigh puts it more bluntly: “Th e goal of the rule is to empty museums of human remains. It is illegal, and it is a disaster.”

Among Native Americans, both scientists and non-scientists, the debate isn’t about the

rule’s legitimacy, but how overdue it was and how much further it should have gone. “It does streamline things,” says Indiana University’s Sonya Atalay, a member of the Ojibwe tribe. She believes it should encourage future collaboration, assuming people take the opportunity.

Atalay acknowledges it will mean more work for museums that aren’t

currently in compliance with the law, whether due to a lack of motivation or funding or, in some cases, the active desire to subvert the NAGPRA process through the CUI loophole. On the other hand, some institutions were already proactively engaged in inventorying and repatriating CUI. As for fears of a wild scramble of claims, she says, “It’s not as if native communities want to bring back any remains out there that have nothing to do with them.”

At the heart of the matter may well be the elementally diff erent perspectives on kinship held by archaeologists and Native Americans. While European cultures tend to feel strongly only about the remains of recent generations, says Atalay, to Native Americans it doesn’t matter how old the remains are. “We have the responsibility to care for all of our ancestors. Where would we draw the line?”

Another area in which these diff erent attitudes clash is the rule’s handling of funerary objects associated with CUI. It recommends transferring control of grave goods to tribes along with human remains, but doesn’t require it. Th is is a gaping hole, says Atalay. “What’s missing is the cultural understanding of how important those items are and that they remain with individuals. Th ey were buried with those items for a reason.”

Riding In calls the separation of funerary objects from bodies nothing less than a human rights violation. “It’s very troubling. Scientists have a vested interest in retaining control of artifacts for study.” Some archaeologists have a “missionary attitude,” he says. “Th ey’re hoping to convince Indians they need to open their graves for study. If Indians accept that, it’s another form of cultural erosion, a step toward total cultural assimilation.” Even the terminology can be a form of colonialism. “Th ese aren’t archaeological sites—they’re Indian burial sites.”

“We’re already seeing some resistance about returning associated funeral objects,” Atalay says. “We hate to see tribes put in the position

Among Native Americans,

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In spite of these tensions, some academics are guardedly optimistic about NAGPRA’s

future in light of the new rule. “It’s not perfect by anyone’s standards, but all in all, yes, it has improved things,” says Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, a NAGPRA officer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Museums are now compelled to address the issue of CUI that many have ignored for two decades, and more than 60 institutions have already begun the process. In 2009, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science held video conferences with 27 tribes across the country to discuss the disposition of CUI. The year before, the Museum of Cultural and Natural History at Central Michigan University started talks to repatriate the remains of 144 Saginaw Chippewa ancestors.

Some tribes may still permit research on repatriated remains, says Colwell-Chanthaphonh. But even


that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “Good science is always open to new ideas, to being questioned.” Incorpo-rating Native American viewpoints in the study of material culture means “not just more ethical and respectful science, but better science.” He points to work at On Your Knees Cave in southeastern Alaska as perhaps the best example of this kind of coopera-tion. When 10,000-year-old remains were found there in the mid-1990s, archaeologists chose to work closely with local Tlingit groups, consulting with them throughout the project. Native American interns excavated at the site, and the Tlingit not only shared oral history with the research-ers, but even donated DNA so archaeologists could study the rela-tionship between the remains and the contemporary tribe. As a result of this kind of close collaboration, says Col-well-Chanthaphonh, “scientists had a much more intricate and complex story to tell.” ■

Julian Smith is a contributing editor to Archaeology.

though many will be reburied without study, the loss of scientifi c data needs to be kept in perspective. “Human interest in science is limited—as it should be—by other human interests.” He reasons that critics might do well to ask how taking 20 years to affi liate just a quarter of the remains in collections is a balanced approach, “or how allowing researchers to defi ne how and why the remains are useful to society is evenhanded.”

Wendy Teeter of the Fowler Museum at UCLA agrees that the issue goes far beyond facts and fi gures. “In the U.S., we give a decent burial to the pauper who dies on the sidewalk in front of the 7-Eleven. Even people who donate their bodies to science are cremated.” It’s not fair to treat ancient Native Americans diff erently, she says. “Th ey’re still people.” Compared to other academic disciplines with strict review boards, “archaeology has been given a free rein, as if it doesn’t aff ect people.”

One thing is clear: there’s no quick fi x. Colwell-Chanthaphonh thinks

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Photo Credits COVER—Samir S. Patel; 1—Pasquale Sorrentino; 2—Courtesy Quirino Olivera Núñez/Asociación Amigos del Museo de Sipán, Michael Wells, Samir S. Patel; 8—Courtesy Patricia Crown, from the collections of the American Museum of Natural History, photograph by Marianne Tyndall; 9—Christie’s Images Ltd. 2010, Courtesy Daniel Pett, Portable Antiquities Scheme; 10—Courtesy Hebrew University, Flickr; 11—© Luke Torris Photography; 12—Courtesy David Grant Noble, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes-Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia-Mexico-Javier Hinojosa;13—© Richard Hewitt Stewart/National Geographic Stock; 14-15—Mexico: Courtesy INAH, Scotland: Courtesy Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland, Britain: Courtesy Vindolanda Trust, Israel: Courtesy Natalie Munro, University of Connecticut, Photo by Naftali Hilger, Palau: Courtesy Scott Fitzpatrick, North Carolina State University, Peru: Courtesy Maria Anna Pabst, Medical University of Graz, Switzerland: Courtesy City of Zürich, Office of Urbanism; Italy: Courtesy Instituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria, India: Courtesy Metin Eren, Southern Methodist University, and Christina Neudorf, University of Wollongong; Papua New Guinea: Courtesy Andrew Fairbairn, University of Queensland; 16—© Bettmann/Corbis; 18—Andrew Lawler; 19—Andrew Lawler; 20—Andrew Lawler; 21—Andrew Lawler; 22—Courtesy DAFA/Afghan Institute of Archaeology; 23—Courtesy DAFA/Afghan Institute of Archaeology; 25—AP Photos/Durmus Genc, Anatolian, Scala/Art Resource; 26—Courtesy Thomas Strasser (2), Courtesy Brown University, Photo by Arturo Godoy; 27—Courtesy Quirino Olivera Núñez/Asociación Amigos del Museo de Sipán, Copyright Royal Geographic Society/London/The Bridgeman Art Library International, Courtesy Parks Canada; 28—John François Podevin, Flickr; 29—Courtesy Houston Museum of Natural Science, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Liz Russell, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Used by permission from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Courtesy Preservation Virginia, photo by Michael Lavin, Courtesy Preservation Virginia; 30—Courtesy Marvin Rowe, Courtesy NASA; 31—Underwater: Courtesy NOAA, Iraq: Courtesy Diane Siebrandt, California: Richard Hewitt Stewart/National Geographic Society, Turkey: Butent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images, Egypt: Flickr; 32-37—Samir S. Patel; 38-39—Courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologica di Palermo; 40—Pasquale Sorrentino (2), Courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologica di Palermo, Pasquale Sorrentino; 42—Michael Wells (3); 43—Michael Wells; 44—Courtesy Robert Kee, Michael Wells; 45—Courtesy Courtesy Jason de Leon, Michael Wells; 46—Courtesy Courtesy Jason de Leon, Michael Wells; 47—Michael Wells; 49-56—Courtesy Colonial Williamsburg; 68—Samir S. Patel; 72—Courtesy Qinghua Guo, author, The Mingqi Pottery Buildings of Han Dynasty China (206BC–AD220): Architectural Representations and Represented Architecture. Sussex Academic Press, 2010.

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exchange,” says Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist from Australian Nation-al University who is overseeing Guse’s doctoral research at Anuru Bay. “For god’s sake, if we didn’t have the rock art, we wouldn’t have a clue, really.”

Th e history of Australia, as most Australians know it, is a European one. But the rock art of Arnhem Land is an alternate history that puts to rest the idea that Aboriginal culture was iso-lated and static. Well before the English arrived, they were interacting regularly with Macassans, tangentially participat-ing in a global trade network through Indonesia and into China. Taçon expects to fi nd more solid evidence of pre-Macassan contact between Aborig-ines and other seafarers in the region going back thousands of years.

In some ways, this history is still being recorded, though nothing has been painted at Djulirri for decades. Th e arrival of Europeans ended the seminomadic indigenous lifestyle that had been in place for generations. Rock art was no longer easily prac-ticed, so the art became exclusively portable, drifting toward a tradition of painting on bark that itself goes back thousands of years. Aboriginal paint-ings, in recognizably traditional forms (many young artists visit rock art sites for inspiration), hang in tourist shops, galleries, homes, and museums across the country. Th ey don’t serve the same role as the rock art, but they do main-tain a cultural tradition and provide an Aboriginal narrative of a world still in fl ux. Several of the Lamilami sons are painters.

“If you keep this in the back of your mind, you can know what your ancestors knew, saw, and did. But if you lose this connection,” says Lami-lami, who knows from experience, “you sort of lose the plot.” ■

Samir S. Patel is a senior editor at Archaeology.

lines of stone fi replaces and white ash. Where Macknight looked at the interaction from the Macassan point of view, Guse is approaching it from the Aboriginal perspective. He’d like to sort out when and how the Macas-san presence infl uenced Aboriginal culture, perhaps by drawing more outlying groups closer to the coast for trade or out of curiosity. “Th ere was a great level of complexity in the way Aboriginal people responded to this contact on the coastline,” says Guse.

Guse has excavated some promis-ing materials, but so far Djulirri has provided the fi rst hard evidence of the earliest Macassan arrival. Taçon, who collected samples of the bees-wax with Lamilami’s permission and help, has dated the painting of the prau to at least 1664, and he thinks it could be much older. Th e date places Macassans in Australia around 100 years before it was thought they had arrived, and makes the prau the earli-est known piece of contact rock art. In a way, this date also lends credence to the Aboriginal oral history, which is often dismissed as a poor historical source—it distinguishes their experi-ence historically and provides some of the fi rst concrete hints of a narrative of contact that can be told, reliably, from their side.

“It tells such an amazing story, a narrative of cultural interaction and

(continued from page 37)Th e Macassans didn’t come to

Australia to colonize or trade, but to fi nd trepang, also known as sea cucumbers or bêche-de-mer. Th e slimy marine invertebrates became a prized delicacy and aphrodisiac in China in the eighteenth century. At the northern end of the Lamilami clan estate is Anuru Bay, where fl eets of Macassan praus visited each year to catch and process trepang.

“Trepang was the fi rst thing any-one found in Australia to make money on the global market,” says Campbell Macknight, a visiting fellow at Aus-tralian National University, who fi rst excavated at Anuru Bay as a student in the 1960s. “Th e question of its infl u-ence on Aborigines is interesting.”

Dutch trade records show a spike in the trepang trade around 1780. Macknight believes this coincides with the Macassans fi nding the fertile waters at Anuru Bay, after having vis-ited other parts of the coast sporadi-cally in the preceding decades. Guse has returned to Anuru Bay to look for more evidence of Macassan-Aborigi-ne interaction and fi nd some reliably datable material. Macassan archaeo-logical sites are processing facilities—the oldest known industrial sites in Australia—where the Macassans boiled, buried, and smoked the trepang, leaving behind distinctive

Archaeologist Daryl Guse (standing) oversees excavations at Anuru Bay, where Indonesian seafarers encountered Aborigines many years before European arrival. The site is helping show that Aboriginal culture was more dynamic and connected than once thought.

69

In April , the AIA awarded its fi fth Site Preservation Grant to the Gault School of Archaeologi-cal Research (GSAR) in central

Texas to support the expansion of educational and outreach program-ming at the Gault Site—GSAR’s largest and best-known project.

Th e Gault Site is widely regarded as one of the most signifi cant archae-ological sites for understanding the initial arrival and settlement of people in the Americas. Continuously occu-pied by humans for over 14,000 years, the site has yielded over 2.6 million artifacts during archaeological exca-vations in the last 12 years. Th e evi-dence for long-term occupation and the density of artifacts uncovered at Gault is helping to overturn the long-standing theory that early Americans were completely nomadic mammoth hunters. Th e site’s proximity to a good water source, edible native plants, and one of the largest chert sources in North America made it an excellent location for these early settlers.

Specialists at Gault have had great success in determining the uses of many of these stone tools by analyz-ing markings on the stone under a microscope—often determining if the tool was used to cut grasses, scrape wood, process hides, or for some other task. In the coming years the Gault Site will continue to advance our knowledge of early peoples in the Americas.

Th e site is also helping archaeolo-gists understand the Clovis culture. Th e Clovis people are known for a particular style of stone projectile points, dated to about 13,500 years ago. Th ese artifacts were fi rst discov-ered near Clovis, New Mexico, in the

Early Americans in Texas

EXCAVATE, EDUCATE, ADVOCATE

1930s. At the time, they were the ear-liest known human artifacts found in North America.

Unfortunately, the site’s proximity to current population centers has left the site vulnerable to looters and col-lectors. Th e grant from the AIA will help GSAR Executive Director D. Clark Wernecke educate local people, especially educators and students, about the signifi cance of the site and raise awareness of the need to protect our past. As Wernecke notes, “it is more eff ective—and certainly more cost-eff ective—to enlist hundreds of pairs of eyes (to protect the site) rather than erect fences, cameras, and other security systems.”

Th e expanded programming includes workshops for teachers, the creation of a teacher’s guide to accompany a wonderful informational movie that was created by GSAR in

2008, and a series of presentations at conferences around Texas. Wernecke points out that “people, particularly in the United States, believe that archaeology is something that hap-pens elsewhere. Here we have an internationally famous site right in people’s backyards.” GSAR wants to make sure that people learn about this incredible archaeological resource and the AIA is helping them achieve that goal.

Th e AIA Site Preservation Pro-gram emphasizes outreach, education, sustainable development, and the spread of best practices in site pres-ervation. Th e Institute also supports preservation projects in Belize, Cam-bodia, Chile, Cyprus, Jordan, Peru, and Turkey. Th e program is made possible through donations to the AIA. To learn more, please visitwww.archaeological.org/sitepreservation.

At the Gault Site’s teacher’s workshops, participants learn many of the basic skills of archaeological excavation, including screening for artifacts.

www.archaeological.org

70

Each year, the Archaeological Institute of America’s Lecture Program provides over 300 free public lectures to AIA Local

Societies in the U.S. and Canada. Lecture topics address the most recent fi eldwork and research being conducted around the world and are presented by the archaeologists and scholars involved in these projects. Th e Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship established in 1907 and named after the AIA’s fi rst president and founding member is one of the highest honors that the AIA can bestow on a scholar. Th e 103-year list of Norton Lecturers is a virtual who’s who of the world’s eminent archaeol-ogists. Th e 2010/2011 Norton Lec-turers include John Peter Oleson of the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Specializing in ancient maritime technology and Roman building tech-niques, John Peter Oleson has been co-director of the Caesarea Ancient Harbour Excavation in Israel, direc-tor of the Humayma Excavation Project in Jordan, and co-director of the Roman Maritime Concrete Study. He has received numerous awards for his work, and has published 11 books and over 75 articles and chapters.

Starting in spring 2011, Oleson will travel around the U.S. lectur-ing on “Harena Sine Calce (“Sand Without Lime”): Building Disasters,

Incompetent Architects, and Con-struction Fraud in Ancient Rome.” During its tenure as a major world power, the Roman Empire was responsible for many impressive architectural works, some of which still stand to this day. For a structure to survive as long as 2,000 years sug-

Upcoming AIA Events■ Join us at the 112th AIA-APA Joint Annual Meeting,

January 6–9, 2011, San Antonio, TX. To learn more about this event, visit www.archaeological.org/annualmeeting.

■ AIA 11th Annual Archaeology Fair, co-sponsored by the Witte Museum, will be held on January 7 and 8 at the Witte,during the AIA Annual Meeting. For more information about this program, go to www.archaeological.org/events/fairs.

■ Did you know? Th e AIA maintains a list of outside funding opportunities related to preservation at www.archaeological.org/sitepreservation/outsidefunding.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

gests that ancient Roman architects were quite competent in their trade. Yet those buildings that remain are but a small percentage of the total number that the Roman Empire built throughout its territory. What caused some buildings to disappear while others remained? Were the Romans really such good construc-tion engineers after all? Using Roman literary, epigraphical, and legal texts as primary sources, Oleson reveals instances of fraudulent contracting, cost overruns, and construction disas-ters, as well as misjudged urban plan-ning and a disregard for regulations that sometimes resulted in loss of life and property. Apparently, some things never change.

Visit www.archaeological.org/lectures for a full listing of the 2011 Lecture Program, and contact your local AIA Society or call 617-358-4184 ([email protected]) for more information on events near you.

John Peter Oleson has sought out the secrets of ancient Roman building techniques and maritime technology as co-director of many projects, including the Caesarea Ancient Harbour Excavation in Israel (above), and by diving the submerged port city of Alexandria in Egypt (left).

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om th

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Featured VoyagesLost Cities of Libya aboard Callisto

October 29-November 10, 2011 with AIA lecturer

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North Africa’s Mediterranean Coast: Egypt to Morocco aboard Corinthian II

November 2-17, 2011- AIA lecturer TBA

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Those who expect the very best travel aboard the elegant 17-cabin yacht Callisto or the 57-cabin, all-suite Corinthian II. More like private yachts than cruise ships, they provide small-ship grandeur and intimacy.

With prices starting at less than $235 per day, including airfare, excursions and gratuities, the 198-cabin Aegean Odyssey offers the best value in educational cruising.

Featured VoyagesAthens to Alexandria,including Sicily, Malta, Tunisia and LibyaMarch 25-April 9, 2011 with AIA lecturer Jenifer Neils

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March 16-30, 2011 &October 19-November 2, 2011

with AIA lecturer Susan Kane (Director of the Cyrenaica Archaeological Project)

Experience North Africa with the AIA

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“The itinerary was excellent. The number of ancient sites visited was impressive.”

ARTIFACT

72 ARCHAEOLOGY • January/February 2011

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, many mingqi

(a word that literally means “visible objects,” used to mean all

types of grave furnishings) have been discovered in Han Dynasty

tombs in Henan Province, but few are as impressive as this six-

foot-tall model of a multi-story manor house.

Actual remains of ancient Chinese domestic architecture

are rare. Scholars, however, are still able to glean the

appearance of some types of houses from pottery

models, such as this one, that reveal a higher level

of architectural achievement than had previously

been imagined.

From the carefully

constructed main house

and tower with its brightly

colored exterior, to the enclosed

courtyard with its model dog, the

level of detail shown in this mingqi

is impressive. Th e artist even

inscribed small markings on the

home’s exterior, both to sign his

work and to help him assemble

the model.

Many Han Dynasty tombs

were equipped with the necessities

of everyday life including furniture, cooking utensils, and even food—items thought to

provide comfort and ease the soul’s transition to the afterlife. Mingqi as elaborate as this,

however, would only have been buried with the wealthiest members of Han society.

WHAT IS IT?

Model of a seven-story manor house and tower

DATE

Early fi rst century a.d.MATERIAL

PotteryDISCOVERED

1993, Tomb no. 6 at Baizhuang, Jiaozuo,

Henan ProvinceSIZE

6.2 feetCURRENT LOCATION

Henan Museum, China

Indonesia (20 days)Explore the lush tropical islands of Java,Sulawesi and Bali with Prof. Richard Cooler,Northern Illinois U. Highlights include legendaryBorobudur and Panataran, Indonesia’s largesttemple complex, Solo’s old Javanese culture,the distinctive architecture and rituals of TanaToraja, the magical ambiance of Bali and themusical and dance performances throughout.

Archaeological Toursled by noted scholars

Invites You to Journey Back in Time

Journey back in time with us. We’ve been taking curious travelers on fascinating historical study tours for the past 35 years. Each tour is led by a noted scholar whose knowledge and enthusiasm brings history to life and adds

a memorable perspective to your journey. Every one of our 37 tours features superb itineraries, unsurpassed service andour time-tested commitment to excellence. No wonder so many of our clients choose to travel with us again and again.

For more information, please visit www.archaeologicaltrs.com, e-mail [email protected], call 212-986-3054, toll-free 866-740-5130. Or write to Archaeological Tours, 271 Madison Avenue, Suite 904, New York, NY 10016.

And see history our way.

2011 tours: Libya • Etruscan Italy • Sri Lanka • Syria & Jordan • Caves & Castles • Turkey • Malta, Sardinia & Corsica • EgyptSudan • Israel • Cyprus & Crete • Burma In-Depth • South India • Greece • Peru • Bhutan & Ladakh • Provence...and more

Scotland (17 days)Study Scotland’s prehistoric and earlyChristian sites with Dr. MattanyahZohar, Archaeologist. The tour beginswith the Early Christian monastic settlement on the Island of Iona andthe intriguing Neolithic sites in theKilmartin Valley. Tour highlightsinclude the enigmatic megalithic Stones of Callanish on the Isle ofLewis, Edinburgh, the Bronze Age burial cairn at Cairnpapple Hill, fascinating carved Pictish menhirs and a fairy-tale castle. The tour endson the Orkney and Shetland Islands visiting Neolithic and Viking sites suchas Maes Howe and Skara Brae.

Ancient Rome (12 days)Examine the monuments of each historical period as a unit with Prof. Myles McDonnell,Baruch College, CUNY. Covering RepublicanRome, Rome of the Caesars, the Early Empire,High Empire and Christian Rome, we spend aday at the ancient port, Ostia Antica, and anothervisiting Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, and end withthe Imperial Palaces of the Later Empire.

Korea (16 days)Explore Korea’s 5,000 years of history withProf. Donald Baker, U. of British Columbia.Beginning in Seoul, tour highlights includethe royal tombs of the Baekje and Silladynasties, Buddhist grottoes, exceptionalmuseums, ancient temples, colorful traditionalKorean music and dance performances plus a day trip to the Demilitarized Zone.

Ancient Capitals ofChina (17 days)

with an Optional Yangtze River Cruise

Visit the major capitalsof Imperial China,including Beijing, Xian,Luoyang, Zhengzhou and the garden city ofSuzhou with Prof. RobertThorp, Washington U.Tour highlights are the

Forbidden City, GreatWall, Longmen Buddhistcaves in Luoyang, thefamous terra-cotta warriorsnear Xian and the world-class museum in Shanghai.

This tour is a must forthose who have nevervisited China.

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