JODI MAGNESS LECTURES ON THE HUQOQ SYNAGOGUE

rofessor Jodi Magness embarked on a mission in 2011 to excavate the Huqoq synagogue in Israel with little idea of its contents — and with only an ancient village as its possible location.

Unsure of whether they would find anything, Magness’ team randomly picked a square as their first dig site and discovered archaeological fragments. Eventually, the team unearthed mosaic pavings crafted on the synagogue’s foundation depicting biblical scenes relevant to the history of Israel. Since then, Magness has been working on the excavation and preservation of the historical site in the ancient village of Huqoq, with the eventual goal of relocating the mosaics to public areas.

Pitt’s Jewish Studies program and Nationality Rooms program came together Monday night to host Magness and celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Israel Heritage Classroom — the 20th Nationality Room constructed in the Cathedral.

Magness — a University of North Carolina professor with a bachelor’s in archaeology and history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — shared the current status of the excavation site at the Late Roman-era synagogue with more than 80 people during her lecture, “More than Just Mosaics: the Huqoq Synagogue,” in the Cathedral of Learning.

Magness and her excavation team have gone out every summer digging season since 2011 and unearthed a variety of partial and complete mosaic scenes throughout the stone foundations of the Jewish synagogue.

Magness showed the audience of community members, Pitt staff and students unreleased images of the dig sites and the mosaic pavings within — including scenes depicting biblical motifs and stories such as Noah’s Ark and Helios and the Zodiac Cycle, as well as figures including Dionysus and Alexander the Great.
The surviving mosaics stayed preserved under dirt and stone rubble after the synagogue was abandoned due to unknown circumstances, she said. Magness and her team bury the artifacts again after each digging season. “The only way to protect our mosaics from vandalism is to backfill them at the end of the season,” Magness said.

OLDEST VIRTUALLY COMPLETE FOSSIL OF HUMAN ANCESTOR FOUND IN SOUTH AFRICA -- CALLED "LITTLE FOOT"

South Africa's status as a major cradle in the African nursery of humankind has been reinforced with today's unveiling of "Little Foot", the country's oldest, virtually complete fossil human ancestor.

Little Foot is the only known virtually complete Australopithecus fossil discovered to date. It is by far the most complete skeleton of a human ancestor older than 1.5 million years ever found. It is also the oldest fossil hominid in southern Africa, dating back 3.67 million years. The unveiling will be the first time that the completely cleaned and reconstructed skeleton can be viewed by the national and international media.

Discovered by Professor Ron Clarke from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, the fossil was given the nickname of "Little Foot" by Prof. Phillip Tobias, based on Clarke's initial discovery of four small foot bones. Its discovery is expected to add a wealth of knowledge about the appearance, full skeletal anatomy, limb lengths and locomotor abilities of one of the species of our early ancestral relatives.
"This is one of the most remarkable fossil discoveries made in the history of human origins research and it is a privilege to unveil a finding of this importance today," says Clarke.

After lying undiscovered for more than 3.6 million years deep within the Sterkfontein caves about 40km north-west of Johannesburg, Clarke found several foot bones and lower leg bone fragments in 1994 and 1997 among other fossils that had been removed from rock blasted from the cave years earlier by lime miners. Clarke sent his assistants Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe into the deep underground cave to search for any possible broken bone surface that might fit with the bones he had discovered in boxes. Within two days of searching, they found such a contact, in July 1997.

Clarke realised soon after the discovery that they were on to something highly significant and started the specialised process of excavating the skeleton in the cave up through 2012, when the last visible elements were removed to the surface in blocks of breccia. "My assistants and I have worked on painstakingly cleaning the bones from breccia blocks and reconstructing the full skeleton until the present day," says Clarke.

In the 20 years since the discovery, they have been hard at work to excavate and prepare the fossil. Now Clarke and a team of international experts are conducting a full set of scientific studies on it. The results of these studies are expected to be published in a series of scientific papers in high impact, peer reviewed international journals in the near future. This is the first time that a virtually complete skeleton of a pre-human ancestor from a South African cave has been excavated in the place where it was fossilized.

The 20-year long period of excavation, cleaning, reconstruction, casting, and analysis of the skeleton has required a steady source of funding, which was provided by the Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST) – a Johannesburg-based NGO that promotes research, education and outreach in the sciences related to our origins. Among its many initiatives aimed at uplifting the origin sciences across Africa, PAST has been a major funder of research at Sterkfontein for over two decades.

After 20 years, researcher presents the most complete Australopithecus fossil ever found

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-12-years-australopithecus-fossil.html#jCp

ROMAN TEMPLE UNCOVERED IN HAMPSHIRE MAY BE FIRST OF ITS KIND IN BRITAIN DATING TO REIGH OF EMPEROR NERO

The temple remains were found within the grounds of the Old Manor House in the Roman town at Silchester, along with rare tiles stamped with the name of the emperor, who ruled AD 54-68.

The temple joined two others to make a group of three when it was investigated in Silchester in autumn 2017, and is the first to be identified in the town for more than 100 years. The three temples are located in a walled sanctuary, numbered Insula XXX by Victorian archaeologists. It would have been a striking gateway to the city for travelers from London.

Four fragments of tiles stamped in Nero's name were found in a ritual pit within the temple site – the largest concentration ever found in the town – along with another three at the kiln site which made the tiles in nearby Little London. These provide further evidence that the temples could all have been part of a Nero-sponsored building project in Silchester.

Professor Mike Fulford at the University of Reading, who is leading the Silchester archaeology team, said: "These findings are a crucial piece of the jigsaw as we look to solve the mystery of Nero's links to Silchester. This is something that has puzzled archaeologists for more than a century. "Only a handful of Nero-stamped tiles have ever been found in the UK, so to unearth this many was very exciting. It adds to the evidence that Nero saw Silchester as a pet project where he could construct extravagant buildings like those seen in Rome, to inspire awe among his subjects in the UK."

The three temples are the earliest known masonry constructions in Silchester, the city of Calleva in Roman times. They would therefore have been the most prominent buildings in the city, being erected decades before others, like the great complex of the forum basilica in the center of the town, were rebuilt in masonry. They were aligned north to south at the eastern end of the Roman town.

Credit: University of Reading
The remains of the first two temples on the Insula XXX site were first found during grave-digging in St Mary's churchyard in 1890, with evidence of the third building unearthed in 1902. However, its identity as another temple was overlooked until now.


Ground-penetrating radar, and a follow-up excavation this autumn, have confirmed three temples once stood on the site. They had a typical 'double-square' plan – a central cella (shrine) surrounded by a walkway. This design originated in the late Iron Age, and is rare in Britain but more common in France and Germany.
The foundations suggest the temples could have been up to 15m high. The dimensions of the third temple, 15m by 17.5m, are similar to those of the southernmost Insula XXX temple but smaller than the central one, which still remains the largest known of its type in Roman Britain.
Although the religious purpose of the temples remains a mystery, evidence uncovered at the latest temple site suggests it was built in the 50s or 60s of the first century AD – within Nero's short reign. Similarities in the layout within the three temples suggest all three were conceived and built at a similar time, although further excavations by the team will test this theory.
Nero's reign is associated with brutality and extravagance. He was known for the persecution of Christians as well as his grand building plans, some of which were constructed after Rome's great fire, before his suicide. Nero's buildings were made in high-quality stone, as well as ceramic brick and tile, but only the tiles found at Silchester are stamped in his name.
The existence of one of his buildings in Roman Britain, as well as evidence he might have visited, has always remained elusive. However, the find of the seven tiles, adding to only 14 previously found in the UK, only at Silchester and Little London, validates the theory that Nero was keen to sponsor a building project in Silchester.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-roman-temple-silchester-emperor-vanity.html#jCp

UNUSUAL STONE TOOLS UNLIKE ANY OTHERS FOUND IN BRONZE AGE SITE IN WALES

Mysterious stone tools unearthed at Welsh Bronze Age site

Amateur archaeologists excavating a Bronze Age site in Wales have discovered a cache of unusual stone tools unlike any that have been found before. The tools appear to have been deposited deliberately - perhaps ceremonially - in what would have been a stream around 4,500 years ago, according to the researchers.

Around 20 of the roughly triangular stone hand tools, of various sizes, were found at the excavation site in the Clwydian Range, a series of hills in Denbighshire in northeast Wales, by the Clwydian Range Archaeological Group (CRAG) during four weeks of excavations in July and August.

"I've not seen anything like them before, and I've talked to a number of colleagues who've never seen anything like them," said Ian Brooks, an archaeologist employed as a consultant by CRAG. The tools were made from a hard limestone found locally, but not in the immediate area of the excavation. "They are rough slabs of the limestone, which have been shaped to produce one pointed end," he said.

The tools vary in size, between 2 inches (50 millimeters) long to about 8.6 inches (220 mm) long. "But they all have this characteristic point at one end, which has then been battered - you've got pitting and distinctive damage on the end, so they've been heavily used," Brooks said.

The purpose of the tools is unknown, and future work by the archaeological team would include examining the utensils in more detail. But, it's possible that the tools were used for chipping ornamental designs onto rock surfaces, he said. "One of the things that you do get in the Bronze Age is the decoration of natural boulders and rock faces, producing things like cut marks and rings and suchlike," Brooks said. "The point on these things would be about the right sort of size for pecking that sort of design."

Brooks explained that all of the mysterious stone tools were found at the bottom of what would have been a stream around 4,500 years ago, on a plateau northeast of the Moel Arthur hill fort. Brooks thinks the site where the tools were found could be more than 1,000 years older than the hill fort itself, based on carbon dating of stones from an 'burnt mound', located beside the former streambed, that dates to between 2456 to 2583 BCE.

The limestone tools did not seem directly related to the activity at the burnt mound, but they appeared to have been deposited on purpose at a particular spot nearby, in what would have been a running stream at the time, he said. Geophysical surveys, funded by CRAG in 2011 and 2012, indicated that the plateau near the burnt mound and the ancient stream may have included a small settlement of roundhouses, a typical style of dwelling in Bronze Age Britain.

NEW SETS OF CAVE PAINTINGS IN NORTHERN SPAIN POSSIBLY 30,000 YEAR AGO

Researchers have discovered four new sets of cave paintings in Cantabria, northern Spain, the oldest of which was made nearly 30,000 years ago – making it one of the earliest known examples of prehistoric art in the world. The team from the Museum of Prehistory of Cantabria, led by Spanish prehistorian Roberto Ontañón, used cutting-edge imaging techniques to identify the drawings.

Twenty years ago, a speleologist – a scientist who studies caves – had informed archaeologists of the possible existence of ancient paintings in various rock cavities in Cantabria. However, the techniques available at the time were not sufficient to confirm the existence of the art.

The paintings, like much prehistoric artwork, had degraded so much over time that they were difficult to identify with the naked eye. To overcome this, Ontañón and his team used a 3D laser scanning method, which reproduced the artwork on a computer.

"These technologies allow you to detect colors beyond the range of the visible spectrum (infrared to ultraviolet) and, in this way, 'reveal' paintings that at first sight are imperceptible or difficult to
distinguish", Ontañón told IBTimes UK.

The artworks are estimated to have been made between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago, making them older than the famous bison drawings at the renowned UNESCO World Heritage Site at nearby Altamira – created around 16,000 years ago – but not as old as the earliest example in the region.

That title goes to the cave drawings at El Castillo, also in Cantabria, which were made more than 40,000 years ago and are arguably the oldest in the world.

Cantabria has some of the highest concentrations of prehistoric art anywhere on Earth. This can be attributed to the fact that the region was a good place to live during glacial periods in the Earth's history, a result of its temperate climate and abundance of wild animals.

PREHISTORIC SCOTTISH CAVE -- DIGITAL EXPLORATION

During the late Bronze Age, the The Sculptor's Cave in Moray (Scotland) appears to have been a repository for precious objects, with finds ranging from bronze bracelets via pottery to a swan's neck pin.

Large quantities of human remains have also been discovered, suggesting that the cave may have been a center for funerary rites. Intriguingly, on the frontal bone of one child, there is evidence suggestive of deliberate defleshing. Some of the cave's most important features, however, are the Pictish symbols that can be found on the walls of its entrance.

Problematically, the cave is only accessible at low tide, making investigation of the interior time-sensitive. A new project, funded by Historic Environment Scotland and carried out by Professor Ian Armit and Dr Lindsey Büster at the University of Bradford, has created a high-resolution animated model of the cave. Through laser scanning and structured light scanning, the details of the cave have been digitally preserved to allow for more in-depth exploration of the cave - and the Pictish symbols - no matter whether the tide is high.

"The Sculptor's Cave is a fascinating location, known for decades for the richness of its archaeology and for the unusual Pictish carvings around its entrance," said Professor Armit of Bradford's School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences. "This walk-through animation allows us to study the carvings in detail, and to present this inaccessible site to the public through online and museum displays. It also ensures that we can preserve the cave and the carvings digitally for future generations to study."

The digital model will be deposited in the Elgin Museum and included in their exhibition on the cave. A video of the 3D animation can be found on YouTube.

SKULL FOUND IN CHINA COULD REWRITE HUMAN EVOLUTION -- NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS THAT IMPORTATN CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMANS ACTUALLY DEVELOPED IN EAST ASIA

A skull found in China could re-write our entire understanding of human evolution.

That's according to scientists who have examined the important, ancient head and say that it proves the existing theory of how humans came to be is wrong.

Most anthropologists believe that our species came about in Africa around 200,000 years ago – and that one group left around 80,000 years later before spreading across the world. But instead of humans purely coming out of Africa, the new research suggests that important characteristics of humans actually developed in east Asia.

In fact there might have been times of intense intermingling as those early humans in Asia moved out of and back into Africa, with no single event when modern humans came into being. That means that modern humans are made up of the DNA of ancestors from both Asia and Africa, if the researchers are correct.

The story is a development of a theory that has been widely dismissed by mainstream academics for decades, some of whom suggest that it is being made up to emphasise the role of China. But if the new claims are true, it might prove that the long-ridiculed theory is actually true.

The important head, known as the Dali skull, was found 40 years ago in China. It was once a member of the early species – and our ancestor – the Homo erectus. It is surprisingly intact, with scientists still able to see the face and brain case as it would have been when its owner was living around 260,000 years ago.

It has strange similarities too with modern Homo sapiens. And the new research suggests that it has far more than expected in common with specimens found in morocco.

Taken together, the research suggests that humans might not have evolved in Africa and then left, as has long been thought to be the case, researchers Xinzhi Wu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sheela Athreya of Texas A&M University told the New Scientist. The similarities suggest that the early modern humans might not have been isolated in one place as their characteristics evolved, the scientists say, instead sharing characteristics across the world.

The scientists now hope to do even more detailed comparisons of the Dali skull with those found in Morocco, to understand how the specimen found in China is similar to and different from other examples of early humans.

FIRST LANDING OF CAESAR'S INVASION OF BRITAIN HAS BEEN DISCOVERED

Based on new evidence, the team suggests that the first landing of Julius Caesar's fleet in Britain took place in 54 BC at Pegwell Bay on the Isle of Thanet, the north—east point of Kent.

This location matches Caesar's own account of his landing in 54 BC, with three clues about the topography of the landing site being consistent with him having landed in Pegwell Bay: its visibility from the sea, the existence of a large open bay, and the presence of higher ground nearby.

The project has involved surveys of hillforts that may have been attacked by Caesar, studies in museums of objects that may have been made or buried at the time of the invasions, such as coin hoards, and excavations in Kent.
The University of Leicester project, which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, was prompted by the discovery of a large defensive ditch in archaeological excavations before a new road was built. The shape of the ditch at Ebbsfleet, a hamlet in Thanet, is very similar to some of the Roman defenses at Alésia in France, where the decisive battle in the Gallic War took place in 52 BC.

The site, at Ebbsfleet, on the Isle of Thanet in north-east Kent overlooking Pegwell Bay, is now 900 m inland but at the time of Caesar's invasions it was closer to the coast. The ditch is 4-5 meters wide and 2 meters deep and is dated by pottery and radiocarbon dates to the 1st century BC.

The size, shape, date of the defences at Ebbsfleet and the presence of iron weapons including a Roman pilum (javelin) all suggest that the site at Ebbsfleet was once a Roman base of 1st century BC date.
The archaeological team suggest the site may be up to 20 hectares in size and it is thought that the main purpose of the fort was to protect the ships of Caesar's fleet that had been drawn up on to the nearby beach.

Dr Andrew Fitzpatrick, Research Associate from the University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History said: "The site at Ebbsfleet lies on a peninsular that projects from the south-eastern tip of the Isle of Thanet. Thanet has never been considered as a possible landing site before because it was separated from the mainland until the Middle Ages.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-evidence-julius-caesar-invasion-britain.html#jCp

PREHISTORIC SCHOOL IN ISRAEL DATED TO 400,000 YEARS AGO -- THE OLDEST SCHOOL IN THE WORLD

Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe was a prehistoric school, where the ancestors of modern humans taught their children how to survive by manufacturing flint instruments and dismembering animals, 400,000 years ago.

The hominini, ancestors of today’s homo sapiens, had a similar brain size to today's humans and, according to the findings in the Kessem Cave in central Israel, had developed relatively advanced techniques of manufacture.

The dig, led by Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai, of Tel Aviv university, has been dubbed “the oldest school in the world”, because it suggested hominini had used the space to impart flint skills to their children, the oldest such documented find.