When did the Neolithic Start?: Excavation of islands around Britain meant to establish origins of Neolithic period

Archaeologists in Southampton and Liverpool are investigating three island groups around Britain to help understand why people changed from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to farming the land.

Academics from the Universities of Southampton and Liverpool are hoping to shed new light on the longstanding debate about whether this change around 4,000BC was due to colonists moving into Britain or if the indigenous population of Britain gradually adopted the new agricultural lifestyle themselves.

Early Coastal Man

Norway's rugged coast has perhaps no better analogue than the glacially scoured shoreline of Patagonia, 13,000 kilometres away and a hemisphere apart. Their similarities, isolated from each other, make the two locations perfect natural laboratories for archaeologists interested in how early man lived in and adapted to marine environments.

Archaeologists from the two countries involved in a cooperative project called "Marine Ventures" met in Norway this summer in search of clues to the past.

Eastward Bound: DNA Study Suggests Asia Was Settled in Multiple Waves of Migration

To extract DNA from a fossilized bone, researches extract material using a dentistry drill.  (Photo by the National
Science Foundation)

An international team of researchers studying DNA patterns from modern and archaic humans has uncovered new clues about the movement and intermixing of populations more than 40,000 years ago in Asia.

On the Move: Continents Influenced Human Migration, Spread of Technology

Ketchikan, Alaska.  Native American totem pole. (Photo by Jeremy Keith from Brighton & Hove, United Kingdom)

Researchers at Brown University and Stanford University have pieced together ancient human migration in North and South America. Writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the authors find that technology spread more slowly in the Americas than in Eurasia. Population groups in the Americas have less frequent exchanges than groups that fanned out over  Europe and Asia.

Certified Kosher

(Photo by Wiki Commons)

Alongside the ox, sheep and goat, the list of ungulate animals permitted for consumption in Deuteronomy includes the aqqo, dishon and zemer - but what exactly are these species? Could it be that part of the Israelite diet included rhinoceros, bison and giraffe, as some interpretations have offered? A new archaeozoological study has examined zoological findings at 133 biblical sites and is exploring the possible answers to these questions.

Where the Buffalo Fall: New Technologies (and Tires) Reconstruct Ancient Bison Hunts

American Indian students stand atop the cliff
edge at the Kutoyis bison jump site at Two
Medicine River with experimental bison (tires)
in foreground.  (Photo by Jesse Ballenger)

A researchers are looking for, among other things, how fire changed the landscape of the Northern Great Plains as ancient hunters went after big game.

Researchers from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona are investigating the complex relationship between climate change and modifications that humans have made to the landscape. And among the tools they are using in the pursuit of this knowledge are a bunch of old tires.

Led by Maria Nieves Zedeño from the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, the Kutoyis Archaeological Project is a four-year collaboration focused on prehistoric bison hunting societies in the Northern Great Plains. The project is funded by the National Park Service and the National Science Foundation.

Israeli archaeologists identified Caliph Mu’awiya’s Lakeside Palace

(Graphic by Fossil HD)

Israeli archaeologists report that they have identified the palace of the Umayyad caliphs at al-Sinnabra – modern Beth Yerah or Kh. el-Kerak – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The discovery is based on results of the recent Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology excavations headed by Raphael Greenberg and on research conducted by Taufik Deadle of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The existence of a palace at al-Sinnabra is reported by early Arab historians, but its precise location was long unknown. Between 1950 and 1953 the archaeologists Guy and Bar-Adon excavated a large fortified structure on Tel Bet Yerah which they dated to the Byzantine period (c. 330-620 CE). A large hall in the center of the complex had a curved apse facing south and colorful mosaic floors. When they discovered a stone bearing an engraved depiction of a seven-branched candelabrum, they quickly dubbed the entire building a synagogue, and it was soon incorporated in the Beth Yerah National Park – a popular tourist destination during the 1950s and 1960s, now abandoned. Over the years the identification of the structure was questioned, but only in 2002 was a new interpretation offered by Donald Whitcomb of the University of Chicago: the “synagogue” was in fact the Palace of al-Sinnabra, where Umayyad rulers used to spend the winter months near the regional capital at Tiberias.