News by Subject Archaeology

Coinciding with the Pit Grave culture (4200-3600 years before our era), coming from Southern Europe, the Neolithic communities of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula started a ceremonial activity related to the sacrifice and burial of dogs. The high amount of cases that are recorded in Catalonia suggests it was a general practice and it proves the tight relationship between humans and these animals, which, apart from being buried next to them, were fed a similar diet to humans'.

The UPV/EHU's IBeA research group has used a non-destructive methodology to determine the role of specific algae, lichens, mosses, cyanobacteria, etc. that may be causing exfoliation and delamination, which are degrading the Sacred Rock of Machu Picchu, one of the most important symbols in the Peruvian archaeological city.

This work started 10 years ago, when the first dates using the OSL method were obtained. It is then that the first traces of footprints left by vertebrates were found. In subsequent years the successive natural collapse of sand has revealed further material and has permitted a detailed study including new dates.

An exceptional sauropod dinosaur specimen from the middle Cretaceous of Tanzania represents a unique species and provides new insights into sauropod evolution, according to a study published Feb. 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Eric Gorscak of Midwestern University, Illinois, and Patrick O'Connor of Ohio University, USA.

About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from -- the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo. But archaeologists have found a new way to tell where the ceramic cargo of the ship originally came from: by zapping it with an X-ray gun.

A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia, according to a study published in Feb. 6, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Yuong-Nam Lee from Seoul National University, South Korea, and colleagues.

Prehistoric peasant farmers struggling to put more food on the table fueled the global spread of some of the world's first and most important domesticated grain crops beginning as early as 7,000 years ago, according to an international study led by anthropologists at Washington University in St. Louis.

In the Bronze Age, the Caucasus Mountains region was a cultural and genetic contact zone. Here, cultures that originated in Mesopotamia interacted with local hunter-gatherers, Anatolian farmers, and steppe populations from just north of the mountain ranges. Here, pastoralism was developed and technologies such as the wheeled wagon and advanced metal weapons were spread to neighbouring cultures. A new study, examines new genetic evidence in concert with archaeological evidence to paint a more complete picture of the region.