Prehistoric America

[Cleito]

18 ancient idols unearthed in TN village
 
Tuesday, 08 May , 2007, 08:09 
 
Porayar: Eighteen ancient panchaloha idols of various deities were unearthed while digging a piece of land for construction of a panchayat school at Arundavampulam village near Porayar in Nagapattinam district. | For more news and analysis click here>>

 

Officials said the idols, unearthed on Friday, were taken over by revenue officials, who later handed them over to the Government Museum here for safe custody.

Archaeologists are of the opinion that the idols might belong to the Chola period.

According to officials, this is the first time such large number of ancient panchaloha idols have been unearthed in the district from a single place.

Official sources said the idols might be worth several crores in the international market.
 
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14445484

[Boreas]

Inka in Norway 1000 years ago?!

For the first time ever Norwegian archaeologists have found a specific type of skeletons, dated to the year 1000 AD. One of the cranial parts recently found on the premises of Borgsyssel Museum in Sarpsborg, Norway have the indisputable characteristics of an Inka indian.





In restoring the old stone church of St. Nicolas in Sarpsborg the conservating archeologists were in for a big surprise as they excavated the roots of a rose-bush that grew under the foot of the old church’s tower. Suddenly the sacred bones of two men and a baby appeared.

One of the sculls have became an enigmatic object of discussion, since it  resembles the peculiar characteristics known to exist only among Inka indians!

“There is a bone in his neck that have not grown, which is a inherited characteristic that is well known among Inka Indians, but hardly anyone else”, says Mona Beate Buckholm, head archaeologist at The Bogarsyssel Museum in Sarpsborg, Norway. The skeletons are remains from two men, both between 50 and 70 years old, when they died - between 890-1015 AD.



The Norse king-sagas tells about long-standing relations over great distances, such as between Norway and east-coast America. Modern scholars, such as Thor Heyerdahl, have argued that Leif Eriksson was far from the first Norse sailor to cross the entire North Atlantic. In 1991 the Norwegian author Kare Prydz argued that the entire east-coast of North-America – down to Florida - was populated by Norse settlers that maintained a regular contact with their kings and cousins in Scandinavia until the end of Viking-time.



“We can hardly exclude the possibility that this man have been able to come here as a passenger on a ship. But, this is very special – as well as sensational”, says Buckholm.

Later this summer the Borgarsyssel Museum will continue excavating the fundaments of the tower from one of Norway’s oldest stonebuildings – the St. Nicolas Church in Sarpsborg, the old capitol of Viking-time Norway.

http://www.ostfoldmuseet.no/?ItemID=1251




 

[Cleito]

Nice work!  You wonder how the Incas managed to connect with the Vikiings.  Who visited who first??

[Cleito]

Fremont culture

The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah where the first Fremont sites were discovered. The Fremont River itself is named for John Charles Frémont, an American explorer. It inhabited sites in what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from AD 700 to 1300. It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with but distinctly different from the Anasazi culture.

Fremont Indian State Park in the Clear Creek Canyon area in south-central Utah contains the biggest Fremont culture site in Utah. A recent, major discovery of a new site at Range Creek, Utah, has drawn a great deal of interest because it has stayed undisturbed for centuries. Other sites are found in Dinosaur National Monument, Zion National Park and Arches National Park.

While there is as yet no firm consensus as to the Fremont comprising a single, cohesive group with a common language, ancestry or lifeway, there are several aspects of their material culture that give credence to this notion. First, it is well known by researchers that those referred to as the Fremont lived a lifestyle that revolved largely around hunting and gathering and corn horticulture, in other words a continuum of fairly reliable subsistence strategies that no doubt varied from place to place and time to time. This shows up in the archaeological record at most village sites and long term camps as a collection of butchered, cooked and then discarded bone from mostly deer and rabbits, charred corn cobs with the kernels removed, and wild edible plant remains. Other unifying characteristics include the manufacture of relatively expedient gray ware pottery and a signature style of basketry and rock art. Most of the Fremont lived in small single and extended family units comprising villages ranging from two to a dozen pithouse structures, with only a few having been occupied at any one time. Still, exceptions to this rule exist (partly why the Fremont have earned a reputation for being so hard to define), including an unusually large village in the Parowan Valley of southwestern Utah, the large and extensively excavated village of Five Finger Ridge at the above mentioned Fremont Indian State Park, and others, all appearing to be anomilous in that they were either occupied for a long period of time, were simultaneously occupied by a large number of people, sixty or more at any given moment, or both.

[Cleito]

Typical Moki Hut placement in the crevice of the cliff

[Cleito]

A Fremont Granary; called Moki Huts locally

[Cleito]

Fremont petroglyph, Dinosaur National Monument

[Cleito]

Recent developments

The Range Creek Canyon site complex is unambiguously identified with the Fremont culture, and because of its astonishingly pristine state, promises to bring an immense amount of insight to this hitherto obscure archaeological culture.

[Cleito]

Alexandria Archaeologists Discover Ancient Artifact

WRC-TV
Updated: 12:16 p.m. CT Aug 10, 2007
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Archaeologists working at Freedmen's Cemetery in Alexandria have unearthed a stone tool believed to be about 13,000 years old.

The artifact was discovered during a dig last week, officials said.




Although the tip of the spear point is broken, archaeologists from Alexandria and Fairfax have identified it as a reworked Clovis point. Clovis points are recognized by their distinctive shape and serve as one of the diagnostic markers for an era known to archaeologists as the Paleoindian period that lasted from as early as 18,000 to about 12,000 years ago.

Michael Johnson, an archaeologist for Fairfax County, has examined several stone artifacts found at Freedmen's Cemetery and said he believes the location was once a major Native American site. Johnson concluded that the broken point had been reworked or re-sharpened so it could continue to be an effective tool.

Clovis points were manufactured and used by bands of hunters as they roamed the grasslands and open conifer forests that would have been present in Northern Virginia as the glaciers from the last Ice Age began to melt, scientists said.

Until this discovery, the oldest known Alexandria artifact was a 9,000-year-old Kirk point found at Jones Point, officials said. According to Francine Bromberg, Alexandria's preservation archaeologist, the Clovis point provides the first concrete evidence that Native Americans were present in Alexandria during the Paleoindian period.

Alexandria archaeologists have been working at Freedmen's Cemetery since May, excavating the site where approximately 1,800 African Americans were buried in the late 1860s.

A gas station and office building had been at the site until historians found documentary evidence of the cemetery. Since then, a team of archaeologists has been carefully excavating the property, identifying grave shafts without disturbing any burials or remains.

Officials hope to identify the burial locations so that a memorial park honoring the freedmen can be designed and built without disturbing any graves.

In digging the cemetery site, archaeologists said it's likely that the location was a major prehistoric site, periodically visited and probably occupied by different peoples for thousands of years.

Archaeological work at Freedmen's Cemetery, located at South Washington and Church streets, is expected to continue into October.

For more information, see the Alexandria Archaeology Web site or call 703-838-4399.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20211449/