02 - Archaeology - March April 2011

Ancient Irrigation in the Southwest

www.archaeology.org

A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America

INTERVIEW

WERNER
HERZOG
Origins of Art
on the

Lost
Wrecks
of the Adriatic
Life Beyond
Imperial China

Medieval
Arms Race
PLUS:
World’s Oldest Soup,
Microarchaeology,
Cold War Whodunit,
Old Europe’s New Money

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Reiko Ishihara

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MARCH/APRIL 2011
VOLUME 64, NUMBER 2

CONTENTS
features
18 Reading the Yellow River
Preserved by centuries of floodborne silt, a rural landscape offers
a new look at the Han Dynasty
BY LAUREN HILGERS

24 The Adriatic’s
Uncharted Past
Once closed to exploration,
the waters off the Albanian coast
begin to give up their secrets
BY MARA HVISTENDAHL

29 Pieces of History
On one of Britain’s most famous
battlefields, early gun fragments
hint at a new style of warfare
BY JARRETT A. LOBELL

32 Interview:
Werner Herzog
on the Birth of Art
The famed director of more than
60 films speaks with ARCHAEOLOGY
about Chauvet Cave

40 The New Upper Class
Recent digs at Copper Age sites
across Europe are overturning
long-held beliefs about the
continent’s earliest cultures
BY ANDREW CURRY

40 Gold artifacts in a burial from
Varna, Bulgaria, provide evidence
of the emergence of a class
system in Copper Age Europe.

Cover: Amphorae mark the site
of a 4th-century A.D. shipwreck
off the coast of Albania.

1

68

47

14

departments
4 In This Issue
6 From the President
8 Letters
Archaeology of (illegal) immigration, America’s
first church, and the endangered fisherman

9 From the Trenches
The expanding archaeological toolbox, Puerto Rican
petroglyphs, and recent collapses in Pompeii

12 Reviews

■ More from this Issue

The rise and fall of ancient Egypt and squabbling
over a Sumerian city

14 World Roundup
Secret message from the Civil War, a black velvet
mask, a Neanderthal family’s grisly end, first groundedge tool, rock art vandals, and the oldest soup

16 Insider
Ancient irrigation systems in the Southwest point
the way toward sustaining modern water supplies

47 Letter from Iraq
An American soldier reflects on his experience
at the ancient city of Ur

68 Artifact
A working Antikythera Mechanism—
made out of Legos

on the web
www.archaeology.org
Listen to Werner Herzog talk
about his new film, Cave of
Forgotten Dreams.

■ Interactive Digs
Read about the latest discoveries
at the Minoan site of Zominthos
in central Crete.

■ Stay in Touch
Visit Facebook to become a
friend of ARCHAEOLOGY or follow us
on Twitter @archaeologymag

■ 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.

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IN THIS ISSUE
Editor in Chief

Claudia Valentino

Hidden from View

Executive Editor

Deputy Editor

Jarrett A. Lobell

Samir S. Patel

Senior Editors

Nikhil Swaminathan

Zach Zorich

O

n December , , in the southern Ardeche region of France, three speleologists had climbed the cliffs above the Ardeche River and were picking their
way along a mule path that led to a small opening in the cliff face. Once they
squeezed through, they began to search for drafts that might indicate the presence of
larger spaces. Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps, and Christian Hillaire
did indeed detect a flow of air. They followed a narrow passage and climbed down into
an enormous chamber. What they discovered that night is now known as Chauvet Cave,
site of the world’s oldest paintings.
Since the discovery of Chauvet, only a handful of
researchers has been able to view the extensive galleries filled with sophisticated paintings of horses,
lions, and other animals dating back some 30,000
years. This spring, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a new
movie by renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog,
documents the site, and will offer the public a rare
and intimate view of Chauvet’s masterpieces.
Herzog, whose films such as Fitzcarraldo and
Nosferatu have dealt evincingly with themes of
humanness and the soul, spoke with senior editor
Zach Zorich. In our interview,“Werner Herzog on
the Birth of Art” (page 32), they discuss the new
movie, his decision to film in 3-D for the first time,
and his unique ties to archaeology.
In “Reading the Yellow River” (page 18), ShangPanel of the Horses in Chauvet Cave hai-based writer Lauren Hilgers surveys work
in China’s Henan Province to excavate a vast site
preserved some 2,000 years ago by the capricious flooding habits of the Yellow River.
For the first time, archaeologists are now uncovering signs of a prosperous Han Dynasty
farming community.
The deep waters of the Adriatic have hidden hundreds of shipwrecks, dating from
antiquity and more modern times, due to the decades-long prohibitions against exploration during Communist rule. In “The Adriatic’s Uncharted Past” (page 24), science
journalist Mara Hvistendahl joins an international team aboard the R/V Hercules as
they explore the Albanian coast for evidence of ancient trade routes.
In “The New Upper Class” (page 40), contributing editor Andrew Curry surveys three
emblematic Copper Age sites that show how metalworking created both wealth and social
hierarchy in ancient Europe. At sites all across the continent, decades of dogma are being
overturned as the complex nature of society more than 6,000 years ago is revealed.
Plus, microarchaeology helps detect what the eye can’t see, some of Europe’s oldest
guns and the Wars of the Roses, ancient lessons for water conservation today, and much
more. Happy reading!

Claudia Valentino
Editor in Chief

4

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. Stavrakakis
Bangkok: Karen Coates
Islamabad: Massoud Ansari
Israel: Mati Milstein
Naples: Marco Merola
Paris: Bernadette Arnaud
Rome: Roberto Bartoloni,
Giovanni Lattanzi
Washington, D.C.: Sandra Scham
Publisher

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ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

Archaeological
Institute of America
Located at Boston University

Ready to Serve
Greetings from the newly elected AIA President

OFFICERS
President

Elizabeth Bartman
First Vice President

Andrew Moore

A

s the newly elected president of the Archaeological Institute of America,
it is my great pleasure to pen my first letter to the readers of Archaeology.
Over the next four years I will bring you news of the signal initiatives of the
AIA, and I will bring to your attention issues and events in the wider world that affect
the field and practice of archaeology.
I have been fortunate to have served for the last
four years as first vice president under our distinguished departing president C. Brian Rose. These
years have provided me with an invaluable apprenticeship and I know that our members and our
trustees join me in thanking him for his outstanding
and selfless service to the AIA and its core mission
of education and outreach.
That mission is one that has sustained me as well
in my several decades with the AIA. I have been an
officer of two of our distinguished local societies—
New York and Philadelphia—I have served as a
trustee on the national board, and I have also chaired
multiple board committees. A turning point for me
occurred when I began speaking to societies as part
of the AIA’s celebrated Lecture Program and was
able to meet society officers and members around
the country. Volunteers one and all, they selflessly
offer their time, intellectual capital, and financial support to ensure the AIA’s success.
This spirit of volunteerism is at the core of the AIA and it extends across more than 100
local societies here in the U.S., Canada, and abroad.
I will continue to expand that global reach by forging strong relationships with
archaeological groups in other countries. I will work with my colleagues at the AIA so
that we may take advantage of new technologies and modes of communication to spread
our message to a broader public. And I will work to bring attention to the fact that
archaeology as a subject of study is under threat in universities. The AIA must lend its
name and resources to ensuring the survival of this discipline—for without it there will
be no trained professionals to succeed the present generation and carry on the critical
work of excavation and research.
As I begin my term, I know that I will continue to draw inspiration from our members’
efforts—even as I deepen my own commitment to our mission.

Vice President for Education and Outreach

Mat Saunders
Vice President for Professional Responsibilities

Sebastian Heath
Vice President for Publications

John Younger
Vice President for Societies

Thomas Morton
Treasurer

Brian J. Heidtke
Chief Executive Officer

Peter Herdrich
Chief Operating Officer

Kevin Quinlan

GOVERNING BOARD
Susan Alcock
Michael Ambler
Carla Antonaccio
Cathleen Asch
Barbara Barletta
David Boochever
Laura Childs
Lawrence Coben
Julie Herzig Desnick
Mitchell Eitel
Harrison Ford
Greg Goggin
John Hale
Sebastian Heath
Lillian Joyce
Jeffrey Lamia
Lynne Lancaster
Robert Littman
Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
Peter Magee
Shilpi Mehta
Naomi Norman, ex officio
Eleanor Powers
Paul Rissman
Ann Santen
William Saturno
Glenn Schwartz
Chen Shen
Douglas Tilden
Claudia Valentino, ex officio
Shelley Wachsmann
Ashley White
John J. Yarmick
Past President

C. Brian Rose
Trustees Emeriti

Norma Kershaw
Charles S. LaFollette
General Counsel

Mitchell Eitel, Esq,
Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP

Elizabeth Bartman
President, Archaeological Institute of America

6

Archaeological Institute of America
656 Beacon Street • Boston, MA 02215-2006
www.archaeological.org

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

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LETTERS
Archaeology of
(Illegal) Immigration

I am appalled that you could even
consider publishing an article like
“The Journey to El Norte,” ( January/
February). It casts a romantic light
on illegal immigration. To compare
these criminals to the millions
of Europeans who immigrated
in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries is an insult
to their memories and efforts to
give their children better lives.
My grandparents came to this
country legally. They wanted no
handouts, learned to speak English,
and eventually owned their own
company. To document the trash
heaps of these current illegal
immigrants as artifacts, as if they are
sacred, is beyond credibility.
Debra Stellato
Merrimack, NH

As I read “The Journey to El Norte,”
I was amazed and disappointed.
Regardless of which side of this
politically charged issue you are on,
it is certainly not archaeology.
Ronald K. Toppings
Richmond, KY

Senior editor Zach Zorich replies:
The study of recent material culture
may not be for everyone, but it is most
certainly archaeology. Jason De Leon’s
work is an example of how archaeology
can provide a unique perspective on a
modern issue. Mass migrations—past
and present, all over the world—are
an important area of study.
Building America’s First Church

The description of the Jamestown
Church (“Top 10 Discoveries of
ARCHAEOLOGY welcomes mail from
readers. Please address your comments
to ARCHAEOLOGY, 36-36 33rd Street,
Long Island City, NY 11106, fax 718-4723051, or e-mail [email protected].
The editors reserve the right to edit
submitted material. Volume precludes
our acknowledging individual letters.

8

Archaeologists at Jamestown discovered the site of North America’s first Protestant
church, where Pocahontas married John Rolfe.

2010”) leaves us a bit confused. It
states that five postholes spaced
12 feet apart suggest a 60-footlong building. Having constructed
a number of post-and-beam
buildings, something struck us as
odd. If two posts were endposts,
they would form four spans, for a
total building length of 48 feet. Are
we missing something?
Paul and Sarah Schwennesen
Winkelman, AZ

William Kelso of Historic
Jamestowne replies: A 1610
description of the 1608 Jamestown
church established its overall
dimensions as 24 feet by 60 feet. If
its posts are spaced 12 feet apart,
there should be a total of 14 postholes
around its perimeter. Excavations, as
yet incomplete, have so far revealed
eight postholes, and it is almost
certain that the remaining six will
be found when digging resumes this
spring. Other compelling evidence
that this is the 1608 structure is four
aligned burials in the east end of
the structure, and a 1608 map that
appears to locate the church where the
postholes were found.

Fishing and Shipwrecks

In the list of “Sites Under Threat”
(“Top 10 Discoveries of 2010”)
you assert that fishing is destroying shipwrecks worldwide. As the
daughter of a commercial fisherman, I was very disappointed, as
the article appears to contend that
fishermen are somehow inherently
destructive. Trawl fishermen stay
clear of shipwrecks on their charts
because those areas can damage their
gear. It is misleading to suggest that
they are simply “hauling huge nets
across the ocean floor” without any
regard for what’s on the bottom. It’s
unfortunate that historic shipwrecks
are under threat, but the New England fisherman is also becoming an
endangered species. We have to share
the ocean, and if the public wants to
eat healthy domestic seafood in the
future, they must understand the
threats facing our fishermen as well.
Supporting more closures in Stellwagen Bank to protect shipwrecks
furthers the assault on generations of
fishermen who are increasingly losing their fishing rights.
Tove Bendiksen
New Bedford, MA

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

LATE-BREAKING NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE WORLD OF ARCHAEOLOGY

New Instruments Enter
the Archaeological Toolbox

R

ecently, excavators uncovered a
crucible at Tell es-Safi/Gath,
the site of a tenth-century b.c.
Philistine city in southern Israel. Many
excavation teams would have continued
digging, overlooking nearby evidence.
Instead, thanks to the presence of instruments that are more typically found in a
laboratory, the Tell es-Safi/Gath team—
which includes chemists, zoologists, and
metallurgists—took a time out. Several
square yards surrounding the crucible were
examined in excruciating detail. Samples
of sediment were tested, and scientists
confirmed the presence of copper and iron
as well as hammerscale, flakes of iron that
fly off when the metal is forged.
These results answered a puzzle that
Chemists and other natural scientists at the Tell es-Safi/Gath site offer
had perplexed researchers for years:
Although there is much evidence of met- immediate anaylsis of finds. Their results can help determine where to dig next.
allurgy throughout early Iron Age Israel,
Mediterranean. He calls this novel approach to archaeolarchaeologists never find workshops. “There’s very little
ogy “microarchaeology”—“like ‘microbiology,’” he says,
infrastructure,” says Steve Weiner, a researcher at the
“which is the biology of things you can’t see with the eye.”
Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Here, finally, was
In addition to allowing excavators to glean more informaclear evidence that a metalsmith worked at that location.
tion from the evidence they find, the methodology also
“You go around with your anvil, like the gypsies used to
avoids a reliance on off-site labs where samples from digs
do, and make a pot on the spot. And you move on and
are sent for analysis, which can delay results for months
leave nothing.”
to years after an excavation.
The use of devices such as infrared spectrometers and
With Weiner in tow, however, if archaeologists uncovX-ray fluorescence analyzers is allowing archaeologists to
ered, say, a white, flat layer, they could pass a sample to
read deeper into the archaeological record, beyond what
him for immediate analysis. Weiner could then load
can be seen by the naked eye. Thomas Levy, a researcher
it into his infrared spectrometer, which shines a light
at the University of California, San Diego, says that more
similar to the one a remote control uses to change the
and more excavators are taking this new approach. “The
channels on a TV on the sample. The instrument disportability and the drop in price of these high-precision
plays a spectrum with peaks corresponding to the unique
scientific instruments are creating a sea change in the way
wavelengths of light that a material absorbs. In this case,
that we do field archaeology,” he says.
it quickly tells excavators whether they’ve uncovered phyIn the late 1980s, Weiner, whose background is in
toliths (silica-based remnants of ancient vegetation) or
geology and chemistry, began accompanying archaecalcite (a primary constituent of limestone, as well as of
ologists on digs, carrying with him a first-generation
man-made plaster).
portable infrared spectrometer. Since then, he’s traveled
Recently, Weiner and colleagues at the Weizmann
with such equipment to sites in China, France, and the

www.archaeology.org

9

FROM THE TRENCHES
Institute exploited the fact that the
infrared light is probing the bonds
between atoms in a material to take
the analysis one step further. The
heights and widths of the peaks
on a spectrum offer clues to how
tightly the atoms are arranged—
taller, sharper peaks indicate more
disorder—allowing Weiner to differentiate between subtypes of calcite:
sedimentary limestone, plaster used
in building, or wood ash, which is
evidence of fire-related entities, like
ovens or kilns.
This year, Weiner collaborated
with two materials scientists, Kristin
Poduska at Memorial University in
Newfoundland and Stefano Curtarolo at Duke University, to refine
his method and provide a framework
for extending it to materials beyond
calcite, such as bone. Over time, bone
that’s not well preserved tends to
recrystallize—meaning its internal

Many people get away to Puerto
Rico during the winter, but few
know it was a home of the Taino
people before Columbus arrived
in the Americas, and that Taino
culture is alive and well there.
Archaeologist Miquel Bonini of the
Puerto Rico State Historic Office
recommends that vacationers hit
La Piedra Escrita in the town of
Jayuya, where there is a huge,

structure tightens,
becoming less disordered, and samples
become poor candidates for radiocarbon
dating or DNA
analysis. “If you can
check right away,” says
Poduska, “you can say,
‘Wow, these bones
aren’t very well crystallized—we should
take more samples.’”
On-site analysis of a crucible at Tell es-Safi/Gath provided
Curtarolo believes
the first evidence of ancient Philistine metalwork.
that in 20 to 30 years,
scientists could develop spectral finCase in point: the metal-making
gerprints for the majority of minerals
center at Tell es-Safi/Gath. Says dig
that archaeologists might encounter
director Aren Meier, an archaeologist
during excavations.
at Bar-Ilan University, “Perhaps some
Microarchaeology offers not just
of these barely noticeable areas where
quicker analysis of finds on-site, it
metal production was conducted
also allows excavators to restrategize
would have been plowed through in
digs on the fly based on solid
the past.”
knowledge of what they’ve found.
—Nikhil Swaminathan

river-bound boulder covered with
86 prehistoric Taino petroglyphs.
The site La Piedra Escrita, or “The
Written Rock,” is 32 feet high and 13
feet wide, and rests right in the middle
of the Rio Saliente, in the central
forested, mountainous region of the
island. About half the petroglyphs on
it resemble people, a few have animal
shapes, and others are geometric or

abstract. The petroglyphs date to
sometime around A.D. 600–1200,
but the significance of the boulder
is unknown.
Getting there It should take about
two hours by car from San Juan to
reach Jayuya, a town known for its
deep love of its Taino heritage. There
is no fee to view the petrolgyphs,
and there is a recreation area,
restrooms, and a parking lot. A
wooden boardwalk leads down to
the river for a closer look, but Bonini
requests all visitors to refrain from
touching the boulder.
While you’re in the neighborhood In
Jayuya, check out the Museo el Cemi,
designed to represent Taino divinities.
It is full of Taino artifacts for those
curious to learn more about Puerto
Rico’s indigenous people. Also nearby
are the Caguana Ceremonial Ball
Courts, a group of 30 restored courts,
called bateyes, that date back 700
years. One of them is the largest of its
type in the Caribbean. To learn more
about the Tainos, Bonini recommends
Irving Rouse’s The Tainos: The Rise
and Decline of the People Who
Greeted Columbus.
—MALIN BANYASZ

10

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Recent Collapses in Pompeii

P

ompeii is one of the most
visited archaeological sites
in the world. The extraordinarily well preserved remains of the
Roman city buried by the eruption of
Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79—luxurious homes containing some of the
finest ancient fresco paintings, streetside bars that provided the city’s
inhabitants with a quick snack, and
still-standing temples, theaters, and
brothels—attract more than 2.5 million visitors and bring in more than
30 million dollars annually.
But the November collapse of the
so-called “School of the Gladiators”
and several ancient walls has once
again thrown the spotlight on the
reality that Pompeii is falling down.
The primary cause of last year’s collapses was days of torrential rain that
taxed the city’s drainage system and

thousands of buildings that are more
than 2,000 years old and covers
roughly 160 acres, is in “a constant
state of emergency.” Andrew WallaceHadrill, director of a major project to
conserve the nearby site of Hercula-

neum, says, “These collapses are a
warning to us of much, much worse
collapses that could easily happen.
The whole site [of Pompeii] is at
risk.”
—Jarrett A. Lobell

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may have broken down some of the
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walls. Just days after the collapses, a
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writing, they are scheduled to return
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Many Italian government officials
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11

REVIEWS
BOOKS

A New Look at Ancient Egypt

S

ome stories never fail to fascinate, such as the
knowledge and writing skill to hold the reader’s attention
discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, with which
for more than 500 pages.
Cambridge Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson opens
While this book is accurate in most of its details,
his brilliantly told history, The Rise and
historyy is by nature interpretive,
Found on Pharaoh
e,
and som
Fall of Ancient Egypt (Random House,
some of Wilkinson’s ideas are
Shoshenq II’s mummy,
unconvin
$35.00). But those familiar with the
unconvincing. One example is his
this pectoral was intended
to magically ensure his
thesis that
th ancient Egypt was pristory of Tutankhamun’s discovery willll
resurrection.
maril
find some minor inaccuracies. Hismarily a brutal culture, ruled by
phar
tory tells us that Howard Carter
pharaohs who cared little for the
comm
did not, in fact, find amulets and
common man. As an example
of the health disparities between
ritual objects inside each coffin
the up
when he came upon the tomb. But
upper and lower classes, he
compa
readers should not be put off. The
compares tomb paintings of
health
book is a masterful introduction to
healthy-looking elites with the
bones of peasants who suffered
ancient Egypt for a general audience.
from a range of debilitating disWilkinson uses the Palermo
eases. It is not a fair comparison.
Stone, a fragmentary list of the early
The paintings
p
kings of Egypt carved during the
are idealized; the
actua
Fifth Dynasty (2450 to 2325 b.c.),
actual bones of Egyptian elites
als
as a platform from which to tell
also show the ravages of diseease. Tutankhamun suffered
his story of Egypt’s earliest pharaohs.
tails
m
Along the way he selects revealing details
multiple bouts of malaria,
as the
Ram
to answer questions such as: What was
Rameses II had a massive infecearliest papyrus found in Egypt? (Kemeka’s of Dynasty I.)
tion in his mandible, and Amenhotep III had excruciating
And which was the first bronze vessel? (Khasekhemwy’s,
dental abscesses. Wilkinson’s account, despite these small
Dynasty II.) As he describes the early cities and objects
drawbacks, is an enjoyable history of Egypt packed with
found there, Wilkinson demonstrates both the detailed
details not found elsewhere.
—Bob Brier

EXHIBITIONS

Squabbling Over a Sumerian City

I

n 1889, University of Pennsylvania
archaeologists began excavations at
Nippur—one of the world’s earliest cities
and the most important religious center
of the Sumerian civilization—located in
modern-day Iraq. Archaeologists & Travelers
in Ottoman Lands, which will be on display
at the University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology until June
26, tells a tale of discovery, diplomacy, and
deception involving the three men responsible
for much of the early archaeology at Nippur:
John Henry Haynes, Hermann Vollrath
Hilprecht, and Osman Hamdi Bey.
Haynes served as field director on Penn’s
excavations at Nippur. Hilprecht, who officially led the project, avoided the harsh condi-

12

The Nippur temple excavation photographed by John Henry Haynes in 1893.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

BORA ÖZKÖK / Cultural Folk Tours’ 33rd year
tions on-site, instead staying back in
relatively cozy Constantinople. There,
he ingratiated himself with Hamdi
Bey, the director of the Ottoman
Empire’s Imperial Museum, founder
of what would become the Istanbul
Archaeological Museums, and author
of a restrictive set of laws limiting
foreign excavations within the empire.
To gain access to sites and artifacts,
Hilprecht arranged for Penn to award
Hamdi Bey honorary degrees and buy
some of his paintings for exorbitant
prices; two of these paintings are on
display.
The exhibited artifacts from Nippur illustrate the trio’s story. Particularly noteworthy are never-beforeseen black-and-white and sepia-toned
landscape photographs that chronicle
Haynes’ extensive travels around the
Ottoman Empire. While the exhibition tells us more about the three men
than it does about ancient Sumer,
a collection of 16 cuneiform tablets
provide details about life in Nippur.
A severely fractured piece bears an
inscription that uses sexual imagery
to describe digging a canal. Another is
a receipt for the sale of a slave for 20
silver shekels. Several school tablets
clearly contrast the meticulous, tiny
cuneiform of an advanced scribe and
the clumsy, large markings of a novice.
During a decade of excavating at
Nippur, Haynes helped uncover the
Temple Library, which held 23,000
of these tablets. Hilprecht, however,
stole the credit for this and other
finds, earning him headlines in The
New York Times and eclipsing Haynes’
career. After being revealed as a fraud
and accused of mismanaging the collection of tablets, Hilprecht resigned
from Penn in 1910—the same year
that both Hamdi Bey and the emotionally shattered Haynes died.
In the final analysis, Archaeologists
& Travelers in Ottoman Lands is aptly
named. It offers a fascinating behindthe-scenes look into what impelled
these three personalities with different
motivations to dedicate themselves to
Nippur. —Nikhil Swaminathan
www.archaeology.org

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M9863-5_Archeology_Travel.indd 1

13
1/4/11 2:05 PM

WORLD ROUNDUP
NEVADA: In the
world of graffiti
writers, location is important—tagging
an inaccessible
or notable site
is an achievement. This spirit often leads
to serious damage. In a recent
incident, a vandal covered three
panels of ancient Native American
pictographs at Red Rock Canyon
with maroon spray paint. It’s the
worst damage the site has seen in
years, and cleanup may cost
upwards of $10,000. The suspect the
police have identified may face federal charges.

PERU: Acoustic scientists
have resurrected the
ancient, booming sound of
decorated shell trumpets
from Chavín de Huántar by
playing the 2,500-year-old
pre-Inca instruments. They
also used computers to
simulate the acoustic
properties of the site’s
ceremonial center and
found that the sound from a
shell trumpet—20 were
found at the site—could
have created sensory
disorientation that might
have been used in rituals or
to enforce social hierarchy.

14

VIRGINIA: An encrypted message in
a bottle dating to the Civil War has
been removed and deciphered by
codebreakers. “You can expect no
help from this side of the river,”
began the unsigned message, which
is in a museum collection. It was
meant for Confederate Lt.
Gen.
G
John C. Pemberton, in
response to his request for
aid
a during the Siege of
Vicksburg
V
in Mississippi. But
the
t
note never reached his
hands—it was dated July 4,
1863,
1
the date he surrendered
to
t Ulysses S. Grant.

CHILE: The country’s mining industry—
brought to the world’s attention during last
year’s dramatic rescue of trapped miners—
began some 12,000 years ago, when the
Huentelauquen people mined iron oxides as
pigments. Their
recently discovered mine, which
is estimated to
have produced
50 tons of pigment over 8,000
years, is the oldest securely
dated mine in
the Americas.

ENGLAND: Silk
k inside
and black velvet
vet
outside, this
rare 16th-century vizard,
or mask,
would have
been worn
to hide or
protect a
gentlewoman’s face while
e
traveling. The
small white thread
read
by the mouth was once attached to
a bead, also found with the mask,
that she would have held in her
mouth to keep the mask in place. It
was secreted away in a stone wall,
perhaps as a “witch deposit,” a common practice for warding off maleficent forces.

SPAIN: In 1994, the jumbled remains
of several Neanderthals were found
in a cave called El Sidrón. Scientists
recently
determined
there were 12
individuals—
six adults and
six children—
and that they
were massacred together
and cannibalized. The
gruesome
scene is also
providing some of the first detailed
evidence of Neanderthal social
structure. Mitochondrial DNA shows
that they were a family—the three
adult males were related, though the
three females were not. This suggests that Neanderthals were
patrilocal—females left their own
families to join their mates.

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

By Samir S. Patel
ISRAEL: During the construction of a
mikveh, or ritual bath, in Jerusalem’s
Jewish Quarter, archaeologists found
an older bathing pool, built and used
by the Roman Tenth Legion. The
troops were garrisoned there after
A.D. 135, when the Roman city of Aelia
Capitolina was established following
Hadrian’s destruction of the old city.
The location of the find supports an
emerging theory that Aelia Capitolina was larger than previously thought.

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15

INSIDER
By Brian Fagan

Phoenix’s Looming Water Crisis
Could the solution be under the city itself in the
vast and ancient irrigation networks of the Hohokam people?
California in the midst of a multiyear drought, I wondered just how
long it would be before promiscuously expanding Phoenix imploded
in the face of chronic water shortages triggered in part by a culture of
urban excess and waste.
The statistics are daunting: More
than 1.8 million people live in Phoenix itself, and a further 22 cities
surround it in the Valley of
ctober 2008. The
the Sun, forming the largpropjet’s engine
est metropolitan landscape
slowed and I woke
by area in the United States.
abruptly, watching an almost
Each year the valley receives
surreal urban landscape come
about seven inches of rainfall.
into view as we descended.
Average temperatures exceed
The sun was setting behind
100 degrees for three months
us, casting long shadows,
a year, with peaks as high as
but Phoenix shimmered
120 degrees.
beneath us. Broad streets
We descended gradually,
led into the far distance,
bumping gently in the late
and huddled apartment
afternoon turbulence, and
buildings and carefully
passed over the meandering
ordered subdivisions were
Salt River, its waters yellowscattered over arid terrain.
brown in the hazy sunlight.
High-rise office buildings
Once this was the land of the
towered incongruously over
Huhugam, meaning “somethe desert. Everything was
thing that is all gone” in the
yellow or buff-colored except
O’odham language. To archaefor occasional splashes of
ologists they are known as the
green—golf courses, parks,
Hohokam, an ancient people
and irrigated farms seemed
who faced the challenges
to have sprung up without
of this dry and changeable
notice from the dry landscape.
environment for more than
Dozens of blue swimming
a thousand years and turned
The city of Phoenix was built on the ruins of a Hohokam
settlement that is between 1,500 and 550 years old. The this inhospitable desert into
pools adorned suburban
remains of a canal network are still visible near the airport. a thriving urban and agriculyards. Over to the left, the
long, straight line of an
tural landscape. In some ways
aqueduct ran to the distant horizon.
the story of the Hohokam offers an
Copyright ©2011 Brian Fagan.
All of this urban sprawl depends
example of how to live sustainably
From: Elixir: A History of Water and
on finite water supplies pumped
in this landscape, but it also reveals
Humankind by Brian Fagan. Reprinted
from deep beneath the earth or
what a difficult balancing act it is.
by permission of Bloomsbury Press.
(continued on page 54)
delivered from afar. Coming from a
At a time when water is still relatively inexpensive and abundant, at least in the
industrialized world, it is easy to forget that controlling water was a necessary
first step to feed and quench the thirst of the people who built the first cities. Brian
Fagan’s soon-to-be-released book Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind,
provides an in-depth examination of the history of water control. For thousands of
years, societies have found inventive ways to provide water for their fields and their
people in spite of fickle climates. It is no exaggeration to say that civilization itself
is built on a foundation of water. This excerpt from Fagan’s book centers on the
Hohokam people, who used an elaborate network of canals to support a society that
flourished in the area around Phoenix, Arizona, until about 550 years ago.

O

16

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

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T

. R. Kidder often says that a
river is like a text. It leaves behind
telltale layers of silt, carves channels when it runs quickly, and
makes patterns in the sand when
the water is low. If that is the
case, he says, then China’s Yellow River is one hell
of a read. Kidder, a geoarchaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis, is standing in a place
where the river once flowed, at the bottom of a
hole dug 30 feet into the layers of sediment it left
over millennia. The bands of colored mud provide
a timeline—Kidder’s feet are somewhere near the
end of the Pleistocene, around 10,500 years ago,
while his head is a few feet below the Han Dynasty,
206 b.c.–a.d. 220.
In the cross-section of sediment, Kidder sees
the undulating furrows of an agricultural field
and, in the layer of red clay above it, the fate of a
2,000-year-old farming community. In this stretch
of peanut fields and peach trees in the northern
part of China’s Henan Province, near the village of
Sanyangzhuang, archaeologists have discovered an
entire landscape sealed away by the whims of the
Yellow River. Kidder is at the site of a remarkably
well-preserved rural homestead. Footprints are
still visible in the fields, and within the collapsed
walls of a courtyard, intact millstones and ceramic
food steamers look like they are waiting to be
used. Two thousand years ago the Yellow River

Reading the

YELLOW
RIVER
Preserved by centuries of flood-borne
silt, a rural landscape offers a new
look at the Han Dynasty
by Lauren Hilgers

18

took this place by surprise and preserved a never-before-seen picture of farming life in the
Han Dynasty, far from any imperial city, across an area so large it will keep archaeologists
busy for generations.
The river had broken its banks a few miles away and Kidder imagines—invoking Carl
Sandburg—that the water came in “on little cat feet,” in a slow trickle at first and then faster.
The Han settlement was in a low spot, a dangerous place to be considering the Yellow River’s
well-earned reputation for caprice. The water rose and rose until the entire area was flooded. Its
residents traveled roughly 40 miles to reach higher ground, leaving behind tile-roofed houses
and well-maintained fields. They abandoned coins and farming tools and looms still in use, and
traveled along roads that still bear the tracks of their wooden wheels. The Yellow River covered
it all in thick, heavy silt. Today, though the river has meandered north, the county is still called
Nei Huang, or “Inside Yellow”—a reminder of how much time it spent under water.
Archaeologists have now excavated four homestead sites here, which they refer to as
www.archaeology.org

A Han Dynasty homestead
site in China’s Henan
Province, surrounded by
what was once a moat,
was preserved in silt when
the Yellow River burst its
banks and flooded the area
around 2,000 years ago. At
lower left, archaeologist Liu
Haiwang climbs out of a pit
dug into thousands of years
of river sediments.

19

Stacks of roof tiles near one ancient house were waiting to be
used in repairs when the Yellow River washed into the area. They
include, according to Liu, some of the largest tiles ever found.

compounds. Each compound consists of a house, made of
a series of covered rooms and courtyards surrounded by a
rammed-earth wall, and the area immediately around it. One
compound was surrounded by a moat, another by trees. Each
of the four is within 500 yards of the next, and tests indicate
there are at least 12 more sites within a few square miles. A
bit further afield, the top of a Han Dynasty wall is visible,
hinting that an entire city might lie in wait. Kidder jokes that
if this find had been made in America, where manpower is
more limited, overwhelmed archaeologists might have covered it back up and run.
After three years of visiting the site each summer, the
American archaeologist still seems amused by his good
fortune. Kidder, a self-proclaimed “river guy” or “dirt guy,”
has spent most of his life studying the Mississippi River.
He is most at home with mud in his hands, examining it
through glasses that cling precariously to the tip of his nose.
His Chinese host, Liu Haiwang, is a senior researcher at the
Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the head archaeologist at the site. He is thin and
polite and extremely organized. While Kidder examined
silt, Liu measured the scope of their archaeological task by
putting together a meticulous 10-foot-square diorama of
the area, with little blue lights flickering around every possible new site. “The area is huge,” he says. It also presents
a conservation challenge—the state of preservation is
so excellent that the archaeologists are hesitant to
disturb the first layer of collapsed roof tiles and risk
exposing what is underneath to Henan’s up-anddown climate. “We have to be careful; we have
to go slowly,” says Liu.

I

f Kidder is a reader of rivers, Liu is
fluent in ceramic tiles. He first came to Sanyangzhuang in 2003 on a familiar errand. A construction
team digging an irrigation ditch hit what appeared to be
a wall and a pile of roof tiles. So they changed direction.
20

A few yards further they hit more tiles—a collapsed roof.
Two archaeological finds in one ditch were enough cause to
notify the local authorities, and Liu’s institute sent him to
investigate. He examined the find, read the patterns on the
roof tiles, and dated the remains to the first half of the Han
Dynasty. The construction crew changed direction again and
Liu left for another project in the city of Chongqing. Two
years later he returned to follow up on the earlier discovery.
“It wasn’t until 2005 that we realized how significant the find
was,” Liu says. “We found the fields.”
The Han Dynasty fields at the site are preserved so perfectly that once they are exposed it looks as if they’d been
plowed last week. The furrows begin just beyond the walls of
each compound and Liu, citing historical records of farming
practices, estimates they extend for around four square miles.
The fields confirm an important feature of the site—it is
no monument, tomb, or tiny outpost, but an active farming
settlement, a picture of everyday rural life from around 100
b.c. to a.d. 40.
This is new territory for archaeologists in China, where
most work is focused on imperial sites and cities, about which
Chinese rulers and historians kept meticulous records. Here,
however, Liu has a segment of society that has been left out of
the histories and has been unexplored archaeologically. This
is China’s first look at a farming community far away from
the gates of an imperial capital, outside the protective walls
of any city. Over five years of excavation, Liu has uncovered
a surprisingly interconnected and prosperous settlement.
“There are historical records that tell us what life was like
in Chang’an and Luoyang,” he says, referencing the capitals of
the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties, respectively. “But
in China’s plains, the lifestyle was different—we’ve never
researched it before because we’ve never had the material.”
In most parts of rural China, when peasants left a place
like this, they took their pots, plows, and tools with them. But
at the site outside Sanyangzhuang, life was in motion when
the water came. Roof tiles are carefully stacked outside of one

A corner roof
tile is decorated
with the characters “Yi Shou
Wan Sui,” or “long life,” a decoration
reserved for well-to-do households.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

house, to be used for repairs. Weights used for
weaving sit under the base of a loom. The largest of the four sites, Compound Two, has been
completely uncovered. The warehouse-sized
stretch includes the house itself, a well, the
beginning of a field, and a large depression that
Liu thinks might have been a seasonal pool.
The house features a large entry courtyard and
kitchen, living quarters, and a smaller courtyard
tucked away in the back.
Piles of cracked roof tiles, which fell when
the flood collapsed walls, cover the site today.
The curve of a large ceramic pot—perhaps for
storing water—peeks out from what was once
a covered room. So far, archaeologists have also
found coins, bronze and stone tools, and more
pottery, even without excavating many of the
enclosed rooms. Liu picks up a tile and runs his
fingers lightly over shallow, closely spaced ridges and round depressions.“Late Western Han,”
he says. Another tile has a mesh pattern, as if
it were dried on a burlap sack. “This is more
typical during Eastern Han,” he says. Some of
the bricks used for the homestead’s walls and
flooring have unusual patterns, stripes Liu has
never seen before. “Maybe they had a local kiln
operating nearby,” he says.
The tiles point to a unique period in China’s
history. The four hundred years of the Han
Dynasty were unusually peaceful, bracketed by
periods when warlords struggled for control—
the Spring and Autumn and Warring States
periods before, and the Three Kingdoms period
after. According to histories, this lasting peace
allowed the development of new cultivation
techniques, such as crop rotation and improved
plows. The flood probably came during a brief
interlude in this history of peace and advancement, the 14-year Xin Dynasty that marked
the transition from Western to Eastern Han.
At that time, Wang Mang, a Han Dynasty
official, had seized the throne from the ruling
family and spent his few years in power trying
to implement a series of land and tax reforms.
Kidder guesses that the flood played a role
in ending the usurper’s rule. Written records
mention a break in the Yellow River around
a.d. 11 that caused famine and mass migration.
The fleeing of the Han settlers, combined with
Patterns in clay bricks and roof tiles can be used
to date the site. The top two patterns come from
a tile that might be unique to Sanyangzhuang.
The next dates to the late Western and early
Eastern Han, while the bottom became prevalent
during the Eastern Han.
www.archaeology.org

In a protective structure over Compound
Two, Kidder and Liu compare theories on a
mysterious collapsed structure.

a massive drought, helped catalyze a series of
agrarian rebellions and bring about the downfall of Wang Mang. By a.d. 25, a descendant of
Western Han royalty had retaken the throne,
establishing the Eastern Han Dynasty, which
lasted for another 200 years.

T

he Han settlement that Kidder
and Liu are studying was neither the
first nor last to end up under water.
A pattern—common to floodplains all over
the world—repeated over the centuries here:
occupation, flood, and abandonment, over and
over again. No matter how many times the
water came, people kept coming back for the
rich, river-enriched soil. While Kidder examines silt near the bottom of the 30-foot hole,
Liu stands on a platform halfway back to the
surface, where there is another field preserved
in silt, as yet undated.
This pattern occurs because the Yellow River
is a flowing mudslide. The river normally carries an enormous silt burden, and a flood can
increase it dramatically. During a 1958 flood,
for example, sediment levels in the river were
measured at 35 pounds per cubic foot, and an
observer described its surface as “wrinkled.”
The river was primarily dirt.
The Yellow River flows in a braided stream, a
network of smaller channels that weave in and
out of each other. “Think of the river coming
into Henan like a loose hose,” says Kidder. “It’s
21

just spraying all over the place.” In each channel, silt slowly
builds the riverbed above the surrounding landscape and
gives the river the devastating habit of breaking its banks and
changing course. In some places, where water flowed slowly
or not at all, sediment could accumulate and preserve whatever was below. In other places, it might flow fast and furious,
carving deep channels. A flooding Yellow River might crush
one ancient household and preserve the next.
The sediment left behind changes depending on the river’s
mood. In Kidder’s excavation, the cross-section, or profile, of
each flood has a different color and texture. Kidder’s reading of the Han flood reveals two distinct layers: one rustcolored and syrupy to the touch, the other dark brown and
composed of a denser, thicker mud. The flood was part of a
centuries-long cycle, but its two phases were uniquely suited
to preserving the landscape. A slow initial flood allowed a
protective layer of silt to settle to the bottom, and then a
second, stronger flood brought more silt that sealed it all
away. The first stage would have undermined the foundations
of buildings and walls. When the second wave came, roofs
collapsed and sank into the layer of mud already covering the
ground below. “Then there was a period of time when the
river was relatively still,” says Kidder, who guesses the area
stayed under water for nearly 50 years while the river slowly
carved out a new path elsewhere. More floods would come,
including a strong one in the Tang Dynasty (a.d. 618–907),
but higher up the dirt in Kidder’s profile becomes loose and
sandy, a sign that the river had settled in elsewhere.
The monumental volume of sediment is key to preserving
The condition of the Han Dynasty sites is so pristine that
in many cases the archaeologists stopped at the level of
collapsed roofs to protect what lies beneath.

the landscape so well—a river with less silt would simply
erode away whatever lay in its path. And a more austere,
less prosperous settlement would have left little behind to
suggest its existence. “To get something like this, you need
a river system that buries things and a cultural system that
practices things on this scale,” Kidder says.

T

he prolonged stability of the Han would have
helped the Sanyangzhuang settlement prosper
and expand from simple agriculture to trade, silkmaking, and a whole range of cultural production including
ceramics, textiles, and stone-carving. The land they worked
was likely their own and they benefited from it. “These were
not peasants,” Liu says.“These were people with connections
to trade and comfortable lifestyles.”
Signs of their prosperity are scattered throughout the
site. An indoor toilet at Compound Two is one of the
most opulent Liu has seen. “There were bricks covering the
floors,” he says emphatically. An average family would have
been content with packed dirt. Some of the roof tiles are
the largest Han Dynasty tiles on record, about the size of
a movie poster. Archaeologists also uncovered corner tiles
with the Chinese characters for “Yi Shou Wan Sui,” or “long
life,” imprinted on the end—a mark generally reserved for
high-ranking families.
A system of roads uncovered nearby suggests that each
household was connected to the surrounding community
and probably beyond. Liu is particularly excited to show off
stumps of mulberry trees and the imprints of their leaves,
evidence that one household was involved in silk production. “This could be the real start of the Silk Road,” he says.
Their silk could have made it to the imperial capital and from
there to as far away as Baghdad and Byzantium, with Roman

gold coins filtering back in return. Without the security that
allowed for the flow of silk and wealth, Liu conjectures, compounds like these could never have been built.
The Sanyangzhuang sites are unusual not only for their
apparent prosperity, but also for the rare example they provide
of farmers living permanently outside the protection of city
walls.“During the Warring States period, farmers would live
inside cities and go out during the day to work,” Liu explains.
“Or they would live in smaller towns and go out to cultivate
their fields during certain times of year.” That settlement pattern persisted throughout Chinese history and Liu guesses
that many farmers still lived like that during the Han. In
Sanyangzhuang, however, the farmers appear to have lived
exposed on the plain, building large houses a few steps from
their fields and a comfortable distance from their neighbors.

T

oday, with the Yellow River 20 miles in
the distance and no roving warlords, the Sanyangzhuang sites are facing a new set of threats. Henan’s
climate—cold in the winter and wet and hot during the
summer—can be hostile to an exposed site. A large warehouse has been constructed over a portion of the site, part
of a recently opened tourism complex that includes a small
museum. The building is not air-conditioned, however, and in
Henan’s summer, the exposed parts of the Han Dynasty layer
develop a thick green sheen of mold. Liu has experimented
with a range of anti-mold agents and thinks he has found
the right formula. The other excavated sites have all been recovered with loose dirt until Liu can get permission to build
additional structures and prepare conservation treatments.
The cautious archaeologist also faces dilemmas courtesy
of the Yellow River. Unlike Pompeii, where in some places
volcanic ash and lava fragments filled houses and preserved
their structures, the river collapsed the buildings as it preserved their contents. Typically, Kidder says, excavators
would record and chart what they had discovered, and then
go deeper. This site is so well-preserved, however, that Liu
has stopped at roof level, wanting to keep the outline of the
houses and collapsed roofs complete. He hopes to excavate
further at some sites but leave others as they were found. This
way, he says, archaeologists and visitors can understand both
life in the settlement and the way the disaster unfolded.
“There will be some difficult decisions to make,” Liu
says. There are so many layers of occupation, he points out,
that archaeologists could potentially keep digging past the
Han Dynasty into the Warring States period and beyond.
Despite his cautious approach, Liu is eager to see what lies
underneath the roof line. In Compound Two, he says, it’s
possible the family would have kept

Farm tools, like these
millstones, provide
archaeologists with
a rare glimpse into
rural life during the
Han Dynasty.
www.archaeology.org

Henan’s hot and humid climate makes mold a pressing
challenge once portions of the site have been exposed. The
team believes it has found the right anti-mold agent.

a bamboo book, in which a wealthy or aristocratic household
recorded its daily affairs. “If we want to find and preserve a
bamboo book, we will have to proceed carefully,” he says. The
book would likely be very fragile but could provide important
details on community and household management.
For now, Kidder and Liu are puzzling over a mysterious
indentation. A section of the Han Dynasty layer a few yards
behind the compound has been washed away, replaced by
a stretch of rubble—chunks of rammed earth and broken
tile that lie at an incline, as if they had settled into the side
of a riverbed. Interspersed in the rubble are smooth glazed
pottery sherds, an easy read for Liu.“Tang Dynasty,” he says,
well after the end of the Han.
The archaeologists guess that a braid of the Yellow River
settled here during the Tang Dynasty flood, carving its way
through the soil and uncovering a collapsed wall that was
once part of the homestead at Compound Two. Too heavy
to be swept away, the tiles and rammed earth of the wall
simply slid toward the center of the river before another layer
of sediment settled on top of them. As they were sinking
in this new silt, Tang pottery sherds that had been swept
downstream lodged in the sludge. But that still leaves the
question of what kind of structure the tiles and rammed
earth came from.
“Maybe this was a pigsty or a storage room,” Liu says,
examining the base of the wall.
“It seems too big for a pigsty,” argues Kidder, who is eager
to start digging for more clues. He clambers past Liu
to the base of the wall. “Can I cut a profile
right here?” he asks. Liu, silent and
thoughtful, raises his eyebrows.
“He is good at keeping me
in line,” laughs Kidder. ■
Lauren Hilgers is
a freelance writer
based in Shanghai.
23

T

he R/V Hercules is anchored in the Adriatic
Sea near Saranda, Albania, and the crew of
the 110-foot-long research vessel is at attention. “Back deck, stand clear of the wind!”
RPM Nautical Foundation (RPMNF)
founder George Robb bellows into a walkie-talkie from his seat in the boat’s control room, deep in the
belly of the ship. “Winch going out, winch going out!”
Up on deck, two crew members ease the massive, milliondollar SeaEye Panther Plus remotely operated vehicle (ROV)
off the stern. With two spindly arms and a boxy frame, the
submarine robot resembles a cross between R2-D2 and
a construction crane. The SeaEye is about the size and
weight of a golf cart, but a single Kevlar cord attached to
its protective metal cage holds it up and out over the water.
The apparatus breaks the surface of the water, and the boat
heaves from the sudden lightening of its load.
As robot and cage plunge into the Adriatic, a video feed
streams from a camera bolted to the top of the cage to one
of the dozen computer monitors in the sunless control
room. “Give me TMS full-screen here,” Robb calls out. “Is
it off ? Kill it and reopen it.” The monitor goes blank and
then flickers on again. Next to Robb, ROV operator Kim
Wilson fiddles with a joystick, his lips clamped shut. He has
the silent intensity of a boy steering a remote-controlled car.
“Give me lights!” Robb shouts. Wilson flicks a switch and
another camera—there are six in total—reveals the sea as
a crystal-clear, turquoise expanse punctuated only by air
bubbles. RPMNF archaeologist Jeff Royal inches forward
on his leather recliner to get a better view.

The Adriatic’s

Uncharted
Once closed to exploration,
the waters off the Albanian coast
begin to give up their secrets
by Mara Hvistendahl

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Past

Hiding more than 200 feet down is a wealth of untouched
finds, encompassing everything from ancient Roman trade
vessels to medieval warships to World War II fighters. Until
recently, decades of isolationist Communist rule meant
Albania’s waters were off-limits to archaeologists and even
the recreational divers who sometimes discover sites. “Up to
the 1990s the coast was protected,” says Adrian Anastasi,
director of the department of nautical archaeology at the
Albanian Institute of Archaeology.“You couldn’t do nautical
research because the military had control.”
But that control also means that Albania’s underwater
treasures have been well-preserved, insulated from the
trawling and waterfront development that have ravaged
other portions of the Mediterranean and Adriatic. Democracy came in 1992, opening the coast to archaeologists, and
www.archaeology.org

Above, the SeaEye remotely operated vehicle investigates
a 1,600-year-old shipwreck that contained amphorae from
Tunisia. At far left, the crew of the R/V Hercules lift the
SeaEye out of the Adriatic and back onto the ship.

25

in 2007 Anastasi’s institute began surveying the waters in
collaboration with RPMNF, a Key West–based nonprofit
foundation that specializes in nautical archaeology. Together,
they have been discovering shipwrecks at a dizzying pace.
In four short years, they have uncovered 32 wrecks—eight
of them more than 1,600 years old—in Albanian waters.
“No one had done anything like this in Albania,” says
Auron Tare, director of the Albanian National Trust, who
helped set up the survey. “It’s completely uncharted territory.” The region’s waters contain so many wrecks, in fact,
that RPMNF mostly focuses on ancient finds, leaving more
modern sites largely unexplored.
For several months each summer, the Hercules trolls the
coast, conducting detailed surveys and using the SeaEye and
divers to explore potential wrecks. The long hours at sea can
be grueling: Robb, Wilson, Royal, Anastasi, Tare, and the
rest of the ten-member crew bunk in tiny rooms belowdecks,
and despite the fast pace of discovery, the team sometimes
goes weeks between finds. The daily monotony during these
dry spells is broken only by dinner, which is prepared by a
Michelin-rated chef. (As a former Wall Street financier, Robb
can afford a few indulgences.)
To find sites worth exploring in detail, the crew spends
weeks scanning the ocean floor with multibeam sonar, bouncing sound waves off it to map its topography. Poring over the
resulting charts, Robb and Royal look for anomalies, telltale
red spots that indicate increased elevation. If the spots are
surrounded by depressed green areas—features they jokingly
refer to as “doughnuts”—it suggests the anomalies have been
there long enough for currents to carve out the surrounding
seafloor. A doughnut could mean an ancient wreck, but it
could also indicate modern debris—more than once the team
has stumbled across sunken plastic beach chairs. The sonar
26

Righting a Cold War Wrong

Where was the
HMS Volage?

O

n October , , the British ship HMS Volage
struck a mine off the coast of Albania—a collision
that blasted apart the destroyer’s hull, killed dozens of its crew members, and helped spark the Cold War.
As the matter, one of a trio of clashes that became known
as the Corfu Channel Incident, went before the United
Nations Security Council and the International Court of
Justice, tensions between the United Kingdom and Albania
escalated, resulting in the two countries severing relations
for over four decades.
But just where the Volage’s bow sank—the rest of the ship
was towed to safety—has been a serious matter of debate.
The international court found Albania liable for damages—
suggesting the country had planted mines in the international
waters of the Corfu Strait. Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha,
meanwhile, maintained that the British had provoked Albania to find a pretext for an invasion. “The Corfu Channel
Incident is a concoction of the British from start to finish,”
Hoxha reportedly told Joseph Stalin in 1947.
Hoxha’s view suddenly gained credence in 2009 when
a survey conducted by the RPM Nautical Foundation and
the Albanian Institute of Archaeology uncovered the bow
of the Volage off the coast of Saranda, Albania—not in
international waters, where most historians thought it was.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

RPM Nautical Foundation founder George Robb and
archaeologist Jeff Royal watch from the ship’s control room as
the SeaEye ROV investigates a possible wreck site.

narrows down the possibilities, but the team must use the
SeaEye to determine a site’s identity. They also use divers, but
the robot is preferable, especially at deeper sites, as it can stay
underwater longer and gather more data.
When the SeaEye reaches a point two yards above the
ocean floor, Wilson looses the ROV from its cage and steers
it toward the target anomaly they identified on the sonar
scan of the area. The trick is to keep the robot hovering at a
steady depth to prevent it from stirring up blinding clouds
of silt. Hit bottom, says Robb, and “it’s like a pickup on a
Texas road.” Royal, the archaeologist, keeps a watchful eye on
the wall of screens. The robot’s arms—critical to retrieving
any particularly interesting or diagnostic artifacts—are not
working, and the FedEx shipment containing replacements
is still a few days away, delayed by Albanian bureaucracy.
Though they’re in the midst of a weeklong dry spell, Royal
knows each anomaly is a potential shipwreck—and that a
few of those can reconfigure ancient history.

ust  years ago, Croatian maritime archaeologist
Mario Jurišić wrote that the history of the Albanian
coast was “almost entirely unknown.” He asserted, “It is
only certain that maritime trade occurred in this area, and
that ports that paralleled the navigational route must have
existed here.”
That is an understatement. The Adriatic’s position between
ancient Rome to the west and the important Aegean and Black
Sea economies to the east means that it would have hosted
a great deal of ship traffic—and shipwrecks. Well before
RPMNF started working in the area, other finds pointed
to the region’s economic importance. In the early twentieth
century, archaeologists unearthed Butrint, a majestic city
founded in the seventh century b.c. at the southwestern tip
of Albania, and occupied from the Bronze Age through the
Ottoman period. And yet from the standpoint of nautical
archaeology, the Albanian coast, from western Greece north
to Montenegro, was a “gigantic blank spot,” says Royal, a
genial, wisecracking man who turns serious when discussing
Roman history.
“It seems so obvious,” he continues.“It’s an area you’d think
would be under a lot of influence from the economic and
political development happening in the region.”

J

was neatly arranged, much as it
“The bow is very close to the shore,
would have been onboard—sugand in a different position than in the
gesting the hull sank quickly, as a
official record,” says James P. Delgado,
vessel that hit a mine would have.
director of maritime heritage for the
“The dishes were still stacked,”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
says Delgado.
Administration, who joined the survey
Auron Tare, director of the
that summer, when he was president of
Albanian National Trust, folthe Institute of Nautical Archaeology
lowed the discovery with research
at Texas A&M University.
in the British National Archives.
The discovery came about when
He found a four-minute reel of
Delgado, an expert in twentiethfilm, shot from another ship, concentury wrecks, learned that the
firming the Volage was close to
year before, the team had found the
shore when it exploded. Togethremains of a wreck measuring about
Dishes and a canteen were seen in the wreckage
er, the discoveries upend decades
40 feet in length but had moved on of
the bow of the HMS Volage. The Cold War–era
of Cold War gospel.“All evidence
after determining the ship was moddestroyer (below) was in Albanian waters—
proves that the British ships
ern. Delgado wondered whether it
where it shouldn’t have been.
were not on innocent passage as
could be a piece of the Volage.
claimed,” says Tare, “but on a military operation.”
The team returned to the site to investigate. As the
By suggesting that the United Kingdom, and not Albania,
remotely operated vehicle reached the ocean floor,
was at fault in the blast, the Volage ruins “rewrite our underDelgado spied a partially buried steel hull lying on
standing” of one of the first incidents of the Cold War, says
its side in the mud, misshapen in a way suggestive
Delgado—a change with repercussions for geopolitics
of damage from an explosion. Electrical wiring
today. “We live in a world,” he says, “that is still strongly
established that the ship dated to World War
influenced by the Cold War.”
II or later. The surrounding debris, meanwhile,

www.archaeology.org

3

January 12, 1945. Another particularly striking modern find is the long-missing bow of the
HMS Volage, which is rewriting a controversial
bit of Cold War history (see sidebar on page
26). Nautical archaeologists are just starting
to understand the region, Royal stresses. But
that is an improvement on years past, he adds.
“Before, archaeologists didn’t even know what
questions to ask.”

T

he mood in the control room is tense.
Wilson steers the SeaEye toward the
anomaly using a 3-D model of the
seafloor generated by the ship’s GPS. Robb and
Royal are antsy, their eyes glued to the wall of
monitors.“This is when we turn into little kids,”
This early amphora, made in Sicily or southern Italy, probably carried wine
Robb says.
in the 5th or 4th century B.C. Such finds are changing our understanding
Suddenly in the corner of one screen a long,
of the place of the eastern Adriatic in ancient trade networks.
curved, gray-green object pops into view. “That
is an anchor!” Robb says, smiling.
But in the absence of more archaeological evidence, it was
“It’s a long daddy,” Royal chimes in, as the full object
hard to say with certainty what role the area played in regionappears on-screen. Octopus eggs hang off the curved fluke,
al trade. As a result, many historians embraced a narrative
and the shank is covered with tiny crustaceans. A lobster
put forth by ancient Roman texts—that the eastern shore of
clings to the tip.
the Adriatic was in fact not so economically critical, and that
Where there is an anchor, there is often a wreck, and now
the Illyrians, the people who inhabited it, were pirates, not
the expedition’s team members wonder whether they’ll break
traders. Polybius (ca. 200–118 b.c.) summed up what would
their dry spell. “This is a good sign,” Robb says, to no one in
become the prevailing analysis of Balkan maritime activity in
particular. Tare jogs in from the next room and kneels on the
Book II of The Histories: “For a long time previously they [the
floor to get a good look.
Illyrians] had been in the habit of maltreating vessels sailing
Wilson steers the SeaEye west, then north. A school of
from Italy, and now while they were at Phoenice, a number
fish swims into view—another good sign, since fish tend to
of them detached themselves from the fleet and robbed or
hide in wreck debris. The fish disappear, and a rectangular
killed many Italian traders, capturing and carrying off no
column, long and fuzzy with sea life, takes their place.
small number of prisoners.”
“Looks like wood!” Royal shouts.
Today, RPMNF and the Albanian Institute of Archaeol“Yep, wood,” Tare says.“Wow.” Then everyone is talking at
ogy are changing that interpretation. The surveys of Albaonce. “That looks like a cannon!” “Looks like a cannon lying
nian and surrounding waters have uncovered wrecks that
on something.” “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff here.” “A cannon
give strong evidence of trade. Last summer in Montenegrin
and an anchor—that means a ship!”
waters just north of Albania, RPMNF found a wreck site
The ship’s hull long ago disintegrated, but sure enough, the
covered with amphorae of a type known to have originated
team has found a wreck. The SeaEye’s cameras reveal a ram,
in Sicily and southern Italy, dating to the fourth century
two anchors, and fragments of five cannon. Robb announces
b.c., suggesting a clear commercial route across the Adriatic.
the discovery over his walkie-talkie, and the rest of the crew
The ship, Royal says, “would have been coming from Italy or
crowds into the tiny control room—captain, chef, videograSicily and continued right past northern Albania and into
pher, divers, and engineers, all vying for a look. Wilson traces
Montenegro”—providing further evidence that the region’s
the outline of the wreck with the SeaEye, and Royal decides,
people were traders rather than pirates. Royal believes the
based on the features of the cannon and anchors, that they
region may have also hosted trading partners for Corinth, the
are looking at a ship from the early eighteenth century. Later
ancient city-state in southern Greece established in the late
he will run the images past modern-era specialists, but his
seventh century b.c. RPMNF has already found five wrecks
assessment means that for now, at least, the team won’t linger
containing Corinthian amphorae, and Royal hopes future
there. There are simply too many ancient wrecks waiting to
work will reveal Corinthian trade routes.
be discovered. As the SeaEye hovers over the ocean floor,
Albanian waters are so archaeologically rich that the crew
though, the crew members take a minute to marvel. Then
is making modern discoveries as well. In 2007, RPMNF
they go back to work. ■
found what appear to be the remains of the HMS Regulus,
Mara Hvistendahl is a science journalist based in
a 235-foot World War II minesweeper that reportedly sank
The Netherlands.
off the southern shore of Albania after hitting a mine on
28

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

PIECES OF

HISTORY
On one of Britain’s most famous
battlefields, early gun fragments
hint at a new style of warfare
by Jarrett A. Lobell

www.archaeology.org

Two ffragments
found o
on the
Towton b
battlefield
are from th
the earliest
guns to have been
discovered in En
England on
the site of a known conflict.
Analysis has shown th
that at
least one of the guns was fired,
probably during the battle.

O

n a snowy Palm Sunday morning,
March 29, 1461, two armies met between
the villages of Towton and Saxton in North
Yorkshire, England. At stake was nothing
less than control of the English throne.
By the end of the next day, the Battle of
Towton, as it came to be known, was over. Thousands of
soldiers were dead, and the decades-long Wars of the Roses
had reached a turning point. The House of Lancaster, led by
King Henry VI, was routed by the forces of the House of
York, which soon assumed control of England under King
Edward IV. Although the actual number of casualties is a
matter of scholarly debate, the Battle of Towton is often
called Britain’s bloodiest battle.
29

When Tim Sutherland of the Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project began digging at
the site more than a decade ago, he expected to
find the usual artifacts of medieval warfare—
arrowheads, horse fittings, spurs, and graves.
What he did not expect to find was evidence
of new developments in armament technology
that would eventually change the way that
subsequent battles and wars were fought.
On what is believed to be the Lancastrian
side of the battlefield, Sutherland found the
remains of two guns, the earliest firearms
found on the site of a known battlefield in
Britain, and possibly Europe. Although we
know from historical sources that guns were
becoming popular on the battlefield at this
time, no examples this early have ever been
found at the site of a recognized conflict. The Battle of Towton pitted the House of Lancaster under King Henry VI (left)
against Edward of York, who would become King Edward IV (right).
Sources also tell us the Lancastrians hired
gunners from the Burgundy region of France,
noise and lots of smoke, and probably intimidated people
who were known to be up-to-date in their battle practices, to
who had never seen one. But they also might have blown up
fight alongside them as mercenaries. But with only these two
in a person’s face.”
guns for evidence—and the possible remains of a third—it’s
One of the main questions Sutherland wanted to answer
hard to gauge the weapons’ effectiveness on the battlefield.
was if the guns had actually been fired during the battle. He
“Although local bronze smiths knew how to cast bronze very
sent the fragments—earlier microscopic analysis had already
well—they made really good bells found just down the road
established that they were from two different guns—to
that still ring—these guns are poor castings, filled with air
Bruker AXS, a company specializing in high-tech scientific
bubbles,” says Sutherland.“The guns would have made a huge

The Towton Mass Grave Project

F

or more than 10 years, researchers from the University of Bradford have
been studying the Battle of Towton’s dead. Analysis of bones found in both
single and mass graves has shown that Towton’s warriors were larger and
more robust than other medieval populations. Evidence of healed injuries
suggests that some of them may have participated in armed conflict from a young
age. But on March 29, 1461, many suffered an extremely violent end, sustaining
injuries far beyond that necessary to cause death, and suggesting perimortem—
around the time of death—mutilation. The excessive violence of the injuries has
lead researchers to challenge the traditional picture of medieval warfare. Rather
than the commonly accepted view that it was chivalrous, the project’s directors
believe that the skeletons may be early evidence of the brutality more often encountered in the civil wars of the modern era.
The Towton Mass Grave Project is also challenging the received wisdom about
another aspect of the battle. According to archaeologist Tim Sutherland, the generally accepted figure of 28,000 war dead from the single day’s conflict may be grossly
exaggerated, and would represent approximately
10 times as many casualties as any other battle of
In addition to weapons and
artillery, excavators have
the Wars of the Roses. Sutherland says that early
uncovered the remains
estimates based on the graves’ dimensions suggest
of soldiers felled on the
that they held several thousand, rather than tens of
Towton battlefield, many of
whom had sustained injuries thousands. “The main site of the mass graves on the
Towton battlefield has now been located and awaits
from projectiles and handheld weapons.
imminent excavation,” says Sutherland.
30

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

A Superior Shot

I

t isn’t only the guns’ discovery that has provided scholars with new evidence of medieval
warfare’s advancement. In the center of the
Towton battlefield, Sutherland’s team also
uncovered a lead ball with a wrought-iron core.
It may seem like a small find, but, in fact, it is the
earliest example found in Europe of a specific type
of lead shot that would make artillery much more
lethal. Shot is a round piece of artillery—in contrast
to bullets, which are rounded cylinders and were not
made until the nineteenth century. Medieval shot
was fashioned of lead (or occasionally wrought iron).
“When you blast lead out of something and it hits
a hard target, like a castle, armor, horse, or person,
lead completely splatters,” says Sutherland, “so there
is not a lot of point in solid lead shot.” But neutron
tomography has shown that the shot from Towton
is composite shot, made of an iron cube inside a
spherical lead shell (shown at right). In contrast to
the earlier, simple lead shot, composite shot, with its
hard iron center, doesn’t totally shatter on impact.
Thus, the potential for far greater bodily harm to
one’s enemies is obvious. So far, there has been
no evidence linking this shot to one of the newly
discovered guns.
instrument manufacture and materials analysis. There, specialist
Mike Dobby used X-ray fluorescence to confirm that at least one
fragment had traces of both sulfur and lead inside. He believes the
sulfur is from the original gunpowder and the lead residue is from
shot, evidence that at least one of the guns was used during the battle.
Sutherland even believes he may be able to pinpoint what time the
round was fired. Primary sources, some of which were written only
days after the battle, suggest that the main conflict began between 9
a.m. and noon. “This would fit with it being a very cold day since the
guns heating up very quickly as they were first fired, possibly even
with their first shots, would have stressed the poor-quality castings
until they fractured and exploded,” says Sutherland.

A

lthough it is clear that a gun was fired at Towton, whether the expelled shot would have wounded or killed anyone it
hit is a question for future research. But the guns’ effectiveness
may be beside the point. Sutherland thinks it’s possible that a gun may
sometimes have been more of a fashion statement than a functional
weapon. “One can imagine a Lancastrian noble saying ‘I have to have
a gun,’ and even if he couldn’t get a good one, he might have had one
made that was of inferior quality, cast by nonexperts, or perhaps one
the manufacturer was passing off as high quality.” In the final analysis,
it may have been somewhat like showing up on a battlefield in a Ferrari. It would look great and be highly impressive, but as to its ability
to determine the outcome of the battle, the jury is still out. ■
Archaeologist Tim Sutherland of the
Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project
www.archaeology.org

Jarrett A. Lobell is executive editor of Archaeology.
31

L

ast March, preeminent filmmaker Werner Herzog was given unprecedented access to Chauvet Cave
in southeastern France to film the site’s Paleolithic art. The result, his film Cave of Forgotten Dreams,
which will be released this spring, is a document of some of humankind’s earliest and most extraordinary
paintings. Since the cave was discovered in December 1994, few people, mostly researchers, have seen the artwork,
owing to the cave’s extremely delicate climate and concerns about preserving the ancient paintings. But the film
is more than a tour of the cave. It is an exploration of what the science of archaeology is revealing about the
Aurignacian people—Europe’s first artists—and the origins of the modern human mind. Part of the film focuses
on the work of Jean Clottes, the former director of research for the Chauvet Cave Project, and Jean-Michel Geneste,
the project’s current director, and what their work tells us about how the Aurignacian people may have lived their
lives and connected to their world through art. In November, Archaeology senior editor Zach Zorich was
invited to Herzog’s Manhattan apartment for an extended interview about the unique challenges of making this
film, the kinship among artists across the ages, and Herzog’s archaeologist grandfather.

INTERVIEW

WERNER HERZOG
ON THE BIRTH OF ART
ARCHAEOLOGY: There are hundreds of ancient sites in the

world that have really fascinating artwork. What was it that
attracted you to Chauvet?
WERNER HERZOG: It is one of the greatest and most sensa-

tional discoveries in human culture and, of course, what is so
fascinating is that it was preserved as a perfect time capsule
for 20,000 years. The quality of the art, which is from a
time so far, so deep back in history, is stunning. It’s not that
we have what people might call the primitive beginnings of
painting and art. It is right there as if it had burst on the scene
fully accomplished. That is the astonishing thing, to understand that the modern human soul somehow awakened. It is
not a long slumber and a slow, slow, slow awakening. I think
it was a fairly sudden awakening. But when I say “sudden” it
may have gone over 20,000 years or so. Time does not factor
in when you go back into such deep prehistory.
ARCHAEOLOGY: You are famous for taking on some very
difficult challenges in filmmaking, especially in Fitzcarraldo
where you hauled a steamboat over a mountain. In this case,
the limitations were of a different nature. You had to stay
on a two-foot-wide walkway, and had only a short period
of time to film.
32

HERZOG: Yes, and having only three light panels. Of
course, we were only allowed to take along what we could
carry in our own hands, so we couldn’t move heavier
equipment into the cave. The most intense challenge came
from the fact that when filming in 3-D, you cannot move
a 3-D camera around like a regular film camera. If you
move, for example, closer to an object, the lenses actually
have to be closer together, and when you are fairly close
you even have to make them “squint” slightly. We had to
reconfigure our camera to take close-up shots of the paintings. It is a high-precision, technical thing to have to do, in
semidarkness on a narrow walkway. We had a fairly brief
period of time to film. When the researchers left in early
April, I had the cave practically undisturbed for filming,
but only for six days, and only four hours each day. Of
course, later in the season the carbon dioxide level in the
branch of the cave where you have the Panel of the Lions
becomes dangerously high. In other parts of the cave there
is a fairly high level of radon, and it has a cumulative effect
on your lungs. So, we had to move around between toxic
gases and radioactive gases.
ARCHAEOLOGY: Did these shooting conditions limit the
story you were able to tell?
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

HERZOG: No, I was able to tell what I had to tell, but we had
to be completely focused, very fast, and very professional. So,
when I am asked, what was your feeling inside the cave? Did
it somehow strike you like a religious experience? No, it was
professionalism that was foremost. But there were moments
where the crew moved out and I just stayed behind for five
minutes, which I apparently was not supposed to do. But I
did it anyway and the guards knew I wouldn’t do anything
foolish so I stood there in silence and looked.
ARCHAEOLOGY: What was it like in those five minutes?
HERZOG: It is really awesome, absolutely awesome.
ARCHAEOLOGY: The film seems to convey what it is really

like to be in the cave. How were you able to capture that?
HERZOG: We talked a lot about how still the cave is. When
you hold your breath you can actually hear your own heartbeat. I said to Jean Clottes, we have to have this in the film,
even if it’s staged, even if it’s a scripted text. But of course, it
is not fake. It is exactly what you experience when you are
in there. In making the film we paid attention to details, to
sound, to music. That’s what moviemaking is all about. It’s
about steering the flow of the viewers’ imagination, to awaken
the imagination, to sensitize them to sound, to sensitize them
to imagery, to sensitize them to life in general. The movie
proceeds very, very carefully and very methodically. And this
is why at the end when you see these endless shots and pans
of the paintings you see them with a different depth of feeling than if you were just going through a catalog. And that’s
what cinema can accomplish.

used by the artists. They did it with phenomenal skill, with
great artistic skill, and there was something expressive about
it, a drama of rock transformed and utilized, in the drama of
paintings. This is why it was imperative to shoot in 3-D.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Why did you choose to film in 3-D?
ARCHAEOLOGY: Were there any of

3-D was imperative because I initially thought
there were flat walls and paintings in the cave. But there are
no flat areas. The drama of the bulges and niches was actually

HERZOG:

Werner Herzog and director of photography
Peter Zeitlinger review footage from Cave of
Forgotten Dreams, which was filmed in 3-D.

the paintings that you
found particularly striking or moving?
Yes, the Panel of the Horses and the Panel of
the Lions, of course. The lions in particular are just incredible because a whole group of lions is looking, is stalking
something. The intensity of their gaze, all looking exactly at
something, focusing on something. You don’t know exactly
on what they focus and it has an intensity of art, of depiction,
which is just awesome.

HERZOG:

ARCHAEOLOGY: You also say that there is a sense of motion

in some of these images, and talk about this as being an early
form of animation. Do you feel a connection between what
the cave artists at Chauvet were doing and what you were
doing as a filmmaker?
HERZOG: Well, there is one moment in the film where I am

speaking about the charcoal that was found in the vicinity of
the Panel of the Horses, the charcoal fires. There is a row of
fires which was used for illumination, but placed in a way that
when you are close to the Panel of the Horses your own shadARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

ow becomes a part of the image, apparently as an integral part
of the staging. Of course in the film, I couldn’t help showing
Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time,
which is quintessential cinema. In it, a human being, Fred
Astaire, is moving with his own shadows and all of a sudden
the shadows do something separate and become independent
of him, do mischief, and he still catches up and dances with
them. It is one of the great moments of cinema.
You admire the cinema of the past, but
you have said that the imagery of today’s civilization is
inadequate, that it is absurd and useless, and that the lack of
adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude as the
overcrowding of our planet. Why do you believe that, and
how does this film confront that issue?

ARCHAEOLOGY:

HERZOG: Well, that’s a very condensed form of a more com-

plex thought, which has to do with language and imagery.
When you are looking around at images, when you watch
television for six consecutive hours, or when you open a
catalog from a travel agency, you immediately know those
are worn-out images not really adequate to our state of
civilization. If you are lagging behind it is dangerous, and
it brings decay with it. In America, for example, you have a
lot of innovation in language. However, almost worldwide,
there are very few attempts to bring images up to the status
of our civilization.
www.archaeology.org

The Panel of the Big Lions shows a pride of 14 individuals
stalking bison. The painting follows the contours of a niche in
the cave wall, lending dimensionality to each of the figures.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Another idea you have mentioned is that
you are searching for a new grammar of imagery, and I was
wondering how the images of Chauvet Cave play into that,
or do they?

That’s a very interesting question because my
immediate reaction was, what you see there is not just a
vocabulary—this is a megaloceros, this is a wooly rhino, this
is a lion. Yes, you do have a complete new vocabulary for the
first time, but you also have new grammar: How do horses
interact with each other? How do lions charge and stalk?
It’s the entire ensemble, focused on something that we do
not see. So there’s a very mysterious, obvious grammar of
depiction there, narratives, whole stories. And, by the way,
the painters of Chauvet are not accountants of truth, of the
variety of species. They are not accountants. They are not
cinema verité of their time.
HERZOG:

ARCHAEOLOGY: They are not creating a taxonomy.
HERZOG: Exactly. They are creating something at a complete-

ly different level, something imaginary, probably ritualistic. I
say this with necessary caution: probably something interi35

or—the interior landscape of their souls. And it coincides
with the landscape near the cave, the Pont d’Arc with this
natural arch, which is like a purely Wagnerian opera stage.
ARCHAEOLOGY: You are talking about a limestone arch that
goes over the river Ardeche.

The Panel of the Horses is among the cave’s most technically
adept paintings. The figure of the horse on the right was
outlined in charcoal, shaded with a mixture of charcoal and
clay, and engraved around its profile with fine white lines.

HERZOG: Yes, what I am trying to say in the movie’s voiceover is that this kind of staging of the landscape as an interior
landscape does not belong to the German romanticists alone.
It belongs to the Aurignacian people, and that makes them
immediately familiar to me. The kind of wild, exuberant
fantasy and the stylizations. I’ve done this all my life in my
movies. That is why I feel absolutely at home, in a way, when
I move into the cave, as strange and as remote and as foreign
as some of it is, and beyond the reach of my understanding.
But that doesn’t matter. There were people out there who
created something absolutely fantastic.

way, completely accomplished, and somehow, of course,
adequate to the civilization of Aurignacian man, no doubt
about it. We should never forget the dexterity of these people.
They were capable of creating a flute. It is a high-tech procedure to carve a piece of mammoth ivory and split it in half
without breaking it, hollow it out, and realign the halves. We
have one indicator of how well their clothing was made. In
a cave in the Pyrenees, there is a handprint of a child maybe
four or five years old. The hand was apparently held by his
mother or father, and ocher was spit against it to get the
contours and you see part of the wrist and the contours of a
sleeve. The sleeve is as precise as the cuffs of your shirt. The
precision of the sleeve is stunning.

ARCHAEOLOGY: And at the end of the film you introduce

ARCHAEOLOGY: You have resisted having the label “artist”

a postscript, the idea of radioactive mutant albino crocodiles
from a nearby animal preserve getting loose and heading for
Chauvet. Why did you do that?

applied to you. Were the people of Chauvet artists or craftsmen in your estimation?

HERZOG: It has to do with pure science fiction fantasy. That

is the beauty of it. It allows me to introduce the idea that I
am not an accountant of truth, that I intensify something,
something into an ecstasy of truth instead. I’ve been very
much into the quest for ecstatic truth in all my films.
ARCHAEOLOGY: Do the incredible images in the cave con-

front this problem of worn-out imagery?
HERZOG: No, not explicitly. But it shows that images burst
onto the scene and into our consciousness in a phenomenal
36

HERZOG: In this case, you can clearly say this is art, and
you can say it easily. It goes back to a time when there was,
for example, no art market, no exhibitions, no galleries. No
doubt in my heart that this is art, and it’s some of the greatest
that the human race ever created, period. It can’t get any better, and it hasn’t gotten much better. That’s a great mystery.
ARCHAEOLOGY: There is a great shot in the film of a painting of a half-woman, half-bison figure that wraps around
a stalactite. Until now, the painting has only been photographed from one side. How difficult was it to get that shot
considering the constraints of the cave?
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Well, we were not allowed to step beyond the
walkway. When we were alone and only with the guards, at
the end of one of the last days, I said, “let’s give it a try.” We
had a boom for the mike with us, although we had no sound
man, and I said to the guards, “If we held the camera man
and tied him securely to the boom, could he possibly extend
this tiny camera a little bit beyond the walkway?” And they
looked at us, and they looked at the camera, and they just
nodded and knew we would do it right. We couldn’t extend
it really far otherwise the pole might have fallen over so we
were still limited. But we’ve seen a little bit more than anyone
else could ever see. But in a way it’s good that you do not
know what is on the other side of this stalactite and how
the painting continues. Sometimes it is better to have a big
question and no answer.

HERZOG:

ARCHAEOLOGY: Why is that?
HERZOG: Because it is much more intriguing. It becomes
much more an element that forces us to think, forces us to
imagine, forces us to use all our intelligence and all our capacity for vision. And it’s the same in archaeology. You hardly
ever have full answers and much of the interpretation has
to be with a clear vision and understanding of how people
would live, let’s say, in England in late Neolithic times. How
do you imagine it, and how do you visualize it and interpret
things? That’s the beauty of it, which is beyond the sheer
factual findings.
Just below the Panel of the Horses is an
image called the Confronted Rhinoceroses,
which may depict two males fighting or a
male and a female about to mate.

ARCHAEOLOGY: You’ve talked about how culture conditions the way we interpret images. Have we lost something
between the modern day and the time of Chauvet?

No, not lost. We simply have changed. We are
fundamentally changed and yet there is something about
humanness, there is something about the modern human
soul, which awakened during the time of Chauvet, or maybe
a little bit earlier, we don’t know.

HERZOG:

ARCHAEOLOGY: What is your definition of humanness?
HERZOG: I think as Jean-Michel Geneste says, it is an
adaptation to the world, language, symbolic representations,
including rituals like burial, like probably cannibalism, initiation rites. There is a point where we shift away from a purely
material culture.
ARCHAEOLOGY: Do you feel the story that science is telling

of Chauvet Cave is inadequate in some way?
HERZOG: No, its not inadequate, and I’m glad that it does
not proclaim to have a full explanation. There is a younger
generation of archaeologists at work who are very much into
declaring the findings as they are and not over-interpreting
them. Everything in the previous generations was declared
ritualistic and part of ceremonies and the young generation
says “maybe, but we do not know.” I find it a healthy attitude.
It will certainly be the school of archaeology that will prevail
in the foreseeable future.
ARCHAEOLOGY: You included quite a bit about the way
archaeology is done in this film. As I was doing research

for this interview, I was surprised to find out that you actually have a very personal connection to archaeology. Your
grandfather, Rudolph Herzog, was an archaeologist who
excavated in Greece.

imagine how it looked with forests and where a facility like
that might be built. I really liked him for that. Unfortunately,
he was insane at the end of his life and I practically know him
only as being insane, but I really loved him.

HERZOG: Yes, he discovered and excavated the Asklepieion,

ARCHAEOLOGY:

on the island of Kos, and that was his life’s work in the early
twentieth century.

Asklepieion?

ARCHAEOLOGY: What is the Asklepieion?
HERZOG: Dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine, it
was like a hospital and resort. I think my grandfather came
across it through studying texts. Originally he was a classicist.
He was a teacher of ancient Greek at a university, and at
that time there were discoveries of texts, and one was a text
by Herondas, a fairly unimportant writer. It describes the
Asklepieion—two women are in dialogue and describe it.
My grandfather set out and left his profession as a classicist
behind, a little bit like Schliemann [Heinrich Schliemann,
the discoverer of a city that may be Troy from Homer’s Iliad].
He was just barely 30 or so, got married, and took his wife,
my grandmother, to the island of Kos.

Did you have a chance to visit the

HERZOG: Yes. I went out when I was 15. I was more interested in my grandfather’s generation than in my parents’
generation and I followed his footsteps trying to find out
what he had done and where he had done it. That is why I
went to Greece and actually made my first long feature film
in 1966 on the island of Kos, Signs of Life.
ARCHAEOLOGY: As you were making this film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, were you surprised at how much archaeology
has changed since the days of your grandfather?

HERZOG: Yes, or since Schliemann. My grandfather was
basically at the end of that generation, more or less. There
were more modern methods at that time, and I think he
looked at Schliemann with a suspicious eye considering the
techniques they applied at the time. It’s quite extraordinary
ARCHAEOLOGY: This would have been the early 1900s.
what they are doing now. How they have new, almost forensic-like science to collect pollen and understand the vegetaHERZOG: Yes, and he had an astonishing eye for locations.
tion. They do things that are unprecedented, in a way, and it’s
I have seen, for example, a vast field with all these trees and
very beautiful to see that. I’m really intrigued by modern-day
vineyards. Somehow in the middle of all this he chose to dig
archaeology. For example, a square foot in one of the caves
and found a late Roman bath. How? Why right there? Or,
in the film—it took five months to remove half a centimeter
the Asklepieion, which is high up on the slope of this small
of sediment. Every single grain of sand was picked up with
mountain ridge on the island. He had a fantastic eye for
a pair of pincers and documented with laser measurements.
a situation that was, let’s say, 2,000 years earlier. He could
And all of a sudden it makes clear things like the flute, the
flute from Hohle Fels Cave [in Germany],
which is mammoth ivory, and the tiny
To preserve the cave’s fragile environment, Herzog and his crew had to
fragments that were not understood for
do all of their filming from a metal walkway that runs through the cave.
decades, but they were preserved. That’s
a fine thing, yes, until somebody came
who had the kind of imagination like the
young woman who is in the film, Maria
Malina, an archaeological technician who
had the insight and started to put the
fragments together.

Yes, I think those
moments of insight really draw people
into archaeology.

ARCHAEOLOGY:

HERZOG: Yes, of course. We do not need

any other Tutankhamun’s tomb with all
its treasures. We need context. We need
understanding. We need knowledge of
historical events to tie them together. We
don’t know much. Of course we know a
lot, but it is context that’s missing, not
treasures. ■
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Some of the paintings in Chauvet
Cave incorporate claw marks
left by bears, making the art an
interspecies collaboration.

A CHAUVET PRIMER
Dating
After the cave paintings were discovered in December 1994,
the first question archaeologists faced was, how old are they?
At first glance, the paintings’ technical sophistication made
them seem relatively recent, perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 years
old. Radiocarbon dating of the charcoal in the black pigments, however, showed that the earliest paintings in the cave
were made 35,000 years ago. The date overturned the idea
that Europe’s earliest cave paintings were crude and simple
and that artistic techniques had to be refined over thousands
of years before the finest cave art could be made. More than
80 radiocarbon dates have been taken from the torch marks
and paintings on the walls, as well as the animal bones and
charcoal that litter the floor, providing a detailed chronology
of the cave. The dates show that the artwork was made in two
separate periods, one 35,000 and one 30,000 years ago.

Cave Bears
The way that people used Chauvet Cave was shaped by their
interactions with the cave’s primary residents, the now-extinct
cave bear. Humans do not appear to have lived in the cave and
it is likely that the paintings were made in the spring or summer when the bears would not have been hibernating. The
bears themselves seem to have held a special significance for
the artists who worked in the cave, in addition to being subjects of the artwork. A bear skull was placed on top of a large,
flat rock in an area called the Skull Chamber. There is evidence a fire was lit before it was set there, raising the possibility
that it had some kind of ritual function. More than 190 bear
skulls have been found in the cave, giving paleontologists an
enormous amount of information about a species that disappeared 20,000 to 25,000 years ago and used caves in ways that
were similar to how humans used them. The bears organized
the space within the cave by digging shallow depressions in
More than 190 cave bear skulls have been found
in Chauvet Cave. Why this one was placed at the
edge of a large stone block remains a mystery.
www.archaeology.org

Tracings

the cave floor, possibly as sleeping areas.
They also made their own marks on the
cave walls by repeatedly raking their
claws across the limestone, incising sets
of four parallel lines. In some cases the
paintings in Chauvet Cave are a kind
of collaboration between humans and
bears. Human artists incorporated
claw marks into some of their paintings. In others, cave bears made their
marks on top of the paintings, adding
a new element to the images that cave
art expert Jean Clottes calls “the magic
of the bears.”

Studying the paintings is an intensive process that begins
by going into the cave to photograph an image. The digital
photograph is enlarged in the laboratory. Then a researcher
places a sheet of transparent plastic over the photo and traces
the image in as much detail as possible. The tracing is then
brought inside the cave to check it against the original painting. At this stage the researchers also move a light at different
angles around the painting to reveal any hidden details of the
image. The process forces the researchers to put themselves
in the place of the painters and understand the variety of
techniques that were used to make the artwork. Some of the
images were made after scraping away a layer of dark brown
clay that covers the cream-colored limestone walls. Most
were made by drawing with a piece of charcoal, or painting
with a brush or finger covered in red pigment, or by spitting pigment against the wall. As the tracing is created, the
research team learns how the images were composed and the
order in which the lines were drawn. “People ask me, ‘Why
don’t you use photos?’” says Clottes. “Well, a photo is not a
study…the human mind is still the better computer.”—ZZ

THE NEW UPPER
Recent digs at
Copper Age sites
across Europe are
overturning longheld beliefs about
the continent’s
earliest cultures
by Andrew Curry
40

O

nce largely ignored by the scholarly community,
the Copper Age has become a hot topic. Since the collapse of communism in 1989 opened doors for western
scholars in countries including Bulgaria, Romania, and
Ukraine, a new appreciation for the region’s prehistory
is taking hold. The centuries between 5000 and 3500
b.c. are now seen as a crucial transition period during which early Europeans began to use metal tools, developed complex social structures, and
established far-flung cultural and trading networks.
Far from being a historical footnote, Copper Age Europe was a technological and social proving ground. Archaeologists have found the earliest
evidence of distinctions between rich and poor, rulers and the ruled. There
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

is no evidence of social hierarchy prior to this period, in the
Neolithic, or Stone Age. Until recently, scholars assumed the
Copper Age was no more advanced. “Copper Age and Neolithic societies are always described as egalitarian, or as less
complex,” says German Archaeological Institute researcher
Svend Hansen. The latest discoveries, however, suggest that
humanity’s first hesitant steps out of the Neolithic were probably taken as a result of the development of metalworking
and the changes in society that came along with this technological breakthrough.

B

CLASS
Beginning in the early 1970s,
archaeologists excavating
the Copper Age site of Varna,
Bulgaria, uncovered evidence
of the emergence of a class
system in prehistoric Europe.
In one grave (pictured
above in a reconstruction
from the Varna Museum of
Archaeology), the remains of
a man buried with more than
two pounds of gold pointed to
his economically and socially
superior position in society.
www.archaeology.org

eginning around  b.c., a wave of pioneers from
the Middle East settled in southeastern Europe. They
brought with them the first agricultural technology,
including domesticated grains such as barley and wheat, and
livestock such as sheep and cattle. But they were still using
flint tools. Around 5000 b.c., someone may have had a lucky
accident. Heating certain green stones (malachite) or blue
stones (azurite) produced shiny beads of copper, a malleable
metal that could be melted and shaped into weapons, tools,
and jewelry. Hartwick College archaeologist David Anthony
says the first metalworkers may have been regarded as magicians, turning green pebbles into gleaming knives and axes.
Demand for their specialized skill and products set in motion
the emergence of a ruling class.
Over the next 1,000 years, in the area that is now Greece,
Turkey, Hungary, and the Balkans, simple farming villages
slowly became substantial settlements, with solidly built
houses, finely worked pottery, and trade networks that linked
settlements together.
In the last 20 years, researchers all over Europe have
been comparing Copper Age sites and discovering that the
Balkans were a kind of trading gateway to other areas of
prehistoric Europe, including France, Spain, and Germany.
Along the Danube, early traders transporting copper could
have reached southern Germany and, from there, followed
the Alps to France. Skirting the Carpathians led to what is
now Poland, where they exchanged their prized metal goods
for jade axes and sacred shells. “The Copper Age used to be
seen as a regional phenomenon, but all these areas somehow
connected. The know-how to make copper developed in the
Balkans and quickly spread elsewhere,” Hansen says.

T

he study of the Copper Age in Europe is synonymous with one woman,
anthropologist Marija Gimbutas. Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1921, Gimbutas fled to Germany when the Soviet Union invaded the Baltic states in 1939
and later moved to the U.S. She spent her career at Harvard and UCLA studying the
archaeology and prehistory of Eastern Europe.
Even though Gimbutas died in 1994, archaeologists today are still working in her
shadow. In 1974, Gimbutas coined the term “Old Europe” to describe the cultures
that emerged in southeastern Europe during the Copper Age. She was convinced
that the people who lived between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean before the
Bronze Age were peaceful farmers living in small, simply organized groups. Though
minor cultural differences like pottery styles and settlement patterns separated nearly
a dozen different Old European regional cultures including the Varna, Karanovo,
41

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At sites across the former Communist Bloc,
archaeologists are uncovering surprising evidence
of Copper Age culture. Female figurines like this
one from the site of Dra
˘ gus
¸eni, Romania, are some off
e.
the most characteristic artifacts of the Copper Age.

Cucuteni, Tripol’ye, Cernavoda, Bodrogkeresztur,
and Gumelniţa, Gimbutas argued they had more
similarities than differences.
Gimbutas was captivated by some of the most
distinctive artifacts of the Copper Age—clay,
bone, and later copper figurines that appear at
sites across the region beginning around 6000
b.c. Ninety percent of the figurines are female,
but they have little in common with the plump,
sexual “Venus” totems from tens of thousands off
years earlier in western Europe, such as the Venuss
tly
of Willendorf. Copper Age figurines are less overtly
ous
sexual and Gimbutas interpreted them as religious
omeobjects. They’re often found in seated poses, someylized
times even on their own tiny ceramic chairs. Stylized
bone and clay figurines of this type—Gimbutas dubbed
ns near
them “goddesses”—found during new excavations
Pietrele in Romania had pierced ears and copper anklets
and necklaces.
Based on these female figurines, Gimbutas argued that
the small, prosperous settlements found on top of mounds
throughout the region were the product of a society run
by women. These “Old Europeans” were “matrifocal …
agricultural and sedentary, egalitarian and peaceful,” she
wrote in her 1974 book Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, a
tremendously influential tome that was later reissued with
the title slightly but provocatively altered to Goddesses and
Gods of Old Europe.
According to Gimbutas, this feminist utopia thrived in
the Danube Valley and the Balkans for 2,000 years. Then,
around 4000 b.c., calamity struck. Horse-riding invad42

ers from the east, “patriarchal, stratified, pastoral, mobile,
and war-oriented,” swept into Old Europe from the Central Asian steppes. These Proto-Indo-European invaders
replaced the Old European goddesses with the aggressive
male gods we know today.
Her explanation of the era’s end—cruel eastern hordes
snuffing out a superior, more democratic civilization—fit
neatly with the anti-Soviet sentiments of her time. But as new
evidence emerges, many of her most extravagant claims have
now come under fire from a new generation of scholars. “If
I have to be honest, everything Gimbutas has written about
the structure of societies is not very correct,” says Vladimir
Slavchev, curator of the Varna Museum of Archaeology.

I

n 
, a construction worker discovered a
prehi
prehistoric cemetery while digging a trench for electric
cable
cables in Varna, Bulgaria, a small city on the shore of
the Black Sea. After the worker alerted archaeologi
gists, Bulgarian authorities authorized a massive
ex
excavation that lasted until 1991. Researchers
eve
eventually uncovered more than 300 graves containm than 15,000 artifacts. The Varna cemetery,
ing more
which Slavchev says was in use for less than a century
some ttime between 4600 and 4400 b.c., was filled with
an as
astounding variety of flint, jade, gold, and copper
tool
tools. There were also weapons, mostly flint, jade,
and copper axes, some of which were covered in
go
gold foil. In addition, the graves held gold necklaces,
r
rings,
scepters, and even a gold penis sheath.
Distinctive pottery and carbon dating of
o
organic
remains marked Varna as a Copper Age
si and it remains the world’s earliest major gold
site,
ho
hoard.
As important as the dramatic finds were, so

Among the six pounds of gold artifacts found in the graves at
Varna, were several zoomorphic figures, such as the one above,
likely depicting bulls, which may have been used as amulets.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Since 2004, archaeologist Svend Hansen has been working
at Pietrele, Romania, one of the most thoroughly excavated
Copper Age sites in Europe.

was their distribution. “More than six pounds of gold was
found in the cemetery, but most of it was found in just four
graves,” says Slavchev.
More than two pounds were found in a single tomb containing the body of a man between 45 and 50 years old. The
discovery was explosive. Excavations at the site reinvigorated
interest in the archaeology of the region, and in what the
Copper Age could tell us about the development of complex
civilizations. Archaeologists had long assumed the societies of the Copper Age were organized much like the small
bands of Stone Age farmers that preceded them—simple,
egalitarian hamlets without much need for hierarchy or class
differences. But “it is clear that the Varna cemetery illustrates
the early emergence of a kind of class or political and social
structure,” Slavchev says.
The people buried in Varna’s graves had contact with
others from relatively far-off regions. Metallurgical analysis
of the copper used to make the axe heads and jewelry found
in many of the Varna burials showed that it was mined from
multiple sources, some almost 150 miles away. Shell jewelry
from the Mediterranean, more than 300 miles away, was a
popular ornament. The long-distancee trade, probably carried out along the region’s rivers and on foot in an age
before the wheel and domesticated horses, was a
remarkable feat of organization and power. The
me benhandful of rich graves shows that some
egins in
efited more than others. “Inequality begins
the cemetery at Varna,” says Hansen.

D

iscoveries at the site of
lso
Pietrele in Romania have also
rgone a long way toward overn
turning the idea of Old Europe as an
egalitarian idyll. Hansen started digging at Pietrele, one of the Gumelniţa
culture sites, in 2002 after using geomagnetic scanners to map the buried settlement’s layout. In the past,
archaeologists studying the Copper
hen
Age had focused on tells formed when
ctures,
people built houses on top of old structures,
s.
over and over, sometimes for centuries.
lassic example
At first glance, the Pietrele tell is a classic
example.
Located a few miles north of the Danube River, it’s a pronounced mound about 30 feet high. From the top of the tell,
the view to the south in 4500 b.c. would have taken in a wide,
lush plain, crisscrossed by meandering streams and dotted
with meadows and marshes, making it an ideal place for a
settlement. By analyzing the bones found on and around the
tell, archaeologists know that the lowlands yielded ample fish,
mussels, and turtles. Plains atop a nearby plateau provided
a steady supply of wild boar, horses, and deer for enterpriswww.archaeology.org

ing hunters. “We have catfish bones as thick as your wrist,”
Hansen marvels. “That’s an eight-foot fish.” (The area today
is primarily scrubby, ill-kept fields. After Romania’s communist government channeled and redirected the
Danube in the 1960s, fishermen in Pietrele
were left high and dry for the firrst time in
millennia.)
Previous digs at tells in Bulgaria and
a Romania from the same time period had given
archaeologists an impression of sm
small, tightly
knit settlements. Most of the region’
regions tells have
fewer than 20 houses, enough to co
comfortably
fit a group of 60 to 80 people. “With 80
Around 5000 ı, metalworkers
metalworker began
to make tools, utensils, and orn
ornaments
from copper as well as bone, llike these
discovered at Pietrele (left).

people, it’s hard to imagine a complex so
society with
a hierarchy,” Hansen says. “It’s hard to imagine
ima
many
complex economic activities in a settlement tthat small.”
As expected, Hansen’s first geomagnetic surveys of Pietrele
packe together
showed a knot of 25 houses atop the tell, packed
with just a few feet between each dwelling
dwelling. Bu
But Hansen
decided to expand his search, running geomagnetic sensors
over the flat area at the base of the tell. To his surprise, the
survey revealed foundations for as many as 120 houses. For
the last six years, Hansen’s team has uncovered the remains of
these 6,300-year-old houses, first on top of the tell and then,
beginning in 2009, in the lower settlement. “Two hundred
people might have lived here once,” Hansen says.
German Archaeological Institute archaeologist Agathe
Reingruber, who was born in Romania and immigrated to
43

Germany with her parents in 1990, oversees pottery experts
and local workers at Pietrele who clean and catalog ceramic
sherds in a makeshift classroom workshop. In a typical
season, the team may excavate close to 40,000 pieces of
pottery—almost a ton of broken pots, jars, and plates.
Inside one house, Reingruber found the shattered remnants of hundreds of clay pots and jars, some distorted and
melted by fire. She also found scattered copper pins, precious
objects in the early days of metalworking. Forensic analysis
of more than 200 human bones found in the house identified the bones of four children, a man and a woman in their
20s, and an older couple in their 50s—a Copper Age family
killed in a house fire almost 6,000 years ago.
Pietrele is one of the most thoroughly excavated Copper
Age settlements ever dug. Hansen has uncovered more than
2000 whetstones and grindstones, some weighing more
than 100 pounds; more than 9,000 flint tools; a collection
of human and animal figurines made of bone and clay; and
more than 200 copper blades, axes, pins, and rings. “We
have more copper artifacts at Pietrele than all the rest of
the Gumelniţa sites combined,” says Romanian Institute of
Archaeology copper expert Meda Toderas.
As the team sifted through the data, clear trends emerged.
Although the foundations of all the houses are roughly
the same size, the interiors weren’t the same. For instance,
certain types of artifacts are found in certain houses. Three
layers of houses built on the same spot contained nearly all
the hunting weapons in the settlement, while another
he
contained ceramic loom weights, some of the
earliest known evidence for weaving.
Reingruber and Hansen say the finds show
that the houses on top of the tell were richer.
They had nicer, more elaborately decorated
pottery and more shell jewelry. All but one
of the copper objects found at Pietrele so far
came from the tell, not the surrounding lower
settlement. And judging from the bones they
threw away, the people who lived on the tell
ate more wild game like deer and boar, perhaps
showing that only the upper crust spent their
time hunting.
The excavations at Pietrele confirm what thee
o.
rich graves of Varna first suggested 30 years ago.
y,
For perhaps the first time in human history,
n
social and class divisions can be seen clearly in
the archaeological record.“Social stratification is
er
closely linked to metal production,” Reingruber
es,
says. “You have to be a specialist to handle ores,
a specialist to extract copper.”
me
With some villagers spending all their time
In the past, scholars have sometimes
etimes
interpreted the female figurines found
und at
Copper Age sites across Europe, such as this
one from Pietrele, as goddesses. However,
owever,
current research is challenging this interpretation.
retation.
44

A
Agathe Reingruber cleans and catalogs tens
o
of thousands of pieces of pottery that are
u
uncovered each season at Pietrele alongside
th
the copper artifacts.

doin one thing—a metalworker, for example,
doing
w
would have had to spend all his time producin
ing copper—elaborate social structures must
ha
have developed to ensure the settlement’s
spe
specialists were fed and clothed. That level of
oorganization probably required both large
ssettlements and someone at the top giving
oorders. “We’re suddenly not in the Neolithic
aanymore, where everyone’s a generalist, but
in a specialist society that has to be organ
nized,” Hansen says. “You have to reckon with
in
inequality and rulership.”

H

undreds of miles to the northeast of Pietrele, in central Ukraine,
University of Durham archaeologist
John Chapman is working to unravel the mystery
c
of a culture
that existed at the same time as the
people of Varna and the Gumelniţa culture found
Pietr Called the Tripol’ye, their settlements
at Pietrele.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

look very different from the tall,
layered tells found in Romania
and Bulgaria. At some Tripol’ye
sites, archaeologists have found
the remains of more than 1,500
nearly identical houses spread
out on the flat plains. At first,
Ukrainian archaeologists sug-egested that these “mega-settleies,
ments” were the world’s first cities,
es by
predating Mesopotamian cities
hapman
more than 1,000 years. But Chapman
ult of houses
says they may just be the result
being abandoned and then rebuilt nearby—a sortt
of creeping, horizontal tell that sprawled over more
than 1,000 acres. Carbon dating, capable of estimating ages within a century or two, isn’t precise
enough to tell which house was built when, and “so
far no one’s been able to figure out a way to date the
Tripol’ye sites, so nobody knows how many were
occupied at the same time,” Chapman says. The sheerr
vel
size of the sprawling settlements suggests a higher level
of organization, and researchers are searching for hard
ve 1,500
evidence of social structures. “If you really do have
ow there
houses occupied at the same time, it’s hard to see how
wasn’t social hierarchy.”
Chapman is hoping to find funding to excavate one
of these mega-settlements. In the meantime, he has used
extensive geomagnetic surveying to map the settlements
from the surface. A few years ago, Chapman found a large
building, bigger than its neighbors by a factor of three. “If
The specialization required to make these copper
implements found at Varna created the need for
centralized organization and leadership, spurring the rise
of class distinctions.

The surprising evidence of long distance trade
in Europe in the 5th millennium ı includes
ornaments made of Spondylus, a type of shell
ornament
found in the Aegean and Mediterranean Sea, at
Copper Age sites such as Cernavoda
Coppe
˘ , Romania.

yo have a mega-city, you would expect to find
you
m
mega-buildings,” he says. “That’s a hint toward a
bbit more social complexity.”

P

ietrele was occupied for a few centuries starting around 4500 b.c. Then, some
time around 4250 b.c. the settlement was
abruptly aba
abandoned. At hundreds of tells
all across the region, radiocarbon dates
s
tell a similar
story. “There are a lot of
radio
radiocarbon
dates for 4700, 4600,
45
4500, 4300, and then it drops
off a cliff,” says Anthony, who
oorganized a definitive exhibition
oof Copper Age artifacts at the
In
Institute for the Study of the
An
Ancient World at New York University called The Lost World of Old
Europe “Something
“So
Europe.
really catastrophic—
something culture-ending—happened there.”
In the end, perhaps the people of Old Europe simply
exhausted the potential of the technology they had at hand.
Metalworking, however miraculous it may have seemed,
wasn’t enough. They still lacked the advancements, including
writing and the wheel, that pushed later civilizations, such
as those in Mesopotamia, into more complex social organization. “Maybe they just were not able to make that last big
step,” Reingruber says. ■
Andrew Curry is a contributing editor to Archaeology.

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LETTER FROM IRAQ
The author’s M1117 Armored
Security Vehicle is parked next to
the 4,000-year-old ziggurat in Ur.

The Ziggurat Endures
An American soldier reflects on his experience at the ancient city of Ur

by Michael Taylor

T

he city of Ur, once the
largest in the world and
the crown jewel of one of
humanity’s first civilizations, sits in a
wasteland at the edge of a war zone.
In late spring, the temperature easily
hits 120 degrees as the blazing sun
reflects off endless sand flats and
yellow Sumerian brick. A 45-minute
walk around the site is exhausting
even for a very fit person. The ruins,
which were inhabited from roughly
3000 to 300 b.c., consist mostly
of brick walls, some of which are
partially restored, revealing the
outlines of monumental complexes
www.archaeology.org

such as shrines, storehouses, and
elite residences. The ruins are
now abandoned, save for a solitary
shopkeeper who sits in a ramshackle
hut marked “Shop Ziggurat,” where
he sells trinkets and Mesopotamianthemed souvenirs.
I went to Ur in May 2008 as
neither archaeologist nor tourist, but
as a platoon leader in an American
infantry battalion, responsible for
30 soldiers and 10 gun trucks. The
ancient Sumerian city is within Tallil
Air Force Base, near Nasiriya, Iraq.
Few Westerners have been privileged
to see it. In 1999, Saddam Hussein

even denied Pope John Paul II access
to the site, supposedly the birthplace
of Abraham (ca. 1800 b.c.). But
since 2003, American military
personnel have been able to convoy
into Tallil and drive straight into
the ruins, putting down rifles and
picking up cameras.
Above the tiny shop—we soldiers
were its only customers—looms the
heart of Ur, the best-preserved ziggurat in all of Iraq. The classic steppyramid temple consists of two tiers
stacked one atop the other, with three
converging staircases in front. It is six
stories tall and its footprint would fill
47

The author, from the 1-160th Infantry of the California National Guard, poses on the steps
of the ziggurat at Ur. Few Westerners were able to visit when Saddam Hussein was in
power, but since 2003, American military personnel have had easy access to the site.

more than half a football field. In an
otherwise barren landscape, it exerts
an almost gravitational pull, drawing
visitors up the steep yellow steps. It
is a great artificial mountain of brick,
and long ago it gave the Mesopotamians a brush with their gods.
The ruins of the city cover roughly
30 acres around the ziggurat. As one
walks through the larger site, potsherds crunch underfoot. It is impossible not to step on them. The Sumerians simply tossed their rubbish in
the streets, gradually raising the level
of their cities as garbage accumulated
over hundreds of generations. And a
few hundred yards from the ziggurat,
there is the great necropolis of Ur,
where dozens of tombs and pits lie
open, their inhabitants removed by
British archaeologists decades ago.
When my platoon visited the site,
I was the officer in charge. At most
tourist sites, you have to wait in line,
purchase a ticket, and see things
under the supervision of custodians
and docents. But in Ur we were free to
wander and enjoy a few rare moments
of peace. Most of our time in-theater
48

was spent sucking sand, dealing with
military snafus, and worrying about
getting blown up. Ur was a fleeting
opportunity, in the calm of the empty
ruins, to take in this exotic land.
That May, our unit, the 1-160th
Infantry of the California National

A tomb in Ur’s necropolis complex was
one of many excavated by Leonard
Woolley in the 1920s and 1930s.

Guard, was wrapping up a year in
Iraq. We were citizen-soldiers from
all walks of life, hastily mobilized and
with the unglamorous mission of

escorting food, fuel, and equipment
from Kuwait to the fight up north.
Most of our stretch was defined by
tedium, punctuated by moments of
terror—exploding roadside bombs
or incoming rockets. My platoon
was fortunate to suffer no casualties
caused by the enemy.
A typical mission involved linking
up with a long line of civilian trucks
and convoying through a desolate
stretch of southern Iraq, as barren as
the moon. At night the desert glowed
from the thousands of oil wells. Finally, as we turned onto Iraq’s Highway
One, a modern if somewhat decrepit
road, we would begin the most dangerous part of our trip, where every
dead donkey or pile of trash might
be rigged to explode. Just shy of the
Euphrates River, we could see the
landmark that signaled the end of the
trip: the ziggurat, a monument that
has stood mute witness to 4,000 years
of human conflict.

U

r was one of a series of
Sumerian city-states that
arose in Mesopotamia
roughly 5,000 years ago, fueled by
agricultural surpluses and dominated
by an elite that maintained the complex irrigation systems upon which
the city’s wealth depended. Around
2250 b.c., Sargon the Great made
Ur part of his Akkadian empire, one
of the world’s first centralized states.
Akkadian, a Semitic language distantly related to the modern Arabic
now spoken there, gradually replaced
Sumerian as Ur’s language. Little of
the architecture visible today dates
to Ur’s early history, though artifacts
from early tombs can be viewed in
the museums of London, Philadelphia, and Baghdad. The city’s greatest
and most enduring monuments were
constructed in the period that followed the collapse of the Akkadian
dynasty around 2050 b.c.
In 2047 b.c., Ur became the capital of its own centralized state, ruled
by what historians call the Ur III
dynasty. Its new king, Ur-Nammu,
sought to create monuments to make
ARCHAEOLOGY •March/April 2011

ARCHAEOLOGY ADVENTURES

EXCEPTIONAL SCHOLARS

Hussein and his Ba’ath Party.
A pious ruler, Nabonidus restored a
number of ancient temples in his realm
during the sixth century b.c. The
exact details of his reconstruction are
unclear, but it seems that he built some
enormous structure on top of the massive burnt-brick base left by Ur-Nammu, replacing what had been a modest
shrine. But where Ur-Nammu used
durable bitumen mortar, Nabonidus’
builders used ordinary cement. Wind
and rain have since reduced his later
structure to the heap of rubble that
now sits atop the ziggurat. Nabonidus
was not rewarded for his piety—he
was deposed by invading Persians in
539 b.c. Over the next 2,500 years,
Nabonidus’ contribution fell to ruin,
while Ur-Nammu’s original held up.
The Ba’ath Party, which dominated
Iraq from 1968 to 2003, was keenly
interested in Iraq’s Mesopotamian
heritage and its potential to unite a
population fragmented by sectarian
differences. As part of an aggressive
program in the 1970s to restore
Mesopotamian antiquities, the

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the city equal to that status, and began
construction of the ziggurat temple in
honor of the city’s patron deity, Nannar, god of the moon. But Ur-Nammu
died before his greatest work could
be finished, and the project was completed by his son, Shulgi.
The brickwork of the ziggurat
attests to the kings’ desire to create a
lasting monument to their empire. The
bitumen mortar—one of the first uses
of southern Iraq’s vast oil fields—is
still visible between the burnt bricks.
The sticky black substance, today a
source of the region’s instability and
violence, once literally bound this civilization together. The use of bitumen
as mortar and pavement has helped
waterproof the otherwise fragile Sumerian mud-bricks, ensuring that the
structures endured for millennia.
The ziggurat has always been an
important symbol for this region, and
two later rulers attempted to adopt it
as their own through reconstruction
projects. The first was Nabonidus,
the last king of the Neo-Babylonian
Empire. The second was Saddam

,)1‘(3)(
,")&)!#&‘(.,
Discover the Past, Share the Adventure

800.422.8975
www.crowcanyon.org/archaeology

This 2008 photo shows the shop that sits at the base of the ziggurat. Visible in the
foreground is the monument’s bitumen mortar. The sticky black substance helped
preserve the structure, and is one of the first uses of southern Iraq’s oil fields.

Make Room for the Memories.
An adventure of historic proportion is waiting for
you—at two living-history museums that explore
America’s beginnings. Board replicas of colonial
ships. Grind corn in a Powhatan Indian village. Try
on English armor inside a palisaded fort. Then, join
Continental Army soldiers at their encampment
for a firsthand look at the Revolution’s end. Don’t
forget your camera. Because the history here is
life size. And your memories will be even bigger!

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49

Ba’athists installed a new facade on
the ziggurat’s stairways and around
the top of the first tier, in addition to
making other repairs. A grand festival
in 1977 celebrated the restoration,
hailing the legacy of Ur-Nammu
who, according to the official
Ba’ath newspaper, “united the state
administratively and politically after
it had been divided and split.”
Ur, treated modestly by Hussein,
was fortunate not to have captured
the dictator’s self-aggrandizing
imagination the way Babylon had.
Hussein liked to compare himself
to that city’s Hammurabi and
Nebuchadnezzar II, and ordered
an elaborate reconstruction of the
Babylonian ruins, transforming them
into a gaudy Ba’athist theme park.
He even had his name stamped in
cuneiform on the new bricks. Ur, on
the other hand, received only basic
restoration—with modern bricks
protecting ancient ones within,
thankfully devoid of megalomaniac
excess. As a general rule, most of
the bricks in the massive first tier
of the ziggurat are the originals of
Ur-Nammu, while rubble on the
second tier dates to Nabonidus.
Facade elements, such as the
banisters on the stairways, fencing
around the edge of the first tier, and
the facing on the second tier, are
modern restoration.
The Ur III empire founded by
Ur-Nammu was overrun around
1950 b.c. by Elamites invading from
the east, a disaster memorialized in
haunting Sumerian laments:
Ur—inside there is death,
outside there is death
Inside we succumb to famine
Outside we are dispatched
by Elamite blades.
The city, however, endured
and was eventually subordinated
under successive empires of Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, NeoBabylonians, Persians, and (briefly)
Macedonians. At some point after
the Persian invasion in 539 b.c., the
50

Euphrates shifted to the north and
east of the city, transforming Ur
from prime riverfront property to
the center of an expanding desert.
While a tablet found at Ur that
mentions Philip Arrhidaeus, Alexander the Great’s half-brother, states
that the site was inhabited as late as
316 b.c., it was more or less abandoned for the next 2,200 years.

A

Max E.L. Mallowan, 14 years her
junior, and the couple married in
1930. Katherine Woolley quickly
came to detest Christie, who was
subsequently banished from the
dig. Mallowan lamented that “there
was only room for one woman at
Ur,” and spent the first dig season
after his marriage separated from
his bride. The dig at Ur inspired
Christie’s 1936 mystery novel
Murder in Mesopotamia, in which
the archaeologist’s sickly wife, Mrs.
Leidner, is brutally murdered.
Similarities between the victim and
Katherine Woolley were not exactly
accidental.
Woolley’s most dramatic finds
were in the necropolis, where he
uncovered the remains of around
1,850 people from all stages of the
city’s life. He defined 16 tombs as
“royal,” and identified a grisly burial

s I walked around the
site in 2008, I could see
evidence of archaeological
activity: great tells of dirt and
ceramic sherds. In 1854, James
E. Taylor, the British consul at
Basra, conducted an excavation at
Tell al-Muqayyar, the “Mound of
Pitch,” so named by the locals for
the bitumen mortar visible in it. He
revealed the crumbling ruins of the
ziggurat, as well as cuneiform tablets
that identified the site
as the biblical “Ur of the
Chaldees,” birthplace of
Abraham in Genesis.
There were a few minor
British digs in the
waning years of World
War I, but the landmark
excavation of the site was
conducted between 1922
and 1934 through a joint
expedition sponsored
by the British Museum
and the University
of Pennsylvania. The
chief archaeologist was
Leonard Woolley, an
experienced Near East
excavator who had
previously dug in Syria
with T.E. Lawrence. The
dig captured the public
imagination and proved
curiously conducive
to romance. Woolley
married his assistant
Katherine Merke in
1927. When a charming
divorcée named Agatha
Christie visited the site, This silver lyre was found by Leonard Woolley in the
she caught the eye of
“Great Death Pit,” a royal grave at Ur that contained
the remains of 68 women and six men.
another archaeologist,

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practice: Human sacrificial victims
were arranged around the royal dead,
producing what he dubbed “death
pits.” The largest of these, the “Great
Death Pit,” contained the bodies of
68 women and six men.
Woolley especially excelled in the
excavation of delicate objects. He
extracted fragile artifacts (such as the
two “Ram in a Thicket” statues) by
coating them in melted wax before
removing them. Noticing two voids
in the earth left by decaying organic
matter, he carefully filled them with
plaster, producing a precise cast of a
lyre. Woolley continued excavating
until diminishing finds and funds
forced an end to the expedition.
There has not been an excavation at
Ur since.
Though only soldiers see Ur today,
the ruins have largely escaped the
worst effects of modern warfare. The
site was incorporated into a Hussein-

The author waits at a checkpoint located about a mile from the ruins of Ur.

The British Museum and the University of
Pennsylvania cosponsored the excavations at Ur.
Each institution holds one of the two nearly identical
“Ram in a Thicket” sculptures from a royal grave at
Ur. The British Museum statue is pictured above.
52

era military base, which
was strafed by Allied
warplanes during the First
Gulf War, causing minor
collateral damage. The
city was in turn occupied
by U.S. forces in 2003,
which prevented the orgy
of destructive looting that
took place at other ancient
Iraqi sites. While we were
subject to mortar and
Katyusha rocket attacks
at the base, there does not
appear to have been any
significant damage to Ur
itself.
In 2009, U.S. military
authorities turned the
site of Ur over to the Iraq
State Board of Antiquities
and Heritage. The future
of Iraq remains precarious, as sectarian violence
between Sunnis and Shiites continues to wrack
the country and the Iraqi
Army begins to take over
security duties. But Mesopotamian sites such as Ur
represent a glimmer of

hope. If there is a dramatic reduction
in violence, international tourism revenues from Mesopotamian archaeology could be substantial. Thriving
archaeological activity might also
help regenerate a once-vibrant Iraqi
intelligentsia depleted by violence
and emigration. More importantly,
ancient Mesopotamia retains the
potential to serve as a rallying point
and common heritage for a responsible Iraqi nationalism that transcends
sectarian divides.
Our visit to Ur was short.
Soon it would be time for another
mission. We put away our cameras,
suited up in our body armor, and
loaded magazines into our rifles.
The only way for a Westerner to
visit Ur in 2008 was to come ready
for war, in armored vehicles bristling
with machine guns. Hopefully
someday soon, people from across
the world will peacefully tour what
we saw as soldiers. ■
Michael Taylor served as a platoon
leader in Iraq from 2007 to 2008.
He is currently a graduate student
in history at the University of
California, Berkeley.
ARCHAEOLOGY •March/April 2011

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(continued from page 16)
transported for mile after mile by the
meticulous care to avoid extremes
hoenix and its surrounding
forces of gravity. Omar Turney, a city
of heat or cold. There was nothing
communities have paved over
engineer for Phoenix, mapped the
the Hohokam did not know about
much of the Hohokam world.
ancient Hohokam irrigation systems
farming in arid landscapes, and they
But the long-vanished farmers reapduring the 1920s. He walked over the
supplemented their crops by hunting
pear with persistent frequency, under
river basin and consulted old maps
and gathering plant foods.
the foundations of modern buildings
and historical records to reveal what
The canal systems began at the
razed for new development, in the
he called “the largest single body of
river, where a weir raised the water
le
pathways of expanding interstates,
land irrigated in prehistoric
level and directed it into the
ccanal. A head gate regulated
even in backyard gardens. For

#[WZSa

th
the most part, the traces of
the amount of water passing
/@7H=</
in
their presence are inconspicuinto the system. From there,
=bVS`6]V]YO[aWbSa
th
ous, requiring careful dissection
the water flowed along large
ddistribution canals that were
with spade and trowel. Only a
uup to 85 feet across and 20
few notable adobe structures
f deep. The size of the canal
feet
still stand above ground, makWdS`
ddiminished away from the river,
ing it hard to believe that the
AOZb@
>V]S\Wf
;SaO5`O\RS
a technique that ensured an
Salt River Valley was the most
/97;3:
eeven water flow. A steady flow
populous and agriculturally
WdS`
@

O
=¸=26/;
5WZ
eensured that too rapid a current
productive valley in the Southddid not erode the earthen sides.
A\OYSb]e\
west before a.d. 1500. The
5WZO@WdS`
IIf, however, the current was too
land looks barren and utterly
sslow, it would deposit silt and
dry, yet it has fertile soils and
cclog the defile. Control gates lay
lies near major river draintimes in North or South America.”
America ”
at int
ages. Between a.d. 450 and 1500, the
intervals along the main canals.
Hohokam living near the Salt River
The lower Salt River Valley, where
When closed, they caused the current
adapted brilliantly to this seemingly
downtown Phoenix now stands,
to back up, creating a head of water
desolate environment, refining their
supported miles of irrigated fields and
and allowing the farmers to regulate
agriculture and water management
dozens of farming communities. The
the flow down-canal. Feeder chanfrom one generation to the next. Over
scale of the irrigation works boggles
nels carried water through wicker and
more than 10 centuries, they built vast
the imagination. In the downtown
stone gates along long branches of the
canal networks up to 22 miles long
metropolitan area alone, 300 miles of
main canals, in turn leading to much
and irrigated tracts of arid land up to
canals formed 14 irrigation networks
smaller defiles that fed gridlike field
70,000 acres in size.
that watered 256,000 acres of fertile
systems, each with their own water
Archaeologists identify the
river basin soils. The Gila River Valley
supplies constrained within banks like
Hohokam from their buff- to brownto the south, with its four irrigation
a crowded chess board.
colored potsherds that abound in the
networks, watered nearly 19,000 acres
The amount of communal labor
river basin floors of southern Arizona.
of closely packed fields a thousand
required to construct and maintain
If we use such vessels as a criterion,
years ago. In the heart of this carefully
these irrigation works was enormous.
then we can trace the extent of the
engineered landscape, stood the
Reconstructions of ancient canals
Hohokam over more than 30,000
250-acre Snaketown site, with its
suggest that as much as 28.25 million
square miles of southern Arizona—
ceremonial ball court. Six miles of
cubic feet of dirt may have been
an area larger than South Carolina.
irrigated land and smaller settlements
excavated to construct one major
In general terms, Hohokam groups
lay along the river upstream and
canal system alone. If a single worker
shared a common ingenuity as farmdownstream of Snaketown. The
removed 106 cubic feet of soil a day, it
ers, a superb ability at irrigation agridense cultivation extended as much as
would have taken more than 25,000
culture, and a common architecture
two miles from the riverbanks.
person-days to build many of the
of adobe dwellings. There were none
The Gila and Salt rivers received
canals.
of the elaborate, multistory pueblos of
their water from highland watersheds.
ohokam culture as
Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde here,
The river flow varied from season to
archaeologists know it
but a distinctive ceremonial architecseason and year to year, but provided
appeared around a.d. 500,
ture based on adobe platform mounds
generally reliable water supplies for
at the moment when the plazas were
and ball courts, the latter apparently
the Hohokam’s fields. Away from the
first built, at a time when new pottery
an import from Mexico.
great rivers, farmers relied on both
forms came into being and improveHohokam canals flow outward
summer and winter rainfall. They
ments in grinding technology made
from the Salt River like the tentacles
would trap the occasional tributary
food preparation somewhat easier.
of a giant octopus. They split and split
flood, use terraces and small dams to
More diverse cooking vessels allowed
again, once full of gently flowing water
trap water, and place their crops with

P

hOb

;O

hOZ

;b

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54

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

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Richard W. Wetherill
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mothers to wean their children earlier
and feed them soft foods. At this time
new varieties of maize also appeared
in Hohokam fields.
Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport
lies on the Salt River floodplain.
When archaeologists surveyed the
land under the runways and airport
buildings, they found extensive tracts
of once-irrigated land and large and
small houses built alongside the fields.
Here, people camped during the
growing season. The larger structures

access to prime irrigated land, would
have acquired wealth and status, in
part because of their more productive fields. In later times, Hohokam
communities varied greatly in size.
Some, like those on the Gila River
south of Phoenix, ranged along single
canals that lay parallel to the river on
either bank. Such communities may
have covered 15 square miles and
contained as many as 2,550 irrigated
acres. Salt River communities lived
amid branching canal networks that

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5 P L AT E I A S TA D I O U , AT H E N S , G R E E C E

An archaeologist stands at the intersection of two canals at the site of Snaketown.

with hearths were the places where
farmers cooked and slept, the smaller
ones used for storage and other purposes. These were casual, temporary
structures, rebuilt again and again
over the centuries. But this very
rebuilding confirms that the same
households farmed the same plots of
land over many generations.
Early permanent villages founded
along the Gila and Salt rivers coincide with the construction of the
first large-scale canal system. If the
O’odham people, who followed the
Hohokam in this area, are any guide,
those who participated in canal construction had the first pick of the best
land. Later arrivals would have occupied less desirable acreage. Over time,
the first comers, who enjoyed the best
56

traversed the Phoenix Basin. Suzanne
Fish, who has studied Basin communities of a.d. 1100 and later, estimates
that community territories averaged
15 square miles, a figure similar to
that from the Gila.
The household lay at the core of
Hohokam irrigation works and of
society as a whole. Their members
built and maintained a sophisticated
canal network. They provided the
demanding labor needed to sustain
an intensive agricultural regimen for
nearly a thousand years. How did
this system work, with all the close
cooperation that it required? Judging from historical practice among
the O’odham, individual households
held claims to plots of land that
passed from one generation to the
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after the discovery of tanzanite in 1967, a Maasai tribesman
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"[WZSa

A\OYSb]e\

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Snaketown is famous for its Mesoamerican-style ball court, but the canals that watered
fields as much as two miles away from the Gila river are even more impressive.

next. However, rights to irrigation
water belonged to the community
as a whole, the water being allocated
to each household according to the
amount of land they cultivated.
Households shared water rights.
Thus, they had an interest in protecting these rights and protecting their
investment in the canal works that
brought water to their fields.
Some archaeologists believe that
there must have been a dynamic tension between individual interests of
the households and collective ones.
The two tension points were always
in play, balancing one another out
over years, generations, and centuries.
The resulting balance enhanced the
long-term stability of a society that
depended heavily on canals to bring
water to soils that were otherwise useless.
On this wider scale, we can think
of Hohokam society as a series of
what the archaeologist David Doyel
once called “irrigation communities.”
He imagined Hohokam irrigation
in terms of canal networks branching from a single river intake. These
networks connected an array of interdependent villages, whose households
shared the labor of canal construction,
maintenance, and management in a
peaceful manner. Doyel identified at
least six such irrigation communities
along the longest Phoenix Basin canal
network. By a.d. 1100, these larger
settlements comprised a prominent
58

village with communal structures
such as a ball court, a plaza, or a platform mound, with outlying smaller
settlements and farms, the whole
surrounded by carefully laid out and
intensely cultivated farmland. A web
of secular and ritual relationships
united every individual in Hohokam
society to a wider world.

Households shared
water rights. Thus,
they had an interest in
protecting these rights
and protecting their
investment in the canal
works that brought
water to their fields.

B

etween  and , after
almost a millennium of relative
stability, profound changes
occurred in Hohokam society.
These three centuries were a time of
unstable environmental conditions.
The instability coincided in part with
the major droughts of the Medieval
Warm Period that descended on

t Southwest and contributed to
the
t abandonment of Chaco Canyon
the
a its great houses and, later, large
and
p
pueblos
at Mesa Verde and in the
n
nearby
Moctezuma Valley. In the
d
desert,
this same period may have
b a time of floods that altered
been
r
river
channels and undermined
c
canal
systems, as well as sometimes
p
prolonged
droughts that caused
w
water
shortages. We know little of
t
these
environmental perturbations,
b we do know that Snaketown
but
o the Gila River lost population.
on
M
Meanwhile,
other communities such
a Casa Grande consolidated formerly
as
s
separate
canal systems into a single
ir
irrigation
network based on a 21-mile
canal that watered 15,000 acres. Five
villages, each with their own platform
mounds, lay along the canal. Another
irrigation community in present-day
Mesa had 21 miles of canals that
watered 14,000 acres of fields. By any
standards, this was irrigation on a
large scale, with the largest Phoenix
Basin communities each supporting
between six and 10 thousand people.
As the social order changed, so
environmental pressures appear to
have intensified. Just how, we don’t
know, but the massive irrigation
systems no longer produced the food
surpluses necessary to support the
now much more elaborate Hohokam
society. The collapse came around
1450, probably a rapid dispersal,
household by household, as people
moved away to settle with kin or
farmed on a much smaller scale. Their
successors were the Akimel O’odham,
probably their direct descendants,
who built more modest irrigation
works atop those of earlier times.

I

n 1882, 400 years after
the Hohokam dispersed,
Smithsonian anthropologist
Frank Hamilton Cushing came to
the Salt River Valley. He climbed to
the top of an earthen monument and
was astonished to find himself in the
heart of a long-abandoned Indian
settlement. He wrote: “It was one of
the most extensive ancient settlements
we had yet seen. Before us, to the
north, east, and south, a long series
(continued on page 64)
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ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

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COVER—Courtesy RPM Nautical Foundation;
2—Courtesy Varna Regional Museum of
History; 3—Courtesy Nature Publishing
Group/Macmillan, Courtesy Michael
Taylor, Imaginechina; 4—ITI; 8—Courtesy
Preservation Virginia; 9—CourtesyAren M.
Maeir, Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project,
Bar-Ilan University; 10—Courtesy Aren
M. Maeir, Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological
Project, Bar-Ilan University, Bowie Snodgrass/
Flickr, Alan Cressler/Flickr; 11—AP
Photo/Salvatore Laporta; 12—Araldo de
Luca, Courtesy University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology;
14–15—Nevada; Courtesy Bureau of Land
Management; Virginia: Courtesy Museum
of the Confederacy, Photo: Alan Thompson;
England: Courtesy the Portable Antiquities
Scheme; Israel: Courtesy Israeli Antiquities
Authority; Imaginechina; Peru: Courtesy Center
for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics,
Stanford University, Photo: Jyri Huopaniemi;
Chile: Courtesy Diego Salazar, University of
Chile; Spain: Courtesy El Sidrón research team;
Egypt: Courtesy Ted Maxwell, Smithsonian;
Australia: Courtesy Steve Morton, Monash
University; 16—Adriel Heisey;18–23—All
photos Courtesy Liu Maiwang, Henan Provincial
Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology;
24–26—Courtesy RPM Nautical Foundation;
27— Courtesy RPM Nautical Foundation, Navy
Photos/George Knight; 28—Courtesy RPM
Nautical Foundation; 29—Courtesy Roger
Keech & Tim Sutherland/Towton Battlefield
Archaeology Project, Courtesy Tim Sutherland/
Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project;
30—Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art
Library International, Private Collection/Photo
© Philip Mould Ltd, London/The Bridgeman
Art Library International, Courtesy University
of Bradford/Towton Mass Grave Project;
31—Courtesy Roger Keech & Tim Sutherland/
Towton Battlefield Archaeology Project,
Courtesy Roger Keech; 33–34—Courtesy
Marc Valsella; 35–37—Courtesy Jean Clottes,
Chauvet Cave Project; 38—Courtesy Marc
Valsella; 39—Courtesy Jean Clottes, Chauvet
Cave Project; 40-41—Courtesy Kalin Dimitrov;
42—Courtesy Botoşani County Museum,
Botoşani: 7558. Photo: Marius Amarie,
Courtesy Varna Regional Museum of History:
1664, Photo: Rumyana Kostadinova Ivanova;
43—Andrew Curry, Courtesy DAI EurasienAbteilung (S. Hansen); 44—Andrew Curry,
Courtesy DAI Eurasien-Abteilung (S. Hansen);
45—Courtesy National History Museum of
Romania, Bucharest, and National History and
Archaeology Museum, Constanţa: 4275, 11666,
Photo: Marius Amarie; 47—Courtesy Michael
Taylor; 48-49—Courtesy Michael Taylor;
50—Erich Lessing/Art Resource; 52—Photo:
John Gietzen, © The Trustees of the British
Museum/Art Resource; 56—Courtesy Helga
Teiwes, Arizona State Museum; 58—Reprinted
by permission from The Hohokam Millenium,
copyright 2007 by the School for Advanced
Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico;
64—Henry D. Wallace, Desert Archaeology,
Inc.; 68—Courtesy Nature Publishing Group/
Macmillan, © Antikythera Mechanism Research
Project
63

(continued from page 58)
of…house mounds lay stretched out
in seemingly endless succession.”
Cushing was by no means the
first outsider to explore the valley.
In 1865, the United States Cavalry
had established Camp McDowell
in what is now Maricopa County.
Enterprising visitors observed not
only the eroded mounds of what were
once adobe structures, but also the
remains of extensive irrigation canals
that had once brought water from
the Salt River to wide tracts of nowabandoned maize fields. In 1867, Jack
Swilling, a former soldier, established
the Swilling Irrigating and Canal
Company. The company flourished,
for its canals often followed those of
the ancient farmers, and the farms
prospered despite the extremely hot
summers. On October 20, 1871, a
mass meeting of settlers appointed
a committee to select a town site.
After considerable debate, committee
member Darrell Duppa proposed
the name Phoenix, for a city rising
Phoenix-like on the ruins of an
ancient civilization.

F

arther north, Mormon
settlers arrived at the Great Salt
Lake. Brigham Young himself
declared that this was their new
homeland. Within days, the brethren
had a small dam and ditches irrigating
a five-acre field of potatoes. Their
tools were simple, their dams scraped
together from earth and stones, but
their willpower was inexhaustible.
The pioneers lived in a close-knit
society in which the church decided
where to capture water and how to
distribute it. Mirroring the Hohokam
system, the water from the nearby
Wasatch Mountains belonged not to
individuals but to everyone, resulting
in small communities that were
sustainable over many generations.
By 1910, small-scale farmers in Utah
irrigated nearly 1 million acres.
Small groups of farmers living in
sustainable communities: The idea
appealed strongly to John Wesley
Powell of Colorado River fame, who
spent time among the Mormons
and acquired a profound knowledge
of the desert West at a time when
64

An aerial view of Las Capas, a Hohokam site in southern Arizona, shows the remnants
of farmers’ fields surrounded by a network of canals, outlined in white.

few Easterners had been there. On
the face of it, the obvious thing to
do was to leave most of the West
unpopulated except for isolated,
better-watered enclaves. However,
such thinking ran contrary to doctrines of progress, western expansion, and proper use of the land for
agriculture. Besides, America would
become two lands separated by desert. Only one weapon would suffice
to master the arid lands—water.
The dream was a glorious vision of
fertility and prosperous farms, and
a wonderful concept for ambitious
politicians looking to deliver jobs in
the form of water engineering projects to their constituents.

T

oday, the southwestern
U.S. faces a variety of
pressures on its water supply.
Temperatures are rising, while rainfall
and river flows are dropping. The
area is in the middle of a drought
that is as severe as any that has struck
in the past 100 years. At the same
time, the Southwest is experiencing
rapid population growth. The U.S.
Census Bureau projects that by the

year 2030 the population of Arizona
will grow by five million people. Glen
MacDonald, a geography professor
at the University of California, Los
Angeles, writing in the December
14, 2010, edition of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
makes the point that engineering
projects designed to transfer and store
water cannot completely supply the
increased need for water. Industrial
and agricultural water use must
become more efficient, and residential
water use must decrease dramatically
by limiting the amount of water used
for swimming pools and landscaping.
Humans have managed water
successfully for thousands of years in
ways that are often ignored by history.
But their experiences tell us that it is
the simple and ingenious approaches
that often work best—local water
schemes, decisions about sharing and
management made by kin, family, and
small communities. These experiences
teach us that self-sustainability is
attainable. ■
Brian Fagan is a contributing editor to
Archaeology.
ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

www.archaeological.org

EXCAVATE, EDUCATE, ADVOCATE

A Toast to the Past
Ancient Culture–Themed Galas Raise Money for AIA Programs

I

n April , the AIA featured a unique Maya feast at its
first-ever gala held at Capitale in New York City. The meal
won BizBash’s New York Event Style Award for best Overall Catering. The Institute hosted a second gala in April
2010—featuring the cultures, traditions, and archaeology of
Peru—and is currently planning a third event. The galas are
the latest addition to a diverse array of outreach programs that
the AIA organizes annually. These programs reach out to hundreds of thousands of people informing them about the
importance of understanding, protecting and preserving our
Attendees at the gala enjoyed Peruvian-inspired food and the extraordinary
architecture at Guastavino’s in New York City.
cultural and material heritage. Proceeds raised from the galas
make it possible for the AIA to
continue these efforts.
This year, on April 26, the
gala returns to Capitale and will
New AIA Award, Best Practices in Site Preservation,
feature the rich heritage, and
goes to Professor Giorgio Buccellati
traditions of Ireland. Irish Culn January  at the 112th AIA
tural Ambassador and acclaimed
sure to the elements causes the extremely
Annual Meeting in San Antonio,
actor, Gabriel Byrne, will host
fragile mudbrick to deteriorate rapidly.
Texas, the AIA Site Preservation
an evening that spotlights both
Traditionally the delicate structures
Committee presented its first Best
ancient and modern Ireland, and
have either been reburied or encased in
Practices in Site Preservation Award to
includes a contemporary Celtic
modern mudbrick. Buccellati and his
feast, musical performances, and Giorgio Buccellati for his exceptional
team have come up with an alternative
archaeologically themed auction conservation work at Tell Mozan
by developing protective covers that
(ancient Urkesh) in Syria and particuitems including travel. A highpreserve the original mudbrick while
larly for his efforts in the conservation
light of the gala is the presentastill displaying the form of the walls. The
of mudbrick—a notoriously difficult
tion of the Bandelier Award for
covers are low-cost, renewable, locally
Service to Archaeology. This year material to preserve.
constructed, and easily removed to allow
The award is given annually to people for inspection of the walls.
it will be given to George Bass
and/or projects that exemplify the best
for his efforts in establishing the
Buccellati’s innovative approach
discipline of underwater archae- practices in site preservation and concombines archaeological research with
ology and for his achievements in servation as judged by a committee of
creative preservation solutions. Just as
that field over the last fifty years. conservation and archaeological profes- critical to the long-term preservation
sionals. By recognizing and publicizing
Attendees will be treated to an
of the site is Buccellati’s ability to work
unforgettable night of fascinating these exceptional projects, the Commit- with the local community to provide
and inspiring sights, sounds, and tee hopes to encourage other archaeolo- training and income and thereby ensure
gists to adopt and utilize these practices. its commitment to the project. Buctastes as the Institute celebrates
Tell Mozan, dating from the third
archaeology and Ireland. To supcellati is currently working to create a
port the Institute and its mission, millennium b.c., was an important urban 9½-square-mile eco-archaeological park
center of the Hurrian civilization. Bucjoin the AIA on April 26th at
that will better protect Tell Mozan and
cellati and his team have been working at its environs.
Capitale. For more informathe site for over 20 years and during that
tion about this event, visit www.
Nominations for the award can be
period their excavations have exposed
archaeological.org/gala or call
made at www.archaeological.org/
numerous mudbrick structures. Expo617-353-9361.
sitepreservation.

I

65

Excavate, Educate, Advocate
■

Dispatches from the AIA

AIA in the Lone Star State
Two thousand attend the 112th AIA Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas

T

he Annual Meeting
is the highlight of the
AIA’s academic programming and the largest event organized by the
Institute. The four-day conference brings together a mix of
professional and avocational
archaeologists, classicists, epigraphers, heritage specialists,
and members of the general
public interested in learning
about the latest archaeological
research and discoveries. The
112th AIA Annual Meeting
was held this year in San Antonio, Texas from January 6 to
January 9. Over the course of a
long weekend, attendees were
presented with a wide range of
formal academic sessions, public outreach programs, social
events, and tours.
While the meeting is primarily an opportunity for
professional archaeologists to present
new discoveries and fresh ideas to
their colleagues for discussion and
debate, the AIA has worked very
hard over the last few years to ensure
that the program has something for
everyone. The 2011 program was one
of the most diverse in recent years.
The academic program included over
300 presentations, several workshops,

Upcoming AIA Events
■ AIA-Milwaukee Society: Second

Annual Milwaukee Archaeology
Fair, March 11 and 12, 2011, will
be held at the Milwaukee Public
Museum. Cosponsored by AIAMilwaukee Society and Milwaukee
Public Museum.

■ AIA-Staten Island Society: Staten

Island Archaeology Fair, April 3,
2011, will be held at Wagner College.

■ AIA Gala: April 26, 2011, at Capitale

in New York City. Sponsored by
Culture Ireland and Tourism Ireland.

66

Guests enjoyed themselves at the Annual Meeting’s
opening night reception.

and colloquia with topics such as a
reexamination of pottery in the classical world, discovering and uncovering
shipwrecks in Turkey, conservation
in Egypt, and teaching archaeology
to K–12 students. A day long workshop organized by the Department
of Defense focused on issues related
to the protection of cultural heritage
in areas of conflict. In addition to the
academic sessions, participants had
the opportunity to tour the Gault
archaeological site and attend several

special events, including an
opening night public lecture
on shipwrecks followed by a
reception at the San Antonio
Museum of Art, a two-day
archaeology fair co-organized
and co-hosted by the Witte
Museum, a series of roundtable
discussions, and several receptions hosted by various academic organizations and universities. (To see the complete
program, visit archaeological.
org/annualmeeting.)
The program also allowed
the AIA to highlight its global
partnerships. Both the German
Archaeological Institute and the
Institute of Archaeology of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
hosted sessions at the conference. These international partnerships have allowed the AIA
to expand its programming to
include new audiences. Several
AIA members who have made significant contributions to the field of
archaeology and conservation were
recognized for their efforts at the
annual AIA Awards Ceremony. (See
AIA Award Winners.)
The presentations, workshops,
colloquia, receptions, lectures, fairs,
exhibits, and other events all added
up to a very busy and successful annual meeting. Please be sure to join us at
the 2012 Annual Meeting, which will
be held next January in Philadelphia.

AIA Award Winners
Best Practices in Site Preservation: Giorgio Buccellati
Conservation and Heritage Management: Archaeological Conservancy
Gold Medal: Susan I. Rotroff
Joukowsky: Ava Seave
Pomerance: Michael Glascock
Public Service Undergraduate Teaching: Stefano De Caro
Wiseman Book Award: Peter Stone and Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly
Holton Book Award: Benjamin R. Foster and Karen Polinger Foster
Holton Book Award (honorable mention): Patrick E. McGovern
Graduate Student Paper Award: John Marston
Graduate Student Paper Award (first runner-up): Stephanie Pearson

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AIA Presidents Cruise:
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Venice to Athens: Exploring
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Retrace The Odyssey aboard
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President Brian Rose.

Hidden Islands of Greece
Cruise the Aegean aboard Callisto in July 2011 (11 days)
with AIA lecturer James Wright.

Spring and Fall 2011 (14 days) with
AIA lecturer Virginia AndersonStojanovic (spring, fall TBA)

Athens to Athens, including
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Spring and Fall 2011 (16 days) with AIA lecturers
William and Suzanne Murray (spring, fall TBA)

Featured Land Tours
IRAN: The Ancient
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CHINA:
The Ancient Kingdom

Prehistoric Cave Art
of SPAIN & FRANCE

May 2-20, 2011 (19 days)
with AIA lecturer Margaret Cool Root

September 7-24, 2011 (18 days)
with AIA lecturer David Sensabaugh

October 12-24, 2011 (13 days)
with AIA lecturer Paul Bahn

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ARTIFACT

I

t took Andrew Carol  days to build a working model of the
Antikythera Mechanism—the ancient Greek world’s most
sophisticated astrological instrument. The original device, dating to the
second century b.c., consists of bronze gears. Carol used Legos.
The choice of medium limited Carol, but it illustrated the elegant simplicity
of its inspiration. The Greeks could economically perform the math needed to
calculate upcoming solar and lunar eclipses using 30 hand-cut gears with
between five and 223 teeth—223 is the number of lunar months between
eclipses. The Lego Antikythera does its calculations in a less direct manner,
requiring more than 100 prefab gears assembled into several modules, each
performing separate bits of math. Then seven differentials—additional
gears—reconcile the computations from different modules.
The original Antikythera Mechanism
is not only simpler than its Lego

WHAT IS IT?

A working Lego model
of the Antikythera
Mechanism
DATE

Finished in May 2010
MATERIAL

Lego Technic
NUMBER OF LEGOS

More than 1,500
ORIGINAL DISCOVERED

1901, in a shipwreck
near the Mediterranean
island of Antikythera

counterpart, it’s more accurate. Carol’s device can predict an eclipse
to within 24 hours. The original is precise to within 12, thanks to a
The original
Antikythera Mechanism
clever assembly that causes one of its gears to spin faster at some
points in its rotation and slower at others, approximating the elliptical orbit of the moon.
“Nothing on this planet was as mechanically complicated as the Antikythera Mechanism
until the 1300s,” says Carol. “It’s a testament to the Greeks’ genius.”

68

ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2011

Archaeological Tours
led by noted scholars

Invites You to Journey Back in Time
Ancient Rome (12 days)

Scotland (17 days)

Examine the monuments of each historical
period as a unit with Prof. Myles McDonnell,
Baruch College, CUNY. Covering Republican
Rome, Rome of the Caesars, the Early Empire,
High Empire and Christian Rome, we spend a
day at the ancient port, Ostia Antica, and another
visiting Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, and end with
the Imperial Palaces of the Later Empire.

Study Scotland’s prehistoric and early
Christian sites with Dr. Mattanyah
Zohar, Archaeologist, beginning with
the monastic settlement on Iona Island
and the intriguing Neolithic sites in
the Kilmartin Valley. Tour highlights
include the enigmatic Stones of
Callanish on the Isle of Lewis,
Edinburgh, the burial cairn at
Cairnpapple, carved Pictish menhirs
and a fairy-tale castle. The tour ends
on the Orkney and Shetland Islands
visiting Neolithic and Viking sites such
as Maes Howe and Skara Brae.

Ancient
Capitals
of China
(17 days) with
an Optional
Yangtze River
Cruise

Indonesia (20 days)
Explore the lush tropical islands of Java,
Sulawesi and Bali with Prof. Richard Cooler,
Northern Illinois U. Highlights include legendary
Borobudur and Panataran, Indonesia’s largest
temple complex, Solo’s old Javanese culture,
the distinctive architecture and rituals of Tana
Toraja, the magical ambiance of Bali and the
musical and dance performances throughout.

Visit the major
capitals of
Imperial
China,
including
Beijing, Xian,
Luoyang,
Zhengzhou
and the
garden city
of Suzhou with Prof. Robert Thorp,
Washington U. Tour highlights are
the Forbidden City, Great Wall,
Longmen Buddhist caves in
Luoyang, the famous terra-cotta
warriors near Xian and the worldclass museum in Shanghai. This
tour is a must for those who have
never visited China.

Peru (18 days)
Discover the intriguing empires of the Inca,
Mochica, Lambayeque, and Chimú peoples
with Prof. Daniel Sandweiss, U. of Maine.
Touring includes visits to Lima’s museums,
the Moche tombs of Sipán, Trujillo, Túcume,
Chan Chan, the largest adobe city in the world,
as well as Cuzco and the sacred Urubamba
Valley. Tour highlights include Cerro Sechín,
renowned for its unique stone carvings,
the early temple-fortress of Chankillo
and amazing Caral, the oldest city in the
Americas plus two days at Machu Picchu.

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

film
theater
dance
literature
events
visual arts
music

A year of Irish arts
in America 2011

www.imagineireland.ie

Events here,
vacation there!

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