12 - Archaeology - Nov Dec 2012

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Archaeology magazine issue 12

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India: Living Heritage at Risk

www.archaeology.org

A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America

The

Maya
and the

End of Time
Making
Money in

Ancient
China
Lost Churches
of Medieval
Sudan
Rescue of
Turkey’s
Mosaics
PLUS:
Ancient Southern BBQ,
The First Bra, Bog Army,
Cahokia Cup of Joe

July/August 2009
November/December
2012

November 17, 2012—Februar y 24, 2013

Principal co-sponsors of the US tour

Further generous sponsorship
the olayan group and fluor corporation

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
RoadsOfArabia.com

Detail: Stele, Saudi Arabia, 4th mill. bce. National Museum, Riyadh

Organized by the Sackler
Gallery in association with
the Saudi Commission for
Tourism and Antiquities.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
VOLUME 65, NUMBER 6

CONTENTS
features
25 The Maya Sense of Time
As one Maya calendar reaches the
end of a cycle, we take a look at how
an ancient people understood their
place in the cosmos
BY ZACH ZORICH

30 Factory of Wealth
A mint from the Han Dynasty
produced billions of coins that
enabled vast economic growth and
trade along the Silk Road
BY LAUREN HILGERS

36 Zeugma After the Flood
New excavations continue to tell the
story of an ancient city at the
crossroads between east and west
BY MATTHEW BRUNWASSER

42 Down by the Savannah
Riverside

By studying ancient landforms,
archaeologists are uncovering
evidence of a novel hunter-gatherer
behavior
BY MARGARET SHAKESPEARE

48 Pilgrimage to Sudan
Miracles of Banganarti
BY JARRETT A. LOBELL

48 A portrait of St. Damian in the
medieval Church of the Archangel
Raphael in Sudan.

Cover: The Temple of the Inscriptions at
the Maya city of Palenque in Mexico may
have been engineered to align with the
setting sun on December 21st.
COPYRIGHT KENNETH GARRETT

1

2012 marks the completion of a cycle of 13 Bak´tuns, corresponding to 5,125 years and its meaning is fundamental in Maya mythology. Rather than marking the end of a
period, 2012 represents the BEGINNING of a new era given that calendric cycle changes are an opportunity for positive renewal, according to Maya philosophy.
Guatemala is the ideal place to understand this concept of time and the perfect setting in which you can LIVE the beginning of this new era. Its ancient ceremonial plazas,
impressive archaeological sites and complex texts carved in stone, bear witness to the importance that calendars had during the grandeur of those kingdoms and dominions.
In addition, the Maya population of Guatemala has kept alive its Cosmology with many religious manifestations that are practiced daily in various regions and ceremonial
sites.
This 2012, the Mayan give us a great lesson that can be transmitted around the world: We need changes in society and human nature.
Visit Guatemala and live the change!

13 Bak´tun
On December 21, 2012 we’ll celebrate the end of the
Oxlajuj B’aq’tun or 13 Bak´tun and the start of a new
era that should be seen as an opportunity for positive
renewal to generate changes in our society and human
nature in general. This is the Maya philosophy and
is based on the knowledge and interpretation of the
legacy left by the ancient Maya in their calendars.
Measuring time has always been central in Maya
Cosmology. The Long Count was one of the calendars
used by the ancient Maya, especially to record
important historical events. This time measuring
system consists of counting the days from an initial
GDWHRU©\HDU]HURªPHDVXUHGDFFRUGLQJWR¿YH
periods (K›in, Winal, Tun, K›atun and Bak´tun)
based on a vigesimal system. The greatest period, the
Bak´tun, consists of 144,000 days.
The initial date of the Long Count was recorded by
the Maya in several monuments, among which Stela
C at Quiriguá stands out. The date was not recorded as
0.0.0.0.0, but as 13.0.0.0.0, and corresponds to day 4
Ajaw on the Tzolkin Caldendar and 8 Kumk›u on the
Solar Calendar or Ja’ab. According to the inscription
at Quirigua, the initial event of the Long Count can
be interpreted as a creation, expressed metaphorically
as the positioning of three sacred stones by a pair of
creator gods.

The Bak´tun Route
The fact that the starting date is 13.0.0.0.0 indicates
that this is, at the same time, the date when a previous
cycle ended. From this data, the Long Count is then
considered to be the measurement of cycles of 13
Bak´tuns, ie 1,872,000 days (5,125.26 Gregorian
years). The end of the cycle that began on August 11,
3,114 BC, will be December 21, 2012, which in Maya
connotation is 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 13 Kankin. To date,
there is only one known record of that date written
by the Maya, and it’s in a monument at the site of
Tortuguero.
Much has been said about the end of this cycle, once
it reaches the 13 Bak´tun, often with an apocalyptic
connotation. However, for the ancient Maya, this date
didn’t represent the end of the Long Count or the end
of the world. This can be proven by the nature of the
interpretations of the Tortuguero monument and by
two inscriptions at the site of Cobá, which recorded
Long Count dates far greater than the cycle of 13
Bak´tuns.
The 13 Bak´tun is not to be confused with the
catastrophes of other Mesoamerican cultures’
mythologies, such as the «Era of the Suns» of the
Aztecs or the failed creations narrated in the Popol
Vuh. Either way, the meaning of these myths is not
focused on disasters that wiped out humanity, but in
the social and spiritual transformations that occurred.

Guatemala is the Heart of the Maya World and the
country where the Maya civilization reached its
maximum splendor, making it the ideal place to
experience the culmination of the Maya calendar
cycle 13 Bak´tun and the start of a new era for
humanity. To commemorate this important historical
event, we’ve designed The Bak´tun Route.
This route allows you to visit 11 ancient Maya
cities that were important witnesses of historical
events associated with the Maya Calendar, similar
to what will happen on December 21, 2012 with the
completion of the 13 Bak´tun.
,Q7KH%DNWXQ5RXWH\RX¶OO¿QGPRQXPHQWVVWHODH
and structures related to the Long Count and / or
the Solar Calendar, as well as sites that are still
considered sacred places and where Maya people
perform religious ceremonies.

16

departments
4 Editor’s Letter
6 From the President
8 Letters
The legend of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, the
language of a curse, and what “killed” the people
found in a seventeenth-century Lithuanian

20

mass grave?

9 From the Trenches
Why hunter-gatherers in modern day Chile
mummified their dead, going beyond DNA in
diagnosing ancient disease, and did Clovis
have company?

22 World Roundup
The oldest bow in Europe, domesticated sheep
and goats at Namibia’s Leopard Cave, how climate
changes fueled Genghis Khan’s invasions, and

18

mistaking matches for ritualistic phallic objects

55 Letter from India
Searching for a new approach to development,
tourism, and local needs at the grand medieval
city of Hampi

68 Artifact
Ceramic beakers were the vessels of choice for the
so-called “Black Drink” used at Cahokia by Native
Americans in their purification rituals

on the web

www.archaeology.org

■ More from this Issue To read more about

■ Archaeological News from around the

Hampi, as well as neighboring sites in southern India,
go to www.archaeology.org/hampi

■ Interactive Digs Read about the latest discoveries
at the Minoan site of Zominthos in central Crete and at
Johnson’s Island, a Civil War site in Ohio

world—updated by 1 p.m. ET every weekday. And
sign up for our e-Update so you don’t miss a thing

■ Stay in Touch Visit Facebook and like
Archaeology or follow us on Twitter at
@archaeologymag

3

EDITOR’S LETTER

It’s Not the
End of the World

Editor in Chief

Claudia Valentino
Executive Editor

Deputy Editor

Jarrett A. Lobell

Samir S. Patel

Senior Editors

Nikhil Swaminathan
Zach Zorich
Editorial Assistant

Malin Grunberg Banyasz

F

or more than 10 years now, speculation has been
mounting about whether the Maya calendar predicts
that the world will end on December 21, 2012. In
“The Maya Sense of Time” (page 25), senior editor Zach
Zorich delves into what the archaeological record can tell us
about the intricacies of Maya date-keeping—and why our
world will likely still be here in 2013.
It is difficult to imagine a time when people didn’t have
some sort of regularized currency jingling in their pockets. In
“Factory of Wealth” (page 30), Shanghai-based writer Lauren
Hilgers surveys new discoveries near the Han Dynasty city
of Chang’an in central China that reveal what consistent
coinage can mean when it comes to building an empire.
“Pilgrimage to Sudan” (page 48) brings us to the Sahara
Desert and the medieval Christian site of Banganarti.
Executive editor Jarrett A. Lobell traces the visit of an
ancient traveler named Benesec who may have gone there
for a cure. He, along with thousands of other pilgrims,
would have been able to view astonishing frescoes of saints and demons, and leave their
names inscribed on the site’s walls.
Hunter-gatherer groups, some 7,000 to 11,000 years ago, apparently were making a
habit of returning again and again to bodies of water called Carolina bays each fall and
winter. In “Down by the Savannah Riverside” (page 42), writer Margaret Shakespeare
picks through evidence of these activities with archaeologists who were observant
enough to see what could so easily have been overlooked.
Turkey is known to be the source of some of the most artful mosaics in the ancient
world. In “Zeugma After the Flood” (page 36), Istanbul-based writer Matthew
Brunwasser tells the story of the ongoing efforts to excavate and preserve the mosaics
threatened with inundation when a massive dam was constucted on the Euphrates
River. He also shares how new excavations are revealing even more of Zeugma’s story.
The ruins of the medieval city of Vijayanagara, also known as Hampi, are the most
extensive of any Hindu royal site in southern India. Today, however, its invaluable
remains are the source of conflict between India’s official archaeological agencies and
the hundreds of local residents who have, over the last 20 years, set up shops and
homes along the site’s colonnades. In “Living Heritage at Risk” (page 55), archaeologist
John M. Fritz and architectural historian George Michell, who worked at Hampi for
more than 20 years, bring us the latest word on the dispute and what it says about
cultural heritage preservation in India.
And, as always, get ready for a trek around the globe in From the Trenches, World
Roundup, and Artifact.

Claudia Valentino
Editor in Chief

4

Creative Director

Richard Bleiweiss
Contributing Editors

Roger Atwood, Paul Bahn, Bob Brier,
Andrew Curry, Blake Edgar, Brian Fagan,
David Freidel, Tom Gidwitz, Andrew Lawler,
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

Peter Herdrich
Associate Publisher

Kevin Quinlan
Director of Circulation and Fulfillment

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Director of Integrated Sales

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Kenneth B. Tankersley
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FROM THE PRESIDENT

Archaeological
Institute of America
Located at Boston University

Strength in Numbers

A

I FIRST JOINED THE AIA as a graduate student several decades ago, I
did not become fully connected to the organization until I began visiting its Local
Societies as a lecturer. I was impressed by the audience members’ enthusiasm
for archaeology, their thoughtful attention, and their eagerness to learn. Most of them
tended to belong to the particular Local Society that was hosting me. Young and old, they
taught me as much with their questions and observations as I taught them through my
lectures. Today, as president, visiting societies is how I continue to meet the members
who are the bedrock of our organization.
Thousands of AIA members belong to our 106 Local Societies spread throughout the United
States and Canada. Virtually every major metropolitan area in the country has a society, and
so do many less-populated areas. The AIA has a growing presence in the American West and
South, paralleling shifts in the distribution of the U.S. population to these regions.
The mission of AIA Local Societies is to create a community of people who share
a passion for archaeology and provide them with high-quality programs that are both
intellectually stimulating and entertaining. All societies sponsor lectures by archaeologists
and also offer other highly diverse programs and opportunities. Field trips and tours,
workshops in making stone tools or
writing hieroglyphics, kids’ fairs and
outreach to local schools, receptions and
dinners with archaeologists, and even
wine tastings are among the activities
that societies have recently organzied for
their members and the general public.
Through these events, AIA societies
are engaging the people in their local
communities with archaeology.
If you enjoy reading ARCHAEOLOGY
magazine and would like to deepen your knowledge and get more involved with the
discipline, I would encourage you to join a Local Society. You can learn more by visiting
our website at www.archaeological.org/societies. If there is not a society near you, join
as a member-at-large and await the virtual society that will soon bring you a range of
lectures and other modes of learning through your computer, smartphone, or tablet. Your
involvement will further our mission to inform and educate people about the precious
cultural heritage that belongs to us all.
LTHOUGH

OFFICERS
President

Elizabeth Bartman
First Vice President

Andrew Moore
Vice President for Outreach and Education

Pamela Russell
Vice President for Professional Responsibilities

Laetitia LaFollette
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
Julie Herzig Desnick
Michael Galaty
Greg Goggin
Ronald Greenberg
Michael Hoff
Jeffrey Lamia
Lynne Lancaster
Deborah Lehr
Robert Littman
Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
Heather McKillop
Shilpi Mehta
Naomi Norman, ex officio
Maria Papaioannou
Eleanor Powers
Paul Rissman
Robert Rothberg
Glenn Schwartz
David Seigle
Chen Shen
Charles Steinmetz
Douglas Tilden
Claudia Valentino, ex officio
Shelley Wachsmann
Ashley White
John J. Yarmick
Past President

Elizabeth Bartman
President, Archaeological Institute of America

C. Brian Rose
Trustees Emeriti

Norma Kershaw
Charles S. LaFollette
Legal Counsel

Mitchell Eitel, Esq.
Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP
Archaeological Institute of America
656 Beacon Street • Boston, MA 02215-2006
www.archaeological.org

6

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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ARCHAEOLOGY’S
SPECIAL
COLLECTOR’S EDITION

LETTERS
Legend of Oz
A recent court case in Victoria has determined that the remains of Ned Kelly
belong to his descendants (“Final Resting
Place of an Outlaw,” September/October
2012) rather than to the owner of the
hotel now on the Pentridge Prison site.
There is a 30-minute show produced
by the Australian Broadcasting Commission called Catalyst. One of its segments
looked at the plowshare mask that Kelly
wore at the Glenrowan siege. It has long
been a contentious issue whether the
mask was made by a local blacksmith or
by the Kelly gang in the bush. Examination of the metal’s crystalline structure
apparently shows that the mask was
made over a bushfire, probably by the
Kelly gang. Another piece of the myth
falls to science.
Helen Andrews
Adelaide, Australia

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Indeed, you’re right. The court decision was
handed down just after our September/
October 2012 issue went to print.
Ned Kelly’s exploits were the subject of
The Story of the Kelly Gang—the world’s
first full-length feature film, made in
1906, now on the UNESCO Memory
of the World Register. In 1946 and 1947,
artist Sidney Nolan produced a famous
series of 27 paintings concerning Ned
Kelly. Books and poems have been
written about his life. In 2005 the Glenrowan Heritage Precinct was included
on Australia’s National Heritage List. In
2001 Australia’s former Arts Minister,
Peter McGauran, said, “Whether you
regard Ned Kelly as a hero or a villain,
his story is part of our heritage.” As
Patel rightly comments, this story has
become the stuff of legends.
Patrick O’Keefe
Toowoomba, Australia

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8

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.

Curse Words
The story titled “Curses!!!” (September/
October 2012) describes two “Roman”
tablets rediscovered in the City Archaeological Museum of Bologna that date to
the fourth or fifth century A.D.—their
provenance is unknown. Nowhere in the
article does it say that the tablet pictured
is in Latin. In fact, it is written using the
Greek alphabet. Classical Romans (centuries earlier) were definitely literate in
Greek, as it was the language of culture
and education. Regarding this particular
time period in history, I’m not so certain.
Stefan M. Pugh
Wright State University
Dayton, OH

Cause of Death at Vilnius
In “Burial Customs” (September/October 2012), archaeologist Phil Freeman
is quoted as saying the only comparable
finding to the Roman mass grave found
in Macedonia is one dating to 1812 in Vilnius, Lithuania, which contained “corpses
of French soldiers killed during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia.” The word
“killed,” implying violence, is unfair and
inaccurate. In the article you previously
published (“Digging Napoleon’s Dead,”
September/October 2002), the deaths
were attributed to epidemic disease,
starvation, and the severe winter. The
Lithuanians were not causally involved.
Viktoras Pranziskus Mockus
Santa Cruz, CA

As it is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, our in-house reference
guide, the word “killed” does not necessarily
imply violence.
Yang Jian’s Empire
As stated in “The 3,000 Buddhas”
(September/October 2012), Yuchi Jiong
indeed was a Northern Zhou general
stationed at Yecheng. What he opposed
was the ouster of the Northern Zhou by
Yang Jian when he established the Sui
Dynasty in A.D. 581. Thus, Yang Jian was
not an emperor of the Northern Zhou.
Albert Dien
Stanford University
Menlo Park, CA

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

LATE-BREAKING NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE WORLD OF ARCHAEOLOGY

The Desert and the Dead

A

round 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, the Chinchorro, a
group of hunter-gatherers living in the Atacama Desert on the coast of northern Chile, began mummifying their dead. But how the practice originated has remained
a mystery. Many archaeologists, including Mario Rivera of the
Field Museum in Chicago, believe that the ancestors of this
hunter-gatherer culture migrated
from the Amazon River Basin and
brought with them some basic
techniques for treating the dead,
which they then developed into a
more elaborate form of mummification. A team of Chilean researchers,
however, has proposed an alternative hypothesis. They believe that
a combination of environmental
and demographic factors led the
Chinchorro to develop mummification practices.
By comparing radiocarbon
dates from Chinchorro sites with
climate data obtained from ice
cores and pollen samples, the
researchers found that there was
a greater amount of rainfall in the
Andes Mountains, east of the Atacama Desert, at around the same
time that there was an increase in
the number of Chinchorro settlements. The team believes that the
wetter climate in the mountains
may have started a series of events
that led to the development of the
Chinchorro culture. Team member Pablo Marquet of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
believes that the population in the
desert grew because the increased
rainfall in the mountains would
have meant more ground water
to feed the desert springs upon
which the Chinchorro depended
for survival. The greater availability

www.archaeology.org

of water, coupled with the abundant marine food resources
on the coast, may have allowed the desert to support a larger
number of people than it previously had. “Here is one situation where climate change had a positive impact on the
emergence of innovations,” says Marquet.
The larger population size would have set the stage
for cultural innovations such as
artificial mummification, according to Marquet. Even with rain
falling in the mountains, the desert remained extremely dry—dry
enough to naturally mummify dead
bodies. The increased population
would have meant that more slowdecaying corpses would have been
visible in the desert. Marquet
thinks that observation of these
naturally preserved remains might
have inspired the Chinchorro to
augment the process and create
artificial mummies of their own.
The Chinchorro mummified
bodies by removing muscles and, in
some cases, organs, and replacing
them with sticks and clay or plant
materials, Marquet says. The mummies’ faces were covered by clay
masks, and the bodies were often
coated with black or red pigments.
Rivera, however, is not convinced that environmental conditions led so directly to the practice
of mummification. People living
in very different environments,
including the Pacific Islands and
Amazon River Basin, have also
practiced mummification, but
without climates conducive to
natural preservation, he points out.
“You could get the same results
in quite different environmental
conditions,” he says.
—ZACH ZORICH

9

vv
FROM THE TRENCHES

Fractals and Pyramids

W

hen rain falls in a river valley, overflow from the
river forms channels that spread out across the
landscape. Even when rivers dry out, the branching channels persist, having carved geometric patterns known
as fractals. Fractals have a self-similar nature, meaning that a
glimpse from above at a small part of the valley network will
appear similar in form to the complete network, just as a twig
shows the same basic form as a whole tree.
German scientists are now using these fractals, or rather
their absence, to identify landscapes altered by humans. Take
the necropolis of Dashur, a 4,600-year-old site 20 miles south
of Cairo, where King Sneferu erected pyramids and temples.
Surveys around Dashur show that natural fractal patterns
appear regularly—except within a two-and-a-half-square-mile
section around the complex.
Arne Ramisch, a geographer at the Free University of Berlin, says the fractal-free region might have been used for trans-

Just 11 miles long and three miles
wide, Georgia’s Sapelo Island is a
unique cultural destination with a
long history. The barrier island’s first
known residents were the Guale
Indians, who occupied it on and off
for more than 3,000 years. In the
sixteenth century, Spanish missions
and settlements sprang up, and
after that, British and French settlers
moved in. The nineteenth century
brought the island’s plantation era
and the 1819 establishment of
Chocolate Plantation, built by
Edward Swarbeck, a Danish
merchant who traded in cotton and
other commodities, as well as slaves.
The remains of the once-prosperous
cotton and sugar plantation are,
today, one of the island’s great
draws for tourists, according to

10

porting construction materials more easily, creating a more
monumental appearance, or extensive quarrying. “Excavations
from our archaeological colleagues revealed that in one of the
many potentially man-made landforms a harbor was located,”
Ramisch adds. “And this, in the middle of the desert.”
—NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN

Bryan Tucker, Georgia’s state
archaeologist. The ruins are
particularly interesting for their
building material, Tucker says—a
compound known as “tabby,” a
Spanish recipe adapted for use in
the southeastern United States.
The site
Don’t let the name fool you: No
chocolate was grown at Chocolate
Plantation. Its name comes from
a nearby Guale village named
Chucalate. Today, the plantation
site consists of more than a dozen
structures made of tabby, a mixture
of lime, burned oyster shells, sand,
and water. The labor-intensive
construction process began by
mining shells from midden deposits
at nearby Native American sites.
In addition to
the large twostory plantation
house and several
outbuildings, the
site also has nine
buildings that
were once slave
quarters. These
buildings typically
had two floors,
central chimneys,
and finished
tabby floors. They
suggest that the
resident slave

community consisted of at least 18
households and between 70 and 100
individuals. Visitors can also check
out a restored livestock barn and,
for a taste of more modern history, a
house purchased from Sears that was
assembled on-site from prefabricated
parts sometime after 1929.
While you’re there
Sapelo Island is easily accessible by
ferry from the Georgia mainland. If,
after seeing Chocolate Plantation,
you can’t get enough tabby, get a
large group of friends together and
rent out the Reynolds Mansion, a
nineteenth-century estate house
partially made of the material. You
can also take in the complex of three
large 4,000-year-old rings of oyster
shells built up by the Guale Indians
(perhaps intentionally, but most likely
accumulated around villages), as well
as the island’s beautifully restored
candy-striped lighthouse, originally
built in 1820. And finally, Sapelo
Island is a home to Gullah culture,
African-American communities
that have retained some of their
African cultural heritage. People in
these communities, such as Hog
Hammock, are descended from the
area’s slaves and still speak a creole
language called Gullah, or Geechee.
Visiting their communities is a cultural
experience like no other.
—MALIN GRUNBERG BANYASZ

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

Exploring the Roots
of Religion
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FROM THE TRENCHES

Mosaics of Huqoq

I

n June 2012, Jodi Magness of the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill began her second
season of excavation in the village of
Huqoq, in Israel’s lower eastern Galilee.
There, in the remains of a Late Roman
or Byzantine synagogue, she discovered
an extraordinary mosaic depicting
female faces flanking a medallion with
Hebrew or Aramaic inscriptions. In
another area of the floor, Magness
uncovered an image of the Biblical

judge Samson placing torches between
foxes’ tails. Although archaeologists
have found mosaics in three other
synagogues in this area of the Galilee,
the example from Huqoq is unprecedented—it’s the earliest securely identified image of Samson in a synagogue
in Israel. “This scene comes right from
Judges 15:4,” says Magness, “and shows
Samson taking revenge on the Philistines, the Israelites’ traditional enemy.”
It’s also interesting that in the Wadi

Medieval Fashion Statement

W

hen archaeologists pulled up the floorboards during extensive
sive
restoration work at Lengberg Castle in Austria, they found a
space filled with dry organic material, including branches and
d
0
straw, processed wood, leather, shoes, yarn, rope, and more than 2,700
air
textile fragments. Among the textiles were 17 linen shirts, a complete pair

and a fragment of men’s underwear, and four lace-decorated linen bras—
nt
which push back the earliest date for this type of women’s undergarment
more than 500 years. Using both their archaeological context—the filll
layer was likely created during a fifteenth-century renovation of thee
castle—and radiocarbon analysis of fibers from two of the bras, Beatrixx
Nutz of the University of Innsbruck dated the garments to between
n
A.D. 1390 and 1485. There are numerous medieval written sources that
hat
describe bras as “breastbags,” but until this discovery no one had any idea
ea
what these garments looked like. According to Nutz, we also know from
rom
contemporary sources that women likely made the garments themselves
lves
and did not rely on male tailors. The discovery will enable archaeologists
gists
and clothing historians to learn more about tailoring by women.
—JARRETT A. LOBELL
BELL
12

Hamam synagogue only a few miles
away, archaeologist Uzi Leibner of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem found
a mosaic in 2008 that he thought might
also depict Samson. By comparing the
clothing and size of the figures—both
are portrayed as giants—it’s now possible to identify the Wadi Hamam
image as Samson as well. The question
remains, though, whether Samson had a
special significance in this area of Israel.
—MALIN GRUNBERG BANYASZ

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FROM THE TRENCHES

The Bog Army

W

hen the team of archaeologists from Aarhus University
began finding human bones
in Alken Enge bog in eastern Denmark
three years ago, they weren’t sure what
to think—but they knew they wanted
to return. After more than two months
in the field this past summer, they have
now recorded the remains of nearly 250
individuals, as well as spearheads, shields,
clubs, and an ax, all part of what project
archaeologist Mads Holst believes is evidence for a catastrophic military event that
occurred around A.D. 1. At this time the
Roman Empire had reached its northern
boundary just 185 miles south of Alken,
resulting in turmoil and increased militarization of the local tribes in response
to the empire’s expansion. According
to Holst, it appears that the soldiers
from the bog, a unique find in northern
Europe, may have been killed in battle—
their wounds are consistent with battle
damage—and then buried in the bog in
some sort of ritual.
Holst is certain there is a great deal
more to uncover and to learn. “We have
only excavated about 1,600 square feet
so far, just a small part of the complex.
But we know from surveying and doing
small test excavations that there are
finds from an area that covers almost
100 acres,” says Holst. “The scale of the
conflict is much larger than we expected
and reveals a much higher level of organization than most ancient descriptions
of these tribes would have you believe.”
—JARRETT A. LOBELL

14

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

2013 TRAVEL ADVENTURES

The Cultures and
Arts of Morocco
and Moorish

Who Came to
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Explore medieval
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Scholar: Dr. Ron Messier

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Explore the
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n 2008, archaeologists working at
Paisley Caves in central Oregon
presented evidence, in the form of
coprolites, or fossilized feces, of human
occupation in the Americas dating back
more than 14,000 years. That’s 1,000
years before the emergence of the Clovis culture, the previously agreed-upon
first Americans. Critics discounted
the findings because no tools had
been found with the coprolites. They
asserted that human DNA found on the
feces might have washed down onto the
droppings over time.
This summer the Paisley Caves team
presented new evidence from the cave,
including stone tools and radiocarbon
dates for them and the coprolites—all
as many as 13,200 years old. The Paisley
Caves tools belong to the so-called Western Stemmed tradition, and are markedly different from Clovis tools, which
are best exemplified by their fluted,
Christmas tree–shaped projectile points.
Loren Davis, an archaeologist at Oregon
State University and part of the Paisley
Caves team, says that Clovis points were
made from large stone cores, while the
Western Stemmed tools were fashioned
from stone fragments.
Davis says the findings indicate that
another population was here at the same
time, or possibly before, Clovis, requiring a new model for the peopling of
the Americas. “It can’t be a straight-line
evolutionary model where everything
descends from Clovis,” he explains. “Now
the scene early on is very complicated.”
—NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN

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FROM THE TRENCHES

Settling
Southeast
Asia

Livestock for
the Afterlife

I

n Oakington, England, a team
of archaeologists led by Duncan Sayer of the University of
Central Lancashire has excavated a
late-fifth-century A.D. Anglo-Saxon
grave containing the remains of
a wealthy woman and a cow. The
grave is the first of its kind in
Europe. “It matches the female role
in Anglo-Saxon society,” says Sayer.
“The cow was much more a symbol
of economic and domestic power.”
—ZACH ZORICH

F

ragments of a human skull
found at Tam Pa Ling Cave
in Laos, dated to between
46,000 and 63,000 years old, are
providing insights into how the first
Homo sapiens settled Southeast Asia
and later Australia. Archaeologists
Fabrice Demeter of the National
Museum of Natural History in Paris
and Laura Shackelford of the Illinois
State Geological Survey analyzed the
skull. According to Shackelford, it
does not show any evidence that the
individual’s ancestors interbred with
Homo erectus, a hominin species that
lived in the area for more than one
million years. The skull itself is small
and belonged to a young adult at least
18 years old. No artifacts were found
with the bones, but the cave’s location, far from the coast, shows that
modern humans migrated through
the river valleys and into the mountains of Laos as they continued their
trek toward Australia, where they
arrived at least 40,000 years ago.
—ZACH ZORICH

Running Guns to Irish Rebels

A

fter 14 months of planning, a crew has recovered two iron anchors from the
wreck of a German ship that, in 1916, attempted to deliver arms to Irish
Republicans. The Aud carried one million rounds of ammunition and 20,000
arms for use in the Republicans’ Easter Rising to free Ireland from British rule. When
the Aud mistakenly landed more than 60 miles south of its intended destination, the
British navy seized the ship. After being caught, the German captain chose to scuttle
the boat off the coast of County Cork.

“Very little of the Aud actually survives, as it was depth-charged and used for target
practice a number of times in the past,” says archaeologist Laurence Dunne, who
helped lead the recovery effort. All that remains intact besides the anchors—one of
which weighs half a ton, while the other is just less than two tons—is a section of
the bow and a boiler. Dunne estimates it will take three to four years to complete
conservation work on the anchors.
—NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN
16

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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2006 Silver Panda .................................... $113.29
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FROM
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Garry Shaw
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ike builders everywhere, the
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near the southern city of Oaxaca,
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ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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FROM THE TRENCHES

Diagnosis of Ancient Illness

T

he Black Death, brucellosis, leprosy: The pathogens
that cause these diseases have been identified in
ancient remains by their DNA. But the presence
of such DNA doesn’t necessarily mean that the person who
carried it was sick. For example, one can carry the bacterium
that causes tuberculosis for years without suffering from a
serious cough, fever, and weight loss.
In the case of three well-preserved 500-year-old mummies
found in 1999 on high-and-dry Llullaillaco peak in Argentina,
forensic examination and DNA tests suggested that one of
them—a 15-year-old girl known as the “Llullaillaco Maiden”—
suffered from a lung infection. But the
DNA was degraded and the finding wasn’t
definitive. Recently, forensic pathologist
Angelique Corthals of Stonybrook University noticed what looked like traces
of blood and mucus around the maiden’s
mouth. She and her colleagues used swabs
to take samples, hoping to determine
where in the body the blood had come
from. The team employed a technique
called shotgun proteomics, used in mod-

ern medicine to look for biomarkers of diseases such as cancer,
which involves separating and identifying specific proteins.
“Lo and behold, we actually found a lot,” she says. “We didn’t
expect so many proteins would survive 500 years. We saw a
whole profile of the body’s immune system.”
Samples from the maiden showed the presence of several proteins strongly associated with severe, chronic lung
inflammation. Alongside the DNA and other tests, the
protein profile clearly showed the maiden suffered from a
lung infection at the time of death, caused by the genus of
bacterium that causes tuberculosis.
Proteomics has several advantages
over DNA testing in identifying ancient
diseases. Proteins degrade more slowly
than DNA. The technique is also cheaper and less susceptible to contamination by modern sources. And because
proteomics shows immune response to
active disease, it can in some cases be
used to infer cause of death. But not for
the maiden—she was a sacrifice.
—SAMIR S. PATEL

Pharaoh’s Port?
The remains
of the harbor
at Acre (left)
and a ceramic
bowl (below)
with an image
of the Greek
mythological
figure
Hypnos

A

2,300-year-old harbor has
been uncovered off the coast
of the Israeli city of Acre. An
Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)
and University of Rhode Island team
believes Acre was the most important
regional port at that time, the only one
in a protected natural bay.
20

“Recently, a
find was uncovered that suggests
we are excavating
part of [Acre’s]
military port,” sayss
Kobi Sharvit, direcirector of the IAA’s Marine

Archaeology Unit. “We know the
pharaoh Ptolemy Philadelphus built
a harbor for his fleet at this time.
Usually military ships were kept out
of the water in ‘shipshades’ like what
we found here.” The size and design
of the structure suits warships from
that period. Large mooring stones,
pottery vessels, and metallic objects,
many of milita
military function,
were also ffound. Initial
examin
examination
reveals
ite originated
the items
acros the eastern
across
Med
Mediterranean,
incl
including
at Aegean Sea islands
such
su as Knidos,
Rhodes,
R
and
Kos.
K
Sharvit’s
team
tea
will next
attempt
attem to determine when
w
the harbor was destroyed.
d
—MATI MILSTEIN
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

Peru’s
Mysterious
Infant Burials

T

he ancient Peruvian site of
Pachacamac is known to have
been an important pilgrimage
destination for sick travelers seeking
cures during the Inca period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But the
site had been occupied since as early as
A.D. 200. Between roughly A.D. 900 and
the beginning of the Inca period, the
Ychsma culture inhabited Pachacamac.
Archaeologists know primarily about
Ychsma rulers, who built pyramidal
palaces filled with simple, secular items
related to weaving and animal husbandry. When a local lord died, the members
of his household would be entombed in
his palace, and his successor would build
a new pyramid nearby.

Peter Eeckhout, an archaeologist
at the Université libre de Bruxelles in
Belgium, hopes the new find will illuminate the “social organization of the
common people, which is, in our opinion, reflected in their burial practices.”
To that end, he is attempting to discern
if the infants atop the tomb were sacri-

ficed or if they died of natural causes.
Further, dating of the burials found in
the chamber will determine whether
the structure was a collective tomb
reopened over successive generations
for new burials or if all the bodies were
entombed at the same time.
—NIKHIL SWAMINATHAN

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WORLD ROUNDUP
IDAHO: Excavations at the Cyrus
Jacobs-Uberuaga House in downtown
Boise have revealed a glimpse into
one of the city’s most prominent early
families, as well as a look at its most
distinctive ethnic group: Boise is home
to the country’s largest community of
Basques, who originally hail from the
western end of the Pyrenees. Artifacts
of the Jacobs family include children’s
toys and a variety of European home
products. Later deposits include items
from the building’s 70 years as a Basque
boarding house.

MEXICO: Context is everything. Find evidence of
cacao beans in an ancient
Maya drinking vessel, it is
pretty clearly some kind of
chocolate beverage. But
find that same evidence
on a plate, and it’s time to
start thinking about mole
sauce. The recent finding of
theobromine and caffeine
compounds characteristic of
chocolate on a Maya plate
dating to between 600 and
500 B.C. suggests that, in
addition to being imbibed,
cacao was also used as a
condiment or sauce.

22

BAHAMAS: In the
churning waves
at Lynyard Cay in
the Abaco Islands,
archaeologists
have found what
they believe are the
remains of the Peter
Mowell, an illegal
slave ship that ran
aground while trying to avoid capture in
July 1860. Finds include ballast stones,
bricks, copper sheathing, nails, and
spikes. Of the 400 Africans aboard, 390
made it to safety on the uninhabited
island, to eventually be made indentured laborers on the island of Nassau.

GREENLAND: The SS Terra Nova lived a
full life at the ends of the earth. Built in
Scotland in 1884, the ship had a history
in the northern sealing industry before
being enlisted for Robert Falcon Scott’s
ill-fated expedition to the South Pole.
After its return from Antarctica in 1913, it
went back to sealing for decades before
being drawn into wartime supply service
in 1942 and sinking the next year. An
oceanographic expedition testing sonar
equipment in the Labrador Sea has just
located the wreck.

ARGENTINA: The 500-year-old Llullaillaco mummies (see “Diagnosis of Ancient Illness,” page 20) are remarkably preserved in part
because they were buried in an extreme environment, inhospitable
even to the microbes responsible for decomposition. The mummies piqued the interest of ecologists, who trekked up the volcano
where they were found to study its microscopic ecosystem—a
potential analogue for life on Mars. They found several unique varieties of fungi and microbes—extremophiles hanging on despite
freezing temperatures, punishing UV rays, and almost no water.

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

By Samir S. Patel

SPAIN: The site of La Draga has
produced the oldest Neolithic bow
in Europe, a three-and-a-half-foot
length of yew dating to between
5400 and 5200 B.C. It was found
in the remains of the area’s earliest
farming settlement. Though the bow
could have been used for hunting,
the practice does not seem to have
been common at La Draga, suggesting the weapon might have been a
status symbol or used for defense of
the community.

MONGOLIA: Did
climate spur the
Mongolian invasions of the 13th
century? The
accepted wisdom
has been that an
erratic, variable
climate at home
drove Genghis
Khan’s expansionist desires, but according to early analysis
of tree rings from Siberian pines, the opposite might have been true. Thick rings from
around the time of the invasions suggest
that it was a wet period, which would have
fueled grasslands and provided fodder for
thousands of Mongol horses.

CROATIA: Neolithic Europeans
coveted hunting trophies just
like modern hunters. In the
remains of a prehistoric home,
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The Maya
Sense of Time
As one Maya calendar reaches the end of a
cycle, we take a look at how an ancient people
understood their place in the cosmos
by Zach Zorich

The Maya tracked
astronomical movements
and recorded them on
calendars, monuments,
and architecture. One
example is the Temple
of the Inscriptions at
Palenque, which may
have been built with solar
alignments in mind.

A

LITTLE MORE THAN 2,000 YEARS AGO, the
Maya were creating spectacular works of
art and erecting massive stone buildings
across what is now southern Mexico,
Guatemala, Belize, northern Honduras,
and El Salvador. As their culture spread
and developed, the Maya also created a complex system of
calendars that reflected an understanding of the passage of
time that is very different from anything in Western culture.
It is not entirely clear whether the Maya invented all of the
calendars they used or whether they adopted them from
the neighboring Olmec people. But over a period that may
have lasted from 900 to 1,200 years they made a careful
and accurate study of astronomical cycles and used that
knowledge as a way to make sense of and bring order to the
unpredictable world in which they lived.

The Maya recognized that the natural world, the cosmos, and even their own bodies functioned according to
observable cycles. To locate themselves within these cycles
they tracked the movements of planets, the moon, and the
sun. They also used a 260-day calendar that many scholars
believe to be based on the approximate duration of a human
pregnancy. Another Maya calendar, the Long Count, was
used to tally the number of days that had elapsed since the
mythological date of their creation. The Long Count is set
to reach the end of a 1,872,000-day-long period on December 21, 2012. (Some scholars, however, pinpoint the date as
December 23.) Regardless of the date, this has given rise to
widespread apocalyptic predictions about what will happen.
Evidence from archaeological sites, ancient books, and the
modern-day Maya themselves shows that while this one cycle
is ending, many others will continue.

PRIMER:
THREE
MAYA
CALENDARS
Glyphs on the back of a monument from
the site of Tonina in Mexico spell out a
date that is the last known use of the Long
Count calendar. The carving at the top of
the monument is an introductory glyph that
has not yet been translated. The rest of
the glyphs record the Long Count calendar
date—10 bak’tun, 4 k’atun, 0 tun, 0 winal.
Because the monument was broken, the
bottom glyph in the date is obscured,
but it probably reads 0 k’in. The date
corresponds to January 20, A.D. 909.

Introductory
glyph

10 bak’tun

4 k’atun

0 tun

0 winal

T

MAYA CALENDAR that records the longest span
of time is called the Long Count. It marks the number of days that have passed since a mythological
founding date that fell on either August 11 or 13, 3114 B.C.,
depending on how the Maya calendar is reconciled with our
calendar. Long Count dates are usually written as a series of
five numbers, such as 7.17.18.13.3 (the date that corresponds
to January 1, A.D. 1). The smallest unit of time is the day, or
k’in, and it is recorded in the place farthest to the right. The
next place records the number of winals, a 20-day unit of
time often referred to as a “Maya month.” The third place
records the number of Maya years called tuns. Eighteen winals
make up a tun, for a total of 360 days. The Maya extended
the count by multiplying each successive cycle by 20. Thus,
20 tuns make up a k’atun, and 20 k’atuns make up a bak’tun—a
period of time equivalent to 394.52 solar years.
Maya monuments that have Long Count dates often include
dates from other types of calendars. The two most important
of these time cycles are the tzolk’in, a 260-day cycle that may
HE

26

be based on the duration of a human pregnancy, and the haab,
a calendar that approximates the solar year. One example
of an artifact that includes dates from all three calendars is
monument six from the site of Tortuguero. An inscription
on that monument mentions the date at the end of the thirteenth bak’tun, which falls on December 23, 2012, written as
13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in by the ancient Maya.
The date 4 Ajaw records the day in the tzolk’in calendar.
The tzolk’in is based on a 13-day “week.” The number 4 in the
date records the day of the week. There are also 20 named
days, so each day has a name and a number. The first named
day is Imix, which translates as “water serpent” in Yukatek
Mayan, followed by Ik’ (“wind”), and Ak’bal (“night”). The
numbers run concurrently with the names, so the first day
of the tzolk’in calendar is 1 Imix, followed by 2 Ik’, and then 3
Ak’bal. After day 13 is reached, the numbers start over but the
names continue, therefore the fourteenth day of the tzolk’in is
called 1 Ix (“jaguar”). This cycle continues for 260 days, when
the calendar returns to 1 Imix. The twentieth day name, and
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

Only two Maya monuments refer to the end of the 13th bak’tun, which will
occur on December 21 (or 23) this year. Part of the controversy over what will
happen on that day stems from the inscription on monument six from the site
of Tortuguero in Mexico. A glyph in the far right column refers to the end of the
13th bak’tun in the Long Count calendar. Another glyph states that the day will
fall on 4 Ajaw in the tzolk’in calendar, and a third glyph states the day will fall
on 3 K’ank’in in the haab calendar. According to epigrapher Barbara MacLeod,
the glyphs following the dates make a cryptic reference to a deity named B’olon
Yokte’ ascending to power on that day. This inscription has fueled some of the
apocalyptic predictions involving the end of the 13th bak’tun.

Reference to the Long Count
calendar’s 13th bak’tun

Haab date: 3 K’ank’in

Tzolk’in date: 4 Ajaw

the one mentioned in the Tortuguero monument, is Ajaw
(“lord”), which was the day when many important festivals
commemorating period endings were celebrated.
The date “3 K’ank’in” refers to a day in the haab calendar,
which is based on the solar year. Each day in the haab is numbered from zero to 19 and occurs during one of 18 named
months called a winal. The first day of the haab is called 0 Pop,
the second day is 1 Pop, etc., up to 19 Pop. The twenty-first day
of the haab is 0 Wo. The 18 winals add up to 360 days. The
remaining five days of the solar year were called Wayeb, and
were considered a time of bad luck. The Maya did not include
a leap day in the haab calendar, so it would diverge from our
modern calendars by one day every four years.
The tzolk’in and haab calendars were also used together
in what is called the “Calendar Round.” Starting at 1 Imix
0 Pop, it takes 52 haab years or 73 tzolk’in cycles for the
two calendars to come around again to that date. The last
calendar round was completed on April 28, 2011. The next
one will end on April 15, 2063.
www.archaeology.org

THE CALENDAR INSCRIPTIONS
Tortuguero
One of the few artifacts that survived being crushed in the
gravel factory that now occupies the site of Tortuguero in
southern Mexico is a large stone tablet (monument six) that
records important events in the life of the ruler Bahlam Ajaw
(“Jaguar Lord”), who lived in the early seventh century A.D.
The tablet contains one of only two known references to the
end of the thirteenth bak’tun (13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in),
which translates to December 23, 2012. This is the inscribed
date that people refer to when they discuss the Maya calendar
predicting the end of time.
Chiapa de Corzo
A small fragment of a monument from the site of Chiapa
de Corzo in southern Mexico indicates when the earliest
known Long Count date was written. Parts of the inscription have been lost, but based on the readable glyphs,
27

Gareth Lowe of Brigham Young University deduced that it
probably recorded a date in 36 B.C.
Tonina
The most recent Long Count date comes from a monument at
the city of Tonina in southern Mexico. It commemorates the
k’atun that ended on 10.4.0.0.0, which took place in A.D. 909.
By that time, Tonina’s power and influence were in decline, but
the ruling dynasty seems to have managed to hold on to power
longer than many of their neighbors.
La Corona
A stone block from a staircase decorated with hieroglyphics at
La Corona, an ancient Maya city in northern Guatemala, was
carved to commemorate a visit by the king of the region’s most
powerful city, Calakmul, sometime after August 5, A.D. 695,
when the king had been defeated by an army from the city of
Tikal. According to Marcello Canuto, David Stuart, and Tomás
Barrientos of the La Corona Project, the king was probably
visiting to shore up support among his allies after his defeat.
The glyphs refer to the king as
“1
“13 k’atun lord”—the end of
tthe thirteenth k’atun had been
ccelebrated a few years earlier.
T
The text goes on to refer to the
eend of the thirteenth bak’tun,
13
13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K’ank’in,
perhaps
pe
as a way to locate the
recent
re
historical events within
larger
lar cycles of time.
Xultun
Evidence of the way Maya priests calculated calendar dates was
discovered earlier this year at the ancient Maya city of Xultun
in northern Guatemala’s Petén rain forest. The investigation
of a looter’s trench revealed a building that may have been
used as a workshop by priests or scribes. In addition to vibrant
paintings of a king and other important figures, numbers were
painted and scratched into the building’s plaster walls. According to a group of researchers led by William Saturno of Boston
University, the numbers were probably tied to calculating the
movements of the moon, Venus, and Mars.

28

AN EYE ON VENUS

T

were not the only celestial
bodies of importance to the ancient Maya. The movements of the planet Venus also held special meaning
for them. Tables that mark Venus’ position throughout the
year are recorded in ancient Maya books called codices and
on monuments throughout the Maya kingdoms. Venus also
seems to have influenced the architecture of the city Uxmal
in the northwestern part of Yucatán, Mexico. Anthony Aveni,
an archaeoastronomer at Colgate University, believes that
the royal residence named the “House of the Governor”
was designed with the observation of Venus in mind. Venus
symbols decorate its façade and from its central doorway an
observer can still see the planet align with monuments across
the site that mark the northern and southern extremes of
Venus’ migration along the horizon throughout the year.
Venus orbits the sun approximately every 225 days, but
as it is seen from Earth, the planet appears to move back
and forth relative to the sun in a cycle that lasts 584 days.
Five of these oscillations—2,920 days—are almost exactly
as long as eight solar years. Aveni believes that Maya priests
saw significance in this astronomical coincidence. “For the
Maya, everything has to be brought together in terms of
whole multiples and that’s where Venus comes in. It has a
five-to-eight rhythm with the sun,” says Aveni.
Venus also appears to go through four phases. For 250
days the planet is known in Western cultures as the “Evening
Star” as it follows the setting sun. After the Evening Star
phase, Venus disappears for eight days before returning as
the “Morning Star”—the 236-day-long phase when it rises
just before dawn. After the Morning Star phase, Venus disappears for 90 days before returning again as the Evening
Star. A document from Central Mexico written in the late
1500s called the Annals of Cuauhtitlan associates the eight-day
period between the Evening and Morning Star phases with
the death and resurrection of Quetzalcoatl, a deity known as
Kukulcan to the ancient Maya. Kukulcan was the sky god and
the most powerful of the ancient Maya deities. According to
Aveni, rituals celebrating the appearance of the Morning Star
may have been held on the large plaza in front of the House
of the Governor, providing the rulers of Uxmal with a way
to commemorate their ties to the sky god.
HE SUN AND THE MOON

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

THE MAYA CODICES

W

what we know about Maya astronomical knowledge from
detailed records they themselves created on the pages of bark-paper books
called codices. In the mid-sixteenth century, Franciscan missionaries burned
nearly all of the Maya’s written records in an eff ort to eradicate their religion. Today, only
three or four Maya codices remain. Three of them are named for the European cities where
they are kept—Dresden, Paris, and Madrid. The authenticity of a fourth book called the
Grolier Codex, now in Mexico City, is still disputed. The codices were probably written
no earlier than the twelfth century A.D., but the Maya may have copied books that were
written much earlier. According to archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni, the codices were
used to set dates for rituals, often by linking them to astronomical events.
The pages of the codices usually depict a deity and include a series of glyphs describing what the deity is doing. Many pages of these books also contain lists of numbers that
allowed the Maya to predict lunar and solar eclipses, the phases of the moon, and movements of Mars and Venus. One example is a series of three pages in the Dresden Codex
that record the phases of Venus as well as a list of tzolk’in dates and glyphs that have to do
with omens and augury. The Maya believed that Venus was associated with violence and
bad luck at certain times of the year. That association is clear on the second page in the
series, which shows an image of the god Kukulcan, representing Venus, in the process of
spearing an enemy.
E GATHER MUCH OF

THE MODERN CALENDAR PRIESTS

T

HE LONG COUNT CALENDAR may be a relic of the
past, but modern-day Maya communities in the highlands of Guatemala still have “Daykeepers,” people
whose job it is to maintain a 260-day ritual calendar. Allen
Christenson, an anthropologist at Brigham Young University,
apprenticed himself to a Daykeeper to gain a better understanding of Maya concepts of time and
the cosmos. According to Christenson,
the Daykeepers’ role in the community is
to keep track of different cycles of time,
to perform the proper rituals to keep
the cycles running, and to heal people
when they are sick. The 260-day calendar
they use today is the same as the tzolk’in
calendar used by the Maya 1,000 years
ago, although the modern calendar is
shifted two days later than the ancient
one. One concept that seems strange to
the Daykeepers with whom Christenson
has worked is the idea that some kind of
apocalypse is going to happen on December 23, 2012. Until recently the highland
Maya had little or no knowledge of the
predictions regarding the 2012 date, but
that doesn’t mean that they don’t think
the world will end. “The world is going
die on December 23,” says Christenson,

www.archaeology.org

explaining that the Maya believe the world dies each day
when the sun sets, or when crops are harvested. “The world is
constantly dying,” he says, “and the role of the Daykeeper is
to make sure they get things going again.” ■
Zach Zorich is a senior editor at Archaeology.

29

Factory of
Wealth
A mint from the Han Dynasty
produced billions of coins that
enabled vast economic growth
and trade along the Silk Road
by Lauren Hilgers

I

N A BACK ROOM at the Shanglinyuan archaeologi-

cal headquarters, just outside the modern city off
Xi’an, a concrete floor is nearly entirely covered
d
by a single layer of loosely arranged and dustyy
bricks. They have been placed in rows and come
me
in red, gray, and brown. Some are crumbling at the
edges, and others have been rounded over time. But thesee are
no simple construction materials. Archaeologist Liu Rui picks
icks
up one of the bricks, which date to the Western Han Dynasty
asty
(206 B.C.–A.D. 9), and dusts it off with a brush. Each brick
k has
one or more circular impressions on its face, and further dusting reveals a square protrusion at the center of each circle.
e. It
is an iconic shape in Chinese archaeology—the outline off the
country’s longest-lived currency, the “Wu Zhu” coin. Thesee are
molds for casting the coins that helped unify China and build
the Silk Road, which connected the region to the rest off the
world. The room is filled with the phantoms of the enormous
mous
wealth of the Han Dynasty.
Liu is the head of an ongoing excavation at a Han Dynasty
asty
mint, a gigantic ancient factory located in Shanglinyuan,
an, a
few miles from the ruins of the Han capital of Chang’an. “We
have discovered Wu Zhu coins in tombs all over China, butt we
have never excavated a site like this,” says Liu. “We don’tt yet
know the full story of how the Wu Zhu coin was minted.”” To
him, the bricks provide a new way to look at the empire’s vast
wealth and an opportunity to study the lives of the workers and
artisans that once kept the sprawling factory—and the empire
mpire
it supplied—running. It is estimated that during the Western
tern
Han, around 28 billion coins were minted. They remained
d in
use for 700 years, as other dynasties adopted the currency and
continued minting the coins, which have been uncovered
d in
sites as far afield as Southeast Asia, Japan, and Russia.
The city of Chang’an served as the Han capital from 220
B.C. to A.D. 11, and rivaled Rome in both size and grandeur.
deur.
The remains of this site, including the mint, miles of mud-andandbrick city walls studded with gates, several imperial palaces,
aces,
30

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

A brick excavated near the
modern city of Xi’an in China’s
Shaanxi Province was used as a
coin mold at an imperial mint on
the outskirts of the Western Han
Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 9) capital of
Chang’an. The mold was used to
cast the Wu Zhu coin, a currency
that was in use for 700 years and
was pivotal in the rise of ancient
China’s economy.
www.archaeology.org

31

This 17th-century painting on silk depicts Emperor Wu Di
preparing to leave his palace. In 188 B.C., he introduced the
Wu Zhu coin, standardizing currency and facilitating
economic growth.

and a variety of other official buildings and residences, lie at
the edges of Xi’an’s modern sprawl. Though study of the site
has been going on for some 60 years, there is still much to be
learned—as long as modern China’s rapid development can be
held at bay. The bricks that served as molds for coins provide
a humble entry point to big questions about commerce and
the ways of empire-building. “This mint,” Liu says, “can help
us tell the story of the booming Han economy.”

A

RCHAEOLOGISTS DON’T UNDERSTAND

every phase of
the Han Dynasty coin-making process yet, but some
of the steps are clear from the bricks themselves. The
ones that Liu is examining would have been used in pairs—one
with the impression of the front of a coin, another with the
back. He points out holes on some of them where they would
have been secured to their partners, though archaeologists are
not sure how they were attached. “On the molds you will often
see round or square joints,” Liu says. “They may have been
secured with rope or some other kind of material.” Once the
two bricks were secured together, he explains, molten copper,
likely brought from imperial mines in neighboring Sichuan
Province, would be poured into a hole, usually located near
the center of the front panel in the mold. On one of them,
he traces with his finger a channel this molten copper would
have run down. The molds were then heated evenly, perhaps
to facilitate a smooth flow of the copper into each mold, and
cooled with water before being separated or broken apart to
retrieve the coins. The bricks that Liu has excavated from the
32

Shanglinyuan mint are worn and chipped, and according to Liu,
were probably trash. The bricks form the back half of molds,
he says—the less important half. Each one might have been
used just once and then discarded. “They threw them out,” he
says. “We found them in what was likely a scrap yard.”
The mint would have required facilities to make the
bricks, melt the copper, and retrieve the coins, as well as
lodging for managers and laborers, who would have lived
on-site. “We are hoping to excavate kilns, warehouses, and
housing,” he says. “There are few records of how the government made coins or managed currency, but the making of Wu
Zhu would have followed strict rules…this would have been
a well-regulated factory.”
The regulations for making and maintaining such a
currency for such a long period of time, illustrated by the
bricks, are important pieces of the larger puzzle of the
evolution of ancient China’s economy. China experienced
its first moments of unification with the Qin Dynasty
(221–206 B.C.), and Emperor Qin Shihuangdi introduced
the country’s first standard currency, the “Ban Liang” coin.
When the Western Han Dynasty succeeded the Qin, the
first Han emperor, Gaozu, liberalized coin-making. Illegal
private mints sprang up all over the empire and the standards for the size, design, and weight of the Ban Liang coin
were often ignored. It was difficult for a merchant to tell if
the coins he was being paid with were real or fake, or how
much they would be worth in the next town over. If a unified
currency is needed to create a regulated, trusted commercial
environment, the Ban Liang was failing.
“Coin-making was always supposed to be controlled by
the central government. Different prefectures, however, had
their own rights to make coins by themselves. Even private
workshops were secretly making coins,” says Liu. “When we
look at different coins, it’s easy to tell which one is from a private workshop, because illegal coins are visibly different from
official ones.” He adds, “This mess remained until Emperor
Wu Di took the seigniorage [revenue from the manufacture
of coins] back to the central government.”
After a few decades of this monetary uncertainty, in 188
B.C. Wu Di decided to standardize the currency and replace
the small, light Ban Liang with the larger and heavier Wu Zhu.
, with “Wu” meaning “five”
Each coin bore the characters
and “Zhu” meaning a measure of weight. The standard square
hole in the middle enabled people to thread a string through
them to carry many coins easily. With the central government
in control, stability was brought back to the value of money.
The Shanglinyuan factory produced only Wu Zhu coins,
but slight variations in size and quantity are visible in the
bricks. Liu attributes small changes in the coins to variation
over time in the workmanship of the molds. Also, some of
the bricks were imprinted with only one row of coins, while
others were covered with up to three rows, as if workers
were squeezing as many coins as possible into the available
space. Liu attributes these changes in production standards
to a time when the empire was still working out the rules
and demand for Wu Zhu coins.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

L

IU’S MINT WAS FIRST DISCOVERED and studied in 1962. In
a preliminary survey using Luoyang spades—long poles
with hollow ends used for taking small soil samples—
archaeologists determined the site, near a village called Suilun,
was around 12 acres. Liu returned to conduct further study and
excavation in 2011. Using the same methods, he identified a
much more expansive factory. According to his survey, it once
covered 100 acres, roughly the same floor space as a modern
Boeing airplane factory. It is one of three that Emperor Wu
Di is said to have dedicated to coin-making. The first was
discovered, but not extensively excavated, in Zhaolun Village,
a site 13 miles away from the Shanglinyuan mint. “Among the
three, we have now found two,” he says. “We still have no clue
where the third one might be located.”
The site is located six miles outside of the Han Dynasty capital of Chang’an, in an area that was once the expansive garden
of Han Dynasty emperors. Its proximity to the capital places
the mint at both the center of the Western Han’s economic
boom and at the heart of Chinese archaeology. In its time,
Chang’an was one of the great cultural, military, and economic
centers of the world, and remains central to Chinese history.
There, Confucianism was first adopted as the state philosophy.
Military campaigns were devised in Chang’an that expanded the
country’s borders toward Central Asia. Trade links that would

last a millennium, and diplomatic links that were slightly less
persistent, all originated with the emperors there.
In the 1950s the People’s Republic of China decided to start
an official archaeological bureau. But with just 20 archaeologists at the start of the program, only a handful of sites could
be considered for excavation. Chang’an was an easy choice.
The ancient city walls were still visible in some places, giving

Chang’an

CHINA

From its capital in Chang’an, the Han Dynasty—shown here at
its greatest extent, around A.D. 100—presided over a period of
relative stability and economic growth.

Archaeologists conduct preliminary excavations to determine
the boundaries of the Han Dynasty coin mint. Previously thought
to cover 12 acres, the mint is now thought to have sprawled
across 100 acres—the size of a modern airplane factory.
www.archaeology.org

archaeologists a clear point of entry. The Han Dynasty was
also a logical place to start from a political point of view—it
had been one of China’s most glorious empires. The country’s
largest ethnic group, the Han, gets its name from the dynasty.
“Tombs from the Han Dynasty are found all over the place,”
says Liu. “They tell us a story of an empire in prosperity. Even
the ones from the Tang [A.D. 618–907, a particularly prosperous dynasty, also with its capital in Chang’an] can’t compete.”
Archaeologists first arrived at the ruins of Chang’an in 1956
and established the city’s boundaries. Prior to the 1980s, they
focused on the outline of the city, excavating 12 city gates and
identifying eight main streets that partitioned the city into
nine sections. The city of Chang’an was less a hub of trade and
manufacturing than it was an enclave of the Han aristocracy.
Huge imperial palaces, the first of which were completed in
195 B.C., took up much of the city’s area and were surrounded
by accommodations for servants and the scholar-gentry class
that helped run the government. The city was hemmed in by
a 16-mile wall of mud and brick. “This was one of the most
important cities in ancient China,” says Liu Zhendong, an
archaeologist who works in Chang’an.
The early work was extensive, explains Liu Zhendong, and
the layout of most official buildings has been established. But
it did not have the advantage of modern archaeological techniques. “During the beginning of excavations, their focus was
more on excavating artworks,” he says. These early efforts were
more interested in individual artifacts than in gaining a deeper
understanding of life in the Han city. So the artifacts that were
33

easy to remove have been removed, and today archaeologists
focus on daily life in the city’s interior and its palaces, where
many questions remain. “No one can say what the population
was,” Liu Zhendong says, surveying the site from a hill that
archaeologists think was once a huge city monument. “We can
say the number of households was in the tens of thousands.”
All sorts of intriguing finds have been made there recently,
such as an ice-storage building located in what once would have
been the palace reserved for the emperor’s mother. “When we
first saw this we couldn’t decide what it was—the earthen walls
are very thick and the floor is angled and has what look like
water channels running through it,” Liu Zhendong says. “One
archaeologist, at the time, guessed it was for making tofu.”
Upon closer examination, he says, the thick walls and water
channels started to make sense—workers might have collected
ice during the winter and stored it in blocks, with layers of
straw in between. During the summer, he says, the emperor’s
mother might have been accompanied by a pan of ice as a
personal cooling system.
Among the remains of palaces and other structures at
Chang’an was this mysterious site, now thought to have been
an ice-storage facility, with sloping floors lined with drainage
channels. The ice may have been used as a personal cooling
system for the emperor’s mother.

Most of the rest of the palace to which the ice-storage
building belonged, the Changle (“Long Happiness”) Palace,
has been excavated, backfilled, and returned to farmland. The
same is true of the city’s other large palaces, the Northern and
Weiyang palaces, as well as Liu Rui’s mint. “It’s hard to imagine
it was right here,” he says, pointing to a spot on his map. “Now
most of it is farmland.”

A

T THE PINNACLE OF ITS POWER, no one would have
described the capital of the Western Han Dynasty as
understated. Today, however, the site is eerily empty, a
break in the urban sprawl of modern Xi’an, a place where the
factories and industrial zones end. Inside the still-standing
portions of the city walls is a jumble of agricultural fields,
clusters of small houses, and a few mysterious, grass-covered

34

hills in an otherwise flat landscape. Whatever else remains of
the dynastic capital is buried.
Chang’an’s monuments were constructed of mud and
brick—a kind of imperial adobe—and capped with tile roofs.
“China is full of earthen sites,” says Liu Rui. “If we leave it
open to air, no matter if it’s in the northern or southern part
of China, it will weather over time.” As a result, much of the
work of Liu Rui and Liu Zhendong stays out of sight.
“Usually, there are only two ways of protection. The most
frequently used one is returning to farmland, while the other
is setting up for exhibition,” says Liu Rui. “As far as I am concerned, I prefer returning to farmland.”
While some of the sites, such as the icehouse, are enclosed
during excavation by warehouse-like structures with elevated
walkways, the only sure way to protect Chang’an’s sites is to
backfill all the excavations quickly, Liu Rui says. “If you return
the site to farmland, no man-made interference can hurt it,” he
says. “In some cases, we can build scale models of the sites to
show people what we have found.” Even backfilled, however,
Chang’an is not out of danger.
Over the next few years, archaeologists at Chang’an will
be launching a program to better protect the ancient capital
and help visitors understand what lies around Chang’an’s city
walls. Part of the plan proposes the site be developed as an
archaeological park. The city walls have already been fenced
and surrounded by parkland. These protection efforts, according to Liu Zhendong, have been implemented just in time.
Local farmers sometimes plant trees with roots deep enough
to damage the sites. In addition, factories—representing,
perhaps ironically, economic growth—are encroaching on the
area from Xi’an, one of the country’s most booming cities. The
new wealth could easily drown out what remains of the old.
Inside the headquarters of Han Chang’an City’s Protection
and Administration Institute, there is a wooden diorama of the
city. Gan Honggeng, the stout, well-dressed man responsible
for protecting the sites, can point out the areas that have
received special attention and the areas he considers endangered. “When I first came here in 1994, I saw acres of farmland
on the site. Now farms have been replaced by buildings,” Gan
says. “In 2000, we started a cultural relics protection plan that
concerned the entire Han Chang’an City.”
Government regulations have been successful in keeping
out tall buildings and factories for now, but the populations
of migrant workers and farmers have continued to multiply. In
some cases, protecting the site will likely necessitate relocating
villages from within the city walls. “Local people have been
here for generations,” says Gan. “It’s possible that they didn’t
know that they lived on a treasure land.” Relocation will take
some time, he admits, but Gan believes it will be to the benefit
of both the archaeologists and the villagers.
The coin factory site is also partially covered by a village,
sitting on top of what Liu Rui believes would have been the
managerial housing. “It’s impossible for us to excavate the
whole village,” he says. “First, we don’t have the energy; second, we don’t have the money.” To date, his excavation sites
have uncovered parts of the mint that were peripheral—a
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

The most prominent remains of ancient Chang’an are pieces of
the original city wall, which stretched 16 miles around palaces
and accommodations for servants and the scholar-gentry class
that helped run the city. Constructed of mud and brick, the
wall is subject to erosion. 

few ash pits and the scrap yard that yielded his bricks. “So
far what we have uncovered have not been important parts
of the factory,” he says. “And it is more than a meter below
the surface. So we excavate artifacts and then let farmers
continue planting over it.”
During the next round of excavations, which will have
started once Xi’an’s summer heat subsides, Liu hopes to
uncover a pottery kiln used for making the more precise parts
of the coin molds, filling in some of the missing steps in the
coin-making process.

A

T THE SAME TIME that Emperor Wu Di was reestablish-

ing control over the empire’s monetary system with
the introduction of the Wu Zhu coins, he also dispatched an emissary named Zhang Qian to the Western world.
This act, and the years of stability, growth, and prosperity
that China was then about to experience contributed greatly
to the establishment of the Silk Road, which connected the
commerce and culture of three continents, leading to further
prosperity and creativity in China.
In 2006, several Asian countries filed a joint application
to give the Silk Road World Cultural Heritage status, with
its start at Chang’an. “The only channel to go abroad was the
Silk Road,” Liu Rui says. The coins minted at Shanglinyuan
would have been trickling out with traders, while at the same
time facilitating a boom in the Han economy. They enabled

www.archaeology.org

Archaeologists work at a site that was once probably a rubbish
heap at the Han Dynasty mint. The village of Suilun, in the
background, covers a portion of the site thought to contain
the living quarters of many of the ancient factory’s workers
and managers. For now the archaeologists will work around it.

the merchant classes to buy land, and the government to
more easily pay the army and expand its influence to the west.
On the bricks in Liu Rui’s back room, the molds look small
and faded. He picks up one of the handful of actual coins that
have been excavated from the site so far. It’s covered in brick
dust and corrosion, the characters on it only barely visible.
“The coins only weigh around 2.1 or 2.2 grams [less than a
tenth of an ounce],” he says. “But they tell us the story of an
empire in prosperity.” ■
Lauren Hilgers is a freelance writer based in Shanghai.
35

Zeugma
After the
Flood
New excavations continue to tell
the story of an ancient city at the
crossroads between east and west
by Matthew Brunwasser

Extraordinary Roman mosaics such as this image of a girl or perhaps
a goddess (above) once decorated wealthy houses in Zeugma
in southern Turkey. Much of the ancient town and its modern
counterpart of Belkis (top) now lie under the reservoir created by
the construction of one of Turkey’s largest dams in 2000.
36

ARCHAEOLOGY • N
November/December
b /D
b 201
2012

I

T WASN’T GOOD POLICY that saved ancient Zeugma.

It was a good story. In 2000, the construction of
the massive Birecik Dam on the Euphrates River,
less than a mile from the site, began to flood the
entire area in southern Turkey. Immediately, a
ticking time-bomb narrative of the waters, which
were rising an average of four inches per day for six months,
brought Zeugma and its plight global fame. The water, which
soon would engulf the archaeological remains, also brought
increasing urgency to salvage efforts and emergency excavations that had already been taking place at the site, located
about 500 miles from Istanbul, for almost a year. The media
www.archaeology.org

attention Zeugma received attracted generous aid from both
private and government sources. Of particular concern was
the removal of Zeugma’s mosaics, some of the most extraordinary examples to survive from the ancient world. Soon
the world’s top restorers arrived from Italy to rescue them
from the floodwaters. The focus on Zeugma also brought
great numbers of international tourists—and even more
money—a trend that continues today with the opening in
September 2011 of the ultramodern $30 million Zeugma
Mosaic Museum in the nearby city of Gaziantep.
But Zeugma’s story begins millennia before the dam was
constructed. In the third century B.C., Seleucus I Nicator (“the
37

Victor”), one of Alexander the Great’s commanders, established a settlement he called Seleucia, probably a katoikia, or
military colony, on the western side of the river. On its eastern
bank, he founded another town he called Apamea after his
Persian-born wife. The two cities were physically connected
by a pontoon bridge, but it is not known whether they were
administered by separate municipal governments, and nothing of ancient Apamea, nor the bridge, survives. In 64 B.C.,
the Romans conquered Seleucia, renaming the town Zeugma,
which means “bridge” or “crossing” in ancient Greek. After the
collapse of the Seleucid Empire, the Romans added Zeugma to
the lands of Antiochus I Theos of Commagene as a reward for
his support of General Pompey during the conquest.
Throughout the imperial period, two Roman legions were
based at Zeugma, increasing its strategic value and adding
to its cosmopolitan culture. Due to the high volume of road
traffic and its geographic position, Zeugma became a collection point for road tolls. Political and trade routes converged
here and the city was the last stop in the Greco-Roman world
before crossing over to the Persian Empire. For hundreds of
years Zeugma prospered as a major commercial city as well
as a military and religious center, eventually reaching its peak
population of about 20,000–30,000 inhabitants. During the
imperial period, Zeugma became the empire’s largest, and most
strategically and economically important, eastern border city.
However, the good times in Zeugma declined along with
the fortunes of the Roman Empire. After the Sassanids from
Persia attacked the city in A.D. 253, its luxurious villas were
reduced to ruins and used as shelters for animals. The city’s new
inhabitants were mainly rural people who employed only simple
building materials that did not survive. Zeugma’s grandeur and
importance would remain forgotten for more than 1,700 years.

T

HIS MAY SOUND DIFFICULT to believe, considering that

at least 25 percent of the western bank of the ancient
town now sits below almost 200 feet of water and
the city’s eastern bank is completely submerged, but there is
still much left to see—and to excavate—in Zeugma. With the
imminent threat of the rising water having abated, archaeologists including Kutalmis Gorkay of Ankara University, who
has directed work at Zeugma since 2005, have focused their
attention on new projects as well as on conservation and
preservation of what remains above the water. Fortunately,
these excavations are still relatively well funded, Gorkay says,
although the budget is not comparable with the monies that
came in during the salvage excavation.
Gorkay is now looking for more evidence of how this multicultural city functioned as the transition between east and west,
and the Persian and Greco-Roman worlds. He is also seeking
to understand how the shift from the Hellenistic Greek world
to the domination of the Roman Empire affected the city. “We
don’t know of any other big cities in this area that changed from
a Hellenistic city into a Roman garrison city in such an important geopolitical location, making it an ideal place to study the
cultural changes between the two,” says Gorkay.
Just 50 yards from the shore of the large reservoir created by
38

A shelter (above)
protects both the ancient
structures and numerous
visitors from Zeugma’s
harsh climate, where
summer temperatures
average 97 degrees F.
Zeugma’s residents built
sophisticated water
systems, including the
limestone channels
(left) that once carried
wastewater out of
wealthy private homes.

the dam sits a shiny $1.5-million steel-textile and polycarbonate structure that contrasts boldly with the desolate landscape.
Constructed to protect the remains of five Roman houses, it
has multilevel viewing platforms that allow visitors to see the
carefully excavated buildings and streets. Most of the structures
under the shelter were built in the first and second centuries
A.D., during the Roman imperial period. The residents of this
once upscale neighborhood were likely high-ranking civil and
military officials and merchants grown wealthy from trade.
There is ample evidence of a sophisticated sewage and water
supply system. Grooves cut into the stone streets once held
pipes that delivered water from at least four reservoirs and cisterns on the Belkis Tepe, the city’s highest point, through spouts
capped with bronze lion heads. Sunny courtyards in the center of
the houses allowed fresh air to circulate inside. Some had shallow
pools, called impluvia, to collect rainwater and cool the air before
it entered the house. These courtyards also once contained some
of Zeugma’s most famous mosaics, many of which have water
themes: Eros riding a dolphin; Danae and Perseus being rescued
by fishermen on the shores of Seriphos; Poseidon, the god of
the sea; and other water deities and sea creatures.
Now only geometric mosaics remain visible at the site.
Although archaeologists prefer to restore and leave mosaics in
situ so that visitors can understand their original setting, protection from the elements is difficult and expensive. Theft is also
a great challenge in Zeugma, where looting has long been considered a legitimate source of income for an impoverished local
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

population. One night in 1998 all the figures were stolen from
a mosaic depicting the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne that
archaeologists were working on. In response to this incident, the
Gaziantep museum removed all the previously excavated figural
mosaics, and the site now has armed guards around the clock.
According to Gorkay, the mosaics were an important part of
a house’s mood, and their function went far beyond the strictly
decorative. Many of the mosaics were selected
according to a room’s function. For example,
bedrooms sometimes featured lovers’ stories,
such as that of Eros and Telete. The choice
of images in the mosaics also reflected the
owner’s taste and intellectual interests. “They
were a product of the patron’s imagination.
It wasn’t like simply choosing from a catalog.
They thought of specific scenes in order to
make a specific impression,” he explains. “For
example, if you were of the intellectual level
to discuss literature, then you might select a
scene like the three muses,” Gorkay says. The
muses were thought to be the inspirations for
literature, science, and the arts. “They are also
a personification of good times. When people
drank near this mosaic, the muses were
always there, accompanying them for atmosphere,” he says. Other popular themes in
these reception and dining areas were love,
wine, and the god Dionysus.

www.archaeology.org

However, it was not only subject matter that was important
in choosing the mosaics. It was also their placement. “In a dining room off a courtyard, the couches on which people were
sitting or lying, drinking, and having parties were positioned
around the mosaics so people could see them, as well as the
courtyard and pool,” Gorkay says. He also explains that there
was an order in which the mosaics were intended to be viewed.
When guests first entered the house, there
was a salutory mosaic positioned to make
an impression on people coming through
the doorway. This mosaic might give introductory hints to the guests about the favorite subjects, taste, or themes of the host.
In the next room, they were invited to
recline on couches in order to view other
mosaics. After the guests were seated, the
convivium, or feast, would begin.

The mosaics that once decorated
Zeugma’s elite residences often depicted
mythological scenes such as the story
of Antiope and the satyr (left, top), the
nymph Galatea (left, bottom), and the
muses (below). The choice of topic was
not only decorative, but was also informed
by the homeowners’ level of learning and
idea of how they wished to be regarded
by their guests.

39

Inside the Tombs

I addition to
In
uncovering information
u
about how Zeugma’s
a
iinhabitants lived,
archaeologists also
a
want to explore the
w
tthousands of tombs
s
scattered around
tthe city’s outskirts.
H
i Y
k
U
i
it is studying the
Huseyin
Yaman off A
Ankara
University
tombs’ visible architectural elements, since there has
been little excavation work so far. Cut from the soft
limestone landscape (top), the tombs come in many
different shapes and sizes, a reflection of the city’s diverse
residents. Some are small spaces for an individual or a few
members of one family. Others are enormous chambers
with altars and as many as 64 graves. Inscriptions on the
walls also vary widely and use several languages to list
first names, family names, ages, and professions. Some
names are Latin, some Semitic, and others Greek, which,
according to Yaman, shows the cosmopolitan nature of
the city. Interestingly, the tombs have few human figures.
In most cases there is only the image of a basket for a
woman’s tomb and an eagle for a man’s (above). The
meaning of the unusual imagery remains unknown.

C

GORKAY and his team of 25 students are
excavating two first-century A.D. houses about 300
feet from the area under the shelter, where work has
been completed. Here the team will learn more about the
private lives of Zeugma’s former residents. For every room
of each house being excavated, there is always the hope of a
fantastic mosaic waiting for them when they reach the floor
level. The team also hopes to find examples of graffiti, a term
archaeologists use to mean any images or text written on a
building’s wall. Graffiti can be an important type of evidence
in determining the religion, profession, or ethnicity of a house’s
inhabitants. For example, in Zeugma, a painted or scratchedon name could determine whether an inhabitant was Semitic,
Persian, Greek, or Roman.
Gorkay has also supervised preliminary studies in the Hellenistic agora, the commercial and administrative center of the city,
some 100 yards away from the shelter. As yet there has been little
excavation there, but Gorkay hopes that future digging will reveal
more about Zeugma’s civic identity. In 2000, a team excavating a
URRENTLY

40

market building in the agora uncovered an archive room containing tens of thousands of official seals, giving previously unknown
details about the administration of the military and trading center.
Other excavations across the site have yielded several bronze
statues, thousands of coins, and hundreds of pounds of ceramics.
When they are catalogued and studied, these too will reveal valuable information about the city’s residents, their customs, and the
types of goods being used and traded there.
There is also much yet to learn about the practice of religion in Zeugma. Through further excavation, Gorkay wants
to examine the place of politics and nationality in the practice
of religion during the transformative periods in Zeugma’s history. In 2008, atop the Belkis Tepe, archaeologists excavated
a temple and sanctuary where three colossal cult statues of
Zeus, Athena, and probably Hera, were found, marking it as
one of the city’s most important religious sites. But there are
still many questions left to answer about the ways in which the
traditional Greco-Roman gods were worshipped alongside the
Persian deities who were also honored in the city. Similarly, says
Gorkay, “In the time of the Commagene rulers, Antiochus I

A team from Ankara University is excavating the remains of a
Roman house in hopes of learning more about the private lives
of Zeugma’s ancient residents.

consecrated many sanctuaries and depicted himself in all of
them,” including stelae on which the king is shown shaking
hands with gods. But during the Roman period, these temples
were stripped of their political character and the gods were
portrayed alone, signifying a change in the cult dedicated to
the worship of the ruler.
In the future, Gorkay hopes to continue to explore the
civic, sacred, and private identities of the city, and to focus his
excavations on the sanctuaries, civic buildings, houses, and
necropolises that give Zeugma its cosmopolitan character.
While many of the mysteries of this ancient city will remain
forever sealed under the waters of the Euphrates, Gorkay is
convinced that Zeugma has only started to tell its story. ■
Matthew Brunwasser is a freelance writer living in Istanbul.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

Mosaic Masters

M

INE YAR AND

CELAL KUCUK, a
couple who own the Istanbulbased Art Restorasyon, first
came to Zeugma on May 5, 2000, as
volunteers to help with emergency mosaic
removals necessitated by the construction
of the Birecik Dam. For the next month
and a half they toiled every day, until the
site was covered with water. “We were
working against nature,” says Yar, recalling not only the rising
water, but also the snakes and other animals heading up the
hillside to escape the impending flood. “It was a very exciting
time,” she adds. During this period, Yar says, at least 3,000
square feet of mosaics, about 15 complete ones in all, were
removed from two Roman villas. The mosaics are now on
display in the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in nearby Gaziantep.
After the initial on-site work was completed, Kucuk and Yar
were part of a team of dozens of conservators, archaeologists,
art historians, and local mosaic masters gathered in the museum’s impressive restoration laboratory. Work on the mosaics
from Zeugma is now finished, mosaics from the region are still
being conserved in the laboratory, and Yar and Kucuk continue
their preservation efforts on other projects.
But how were the mosaics initially removed from Zeugma
more than a decade ago? The team used different techniques
depending on the mosaic. For mosaics with a big emblema
(central figure) such as the Poseidon—the emblema alone was
more than 300 square feet— they used a specially built wooden
roller. To begin, the team slipped metal rods under the layer of
tesserae (the small square stones from which mosaics are made).

www.archaeology.org

A mosaic depicting the myth of Pasiphae (above) and the
recovery in 2000 of a mosaic of Poseidon (below).

This raised the entire mosaic up from the
floor. They then placed the roller, which
was about nine feet long and almost four
feet in diameter, on top of the mosaic and
“rolled” it up like a carpet. The other technique the team used was to cut the mosaic
into both big and small sections, but Kucuk
says this is not the preferred method. “We
didn’t want to cut them into pieces because
every time you put them back together, you add to the story of
the mosaic. You especially don’t want to cut the emblema,” he
says. “You also need to be aware of how cutting it up will affect
your ability to restore the mosaic later,” he adds.
While doing restoration work, Yar noticed that sections
of tesserae had been replaced in three mosaics, one featuring
the three muses, a second showing the goddess of the earth,
Gaea, and a third geometric mosaic that once covered a pool.
“Maybe the lady of the house wanted to redecorate,” she says.
She also detected other irregularities in a geometric mosaic
where stones were used irregularly to fill cracks or holes, indicating that the emblema had been changed, although what the
original depicted remains unknown.
During the rescue work Kucuk says the team learned
about how the mosaics had been made. “We found drawings
underneath the mosaics showing the ancient workers where
to place the panels,” he explains. “This helped us understand
that mosaic panels were not put together inside the house.
Instead, they made them in the workplace and then brought
the finished mosaic to the home in pieces and placed it, section
by section, on the floor.”
—M.B.

41

A recent lidar image shows a geologic
feature called a Carolina bay. Thousands of
years ago, Archaic hunter-gatherers came to
these pond-like bodies of water in the fall or
winter to process large, wild birds that would
migrate to the bays seasonally.

Down
by the
Savannah
Riverside
By studying ancient landforms,
archaeologists are uncovering
evidence of a novel huntergatherer behavior
by Margaret Shakespeare
Many bays have been
lost to development,
but Johns Bay (right),
located in Allendale
County, South Carolina,
is still viable and filled
with water.

A

STEADY WARM BREEZE barely ruffles the high-

rise canopy of tall, straight pine trees. Diffuse sunlight filters down to the ground.
Underfoot, maypop vines, flaunting fancy
lavender blossoms, slyly tangle with poison
ivy on a crunchy carpet of pine needles
patched with peek-a-boo white sand. A bird chirps. A gnat
bites. A vehicle whirs along a distant unseen road. At first take
it could all pass for an unremarkable stretch of Southeastern
woods. But to archaeologists of the Savannah River Archaeological Research Program (SRARP), this is Flamingo Bay. It’s a
shining example of an ancient landform, once a pond-like body
of accumulated rainwater with the nontechnical name “Carolina bay,” where they are finding new knowledge of Middle
Archaic hunter-gatherer sustenance, industry, and lifestyles.
43

North Carolina

Early hunter-gatherers might have
come to the bays located at the
Savannah River Site from South
Carolina’s Piedmont or as far away as
southeastern North Carolina.

Piedmont

hickory shells charred 10,000 years
ago (give or take a millennium), and
says, “It looks like it just came out of
my barbecue today. But we think it’s
the earliest example in the Southeast
of this kind of mass food processing.”

South Carolina
No

rth
Riv Edi
er sto
uth
Riv Edis
er to

So

Savannah
River Site

ie
ch
at
eh
lk
Sa
r
ve
Ri

Georgia

h

na

n
va
Sa
r
ve
Ri

Mark J. Brooks, an archaeologist at the University of South
Carolina and director of SRARP, trudges across the slight
rise of sand that surrounds the bay as he gestures toward the
scattered handful of blue, white, and orange flags stuck in the
dry ground. Only the center of Flamingo Bay occasionally
holds water these days. The flags indicate recent investigation.
Brooks says, “From the samples we have taken we know that
this area had a major concentration of food-processing activity.
We have evidence that small groups of people returned here
repeatedly, every fall or early winter.”
The archaeological record that Brooks and his colleagues
have uncovered shows that hunter-gatherers at this bay, and perhaps others, stood notably apart from other prehistoric groups
in their use of natural resources. In pre-agrarian times here, as
elsewhere, people typically banded together to forage for food.
They gravitated toward forests, plentifully supplied with game,
deer being the main meat in their diet, and toward oceans, rivers, and streams for a steady harvest of fish and other seafood.
Brooks, though, and Christopher R. Moore, also a University
of South Carolina and SRARP archaeologist, have discovered a
sophisticated departure from these patterns. They have found
artifacts along the edges of Carolina bays that are specifically
associated with a well-organized system of preserving the meat
of large migratory birds. Evidence shows that every autumn
or winter people would return to the bay site, which reliably
provided all the raw materials—including slow-combusting
hickory nut shells, not practical for fuel but excellent for the
smoking process—needed to stockpile great amounts of food.
Underlying this activity would have been an understanding on
the part of these prehistoric peoples that birds would arrive at
Carolina bays at particular times of year and in great numbers.
Brooks picks up a few pieces of the physical evidence,
44

S

RARP MANAGES 2,000 archaeological and natural sites at the
federally controlled 310-squaren
a
mile Savannah River Site (SRS) located
ce
O
just south of Aiken, South Carolina,
ic
t
and bounded on the southwest by
n
la
the Savannah River. Created in 1950
At
by the U.S. government to produce
materials for making nuclear bombs
during the Cold War, SRS displaced
three towns and 6,000 people who had to leave behind homes,
schools, businesses, churches, and even cemeteries.
SRS, now part of the Department of Energy, must comply
with federal requirements that mandate that any area marked
for proposed development within its tightly secured boundaries first be surveyed for possible impact on cultural or historical
resources. George Wingard, SRARP administrative manager,
says the main reason archaeologists have had a presence at the
off-limits, super-secret facility since 1973 is to comply with
the DOE regulations. For instance, archaeological surveys of
Woodland and Mississippian sites, which date as far back as
2,000 years, were prompted in advance of the 2007 construction of a facility for disposing of weapons-grade plutonium.
Today, gaining access to the SRS is more formidable than
clearing airport security. Visitors must pass a background
check, attend an orientation, leave behind all personal electronic communication devices, and may enter only when
accompanied by an “assigned competent person.” Archaeologists traveling from their compound of offices and labs less
than a mile to Flamingo Bay must report their whereabouts
and stay tethered by radio contact.

T

HROUGHOUT PREHISTORY in what is now southwestern

South Carolina, near its border with Georgia, Carolina
bays, which were surrounded by dense vegetation,
attracted all kinds of animal life—and people followed. Dating
back to between 13,000 and 13,500 years ago, Paleoindians
hunted at Flamingo Bay, evidenced by projectile points and
other tools, such as several large scrapers, found at the site.
These finds suggest butchery of large animals, although no
bones from that early time period have yet turned up. There
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

What Are Carolina Bays?

C

HRISTOPHER R. MOORE, a University of South
Carolina and SRARP geoarchaeologist, notes that
the Carolina bays got their name because of the bay
trees frequently growing nearby. Several hundred thousand of
these bays occur throughout the South Atlantic Slope, from
Delaware to northern Florida, with a concentration in the
Carolinas. The conditions needed to form a Carolina bay are
shallow depressions that allow water to pool, underlying rock
that is impermeable to groundwater, strong unidirectional
winds, and gently sloping grassland, which doesn’t lock in
sediment as trees and heavy vegetation do. The elliptical
bays were shaped by southwesterly winds (blowing from
the southwest to the northeast), which caused sediment to
accumulate on their eastern rim, giving them an elongated
orientation from northwest to southeast. “Colonists called
these depression wetlands pocosins,” says Moore. The term
was a Native American one and meant ‘swamp on the hill.’
Most bays formed during the Pleistocene epoch, when
the land was perpetually being covered and then uncovered
by glaciers. Moore has used a relatively new dating technique, optically stimulated luminescence, which can tell
the last time sand, even a single grain, was exposed to light.
“We have done rim-dating that shows some bays formed as
long ago as 100,000 years, the youngest rims 2,000 years
ago,” Moore says. He also used lidar (light detection and
ranging) to track migration of some bays. Bay migration
occurs when a new sand rim overtakes the old, causing

www.archaeology.org

the bay basin to shift slightly toward the northwest. The
movement results from less frequent but more powerful
northwesterly winds (blowing toward the southeast) that
cause the trapped water to erode the northwest lip of a bay
and the sand to buildup on the southeastern rim, with the
outermost part of the rim being the oldest.
Flamingo Bay has not migrated. Its northwestern rim
bumps up against an elevated patch of land, so it can’t erode
in that direction. It is possible that bays with younger bay
rims may have Paleoindian sites on the older rims and more
recent Archaic occupations on younger rims. “Most of these
prehistoric sites were formed more by natural processes than
cultural ones,” Moore says. “So the geology is important.”
In the nineteenth century, farmers often used bays to water
livestock. In the early 1930s, aerial photography done by the
Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture,
showing a landscape uniformly pockmarked by bay after bay,
some occurring all in a row, kicked off what Moore calls the
Carolina bay “craze.” Suddenly the formations became the
subject of pseudoscience, with people hypothesizing that
some mysterious or dramatic physical phenomenon—say, a
raining down of meteors—created the bays. “The erosionscour-deposition patterns show that it was not meteors or any
other single-impact event,” Moore says. Today, many bays have
been lost to twentieth-century development and agriculture,
although a few still have enough water for waterskiing and
other recreational activities.
—M.S.

45

was also no indication of food preparation or preservation
methods, although, says Moore, “We do know that Paleoindians elsewhere used drying racks. From the ethnohistoric record
we know they were smoking and drying food.”
During the Early to Middle Archaic period (roughly 11,450
to 5,900 years ago) inhabitants here intensified their hunting
and harvesting, focusing on large migratory waterfowl. “Bird
migration, when large populations would be moving through
the area, was a seasonably predictable event for these people.
And it is established that hunter-gatherer strategy involved
going after a large product that’s predictable, such as deer or
turkey,” says Brooks. He does not see evidence of permanent
settlements at the bays.
Moore describes a possible mobility pattern, based on
a model developed by other researchers: Bands of people,
perhaps 50 or so individuals, centered on the Savannah River
Valley (which forms the border between South Carolina and
Georgia to the south and west), moved upriver into the Piedmont during the summer. They would move back downriver
and spend the winters in its upper coastal plain. During the
autumnal move to these residential winter settlements, small
groups, maybe a half-dozen individuals, would move out to
Flamingo and perhaps other bays. Stone tools and debris from
their production found in recent excavations are similar to
what has been found throughout the region. There is evidence
of scavenging and retooling of pieces of chert, a sedimentary
rock often used by prehistoric peoples as material for tools.
The number and diversity of tool types and tool kits at Flamingo Bay suggest these breakaway groups of people, organized
for work, stayed put for a month.
An alternative model is that small bands moved primarily between upland rivers—the Savannah, Salkehatchie, South
Edisto, and North Edisto—quarrying chert along the Savannah
River’s banks to make their tools. They would have covered large
territories throughout present-day North and South Carolina and
come together periodically in larger aggregations—important to
survival—for mate selection, social
ial alliances,
sharing information, and for harvest.
arvest.
During the Middle to Late Archaic
haic
period these bands began to
settle in, possibly because population growth rendered the
Early Archaic pattern of seasonal
mobility over large territoriess

unsustainable. In this scenario, too, there could have been an
annual pattern of seasonal travel by a handful of individuals,
leaving the larger group temporarily to harvest and process
food at Flamingo Bay. Food processing presumably would have
taken place there as long as there was a supply of birds—either
until the population was decimated by slaughter or the food
source took off for warmer, friendlier destinations. An essential
part of the processing would have been preserving the meat as
a transportable staple with an extended shelf life.

T

HE SRARP TEAM focused its investigations on a 3,000foot arc around Flamingo Bay’s eastern rim where
they found evidence of a nearly continuous distribution of occupations. Out of that large area of archaeological
distribution, however, only a relatively small section has been
intensively examined. Opening up 6.5-by-6.5-foot trenches for
excavation, early on they found fire pit features and hearthrelated artifacts, such as rocks cracked by high heat. In 2010,
in order to get at the smaller artifacts, they switched from
quarter-inch mesh screen to eighth-inch mesh for sifting all
samples. “A quarter-inch screen lets a lot of the archaeology get
lost,” says Moore, adding that some of the remains of hickory
shells that were found, while recognizable and exquisitely
detailed, are tiny. “For grain-sized analysis, we run everything
through a stack of sieves.” And by “everything,” he means taking 40 or more soil samples from three feet of depth.
Artifacts they found—the charred hickory nut shells, carbonized seeds, pieces of tools and residue of tool-making, and
animal bone fragments that had degraded from exposure to high
heat—gradually added up to a rather complete picture of an
intense, organized early human activity. The team radiocarbon
dated carbonized hickory nut shells and other organic material
found at levels down to about two and a half feet. Whereas the
bays date back to the Pleistocene, the dates of the nutshells all
fall in the Early to Mid-Holocene epoch, once all the glaciers
covering the Americas ret
retreated. The youngest dates are
around 7,500 years before presaro
eent, with the oldest shell being
aalmost 11,000 years old.
The deposits the archaeologists uncovered also held an abundanc
dance of smooth, rounded pebbles
un
unfamiliar to most of the team
m
members. Although Brooks
ssays it took years to recognize
th
their significance, he hung on
to everything like a pack rat. “Most archaeolothem as naturally occurring and
gists would see the
out. Bu
But I am a geologist too. And
throw them out
I am interested in burial patterns: How did the water lay

Archaeologists found various fragments of bird bones
(above), which are believed to have come from large birds,
such as turkeys or cranes, during excavations at the eastern
rim of Flamingo Bay (aerial shot at left).
46

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

these down? And why did a pebble look like tooth enamel?”
“I would have weighed them and then thrown them
out in the driveway,” says Keith Stephenson, a SRARP
archaeologist, with half a smile. “I sure wouldn’t have
recognized them as artifacts. Tammy’s the first one who
saw that they were gastroliths.” Indeed, SRARP curator
Tammy Forehand Herron, who grew up on a farm in rural
Georgia, recalls hardly needing to complete the lab work
for verification. “I knew exactly what they were,” she says,
“because I’ve seen them all my life.” Chickens, ducks,
turkeys, and other domestic and wild birds ingest sand
and pebbles that, held in the gizzard, aid in grinding and
digesting food. The grinding action and digestive tract
acids polish the stone surfaces to an enamel-like sheen.
Brooks, wearing his geologist’s hat, knew some of the
pebbles to be nonlocal stone. Now he knew why. The migratory birds had ingested stones at other places along the flyway.
Those gastroliths remained in the birds’ gizzards until people
tossed them aside during the butchering process.

R

set out to determine exactly
what kind of birds the Archaic hunter-gatherers
were processing. Thomas R. Whyte, an anthropologist at Appalachian State University, identified some of the
bone fragments as coming from a large bird—goose, swan,
crane—bigger than a duck, potentially up to the size of a
turkey. Whyte also identified black bear bone that, from what
he has seen at other sites in the Southeast, might have been
used for ceremonial purposes.
Because they had otherwise found little data on gastrolith
size or other properties related to bird type, Brooks and Moore
acquired modern-day duck and turkey gizzards and extracted
their gastroliths. They compared the length, width, weight,
and mineralogy of the modern and prehistoric stones—the
largest being roughly half an inch in length—plus a larger
number of quartz pebbles taken from sediment predating
human occupation. The naturally deposited pebbles lack the
polished appearance of any of the gastroliths, an immediate
visual distinction. Generally, prehistoric or modern, the bigger
the bird, the bigger the gastrolith. The largest archaeological
specimens match up quite closely in size and shape to turkey
gastroliths. Comparatively smaller duck gizzards held sandgrain- and grit-sized gastroliths.
While there is some possibility that ducks or smaller birds
were processed at Flamingo Bay, supporting evidence, such
as bones, is lacking. Brooks hypothesizes that the large birds
slaughtered at the site might have been large, migratory waterfowl such as cranes, the numbers of which would have been
fairly consistent year to year. Wild turkeys might be plentiful
one season but scant the next, as their numbers would recover
slowly after harvests. “Even in areas where turkey populations
are generally quite high, their local distribution and relative
abundance is highly variable each year due to ever-changing
forage conditions,” Brooks explains. “In short, for huntergatherers anticipating a trip to Flamingo Bay in the fall or
ECENTLY THE TEAM

www.archaeology.org

When researchers found these stones during excavations, they
didn’t realize they were gastroliths, pebbles once trapped in
birds’ gizzards to aid in food-grinding and digestion.

winter, the likelihood of encountering large numbers of migratory waterfowl would be far greater than that of encountering
large numbers of turkeys.”

B

IRD GIZZARDS RETAIN FOOD,

some of which ends up
in gastrolith crevices. And, sure enough, the Flamingo
Bay gastroliths have organic residue in their pits. Future
organic chemical analysis of these residues—and also of fats
that might be sequestered in the hickory-nut charcoal pit
sediments—may open up more details about exactly what
birds were being butchered, as well as the cooking methods
used by these prehistoric people. “At Flamingo Bay, where the
fire-cracked quartz we found is about fist-sized, it could have
been they used earth ovens or racks,” says Moore.
The team is beginning its hunt for residues associated with
cooking by examining the clay content from the sediment
around the hearths they found. Clay can trap geochemical
tracers of human activity, including, possibly, fats from bird
meat. Analysis of residues found could help the archaeologists
determine if the fire pits were used for fast-combustion cooking or slow-combustion smoking of the meat.
“There is more to be learned about [this area’s] inhabitants
and their food economies,” says Moore. He adds that this new,
alternative picture of hunting and gathering in the Early to
Middle Archaic period is derived entirely from an archaeological
record buried neatly, compactly in sandy bay rims, at a depth of
no more than three or four feet. “It is there, if you look,” Moore
says. “The closer you look, the more you find.” ■

Margaret Shakespeare is a freelance writer living in New York
City and Long Island.
47

At the site of Banganarti in Sudan (ancient Nubia), archaeologist
Bogdan Zurawski and his team (below) are shown just hours
after the discovery in 2001 of a mural painting hidden for
centuries under the Sahara. The image depicts a ruler of
the Kingdom of Makuria. To the king’s left, the hand of the
Archangel Raphael is visible. Zurawski could not have known
that on this site only two years later, he would uncover the
remains of five successive churches dedicated to St. Raphael
(right), dozens of mural paintings, and at least a thousand
inscriptions, all testament to Banganarti’s place as the most
important pilgrimage site in the region from A.D. 750 to 1350. All
but three of the murals, which were taken to Poland and will be
returned to Banganarti in 2013, were conserved on site.

Pilgrimage to Sudan
Miracles of Banganarti
by Jarrett A. Lobell
48

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

S

OMETIME IN THE fourteenth century A.D., a
traveler named Benesec journeyed from either
southern France or northern Spain across the
Mediterranean, through Egypt, and then up
the Nile far into Africa’s desert interior, a trip
of more than 2,500 miles. His destination was
Banganarti, the most important pilgrimage site in the medieval

www.archaeology.org

Christian Kingdom of Makuria. Benesec may have traveled
to Banganarti (“Island of the Locust” in the local language) to
be healed of some ailment, or he may have been on a trading
mission. Perhaps he shared in one of the sanctuary’s curative
rituals. These included drinking holy water and drilling holes
in the unpainted walls to obtain holy dust, which was mixed
with water and taken as a medication. He may have engaged
49

Aswan

Egypt

Red Sea

NOBATIA
Faras?

Sudan

MAKURIA
Old
Dongola

Banganarti

ALODIA
Eritrea

Ethiopia

in the practice of incubation, which involved sleeping inside the
church of the site’s patron saint. Whether Benesec was cured or
not is unknown, but an inscription he scratched onto the wall
survives as a record of his journey. Written in the Latin alphabet,
the inscription reads, “When Benesec came to pay homage to
Raphael,” and is one of almost a thousand mementoes left by
the pilgrims who came to Banganarti over a period of 600 years.
In the mid-fourteenth century the church collapsed and the
sanctuary was abandoned to be covered by the drifting sands
of the Sahara for almost seven centuries.
In 2001 a team of archaeologists from the University of
Warsaw’s Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, led by
Bogdan Żurawski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, came to
Banganarti in the land of ancient Nubia (now part of Sudan) to
begin excavating a huge kom (artificial mound) covering a church.
Known locally as the kom el-kenissa (“mound of the church”), the

In this image (above), the first to be uncovered at Banganarti,
the king is shown with the Archangel Raphael and flanked by
apostles. He holds an unusual scepter topped with a seated
Christ and a cross, the only one known of its kind. Imagery
showing a ruler flanked by Christ and the apostles establishes
the king as sacrosanct.
50

Zurawski created a 3-D image
of the Church of the Archangel
Raphael (Raphaelion) during the
last phase of its use (far left),
which dates to the final days of
the sanctuary’s importance in
the 14th century. The church’s
walls were covered in murals
depicting apostles, archangels,
saints, and kings, as well as
inscriptions made by pilgrims
who came to the sanctuary to be
healed. Makuria was one of three
Christian kingdoms (left) that
flourished in Sudan throughout
the medieval period. Very few
sites from this era have
been excavated.

kom had been created by centuries of discarding debris around
the building and the accumulation of sand on top of it. The
consecration of this church had been mentioned in The History
of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, the major historical work of the
Coptic Church, but its history was not the reason Żurawski and
the archaeological mission from the University of Warsaw were
there. They came because the site was increasingly threatened
by aggressive palm planting surrounding the kom.
By the end of the first day, a test trench had revealed a part
of the central apse of a large church the team soon realized had
been decorated with remarkable murals. In fact, all seven chapels grouped along the church’s eastern wall were embellished
with representations of the Nubian kings under the protection
of the Archangel Raphael, who was viewed as a guardian of
human health. Now, after more than 10 field seasons, Żurawski
has uncovered evidence of a sequence of five churches built on
the site in the seventh through eleventh centuries. The first two
churches were dismantled in the Middle Ages to make space
for the third church, called the “Lower Church III,” which was
abandoned when Nile floods damaged its foundations in the
late tenth or early eleventh century. The area was then filled in,
preserving the church’s walls, remains of which now stand about
12 feet high. Almost immediately, the huge “Upper Church,”
also known as the “Church of the Archangel Raphael,” was built
on top of the earlier one. Today its remains stand just under 10
feet high. All five churches’ interior walls were almost entirely
covered with murals depicting a range of subjects including
Nubian kings, apostles, archangels, saints, and two particularly
arresting Christian scenes: the trampling of a demoness called
Sideros and another known as the “Harrowing of Hell.”
What is not painted with murals is densely covered with
inscriptions in both Greek and Old Nubian—the Benesec graffito is the only wall inscription in the Latin alphabet known
from Nubia—that attest to Banganarti’s importance as a pilgrimage site. They name not only travelers such as Benesec,
but also record visits by important Makurian kings including
“David,” who is known to have reigned in the 1260s and 1270s;
the previously unknown fourteenth-century “King Paper of
Tungul” (Tungul refers to Dongola, the medieval capital of
Nubia); and his contemporary, “King Siti.”
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

An image of the “Harrowing of Hell” from
the walls of the Raphaelion (above) shows
Christ, Adam and Eve, Hades, and the dead.
All the figures are shown naked, which is
unique in Byzantine or medieval Eastern
iconography, suggesting close contact
between Banganarti and southern Italy,
Sicily, and western Europe in the 9th and 10th
centuries, the time period from which the
painting dates. Another very rare, perhaps
unique, subject depicted is that of the
demoness Sideros being trampled by a horse
(left), symbolizing the everlasting conflict
between good and evil. Sideros was known
as a baby snatcher and was much feared by
women during pregnancy. The image of the
triumph of good over evil was intended to
give these women comfort and hope.
www.archaeology.org

51

At least 1,000 inscriptions cover the Raphaelion’s walls. The inscriptions, which are written mainly in Greek and Old Nubian,
record visits to the sanctuary by pilgrims seeking to be healed by the Archangel Raphael, who is associated with curing blindness,
or by traders traveling through the area. Some of the inscriptions were scratched into the walls (above left), but the vast majority
were written with black paint. One of the inscriptions (top right), the only one that uses the Latin alphabet, records the visit of
the pilgrim or trader named Benesec, who traveled from western Europe to Makuria. Below Benesec’s inscription is a prayer
to the Archangel Raphael for peace and a high—but not too high—flood. A prayer for peace is an element common to many of
Banganarti’s inscriptions, the majority of which were made during the 14th century, a turbulent period in Christian Nubia, which
was under threat from Muslims. An image among the inscriptions (bottom right) shows a previously unknown ruler, King Paper of
Tungul, riding a horse and lassoing another rider.

S

URPRISINGLY LITTLE IS KNOWN about Makuria, although

the kingdom endured as a regional power for almost
600 years, participated in an extensive trade network
that stretched from the Red Sea to the interior of Africa, and
controlled gold mines and oases to its east and west. By the
sixth century, the kingdom’s inhabitants had converted from
a religion based on Egyptian deities and local gods to Christianity. This continued a tradition of Christian worship in the
area that likely began with the conversion of the Kingdom
of Axum to the south, in what is now Ethiopia, in the midfourth century. In the seventh century the Arab conquest of
Egypt effectively cut Nubia off from the rest of the Christian
world. Much of what was written about Makuria in the Middle
Ages comes from Arab writers who passed through the area
and recounted military conflicts between the Christians of
Makuria and their Islamic neighbors. Despite its religious isolation, however, Makuria continued to flourish, especially in the
period when the Lower Church was in use, from roughly 750
to 1150. The kingdom finally collapsed from external pressures
in the mid-fourteenth century.
52

Archaeological work in the area over the past 50 years, mostly
concentrated in what was the Kingdom of Nobatia to the north
of Makuria, has added to our knowledge of life in ancient and
medieval Nubia. The most notable of these investigations were
conducted in the city of Faras and its cathedral (whose precise
date is unknown) and in the medieval village of Debeira. Both sites
were excavated in anticipation of the flooding of the region caused
by the construction of the Aswan High Dam between 1961 and
1964. Aside from the Royal Ontario Museum’s research in the
medieval settlement of Hambukol and the excavation of the
fortress of Qasr Ibrim, the only major Christian site in Makuria
to have been explored before Żurawski’s project began was the
capital, Old Dongola. The University of Warsaw began working
there almost 40 years ago, and excavation and research continue
today. Thus, Żurawski’s discoveries are invaluable, and Banganarti’s paintings and inscriptions are the best source of information,
so far, on both the Late Christian phase of Nubian history and
medieval pilgrimages to the region of the Middle Nile. ■
Jarrett A. Lobell is executive editor at Archaeology.
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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LETTER FROM INDIA

A building, marked for demolition with red crosses, is
in the process of being removed from the medieval site
of Hampi in southern India. Archaeological authorities
deemed these homes and businesses encroachments on
the site and seek to return it to its 16th-century condition.
Some 300 residents have been evicted.

Living Heritage at Risk
Searching for a new approach to development, tourism, and local
needs at the grand medieval city of Hampi
by John M. Fritz and George Michell
John M. Fritz, an archaeologist and
consulting scientist at the University of
Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology
and Archaeology, and architectural
historian George Michell, professorial
fellow at the University of Melbourne,
studied the medieval city of Vijayanagara
in southern India, also known as Hampi,
for more than 20 years. Recently, the
Archaeological Survey of India assumed
control of Hampi village within the site,
evicting the local community. Fritz and
Michell reflect on their long history at
Hampi and their ideas for managing
“living heritage.”
www.archaeology.org

W

hen we first arrived at
Hampi, in the state of
Karnataka in southern
India, in 1980, we encountered
a landscape strewn with huge
granite boulders and the scattered
remnants of a once great city,
known during its heyday from the
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries
as Vijayanagara, the City of Victory.
The ruins, rarely visited and
picturesquely overgrown, consisted
of fort walls and gateways, audience
halls and pleasure pavilions, and
numerous temples and shrines.

Though many of the remains
were under the protection of
the Archaeological Survey of
India (ASI) and the Karnataka
Department of Archaeology and
Museums (KDAM), there was a
sense then that the place had hardly
been touched since January 1565,
when the city was sacked by the
troops of the neighboring Deccan
sultanates and then abandoned.
It was like walking into an old
engraving. We have, in the 30 years
since then, seen many changes
come to that landscape, but few as
55

street that stretched almost half
a mile. The street was lined with
granite columns that had originally
accommodated a market. Portuguese
traders who visited in the early
sixteenth century wrote that it
was stocked with food of all kinds,
birds and other animals, and even
precious stones, including diamonds.
By 1980, there was little besides
the columns to recall those times of
splendor. But the street was still a
commercial center, however modest,
known to locals as “Hampi Bazaar.”
Between the columns nearest
the temple were souvenir stalls; a
simple “hotel” offering tea, coffee,
and vegetarian meals and snacks;
and a bank, presumably with the
temple as its principal customer.
Each year in March or April, the
festival celebrating the marriage of
Virupaksha to the goddess Pampa
drew great crowds, as a tall chariot
was pulled up and down the street.
Hampi Bazaar was a place where
past and present lived together.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, we
returned to Hampi each winter,
with teams of archaeology and
architecture students from Indian
and foreign universities, to map
the medieval city and document its
surviving art and architecture.
Over those years, we saw the
bazaar evolve in ways we never
would have expected.

V
In the shadow of the Virupaksha Temple, which lies at the heart of medieval Hampi,
local residents and pilgrims celebrate the marriage of Virupaksha to the goddess
Pampa by pulling a ceremonial chariot up and down the street. In recent years, the
bazaar continued its medieval tradition as a commercial and social thoroughfare.

dramatic as what has happened to
the site in just the last few years.
Back in 1980, one small part of
the site showed signs of life: The
village of Hampi bustled in the
middle of what we came to call the
Sacred Center of Vijayanagara. A
few simple houses clustered around
56

a walled temple consecrated to
Virupaksha, a form of the Hindu
god Shiva. The medieval temple
was, and still is, a place of worship,
with resident priests and regular
pious visitors. Just in front of the
temple’s 160-foot-tall gopuram, or
lofty towered gateway, was a broad

ijayanagara has always
been known to historians
of India as the capital of
one of the greatest and wealthiest
Hindu empires, which, at its height,
ruled almost all of southern India.
The city’s ruins, the most extensive
of any Hindu royal site in southern
India, were largely forgotten
until the mid-nineteenth century,
when they attracted several early
photographers. By the turn of the
twentieth century, parts of the
site had been brought under the
control of the newly formed ASI,
which, on and off over the years,
uncovered and conserved certain
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

monuments. By 1980, the ASI and
KDAM were excavating in what
we came to call the Royal Center
of Vijayanagara, but there was a
need for a comprehensive map of
the site and an inventory of its
visible archaeological remains. Our
team, the Vijayanagara Research
Project, undertook a study of the
religious and royal monuments. In
addition, we examined the planning
of the city, the extensive military
fortifications, a complex hydraulic
system, and even traces of the lives
of common people.
We became particularly
fascinated with the relationship of
Vijayanagara’s layout to features
in the surrounding landscape.
Some of these features had long
been identified with episodes in
the Ramayana, the Hindu epic,
and particularly with tales of the
godlike hero Rama and Hanuman,
his brave and daring monkeylike confederate. We came to
understand that associations
between Vijayanagara’s rulers, the
gods of myth, and the city’s natural
setting were keys to understanding
how three successive lines of rulers
commanded a kingdom that grew
into an empire.
Over the 20 years that we
studied the site, we saw Hampi
Bazaar return to life. Readily
available transportation brought
more pilgrims to the Virupaksha
Temple, especially at festival time,
helping improve the economic
situation of the local community.
Vijayanagara also gained in
reputation, particularly after the
1986 listing of the “Hampi Group
of Monuments” on UNESCO’s
World Heritage List. By 2002,
when we wound up our project,
Hampi had become world famous,
with thousands of tourists arriving
in vehicles ranging from threewheeled auto-rickshaws to airconditioned cars and buses. The
local population had also grown
dramatically, and the columns of
the bazaar hosted a wide variety of
www.archaeology.org

shops and services, such as stores
selling film, toys, guidebooks, and
maps, as well as restaurants with
quasi-European menus, travel
agencies, Internet cafés, and more.
In contrast to the exposed ruins
of much of Vijayanagara, Hampi
Bazaar was a welcome respite
where visitors could find shade
and refreshment. Though these
modern businesses were occupying
the medieval site, they seemed
perfectly appropriate—they
recovered some of the original
function and spirit of the bazaar.
We did observe, however, that the
temple and KDAM, which had
authority over the bazaar, did little
to guide this growth or regulate the
construction of new guesthouses,
some of which soared to three or
four stories. Nonetheless, while it

was heartening to see the bazaar
so animated, we and others were
concerned about the integrity of
the original structures.

A

fter 2002, we regularly
returned to the site
and observed a steady
acceleration of building activity
in the village, accompanied by
migration of people from the
surrounding countryside looking
for work. Many of these migrants
were extremely poor, and they
converted more and more of the
bazaar’s colonnades into simple
dwellings and stalls that extended
almost the full length of the street.
In 2003, the ASI commissioned an
Integrated Management Plan for
the entire Vijayanagara site. This
(continued on page 60)

Local residents gather to discuss and protest the demolition of homes and
businesses in Hampi Bazaar (top). In July 2011, bulldozers began this work (bottom
left) despite the protests, leaving behind piles of rubble (bottom right)
that were later cleared.
57

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COVER—Copyright Kenneth Garrett; 1—
Courtesy Bogdan Zurawski; 3—Courtesy
Laurence Dunne Archaeology, Courtesy
Israel Antiquities Authority, Courtesy INAH
Conaculta; 4—bpk, Berlin/Art Resource;
9—Wikimedia Commons, Photo: Valerio
Pillar, Courtesy Bernardo Arriaza;10—
Courtesy German Archaeological Institute/
Tobias Gutmann, Courtesy Bryan Tucker;
12—Courtesy Jodi Magness, Institute for
Archaeologies, University of Innsbruck; 14—
Courtesy Ejvind Hertz (3); 15—Courtesy
Jim Barlow; 16—Courtesy Fabrice Demeter,
Courtesy Duncan Sayer, Courtesy Laurence
Dunne Archaeology; 18—Courtesy INAH
Conaculta (3); 20—Courtesy Angelique
Corthals, Stonybrook University, Courtesy
Israel Antiquities Authority (2); 21—
Courtesy Copyright Project Ychsma-ULB;
22—(clockwise from top left) Idaho: Ana
Overgaard; Bahamas: Courtesy Don Kincaid;
Greenland: Courtesy Schmidt Ocean
Institute; Argentina: Courtesy Steve Schmidt,
University of Colorado; Mexico: iStockphoto;
Page 23 (clockwise from top left)
Spain: Courtesy Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona; Mongolia: Courtesy Amy Hessl,
University of West Virginia, Photo: Neil
Pederson; Croatia: Courtesy Marcel Buric,
University of Zagreb; Israel: Courtesy Public
Library of Science (doi:10.1371/journal.
pone.0042213.g003); Namibia: iStockphoto;
25—Copyright Kenneth Garrett; 26—Ian
Graham and Peter Mathews, CMHI,
Vol. 6.2: 125. ©President and Fellows of
Harvard College; 27—Photo composite by
Donald Hales, Elisabeth Wagner, and Paul
Johnson, illustration by Sven Gronemeyer;
28—Courtesy David Stuart (La Corona),
Courtesy Tyrone Turner © 2012 National
Geographic; (Xultun), Lonely Planet Images
(Uxmal); 29—bpk Berlin/Art Resource,
Courtesy Allen Christenson; 30-31—
Courtesy Liu Zhendong, Imaginechina
(2); 32—Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
France/Archives Charmet, The Bridgeman
Art Library; 33—Courtesy Liu Rui; 34—
Courtesy Liu Zhendong; 35— Courtesy Liu
Zhendong, Courtesy Liu Rui; 36-37—Sites
& Photos/Art Resource, Hasan Yelken/
Images & Stories; 38—Matthew Brunwasser
(2); 39—Matthew Brunwasser, Courtesy
Kutalmis Gorkay, Zeugma Archaeological
Project; 40—Matthew Brunwasser, Courtesy
Kutalmis Gorkay, Zeugma Archaeological
Project, Matthew Brunwasser; 41—Matthew
Brunwasser, Mehmet Gulbiz/Images &
Stories; 42-47—Courtesy Christopher R.
Moore/SRARP; 48-49—Courtesy Jacek
Poremba, Courtesy Bogdan Zurawski;
50—Courtesy Paweł Malec (reconstruction),
Courtesy Bogdan Zurawski; 51—Courtesy
Bogdan Zurawski, Courtesy Wojciech
Chmiel; 52—Courtesy Bogdan Zurawski (3);
55—Gethin Chamberlain; 56—Surendra
Kumar; 57—Surendra Kumar; 60—Gethin
Chamberlain; 62—Gethin Chamberlain;
68—Linda Alexander, photographer,
use with permission of the Illinois State
Archaeological Survey










Email materials to:
[email protected]
Materials for the Jan/Feb 2013 issue
are due Nov 6, 2012
www.archaeology.org

59

(continued from page 57)
plan recognized the exceptional
value of the Hampi Bazaar, and
recommended collaboration with
local people in its management
and future development. But at
no time during this period did
the authorities work with the
population to restrict inappropriate
construction. In our decades

restaurants, and dwellings were
deemed illegal encroachments,
even those that had been there
for generations. The local district
commissioner, working with the
ASI, issued orders for the bazaar
to be cleared and the surrounding
houses to be demolished.
Neither the Integrated
Management Plan nor the

with what was perceived by the
ASI as the demands of managing
a site of national importance.
Despite protests by the villagers,
attempts at legal action, and
appeals in English- and local
Kannada-language newspapers,
the decision was ironclad. In July
2011, bulldozers rolled into Hampi,
removing the shops, stalls, and

working at Hampi, we worked with
and got to know many of the local
residents. Some of them have told
us that they would have welcomed
such an initiative, since they had no
problem understanding that their
welfare depended on the proper
management of the site.
The results of this lack of
communication became apparent
in 2010, when the ASI assumed
control of the Virupaksha
Temple and Hampi Bazaar. The
ASI declared all of the Hampi
population to be squatters without
any rights, and their stalls, shops,

Tour guide P. Hussen stands outside
the remains of his home at Hampi
Bazaar. The original medieval columns
that make up the bazaar are clearly
visible amid the wreckage.

hotels, and in some cases damaging
the original medieval fabric of
the bazaar. More demolition and
resulting destruction occurred
during summer 2012 and still more
is scheduled for the near future.
At first, authorities refused to
help the displaced villagers, but
since then some of them have
been offered small residential plots
two miles away and portions of
another distant area on which to
develop commercial sites. However,
the community that the bazaar
formed and the livelihoods that it
supported are now gone.

60

UNESCO listing recommended
the removal of the local population
from the bazaar. Both recognized
that the commercial activity in
Hampi Bazaar was in accordance
with the site’s medieval tradition.
Hampi residents reported to us
that no one in the village was
consulted on how they might
reconcile their personal livelihoods

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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61

10/11/12 10:37 AM

The residents of Hampi Bazaar, who have been relocated two miles away, return to
view the remains of their homes and businesses. A policy of “living heritage” might
have allowed the community and the medieval site to coexist.

While there is an obvious need
to ensure the preservation of the
medieval remains of the site, we
agree with our local contacts that
this course of action is callous, not
least because the local population
was not involved in the decisionmaking process. Unfortunately, this
is all too common in India, where
there is only a limited range of
paradigms for managing heritage
sites. Backed by the Departments
of Culture and Tourism, the ASI
seems familiar with only two
62

letter from.ND.indd 62

approaches. Some sites, like the
bazaar prior to 2010, are neglected,
unprotected, and open to illegal
encroachment and inhabitation.
This paradigm, of course, puts sites
at risk. Other sites, like the bazaar
today, are “protected”—cleared of
all encumbrances such as previous
inhabitants, set in pleasant garden
compounds, and surrounded by
walls and gates. Sites subject to this
treatment risk becoming the sole
province of “five-star” tourism.
Though Hampi Bazaar is not the

only site to fall victim to one or both
of these flawed approaches, it is one
of outstanding national importance
and international repute. And it
aptly demonstrates why such an
unyielding policy was not necessary.
Damage to the historical
colonnades of the bazaar in recent
years was minimal and could easily
have been rectified. The essential
services the shops offered to
pilgrims and tourists were not only
welcome, but were also entirely
within the spirit of the original
bazaar. Indian cultural authorities
would only have to look as far as
Europe for a different approach:
Italy, Spain, Germany, and other
countries maintain countless
meticulously restored medieval
towns with streets and squares
surrounded by houses, churches,
civic halls, and markets—all
crowded with residents and tourists
intent on everyday pursuits. Hampi
Bazaar could have been such a site,
under an alternative paradigm, that
of “living heritage,” in which past
structures of different types are
rehabilitated according to accepted
conservation standards, yet adapted
for everyday use. Hampi should
have seen studies to explore
ways to rehabilitate the bazaar to
accommodate modern shops and
facilities, while at the same time
respecting the historical fabric of
the colonnades. After all, this street
was originally intended as a setting
for bustling activity. To see it
empty today is to see it diminished,
disconnected from its own past,
both ancient and more recent.
In India, as elsewhere, many
archaeological sites have seen change
and continue to live and breathe.
To ignore the full scope of Hampi’s
history risks turning a unique relic
of medieval commerce and religious
faith into a lifeless ruin. ■
For more information on Hampi,
go to www.penn.museum/sites/
vrp/Index.shtml, and
www.archaeology.org/hampi
ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

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EXCAVATE, EDUCATE, ADVOCATE

114th AIA-APA Joint Annual Meeting in Seattle

T

he th Joint Annual
Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA)
and the American Philological
Association (APA) will be held in
Seattle, Washington, from January
3 to 6, 2013. The Annual Meeting
is the highlight of both organizations’ academic programming and
is an important forum for scholars
to present new ideas and current
research. The four-day program in
Seattle will feature over 250 events,
including academic sessions featuring about 700 speakers, workshops,
roundtable discussions, and poster
sessions. Meeting attendees will be
a mixture of professionals, graduate
and undergraduate students, archaeology enthusiasts, ARCHAEOLOGY
magazine subscribers, and members

The Annual Meeting will feature over 250 sessions and events.

The 114th AIA-APA Joint Annual Meeting
will be held at the Washington State
Convention Center.

of AIA Local Societies.
Over the last 10 years, the Annual
Meeting has experienced tremendous growth in attendance—last
year’s record-breaking meeting in
Philadelphia had over 3,000 attendees, including more than 600 firsttime attendees and a 30 percent
increase in international participation—and in the scope of papers
presented and topics considered.
With an increased focus on professional development, cultural heritage
management, new technologies, and
other topics of critical importance to
the field, the meeting has expanded
its appeal. The 2013 meeting will
feature several new sessions including a Poster Colloquium, a Graduate
Student “Lightning Session,” and
dedicated sessions for undergraduate
poster and paper presentations.

64

The Annual Meeting also includes
events that are open to the general
public. A Public Lecture and Opening Night Reception will be held on
Thursday, January 3, 2013.
On Saturday, January 5, the AIA,
in collaboration with the Burke
Museum in Seattle, will present the
13th Annual AIA Archaeology Fair.
The fair is a family-friendly event
that encourages people to learn
about archaeology by participating
in hands-on activities. In the past,
fairs have included everything from
stone-tool-making workshops to historical reenactments.
We encourage you to join us in
Seattle for a stimulating and informative AIA-APA Joint Annual
Meeting. To learn more about the
event, visit www.archaeological.org/
annualmeeting

R

epresentatives from the
AIA participated in the 18th
Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists
(EAA) that was held in Helsinki,
Finland, from August 29 to September 1, 2012. Last year, at the 17th
EAA Annual Meeting, the AIA had a
presence in the exhibit hall. This year
we increased our participation in the
meeting by also presenting papers in
two academic sessions. The papers,
entitled “Public Engagement Through
Archaeology Day” and “Fostering
Heritage Stewardship to Preserve
Archaeological Sites,” were authored
by AIA Programs Department staff
members Ben Thomas and Meredith
Anderson Langlitz.
In an ongoing effort to further
increase collaborative efforts, the AIA
published two articles in the EAA
newsletter, The European Archaeologist
(Issue no. 37: Summer 2012, available

Senate Square at sunset, Helsinki, Finland

EAA President Friedrich Lüeth welcomes
attendees to the meeting.

at http://e-a-a.org/tea/). We are also
listing EAA events on the AIA website and in “Dispatches.” Furthermore,
in an effort to encourage greater participation in the AIA Annual Meeting, EAA members are being offered
discounted registration rates for the
meeting in Seattle and EAA representatives will be in the exhibit hall.

A

s mentioned in the September/October issue, AIA members are eligible for discounted
registration rates to attend the seventh
World Archaeological Congress (WAC
7) in Jordan from January 14 to 18,
2013. For details and to find out how
you can access these special AIA rates,
please visit archaeological.org/WAC.
The WAC 7 registration fee includes

Excavate, Educate, Advocate

AIA Participates in 18th Annual
Meeting of the European Association Of Archaeologists (EAA)

AIA Members to Receive Discounted Registration Rates for WAC 7

Dispatches from the AIA

O

ver the years the Archaeological Institute of America has collaborated with various like-minded organizations. These joint ventures allow
for an open exchange of information and ideas among the organizations,
cross-participation in events and programs, and greater opportunities for members to share their research and ideas with diverse audiences. It also enables the
AIA to publicize and promote its programs and events to a wider audience. On
this page are some recent collaborative efforts.



AIA and Collaborations

access to all conference sessions and
exhibitions, invitations to special
receptions, and the ability to participate in a mid-congress excursion to
sites in the Dead Sea area.
AIA Joins with SAA and SHA
for NCSS

T

he AIA will once again
join the Society for American
Archaeology (SAA) and the
Society for Historical Archaeology
(SHA) to attend the Annual Meeting of the National Council for the
Social Studies (NCSS) in Seattle,
Washington, from November 16 to
18, 2012. In 2007, the AIA, SAA,
and SHA formed the Archaeology
Education Clearinghouse (AEC) for
the express purpose of presenting
the organizations’ K–12 educational
resources to the teachers and educators who attend the annual NCSS
meeting. At the 2012 meeting, the
AEC will also present a workshop
that demonstrates how archaeology can be used to fulfill curriculum
requirements and to engage and
educate students.
65

Excavate, Educate, Advocate


Dispatches from the AIA

AIA Local Societies and National Archaeology Day

E

ach year the AIA provides
grants to AIA Local Societies to support local outreach
and educational activities through
the Local Society Outreach Grant
Program. These grants are given out
twice a year, in the fall and the spring.
Six societies received grants in spring
2012 and five of them are using their
grants to organize events for National
Archaeology Day that highlight Society activities and local resources.
The AIA-Boulder Society Archaeology Day events will feature speakers, artifact displays, information
tables for local archaeological organizations, a Family Day at the Museum
of Natural History, archaeological
foods, and an evening program at the
Fiske Planetarium. 
The AIA-Denver Society will
present “Settling the West: Archaeology at the Dry.” The program will
examine the daily lives of settlers at
“The Dry,” an early 20th-century
African-American homesteading
community located south of Manzanola, Colorado. One of the goals for
the program organizers is to create a
traveling exhibition that will be used
to present archaeology to children
who live in rural areas and often do
not have access to archaeological education programs.
The AIA-Toronto Society and the
Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) are
joining together to host a full day of
programs in celebration of National
Archaeology Day on October 20.
The museum will host lectures, displays, and family- and child-friendly
interactive activities that celebrate the
diversity and excitement of archaeology around the world. The central
hall of the museum’s ground floor will
feature booths and posters as well
as interactive interpretative sections.
ROM researchers will have displays
detailing their current archaeological
research and will be on hand to talk
to the public and answer their questions. In addition, talks will be delivered by two eminent scholars in the
Museum’s lecture hall.

66

The AIA-Western Massachusetts
Society will present “Afternoon with
an Archaeologist.” This program will
introduce students and the public to
an archaeological survey of a local
site. They will be led on a visit to an
historical and archaeological site for
surface walking and mapping of surviving above-ground features. 
The AIA-Winnipeg Society, in

collaboration with the University of
Winnipeg, will host an open-house
event where members of the community and general public can tour the
archaeology laboratories on campus
and view relevant exhibits and displays. The University of Winnipeg
houses a vast array of artifacts and
teaching exhibits related to archaeology in its museum collections.

Society Membership

A

IA president Elizabeth Bartman’s letter in this issue encourages
ARCHAEOLOGY magazine readers to join the AIA as Society Members and get involved in local community archaeology.
ARCHAEOLOGY subscribers can upgrade to Society Level Membership
for just $30. For the full list of benefits and to upgrade your membership,
visit archaeological.org/upgrade

National Archaeology Day

O

ctober , , is National
Archaeology Day! On that day
and throughout the month of
October, AIA Local Societies and
over 100 Collaborating Organizations
will host archaeological programs and
activities open to all. Please visit
www.nationalarchaeologyday.org to
learn more about this annual celebration of archaeology and to find an
event near you. Follow us on Facebook
at facebook.com/NatlArkyDay and
Twitter at @NatlArkyDay.

(J\SW
DZDLWV

Fascinating itineraries with expert lecturers

call: 800-748-6262 • web site: www.aiatours.org • email: [email protected]
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ARTIFACT

C

offee had not yet arrived in Europe from southern Arabia when Spanish explorers came to the southeastern United States and discovered that Native Americans were already drinking a highly caffeinated beverage. Called Black Drink,
it was made from the toasted leaves of two species of Ilex (holly) and was used

by many tribes as part of purification rituals that also included fasting and vomiting. According
to anthropologist Patricia Crown of the University of New Mexico, these rituals were widely
practiced, especially by men, before important activities such as religious events, political

WHAT IS IT?

Beaker vessels
DATE

A.D. 1050–1250
MATERIAL

Clay
FOUND

Greater Cahokia
and hinterlands,
southwestern Illinois

councils, ball games, and war parties.
By analyzing residue left in the beaker vessels dating to as early as A.D. 1050 from which
Black Drink was consumed, Crown’s team has shown that the local population of Cahokia, the
largest pre-Columbian site north of Mexico, had in fact been imbibing the potent potable 500
years earlier than previously thought. Since the brew’s main ingredient, Ilex vomitoria and possibly Ilex cassine (also known as Yaupon and Dahoon) are not found locally, Crown also believes
that the drink’s presence at Cahokia indicates that the plants were brought in from hundreds
of miles to the south, making Black Drink an imported luxury. Because Cahokia was the most
influential center in the Eastern Woodlands, which spanned the area between the Mississippi
River and the Atlantic Ocean, including the Great Lakes, the rituals practiced there, including
the consumption of Black Drink, deeply impacted those of other groups in the region.

68

ARCHAEOLOGY • November/December 2012

Archaeological Tours
led by noted scholars

Invites You to Journey Back in Time
Classical Greece (16 days)
Tour the major Mycenaean, Classical and
Byzantine sites of mainland Greece with
Prof. Gerald Schaus, Wilfrid Laurier U.
Beginning in Athens, we explore Olympia,
Byzantine Mistra, Tiryns, Mycenae
and the great healing center at
Epidauros. Traveling north,
highlights include mystical
Delphi, Meteora,
Thessaloniki, Pella
and monuments
associated with Philip
and Alexander.

Northern India (20 days)
Travel with Prof. J. Daniel White, U. of
North Carolina at Charlotte, as we visit
the palaces and fortresses of the amazing
Rajasthani cities of Udaipur, Jodhpur and
Jaipur, the breathtaking Taj Mahal and
the sacred ghats and temples in Varanasi.
Additional tour highlights include visits
to the lovely Hindu temples in Khajuraho,
renowned for their voluptuous sculptures;
the magnificent Buddhist temples spanning
the whole range of Indian Buddhist art at
Sanchi; as well as the wonderful museums
and Neolithic cave paintings near Bhopal.

Great Museums: Berlin,
Hildesheim & Hannover (10 days)

Splendors of Ancient
Egypt (20 days)
Join Prof. Lanny Bell, Brown U.,
as we journey along the Nile to
Luxor, visiting the rock-cut tombs at
Beni Hassan, Tuna el-Gebel, Akhenaten’s
capital at el-Amarna, Dendera and Abydos.
In Cairo, we visit Sakkara, Giza, the Egyptian
Museum, Islamic and Coptic monuments
and the seldom visited pyramid complexes
at Dahshur and Abusir and the collapsed
pyramid of Meydum. We will spend five
days in Luxor exploring the magnificent
temples and tombs of Thebes before a
deluxe 5-Day Nile cruise on the new M.S.
Farah. This fabulous tour ends with three
days in Aswan and Abu Simbel.

View the Egyptian, Classical and Near
Eastern art collections in the museums of
Berlin, Hildesheim and Hannover with Dr.
Robert Bianchi, Art Historian. For all who
have visited Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Italy,
or Greece, or will visit these places, this
tour is an absolute treasure trove of art
from their ancient cities. We will also
visit museums known for their outstanding
paintings. The Berlin museums have recently
reorganized their collections improving the
visitor’s experience.

Prehistoric to Medieval Ireland
(18 days)
Explore Ireland’s prehistoric and early
Christian sites with Prof. Charles Doherty, U.
College Dublin. Touring will span thousands
of years as we study Neolithic and Bronze Age
monuments and artifacts, Celtic defensive
systems and stone forts. Highlights include
prehistoric Newgrange and Knowth; Dun
Aengus fort on the Island of Inishmore; Ring
of Kerry; Clonmacnoise monastic settlement;
Dublin and Belfast. Our tour is enhanced by
traditional music and dance performances
and lectures by local archaeologists.

2013 tours: Turkey • Khmer Kingdoms • Bulgaria • Israel • Morocco • Byzantine to Baroque Italy • Ancient Rome • Balkans • China
Indonesia • Malta, Sardinia & Corsica • Bhutan & Ladakh • Scotland • Caves & Castles • Peru • Cyprus & Crete...and more
Journey back in time with us. We’ve been taking curious travelers on fascinating historical study tours for the
past 38 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.

archaeological tours
LED BY NOTED SCHOLARS

superb itineraries, unsurpassed service

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Hemisphere’s largest barrier reef. As one of the last unspoiled places, you’ll feel an intimate connection
to authentic experiences in Belize. All just a two-hour flight from the U.S., in the only English-speaking
country of Central America. Call 800-624-0686 or visit TravelBelize.org. And just be, in Belize.

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