A pair of glasses made from wood.
NEW In the past, sensory experiences have often been used to shape and maintain power structures. By investigating the material culture of the senses in medieval and Early Modern Europe, a new study explores these 'sensory regimes'.
A sensitive #AntiquityThread 1/11 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology #medievalsky
Dr Alice Rose sampling bone for isotope analysis.
How did social inequality really affect past people?
Isotope analysis of different social groups in medieval Cambridge, England indicates diet varied greatly based on status, offering a rare "whole-town" view of medieval life.
#AntiquityThread 1/12 🧵
📷 S. Leggett
🏺 #Archaeology
Above: piece of stone engraved with lines with the appearance of a game board. Below: illustration of the lines with circular black and white game pieces on them, showing how the pieces could move.
Researchers have used artificial intelligence to model possible rulesets for a Roman board game, concluding it was a kind of game previously unknown in Europe until the Middle Ages, pushing back evidence of their play by several centuries.
A playful #AntiquityThread 1/13 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Dr. Mari Kleist (Associate Professor, Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland) documents an Early Paleo-Inuit tent ring at Isbjørne Island, Kitsissut.
Discovery of 4,500-year-old Paleo-Inuit settlement on the Kitsissut Islands, north of Greenland, shows the first people in the High Arctic were skilled seafarers, deeply entangled with Arctic ecosystems from the beginning of glacial retreat.
#AntiquityThread 1/13 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Map of the study are in Northern Mesopotamia, with major sites pinpointed and blue lines representing ancient route systems between them.
NEW How did ancient cities adapt to changes and overcome crises? By applying resilience theory to Northern Mesopotamian urban centres, researchers empirically analyse how settlement networks and connectivity changed over time.
A resilient #AntiquityThread 🧵 1/9
🏺 #Archaeology
Smooth, Neolithic stone axes, knapped flint tools and two awls made from bone.
Archaeologists have uncovered one of the first instances of interaction between #Neolithic farmers and #Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in central Europe, indicating a level of technology transfer not observed before.
🏺A communicative #AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵
Six pieces of clay with impressions of various designs imprinted onto them.
Archaeologists have uncovered the largest known corpus of late prehistoric administrative artefacts in the ancient world in western Iran, prompting us to reconsider our understanding of early bureaucratic institutions.
A well-organised #AntiquityThread 1/8 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Feeling a little worse for wear this #NationalHangoverDay? Just think of it as continuing one of humanity's oldest traditions. To prove it, here's a mini #AntiquityThread on the production and consumption of alcohol in the past 🥂 1/6 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Reconstruction of Roman Londinium. Aerial view of a miniature city. Buildings have white walls and red-orange, sloped, tiled roofs.
NEW Did the #Romans harm our health? Analysis of skeletal remains from England before and during Roman occupation confirms theories that the population’s health declined under Roman occupation, but only in the urban centres.
#AntiquityThread 1/13 🧵
TW: human remains
🏺 #Archaeology
Print of Röntgen's first 'medical' X-ray, depicting a hand with rings on the fingers.
The first Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded #OnThisDay in AD 1901 to Wilhelm Röntgen, for his discovery of X-rays. Best-known for their medical applications, X-rays are also valuable for #archaeology. Here's a mini #AntiquityThread on some of their recent uses 1/6 🏺 🧵
Miquel López-Garcia playing one of the shell trumpets from Mas d’en Boixos during a test at the Vinseum museum (Vilafranca del Penedès).
NEW Archaeologists play 6000-year-old shell trumpets from Neolithic Catalonia, revealing they were highly effective for long-distance communication and may have also been used as musical instruments.
A jazzy #AntiquityThread 1/11 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Map of terrain built from lidar data, revealing the underlying contours of the landscape including the outline of a hillfort.
It's that special time of year we've all been waiting for, happy #GISDay everyone! 🗺️
Here's a mini #AntiquityThread on some of the fantastic #archaeology research published in Antiquity this year that applied this now-indispensable tool 1/6 🧵
🏺
Drone photograph of the archaeological site of Semiyarka, looking from the south-east to the north-west, taken in July 2018. The outlines of several rectilinear buildings are visible running in a line across a flat grassland (credit: Peter J. Brown)
NEW In the heart of the Eurasian steppe, a #BronzeAge metropolis has been unearthed, showing that the settlements of nomadic steppe societies were just as sophisticated as contemporary, more traditionally 'urban' civilisations.
#AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Aerial photo of a row of holes running across a mountain ridge.
NEW Made of thousands of aligned holes, the Andean monument Monte Sierpe (Band of Holes) is iconic, but its purpose is unknown. Research supports a new interpretation of this mysterious monument as part of an Indigenous system of accounting and exchange
#AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Double-sided comb made from bone.
NEW Were the Picts of northern Scotland wiped out by Viking conquest? New radiocarbon dates from the 1st millennium AD settlement of Buckquoy, Orkney paint a more complex picture of cultural interaction in the Northern Isles.
#AntiquityThread 1/15 🧵
@northernpicts.bsky.social🏺 #Archaeology
Several stone monuments engraved with different motifs ranging from flowers to calendar dates.
NEW Mountains are central in Mesoamerican cosmogeny, but have rarely been investigated with modern archaeological methods. #Lidar mapping and examination of monuments from Cerro Patlachique, Mexico sheds light on mountain worship and pilgrimage.
🏺 #AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
Archaeologists excavating in a trench in Area 5 of the MOWAA excavations.
NEW Excavation at Benin City's historic palace, looted and destroyed by the British in 1897, provides an unprecedented glimpse into pre-colonial West African urban development and artisanal crafts, including the famous Benin Bronzes.
#AntiquityThread 1/16 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Facade of a rock-cut temple. On either side of a doorway stand two large statues of pharaohs sat on thrones. The top half of one of the statues has been destroyed. Public Domain.
The #AbuSimbelFestival is today, during which the sun reaches the inner sanctums of the Ancient Egyptian Abu Simbel temples, lighting up statues of Ramses II and the gods.
Many societies built monuments in alignment with the sun. We explore some in this mini #AntiquityThread 1/6 🏺 #Archaeology
Excavation within the mausoleum, annotated with different preserved wooden features identified.
NEW How advanced were the resource networks of ancient China?
Analysis of timber from the mausoleum of the first emperor indicates sophisticated logistical planning and resource mobilisation even at the beginning of the Qin Dynasty.
🧵 #AntiquityThread 1/12
🏺 #Archaeology
Aerial photograph of two chacu hunting traps: drystone structures made up of two walls forming a V-shape, tapering to a circular enclosure (credit: A. Oyaneder).
NEW Satellite imagery reveals 76 hunting traps and 100s of undiscovered settlements in the Andean highlands, indicating hunting and foraging were still major aspects of life long after researchers believed people transitioned to agropastoralist farming.
#AntiquityThread 1/11 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
One of the researchers with the remains of an exceptionally large steamer used for ritual feasting.
NEW How did ancient China go from several competing polities to a unified state? New research indicates ritual feasting and shared belief systems played an important role.
Get ready for a spiritual #AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Bronze and bone objects incorporating animal-style ovicaprid (sheep & goat) motifs.
‘Animal-style’ art served as a unifying language across the ancient Eurasian Steppe, but where did it originate? New research offers a rare glimpse into the emergence of this aesthetic tradition alongside the formation of nomadic cultures.
#AntiquityThread 1/13 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Close-up image of a stone with traces of blue pigment on its surface.
NEW Archaeologists find the earliest evidence for blue pigment use in Europe, dating back ~13,000 years and questioning the long-held belief that Palaeolithic artists only used red or black.
Strap in for a colourful #AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Two archaeologists excavating in a trench.
NEW Britain's economy did not collapse after the #Romans left
A new, unbroken timeline of British metal production from the 5th century AD to the present day questions the idea of a post-Roman 'Dark Age'.
Strap in for an industrious #AntiquityThread 1/12 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Grey-green metal sculpture of a lion with feathered wings (credit: Scarfì, 1990).
NEW Was Venice's iconic Winged Lion statue made in China? New research indicates this symbol of medieval Venetian statehood in fact originated far to the east, possibly sent back along the Silk Road by Niccolò and Maffeo Polo.
A well-travelled #AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Fragmented brown bear cranium from three angles. An annotated illustration of a brown bear head shows which parts of the cranium they are.
NEW What was life like for the animals that fought in the amphitheatres of the #Roman Empire? New research tells the story of a fighting bear from Roman Serbia.
Strap in for a gladiatorial #AntiquityThread 1/9 🧵
🏺 #Archaeology
Several archaeologists wearing high-vis vests excavating graves. In the background an excavator stands amongst piles of earth. Excavation at the post-Roman cemetery at Worth Matravers cemetery (credit: Lilian Ladle).
NEW West African ancestry in #medieval England? 🏺 #Archaeology
DNA analysis of two unrelated individuals from two seventh-century-AD cemeteries uncovers the first evidence for genetic connections between Britain and Africa during the Early Middle Ages.
#AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵
📷 Lilian Ladle
Assorted "Rising Sun/Srivatsa" coins found at Oc Eo/An Giang, Vietnam and Angkor Borei, Cambodia, held at the Ho Chi Minh City History Museum and SOSORO Museum of Economy and Money, Phnom Penh. On one side, a rising sun motif is visible, on the other a 'srivatsa'.
NEW Analysis of beautiful 'rising sun' coins reveals 1st millennium AD connections from Bangladesh to Vietnam, indicating ancient Southeast Asia's understudied economies were just as complex as those of Rome, India & Central Asia 🏺 #Archaeology
Strap in for a valuable #AntiquityThread 1/12 🧵
Illustrations of a tattoo depicting a deer being attacked by a griffin, showing it: A) in its current state; B) recreated to fill in missing elements and account for skin desiccation; and C) an idealised rendering (credit: D. Riday).
NEW How did ancient tattooers learn their craft?
High-res, near infrared photography and collaboration with modern tattooers reveals the complex process behind tattoos on Siberia's 'ice mummies'.
#AntiquityThread 1/14 🧵
Warning: this thread contains images of human remains
Map showing the location of Charterhouse Warren, Mendip, Somerset.
Analysis of over 3000 human bones from Charterhouse Warren, England indicated they were massacred and partly consumed by enemies, questioning the idea that Early Bronze Age Britain was relatively peaceful.
An @archaeologyuk.bsky.social #FestivalOfArchaeology #AntiquityThread 1/15 🧵
