ClassiCult World

20/12/2024

The Vasari Corridor reopens on December 21, following its closure in 2016 for necessary upgrades to comply with modern safety regulations. For the first time in its history, the public will have the chance to enjoy a unique panoramic walk above the center of Florence. The route starts at a dedicated entrance on the first floor of the Gallery of Statues and Paintings in the Uffizi Galleries, taking visitors across Ponte Vecchio and leading to the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti Palace beyond the Arno River. More than just a journey, this will be like stepping back in time almost 500 years, to when the corridor was first created. Now restored to its original simplicity, the corridor presents itself to visitors as a plain “aerial tunnel,” over 700 meters long and passing above the heart of the city – just as it appeared when the Florentine rulers used it for quick, safe, and uninterrupted passage between their residence and the seat of government.

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The Vasari Corridor reopens on December 21, 2024. The chance to enjoy a unique panoramic walk above the center of Florence

09/12/2024

A study provides unprecedented information on prehistoric archery from the early Neolithic period in the Iberian Peninsula. The well preservation of the remains of the Cave of Los Murciélagos in Albuñol, Granada, made it possible to identify the oldest bowstrings in Europe, as well as the use of olive and reed wood and birch bark pitch in the making of arrows. The results, published in Scientific Reports, reveals an unprecedented degree of precision and technical mastery.

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Iberian Neolithic societies had a deep knowledge of archery techniques and materials, according to a new study in Scientific Reports

09/12/2024

By decoding the DNA of the beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), a native plant that thrives in British Columbia, a team of multidisciplinary scientists is providing new insight into how ancestral Indigenous peoples stewarded plants across the province.

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Genetic study of native beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) challenges misconceptions about how ancient Indigenous peoples used the land

09/12/2024

From feeling heavy-hearted to having butterflies in your stomach, it seems inherent to the human condition that we feel emotions in our bodies, not just in our brains. But have we always felt –– or at least expressed –– these feelings in the same way?

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A new study about how people in the ancient Mesopotamian region experienced emotions in their bodies thousands of years ago

09/12/2024

The study, published today in the journal Science Advances and based on archaeological remains from Alaska, shows that people and the ancestors of today's dogs began forming close relationships as early as 12,000 years ago – about 2,000 years earlier than previously recorded in the Americas.

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Remains at Swan Point and Hollembaek Hill, Alaska, show that humans and ancestors of dogs began forming close relationships as early as 12 KIA

27/11/2024

A scientific study has for the first time described a structure compatible with theoretical studies of anoxic heating. The structure looks like a simple pit, and this simplicity may be why this structure has not been previously identified.
Only through a multitude of analyses and the collaboration of a multidisciplinary team has it been possible to demonstrate its use as an anoxic heating chamber.
The discovery was made in Vanguard Cave (Gibraltar, UK), part of the ‘Gorham’s Caves Complex’.

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A complex structure for the production of tar, created by Neanderthals, has been discovered at the Vanguard Cave, in Gibraltar

27/11/2024

When the lake levels have remained unchanged, these extremely smooth rock surfaces generate distinct single-repeat echoes, which accurately copy the given sounds, forming auditory mirror images that appear to emanate from behind the rock walls. The adjacent, more jagged lakeshore cliffs generate weaker and less distinct echoes, while the more or less contemporary dwelling sites on the sandy shores of the same water bodies have no audible echoes at all.

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Finnish prehistoric rock paintings (5000–1500 BCE) on the cliffs rising directly from the lakes are acoustically special environments

27/11/2024

“Scientists have long assumed that the Faroe Islands and Iceland were both settled by similar Norse people. Yet our novel analysis has shown that these islands were founded by men from different gene pools within Scandinavia,” said Dr Christopher Tillquist.

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Viking Faroe Islands colonizers were a group of male settlers from multiple Scandinavian populations, different from Iceland colonizers

24/11/2024

ClassiCult Archaeology News – November 18-22, 2024:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFRqASh5OM0

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XERFAN8nX7AqzO9BOWjUN?si=4b418028909f4617

21/11/2024

The writing, which is dated to around 2400 BCE, precedes other known alphabetic scripts by roughly 500 years, upending what archaeologists know about where alphabets came from, how they are shared across societies, and what that could mean for early urban civilizations.

Read more on ClassiCult: https://www.classicult.it/en/oldest-known-alphabet-unearthed-at-tell-umm-el-marra-once-an-ancient-syrian-city/

17/11/2024

ClassiCult Archaeology News - November 11-17, 2024:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGglLicgvMw
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Cqh06yY4J0EtuQjsnR1us

17/11/2024

With funding from the National Science Foundation, a team of archaeologists from LSU and the University of Texas at Tyler have excavated the earliest known ancient Maya salt works in southern Belize, as reported in the journal Antiquity.

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Researchers excavate earliest ancient Maya salt works at Jay-yi Nah, which turned out to be much older than the other underwater sites

17/11/2024

The project has the Latin title "disiecta membra" – meaning "scattered fragments" – and it aims to collate some 25,000 individual building elements and 5,000 standing or still visible structures, such as Roman theaters.

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A long-term research project, the large-scale online edition "disiecta membra. Stone Architecture and Urbanism in Roman Germany"

11/11/2024

An international team of archaeologists led by Professor Jochem Kahl from Freie Universität Berlin has made an incredible discovery in the necropolis of Asyut, Egypt. Researchers discovered the burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian priestess Idy, daughter of the regional governor Djefaihapi I, in a previously inaccessible section of his monumental tomb from around 1880 BCE. Unearthed after twenty years of fieldwork, the find is being hailed as a significant archaeological discovery.

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The burial chamber and grave goods of the ancient Egyptian Priestess Idy have been discovered in the Egyptian necropolis of Asyut

11/11/2024

15,800-year-old engraved plaquettes from the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf, located in modern-day Germany, depict fishing techniques, including the use of nets, not previously known in the Upper Paleolithic

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Plaquettes from the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf, depict fishing techniques, including the use of nets, not known in the Upper Paleolithic

31/10/2024

These age-related changes were more pronounced in right clavicles than in left clavicles. A higher proportion of people are naturally right- than left-handed, and at the time when the Mary Rose sank, left-handedness was associated with witchcraft and therefore strongly discouraged. So, assuming right-handed preference among the crew, this finding suggests that handedness may have affected their clavicle chemistry, perhaps through putting more stress on their right side during repeated ship-related activities.

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Bones from Tudor Mary Rose shipwreck suggest handedness might affect collarbone chemistry and help to learn about sailors in the 16th century

31/10/2024

The development of large urban settlements was a major step in the evolution of human civilization. This process of urbanization has proven difficult to study in northern Arabia, due in part to a lack of well-preserved archaeological sites in the region compared with better understood areas such as the Levant and Mesopotamia. In recent decades, however, excavations have uncovered exceptional sites in northern Arabia that provide insights into the early stages of urbanization.

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The ‘urban revolution’ was slow in Bronze Age Arabia: the site of al-Natah, occupied 2400-1500BCE, was an early transitional stage

13/10/2024

A new study in PLoS ONE reports and assesses the contents of 25 caves and rock shelters, most of them first identified between 1870 and the 1990s but essentially lost to science over time. Study authors also conducted new land and underwater surveys in previously unexplored coastal areas and uncovered three new sites that contain potentially important archaeological sediments.

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Coastal and underwater caves in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the island