̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Archaeology

̽��ֱ��tale of the tomb of Thutmose II

fpjl2 — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:15:24 +0000

Cambridge ̽��ֱ��'s Dr Judith Bunbury is Deputy Mission Director of the archaeological project in the Theban Mountain area that found the lost tomb of Thutmose II.

Professor Lord Colin Renfrew – 1937-2024

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:17:35 +0000

̽��ֱ��Department of Archaeology and McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge mourn the death and celebrate the extraordinary life of Professor Colin Renfrew, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, formerly tenth Disney Professor of Archaeology, the McDonald’s founding Director, and Master of Jesus College.

Colin was, and will always remain, one of the titans of modern archaeology, a distinguished public figure, and a fine friend and colleague to innumerable archaeologists around the world. This loss makes the world of archaeology a poorer place intellectually, as well as in terms of the sheer energy and optimism that he brought to everything he did.

From his first years as one of the brave new archaeologists of the 1960s, Colin stood out as an exceptional mind, and as a spirit of profound, exciting and rigorous change. He pioneered new, theoretically informed ways of thinking about the explanation of social and political change in the past, within and then far beyond his first enduring regional love for the prehistoric Aegean, while advocating scientific techniques of dating and provenance as an integral part of archaeological endeavour. From this perspective, he was one of the first to appreciate the significance of the calibration of radiocarbon dates for the understanding of European prehistory.

He went on to ask equally fresh questions about the link between language evolution and archaeology and, as the first Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, championed some of the earliest applications of archaeogenetics, as well as a critical and investigative approach to the illicit antiquities market. His fieldwork expanded to Orkney, and latterly returned to the more southerly isles of the Cyclades, subject of his doctoral research, and to remarkable discoveries on the island of Keros. To the very end, he remained engaged with the forefront of archaeological developments, attending and clearly relishing the 36th Annual McDonald Lecture on the Wednesday before he left us.

As those who knew him will amply testify, there was far, far more to Colin than the world-leading and much honoured archaeologist. He took on the mantle of a working peer in the House of Lords, where he spoke up for matters of heritage and archaeological legislation with the customary eloquence and lapidary reasoning of a one-time President of the Cambridge Union.

He was a passionate and knowledgeable expert and collector of modern art, by which Jesus College under his care remains permanently graced. Social events under his hospitality became unforgettable and often hugely convivial gatherings of brilliant minds from the widespread fields that he drew together, and under the right circumstances often culminated in demonstrations of Colin’s skills as a dancer. Last but far from least, he was a much-loved husband to his wife Jane, and father to Helena, Alban and Magnus.

Colin passed away peacefully in his sleep during the night of Saturday 23 to Sunday 24 November 2024. All of us at Cambridge extend our heartfelt condolences and profound respects to his family and to all those who loved and knew him.

Professor Cyprian Broodbank remembers Professor Lord Colin Renfrew, founding Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and former Master of Jesus College, who passed away at the weekend aged 87.

Michael Boyd. Reproduced with kind permission.

Professor Colin Renfrew, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Previously unknown Neolithic society in Morocco discovered

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:34:03 +0000

Archaeological fieldwork in Morocco has discovered the earliest, previously unknown 3400–2900 BC farming society from a poorly understood period of north-west African prehistory. This is the earliest and largest agricultural complex yet found in Africa beyond the Nile.

This study, published in the journal Antiquity, reveals for the first time the importance of the Maghreb (north-west Africa) in the emergence of complex societies in the wider Mediterranean during the fourth and third millennia BC.

With a Mediterranean environment, a border with the Sahara desert and the shortest maritime crossing between Africa and Europe, the Maghreb is perfectly located as a hub for major cultural developments and intercontinental connections in the past.

Whilst the region’s importance during the Palaeolithic, Iron Age and Islamic periods is well known, there is a significant gap in knowledge of the archaeology of the Maghreb between c. 4000 and 1000 BC, a period of dynamic change across much of the Mediterranean.

To tackle this, a team of archaeologists led by Prof Cyprian Broodbank from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Prof Youssef Bokbot from INSAP, and Prof Giulio Lucarini from CNR-ISPC and ISMEO, have carried out collaborative, multidisciplinary archaeological fieldwork at Oued Beht, Morocco.

"For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental in later prehistoric north Africa," said Broodbank. "Now, at last, we know that was right, and we can begin to think in new ways that acknowledge the dynamic contribution of Africans to the emergence and interactions of early Mediterranean societies."

"For more than a century the last great unknown of later Mediterranean prehistory has been the role played by the societies of Mediterranean’s southern, Africa shores west of Egypt," say the authors of the new study. "Our discoveries prove that this gap has been due not to any lack of major prehistoric activity, but to the relative lack of investigation, and publishing. Oued Beht now affirms the central role of the Maghreb in the emergence of both Mediterranean and wider African societies."

These results reveal that the site was the largest agricultural complex from this period in Africa outside of the Nile region. All of the evidence points to the presence of a large-scale farming settlement—similar in size to Early Bronze Age Troy.

̽��ֱ��team recovered unprecedented domesticated plant and animal remains, pottery and lithics, all dating to the Final Neolithic period. Excavation also revealed extensive evidence for deep storage pits.

Importantly, contemporaneous sites with similar pits have been found on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar in Iberia, where finds of ivory and ostrich egg have long pointed to African connections. This suggests that the Maghreb was instrumental in wider western Mediterranean developments during the fourth millennium BC.

Oued Beht and the north-west Maghreb were clearly integral parts of the wider Mediterranean region. As such, these discoveries significantly change our understanding of the later prehistory of the Mediterranean and Africa.

As the authors of the Antiquity article state: “It is crucial to consider Oued Beht within a wider co-evolving and connective framework embracing peoples both sides of the Mediterranean-Atlantic gateway during the later fourth and third millennia BC - and, for all the likelihood of movement in both directions, to recognise it as a distinctively African-based community that contributed substantially to the shaping of that social world.”

arch.jpg

Multi-disciplinary archaeological survey at the site of Oued Beht, Morocco, reveals a previously unknown 3400–2900 BC farming society, shedding new light on North Africa’s role in Mediterranean prehistory.

For over thirty years I have been convinced that Mediterranean archaeology has been missing something fundamental

Prof Cyprian Broodbank

Lorena Lombardi & Moad Radi

Stone tools from Oued Beht

Yes

Arcadia awards over £10 million for 2 major archaeology projects

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 14:57:42 +0000

̽��ֱ��McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology and ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Development and Alumni Relations are pleased to announce that the Arcadia charitable foundation has awarded grants totalling £10.3 million to continue the work of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project.

Archaeological sites and monuments around the world are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of climate change. These pressures are especially severe in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where local heritage agencies are often short-staffed and under-resourced; where existing sites and monuments registers are often incompletely digitised; and where many sites are not yet documented and large areas remain archaeologically under-studied. Alongside the intensity of natural and human threats, these factors combine to make the implementation of planning controls, impact assessments, mitigation measures and long-term monitoring especially challenging.

̽��ֱ��five-year funding of £5.7 million to the MAEASaM project supports the continuation of its mission to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa, building on the work accomplished thus far with our in-country partners in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. ̽��ֱ��funding will also allow the project to expand its collaborations with other national heritage agencies in Africa, including Mozambique, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to develop innovative approaches to better integrate heritage concerns into national planning and development control activities

During Phase 1 of the project, the MAEASaM team managed to assess a total area of 1,024,656 square kilometres using a combination of historical maps, Google Earth and medium-resolution satellite imagery, resulting in digital documentation of some 67,748 sites and monuments. Concurrent with this work, the team created digital records of 31,461 legacy sites, from unique information sets spanning almost a century of archaeological fieldwork on the continent. ̽��ֱ��accuracy of a sample of these records were also assessed via 11 field verification campaigns, helping establish the current status of these sites and levels of endangerment from anthropogenic and natural processes, while also locating many previously undocumented sites. Training, skills enhancement and knowledge transfer activities were also delivered via both in-person and online events, often in collaboration with MAHSA, and team members presented their work at 15 international meetings and via numerous social media and website posts.

Professor Paul Lane, Principal Investigator of the MAEASaM project, said: “I am truly delighted by the news of this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank Arcadia for their continuing support. As well as allowing expansion of the project to cover other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this further 5 years of funding will enable the creation of a repository of digital assets and a sustainable system for more rapidly and easily assessing, researching, monitoring and managing archaeological heritage, accessible to heritage professionals, researchers and students across the continent.”

Similarly, the five-year grant of £4.6 million to the MAHSA project supports its continuing mission to document endangered archaeological heritage in Pakistan and India, working alongside collaborators in both countries to support their efforts to protect and manage the rich heritage of the region. Over the next 5 years, MAHSA will continue to develop and populate its Arches database, creating a resource to make heritage data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. MAHSA will consolidate the work it has begun in the Indus River Basin and surrounding areas, and will also expand its documentation efforts to include the coastline areas of both India and Pakistan, Baluchistan in Pakistan and the Ganges River Basin in north India.

During Phase 1, the MAHSA team georeferenced in excess of 1,300 historic Survey of India map sheets, covering over 890,000 square kilometres, and have reconstructed over 192,696 square kilometres of ancient hydrological networks. This groundwork has made it possible to digitise over 10000 legacy data records, and many of those records have been enriched. In addition, they carried out 5 collaborative archaeological surveys both as part of their training programme, and as part of new collaborative research with stakeholders in both India and Pakistan. They have engaged in policy-level dialogue with different government organisations in Pakistan and India, with an aim of working towards the development of a sustainable solution for the inclusion of heritage in urban and agricultural development strategies.

Professor Cameron Petrie, Principal Investigator of the MAHSA project, said: “I am extremely proud of what the collaborative MAHSA team have achieved during Phase 1, and the support from Arcadia for Phase 2 will allow us to continue making a transformational contribution to the documentation and understanding of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan and India. We are clarifying existing archaeological site locations datasets and collecting new ones at a scale never before attempted in South Asia.”

About Arcadia

Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1.2 billion (£900 million) to organisations around the world.

About Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM)

About Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA)

̽��ֱ��charitable foundation awards £10.3 million for the continuation of 2 Cambridge projects mapping endangered archaeological heritage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Image from the MAEASaM Project

Yes

Revealed: face of 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal from cave where species buried their dead

fpjl2 — Thu, 02 May 2024 06:46:45 +0000

A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Interspecies competition led to even more forms of ancient human – defying evolutionary trends in vertebrates

fpjl2 — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 08:06:16 +0000

Climate has long been held responsible for the emergence and extinction of hominin species. In most vertebrates, however, interspecies competition is known to play an important role.

Now, research shows for the first time that competition was fundamental to 'speciation' – the rate at which new species emerge – across five million years of hominin evolution.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, also suggests that the species formation pattern of our own lineage was closer to island-dwelling beetles than other mammals.

“We have been ignoring the way competition between species has shaped our own evolutionary tree,” said lead author Dr Laura van Holstein, a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge biological anthropologist at Clare College. “ ̽��ֱ��effect of climate on hominin species is only part of the story.”

In other vertebrates, species form to fill ecological “niches” says van Holstein. Take Darwin’s finches: some evolved large beaks for nut-cracking, while others evolved small beaks for feeding on certain insects. When each resource niche gets filled, competition kicks in, so no new finches emerge and extinctions take over.

Van Holstein used Bayesian modelling and phylogenetic analyses to show that, like other vertebrates, most hominin species formed when competition for resources or space were low.

“ ̽��ֱ��pattern we see across many early hominins is similar to all other mammals. Speciation rates increase and then flatline, at which point extinction rates start to increase. This suggests that interspecies competition was a major evolutionary factor.”

However, when van Holstein analysed our own group, Homo, the findings were 'bizarre'.

For the Homo lineage that led to modern humans, evolutionary patterns suggest that competition between species actually resulted in the appearance of even more new species – a complete reversal of the trend seen in almost all other vertebrates.

“ ̽��ֱ��more species of Homo there were, the higher the rate of speciation. So when those niches got filled, something drove even more species to emerge. This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary science.”

̽��ֱ��closest comparison she could find was in beetle species that live on islands, where contained ecosystems can produce unusual evolutionary trends.

“ ̽��ֱ��patterns of evolution we see across species of Homo that led directly to modern humans is closer to those of island-dwelling beetles than other primates, or even any other mammal.”

Recent decades have seen the discovery of several new hominin species, from Australopithecus sediba to Homo floresiensis. Van Holstein created a new database of 'occurrences' in the hominin fossil record: each time an example of a species was found and dated, around 385 in total.

Fossils can be an unreliable measure of species’ lifetimes. “ ̽��ֱ��earliest fossil we find will not be the earliest members of a species,” said van Holstein.

“How well an organism fossilises depends on geology, and on climatic conditions: whether it is hot or dry or damp. With research efforts concentrated in certain parts of the world, and we might well have missed younger or older fossils of a species as a result.”

Van Holstein used data modelling to address this problem, and factor in likely numbers of each species at the beginning and end of their existence, as well as environmental factors on fossilisation, to generate new start and end dates for most known hominin species (17 in total).

She found that some species thought to have evolved through 'anagenesis' – when one slowly turns into another, but lineage doesn’t split – may have actually 'budded': when a new species branches off from an existing one.

For example, the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis was believed to have speciated via anagenesis from Australopithecus anamensis. However, the new data modelling suggests they overlapped by around half a million years.

This meant that several more hominin species than previously assumed were co-existing, and so possibly competing.

While early species of hominins, such as Paranthropus, probably evolved physiologically to expand their niche – adapting teeth to exploit new types of food, for example – the driver of the very different pattern in our own genus Homo may well have been technology.

“Adoption of stone tools or fire, or intensive hunting techniques, are extremely flexible behaviours. A species that can harness them can quickly carve out new niches, and doesn’t have to survive vast tracts of time while evolving new body plans,” said van Holstein

She argues that an ability to use technology to generalise, and rapidly go beyond ecological niches that force other species to compete for habitat and resources, may be behind the exponential increase in the number of Homo species detected by the latest study.

But it also led to Homo sapiens – the ultimate generalisers. And competition with an extremely flexible generalist in almost every ecological niche may be what contributed to the extinction of all other Homo species.

Added van Holstein: “These results show that, although it has been conventionally ignored, competition played an important role in human evolution overall. Perhaps most interestingly, in our own genus it played a role unlike that across any other vertebrate lineage known so far.”

Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins, and produced a “bizarre” evolutionary pattern for the Homo lineage.

This is almost unparalleled in evolutionary science

Laura van Holstein

̽��ֱ��Duckworth Laboratory

A cast of the skull of Homo Heidelbergensis, one of the hominin species analysed in the latest study.

Yes

Four Cambridge researchers awarded prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grants

jg533 — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 10:01:02 +0000

̽��ֱ��European Research Council (ERC) has announced today the award of 255 Advanced Grants to outstanding research leaders across Europe, as part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. Four ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers are amongst those to receive this prestigious and competitive funding.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s grant awardees are:

Professor Albert Guillén i Fàbregas in the Department of Engineering for his project Scaling and Concentration Laws in Information Theory.

Guillén i Fàbregas, who has previously received ERC Starting, Consolidator and Proof of Concept Grants, said: “I am truly delighted with the news that the ERC will continue to fund my research in information theory, which studies the mathematical aspects of data transmission and data compression.

“This project will broaden the theory to study arbitrary scaling laws of the number of messages to transmit or compress." Read more about Professor Guillén i Fàbregas' project here.

Professor Beverley Glover in the Department of Plant Sciences and Director of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Botanic Garden, for her project Convergent evolution of floral patterning through alternative optimisation of mechanical parameter space.

Glover said: “This funding will enable us to explore how iridescent colour evolved repeatedly in different flowers. We think it will shed new light on evolution itself, as we think about the development of iridescence structure from a mechanical perspective, focusing on the forces acting as a petal grows and the mechanical properties of the petal tissue.

“It's only possible for me to do this work because of the amazing living collection at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Botanic Garden, and I'm thrilled that the ERC is keen to support it."

Professor Ian Henderson in the Department of Plant Sciences for his project Evolution of the Arabidopsis Pancentromere.

Henderson said: “This project seeks to investigate enigmatic regions of the genome called the centromeres, using the model plant Arabidopsis. These regions play a deeply conserved role in cell division yet paradoxically are fast evolving.

“I am highly honoured and excited to be awarded an ERC Advanced grant. ̽��ֱ��advent of long-read sequencing technology makes addressing these questions timely. ̽��ֱ��ERC’s long-term support will allow us to capitalise on these advances, build new collaborations, and train postdoctoral researchers.”

Professor Paul Lane in the Department of Archaeology, for his project Landscape Historical Ecology and Archaeology of Ancient Pastoral Societies in Kenya.

Lane said: “Pastoralism has been an extraordinarily resilient livelihood strategy across Africa. This project provides an excellent opportunity to reconstruct how East Africa’s pastoralists responded to significant climate change in the past, and to draw lessons from these adaptations for responding to contemporary climate crises in a region that is witnessing heightened water scarcity and loss of access to critically important grazing lands.”

“This project will allow us to utilise the department’s world-leading archaeological science laboratories and expertise to answer crucial questions about past patterns of mobility, dietary diversity, climatic regimes and food security among East African pastoralists over the last fifteen hundred years. This has never been attempted before for this time period.” Read more about Professor Lane's project here.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “Many congratulations to Albert, Beverley, Ian and Paul on receiving these prestigious and highly competitive awards. It is fantastic that their ambitious, cutting-edge research will be supported by the European Research Council, marking them as outstanding European research leaders.

“Now that the UK is an associated country to Horizon Europe I encourage other Cambridge researchers to also consider applying to the ERC and other Horizon Europe programmes.”

President of the European Research Council Professor Maria Leptin said: “Congratulations to the 255 researchers who will receive grants to follow their scientific instinct in this new funding round. I am particularly happy to see more mid-career scientists amongst the Advanced Grant winners this time. I hope that it will encourage more researchers at this career stage to apply for these grants.”

̽��ֱ��ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. ̽��ֱ��255 ERC Advanced Grants, totalling €652 million, support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields from medicine and physics to social sciences and humanities.

̽��ֱ��European Commission and the UK Government have reached an agreement on the association of the UK to Horizon Europe, which applies for calls for proposals implementing the 2024 budget and onwards.

̽��ֱ��ERC Advanced Grants target established, leading researchers with a proven track-record of significant achievements. In recent years, there has been a steady rise in mid-career researchers (12-17 years post-PhD), who have been successful in the Advanced Grants competitions, with 18% securing grants in this latest round.

̽��ֱ��funding provides leading senior researchers with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.

Many congratulations to Albert, Beverley, Ian and Paul... It is fantastic that their ambitious, cutting-edge research will be supported by the European Research Council, marking them as outstanding European research leaders.

Anne Ferguson-Smith

Yes

Research reveals ‘cosy domesticity’ of prehistoric stilt-house dwellers in England’s ancient marshland

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 08:57:27 +0000

Detailed reports on thousands of artefacts pulled from “Britain’s Pompeii” reveals the surprisingly sophisticated domestic lives of Bronze Age Fen folk, from home interiors to recipes, clothing, kitchenware and pets.