The tomb of a headless man adorned with jade has been discovered beneath an ancient Mexican  chamber famously painted with scenes of torture. Found under the Temple of Murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, the man was either a captive warrior who was sacrificed—perhaps one of the victims in the mural—or a relative of the city's ruler, scientists speculate. Whoever he was, "the place of the burial tells us that the person buried there was special," said anthropologist Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta via e-mail. At the time of the murals' creation, about A.D. 790, Bonampak was a city of thousands. Today its most prominent vestige is a long-overgrown, partially excavated acropolis in the middle of a vast tropical rain forest in the southern state of Chiapas. Perched midway up the stepped acropolis, the Temple of Murals holds three elaborately painted rooms. Room One depicts the presentation of a young heir. Room Two, above the newfound tomb, is ringed with scenes of the torture of captive warriors—broken fingers, torn-out fingernails, heads without bodies. Room Three includes paintings of an elite bloodletting ritual.  Discovered by the outside world in 1946, the Bonampak murals eviscerated scholars' long-held belief in an ancient Maya Empire ruled by kindly astronomer-priests. The new tomb find may only add to the aura of violence. [...]

Jessica Crawford traveled from Marks, Miss., to Fort Smith to look at a BIG pile of dirt. It’s an historic piece of ground, in fact, located behind the New Liberty Baptist Church in south Fort Smith and believed to be constructed by Native Americans (possibly Caddo Indian ancestors) between AD 1100 and 1300. Crawford is the southeast regional director for The Archaeological Conservancy, the private, non-profit organization that purchased the “Cavanaugh Mound” in 2006 to prevent its further destruction. The Archaeological Conservancy was formed in 1980 for the purpose of acquiring and preserving important archaeological sites. “Since its beginning in 1980, the Conservancy has acquired more than 325 endangered sites in 39 states across America,” according the conservancy’s Web site. “These preserves range in size from a few acres to more than 1,000 acres. They include the earliest habitation sites in North America, a 19th-century frontier army post, and nearly every major cultural period in between.” One of those early habitation sites is where Crawford and Tim Mulvihill, an archeologist with the University of Arkansas system, spent much of Thursday clearing brush and trash from around the already damaged eastern side of the mound. The mound, originally about 200 feet long at the base of each of the four sides and about 40 feet tall, is a project the Conservancy will research and restore. Crawford said at some point the Conservancy may build a small park around the mound with signage and other exhibits that explain the historic site. The cost and timeframe for that eventuality is unknown, Crawford said. Just clearing the vegetation and trees that have taken over the mound could cost up to $15,000. [...]

Specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) explore in Tenosique, Tabasco, an archaeological site of Maya affiliation dedicated exclusively to manufacture weapons and tools. San Claudio “was occupied from 200 BC to 900 AD by Maya workers at the service of other community of higher hierarchy”, informed archaeologist Jose Luis Romero Rivera, director of the excavation project at the site. Located in the contact region between Chiapas Mountain Range and Guatemala, this site accounts for quotidian life of ancient Maya population dedicated to weapons and tools manufacture, which were commercialized with other towns. “One of the main activities at the site was flint exploitation; we have found a great amount of this mineral debris all over the place. Due to its relatively easy manipulation, it was used to create sharp tools such as knives, axes and arrowheads”. Flint was a strategic material since metal was not known and they would not count on with obsidian, controlled by most important cities, he added. They created an industry based on exploitation and commercialization of this mineral, displacing obsidian and allowing them to be independent from great commercial networks. Romero Rivera declared that the site has been researched by the Institute since 1998; “it is not one of the great Maya capitals, but a small site probably subdued to Piedras Negras ancient city, located 40 kilometers away from San Claudio. “We have not found inscriptions or architectural elements such as in places like Palenque. There are no tall buildings, but urban organization is delimited by rectangular patios probably used to manufacture objects”. [...]

Visitors from around the world have turned an isolated ravine in central Russia into a pilgrimage site in recent years. They arrive to gaze at the unadorned earth where the Bolsheviks, in one final act to defile the dynasty that they toppled, are believed to have dumped the remains of Czar Nicholas II  and his family in July 1918. But now the site is being threatened by an unlikely opponent: the powerful Russian Orthodox Church, which to this day has not acknowledged that the bones retrieved there over the last two decades are those of the royals. The church wants to build a large Russian Orthodox cemetery and cathedral at the site, effectively obliterating its historic and archaeological value, according to professionals who have worked at the site and experts on the royal family. The church hopes to begin construction in April, when its leader, Patriarch Kirill I, visits for a groundbreaking for the project, in Yekaterinburg, in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The project will not include memorials or other references to the remains because the church does not believe they are genuine, a position that flies in the face of an overwhelming scientific consensus based on extensive DNA testing by major laboratories in Russia, Europe and North America. The results of our studies provide unequivocal evidence that the remains of Nicholas II and his entire family, including all five children, have been identified,” a team of prominent Russian, American and Canadian researchers wrote last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.  [...]

Mise à jour | Update

The DNA tests that revealed how the famed boy-king Tutankhamun most likely died solved another of ancient Egypt's enduring mysteries - the fate of controversial Pharaoh Akhenaten's mummy. The discovery could help fill out the picture of a fascinating era more than 3,300 years ago when Akhenaten embarked on history's first attempt at monotheism. During his 17-year rule, Akhenaten sought to overturn more than a millennium of Egyptian religion and art to establish the worship of a single sun god. In the end, his bold experiment failed and he was eventually succeeded by his son, the young Tutankhamun, who rolled back his reforms and restored the old religion. No one ever knew what became of the heretic pharaoh, whose tomb in the capital he built at Amarna was unfinished and whose name was stricken from the official list of kings. Two years of DNA testing and CAT scans on 16 royal mummies conducted by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, however, gave the firmest evidence to date that an unidentified mummy - known as KV55, after the number of the tomb where it was found in 1907 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings - is Akhenaten's. The testing, whose results were announced last month, established that KV55 was the father of King Tut and the son of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, a lineage that matches Akhenaten's, according to inscriptions. [...]

Nine blindfolded and buried bodies found during construction of a beachfront luxury hotel likely were East Timorese freedom fighters executed and put in a mass grave early in the Indonesian occupation, experts said Friday. Archaeologists are searching for more unmarked graves at the site seven miles (12 kilometers) west of Dili where construction workers last month uncovered human bones while digging the foundation of a five-star hotel. All nine were wearing remnants of blindfolds. Two Portuguese military uniforms among the remains suggested all nine bodies were of freedom fighters, said Gregorio Saldanha, who heads a government commission that searches for victims of Indonesia's brutal 24-year occupation of this former Portuguese colony. Resistance fighters used old Portuguese military uniforms and weapons in the early years of the occupation and used stolen Indonesian equipment in later years. [...]

Thick slabs of stone are set at a 30-degree angle into the side of a hill, cloaked in a tangle of undergrowth. Known as El Porvenir, this pre-Columbian indigenous site in a remote part of western Venezuela has never been truly examined by archaeologists. And now it looks like it may never be. The government plans to flood the valley in which El Porvenir lies to create a hydroelectric dam, wiping out the stones and leaving archaeologists unable to determine whether the site was built by a local indigenous tribe. True examination of the site has been limited due to the remote location and difficult working conditions — the area is know for its particularly aggressive lancehead vipers. Archaeologist Reina Duran, director of the Tachira Museum in the state capital San Cristobal, said she first visited El Porvenir in 1979 and worked on it each dry season for 10 years. “During those years when we came and went it was overgrown and full of mud again,” she said. “Every time we arrived at the site we had to begin the work again.” [...]

When the Spanish arrived on the coast of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, they observed small houses near the beaches which were woven like baskets.   In, what is now South Carolina and Georgia, these “basket houses” were only used in the warm months as fishing camps.  However, the Tequesta People living in the coastal areas of far southeastern Florida lived in them year round. The houses were literally woven from dry palmetto fronds like they were oversized baskets.  They functioned much like a screened porch today - air could circulate, but insects and rain drops couldn’t penetrate the walls. Very similar woven houses were used by the Potawatomi People in the Upper Great Lakes Region in the late summer and early autumn, when they were gathering wild rice and fishing on the lakes.  It is quite possible that the “basket house” were once a tradition throughout much of North America for summer time housing.  Since their construction was basically woven leaves, reinforced with saplings, nothing remains of these houses on archaeological sites. [...]

Several readers commented on the article about the Sweet Potato Village near Atlanta.  They questioned how the archaeologists could know that the Sweet Potato Village was a permanent farming settlement.  How did it differ from any of the other early Native American communities, we have discussed in this series?  The answer comes both from the artifacts and footprints left by the buildings in Sweet Potato. A common characteristic of the mounds and villages constructed by Native Americans prior to the time of the Sweet Potato Village is that very little remains of the buildings. Even when Europeans began colonizing North America, most indigenous peoples of North America outside the Southwest and Southeast still framed their homes with saplings. Saplings were much easier to cut with stone tools and were transportable. Often all that archaeologists find at such sites are hearths and the detritus of daily living.  Archaeologists assume there was once a hut or teepee, where now there is only a hearth. Pottery and grinding stones are heavy. They are not something that most people would want to carry around if their camp site was constantly on the move.  Baskets and gourds were much lighter and therefore, more appropriate for migratory peoples.  One of the many cultural changes one sees when native societies became more sedentary because of farming is the increased quantity and quality of pottery.  This is true both in the Southwest and the Southeast. [...]

Construction by local residents, ignored by the authority has imperiled an Achaemenid tomb, believed to be the tomb of Cyrus I, the Achaemenid king and son of Teispes and grandfather of Cyrus II the Great, near the village of Tang-e Eram in Bushehr Province. Experts have demarcated a 100-meter perimeter for the site, which was registered on the National Heritage List in 1997, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday. Any construction done on this perimeter is illegal, however, construction of buildings has increased in the vicinity of the boundary. The first breach of the site’s perimeter was done by the Islamic Republic regional electrical supplier when they installed a power line some 4 meters from the tomb a few years ago. Known as Gur-Dokhtar (the burial of Daughter) by the local people, the site was discovered in 1960 by Belgian archaeologist Louis Vandenberg, who believed the tomb belonged to Cyrus I. [...]