ARCHAEOLOGY

This issue is filled with stories that explore how people of the past dealt with drastic changes in the world around them. The different ways they responded to seismic historical shifts speaks to their resilience and the extent to which they were able to preserve aspects of their culture, even when their ways of life—and their very freedom—were under threat. The shift from hunting and gathering to farming could have tremendous consequences for a culture’s social order. The Basketmaker II people, who inhabited the Colorado Plateau for about 1,000 years beginning in the mid-first millennium B.C., were once thought to have preserved an egalitarian social system even after they became farmers. But researchers studying several unusual examples of Basketmaker II jewelry have concluded that the exotic objects were used to…

Many of the sites described in this magazine and explored by Archaeological Institute of America archaeologists are known for events that have indelibly marked the built and natural landscape. We see the effects of gradual change: the slowly accumulating mounds of Near Eastern tells, the silting and shifting of coastlines, the terracing and irrigation of farmlands. We also see signs of immediate and violent invasions, expulsions, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. The impacts of these humanitarian crises on the people affected are sometimes less visible many years later, but they continue to play a critical role in our understanding, our empathy, and our shared experience with past societies. The Roman historian Cassius Dio describes an earthquake that struck the city of Antioch in 115, during which “the whole earth was upheaved,…

A WOMAN TO REMEMBER “The Shaman’s Secrets” (March/April 2023) was one of the most riveting magazine articles I have read. It gave new meaning to the phrase “Truth is stranger than fiction.” The German researchers did thorough and painstaking work on the artifacts as well as revisiting the location, rescuing the soil surrounding the grave to gather more evidence, and reaching out to other researchers for analysis. This particular shaman will be long remembered. Thanks! Debbie Miller Mentor, OH SWORD PLAY I found the article about the standing swords in the Viking cemetery to be fascinating (“Standing Swords,” March/April 2023). I wonder if the legend of King Arthur pulling the sword from the stone was inspired by these Viking swords? The first mentions of King Arthur’s sword being pulled from…

THE BEAUTY OF BUGS Different people value different things. The same goes for cultures at large. The things people value and how they choose to display their wealth depends on a great number of factors: geography, history, personal preference, religious beliefs, and mythology, to name just a few. And while the term “wealth” may evoke images of shining gold and silver, glittering gems, and piles of currency, something that may not have any value to people of one culture may be precious to another. It is often at times of momentous change that notions of value can provide the greatest insight into a culture’s belief system. Recently, archaeologist Michael Terlep, who works in Arizona’s Kaibab National Forest, and colleagues from Northern Arizona University (NAU) have explored how members of the…

Lying in the path of a road construction project near Svingerud farm in southeastern Norway was a cremation pit that contained what at first seemed to be an utterly ordinary mud-smeared chunk of sandstone. When archaeologists cleaned the stone and it had dried, a series of shallow runic inscriptions became visible. The grave has been radiocarbon dated to between A.D. 25 and 250, making the artifact the oldest known runestone. Some of the inscriptions are in the 24-character Elder Futhark writing system, which was used until around A.D. 700, when it was replaced by the 16-character Younger Futhark system that was used during the Viking Age (A.D. 800–1050). Many of the inscriptions are a mixture of scribbles, says Kristel Zilmer of the Museum of Cultural History at the University of…

People living in southern Germany around 3,500 years ago appear to have grown so concerned about dwindling water supplies that they deposited valuables in a well in an attempt to end the drought. Archaeologists working in advance of construction in the town of Germering found dozens of items at the bottom of the well, including 26 robe pins, needles, a bangle bracelet, two metal spirals, four amber beads, and a wooden ladle. There were also more than 70 finely crafted and decorated clay vessels of a type usually only found in Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1800–1200 B.C.) graves, a single button that was likely already hundreds of years old when it was put in the well, and an animal tooth wrapped in bronze wire, possibly as a ritual practice. “We…