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Archaeology magazine picks top 10 discoveries of 2007 |
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11:30, December 20, 2007 |
Archaeology magazine, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America, has selected the 10 most important archaeological discoveries in 2007, published in its January/February 2008 issue.
Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru
Travelers have noticed the 13 stone towers rising over Peru's coastal desert since at least the nineteenth century. But researchers only last year discovered the structures' purpose: they make up a sophisticated solar observatory, one of the earliest known in the Americas. Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet, The British Museum, UK
Last June, Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. But while analyzing records from the Babylonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an official, or "chief eunuch," Nebo-Sarsekim. New Dates for Clovis Sites, North America
New radiocarbon dates kept the controversy over the peopling of the Americas simmering in 2007. An analysis of dates for the best-documented Clovis sites suggests the culture arose later and was shorter-lived than once thought, a finding that some say deals a blow to the "Clovis first" theories that maintain the big-game-hunting people were the first immigrants to the New World. Early Squash Seeds,Peru
New research favors the idea that agriculture began in the New World shortly after it first appeared in the Old World. Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University has the squash seeds to prove it. Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use 
Archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary have uncovered the first known ancient chimpanzee archaeological site, a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans. Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria
Archaeologists have long believed that the world's oldest cities lay along the fertile riverbanks of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. There, in a land of plenty, went the idea, powerful kings began coercing their subjects to live together some 6,000 years ago. Their great invention--the city--later spread throughout the Near East. But last August, Harvard University archaeologist Jason Ur and two British colleagues turned that idea on its head. Their intensive field survey and surface collection of potsherds at the site of Tell Brak in northern Syria revealed that an ancient city rose there at exactly the same time as urban centers first sprouted up in southern Mesopotamia, but followed a very different model of development. "Urbanism," says Ur, "is not one brilliant idea that occurred one place and then diffused." Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland 
Early last year, archaeologists working on the route of a controversial highway near the village of Lismullin, Ireland, stumbled across a vast Iron Age ceremonial enclosure, or henge, surrounded by two concentric walls. The 2,000-year-old site is just over a mile from the Hill of Tara, traditional seat of the ancient Irish kings and site of St. Patrick's conversion of the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century A.D. The discovery of the massive henge, measuring more than 260 feet in diameter, confirms the long-held belief that the area around the hill contains a rich complex of monuments.Polynesia n Chickens in Chile
Scholars have long assumed the Spaniards first introduced chickens to the New World along with horses, pigs, and cattle. But now radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a chicken bone excavated from a site in Chile suggest Polynesians in oceangoing canoes brought chickens to the west coast of South America well before Europe's "Age of Discovery." Homo habilis & Homo erectus, Kenya 
Whether they are mother-and-daughter species or two sisters, the relationship between Homo habilis and Homo erectus is becoming strained. A pair of discoveries near Lake Ileret in Kenya call into question the idea that H. erectus, the species from which modern humans evolved, is descended from H. habilis, the earliest hominid known to use stone tools.Greater Angkor, Cambodia
The capital of a Khmer state that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Cambodia's Angkor is one of the most intensively studied sites in the world. But it continues to inspire more questions than answers, the most fundamental being why the sophisticated Khmer Empire collapsed. In 2007, research into the mysteries of the world's largest preindustrial city reached a milestone with the completion of a 10-year mapping project, which yielded clues suggesting that the sprawling metropolis may have collapsed under self-induced environmental pressures related to overpopulation and deforestation.Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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