Individual burials also reveal that political influence did not always correspond to foreign ancestry: migrant identities could be acquired through family, political and cultural alliances, and even closely related people could be separated by hundreds of kilometres. The study, published in Cell, is presented as the first systematic, large-scale archaeogenomic analysis of Roman and Late Antique Hispania. It combines ancient DNA with archaeological evidence to examine ancestry across different sites, social contexts and family relationships.

The analyzed remains span seven centuries and reveal a marked contrast between the relative genetic homogeneity of the Iron Age and the much greater diversity found among people living from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE. Its position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, together with its abundant natural resources, made the peninsula an important territory for the expanding empire. As Roman rule became established, people with ancestry from the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa joined the populations already living in Iberia.

The researchers describe the resulting society as a genetic mosaic connected to human networks across the Mediterranean, with ancestry diversity far greater than that recorded for the preceding Iron Age. This was not presented as the simple replacement of one population by another; instead, the evidence points to the expansion and mixing of multiple population components. Carles Lalueza-Fox, co-senior author of the study and director of the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona, said the findings show that “Romanisation was not only a political, linguistic and cultural transformation.” The ancient genomes also indicate that it was “a major demographic transformation,” connecting local Iberian populations with people whose origins lay in different parts of the Mediterranean.

The distinction is important because the emergence of Roman political authority and cultural practices is not being used as a proxy for genetic uniformity. The genomic data instead show that the empire’s influence drew together populations with measurably different ancestries and produced a substantially more heterogeneous society across Hispania. The demographic effect of the migrations that followed the weakening of Roman power was smaller.

From the 5th century onward, the study identifies individuals with Central and Northern European ancestry, particularly in archaeological contexts associated with the new political groups that established themselves in the peninsula. The Suebi, Alans and Visigoths arrived during or after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and their elite status and political authority gave them a lasting cultural and political presence. Yet most communities retained the diverse ancestry profile associated with the Hispano-Roman period.

The estimated genetic contribution of these groups ranges from 12% to 22%, depending on the region and social context, and admixture with local populations appears to have been gradual rather than a radical transformation of the peninsula’s genetic landscape. Pablo Carrión, the study’s first author, said the contrast between these processes was the most surprising feature of the results. Roman rule created an exceptionally diverse society through population movement across the Mediterranean, whereas the later migrations introduced new ancestries but had a much smaller overall demographic effect.

David Reich, a co-senior author, characterized the Iberian evidence as showing migration and new ancestries “but not population replacement or large-scale demographic impact.” The pattern differed from Britain and the Balkans, where post-Roman migrations are reported to have produced greater demographic effects. Sampling across the ancient record remains uneven, however, and the 243 genomes represent particular archaeological sites and periods rather than every community in the Iberian Peninsula. Genome analysis also allows the researchers to reconstruct individual histories that are obscured in population-level ancestry estimates.

Two genetically related siblings were buried at sites approximately 725 kilometres apart when measured along the Roman road network: one at ancient Augusta Emerita, now Mérida, and the other at Ildum, a Roman posting station near Castellón beside the Via Augusta. Both had entirely Central European ancestry and were probably first-generation migrants. Their kinship and the rich nature of their burials point to a possible route associated with the Suebian migration.

The burials of women associated with the so-called “Suebian princesses” complicate another traditional interpretation. Rich grave goods had previously led researchers to regard these women as members of a migrant elite that arrived from beyond the Roman Empire’s frontiers. Genomic evidence showed, however, that one of the women had local ancestry.

The finding supports the interpretation that the period’s elite networks included marriage alliances between Suebian and Hispano-Roman families. The deaths of several of these women within the same period may have been linked to a succession dispute in an elective monarchy, although the genetic results do not establish the cause or circumstances of their deaths. More generally, an identity associated with the Suebi or Visigoths did not necessarily indicate foreign ancestry because such an identity could also be acquired through family, political and cultural alliances.

The findings describe the ancient gene pool rather than a complete history of the peninsula’s population. People living in Late Antique Iberia were more genetically heterogeneous than present-day populations, indicating that the gene pool changed again during the medieval and post-medieval periods. The researchers associate those subsequent changes with a combination of Visigothic rule, the Islamic conquests, internal population movements and the expansion of Christian kingdoms.

These broad historical processes are not themselves outcomes demonstrated by the 243 genomes, whose principal coverage extends from the 1st to the 8th century CE. Reconstructing the complete genetic history would require additional medieval and post-medieval genomes, together with expanded sampling from northern Iberia and North Africa. Overall, the study demonstrates that major political changes do not necessarily leave equivalent genetic signatures.

Romanization profoundly altered the composition of Iberian society by bringing together people from across the Mediterranean and mixing their ancestries with established local populations. The elites of Late Antiquity, by contrast, exerted substantial political and cultural influence without replacing the peninsula’s population at the scale associated with Roman conquest. The 243 genomes from 31 sites provide a detailed view of that distinction, while individual cases show how migration, kinship and elite alliances operated within it.

The evidence is strongest for the sampled places and periods, and broader temporal and geographic coverage will be needed to complete the genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula.

Subject of Research: Ancient-DNA reconstruction of demographic change in Roman and Late Antique Hispania

Article Title: The arrival of the Suebi, Alans and Visigoths did not erase the deep genetic legacy of Roman Hispania

Article References: The arrival of the Suebi, Alans and Visigoths did not erase the deep genetic legacy of Roman Hispania. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: ancient DNA, archaeogenomics, Iberian Peninsula, Roman colonization, Hispania, Suebi, Visigoths, Alans, population history, Mediterranean migration, arrival, erase

The study, published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, examined 59 fragments selected from documented production contexts at two sites about 150 metres apart in the city’s historic pottery district. The material dated mainly from the late eleventh to the mid-twelfth centuries, spanning the Taifa, Almoravid and early Almohad periods. One workshop contained a rod kiln that had been reused as a waste dump after abandonment; the other had a clay-setting pit and production debris. The researchers regarded these contexts as more securely documented than many assemblages of decorated medieval pottery found in residential areas.

Each fragment was mounted in resin and examined by optical microscopy, while all 59 were analysed with scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, or SEM–EDS. Twenty specimens were prepared as 30-micrometre petrographic thin sections, 14 were tested by wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence, and 18 underwent X-ray diffraction. The methods were chosen to connect visible vessel traits with microscopic fabric, elemental composition and mineral phases formed during firing. Because SEM–EDS can give broader readings across heterogeneous pastes, its results were combined with petrography and XRF rather than treated as a complete chemical map.

Petrography separated the assemblage into three principal fabric groups that broadly followed function. Kitchenware belonged to Fabric F1, whose dark, fine-grained matrix contained abundant phyllite, mica schist and granite inclusions. Its cooking pots were generally low in calcium and sodium but high in silicon, with average values of about 1.5 weight per cent CaO, 0.6 per cent Na₂O and 63.2 per cent SiO₂ in the SEM–EDS dataset. Quartz-rich particles and rock fragments would have increased resistance to thermal shock. Most cooking pots were handmade, although three of the analysed examples were wheel-thrown, documenting a technological transition within the same production setting.

Water jugs formed a distinct group, Fabric F2. Their bodies were poorer in silica and richer in calcium and magnesium than the cooking pots, with a CaO/MgO ratio near 1.25. The authors interpreted this composition as evidence that at least two clays were combined: a medium-grained, non-calcareous red material resembling that used for kitchenware and a lighter clay containing dolomitic inclusions. This blended paste was also chemically similar to that used for kiln rods, suggesting that available workshop clays were adapted according to the demands of different objects. The water vessels were wheel-thrown and decorated with painted red or black designs, while their handles were sometimes made by hand.

Tableware used a finer, calcareous fabric divided into two subgroups. Both had relatively low porosity and fewer inclusions than the kitchenware, but F3-S1 contained more potassium while F3-S2 contained more sodium. Their average K₂O concentrations were about 2.6 and 0.8 per cent, respectively, while Na₂O averaged approximately 1.1 and 2.4 per cent. Neither subgroup consistently belonged to one workshop, indicating that the chemical contrast was not a simple division between the two sites. Instead, the researchers proposed that it could reflect different local clay sources, clay mixing or paste-preparation practices. Geological sampling would be required to determine whether the workshops exploited the same deposits.

The glazes showed that shared clays did not imply a single firing recipe. SEM–EDS identified 26 glazed samples, including 11 kitchenware and 15 tableware examples, along with glaze droplets from workshop equipment. Many transparent glazes contained lead and were coloured honey-yellow by iron oxide. Transparent tableware glazes ranged from 27.1 to 56.2 per cent PbO. Comparison with the ceramic bodies indicated that lead compounds were combined with quartz sand rather than applied as a simple lead coating. The tableware glazes also showed evidence of a deliberately added potassium-bearing material, possibly derived from woody plant ash, while some recipes apparently included a sodium-rich component such as salt.

Colour was produced through a limited but technically varied palette. Copper oxide generated green transparent glazes, with some samples also containing zinc, possibly indicating the reuse of brass. Brown decoration on honey-coloured tableware contained iron and manganese oxides and may have been painted onto the biscuit-fired vessel before glazing. Opaque white glaze came from cassiterite crystals formed when tin oxide was added to lead glaze. Turquoise combined copper with tin, the latter dispersing fine cassiterite particles that increased opacity. A droplet adhering to a workshop handle contained partially dissolved quartz, cassiterite and lead glaze, consistent with preparation of tin “calx,” while its wider composition included substances associated with lustre pigments. The evidence demonstrates use of lustre-related materials, but the researchers stressed that it did not conclusively prove lustreware production at either workshop.

Principal component analysis reinforced the separation of the three fabric groups: the first three components accounted for 96 per cent of the total chemical variance, with 76.9 per cent contributed by the first component alone. Mineral phases also suggested varying firing temperatures. Kitchenware containing dehydrated muscovite was probably fired below 850 degrees Celsius, while some waterware and tableware indicated temperatures of about 850 degrees or higher; analcime in one tableware subgroup pointed to vitrification above 950 degrees Celsius. Workshop equipment showed repeated exposure to heat: kiln rods contained abundant glassy phases, and one tripod stilt appeared to have been fired more than once. Overall, the evidence points to a coherent but flexible craft system, with functional choices in clay selection and multiple glazing traditions rather than highly specialised production. The study’s principal limitation is that the two selected workshops and 59 fragments cannot establish the exact source of the clays or represent every medieval pottery tradition in Almería.

Subject of Research: Archaeometric characterization of medieval pottery production, clay fabrics, glazes and colorants in Almería, al-Andalus

Article Title: Materials and technological choices in ceramic production of Medieval Almería (al-Andalus): clays, glazes and colorants

Article References: Peregrina, M. J., Molera, J., Garcia-Porras, A., Pradell, T., & Salinas, E. (2026). Materials and technological choices in ceramic production of Medieval Almería (al-Andalus): clays, glazes and colorants. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 18(11), Article 219. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-026-02575-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12520-026-02575-6

Keywords: medieval pottery, archaeometry, Almería, al-Andalus, ceramic technology, clay fabrics, lead glazes, tin opacification, pottery workshops, X-ray diffraction, SEM–EDS, petrography

The Kilpdrift Complex lies within the coastal cliffs of the De Hoop Nature Reserve and is a Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological site. Investigators analysed archived sediment samples taken from the ochre-rich surface in an experimental palaeoproteomic study. Because the recovered proteins were not readily visible, the researchers used molecular analysis to identify their animal source. The analysis found type I collagen assigned to the common eland, Taurotragus oryx, providing evidence that eland material had been associated with the archaeological deposit.

Proteins were extracted from the sediment and separated and analysed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, commonly abbreviated LC-MS/MS. This method breaks extracted proteins into measurable peptide fragments. The resulting fragments were compared with large protein databases and a custom collagen reference database to determine the species of origin. The eland identification was based on this biomolecular comparison, allowing researchers to detect animal material that could not be characterized by visual examination of the sediment alone.

The successful recovery of identifiable collagen from archaeological sediment demonstrates a potential role for palaeoproteomics at sites where ancient DNA rarely survives. Ancient proteins can therefore supplement other forms of archaeological analysis by revealing biological traces associated with otherwise inconspicuous deposits. In this case, the method recovered eland collagen from a challenging African environment and documented an association between animal material and ochre use. The study does not establish the precise origin of the collagen, whether it was intentionally added to the ochre, or whether the deposit reflects a specific technical or symbolic activity.

Evidence of organic components mixed with ochre has been extremely rare in Africa, according to the research report, making the eland collagen an unusual addition to the record of Middle Stone Age behaviour. The authors interpret the association as evidence of the complex technical and possibly symbolic behaviours of early Homo sapiens, but they acknowledge that the protein evidence alone cannot distinguish between deliberate mixing and the presence of ochre-treated hides. Further archaeological context would be needed to determine the sequence of events that created the deposit and the function of the ochre and animal material. The principal demonstrated result is therefore the identification of common eland collagen in approximately 60,000-year-old ochre-rich sediment through palaeoproteomic analysis.

Subject of Research: Palaeoproteomic identification of eland collagen associated with Middle Stone Age ochre use in South Africa

Article Title: Invisible eland identified from 60,000-year-old ochre-rich sediment

Article References: Invisible eland identified from 60,000-year-old ochre-rich sediment. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: palaeoproteomics, ancient collagen, common eland, ochre, Middle Stone Age, archaeology, mass spectrometry, South Africa, Kilpdrift Complex, Invisible, eland, identified

The identity of the medieval occupant has remained uncertain throughout more than 150 years of investigation. The peer-reviewed observational study, published in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association by Westminster Abbey consultant archaeologist Warwick Rodwell, concludes that Aelfwig is the most likely occupant. Aelfwig died around 1020 after serving as abbot of Westminster Abbey, then a Benedictine monastery.

His successor, Wulnoth, died in 1049 and is presumed to have been buried at the abbey, making him another viable contender. Rodwell said both men could fit the available evidence if they assumed the abbacy in their early twenties and died close to age 50. Aelfwig’s earlier status as a monk at Westminster may favor him, but the study cannot establish a definitive identity because the birth dates of both abbots are unknown.

The interpretation draws on archaeological, osteological and radiocarbon-dating evidence assembled through earlier research and a present-day excavation connected with construction of the King Charles III Sacristy. Human bone specialist James Young Langthorne of Pre-Construct Archaeology examined the skeleton and estimated that the deceased was a man aged between 35 and 49 and about 5 feet 9 inches tall. This differed from a 19th-century assessment describing the remains as those of a robust young man, around 5 feet 7 inches tall and no more than 30 years old.

A bone sample tested at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre by carbon dating produced a date range of AD 987–1052. That result is consistent with burial during the late Saxon period and with reuse of the Roman sarcophagus centuries after its original use. Physical evidence supports the conclusion that the sarcophagus was repurposed.

The deceased was placed first in a wooden coffin and then enclosed within the older stone burial casket, an arrangement Rodwell characterized as a possible early example of recycling. The lid was subsequently reworked to feature a large Latin cross. Before researchers opened the stone coffin at a conservation studio in 2016, the skeleton was believed to have been lost.

Lifting the lid instead revealed an almost-complete set of human remains. Researchers also identified a rectangular outline inside the sarcophagus, marked by white residue left by lime, a substance traditionally used in burials. Although no physical traces of the original container survived, Rodwell argued that the outline could only have been formed by a timber coffin, which completely decayed during the roughly seven centuries the sarcophagus remained buried in the sacristy courtyard.

The sarcophagus was first uncovered accidentally by workmen in 1820, when its lid was smashed into six pieces, and was repaired before its official excavation in 1869. Investigations of the surrounding area have included Channel 4’s Time Team in 2009, while Pre-Construct Archaeology completed the present-day excavation in 2025. The evidence narrows the likely date and status of the occupant, but it does not conclusively distinguish between Aelfwig and Wulnoth.

The Roman sarcophagus and its medieval afterlife nevertheless show how an ancient burial container was transformed into a high-status burial within Westminster Abbey’s Benedictine abbey. The sarcophagus is now on public display in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries.

Subject of Research: Archaeological identification of a medieval monk buried in a reused Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey

Article Title: Mystery skeleton found in Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey may finally have an identity

Article References: Mystery skeleton found in Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey may finally have an identity. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Westminster Abbey, Roman sarcophagus, medieval archaeology, Aelfwig, Wulnoth, radiocarbon dating, human remains, osteological analysis, monastic burial, archaeological reuse, Mystery, skeleton

Researchers call those projections antennae, and similar monuments are documented across Western Sahara and more widely from the Atlantic coast toward the central Sahara. Although antennae tumuli are relatively common in survey inventories, the form had rarely been investigated through excavation, leaving both its function and its position in the regional funerary sequence uncertain. The excavation showed that the tumulus contained a single inhumation.

Beneath an irregular outer covering of limestone slabs and blocks lay a convex structure made from slabs exceeding one metre in length. Under this protective layer, the skeleton of one person rested directly on the natural ground, which contained ochre coloration, calcite crystallizations, ferruginous concretions and siliceous material. No cut pit, constructed chamber, cremation, bone selection or other alteration was identified.

The absence of evidence for disturbance or reuse, together with the body’s position within the primary burial deposit, led the team to classify the deposition as an undisturbed primary inhumation. The individual lay on the back along a north–south axis, with the head toward the south. The lower limbs were folded laterally toward the west, the side opposite the direction in which the monument’s antennae extended.

The skeleton was extremely fragmentary because of the harsh arid preservation conditions, but dental wear placed the person at approximately 25 to 35 years old at death. Sex could not be determined because the pelvis was not sufficiently preserved. Measurements suggested a relatively gracile build, although the researchers emphasized that assigning female sex would be speculative.

The remains also displayed dental calculus on a lower first molar and an osteophyte on a phalanx that may be associated with repetitive manual activity. Only four artifacts were recovered from the burial: annular beads made from the eggshell of the ostrich, Struthio camelus. The beads were found in direct contact with the skeleton and most likely belonged to ornaments worn by the deceased.

Their presence nevertheless offered little help for identifying the burial’s cultural affiliation, because similar ornaments were widely distributed during the later prehistory of the Atlantic Sahara. The scarcity of grave goods illustrates a persistent problem in Western Saharan archaeology: individual burials rarely contain assemblages precise enough to establish cultural attribution on their own. Direct dating therefore became essential for placing the tomb within a regional funerary sequence.

Initial attempts to date collagen from the skeleton in 2018 were unsuccessful, first with a 1.9-gram sample and then with a larger 19.1-gram sample. The researchers returned to the remains in 2025 and sampled their mineral fraction, or bioapatite, following successful applications of this method to other burials in Western Sahara and funerary monuments in the Nigerian Sahara. Fragments of the left humerus and left femur were sent to the CIRAM laboratory.

Their carbon-to-nitrogen ratios, used as indicators of preserved collagen quality, fell outside the optimal range of 2.9 to 3.6, confirming that bioapatite dating was the only available option. The two calibrated results were consistent with one another, providing what the authors described as a high degree of confidence in the assigned age. Calibration with OxCal version 4.4.4 and the IntCal20 curve placed the burial in the middle of the fifth millennium cal BP.

In the study’s regional sequence, this date falls at the end of the Late Neolithic phase of stone-built funerary monuments. It also establishes a temporal overlap with mounded crescent-shaped tombs, including one dated monument in southern Tiris whose two interments fell within ranges of 4522–4259 and 4233–3986 cal BP. The new evidence therefore helps place antennae tumuli within the first phase of monumental burial traditions in Western Sahara, before later phases represented by alignments of stelae and stepped structures known as bazinas.

The comparison is chronological and typological; the study does not establish that the two monument types shared a single cultural identity. The result is important because it changes antennae tumuli from a predominantly survey-based category into a chronologically and functionally documented monument type. An earlier excavated example from Wadi Tasua had yielded no archaeological material, while the Lawash el Telli excavation now directly demonstrates inhumation within the structure.

Its chronology also offers a useful comparison with two radiocarbon-dated V-antennae monuments from the Libyan Tanezrouft region, dated to 3957–3693 and 3357–3078 cal BP. Those examples are both later and morphologically different, and the wide separation between their dates prevents a firm comparison. The new Western Saharan date is nevertheless a foundational point for future regional studies.

Distribution may provide another line of inquiry, but it does not by itself establish shared chronology or identity. Field surveys and satellite imagery indicate that antennae tumuli and other monuments with antennae are especially abundant in northern Western Sahara. Certain rock-art styles also have a northern distribution, prompting proposals that particular funerary monuments and pictorial traditions might be associated.

The authors stop short of treating that overlap as proof. Antennae tumuli and related forms extend much farther across the Sahara than the northern Western Saharan pictorial styles, making a clear cultural relationship difficult to demonstrate. The excavation instead supplies a dated anchor against which future comparisons of monuments, engravings and regional settlement patterns can be tested.

Construction at Lawash el Telli apparently did not require specialized quarrying, transport infrastructure or a large workforce. Local Devonian limestone was available in the immediate area, and apart from the slabs covering the burial, the blocks used in the mound and antennae were generally less than a metre in any dimension and could have been carried by one person. The antennae were formed by alignments of slabs and blocks placed directly on the ground, often without contact between pieces and without elaborate terminals.

This contrast suggests that the extended monument could have been built relatively quickly while its central burial was still given a distinct protective arrangement. The new chronology comes from one excavated burial and therefore does not establish a fixed age for every antennae tumulus in the region. The study’s chronology also depends on a typological sequence drawn from a limited body of directly dated monuments, and the excavation recovered only minimal anthropological and artifactual evidence because the remains were badly deteriorated.

A sediment sample intended for exploratory pollen analysis produced only two Pinus grains at 6.3 grains per gram, far below the concentration and pollen-sum thresholds required for meaningful environmental reconstruction; the result mainly indicates poor preservation. Even with those limitations, the paired radiocarbon measurements securely anchor one antennae tumulus in time. By confirming both its funerary role and its fifth-millennium position, the Lawash el Telli excavation provides a concrete starting point for reconstructing the emergence and chronology of prehistoric stone mortuary traditions in the Atlantic Sahara.

Subject of Research: Radiocarbon dating and funerary evidence from a Western Saharan antennae tumulus

Article Title: Chronology and Funerary Practices Associated with Antennae Tumuli in Western Sahara

Article References: Soler, J., Ventura, H., Rufí, I., Coromina, N., Revelles, J., Saña, M., Moll, L., & Soler, N. (2026). Chronology and Funerary Practices Associated with Antennae Tumuli in Western Sahara. African Archaeological Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-026-09666-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10437-026-09666-8

Keywords: Western Sahara, antennae tumuli, radiocarbon dating, bioapatite, prehistoric burial, Late Neolithic, Atlantic Sahara, human inhumation, stone funerary monuments, Chronology, Funerary, Practices

The work forms part of the Gulamada Project, which brings scientific knowledge and First Nations cultural knowledge together through an approach described as walking side by side. The Blue Mountains contain more than 200 recorded rock shelters with cultural and archaeological evidence, but researchers estimate that only about 10 percent of the region has been surveyed. Dense vegetation and challenging terrain restrict pedestrian reconnaissance, while conventional ground surveys require substantial time, labour and expense. The drone survey was therefore used to narrow the search for likely shelters, after which researchers entered the landscape to confirm their locations and examine whether they contained cultural material. The approach combined remote sensing with field verification rather than treating features visible in aerial data as archaeological discoveries without further checking.

LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging, uses laser pulses to create detailed three-dimensional maps of a landscape. In the project, the system was carried on a DJI M350 drone fitted with a YellowScan Explorer V2 LiDAR sensor. The airborne measurements helped researchers detect features that could be difficult to recognize beneath dense bushland and tree cover, including locations consistent with rock shelters. Once the analysis indicated possible sites, project co-director Dr Amy Mosig Way, a research archaeologist at the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum, led teams of students and volunteers into the field to verify the locations and assess whether the shelters contained cultural material. This staged process was central to the reported results: the drone survey helped direct ground investigation, and the identified shelters were subsequently checked and recorded in person.

The drone-based field surveys confirmed the locations of six rock shelters already listed in the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System, the official NSW sites register, and identified three previously unregistered shelters containing rock art and stone artefacts. The surveys also produced more accurate coordinates for the six known sites than those recorded in AHIMS. After the aerial analysis highlighted possible locations, Wayne Brennan, an Indigenous rock art expert and project co-director at the University of Sydney, and Erin Wilkins of the Dharug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation led the recording of rock art at the confirmed sites. The newly documented shelters contained visually striking red hand stencils, while stone artefacts were also present. Their discovery expands the record of Aboriginal cultural sites in a region already noted for its natural and cultural significance.

Dr Jacob Bongers, lead author of the drone research and a digital archaeologist at the University of Sydney, said the methodology offers an efficient and accurate way to locate sites in rugged environments that are arduous, expensive and time-consuming to survey. He said its importance lies not only in the speed of aerial coverage but also in expanding the record of Aboriginal cultural sites and offering a method that may be applied in other regions. The Blue Mountains survey demonstrates a practical workflow in which drone observations provide candidates for attention and specialists conduct the subsequent cultural assessment and documentation. For Aboriginal communities, the researchers said, LiDAR can serve as an additional tool alongside existing knowledge and cultural practices for locating, documenting and protecting important heritage places before they are affected by development, erosion, bushfires or other threats.

The project received $248,610 from Round 1 of the Australian Government’s First Nations Heritage Grants program, managed by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. The program supports on-Country projects led by First Nations people to identify, record and protect First Nations heritage in existing World and National Heritage-listed places. Gulamada Project co-director Wayne Brennan said the project was designed as a nexus of science and culture and emphasized the importance of listening, learning and working together. The drone research also gave students opportunities to gain hands-on experience in cultural heritage research within a community-centred project. According to Dr Way, those field activities connected the technical survey with direct examination and recording of the shelters, while the collaboration gave the work an explicitly First Nations framework.

Looking beyond the Blue Mountains, the team plans to work with Aboriginal communities to test and adapt LiDAR-assisted surveys in different environments, including the tropical savannahs of western Arnhem Land and the semi-arid landscapes of western New South Wales. Those future studies are intended to determine how the approach performs and where it may be useful in settings unlike the densely vegetated Blue Mountains landscapes. The current findings do not by themselves establish how the method will operate in every environment, nor do they replace the knowledge and cultural practices through which Aboriginal communities understand and manage Country. Instead, the Blue Mountains study provides a documented example of aerial laser mapping assisting a search that was followed by ground verification, archaeological assessment and Indigenous-led recording of rock art.

The immediate achievement is a measured expansion of what is known about Aboriginal cultural heritage in the Blue Mountains. One survey confirmed six registered rock shelters, improved the recorded coordinates of those sites and identified three additional shelters that had not been registered. Those three sites contained both rock art and stone artefacts, showing that the survey extended the formal record rather than merely checking previously known locations. The project also shows how an airborne instrument can help focus limited ground-survey capacity in a region where only an estimated 10 percent has been surveyed. Its broader significance lies in the integration of several stages: drone data identified potential locations, field teams checked them, and trained specialists documented the cultural material once the shelters were confirmed.

For heritage managers, the proposed benefit is a faster and more targeted means of locating Aboriginal cultural sites before they are affected by threats such as development, erosion, bushfires or other changes. The authors caution implicitly through their proposed next steps that broader application must be tested with Aboriginal communities in additional landscapes rather than assumed from the Blue Mountains results. If those community-led trials support the approach, LiDAR-assisted surveying could help document and manage cultural landscapes in other parts of Australia. The method is not a substitute for field expertise, archaeological assessment or Indigenous knowledge. Its demonstrated role is narrower and more concrete: it can assist teams in locating promising shelters, extend the registry of Aboriginal sites and direct subsequent investigation toward areas that conventional ground surveys could otherwise overlook.

Subject of Research: Drone-based LiDAR surveys for Aboriginal rock shelters in Australia’s Blue Mountains

Article Title: Drones help archaeologists find Aboriginal rock art sites hidden in Australia’s rugged Blue Mountains

Article References: Drones help archaeologists find Aboriginal rock art sites hidden in Australia’s rugged Blue Mountains. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Aboriginal archaeology, Blue Mountains, drone surveying, LiDAR, rock art, cultural heritage, Dharug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation, Gulamada Project, remote sensing, rock shelters, Drones, help

The Middle Pleistocene, spanning roughly 780,000 to 130,000 years ago, was a transformative period in human evolution. It was during this interval that the genus Homo spread across much of the Old World, hunting technology advanced, and meat eating became a central pillar of the human diet. Understanding how hominins exploited animal resources is therefore essential for reconstructing their subsistence strategies and ecological adaptations. Zooarchaeology, the study of animal remains from archaeological sites, provides the key technical toolkit: analysts examine cut marks left by stone tools, percussion marks from breaking bones open, tooth marks from carnivores, mortality profiles of the prey species, and the anatomical distribution of bone fragments to determine who got to the carcass first and what they did with it.

Du and Wang synthesized this kind of evidence from published Chinese assemblages to evaluate patterns of carcass acquisition, processing and utilization. The review identifies several recurring patterns across the Chinese record. The most fundamental is the exploitation of medium- to large-sized ungulates, the hoofed mammals such as horses, deer and rhinoceroses that dominate the faunal spectra. Alongside this prey focus, the evidence points to systematic carcass processing involving the removal of soft tissue, the extraction of nutrient-rich marrow from long bones, and, in some cases, the reuse of broken bones as expedient tools. These are the same hallmarks of detailed butchery sequences documented at flagship western Eurasian sites, suggesting that the behavioral repertoire of East Asian hominins was more elaborate than the region’s sparse analytical record had implied.

To organize this evidence, the authors summarize carcass utilization in a three-stage framework. The first stage concerns acquisition, whether animals were hunted directly or scavenged from carnivore kills, a question that taphonomists address by reading the sequence of surface modifications on bones. The second stage covers processing, the systematic disarticulation and defleshing of carcasses and the deliberate breakage of long bones to reach the marrow cavity. The third stage involves utilization, the consumption of meat and marrow and the secondary use of bones as raw material. This framework mirrors the analytical logic applied at European and Levantine sites, allowing Chinese assemblages to be compared stage by stage with their western counterparts rather than treated as an isolated regional curiosity.

Shared processing practices, however, coexist with striking regional variation. The taxa exploited differed across habitats, from the open steppe settings of northern China to the subtropical karst caves of the south, and the use of osseous materials, bones as technological resources, varied regionally as well. At Panxian Dadong in Guizhou Province, southwestern China, Middle Pleistocene hominins interacted intensively with rhinoceroses and stegodonts, extinct relatives of elephants, and even fashioned tools from rhinoceros teeth, an unusual osseous technology with few parallels elsewhere. At Zhoukoudian near Beijing, the famous cave of Peking Man, decades of debate over the faunal remains, including pointed critiques by Lewis Binford and colleagues in the 1980s, have given way to a more nuanced view in which large carnivores such as hyenas contributed to bone accumulations alongside hominin activities, and recent work has documented hominin use and maintenance of fire at the site.

The strongest evidence for detailed processing sequences comes from a small number of sites, particularly in northern China. The Nihewan Basin, a rift landscape west of Beijing packed with Paleolithic localities, has emerged as the analytical heartland of the review. At sites such as Xujiayao, equid prey acquisition has been analyzed in detail, revealing archaic Homo adaptability in exploiting horses. Newer work by the same research group, including taphonomic analyses at Jijiazhuang and the Caijiagou site in the Yuxian Basin, has applied modern bone-surface modification protocols to Middle Pleistocene assemblages, documenting cut marks, percussion damage and mortality patterns at a resolution that finally matches western Eurasian standards. These northern Chinese sites show that hominins were not passive scavengers trailing behind carnivores but active participants in carcass acquisition and processing.

Southern Chinese and Tibetan Plateau assemblages broaden the ecological range of the comparison considerably. The subtropical cave sites of the south, with their rhinoceroses, stegodonts and gaurs, demonstrate that hominins adapted to very different prey communities than the equid- and deer-dominated assemblages of the north. At Hualongdong in Anhui Province, recent studies of gaur teeth have been interpreted as evidence of hunting behavior, and the site has also yielded archaic human remains documenting Middle Pleistocene human continuity and variation in China. On the Tibetan Plateau, the Denisovan-bearing Baishiya Karst Cave has produced faunal evidence of Middle and Late Pleistocene subsistence at high altitude, extending the geographic and ecological scope of animal exploitation to environments once thought marginal for Pleistocene hominins.

The review does not shy away from the constraints on interpretation. Sample sizes remain limited, data collection is uneven across regions, and analytical protocols are inconsistent, with different studies applying different standards for recording cut marks, percussion marks and mortality profiles. This unevenness matters because interpretations of hunting versus scavenging hinge on fine-grained taphonomic details, such as whether cut marks overlie tooth marks, indicating hominin first access, or the reverse. The authors are careful to note that the documented patterns characterize the Chinese assemblages reviewed here rather than the entire East Asian record, and they present their synthesis as a basis for evaluating regional adaptations within East Asia, not a final verdict.

Even with those caveats, the synthesis carries real weight for the Eurasian big picture. The three-stage framework of acquisition, processing and utilization aligns the Chinese record with the analytical standards of western Eurasian zooarchaeology, and the recurring patterns, medium- to large-sized ungulate prey, systematic butchery, marrow extraction and expedient bone tool use, suggest that Middle Pleistocene hominins across Eurasia shared a core behavioral repertoire for exploiting animal resources. At the same time, the regional variation in exploited taxa, habitat settings and osseous technology, from rhinoceros tooth tools in Guizhou to equid processing in the Nihewan Basin, underscores that this shared repertoire was flexibly adapted to local ecologies. Meat made us human, as the evolutionary catchphrase goes, and the Chinese record now shows that the meat-eating revolution reached the eastern edge of the hominin world with full force.

For a field long dominated by western Eurasian narratives, the review marks a turning point. It demonstrates that East Asian zooarchaeology has matured to the point where regional syntheses can be built and compared, and it identifies precisely where the analytical gaps lie, in sample size, in data collection and in protocol standardization. As new excavations in the Nihewan Basin, southern China and the Tibetan Plateau apply modern taphonomic methods, the resolution of the East Asian record will only improve, and the interactions between hominins and animals during the Middle Pleistocene will come into focus as a genuinely Eurasian story, told from both ends of the continent.

Subject of Research: Paleoanthropology

Article Title: The interactions between hominins and animals: Subsistence strategies of Middle Pleistocene hominins in China

Article References: Du, Y., & Wang, C. (2026). The interactions between hominins and animals: Subsistence strategies of Middle Pleistocene hominins in China. Asian Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41826-026-00135-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s41826-026-00135-4

Keywords: zooarchaeology, Middle Pleistocene, hominins, China, subsistence strategies, Nihewan Basin, Zhoukoudian, Panxian Dadong, taphonomy, bone tools, interactions, between

The research, carried out by June Versluis and Patrick Schmidt at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, was inspired by an unexpected parallel from southern Africa. There, studies of Middle and Later Stone Age adhesive technology showed that hunter-gatherers produced so-called biomass tars by burning the leaves of a variety of plant genera using a condensation process. That discovery raised an obvious question for European prehistory: if leaves from African plants could yield tar, could the same be done with birch, the iconic raw material of Ice Age Europe? And if so, would leaf-derived birch tar be chemically confounded with the bark-derived tar that archaeologists have identified for decades, or could the two be told apart?

To find out, the team turned to the condensation method, one of the simplest ways of making birch tar and the technique documented in the African leaf-tar tradition. In this aboveground approach, plant material is burned beneath an overhanging cobble; tar from the flames condenses on the cobble’s surface and can be scraped off with a stone tool. Five participants in an experimental archaeology course each produced tar from both birch bark and birch leaves, following the same protocol so that the two raw materials could be compared directly. All material came from Betula pendula trees in the Schönbuch forest in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, harvested in summer. Because fresh leaves do not burn easily, they were air-dried for two weeks before the experiments, while bark, which burns readily even when wet, was collected on the morning of each run.

The experimental setup was carefully standardized. Leaves were bundled into 25-gram portions and wrapped with birch twigs so that the mass of burned material could be estimated, while bark was allowed to roll up naturally and weighed beforehand. Two river-rounded quartzite cobbles served as condensation centres, one dedicated to leaf experiments and one to bark, and each cobble was deliberately reused across runs so tar could accumulate on its surface. After each five-minute burning run, the cobble was scraped for tar and cooled in water to provide the same starting temperature for the next attempt. The protocol produced ten tar samples in total, five from bark and five from leaves, which were then subjected to two complementary analytical techniques: gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to probe the soluble molecular fraction, and infrared spectroscopy to characterize the insoluble, highly polymerized portion.

The first answer came quickly: birch tar can indeed be made from birch leaves. But the yields told a more nuanced story. Per unit of raw material, bark was far more efficient, producing an average of 0.11 grams of tar per 100 grams of bark compared with just 0.04 grams per 100 grams of leaves, roughly 2.6 times more. Yet when production time was factored in, the picture shifted. Because the thin leaves burned fast and the fire was easy to keep alive, a given amount of leaf tar could be produced in less time than the same amount of bark tar; once scraping and cooling time were included, leaf tar yielded a hypothetical 0.13 grams per hour against 0.10 grams per hour for bark. In other words, bark gives more tar per gram, but leaves give more tar per minute, a trade-off that may have mattered to foragers weighing effort against return.

The chemical analyses revealed that the two tars, while recognizably related, are far from identical. Birch bark is chemically distinctive: roughly 45 percent of its outer layer consists of suberin, a cross-linked polymer, and another 40 percent consists of lipophilic extractives, chiefly the lupane-type triterpenoids betulin and lupeol. Birch leaves, by contrast, are built mostly from the heavy biopolymers lignin and cellulose, coated in waxes and fats. Those differences carried through into the tars. The bark-derived tar contained the classic suite of lupane triterpenoid biomarkers, including betulin, lupeol, and their degradation products such as betulone and lup-20(29)-en-3-one, compounds that form through oxidation and dehydration during tar production. The leaf-derived tar entirely lacked this triterpenoid fraction in identifiable form, though a few small peaks with fragmentation ions characteristic of lupane-skeleton molecules hint that such compounds may be present at very low concentrations.

What the leaf tar did contain was a rich signature of epicuticular leaf waxes. The chromatograms showed long-chain even-carbon alcohols, tentatively identified as docosanol, tetracosanol, and hexacosanol, alongside fatty acids and odd-carbon n-alkanes, a combination characteristic of the waxes that coat plant leaves. Both tars also contained levoglucosan, a marker of cellulose pyrolysis that confirms plant material was burned. In the infrared spectra, the differences were equally telling. Bark tar showed a split carbon-hydrogen bending region resembling that of bitumen asphaltenes, along with absorption bands tied to betulin, lupeol, and their degradation products. Leaf tar showed a diffuse, unsplit version of that region and a distinctive split band near 729 and 719 wavenumbers, a hallmark of crystalline n-alkanes in waxes. Leaf tar also carried calcite bands, interpreted as ash particles incorporated from the burning leaves, a contamination that apparently does not occur when denser bark rolls burn with smaller, oilier flames.

These findings matter because they hand archaeologists a new diagnostic toolkit. Until now, identifications of birch tar in the archaeological record have rested on the assumption that the raw material was bark, and the authors propose that the two tars can be distinguished by their overall molecular signature rather than any single biomarker: bark tar is dominated by triterpenoids in its soluble fraction and shows a split CH bending region in its insoluble phase, while leaf tar is dominated by n-alkanes, fatty acids and alcohols, and carbohydrates, with a diffuse unsplit bending region. Intriguingly, no archaeological birch tar made from leaves has ever been identified, but as the researchers note, that may simply be because no one has specifically looked for it. Future finds of birch tar artefacts can now be tested for these diagnostic differences.

The study also adds a cautionary note about analytical method. One infrared band at 1515 wavenumbers, previously assigned to betulin, appeared in the leaf tar spectra even though GC-MS detected no betulin there, a discrepancy the authors attribute either to a misassignment of the band or to betulin concentrations too low for chromatographic detection. Either way, it underscores that infrared spectroscopy alone is impractical for identifying specific organic molecules in complex mixtures like tar, and that molecular confirmation remains essential. The team also acknowledges limitations in the sensitivity of their chromatographic setup for the later-eluting triterpenoid region, which is why they frame the low-level presence of triterpenoids in leaf tar as a hypothesis rather than a confirmed result.

Beyond the laboratory, the implications ripple outward through human history. Birch tar vanished from the European record after the Middle Palaeolithic and only reappears clearly in the Mesolithic, becoming widespread from the Neolithic onward as a hafting adhesive, a sealant for ceramics, and later a material for metalworking and decoration. Yet remarkably little is known about how it was actually produced in most of these periods, since many proposed analytical criteria for identifying ceramic-based production techniques have been invalidated. By showing that the same condensation method documented in African leaf-tar traditions works with birch leaves, and by defining how leaf tar differs chemically from bark tar, the Tübingen team has expanded the range of raw materials early humans could plausibly have exploited and opened a genuinely new line of evidence. The first synthetic material ever made may have had more recipes than we ever imagined.

Subject of Research: Experimental production and chemical identification of birch tar made from birch leaves versus bark

Article Title: Birch leaves as raw material for tar – production, identification and implications

Article References: Versluis, J., & Schmidt, P. (2026). Birch leaves as raw material for tar – production, identification and implications. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 18(11), Article 218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-026-02571-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12520-026-02571-w

Keywords: birch tar, experimental archaeology, Neanderthals, ancient adhesives, biomass tar, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, infrared spectroscopy, Middle Palaeolithic, condensation method, triterpenoids, epicuticular waxes, pyrotechnology

The research, led by Martina Mercurio and Concetta Rispoli of the University of Naples Federico II together with colleagues from several Italian institutions, took a fresh look at the pozzolana deposits of the Campi Flegrei, the volcanic district west of Naples. The team collected samples from historical quarries that the Romans themselves are known to have exploited, extending from Naples to Bacoli. One sample, labeled SAV, came from an ancient tuff quarry in Marano di Napoli and represents pozzolana in the strict sense, the unconsolidated facies of the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. Two others, labeled CL and LP, were collected near Baia, close to the Pontile Lubrano, an area where Imperial-age ceramics and artifacts testify to intense Roman maritime activity. Crucially, these two deposits belong to eruptions that occurred after the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff event, within the caldera’s later Epoch II activity.

The geological setting explains why this region is so rich in reactive ash. The Campi Flegrei caldera took shape through two cataclysmic collapses: the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption about 40,000 years ago, which ejected between roughly 60 and 300 cubic kilometers of phonolitic-trachytic material and ranks as the largest eruption in the Mediterranean over the past 200,000 years, and the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff eruption about 15,000 years ago, which produced around 50 cubic kilometers. After that second caldera-forming event, more than 70 eruptions occurred within the caldera, grouped into three epochs, the most recent ending with the Monte Nuovo eruption in AD 1538. These later eruptions, mostly explosive events of intermediate to Plinian scale, scattered cones and ash deposits across the entire territory. The magmas are potassic-alkaline in character, dominated by trachytic and trachy-phonolitic compositions, with clinopyroxene, plagioclase, sanidine, biotite and magnetite as the principal mineral phases.

To determine whether these post-Neapolitan Yellow Tuff deposits could genuinely serve as hydraulic binders, the researchers deployed a battery of modern analytical techniques. Polarized optical microscopy revealed the texture of pumice fragments and their crystal cargo; X-ray powder diffraction identified the mineral assemblage, including the zeolites phillipsite and analcime that form when hot reactive glass interacts with hydromagmatic fluids; field-emission scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive spectroscopy delivered precise chemical analyses of individual volcanic glass fragments; and X-ray fluorescence characterized the whole-rock composition. Laser particle-size analysis measured the grain-size distribution of the fine fractions, the portion Roman craftsmen would have crushed or selected deliberately, since finer particles expose more reactive surface area. The samples proved remarkably similar in texture and mineralogy, all containing fresh volcanic glass, pumice fragments with elongated vesicles, and the zeolitic association typical of Phlegraean pyroclastic products.

The chemistry told the most compelling story. On the standard Total Alkali versus Silica classification diagram, the whole-rock compositions of CL and LP plot as trachyte while SAV falls in the latite field. But the decisive evidence came from individual point analyses of the glass component itself, which bypasses the diluting influence of crystals, lithic fragments and alteration products. Glass from CL and LP overlaps the compositional fields of the Baia-Fondi di Baia eruption, a small multievent eruption that occurred 9,500 to 9,600 years ago on the western side of Pozzuoli, while SAV glass matches the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff field. The potassium-to-sodium ratio proved a particularly sharp discriminator: CL and LP glasses show ratios of two or higher, excluding the low-ratio Averno eruption, whereas SAV aligns with the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff. These geochemical attributions agree with the official geological cartography of the sampling sites.

The team then confronted their quarry samples with published glass analyses of pozzolanic aggregates extracted from actual Roman mortars across the Mediterranean. The dataset spanned local Campanian monuments, including the Baths of Baia, the Flavian Amphitheater of Pozzuoli and the vast Piscina Mirabilis cistern, as well as distal sites: Roman structures in the Venice Lagoon, the Roman theater of Aquileia in northeastern Italy and the ancient city of Hippo Regius in Algeria. The glass compositions from these mortars fall within the compositional range of the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff and, tellingly, match the variability of Baia-Fondi di Baia products as well. Some anomalies in calcium oxide and sodium oxide values for the Venice and Aquileia samples reflect severe post-depositional alteration in underwater environments rather than original compositions. The pattern suggests that Roman builders did not confine themselves to a single eruption but exploited multiple Phlegraean deposits as pulvis puteolana.

A machine-learning tool added statistical rigor to the visual comparisons. Discriminant analysis, a supervised multivariate method suited to datasets with overlapping chemical features, assigned the quarry samples and mortar aggregates to specific eruptions with high probabilities. CL samples matched the Baia-Fondi di Baia eruption with probabilities from about 93 to 100 percent, LP from nearly 100 percent, and SAV, despite its geological mapping to the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff, was classified as Baia-Fondi di Baia with 95.6 to 100 percent probability, reflecting the genuine chemical overlap shared by several Phlegraean products. The literature mortar data showed primary affinity with Baia-Fondi di Baia followed by the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff, with a minor subset pointing to Monte Spina and Averno. The authors note that these probabilistic attributions rest on major-element chemistry alone and that trace-element data could sharpen future provenance assignments.

The technological test came from the Fratini test, a European standard method developed more than fifty years ago that measures how much calcium hydroxide a blended cement can consume over fifteen days of curing at 40 degrees Celsius. All three samples plotted below the calcium hydroxide solubility curve, proving genuine pozzolanic activity. The SAV sample showed the highest calcium oxide reduction at 38.6 percent, followed by CL at 30.3 percent and LP at 29.2 percent. The authors are careful to frame these results as complementary evidence: the Fratini test was designed for modern cementitious systems, and the hypothesis that Romans deliberately selected specific Phlegraean materials rests mainly on the convergence of historical quarry locations, petrographic features, reactive glass content and the geochemical match between deposits and mortar aggregates.

Why did these particular ashes work so well? The answer lies in the polymerization of the volcanic glass network. Glasses with moderate silica content, characteristic of part of the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff and Baia-Fondi di Baia products, are less polymerized and therefore dissolve more readily, accelerating the pozzolanic reaction in which silica and alumina react with calcium hydroxide at room temperature to form calcium-aluminum-silicate-hydrate gel. This C-A-S-H gel is what gives Roman hydraulic mortars their ability to harden underwater and their exceptional mechanical strength. Silica-rich glasses, by contrast, are less reactive. The shared compositional variability of the two eruptions in terms of silica content may thus be the key factor behind high-performance hydraulic mortars, and it may explain why the Romans favored these deposits without ever knowing the chemistry behind them.

The study establishes a first reference database of glass analyses for Phlegraean pozzolana, offering archaeologists a powerful tool for tracing the provenance of mortar aggregates in monuments across the former Roman Empire. It also reframes the scale of Roman resource management: the expansion of Puteoli’s harbor made the ash a strategic commodity, exported along grain-ship ballast routes to Ostia, Alexandria, Caesarea Maritima and beyond, and even carried to Constantinople, as the fifth-century historian Sidonius Apollinaris documented in his Panegyricus. Roman craftsmen, the authors conclude, possessed an advanced empirical knowledge of the raw materials of their territory, recognizing the value of many pyroclastic deposits rather than a single one. That legacy, encoded in mortars that have survived two millennia of seawater, may yet inform modern sustainable cement formulations seeking to rediscover what the Romans knew by practice alone.

Subject of Research: Provenance and selection of Roman hydraulic pozzolana from the Phlegraean Fields

Article Title: On the tracks of Pulvis Puteolana: provenance and selection of Roman hydraulic materials

Article References: Mercurio, M., Montesano, G., Cappelletti, P., Petrosino, P., Graziano, S. F., Campanile, A., Liguori, B., & Rispoli, C. (2026). On the tracks of Pulvis Puteolana: provenance and selection of Roman hydraulic materials. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 18(11), Article 217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-026-02582-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12520-026-02582-7

Keywords: tracks, Pulvis, Puteolana, provenance, selection, Roman, hydraulic, materials, scientific research

The scapula, or shoulder blade, is a broad, flat bone so thin in places that it becomes almost translucent when held up to a light source. Complete scapulae rarely survive even in modern burials, yet this one was preserved nearly intact beneath seven and a half metres of rock and sediment. Dr Emma Pomeroy of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, the study’s lead author, described the extraordinary condition of the find, noting that the team was able to lift the bone out in a single piece from under almost eight metres of overlying deposits. Apart from the circular perforation, the bone is whole, giving researchers an unusually clear window into a moment of violence from deep prehistory.

The morphology of the wound itself points strongly toward wood rather than stone. A spear tip of flint or other stone would be expected to leave a flat or angular hole, whereas the round shape of the perforation matches a sharpened wooden point. The researchers argue that the spear entered the left chest cavity from the front and travelled through the body, passing through lung tissue and likely major arteries, before punching through the left scapula on its way out. Beveling around the hole is typical of an exit wound, and the team recovered tiny shards of bone displaced by the weapon, whose positions suggest the spear entered from above on a downward trajectory. Guided by faint ridges on the bone surface left by muscle attachments, the researchers were even able to piece part of the hole back together from those fragments.

The researchers interpret the trajectory and force involved as consistent with an intended heart shot, a killing blow aimed at the centre of the chest. Pomeroy cautions, however, that a hunting accident cannot be ruled out. Large animals such as mammoths may have been hunted at close range with thrusting spears, and lethal injuries in such encounters are easy to imagine. Still, she notes that the position of the wound and the force required to drive the weapon completely through the body bear what she describes as the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed toward the heart. There is no way to establish the broader context of the violence, or whether modern humans might have been involved, but the researchers consider the most straightforward interpretation to be interpersonal violence between Neanderthals themselves.

Wooden artefacts almost never survive from this depth of time because decomposition destroys organic material, which makes the comparative evidence all the more valuable. Waterlogged spear examples dated to around 200,000 years ago, from the era when early Neanderthals roamed Europe, were recovered at Schöningen in Germany during the 1990s. Some of those preserved spears measure more than two metres long and were manufactured from carefully selected timber with weight distribution optimised for throwing, much like modern javelins, and they were probably used to hunt large game. The earliest known rounded wooden spear is more than 400,000 years old and consists only of a pointed end, pulled from the shoreline at Clacton-on-Sea in England in 1911. Similar technology, the Cambridge team argues, may well have caused the death of the individual now known as Shanidar A, and the wound could represent the first evidence for the use of sharpened wooden spears in the prehistoric Middle East.

Experimental work strengthens that argument. According to Pomeroy, holes left by reconstructions of spears from this period are an excellent fit for the perforation observed in the scapula, demonstrating that the early technology absolutely works for producing this kind of wound. She adds that the available evidence suggests Neanderthals and their ancestors had developed woodworking and weapon-making skills many thousands of years before Shanidar A died, and that this package of capabilities could have spanned the full geographic range of Neanderthal homelands, from Wales to Siberia. If correct, the wound at Shanidar extends the known use of such weapons into a new region of the Neanderthal world and deepens the picture of them as sophisticated toolmakers rather than the brutish figures of older stereotypes.

The shoulder blade was excavated alongside a mostly complete right hand, two left ribs plus a right rib fragment, and seven teeth, all that remains of an adult Neanderthal estimated to have been around 45 years old at death. Among the teeth, one incisor from the front of the lower jaw had been split lengthways, with only half remaining, while the surrounding teeth had rotated inward. The surviving half-tooth carried significant tartar, or dental calculus, build-up along its exposed root canal, indicating that it remained in the mouth for a considerable time after the injury. Scientists interpret this as evidence of major blunt-force trauma to the front of the face, an injury the individual survived.

That survival carries a profound social implication. Pomeroy notes that surviving a blow severe enough to split a tooth in this fashion, and then continuing to live and eat for at least a year and possibly much longer, would have required care and support from other Neanderthals. Shanidar A may have been fed soft food after the initial injury, and previous research on sediment in Shanidar Cave shows that plant foods were being soaked before cooking around the same period. Pomeroy observes that there is no doubt Shanidar A would have had difficulty communicating and would have been in absolute agony for a long stretch of time. The remains, she says, reflect the dual nature of so much of what we recognise as human: evidence of a terribly violent end on one hand, and clear evidence that the individual was cared for during their lifetime on the other.

Shanidar Cave is one of the most famous Neanderthal sites in the world. Excavations in the 1950s led by Ralph Solecki uncovered ten individuals, including a cluster of four found in the same spot despite having died at different times, suggesting the Neanderthals had returned repeatedly to inter their dead. Remains of another individual from a different part of the cave, who lived thousands of years later, showed a paralysed arm, arthritis, deafness and partial blindness, yet that person had lived a long life and must therefore have been cared for. These signs of compassion, social support and ritual around death helped overturn the Victorian view of Neanderthals as brutish and subhuman, and evidence of sophistication has continued to accumulate, from cave art to jewellery, alongside genetic analyses demonstrating interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Shanidar A itself was unearthed in 2020 by a Cambridge-led team that has been working in the cave since 2015, and is one of three further Neanderthals found in the burial cluster, bringing the total to five: four adults and an infant, all within an area of the cave just 1.5 metres long by one metre wide and a metre deep. The spot lies directly behind a large vertical boulder that may have served as a prominent marker, and the remains are separated by thin layers of sediment. Shanidar A is the deepest burial yet found in the cluster and may have been the first body laid to rest there, positioned on its back with the head facing east, matching the orientation of the body directly above. Pomeroy argues that the best explanation for this pattern is intentional and symbolic funerary behaviour, with Neanderthals returning to the same place to lay their dead to rest, sometimes depositing new bodies before the earlier ones had fully decomposed, within years or decades of one another. Professor Graeme Barker of St John’s College, Cambridge, who leads the Shanidar Cave excavations, notes that evidence of systematic violence is extremely rare in deep prehistory, with the vast majority coming from settled farming communities thousands of years after hunter-gatherer societies like these Neanderthals. As he puts it, all we can ever know about the end of this Neanderthal’s life is that it was violent, and came at the end of a wooden spear, a statement that captures both the brutality and the humanity preserved in a single, astonishingly fragile bone.

Subject of Research: Paleoanthropological analysis of a fatal spear wound and evidence of care in a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave

Article Title: Fatal Neanderthal wound may be earliest evidence of a wooden spear attack on a human ancestor

Article References: Fatal Neanderthal wound may be earliest evidence of a wooden spear attack on a human ancestor. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Neanderthals, Shanidar Cave, wooden spear, interpersonal violence, paleoanthropology, scapula trauma, Iraqi Kurdistan, funerary behaviour, Scientific Reports, University of Cambridge, Middle East prehistory, dental calculus