Archaeology | The Essential Guide to our Human Past

Paul Bahn is a leading archaeological writer, translator, and broadcaster. He is a Contributing Editor of the Archaeological Institute of America’s Archaeology magazine, and he has written extensively on prehistoric art. He has also authored and/or edited many books on general archaeological subjects, including The Cambridge World Prehistory, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, and The Penguin Archaeology Guide. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Corresponding Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. He was an advisor on the BBC’s The Making of Mankind and a consultant on a segment of WGBH’s NOVA trilogy Human Origins.

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• Detailed coverage of the world’s most important archaeological sites, with contributions by top scholars that contextualize these finds alongside key social and cultural developments.

Front cover: Stonehenge, UK © Avella/Shutterstock. Inset images, left to right: Nok culture Jemaa head © Ancient Art and Architecture/Alamy Stock Photo; fresco from the House of the Centenary in Pompeii © WolfgangRieger/Wikimedia Commons; Terracotta Army © CTK/Alamy Stock Photo; Neolithic engraved vessel from Skarpsallino © DEA Picture Library/De Agostini/ Getty Images Back cover: clockwise from top left: Relief at Karnak Temple, Egypt © Joyce Tyledesley; El Castillo, Chichén Itzá, Mexico © Matyas Rehak/Shutterstock; detail from Nebuchadnezzar’s throne room at Babylon © Prisma/UIG via Getty Images; Maison Carrée, Nimes, France © Horizon Images/Motion/ Alamy Stock Photo

ARCH ÆOLOGY

Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past is a comprehensive guide through the entire history of humankind. Starting more than four million years ago, in deep prehistory, and finishing in the present era, it takes the reader on a tour through time and around the globe to hundreds of sites of archaeological importance. From the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux to Tutankhamun’s tomb to the buried city of Pompeii to China’s Terracotta Army, all of the world’s most iconic sites and discoveries are here. So too are more obscure but equally groundbreaking finds, such as the recent discovery of our most distant human ancestors and the uncovering of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, the world’s oldest known temple.

the essential guide to our human past

Brian Fagan is a British-born archaeologist and Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He worked in Central Africa before moving to the United States in 1967. He is the author of numerous books on archaeology and ancient climate change. His latest release is The Intimate Bond: How Animals Shaped Human History.

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Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past With a global perspective that covers more than four million years of history, this accessible volume provides a chronological account of both the development of the human race and the discoveries that modern societies have made about their ancient past. Beginning deep in prehistory, it takes in all the great archaeological sites of the world as it advances to the present day.

A masterful combination of succinct analysis and driving narrative, Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past also addresses the questions that inevitably arise as we gradually learn more about the history of our species: What are we? Where did we come from? What inspired us to start building, writing, and performing all the other activities that we traditionally regard as exclusively human?

ARCHÆOLOGY

the essential guide to our human past

• Stunning imagery of crucial archaeological discoveries, from spectacular complexes unearthed in deserts and jungles to fascinating artworks and artifacts.

• Historical timelines mapping the complete story of human civilization.

editor

PAUL BAHN

editor

PAUL BAHN

foreword by

BRIAN FAGAN

A concluding section explains how we know what we know: for example, how seventeen prehistoric shrines were discovered around Stonehenge using magnetometers, ground-penetrating radars, and 3D laser scanners; and how DNA analysis enabled us to identify bones discovered beneath a car park in Leicester as the remains of a fifteenth-century king of England.

Written by an international team of archaeological experts and richly illustrated with more than 1,000 images, Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past offers an unparalleled insight into the origins of humankind.

Lascaux Late Upper Paleolithic

No fewer than 158 mineral fragments were found in various parts of the Lascaux cave, together with crude mortars and pestles, stained with pigment, and naturally hollowed stones still containing small amounts of powdered pigment. There were scratches and traces of use-wear on thirty-one of the mineral lumps.

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he greatest of all Ice Age decorated caves was discovered in 1940, near the village of Montignac in Dordogne, France. Although fairly small, Lascaux contains about 1,500 animal images, with far more engravings than paintings, and a bewildering variety and quantity of apparently abstract or geometric motifs known as signs. One particularly sophisticated technique used was the gap left between legs and the body, which tells the brain that certain limbs are on the far side. In addition, one large horse figure was painted upside down around a rock, so that the artist could never see the whole figure at once, yet it is in perfect proportion.

For such an important site, Lascaux is very poorly dated, largely because its contents were cleared out in 1948 without any archaeological investigation. It has been treated as a homogeneous collection of figures, all produced within a maximum of about 500 years; but specialists have discerned different phases of decoration. There is some heterogeneity of style in the cave, and a great deal of superimposition. A single date of 17,190 years ago for the cave came from charcoal in the passage, while later dates of 16,000 and 15,516 years ago were obtained from charcoal down the well shaft. One spear-point fragment from an excavation in the shaft has been directly dated to 18,600 years ago. Some of Lascaux’s art can be attributed to the traditionally accepted date, but this does not prove that it is a coherent entity spanning only a few centuries. The cave is dominated by its score of aurochs figures, yet in southwest France bones of the aurochs are absent in that period. It is probable that Lascaux is not a homogeneous whole but belongs to a number of different periods. PGB

48 deep prehistory 4 million – 10,000 bce

focal points 1 licorne The poorly named Licorne (unicorn) seems to have two horns. It is probably a fantasy creature comprising parts of different animals and perhaps even some human traits. Such figures are rare in Ice Age cave art, as are scenes. There are no landscapes and no vegetation.

2 horses Lascaux is dominated by its hundreds of horse depictions, both painted and engraved.

The Hall of the Bulls was originally decorated with numerous horses, as well as stags, a few bison, and a bear. Black pigments dominate, followed by yellows, reds, and white.

3 aurochs The Hall of the Bulls earned its name when a series of huge aurochs bulls were added to the walls, often superimposed on existing images. The biggest figures in all Ice Age cave art, some are 16 feet (5 m.) long.

Extinct since the seventeenth century, the aurochs is the ancestor of domestic cattle.

pigments Lascaux has fifteen hues derived from the four dominant colors, those of ocher having been modified by heat. Yellow ocher, when heated beyond 482 degrees Fahrenheit (250˚C), passes through different shades of red as it oxidizes into hematite. A further stage in pigment preparation, in Lascaux at least, involved the mixing of different powdered minerals, since unmixed pigments are rare there. Clearly, the artists were experimenting and combining their raw materials in different ways. Traces have been found of reindeer antler in some pigments; it is thought to be a pollutant caused by stirring the pigments in water with a piece of antler, or by carving antler artifacts close to where painting materials were being prepared.

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Tell Abu Hureyra 11,500 – 7000 bce

Abu Hureyra’s rectangular mud-brick houses were rebuilt repeatedly on the same base, thereby suggesting ownership by a family over generations.

The old house was demolished down to a few courses of brick and the room stubs infilled with clay—often covered by a layer of stones—to create a flat surface on which the new house was constructed.

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ell Abu Hureyra was established in c. 11,500 bce, during the Natufian period, favorably situated to exploit the Euphrates river and its backswamps, forested alluvium, plateau steppes, and open hilly woodlands. The wide range and abundance of plants and animals enabled a hunter-gatherer community to live there year-round. Early settlers constructed circular semi-subterranean pithouses; later they built circular houses on the ground surface. They hunted, mainly gazelle, and gathered a great range of plants, including at least thirty varieties of cereals and other seeds. In c. 11,000 bce, probably in response to diminishing resources as the cold, dry conditions of the Younger Dryas developed, they also began to cultivate rye and perhaps wheat.

From 9400 bce, as warm, moist conditions returned, the settlement rapidly expanded and became one of the largest villages known in West Asia at the time. Domestic cereals—rye, three varieties of wheat, and two of barley—now provided most of the villagers’ plant foods; domestic pulses—lentils, peas, and vetches—were also important.

Some wild leafy plants, roots, and fruits were still gathered. Hunting still relied mainly on gazelle, although sheep were also eaten. After 8300 bce, however, domestic sheep and goats became the main source of meat, as in many contemporary farming sites. By this time the villagers were building rectangular mud-brick houses, close together, separated by narrow alleys and small courtyards. The main room, in the middle of the building, contained a central hearth and often a separate oven on a platform beside one of the walls. By 7300 bce, the population had increased to between 5,000 and 6,000. However, thereafter it declined, and the site was abandoned in c. 7000 bce. JM

84 from hunters to farmers 10,000 – 3000 bce

focal points 1 Plaster Plaster was a major Pre-Pottery Neolithic invention. Limestone was burned to make lime, which was then mixed with water to create a plaster that dried to concrete hardness. This was used mainly for floors, but also to make “white-ware” containers, the precursors of pottery in the region.

2 Walls The rectangular houses were divided by internal walls: the example seen here had five rooms. All of its walls were two mud bricks thick, although some houses had external walls three bricks thick.

High sills connected these rooms and may originally have held doors.

3 plaster floor Lime plaster often covered the house floors. Floor plaster, hard and easy to keep clean, was either left white or colored using readily available pigments: soot for black, ocher for red. The floor was generally renewed several times: clay was spread over the old surface before the new floor was laid.

Abu Hureyra’s inhabitants were buried under house floors or in abandoned houses. Their skeletons reveal that they were generally well fed, but that the diet exacted a price from women, who spent many hours a day grinding grain: kneeling, pressing the ground with their toes, and pushing strongly with their arms and back.

Well-developed arm muscles and deformed knees, vertebrae, and toes bear witness to their labors.

the flotation machine The 1960s and 1970s saw a major focus on investigating the origins of agriculture, led by Eric Higgs (1908 – 76).

Traditional excavation methods rarely recovered small bones or plant material: at Abu Hureyra, experiments with technology to address this problem were conducted.

Excavated soil was sifted to recover small remains missed by diggers. Four wheelbarrow loads of soil from each deposit were passed through a froth-flotation machine devised to recover plant material. The soil was poured into a sieve submerged in water to separate denser material from carbonized seeds and other plant remains. A frothing agent and paraffin helped this light material to float; air was bubbled through to separate the material. The denser fraction was then wet-sieved through a coarser-meshed sieve, thus recovering small bones and bone fragments, beads, and microliths (chipped stone tools). The material collected by dry and wet sieving and flotation greatly increased knowledge of early agriculture.

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Neolithic Orkney Fourth – third millennia bce

The Maeshowe passage grave dominates the landscape of Neolithic Orkney. Dating to the first quarter of the third millennium bce, it has been suggested that it took 100,000 person-hours to build. Its central chamber is entered via a passage 36 feet (11 m.) long.

The passage and chamber were covered by a mound 115 feet (35 m.) in diameter and 24 feet (7.3 m.) high.

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he windswept Orkney Islands lie 10 miles (16 km.) off the northern tip of Scotland.

Today, as was probably the case in the past, few trees are found on their rocky landscape, which is used primarily for grazing livestock. The surrounding ocean is a challenge to navigate even now, and is prone to gales and high waves, although it is home to abundant sea life. Despite these harsh conditions, Neolithic people made their way to Orkney during the fourth millennium bce. By 3000 bce, they had established settlements whose economy was based on herding and fishing—with faint traces of cultivation—and built megalithic monuments. Together, the Orkney sites make up a complex domestic, ceremonial, and mortuary landscape at the edge of Neolithic Europe.

Since wood was scarce on Orkney, the principal Neolithic building material was stone, which was laid dry to form walls and chambers. Slabs of flagstone were used for walls and floors. It was also used to construct interior fittings in domestic areas.

In 1999, a cluster of major Neolithic monuments on the largest Orkney island, Mainland, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Heart of Neolithic Orkney, taking note of the fact that monuments are found on other islands in the archipelago. Four major sites make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney: Maeshowe, a passage grave; the Stones of Stenness, a henge; the Ring of Brodgar, a stone circle; and Skara Brae, a settlement of eight stone houses. Although not formally part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Ness of Brodgar and Barnhouse Neolithic residential and ceremonial sites lie nearby. PB

116 from hunters to farmers 10,000 – 3000 bce

focal points Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness Henges and standing stones are familiar prehistoric monuments throughout the British Isles. Orkney has two such monuments that were integral to the ceremonial landscape. The Stones of Stenness on Mainland are thought to be one of the oldest monuments on Orkney, dating to just after 3000 bce. Four large stones survive from an elliptical arrangement of up to twelve. The nearby Ring of Brodgar is a henge 341 feet (104 m.) in diameter, in which twenty-seven stones of an estimated original sixty still stand. The Ring of Brodgar is believed to be one of the younger Neolithic monuments on Orkney, dating to the second half of the third millennium bce.

Ness of Brodgar The Ness of Brodgar lies between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar on Mainland. In contrast to the other sites, it is quite large, covering more than 6 acres (2.5 ha.). The earliest occupation at Ness of Brodgar began in c. 3300 bce and continued through several phases for approximately a millennium.

One building built in c. 2900 bce is much larger than the others, measuring 82 feet (25 m.) long and 65 feet (20 m.) wide. It has been interpreted as a ritual complex, and when it was demolished several hundred cattle were slaughtered to mark the event.

In 2010, archaeologists found proof that the Neolithic occupants used paint to decorate their buildings.

skara brae The Orkney Neolithic site of Skara Brae is a settlement on Mainland along the Bay of Skaill. After it was abandoned, Skara Brae was covered by drifting sand and sod until it was exposed by a gale in the nineteenth century. V. Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957) excavated the site from 1927 to 1930 and other archaeologists have studied it since.

Skara Brae now presents a subterranean warren of structures surrounded by mounds of sod-covered refuse. Many accounts of Skara Brae report that Neolithic people burrowed into a refuse deposit left by an unknown earlier settlement to build their houses, which were then insulated from the harsh climate by the organic debris. Recent investigations suggest this is an oversimplification. It seems likely that the houses were built as free-standing structures, and then over a number of generations they became embedded in the debris of their inhabitants before the site was abandoned.

Today, Skara Brae consists of eight rectangular dwellings, each 15 to 20 feet (4.5–6 m.) across, interconnected by narrow passageways. Each house has a central stone hearth. In some houses, smaller alcoves branch off from the central space. How the houses were roofed is not known; possibly whale ribs were laid across the openings and covered by hides.

Skara Brae was the first Orkney site at which the remarkable stone furniture around the walls of the central rooms was observed. Directly opposite the entrance to each house is a stone shelf construction that evokes a dresser, albeit without drawers. These may have served as storage shelves for pots of food and milk. On either side of the hearth are stone boxes that have been interpreted as beds, although this function is not certain. Stone pits in the floors were caulked with clay to make them watertight and may have been used to store shellfish.

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Babylon 612 – 539 bce and later

The chief event of the Babylonian year was the twelve-day Akitu New Year festival, held at the spring equinox. A procession bore the statues of Marduk and other gods from Marduk’s temple in the city’s heart through the Ishtar Gate and along the Processional Way to the Akitu temple north of the city.

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olored by hostile Biblical descriptions, Babylon was portrayed as the epitome of decadence and oppression, though the Greeks attested to its magnificent cultural legacy. So when early archaeologists approached the city in the nineteenth century, it was with considerable interest. They were disappointed. Babylon was built mainly of mud brick, unspectacular and hard to detect. They abandoned Babylon and southern sites in favor of the splendors of the Assyrian north. Things changed when German archaeologist Robert Koldewey (1855 – 1925) began work here.

His excavations between 1899 and 1917 exposed the city’s layout and identified its royal palaces, massive city walls and gates, temples, and the Processional Way. This was the city refurbished and extended by the first Neo-Babylonian king, Nabopolassar (c. 658 – 605 bce), and his son, Nebuchadnezzar II, who presided over the early days and finest flowering of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Koldewey cut a deep sounding to investigate earlier periods but the high water table prevented him reaching the levels belonging to Babylon’s first great king, Hammurabi (r. 1792 – 1750 bce). The glazed bricks that made up the Ishtar Gate, Processional Way walls, and Nebuchadnezzar’s throneroom facade were shipped to Berlin, where these were rebuilt and still stand in the Pergamon Museum (above). In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein (1937 – 2006) had a replica of the Ishtar Gate erected at Babylon and restored some of the city.

After the Babylonian Empire fell to Persia, Babylon retained its position as a major city for many centuries, under Persian, Hellenistic, and Seleucid rule, dwindling in importance under the Parthians, and was gradually abandoned in Sasanian times. JM

226 the iron age and the ancient world 1000 bce – 500 ce

focal points 1 divine symbols The Ishtar Gate was the most potent symbol of Babylon’s magnificence. It was decorated with bulls, representing the storm god Adad, and dragons (mushussu), the magically protective creature sacred to Babylon’s patron god Marduk, which combined a lion’s forelimbs, an eagle’s legs for hindlimbs, horns, and a snake’s head, body, and tail. Lions, sacred to the goddess Ishtar in her aspect as goddess of war, decorated the walls that flanked the Processional Way. 2 glazed brick designs The Mesopotamians were skilled workers in vitreous materials. They made faience from the fifth millennium bce; developed glass and were manufacturing it in quantity by 1600 bce; and rapidly solved the technological problems involved in bonding glass to baked clay, enabling them to make glazed pottery, tiles and bricks. The designs built from glazed bricks decorating Babylon’s Ishtar Gate and Processional Way are among their finest works.

etemenanki ziggurat Marduk was the principal Babylonian deity by the late second millennium bce. His temple, Esagila, was at the city’s heart; destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, it was rebuilt and embellished by Nebuchadnezzar II. Immediately to its north was the walled precinct containing the ziggurat Etemenanki, a probable inspiration for the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It had seven tiers, each painted a different color. Built over the remains of Hammurabi’s earlier ziggurat, it was founded by Nabopolassar, on divine instructions delivered in a dream, and completed by Nebuchadnezzar. The roof of the shrine on the uppermost level, accessed by an internal stair, may have been used for astronomical observation.

West of the Ishtar Gate on the banks of the Euphrates lay the main palace complex; the southern palace was within the inner city, the northern palace outside, with gardens between them. This magnificent frieze of glazed bricks decorated the throne room in the southern palace— its thick baked brick walls were covered with wooden paneling, ornamented with precious metals, ivory, and gemstones.

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Battle of the Little Bighorn 1876

This detail from Custer’s Last Stand (1899) by Edgar Samuel Paxson (1852 – 1919) shows Custer standing in a beige uniform with a red kerchief.

Paxson arrived in Montana in 1877, a year after the battle, and spent years doing research for his painting, including interviews with Indians who had been in the battle.

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n June 25, 1876, on the banks of the Little Bighorn river that cuts through the grasslands of Montana, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839 – 76) rode into the annals of U.S. history. Brigadier General Alfred Terry (1827 – 90) ordered him to capture a large force of Cheyenne, Lakota, and Arapaho encamped along the banks of the Bighorn and to bring them and their families back to their reservation—a mission, according to the myth, approached by Custer with characteristic hubris. Distrusting the advice of his Crow scouts who told him he was about to meet a huge Indian encampment, Custer pressed on with his plan to attack and then take the survivors back to their reservation. Unfortunately, he had driven his men too hard. His 600 cavalrymen were fatigued even before the battle started, and most of them were undertrained and under-equipped. Custer decided to split his forces into three battalions led by himself, Major Marcus Reno (1834 – 89) and Captain Frederick Benteen (1834 – 98).

Custer and Reno made a two-prong attack, either directly at the camp or in a sweep to prevent the women and children from escaping. Custer’s own battalion of 210 cavalrymen was wiped out, the remnants of whom—the myth insists—clustered round the general until they fell to the Indian onslaught. No cavalrymen under Custer’s direct command lived to say what happened. Reno and Benteen’s units took heavy casualties and were either too distant from the battle or preoccupied with saving their own lives to notice.

In 1983, a grassfire swept the battlefield and surrounding area, allowing archaeologists to conduct a ground survey and excavations. After years of analysis of the artifacts and human remains, archaeologists and forensic anthropologists doubted the tale. PD

512 the modern world 1600 ce – present

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Human vertebra with metal arrowhead

video superimposition technique

Archaeologists recovered the skeletal remains of more than thirty troopers. Forensic anthropologists were able to reconstruct what the men looked like while alive and describe their last moments.

One soldier had been shot in the chest with a repeating rifle, shot in the head with a pistol, and then had his skull smashed. To make sure he would be recognized in the afterlife as having been killed in battle, his chest had been slashed and arrows shot into him.

Archaeologists found a bone assemblage along with European-style, non-regulation clothing including a rubber button such as those found on ponchos. The face bones indicated he was part white and part Indian. The only racially mixed individual to have been killed under Custer’s command is scout Mitch Boyer (1837–76). Video superimposition was used to overlay a photograph of him on the bone. The fit was excellent and it is likely that the remains are his.

archaeology explodes the myth After the fire at the site of the battle, archaeologists investigated it over several years. They found 5,000 artifacts and much new data. By combining crime-lab methods with spatial patterning and artifact analysis, they verified cavalry positions and defined previously unknown Indian fighting areas.

Hundreds of spent cartridges, bullets, bits of military clothing and guns, and even metal arrowheads were recovered during the excavations of the battlefield. All firearms leave unique markings on the bullets fired from them. A careful ground survey of the battlefield using metal detectors to locate spent cartridges, followed by forensic analysis of the cartridges’ unique markings, allowed archaeologists to map out the movements of the cavalryman and the Indian—or at least his rifle—across the battlefield.

Among their findings is that the hill where Custer made his famous last stand is marked by a heavy concentration of spent cartridges, but it is unclear whether Custer was one of the last of his men to fall, or even whether it was the site of a last stand at all.

Although the cavalry attacked the Indian encampment as a cohesive and well-ordered fighting unit, panic quickly set in among the troops and their discipline evaporated. It is now clear that Custer’s force was wiped out piece by piece, cut down by sniping Indians whose repeating rifles were superior to the cavalrymen’s single-shot carbines. It is unlikely that there was any hand-to-hand fighting. The final part of the battle is thought not to have taken place on Last Stand Hill as paintings and the myth suggest, but in a ravine, where soldiers were hunted down and killed.

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