Ahh, the Life of a Pirate

Posted on September 1, 2011 by marcia

Caribbean Pirate Life: Tobacco, Ale … and Fine Pottery

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 01 September 2011 Time: 10:56 AM ET

Archaeologists researching a site where Caribbean pirates “laid their hats” have found the drunken men not only smoked like the devil but also preferred fine pottery. They were sort of the real “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
CREDIT: KSL Productions LLC / Shutterstock

They smoked like the devil, drank straight from the bottle, annoyed the Spanish and had a fascination with fine pottery.

Oh, and they didn’t use plates … at least not ceramic ones.

Based in 18th-century Belize, they were real “Pirates of the Caribbean” and now new research by 21st-century archaeologists is telling us what their lives were like.

Their findings, detailed in a chapter in a recently published book, suggest that while these pipe-smoking men acted as stereotypical pirates would — drinking, smoking and stealing — they also kept fancy, impractical porcelain in their camps. The fine dinnerware may have been a way to imbue the appearance of upper-class society. [See photos of the pirate loot discovered]

Caribbean pirates

From historical records scientists had known that by 1720 these Caribbean pirates occupied a settlement called the “Barcadares,” a name derived from the Spanish word for “landing place.” Located 15 miles (24 kilometers) up the Belize River, in territory controlled by the Spanish, the site was used as an illegal logwood-cutting operation. The records indicate that a good portion of its occupants were pirates taking a pause from life at sea.

Their living conditions were rustic to say the least. There were no houses, and the men slept on raised platforms with a canvas over them to keep the mosquitoes out. They hunted and gathered a good deal of their food.

Capt. Nathaniel Uring, a merchant seaman who was shipwrecked and spent more than four months with the inhabitants, described them in the book The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring (reprinted in 1928 by Cassell and Company) as a “rude drunken crew, some which have been pirates, and most of them sailors.”

Their “chief delight is in drinking; and when they broach a quarter cask or a hogshead of Bottle Ale or Cyder, keeping at it sometimes a week together, drinking till they fall asleep; and as soon as they awake at it again, without stirring off the place.” Eventually Captain Uring returned to Jamaica and, in 1726, published an account of his adventures.

to read more and see the photos, go to: http://www.livescience.com/15866-caribbean-pirates-archaeology.html

Peruvian 13 Towers Sun Citadel

Posted on August 11, 2011 by marcia

The Thirteen Towers: Peruvian Citadel is Site of Earliest Ancient Solar Observatory in the Americas

Existence of sophisticated Sun cults uncovered by researchers from University of Leicester and Yale University

Article Image and Home Page Image: courtesy of Ivan Ghezzi

image fr/(SAN).

A 2,300 year old solar observatory in Peru has been identified by new research published today (March 1), in the journal Science, by archaeologists from the University of Leicester and Yale University.

The Thirteen Towers of Chankillo have been discovered to span, almost exactly, the annual rising and setting arcs of the sun when viewed from two specially constructed observation points.

The existence of this observatory predates the European conquests by 1,800 years and even precedes the monuments of similar purpose constructed by the Mayans in Central America.

Chankillo is a large ceremonial centre covering several square kilometers. It was better known in the past for a heavily fortified hilltop structure with massive walls, restricted gates, and parapets. But the purpose of a 300m-long line of Thirteen Towers lying along a small hill nearby had remained a mystery. New evidence now identifies it as a solar observatory.

And the researchers go further-pointing to evidence of an ancient Sun cult participating in public rituals and feasts directly linked to the observation and interpretation of the seasonal passage of the Sun.

Historic Contact: Celts & Pawnee Indians

Posted on August 11, 2011 by marcia

This article is from: http://onter.net/news.html

The Pawnee Americans is an obscure 1925 article recently brought to our attention by a reader. Author Mark E. Zimmerman cites archaeological finds along major riverways throughout mid-America as well as Native American ethnographies to theorize Celts, who came to America long before Columbus, had children with the ancestors of a Pawnee tribe, the same one mentioned by Von Del Chamberlain in his 1982 book When Stars Came Down to Earth: Cosmology of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of North America illustrated with a map of the Milky Way preserved on a tanned elk hide. (NY Times article on Adler Planetarium show “Spirits From the Sky” in late 2000). Although Zimmerman believes these “long heads” slowly migrated from the eastern seaboard, through the Ohio River valley to what is today southeastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas, perhaps more conveniently, Celtic sailors well may have navigated the inland waterways to bring their Ogham and European archaeoastronomy to southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle. Zimmerman’s 13 page article, highlighted and including our map, below, has just been added to our online PDF bibliography. You may download the 1.2 MB article directly here. Alternatively, for an overview of this and more, watch Celts & Indians on our videos page.

Zimmerman refers to a tribal elder Lenni Lenape historian and the Walum Olum, tree bark pictographs to aid in recalling song verses. More about the largely ignored, Native American ethnographic record on this, can be found at Frozen Trail, a web site describing Norse travels across an ice bridge from Greenland to Labrador. At the bottom of this external web page are links for more about the controversy regarding this artifact, discredited and discarded by much of academia, still simmering in 2008.

satellite map showing selective mid-American riverways and locations

Archaeogeodesy

Posted on August 7, 2011 by marcia

Archaeogeodesy can be defined as that area of study encompassing prehistoric and ancient place determination, navigation (on land or water), point positioning, measure and representation of the earth, geodynamic phenomena, and the applied astronomy. Archaeogeodesy, by combining fundamental astronomy, geodetic knowledge, applied mathematics, accurate positional data and archaeology, presents a methodology for investigating the architecture, placements, spatial properties, relationships and arrangements of prehistoric sites and monuments. As a new area of inquiry, archaeogeodesy presents unique avenues of assessing ancient understandings of geography, of place, and of the earth and the cosmos as evidenced by archaeological remains.

Miamisburg Mound, Ohio

We generally regard temporally, spatially and culturally diverse ancient monuments as unrelated. The many pyramids of Egypt, whether stepped, bent, or true, have interrelationships, however understudied. What of the other pyramids and similar mounds dispersed the world over? Few would argue no relationship between neighboring earthworks in North America, for example, yet their similarities to Neolithic mounds and circular embankments of the British Isles go relatively unnoticed. Visitors to Stonehenge and other stone circles who notice surrounding earthworks are unlikely to postulate connections, spatial or functional, to similar earthen monuments in distant Ohio because of an intervening ocean.

for more, go to: http://jqjacobs.net/astro/aegeo.html

Pre-Columbian Settlements in the Amazon

Posted on August 6, 2011 by marcia

New discoveries concerning pre-Columbian settlements in the Amazon

October 25, 2010

The pre-Columbian Indian societies that once lived in the Amazon rainforests may have been much larger and more advanced than researchers previously realized.

Together with Brazilian colleagues, archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg have found the remains of approximately 90 settlements in an area South of the city of Santarém, in the Brazilian part of the Amazon.

“The most surprising thing is that many of these settlements are a long way from rivers, and are located in rainforest areas that extremely sparsely populated today,” says Per Stenborg from the Department of Historical Studies, who led the Swedish part of the archaeological investigations in the area over the summer.

Traditionally archaeologists have thought that these inland areas were sparsely populated also before the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries. One reason for this assumption is that the soils found in the inland generally is quite infertile; another reason is that access to water is poor during dry periods as these areas are situated at long distances from the major watercourses. It has therefore been something of a mystery that the earliest historical account; from Spaniard Francisco de Orellana’s journey along the River Amazon in 1541-42, depicted the Amazon as a densely populated region with what the Spanish described as “towns”, situated not only along the river itself, but also in the inland.

NEW DISCOVERIES COULD CHANGE PREVIOUS IDEAS

Ancient Palace Remains Found

Posted on August 6, 2011 by marcia

Remains of Ancient Palace Discovered

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 05 August 2011 Time: 02:04 PM ET

Only a small portion of the structure, possibly an ancient palace, has been excavated so far (part of it can be seen in the photo’s bottom foreground) in central Sudan beneath another ancient palace. The structure is the oldest building ever found in the ancient city of Meroë.
CREDIT: Photo copyright Royal Ontario Museum

Hidden beneath an ancient palace in what is now central Sudan, archaeologists have discovered the oldest building in the city of Meroë, a structure that also may have housed royalty.

At its height, the city was controlled by a dynasty of kings who ruled about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) of territory that stretched from southern Egypt to areas south of modern-day Khartoum.

People of Meroë built palaces and small pyramids, and developed a writing system that scholars still can’t fully translate today. Although Meroë has been excavated off and on for more than 150 years, archaeologists are not yet clear on how it came to be. The city seems to have emerged out of nowhere

Machu Picchu Theories

Posted on July 23, 2011 by marcia

What Was Machu Picchu For? Top Five Theories Explained

Popular ideas include a royal retreat and sacred memorial.

A resident llama mows the grass at Machu Picchu in Peru.

Machu Picchu is encircled by the Urubamba River (pictured), considered sacred by the Inca.

Photograph by Michael and Jennifer Lewis, National Geographic

Ker Than

for National Geographic News

Published July 21, 2011

Nestled atop a mountain ridge in Peru, the 15th-century Inca city of Machu Picchu had sat largely forgotten for centuries—until archaeologist Hiram Bingham began excavations of the ruins a hundred years ago this week.

Now one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, Machu Picchu’s original purpose is still unknown—though many archaeologists think they are closer to finding an answer. (Take a Machu Picchu quiz.)

Here are some of the top theories about Machu Picchu proposed—and in some cases disproven—in the century since its “rediscovery.”

New Look Inside Mayan Tomb

Posted on July 23, 2011 by marcia

24 June 2011 Last updated at 21:53 ET

Video camera reveals secrets of ancient Mayan tomb

Click to play

The inside of a Mayan tomb thought to be 1,500 years old has been filmed by archaeologists.

Using a tiny video camera, the researchers were able to capture images of the burial chamber in Palenque in south-eastern Mexico.

As the device was lowered 16ft (5m) down into the tomb, they saw red paint and black figures emblazoned on its walls.

The scientists say the images will shed new light on the Mayan civilisation.

Royal necropolis?

The tomb in Palenque was discovered in 1999 and then filmed using a tiny camera lowered on a pole, but archaeologists have not been able to excavate for fear of undermining the pyramid.

Palenque was a Mayan city-state in what is now Mexico’s Chiapas state, but after its decline during the 8th Century AD it was absorbed into the jungle.

Jerusalem Underground

Posted on June 3, 2011 by marcia

Beneath Jerusalem, an underground city takes shape

- AP – In this May 17, 2011 photo, a view of Zedekiah’s Cave is seen in Jerusalem’s Old City.

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press – Mon May 30, 12:09 pm ET

JERUSALEM – Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above.

At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab.

Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago.

Chromographics Institute

Color + Art = Healing

Tag Archives: archaeology