archaeology – UofL News

UofL, Kentucky School for Blind team up for archaeological dig project

Janet Cappiello — Mon, 23 May 2022 18:50:46 +0000

Students and researchers from the University of Louisville are helping with an archaeological dig at a site of the former segregated school on the Louisville campus of the (KSB).

KSB, run by the Kentucky Department of ��ֱ�� (KDE), provides educational services for students throughout the state who are blind or visually impaired. Starting in 1884, the school operated a segregated facility on its campus that closed in the 1950s and was demolished.

UofL students from the Department of Anthropology are helping teach younger KSB students archeological field methods such as screening and excavating. A community participation day was held May 21.

In addition to KDE, other partners are the UofL’s (CACHe) and the Kentucky School for the Blind Charitable Foundation (KSBCF).

“It has been great seeing these students learn about archeology and be so excited about the process and learn about the history of their campus,” said Ashley Smallwood, UofL associate professor of anthropology and archaeologist who is directing the project as part of her Archaeology Methods course. Assisting her is Tom Jennings, assistant professor of anthropology, archaeologist and director of CACHe. A total of 10 UofL students are taking the course and participating in the project.

KSB Principal Peggy Sinclair-Morris said the school was excited to partner with the KSBCF and UofL for a unique experience.

“In addition, it supports learning about the field of archeology and the importance of preserving and talking about history,” she said.

Kentucky Commissioner of ��ֱ�� Jason E. Glass said the project also supports the state initiative.

“This opportunity really hits upon two of the main themes of United We Learn, which is a new vision for the future of public education in the Commonwealth that was created by Kentuckians,” he said. “The central pillar of United We Learn is creating a vibrant experience for every student by making it more hands-on and experiential. It also stresses the importance of our schools and their communities working together.”

The dig began May 9 and will end May 27.

UofL researcher leads team that discovered modern humans and Neanderthals possibly lived in the same area concurrently

Betty Coffman — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 19:45:28 +0000

Modern humans arrived in the westernmost part of Europe 41,000 to 38,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously known, according to Jonathan Haws, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Louisville, and an international team of researchers that includes three UofL alumni. The team has revealed the discovery of stone tools used by modern humans dated to the earlier time period in a report published this week in the journal .

The tools, discovered in a cave named Lapa do Picareiro, located near the Atlantic coast of central Portugal, link the site with similar finds from across Eurasia to the Russian plain. The discovery supports a rapid westward dispersal of modern humans across Eurasia within a few thousand years of their first appearance in southeastern Europe. The tools document the presence of modern humans in westernmost Europe at a time when Neanderthals previously were thought to be present in the region. The finding has important ramifications for understanding the possible interaction between the two human groups and the ultimate disappearance of the Neanderthals.

“The question whether the last surviving Neanderthals in Europe have been replaced or assimilated by incoming modern humans is a long-standing, unsolved issue in paleoanthropology,” said Lukas Friedl, an anthropologist at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, and project co-leader. “The early dates for Aurignacian stone tools at Picareiro likely rule out the possibility that modern humans arrived into the land long devoid of Neanderthals, and that by itself is exciting.”

Until now, the oldest evidence for modern humans south of the Ebro River in Spain came from Bajondillo, a cave site on the southern coast. The discovery of stone stools characterized as Aurignacian, technology associated with early modern humans in Europe, in a secure stratigraphic context at Picareiro provide definitive evidence of early modern human arrival.

“Bajondillo offered tantalizing but controversial evidence that modern humans were in the area earlier than we thought,” Haws said. “The evidence in our report definitely supports the Bajondillo implications for an early modern human arrival, but it’s still not clear how they got here. People likely migrated along east-west flowing rivers in the interior, but a coastal route is still possible.”

“The spread of anatomically modern humans across Europe many thousands of years ago is central to our understanding of where we came from as a now-global species,” said John Yellen, program director for archaeology and archaeometry at the National Science Foundation, which supported the work. “This discovery offers significant new evidence that will help shape future research investigating when and where anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe and what interactions they may have had with Neanderthals.”

The Picareiro cave has been under excavation for 25 years and has produced a record of human occupation over the last 50,000 years. An international research team from the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB) in Faro, Portugal, is investigating the arrival of modern humans and extinction of Neanderthals in the region.

The project is led by Haws, Michael Benedetti of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Friedl, in collaboration with Nuno Bicho and João Cascalheira of the University of Algarve, where ICArEHB is housed, and Telmo Pereira of the Autonomous University of Lisbon, Portugal. Co-authors on the publication include UofL alumni M. Grace Ellis, Milena Carvalho and Brandon Zinsious. All three have degrees in anthropology from UofL and are pursuing doctorates at other universities.

With support from U.S. National Science Foundation grants to Haws and Benedetti, the team has uncovered rich archaeological deposits that include stone tools in association with thousands of animal bones from hunting, butchery and cooking activities.

Determining the age of early modern human and Neanderthal occupations

Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna, Italy, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, joined the research team to determine the age of the early modern human and Neanderthal occupations. She used state-of-the-art bone pretreatment and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to date the bones that show evidence of butchery cut marks and intentional breakage by humans to extract bone marrow, a highly prized and nutritious food consumed by ancient people. The dating results place the modern human arrival to the interval between 41,000 and 38,000 years ago. The last Neanderthal occupation at the site took place between 45,000 and 42,000 years ago.

Spatial analysis of high-resolution, 3-dimensional data confirmed the precise stratigraphic relationships between artifacts and radiocarbon samples and revealed discrete layers of occupation at the site.

“Analysis of high-resolution spatial data is crucial for documenting and observing lenses of human occupation and reconstructing occupational patterns, especially in cave environments where complex formation processes exist,” said Grace Ellis, a PhD student at Colorado State University studying landscape archaeology and ancient settlement patterns.

While the dates suggest that modern humans arrived after Neanderthals disappeared, a nearby cave, Oliveira, has evidence for Neanderthals’ survival until 37,000 years ago. The two groups may have overlapped for several thousand years in the area.

“If the two groups overlapped for some time in the highlands of Atlantic Portugal, they may have maintained contacts between each other and exchanged not only technology and tools, but also mates. This could possibly explain why many Europeans have Neanderthal genes,” said Bicho, director of ICArEHB.

Despite the overlap in dates, there does not appear to be any evidence for direct contact between Neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals continued to use the same stone tools they had before modern humans arrived, bringing a completely different stone technology.

“Differences between the stone tool assemblages dated before and after about 41,000 years ago are striking at Picareiro,” said Cascalheira, an ICArEHB board member and specialist on stone tool technology. “Older levels are dominated by quartzite and quartz raw materials and marked by the presence of Levallois technology, a typical element of Neanderthal occupations in Europe. Aurignacian levels, on the other hand, are dominated by flint and the production of very small blades that were likely used as inserts in arrow shafts for hunting.”

Flint also was used to make tools for butchering animals such as red deer, ibex and possibly rabbits. The team recovered a few red deer canine teeth, often used as personal adornments, but so far these do not show traces of manufacturing jewelry.

The cave itself has an enormous amount of sediment remaining for future work and the excavation still hasn’t reached the bottom.

“I’ve been excavating at Picareiro for 25 years and just when you start to think it might be done giving up its secrets, a new surprise gets unearthed,” Haws said. “Every few years something remarkable turns up and we keep digging.”

UofL archaeologist to discuss mapping of Maya ‘Atlantis’

Betty Coffman — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 14:34:49 +0000

After a Guatemalan sport diver discovered ancient Maya ruins in the depths of Lake Atitlan, underwater archaeologist John R. Hale, PhD, director of the Liberal Studies program at the University of Louisville, was invited to map the site, located in the Sierra Madre mountains of Guatemala.

“Working with UofL archaeology majors who also were scuba divers, we were able to show that the site was in fact a 2,000-year-old ceremonial center that the Maya had constructed on a small circular island in the middle of the large lake,” Hale said. “Using newly developed mapping techniques that linked sonar with satellite data, our UofL team was able to reconstruct the original contours of this Maya ‘Atlantis’ and reveal the extraordinary array of altars, standing stones and processional ways which had played a vital role in early Maya ceremony, cult and myth-making.”

A real-life “Indiana Jones,” Hale received a PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University and has performed field work for more than 40 years. He has published works on ancient Scandinavian, Greek and Maya civilizations and technologies.

At this month’s Beer with a Scientist, Hale will recount the exploration of the ancient, underwater site. His talk begins at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at , 8023 Catherine Lane. A 30-minute presentation will be followed by an informal Q&A session.

Portland space is ‘a town-gown relationship at its best’

Judy Hughes — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 15:45:24 +0000

An 1880s brick warehouse nestled in Louisville’s Portland neighborhood has been transformed into space for College of Arts and Sciences students and faculty to create art, honor and learn from history and develop partnerships for the future.

City and university officials, along with building owner/developer Gill Holland, ceremonially snipped the red ribbon March 5 to welcome guests to the newly renovated space. Fine arts and archaeology students have settled in this semester to make a home for programs that outgrew Belknap Campus facilities.

“We’re super excited to be here,” Dean Kimberly Kempf-Leonard told the crowd in thanking people who contributed to the years-long effort. “This is a proud moment for many here.”

UofL is leasing most of the space, about 43,000 square feet, from the Rowan Downstream LLC group that includes Holland, noted for revitalization efforts in Portland and NuLu sections of the city. The building retains some elements that reflect its former uses over time including steamer trunk factory, floor-covering distribution business, storage warehouse and senior nutrition center.

“When you walk in here, you go ‘Wow,’” said Mayor Greg Fischer, also joined by Metro Councilwoman Barbara Sexton Smith at the ceremony.

Now its second-floor mezzanine is rimmed with graduate student and faculty studios and offices associated with the UofL Hite Arts Institute’s master of fine arts degree in studio arts and design, an MFA program that began in 2014. Below that are exhibition spaces and larger studios for media including ceramics, glass, wood, metal, printmaking and digital art.

“You can feel the creative energy. You can see the amazing art,” Holland said.

In another wing, the university’s collections of hundreds of thousands of artifacts have been relocated to climate-controlled rooms to better protect them for the future and future study. Archaeology students and faculty from the anthropology department will use six new laboratories – some for instruction and some for sample preparation and artifact cleaning – for their research and teaching. Planners there expect to do more outreach to interest and interact with the neighborhood residents, particularly schoolchildren, according to Thomas Jennings, an assistant professor working in the renovated facility.

Other UofL students benefiting soon from the Portland space will be from the urban and public affairs department. The Urban Design Studio, which researches and raises community awareness of better, more sustainable design practices, has relocated there from its former leased downtown space. Studio director Patrick Piuma echoed the hope for more collaboration across the academic disciplines thanks to the new proximity and envisioned possibilities for public art or neighborhood projects tackled together.

“I’ve always wanted to integrate more with others,” he said. “Now it’s an opportunity to interact on a daily basis.”

At the ribbon-cutting, UofL President Neeli Bendapudi commended those who had the vision to see potential for the university’s presence in the Portland space. “This is a university that I promise you is going places.”

“This is a town-gown relationship at its best,” she said.

Many people at the ribbon-cutting remained for the first large public event in the space – Bendapudi’s lecture on “The Liberal Arts in a Global Economy.” Her talk was the 14th annual Phi Beta Kappa lecture, which the College of Arts and Sciences offers with the Phi Beta Kappa Association of Kentuckiana.

Check out highlights from the ribbon-cutting event below.