Pyramids, with homes on top?

John Roach at National Geographic News has a lot to say about an odd pyramid that had rooftop homes and possible ritual sacrifices ... At rare Peru site, elites linked to copper industry lived on high, experts say.

Yes, it's yielded human remains—including five females who may have been ritually sacrificed. But it's the signs of life that make a half-excavated Peruvian pyramid of the Moche culture stand out, archaeologists say.

"Often these pyramidal mounds were built as mortuaries more than anything else," said excavation co-leader Edward Swenson. (See pictures from the tomb of the Moche "king of bling.")

"In most instances [a pyramid] is not where people live, it is not where they were cooking their food," the University of Toronto archaeologist added.

But the newly exposed 1,400-year-old flat-topped pyramid supported residences for up to a couple dozen elites, who oversaw and perhaps took part in copper production at the site, evidence suggests.

The pre-Inca pyramid dwellers likely presided over important rituals, feasted on roasted llama and guinea pig, and drank corn beer, according to archaeologists working at the site.

Among the signs of occupation are at least 19 adobe stands where large vessels of water and corn beer were stored, as well as scattered llama, dog, guinea pig, and fish bones and traces of coca leaves and red peppers.

"There's a far more robust domestic occupation than what we would have expected," said expedition co-leader John Warner, an archaeologist with the University of Kentucky.

Read more of his great article here.

Easter Island and Thor

As if you needed more proof that Norwegians are just amazing - check out details of Thor Heyerdahl...yes, he name really was Thor!

Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002) was a Norwegian ethnographer who explored the archaeology of the Pacific and excavated at Easter Island. He fought with the Free Norwegian Forces in World War II, and was decorated for his bravery.

In 1947, he embarked on his legendary Kon-Tiki expedition from Peru to Polynesia, travelling over 6,000 kilometers on a small balsawood raft. The expedition proved that it was possible for such a tremendous journey to be made on a lift raft and affirmed Heyerdahl's belief that this is how the string of islands across the Pacific Ocean came to be populated millennia ago.

His epic journey was filmed, winning Heyerdahl and Oscar for Best Documentary, and turned into a book, selling 60 million copies worldwide.

While on his sea hop Thor enjoyed the simpler things in life, like catching sharks for dinner...!

In 1970, he crossed the Atlantic on a papyrus raft, Ra II, undermining the belief that Columbus was first to cross the ocean. His adventures always included an international crew and they always flew a UN flag, in support of Heyerdahl's internationalism convictions. He was also concerned with the damage to the planet caused by pollution.

Stop looting via Google

This is a good news story that began with some exceedingly grim news.

This grim news came to light in the late spring of 2003, after the dust had begun settling from the invasion of Iraq and archaeologists began taking stock of the country’s looted archaeological sites. To measure the severity of the problem and determine when most of it had occurred, Elizabeth Stone, an archaeologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, purchased a series of high-resolution commercial satellite images taken of southern Iraq just before and after the invasion. Stone pored over them, examining known sites and measuring the extent of looters’ pits over time. These scars on the landscape can be seen from space.

Much of looting, Stone discovered, occurred just before and just after the invasion. And the total area pillaged, she noted in a 2007 paper in Antiquity, “was many times greater than all the archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands.”

It was a grave situation, one requiring intervention from Iraq’s new government, and Stone let everyone know what she had learned. At one point, she flew out to California to give a lecture on the subject at Stanford University, and as sometimes happens, her talk galvanized a young post-doc, Daniel Contreras. Contreras had put in several field seasons as an archaeologist in Peru: he had found the scale of looting there staggering. “You can’t drive down the Panamerican highway without seeing looters’ pits,” he says. “So looting is really never off the radar there.”

Contreras wanted to start quantifying looting in Peru, à la Stone. But satellite photos are pricey, and Contreras couldn’t afford to buy them. So he and Stanford colleague, Neil Brodie, an archaeologist who specializes in looting issues, started casting around for something much cheaper. What they discovered is that Google Earth photos work just fine. So in the current issue of Antiquity, Contreras publishes the results* of his Google Earth study of looting in Peru’s Vir’u Valley, concluding that a whopping 116 acres of sites in this relatively small valley show intensive damage.

Ok, I know, this still doesn’t sound like good news. But I thought Contrera’s study was ingenious, so I called him up this week to talk about it. Just before hanging up, I asked him whether this might be the beginning of a much larger project, one that enlists the sharp eyes of the Google Earth community and anyone else with an interest in archaeology to keep an eye on the world’s looting hotspots. Could archaeologists crowdsource the monitoring of the our collective archaeological heritage?

“Definitely,” he said, without a moment of hesitation. In fact, he’s now thinking of how to go about doing just that. The technology is all there, he said, it’s just a question of how to administer it. “And I think this would make people a little more aware of the problem of looting, as well as providing a tangible source of documentation for archaeologists.”

Facts and figures of this type are exactly what archaeologists need the next time they press for stricter laws on the looting and sale of antiquites. And I think this new Google Earth study is very good news.

(Story Source)

*Antiquity

Volume: 84 Number: 324 Page: 544–555

Huaqueros and remote sensing imagery: assessing looting damage in the Virú Valley, Peru

Daniel A. Contreras*

*Archaeology Center, Stanford University, P.O. Box 20446, Stanford, CA 94309, USA (Email: dcontre@stanford.edu)

This article presents a new initiative in combating looting from the air, building on previous work in Iraq and Jordan. Looted sites in the Virú Valley, Peru, are visible as pit clusters on dated versions of Google Earth. Compare these with earlier air photographs and Gordon Willey's famous survey of the 1940s, and we have a dated chronicle of looting events. This makes it possible to demonstrate that modern looting is certainly taking place and linked to an upsurge in the antiquities trade. As well as being a new instrument for managing heritage, the author shows that the looting survey offers an important research dividend: the location of cemeteries not previously systematicalldocumented, with potential for more thorough investigation even of already looted areas.