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Stone tools on Sulawesi
Excavations at a site called Calio, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, have found new evidence of the island’s occupation by early hominin species.
Carried out between 2019 and 2022 by a joint team from Indonesia and Australia, the excavation uncovered seven Early Pleistocene tools: all chert flakes that had been struck from larger stones. Dating of the surrounding sediments using palaeomagnetic techniques along with the dating of fossilised pig teeth found in the same layer using uranium series and electron-spin resonance (US-ESR) found that the tools date to at least 1.04 million years ago, and possibly up to 1.48 million years ago. These findings suggest that hominins reached Sulawesi significantly earlier than was previously known, as until now the oldest archaeological indication of early humans on Sulawesi dated to just 194,000 years ago.
Neolithic feasting finds in Iran
Analysis of wild boar remains, found in a pit at a site in the Zagros Mountains in Iran, suggests that early Neolithic communities may have gathered there for ritual feasting.
The excavations in 2016, at the site of Asiab, uncovered a large pit in the centre of a round structure, which is believed to have been a communal building. Inside the pit were the crania and mandibles of 19 wild boars, as well as the skull of a brown bear and fragments of red deer antler. All of these faunal remains had been carefully placed in the pit, arranged east west. The amount of meat these boars would have provided (a minimum of c.700kg) is far more than the average early Neolithic settlement could have consumed, so it is thought that this may be associated with a communal feasting event in which nearby communities could have gathered together. This was corroborated by the isotope analysis of the remains, which found that the boars were not local, with some originating from more than 44 miles (70km) away.
Pompeii reoccupied
New evidence has been uncovered from Pompeii, which adds to suggestions that some areas of the city were reoccupied, at least for a brief period, after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
Recent excavations in the Insula Meridionalis have found signs that people – whether survivors of the eruption or those looking to loot the ruins – settled on the upper levels of houses that had re-emerged from under the ash, using the original ground floors as cellars with hearth, ovens, and mills. It appears that this precarious living situation continued at the site until at least the 5th century AD, when the area was fully abandoned, perhaps after another eruption.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Image: M W Moore
