What I mean is there something like a maximum age where bones simply disintegrate no matter how well entombed?

NOTE: This article is complemented by a couple of publications in Fossil Studies and Science Advances.

The fresco depicts Christ as the “Good Shepherd,” young and beardless, carrying a lamb on his shoulders and surrounded by animals and floral motifs. Archaeologists date the painted tomb chamber (hypogeum) to the 3rd century AD, an era before the cross became the dominant symbol of Christianity.

The discovery was made at the Hisardere necropolis near ancient Nicaea, in present-day İznik. Researchers describe the fresco as one of the region's best-preserved early depictions of Christ.

📸 Photo credit: Semih Tutunsatar

The Study: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/18/20/3495

Walking the Blue Mountains west of Sydney is hard work. Sandstone cliffs, thick eucalyptus forest and deep valleys hide many rock shelters, and crews on foot miss a lot of them.

A University of Sydney team, working with the Dharug Custodian Aboriginal Corporation, tried a different approach. They used laser scans from the air plus a set of computer models to point the way. The study appears in Remote Sensing.

LiDAR fires laser pulses at the ground and times the return. Some pulses slip through gaps in the trees, so the data show the land under the canopy. The team tested two sources across a 1,057 square kilometer area. One was free, low-detail aircraft data from the New South Wales government, with at least 0.5 points per square meter.

The other came from a drone flown at 75 meters, which gathered at least 100 points per square meter over four zones. The models, built in ArcGIS Pro, look for steep slopes, big height gaps within a small patch of ground, and low terrain next to open space.

Shapes too small or too large get filtered out. The aircraft model produced 751,655 detections across the whole area. The drone model produced 2,017 in the four zones. The researchers checked the likeliest ones in 3D point clouds, then walked to them.

All 19 candidates they visited were shelters, overhangs or hollows under rock. The authors point out they picked those 19 by eye, so the number says nothing about overall accuracy. Results were stronger for known sites. Both datasets picked out six shelters already on record, including Honey Upgrade, Morley’s Creek and Emu Cave.

Coordinates in the state heritage database sat 1.78 to 30.10 meters from the drip lines the team mapped with a GNSS receiver. The LiDAR detections landed closer. The authors say some older records are off by hundreds of meters.

Three shelters had never been registered. BM139 holds three large stone artifacts on the floor. BM140 has 21 stone artifacts and a panel with two red hand stencils, one left and one right, covering about 35 by 15 centimeters. BM141 yielded 26 stone artifacts during a short surface check.

Time and money limit how many candidates a crew could visit, so the team ranks them. A drone detection within 1 meter of an aircraft detection gets high priority. A shelter named DJ1-028, which shows no visible artifacts, appeared only in the drone data. The aircraft data alone miss some shelters.

The study has gaps. The team has no false positive count and did not survey areas without detections. The settings were tuned for Blue Mountains sandstone, and the raster method struggles with deep undercuts. Work in other regions would need new calibration.

The Dharug asked the authors to leave out site coordinates and photos of rock art and stone tools, and they did. The team is still checking detections with the Dharug. Next, they plan to test the method in western Arnhem Land and western New South Wales.

Sometimes a dark discolouration in the soil is enough to open a window onto a long-forgotten world. In the Lower Bavarian village of Großköllnbach (Dingolfing-Landau district) just such a clue led to a discovery that is posing new questions for archaeologists: in a pit they uncovered the remains of a person who lived around 7,000 years ago.

But it is not just the great age of the find that makes it remarkable. Above all, it is the unusual position of the skeleton: unlike the burials that were customary at the time, the body lies in a striking, twisted posture. The condition of the cervical spine is also puzzling researchers.

The discovery came to light during archaeological investigations in the future Steigäcker IV development area. The excavation team had been examining the site for five weeks when what initially appeared to be a nondescript change in soil colour turned out to be a pit containing human bones.

For district archaeologist Dr Florian Eibl, it is above all the type of burial that is unusual. The people of the Linear Pottery culture (Linienbandkeramik), one of the earliest farming cultures in Central Europe, often buried their dead in crouched burials.

The deceased were laid on their side with their legs drawn up, in a posture resembling a sleeping person.

I’m an international student and I’m in my last year for my MA. I’m debating on whether to go back to my country or stay in the uk. My main interest is in artifact conservation and collections. I know there are a lot of chances for archeology in the uk, but I’m honestly not sure if getting a worker visa or trying to get a sponsorship is really worth it compared to just going back home. I’d couldn’t go back to my parents anyway and I’d have to go pretty far in my country to find a job and location for me. I’ve been considering paid internships and everything, but I think I want a more permanent solution, but honestly I’m not really sure.

I have some experience in conserving artifacts, but my degree won’t really give me a lot of hands on experience. I’m finding a lot of volunteer opportunities as an object handler for a museum, organizing a zooarcheology project into new shelving, and helping cataloging, analog, and rebagging collections for museums.

I’m also considering doing americorps, but I kind of don’t really understand the loans thing they do.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, a US law which set up protections for historical sites. A special section of this act, Section 106, requires developers to work with archaeologists prior to certain construction projects.

But now, a proposed law stands to change everything. Embedded in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is language which would take archaeologists out of this process, remove all opportunities for public comment, and allow development to continue even if historical sites are encountered.

If you're in the US, please consider calling your congresspeople before November 9th and ask them to protect US archaeology by opposing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act. Learn more at https://www.106strong.com/

A few years ago, excavations at Stainton West near Carlisle turned up two carved oak "tridents" in a waterlogged river channel, dated to the early 4th millennium BC. Similar objects are known from Ehenside Tarn in Cumbria and from County Armagh. Each is carved from a single oak plank, with three tines and a pair of shaped projections, or "ears", where the tines meet the body. Nobody is sure what they were for.

My theory is that they're turf cutters and lifters.

Why turf: Neolithic Britain used enormous amounts of it. Long barrows, henge banks, houses and Silbury Hill all contain cut turf, sometimes tens of thousands of sods in a single monument. Yet no turf-cutting tool has been identified from the period. Something had to do that job.

Why this shape:

• It's one piece of oak. A hafted flint, bone or antler blade adds a joint that breaks. A turf specialist tried an ox-scapula mattock, and it was slow and snapped.
• The tines slip past roots and push them aside, where a solid blade would jam.
• It's used low and nearly flat, thrust in to start the cut, then swivelled and levered. The ears act as a pivot to flip the turf onto a plank.
• The best turf grows on flat, stone-free, damp ground such as river floodplains, which is where several of these have been found.

The wear: the complete Stainton example looks to me like a tool at the end of its life. The gaps between the tines have worn from a rounded shape into a V, which traps roots rather than shedding them. Reshaping it further would snap the tines off, and one of the pair did have broken tines. A longer example exists, which I read as a fresher tool earlier in its life.

The test: I carved a one-piece wooden replica on a long handle and tried it on a meadow and a lawn. It lifted sods cleanly. The catch is that I copied the worn Stainton example, so my tines were too short and blunt. It worked anyway, and a fresh, sharp one should work better.

Has anyone seen any other suggested ancient turf lifters?

Video Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfWlXHCuHmU

Sources: F. Brown (2013), IfA Finds Group newsletter, on the Stainton West finds; R. Loveday (2006), "Turf – an Invisible Component", Scottish Archaeological Journal 28(2).

Happy to answer questions. Tear it apart