Preliminary Reports on the Excavations at Burgut Kurgan and Bobolangar in 2017

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Aleti Tunu Bibi: Contextualizing a New Rock Art Site in East Timor and the Wider Asia-Pacific Region

Recent archaeological surveys and excavations on the island of Atauro, East Timor, identified several rock shelters with evidence for prehistoric occupation. Well-preserved rock art was found at one of these sites, Aleti Tunu Bibi. Here we present a description of the site and rock art, including the motifs and design elements, and interpret the site within the context of East Timor and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Most of the art was painted in red (likely ochre) or, in a few circumstances, black pigment (likely charcoal). Ochre was found in Pleistocene and early Holocene layers during excavations of the site. The only observed drawing, the outline of a boat in dry black charcoal, may represent a “boat of the dead” similar to those depicted on Dongson drums in the region, one of which was found recently in East Timor. That a boat is depicted in the drawing suggests that it may have been executed sometime after 2000 b.p. The Aleti Tunu Bibi rock art fits within the description of other East Timor painted rock art and shares some attributes with other sites in East Timor. However, the Aleti Tunu Bibi rock art is also distinct from sites on the mainland, and its presence on Atauro Island supports previous hypotheses of substantial local or temporal variation, and possibly indicates a pre-Austronesian origin for this tradition on the island

THE 2008-2009 EXCAVATIONS AT THE SAC LOCALITY, REBER-RAKIVAL LAPITA SITE, WATOM ISLAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The Reber-Rakival site on Watom Island is of particular significance, as it is the first place where what is now known as Lapita pottery was found, by a German missionary in 1909. It is also significant as a Lapita-era burial site, although there has been much debate about the exact relationship between the burials and the Lapita occupation. In 2008 and 2009 an Otago University/Otago Museum/Papua New Guinea expedition carried out new excavations at the SAC site in Rakival Village, in order to increase the sample size of both burials and ceramics, and to address some of the ogoing debates. The expedition found more burials, Lapita ceramics and associated artefactual material, and while it confirmed the relationship between the burials and the Lapita occupation, it also found that previous excavations had not reached the base of the site, and evidence of human occuption was found up to 0.8m deeper than previously known. Based on this work, a refined stratigraphic sequence is presented, with 7 layers replacing the old 4 zone model that has been used to date. This paper presents the description and interpretation of the SAC locatily at Watom, and provides a basis for other more specialist papers that are in preparation

Preliminary Reports on the Excavations at Burgut Kurgan and Bobolangar in 2017

The current report presents the results of the 2017 excavations of two prehistoric sites in, or in the vicinity of, the Zarabag Oasis, South Uzbekistan. In the Yaz I settlement of Burgut Kurgan, the 2017 excavation season focused on a small portion of the stone wall and was not able to confirm the presence of a gate hypothesised during the 2016 excavations. A trial excavation consisting of three trenches (BBL01–BBL03) was conducted at the site of Bobolangar, which was discovered during a previous field survey in 2016. The pottery sherds collected on the surface of Bobolanghar were from the Late Bronze Age and the date of the site was confirmed by the presence of Late Bronze Age pottery in secure stratigraphic contexts. Moreover, two burials were found in trench BBL03. Based on the characteristics of the burial traditions, it is likely that both individuals were interred during the Middle Ages and the graves were cut into the Late Bronze Age layers of the site. The human skeletons were exceptionally well‑preserved and preliminary details of the bioarchaeological analyses are presented here

“Captain of All These Men of Death”: An Integrated Case Study of Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century Otago, New Zealand

The South Island of New Zealand saw several major waves of migration in the mid-nineteenth century, predominantly from Europe but also with an ethnically distinct Chinese presence. The rural community of Milton, Otago, was a settler community established primarily by immigrants from the United Kingdom in search of a better quality of life. However, these settlers faced unique challenges related to surviving in an isolated location with very little infrastructure compared to their origin populations. In 2016, excavation was undertaken at St. John’s burial ground, Milton, with the object of using bioarchaeological methods to elucidate the lived experience of the first organized European settlement of this region, particularly in terms of health and disease. Here we present a case study of Burial 21 (B21), a male individual of known identity and a documented cause of death. We use biochemical and paleopathological methods to ground-truth his written history, which includes a period of invalidism due to tuberculosis, and discuss the implications of our findings for the community, provision of care, and quality of life in rural colonial New Zealand. He maha tonu ngā hekenga tāngata ki Te Waka a Māui i ngā tau kei waenga pū o te rau tau 1800, ko te nuinga nō Ūropi, heoi he tokomaha tonu nō Haina. Nā ngā manene nō Peretānia te hapori o Milton i whakatū ki Tokomairaro, i Ōtākou, i tō rātou hiahia ki tētehi oranga kounga ake i tō rātou oranga i Peretānia. Heoi, ko ētehi o ngā wero nui i tau ki ngā manene nei i ahu mai i te noho pūreirei ki tētehi wāhi kāore rawa ngā ratonga i rite ki ngā wāhi i ahu mai ai rātou. I te tau 2016, i hahu kōiwi i te urupā o Hato Hone, i Milton, hei whakamātau i te kaha o te ora me ngā momo mate i pā atu ki ngā tāngata whai i noho i te rohe nei. Nei rā he ripoata mō tētehi kua hahua, kua tapaina ko B21, he tāne ia, ko tōna ingoa kua mōhiotia, ko tōna mate kua āta tuhia. Kua āta whakamātauria ōna kōiwi me ōna toenga kiko mō ngā tohu ora me ngā tohu mate, kia mārama ai mena rānei e hāngai ana ngā tuhinga rongoā mōna, ngā mea i tuhia nōna e takatū ana, tae atu ki te wā i tūroro ia i te mate kohi, ki ngā tohu e puta ana i te mātauranga Rongoā-Koiora ō nāianei. Ka matapakina ngā hīrautanga o ngā kitenga me te māramatanga kua puta i tēnei rangahau e pā ana ki te hapori, ki ngā ratonga hauora, me te kounga o te oranga mō te hunga noho tuawhenua i tērā wā i Aotearoa

Archaeological excavations at Lungi Tepa, south Uzbekistan. Preliminary Report for Season 2019

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A Land of Plenty? Colonial Diet in Rural New Zealand

Colonial New Zealand was built on the ideal of creating better lives for settlers. Emigrants came looking to escape the shackles of the class-system and poor conditions in Industrial Revolution period Britain. Colonial propaganda claimed that most emigrants achieved their aims, but the lives the colonists actually experienced upon reaching New Zealand remain relatively unexplored from a biosocial perspective. In this paper we present a pilot study of stable isotope results of bone collagen from seven adults interred in the St. John’s Cemetery (SJM), Milton, New Zealand (ca. AD 1860–1900). We interpret the diet at Milton and broadly compare our isotopic results with contemporaneous samples from Britain. We show that, like contemporary Britain, the diet of our studied individuals was focused on C3 crops and terrestrial meat sources. Despite higher ????15N values in contemporary UK populations (which can simplistically be interpreted as indicative of higher meat intake), consideration of different local baselines makes it likely that this New Zealand population had relatively similar levels of meat intake. Interestingly marine resources did not form an important part of the Milton diet, despite the site's proximity to the ocean, hinting at the possible stigmatisation of local resources and the development of a European New Zealand (pākehā) food identity

The First New Zealanders: Patterns of Diet and Mobility Revealed through Isotope Analysis

Direct evidence of the environmental impact of human colonization and subsequent human adaptational responses to new environments is extremely rare anywhere in the world. New Zealand was the last Polynesian island group to be settled by humans, who arrived around the end of the 13th century AD. Little is known about the nature of human adaptation and mobility during the initial phase of colonization. We report the results of the isotopic analysis (carbon, nitrogen and strontium) of the oldest prehistoric skeletons discovered in New Zealand to assess diet and migration patterns. The isotope data show that the culturally distinctive burials, Group 1, had similar diets and childhood origins, supporting the assertion that this group was distinct from Group 2/3 and may have been part of the initial colonizing population at the site. The Group 2/3 individuals displayed highly variable diets and likely lived in different regions of the country before their burial at Wairau Bar, supporting the archaeological evidence that people were highly mobile in New Zealand since the initial phase of human settlement.: University of Otago Research Grant (http://www.otago.ac.nz/research/otago004140.html); A grant-in-aid by the School of Medical Sciences, University of Otago (http://osms.otago.ac.nz/); The Mason Foundation (http://research-hub.griffith.edu.au/display/fosc_MASONG); Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programmes/funds/marsden/) grant number UOO0711. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Past rainfall patterns in Southeast Asia revealed by microanalysis of δ18O values in human teeth

Funding Information: Technical assistance was provided by Kamil Sokolowski and Brian Tse at the Preclinical Imaging Core Facility at the Translational Research Institute, funding support for which came from Therapeutic Innovation Australia, under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Histological preparation and SHRIMP analyses were funded by the Australian Academy of Sciences Regional Collaborations Program; Project ‘Tracing Ancient Environments During the Peopling of Southeast Asia’ (BCC 2017/2305974; Co-PIS: TM Smith, IS Williams, HR Buckley, DR Green) and the Australian Research Council (Future Fellowship FT200100390, PI: TM Smith). The excavation of the Pain Haka site was funded by a grant from the Research Institute for Development, UMR Paloc, and by additional funding from the French Embassy in Indonesia and a University of Otago Research Grant. Regarding the Napa material we thank Mr Ermilando Napa; Captain Leopoldo Quindoza of Barangay Tuhian and the Barangay council; the Sitio Buhangin community; and Jeremy Barns and Angel Bautista of the National Museum of the Philippines. With respect to the Con Co Ngua material grant sponsors included the Australian Research Council DP110101097, FT120100299, FT100100527, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 16H02527. Two living tooth donors and their families are also acknowledged with gratitude for their contributions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD