Kris's Archaeology Blog

There are two species of quadruped animal of the deserts of the world called "camel", both of which have implications for archaeology.

• On the Domestication of Camels
• Bactrian Camels
• Dromedaries

.
Spoon/perforator with incised Quincunx design, Early-Middle Preclassic periods, 1500-300 BC, Guerrero Olmec culture, incised and drilled greenstone. Photo by Madman2001.

A bloodletting spoon is a type of artifact discovered on many Olmec archaeological sites. Although there is some variety, the spoons generally have a flattened 'tail' or blade, with a thickened end. The thick part has a shallow off-center bowl on one side and a second, smaller bowl on the other side. Spoons usually have a small hole pierced through them, and in Olmec art are often depicted as hanging from people's clothing or ears.

Bloodletting spoons have been recovered from Chalcatzingo, Chacsinkin, and Chichén Itzá; the images are found carved in murals and on stone sculptures at San Lorenzo, Cascajal and Loma del Zapote.

Olmec Spoon Functions

The real function of the Olmec spoon has long been debated. They're called 'bloodletting spoons' because originally scholars believed them to have been for holding blood from auto-sacrifice, the ritual of personal bloodletting. Some scholars still prefer that interpretation, but others have suggested spoons were for holding paints, or for use as snuffing platforms for taking hallucinogens, or even that they were effigies of the Big Dipper constellation. In a recent article in Ancient Mesoamerica, Billie J. A. Follensbee suggests Olmec spoons were part of a hitherto unrecognized tool kit for textile production.

Her argument is in part based on the shape of the tool, which approximates bone weaving battens recognized in several Central American cultures, including some from Olmec sites. Follensbee also identifies several other tools made of elite greenstone or obsidian, such as spindle whorls, picks and plaques, that could have been used in weaving or cord-making techniques.

The answer, if you're looking for one, is that Olmec spoons were probably used for a variety of reasons---but Follensbee's paper makes a compelling argument for weaving to be one of them. It's an interesting paper. Take a look.

Sources and More Information

• Bloodletting, more on the black art
• Where do you wear your paint pot? FAMSI
• Olmec spoons, a bunch of photographs from the Latin American Studies site.
• Textiles
• Cascajal Block
• Olmec Civilization Timeline and Description
• Chichén Itzá
• Follensbee, Billie J. A. 2008 Fiber technology and weaving in formative-period Gulf Coast culture. Ancient Mesoamerica 19:87–110. Added: It turns out that this entire issue from Ancient Mesoamerica is free at the moment, and it contains many articles on weaving and textiles. Yippee!

A new article on the origins of vanilla inspires me to add it to the Plant Domestication Table, despite the fact that it really wasn't domesticated.

Vanilla is a spice painstakingly cured from pods of the vanilla orchid, the only edible orchid known (and isn't it a beauty!). Found today only in French Polynesia, its origins have long been recognized in Central America, where the Maya and Aztec civilizations used the vanilla bean for a variety of incense, flavoring and healing purposes.

New Research

The new article, published in the American Journal of Botany, is open source (wahoo!), and the authors used genetics to identify the progenitors of the French Polynesian orchid Vanilla tahitensis as two Central American orchids, V. odorata and V. planiform.

• Origins of Vanilla, more on vanilla origins
• Lubinsky, Pesach, et al. 2008 Neotropical roots of a Polynesian spice: the hybrid origin of Tahitian vanilla, Vanilla tahitensis (Orchidaceae). American Journal of Botany 95:1040-1047. Free download

News broke yesterday about a new mass spectrometry inspection of the clothing belonging to Oetzi. You'll recall, no doubt that Oetzi, also known as the Iceman or Simalaun Man, was discovered in the Alps near the Italian/Swiss border in 1991, and discovered to be a Bronze Age man. Lots of little snippets of news have come out over the years, summarized in the Iceman's glossary entry. The latest bit reports on the use of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometery to identify of the kinds of animals used to make up his clothing (sheep and cattle), which supports the argument that the poor old fellow came from a herding village.

Latest News

• Oetzi the Iceman, the glossary entry here at About.com
• Oetzi the Iceman dressed like a herdsman, Eureka Alert 20 August 2008
• Mummified Iceman's Ancient Job Determined, LiveScience
• Cracking Ice Age dress code a shot-in-the-arm for fashionistas, SAWF News
• Oetzi The Neolithic Iceman Had Some Pretty Good Clothing
• MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry Of Ötzi/Oetzi The Iceman’s Clothing, Kambiz on Anthropology.net

Need a giggle? Read what T.R. Talbott submitted as an entry to the Bulwer-Lytton contest in 1997: Death of an Iceman

Added:: the article referred to in the above reports is Hollemeyer, Klaus et al. 2008. Species identification of Oetzi's clothing with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry based on peptide pattern similarities of hair digests. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 22(18):2751-2767. That will take you to the abstract, although you'll have to pay to read it.

Photo by Holger Reineccius

Wordless Wednesday and Wordless Wednesday on About

National Geographic was kind enough to give me access to a handful of photos illustrating my article on the new findings in the western Sahara Desert; however, this is not one of them, so be sure to read Ancient Life in the Saharan Desert to get a look at this fascinating new archaeological site. Happy WW, everyone!

Shelley Esaak, About.com's guide to Art History, has uncovered what strikes her as a very peculiar mystery: an artist about whom a documentary is in pre-production, but whom Shelley is beginning to doubt existed. Pietro Psaier is supposed to have been a close personal friend of Andy Warhol's, but he was killed in the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Or... was he?

Who on Earth was Pietro Psaier?

In AD 998, the Viking Leif Ericson (or Leifr Eiríksson) established a post on what he called Vinland, what we call Labrador in eastern Canada. The archaeological site where he landed is called L'Anse aux Meadows today, but that attempt to colonize was a bitter failure. It failed in part because the Vikings couldn't or wouldn't adapt to the rigors of the worsening climate, but mostly because there were people already living there, called "Skraelings," who didn't take kindly to the newcomers. Skraelings have tentatively been identified as the Thule, ancestors to the Inuit who originated in the Bering Strait region and migrated through Canada, and from some archaeological sites such as Skraeling Island.

The Thule Migration

A new article in American Antiquity argues that the Thule migration---when the ancestors of the Inuit left the Bering Strait region and began their spread into the Canadian High Arctic---occurred about 1200 AD, two hundred years later than previously believed.

The research from T. Max Friesen and Charles Arnold reports new radiocarbon dates from two crucial sites on the Thule spread: Nelson River and the Washout site. Both of those sites are located on the Amundsen Gulf of the Beaufort Sea, just east of Alaska and hence the 'jumping off point' for the migration. The new dates were warranted, say Friesen and Arnold, because many recently excavated Thule sites (including Co-op, Tiktalik, Pearce Point, Cache Point) had returned radiocarbon dates later than the original dates of Nelson River and Washout. Each of these sites contained harpoon heads of the same styles seen at Nelson River and Washout. Finally, the dates falling within 2 sigmas at Nelson River and Washout covered a fairly broad range of time, Nelson River between AD 720 and 1270; and Washout between AD 350 and 1260.

The new dates, taken on terrestrial bone or sedge matting from each of the sites are AD 1030-1300 for Nelson River, and AD 1300-1430 for Washout. These dates align with those from Pearce Point and Co-op and Tiktalik and Cache Point, making the researchers believe that the Thule migration did take place later, and more rapidly, than previously believed.

So Who Were the Skraelings?

If the dates prove correct, the redating of the Thule emigration into eastern Canada is 200 years and more too late for this society to represent Leif Ericson's Skraelings, who must have been Dorset culture folks, who lived in the Canadian eastern Arctic and Greenland between 800 BC and AD 1300.

Sources

• See the article on Thule Tradition for further information about the Thule and their migration from the Bering Strait.
• The University of Waterloo has a substantial library of information about the prehistoric peoples of Canada, including interesting papers on Dorset Culture and Thule Tradition.
• Nelson River, includes further information on this important site
• L'Anse aux Meadows, where Leif Ericssen met Skraelings in what is now Labrador.
• Friesen, T. Max and Charles D. Arnold 2008 The Timing of the Thule Migration: New Dates from the Western Canadian Arctic. American Antiquity 73 (3):527-538.

A great article on an iron smelting experiment made its way to my desk from Expedition, the organ of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (a.k.a. Penn Museum). Pre-industrial iron smelting is fascinating to me, and experimental archaeology reproducing the fiery furnaces must be an incredibly exciting event. While I was looking for some support for this little blog, I discovered that the entire catalog of articles from Expedition is available for free to anybody to download on the Penn Museum website. Bravo!

And, since you can read the article yourself, I'm going to link to it and leave it at that.

• Hamilton, Elizabeth G. 2008 Adventures in experimental smelting: Iron the old-fashioned way. Expedition 49(3):13-19. Article can be downloaded for free
• Expedition, their entire catalog
• University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
• Inagina, Last House of Iron, a video on a similar experiment conducted in Africa by ethnoarchaeologist Eric Huysecom and eleven Dogon master blacksmiths

In honor of the breaking news release about two guys in Georgia displaying their yeti in a box, Archaeology magazine has started an enormously silly poll, wondering if, in a battle of the fictional archetypes, who would win, Big Foot or Indiana Jones?

• Bigfoot vs. Indiana Jones: Battle of the Century
• Return of the Yeti: Media Bigfoots Await Afternoon 'Bigfoot' Press Conference, Editor and Publisher
• We put Yeti in the Freezer, from the Daily Star.

Hmm. I believe the start of the Silly Season has been officially signaled.

Excavations at the site of Sagalassos in Turkey have uncovered the remains of an enormous Roman era statue of the Empress Faustina. Sagalassos is a Roman metropolis that has been featured in Archaeology magazine's Interactive Digs, and it's being excavated by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven team (Belgium) directed by Marc Waelkens.

Faustina was the wife of Antoninus Pius, the successor of the emperor Hadrian; a colossal statue of Hadrian himself was discovered near this location last year.

The marble head is 2.5 feet high with large almond-shaped eyes and fleshy lips, according to Archaeology's web page, where you can find all the details on this exciting discovery.

• Colossal Head of Roman Empress Unearthed, Marc Waelkens at Archaeology Online.
• Sagalassos, on Archaeology magazine's Interactive Digs
• More on the Emperor Hadrian and his crowd, from our Ancient History guide, N.S. Gill.