09 JUIN 2022 NEWS
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VIET NAM – 
Quang Khe - Archaeologists have found various traces of early humans in a karst mountain cave in Quang Khe Commune, in the northern province of Bac Kan. They have excavated Tham Un Cave and found that the cave’s foundation has been recently stirred up by cattle raised by locals. As a result, a cultural layer from an earlier time was revealed. A hole of three square metres was made to research the culture deposits. Archaeologists have found two cultural layers lying directly on top of one another, without any border layer. The earlier cultural layer lies lower, measures 0.6-0.65-metre thick and is fairly hard, formed by clay. The dark brown layer contains objects like stone tools together with animals’ teeth and snail shells. The cultural layer on top has a light grey colour and is made of crumbled soil. The layer contains fewer objects. In the hole, traces of four fireplaces have been found at different positions and depths. Although no tomb has been found in the cave, a total of 700 objects have been recovered, most of which are stone tools made from pebbles taken out of rivers and streams.“Stone tools found in lower cultural layer have typical features of Bac Son culture (10,000-8,000BC),” said head of the excavation team Associate Prof Trinh Nang Chung. In the higher cultural layer, a well-polished axe was found, the first of its kind to be excavated from the Bac Kan mountains. Various pieces of broken ceramic wares have been found, too. The core ceramic material was mixed with various kinds of vegetables, formed by hand with decorative patterns of twisting and gentle curves. It was baked at a low temperature. Archaeologists have hypothesised that hunting and gathering fruits and vegetables were important food sources for these early humans.
https://borneobulletin.com.bn/archaeologists-find-traces-of-early-humans-in-vietnam/
GUATEMALA – San Bartolo - In two small circular pits that were dug into the corner of a home in central Guatemala more than a millennium ago, archaeologists have discovered new insights into the lives of the Maya people, including how they turned maize into tamales and what they used to flush indoor toilets; they also found parasites that may have left the Maya plagued by bouts of nausea, weakness, and diarrhea. In a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from Boston University, Harvard University, and the University of Texas at Austin reveal how the pits were full of maize starch spherulites, a microscopic byproduct of nixtamalization-a food preparation process essential to making tamales and tortillas, where corn kernels are soaked and washed in an alkaline solution of water and lime. Because the pits were also dotted with parasitic worm eggs from human feces, the archaeologists think the Maya were using the pits as latrines, flushing their toilets with lime water leftover from making tamales.
https://www.miragenews.com/what-ancient-toilets-can-teach-us-about-maya-794967/
INDE -Sivakalai - As part of the ongoing third phase of the excavation at Sivakalai, 18 pits have been dug in Sri Moolakkarai, Parakkiramapandian Thiradu, Pottalkottai Thiradu and the adjoining areas, from where 35 burial urns, beads, pieces of bangles, ear rings, sharp objects made of bones, stamps, etc., have been unearthed. The excavators found a structure made with bricks, each measuring 25 cm in length , 16 cm in width and 5 cm in height.
THAILANDE – Ban Non Wat - It was previously believed that chickens were bred for the table up to 10,000 years ago, but the new report, published in the journal Antiquity, suggests humans did not come into close contact with chickens until about 1500BC. The researchers used carbon dating to establish the age of 23 of the proposed earliest chickens found in western Eurasia and north-west Africa. Most of the bones were far more recent than previously thought. Chickens, native to the tropical jungles of south-east Asia, did not arrive in Europe until about 800BC. Then, after arriving in the Mediterranean region, it took almost 1,000 years longer for chickens to become established in the colder climates of Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Iceland. The experts re-evaluated chicken remains found in more than 600 sites in 89 countries. They found that the oldest bones of a definite domestic chicken were at the Neolithic Ban Non Wat in central Thailand, dating to between 1650BC and 1250BC. Researchers say that humans came into contact with the jungle birds, which lived high up in trees, during dry rice farming. The ancient ancestors of domestic chickens were tempted down from the trees by the rice. Once they’d been domesticated, the chickens were transported first across Asia and then throughout the Mediterranean along routes used by early Greek, Etruscan and Phoenician maritime traders.
ILES MARIANNES – 
- Analysis of ancient DNA collected at burial sites around the Marianas reveals more about how ancient people first migrated to the islands. The new research appears to confirm that CHamorus and their ancestors have lived in the Marianas, uninterrupted, for more than 2,500 years. It also challenges the decades-old belief that Guam’s first settlers were from the northern Philippines. the first people to arrive in the Marianas were mobile marine foragers from inland South East Asia. As sea levels lowered around 3,500 years ago, they may have came and went from the islands, without ever settling down. But it was unclear from the archeological record whether the Late Unai settlers were the same group of people as the ancient CHamorus who began building latte stones around 1,200 years ago. The analysis of 370 sets of skeletal remains found at Guam’s Naton Beach in 2006 revealed that people from the Late Unai and Latte Period were culturally distinct, had different bone structures, lived different lifestyles, and had different diseases. Late Unai samples collected from the 2,800-year-old Naton camp in 2015 yielded poor DNA samples. But using new technology, and through collaboration with the Harvard Medical School and Pinhasi lab in Vienna, fragments taken from the inner ear bone of ancient remains yielded analyzable DNA in 2018. That was compared against a number of latte period DNA samples collected throughout the Marianas.“In all, we and others collected ancient DNA samples from Guam, Saipan, and Pohnpei and we compared them with modern DNA samples from Guam, Palau, Chuuk, and Pohnpei,” Hunter Anderson said. The results, said Eakin, show that “more than 90% of the Late Unai maternally inherited DNA, E2, belongs to the most common lineage that is present in the modern Chamoru.” Both the Unai and Latte period groups had DNA that originated 5,000 to 10,000 years ago in Indonesia, most likely Sulawesi — not the northern Philippines, as early origin models determined based on similarities in language and pottery. “The Unai and Latte Period DNA showed no direct prehistoric connections to the Philippines,” Eakin said. The results were surprising, she said, and showed how people from the same lineage could change both their appearance customs over 1,000 to 1,500 years. But the remains at Unai are the oldest uncovered in the Marianas, and the research doesn’t shut the door to more recent Philippine ancestry among CHamorus, Hunter-Anderson noted. In the past 1,000 years, more DNA lineages appeared in the region as all of Micronesia was populated, and Latte Period CHamorus reflect DNA ties to Melanesia and Eastern Indonesia.
ANGLETERRE – Blenheim - Wessex Archaeology have informed that the remains found this year comprise part of the stone-lined mill race, directing water from the mill and are surprisingly well-preserved and substantial.They have also discovered stone water channels, which would have been part of a medieval mill site, recorded as being demolished in 1334, and which was partly excavated in the mid-1970s.
CANADA - Drummondville - Des centaines d'objets et de fragments ont été découverts dans le sol de Drummondville lors de fouilles archéologiques réalisées l'automne dernier, ce qui a permis d'en révéler un peu plus sur l'histoire de la ville. Les archéologues ont extrait 780 objets et fragments du stationnement de la place d'Armes. Ces pièces confirment clairement la présence britannique dans la ville fondée par le lieutenant-colonel Frédérick Georges Heriot vers 1815. Dans les objets découverts, il y en a plusieurs intéressants, dont un encrier que l'on a pu reconstituer complètement. Il y a aussi des pièces de porcelaine peinte, des clous de métal et des pièces de verre.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1889071/fouilles-archeologie-abenakis-stationnement
FRANCE – Baudimont - Les premières découvertes de cette fouille réalisée par le service archéologique d’Arras sont remarquables et viennent compléter les données acquises au cours des fouilles de sauvetage réalisées en 1989. Elles confirment deux choses mises en évidence lors du diagnostic réalisé en fin d’année dernière. D’abord, on est aujourd’hui sûr qu’il y avait là une présence gauloise, bien avant l’arrivée des Romains en -10 avant Jésus-Christ. Cette fouille a permis de trouver les traces de la présence du peuple des Atrébates sur le mont Baudimont avant l’arrivée des militaires romains. Ensuite, c’est la première fois que l’on trouve des vestiges de la cité antique, Nemetacum, de l’autre côté de la rue Baudimont. Les ancêtres des Arrageois ont vécu là au moins jusqu’au IVe siècle, date d’un incendie daté par ces fouilles. Toutes les preuves de l’existence d’un véritable quartier entre le Ier et le IVe siècle sont là : traces d’un grand bâtiment, de plusieurs habitations, de trottoirs, de voiries, des éléments de la vie quotidienne : céramique, ossements d’animaux, restes de produits de la mer (coquilles), jetons de jeu, éléments de parure, etc.