The Trowel Tribune
Archaeology never stops happening!
Mystery Civilization Found in Southern China
New site may reveal clues to little-known culture.
The Shu culture was first identified archaeologically in southern China in 1929. This mysterious culture is as much as 14,000 years old and was quite advanced. However, scant historic records mean that relatively little is known about the Shu.
Just last Sunday Chinese archaeologists announced the discovery of six new sacrifice sites that contain various metal artifacts, a large number of elephant tusks, and even traces of silk and cotton.
“Holy caboli, that’s quite the setup” said Tristan Harrenstein of the Florida Public Archaeology Network when looking at the pictures of the excavation (right).
The facility constructed for the excavation consists of a large clear dome covering the site and a smaller clear structure for the current excavation. Archaeologists wear PPE suites to avoid contamination from clothing fiber and hair.
One of the sacrifice pits was discovered while starting work on a museum to hold artifacts found at the Sanxingdui site, which is currently under consideration as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Continued on page 17
Native American Copper Smiths
Research shows earlier copper use than previously thought.
A new study found that Native Americans in the Great Lakes were some of the earliest to use copper for tools. This use actually started 8,500 years ago, 2,500 years earlier than previously thought.
Researches think that the reason copper tools may have fallen out of favor is because the Great Lakes area copper is unusually pure (and soft) when compared to copper in other parts of the world. Experimental archaeology has shown that they were not much more effective than stone or bone tools, but were a lot more work to make.
Continued on page 5
Q: Do archaeologists really lick bone?
A: Sort of! When an artifact is very tiny it can be hard to identify. Bone (and porcelain) are very porous and absorb moisture quickly, this causes them to stick to the tongue slightly!
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