Pieces of the past have been unearthed during the first stages of construction of the East Kent Access Road.

Archaeologists have found artefacts dating from when the Romans inhabited Thanet, as well from other periods.

The finds from the recent excavations were shown to isle residents at two roadshows from the Trust for Thanet Archaelogy over the weekend.

The first took place at Margate library on Saturday, and the second at Westwood Cross on Sunday.

Shoppers thronged around the stall outside Debenhams to look at what has been found so far.

Pieces of Roman ceramics from the period around 150AD, flints used to work on animal skins and animal bones were among the pieces on show.

Similar remains were found by teams near Monkton, before Thanet Earth was built around two years ago.

Archaeologist David Crawford-White, who is the archaeology outreach officer for the road, said:

“Much of what we have been finding are domestic items and we have found some really good examples.

“We have had a fantastic response to this, people are really interested in the area’s history.

“The Isle of Thanet has a unique archaeological heritage and what has been found locally so far has been tremendous, but there is so much more to find. People have been living here for 6,000 years.”

The road is being built from near the old cooling towers in Richborough and will snake up to Manston.

It will join up to Cliffsend in the east and a second section will split off and finish at the Tothill Street roundabout near Minster in the west.

A stretch will run alongside the Kent International Airport runway, and the work there is currently the most visible.

It is hoped it will ease congestion and attract more businesses into the area.

For more details on archaeology in Thanet, and to see the virtual museum, visit www.thanetarch.co.uk, and the Isle of Thanet Archaeological Society’s site at www.iotas.org.uk.

The team will be back at Westwood Cross on Sunday, April 18, from 11am to 4pm, for another roadshow. — www.yourthanet.co.uk

The mention of Serbia usually brings to mind the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but rarely ever the Roman Empire - despite the fact that 18 Roman rulers, one fifth of all emperors, were born on its territory.

With that in mind, archaeologist Miomir Korac has launched The Road of Roman Emperors in Serbia (Itinerarium Romanum Serbiae) - a project meant to combine dozens of antique places across the country into a 600-kilometre-long tourist itinerary.

‘This is perhaps the most important project in Serbia because it is a chance to show the country’s pretty face and earn money,’ Korac, the head of the Viminacium archaeological site, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Emperors originating from Serbia represented the largest number of Roman monarchs born outside of Italy. Among them were Constantine the Great and Justinian I.

Remnants of imperial cities, residences, villas and forts also remain part of Serbia’s Roman legacy.

Viminacium, which used to be the capital of the Roman province of Upper Moesia, is set on thousands of acres of land, some 60 kilometres east of Belgrade.

It is the best preserved and managed antique site in the country, a model for other Roman locations and two Serbian prehistoric spots - Vinca and Lepenski Vir. Both will also be included on the tourist route, because they ‘are important for the world heritage,’ Korac said.

The circuit will go from the north-western city of Sremska Mitrovica (Sirmium) along the Danube to Belgrade (Singidunum), Vinca and Kostolac (Viminacium), before heading to the southern city of Nis (Naissus), the birth place of emperor Constantine.

‘These sites represent enormous heritage from antiquity, not only for Serbia but for the world as well,’ Korac said.

The idea of the project is to combine science and culture with tourism, also generating new bicycle roads, inns and infrastructure, bringing money to the impoverished provinces, Korac said.

‘We will build some 100 boarding houses - replicas of Roman villas - every 5 to 10 kilometres, so that the route can be traveled either by foot or on bike or by car or all of the above,’ Korac said. ‘That would initially cost around 39 million euros (52.6 million dollars), but would generate 300 million euros and 300,000 visitors each year.’

The inns, set in authentic surroundings - forests, fields and river banks - are to be family run, with elderly relatives managing the business, women cooking and youngsters helping out with modern aspects such as the internet.

‘Serbia has nothing to show. A street in Florence has more beautiful houses than entire Belgrade. Our spas may have a 100-year- long tradition, but are old, outdated and devastated,’ Korac said. ‘We can not offer them that, but we can sell the energy of the local surroundings.’

Several Serbian ministries have recognized the potential of the project and contributed money for investments in Viminacium, Sirmium and Gamzigrad.

The construction of some inns has already begun, but the process is painfully slow, as the country struggles with the recession and the fact that many ordinary citizens do not know of Serbia’s rich heritage.

‘I know that Constantine was born in Nis, but I had no idea that there were so many of them,’ pensioner Milka Petrovic told dpa.

The project might get a further boost next year when Nis will host a celebration to mark the anniversary of the Edict of Milan, which was signed by Constantine in 313 and proclaimed religious toleration in the Roman Empire. — www.monstersandcritics.com

Thousands of years before Euro-Americans “discovered” the bubbling mudpots and eruptive geysers of what is now Yellowstone National Park, early Americans were spending part of their summer camping in the Yellowstone Lake area.

“It’s always been a destination resort,” said Elaine Hale, park archaeologist. “For at least 10,000 years people have been using the lake area.”

Thanks to archaeological digs around Yellowstone Lake last summer by University of Montana assistant archaeology professor Douglas MacDonald and 13 graduate and undergrad students, park officials are now getting a broader picture of early human use of the lake area.

“The lake may have served as a crossroads of sorts for Native Americans from multiple regions,” MacDonald said.

*****

Why here?

The reasons are several.

Obsidian, a valued rock used to create razor-sharp points for weapons and tools, is located about 20 miles to the northwest at Obsidian Cliff. The lake area contains a variety of flora – everything from camas to wild onions – that would have created a great stew or to create medicines. And there was plenty of wildlife in the region. One archaeological site turned up blood residue from bear, wolf and deer as well as rabbit sinew.

“The lake area was clearly an important warm-weather hunting and gathering grounds for Native Americans from all over the northwestern Great Plains, northern Great Basin and northern Rocky Mountains,” MacDonald said.

His group’s explorations are part of the university’s Montana-Yellowstone Archaeological Project, which is now entering its fourth year. The partnership offers students the opportunity to perform field work while Yellowstone receives inexpensive research help.

This past summer, MacDonald’s crew made some unique finds. Along the northeast shore, the crew uncovered the park’s first Early Archaic hearth, dating to 5,800 years ago.

“The feature indicates that Native Americans used the park during the hot and dry altithermal climate period,” MacDonald said.

The Altithermal Period followed the last ice age, after large mammals like woolly mammoths had become extinct. Yellowstone Lake, during that time, would have been a huge oasis drawing people, and wildlife, from throughout the region.

*****

Hale said analysis of campsites showed some visitors could have been small parties of male hunters, while others were families staying for longer periods.

“There are sites along the lake where there was extensive processing of hides,” Hale said. “We found sites where freshly quarried obsidian cobble had been transported to the area. This is a lithic workshop area.”

Another campsite was littered with about a dozen shaft abraders, used to smooth arrows and spears.

“That smacks of duration,” Hale said.

Another unique find was a large obsidian spear point. MacDonald theorized that the point was created for ceremonial purposes, since it’s 150 percent larger than other spear points of the same time.

The point was shaped in the style of the Hopewell Culture of about 1,500 years ago. The Hopewell Culture is known for being one of the first in North America to lead a more sedentary life that included farming, and metal working, and created burial mounds along the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. They also traded extensively.

“It is well known that Obsidian Cliff obsidian was traded eastward to the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys,” MacDonald said. “Some archaeologists also speculate that Hopewell Native Americans themselves actually traveled to Obsidian Cliff to collect obsidian.

“Our large spear point was likely a ceremonial item, as was much of the obsidian for Hopewell people,” he said. “Most of the obsidian at sites back east is found within burial contexts.”

The UM research also indicates that “most Native Americans using the northern end of the lake traded and traveled primarily to the north, east and west, rather than to the south,” MacDonald said. “Other work at sites along the south shore of the lake indicated that Native Americans in that area were focused more southward.”

So there seemed to be some reason, possibly a cultural one, for why the people traveling from the south into the lake area didn’t move farther north.

“It just so happens that Yellowstone Lake is at the edge of multiple different tribal territories,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald and a crew of 22 graduate and undergraduate students will continue their work in the park this summer, their fourth year, surveying other parts of the lake’s shore. By identifying important cultural resource sites, park officials can plan any development to exclude and protect those areas, Hale said. Four of the five sites uncovered last summer are being considered for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

“This is a huge benefit to the park for very little cost,” Hale said. “It’s a huge benefit to the students, too, because they have a big area to do archaeology in.” — www.missoulian.com

Scholars translating a Roman victory stele, erected in the Temple of Isis at Philae in Egypt in 29 BC, have discovered the Roman Emperor Octavian Augustus’ name inscribed in a cartouche – an honour normally reserved for an Egyptian pharaoh

Octavian’s forces defeated Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and captured Alexandria soon afterwards. Historians believe that although Octavian ruled Egypt after the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC, he was never actually crowned as an Egyptian pharaoh.

The stele was commissioned by Gaius Cornelius Gallus, a Roman soldier and poet who was appointed by Octavian to run Egypt as a province, and who administered Egypt until he was recalled to Rome in 27 BC. The stele celebrates the end of the Ptolemaic kings and the defeat of the “king of the Ethiopians”. It is written in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Latin and Greek.

The stele has been known to scholars for around 100 years, but translation of the hieroglyphic text has been difficult as the inscription is no longer clear. Previous work had suggested that the name of Gaius Cornelius Gallus had been inscribed in the cartouche (an oblong frame).

Historians don’t believe that Octavian Augustus was ever crowned as the Pharaoh of Egypt. However, Professor Martina Minas-Nerpel, who was part of the team translating the stele, said that the inscription clearly indicated that Octavian Augustus was treated as a pharaoh by the Egyptians.

“The name of Octavian is written in a cartouche - he’s treated as any other Egyptian king,” she said.

Professor Minas-Nerpel believes that Egyptian priests had insisted on this honour, and that it was in Octavian’s interests to comply.

“(The priests) had to have an acting pharaoh, and the only acting pharaoh (possible) under Octavian was Octavian,” said Minas-Nerpel. “The priests needed to see him as a pharaoh otherwise their understanding of the world would have collapsed.”

For Octavian, pleasing the priests would have been vital in keeping the province in order.

“He needed to have a calm province and the key element to keeping the province calm were the priests – they were key to the population,” said Minas-Nerpel.

This stele would not be the only example of the names of Roman rulers being written in a cartouche. Similar instances dating up to the 3rd Century AD have also been discovered. Professor even Minas-Nerpel cites another example of Octavian’s name being written in a cartouche. His name is found on a gateway dating to 30 BC, on the island of Kalabsha in Southern Egypt. — www.independent.co.uk

Have scientists identified a “homo incognitus” — a previously unknown human species? Finger bones dating from 30,000 years ago were unearthed in southern Siberia. Its genes differ from those of modern humans as well as Neanderthals, and German scientists think they are onto a sensation.

John Krause checked his findings again and again. Somehow he couldn’t believe what the analysis was showing. The scientist wanted to make sure he was right before phoning his boss, the renowned evolutionary genetics specialist Svante Pääbo. Did the DNA really stem from a previously unknown human form?

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig had just 30 milligrams of bone powder available to carry out its genetic analysis. From that sample, Krause and his colleagues isolated the DNA of a primitive human who had lived anywhere between 30,000 and 48,000 years ago in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.

The scientist began with low expectations, seeing the job as a “routine investigation of an ancient fossil,” Krause told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “That piece of bone was sold to us as a specimen from early modern humans.” Russian scientists had unearthed the fossil fragment in 2008.

Isolating DNA from fossil bones is no easy task, not least because the ancient pieces of bone also contain DNA from other organisms such as bacteria or fungi, possibly even from other early humans. If laboratory conditions fail to meet the strictest standards, there is the risk of contaminating the sample with the genetic material of a present-day scientist.

So Krause had to rule out these factors. But eventually he believed the genetic material was several thousand years old, harbored intact within the cells of a small chunk of bone, no bigger than a cherry pip. Whichever way he examined the find, the DNA sequence did not resemble anything any anthropologist had ever seen before. Had the Max Planck researchers discovered a new species of early man? Did it belong to an unknown hominin, whose DNA differed so much from Neanderthal and early modern humans that it could revolutionize our understanding of the evolution of man?

Bred in the Bone

The genetic material found in the Denisova Cave is a complete sequence of so-called mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material found in a cell’s mitochondria. Within these organelles, the cell’s power plants, biochemical processes take place which enable the survival of a whole organism. Each mitochondrion has its own genome, which is passed from mothers to offspring.

And each cell has approximately 8,000 copies of mitochondrial DNA. But the mitochondrial genome is far smaller than the nuclear genome. Only around 16,500 building blocks (or base pairs) sit side-by-side in the mitochondrial DNA, compared to approximately three billion in the DNA of the nucleus.

Every base pair of the mitochondrial DNA was sequenced by Krause over and over again, up to an average of 156 times each. Afterwards researchers compared the mitochondrial DNA sequence with others — including 54 sequences belonging to modern man, one belonging to a recently discovered early human from Kotenski in Russia, six from Neanderthals, and one each from a bonobo and a chimpanzee.

The mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthals differs on average in 202 ways from the mitochondrial DNA of modern humans. There were twice as many differences separating the Denisova Cave individual from modern man.

Amazing Results

“The results practically blew me away when I heard,” says Svante Pääbo, director of the genetics department at the Max Planck Institute, who received the phone call while he was in the US. Once Pääbo had convinced himself of the findings, he too was certain that the science of human evolution was about to change.

So how should we understand this stranger from southern Siberia, if not as an early modern man or as a Neanderthal? Researchers still don’t know the hominin’s gender. To find out, Pääbos’ research team needs to examine the nuclear genome, one base pair at a time. Only then can they make more precise statements about the skin and eye color, blood type, or the health of the specimen. These investigations are painstaking but not impossible: A Danish research team recently gleaned similar information from a 4,000-year-old hair belonging to a Paleolithic eskimo.

For years, anthropologists believed only two species of the genus Homo lived on earth around 40,000 years ago. The first group, Neanderthals, lived in large areas of Europe and northern Asia, but disappeared some 25,000 years ago for reasons which are not completely clear. The other group, anatomically modern humans — our direct ancestors — scattered across Eurasia after leaving the African continent.

Until now researchers have also assumed at least three waves of emigration from Africa, one of which took place about 1.9 million years ago, when an earlier group of hominins, Homo erectus, left the continent. While there are fossils to prove that Homo erectus may have survived in Indonesia until up to 100,000 years ago, there is no evidence that the species might have existed on the Asian mainland as recently as 30,000 or 40,000 years ago — the era of the Denisova finger.

A New Human Family Tree

The genetic analysis that Krause and his colleagues recently published in the journal Nature adds a new piece to the puzzle of huan evolution. Once the scientists combined the new data with the previously known facts they were able to sketch out a new human family tree. It shows the evolutionary relationship between early modern humans, Neanderthals and the previously unknown Denisova hominids.

There seems to be only one way to explain the discovery of this previously unknown strand of DNA: Denisova hominins and the ancestors of the modern human as well as the Neanderthals must have shared a common ancestor about one million years ago. That ancestor is about twice as old as the known common ancestor of anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals (Homo heidelbergensis).

Moreover, the researchers conclude from the age of the mitochondrial genome that this previously unknown form of human must have lived alongside Neanderthals and modern humans.

The researchers are absolutely certain that they are dealing with a hitherto unknown mitochondrial genome which strongly suggests a new form of hominin. This would also suggest a fourth wave of emigration from Africa.

After the release of these sensational results, the Max Planck researchers will be forced to respond to the same questions they encountered when they discovered the first version of the Neanderthal genome: How did this unknown hominin live? Why did they disappear? And: Did Neanderthals and modern humans fornicate with this Siberian stranger?

‘X-Woman’

To get answers to these questions one will have to wait until the scientists from Leipzig have analyzed the stranger’s entire genome. It would help the researchers if further fossilized bones of this kind were found, which would enable study of the hominin’s physique.

Krause and Pääbo, speaking at a press conference Tuesday, said that any further statements at this point would amount to pure speculation. The researchers won’t even announce their intention to present a new name for this hominin as they can’t yet be 100% sure it represents a whole new species. “The terminology of human species is rather tricky,” Pääbo says.

Internally, the researchers refer to the new hominin form as “X-Woman.” The “X” stands for the unknown factor, and “woman” merely represents the fact that mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother. Pääbo restrains himself: “Whether or not we academics speak of a new species and give it a new name is just a matter of pride, nothing else.” — www.spiegel.de

An excavation project is under way on Mt. Fuji, searching for the roots of religious faith involving this national symbol.

A three-year enterprise begun in fiscal 2009 by Yamanashi Prefecture’s Archaeological Cultural Properties Center, the project is seeking to find out when Mt. Fuji became a place of worship for laypeople as well as priests.

Climbing Mt. Fuji to perform religious devotions is known to have become popular among laypeople living near the capital during the Edo period (1603-1867). However, items recently unearthed on the mountain suggest such “climber-worshippers” may have established a base there much earlier.

Excavation began last year at Fuji Omuro Sengen Jinja shrine in Fuji Kawaguchikomachi, Yamanashi Prefecture, located at the second station from the Fuji Yoshida entrance to Mt. Fuji.

Legend has it that contributions to build the shrine began to be solicited in 699, making it the oldest shrine near the mountain.

The property was refurbished in the Keicho era (1596-1615), and little is known about the shrine and how it was used before that period.

Last year, the excavation team worked around the altar and at the back of the shrine grounds. Near the altar, archaeologists found kanei tsuho, coins used in the Edo period, and within the grounds they found about 40 toraisen, foreign coins used before the Edo period.

They did not find a cornerstone or nails in the back of the shrine grounds, or traces of a building, indicating no large structure was built. However, their research discovered that land was prepared to construct something in an area along an old thoroughfare.

“Some sort of religious facility–a small building like a hokora (small-scale shrine)–might have been there,” said Kazuhiro Hosaka, an official at the center.

“We shouldn’t make a conclusion based just on toraisen, but it’s highly likely it was built in the medieval era or earlier,” Hosaka said.

The earliest document in existence that refers to a religious facility at Mt. Fuji’s second station is a 1475 land deed for the area. A 1500 entry in the chronicle Katsuyamaki says that in addition to monks undergoing religious training on the mountain, laypeople had begun climbing it to worship.

“It’s hard to believe monks carried money when they went on the mountain. Whether it was for donations or something else, laypeople must have brought the coins,” said Hidekazu Sakazume, an archaeologist and professor emeritus at Rissho University.

An expert in ancient coins, Sakazume hailed the findings.

“[The coins] are evidence the second station may have served as a religious base for laypeople in the medieval era,” he said.

In the Edo period, a religious group called Fujiko became popular among laypeople. People gathered to climb Mt. Fuji to worship, led by priests called oshi.

Fujiko extended its influence in the late Edo period by linking its ideology to the belief that the Emperor should rule the nation. The bakufu government repeatedly banned the group.

Advocates are aiming to have Mt. Fuji registered as a World Heritage Site in fiscal 2012 or later. A member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites at an international conference has advised them to focus on the religious and artistic aspects of the mountain when seeking registration.

The latest findings are certain to reinforce the religious connection between the Japanese people and Mt. Fuji.

The center plans to continue its research this year, and hopes are high its research will solve a number of mysteries. — www.yomiuri.co.jp

A 4,500-year-old fortress city, the first capital of ancient Iraq’s Assyrian civilisation, is in danger of falling into Iraq’s Tigris River, an antiquities official warned Monday.

The archaeologist, from the antiquities department for central Iraq’s Salah al-Din province, said the river has already washed away more than 30 metres of the ancient city of Assur, the religious capital of ancient Iraq’s Assyrian civilisation.

‘This season, the river washed away dozens of clay tablets and statues because there is no protective flood wall,’ Mohammed al- Jabouri told the German Press Agency dpa.

The ruined city, now known as Qalah Sharqat, or ‘Castle of Earth,’ dates back to 2,500 BC. It was named for its patron god, Assur, who also gave the Assyrian civilisation its name.

German archaeologists partially excavated some parts of it during a 1913-1918 expedition, but left after World War I. Since then, al-Jabouri said, no work has been done to unearth whatever artifacts might remain on the site.

He called on the central Iraqi government, the provincial government, and all those interested in world heritage to speed the release of funds to build a wall to protect the castle from the river.

‘The antiquities department in Salah al-Din province has repeatedly asked the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to protect the castle from the flood, but the ministry has done nothing so far, as if this is a matter of no concern,’ al-Jabouri said. — www.monstersandcritics.com

The oldest known example of a man-made structure was found within a prehistoric cave in central Greece, according to the Greek culture ministry.

The structure is a stone wall that blocked two-thirds of the entrance to the Theopetra cave near Kalambaka on the north edge of the Thessalian plain. It was constructed 23,000 years ago, probably as a barrier to cold winds.

“An optical dating test, known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence, was applied on quartz grains nested within the stones. We dated four different samples from the sediment and soil materials, and all provided identical dates,” Nikolaos Zacharias, director of the laboratory of archaeometry at the University of Peloponnese, told Discovery News.

According to a statement by the ministry of culture, “the dating matches the coldest period of the most recent ice age, indicating that the cavern’s inhabitants built the stone wall to protect themselves from the cold.”

Excavated since 1987, the Theopetra cave is well known to palaeontologists as it was used and inhabited continuously from the Palaeolithic period onwards (50,000 to 5,000 years ago).

“The newly discovered stone structure is important as it shows the technological level of humans at that time,” Zacharias said. — discovery.com

New findings from an excavation site in Spain are generating heated debate among palaeontologists and archaeologists about precisely when the Neanderthals disappeared and were replaced by the first anatomically modern human beings.

The research, carried out by a team from the Centre for Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and published in the Journal of Human Evolution, pinpoints the transition to between 34,000 and 32,000 years ago, and supports the hypothesis that that the two species did not interact or coexist.

The archaeologists carried out their research at a site called Cova Gran in the south-eastern Pyrenees in Catalonia, Spain, that was inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans at different times in the past.

Covering a total surface area of 2,500 square metres, Cova Gran is a rarity for archaeologists; sites of this ‘transitionary’ type are crucial to palaeontologists and archaeologists as they offer them a chance to trace the development of the human species.

The research team excavated a large area of Cova Gran, enabling them to reconstruct the way that previous inhabitants lived. Many exceptionally well preserved materials including tools were discovered from both the Middle Palaeolithic (300,000 to 30,000 years ago) and Upper Palaeolithic (40,000 to 10,000 years ago periods, allowing the different species involved to be identified from the ways in which the tools were made. Differences in the construction of the tools imply that they were made by different species.

The results from Cova Gran, which were obtained by Carbon 14 (C14) dating, show that the area was inhabited by different types of human, including Neanderthals and ‘modern’ humans, at different periods of prehistory. Their lifestyles were similar in many ways: they hunted, gathered, made tools and used fire. But they employed very different techniques and materials in their day-to-day lives. The C14 dating process showed that remains at the site are between 34,000 and 32,000 years old, the time when it is believed that Neanderthals became extinct and modern humans took their place.

This backs up evidence from excavations in other European sites where similar results have been noted, furthering evidence that the two species did not interact although they may have inhabited the same area 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, which is generally referred to as the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic transition period.

Other finds at Cova Gran include perforated sea-snail shells. These ornaments signify the existence of cognitive capacities for which there is, as yet, no evidence during the Middle Palaeolithic period. As well as offering us clues to their social structures and identity, the existence of the perforated shells indicates that Homo sapiens may have travelled widely and had social networks in which objects of this type would have circulated. — cordis.europa.eu

Oxford University is involved in a research project to unearth 30,000 year old climate records, before they are lost forever.

The rings of preserved kauri trees, hidden in New Zealand’s peat bogs, hold the secret to climate fluctuations spanning back to the end of the last Ice Age.

The team, led by Exeter University, has been awarded a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council to carry out carbon dating and other analyses of the kauri tree rings.

The trees store an immense amount of information about rapid and extreme climate change in the past. For instance, wide ring widths are associated with cool dry summer conditions. The scientists believe their findings will help us understand what future climate change may bring.

Tree rings are now known to be an excellent resource for extracting very precise and detailed data on atmospheric carbon from a particular time period. Therefore this study could help plug a large gap in our knowledge of climate change by extending historical weather records that only date back to the mid-nineteenth century.

There is nowhere else in the world with such a rich resource of ancient wood that spans such a large period of time. The ancient kauri logs are of enormous dimensions, up to several metres across, and have the potential to provide new detailed information about rapid, extreme and abrupt climate changes at a time when there was significant human migration throughout the globe.

While various records exist for historic climate change, such as those derived from ice cores, there is no easy way of correlating these records. The research will focus on the last 30,000 years, but some trees date back 130,000 years. The period towards the end of the last Ice Age is particularly difficult to understand.

This unique archive of kauri trees is likely to be lost within the next ten years because the timber is so highly-prized for furniture, arts and crafts. Kauri (Agathis australis) are conifer trees buried in peat bogs across northern New Zealand. Trees can measure up to four metres wide and live for up to 2,000 years. As well as containing information on past climates, they could also shed light on environmental and archaeological change.

Samples from a network of sites with buried trees will be collected in New Zealand and taken back to the UK laboratories for preparation and analysis at Exeter and then radiocarbon measurement at Oxford.

Professor Christopher Ramsey, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘This gives us a unique opportunity to increase our knowledge of the earth’s climate and human responses to it at the end of the last Ice Age. The radiocarbon measurements should give us important new data that will help us to understand interactions between the atmosphere and the oceans during this period when there was rapid and dynamic change. Equally exciting is the prospect it will give us of more precise dating of archaeological sites from this period — illuminating the only window we have onto how humans responded to these major changes in the environment.’

Lead researcher Professor Chris Turney of the University of Exeter said: ‘We are facing a race against the clock to gather the information locked inside these preserved trees. It is fantastic to have this funding so we are able to gather this information before it is lost forever. While it will be fascinating to find out more about the earth 30,000 years ago perhaps more importantly we will have a better appreciation of the challenges of future climate change.’ — www.sciencedaily.com