A Gallo-Roman grave of a child buried with a puppy has been discovered in Aulnat, central France. Excavation at a site slated for  airport expansion unearthed the grave was found on the perifery of a settlement from the Gallo-Roman era. It dates to the first third of the 1st century A.D., the reigns of emperors Augusts and Tiberius.

The child was only one year old when he died. He was buried in a fitted wooden coffin about 32 inches long. The wood has long since rotted away, but the nails that held together and an ornamental iron plate have survived to attest to its structure and design. The casket was placed in a large pit (6.5 x 3.3 feet) and surrounded with a remarkable array of objects and offerings.

About 20 terracotta containers were placed around the coffin and on top if its lid. They were offerings that would have held food and beverages for the deceased’s funerary banquet. The remains of a pig cut in half lengthwise found inside the pit were part of that final banquet, as were three ham shanks, one pork butt and one ham. The remains of two hens with their heads cut off (not present) were in the grave.

Miniature vases and two glass balsamaria likely held unguents or medicines. They are currently undergoing chemical analyses to identify any residues inside the vessels.

The child’s most valued belongings were buried in the grave, one typical of any Roman-era graves: a copper alloy fibula used to pin clothing together. Another is a poignant testament to the child’s all-too-brief life: an iron circle and a bent rod believed to have been a hoop game. The circle was rolled along the ground using the rod to keep it running and vertical. It was found leaning against the coffin.

A puppy was placed at the feet of the deceased, one end of the iron hoop rod between its legs. The puppy was a beloved pet, as evidenced by his snazzy collar covered in 15 bronze appliques and one bell.

Last but not least, a single baby tooth lovingly placed on a shall was deposited in the grave. Archaeologists hypothesize this may have been the offering of an older brother or sister of the deceased.

This is an extremely rare burial for a toddler in the Roman era. With child mortality so high, children who passed away this young were usually buried informally, not in the community cemetery and not sharing the funerary practices their older relatives would. At this time and place, the dead were typically cremated. This baby was inhumed, probably near or on his home, but the richness of his grave furnishings, the lavish offerings, the high quality and quantity of vessels, animal remains and personal belongings are exceptional. Nothing like them has been found before in the graves of Gallo-Roman children in the region. The second most furnished child grave on the record had only 10 vessels and two small pieces of butchery. It is clear that this child came from a very privileged family.

A group of 45 pre-Inca ceremonial objects have been discovered at the archaeological site of Tiwanaku, western Bolivia. The objects include ceramic vessels and statuary, stone knives, bottles, a gold head with blue stone yes and lips that may have represented a deity and the remains of animals including fish, camelids and birds. They are at least 1,500 years old, and may date as far back as the 4th century.

Fifteen of the pieces were unveiled at a press event on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Culture, organizer of the event, specified in a technical report that the find is “made up of many components or ceremonial supplies” and that “it will allow to establish the ritual and ceremonial system that was deployed during the beginnings of Tiwanaku.”

The archaeological pieces “tell us that we are here in Tiwanaku, sitting in a gold mine of knowledge and information, not only important for us, but for the whole world,” declared Bolivian President Luis Arce, invited to the event.

The artifacts were discovered during an excavation last year in the Temple of Kalasasaya about a foot under the surface. The temple was built by the Tiwanakota culture in what is known as the Tiwanaku III Phase (375-750 A.D.). According to Julio Condori, director of the Tiwanaku Center for Archaeological, Anthropological and Administration Research, these artifacts are the most important find since the monumental edifices of Tiwanaku were rediscovered in the 1800s.

Located in the Andes about 45 miles west of La Paz near the southern bank of Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku was the dominant empire  in the Andean region before the rise of the Inca. Its political, religious, cultural and economic influence stretched from what is now the border with Ecuador to the north to central Chile/northwest Argentina to the south. It rose to prominence in the first three centuries A.D. and became hub of trade in the region.  By the 6th century, it was the largest urban center in the region. A sophisticated network connected town in western Bolivia, northern Chile, southern Peru and northwestern Argentina, moving raw materials to Tiwanaku’s whose crafts guilds created manufactured goods for export over the same routes.

Tiwanaku society collapsed around the 11th century. Ceramic production ceased around 1000 A.D. and within a few decades of that most urban centers in the empire were abandoned. Its sphere of influence splintered into tribal chiefdoms until the Inca conquest in the 15th century.

A stone engraved with multiple animal figures in the Upper Paleolithic era has been unearthed at the prehistoric Coves del Fem near Ulldemolins, Catalonia, northeastern Spain. About 15,000 to 11,700 years old, the stone is intricately carved with at least six animals: a doe, a stag, two goats or bovids and two others as yet undetermined.

The plaque was discovered last summer during archaeological salvage in the wake of flooding. It is oval, about seven inches long and five wide and was engraved using a very sharp flint. The artist or artists were able to create impressive detail with the flint. Anatomical details like eyes, ears, noses, horns and fur are visible. The stag’s antlers are particularly impressive with their seven points.

The piece was among stone blocks found on the surface of the site after the floods eroded the strata. Researchers were examining the blocks because the prehistoric inhabitants of Coves del Fem used rocks and slates to make tools. They didn’t engrave them with art, however, so this stone came as a surprise.

Without a stratigraphic context, the engraving can only be dated by its style. The composition and execution compare to similar pieces found at other Paleolithic sites that do have well-established stratigraphic and absolute dates. The use of the cave to make tools took place long after the plaque was carved, between 6,000 and 4,500 B.C.

Its origin is still unclear but there are different theories about its presence in that area. “The river might have moved old remains and moved them to other, younger sectors,” she said adding that it was also possible that “maybe the younger communities, whose members tended to dig holes in order to keep their belongings there, touched older levels and moved that piece to their place.”

The piece is important as it appears to reference the ideological world of a community of hunters and collectors when engravings were symbolic representations. “It is known as ‘moving art’, it was not used to hunt or produce food, it is linked with the ideological world, with a way of ideological communication, but we do not know what it means,” the professor said.

She added that it might have been used to share rules with the rest of the community, or even to symbolize the tribe or the community. “What we do know is that for them, it had meaning and this meaning was shared with other individuals.”

Paleolithic art of this kind is very rare in Catalonia, which gives the piece oversized significance in the study of the Stone Age in the region. It also expands the known human occupation of the Monstant massif through the end of the Upper Paleolithic.

The piece is briefly on display at the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia from December 14th through January 24th. After that, researchers will continue to study it.

Two Tang Dynasty (618-907) tombs with surviving murals were unearthed in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. Archaeologists from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology discovered the tombs last month in Buli Village, 25 miles from Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province today and the ancient capital of China during the Tang Dynasty. The tombs are intact with inscriptions identifying the owners and the murals, while damaged, contain imagery that is extremely rare in Tang Dynasty art.

One of the tombs contained the remains of a Tang Dynasty official. The single-occupant tomb was made of brick, encircled by a ditch and sealed with soil. It is oriented north to south and is 140 feet long with a sloped passage leading into the burial chamber. Archaeologists have found 102 funerary figurines, most of them depicting riders on horses, some standing individuals placed in niches.

The interior east and west walls are painted with a mural of caravan led by a blue dragon and a white tiger. Huren (a broad term meaning northern barbarians used by Chinese chroniclers to describe the nomadic peoples who were conquered and absorbed under the dynasty’s second emperor, Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626-649)) are depicted training horses and leading camels. Horses, canopies and attendants armed with bows and arrows follow. Below them are hunting hounds lying down, looking up at the caravan and running.

The quality of the painting is high with fine pigment and smooth brushwork. The people and animals are captured in dynamic movement. Horses and hunting dogs were very rare subjects for murals in Tang Dynasty tombs, and the epitaph explains their presence: the deceased, Kang Shanda, was the supervisor of horses under Emperor Gaozong (649-683). His father had held the same position and the family was very wealthy, rich in, the inscription says, cattle, horses and hidden treasures. He died in 671.

The second tomb is a joint burial of two royal family members. It is 110 feet long, north to south, cut out of the earth. The four walls of the chamber are decorated with murals. The raw soil walls were whitewashed and painted with scenes of feasting. One wall features dancers standing in the middle between two groups of musicians. Another mural features a table with dishes of food placed along it.

The epitaph identifies this tomb as that of Yang Zhishi and his wife from the Pangda family. Both the Yang and the Pangda families married into and were related to the imperial families of the Wu, Zhou and Tang imperial dynasties.

A mural depicting a scene of music and dance in the second tomb, owned by a royal couple, is in the typical style of the golden age of the Tang Dynasty.

The discovery of the two tombs has provided new materials for the study of murals and social customs at the time….