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Unearthed 2011: Some great archaeological finds

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Matt Smith:

Every now and then a story from archaeology grabs the headlines and more often than not, there's plenty of interesting discoveries waiting to be unearthed. I'm Matt Smith, and you're listening to a La Trobe University podcast. Our guest today is Tim Murray, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University and Professor of Archaeology. He's here today to discuss his top five finds of 2011 and would like to start with a bit of a disclaimer.

Tim Murray:

The purpose here is not to actually define our top five but just to take a spread of five interesting discoveries. These ones range right across the board from maritime archaeology to the analysis of animal bones, and the stories behind them are kind of interesting. So they give a sense of the variety in which archaeologists operate.

Matt Smith:

OK. Disclaimer. Let's start off with number 5. What is number 5 on Professor Tim Murray's archaeological discoveries of 2011?

Tim Murray:

Right. It's a historical archaeological discovery. It's maritime archaeology. 1671, in the Caribbean, five ships, a fleet controlled by Captain Henry Morgan, of privateer fame, which were lost in the siege of a fort on the Spanish Main in Panama. And they were rediscovered recently using remote sensing equipment, a magnetometer is what the divers were using, and this is a thing which measures changes in the earth's magnetic field, and it actually measures the presence of metal. This can be done very successfully, looking for cannon and this sort of stuff, and that's what they found. But the interesting thing about this one is, it's not just the fact that the ships are there, and it's associated with quite a famous event, it's also the people who are funding this one are the Captain Morgan rum producers are very keen of course to find out whether or not there's any rum left in the ship. They haven't yet excavated too much of it, but it's a possibility that there'll be some rum there.

Matt Smith:

Even if there isn't, it's good publicity for them to say, hey, look, we've found these ships of Captain Henry Morgan. But do you think it's likely that some of the rum's going to be there on board?

Tim Murray:

Why not?

Matt Smith:

Would it survive that long?

Tim Murray:

Yes, I'm sure. But if it's in a bottle with a cork, either in a cask with lots of other bottles, in some kind of chest, these things would be encrusted in coral and they'd be pretty stable. They've discovered champagne from that age before. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility. I wouldn't want to drink the rum. Probably it would have gone off by now, but it will be there.

Matt Smith:

But from the perspective of Captain Morgan's Rum, the company, they can analyse it and maybe recreate one and go, right, this is the authentic blend.

Tim Murray:

I'd like to see them do that. That would be a lot of fun as well, I have to say. But I think it's a tremendous marketing tool for them. But I think it's also incredibly important to remember that this stuff is very expensive to do. And getting the funding to do this – the story behind this is that they actually ran out of money, right at the point when they made the discovery, and they were looking around for people to support them, and they got it from the Captain Henry Morgan rum people. But it's also important to remember that the stuff, the material that they excavate, won't leave Panama. It will be the property of the people of Panama. And I suppose what the rum people will get out of it will be publicity.

Matt Smith:

Just touching on Captain Henry Morgan slightly for a bit, I've heard him described as both a pirate and a privateer. And those are very different terms. One is condoned piracy on behalf of the government, isn't it?

Tim Murray:

The way it worked was that privateers were often pirates who became legal for a stretch of time, and then went back to being pirates again. They were given what are called "letters of mark" by the government. Elizabeth was particularly fond of doing this. Captain Drake and others, Raleigh, all did this sort of stuff, and of course, William Dampier was one of the more famous of the privateers who spent quite a lot of time on the coast of Western Australia. So, yes, they would become legal for that period of time and the idea was that they would in effect inflict as much economic damage on the Spanish, or on the French, or on the Dutch, or whomever it was that they were at war with at the time. And in fact they may not even be at war – they may simply be used as an instrument by the state to inflict economic damage on their opponents.

Matt Smith:

And that's what Captain Morgan was doing at the time, was it?

Tim Murray:

Oh, yes, at that time he was legal. But they flip in and out – they did it all the time. I'm not sure how many episodes of Pirates of the Caribbean you've been watching but you see the pirates had a good time. And when they in port a lot of rum drinking used to take place, and other times I think it was mostly just business as usual. They'd get out there and sink ships.

Matt Smith:

The business of a rum company sponsoring an archaeological dig like this, it being proudly brought to you by Captain Morgan's Rum – do you think that's a good sort of way to run archaeology, or is it more so the only viable way to do it sometimes?

Tim Murray:

It is one of the ways in which archaeology gets funded. I think if you're in Australia, for example, since around about the mid 70s, decreasing amounts of archaeology are paid for by the ARC or by governments or by museums. The vast bulk of archaeology is paid for, as part of the development process. So, if you're a mining company like Rio Tinto or BHP and you've got eighty billion dollars worth of energy contracts that you want to fulfil, and a lot of archaeology to do, the cost of the archaeology is actually miniscule, in terms of the amount of return. But you've got to do it in order to get the clearance to mine, or to build a housing subdivision, or a road, or whatever. I mean, by far the greater portion of archaeology is funded that way.

Matt Smith:

The fourth notable archaeological find of 2011 on the list of Professor Tim Murray would be …

Tim Murray:

This one's interesting, because it actually has to do with the discovery that my colleague Andy Herries was closely associated with. This is the new Australopithecus sediba skeleton. And the fascinating thing about this one is that I'm sure you've already done a podcast I think on …

Matt Smith:

We have, yes.

Tim Murray:

It's a very interesting find for lots of reasons which Andy knows all about. But what interests me about this one is the kind of spin-off analysis of this, which is when they were doing the scans of the fossil, they noticed a sort of thin, mineral layer. And it occurred to them that might be fossilised skin. In fact it's not a discovery in itself, because we don't know whether it is or it isn't … what's going on is that Lee Berger, who's the person who essentially is, I suppose, the project leader of this investigation, has gone to open the source, to find suggestions as to how they might be able to establish whether or not it is skin.

Matt Smith:

Right.

Tim Murray:

And so it's kind of opening up the research process virtually to anybody who wants to participate. And they've done that before. But not in this aspect of paleoanthropology. There's a real democratisation of access to information and it's all going to be open source – all the information's out there, there's no intellectual property arrangements or anything like that happening – they've simply put it on line and people can take a look and make suggestions as to how they might be able to establish whether or not it is skin.

Matt Smith:

So if this is the skin, it will be the oldest example of skin found on a fossilised person, wouldn't it?

Tim Murray:

Yeah, we're talking about 2.2 million years ago.

Matt Smith:

If you accept that's a person.

Tim Murray:

Well, how long have you got? We could argue this one until the cows come home. But I think the interesting thing about this one is it shows very clearly the strong intersection between archaeology or paleoanthropology in this case, and a whole range of sciences, from molecular biology through to chemistry.

Matt Smith:

This fossil was discovered a couple of years ago. How common is it to go back and look at old discoveries and notice something new like this?

Tim Murray:

Very common. Because the technology changes all the time. Our capacity to get new information from previously discovered things is just massively increasing every year. So the scanning technology that allowed Lee Berger and his colleagues to identify that layer of minerals wouldn't have been there five years ago. I'm not sure exactly whether it's the same as getting a CAT scan nowadays, but the scanning technology, even for live people, is pretty extraordinary. And so they can do all the 3D sections, they can get it at the molecular level, and take a look at it. Next?

Matt Smith:

Next. What discovery was number 3 on Professor Tim Murray's list of 2011 archaeological discoveries?

Tim Murray:

This one's one of my favourites, because I like dogs, a lot. There are lots of theories about the relationship between human beings and dogs, in the sense that the domestication of the dog made it possible to be more effective in hunting and also of course in the management of livestock if you're into pastoralism. Now originally, the earliest dogs were supposed to have been around about fourteen thousand years ago, roughly called the Mesolithic, really late Palaeolithic, and it's a European discovery, and the reason for it, dogs and human beings connecting at that time, their argument used to go was that if you were hunting in forests, and you managed to spear or wound a deer, for example, the dog would be able to track it and your chances of finding the carcass would be immeasurably increased. So it was a kind of selective pressure there. What we now find out is the fact that instead of fourteen thousand years ago, it's now pretty clear that right across from Siberia into Eastern Europe, dogs were domesticated some thirty-six thousand years ago. Now we're talking about right at that point of time when homo sapien sapien is evolving, so this is major news, in the sense that you've got an animal and a human being having a commensurable relation for that long. It's amazing.

Matt Smith:

It would have been a wolf back then though wouldn't it?

Tim Murray:

No, a dog. I'm not sure what kind of dog it would have looked like. It's got big teeth, looking at the picture.

Matt Smith:

It wouldn't be a small white dog in a handbag would it?

Tim Murray:

No, not a Chihuahua or indeed a Scottie. The one we're talking about is from a very famous Czech site called Predmostí which has been dug for over, I think, the last fifty years. It's a big site, which has been dug for over the last fifty years. It's a big site. There are three skulls, dog skulls, together in this deposit. And it's interesting because it shows us something about how science operates as well. Some years before a Belgian archaeologist had found a dog and dated it at around 33,000 years ago and people said, no, no, it's not possible. Since that time there have been discoveries in Inner Siberia and now these ones in the Czech Republic, that indicate that it's in fact real. One example doesn't do it, but three or four does.

Matt Smith:

How did the discovery of the skulls show that they were domesticated dogs? What context was it in?

Tim Murray:

They're there with people.

Matt Smith:

Oh, they're there with people. That would do it.

Tim Murray:

Yeah, it does it. And you can see that the skulls are different from wild ones. It's great.

Matt Smith:

Three skulls discovery, so it's literally a three dog night then.

Tim Murray:

Thank you, thank you. You can get one for free for that.

Matt Smith:

Sorry. Look I had that written down and everything. Three dog night.

Tim Murray:

You know what a three dog night is though, don't you?

Matt Smith:

Really cold nights – you need three dogs to keep you warm.

Tim Murray:

In Central Australia.

Matt Smith:

So, the second most interesting discovery on Professor Tim Murray's archaeological discovery list of 2011. The title's getting longer.

Tim Murray:

Yes, it's getting longer and longer. This one is an absolutely amazing one. It's from Guatemala, from the site of Nakum. Now what happened was that we're right in the middle of the sort of classic moment, in the heartland, down in the steamy jungles of Guatemala, and there are a lot of tombs that are built into the side of pyramids, and various other large structures. Now this is at the height of the classic Maya, which is round about the second and third century ad. OK? What was found by the archaeologists was a skeleton of a person who was a high ranking female ruler. It was kind of by chance because they were into the tomb with a skeleton and they saw all the grave goods and all the rest of it, but then as they were excavating, they noticed through the cracks in the floor of the tomb, another tomb below it which had this female skeleton in it. It's clearly a high ranking person. From the glyphs, the analysis of the glyphs, it looks like this person was a member of a dynasty that lasted for about five hundred years in this particular part of Guatemala. Now, we've not seen it before so it's a great example of how pre-suppositions about ancient societies operated – the nature of rulership and all that sort of stuff, how they change on the basis of a single discovery. Previously people thought only men occupied those sorts of leadership roles.

Matt Smith:

There's been other discoveries like that in, say, Egypt, where there's been female Egyptian pharaohs …

Tim Murray:

Correct.

Matt Smith:

And those sort of things, but this is the first time it's happened in the Mayan civilisation? That we know of.

Tim Murray:

Yes, that we know of. Who knows what else is out there? This is one of those great things about archaeology. I think the extraordinary thing about this is that we are talking about work in an area which has had really substantial excavation happening for over a century. So it's kind of out of the box. This is possibly also a testament to the fact that there's an increased amount of work happening, over time, there's much more archaeology happening and the extraordinary thing about this is not just the fact that it was a female, but that the tomb hadn't been looted. My colleague, Peter Mathews, who's a justly famous Maya archaeologist, has been involved in excavating in Guatemala and Mexico and a whole bunch of other places there, and has had frequent brushes with tomb looters, or seen the consequences of what they do. But this one had not been looted, and as a result, it's pristine.

Matt Smith:

So, do we know anything about the Mayan queen, then?

Tim Murray:

Oh, I think the thing is that much more work is being done on the analysis of the glyphs. This is just an early touch. I think as time passes and the work is done on looking at the inscriptions that are there in the tomb, that we'll find out more about them.

Matt Smith:

OK. The final item on your list isn't so much a discovery – it's a development is probably the best way to call it, on Tim Murray's archaeology list of 2011. The amazing list that it is.

Tim Murray:

You'll drag this out longer and longer. This one as you say has got nothing at all to do with discovery. The reason why I put it in is that it's an opportunity for us to reflect about the impact that conflict can have on archaeological remains. You remember some years ago when the US Army entered Baghdad and the National Museum of Iraq was looted. A great deal of work has been done on trying to recover those looted objects but many of them of course have gone into private hands and may not surface for a long period of time. So when the Arab Spring happened – the first beginning if you remember rightly in Tunisia, then go into Libya, then to Egypt, and now of course it's going full tilt in Syria – there's been a considerable concern about the impact that the conflict would have. In the case of Tunisia, it's pretty clear, with the fall of the dictator there, that the state which he was running, was looting. And much of that stuff was going into the hands of his family, his daughter, in particular. In the case of Libya, which has got really, really major Roman sites in particular, Leptis Magna and places like that, there was a real fear, because it was a much greater conflict – NATO war planes were over Libya – there was a lot of fear that significant damage had been done to major sites like that. It transpired that it didn't actually happen – that it was a good story. They didn't level Leptis Magna, but nonetheless there were clear signs of looting taking place, particularly in museums and collections. Another example of that actually recently was in Afghanistan, where the National Museum of Kabul – the Taliban attempted to loot that and to destroy a lot of the objects that were there. But the curators very bravely got most of the stuff out and buried it deep in the vaults of the museum. And I was in London last year doing research and there was a fantastic exhibition at the British Museum of these materials that had been saved from the Taliban. That's just an aside. But Egypt, there's been signs again of looting and the destruction of cultural property. And we have no real idea what's happening in Syria at this stage, because the country's effectively been locked down. The reason for including this one is that to help us to, I suppose, reflect on the consequences of conflict for cultural heritage, and as you can see in the case of the Arab Spring, it's kind of varied, but it also allows us to talk about illegal trade in antiquities, which is a major source of destruction of archaeological sites.

Matt Smith:

This came up a bit in the last story as well, the Mayan queen's tomb was untouched, and that's quite a rare thing to happen. How much damage does private collectors I suppose, do to archaeology?

Tim Murray:

An unbelievable amount of damage. Numbers of people have gone to jail for dealing in antiquities. I mean, there's quite strong international conventions that deal with it, but it's a constant problem. Places like Guatemala for example, or indeed in large sections of Africa, where people are very poor, looting is a form of subsistence. Instead of growing crops, you excavate tombs. And there is a ready market for that sort of hot stuff. And some very famous museums have been implicated in this, certainly some auction houses have also been. But I think there's more to it than the idea of subsistence looting. It's the fact that this is a very destructive enterprise. Looters don't excavate like archaeologists – they just get in there as quickly as they possibly can, there's no context – they're after an object, so all the other information you would collect as an archaeologist is gone. And as soon as a site's been looted like that, it's effectively trashed. It has very little archaeological value. There's now been a large amount of research done on trying to establish whether or not you can in a sense you can claw back information from the looted sites, but it's still much more preferable to dig a site that hasn't been looted. But that's increasingly rare these days.

Matt Smith:

Now to look forward to 2012, to one of the potentially biggest discoveries that is going to come out of the year. Tell us about the dig that's going to be going on in Melbourne.

Tim Murray:

Nice one, you've been working on this one. This is a site that's at the top end of Swanston Street. We actually started working there a couple of years ago because we had to do the initial survey to establish whether there were substantial remains. The survey did establish it. It's a development paid for by Grollo, where the old Carlton & United Brewery is being turned into a series of skyscrapers. A portion of the site has already been built on but the rest of the site is now ready for development and it's extremely costly, because skyscrapers don't come cheap. We will be beginning work there later this month. That's the latest news we have. What we're likely to find there is, the earliest part of the site will be a gold rush town, that was essentially attached to the side of Melbourne where people would stay before they went off to the gold fields. But over the course of the next century or so, it transformed into a major brewery. There were still residential parts to the block. It's kind of very mixed. It's a sort of mixed occupation of houses and business and industry, similar to the sort of thing we saw at Casselden Place, which is a site further up the hill. So we're very keen to get started. It will be a very big hole I can tell you.

Matt Smith:

Tim Murray there, Professor of Archaeology from La Trobe University and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. We'll be keeping you up to date on the Carlton Brewery digs as it develops. That's all the time we've got for the La Trobe University podcast today. If you have any questions, comments or feedback about this podcast, or any other, then send us an email at podcast@latrobe.edu.au.