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Aug 10

🆕: Researchers have identified the ingredients in chemistry formulae from an 2,300-year-old Chinese text, revealing ancient metallurgy was more complex than expected.

An #AntiquityThread (paper: buff.ly/3QgrdMP) 🧵1/11

The Kaogong ji was written in China in the 1st millennium BC. It's the oldest known technical encyclopedia, detailing items from swords to instruments and how to make them - including formulae for mixing bronze. 2/11

📷: Bronze weapons from around the time of the Kaogong ji

@RuiliangLiu

“These recipies were used in the largest bronze industry in Eurasia during this period,” said Dr @RuiliangLiu from the @britishmuseum “Attempts to reconstruct these processes have been made for more than a hundred years, but have failed.” 3/11

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Aug 8

It's International #CatDay! 🐈‍⬛

Here's a cheery feline decorating an >1000-year-old Late Paracas ceramic vessel from Peru. 🐈

🔗 from 2018 (🆓) buff.ly/35YLnUS

We've been obsessed with our kitty companions for millennia - people were buried with them (& foxes) during the #Neolithic in the eastern Meditteranean, around 7,000 BC!

🔗 from 2019 (🆓) buff.ly/2Pvm59I
📷: Neolithic burials with 🐈/🦊

Cats are most famously associated with ancient Egypt, where they were kind of a big deal. Many deities were depicted with cat heads and mummified felines were given as votive offerings.

📷: Statuette of the cat-headed deity Bastet. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Jul 20

🆕: Archaeologists have identified a key fortress of the Parthian Empire, which ruled from Turkey to Pakistan ~2,000 years ago, that may be a lost city.

An #AntiquityThread (paper: buff.ly/3INUXO5) 1/ 🧵

The mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly, in modern Iraqi Kurdistan, features four-kilometer-long defenses and two associated settlements. 2/10

📷: Location of Rabana-Merquly

Over the past 13 years, archaeologists from Germany and Iraq have been studying the site. They carried out excavations and fully mapped the site - something that could only be done with drones due to the mountainous terrain. 3/10

📷: Photo of the site taken from a drone

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Jul 20

This is an Inca observatory at Incahullo in Peru, with windows designed to track lunar and solar events.

~500 years after the observatory was used to track the moon, Neil Armstrong took his first small steps on it #OnThisDay in 1969.

The light shining into the structure at sunset moves throughout the year, helping track the farming season.

Looking out the structure, the windows frame key events like the solstice and lunar standstill.

Historical records indicate the Inca capital, Cusco, had a similar observatory.

📸: European drawing of Cusco's main square. In the bottom right is a structure with similar windows, said to be where astronomical observations were made.

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Jul 19

Archaeologists found over 100 previously unknown settlements north of Hadrian's Wall from around the time of Roman occupation.

A #FestivalOfArchaeology thread 1/6 🧵

Thes settlements were found between #HadriansWall, built in AD 122, and the Antonine Wall, built around 20 years later when the Empire expanded further north for a brief period. 2/6

📷: The walls by NormanEinstein / CC BY-SA 3.0

Recently, an analysis of lidar from the region around Burnswark hillfort revealed 134 new indigenous Iron Age settlements in the region, even though it had been extensively studied in the past. 3/6

📷: Known and newly identified sites

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Jul 19

This is an entire wooden tomb, from ~583 BC, being removed as a single 80-tonne block. #TombTuesday

The tomb was buried in waterlogged soil, so it was exceptionally well preserved. The large wooden structure was 4.6 × 3.8m.

📷: Composite image of the tomb. Labels mark wood type and radiocarbon dates obtained from the wood.

Inside was a female buried with an impressive collection of grave goods made from gold, jet, and amber.

A probable male was also found but had a much simpler set of jewellery - only a few bronze pieces.

📷: Golden earing, likely from the female's grave goods.

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