#archaeology — Public Fediverse posts

Ancient Egyptian official’s tomb and 100+ ushabti figures found at Saqqara

An ancient tomb, a network of burial shafts, and hundreds of funerary objects have been found at Saqqara, Egypt, during the first excavation season in a new area west of the Bubastion necropolis. The Egyptian archaeological mission working in Sector A has uncovered the Old Kingdom tomb of Sekhentiu-Ptah...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/egyptian-officials-tomb-and-ushabti-figures-at-saqqara/

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#archaeology #anthropology #egyptology #ancientegypt

And their names: ΣΜΑΡΑΓΔΙN (Emerald) 🐈and ΩΚΕΑΝΟC (Ocean)! 🐕🐾🏛️

Details from a 1,800-year-old mosaic discovered in Adramyttium (Αδραμύττιοv/ Edremit‎‎/ https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550403) bring to light precious insights into the life of its different inhabitants and their close connection.

https://hispanatolia.com/en/roman-villa-with-mosaics-discovered-in-the-ruins-of-adramytteion-turkey/

#Art #Archaeology #Antiquity #Mosaics #Animalia #Academic #PleiadesGazetteer #GrecoRoman #Adramyttium #Excavation #Apotropaic #RomanVilla #Mediterranean #Histodons #MuratÖgzen #Hellenistic

And their names: ΣΜΑΡΑΓΔΙN (Emerald) 🐈and ΩΚΕΑΝΟC (Ocean)! 🐕🐾🏛️

Details from a 1,800-year-old mosaic discovered in Adramyttium (Αδραμύττιοv/ Edremit‎‎/ https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550403) bring to light precious insights into the life of its different inhabitants and their close connection.

https://hispanatolia.com/en/roman-villa-with-mosaics-discovered-in-the-ruins-of-adramytteion-turkey/

#Art #Archaeology #Antiquity #Mosaics #Animalia #Academic #PleiadesGazetteer #GrecoRoman #Adramyttium #Excavation #Apotropaic #RomanVilla #Mediterranean #Histodons #MuratÖgzen #Hellenistic

And their names: ΣΜΑΡΑΓΔΙN (Emerald) 🐈and ΩΚΕΑΝΟC (Ocean)! 🐕🐾🏛️

Details from a 1,800-year-old mosaic discovered in Adramyttium (Αδραμύττιοv/ Edremit‎‎/ https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550403) bring to light precious insights into the life of its different inhabitants and their close connection.

https://hispanatolia.com/en/roman-villa-with-mosaics-discovered-in-the-ruins-of-adramytteion-turkey/

#Art #Archaeology #Antiquity #Mosaics #Animalia #Academic #PleiadesGazetteer #GrecoRoman #Adramyttium #Excavation #Apotropaic #RomanVilla #Mediterranean #Histodons #MuratÖgzen #Hellenistic

And their names: ΣΜΑΡΑΓΔΙN (Emerald) 🐈and ΩΚΕΑΝΟC (Ocean)! 🐕🐾🏛️

Details from a 1,800-year-old mosaic discovered in Adramyttium (Αδραμύττιοv/ Edremit‎‎/ https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550403) bring to light precious insights into the life of its different inhabitants and their close connection.

https://hispanatolia.com/en/roman-villa-with-mosaics-discovered-in-the-ruins-of-adramytteion-turkey/

#Art #Archaeology #Antiquity #Mosaics #Animalia #Academic #PleiadesGazetteer #GrecoRoman #Adramyttium #Excavation #Apotropaic #RomanVilla #Mediterranean #Histodons #MuratÖgzen #Hellenistic

And their names: ΣΜΑΡΑΓΔΙN (Emerald) 🐈and ΩΚΕΑΝΟC (Ocean)! 🐕🐾🏛️

Details from a 1,800-year-old mosaic discovered in Adramyttium (Αδραμύττιοv/ Edremit‎‎/ https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550403) bring to light precious insights into the life of its different inhabitants and their close connection.

https://hispanatolia.com/en/roman-villa-with-mosaics-discovered-in-the-ruins-of-adramytteion-turkey/

#Art #Archaeology #Antiquity #Mosaics #Animalia #Academic #PleiadesGazetteer #GrecoRoman #Adramyttium #Excavation #Apotropaic #RomanVilla #Mediterranean #Histodons #MuratÖgzen #Hellenistic

🔍 FASCINATING DISCOVERY: Shinigami: The Grim Reaper and God of Death in Japanese Folklore
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! You won't believe what they found! 😱
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/shinigami-grim-reaper-japanese-folklore-006072
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #Legends #Mythology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Past #Amazing #Culture

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: Did a Native American travel with the Vikings and arrive in Iceland centuries before Columbus set sail?
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! Ancient wisdom meets modern discovery! 🧠
https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-science/did-native-american-travel-vikings-and-arrive-iceland-020316
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #Vikings #Norse #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Educational #Fascinating #Past

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: Was the Amazon Rainforest Once Home to A Massive Lost Civilization?
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! This will blow your mind! 🤯
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/was-amazon-rainforest-once-home-massive-lost-civilization-008342
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #LostCivilizations #AncientCultures #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Fascinating #Past #Civilization

https://www.europesays.com/dk/159982/ Denmark Uncovers Largest-Ever Viking Silver Hoard in Historic Backyard Discovery #archaeology #Danmark #Denmark #England #europe #FyrkatVikingMuseum #history #IslamicDirhams #NationalMuseumOfDenmark #SilverHoard #VikingAge #VikingTreasure

🆕 4th April 2026: Chinese Bronzes in Guadalajara (Spain) https://jbinnacle.com/2026/09/05/4th-april-2026-chinese-bronzes-in-guadalajara-spain/ #archaeology #ChineseArchaeology #Prehistory #Guadalajara #GuadalajaraSpain #Spain #travel #JBinnacle #中国西南地区青铜文明

💫 AMAZING REVELATION: Tracing the Origins of the Powerful Serpent Cult
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! What do you think? 🤔
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/tracing-origins-serpent-cult-002393
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #Legends #Mythology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Ancient #Amazing #MustRead

🚀 EXPLOSIVE DISCOVERY: Is the 10,000-Year-Old Yonaguni Monument a Man-Made Marvel or Nature's Art?
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! You won't believe what they found! 😱
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-oceania/yonaguni-monument-00817
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Ancient #Educational #Past

🗿 ARCHAEOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH: Mysterious Worlds: Travels to the Faerie and Shamanic Realms
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! History just got more interesting! 📚
https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/mysterious-worlds-travels-faerie-and-shamanic-realms-006475
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Civilization #HistoryFacts #Heritage

The oldest known written complaint is a cuneiform tablet from 1750 BCE. A Babylonian merchant named Nanni wrote to copper trader Ea-Nasir: wrong quality goods, refused refund, poor treatment of his messenger. The tablet survived. Ea-Nasir's reputation did not. The complaint is every complaint. #history #archaeology

The first labor strike in recorded history was in Egypt, 1170 BCE. Tomb workers at Deir el-Medina walked off the job over late rations — grain, fish, vegetables. They sat down in the pharaoh's mortuary temple and refused to leave until they were paid. The foreman's report still survives. #history #labor #archaeology

Egyptian bread contained so much ground stone that by middle age, most people had severely worn-down teeth. The grinding process put grit into every loaf. Hieroglyphs show people smiling — the dental record shows something else entirely. #history #food #archaeology

Iron Age bronze needs copper and tin. Copper sources across ancient Africa were varied — traded, mixed, regional. The tin is different. A new study fingerprinted the metal in Iron Age artifacts across the continent. Almost all of it traces to one mountain valley. Smiths across centuries and thousands of miles, drawing from the same place. #archaeology #history #ironage

Iron Age bronze needs copper and tin. Copper sources across ancient Africa were varied — traded, mixed, regional. The tin is different. A new study fingerprinted the metal in Iron Age artifacts across the continent. Almost all of it traces to one mountain valley. Smiths across centuries and thousands of miles, drawing from the same place. #archaeology #history #ironage

Iron Age bronze needs copper and tin. Copper sources across ancient Africa were varied — traded, mixed, regional. The tin is different. A new study fingerprinted the metal in Iron Age artifacts across the continent. Almost all of it traces to one mountain valley. Smiths across centuries and thousands of miles, drawing from the same place. #archaeology #history #ironage

Iron Age bronze needs copper and tin. Copper sources across ancient Africa were varied — traded, mixed, regional. The tin is different. A new study fingerprinted the metal in Iron Age artifacts across the continent. Almost all of it traces to one mountain valley. Smiths across centuries and thousands of miles, drawing from the same place. #archaeology #history #ironage

Iron Age bronze needs copper and tin. Copper sources across ancient Africa were varied — traded, mixed, regional. The tin is different. A new study fingerprinted the metal in Iron Age artifacts across the continent. Almost all of it traces to one mountain valley. Smiths across centuries and thousands of miles, drawing from the same place. #archaeology #history #ironage

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: Egypt Remembers: Where are the Ancient Accounts of the Great Exodus?
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! You won't believe what they found! 😱
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/great-exodus-002295
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #AncientEgypt #Pharaohs #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Fascinating #Incredible #Educational

New from the Teahouse 🫖

Copper from Everywhere, Tin from One Valley: What Metal Fingerprints Reveal About Iron Age Trade

New study traces copper and tin from three Botswanan Iron Age sites, revealing a trade network that ran hundreds of kilometres across southern Africa's interior

https://archaeologyteahouse.com/stories/copper-from-everywhere-tin-from-one-valley-what-metal-fingerprints-reveal-about-iron-age-trade

#Archaeology #History #Africa

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: The Incredible Powers of the Ancient Siddhars
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! Ancient wisdom meets modern discovery! 🧠
https://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/incredible-powers-ancient-siddhars-001447
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Past #Fascinating #Educational

For 180 years archaeology at Nimrud meant the acropolis. A University of Udine survey is now reading the 340-hectare lower town from sherd counts, drone topography and magnetometry. #Assyria #Archaeology #Nimrud https://www.anthropology.net/p/nimruds-lower-town-mapping-an-assyrian

Interested in history? New to the Ashford area or Kent and want to learn more about local history? Our next season of talks starts on Monday 21st September at 7.30pm in the Quaker Meeting House, Albert Road, Ashford, Kent at 7.30pm. ALL WELCOME! Visitors and non-members - entry £4 cash on the door. #ashford #ashfordkent #kent #events #history #archaeology #talks

New preprint on EcoEvoRxiv: 'Human Settlement and Water Availability at the Qa’ Shubayqa during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene: Comparing Hydrological Models and Archaeological Data', https://doi.org/10.32942/X25T1T

#Archaeology #Prehistory #ComputationalArchaeology

‘Hobbits’ walked more like humans than previously thought, study finds

The pelvis of Homo floresiensis was more human-like than earlier studies suggested, according to a new study of the species’ hip bones. The finding adds detail about how these small human relatives walked and deepens the debate over their origins. Homo floresiensis, often called the “hobbit,” lived on the Indonesian island of Flores...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/hobbits-walked-more-like-humans/

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#archaeology #homofloresiensis

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: The Irish Story and Legend of Cú Chulainn
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! Prepare to be amazed! 🎊
https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/irish-story-and-legend-c-chulainn-002150
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #Legends #Mythology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #HistoryFacts #Past #Fascinating

https://www.europesays.com/videos/88249/ Unearthing her story: The rise of women archaeologists • FRANCE 24 English #Archaeologists #archaeology #Archaeology/Antiquities #digs #DNA #France #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #GenderEquality #herstory #history #patriarchy #SecretsOfThePast #Women #Women'sRights

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

Dead men’s shoes don’t walk, but they do talk…

This image of a pair of espadrilles by Aholas Spa is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Sometimes the mutest of things can be the most vocal witnesses to times long gone*. Take, for example, shoes [Ed. – yes, I do realise some wag may take issue with that statement because shoes aren’t necessarily mute since some of them have a tongue (Oliver Sweeney)…]. An excellent example of this is the work of Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026).

Working in the remains of the Iron Age (Julian Richards) mining site known in ancient times as Urium** in modern-day Spain’s RioTinto region, Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) report on their examination of “eight soles of plant-based footwear”.

So much – but little more – one can glean from the report’s abstract. For more information, since the full paper is in Spanish*** and my knowledge of that language is inadequate to the task of reading the original, my post relies almost solely on the English language interpretation of that work produced by Guillermo Carvajal in his scicomm article about the study.

In essence, what Bustamante-Álvarez et al. (2026) found is ancient sandals, the oldest examples of which were radiocarbon-dated to between 2,000 and 2,400 years old****. These sandals are made of esparto grass (identified in the paper as Stipa tenacissima (Jose Fajardo et al., 2015)), “a fiber of notable resistance and flexibility that grows abundantly in the southwestern peninsula” (Guillermo Carvajal).

Because other examples of the footwear at the same site were dated to the 1st century AD, it is inferred that the sandals’ utility was such that the same design was used essentially unchanged for over 400 years. Which is a remarkable testament to the craftmanship of those ancient shoe-makers. Further examination of the items revealed that their production “followed precise planning: the thicker and more homogeneous ropes were used in the areas of the sole that bore the greatest stress during walking, while the finer fibers were reserved for the straps and binding elements. This differential distribution of thicknesses is not accidental but indicates skilled artisanal production and advanced knowledge of esparto’s behavior under friction and weight, systematically applied by the makers to extend the useful life of the footwear in an environment as harsh as a mine” (Guillermo Carvajal).

All of this analysis was only possible because of the peculiarities of the site-specific physical conditions of preservation of the plant-based artefacts. Normally such organic material does not last long in the archaeological record (Shelby Brown), but burial beneath a pile of ash in this instance permitted their survival. These particular dead men’s shoes [Ed. – and here I’m assuming they belonged to men rather than women because of the working environment from which they were excavated] speak eloquently of many things and “highlights the importance that the exploitation of plant fibers and their transformation into everyday products had within ancient craftsmanship, a field of the domestic economy that written sources usually address tangentially and that the archaeological record, due to the fragility of its materials, rarely manages to document with such clarity” (Guillermo Carvajal).

For more on this story, see Gary Manners, Ella Spitz, Andrew Paul, here, here, Kambiz Kamrani, and – most certainly! – Guillermo Carvajal (the scicomm item that initiated my interest in this story).

[Ed. – by way of bringing this millennia-old ethnobotanical story up to-date in the 21st century, and whilst it’s good to know that esparto is still used in crafting artefacts in Spain (e.g., Jose Fajardo et al., 2015; José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015), Stipa tenacissima is also being investigated as a “promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials” (Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021).]

* For those who appreciate a bit of myth-busting, this use of human-associated objects to discern information about past lives, etc. helps to give the lie to those who promote the proverb (Kassiani Nikolopoulou) that “dead men tell no tales”. The patent falsehood of which statement is convincingly – and regularly and repeatedly – demonstrated by any ‘police procedural’ programme featuring forensic science and/or post mortem examinations. Dead bodies – and their associated artefacts – tell us lots about the person, their life and times (provided they are appropriately preserved).

** For a bit of etymological diversion, the mining connection of the ancient Latin name of the excavation site, Urium (Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026), is honoured in mineralogy, where ‘urium’ is the name given to “The earth that envelops the ore” (quoted from here). Historically, the word is specifically referenced in an English translation of the works of Pliny the Elder (Kenneth F Kitchell Jr, 2024) in his account of gold-mining in Hispania: “earthy sediment of this kind is called urium” (Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024). [Ed. – which surely begs the question, which was named first? The place or the earthy sediment..?]

Urium is the specific epithet for an acidophilic green alga (Stephen S Daggett, 2019), Chlamydomonas urium, isolated from the Río Tinto – ‘red river’ – in the region (María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024), “since urium was the original name of Río Tinto coined by the Romans”. [Ed. – the origins of Rio Tinto, a global metals and mining business, “lie in our namesake, the Rio Tinto or red river mines in Huelva, a region in southern Spain”].

And, “Urium in the Assamese language is the name of a plant identified with Bischofia javanica Blume”. In English, Bischofia javanica, “A Potent Medicinal Plant” (Minakshee Sarmah, 2023), is known as bishop wood.

Nowadays – certainly amongst those discerning individuals in the know [Ed. – or ‘nose’..?] – the name is most notably associated with Spain’s sherry-producing winery of Bodegas Urium (Ruben Luyten).

*** This is an interesting case where a scientific discovery is primarily published in a non-English language. [Ed. – ‘Interesting’ to Englishman Mr Cuttings perhaps, but I’m sure there will be hundreds – if not thousands – of other examples of non-English language publications throughout the world. To express surprise at this shows a very English-centric – and frankly rather arrogant, entitled, and privileged – view of the world, Mr Cuttings] For decades now it appears – and has been assumed – that English (“the most successful lingua franca the world has ever seen”) is the lingua franca (Richard Nordquist, 2020; Gordon Allen-Young, 2022; Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026) of science (Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl). [Ed. – whether that should be the case, and whether it is good for humanity and science, is a moot point (Christine Tardy, 2004; Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007; Robert Sanders, 2020; Briony Fane & Juergen Wastl)…].

Back in the day (from Ancient times until the 19th century (Alexandra Aikhenvald, 2026), it would have been Latin, the literary and spoken language of the learned (Barry Wood, 2019). A reminder of that linguistic heritage is seen today in the Latinisation of scientific binomial names of species (Ronald Coleman) (such as Chlamydomonas urium**), and the plethora of scientific and medical terms that have been derived from Latin (e.g., here, here, Andrew Dunning, Rebecca Ramdeholl; Yuliia Lysanets & Olena Bieliaieva, 2018).

**** Even with an approximate age of up to 2,400 years, these miners’ sandals are not the oldest items of footwear found in Europe. The record – to date – goes to “22 pairs of woven grass sandals discovered in the cave [Spain’s Cueva de los Murciélagos (“cave of bats”)] are some 6,200 years old — and thus the oldest shoes ever found in Europe” (Kaleena Fraga). Interestingly, these artefacts  were also fashioned from esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) (Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023). It is therefore likely that use of this material for footwear is an unbroken practice from 21st century espadrilles (Heidi) to the 5th millennium BCE’s ‘bat cave sandals’.

With that long background and tradition, it’s little surprise to learn that the country’s ‘culture of esparto’ is one of the elements designated as a “Representative Manifestation of Intangible Cultural Heritage” (MRPCI) by Spain’s Ministry of Culture (which manages that nation’s “General Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage”) (more here, here, and here).

And, demonstrating some of the utility of esparto***** – i.e., it’s not used solely in footwear, there is evidence of its participation in the production of textiles. This evidence comes from presence of ropes made from esparto that were part of a wooden loom (Jason Crawford) for weaving cloth preserved by fire 3,500 years ago. No space for more on that story here, but see the interpretative article by Guillermo Carvajal, and the original scientific paper by Ricardo Basso et al. (2026).

***** Extending the utility of esparto, some of the other articles made from it include: “cord, for tying things and for weaving different types of basket, aguaderas or aguandangas (a vessel for supporting cántaros, i.e. 16-L round bottomed vessels), protection for jugs, demijhons [sic.] and bottles, and moulds for making cheese” (González & Amich, 2015); basket, beehive, belt, cheese mould, contraceptive (for sheep!), ferret basket, fishing net, hat, long rug, saddle, shepherd’s spoon, snail basket, stool, and muzzle (for mules) (Fajardo et al., 2015)…

REFERENCES

Ricardo E Basso et al., 2026. Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain). Antiquity 100(411): 636-653; doi:10.15184/aqy.2026.10312

Ioan-Lucian Bolunduț, 2024. History of gold in antiquity. Mining Revue 30(1): 48-57; https://doi.org/10.2478/minrv-2024-0005

Mehdi El Bouchti et al., 2021. Stipa tenacissima L.: A new promising source of bioactive compounds with antioxidant and anticancer potentials. Life 11: 757; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11080757

Macarena Bustamante-Álvarez et al., 2026. Nuevos ejemplares de calzado en esparto en contexto minero. Excavaciones del sector “Nuevo Filón Norte 1” en Urium (Riotinto, Huelva). Pyrenae 57(2): 79-112; doi: 10.1344/Pyrenae2026.vol57num2.4

Jose Fajardo et al., 2015. Traditional craft techniques of esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima L.) in Spain. Econ Bot 69: 370–376; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-015-9323-x

José Antonio González & Francisco Amich, 2015. Plants traditionally used for industrial and artisanal purposes in the Arribes Del Duero (Spain). Anales Del Jardin Botanico De Madrid 72(2): e025–e025; doi:10.3989/AJBM.2335

Raoul Kamadjeu, 2019. English: the lingua franca of scientific research. The Lancet Global Health, 7e1174; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30258-X

Yuliia V Lysanets & Olena M Bieliaieva, 2018. The use of Latin terminology in medical case reports: quantitative, structural, and thematic analysis. J Med Case Rep. 12(1): 45; doi: 10.1186/s13256-018-1562-x

Francisco Martínez-Sevilla et al., 2023. The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol). Science Advances 9(39): eadi3055(2023); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055

Rogerio Meneghini & Abel L Packer, 2007. Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication. EMBO Rep. 8(2): 112-116; doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400906

María Esther Pérez-Pérez et al., 2024. Lipid turnover through lipophagy in the newly identified extremophilic green microalga Chlamydomonas urium. New Phytologist 243(1): 284-298; https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19811

Minakshee Sarmah, 2023. Bischofia Javanica [sic.]: A potent medicinal plant. International Journal of Biomed Research 2(5): doi: 10.31579/2834-5029/030

Christine Tardy, 2004. The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyrannosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 3(3): 247-269; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2003.10.001

Barry Wood, 2019. Latinus Scientificus: The history and culture of scientific Latin. Journal of Big History 3(2): 33-46; http://dx.doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v3i2.3230

New archaeological dig of Camphill earthwork suggests Neolithic activity at site. Harry Bell was right again!
https://youtu.be/MlnMysyZfw8

#glasgowssecretgeometry #HarryBell #Archaeology #Glasgow

🏛️ ANCIENT MYSTERY: Da Vinci Designed a Double Helix Staircase at the Château de Chambord
📈 Trending with 100K+ readers! What do you think? 🤔
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/da-vinci-double-helix-staircase-009689
#AncientOrigins #History #Archaeology #HumanOrigins #Evolution #Ancient #DidYouKnow #Civilization

Young Viking woman’s tomb with 1,300-year-old textile fragments found in Denmark

Textile fragments found in an eighth-century Viking woman’s tomb at Skonager in Western Jutland offer a rare look at Nordic clothing. The burial was found at the Skonager site near Varde. The woman lay in a coffin placed inside a ditch, with her head resting on a stone pillow. Alongside her remains were two concave bronze or silver brooches...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/viking-womans-tomb-with-dress-fragments-in-denmark/

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#archaeology

https://www.europesays.com/videos/88098/ Unearthing her story: The rise of women archaeologists • FRANCE 24 English #AncientSocieties #Archaeologists #archaeology #Archaeology/Antiquities #France #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #FRANCE24 #FRANCE24English #GenderEquality #history #Women #Women'sRights

Man discovers Denmark’s largest Viking Age silver hoard while digging a terrace in his garden – The Art Newspaper

Denmark’s largest known silver hoard from the Viking Age, has been discovered in a man’s garden in Rebild,…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Archaeology #Denmark #Discoveries #Museums&Heritage #silver #Vikings #World
https://www.newsbeep.com/718444/

Climate change has shortened the re-chalking schedule for a prehistoric English giant from every 25 years to every 7-10. Deep time, disrupted. by @susanfourtane.bsky.social

https://onlys.ky/rechalking-the-giant/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=evergreen

#Archaeology #DeepTime #ClimateChange #CulturalHeritage #History

Wheat, barley and cattle reached Gansu around 4,000 years ago. Ancient DNA from 149 people at 11 sites finds no western Eurasian ancestry at all. Though the crops moved; farmers didn’t. #ancientDNA #archaeology #archaeogenetics https://www.anthropology.net/p/western-crops-reached-gansu-without

Iron Age Bosutswe pulled copper from mines in five modern countries, some over 950 km away. But every bronze it made used tin from a single South African valley. #Archaeology #Botswana #Archaeometallurgy https://www.anthropology.net/p/copper-from-everywhere-tin-from-one

A Bronze Age barrow in Suffolk sat empty for 2,000 years. Then Romans enclosed it, built a painted shrine beside it, and buried six pig skulls facing east. Nobody knows which god. #RomanBritain #Archaeology #BronzeAge https://www.anthropology.net/p/six-pig-skulls-facing-east-a-roman

Intensive farming trapped Çatalhöyük in a cycle of land stress, study finds

A thousand years of farming helped Çatalhöyük thrive, but the same system slowly placed growing strain on the settlement. A new computer model suggests the community’s later shift grew from long-term pressure on land, rather than one sudden climate event. Çatalhöyük stood on the Konya Plain in central Turkey...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/farming-trapped-catalhoyuk-in-land-stress/

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#archaeology #archaeologynews #neolithic #çatalhöyük

Intensive farming trapped Çatalhöyük in a cycle of land stress, study finds

A thousand years of farming helped Çatalhöyük thrive, but the same system slowly placed growing strain on the settlement. A new computer model suggests the community’s later shift grew from long-term pressure on land, rather than one sudden climate event. Çatalhöyük stood on the Konya Plain in central Turkey...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/farming-trapped-catalhoyuk-in-land-stress/

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#archaeology #archaeologynews #neolithic #çatalhöyük

Intensive farming trapped Çatalhöyük in a cycle of land stress, study finds

A thousand years of farming helped Çatalhöyük thrive, but the same system slowly placed growing strain on the settlement. A new computer model suggests the community’s later shift grew from long-term pressure on land, rather than one sudden climate event. Çatalhöyük stood on the Konya Plain in central Turkey...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/farming-trapped-catalhoyuk-in-land-stress/

Follow @archaeology

#archaeology #archaeologynews #neolithic #çatalhöyük

Intensive farming trapped Çatalhöyük in a cycle of land stress, study finds

A thousand years of farming helped Çatalhöyük thrive, but the same system slowly placed growing strain on the settlement. A new computer model suggests the community’s later shift grew from long-term pressure on land, rather than one sudden climate event. Çatalhöyük stood on the Konya Plain in central Turkey...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/farming-trapped-catalhoyuk-in-land-stress/

Follow @archaeology

#archaeology #archaeologynews #neolithic #çatalhöyük

Intensive farming trapped Çatalhöyük in a cycle of land stress, study finds

A thousand years of farming helped Çatalhöyük thrive, but the same system slowly placed growing strain on the settlement. A new computer model suggests the community’s later shift grew from long-term pressure on land, rather than one sudden climate event. Çatalhöyük stood on the Konya Plain in central Turkey...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/08/farming-trapped-catalhoyuk-in-land-stress/

Follow @archaeology

#archaeology #archaeologynews #neolithic #çatalhöyük