Audio News for August 25th through the 31st, 2024

Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Rick Pettigrew with our four top news stories from this past week of Archaeologica.

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Excavators in Berlin, Germany, surprisingly recovered a Japanese samurai sword

whose origin has them guessing.

A frozen mummy child found decades ago in the Chilean Andes

turns out unexpectedly to have suffered a violent, sacrificial death.

A Bronze Age cemetery in Norway uniquely includes only the remains of children.

And after many years of analysis, the remains of a U.S. pilot from World War II

now have a real identity and are buried back in his hometown.

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And now here's Laura Kennedy with the audio news from Archaeologica.

We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day.

Welcome to the audio news from Archaeologica.

I'm Laura Kennedy and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news

for the week of August 25th through the 31st, 2024.

We begin this week in Berlin, Germany.

We begin this week in Germany, where researchers have uncovered

a 17th-century Japanese samurai sword.

The team unexpectedly recovered the weapon from the debris of a site

destroyed during World War II.

As reported by LiveScience, a team from the Berlin State Office for Monuments

found the sword, known as a wakizashi, in 2022.

The researchers found the sword during excavations of Mögenmarkt,

the oldest square in the city.

The square had been bombed heavily during the war,

leaving the original building cellars full of debris.

The site was later paved over in the 1960s.

Archaeologists excavating the cellars recovered many war-related items

discarded at the war's end, including bridles, harnesses, and stirrups.

The sword was the most unusual find.

The sword was originally thought to be a military parade saber.

After taking a closer look at its design,

the archaeological team determined it to be from Japan's Edo period,

which lasted from 1850 to 1850.

The sword was originally thought to be a military parade saber.

The archaeological team determined it to be from Japan's Edo period,

which lasted from AD 1603 to 1868.

Although the sword was heavily corroded and damaged by heat,

its carved and painted decorations are still legible.

Daikoku, one of the seven Japanese gods of luck,

is etched into the metal ring on the sword's handle.

The guard is illustrated with chrysanthemum flowers.

A samurai would have carried a wakizashi as a secondary weapon,

used for combat at close range,

or in a small space where a katana or larger sword

would have been impractical.

X-ray analysis of the weapon revealed that the handle was not original,

and that the blade was initially longer.

According to the Museum Prehistory and Early History of the Berlin Sight Museum,

the sword's blade may date back as far as the 16th century.

The researchers posit that the sword may have been brought by Japanese diplomats

during a trip to Germany in the 19th century.

Even with that, how the sword got its current location remains a mystery.

Next, we head to the Chilean Andes,

where a new analysis of a 500-year-old frozen mummy

has challenged our understanding of Inca ritual sacrifices.

Researchers discovered the 8-year-old boy,

known as the Cerro el Plomo mummy, in 1954.

As reported by the Independent,

he was found hugging his knees in a seated position.

He died around A.D. 1460,

during a sacrifice to the Inca.

Inca nobles, priests, and officials were likely in attendance.

According to Chile's National Museum of Natural History,

marks on his feet indicate that he walked for several months

from south-central Peru to Cerro el Plomo prior to death.

The journey is more than 1,250 miles.

He also seemed to have ingested a considerable amount of food,

which remains undigested in his stomach.

The boy died in,

a rectangular chamber with a frozen floor.

Alongside him were items for a funerary offering.

Among the ceremonial objects were two cameloid-shaped figurines,

one made with shells and another with a gold and silver alloy.

Archaeologists initially believed his death

was caused by a combination of fatigue from his long journey,

the high altitude,

and a narcotic substance given to him to sleep on the frozen floor.

The room would have induced deadly hypothermia and suffocation.

However, this new study indicates that this peaceful death likely did not occur.

CT x-ray scans of the mummy's head indicate a blunt force trauma to the frontal bone of the skull.

The impact was likely the result of an object striking from right to left

as the child stood, bowing his head.

Genetic study revealed his ancestry to be from ancient populations in northern Chile

and the southern highlands of Peru.

His exact heritage has not yet been identified.

Archaeologists believe that sacrifices of this kind

may have been a means for the Inca to ensure that the best of their people

joined their deities in the afterlife.

These findings of a violent death challenge the prior notions

on the nature of Inca child sacrifices to the sun god,

particularly those during the harvest month.

Our next story takes us to southeastern Norway,

where an archaeological team from the University of Oslo's

Museum of Archaeology and Archaeology,

the University of Oslo's Museum of Archaeology,

has located an unusual millennia-old burial site.

As reported by Newsweek,

the team discovered 40 circular stone formations

in the municipality of Fredrikstad.

Each formation holds cremation remains in its center.

Most of the burial features contain the remains of children.

According to Hege Damlien,

leader of the excavation and professor at the University of Oslo,

this site is the only known cemetery of its kind in Norway and Scandinavia.

Similar burial grounds largely contain adult remains.

The bones in the formations are mostly burned and very fragmented.

Bone analysis revealed that a significant portion of the skull fragments found

belonged to children who had died as infants.

Other skulls came from children who had died between three and six years of age.

The burial is likely connected to a farming community.

Researchers have already discovered several settlements located near the site.

Archaeologists used radio calls to find out where the bones were.

carbon dating to place the graves between 1300 BC and AD 200. Most of the burials date between 800

and 400 BC, during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages in Scandinavia. This period had a high

child mortality rate. The Late Bronze Age marked a cultural shift in the region. The area initially

followed the practices of the Nordic Bronze Age culture. However, the introduction of bronze and

the practice of cremation likely signals the influence of the urnfield culture in Central

Europe. The design, layout, and goods from graves of this period were more modest, indicating that

the community as a whole was valued more than any individual. The use of cremation graves would

continue into the Early Iron Age. According to Domlian, the mystery of why this community

buried its children together at this specific place is yet to be solved.

Finally, we make our way to Italy, near Caltagrione, Sicily, where a missing U.S. Air Force pilot has

been identified after more than 80 years. The undertaking was a collaboration between the

Cranfield Forensic Institute in the U.K. and the American Prisoner of War Missing in Action

Accounting Agency, or DPAA. As reported by Heritage Daily, Second Lieutenant Alan W. Knepper

was declared missing in action in 1943 after his death. The U.S. Air Force pilot,

a single-seater plane, a P-38 Lightning, was shot down. His squadron took off from a base in

Tunisia and was charged with attacking Axis forces to assist the U.S. Army's beach landings in

Sicily. They came under heavy fire as they neared their target. According to contemporary reports,

he did not deploy a parachute and was believed to have died upon impact. The location of the

crash would be lost to history for the next eight decades. This changed when researchers from the

DPAA, which are the U.S. Air Force, were able to find out what was going on. The U.S. Air Force

found a German report in the U.S. National Archives describing the crash of two P-38 planes.

Based on that document, archaeologists were able to identify the site of the lieutenant's crash.

The team conducted a thorough investigation and excavation of the site, yielding evidence

connected to Knepper that would aid in his identification. Everything recovered from the

crash site was meticulously recorded before being handed over to Italian police. The items were then

taken to the U.S. Embassy, which was in the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. Embassy was then taken to the

and the DPAA lab to begin the process of DNA analysis and identification. Eight years after

the on-site recovery process began, the DPAA confirmed that Lieutenant Knepper had officially

been identified. The authorities have returned his remains to his hometown of Lewiston, Idaho,

for burial. Now that his body has been identified, a rosette has been etched to his name on the

tablets of the missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery.

That wraps up the news. Thank you for watching. See you next time.

for this week. For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web

at archaeologica.org, where all the news is history. Also, be sure to check out our

subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org. I'm Laura Kennedy,

and I'll see you next week.

This has been the Audio News from Archaeologica,

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