Oldest Painted Object in North America

  Nothing like it had ever been seen. The design, known as a lightning bolt, was unmistakeably man-made. 

"When you find something like that, you're very careful in cleaning it up," Lee said. "We took a gazillion photos of it." 

Nearby, the crew found the animal's skeleton, suggesting the skull had not been taken to or away from the site. The implications were profound. Lee and his crew wanted other archaeologists to witness the skull where it lay, but this was the pre-cell phone era. They carefully draped a cloth over the skull, covered that with a dustpan and some more soil, and headed back to town to make phone calls.

"It had been absolutely dry for the past month," Lee said. "That night, we got two inches of rain."

Lee and the others feared the worst: that after being buried for 10,000 years, the sudden deluge would wash away the paint.

"When we went back to the site, everything was mud. So we let it all dry out, then slowly peeled off the cloth, and there it was, the red lightning bolt intact."

The skull was taken to a lab, where the red hematite paint radiocarbon dated to roughly 10,500 years ago. That makes the Cooper skull the oldest painted object ever discovered in North America. The image below represents where a Folsom hunter or perhaps a shaman painted several designs. Only the lightning bolt was visible to the naked eye. The story doesn't end there, however.



 Cont. here:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/timeteam/blog/2012/07/the-cooper-skull.html






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Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone?

A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left)for National Geographic magazine

January 13, 2010

With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site (Jamestown map).

(Explore an interactive guide to colonial Jamestown.)

Cont.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100113-jamestown-tablet-slate-american-rosetta-stone/&ct=ga&cd=e7EIwba_pzY&usg=AFQjCNHsRsAywBIF2XEj2Tgmvwt7OvzdWA


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Important Find Housed in Lindsay Warren Visitor's Center on Roanoke

Once this gorgeous copper necklace flashed in the sun as its wearer proudly exhibited his or her possession.

Then for hundreds of years this beautiful necklace lay hidden in the sand awaiting its place in the sun once more.

Last Fall, the archeology group, First Colony Foundation, with the help of a radar sub contractor, uncovered the copper necklace in the wooded sand dunes not too far from the theater.

It was an exciting time to see it "in situ," said foundation archeologist and co-director Eric Klingelhofer.

The necklace is on display at the Lindsay Warren Visitor's Center located in the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, which encompasses the visitor's center, the Lost Colony and Elizabethan Gardens.

Necklace found on a dig last year on Roanoke.Found near the theater where the Lost Colony Drama has been performed for 72 years.



Related:

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/copper-necklace-inspires-more-digs-at.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=VcH2Ym_ImPEC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=roanoke+copper+necklace&source=bl&ots=peacWYI5MI&sig=4r03TrWyCPV9SLgEPgvDQ0rvzBM&hl=en&ei=R8eKStCEDpuwtgeIvdQd&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Searching for the Lost Colony DNA Blog posts

If you lost this cannon, please call scientists

A find at sea from 24 years ago begs the question of about how it came to rest on the ocean floor.

Courtesy of Roanoke Island Festival Park, September 19, 2007
This cannon on display at Roanoke Island Festival Park in North Carolina
was found off the Virginia coast in 1983 by scallop fishermen.
Researchers dated it to the 1580s.

BY PATRICK LYNCH 247-4534
September 23, 2007

A small cannon dredged up by scallop fishermen off the Virginia coast 24 years ago is getting a second look as a possible mark of a shipwreck with a - potentially - very interesting history.Some historians believe it is an English cannon from the 1580s, and if the dating is correct it would be one of the oldest English artifacts ever found in the Americas.Its mere existence begs larger questions: How did it get to the bottom of the ocean? Did it merely go overboard or did a shipwreck leave it there? Whose ship was it? When did it happen?

Full Article Here:


http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-21163sy0sep23,0,4284916,full.story