September/October 2024 Issue

Charred sticks found in Cloggs Cave are evidence that the GunaiKurnai people passed cultural traditions down for 500 generations. The sticks, which were made from the casuarina tree, are the oldest wooden artifacts ever discovered in Australia. They were smeared with fat and used by mulla-mullung, or medicine men and women, 12,000 years ago to cast spells and cure the sick. During such rituals, a stick was inserted into the ground at an angle and mulla-mullung sang incantations until it fell over, a practice that was still being carried out into the 19th century.

Excavations in a temple known as the Great Basement in the neighborhood of Tlatelolco in Mexico City revealed a stone cist, or burial chamber, beneath the floor near the central altar. The cist contained votive offerings deposited during the structure’s expansion between 1375 and 1418. Among the offerings were 7 obsidian knives and 59 other blades likely used by priests for self-sacrifice. Archaeologists believe the temple, which was dedicated to Tezcatlipoca—Lord of the Smoking, or Obsidian, Mirror­—was a popular place of worship for the military elite.

The homestead of a prominent formerly enslaved man known as King Pompey Mansfield has been located along the Saugus River, just north of Boston. Pompey was likely captured in West Africa and transported to New England, where he eventually gained his freedom and became one of the region’s first Black property owners in the 1760s. Historical sources record that Pompey served as king, an elected position that gave him a leadership role within his community, and that annually on “Negro Election Day,” he hosted festivities for enslaved and free Black people.