July/August 2020 Issue

AUSTRALIA: While excavating the Ladies’ Cottage, a former women’s mental health asylum in Tasmania, archaeologists learned about one inmate’s curious behavior through a surprising discovery. More than 1,000 objects were found hidden beneath the veranda, including bundles of newspaper, food wrappers, articles of clothing, and other personal objects. Researchers believe an unidentified woman may have entered the crawl space through a trapdoor and discreetly stashed the items between the 1920s and 1940s as a way of creating her own private space apart from asylum life.

INDONESIA: The ability to create figurative and portable objects of art is a characteristic that researchers believe separates Homo sapiens from our ancestors. Until recently though, little evidence had been found showing that early humans who settled Southeast Asia displayed these capabilities. But 2 tiny incised stone artifacts created between 26,000 and 14,000 years ago found in Leang Bulu Bettue Cave on Sulawesi are filling in this gap. One of the objects depicts an anoa—a local miniature buffalo—and the other displays a sunburst pattern.

INDIA: Nearly 300 never-before-documented rock paintings were discovered across 11 sites in Madhya Pradesh. The scenes include 67 human and 80 animal figures, among them depictions of deer, rhinoceros, wild boar, and Indian bison. While animal scenes are a common motif in ancient Indian rock art, which dates back as far as 30,000 years, one of the newly documented paintings depicts a rare post-hunt scene of a deer being butchered. A human figure seems to be pulling an arrow from the fallen animal while in the process of disemboweling it.