water

Carved stone palettes are recognised as a distinctive characteristic of the Pre-Classic Hohokam culture. Palettes have been found throughout the Hohokam region, and their distribution has helped to define that region. Prior study has documented context and physical properties of palettes and examined potential uses, including as a tool for pigment processing and use (i.e., a palette). During the same Pre-Classic period associated with palette deposition, the Hohokam constructed irrigation canals by exploiting or creating contours in the landscape to direct and control the flow of water. It is supposed that the Hohokam engineered these irrigation canals without the use of levelling instruments...

Soap is a substance now taken for granted, but there is uncertainty, myth and misinformation about its development, and little scholarly attention has been paid to the likely circumstances surrounding its discovery. As part of a MSc in Experimental Archaeology, a project collated the earliest mentions of proto-soaps...

One of the arguments proposed for interpreting the Neolithic site of Okhta as a settlement is the fact that potsherds found upon the site show no signs of rounding. Interpretation of the site as a settlement correlates poorly with the geological data, which suggests that, in the Neolithic period, the site was the bottom of a shallow bay of the Littorina Sea into which Paleo-Okhta and Paleo-Tosna flowed...

Saturday 1 September dawns gloriously, and is unseasonably sunny. Our fingers are crossed that this is the Indian Summer we'd been praying for all August since we intend to do a lot of walking in the next three weeks...