Hoabinhian neolithic site

Issue #36 of Stone Pages' bulletin, Archaeo News, has arrived to my mailbox with at least one item worth mentioning

New Neolithic (Hoabinhian) site found in North Vietnam

The cave, known as Tham Choong, (Na Hang district, Tuyen Quang province) is dated to 8000-7000 years ago. The tools belong to the Hoabinhian culture, which lasted from some 34,000 years ago to c. 2000 BCE, spanning through Paleolithic and Neolithic.

The thousand or so stone tools recovered served for cutting, chopping and grinding. Bone tools were also found, including a sharply pointed one that archaeologists believe was used for stitching the bark clothes they probably used.

Source: Vietnam News.

Other news

Check the newsletter for other news, such as digs in North America (Utah, already mentioned here from another source, Wyoming, Wisconsin) and Britain (Bronze Age cremation cemetery at projected commercial center near Inverness, Scotland, Bronze Age person from the Isle of Man died violently, trekking path projected between Avebury and Stonehenge, etc.) 

There's also a mention on Timothy Taylor's hypothesis on the baby sling being a decisive invention in human evolution (I'm a bit skeptic but who knows?)

More importantly maybe, Paola and Diego mention that they are heading again to Sardinia, accompanied by archaeologist George Nash, with the intention of persuading the authorities to open the badly sealed and spectacular Tomba della Scacchiera (image below), a Megalithic site that has serious conservation risks and also has a strong touristic potential (already mentioned at Leherensuge).

Sardinian Neolithic art in danger

I got a special newsletter some weeks ago from Diego Menozzi and Paola Arasio, who lead the excellent site on Megalithic monuments Stone Pages and its affiliated forum, but I did not realize the relevance of what they said on it until now: some tomb in Sardinia with conservation issues, you know: the typical problems of archaeology as governments don't care about culture, much less if it doesn't provide political redits.

But now I have accessed to their colorful press release along with Prof. George Nash (via Pileta de Prehistoria) and the problem suddenly became more striking and pressing:


Clear why, right? How can such a beautiful and well preserved monument from what surely was the all-times Sardinian apogee (the Nuraghe era) be treated as some nuisance the government does not want to spend money in protecting and promoting?

The site is known as the Checkered Tomb or Tomba della Schachiera (also: Sa Pala Larga 7) and is located in Bonorva, NW Sardinia, along with many other tombs and monuments, probably dated to the 3rd millennium BCE. It was excavated recently and merely disposed of afterwards, by covering the entrance with a concrete slab (permeable to water and somewhat corrosive) and destroying much of the context by filling with concrete as well, receiving so little attention that even the mayor of the town was unaware of the findings.

For the authors of the press release, this monument and others in the area is easily comparable to famous Maltese monuments, however would not it be for nearby farmer, Mr. Porcu, who took photos in the latest excavation season, in 2009, we would not have even a picture of them... anywhere, except maybe in some forgotten archive of the Italian cultural bureaucracy.