Episode 549 - Water infrastructure and Archaeology

Lagrange Point

Infrastructure projects and large engineering projects can lead to archaeological discoveries. When you start digging a large sewer network, the last thing you suspect to find is 1,000s of fossils. Large water projects in Auckland managed to discover new species and shed light on New Zealand 3 million years ago. We often think of modern plumbing as being a sign of the modern era, but in ancient China, a community banded together to build their own drainage network.
References:​

1. Bruce W. Hayward, Thomas F. Stolberger, Nathan Collins, Alan G. Beu, Wilma Blom. A diverse Late Pliocene fossil fauna and its paleoenvironment at Māngere, Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, 2023; 1 DOI: 10.1080/00288306.2023.2243234
2. Chunxia Li, Yanpeng Cao, Chi Zhang, Ling Qin, Zhenhua Deng, Yan Chen, Shuzheng Zhu, Wei Li, Junping Yuan, Hai Zhang, Yijie Zhuang. Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia. Nature Water, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s44221-023-00114-4