A Belgian archaeological mission to Egypt discovered a Pharaonic housing compound close to a gold mine in mountains along the Red Sea, the Egyptian Supreme Council for Antiquities said.
"The Belgian mission headed by Frank Vermeulen surveyed an area of three square kilometers (one square mile) and discovered numerous housing compounds for laborers in the gold mine," the council's head of Pharaonic Archaeology, Sabri Abdulaziz, told AFP.
The new discovery is situated 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the city of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea, 700 kilometres southeast of Cairo.
Plans to locate slave vessel
Cape Town - The Dutch slave ship, Meermin, ran aground off the southern Cape coast 236 years ago after an on-board rebellion nearly succeeded - and now researchers are poised to uncover her secrets.
"It is the beginning of a larger project to find different slave wrecks around the South African coastline," said Meermin project manager Jaco Boshoff, a maritime archaeologist attached to Iziko Museums.
The ship's last moments are a researcher's dream: bottled messages were surreptitiously slipped into the sea and the rebellion of 140 slaves-to-be quelled before the Meermin ran aground.
Boshoff said the first of three project phases would kick off on May 18, with a four-day expedition conducting a series of preliminary tests using a land and marine magnetometer, a device measuring the earth's magnetic field and which registers anomalies such as canons and other metal objects, to help map the exact location of the shipwreck.
Pre-European Maori Village Life Revealed
Thirty years of archaeological investigation into an early Maori village will culminate on Friday in the launch of Kohika (AUP), a book drawing a rare picture of pre-European Maori village life.
The remains excavated from the remarkable site of Kohika, a late 17th century AD Maori lake village in the Bay of Plenty, reveal many aspects of the community’s daily life, both at work and at leisure.
Kohika lies in what was formerly a great swamp in the west of the Rangitaiki Plains and was connected by major rivers and then by tracks to the interior North Island. It was abandoned after a flood and fortuitously preserved in peat swamp.
Kohika was rediscovered during agricultural drainage in 1974 and archaeological investigations can now provide a snapshot of the Maori way of life that had developed in the North Island before the arrival of Europeans.
This will be way cool Archaeologists OK Shot Put in Olympia
ATHENS, Greece - Archaeologists have approved a request by Olympic organizers to stage the shot put competitions at the site of the ancient games, the Culture Ministry said Wednesday.
The decision by the ministry's Central Archaeological Council, which reviewed the issue late Tuesday, cleared the way for the events to be held in Ancient Olympia, where the flame lighting ceremony takes place for each games.
The headline threw us at first. (Or rather, 'put' us at first, ha ha ha) The upshot (Booo! Hisss!) is that they are going to hold this event in the ancient site of the original games.
Physics meets archaeometry in ancient Greece
Physics-based techniques are playing an increasingly important role in the analysis of archaeological artefacts. At the 34th Symposium of Archaeometry in Zaragosa, Spain, this week Manolis Pantos and colleagues at the Daresbury and Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in the UK will describe how they used beams of synchrotron radiation and neutrons to examine a bronze helmet from ancient Greece. The non-destructive techniques employed by the group have helped to unravel the object's unusual history and could now used to investigate other ancient artefacts.
Pantos and co-workers analysed a "Corinthian-type" battle helmet that dates from the 7th century BC and is currently being exhibited at Manchester Museum. Alistair Jackson, an art historian at the museum, suggested that the helmet was made by beating out a single lump of bronze -- a technique that was so efficient that it was still being used in Italy in the 15th century -- but he also suspected that the nose-guard of the helmet might date from much later.
Ancient Mayan community may have been a city
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 2,000 years ago, while Rome was laying waste to Carthage and the Hopewell people were building mounds in Ohio, a grand civilization flourished at a now little-known site in Guatemala called Cival.
"It's very interesting when we reverse some existing ideas. We thought the preclassic Maya were a relatively simple society ... and they were not," Francisco Estrada-Belli, who led the excavation work at the site, said Tuesday. "There was a whole civilization during the preclassic time we are just beginning to recover."
Cival was one of the largest cities of the Preclassic Maya, perhaps housing as many as 10,000 people at its peak, said Estrada-Belli.
Okay, this: "He said the most important find so far turned up in a dank tunnel dug by looters some time in the past.
While he was inspecting the tunnel he reached into a crack in the wall and felt a curved piece of stucco."
We at ArchaeoBlog are alternately horrified and worshipful at the idea of someone sticking their hand into a crack in the wall of a "dank tunnel".
Unearthed artifacts give new clues to trade history
Archaeologists have found that many artifacts of great value in Cat Tien in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong, which give new clues to the trade history between Viet Nam and other countries as far away as the Middle East.
The findings announced at a seminar in Da Lat City include a statue featuring a victory deity standing on the back of a buffalo, a silver box carved with a reclining lion, a Somasutra water spout, jewelry and lingas among various other items.
Professor Cao Xuan Pho from the Southeast Asia Research Institute said he was surprised at what was discovered at the Cat Tien archaeological site, particularly the statue and variety of lingas reflecting different cultures.
Civil War battery receives grant
It won't be long before people can come and take a peek at Civil War history here.
One of the region's few remaining Civil War batteries will open to the public by June 2005, thanks to a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation Center for Civic Engagement.
Fort Wright City Council, Northern Kentucky University and the Behringer-Crawford Museum have received a $32,000 grant to restore, preserve and exhibit Battery Hooper. The 6-foot-high earthen wall on a hilltop off Highland Pike was built by Union forces to defend against Confederate attacks during the Civil War.
'New spirit' lifts Baghdad's Iraq Museum
One year after looters stole some of its most prized antiquities, the Iraq (news - web sites) Museum in Baghdad is undergoing a top-to-bottom restoration that its leaders hope will make it one of the premier museums and research centers in the world.
The project is being funded by donations from around the world and is not likely to be completed for at least two years, museum director Donny George said. Until then, George said he does not expect a formal re-opening of the museum to the public, in large part out of fear that terrorists will strike. "There is a new spirit in the building," George said during an interview. "The goodwill is back."